The Man from the North flushed red when the women spoke of him, but I laughed along with them. I had begun to take my noon meal with the others, even though I ate little, only fig cakes and crackers, the most I could consume without becoming ill. I had come to enjoy the company of Shirah and her daughters. Revka was still difficult, but I yearned to win her favor, if only to make peace. I offered to walk with her across the plaza.
“For what reason?” she asked.
It seemed she trusted no one.
“So you’ll stop being suspicious of me,” I declared.
“That won’t happen,” she grumbled. Still she allowed me to carry her allotment of water and grain.
Her grandsons ran to meet us as we approached her chamber. When I spoke to them, they stared but did not reply. I had heard others whisper that neither boy possessed a voice.
“You have something to say about them?” Revka asked, glaring at me.
“There’s not that much to say in this world,” I offered. “Let’s keep our mouths shut.”
She laughed at my remark, softening toward me.
“When you have a son, you’ll understand,” she said. “You’ll do anything for him.”
It was said that a woman about to have a daughter was hungry all the time, but one who was to give birth to a son would not enjoy food until the instant he was born. Neither Revka nor I said more. She had let slip that she was aware of my condition, and I was now mindful that her grandsons had lost their voices under circumstances she didn’t wish to speak of. I did not venture to ask if demons had been at work, as some people suggested. In return, she did not question me further.
I understood that to have a son was an honor. Yet it was said that at the moment when a mother first glimpsed a boy-child, she would also see the man he would become, the ax he would carry, the bow he would wield, the battles that awaited him. Even a witch could not undo her son’s desire to be a man. I had spied Shirah in the doorway of the small dovecote far across the field, her black hair tumbling down, her voice mournful when she called for her son. Most often, Adir didn’t answer. He spent his time at the garrison with the warriors. Shirah still tied knots in the boy’s tunic to protect him. She threaded packets of salt and parsley to the fabric to keep away evil. But I had seen him in the alley removing those stitches one by one, casting the charms onto the ground.
WHEN I COULDN’T SLEEP, I sat on a small bench in my chamber spinning with a hand loom. I could do this work in the dark, the door cast open for a trickle of moonlight. The dye I’d used on this wool was shani, scarlet, a crimson color taken from boiling the husks of small insects. Red thread always served as protection and was noticed by the angels and by Adonai. As I worked, the thread was indeed like rubies in my hand.
I gazed out at the fountain in the plaza and saw a shadow. There was no longer any water running through; the rains were long gone and the night was silent. For a moment I thought it was Aziza, come to meet my brother. I rose to shut the door so that I might respect their privacy. It was only then I recognized the figure in the dark. Shirah was the one standing beside the fountain, like a woman desperate for water. I could hear her crying as though the world were about to end. I couldn’t help wonder what on earth could make a witch ache so.
When she left, I fully opened the door to my chamber so that I might drink in the cooler air of the night. I thought about the brutal time I had always feared, the month of the lion, the red-center of Av, when we would yearn for anything cold. As it was said that the rue plant sparks bright red at midnight, its strength dispersed in the heat, I would burn more brightly in Av. I thought of the flame tree in Jerusalem and of the goat who had been my angel and of the trail of blue I had followed through the wilderness. I thought of the woman in the World-to-Come with whom I shared my name and how I owed her both my life and the color of my hair.
I stored away my spindle and slipped into the dark, my cloak clutched around me. I went to the auguratorium, where the bones of doves and eagles had been cast upon the ground to count the years in a man’s life, or the number that his flock would grow to be, or the strength of his sons. Wise men had divined what was to come for warriors and kings from the flight of the swallows and from the collection of blue-white bones, but there was no one to decide my future, or even suggest where it might lead.
I took the curving stairs, worn down by the tide of years and by the footsteps of the sages. I wanted to see the earth below me, a world that was so beautiful and so cruel, the land my child would walk through. There were women working at the looms even at this late hour. If I turned west I could identify their voices, but if I turned east I heard only the wind. Inside its roar were the voices of lions, of men who walked through the dark, of women who had been lost.