In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (16 page)

“Okay,” I
called. “Be safe.”

She nodded and disappeared through the trees.

Muloki and I looked at each other.

He knew Cana and Micah were betrothed
, and I tried to explain that it was Kenai who had loved her and Micah had never shown any interest in her.

“Do you have brothers?” I asked him
as I led him to the log above the main waterfall.

“Dead,” he said.

“In the war?”

“Yes.
Soldiers all.”

“How many?”

“Five.”

“Oh, Muloki!
I’m so sorry. All five were killed?”

“Yes.
In the north. I went south with my friend by command.”

“So you weren’t there.”

“No.”

“But are you sure then?
Perhaps the report was wrong.”

He shook his head and reached under the neck of his tunic.
He pulled out a large, animal tooth threaded onto a thin leather cord. It was intricately painted.

“This tooth mine.
Five teeth, same, come to my hands.”

I looked at the tooth for a long time turning it over in my fingers examining the painting.
I thought it was a jaguar tooth or maybe a bear.

“I have luck,” he continued.
“Not all Lamanitish dead are accounted for.”

“What about your parents?” I said after a while.

He shrugged. I didn’t pry farther.

“Why did you come here?
To Melek?” I asked him.

We sat together on the log, the water rushing swiftly under our bridge.
It was cool where we sat, a nice respite from the warm day and the hard labor. The sun was beginning to set. It would be time to go before long. Mother would be worried. She would be alone.

Muloki looked at me, but then let his eyes fall away
, following the path of the river to the distant sea as he spoke. “When I first saw you at the gate of Antiparah, it was as if you shone like the moon. A light so pretty and your moonbeam shone to me.”

I rested my chin on my raised knees and listened closely.

“Even in the battle at Cumeni your light shone, and I could not swing my sword to you.”

I remembered when he
had begun to lower his sword. I gave a soft hum of acknowledgement and turned my head to look back at him, resting my cheek on my knees.

“And I healed
here.” He raised his arm. “But there was no life left in my home and no one to shine like the moon, so I came to feel the light, to heal more.” He laid a hand over his heart as he had done earlier to indicate he felt the presence of the Holy Ghost. “Here.”

“The Spirit,” I said quietly.

“Yes. I know this now.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said.
“I’m glad you came.”

“You are much alone.”

“Yes,” I said. I took off my sandals and tossed them over to the grass. Then I dropped my feet into the water.

“And you are not alone with me.”

I laughed a little. “No,” I agreed and added, “You are persistent.”

“Persistent?”

I thought for a moment. “You keep trying. You won’t stop.”

He shook his head as if he didn’t understand.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of a different way to explain the word.

Suddenly a slap of cold water landed in my face.
I gasped, lost my balance, and fell into the water beneath the log. The water wasn’t so very deep, but it was swift, so I braced myself against the log and wiped the wet hair from my face.

Muloki stood near me up to his knees in the water, a huge grin on his face, and he splashed me again.

“Hey!” I protested.

I
had no sooner wiped the water from my eyes than he splashed me again. And again.

“Muloki!”

“I am persistent, yes?”

“Yes,” I laughed.

“Relentless?”
His eyes were twinkling with amusement.

“Yes!”

“Giving no quarter?”

I shook my head against another splash, and then I bent and sent large handfuls of cold water toward him.
He began to walk toward me, and I barely got the water as high as his chest.

“And you take no retreat.”

“Never,” I said and kept splashing until he was too close and it did no good. He grabbed my hands, and I slipped, taking him down with me. We came up laughing, and I braced my hands on his shoulders to push him down again.

We
knelt in the water above the falls braced against the log, but strong as the current was, we did not go over the edge.

I heard a giggle from the bank.
I froze. Then I looked back over my wet shoulder and saw Cana standing there with Micah in the green grasses on the solid ground.

“Micah!” I exclaimed.
“You’re back!”

“We just got in
,” he said with a long, obvious glower at Muloki.

I waded toward them.
I could hear Muloki wading behind me. “All of you?” I asked hopefully.

“Only Darius and me.
Jarom and Kenai have gone to join Moroni in the east.”

Moroni
?

“And Zeke?”

“He’s still in Manti,” Cana said, and threw a look toward Micah. “Right?”

“He has work to finish there,” said Micah.
It sounded like the same half-truth Dinah kept telling me.

“Captain
Moroni?” Muloki asked as he came to my side near the bank and held out his hand to assist me up. He went to one knee in the water to form a step for me.

Micah took my other hand and hauled me onto the bank.
Then he extended his hand to Muloki.

“Yes, the great Captain
Moroni,” Micah affirmed. “He is gathering an army to force your people from our lands for good. He raises the Standard of Liberty in all the cities he passes through, and the people flock to him. They tire of those who would usurp our freedoms.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering.
“Muloki is not our enemy, Micah,” I said softly.

He looked down at me, taking in my soaked and clinging
clothing, my wet and stringy hair, the chills on my arms. “I can see you don’t think so.”

Surprising everyone,
Cana hit Micah lightly on his chest and scolded him. “Micah, do not be rude to our guest. Or your sister.”

I tried to hide my smile as he reluctantly apologized to Muloki
, introduced himself, and clasped arms with him.

“We should start for home.
It will be dark soon,” Micah said and turned to go, gathering us all with a look. But Cana touched his arm and caught his eye.

“And I am sorry to you, Keturah
,” he sighed. “It has been a long day.”

“It has been a long four years,” I said
, recognizing the same weariness in his voice that I had felt when I had returned home.

He nodded and led us home.

Darius was still eating when we arrived home. He was talking to Mother as fast as he ate. When we stepped into the courtyard he was telling her about the messengers that had come to recruit volunteers for Moroni’s army.

“
A reinforcement of six thousand fresh troops just arrived in the south,” Darius said through a mouthful of Mother’s corn cakes. “So Helaman was finally able to give leave to the striplings, and the messengers recruited a number of them to move to the campaign in the east instead of going home.”

“And Kenai thought this would be acceptable to me?”

Darius swallowed and gave a laugh. “Kenai has kept himself alive for four years in a wilderness roamed freely by enemy warriors. Fighting with Moroni, in a band of thousands upon thousands, hardly seems dangerous. And besides, Kenai is twenty-one now, grown, and hardly needs your permission.”

Mother didn’t say anythin
g to that, just pursed her lips, and I could see she was not pleased with the news.

“Darius!” I
called out to break the tension between them.

He turned, gave me
his familiar grin, and jumped to his feet.

“What happened?” he asked when he saw that I
was soaked through.

“I got wet,” I said
.

Cana went inside for cloths to dry with and blankets.

“Are you all right?” Mother asked, giving me a stern look that she hid from Muloki and the others.

I held my chin high.
“Muloki had a question about the meaning of a word,” I said.

“Oh?” Teaching Muloki new words was an endeavor of which she approved and worked studiously at herself.
“What word?”

“I am persistent,” Muloki said, placing emphasis on the word.
“I…”

“Splashed,” I filled in for him.

He nodded. “I splashed Keturah.” He made a motion with his hands. “Persistent.”

I glanced at his wet tunic and kilt, remembered him kneeling in the water so I could step up onto the bank.
I made my tone smug when I said, “I am persistent, too.”

Cana came out with blankets then and handed one to Muloki.
She wrapped the other tightly around my shoulders, pulled my wet hair from under it, and rubbed my arms up and down.

“I’ll walk you home,” Micah told her.

“It’s only twenty paces,” Darius teased Micah. Then he turned to us. “You should have seen how anxious he was to get home. We could have camped one more night at the south end of the Land of Melek, but Micah said we’d make it before dark if we kept moving.”

“We did, didn’t we?”
Micah sounded casual, but I could see he was embarrassed as he hurried Cana out through the gate and into the gathering darkness beyond the fence. And I wondered that anything in this world could embarrass my older brother.

Muloki stayed for a while to dry a little near the fire, but when the sun began to dip below the horizon, he said he wanted to get back to
Kalem’s.

Darius waited until a
fter he had gone and Micah had returned before he asked, “Who is Muloki?”

Mother and I exchanged a look.
She knew about Antiparah. But nobody knew about Cumeni.

“
Apparently, Kenai took your sister on one of his spy missions with the intent to send her into Antiparah.”

Darius and Micah turned their attention to me.

“I was a sixteen year old girl and the only Nephite soldier who could get into the city in broad daylight. Kenai spent three days showing me how futile it was to watch from a distance. Then he presented his idea, what I learned had been his intent all along.”

They both seemed to be without words.
Micah was the first to speak. “Kenai let you walk into Antiparah when the Lamanites held it?”

“He
ordered me to.”

“I don’t believe that,” Micah said, shaking his head.

I shrugged. I didn’t really matter what he believed. It had been three years ago and it was long over. Kenai and I understood one another and had made peace with the decision.

“Muloki was the guard at the gate that day.
He let me pass. He felt the Spirit of God when he talked with me, and as soon as he could, he came to find me so he could find out what it was.”

“How did you speak to one another?”

“If he didn’t know what the Spirit was, why did he think you could tell him what he felt?”

They had many questions and I
answered them the best I could. Mother helped me with all she knew of him.

“So he saw you, and he thought he was in love at first sight?” Micah asked, a dark, frustrated look stealing over his features.

“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”

“No, but
I—”

“
Sorry if that makes your obligation to me more difficult. I can see that you have your mind on your own happiness.”

“Keturah!” Mother said in surprise.

“Well, frolicking in the river with Muloki didn’t make it any easier,” he shot back.

Micah had always put the rest of us first, before his own comfort, before his own happiness.
What I had said was unfair, and I knew it.

But he was scowling at me
, so I scowled right back.

“Just look at yourself,” he went on.
“Your sarong was sticking to you like skin. You’re not a little…you’re not a little girl anymore!”

“So stop treating me like I am!”

“Stop acting like it!”

“Micah!
Keturah!” Mother exclaimed.

Darius looked between us with wide eyes.

We did not often disagree or fight in our family.
But we had all been through so much, learned to take care of ourselves or lean on men who were not members of our family. None of us were used to explaining our actions. It wasn’t like when we were young and we asked Mother’s permission for everything. Perhaps this was the way it would be from now on.

And it was how it should be.
We would just have to learn to allow each other our independence and agency. We all had to make our own mistakes and learn our own lessons.

I turned away, ready to let it go, but Micah persisted.
His tone was lower, but just as angry. “I told Zeke you loved him, because you swore to me that you did.”

My eyes shot back to him.

“Don’t make me a liar.”

His words hung in the air between us all. No one moved. Finally, Micah turned and swept aside the mat at the door to leave.

I spoke to his back, telling myself not to say the words even as they came out of my mouth.
“You know, what Kenai did to me was no worse than what you did to him.”

A slight pause as he passed
over the threshold was the only sign he gave that he heard me.

No one said anything as we
prepared for bed, and the morning was uncomfortably quiet too. Micah hadn’t come in for the night, but like us, he had been sleeping on the ground for years. No one was particularly worried about that, and I didn’t feel guilty for driving him to it. He probably preferred it anyway. Though I hadn’t wanted to hurt him, I didn’t wish my words unsaid. It was how I felt. I thought it was how we all felt, and maybe it had needed to be said at least once.

Especially since Kenai wasn’t
there to say it for himself.

As the weeks went on,
Kenai’s absence in Melek was glaringly obvious, and there was little question that Micah’s betrothal was a big part of the reason he hadn’t come home. He had signed himself up for another battle, followed the moving front of the war. How much more blatantly could he say he didn’t want to be at home?

“Hello,
Mui,” I said as I knelt near my old goat. I scrubbed at her scruffy ears and then began to milk her. I gave her an extra pat before I moved on to Abigail.

“Keturah?”
I heard the shy voice from the other side of our fence and looked up to see Chloe.

“Hi!” I said
cheerfully, grateful for the sweet face that interrupted my dark thoughts.

I remembered how she used to call me Ket-ah because she couldn’t say my whole name.
She had called me Ket-ah on the morning I had left with the stripling army. She had run and jumped into my arms, clung to me. I had many such memories of her, all very fond, but I knew any memories she had of me must be very vague now.

Chloe came through the gate.
She was tentative, but I could tell her exuberant nature had not changed. Her eyes were bright, and her smile was contagious. Besides, I had seen her playing with Micah and Muloki.

“May I help?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, moving back from Abigail to let her near.

Chloe moved close and began to milk Abigail, talking to her, almost cooing her greeting.

I observed for a moment. “Chloe, was Abigail your goat?”

“Oh, no,” she said.
“She is Mui’s baby. She is your family’s goat.”

“Little Kanina,” I tried again, addressing this sweet seven year old girl with the endearment that meant the most to me.
“Is Abigail your friend?”

She just looked at me, and then at the goat.

“She is, isn’t she?”

Chloe nodded.

Of course she had bonded with this goat. It had probably been born in her yard. She had watched it grow.

“Why do you call me rabbit?” she asked.

“It’s what my mother calls me. To me, it is a way of saying ‘I love you.’”

“You love me?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in disbelief.

“Yes. We were good friends when you were little. You probably don’t remember.”

“I remember you,” she said.
“You are the girl that fights with Zeke.”

I laughed a little and shifted my weight so my legs wouldn’t go numb from kneeling on them so long.
“I am the girl who fights with the army,” I clarified.

She looked at me a moment in confusion.
“No,” she said slowly, her eyes focused on something in the past. “Zeke said, ‘I swear that girl lives to fight with me.’”

I laughed again
at how she boisterously mimicked his voice. “That sounds about right. When did he say that?”

She frowned.
“All the time I think.”

“Did he say it when he came for his visit last fall?”

She shook her head. “No. He said, ‘Father, the time is not right.’ And Father said, ‘Micah fears you will lose her if you wait.’”

I looked down at
the top of her dark head, trying to keep my curiosity in check.

“And
that
,” she emphasized, “is when Zeke said, ‘If that’s what she wants, she can spend her life fighting with someone else.’”

I thought about this for a long time
, much longer than it took us to finish milking the goats.

The men of the village built a new hut for Micah and his bride on a small side street of the village.
Micah had chosen the location for its proximity to the stream, the large mahogany trees that grew around the little yard, and, I thought, so they would be far enough away that Kenai would not have to look at them together at all hours of the day if he ever came home.

They were married on a hot evening in sultry air.
I expected Zeke to show up. I hoped he would.

While I stared at the food on my plate
during the celebration that night, Dinah said, “Hemni sent word to Zeke of the date, but he was not able to leave his duties.”

He was a chief captain over five hundred now, she
had said with motherly pride, and thus he had many important responsibilities in re-establishing the economic prosperity and the Church of God in the southern Nephite holdings.

Personally I thought Zeke stayed away out of loyalty to
Kenai, his best friend. Zeke was loyal like that.

Kenai had done the same thing after Zeke and Gideon had fought at the falls.
He wouldn’t be a part of my training anymore or a part of my blossoming relationship with Gideon, and he had stayed clear of it in silent support of his friend.

I knew
Zeke loved Cana. He loved Micah too—looked up to and respected him, regarded him as a brother. But I felt deep in my heart that his absence was a deliberate show of support for Kenai.

And I feared it was
also a deliberate avoidance of me.

The day that followed the wedding was just as hot.
The market was crowded with people when Mother and I entered the square with our small baskets.

Mother no longer made any pretense that her main purpose in coming to the market was to see
Kalem. Now that I knew Mother was aware of his marriage, I could detect little things she did to keep a boundary between them. It always made me sad when she circled the table so she wouldn’t pass closely by Kalem or left the market before he’d had a chance to flatter her or give her something pretty. I knew they loved each other dearly, and I was finally okay with it.