Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) (43 page)

“I—I’m dying,” Hurriya choked. Her eyes wild with the sudden, terrible knowledge of it.

Devora reached for her hand, gripped it, brought it to her breast. The girl’s hand was unclean, but Devora was unclean also. Even if she weren’t, in this one moment she could not care. What did it matter?

“Can’t die,” the girl gasped, her eyes wide. “I didn’t find Anath. I didn’t find her.”

“Hurriya—” Helplessly, Devora gave the cloth over the wound more pressure. Without effect. She didn’t have long.

“Please,” Hurriya whispered, “find her.”

“I’ll try.” Devora could hardly speak through the tightness of her throat. Her promise to try was all she could give.

“Oh gods.” Hurriya’s face was white, and the pain in her eyes was terrible, like a reflection of the pain in the eyes of God. She gasped for air a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I—hated you. Blamed you.”

Devora’s eyes moistened. “I’m sorry too,” she whispered.

Something passed between them, something for which there were no words and would never be. Hurriya squeezed the older woman’s hand once, and Devora returned it.

Then Hurriya’s gaze flicked to the side of the room where the dead woman still lay. “Don’t want to be—like her.”

“You won’t.”

“My body—should go to the fish—”

“I can’t,” Devora whispered. “I can’t do that. I’m Hebrew.”

“I know. Hebrew.” A plea in her eyes. “Devora, we are both women.”

“Yes,” Devora whispered.

“Your Law,” Hurriya said faintly. Blood pooling beneath her. “Made to shelter, preserve your People. Your People weren’t—weren’t made to preserve it.”

“Don’t talk. Just breathe. Just breathe.” Devora moaned. She was losing one more woman she loved. She couldn’t bear it.

“You’ll lift stones above me?” Hurriya rasped.

“Yes.”

“And sing over my body?”

“Yes.”

Hurriya’s eyes glistened. “I wish I could—could hold him again. My baby.” Her hands were shaking.

“I know.” Devora lifted the girl’s hand, pressed it to her cheek, holding back her tears. “I know.”

“He was so small,” she whispered. “So small.”

Hurriya’s eyes closed, and Devora could hear her body fighting to breathe now, in little gasps.

“Hurriya,” the
navi
whispered, but the girl didn’t open her eyes. With a shock she realized Hurriya’s eyes would only open again if she rose from the dead.

Her chest tight, Devora hummed the first few notes of Hurriya’s song, in a desperate hope that hearing it, she might come back. But she didn’t. Instead, her breaths grew shallower and shallower. Lifting her hand from the bit of dress she’d pressed uselessly over the wound, Devora took the girl’s hands gently in hers, feeling their warmth. She held them a while. They were so small, like a child’s.

“Sleep, then,” Devora whispered, sniffing back tears. “You sleep now, daughter. Sleep.”

One last, small breath. Then Hurriya’s chest no longer moved. She was still. Devora held the girl’s hands fiercely, but there was no longer any pulse in them. A quiet, keening noise rose in her throat. Hurriya was gone. Her daughter was gone.

Shaking, Devora folded the young woman’s hands over her breast, then reached and caressed her hair softly, tucking it behind her ears and laying it smoothly about her shoulders. Her tears cooled on her cheeks. “No,” she kept whispering. “No, no.”

She bent low over Hurriya’s body and kissed her lips, gently. Hurriya’s lips were soft but dry. Devora kissed the girl again, and a third time, and felt that if she were to try and stand and leave the girl’s side, she would break apart, frail as clay.

Yet she had to. She glanced at the knife Heber had left on the floor. There wasn’t much time. Still she gazed down at Hurriya’s still body. On an impulse she unwound from about her own waist the scarlet cord that she had used there as a sash, the same cord that had once held the furs wrapped about Mishpat and that had come with her all this way into the north.

Gently Devora wound that faded scarlet cord about Hurriya’s wrist. The cord looked lovely on her, even in its lack of color—as though Hurriya had been wearing it like a bracelet for years, while she gleaned in the fields or picked olives from the branches of the orchard by which she’d lived. As though she’d carried it with her all the way from the north, then all the way back again. It was weathered; it had endured, even as she had. And like a cairn, the cord was a covenant, a promise. The cord bound them both to each other. Like her iron blade, that cord had a history. It had belonged to the
navi
before her, who had been given it by Rahab herself, the Canaanite girl who had preserved the lives of two Hebrew spies during the taking of the land and who had then hung the scarlet cord from her window, a sign that her house was inviolate and sheltered when the Hebrew raiders burst at last through the walls of that settlement.

It was not only that the cord had bound Rahab to the People and brought her into the tribe; it also bound the People to her. So that their men would know that Rahab was one of theirs, not to be harmed, and to be treated as a woman of their own People might be treated. A sign that the People had a responsibility now to those women who had survived the falling of their towns’ walls. Devora had a responsibility. Hurriya had tried to tell her that, tried to show her.

“Unseeing,” Devora whispered, “I permitted injustices.” She had sat in decision so many years with the Law at her back and the People before her, both Hebrew and heathen; perhaps she had not looked often enough over her shoulder at the Law, and so had forgotten what to look for when she gazed out on the People. She had forgotten to look for justice for the strangers in the land. Though it was the Hebrews who possessed the land, a land of promise, a land they held to be theirs and held as theirs, yet the Lawgiver had declared that there must be one Law alike for the stranger and for those born in the tents of the People.
Shelter the stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Kemet.

Yet her People had not done so. How many women had been left unsheltered, with only a salmah to clothe them? How many?

But Devora had no more room for thought or for anything but the deep, wrenching grief that assailed her. The house had darkened until she sat beside Hurriya’s body in deep shadow.

She caressed Hurriya’s hair once more, whispering her name. Then reached for Heber’s knife.

The evening light outside the house seemed bright and harsh to her after the dimness inside, though in fact the sun had now slid behind the ridge to the west and dusk was upon them. Barak stood there talking with Omri in a low voice, and he turned at her footsteps.

“
Navi
,” Barak said.

“I will camp here tonight,” Devora said numbly.

After a moment Barak nodded. “I’ll set a watch and tell the men to keep silence.” He looked as though he wanted to say something more but could not find the words he needed.

Devora simply stepped past him, ignoring his gaze on her and the lustful gaze of Omri the Zebulunite. She had no time or space in her heart for either.

Walking as though asleep, she moved to the place at the edge of the field where the men were raising the cairns. Laban was there; he took one glance at the
navi
and then turned grimly toward the house. As he left, Devora sank to her knees by the cairns, her face drained of life. The other men glanced at her but did not disturb her.

Devora gazed out over the blighted field.

“She was the
navi
,” Devora whispered to God. “Your
navi
. How could you.”

No answer came to her out of the withered vines or the wide sky, and Devora knew in that moment that none ever would. Even if God were to show her a hundred visions more, there would never be any vision that would give a reason for Hurriya’s death. Devora’s eyes glistened, but her grief was too sharp for any moisture to wash it out. Her breast felt tight and it hurt almost to breathe. She watched dully as Laban came out of Barak’s cedar house carrying Hurriya’s body in his arms, tightly wrapped and shrouded in a blanket, neither face nor feet visible. Devora saw a red area in the cloth where her head must be and knew it for blood from the knife wound she had inflicted. The
navi
moaned softly and covered her face with her hands.

Devora worked the men hard, raising Hurriya’s cairn. She made it the highest one in that line of silent promises to the dead. When Laban lifted the last stone, it clacked into place nearly level with his head. The other cairns were already done, and only a few men remained there to see if the
navi
needed help. The other men had left quickly, not wanting to spend longer than they must in the presence of the dead.

“Go,” Devora whispered. “All of you.”

Laban hesitated, one hand resting on the top of the cairn. “She was not of the People,” he said.

“She is of my tribe,” Devora said softly. “I accept her as one of my tribe. Please go.”

Laban looked at her another moment, then turned without a word and began walking away through the dead field.

Devora leaned on the cairn, her eyes cold as a winter sea. Then she lifted her voice.

Though hoarse, she sang with such beauty that men raising tents in the field stopped and stood still, turning to face the cairn and the
navi
beside it.

As the darkness fell, Devora sang her farewell to a woman of her People.

Barak offered a room in his house to her, but Devora could not bear the thought of sleeping there. She staggered out into the withered vines in the dark, moving toward where the other war-leaders had set up their tents with hers nearby. The tent Laban had offered her. She wondered a moment if Mishpat and her saddle and her waterskin were there in the tent and whether Shomar had been well cared for, but her mind was too weary to hold the thought. It was dark now, but she did not walk with any alertness. She felt like a vessel with its oil poured out and left to dry in the dust.

Walking so, she nearly collided with a man, and he called out sharply in the dark. Looking up wearily, she saw Heber’s hard face in the starlight.

“Covenant and Law, woman,” he growled, “watch yourself.”

“I am sorry,” Devora said. Her gaze took in the man—he had a bundle on his shoulders and a waterskin slung at his hip. “You’re leaving,” she murmured.

“I’ll not stay to wait for the dead,” he said.

“There are five hundred men here, Heber,” Devora said. “The land will be clean in a few days, and there will be rebuilding and replanting. Raider or no, a man with a strong back will be honored here.”

“Clean?” he said. He looked at her intently, then laughed, hard, a laughter eerily like Barak’s when the chieftain had knelt in the ruin of his vineyard. A laughter devoid of any joy, just mirth at the savage futility he saw. The Kenite wiped tears from his face,
wheezing with laughter. “You don’t. You don’t understand.” His sides shook. “I’ve been hurrying south for weeks. Weeks, woman. After raiding in White Cedars. There are thousands. Thousands in White Cedars.”

All sound left the world, everything but the beat of Devora’s heart. She just stared at Heber, the night terribly dark around them.