The Dovekeepers

And yet, as I watched them at their studies, I thought how much easier it would be if only I could do as my mother asked, if I could be the one to sit beside her, if it had not already been written that I was bound to disobey.

WHEN NAHARA left us, I was convinced she would return. I was the rebel and she the good daughter, my dear and trusted sister. In time I was certain that the Essenes’ strict ways would grate upon her. Then she would remember she belonged to me.

But the season changed, the wheat grew tall, and still there was no word. There was Yael, in Nahara’s place at the table. There was Arieh, cooing, playing with his toes or with his rattle on her bed. My sister dropped her eyes when we passed each other, as though we had not crossed the Salt Sea together and slept in each other’s arms. She seemed not to hear when I called to her in the plaza. I thought she would come to me in her own time, but I was wrong. I should have realized that a ewe does not run through the open gate when her entire world consists of the pen in which she lives. Once such a creature has memorized the fence of thorns, she will not cross that marker, not even after it’s torn down, for it still rules the boundaries of her vision and her life.

When I spied Nahara in the field, tending to the black goats, urging them on with a bent stick, following the men of the tribe, her eyes trained on Malachi, I wondered if my mother had been mistaken in her prophecy when she said that love would bring about my undoing.

Perhaps she had seen my sister’s fate instead.

ON THE DAY of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when we celebrate our people’s release from slavery, the kadim arose out of Edom. No good could come of this, for once the wind began, it was said to last for weeks. There was no way to escape its brutal heat or hide from its fury. For weeks the birds would not rise into the sky, their wings beaten back by the force of the gusts and by the will of our God, reminding us that we must bow before Him and offer thanks for our life on earth. Confusion would reign when men tried to speak to one another, and women’s intentions would be misunderstood.

In the dovecote, the birds were agitated and refused to lay. My mother drew the sign of the four winds on the earthen floor, then burned incense, a small pile of myrrh that caused the doves to quiet, though they still trembled. Yael took the birds onto her lap, and they were comforted, but the moment she went out the door, they began to worry and call.

When the Feast of Unleavened Bread was over and the bakers were once again at work at the ovens, using what little grain they had for their loaves, the wind was still with us, just as fierce. Petals rained down from the almond trees in a blinding hail. Lines formed at the storehouses, where our neighbors waited for their share of food. People had to shout in order to be heard; in the end they often walked away from each other, shaking their heads. The kadim had brought a whirlwind; there was dust and grit where we slept and where we ate and in the seams of our garments.

Fortunately there was a single hour when the wind eased and brought a stillness for which we were all grateful. It came to us when the blue light of evening began to fall. The color of the horizon was so wondrous even the blind vowed they could see it. It was beyn ha’arbayim, a time that is neither day nor night, when the veil of illusion is thinner and we can see things in the lilac-tinged light that cannot be spied at any other hour. It was the time when demons or angels could appear, when the sheydim had first come into existence.

One evening Yael did not come to our chamber alone for her visit with my mother. She brought her Essene friend to us during the hour when the kadim wind grew quiet. Tamar’s white robe appeared blue as it fell around her. The women approached us, eyes downcast. I shivered in the light and the wind. As for my mother, her face was haggard. She had seen a scorpion in a corner that morning. Ever since, she had been waiting for disaster to come to our door.

“Don’t blame Tamar for what she’s about to tell you,” Yael advised my mother, her voice filling with concern. Her hair shone scarlet in the fading light. “She came to me, as she now does to you, to offer the truth, not to cause you any hurt.”

Tamar’s boy, Yehuda, had become a friend to my brother. We had thought perhaps she had come in search of him, as was often the case. But Tamar wasn’t there for her son. It was my mother she wanted, yet oddly she came no closer. We were standing on one side of the doorway with Yael, who had joined us, while Tamar remained on the other side, as if to cross the threshold might bring a curse upon her.

It was a bad omen, to stand divided, yet no one moved.

“Once the Sabbath has come, there is no way to go backward to another day,” Tamar remarked, her eyes downcast. She was a gentle woman, one who had suffered greatly, and it clearly pained her to say more. Yael urged her to go on, so at last she told us. “They went to Abba for his blessing.”