Counted With the Stars (28 page)

“Welcome home.” Her eyes pooled, and I realized that she too grieved my mother.

Shira hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe, but Jumo was nowhere to be seen. I craned my neck to search him out.

Shira whispered in my ear. “He is in his tent. He's barely been outside in the last three days.”

“Does he know I am here?”

She shrugged. “Why don't you take him some food? I tried earlier, but he refused it.”

Jumo was sprawled on his back across his bedroll when I entered his tent. His eyes were closed and his arm slung across his forehead, but he was clearly not asleep.

“Brother?”

His eyes fluttered open.

“Ya-ya.” His brown eyes glittered with tears. Visible grief weighted his gaze, and I knew my own echoed the sentiment. I put down the bowls of manna I had brought with me and lay down beside him, stretching my arm across his chest.

“I'm home, brother.”

Tears trickled down the sides of his face. I pressed my cheek to his, and they washed down my own face as well.

I ached to tell him that it wasn't his fault, but the memory of Eben's warning silenced me. Isolated on the island of pain we were stranded on together, we cried.

The odor of death lingered on the goat hide above me. I shivered. Sayaad's tent had smelled just like this one. I tried to sleep, but memories of my mother gathered like ghosts around me in the howling void.

Everything whispered of her: her empty pallet, her cosmetic box, Shefu's amulet now back around my neck. Jumo had returned the precious treasure to me, and I was grateful that somehow her murderers had not stolen that as well. Yet I almost wished that the symbol of her love for Shefu had been
buried with her in the unmarked grave that lay somewhere in this barren wilderness.

Almond oil and frankincense permeated the dress I wore, one of her favorites. I prayed to Yahweh that the fragrance would never fade. I would wrap it inside other linens to preserve it, and place it inside the empty jar of Shefu's wine she kept hidden among her clothing.

I tossed back and forth on my pallet, the image of her unseeing eyes jeering me every time I closed my own.

Why had I not checked on her earlier? Or gone with her upstream? What if the lookouts hadn't been killed and had warned us? Would she now live? Question after question assaulted me, until I could no longer lie on my mat. I sat up, knees pulled to my chest and eyes blinking into the accusing dark.

The tent flap flew open, and the outline of a body slipped inside. My heart pounded so loudly I almost missed the whisper of my name.

“Shira! You startled me.”

“I'm sorry.” She sat next to me on my mat. “I didn't want you to sleep in this tent all alone.”

I released a long, slow breath. “Thank you. I'd rather not.”

She stammered. “Do you want to talk about—?”

“No.”

I regretted the harsh interruption as soon as it flew past my lips. Even in the darkness, I felt her shrink back.

I cleared my throat. “Not right now.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you.” I found her hand and squeezed it. “You've always been kinder to me than I deserved. And I never apologized after my hateful words on the beach—”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“Yes, there is. I was wrong. Wrong about everything.” My voice broke.

“Kiya, I love you as my sister. Nothing you say or do will change that. Your hurt is my own. And . . .” Her voice softened. “I loved Nailah, too.”

With nothing more to say, I lay back on my mother's pallet. Breathing in what remained of her beautiful fragrance, I let my tears flow.

Shira grasped my hand until I fell asleep.

A
re you coming?”

Eben crouched next to me. His hand brushed down my arm, bringing with it the heat of a lightning bolt across the night sky. His fingers entwined with mine, and I bathed in the indulgence of the obvious delight in his eyes before I answered.

“Where to?”

Mischief cocked his brow, and he pointed his bearded chin at my tent. “Not far, bring your lyre.”

Jumo was seated across the Senet game box from me—one of the many gilded treasures given to Eben by Akensouris. We had been playing for hours, both of us trying to ignore our mother's uninhabited seat by the campfire. Jumo was a master of the game, always quick to block me, as if he could predict which move I would play next. I had won only a couple of games so far.

“G-Go.” Jumo waved a hand, as if to brush me away.

I narrowed my eyes. “You just want me to go because I am winning.”

Jumo unsuccessfully tried to smother a small smile, and a tiny spark of life, one I had not seen in days, glinted in his dark eyes.

To my surprise, he seemed to simply accept Eben and me together, and by the hints he'd dropped all day, he'd known much more than he had let on all along. My brother—always perceiving so much more than he could vocalize. Once again, a pang of regret that he could never truly tell me all he wanted to say, stung my heart. What would my brother say if he had been born with the ability to freely express his deepest thoughts?

I retrieved my precious lyre from the tent, and Eben led me to a place nearby where we could sit in the shade of a large oleander bush yet still within sight of the camp. The reminder of our last day together, before the attack, was acute, and I hesitated when he asked me to sit, overcome with memories and regrets.

Compassion filled his gray-green eyes; he seemed to understand.

I chewed the inside of my cheek to keep tears from forming, wishing there were not witnesses to my grief all around us.

“Tell me.” Tenderly, he smoothed a hand down my hair.

“My fault.” My voice hitched on gulps and sobs. “If we had not left Egypt . . . or if I had kept her in my sight . . . or . . .”

“No. No. No.” His hand gently met my cheek. “Your mother is not gone because of you any more than my father is gone because of me.”

Did Eben blame himself? “I thought Egyptians killed your father.”

“They did.” He blinked slowly and released a shuddering breath. “But I had a hand in it as well.”

He gestured for me to sit. I settled the lyre on the ground next to me and waited for Eben to sit as well.

Instead, he stood, half turned away, as if he could not face me.

“My father was the best of men. Twice the musician I am, able to hear and play anything without practice. He told me Elohim sang songs directly into his heart. They poured out of him. His stories were our bread; we lived on them, day to day.”

He gazed toward the rock, which still gushed fresh cool water from the depths of the earth. “I loved my father, but I was young and foolish, more interested in running wild with my friends than sitting at his knee. I apprenticed with him but stayed at the shop only as long as was necessary before running off to find mischief with the other boys.”

He stopped and smoothed his beard with his knuckles, seeming unsettled by the story he had to tell.

“I was twelve, eager to prove myself as a man and angry with the overseers who took pleasure in humiliating us. Even more so with Hebrews who lightened their load by doing the overseers' bidding.”

Thoughts of Latikah flooded back, and again I wished that I had stayed with her that night, forgiven her, instead of leaving her to her fate.

“One man was known to be a well-rewarded traitor and lived at the edge of the Hebrew quarter. My friends and I waited until he was gone and then broke into his home and vandalized it. We ripped his clothes, spilled his food onto the ground, and slashed his linens. And careless as I was, I dropped my knife.”

He patted the ivory handle now back in its sheath at his side. “The traitor found it when he returned home and knew immediately whose it was; my father was known to have carried it long before he gifted it to me, and a carved ivory dagger at the hip of a Hebrew drew attention.”

I covered a gasp with my hand, anticipating the end of his story.

He nodded. “Yes, you guessed correctly. The Hebrew turned my father over to the Egyptians, and he was imprisoned. It was only two days later that so many of our men were rounded up to be slaughtered, my father among them.”

Eben lowered himself to the ground, sorrow in his expression. “In the heat of my reckless twelve-year-old fury, I confronted
the traitor the next day. The man was actually remorseful when I told him it was me that had destroyed his belongings. He returned the dagger, vowing that he would not have turned my father in if he had known what would happen.”

“So”—he pulled my hand into his—“now you see. Without my destructive choices, my father might be alive now. And as much as I tried to lay the blame at the feet of the Egyptians, at my core my anger was directed at myself. It took friendship with your brother and falling in love with you to face it.”

He ran a finger down my cheekbone, and I stifled a sigh.

“When I saw you talking to Sayaad, when your wagon broke down, it was all I could do not to sling you over my shoulder and run off with you.”

“Truly, you knew even then?”

His finger moved to caress my lips. “Yes, my love. I was half mad with jealousy.”

“No wonder Jumo was smirking at me.”

His brow quirked.

“Jumo always knows.”

Eben laughed. “Yes. That he does. He teased me mercilessly from that night on. But I am glad he did, because it helped me to admit that it wasn't you I was angry with, or even your people, but myself and my foolishness.”

“But you were only a child. You could not have known what would happen.”

“That is true; my father may have been rounded up had I not done what I did—evil men do evil things and even Yahweh's people are not immune to suffering. You did not know what would happen to Nailah, either. You were following the path Yahweh made for you, here into the wilderness with me. And your mother loved you; she would not hold you responsible.”

I missed my mother so much, ached to hear her voice again. There were so many things I had never told her, questions left
unanswered, memories yet to be made. She would never see me married or hold a grandchild in her arms. I longed to tell her of my love for Eben, and of the experience I had on the floor of the tent when Yahweh surrounded me in love. Her face on the morning the manna appeared—
“I asked for bread, and he provided,”
she had said—she must have understood, at least in part. But still, I had only begun to know her, to see her not as some goddess far above my reach but as a fallible and lovely human, weak in some ways and strong in others.

Would this chasm inside me ever be filled?

Eben gazed into my eyes. “Would you like me to play for you?”

I nodded and handed him the lyre, then folded my knees under my chin and wrapped my arms around my legs.

He played the song he had sung at the campfire by the sea, a lament that matched the heaviness pressing against my ribs yet brought with it also the memory of the night I had fallen in love with this fascinating and talented man. If he truly meant what he said, that he would stay by my side, then perhaps the pain might be easier to bear.

Shira had questioned, all those months ago, whether Yahweh was preparing me for something. Now I could see that it was true. Yahweh had brought me here into the wilderness to free me, to show me how to leave my idols behind, and to meet the man I would spend my life with. Yahweh cared enough to bring me out of slavery and ignorance, protect me in the desert, and to reveal himself to me in a tent during the middle of a battle.

The God who parted the sea could surely mend the rift in my heart.

50
TH
DAY
OUT
OF
E
GYPT

W
e stood at the foot of a mountain. The Mountain of Yahweh, many were calling it. The Cloud that had protected us from the hands of Pharaoh hovered above the summit, larger, darker, and now violently booming and flashing sporadic blue lightning. Shoshana huddled beneath Zerah's arm, and Zayna buried her face in Eben's shoulder. She twitched every time the thunder rolled out from the mountain, shaking the ground and threatening to knock us from our feet. The sound of it was even more bone-rattling than the storms that had plagued Egypt.

Three days had passed since Mosheh had returned to the summit, carrying a promise from the Hebrews and from all of us who chose to be included in a covenant: a promise to Yahweh that we received his offer to be his
Am Segula—
his special people—and follow his instructions, his Torah.

Eben had taken me aside after the elders relayed Mosheh's instructions from Yahweh. He said that Jumo and I, anyone who desired so, regardless of their heritage, would be included in this covenant with the Hebrew God, if we chose to take part.

I was Egyptian, my mother and father, both of them born of the Nile, but my heart leapt at the prospect of becoming a part of this nation, the nation that would be called Israel.

From the day I had fallen on my knees and cried out to Yahweh, I had desired to know him better. If I felt his presence there on the sandy floor of an enemy tent, how much more would I know as a part of his chosen people?

Now, after three days of washing, preparing, and making new linen garments, we stood at the foot of the great mountain. All eyes were trained on the path from the top, a white-clad sea of people waiting for the return of Yahweh's messenger, Mosheh.

Midway through the morning, a tide of murmurs and echoes swam through the crowd.

“Mosheh has returned!”

“There, do you see him?”

The silver-blue Cloud roiled above the mountaintop, and a figure appeared at the foot of the path, standing high above the crowd.

Our families were so far back in the multitude, however, that his voice could not reach us.

But the message rolled back through the crowds.

“. . . Yahweh will speak.”

“. . . his own voice.”

“. . . wonder what it will sound like . . .”

Zayna's little face peeked out from the sanctuary of Eben's chest. “Yahweh is going to speak? With his own voice?”

“It sounds that way,” Eben said.

The voice of a god? I had served silent gods—wood, stone, and gold—for eighteen years of my life. And now, this God of the Hebrews would speak? Would we all hear it? Or would the words need to be passed among the multitude?

Jumo's eyes were locked on the summit of the mountain. The flashes of lightning reflected blue in his dark eyes. I reached out
and put my hand in his. He squeezed, a reassuring gesture, but did not look my way.

A shofar sounded in the distance. Once again, the eerie sound raised the hair on the back of my neck and sent a mixture of longing and fear through my veins. The sound began to grow and build. It must be moving closer to us. It continued to intensify, coming not from the valley floor but from the summit of the mountain.

This was no ordinary instrument, and no human breath could produce this loud of a tone.

Louder.

Louder.

Ear-splitting.

Many around us covered their ears. Children shrieked at the abuse of their eardrums.

My bones vibrated in rhythm with the complicated patterns of notes echoing off the steep cliffs all around this protective valley. Who—or what—was giving breath to these ethereal instruments?

As the notes grew louder, the Cloud sitting atop the mountain seemed to respond in kind, billowing higher into the sky and blazing brighter as it did. It became a swirling rainbow of color, hues of every shade, some I had never seen before. The sensations were overwhelming—light, colors, and sound.

A Voice emanated from the Cloud, knocking me to my knees. An earthquake shook the valley, rattling the mountains and tossing boulders about like pebbles.

Most everyone was on their knees, or on their faces, many pleading or crying, some screaming in terror. My body instinctively attempted to struggle, to stand, but the weight of the force was immense.

Every horrible thing I had ever said, done, or thought swirled through my mind. Every time I cursed Tekurah, every time I
disobeyed my mother, every disrespectful word I had spoken to Salima, every patronizing one to Shira, the nights I had spent with Akhum . . .

And the thoughts—the thoughts were even worse than the words or actions—every dark, violent, or evil imagining that had ever flickered inside my brain bubbled to the surface, ripped and tore its way through my consciousness. My stomach quelled violently at just how depraved I could be. I was black inside, filled with hate and pettiness.

The Voice did this; with only one pure syllable it stripped me bare, and I was undone. I hadn't even discerned the word spoken by Yahweh. The echo of it swirled around the valley, bounced off the cliffs, rose above us, and dissipated into the sky.

As the echo of the word died away, it left me with an emptiness at my core. Vaguely aware of those around me, their faces slowly blurring back into focus, I was not the only one decimated under the scrutiny of the Voice.

Most were sobbing, eyes closed, gripping their stomachs with clenched fists.

Eben was on the ground next to me, his face in the sand, arms outstretched toward the mountain. Shira crouched in front of me, protective arms wrapped around Shoshana, but Shoshana held her chin high, gazing at the face of the mountain. Her head was not bowed.

I peeked at Zayna sitting on the ground next to Eben. Her hand rubbed circles on his back. The precious girl was reassuring her older brother. Her upturned face was so peaceful, so joyful. A stab of envy shot through me. The Voice broke me into a million pieces, but the girls were enraptured. In fact, all of the children were looking up, their faces bright with the same fierce joy. They were not afraid of the Voice; they must hear something in it that I could not understand.

The Voice sent splinters of fear shredding through my veins,
but I ached for it at the same time. I could not reconcile the confusing emotions.

The Voice spoke again. This time, the words filled my senses. They hung shimmering, as though written in the air, visible and musical—a song far more beautiful than human words could describe. And the fragrance . . . How could words have a smell? But they did, and it was the sweetest and loveliest smell to ever be imagined. I had smelled a shadow of it before, while I lay on a sandy floor with my hands bound. There was no spice fragrant enough, no breeze sweet enough, no fruit ripe enough to compare to the smell that permeated this valley. I pulled in an open-mouthed breath that melted on my tongue like a luscious delicacy.

The Voice told us that he was Yahweh, the God who had rescued us from Egypt, and there were to be no other gods before him. For hours, maybe days, he told us what he expected of us. He taught us, like little children, everything he wanted us to do, how we should live and treat each other, and most of all, how we should respect him, our God.

And what he promised, if we obeyed him like little children, was so far beyond what I expected. Yes, there were consequences for our disobedience, but the promises far outweighed them. We were to be his
Am Segula—
a special chosen nation, and as his people, we would inherit the promise given to Avraham so long ago, the land specially chosen to bless his family. But even more exciting was that Yahweh promised to be among his people, to reside with us, and teach us, protect us, and guide us. How could that be? A god, walking among humans?

When the last of the precious words shimmered away, I stayed on my knees, wishing the Voice would speak again. I wanted the song to fill my ears and heart forever. I ached long after the echo faded and knew I would do so for all my days. I understood every one of Yahweh's words, but had he spoken in Egyptian?
Or Hebrew? Or something else that my soul understood instinctively? I tried to remember the specific words, but only the meaning rang through me.

Long minutes passed before people began coming to their feet and moving off toward their tents, slow and silent.

I stayed on my knees in the sand, willing the Voice to return. But when Shira finally stood, I did as well. She put her arms around me—her face full of the joy that I had seen on the girls' faces, and I knew mine must be a reflection of that as well.

“Kiya,” a voice said.

I glanced at Eben, thinking it was he who spoke my name, but he stared at something behind me, a startled look on his tear-stained face.

I spun around. Jumo was behind me.

“Kiya,” he said again.

Shock flooded me, and I blinked hard and fast. “Did you just . . . ?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“Sister, I can speak easily now.” Tears streamed down his face, and mine.

“How . . . ?”

“I am healed.” He spoke with reverence; an awe filled his new voice that almost brought me to my knees again.

My mouth gaped; no coherent words would form.

“The very first word that Yahweh spoke healed me. I knew instantly that I could speak. And . . .” He stepped back, then turned and walked in a circle. Smooth, effortless movements.

My brother was completely healed. His speech was clear, and his legs were whole—as if he had never been afflicted in the first place.