In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (3 page)

He shrugged as he
inspected a cluster of leaves. “It’s not totally up to her.”

Her father might have betrothed her to someone, he meant.

“What’s her name?”

“
Elizabeth.” He took a slow breath and set a handful of stems and leaves into the basket I carried. “Beth.”

I wondered if Zeke said my name like that.

“She is the only one,” he went on, wiping off his knife on his tunic to avoid my eyes. “I could never love someone else. If Beth is already promised, I’ll go to Zarahemla with Gid and become a guard.”

It took him a moment to realize what he
had said. When he did, he flushed, glanced at me, and then crouched to cut some more stems.

“I know that’s what he wants,” I said.
“Everyone knows it.”

He
stood. “I know it’s not a secret, Ket.” He sighed, placed his hands on his hips and set one foot farther up on the incline for balance. “But I know what it feels like to part with someone you love, not knowing if you’ll ever see them again.”

I imagine
d this tall, handsome boy saying goodbye, possibly forever, to the girl he loved.

“You’ll know it too.”

“Zach. It will be okay. God knows our hearts. We might get hurt, but in the end we will find that He has prepared the perfect way for us.”

“Say that again when you watch Gid walk away,” he said with pain in his eyes.
But then he gave his head a shake. “Sorry.”

He
missed Beth. The ache and confusion were clear on his face, and I had never noticed them. Having to leave Beth had hurt him deeply, but I knew why he had joined Helaman’s army. The same reason we all had.

“Come on,” I said.
“Let’s go back. We have enough plants.”

Many days passed with small rations and little to do.
Some of the troops were deployed to other cities to hold them from the Lamanites, but we stayed in Cumeni waiting on provisions from Zarahemla.

Finally one morning Micah showed up in my camp.
He had all his gear strapped to his back, and when I glanced behind him, I saw eight or nine other men prepared the same way.

“Where are you going?” I asked before he could tell me, which was obviously why he was
there.

“We’re taking a communication to the governor,
a petition for more supplies.”

I nodded even as I felt my stomach rumble.

At my worried look, my oldest brother put a hand on my shoulder and said, “There’s food out there, Ket. It’s not a famine or anything. We just need to get it here.”

I nodded, melancholy seeping into my smile. “Be safe.
”

He kissed me on the top of
my head and led his men away. It was a comfort, at least, to know the leaders were trying to do something about the problem we faced.

I thought of the way the
Lamanite women had looked when we had let them leave Cumeni after the siege, and I hoped things would not get so bad as that for us.

I was tired of this war, and I was hungry.
How I wished for the corn in my satchel each morning, but it never came. Why, I wondered, did God withhold it? We hadn’t needed it on the march to Judea, not nearly so much as we needed it then.

But
I had learned to trust in God, for He knew all things, and I most assuredly did not. I resolved to leave it up to Him when to distribute His food to the hungry and when to try their faith.

I was pondering on my hunger one afternoon when Zeke walked slowly into camp.

Delighted to see him up and walking, I went to him, meeting him halfway.
But I had hesitated for just a moment, thinking his pride might demand that he walk the full way to me on his own power. His eyes were fixed on me, so of course he noticed the falter in my step, and disappointment showed in his face.

I thought I might in
sult him by not allowing him to walk to me, by diminishing his achievement, but I had managed to insult him anyway.

Still I knew my delight shone in my eyes.
If he couldn’t read it there, then he was blind.

“Come for a walk with me?”
His voice was deep and familiar. His dark hair was tied back, and he looked so good—clean, strong, flushed with life—that I felt butterflies in my stomach where moments ago I had been wishing there was food.

“
I would like that,” I said firmly. I thought to suggest we could sit and give his leg a rest, but I had no sooner thought it than discarded the idea. I would let Zeke do and say what he thought was best without second guessing him. He was capable of making his own decisions. He led fifty men! And I led none.

Our wounds were similar, and
I had been traipsing all over the wilderness to hunt game and gather herbs and roots. Zeke was strong and resilient. He would recover. I was feeling overprotective of a man who had proved he could protect both himself and me. But was it so wrong to want him to be safe? I needed him to be safe.

Was th
is the way he worried about me? Tainted with dilemma and selfishness? Constant wavering between caring too much and feeling unable to care at all? I swallowed hard and tried to think of something else, something that wouldn’t cause my heart to race or helplessness to rise in my chest.

It was a perfect, beautiful day
. The air smelled clean. Fluffy, white clouds drifted in a blue sky. Birds sang in the trees.

Birds sang
in the trees.

My hand went to my sling,
and I fit a stone into it. Without a word, Zeke placed his hand over mine.

He was right
, of course. I was not on a hunting detail.

“Remember when we used to hunt together at home?” I asked
, tucking the sling back into my belt.

He winced at the pain in his leg as he swung it over a
branch in the path. “Of course I do.”

How I hated to see him suffer!

“And you and Kenai would wait to the sides of a path,” I hurried on, “while I lured something into your trap.”

“You made beautiful bait.”

It was a compliment I was accustomed to, but I blushed when he offered it so genuinely.

“We caught a lot of things that way,” I
remembered with a reminiscent smile.

“Between two men,” Zeke said quietly.

For a long time I didn’t respond, and his words hung in the air between us. I wanted to ignore them, to just let it go, but I kept thinking about them as we walked on. They wouldn’t go away.

We hadn’t
yet talked of Gideon or of what Zeke had seen just before he had slipped into unconsciousness on the battlefield. It wasn’t just that my captain had embraced me. It was the clear show of passion that had accompanied it, and not just on Gideon’s part. It was the way he had grasped me tight to him, the way he had kissed my brow as if it was his to kiss and the way he had looked into my eyes.

We hadn’t yet talked of
my feelings for Gideon or of Zeke’s. How could we? It was impossible.

“Don’t start that, Zeke,” I said at last
, trying to keep my voice even. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Don’t start what?”

I bristled at the challenge in his voice. “Don’t you think you’re taking this jealousy thing a little far?”

He threw me a glare, a look he seldom let me see, and we
both stopped walking.

“No.
I think I’ve been tolerant of the time you spend with Gid.”

I repeated the word slowly.
“Tolerant? It’s not as if there is much of a choice. He’s my captain. He’s in my unit. He—”

“
As a captain, he could have chosen any unit,” he interrupted.

“But I couldn’t.
Why do you blame me?”

“You spend a disproportionate amount of time—
”

“I do not!
I spend equal amounts of time with all the men in my unit. You,” I jabbed at his chest much the same as I had with Lamech. “You choose not to see that. You see what you want.”

“You think I
want
to see you with him?”

I stared into his cocoa
-colored eyes. So familiar. Warm, even in his pain. Beloved. I willed my anger to fall away. He was not the one I was mad at.

“No.
” I gave him the courtesy of an answer.

“Micah said you sought forgiveness
, but he was wrong. You only seek justification.”

That stung.
“Can’t you see I’m trying to love you? You’re poisoning it with this bitterness and this jealousy.”

“I don’t want
a girl who has to try to love me.”

The
words, flung like a stone, hit their mark.

“
You don’t love me,” he pressed on with insistence. “And you,” he poked me in the chest. “You are the one who has poisoned it.”

I stared down at my chest where h
is finger had struck. It hurt, and I covered it with my hand. The sting of betrayal welled in my eyes when I looked back up at him. This was not the Zeke I knew.

“
Gideon doesn’t want—”

“I don’t care
what Gid wants!” His voice was higher than normal and raw with honesty. He took a breath. “Gid’s feelings are not the ones that make me jealous, Keturah.”

I glanced around.
We had made our way to the edge of the terrace where the army was camped, but we weren’t yet in the main part of the city where the buildings would provide us more privacy. A lot of people could see us.

I closed my eyes and remembered Zeke’s blood seeping into the soil at my feet.
I thought of what my mother had said.
I am not the one who needs to hear that.

I lowered my voice and said,
“I love you, Zeke.” And I really thought I meant it. If I hadn’t learned what love was by then, it couldn’t be learned. “How can you doubt it? My friendship with Gideon or anyone else does not change how I feel about you. It has no bearing. I promised I would tell you if my feelings changed, and they haven’t.”

I put my hand over my heart because it felt like it was breaking.

“I keep my promises,” I finished.

Zeke
squinted into the distance as if he didn’t like what he saw there. “Maybe your feelings for me haven’t changed,” he allowed. “But your feelings for him have. Give me some credit. I’ve seen the way you look at each other, Ket. I saw you melt into his arms.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice cracked. “And not as if it were the first time. It is not just friendship, and I don’t know why you claim that it is. You lie to yourself and to me.” He took another deep breath and let it out. “And probably to him.”

I was not a liar. I was not a liar!

“You think fighting about this is going to endear you to me?”

Zeke turned on me
, and I caught my breath when I saw the fire in his eyes. “Shall I stand down and do nothing? I
will
fight for you, Keturah!”

“You’re not fighting for me, you’re fighting
with
me!” How I wished we weren’t saying these things to each other. “I don’t know what you want me to do!”

“What do
you want to do?” he demanded.

I couldn’t hold his gaze when it turned from ang
ry to pained.

“What do you
want to do?” he asked more quietly.

Unable to answer,
I turned toward the precipice near which we stood and looked out over the grand square and the homes which were now occupied by families. Behind me stood the army, their tents and their weapons, the young warriors who were probably even now staring at us and hearing every word we yelled at each other. The afternoon winds had kicked up and strands of my long hair swirled around me.

“
I
have
poisoned it,” I said at last, resigned, but my voice was carried away on the wind.

Unable to bear the thoughts that were racing through my mind,
I turned and started to run away, but even on his injured leg, Zeke was quick.

He grabbed my arm,
but not with the gentleness he had always used in the past, not with the gentleness I had become accustomed to.

I looked back at him.
He looked like he might apologize, and I was prepared to insist that everything was my fault, because it was. He was right—I should acknowledge it so we could both move on.

But he didn’t apologize
, and I couldn’t acknowledge it.

“Walk with me,” he said
, his eyes burning into mine.

Zeke and I limped side by side, but we didn’t touch and we didn’t talk, and that was the last time we spoke of Gideon for a long time
.

He came by my camp often and we walked
together. “Walk with me,” he would say. We didn’t fight, which was good, but we didn’t talk either. We didn’t talk about Gideon, or the fact that I was a soldier, or the problems my selfishness had caused. Our opinions on these things differed so greatly that any talk seemed to end in a quarrel that boiled down to my feelings for Gideon.

But how could I not love Gideon, who understood what was inside me, what drove me? He had a way of making me feel comfortable in my own skin. He never made me feel shame for choosing to be a soldier.
I never felt small or incapable in his presence. I could try to explain it, try to rationalize it, but I knew that my feelings for Gideon were more than could be added up on any list of qualities. So very much more.

And yet,
Zeke’s love for me was rooted deeply in our past. It was thorough and unconditional. Even when we disagreed. Even when I hurt him. He viewed my desire to be a soldier as a flaw, and he loved me anyway. Zeke knew every mistake I had made since I was born, and still he wanted me. To be loved like that—it was more than I deserved.

Gideon loved me because of who I was, and Zeke loved me despite of it. And I had come to know that God loved me in both ways.

The worst part was that I didn’t even care anymore whether or not Zeke understood me. He did support me, and a part of me had always known it. Before the war, I had thought being in love meant we had to understand each other completely and perfectly. But that wasn’t it at all. Love was an entirely different feeling than I had thought, because it was so much more complex than just a feeling.

Slowly, as
Zeke and I walked together, we healed. Our strength increased, and our friendship, though guarded and different, grew too. He was my best and oldest friend. Our friendship had been tried, but I very deliberately rebuilt it, and I made sure everyone saw. Zeke had nearly given his life for me. I would give mine over to him in return.

When
nearly everyone was healed enough to march, Helaman commanded us to prepare to march on the city of Manti.

On the way back to our tents
from the council meeting that night, I asked my captains, “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until we have provisions? How far can we march with no food for strength?”

“Manti’s got provisions,” Seth pointed out. “When we take it, we will have its provisions. And we can hunt on the march.”

“And if Helaman has no hope of receiving assistance from the government, he has to take action of his own,” added Gideon.

The next day
, I looked around at all the troops. They all showed signs of hunger—sallow cheeks, dull eyes and hair, sedentary when they were not on assignment. I was becoming worried. Not for myself, but for my brothers in arms. They needed much more food than I did to maintain their strength, and the rations now were even too scant for me. Their wounds were healing, but they needed nourishment to heal fully.

I had chosen life in the army and all that came with it. I was willing to suffer through this grim time myself, but it was very difficult to watch those I loved suffer, e
ven with the faith I had in God. As I watched the men suffer, I understood more fully the anger our prisoners had felt toward us for the unforgivable act of starving their families.

After our meager
morning meal, I looked into the azure sky and knew I needed to make peace with the horrible conditions here in the camps. I looked back down and met Gideon’s eye as he passed a water skin to Zachariah, and I knew I needed to make peace with my feelings for him too.

I approached Lib, and when I told him what I wanted to do, he placed his hand on my shoulder and agreed to take me. He had a couple conditions, but they were acceptable to me and even welcome
by then.