The Olive Conspiracy (11 page)

Shulamit looked over at Isaac. “Anyway, I think
we should send for Aafsaneh.”

“
Do you think we can wait that
long? Even if I were well enough to fly over there and get
her?”

“
We can send our fastest horse and
rider.”

Halleli came back inside carrying a couple of
inflorescences of four-lobed pink ixora flowers. “Here, I just got
these from the bush in the front garden. That way I’ll remember
that you were really here, in our little kitchen!”

As Shulamit accepted the flowers into her arms,
she grew even more determined to save the women’s grove, somehow.
There
had
to be a way. If Isaac wasn’t well enough to fly
over to the City of Red Clay, they’d just have to find a horse and
rider fast enough. Rivka would know which of the Royal Guard was
the most renowned for speed. Or perhaps one of the farmers could
help. Was anyone around here breeding racing horses?

Three days.
Four
days, actually, since
they were farther east than Home City. Could the farm hold out for
four days? How fast did the bugs move? Oh, and yes, then there was
the journey back… Queen Aafsaneh could probably do it in two days,
flying in her swan form.

A week, then. Did they have a week?

“
You have your father’s thick
eyebrows,” Halleli commented.

Shulamit’s eyes stung a little, but it was just
a reflex, and she didn’t cry. “Yes,” she agreed. “You’ve seen
him?”

Halleli nodded. “My parents took me to Home
City for Purim one year. I dressed as a carrot.”

Shulamit giggled. “That must have been
adorable!”

“
I looked hideous, but I had so
much fun.” Halleli’s pencil moved across the paper in slow, fluid
lines. “It was really just an old orange dress, and I used papyrus
to make myself a hat, to be my greens on top.”

“
I remember being a fairy,” said
Shulamit. “I had great big wings made of silk with a frame of cane
inside.”
And the whole of the country’s treasury to pay for it.
I should probably stop talking.
She fought the grimace that
threatened to mar Halleli’s portrait.

How can I take this from her? When I
have the whole palace, and this is her whole family
history?

Aafsaneh. It all boiled down to Aafsaneh. She
had
to know a way.

***

After the portrait was finished, Halleli
offered to show the queen around the farm. They walked out into the
sunlight, guards and Isaac following at a respectful distance.
“This is the tree where my father proposed to my mother.” Her hand
traced the bark, then drew back sharply. “Ew.”

“
Do you know what those are?”
Shulamit found herself asking.

“
Yeah.” Halleli looked at the
ground. “They got Gil’s farm pretty good.” With pleading eyes, she
faced Shulamit. “That’s why you’re here, right? To help with the
bugs?”

Shulamit gave her a weak smile.

Thumps on the dirt heralded the approach of
Rivka and Hadar. “That’s some great woman you got there, Halleli!”
Rivka bellowed.

Hadar laughed. “Whew! You sure gave me a
workout!” She was shining all over with sweat and smiling like
seven birthdays.

“
Wish I had her on my guard.” Rivka
eyed Shulamit significantly, speaking with her eyebrows.

Shulamit lifted her own in response, then
nodded.

“
What’s going on? What are we
doing?” Hadar bounded up to Halleli and caught her in an embrace
from behind, closing her arms around her waist.

“
I was showing the queen around the
farm,” Halleli explained. “We got interrupted by some
bugs.”

“
Those things from Gil’s farm made
their way over here?” Hadar wrinkled her nose. “Ugh.”

“
They weren’t here yesterday?”
asked Shulamit.

Hadar shook her head. “Nah, we were totally
clean yesterday morning. I’ve been spraying soapy water on the
trees, and I thought that would keep them away. It does sometimes,
with other bugs.”

“
They moved this fast overnight,”
Shulamit murmured to Rivka, who had drawn close.

“
And could be on the other side of
the farmhouse by tomorrow.” Rivka’s voice was grim.

“
I thought that if we could get
Aafsaneh here, she’d know what to do, how to fight
them.”

“
Who’s that?” asked
Halleli.

“
My stepmother-in-law,” explained
Shulamit. “Well, legally, anyway. I only have a husband so I could
have a legal heir. He lives on a vineyard with the man he
loves—he’s like us.” She gestured, indicating that she was
including her audience. “But, technically, it’s
her
vineyard, and she lived there for twenty-five years before she
married the king of her country.”

“
Plus, she’s a witch who can turn
into a swan,” piped up Rivka.

“
She sounds wonderful.” Halleli had
stars in her eyes. “You think she can help us?”

Shulamit scratched her wrist. “Well, if anyone
would know magic that would get rid of agricultural pests, she
seems like the one…”

“
They’re on those trees there,
now.” Hadar was pointing at another row, farther to the
south.

Shulamit looked at the ground. Under the soil,
in the roots, the blight spread by the insects was no doubt already
taking hold. When she looked up, she faced south. Past the
farmhouse, she saw the mountains melting away into rolling
foothills, and rows of other people’s trees evening out into other
types of plantations. Rice, oranges, mangoes. Vineyards and
orchards, fields and furrows.

She didn’t have to see the detail to know what
was there—she’d been there before with her father as a young girl
and then as a teenager, and more recently as a queen. There were
scores of people down there growing the food that made her country
rich and well-nourished, each of them with families and memories
and needs.

In her imagination, she saw the bugs sailing in
with each southward breeze, seeking new succulent plants to devour.
She saw the blight spreading into every root in the Valley, the
mold over every leaf. She saw farmhouse after farmhouse grow dark
as their residents were forced into poverty, her cities teeming
with the displaced and hungry.

She saw Perach forced to buy more food from its
neighbors, instead of selling so much as they’d done in any life
she’d known. From Zembluss, from the city-states, and yes, from
cruel Imbrio, who worked its peasants into the ground to keep
pretty Carolina in diamond tiaras.

This was what they wanted.

No.

“
I wish she was here,” Shulamit
found herself saying, “but we can’t get her here in time. Not with
four days’ journey there and back.”

“
So now what?” asked Halleli. Hadar
stepped in front of her slightly, a move that seemed
protective.

Shulamit looked at Isaac. In a choked, broken
voice, she said to Halleli, “I’m afraid I’m going to make you hate
dragons.”

It took her a few moments to understand. “What
are you saying?”

“
I want you to understand,” said
Shulamit somberly, her hands clasped together, “that I understand
if you hate me too.
I
hate me right now.” She took a deep
breath. “I have to stop them. I have to stop the flies.” She closed
her eyes, not able to bear seeing Halleli’s face at her next words.
“We have to burn the farm down.”

She felt an arm she knew was Rivka’s descend
around her shoulder, and she leaned into the familiar, stiff
leather, wishing she was somewhere else and wanting to
cry.

When she opened her eyes, the faces of the
women were pretty much what she’d been expecting. Halleli’s eyes
were wide, her mouth small and open slightly. Hadar had lifted both
brows and was frowning intensely. “How can you just come in here
with your wizards and horsemen and take our farm away?” she
demanded. Halleli began to cry softly, so Hadar put both her arms
around her, glaring around her at everyone.

“
I’m so sorry,” said Shulamit. “I
don’t want to. It’s the last thing I wanted to do.”

“
What about him?” Hadar lifted her
hand to Isaac. “Can’t he do something?”

“
He tried yesterday and it nearly
killed him.” Shulamit’s fingers closed around one edge of her
scarf, massaging the soft fabric to soothe herself. “He’s got a
lifetime of experience on the battlefield and in courts of at least
five different countries I can think of, but this, he couldn’t
do.”

“
I wish that I could,” Isaac
verified.

“
With this much bare earth, we
could hold the bugs off for several weeks,” said Shulamit, “long
enough for Aafsaneh to get here and destroy them completely, if she
knows how.”

“
But why
us?
” Halleli
pleaded.

“
This is how far they’ve gotten.
The bugs just got here, right?”

With a frantic little motion, Halleli nodded.
“But what will we
do
? We have nothing.”

Rivka stepped forward, her hand out to Hadar.
“Come to Home City and let me train you for the

Guard.”

“
Me?” Hadar jutted her face forward
in astonishment. “You were serious about that? But I’m a
woman!”

Rivka’s response was to draw herself up to her
full height, fold her arms in front of her chest, and toss her head
so that her hair rippled golden in the sunlight.

Suddenly, Hadar’s face changed. Her eyes
widened in shock, the rest of her face frozen. Then, slowly, the
corners of her mouth twitched, and the tiniest smile appeared, just
for a moment.

Shulamit figured she’d just witnessed Rivka
wordlessly out herself to her new prospect, and flushed with
feminist zeal.

“
You’re young and you have a lot of
energy,” said Rivka calmly. “Your body is cut out for it, and so is
your mind. And you wouldn’t be the only woman in the Royal Guard.
I’ve started looking for more.”

“
I like the idea,” said Hadar, “but
it’s all up to her. She’s my other heart.” She stepped back and
took Halleli’s hand.

Halleli turned to look at her. “This is really
hard.”

“
I know, love.”

Bugs flew over their heads. Halleli gazed all
around herself, at everything she’d grown, at everything her
parents had planted, and her parents’ parents.

Finally, she spoke, in a voice that was barely
audible. “I won’t hate dragons.”

It was consent. Shulamit stepped forward and
took her hands. “You’re a national hero. I promise.”

“
I’m a national basket case.”
Halleli squeezed her hands, then dropped them and laid her head on
Hadar’s shoulder.

“
My guards will help you pack up
your house.” Shulamit’s voice was gentle. She was consciously
mimicking the tone Aviva used to sing their daughter to sleep.
“I’ll even do what I can, myself. Do you have a wagon we can hitch
to my royal carriage? Or have the horses pull?”

Hadar nodded. “We have a wagon and there’s a
donkey who can help, if we need him. He crushes the olives when we
make oil. I guess we can sell him in the city.”

“
Not yet,” Halleli
whispered.

“
Okay, we can keep him as a pet.”
Hadar hugged her, then pulled away. “What about her? Can she work
in the palace?”

“
We’ll find something for her,”
said Shulamit.

“
I can help in the palace kitchen
or if anyone needs help planting things.” Halleli’s voice was
barely audible now.

Shulamit nodded. “While we find a place you’ll
be happiest, you can draw pictures for me. In any case, there’s
plenty of work in Home City.”
That’s part of what I’m trying to
preserve here…

They worked quickly over the next few hours,
staying one step ahead of insect invasion. Gil and Eliana showed up
with some of their family, fetched by a Royal Guard and one of
Hadar and Halleli’s workers, and they did what they could to help
pack while saying good-bye. Putting so much energy into a task
distracted everyone from the sorrow of the moment, and Shulamit was
able to avoid her guilt by carrying bundles from the house to the
wagon.

It was late afternoon by the time the house lay
empty enough to satisfy its owners. “I think that’s all we really
need.” Halleli’s face looked like she’d aged ten years in a
morning. She put her hands on her hips and looked around the empty
house. One hand reached out and caressed a wall.

“
You are a brave and beautiful
woman,” said Shulamit.

Halleli answered with a half smile. “Guess I’d
better go outside.”

They found Isaac transformed in the front
garden. “Everybody secure?”

“
We’d better do a roll call,” said
Shulamit.

The guards all counted off, and Shulamit
verified that Hadar, Halleli, Rivka, and of course Isaac were all
safe.

“
The horses and donkey with the
wagon and carriage are up on that hill where Hadar and I were
wrestling earlier.” Rivka pointed. “I think that is a good place
for us to wait, out of the range of the fire.”