“Am I a prisoner?” poor Adir demanded to know.
He was still a child in my eyes, even though he was the age I had been when I was expelled from Jerusalem to find my way in the wilderness, when I had been judged as a woman and had already given away my innocence.
Yehuda could keep Adir company, watching over him to make certain he would not flee, for the Essene boy would not fight alongside our people, and though he remained with us, and Revka cared for him as if he was her own, he was set apart by his beliefs.
“Are you my jailer as well?” Adir asked his friend.
“I would never be that,” Yehuda replied.
The Essene boy rose up and opened the door so that Adir might leave if that was indeed his desire. But Adir was exhausted from our arguments; he leaned back on his pallet, his face ashy. His warrior life had been taken from him; only a part of him remained. Although I felt compassion, I was also relieved. Selfishly, I did not wish to risk my son’s life.
My daughter was another matter. She had been cast from iron.
OUTSIDE there was a rising madness. The Romans had begun an attack of fiery arrows that came to us in a blazing hail. A section of the orchard had caught fire, and even when the flames had been put out, our people hurrying to quench them with jars of precious water, the scent of burning fruit drifted everywhere. While our trees were destroyed, while our children breathed in smoke, while our garments singed and turned black with ashes, the Romans set up an arena for cockfights so that they might have some amusement in the evenings. When this bored them, they set their slaves against each other with spears and chains, for to the Romans, slaves’ lives were worth no more than the roosters’.
We turned away and did not look down upon them. We covered our ears so that we would not hear the slaves cry out for their mothers and their wives and for their God, who appeared to have forsaken them.
ON THE DAY my son was called to duty, as all warriors were, I walked into the yard with Aziza. Some might say I was wrong to give her up so easily and allow her to fight among the men, but her fate had already been written. Perhaps I might have prevented her call to war had I not changed her name, or perhaps this was her fate no matter what she was named. She was on the path of her element. She had always chosen metal, something cold and sharp. It suited her, as it had suited her to ride in the grasslands.
Before she left, I offered her the second gold amulet of protection that I wore at my throat, but she shook her head.
“I’m protected,” she assured me. “Have no fear.”
When she lifted her scarf, I noticed the silver medallion with the image of Solomon attacking a female demon. No woman would be allowed to wear such an amulet. Her courage brought me pride, as well as a cloud of regret.
“We should have stayed where we were,” I said ruefully.
I had begun to dream about the Iron Mountain. In my dreams there were forty acacia trees, and in each tree there were forty black birds. I was beneath their branches, and I found I could not move. My feet had become entwined with the roots of a tree, my arms the limbs that were covered with yellow flowers. The bees were called to me, and they swarmed about me, and I wept, for I could not taste the sweetness of their honey, though it was all around.
I had done what I could to stop my daughters from following my fate. None of it had prevented what my mother told me had been written before they were born, before I went to Jerusalem and stood at the well and did as I pleased even though I knew where it would lead me. Love would bring about my undoing. That was the reason I had tried my best not to love my children, so I would not bring my curse upon them. In that, I had failed.
“We were meant to be here,” Aziza assured me.
Her skin was burned by the sun. I noticed the scar that was beneath her eye shone white in her darkened face. She could have been a beautiful woman, instead she was a warrior. She could have been a boy who walked through the streets of the red city of Petra, instead she was my daughter, who had followed me to this fortress, and whom I loved despite the many ways I had tried not to do so.
When she went to the barracks, I thought of my mother, who had stood in the courtyard beside the fountain to watch me leave Alexandria. Now I understood she had known she would not see me again. My heart dropped because I had viewed my own future and what was to come in the bones I had thrown on the tower floor.
I would lose everything I had.
Something was ending, but it was also beginning. I could feel the life within me move and shift. Creation had begun at the Temple mount, and perhaps it would once again if everything else disappeared. Already, there were men speaking of a third Temple, one that would arise in the future, more glorious than any other. From destruction there would be light, and the first words would again be spoken out of a holy silence, for that is always the beginning.