The Dovekeepers

But perhaps on this mountain, with so much danger before us, there was little time to search out sin and little reason to do so. Did my neighbors not wonder what sins of their own had brought them to this place, why our people must suffer so, why God’s ways were so mysterious, why He had forsaken us on this mountain?

The constant howling of the wind drove some people mad; many among us cursed the fortress and were brought lower than they’d ever imagined. There were women who wept during the windstorms until tears streaked their faces with lines of salt. Did they not ask why they had been forced so far from Jerusalem and everything they had known and loved? In their darkest hours, as they huddled with their children in the dwindling light, their shawls their only protection from the sandstorms, they clearly wondered what we were fighting for.

I never asked that question. I gazed out at the land beyond the serpent’s path and thought of the many forms a beast could take. There were those who revealed themselves at noon, squarely setting their feet upon the earth, and those who sifted inside your dreams. There were those who came from Rome, the beasts I despised more than any others, their claws beginning to show as they crossed the Great Sea, for salt repels demons. When I thought of such wickedness, I could not sleep. To protect myself I chanted the incantation Shirah instructed me to recite when I tossed and turned at night. I ban and make an oath against destroyers and demons and plagues and afflictions and terrors and nightmares.

Still I lay awake, unable to close my eyes.

There were occasions when I spied my son-in-law climbing the path, set apart from the other warriors as they returned from missions meant to protect us or when they attempted to locate the provisions we needed from the world outside our walls. I did not wish to think about the mournful deeds they had committed, the blood that had been drawn, the lives taken.

The Man from the Valley who would not walk beside his brethren no longer had a resemblance to the scholar he’d once been. He was never without the ax for which he’d traded his most precious chalice, carrying the weapon so near his torso that it seemed a part of him, threaded to him with invisible red silk. His hair that had turned white overnight was so long that people said God was able to grab him away from danger. This was the reason he still lived, though he placed himself in peril time and time again. He was known to be furious in a skirmish, willing to forge into battle with little thought to his own life. I understood why he did this, for I knew what he was fighting for; in that he was no different than I. Anguish such as ours is fed on bones and blood. We had no more choice than the wind does as to where we must go and where we belonged. I was grateful for this quiet time on the mountain. Here, at last, my grandsons were safe, able to rest without danger while the doves at my bedside hushed them to sleep. As for me, sleep was a country I no longer visited, despite my incantation. When I did, I wished only for my waking life, the hours when I didn’t see the nightmare images of all that had happened and all I had become.

THERE WERE MANY who were leaving cities and villages when we fled. They were mostly good people, but there were also those who veered to the left of the road, the side of the wicked. Before the Baker slid the last loaves in the oven on the huge wooden breadboard he always used, before I knew he wasn’t coming back, before black feathers fell onto the road, it had already been written that we would meet those who were evil and that they would come upon us late in the day, when the sky flared blue and the air was scented with jasmine.

They came for the donkeys, which they spied from the cliff. They came for the cool water that glittered in their eyes. But they stayed when they saw Zara tending to the fire. They saw her brightness, so beautiful it appeared that morning was breaking before them, and their intent changed. They forgot the donkeys and the pool of water and the Tenth Legion, the Roman regiment they had deserted, fearing punishment from their superiors, the canes of the generals broken upon their backs in exchange for misdeeds and grudges.

They were already beyond the line that divides us from the creatures of darkness. They crossed the worn path left by the pack of hyenas who had been stalking us, crying in the night, trying to gain our favor with their sorrowful yelps, hoping for scraps before they came to devour us. Four Roman soldiers who had lived without water or food or hope ventured down the hillside, their chain-mail armor weighing upon their frames, men once but no more. It was easy for them to become beasts; one step and their humanity was an illusion. Beneath the armor there was only teeth and claws, hunger and thirst. It was the Sabbath, and Yoav was gone into the desert to pray, his prayer shawl thrown over his shoulders. The wind was rising, so he didn’t hear any of what happened to us. He was committed to God and to the sound of his own voice. Ever since Yom Kippur he had been absent all day and into the evening, praying for our deliverance. When the first star appeared in the sky, we would light the Sabbath lamp with the last of our olive oil, and he would return to us. That was the sorrow of it. He saw the light but never expected the darkness.