Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (21 page)

Devora had begun running through the grasses that morning of her mother’s death, and though she now lived in a permanent
camp, she hadn’t stopped running. In those first summers in Shiloh, Devora fought to banish from her memory the death of her mother and the growling of the dead in that camp. Her memory seemed to her a badly woven basket; things obviously were capable of leaking through gaps left in the weave, for she’d forgotten things before. So she packed her mind with the six hundred
mitzvot
the way a farmer packs a basket with grain, leaving no unused space, hoping that the more she filled her mind with the Law and the traditions that kept the People safe, the less space there would be for the terrors of the past.

In the ferocity of her study and her flight from memory, Devora knew she seemed grim for a young woman. The one joy of girlhood that remained to her was to watch the young nazarites on the fighting ground each morning, admiring the way the sun had bronzed their powerful arms, noting the sheen of sweat on their bodies as they danced the spears. Young Devora had a favorite among the nazarites, a man who bested most who came against him. In his strength and certainty, he reminded Devora of the nameless herdsman who had defended his cattle from the dead, that man who appeared often in her dreams.

The nazarite had a birthmark on his shoulder in the shape of a spearhead, and the other young men teased him over it. Devora was drawn to him for that. He was not godlike and unreachable; he was like her. He too was nettled by his peers. Devora admired him with a fierceness in her heart for the way he responded. For the nazarite would clap his brother on the shoulder and laugh. “We will be fighting on some high slope and God will look down out of his wide sky and see us all sweating in the heat, and he will be looking for some man to bless that day. His eyes will notice my shoulder. And God will say,
There is my servant Zefanyah, I will bless him
. The rest of you will all have to find other ways to attract God’s attention.”

To Devora’s delight and embarrassment, her nazarite took to watching her in the evenings. He would stand within earshot of the tables where Eleazar the high priest taught the six hundred
mitzvot
of the Law, one table for the sons of priests and one for the dedicates who might become their wives and thus must know more of the Law than the wives of herders or tanners or caravan merchants. Devora would flush when she felt the nazarite’s gaze, and one evening, for the first time, she failed to answer one of Eleazar’s inquiries correctly. The high priest gave her a prolonged stare, then grunted and moved on to ask a question of the other table, without any reprimand beyond that small, noncommittal noise. But Devora’s face burned as though God had placed a sun in front of her. And the other girls whispered quietly about it, which made her burn even more.

That night, Devora stayed behind, feeling an embarrassed need to apologize to Eleazar. The apology only made him cross.

“Get some rest, Devora. You’re only, after all, a woman,” he muttered, waving a hand dismissively.

Devora’s eyes darkened at the comment. It was viciously unfair—she had a better memory than any of those who sat at the boys’ table—but she didn’t have a response that wouldn’t earn her a beating or a week of chores about the camp, so she turned on her heel and stalked away through the tents, thinking dark thoughts about God’s appointed high priest.

She had just reached the shadows of the terebinths in their line behind the girls’ tent when she felt a strong arm about her waist. The soft laugh behind her, a laugh she recognized, stilled a momentary panic. In a moment she was pulled up against a firm, male body, her heart wild within her. She had just time to glimpse his face and gasp before the nazarite covered her lips with his, and the shock of the kiss rushed through her like fire and flood. A weakness came over her that was almost like drowsiness, but beneath it there was a thrill and a heat tightening up deep within
her. She yielded willingly to the kiss, so many feelings rushing into her and through her, like cattle stampeding through a grove, the force of their passage tugging the leaves from the lower branches and sending them whirling about. After a few moments she found herself gazing up at his face, her lips still parted. Hardly enough air.

He smiled.

“You
are
pretty,” he murmured. “Sleep well tonight.” He cupped her cheek in his warm hand, and she just stared up at his face, blushing, because it was unlike her to have nothing to say. Then he kissed her again and she made a small, soft sound as he did, overwhelmed by the taste and scent of him and the strong, uncompromising way he held her. Then he released her, brushed the tip of her nose with his lips, and moved away through the dusk beneath the terebinths, leaving her standing alone, shaking a little. The cicadas were louder than anything she’d ever heard, and she could see every shadow and every patch of dim light beneath the trees cut as sharp as though the world had been made only moments before. She lifted her fingertips to her lips. Her body still felt warm and weak. This wasn’t
anything
like how Hannah had described kissing in her stories in the moon tent.

It occurred to Devora as she stood beneath the terebinths that if this nazarite asked for her, she would be his second wife. She knew he had a wife whom he went to visit each Sabbath, an afternoon’s walk from here at the encampment of Beth El. A woman of Manasseh tribe that Zefanyah’s father had bought for him after his mitzvah. He might even have children; Devora wasn’t sure. She would have to find out; surely the woman would come to Shiloh soon for the Feast of Tents. She felt a little unease, but she had never expected to have a husband. No man in the camp had spoken for her before, and she had no father to provide a dowry. This kiss was new—and unexpected.

She wondered if she
was
pretty.

Even as all of these new joys and anxieties rushed through her like wine and water, Devora lifted her eyes and saw the
navi
walking between the tents with two other women of the camp. A heat rushed through her that was nothing at all like the warmth she’d felt deep in her belly when Zefanyah had held her and pressed his lips to hers. This heat scorched her and dried her out and left her pale and faint. Then the vision came, and the shock of it was too great. After a moment she slid to the ground, fainting.

A touch on Devora’s shoulder woke her, and she came to with a cry of panic. Old Naomi was seated beside her, her brown face wrinkled and furrowed like a freshly plowed field.

“Calm yourself, girl,” Naomi said. Her voice was firm and had a hard edge to it, though it wasn’t unkind.

The
navi
touched Devora’s brow, and her hand was dry.

Above her, the cicadas seemed loud as thunder.

Devora drew in great swallows of air.

“Why did you faint?”

“I grew dizzy,” Devora said. “And afterward I fell.”

“Your flesh was hot as coals when I reached your side. But now you are cool. There’s no fever.”

Devora moistened her lips with her tongue, for they felt so dry they must crack.

“You saw something, girl.”

She hesitated, then nodded.

Naomi watched her a moment, her eyes hard and unrevealing. At last she made a small noise of assent. “Do you know what it is like to be the
navi
?” she asked.

Devora shook her head.

“God terrifies us all. The
kohannim
do not dare to take off their sandals and step onto the holy ground within the Tent unless they’ve
first washed for seven days.” Naomi gave a wry smile. “I wish men in the land might do that before entering into their own tents to lie with their wives. They would smell better. But there, God scares them more than women do.” Naomi looked toward the Tent of Meeting, and her eyes hardened. “Yet they do fear
me
. Did you know that, child?”

Devora nodded.

“God sends visions to my own eyes and does not care whether I wash first. In fact, I do not kneel or ask for him to show himself, he simply does. His
shekinah
, his presence, falls on me like wind and fire and nearly scorches me to the ground. A heat almost too fierce to bear. You know what I’m talking about, girl?”

“Yes,” Devora whispered, frightened.

Naomi’s gaze pierced her.

“What did you see, child? Before you fell?”

Devora shook her head vigorously, and Naomi’s eyes narrowed. “You have pluck, girl. Not many people try to hide something from God’s
navi
.” She lifted a few strands of Devora’s hair between her fingers, looking at them as though she might find in them the answer to her questions. That wry smile again. “Very well. You and God may keep your secret, for now. But listen to me, child. I want to know whenever you have one of these dizzy spells. I need to hear about it. And I think you will come visit me in the mornings. We are going to have a lot to talk about, you and I.”

The thought of approaching the old
navi
’s tent, alone, to be questioned by her—that would have filled Devora with dread, if the old woman’s words had not already given her more dread than she could carry. Naomi helped the younger woman to her feet, and for a moment Devora clung to her, feeling unsteady. The fear of what all this might portend, what it
must
portend, gripped her.

“Please,” she cried. “What does it mean? Why am I seeing these things?”

“It means you are the next
navi
,” Naomi said quietly. “It means you are seeing what God’s eyes see.”

T
HE NEXT
afternoon changed everything.

It was Devora’s turn at the washing. As she left the white tents to make her way upstream, she hauled a washing board under one arm and carried a basket of heavy, soiled cloth on her shoulder. The sun was late-summer hot, baking away what strength she had, and she moved beneath it in a daze. In the sky behind her, cloud was piling upon cloud, promising thunder.

Doing the washing meant a long walk. The women of Shiloh kept the Covenant and were careful not to soil the stream that ran through Shiloh before rushing east past many camps of the People on its way to the Tumbling Water. Instead, the women took the clothes to small, isolated pools that formed in the mud near the stream. In the early dawn the water in these wash holes was cool and clear, but a little splashing of clothing in them and they became brown and more soiled than the tunics and robes
a woman hoped to wash. So as the day aged, the women had to move farther up the stream to find new wash holes, often walking far from the camp. Once the clothes were laid out to dry, there was a brief respite. A woman could lie out on the grass and watch the thunderclouds build on the horizon or stare for an hour at a small beetle clinging to a reed. Or, if she was far enough from the sight of the tents—and if she dared—she might strip away her own tunic and leap into the cold river with a shock like being born. There, swimming between sand and sky, a woman could feel, if just for a little while, completely free and clean.

Today Devora had to walk far; as her feet squelched in the river mud and the tents of the encampment fell far behind, she could see through a haze of green reeds Hannah and Mikal, the women of the shift before her. They were bathing. Devora hoped to find a clean wash hole after passing them. She tried to hasten, but the weight of the basket on her shoulder made her grunt, and twice she slid in the mud, catching herself on a splayed hand but splattering her face and breasts with mud. By the time she reached the bathers, she was livid and in an ill mood. She cast them a glowering look that neither of them noticed. They were enjoying the river and had no room in their minds for anything but the fresh, cool water. Hannah was leaping and diving as though she were part fish.

It was the upcoming Feast of Tents, not only the cool water, that had them in such a good mood. Some of the girls were already considering who they hoped to dance for; a few had even begun quietly sewing decorative patterns into their dresses: flowers, or shapes of people crossing a desert (for the Feast commemorated the time in the desert), or trees.