Now that she had been freed, the shackles loosened, Shirah grabbed for a stick and formed a circle in the dust.
“You wanted me here,” I overheard her say to Ben Ya’ir. “Was it not for this, cousin?”
She stood within the circle, then reached inside her cloak to bring forth ashes, which she sprinkled on her head, chanting as she did so in a low, even tone. The crowd strained to hear and were frightened by a language they didn’t understand. Many among them believed she was bringing a curse upon us and hung back, drawing their children near to protect them from evil.
It began all at once, before we understood what was happening. The sky paled and turned incandescent. Rains begin in different ways, but this was a torrent that had no equal. One moment the earth was dust, and the next lakes were forming. The world became wet and luminous, brimming with sheets of water. I had never before noticed that rain contained every color within itself, green as the fields, blue as heaven, white as a lamb, yellow as my daughter’s hair.
Men sank to their knees, raising the fringes of their prayer shawls to their lips and then to the heavens to offer praise to God and to the mystery of life. We could hear the goats and the sheep in their pens. Before our eyes the living fence of thorns that held back the livestock gave forth buds, and then, as if commanded by the Almighty, those buds unfurled to become leaves.
People whispered this was the reason the Witch of Moab had been able to walk across the Salt Sea without drowning. She, who had slipped down a thousand steps into the cistern to bathe in the dark, was our salvation. I blessed her for this as I raced through the blasts of wind, hurrying to our chamber for the incantation bowl she had cast. I was only a simple woman, but I recognized the missing ingredient exactly as Shirah had assured me I would.
I brought the bowl outside and held it above my head, chanting to the Almighty, singing His praises though the wind was in my face, its roar filling my ears. The bowl overflowed, and my heart did as well. I could hear my grandsons calling to each other as I stood there dripping with rain, as joyful as I’d ever been. Their voices had been caught inside the waterfall all this time, stored in a vessel by the angel who had protected them from evil. Now those voices had been released, drawn toward the prayers in the bowl as the angel Beree rained down upon us. Later, I would bring them before their father, and although the children would shrink from his fierce form, when I urged them to speak a greeting, I would see the Man from the Valley weeping in gratitude. Perhaps his faith would be restored by this gift, as mine was.
I heard the voice of God all around me, but I was unafraid. I should have trembled before the Almighty and hid myself from sight. I should have taken a knife to my own flesh to cut away the mark of my past deeds. But now I understood that, although words were God’s first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven.
I listened to the wind that had risen in the desert to follow us here.
I heard what it had to say.
Winter 71 C.E.
Part Three
Spring 72 C.E.
The Warrior’s Beloved
You are my armor and my sword, my faith
and my treasure, everything I’m fighting for.
My sister, you are like the dove, so beautiful and so distant, the child I saw born into this world as I crouched beside our mother. You are the reason I refuse to witness another birth. The cord of life was wrapped around your neck, and when I looked into your eyes I saw the World-to-Come, a place so distant and vast no one alive should ever view its reaches. You were gasping, turning blue, a fragile creature drawn into our fragile world. I was only a child myself, unwanted, brought into the marriage between our mother and your father in the land of Moab, where the women wore blue veils and no one knew what our mother had been, or what she would become, though they feared her all the same.
Because our mother was a foreigner, none of the women we lived beside came to help when the time for you came upon her. They arrived at other times, when their own needs drove them to appear in the dark, searching for curses or cures. They brought delicacies of lamb and herbs and olives in beautiful pottery dishes, clay bowls decorated with dark red designs. These women came to beg for our mother’s magic when they needed it. She was kind enough to offer the barren among them love apples, the yellow fruit of the mandrake that ripens with the wheat, so that they might conceive. She gave them a healing poultice made from figs for rashes and boils and, in the most sorrowful cases, brought them her knowledge of tzari, the ancient Syrian cure used for leprosy, the illness wherein the flesh is consumed by demons and falls away from the bone. Yet when she was the one in need, the women of the camp hid themselves from view, terrified that our mother might bring another witch into the world, and that her power would double. Then, despite their aversion to her and their bloated grudging jealousy, they would all be forced to drop to their knees before her.