Counted With the Stars (17 page)

I
patted my little donkey's brown neck as he munched a stray tuft of grass. He pivoted his head and butted my arm, his white muzzle nipping at my sleeve playfully, long whiskers tickling my skin. “Well, little friend, you had a day and a half of rest. I wonder how much farther your faithful legs will take us.” I scratched his cheek and he pressed against me, white-lined eyes rolling back in pleasure. He blinked long lashes slowly and watched me as if he understood every word.

Leaning down, I whispered, “Do you speak Egyptian? Or Hebrew?” He twitched the ear, slapping my face with the long appendage. I laughed and left him to finish his last meal before we departed. Eben and Jumo had brought back news that we were to pack and be ready to move before sunset, but that was all we knew.

I found Shira packing cook pots and supplies in her wagon and offered to help. “How do we know which banner to assemble under?” I asked.

“We are of the tribe of Levi.” Her wide smile radiated pride in her heritage.

“How do slaves even know what tribe they belong to after
four hundred years, especially being scattered all over the country?” I handed her a basket of clay mugs, and she pressed it into the corner of the wagon bed.

“Well, the tribes are broken into clans, with a head over each clan, and clans are broken into households, and then finally individual families, and the family authority passes to the firstborn sons.” She handed me the end of a sheet to fold. “In the last two hundred years since being enslaved by Pharaoh, there has been some confusion over which family belongs with which clan due to intermarriage, but every family holds fast to the knowledge of which tribe they are descended from. It's passed from father to son with great pride. You'll see . . . everyone knows their tribe.”

When our belongings were loaded, donkeys and Eben's black horse watered, and the girls perched atop the overfull wagon beds, we followed the river of vehicles and people streaming toward the clumps of banners spread out across the flat, sandy plain.

The ensuing confusion would have been comical if it hadn't been so frustrating. After hours of maneuvering, our little party found our way to the banners of the Levite tribe. The hastily painted symbol on the white banners seemed to be some sort of fish or sea serpent, but the design was difficult to distinguish in the waning sunset.

Once all of the tribes were gathered, with wagons and livestock interspersed, we waited for more hours. Would a ram's horn signal the march eastward?

The last brilliant-red Egyptian sunset I would see, possibly for the rest of my life, faded into twilight and then melted behind the western hills.

No shofar announced our departure. As soon as a few brave stars opened their eyes to the dusk, our signal arose in the east. Perched atop the mountain of belongings, Shoshana bounced
her legs against the side of the wagon, impatient, as we all were, to leave the lakeside. “Look there.” She pointed to a small bluish glow at the edge of the horizon. “What is that?”

Soon everyone looked toward the east. Shouts of “Look!” and “There it is!” muted into awed silence as the shimmering orb grew higher and floated toward us. Blue-white light began to leap and dance and then, stretching toward the heavens, it swelled into a towering pillar of swirling brilliance. Its glow lit the evening like the sun itself. The Hebrew God had sent a pillar of light to guide us.

Most people fell to their knees; some covered their heads with their hands or clothes. Others knelt not out of holy reverence, but in sheer terror, my mother among them. I restrained myself, with everything in me, not to follow suit. Would this terrible god-of-the-slaves continue his campaign of destruction of our people even here, out in the wilderness? My knees shook. I glanced at Jumo, expecting my fear to be mirrored in his expression, but to my surprise, the blue light illuminated a look of inexplicable peace on his face.

Jumo had witnessed the devastating effects of the Hebrew god's wrath upon our country, the broken lives, broken people, the death and destruction left in his wake. What reason would he possibly have for such contentment while witnessing a manifestation of this god's power?

This fearful display terrified me. I needed to get away from it, all of it. It was my fault we were in the wilderness. We couldn't go back to Egypt, that much was clear, but there must be somewhere we could go and begin a new life far away from this fearsome god and his strange people.

Shira came to stand with me and slipped her hand into mine.

“Isn't it beautiful?” Her whisper was full of awe.

I nodded my assent, but a shiver slithered up my back.

She stood transfixed. “It's like we are on the edge of something. Something wonderful.”

Or something terrible.

“Look.” She pointed at the swirling pillar of blue fire. “It stopped moving. I wonder if that is near where Mosheh and Aharon are.”

“Aharon?”

“His brother. Haven't I told you that Aharon speaks for Mosheh?”

“Can't he speak for himself?”

She shrugged. “Mosheh has some sort of trouble speaking clearly. Aharon simply helps him vocalize what Yahweh reveals.”

“Why would your god choose a prophet that can't speak?” I regretted the sharp accusation as soon as it flew past my lips.

She ignored my rudeness. “I don't know. But sometimes it seems to me like Yahweh chooses to work through the most unlikely of people.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked into my eyes. “Our forefather Avraham was the son of an idolmaker, too old to have children, yet Yahweh blessed him with the child of promise. Yaakov stole the birthright from his brother, and yet he is the father of our people.”

She turned back to the flaming cloud. “Perhaps Adonai chose Mosheh to show us all this is not about Mosheh, but about Yahweh.”

The companies of Hebrew tribes worked to situate themselves in columns in front of the pillar of fire. The effort was anything but smooth. In fact, it was a disaster, millions of people jockeying to keep themselves and their livestock in lines hundreds wide. People mixed with bleating sheep, thousands of cattle, every shape and size of wagon, pushcart, and oxcart. Even the strange irony of a few chariots drawn by fine white horses driven by bedraggled slaves stood out among the throng.
Most were on foot, the majority of them unshod, although some sported beaded and gilded sandals to match their recently inherited fine linen clothing and golden jewelry.

The blue fire burned so bright we snuffed our useless torches in the dirt. Shira went to walk with her family, and I pushed the torch into the cart behind Jumo's donkey. Jumo, still silent, faced the swirling light, his silhouette clear against the brightness.

The mass ahead of us finally shuffled forward, so I tapped the donkey on his hindquarters. He responded with a jolt, perhaps as spellbound as Jumo by the phenomenon. The cart jerked forward, and a back wheel slammed against a large rock partially buried in the sand. One of the spokes shattered, and the wheel broke free of the axle.

My mother and I tried to grab the cart before it toppled, but we were too late. Our baskets and clay pots tumbled onto the ground, spilling linens, clothing, and food into the dirt. Jumo slid off the donkey and tried to help right the cart—to no avail. Shira's family was ahead of us and unaware of our predicament. I called to them, but the maelstrom of shouts and animal noises swallowed my voice. We might lose them in the crowd, and once they were lost, we would not find them again for a long while.

“Let's try again to lift the cart, Mother. Jumo, can you get the wheel?”

Jumo limped to the wheel while my mother and I attempted to lift the cart. Hundreds of people streamed about us, gawking, but none offered help.

I pressed my feet against the rock that waylaid us and pushed at the cart with my back. To my great surprise, it moved.

Astonished, I looked around. An Egyptian held up our cart as Jumo pushed the wheel back onto the axle. The man instructed Jumo to press rocks and sand around the wheel to hold it in place while he retrieved a spare one from his own wagon.

The man turned to me with a wide smile. “Weren't you traveling with friends? Perhaps you should alert them.”

“Hmm? Oh . . . yes.” I turned to my mother. “I'll be right back.”

It took me a while to catch up to Shira's family, but luckily they had stopped already, wondering what had happened to us.

“I will help, Ima.” Eben handed the lead rope of the black horse to his mother and gestured with a flourish. “Lead the way.”

Pushing against the relentless stream of bodies, animals, and vehicles was nearly impossible. Eben moved ahead of me, snaking through the mob. I restrained the temptation to grasp the back of his tunic for fear I would lose him in the chaos.

The Egyptian had already fitted his spare wheel to our cart. He was tall, almost as tall as Akhum. He dressed in plainer clothing, just a simple linen kilt, but was nearly as handsome as Akhum as well, with short-cropped black hair and wide shoulders.

“Thank you so much, Sayaad. I don't know what we would have done had you not stopped,” my mother was saying. “Kiya, I'm so glad you made it back. I was worried about you. Sayaad has been so wonderful fixing the cart for us.”

“It was nothing at all, my lady.” He bowed low. “As head of my master's stables, I was more than once charged with repairing broken wheels.”

“You are a slave?” I blurted.

He laughed and tipped his head toward me. “Yes, I
was
a slave. But we are all free now, are we not?” He glanced at Eben, who stiffened beside me. “I had better get back to my own wagon. Are you all right to move on?” Sayaad gestured to the east.

“Yes—”

Eben interrupted with a cold “We are fine, thank you” and then shocked me by wrapping his long fingers around my arm and turning me back toward the cart.

He released me as if his hand were on fire. “Jumo, do you need help mounting the donkey?”

Jumo shook his head, expertly pulled his unruly body onto the donkey, and swung one leg over its back. I handed him his crutches. A strange little smile played about his lips.

My wide eyes and raised palms questioned him, but he just shook his head with a smirk and turned his face toward the light.

A
fter a long night following the unearthly blue fire eastward, I was almost grateful for the year and a half of hard work under Tekurah's hand. No longer was I a soft maiden with tender feet and weak muscles—my body was hard and strong, my feet callused and sure. Everyone around me, with the exception of a few stray Egyptians, had lived a life of harsh servitude. Our bodies were prepared for days of grueling marching in the wilderness.

As the sunlight grew stronger, the fire at the head of the multitude transformed. It became an enormous column of cloud, shimmering an unearthly bluish-white as it roiled and swirled across the landscape. I was glad to be far back in the throng and away from the towering, ghostly column.

The trade road stretched out endlessly to the east. A few hills lay to the south of us, but as far as the eye could see in all other directions, the land was barren. No streams, no trees; only a few squat shrubs broke the monotony of the view.

When the Cloud finally stopped during the heat of the day, we prepared a quick repast of the flatbread from last night's supper, some of the last of the water we carried in our wagons,
and salted meat from Zerah's stores. We set up our shelters quickly and rested, knowing that sundown was only a few hours away and the Cloud may not wait for twilight to start moving again.

I woke after three or four hours of satisfying rest and lay on my mat for a while, listening to the overlap of voices and languages: men arguing, women gossiping, the joyous sounds of children scampering about, playing games of stick-throwing, chase, and hide-and-seek. The sounds of free people enjoying their life without shackles. I envied them. A tether seemed to be latched somewhere under my ribcage. I felt the pull of it more and more with each step I took away from my homeland. The enormous cloud hovered to the east of us. I turned my back to it.

Stretching, I came out of our little shelter, leaving my mother to sleep and therefore avoiding the brittle tension between us. Although I understood the reason for her choices, my heart still ached from the revelation of lies, secrets, and betrayal. I had wanted to hear that she fought for me, that she tried to follow me, or rescue me, that my father was the only one to blame. But with her admission, my mother had destroyed the image of perfection I had built in my mind.

Jumo emerged from the tent he shared with Eben with his usual big smile. When would he shave that beard shadowing his face? I didn't like it.

He tousled my hair and put his arm around my neck. “Nice . . . day. Paint . . . for . . . you?”

Only Jumo could act as if racing through the desert, fleeing from a vicious army, was completely normal.

I laughed. “Please do paint for me. It will keep my mind off this.” I gestured around me. “It's been so long since I have watched you work.”

He smiled and asked for his box of paints and brushes. The
box, carved with intricate swoops and swirls and scenes of foreign gods, was a gift from my father from a voyage in the Northern Sea, and was Jumo's greatest treasure.

Our father, though disappointed in Jumo's affliction, had been as charmed by his sweet spirit as the rest of us and had doted on him. Did Jumo grieve for him? I was afraid to ask for fear of revealing my new knowledge about the man I had called Master.

I fished the box out from under a pile of goatskins given to us by Shira's family, whose laden-down wagons overflowed with gifts pushed at them by desperate Egyptians. My poor little donkey pulled this wagon along the bumpy trade road, carrying all the spoils of Egypt. He lay in the sand now, legs folded underneath him, enjoying his rest. I ran my fingers up his prickly mane and he huffed at me. His white-tipped ears twitched, but he kept his eyes closed.

I gave the box to Jumo and settled on a nearby overturned basket, a piece of scavenged flatbread in my hands, ready to watch the magic of my brother with a paintbrush in his hand.

Sitting on the ground, he tossed his crutches to the side and winced as he crossed his unruly legs with his hands.

He began with a large jar, empty of the precious last of the beer we'd brought with us. I wondered if we might have time to make more—we still had a few loaves of barley bread tucked in the wagon bed. We should be able to let it ferment, even on the move.

Forced to hold one arm steady with the other, his movements at first seemed awkward, but once Jumo's brush touched the jar, it flew. I had forgotten just how transporting it was to watch him work. When Jumo painted, his disabilities vanished.

He decorated the upper rim with blue lotus flowers—so lifelike I could almost breathe in their intoxicating scent. Then he painted a scene of three people, walking together, donkeys
plodding along behind, pulling overflowing carts, an illustration of this sojourn from our homeland. Looking closer at the faces of the people, I recognized the three of us. My mother and I walked with downcast faces, but Jumo's enormous smile blazed, even in still life.

No matter that I did my best to paint myself glad about our escape, to protect him from the crippling grief that overcame me at times—he knew. Jumo watched. He listened. Perhaps being unable to verbalize easily made him more aware of his surroundings—more perceptive than the rest of us.

“Jumo . . .”

His rich brown eyes locked on mine with sudden intensity. “I . . . had . . . dream. Go . . . with . . . Hebrews.”

I gasped and held his gaze. I whispered, “You had a dream that we should go with the Hebrews?”

He nodded, slow and firm.

“Before the Night of Death?”

He dipped his chin again.

He'd come so willingly, without a word. I had assumed that he simply trusted me, but Jumo had experienced some sort of mystic vision.

“This dream, what—?

“Shalom, good morning!” Shira came up behind me, cutting off my questions.

“Or . . . well, good afternoon. Isn't it a lovely day?” she trilled, seemingly, like Jumo, oblivious to the prospect of Pharaoh's army hurdling over the western ridge at any moment. When she saw the magnificent artwork Jumo had created on the jar, she caught her breath. “Oh! Jumo! Did you paint this?”

He grinned at her, never too humble to enjoy someone discovering his talent for the first time.

She crouched on the ground next to the jar. “May I? Is it dry?”

When he nodded, she traced the flowers around the rim with
a delicate finger, entranced by their beauty. “As if one could reach out and pick it . . . extraordinary.”

“Jumo is a natural artist, never taught by a master.” I didn't even try to resist gloating. I beamed at my brother. “His art was the main draw to my mother's market stall.”

“I can certainly see why, don't you, Eben?” Shira looked over my shoulder.

There he was, lurking again, glowering.

“Yes.” His eyes locked on mine for a brief moment, then flicked back to his sister. “Jumo shared some of his other drawings with me. They are well done.”

I blinked, stunned. I knew Eben and Jumo were tentmates, but had they become friends? Although they were the same age, I did not see them as compatible in any way. They were in different realms—Jumo with his effortless, warm spirit; Eben, abrasive and bitter. What could they possibly have in common?

“Well . . . done? You . . . wish . . . you . . . could . . . paint . . . like . . . me!” Jumo threw back his head and laughed loudly.

Eben's face transformed, and his green eyes softened.

A fissure had started inside me the day he killed the cobra to protect me, lengthened whenever he held me in his gaze, and widened when I heard of his pain at his father's death. But at the genuine smile on his face, warm melodic laugh, and his obvious affection for my brother, it became a gaping need that threw me into complete disarray. My resolution to part ways with the Hebrews and their fearsome god wavered.

However, I worried the chasm between us was too wide to bridge.