Word Fulfilled, The (10 page)

“No matter. There are perils in the desert.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“See to it.”

Thirteen

Nineveh, the Privileged Quarter

Twenty-seventh Day of Ajaru

ordac sat on a lush pillow, a tablet balanced on his lap. The markings in the soft clay blurred together through his weary gaze. The transaction notations had ceased making sense hours ago, and he had neither the energy nor the immediate desire to reconcile them.

Hani had not spoken to him since the day the girl came with the news about Ianna. He had seen his wife upset before, but her silence had never lasted this long. She went about her tasks listlessly, almost in a trance. He tried to comfort her, cajole her, berate her, but nothing he said made any difference. She never acknowledged he had spoken. This was not right. He was the master of the household. His decisions were not to be questioned. He had done what he felt was right when he sent Ianna to the temple for her coming-of-age ceremony. It was tradition. If they were ever going to fit into Ninevite society, they must comply with custom. Friendship would demand it. Membership in the trade guild would demand it. It’s what was done.

Surely the girl was wrong. Ianna would come home. She had probably done something wrong, headstrong girl that she was. The temple had standards, expectations, as a temple should. When she satisfied those expectations, of course she would be able to return home. She just needed to be . . . not so stubborn. Lost in thought, Mordac started at Hani’s voice.

“What will we do about our heritage?”

He looked up. She stood in the doorway. Her eyes were still red, and her shoulders drooped as they had now for three days.

“What?”

“Our heritage. With Ianna . . . gone . . . to whom will we bequeath the family treasure?”

He frowned. “My estate is not so great that—”

“Not your estate. Our treasure.
The
treasure.”

Mordac leaned back and tapped the reed stylus on his leg. “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think—”

“No. You haven’t thought, have you?” Her sarcasm cut like a shard of flint.

Mordac tightened his jaw. “You will not address me in that tone. I have—”

Hani turned and disappeared through the doorway.

Lll

Jamin sprawled on his bed mat and stared through the window into the night sky. A half moon cloaked in a hazy aura lounged on the edge of the roof across the alleyway. Its dim light struggled to penetrate the thick night air. Any other time this moon might be silvery, mysterious. Tonight it was gray, tired. Half light, half dark, it appeared awkward in its role as the dominant night luminary. Jamin found it annoying.

Shine or don’t shine. Stand strong or don’t stand at all.
It gradually occurred to him that his irritation was rooted in empathy with the moon’s impotence. Like the half moon, powerless to alter its role in the natural order of the cosmos, Jamin felt half a man, equally powerless to affect anything in the natural order of human events—his own events. His heart burned bright for the girl, but his mind remained dark toward her. When she wore white, there was hope. The blue of
naditu
, though, seemed insurmountable, a pastel pinnacle that could not be overcome.

He rolled onto his side. For the hundredth time he asked himself what it was about this girl. Was it that she was the forbidden fruit, a child beyond the arms of Abraham? Would grasping for her mean his fall, as surrender to the fruit in the Garden of Eden had meant Adam’s?

He frowned. No, there was something more to this. There had to be. There was a reason they had crossed paths, a reason she had captivated him so. Could God be behind this? He must be. There was no other explanation. Perhaps Jamin was to be the means of her rescue, the door through which she was to pass into the good grace of
Elohim Adonai
. But how?

The question bumped aimlessly through his mind. The tunic of a
naditu
had moved her beyond his reach. But beyond redemption? With God all things were possible, were they not?

All things . . .

Sleep crept over his benumbed mind from behind and nudged his eyelids closed. His chest settled itself into a rhythm of deep rest. The answer would come when it was ready. Not before.

Fourteen

The Arabian Desert, East of Damascus

Twenty-ninth Day of Ajaru

he road between Damascus and Tadmor traversed a landscape more barren than Jonah thought possible. To the east stretched desolate flatlands with only low dunes to break the horizon. A hot breeze lifted brown eddies of fine dust that swirled around the pair as they traipsed along the hardened path. To the west, forces of nature unremembered by man sliced deep clefts into the surface of the earth and intermingled them with ridges of rock that jutted up from the ground like broken teeth. In the distance, the land rose into the rocky foothills marking the eastern slopes of the mountains of Lebanon. Jonah focused his weary eyes on the variegated landscape to avoid being pulled into depression by the nothingness to the east.

Worse than the blandness of the terrain was the dust, the ubiquitous motes of grit that coated his cloak and assailed his eyes and nose. The granules squirmed beneath his collar and rubbed his neck and shoulders raw against the coarse cloth. Accursed land! Jonah tugged at the neckline of his cloak and glanced up at his companion.

Akhyeshah seemed oblivious to the heat and the dust. He threw the loose cloth of his keffiyeh across his face to filter the air and kept up a pace that seemed impossible to match. Jonah’s heavier travel cloak, however, served him poorly in open desert. The dark fabric attracted the heat and trapped it against his body. There was no collar to protect his face, so he turned his head to the side and pulled the hood around to cover his mouth and nose. The twisted posture denied him the stability to walk a straight path, and it brought cramps to his neck and back. He had never been more miserable.

The days passed in silence, and today was no different from the others. Jonah plodded behind his guide in a stupor and wondered why Akhyeshah had approached him as a travel companion if he had no desire to socialize during the journey. Jonah’s tentative attempts at conversation were usually met with a grunt . . . or no reply at all. He gave up on the effort after the second morning. One day melded into the next, until he was unsure exactly how long they’d trudged along the barren path. Time seemed to have forgotten him.

As the sun began its descent over the ridges to the southwest, Akhyeshah stepped off the main route. Jonah followed him until they found a small depression in the rocky soil that bordered one of the deep clefts. As he had done each night since they left Damascus, the Assyrian kicked aside several small rocks and peered around his resting place. Apparently satisfied, he grunted, settled onto the ground, and pulled his pouch of food onto his lap.

Jonah puzzled over the ritual, just as he had the previous nights. He shook his head and began his own search for a soft spot amid the stones strewn through the elongated hole. A small space less littered with rock on the shallow slope facing east availed itself, and he eased himself into it. He laid his walking stick aside and groped into his own bag of provisions for the evening meal. Jonah was surprised how much food remained after four days on the open road. True, they made a conscious effort to conserve their resources, but it seemed the pouch was no lighter than when Akhyeshah tossed it to him back in Damascus’s marketplace. There was still a healthy stash of dates, dried figs, a block of hard cheese, and several strips of dried meat. What kind of meat? He thought it best not to ask.

As they chewed in silence, Jonah was struck anew by the utter quiet of the wilderness evening. In northern Israel, noises animated the night. Tree limbs scratched against the house as they stirred in the evening breeze. Choruses of insects serenaded a silvery moon drifting across the serene valley. The rustle of a nocturnal rodent as it rutted for food on the hillside filtered through his window. Here in the desert, the ambiance was as desolate as the landscape. Nothing stirred the night air, nothing broke the silence, save Akhyeshah’s immense body shifting as he slept. Jonah almost wished his companion would snore—anything to break the absolute stillness.

What was magnificent, though, was the brilliance of the heavens. He thought the skies of Galilee were glorious, but they were nothing like this. Stars draped the heavens from horizon to horizon in a rich mantel with pinpoints of light that sparkled white—some tinged with blue, some with red. Jonah knew some of the stellar formations, but it was always difficult for him to pick out any but the most obvious ones. Tracing the Great Cross was simple enough, but the shape of
Kesil
, the foolish hunter Nimrud, eluded his imagination.

As a boy, he had complained in frustration when his father, Amittai, instructed him on the nuances of
Adonai’s
celestial domain. Jonah said he thought man was silly to even try to sort out the stars. The amorphous mass of light above him seemed hopelessly random in its design—yet, as his father reminded him, there was purpose in all things God has made.
“Did not the psalmist write, ‘He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names’? If Adonai gave each star a name, my son, there must be more to them than we know, eh? To have a name is to have essence, a reason for being.”

Jonah sighed and focused his eyes toward the east. The moon, although only at half fullness, cast a blue-white aura over the landscape that made a torch unnecessary to discern his surroundings. The lunar sheen reminded him of a night nearly seven years ago when the angel delivered his first call to prophesy to Jeroboam’s court, the promise of
Adonai’s
intent to restore His people Israel to the land. He remembered how the heavenly messenger’s own aura scattered the light of the august heavenly bodies into the shadows, as glorious as they were. Here the moon and the stars held sway.

Thoughts of the angel dropped Jonah into a lonely mood. The last time the messenger appeared to him was on Joppa’s beach. Was the angel still aware of him? Could he see Jonah here in the desert, outside the Promised Land? Would he ever speak again, or was the restored prophet now on his own? Jonah sighed and rolled onto his side. Sleep came slowly.

Lll

The morning light filtered an orange hue through Jonah’s eyelids and stirred his restless subconscious from its wanderings. He winced and nudged his eyes open to slits as a shadow passed between him and the source of the light. His eyes shot open.

Akhyeshah knelt over him, his face set, his curved sword poised high above his head. He lunged and Jonah recoiled from the ugly blade as it flashed down toward his head. He twisted aside as Akhyeshah’s sword shattered the ground a hand’s breadth from his ear and peppered his face and neck with dirt and shards of rock. Wide-eyed, he rolled to his left and scrambled backward up the slope. He shielded his head with his arm from a second assault, but the attack never came.

Akhyeshah ignored him. The giant poked the tip of his sword into the deep cleft he had cut into the ground. He grunted and scooped a small pile of dirt onto the side of the blade. Then he straightened and extended it toward Jonah. Amid the debris on the sword lay the front half of a black scorpion, oozing a translucent viscous liquid from its severed abdomen. The carcass, easily three finger-widths in length, twitched twice, and then went still.

“Very poisonous.” Akhyeshah flipped the blade over his shoulder. The scorpion flew from the sword and disappeared over the edge of the depression.

Jonah fought to get his breath under control. “How did . . . I thought—”

“Best to check the rocks before you sleep.” Akhyeshah scraped the residue from his sword on a patch of loose dirt and replaced it at his side. He picked up his staff and climbed onto level ground.

“But—”

“Time to go. We eat and walk.” With that he set off toward the road.

Jonah hustled to collect his staff and pouch. He struggled to calm his racing heartbeat as he hurried after Akhyeshah.

Lll

Jonah stumbled onto the main road fifteen paces behind Akhyeshah. He stopped, put his hands on his hips, and glowered at the giant.

“Wait!
”
Fatigue strained his voice. He was tired from nights of fitful sleep, tired from struggling to keep up with Akhyeshah, but mostly tired of being ignored. He felt like little more than extra baggage for the non-attentive Assyrian. What was the point of all this?

Akhyeshah turned and peered back at Jonah. He shifted, rested both hands on the top of his staff, and waited. The Assyrian’s cheeks bulged from a handful of figs he’d stuffed into his mouth. Brown juice flowed into his beard as he chewed the fruit pulp. His dark eyes blinked but betrayed nothing. No irritation, no apology, no curiosity, nothing. That irked Jonah even more.

He stalked up to the big man and slammed the butt of his staff into the dust. “This is enough! We’ve been on the road for—”

“’Nuther day to Thadmor. We musht—”

“Stop it!” Jonah stomped his foot on the ground and flailed his hands. “Stop. Cutting. Me. Off! Will you,
please?”

Akhyeshah’s jaw stopped midchew. His eyes rounded, and he took a half step back.

The exasperated prophet narrowed his eyes. “Who are you? Who are you really?”

The Assyrian looked puzzled. “Hi amb Akhysha. Brofishoner of car—”

“I know, I know. ‘Provisioner of caravans.’ In the name of mercy, swallow that stuff, will you?” Jonah averted his eyes as Akhyeshah sucked the fruit pulp down his throat in one gulp and wiped his glistening whiskers with his sleeve. He lurched as a low belch rumbled up his throat and shattered the morning air, launching three nearby quail into the clear blue sky. Jonah cringed. He was certain he caught an echo off Mt. Hermon, four days to the south.

Akhyeshah grinned and patted his stomach. “Good figs.”

Jonah shook his head. “Akha . . . Akhshayesh—”

“Akhyeshah.”

“Thank you. Akhyeshah, I still don’t know what to think about you.”

“What is to think? Tadmor is small stop along desert caravan routes to the East. Caravans need supplies. Only one or two provide these things.” He shrugged. “That is all. Nothing to think.”

Jonah wasn’t satisfied. “How did you find me? How did you know I was traveling alone? Why did you decide we should travel together?”

Akhyeshah cocked his head. “I did not find you. You were not lost.”

“I meant—”

“I knew you were traveling alone because you were alone . . . traveling.”

“I know, but—”

“I decided we should travel together because traveling alone—as you were—is not safe.”

“But—”

“No more talk. Time to go. Another day to Tadmor, if we hurry.” Akhyeshah clapped Jonah on the shoulder and turned on his heel.

His mouth agape, Jonah watched the giant twirl his staff and hum a tuneless air as he strode off down the road.