Angels at the Gate (35 page)

—Apuleius,
The Golden Ass

L
ILA THANKS ME FOR ACQUIRING
her, but I notice her eyes are red later that day. I do not ask why she has been crying. Perhaps because Lot told her she was now mine, it reminds her she is a slave to be bought and sold.

I am tired from the previous night's climbing. Finally, I reached the top of that accursed cliff. My hip aches, and I am not in a good temper.

“Shall I rub it for you?” Lila asks, seeing my hand on my hip.

“You do not have time. We must prepare the evening meal.”

She spreads her hands. “What good does it do you to have me as handmaiden? You would have done better to purchase another slave.”

“I do not want another slave,” I snap. “I want a nap.”

Her hand flies to her lips, and our eyes meet. We hold it inside for only a moment before we both burst into giggles. I love Lila for this. She makes me see my own absurdity.

I
TAKE MY
nap and am deep asleep when Nami wakes me by jumping on the bed. For a moment, I am disoriented, thinking I am in my father's tent, sleeping late and must do some chore, only I cannot remember what it is. Father will not be pleased.

Lila's arm appears, brushing the hangings aside, and then her small face peers in to see if I am still asleep. When she sees my eyes open, she says, “We have a guest, Lady.”

My hand has found Nami's shoulder. “Who?” I mumble. We have never had a visitor.

“I do not know him.”

I want to roll to my side and return to sleep, despite the troublesome dreams, but the slant of light through the courtyard behind Lila indicates I have slept longer than I intended. With a low groan, I rise. My leg is better for the rest once I work out the stiffness. I sweep back the strands that have loosened from my braid. It has been long enough to wear this way for moons. Sometimes, I put my hand on it and marvel at the soft rope whose length marks my time as a woman.

When I reach the little gate and see the man towering over Lila's small frame, I am unable to move. Chiram's ghost-spirit stands in the doorway. For the time between heartbeats, I am swept into the netherworld, for there can be no doubt I see Chiram before me … and then there is doubt. I blink and realize this man is younger than Chiram, his hair thicker, if that is possible. Not so much fat on him. The shadow world where the dead and the gods dwell resolves into this one, and I realize who this must be.

“Danel! Please enter.”

The welcome in my voice salves Lila's concern at the burly young man, and she steps aside to allow him entry into the little gate.

“Lila, this is Danel, son of Chiram, a longtime friend of my father's”—I swallow—“and of mine.”

Lila looks startled that I would bother to introduce someone to a slave, but she nods to Danel. “May I bring you drink or food?”

Danel, who is only two summers my elder, starts to shake his head, then apparently remembers his manners and amends, “I would be grateful for a drink of water.”

I smile, thinking Chiram would have only grunted a response.

“Of course.” Lila goes to the clay-fired urn that holds the water she draws daily from the river, scooping a cupful. Like Nami, she has a gazelle's grace, moving only lightly on the earth, despite her compactness. When she leaves the cup in Danel's hands, he turns his attention to me, and his expression collapses in sadness. Unlike his father's, Danel's emotions have always been etched for any to read. We are almost of equal height, so he looks straight into my eyes. I feel my bad eye wander to the side.

“Tell me what happened to you? And to my father?”

I am not ready for this. “You do not seem surprised I am a woman.”

He snorts. “I was. I am. I had heard that Lot returned with a new wife, but only today heard your name and that you were a child of Zakiti. It was confusing, but I came and here you are.”

“Yes.”

“I don't understand, but I want to.”

He hesitates and then, as if he feels the need to explain, says, “When your father was killed, I understood the grief that took you into the wilderness. We searched for you and thought you dead, until the rumors came to us about a tall man with a fire burst of hair and a young boy who were guests of a desert tribe.”

I nod. Word in the desert travels faster than a flash flood.

Danel shifted his thick shoulders as if resettling a burden. “Then Father insisted on trying to find you, and he would not allow me to go with him.”

There was much said in the silence that followed.

I put both hands on his shoulders. “Your father is dead, Danel.”

He takes a deep breath.

“He was as brave as any man I have known,” I say.

At this, he looks startled. “Brave? My father?”

I understand his surprise. It is perhaps an odder concept than the fact that the boy, Adir, with whom he was raised, is now a woman. Not that I can remember any cowardly act of Chiram's. He just seemed too self-absorbed to be heroic. Perhaps my father could have told us differently had we thought to ask—Chiram fought at his side in the wars—but as children, we only half-believed an adult had a life before we came into being.

Settling Danel in the courtyard, I tell him the story of what happened from the time I left Lot's tents. I ask Lila to sit with us. She listens to my story with wide eyes, as intent as Danel. When I tell of Chiram's knives
finding the back of my father's killer, she gasps. I do not mention the rite on Ishtar's temple. That is a thing between me and Mika and the goddess.

The words about what happened in the cave are difficult to speak, and this is the first time I have given them. Raph did not need them. He could see what happened with his own eyes. Sarai did not ask and though Ishmael did, I said only that a man had kicked me. Danel, however, needs to know that his father never begged for his life, though he was in agony. Danel bows his head, and I know he is fighting tears.

“I never understood what Chiram was to me,” I tell him, taking both of Danel's hands. “But in that cave I learned more of the true man. Your father always wanted a caravan of his own, but he risked his savings to bet with a nomad for a dog he intended for me, to salve my pain at losing my herder dog. He searched the desert for me out of concern and loyalty to my father. He was a far better man than I, as a child, saw him to be, and I regret I did not know it then.”

Danel takes another deep breath. “You give me a great gift in telling me this. I thank you for that, Adir … Adira.” A smile plays across his generous lips. “I don't know that I will ever be accustomed to you as a girl … a woman.”

I return his smile. “I am not used to it myself.”

Suddenly, his gaze grows intense, and he tightens the grip on my hands. “Adira, you are in danger here.”

I blink. “I know I am not liked—”

“It is more than that. Lot is despised and feared in this city.”

If he had not kept my hands trapped in his, one would have drifted to my face. “I know they do not like what he says about Baal and El, but that has naught to do with me.”

“I cannot say the people of this city would be kind to someone—” His lips tighten.

“Disfigured?” I finish for him.

He nods. “But I can say that the real reason for their hatred lies in the fact that you are Lot's wife.”

“But why? I do not speak ill of their god. I am no threat to them.”

“Exactly. It is easier to vent their anger on you.”

“What can I do?” I ask him.

“Just be careful,” he says, shaking his head. “It is worse that we have had no rain all winter, too easy an excuse for Baal's displeasure at Lot's ranting. If we do not get rain by spring, be careful.”

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.

—Thucydides

I
AM ALONE AT THE LOOM
with only Philot and Nami for company when it seems the ground shudders. It is not the first time I have felt it, but Lot assures me it is an occasional happening, not something to concern me, though I recall seeing the fallen stones of buildings when I roamed the city searching for goods for my father.

Perhaps disoriented by the earth's movement, a small brown bird finds its way through the loose fronds thatching the courtyard roof. It flutters wildly from wall to wall, seeking a way out. Nami jumps to her feet, following it, leaping, and snapping. The chickens squawk and flap in distress. Nami understands the chickens are not prey, but she knows this bird is not a chicken.

When she races by me, I grab her. She trembles with excitement. I know she has longed for a chase. I see it in her eyes when she rests her head in my lap and looks up at me. I spend time throwing a bone for her, and she loves that, but it is not the same as chasing a rabbit or an ibex or even a trapped bird.

“Down,” I tell her, my hands wrapped around her neck. She ignores the command, struggling against my hold. I do not blame her; it is her nature just as it is the bird's instinct to escape. In its panic, the bird does
not realize it could go back up the way it got in. It is difficult to watch the little creature flying again and again into the walls, but if I release Nami, she will kill it. Besides what could I do—limp from wall to wall snatching at it?

At last, it flutters to the ground, exhausted.

Once still, it is not as tantalizing to Nami, and I am able to capture her attention and give her the signal to lie down and stay. She licks my hand in apology for struggling against me. When I am certain she will obey, I rise with the help of Ishmael's staff and go to the corner where the bird sits on the floor, seemingly stunned, though its eyes are open.

Slowly, I reach down and close my hand over it. To hold a bird requires that the grip not be too tight, or it will crush. Yet too loose, and the bird will escape. It struggles once, testing its prison. I am firm, and it quiets, though I can feel the racing flutter of its heart through my fingertips. I remember how Kerit had hooded his falcon to keep it calm, and I tuck the bird, still in my hand, into the dark beneath my robe. Nami looks at me expectantly, wondering, I imagine, if I am going to share my catch.

I hobble to the back window, which is uncovered and open to allow the breeze a path. A lattice normally covers it, but Hurriya had it made so it could be removed and I normally keep it so during the day, even in the winter. I would rather put on a shawl than close it. The chickens sometimes fly up to the sill, but never seem tempted to go beyond.

Beyond the wall's edge, the Dead Sea shimmers. I have learned to see beauty here. Sunset imbues the cliff walls with warm gold. With the morning sun, the salt crystals in the water shoot tiny beams of light to dance just above the surface. So intense is the dazzle, I often wonder if the stars are raining into the sea.

The breeze shifts and I cough, my nose spoiled by the incense I keep burning inside, in part to keep away the flies, but also to cover the smell. Lot says there was not always such a stench. In the days when his wife's mother was a child, she said only on occasion did the smell drift to them.

I remember the first time my father pointed out a yellow seam in the cliffs and had me press my nose to it. It stank of rotten eggs, the same smell that the Dead Sea belches. What has changed, I wonder, to make the sea's belly so discontent?

Lot says if I would stop burning incense day and night, I would become
used to the stench. I cannot imagine becoming used to it. It seems more than a smell; the air is often heavy, almost furred. Besides, I buy the incense with my own silver. With the dowry my father left me, I could buy incense enough for my lifetime.

The throb of the bird's heart has eased, and the creature is quiet in the dark of my robe. Perhaps the warmth and sound of my own heartbeat calms it, reminding it of a safe nest with huddled siblings.

I draw the bird out and open my hand. Splaying tiny talons, it fumbles for a perch. When I spread my fingers, the talons wrap my forefinger like a baby's instinctive clutch.

So, here we are … woman and bird and sea. The wind shifts again, and a clean breeze lifts my hair, and I remember long ago I was daughter of the wind. “Fly,” I whisper.

For a moment, our eyes meet, and we are not predator and prey, but sisters. Then a flurry of wings—and she is gone.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I determine I will not stay a prisoner in this house, despite Danel's warning. I snatch up the basket and announce to Lila that I am going to market. She looks surprised, but says nothing.

Nami is at my side in an instant, quivering with eagerness to stretch her long legs. The street stirs in dawn's light. Nami does her business, and I kick dust over the puddle. Then she is off to investigate everything within sight of me.

I check the sky, hopeful for a sign of rain, but the clouds are white as the salt mountains that lie to the west of the Vale. Not a drop has fallen since we arrived, though we are in winter's heart, and it is the season for rain.