The Dovekeepers

I could feel a sudden chill in the blistering air. I thought this was what we had wanted, for there had been daily gatherings so that we might all pray for rain. Now a light rain had begun, unexpected fortune at this arid time of year. But the rain was strange, falling in bleak bands of white from the slate-colored sky. I licked my lips and realized it was laden with salt. It was a rain from the Salt Sea, a strange occurrence that sometimes took place when the wind arose and carried a cloud of dust. The furious, hot blasts had also picked up water and salt, and dumped those elements upon us. It was a bad omen, for what appeared to be rain was only seawater. A salt rain could poison orchards and contaminate cisterns. Men with wounds would weep in pain tonight; women would be unable to light fires and cook their families’ evening meals. The goatherds would find the fresh milk we called halab turned to salty curds in the milking pails.

It would have been better to have no rain at all than to have this.

Shirah had begun to recite a spell as we ducked back inside to elude the downpour. She stunned us all when she grabbed one of the doves. She took up the knife we used for our meals. As though possessed, she made a gash across the dove’s throat, then turned the bird so that its blood dripped onto the stone floor. The murder of a dove was a crime punishable by law. Certainly none were to be taken for the darker uses of keshaphim.

Aziza turned away when she understood what her mother intended, to come between Nahara and the Essene she had chosen. The Man from the North averted his eyes as well, so that he would not witness a deed that seemed far too intimate for him to behold. As for Yael, she alone stood rapt, drawn to the feathers falling, the blood on the floor. I noticed she was quick to murmur the words of the chant along with Shirah, as though she hoped her voice might give strength to the spell.

As they chanted, the rain from the Salt Sea splashed over the doorway and washed away the blood. In time I came to believe this was what dissolved the spell, turning it worthless before it was begun. Aziza and the slave tried to quiet the doves, who were flapping toward the ceiling, frightened by the rain pelting like stones rattling above us, and even more disturbed by the sudden murder of one of their own kind. I spied Shirah’s grave expression as she tried to sweep away the salt, to no avail. My heart went out to her. Even the witch people so feared, one who knew magic better than most learned men, could not stop a girl who was utterly determined to have her way.

I hurried home to see to my grandsons, stepping widely to avoid the shifting piles of salt that had gathered on the mountain from this wicked rain. Across the field, I spied Nahara walking with the Essene boy. Their women had presented her with one of their fine white shawls, now draped over her hair. Seeing her beside Malachi, sheltered by a length of the purest linen on earth, I knew before Nahara herself did.

She had become one of them.

AS THE RED MOON of Av pulsed, a new life ripened, pushing out the water inside Yael with the heat of his imminent arrival. She was kneeling at the fire where we cooked our meals when her skirts were suddenly drenched. I saw terror flare in her eyes. I hastily sent my grandchildren to Shirah, so she would know Yael’s time had come. Her son, Adir, could watch over the younger boys while we gathered to welcome the newborn child.

Yael and I began to make our way to the storerooms, stopping when she needed to yield and draw a breath. Her father had not once called for her during the last days of her pregnancy, when she’d been confined to our chamber, too heavy and uncomfortable to move. But her brother had visited. He had murmured an apology for disturbing our household, then had gone to kneel beside Yael, still in his silver armor, so that he shimmered in the half-light. I had heard them speaking of Jerusalem, occasionally bursting into laughter as they remembered the house in which they’d grown up, the flame tree that had stood in the marketplace. He came frequently after that, growing comfortable in our household, allowing my grandsons to climb over him and play at being warriors. Yael often teased her brother about Aziza, calling him a lamb who followed blindly after his beloved.

“Does she feed you hay?” Yael asked, and laughed. “Does she lock you in a pen at night?”

“Are you trying to anger me, Yaya?” Amram said with a grin, using her childhood name.

Yael brought out a scrap of blue, the bit of scarf he had given her that still remained. She waved the token to remind him that she kept it for luck, tucked beneath her sleeping mat. I’d seen it there myself. She failed to mention, however, that the swatch of cloth from the slave’s garment was hidden there as well.

During Amram’s visits, they didn’t discuss the baby to come, but the warrior once brought a rattle he had carved, with plum pits inside that clacked together when the toy was shaken. Yael was pleased, relieved that her brother had accepted her situation, whoever the father of her child might be.