In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (14 page)

I ran my hands over the belt.
It was unique and beautiful. “Thanks, Reb,” I said, pretending not to notice he was fighting tears as I fought back my own.

Zach stepped forward and handed over a piece of jewelry made from green jade and
fashioned into the shape of a leaf. I thought of the knowledge we shared of plants and their various uses and all the power that gave to us. He didn’t say anything, which was not unusual for him, and it was as though the previous night had not happened.

Noah gave me a
soft purple feather that I thought I might add to my dancing dress.

Ethanim placed several sets of orange beads into my hand
and closed my fingers around them with his. “To adorn your axe,” he said.

And Lib, with the sunshine hair and vigilant, watchful guard.
He pulled an exquisitely soft blanket from his bedroll and passed it to me with a glance back over his shoulder at the other men. Red tinged his neck and was making its way up into his cheeks.

“Think of me som
etimes,” he said in a low voice. “When you pull it around you.”

They
each hugged me at the gate of our courtyard, and most of them pinched me in the side, pulled my hair, or slugged me in the arm.

“I’ve been dying to get my arms around you,” Joshua joked as he squeezed me too tight.

I laughed as I pushed him away and looked at the last man in line.

Gideon
.

He smiled at me.
His smiles had always been rare, and I knew that I would treasure this one.

I tried not to think of all the people who watched us—all the boys
, Mother, Zeke, Zeke’s parents, Micah, half the village.

Gideon’s
embrace was too brief.

“There is so much I want to say,” I told him quickly.

He shook his head. “You always did let your actions speak for you.” He allowed himself a moment to look into my eyes. “Here,” he said and pressed something into my hand.

I looked down at a ball, the kind we used when we all played together in the camps between work assignments.
It was newly made of golden brown buckskin, but not a pretty adornment like the others had given me. Puzzled, I looked back up at him.

“You’ll figure it out,
Kanina,” he said. His words were mild, but they were accompanied by a fire burning in his eyes that dared me to discern his meaning. Then, with boldness beyond comprehension, he kissed me—and not politely. He was insulting nearly every person there. He knew it, and still he kissed me. One of his hands slipped around my waist, his thumb brushing the ribs over my heart. His other hand slipped into my hair.

It was completely silent in the clearing.
No one gasped or clucked her disapproval. No one cleared his throat when the kiss went on. No one scuffed a sandal in the dirt as he tried not to stare. No one laughed or coughed or even breathed.

Gideon.

He rested his forehead on mine for just a moment, not long enough, and then he let me go. I doubted he even saw the other men when he shouldered past them and left the village.

With wide, shocked eyes, the other men
smothered grins and followed after him.

I gave Lib a last wave
, and he gave me a look that I could not interpret. He motioned to something behind me, and when I looked, I noticed Zeke standing there staring after Gideon.

I touched his arm, and he looked down at me.

“I will see you in a few months,” he said, completely avoiding mention, discussion, or even acknowledgment of what had just happened.

Because
there was just nothing to say.

I was glad when Micah walked out of the village without a word, because I knew he was angry.

I stood alone on the village street, feeling the soft ball in my hand, feeling Zeke’s arms around me, feeling the weight of Micah’s glare, feeling Gideon’s lips on mine.
I stood there feeling guilt and shame, love, hope, and confusion.

Then I felt the weight of so many eyes on me
and Mother’s hand sweeping my hair to the side and smoothing it down.

“Are you okay?” she asked
.

I shook my head.
“I’m going to the falls,” I said, and I stayed there all day, returning only because I knew Mother would start to worry. But when I got back and saw her face as she sat at the fire with Dinah, I knew she had worried anyway.

It wasn’t difficult to keep
our little home in the village, so I started helping at Kalem’s in the city. He needed me, and I felt like I owed him.

One day while I was hanging his laundered tunics behind his home
to dry, I asked him, “Why have you never remarried?”

He sat nearby cleaning a rabbit for the evening meal.
“I don’t remember telling you I was married.”

“You once said you had a daughter my age.
Did you have a wife?”

He was silent for long moments.
I knew I was being intrusive, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t been intrusive in my life.

“I
still have a wife.”

I
straightened up and looked at him. “Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say to that.

After a few more moments, the rabbit was done and he stood to take it to the pot of
stew I had boiling over his fire. He slipped the pieces in and returned to his seat to clean up.

“You know of the battle in which I slew you
r father,” he said at last, his voice flat.

“Yes.
” It was our oldest family story, and I had finally begun to believe it was true.

“When I saw that the people offered no resistance
, I was overcome with shock and then horror at what I had done. It may be the practice of some to attack and kill unarmed men, but it was not my practice.” As he spoke, a shadow came over his face, a darkness in his eyes that I had not seen since before we had left for Judea. “Over the days that followed, I was filled with deep regret. I despaired. But finally I began to feel hope, what I now know was the Holy Ghost.”

“And you went to the king and sough
t his forgiveness,” I said, reciting what I had always been told of Kalem’s conversion.

“Oh no. I
had killed—” He cut himself off and cleared his throat. “The king was dead,” he continued instead. “I went to his brother, Lamoni.”

The old king, Anti-Nephi
Lehi, had given his kingdom to one of his sons, purportedly my father, though Mother had never so much as mentioned this. Lamoni was his brother. Lamoni had never ascended to the high throne of the Lamanites, but had been a king over his own people for a time. After moving to Jershon, he had yielded the title completely, and we were ruled by judges just as the people of Nephi were.

Having been in the army for years and knowing something of the way battles ran, I knew that Kalem himself must have been of the noble class to have
had the honor of slaying the enemy’s king. I always thought of this without much emotion. Since I had never known my father, these events were just a story to me, one that affected my entire life certainly, but not one I had even believed until a few years ago.

“Well,
” he went on. “When I went back home and told my wife what I had done, joined the Church of God, she was furious about it. Her family was quite prominent and it was a great embarrassment to her.”

I could guess what happened and wasn’t surprised when he told me how she had demanded he leave and never return.

“So I did. I did what she asked. I honored her wishes, and it has been one of my biggest regrets.”

“Why don’t you go back?
Find your daughter. She is a woman grown now. She probably has a home of her own.”

He snorted.
“Do you think she would allow me into it? After I left her abandoned all these years?”

I grimaced.
“No, I don’t suppose she would. But you are always too hard on yourself. You never know what life has been for her. She may welcome you.”

“And she may disdain and shun me.”

“But of course you wouldn’t let the fear of that happening stop you,” I teased.

The wash was done, so I told him goodbye and went to the falls to look out over the valley and think.

Many days passed like that, turning into a month, then two. The boredom of my days wasn’t much different from the boredom of my work with the army. It was the work itself that was different. I asked myself a thousand times why I hadn’t just stayed with my unit, within the circle of their friendship and protection. But each time I began to doubt myself and my decision to come home, I was revisited by the Spirit that had planted the idea in my mind in the wild garden of Manti.

So I stayed in Melek, and I began acquiring and making items I would take with me when I married, just as if I had been betrothed, though I was
not. I had scarcely been alone in four years. Now I was alone nearly all the time, and I had too much time to think.

I often thought of that day with Lib and Zeke by the stream while Dinah fed the striplings
who had escorted me home. Lib had suggested that I didn’t know my own heart, that I had made the wrong decision. Zeke had both agreed and understood, and he had left me the time and the freedom to be sure.

Sometimes I wondered
about Zeke and how he really felt about me. He had to feel the pressure of expectations as much as I did. I was so much less than he deserved. I was a warrior whose idea of mercy was a quick death, not a woman who would bring him honor.

I thought of Zeke lying unconscious on the battlefield, of how hard I had fought to keep him alive and whole.

And always, my mind went back to Gideon, to his kiss in the village and his determination to spare me from having to choose between them.

I let myself think about these things, mulling them over slowly as the days went on, but it never helped. Sometimes I took out the leather ball or the beaded hair tie
, but they offered no clarity, and I knew the best thing was to lose myself in work, service, and preparation.

Mother began to
encourage me to practice her intricate patterns of weaving cloth, and as we both had spare time, we spent it developing this skill together. She taught me more of medicines and of cooking with the herbs of the forest. She told me of my grandfather, the healer, and of her sister, Hannah, and we had many good days together.

When the rains had come and gone, we sat in the small yard with
Mui, my old milk goat, and her daughter, Abigail, bleating softly to each other.

I broke a long silence when I said, “Mother, did you know Kalem was married?”

She glanced at me but returned her eyes to her work. “Yes, I’ve always known.”

“I always wondered why he didn’t marry you,” I said.

Her cheeks turned rosy. “Me?”

“You cannot tell me you never considered the idea.”

She didn’t respond, but her rosy cheeks continued to speak for her.

I smiled to myself. “Then you know of his daughter?”

“Yes, Kanina.
So sad for them.”

I tried to ignore the pang when she called me by that name.

“I’ve been trying to convince Kalem that he should seek her out. Right the wrong he did when he left her.”

“I belie
ve his wife forced him to leave,” Mother replied calmly. “Got her father involved.”

“But his daughter didn’t,” I insisted.

“I don’t know what would be best. I know it saddens him. It was a blessing when you began to accept him.”

I looked up at her
, but my eyes slipped past her to a man who was entering the village on the path that led from Melek. He wore a red tunic and a brown leather kilt. He came from the trees into the clearing and looked around curiously.

He looked familiar, but it couldn’t be him.

I watched as he questioned Chemosh, a man who lived at the far end of the clearing and carried a large, limp pheasant slung over his shoulder toward his home. Chemosh pointed down the main road toward my end of the clearing. It reminded me of the time Onah had come looking for my mother.

But I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach that this man was not looking for the midwife.

Mother noticed the direction of my gaze and turned too.

“What is it?” she asked quietly with worry in her voice.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I quickly assured her, though I wasn’t quite sure yet. “It’s just, that man. I know him.”

She studied the man as he approached us.
“Oh?” She brightened. “Is he one of the striplings?”

“No.”

The man neared us. Our eyes met. He smiled and kept a steady stride toward me, even quickened his pace as he became sure of his destination.

“He’s very handsome,” Mother observed, and I felt her study my profile.

“He is,” I agreed.

He stood at our gate,
bronzed skin and sparkling eyes, sheepish smile. Hunting weapons. Travel pack. Two unbroken, whole arms. Someone else might not have noticed the scar at first glance, but I was looking for it.

I got to my feet, unable to break eye contact with him.
I felt Mother at my elbow.

“
Shalal,” he said, nodding to us both.

I cleared my throat.
“Mother,” I said. “Meet Muloki.”

“
Shalal, Muloki,” my mother said graciously.

I had mentioned his name to her
in Judea over a year ago but there was no real reason for her to remember it. And even if she did remember it, she could not know that Muloki was the enemy warrior who had struck Zeke the blow that had nearly killed him, because I had not told her. I had not told anyone.

“Muloki, this is my mother, Leah.”

He gave me an odd look and said something I didn’t understand.

I looked to my mother
for translation.

She looked delighted to meet someone with whom she could speak her native language.
But she was confused when she turned to me and said, “He wishes to know why you don’t speak to him in his language.”

“I don’t know it,” I told her, and she related my comment to him.

He spoke again, but before she could relate it back to me, I quickly explained to her where I had met Muloki and how I had miraculously understood him there at the gate of Antiparah.

Mother nodded and explained it to him, or tried to.
He still looked puzzled, but willingly followed Mother’s invitation to take off his travel pack and sit down to rest. He declined food but did take the cup of nectar I brought out from inside the hut for him. And the whole time he and Mother talked to each other so quickly I couldn’t make out any of the foreign words I knew, which were admittedly very few.

“Does he speak the language of
Middoni?” I asked Mother when there was a lull in their conversation.

“
Enough that we understand each other sufficiently,” she said.

“Did you ask him what he’s doing here?” I asked
her.

“Yes, Kanina.
He came to look for you.”

“Me?
But why?” I asked, though I could think of several pretty good reasons. I remembered how he had talked to me at the gate of Antiparah, interest in his eyes and a smile on his lips. I remembered locking eyes with him at Cumeni, lowering our weapons. I remembered the last look he had given me after Zeke had nearly sliced through his arm with one blow to protect me.

Mother’s
voice was almost scolding when she said, “Oh, Kanina. How can you live in a camp of men for four years and be still so naïve?”

“I wasn’t being naïve,” I protested.
“I was being modest.”

Mother burst out laughing, and at
Muloki’s question, explained my comments to him. He smiled too.

I went back to my loom, distractedly weaving the intricate patterns, making mistake after mistake while Mother and Muloki talked.
Sometimes Mother would tell me what he said—information about the Land of Nephi or his home or his family—but mostly I just listened to the rise and fall of their voices in the foreign tongue and wondered why he would come all this way to find me.

I found myself glancing often at the scar on
Muloki’s forearm. It was straight but rough. The muscles under the skin had healed with a bulge and a narrowing, the effect of which was actually quite attractive. I was astonished that he had been able to keep the arm. I had seen the unnatural angle of it after Zeke had broken the bone completely and severed the flesh. Zeke had been bleeding his life out onto the ground. And they both had taken a stance to continue fighting.