Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (5 page)

The Canaanite girl still knelt by the small body. At first, Devora had feared the girl might grab the infant and flee, but she seemed to be in shock. The salmah had slipped from her shoulder, nearly baring one breast, which was so swollen with milk that her skin was red and each vein could be clearly seen. It must have hurt terribly, yet the girl did not appear to notice. Nor did she cover herself. She just stared listlessly at an empty spot of ground beside the infant and did not twitch or do anything but breathe as Devora approached.

With a groan, the
navi
let the rock fall to the earth beside that scrap of flesh and bone that had once been a child. Then rested a moment, breathing hard. She didn’t spare the Canaanite another glance. Just listened to the beating of her heart and the breath coming in and out of her body. Calm. She needed calm. She glanced again at the sun, held up her hand—four fingers’ width between that blaze of heat and the tops of the hills. Little time, little time. She didn’t intend to spend the Sabbath on this hill among the cairns, with a weeping Canaanite girl and a nazarite lost in his own private nightmare. She needed to get back. She needed to tell the priests of her vision. Needed the solace of her husband’s arms—she knew well that her own nightmares would visit her tonight, after dark.

Taking up a jagged rock to use for a shovel, Devora began digging in the soil beside the body, parting the roots of weeds and hollowing out an infant-sized resting place in the warm ground, as though shaping a small womb in the earth for the child’s body to return to. She panted as she worked. A quick glance at Zadok—he had not moved.

“Don’t put him in the ground,” the Canaanite said, her eyes sore and red.

Devora didn’t look up. “You can’t take it from the hill,” she said quietly. “Or to any water the People might drink.”

“You’ve taken everything from us,” the girl said. “Everything. Our men toil like slaves in your fields. Your priests burn our gods.” A quiver of despair in her voice. “Can I not even care for the body of
my child
?”

Devora cast the jagged rock aside and reached for one of her stones. Each was roughly rectangular, about the length of her arm and the height of her hand. Grasping the edge of a stone with both her hands and digging in with her fingers, she lifted and tipped, rolling the stone into position. Her back itched furiously, and her arms and shoulders and neck burned with pain.

“I hate you,” the girl whispered. “I hate you.”

Devora glanced at the Canaanite girl, a rebuke ready. But she was caught by the girl’s visible anguish and cold defiance. The Canaanite wasn’t the kind of heathen Devora might have expected to meet. She carried in her hand no trivial god of wood or stone. She had no war paint. This stranger in her land was only a girl, one who had suffered and labored in the birth tent to bring one small life into the land to set against all the unclean death. The midwives had pulled that infant wet and helpless from this woman’s own body and handed it to her as it cried in its horror at the strangeness of the world beyond the womb. Devora thought of those moments she’d never known but had witnessed, when the mother and the infant weep together and the midwives press
warm, moist cloths to the mother’s exhausted and torn body to stop the blood.

The grief in the Canaanite’s eyes was so intense it was nearly feral. It took Devora aback; the rebuke died on her lips. She had felt grief before—grief that tore at her in the night. But whatever this stranger was feeling,
that
Devora had never felt. For a moment Devora pressed her own hand to her belly, and something clenched tight about her heart. She had never brought any child crying into the land. What would it have been like to bear one, from one harvest season nearly to the next, feel it growing inside her, and birth one, and then lose one?

The Canaanite’s travails had not ended with the lifting of her child to her breast. It could not have been many days later when she’d risen and stumbled all the way here out of the settlements in the high Galilee, carrying that bitten infant, her own body still bleeding from its birth. She must have needed to rest often, near fainting, only to push herself unsteadily to her feet again. Perhaps the infant had been alive and feverish when she began her long, desperate walk. Perhaps it had died along the way, then risen to the mother’s horror with that low cry of hunger. Yet the girl had kept carrying it, kept on her feet, all the way here, to the
navi
’s olive tree. It might have taken her days. Perhaps Devora’s words of comfort had been colder than she’d realized; perhaps there was no husband. Perhaps it was the husband who had bitten the infant and eaten its leg. She didn’t know. She only knew that the Canaanite girl had come here alone, carrying her infant across a land that had once been hers and her people’s.

“The cairn is a necessity,” Devora said softly. “It is also a promise. A promise to the dead that the People will not forget. A promise that even God will look down and see the cairn and remember. And a promise to the living
and
the dead that the unclean death will end here, at these stones, and spread no further. We must bury the child the Hebrew way. Or more children may die.”
She wished she might wipe sweat from her face, but dared not lift the gloves to touch her skin. She kept her eyes on the Canaanite, saw that her words meant little to her.

“Girl,” the
navi
called softly, “what is your name?”

“Hurriya.” The girl’s eyes were hopeless. “I am Hurriya. The father was Malachi ben Aharon.”

“That is a Hebrew name,” Devora said sharply.

“He
was
Hebrew,” the girl said. “A laborer at an olive press near Judges’ Well. My father sold me to him when I was twelve.”

Devora cast an uneasy glance at the cairn she’d raised. The father had been Hebrew. If he were here, he might beg the
navi
to sing the Words of Going for his son.

“Did the child have a name?”

“No,” Hurriya whispered. “He was only seven days old. I knew in my heart you couldn’t help him. But the hope. The hope was all I had.”

The horror of it made Devora’s throat tighten. On the eighth day, every male Hebrew child was circumcised and given a name. This infant had perished without name and without any mark of the Covenant upon its flesh. It was not of the People. It was not of
any
People—it had no name. Yet if no Words of Going were sung over the cairn, this infant and its father would be forgotten. God might see the cairn, but how would God know who was beneath it? The thought of one of the People being unremembered—that was the grasp of a cold hand about her heart.

She let out her breath and returned her focus to the physical work of raising the cairn. She arranged three great stones in a triangle around the little pit she’d dug—that made a wall, or a frame, for the cairn. Like the foundation of a small house, a house for the dead. She reached for the infant and lowered what was left of it into the small depression she’d made in the earth.

Muscles that she probably hadn’t used since she was a young girl were screaming at her. She clenched her teeth and lifted one of
the other stones. With a groan that felt like her bones were coming loose from each other, she slammed the stone down across the top of the cairn’s foundation, covering half of the small grave, forming half a roof. Her gloved fingers still clenched tight about the edge of the stone, she lay over it, wheezing. For a moment she just lay there.

Finish. She had to finish this.

She pushed herself up.

Only two more stones. One to complete the roof and one to sit atop the cairn, sealing it. Two more, only two. The infant was already half concealed. She could do this.

But she could still hear that moan, that unliving moan, in her mind. Worse, she could hear the moans outside her mother’s tent, thirty years ago, and the screams. Her hands began shaking again. If she were to close her eyes, she’d be
there
, in that tent, as a child. She used to visit that tent in her dreams, night after night. But it had been a long time now since she had. She knew she would be there tonight. When that happened, she couldn’t be alone. After so long—she feared the dreams would shatter her, that her body would convulse and clench up and she would sob in her blankets until morning. She couldn’t afford that kind of weakness, that kind of terror. Israel couldn’t afford it. She needed her husband tonight.

She lifted the next stone, straining. A cry ripped from her throat as she let the great rock fall into place, roofing the cairn. As she gulped in air, her palms flat against the cold stone, she felt the slightest tremor in the ground, through her knees.

She lifted her eyes.

Three horses were riding up the valley below toward her hill at a swift canter, one well ahead of the other two. They were sleek animals, good ones, probably trades from across the Water. They were riding from the northeast, from the northern camp, and with the sun behind her Devora could see them clearly. The riders
were tall men, one broad-shouldered with a thick, dark beard. The other two lean and wiry.

Taking a breath, she returned her attention to the cairn. It must be finished. The earth was cool against her knees, but strands of her hair had strayed across her face, sweaty from the exertion. Not how she would have chosen to meet men of her People: on her knees, sweaty, and dirtied. She hissed through her teeth. Burying this corpse was more important than her dignity. She reached for the last of the stones. She would finish this, and then she would hear what these men wanted, these men who’d taken up the spear when the dead rose, and ridden out of the north.

T
HE FIRST
of the riders pulled well ahead of the other two; he rode at a gallop right up the slope, only slowing when he reached the cairns, so as not to break his horse’s legs against some mound of stone. Horses were rare in the land, a gift of God to any who possessed one. Sacred in their own way and not to be risked heedlessly. The man riding this one checked his steed, slid from its back, and strode toward Devora among the cairns without any sign of deference or respect for the
navi
.

Ignoring his approach, Devora was fighting to lift the last stone into place, and she nearly passed out from the exertion and from the pain in her back.

Suddenly the weight was gone, and she nearly fell. Blinking sweat from her eyes, she found that Zadok had taken the stone from her and was raising it to the top of the cairn as effortlessly as though he were lifting no more weight than a full waterskin.
The stone settled into place with a reassuring
clack
of rock against rock.

Zadok!

Her whole body lightened with relief.

The nazarite turned to her, his eyes grim but present. “
Navi
,” he said quietly.

“About time,” she gasped, then swayed on her feet. Zadok’s hand caught her arm, and for a moment she leaned against him, just breathing, heedless of the impropriety. But she had no time to rest or breathe; the war-leader was approaching between the cairns. The Canaanite looked numbly on without rising from where she knelt. Devora’s own limbs were shaky, but she forced herself to step away from Zadok and stand without support. Her dress was smeared with soil and sweat; there was dirt beneath her nails and scrapes on her hands. She felt filthy, and vaguely defiled, though her naked skin had not touched the corpse. She longed desperately for a cold river to dip into and dry clothes, but there wasn’t time.

The stranger stopped when he was near enough to speak without shouting. A lean man, tall with the height of the northern tribes, his hair braided in the war knot. One of his eyelids drooped a little. That would have made another man look sleepy; it made this man look sinister, secretive. His lip had a bit of curl in it. As his gaze took in Devora and Zadok, then lingered on the Canaanite, that curl twisted into a sneer.

Devora braced herself, not liking the look of this man.

“A heathen,” the man called out, without bothering to introduce himself. “Even in Shiloh I find the stink of them.”

The Canaanite looked up from the cairn, and her eyes burned hot.

“She’s a supplicant,” Devora said quietly. “Let her be.”

The man spat to the side, and Devora tensed. This was where the dead were buried—how
dare
he—

“Who are you, stranger?” she demanded.

He showed his teeth. His hard, cold eyes glanced past her, at Zadok. “I am Nimri ben Nabaoth, of Naphtali tribe. I lead herdsmen in the hills above Judges’ Well. Why does the woman speak for you?”

“She is the
navi
,” Zadok said. “She speaks for God.”

“Ha. Ask God to choose a man for the next
navi
.”

“Perhaps he will,” Devora said smoothly. “You’ve come from Barak’s camp?”

“I’ve come from
my
camp. Barak happens to be camping near me.”

The other two riders were approaching now. They dismounted some distance from the cairns to approach on foot, showing respect for the holy ground where the dead were buried, and for the
navi
. Nimri glanced over his shoulder at them, tensing slightly. Then he shook his head and shot Zadok a look. “Let
them
talk to this woman if they want.” Then he mounted his horse. “The high priest—I can find him down there?” He jerked his head toward the white tents.

“It is nearly the Sabbath,” Zadok said.

Devora didn’t say anything. Her hands were clenched with rage.

“After the Sabbath, then,” Nimri said, his tone dismissive. His gaze flicked across them all once, contempt for the woman who spoke for God and a violent hate in his eyes when he glanced at the Canaanite. Then he turned his horse and kicked it into a canter, nearly riding down the other two men. The men leapt to the side, and then Nimri ben Nabaoth was past, and he and his horse tore down the slope as quickly as they’d come.

“If that is the kind of man mothers raise in the northern tribes,” Devora muttered under her breath, but didn’t finish the thought. The other two were near now.