“Don’t do this for me,” Channa said. “Do it for the one you love. Our husband.”
I watched her hasten away, following the wall, although arrows flew close by, some set on fire. She didn’t shrink from them; perhaps she no longer cared about matters such as her own safety. I noticed that her feet were bare, and that she had wound a black scarf around her shoulders, and that she was now in the wilderness herself, and that everything she had said was true.
*
I WENT to the Snake Gate and asked the guard to let me by. I understood why I had dreamed of forty acacia trees surrounded by bees. The dream had been given to me by the angels and by the Almighty. What had appeared to be a puzzle now formed itself into a path.
The guard might have refused me, but Amram passed near, and I turned to him to plead for help. He was arrogant and impatient, half-dressed in his silver-scaled armor. His hair was long and plaited, ready for war.
“No woman goes through the gate,” he told me coldly, girding himself for the coming night, when the warriors meant to attack the slaves who were building the ramp. He had no idea that I had known him as a spoiled and sweet child, favored in his father’s eyes. Now his demeanor was harsh, and I saw something dark within him, a blackness of spirit that wasn’t there before. Some whispered that the raids of our people had included the murder of women and children. They swore our warriors had no choice, that it was all for the cause of the true Israel and the one whose name can never be spoken aloud, I am I. But war brought such changes to all, and with those changes it brought a loss of lev, the true heart, especially for those who had betrayed God’s laws, and who knew that they did, and who told themselves they acted as they must.
“Perhaps you’ve come because your daughter has a message for me?” he asked.
Aziza had spurned this warrior without granting him a reason for her displeasure, and his hurt was evident. She would not speak of him and seemed to have no interest in him.
“Are you her messenger?” the warrior wanted to know.
He used the word mal’ach, which although it can mean messenger can also mean angel. Perhaps this was his way of calling her a shedah, as many before had, or perhaps he believed I had called the angels of wrath upon him, that it was my disapproval which had caused Aziza to turn from him.
Yael had spied us from the plaza. She wore a tattered gray cloak that was too large for her frame. She came forward, concerned, when she saw her brother’s bitterness. “Shirah is not the cause of her daughter’s actions,” Yael reminded him gently.
“Or am I, it seems,” Amram said in a heated tone. “She can no longer even see me.”
“Be patient,” Yael suggested. “She may return to you.”
Amram reached out to make a quick sweep of the chaos below us. “I have no time to wait.”
Yael had taken note of the basket I carried. She threw me a quick look, then asked her brother if we might gather herbs from the hillside.
Amram shook his head, for this was not allowed. “Not on this day.”
“My brother,” Yael teased, “must I remind you that I can remember when you slept with your thumb in your mouth and feared the scorpion in the corridor?”
“Yaya,” he said, shaking his head, smiling in spite of himself. “I cannot let you go.”
“We’ll be careful,” she vowed. “Some things are meant to be,” I heard her whisper to Amram. “I’ll look for an herb that will bring you luck.”
He was still her brother, willing to listen to her demands. He spoke with the guard, who let us slip out the gate. The daylight had stretched itself into long shadows, which allowed us to press ourselves against the cliffs and go forth unseen. I had meant to be alone, but now I had no choice in the matter. Perhaps it was fitting that Yael should accompany me, for she had learned the spells my mother had taught me and would have no fear of what we must accomplish.
We made our way along the hillside together, then slunk down toward a damp ravine between two caves. Once, gathering kindling nearby, I had spied bunches of fragrant pink blooms set upon spindly green limbs. They were wild cousins of the rhododendron, a flower my mother had pointed out in Alexandria so that she might warn me of its dangers. Like the ba’aras root, which could draw out an enemy’s soul, the leaves and roots of the rhododendron were forbidden but often used for pharmaka in matters of love and of revenge. Of all the parts of this toxic plant, the flowers were the most potent.
We crouched low and listened well, the mud of the nachal slippery under our bare feet. We were protected by the wind. It seemed we were in another world entirely, one in which we might remember how beautiful the wilderness could be. We would soon be approaching the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the sun was strong for the season. The rhododendron flower was the potion I had come to find, one I did not need to concoct or create, for it was already part of creation. Spells and charms were not enough to protect my beloved. It was poison I needed.