The Dovekeepers

The only mark of that time was the scar beneath my eye.

PEOPLE SAY that our mother walked across the water and that Lilith’s thirteen demons held the hem of her dress, but in fact we met a man with a flat boat. A simple, greedy man who wanted a high fee to take us across the water. He looked at my mother with his black eyes, happy to have her as his price. Instead, my mother traded the first jewelry your father had given her, the earrings she always wore. They were rubies from India, captured from a caravan of men who spoke a language no one had ever heard before. The rubies reminded me of your father, how pure they were, how elemental, so brilliant and red they seemed hot to the touch. I turned away, unable to watch this exchange. I had seen your father’s blood shed on many occasions. Despite the Romans’ rumors and stories, it had never been blue.

Before we left we gathered figs, along with a bundle of branches from the acacia trees. There was a storm rising, and the sea was filled with black lumps. They looked like stones set out to block our way. Our mother said not to worry. She swore that the water would heal and protect us; she had seen this as her own destiny. The boat rocked, and the man who rowed it uttered curses and fought with the sea. Still my mother was serene. Salt water splashed in our faces and threatened to blind us, but halfway across the sea turned calm, blue and then gray and then finally silver and still. The mountains of Judea were reflected in the water, floating before us. The vision made it appear that we had already reached our destination, though it was still a far journey. I caught the scent of fire and metal. My elements. My double life.

When we reached the other side of the Salt Sea, the boatman left us. In the silence around us, I felt I could hear the beating heart of the world, lev ha-olam, the center of creation in the distance of Jerusalem. We camped where we had been left, exhausted from our travels. At night, after you and Adir had fallen asleep on the damp sand, our mother motioned for me to follow. We made a fire from the acacia wood we had gathered on the other shore, the last acacia I would ever see that had taken root in Moab. My mother released her pet doves. Once they had disappeared, she added their cage to the fire and let it burn in a blur of flame.

Here in this emptiness, I could not stop thinking of the Iron Mountain and my life there, how I had imagined I was flying when I rode through the night with the troop of fearless raiders, how we had claimed everything we had come upon. I was fourteen, but I had killed several men. Afterward, I had burned the flowers of the acacia in tribute to each, as was the custom. Your father often brought back branches that were hung with hundreds of blooms for our mother. Although she thanked him, she wasn’t partial to those beautiful boughs. She didn’t appreciate the sweet nature of the flowers and how the bees were attracted to them. Those winged creatures understood the true essence of the acacia, the reason we burned it in honor of a soul. When acacia blooms are set aflame, they rise upward, in tribute to our God, who had made them.

The only thing that grew on this side of the Salt Sea was the Jericho balsam, a tree people say arose from the underworld that contains a flame inside an inedible fruit. Our mother took three of these fruits and cast them into the fire, and the flame turned yellow, like gold. She then told me to remove all of my garments. Because I dared not disobey, I did as she said.

I took off my leggings and tunic and then my cloak, along with the head scarf that was dyed the blue color of your father’s people. Our mother burned it all. The fabric sent inky sparks into the sky. She unplaited my hair and combed out the knots with her fingers. I didn’t complain, though it hurt. I said nothing and choked back tears. I had been told that at the beginning, when we first arrived, your father’s people had whispered that he had brought back a witch from Jerusalem and that our mother possessed the power to entrance him. It was best not to look her in the eye, the women of our camp said, or to go against her. Now I wondered if perhaps they’d been right. I feared my own mother on this night. I stood there naked on the salt, my feet burning as she chanted in a language I did not understand, mud from the Salt Sea covering her arms and throat and face so that she appeared to be a demon herself. I felt unmasked, my breasts unbound, my hair so long it reached past my waist in a black sheet.

Our mother carried her small woven bag of belongings. When she reached inside, I dreaded what might be revealed. Perhaps a snake or a scorpion, or a knife meant to mark me a sacrifice, as Abraham had been commanded to bring up his only son, Isaac, before God. It took a moment for me to understand what she intended even after she revealed what she had brought with her from Moab. It was a skirt and a cloak made of silk that your father had given to her, a treasure from India, spun by butterflies. I dressed, slipping on the unfamiliar garments, along with a pair of fine leather sandals. It was dark that night, which was a good thing. I would not have been able to look at myself. I had become a stranger in my own skin. I still felt the wings above my shoulder blades, yet they seemed bound in a way they never had when there was a sheet of linen wound around me, concealing them.