In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (26 page)

When I was standing, I put my knife into its scabbard, which I had tied around my waist after the fighting had stopped—this time on the outside of my sarong. I sent him a disgusted look, but I said, “
It’s okay. You’re trained to act.”

“Yeah, trained to act,” he said under his breath. “Come on.” And he started off after the others.

I walked after him for a few steps and then caught up and walked beside him, still wondering what had happened.

When the group ahead of us walked into the village, Kenai and I heard the relieved cheer go up. Nobody noticed we walked in together minutes behind everyone else.

Kenai put a light hand on my back and led me to where Zeke and Jarom stood surveying the many reunions. He punched Jarom in the arm—a kind of wordless greeting they used, and perhaps, that morning, it was a transferring of responsibility for me. He didn’t look at or speak to me, and I tried not to watch him as he joined his younger brother, Darius, and they made their way home together through the crowd. But I failed.

Zeke stood with his hands on his hips and looked
down at me. “I thought I was done with strong-willed women,” he said.

It wasn’t a compliment.

Jarom smirked, but I disregarded both of them, put my chin in the air and set off for home, where I could see Mother on her toes trying to spot us. Father stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders looking just as anxious.

I felt Zeke and Jarom fall in on both sides of me as I wove through the crowds of people, but I didn’t look at either one of them. I thought it would be best if I just ignored them, but halfway home I thought
why not?
So I slipped my foot out and tripped Zeke. When he stumbled, Jarom laughed. But while he was preoccupied laughing at Zeke, I tripped Jarom too, and then I ran ahead of them into my Mother’s arms. By the time my brothers reached home, tired and annoyed, I was safely ensconced in my Father’s protective embrace.

No. Not protective. Father could protect me from spiders or the rain or perhaps a wild boar, but he could not protect me from Lamanites, or really from men in general.
Because of an oath he made long ago, he could not protect me from what had happened that night.

I thought of the man who had come courting Cana
long ago—long before Micah, Keturah’s oldest brother, had come home from the war to ask Father for her hand. Zareth had seemed so nice at first, but when Father had seen his true nature once in the city, something he would not even discuss with us, he had flatly refused to let the man have any contact with Cana, or any of us girls for that matter.

I guessed there were ways he
could protect me, I thought as I looked up at him.

But I wasn’t so dumb as to think that parents could protect their children from everything.

Take Kenai, for instance. He was alive and healthy and whole, but something had gotten the best of him, and no amount of his mother’s faith had been able to stop it from happening. Everyone said so behind his back, though I knew nobody meant to be unkind. They wanted to help him, but nobody knew how. I wanted to help him too.

I looked back over my shoulder as I stepped from Father’s arms. Darius and Kenai were talking to their mother, Leah,
just a few paces away. They both glanced at me, and I looked away embarrassed.

Zeke and
Jarom’s bratty little sister—that’s what they saw.

“Isabel, you need to take someone with you when you go to the tannery,” Zeke said to me. “Keturah
took someone with her everywhere during the war, and it always kept her safe.”

“And Keturah’s supposed to be my model of behavior?” I asked
skeptically. If I remembered anything about my brother, I remembered that. He hated the way Keturah acted. Loved her. Hated her actions.

He sighed.

“Besides,” I said, “I remember a raid that happened right here in this village. Home is not necessarily safe either. Face it, you wasted six years of your life and it’s no safer here than it was before you left.”

“Isabel!” exclaimed my mother.

I just gave everyone a scowl and walked into the hut.

“How long has she been like this?” I heard Zeke ask in a low voice. “
But as much as I hate to admit it, she is right. Wickedness abounds, even here in Melek.”

“She shouldn’t resist our protection,” added Jarom.

A fine time to get protective, I thought as I remembered Kenai’s chest pressing down on mine, his eyes searching for something in my face, his sudden movement away when he found it.

Chloe’s voice brought me out of my memory.
She was talking to someone in the yard. Going to the side door, I listened. It was Keturah. She was going alone into the woods.

I didn’t know what Zeke was talking about. Keturah hadn’t been accompanied by a guard everywhere she went. Not Keturah. She had been home from the war for over a year and here at home I never saw her with anybody. Not even other women, let alone guards, unless you counted Muloki, but even that had stopped now that Melia had come to live in the village. The whole idea was ridiculous. Improbable. Impossible. I wondered why Zeke would even dream up something so preposterous. Did he want to be the one to accompany me everywhere? That was a laugh.

I gathered up all the things I would need for the work day—my lunch, my tools. I didn’t like to leave my tools at the tannery unattended overnight. Father had given them to me. They were mine, and I didn’t want to lose them. The previous night had been a fine example that even in the land of Melek we were not without crime.

The people of Ammon were good people, but they were not above succumbing to temptation. And lately, in the past few years, many refugees from all different kinds of foreign p
laces had been arriving in Melek for the asylum our Nephite government offered here. And we had to just accept them and all their different customs, even different religious beliefs and value systems.

Hence, I carried my tools with me.

When I stepped into the courtyard ready to go to work my whole family stopped talking and stared at me. After a moment, Mother offered everyone breakfast, which no one accepted.

Chloe was at work milking the goat. Why shouldn’t I go to work?

Well, of course I knew why. I had been kidnapped from the tannery not twelve hours ago. I had been awake and traveling all night. But it was daylight now, and I wouldn’t be alone. Besides, did they think I could go to sleep after stabbing a man—a Lamanite!—with my knife?

I felt my knife tied securely to my waist, and I squeezed my eyes shut so I would not cry.
I was not going to sit around all day sucking my thumb and looking to be coddled.

Misty Moncur wanted to be Indiana Jones when she grew up. Instead she became an author and has her adventures at home. In her jammies. With her imagination. And pens that she keeps running dry.

Misty lives near a very salty lake in Utah with her husband and two children, where they cuddle up in the evenings and read their Kindles. Well, she does anyway.

Connect with Misty on her
Website
.