My mother shook her head sadly. “If I go against her, I place my own child in danger. Is that what you expect of me in the name of our friendship?”
“I’m not afraid of her,” I said.
My mother gazed at me, then quickly looked away. That was when I knew. I was not the child she wished to protect. I understood what should have been evident for some time. There had been signs that my mother was with child, but I had simply failed to notice what I didn’t wish to see. Of course I knew who the father was. The man who still kept the doves he’d sent to her on the Iron Mountain. She still belonged to him.
“Did you think I was a witch and not a woman?” my mother ventured to ask.
Hurt beyond measure, I shrugged. “Another one for you to destroy with your love.”
Yael flashed me a warning look, then went to kneel beside my mother, begging for her help. “I will never ask for anything more. I swear it.”
“She’s already given you a precious gift,” I said, referring to the amulet. The charm’s absence had gone unnoticed by my mother. I wondered what she would think if she found her gift had been forsaken.
Yael exposed her throat to reveal that the amulet was gone. When she admitted she had given the talisman to Wynn for his protection, I felt shame to have confronted her so.
“Forgive me.” Yael bowed her head before my mother. “He needed it more than I. If you help me now, I won’t ask again,” she vowed.
“But I’ll come to you for something,” my mother confessed. “Trust is worth more than gold, loyalty is the best protection. If I do this for you, when the time comes, will you grant me anything I ask?”
“Anything,” Yael promised.
“Channa is not like the other woman who wanted your child,” my mother warned. “That woman had a heart, though she was dust. This one has none. Believe me, she would see your child murdered before she returned him to you. And she’ll put a curse on mine. Remember that when I come for what I want.”
They took the knife Yael carried with her at all times, and they cut their flesh, then let the drops of blood fall into a cup of oil to be burned before the image of Ashtoreth at our altar. My mother then brought forth a bowl of samtar, the poultice that heals wounds caused by arrows. She coated her body as a warrior might before battle. She took a heap of ashes and another of salt, and the precious balm of Gilead, made from the gum of the turpentine tree. When Yael went to accompany her, my mother stopped her.
Yael was puzzled. “You may need me.”
My mother shook her head. “Not you.” She looked at me, then nodded. “You.”
Though I no longer had any duty to this woman, the mother who had lied to me and betrayed me, there was a child’s fate at stake. And there was something more, something I would not have admitted aloud.
Despite the many ways she had betrayed me, I yearned to be the one she chose.
I covered myself with samtar, as my mother had done, and then with oil. I braided my hair and allowed seven knots to be tied inside my cloak, the number said to repel evil when witchery was before you.
“Do you think she’s a witch?” I wondered.
My mother laughed. “I know that she is.”
IT WAS DUSK when we went, the hour when dark and light are difficult to measure and all things are possible. My mother intended to perform an exorcism. Raphael himself occasionally came to help in such proceedings, and there were rumors that it was he who was so radiant who once instructed an exorcist to burn the heart and liver of a fish to drive away demons. My mother had such ingredients with her now, the dried organs of a fish that had miraculously appeared in a nachal on our travels to this mountain, its sole purpose the exorcism of evil. I shivered when I realized this was what my mother meant to do, for it was a truly dangerous act. Once this world was opened, the exorcist herself could fall prey to evil spirits. There were stories of exorcists who never spoke again, who had lost their hearts as a result of their attempts, found with nothing remaining of them save for a pile of dry bones.
We went along the wall, past the garden. The scent of mint was in the air. We could hear the doves calling. My mother didn’t hesitate when she heard them. A smile crossed her face as she went to kneel beside their cage. She opened the door and I thought she meant to stroke their feathers, as she’d often petted the doves she kept when we were in Moab. Instead, she shook the cage so they came tumbling out. She took one in each hand and raised them up. The moment she let go, they lifted into the sky.
“There’s no use for them anymore,” she murmured as we watched them vanish, as we had done years ago, in another life it seemed.