Angel-Seeker (43 page)

The men made camp while the women went straight for their treasure, fanning out around the perimeter of the campsite. It was chilly, but the sun was bright overhead; the day had a somewhat festive air. All the women had pulled off their veils as soon as they were outside of the city, and now they strolled through the winter sands with a heady sense of freedom, the sun on their faces, their hair loose in the wind.

“Oh, this is wonderful, this is
heaven.
” Martha declared as she and Rebekah knelt beside a reskel bush and began to dig. “I feel like I'm breathing for the first time in weeks.”

“Are you going to use that trowel? Hand it over.”

“Aren't you glad you came?” Martha demanded, passing her the digging tool.

“Yes,” Rebekah said. “It could be ten degrees warmer and I'd be happier, but this feels—” She couldn't find the word, so she just shrugged and kept on digging.

Martha sat back on her heels and seemed oblivious to the fact that they had come here to do work. “I wish we could just leave,”
she said suddenly. “Take the wagon all the way to—Semorrah, maybe. Gaza, even!”

“Oh, I wonder why you thought of Gaza,” Rebekah said with affectionate scorn.

“He's probably not even there anymore. Just to go. Just to see it. It's been so long since I've been on the road. My father has taken Ephram with him everywhere since last fall, but I haven't traveled at all.”

“I haven't been out since—” Rebekah fell silent.

“Since the time you met Obadiah,” Martha supplied.

“Yes. Maybe that's what's been bothering me. I've been in the house too long.”

Martha dropped her body down onto the sand, propping herself up on one elbow. “If you ask him, will Hector take you on his next trip?”

“Not unless my mother goes, and maybe not even then. I think my mother would be just as happy to be gone on a long journey and leave me behind.”

“Well, I'll ask my father,” Martha said. “Next time he travels. If he'll take you and me with him.”

Rebekah continued to dig around the root base of the reskel. A few inches below the level of sand, the loose dirt became sticky and dense, hard to cleave apart with the little trowel. It was clear Martha wasn't going to help at all. “Well, we'll see,” she said.

“Don't you want to go?”

“Not if—” Rebekah shrugged. “Not if I'd miss Obadiah.”

Martha made a grunting sound. “Right. Well. Next time your angel is here, tell him you want to travel. Tell him when you might be gone. Let him know you're not going to just sit around on rooftops waiting for him to reappear.”

Rebekah grinned briefly. “I suppose that's how you phrase it to Chesed.”

“Oh, I speak my mind to him, never doubt it.”

Rebekah had dug deep enough now to free some of the roots, fat as her finger but long as a whiplash. “How much can I take from a plant without killing it?” she asked.

“Two pieces, I think,” Martha said. “Maybe three.”

“Let's be safe. I'll take two.”

As soon as she had harvested two of the long, stalklike roots, Rebekah patted all the soil back in place and then smoothed sand all around the base of the bush. “All right,” she said. “Next one.”

They worked at a leisurely pace for the next few hours, Martha only occasionally deigning to do any of the actual digging. Rebekah didn't mind. She actually enjoyed the pull on her muscles, the cramp in her hand, the ache developing in her back from bending over too long. It was good to move and labor, to stretch and strive. She liked the sense of accomplishment she felt when she had completed her task at one station and came to her feet, reaching her arms high over her head and forcing each bone and muscle to realign. She liked the drag of the sand against her feet as she walked between shrubs, liked the insistent prying of the wind at her uncovered face. She liked feeling stresses on her body instead of her soul.

“I'm hungry,” Martha said as they finished up their task. Early dark had descended on the desert, hurrying as if afraid of arriving late. “Do you think anyone's made dinner yet?”

“No,” said Rebekah. “I think the men are sleeping beside the wagons, and the women are still out gathering roots.”

“Then let's go back to the campfire and start cooking.”

The meal was delicious, and the dinner hour passed pleasantly. The women chattered about inconsequential things, and Ezra added a comment or two as the mood struck him. He was a big, rather fierce man with hard, strong features, and Rebekah did not really like him—until the setting was intimate and relaxed like this one. Then he seemed at ease and willing to be amused. He treated his wife and children with affection, teased his sisters, and made a few clumsy jokes with Rebekah about her upcoming wedding.

“Pretty soon now,” he said to her. “Isaac will be getting a good look at that sharp little face of yours—not to mention the other treasures under your robes.”

“Ezra,” Aunt Rhesa reprimanded in a faint voice.

“A couple months,” Rebekah said serenely.

“Well, I hope your mother's taught you all the secrets a girl needs to know! A man likes a wife with a certain set of skills.”

“Ezra,”
Aunt Rhesa said even more strongly.

Rebekah thought for a moment of all the skills Ezra might be referring to and how she had acquired them. She couldn't even allow herself to look in Martha's direction.

“I hope he won't be disappointed,” she said, keeping her expression modest but allowing a little lilt to creep into her voice.

Ezra loosed a crack of laughter. “And I'll wager he won't be! Your mother has kept two husbands quite happy. I imagine her daughter will be well prepared for her own role.”

“There's some pie left. Would anybody like some?” Martha's mother said, obviously trying to change the subject.

“Oh, pie—I'll have it,” Ephram said quickly, and the topic was turned. “More bread, too, if there's any left.”

After they'd cleaned up the dinner mess, they all sat around the fire for another hour just to enjoy its warmth. At first they exchanged desultory conversation, long silences intervening between the words, and then Aunt Rhesa began to sing. It was a slow lullaby, a song Rebekah had sung a hundred times to Jordan and to Jonah, and they all joined in a few notes into it. Ezra had a fine voice—he had performed with the Jansai more than once at the Gloria—so they let him sing the next melody all by himself when he swung into a new song. Once he was done, Aunt Rhesa offered a lighter piece, a call-and-response song, and they all warbled back her melody lines, occasionally managing a fairly respectable three-part harmony. The Jansai were not the singers that the rest of the people of Samaria claimed to be. They offered their prayers to Jovah, and they attended the Gloria, and they accorded music a certain careless respect, but they did not make it the center and focus of their lives.

As Rebekah had heard the angels did. But then, everything the angels did was different from the Jansai way. There could not be two peoples on the planet so different in outlook.

“Well, I think it's bedtime for these old bones,” Martha's mother said, coming to her feet with a muffled groan. “Ezra, where have you decided everyone should sleep?”

“I thought all you girls would want to stay close to the fire,” he said, seeming to have forgotten that two of the “girls” were at least five years older than he was. “It'll be a chilly night. Eph and I will take the wagons.”

“Rebekah and I wanted one of the wagons,” Martha said. “We won't be cold. We brought extra blankets.”

“You just want to stay awake all night and whisper,” her mother said with a sniff.

“That's right,” Martha replied, grinning. “But why should we disturb you by whispering around the fire?”

Ezra was nodding. “You two take the smaller wagon. Eph and I will take the one I drove. Does anyone need anything else for the night?”

There was a quick little scurry as everyone took one last opportunity to go off for a private moment before bedtime, and then it was another ten or fifteen minutes before they were all actually settled down for the night. Rebekah found that it was cold indeed once she and Martha had stepped any distance from the fire, huddling down into the bed of the wagon and burrowing under a pile of five blankets. She shrieked as Martha sat up a moment to rearrange the covers, causing a whippet of cold air to dart in across her shoulders.

“Lie
down.
I'm
freezing,
” she hissed, and Martha giggled and snuggled back under the quilts.

“There, I'm getting warmer already,” Martha whispered. “Isn't this better than lying by the fire?”

“Not yet it isn't,” Rebekah grumbled, but she could already feel the heat of her body getting trapped by the down and cotton of the blankets and warming up the whole makeshift bed.

Martha took a long breath. “Can't you just smell the starlight?”

“Starlight doesn't have a smell.”

“It does. Breathe deeper.”

“All right. It smells lovely. I'm going to sleep.”

Martha laughed and was silent for a few moments. Rebekah turned over, trying to find a more comfortable spot on the hard wood of the wagon.

“That's funny,” Martha said.

“What's funny?” Rebekah said in a resigned voice.

“Your Kiss. Look at it.”

Rebekah didn't bother to look, just pulled the cover up higher over her shoulder so that the crystal didn't show. “What about it?”

Martha was sitting up, leaning over her. “Let me see that again. Is it—doesn't it have a kind of peculiar glow?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Maybe?
Your Kiss is lighting up at night and you haven't said anything to me?”

“It's just this faint little light. I don't know why it does that. I don't think it means anything.”

“Let me see again.”

So Rebekah pulled her arm out from under the covers and let Martha examine the crystal in her arm. “Is it hot? Does it hurt?”

“No and no.”

“When did this start?”

“I don't know. I just noticed it one day and it's been like that ever since.”

“Does it have anything to do with Obadiah?”

“How could it possibly?”

“I don't know. But that would be very romantic.”

Rebekah yawned and buried her arm back under the quilts. “I don't think it means anything,” she said again. “Anyway, I'm too tired to talk about it anymore. I just want to go to sleep.”

“I'm not tired at all.”

“That's because you didn't do any work all day! I did!”

Martha laughed. “All right. You go to sleep, then. I'm just going to lie here a while and think.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

Unbelievably for her, Martha didn't say another word, just lay there quietly. Rebekah let her eyes close and her body relax as she grew warmer and more comfortable. She didn't really expect to fall asleep right away, but the combination of sun, fresh air, and exercise had tired her more than she realized. After only a few fuzzy moments of conscious thought, she gave in to exhaustion and fell immediately into formless dreaming.

She might have slept straight through till noon the next day, except that Martha woke her the next morning while most of the rest of the camp was still sleeping. “Damnation and isolation,” Martha's voice came in a furious whisper. “Corpses, crows, and curses.”

“What is it?” Rebekah asked sleepily, turning to her side to face her cousin and fighting to open her eyes. “Did you get bitten by something in the middle of the night?”

“No! I started my monthly bleeding. I didn't bring anything with me. I wasn't expecting—and my mother won't have anything.”

Rebekah yawned and pushed herself up on one elbow. “I brought an old hallis with me, since I figured we'd be tramping through the sand and getting everything filthy. You can rip it up and make cloths from it. I don't need it.”

“Are you sure? What a waste of good material.”

“Better than ruining your clothes.”

“And we're nowhere near water and I've made a mess—”

“There's a gallon in the wagon. We'll tear up my hallis and you can clean yourself up—”

“I don't know why this never happens to you,” Martha grumbled. “All right, show me where this hallis is.”

The words struck Rebekah dumb. Silently, she climbed out of the warm covers and, shivering, dug through her pack of belongings till she'd located the ancient and tattered undergarment. Silently, she helped Martha rip the fabric into reasonable portions and watched the blond girl hurry off toward a windbreak of bushes where she could strip down in privacy and clean herself up. Still silent, and now both frozen and terrified, she slipped back under the covers and lay there trembling, realizing she would never be warm again.