It came as no surprise when we saw that Yael had followed and was waiting by the wall. She wore a dark veil, as though to disguise herself, but we knew her immediately, and understood why she could not stay away. Perhaps her presence outside the palace would add to our strength.
We went to the door made of cypress wood. My mother leaned in close so she might whisper. I could feel the heat from her body and smell the oil she’d rubbed upon her throat and wrists. As the demon was chased out of the woman we were about to face, we must take the child. In that moment, and only then, would our enemy be powerless.
“She will try to terrify you with her claims, do not listen. She will heap misfortune on you, do not be afraid. There is a missing ingredient that she needs for her powers. It’s something only we have.”
I understood what that ingredient was. My father.
We had made certain to plait our braids tightly, close to our heads, so that the demon we were about to face would be unable to grab us by our hair. We had rubbed pomegranate oil on our arms and legs so that we might slip easily from its grasp. We chanted Abra k’dabra. I will create something from the word. Amen Amen Selah. For the word of our God was what would guide us and would protect us from evil. His song would be our only path, despite any sins we might have committed and any punishments we might deserve. What we believed in, and what we said aloud, we could create before His eyes and in His image.
My mother had streaked her eyelids with lapis and perfumed herself with myrtle and lilies. She lifted her shawl over her head, perhaps to appear modest in her rival’s eyes. Channa would be all the more dumbfounded when she discovered who had come to call.
My mother rapped on the door, lightly, as she might have if she’d had a basket of vegetables to offer, greens, perhaps, or cloves of garlic. We heard a scuffling, but there was no answer. My mother knocked again, more strongly now.
No one came to the door, and there was no longer any sound from inside.
I stepped onto the woodpile and drew myself up. In a corner, I spied the empty cradle. There were only shadows. But the fire was lit. A pot had been set on a metal post to hang above the flame, and the meal within was still cooking. I could smell the lentils and stewing meat.
I took from my cloak the key fashioned from a slip of metal wire. It had worked in the locked door of the tower so that Wynn could be released, perhaps it would once again. My mother stepped away so I might try. It fitted the lock perfectly. The door opened with a click. We went into the chamber where the evening meal that had been set upon the fire would soon enough burn and turn black, for it was bubbling, past readiness. My mother cast the innards of the fish into this stew, and the smoke that arose was a pale green, the color of envy and of betrayal.
Through the haze of the smoke we found a lamp, and although the glow was dim, it worked well enough so that we might find our way. We went along the hall, down the corridor where the frescoes of the seven sisters had been painted by masters from Rome. Each of the sisters was more beautiful than the next, yet none was as beautiful as my mother, not even the silver moon. She drew me to her, and we stood together beneath swatches of ocher and amethyst and sea green. She nodded toward a doorway, urging me to listen. She had done this when we were children, so that we might ascertain the difference between the approaching hooves of her husband’s great steed, Leba, and the sound of any other man’s horse. When my sister’s father was puzzled that we children had run out to greet him long before he arrived, we would tell him that Leba could speak to us, and that the language of horses was easy enough to divine.
Now, in the house of Ben Ya’ir, I heard what I thought was a beetle, the kind they say search for the dead. After a moment I realized it was the rhythmic rasp of someone’s breath. I tapped at my throat, and my mother nodded. We had found the one we searched for.
We followed the sound, pausing when it became more muffled, edging forward when it began again. The breath led us to a small chamber where oil and wine were stored, the tall jars among the last that had belonged to King Herod. The room was dark, but the lamp we carried cast enough light for us to make out the long furrows of shadows. One shadow was like a pool of water that bled toward us in the darkness. She had crouched behind the door, a raven in a dark tunic, hunched down as though she might evade us as easily as dusk fading into a field of blackened trees.
As if magicked, Arieh called out to us. Perhaps he knew his true mother waited nearby. The raven quickly reached to cover his mouth, but he cried out again. He had recognized us, and we took this to be an omen. God was watching over us.
“You have no right to be here,” Channa said when she had little choice but to face us. She stood up, proudly, as though she had not been cowering in the dark with the beetles, a shadow huddled behind a door. “When I call the sentries, you’ll be locked in the tower yourselves. Or perhaps I’ll see you set out in the wilderness. That’s where you belong. You were condemned, yet you think you can come into this house and treat it as your own.”