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By Root 1866 0

times when those around you can see your fate but you yourself are blind, stumbling toward a coil of mistakes. This was such a time for Shirah’s young daughter. We could all see her future if she chose one path rather than another, but she could not see it herself. She sulked out, slipping past the heavy wooden door though her work was not completed. Shirah went after her, but it was too late. In an instant Nahara was nowhere to be seen. It was as though she’d been snatched from the earth and all that remained was her shadow. Perhaps she had already followed Malachi to the stone goat barn of the Essenes, removing her sandals to walk barefoot among the women. She had been an obedient girl, but now her duty seemed to lie beyond her mother’s domain. I stood in the doorway beside Shirah. At this moment she hardly seemed a fierce practitioner of keshaphim, only a mother who could easily be broken by a child’s heedless actions.

“She’ll be back,” I offered hopefully.

Shirah stared into the empty plaza. She shook her head. She’d seen love a thousand times before. She had fashioned charms to induce it and amulets to sever its ties; she had recited spells to bind lovers together and others to break them apart. She was sufficiently practiced in love’s ways to recognize its web, even in the dim light of the dovecote.

“Unfortunately, you’re wrong,” she said to me, her soft voice breaking with regret. “She’s already gone. And if he knew who she truly was he would never want her.”

I could feel a sudden chill in the blistering air. I thought this was what we had wanted, for there had been daily gatherings so that we might all pray for rain. Now a light rain had begun, unexpected fortune at this arid time of year. But the rain was strange, falling in bleak bands of white from the slate-colored sky. I licked my lips and realized it was laden with salt. It was a rain from the Salt Sea, a strange occurrence that sometimes took place when the wind arose and carried a cloud of dust. The furious, hot blasts had also picked up water and salt, and dumped those elements upon us. It was a bad omen, for what appeared to be rain was only seawater. A salt rain could poison orchards and contaminate cisterns. Men with wounds would weep in pain tonight; women would be unable to light fires and cook their families’ evening meals. The goatherds would find the fresh milk we called halab turned to salty curds in the milking pails.

It would have been better to have no rain at all than to have this.

Shirah had begun to recite a spell as we ducked back inside to elude the downpour. She stunned us all when she grabbed one of the doves. She took up the knife we used for our meals. As though possessed, she made a gash across the dove’s throat, then turned the bird so that its blood dripped onto the stone floor. The murder of a dove was a crime punishable by law. Certainly none were to be taken for the darker uses of keshaphim.

Aziza turned away when she understood what her mother intended, to come between Nahara and the Essene she had chosen. The Man from the North averted his eyes as well, so that he would not witness a deed that seemed far too intimate for him to behold. As for Yael, she alone stood rapt, drawn to the feathers falling, the blood on the floor. I noticed she was quick to murmur the words of the chant along with Shirah, as though she hoped her voice might give strength to the spell.

As they chanted, the rain from the Salt Sea splashed over the doorway and washed away the blood. In time I came to believe this was what dissolved the spell, turning it worthless before it was begun. Aziza and the slave tried to quiet the doves, who were flapping toward the ceiling, frightened by the rain pelting like stones rattling above us, and even more disturbed by the sudden murder of one of their own kind. I spied Shirah’s grave expression as she tried to sweep away the salt, to no avail. My heart went out to her. Even the witch people so feared, one who knew magic better than most learned men, could not stop a girl who was utterly determined to have her