He Who Lifts the Skies (3 page)

“Good morning,” Annah said, pleased to see fresh color in Chaciydah’s slender brown face.

“Ma’adannah,” Chaciydah sighed, stretching and yawning. “The baby and I both slept well. I feel much better today. I’ve already fed her and changed her wrappings. If I may ask, will you watch her while I bathe and dress?”

“How can I refuse?” Annah lifted the blanket-swathed infant from the pillow behind Chaciydah. The baby gazed up at Annah mistily, like a blissful dreamer, her tiny ruddy face fringed with soft brown hints of curls. Annah loved the child’s contented and pleasing expression. “We’ll have a good visit together,” she cooed. “And we’ll watch over your sister, you and I, because she’s so busy!”

“At least this baby seems easy to please,” Chaciydah sighed, lapsing into an attitude of helpless regret. “And she has color in her skin and her hair. Though I’m afraid her eyes will be even more pale than her sister’s.”

“You shouldn’t be concerned with your daughters’
looks, Chaciydah,” Annah said, wondering how much of the conversation Sharah would absorb. “You must see beyond their color, or lack of color. They
are
beautiful.”

“As you say.” Chaciydah sounded doubtful.

To urge Chaciydah out of her fretfulness, Annah said, “I’m sure your husband and son will return today, bringing my husband with them. You should get up now. Bathe yourself, put on your favorite clothes and your ornaments, then braid your hair. Take your time. I’ll feed Sharah, then do some cleaning.”

Chaciydah’s eyes shone. “Ma’adannah, thank you.”

“No, I thank you for giving me time with your little ones.” Annah nuzzled the warm infant in her arms. It felt good to hold a baby, particularly one so sweet.
What will we name you?
Annah asked the infant silently.
You’re such a joy that no name will be quite enough to describe you. My Shem will be happy to see you. And I’ll be happy to see him
.

Annah smiled, thinking of Shem. They had been apart for much of the past five weeks, since Annah had come to tend Chaciydah during and after the birth of this child. Sharah, too, needed care, though the little girl didn’t seem to think so.

Now Sharah was crawling across the bed, restless. Chaciydah frowned and reached for one of Sharah’s bare feet. “Little one, where are your leggings?”

“They ugly,” Sharah muttered.

“I’ve had her wrapped in a blanket,” Annah explained to Chaciydah. “But I’ll put her leggings on before we eat.”

“No!” Sharah lifted her chin defiantly, scowling at Annah.

Immediately, Chaciydah began to plead with Sharah. “You need them, little one. Leggings keep your feet warm and—”

“They ugly!” Sharah interrupted, her words and expression truculent, daring her mother to argue with her.

To Annah’s astonishment, Chaciydah humbly agreed. “You’re right. They are ugly. I’ll find some way to make them pretty for you.”

Chaciydah
, Annah thought, dismayed,
why do you always give in to the child?
The little girl’s refusal to wear leggings was a trivial thing. But her consistent stubbornness and arrogance toward her mother—and Annah—were serious. Why didn’t Chaciydah recognize the importance of teaching her daughter to respect others?

“Don’t frown at your mother,” Annah reprimanded Sharah quietly. “Or at me.” Sharah’s lower lip went out stubbornly. Annah stared at her hard, willing the child to yield. At last Sharah looked away, still pouting.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sure she wears her leggings,” Annah told Chaciydah. “Go make yourself ready for visitors, and for your husband, while you have time.”

“But Sharah might fuss,” Chaciydah murmured, hesitating. “She seems so fragile compared to my sons.”

“She’s a fortress,” Annah said dryly. “Don’t let her noncolor deceive you, Chaciydah. She’s no different from any other child.”

“I’m sure you are right.” Chaciydah sighed again.

Trying to bolster Chaciydah’s courage, Annah whispered, “Be a mother to your daughters, not a servant; don’t let them rule you.”

“I won’t, Ma’adannah.”

But by midafternoon, Chaciydah was kneeling beside the bed, knotting decorative fringes around Sharah’s leggings—placing each knot exactly where Sharah’s imperious little finger designated and apologizing if Sharah wasn’t pleased.

Chaciydah
, Annah thought,
you are acting like her servant! It’s not good for her
.

Pondering the situation, Annah went into the main room of the lodge, checked the baby—safe in her basket—then slapped a puffy heap of dough into a kneading trough. It calmed Annah to pound, fold, and push at the dough until it became a smooth, resilient grain-speckled mass. She would shape it into flat, chewy cakes for their evening meal. The cakes, accompanied by simmered dried fruit, a thick stew of preserved meat and grains, and early spring greens, would be enough for six—if the men returned tonight.

After cleaning the dough off her fingers, Annah caressed Chaciydah’s infant daughter. From her seat in the carrying basket, the baby studied Annah solemnly, her gray eyes wide and delicately fringed with dark lashes.

“You’re wonderful,” Annah told the child, in a light speaking-to-an-infant voice. “How glad I am to see you! And my beloved will be glad to see you too, yes he will. And I’ll be glad to see him!”

A smile played about the baby’s mouth, and she kicked within her robes and blankets, seeming to urge Annah to pick her up. Unable to resist, Annah lifted the infant from her basket and rocked her. She was kissing the child’s tenderly rounded chin when a shadow fell across the doorway. A small pebble clattered onto the mats before Annah. Smiling, she looked at the one who threw it: Shem.

He grinned. “Now I see why you’ve stayed away from me for so long, beloved. Am I dull by comparison?”

“Never.” Annah carried the infant to him, delighted. “Here she is. I dare you to resist her.”

Shem cuddled the infant expertly. “Little one, I was
amazed when your father told me he had another daughter.”

Annah stared at her husband, bewildered. “Why are you amazed? Does it matter that she’s a girl?”

“Not at all. It’s just that I had supposed she would be a son when I learned her name. But we know the Most High’s thoughts are perfect even when we can’t understand them.” Shem’s mouth twitched as if enjoying an incomparable joke. “How tiny you are!” he exclaimed to the infant. His voice softening, he added, “Such little hands. It doesn’t seem possible that you should receive the name given to you by the Most High … Karan.”

Annah blinked, startled.
Karan. To push. To gore
. It was hardly a proper name, particularly for a girl. “Why should she have such a name?” Annah demanded.

“This little one will push her enemies until they can’t escape,” Shem answered, smiling down at the infant. “The Most High, the Word, gave her this name. Perhaps it’s a harsh name for a girl, but she is Karan.”

How could you ever have enemies?
Annah wondered, studying the tender-eyed infant girl.
And why?

“Karan?” Aghast, Chaciydah took her infant daughter from Shem.
No
, she thought, staring down at her baby, who was drifting off to sleep.
Karan is too harsh a name for a woman. No, you’ll be Keren. Like a ray of light. That’s a woman’s name, and similar to Karan. Yes, I’ll call you Keren
.

Two

“I HOPE THERE ARE no newcomers at Eliyshama’s wedding feast,” twelve-year-old Keren murmured to Sharah as they wound long skeins of fine blue-gray wool onto carved wooden shuttles. “I hate how they jump and stare the first time I look at them. It makes me think I’m a bad dream come to life.”

A ray of sunlight slanted through the open door of the lodge, illuminating Sharah’s pale curls and her defiant adolescent scowl. “Let them stare at you. I don’t care when they stare at me. It pleases me that I’m unlike other people.”

“You
are
unique, O-Girl-of-No-Color,” Keren agreed, twitting her sister gently. “Newcomers wonder at you. But when they see my brown skin and my brown hair, they expect to see brown eyes. Instead, they see no-color eyes, and they jump as if I’m a fright.”

Sharah sniffed, yanking more thread from her blue-gray skein. “Most of the time you
are
a fright, with your hair and clothes all wild. I’m ashamed to be seen with you.”

Keren glanced down at her rumpled brown woolen overtunic and her smudged, mismatched leather under-tunic. Clothes weren’t as import to her as they were to Sharah—who was neatly clad in matched red and blue wool. Keren defended herself. “But I always comb my hair when we have visitors. And at the harvest, didn’t I wear my new robe the very first day, when only the Father of my Fathers and I’ma-Annah were here?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her that; she’s Ma’adannah. You sound like an infant, calling her I’ma-Annah.”

“She likes being called I’ma-Annah,” Keren argued, keeping her voice low in deference to their mother, who was working just outside the lodge. Quarrels always distressed Chaciydah. “Anyway,” Keren persisted softly, “I wish you wouldn’t be so formal with I’ma-Annah all the time. You hurt her feelings.”

Rolling her eyes upward, Sharah sighed impatiently. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me that I’ve hurt the feelings of the Father of my Fathers too.”

“Actually, you have hurt him. I see his sorrow whenever you behave as if you can’t wait to escape his presence.”

“He’s dull. Always so solemn.”

“Not always,” Keren answered beneath her breath. It was useless to argue. Sharah hated visiting Shem and I’ma-Annah, but Keren adored them. At the end of each day, when all the work was done, her great-grandparents would sit by the evening fire with the Ancient Ones, Noakh and Naomi, and tell wonderful stories of the Most High, the Creation, the Great Destruction, and of their
many adventures beneath the blue heavens. As they talked, they would laugh, feed Keren from their own bowls, kiss her, and fuss over her. Then Shem would play his flute and they would dance.

I love to dance
, Keren thought, lapsing into a daydream.
And I love watching I’ma-Annah and the Father of my Fathers. They are so beautiful together. When I marry, my husband and I will love each other in exactly the same way
.

Her daydream was interrupted by a shove from Sharah. “Hurry with your work! I want to go outside.”

“It’s cold outside; you hate the cold,” Keren said, whipping row upon row of the fine, light thread onto the long wooden shuttle. “You just want to see if Eliyshama has finished polishing that piece of red stone he’s been carving. He never said he would give it to you. For all you know, it’s for his beloved.”

Sharah tossed her pale curls confidently. “Eliyshama has already given Tsereth a stone carving—and it was a much larger stone. She won’t want this one.”

“But what if he plans to give it to our I’ma? Or to I’ma-Annah, or I’ma-Naomi?”

Sharah answered Keren with a threatening, tight-lipped glare. Keren ducked her head submissively and focused on the long wooden shuttle. Finished at last, she tucked her shuttle, and Sharah’s, into a lidded basket beside their mother’s floor loom.

Slapping the basket lid shut, Sharah said, “You’re too slow! Come on.” She seized Keren’s arm and dragged her outside the lodge.

Their mother was stirring an acrid-smelling mixture of dye in a large, blackened clay pot at the hearth. Chaciydah straightened wearily and pushed a brown curl away from her forehead. Lifting one finely arched, skeptical
eyebrow, she asked, “Have you finished winding the shuttles?”

“Yes, I’ma,” Keren answered, as Sharah pulled her toward their brother.

Bundled in a thick gray open-fronted leather robe and a warm brown-furred tunic, Eliyshama was sitting cross-legged on a woven grass mat near the smoking hearth. He was knotting a dark leather cord between his long brown fingers and didn’t look up as they approached.

Keren smiled secretly.
You know we’re coming
, she thought to her brother.
But you’re ignoring us because you know Sharah wants your stone carving
.

Sharah pulled Keren to a stop in front of Eliyshama. “Are you finished? Let me see it.”

“See what?” Eliyshama pretended surprise. He lifted the leather cord and displayed his carving, a smooth, polished circle of bright red stone, pierced through the center. “It’s just a cord with a shiny rock that I’m using as a balance for my spear.”

“Liar,” Sharah accused, making Keren cringe.

Eliyshama gave Sharah a long, even look. “Watch,” he commanded. Quickly, he knotted the leather cord with the bright red stone to the middle of his long ashwood spear. Then he stood, balancing the spear, preparing to throw it into the field beyond the lodge. Keren glanced at Sharah. Hot pink tinged Sharah’s face, though her lips were pressed tight, furious and pale.

Eliyshama ignored them both, concentrating as if his aim were critical. He took several running steps and, raising his left arm for balance, gave a mighty throw. “There,” he said, watching his spear slice through the cool autumn air and then land, quivering, in the short-grazed field. “It works. But then again, I might give that shiny red stone to
the first person who reaches my spear.”