“Is he yours?” Miriam asked, making no effort to return him.
“My sister’s son. I was supposed to be watching him, but he escaped from me. He always does. I keep hoping she will soon stop trusting him to me, but she insists I will one day learn the knack of controlling a small evil child.”
Miriam laughed and bounced the boy on her hip. He squealed with laughter. “He does not seem so evil to me,” she said.
“That is because you have only known him for five minutes,” he said. “But he seems to like you. You must have little siblings of your own.”
“No,” Miriam said, thinking briefly of the one sibling she did have. “No, I think I was always the evil child. Maybe that is why I feel such an affinity for your nephew.”
“I am Daniel, by the way,” the young man said. “You must have arrived with the Lohoras, but I do not remember seeing you with them before.”
A polite way to put it. If she had not known better, she would have thought he was angling for information, covering up his mild astonishment at her presence among them—a blond allali girl who so clearly did not belong. But she had come to understand the Edori by now. There was nothing, not even curiosity, behind his remark. Merely, he had never met her before. He did not think it strange that he was meeting her now.
“I am Miriam,” she said. “I joined the Lohoras a few weeks back. I sleep in the tent of Eleazar and Tirza.”
He glanced around. “Which I think I saw them putting up—yes, over there. Were you trying to find it?”
She laughed. “Actually, I was. I am a little lost among so many Corderras.”
He started walking with her slowly through the camp, past the smoking campfires and the groups of gossiping women. Miriam continued to carry the baby. “We are a big clan,” he said seriously. “I like it that way, but some of the others feel a small group is easier to travel with. We have talked of splitting up, but no one can bear the idea. Still, I think one or two tents may pull away from us once winter is over. It makes these last few months very precious.”
Miriam sighed. “And I am feeling the same way, only backward,” she said. He looked over at her with a smile, since her words made no sense. “I am feeling jealous of the Lohoras, with all you Corderras around to take their attention away from me,” she explained. “I know that it makes no sense. But I saw your camp here, and I wanted us all to run in the other direction.”
“That is because you have not been with the Edori long enough,” he said. “What you will learn is that everyone loves you as much as your own clan does. You are welcome at every fire, in every tent. You will come to see a mixed camp like this as a great opportunity. You will say to yourself, ‘Aha! I have not been loved enough by the twenty people in my own camp, who lavish affection on me every day. Look, now, here are thirty more people who will give me hugs and tell me I am beautiful. I will fill myself up on emotion, so much of it that even I, hungry little Miriam, will have enough.’ ”
She laughed, because his eyes danced even while his mouth remained prim. “That was not the way of things where I was raised,” she said. “There was not enough love to go around, even when there were only one or two people in the room.”
“Why, where did you grow up?” he asked, astonished.
She did not feel like giving details. “In Bethel,” she said.
“And nobody loved you? I find that hard to believe.”
He might have been flirting. It was hard to tell. He might just have been espousing the basic Edori philosophy. In any case, she thought about it. “Actually,” she said slowly, “many people loved me. I guess many people do still love me. It is just that I didn’t know what to do with their love—or I didn’t like the way their love was showed to me.”
“Sometimes all you have to do is give it back,” he suggested.
She smiled. “Yes, maybe that’s what I should try instead.”
She didn’t specify what she had already tried, and he did not ask. At any rate, they had arrived at her tent, and Tirza was looking around in complete distraction. “Miriam! There you are! Can you—oh my goodness, is that Daniel? Come give me a kiss, and then go ask your sister if she has any mint leaves. I wanted to make something special for tonight, but I—Miriam, are you watching the baby? Or can you help me for a little bit?”
“I can do both,” Miriam said, but Daniel took the baby from her arms.
“I will find my sister and come back with every spice in her wagon,” he said solemnly. “But I will leave this little one in her hands and tell her he has worn me out.”
“Tirza, can Daniel eat with us tonight?” Miriam asked.
“Of course he can! I was hoping he would.”
He smiled at them both and turned the baby upside down to dangle by his feet. The boy screamed with delight. “Now I will hurry back even faster,” Daniel promised.
He left and Miriam sent a swift glance around her own campfire. The tent was up, but the men were all gone, and Anna was nowhere in sight. No wonder Tirza looked so harried. Miriam pushed up the sleeves of her blue dress.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
After the dinner, most members of both clans gathered around the central fire to trade stories and sing songs. Daniel and Miriam stood for a little while on the edge of the fire, drinking hot sweet drinks and talking, and then, by common consent, they wandered away from the firelight and the circle of their friends. The night air was downright cold, but Miriam was wearing a jacket that was too small for Eleazar, and she had begun wearing heavy socks inside her sturdy shoes, and she felt quite comfortable.
Anyway, when they spread a small blanket and sat down on it, they almost immediately began to kiss, and that combination of body heat and excitement made her warm all the way to her toes and fingertips.
They were innocent kisses, kisses that would lead to nothing else, and Miriam knew the difference. She was not sure Daniel did. She didn’t think he was much older than she was, a few months maybe, and not nearly as experienced. Kissing Elias had never been like this, so full of joyous wonder at the act itself, the pleasurable exchange of softness and sweetness, without a hot impatience to follow up with the next even more intoxicating act.
Thinking of Elias made her feel small and uncertain. She pulled her mouth away from Daniel’s and buried her face against his chest. But she clung to him more tightly, anxious for the reassurance of his body, the proof that he was alive and full of ageless unchanging desires.
He kissed her hair. “You’re so sweet,” he murmured.
She shook her head, not lifting her face. “No, I’m not.”
“Maybe you aren’t such a good judge.”
“Maybe you don’t know some of the things I’ve done.”
Now he bent in and kissed her cheek, half exposed, though she’d tried to shake her hair over her face when she laid her forehead against his chest. “Very bad things?” he said gently. “That brought harm to others?”
She sighed. “Very, very bad things,” she said. “And they brought very great harm.”
He kissed her cheek again. “Did you intend the harm when you did them?”
“No.”
“Would you do the same things again?”
She considered that, because she had not previously given it any thought. Would she go to the home of a married man and make love to him, knowing his wife was in another town and his daughters would be shamed by their father’s actions? Would she do this even knowing that, if she were not the one in his bed, some other young girl would be, and so the fault was not really hers, or not hers entirely? Would she leave a man, covered with knife wounds and possibly dying, and run away, afraid for her own safety and good name?
Would she steal something just to see if she could do it? Would she entice a friend to run away in the night, just to prove her personal charm was so great that no one could fail to respond to it?
Would she hurt herself, just to hurt the people who loved her? Even if that was the only way she could
think to prove to herself that they did, in fact, hold her dear?
“I would not do some of those things again, ever,” she said slowly. “But I am not sure I am entirely reformed.”
He lifted a hand to stroke her hair, and the motion was both soothing and infinitely warming. He would make a fine lover someday, a gentle and caring lover, someone who would shield his partner from the storms that raged both within her and without. But he would not be hers. “It is enough that you are trying,” he said. “And that you have learned a little. And that you are willing to learn more.”
She tilted her head back so she could see his face again, so he could kiss her again if he wanted to, and she was sure he wanted to. “Yes,” she said. “I am very willing to learn.”
They camped with the Corderras for two more days, and both days seemed, to Miriam, like the feast days and wedding celebrations she had attended at the holds and the river cities. She began to look forward to the Gathering that they talked about so much, a time when all the clans came together to recount tales of their winters apart, news of the tribes, stories of the road. To renew their deep bonds of friendship and to bask in their combined love. If the joining of just two clans could provide such joy and merriment, she could hardly imagine what the joining of all clans could produce.
She was sad, but she was ready, when, on the third day, the general consensus was reached: It was time for both tribes to move on. There were many hugs and exchanges of gifts and last-minute bits of advice given out. Daniel gave Miriam a little carved bird he had made from a stick of kindling, and she gave him a kiss, since she had nothing else. Thaddeus and Shua took clothes and gifts and good wishes from her family but did not, as Miriam had feared, decide to stay with the Corderras. No, they were Lohoras, they would travel as the Lohoras traveled and pitch their tent beside a Lohora fire. The Corderras could see the new baby at the Gathering.
And so the Lohoras moved on, turning northward now, and then west. They were somewhere in central Jordana, Miriam thought, between the Heldoras and the Caitanas, halfway between the Breven desert and the Galilee River. Actually, she had no idea where they were, and she didn’t particularly care. She was happy to be on the move again, to see the landscape changing before her eyes, growing stern and cold as a disobeyed parent. Food was harder to find, though there was still some game, and Anna taught her how to dig for tubers that she never would have realized were hiding just under the surface of the ground. Their meals changed, but they never went hungry. And even on the coldest nights, when they made sure to put up the tents and sleep together, pallet to pallet, they were always warm.
They had been traveling for a couple of weeks when Tirza fell ill with a retching cough that kept her up all night and made her too weak to travel. Naturally, they made camp on the best site they could find, near water and plentiful firewood, and determined they would not travel on until she was better. A day later, Thaddeus came down with it, and moved out of his own tent to make sure Shua did not also get sick, and then Amram caught the virus, whatever it was. It did not appear to be serious, just wearisome, and everyone rallied around the stricken ones, trying to keep them comfortable.
But with so many hands missing, there was twice as much work to do for everyone who was healthy. Miriam had never hauled so much water in her life, had never chopped so many vegetables or stirred so many pots. She volunteered to launder all the clothes of the sick ones, feeling certain that she would not want to still be sleeping in a dress she had coughed on for three days straight, and this task took her one whole day.
Still, Anna looked harassed and Claudia and Shua looked exhausted, and Miriam was fretful, trying to find more that she could do to ease the burdens of those left healthy enough to work. Bartholomew taught her how to build a fire and Shua showed her how to do the mending, though her stitches were clumsy and the hems she set were a little puckered.
One day, Dathan came back with a trio of rabbits slung over his arm, a good bounty now that game was so scarce. Anna, who had not had time to even think about starting dinner yet, threw him a look that was both grateful and exasperated.
“Oh—excellent—I cannot get to them right now,” she said. “Unless—Miriam—no, I’ll finish this first and then—” She shook her head, clearly overwhelmed at all the chores before her.
Miriam went to their utensil basket and pulled out two long, wicked knives. She crouched beside Dathan where he had knelt to lay his kills on a clean board near the fire.
“Here,” she said, handing him one of the blades. “Teach me how to skin a rabbit.”
C hapter E ighteen
Susannah thought it remarkable how quickly Keren adapted to life in the Eyrie when she herself was finding it even stranger than it had seemed when she first arrived.
Everything made Keren happy. The water room was a revelation and delight to her; there were mornings Susannah did not think Keren would ever emerge, but would stay inside for the rest of her life, soaping her long hair and then rinsing it out under the constantly falling stream of warm water.
The food made her happy, the effortlessly conjured meals that were laid out in the dining room three times a day (while anyone could sneak into the kitchen anytime and steal a bite or two from the cold rooms and cabinets). Keren was used to working hard for every bite she put into her mouth, but here! Like magic it appeared! There was no end to its availability or its variety. The Edori girl was enthralled.
The people made her happy, too, the endless parade of angel and mortal, resident and petitioner, all of them hurrying in one direction or another, engrossed in their own importance. She was especially happy in the company of Miriam’s set of friends, for naturally she had become their little pet. Chloe and Zibiah took her anywhere she wanted to go, while Sela felt a special kinship with her—another mortal girl deposited here at the hold where so many of her friends were angels, and sometimes thoughtless. Ahio and Nicholas were never far from Keren’s side, and they brought her gifts every time they came back from some errand to another part of the province. Ahio teased her with his usual quiet good humor, but Nicky was besotted with her. He would sit beside her for hours, listening patiently to her childish prattle—or maybe not listening, maybe just looking at her perfect oval face, her flawless dark skin, her braided hair, her dreamy eyes.
Indeed, Keren had always been a pretty girl, Susannah thought, but here at the Eyrie—afforded every luxury of grooming and cosmetics—she was beautiful. And her happiness made her irresistible, made even the suspicious Esther and the dour Enoch smile at her and pat her on the head when she passed by. She adored them as she adored everybody else; no wonder they were drawn to her.
Susannah felt old, watching her—old and weary and charmless and dull. Still, she couldn’t help loving Keren. Nobody could.
And it was wonderful to have another Edori beside her at night, in the mornings, to whisper tales to and share reminiscences with. With Keren and Kaski beside her, the too-big bed felt just right; the silence of the night was comfortingly filled with steady, untroubled breathing. When she woke in the night—as she did, at least once, every night—Susannah put her hand out to feel Keren’s reassuring presence, and her own tensions would ease. She had a sister beside her, family, someone with whom to share her nightmares. She could fall back asleep without fear.
Once in a while, that quick touch in the night would wake Keren from slumber. “What is it?” the girl would ask sleepily.
“Nothing. Just reminding myself that you’re here.”
“Are you having that dream again? The same one?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I get you some seadrop? I know right where it is.”
“No, silly thing, if I want herbs I can get up and get them myself.”
“Shall I stay awake and talk to you?”
“If you like.”
“I have been having my own dreams, the most wonderful dreams,” Keren would say in a sleepy voice. “I am wearing a blue dress—not the blue one that I ju
st bought, a deeper color, and it’s got embroidery all around the collar, but I didn’t have to do it myself . . .”
Susannah loved hearing Keren’s dreams, always full of such minute detail about what she was wearing and how her hair was styled. These usually lulled her back to sleep, and more often than not, to a dreamless state. But she was beginning to dread closing her eyes at night, having the same dream over and over again.
She was in a room of white and silver, of flashing lights and strange mystical apparatuses. It was familiar from her many nighttime journeys there, but it was still an alien place, and it disturbed her to be returned there, over and over again, as if it was a place she must memorize or decipher before the dream finally left her in peace. She was not afraid while she was there, not even while that deep, insistent voice spoke to her, saying words she did not understand; but every time she woke, she found her whole body tense with protest and incomprehension.
She had not meant to mention the dream to Gaaron, but he had surprised her by commenting on her look of exhaustion. He had surprised her by showing up at her door, and looking so tall and forbidding that at first she did not think he was happy to see her. She had expected their first meeting to go a bit more formally. She would have presented herself to him at his rooms, reported on Miriam’s behavior, applied for permission to allow Keren to stay with her a month or two, and behaved in every way as the model helpmeet she knew he wanted.
She had not expected to be having pillow fights with shrieking girls and looking like a bad month of travel herself.
That first meeting had been awkward, and in the subsequent days, the awkwardness had not passed. He treated her with a somewhat remote courtesy when they sat together at meals, and made no particular effort to seek her out, either to ask her advice or to share news. It was almost as if she had offended Gaaron somehow, though she could not think how, unless he was not pleased that she had brought Keren here without explicit permission.