Chapter 1

     We sat on ground baked hard like bread left too long on the oven stones. Behind us was my brother’s flat-roofed, three-roomed house, ahead two olive trees, grey, enduring. Wind from over the sunrise hills pulled moisture from our mouths and blew brown dust into crannies in the rough stone walls. Shadows lapped dips and hollows in the hills across the valley. By the seldom-moved tents a boy brought nannies in for milking.
     “Marry Namzu,” my brother said. “Go north and live in Laish.”
     Hot words rushed past my teeth. “Marry Namzu, Eliezer? A profitable alliance for you. You’d like a brother-in-law with warehouses in that walled city.”
     “Namzu sent you a good offer of marriage, Kitsia. You’d control your own trade goods.” His voice was calmer than mine.
     But I was still angry. “I’m a widow, not a young girl to marry at her family’s bidding.”
      From a cleft in a rock, where no goat could pull up the pungent greenery, came the scent of thyme. A shuttle whooshed. Basemath, my brother’s second wife, knelt over the loom she had stretched along the ground. Wood supports pulled woof threads tight. Her baby tied behind her, Basemath wove the last of the wool from the spring shearing. She wore a thin wool dress and well-made sandals as befit the wife of a man of substance. On her hair was a scarf in the pattern my brother’s senior wife taught her before leaving the land of the living.
     “In Laish, the springs never fail,” my brother persisted. “You don’t like the marriage proposal Namzu sent? Still go. Establish yourself as a trader. Agree later to a marriage alliance with Namzu. You know that he’s a good, established, man. Go. I’ll send Eliel with you.”
     Eliel is my brother’s firstborn son, born to his first wife, who died when demons ate her guts. My brother wanted Eliel where gods were kinder, opening the heavens to let rain fall. More, my brother wanted a bond with a northern merchant. So, I whispered to my little gods, he says I must move to Laish and marry Namzu. I determine where I go. I myself and not my brother. “I won’t marry Namzu to make a trade alliance for you.”
     “Marry whatever man you want,” he retorted. “Marry the madman from the Little Salt Sea. But leave here and take my son north.”
     My own son was now a trader on the coastal route. No one needed my care. I could do what I pleased. Marry Namzu? I remembered him from my own days on the coastal route with my late husband. Namzu was a solid man a widower, his children grown. I could choose to marry him. Or the madman. In the heat I shivered.
     The madman. Many named the salt trader mad because he never talked of breeding sheep or pressing olives. Instead he described the grace of wild gazelles and the rainbow’s arc over a strange sea. He wore leather, not woven cloth. His beard was uncombed, but his hands were clean. For all this they called him mad. But I heard no madness in his speech and saw none in his eyes. His dark eyes, set deep under thick eyebrows, gleamed. Whenever he came to our hilltop to trade he moved swiftly, and when he left he loped down the path like the antelope, but while he sat opposite me he was still.
     Other traders went to my brother, leaving me only small trades with women who wanted to exchange herbs for olive oil. This salt trader always made his trades with me. In his gazelle-skin robe, supple as wool, he would sit cross-legged on the opposite side of my trading rug and tell me of the beauties of his land. The hairs on his arms glittered in the sun looking soft as the wool of a lamb who nuzzles his mother. On his head, few grey hairs glinted in the black waves. His arms were strong and his hands hard, his beard full and curly and his body lithe.
     Marry him? For my brother to propose I marry a man whose tribe was unknown to us, for him to speak thus, he must be very worried, eager indeed that I take his son north. My brother carries the name of our grandfather; his son bears the name of our father. From grandfather and father my brother inherited responsibility and the weight lies heavy on his shoulders.
     The shuttle went back and forth. Basemath wove cloth for trade. With famine threatening, everything possible must be bartered for grain. Flour was running low. No grain could be spared to feed the sheep, and they found little grass even in the northern pastures where the young men took them. Local springs slowed to a trickle. Cucumbers and melons withered, though Basemath watered the vineyards for the sake of future years. Praying for rain in summer is as useless as praying in old age for youth. In winter we would pray again. Famine lurked, held off only by well-guarded storage jars, but these were nearing empty.
     “What, Eliezer?” I asked more gently. “Why must I leave?”
     “You know the rains were scant this winter. And the year before.”
     I knew. The barley harvest had been small. The wheat harvest had not filled the storage jars. Scarcity approached like an armed man of evil intent. In good years, summer dew forms before dawn. Not this year. We feared a year like the last. Eliezer set guards around the springs though they allowed free access to the one spring whose waters never failed. “I remember the last famine,” I said. “We’ll slaughter sheep and eat until the meat runs out of our noses.”
     Wisdom formed my brother’s next words. “We can’t live on meat alone. We need bread. Where’s the grain to come from? Jacob’s sons talk of going down to Egypt to buy grain. Some one there will help them. They don’t think beyond their need for grain. Egypt is the closest source, but Egypt will want more than silver in exchange for their grain.”
     My brother understands what peddlers and shepherds tell, even more than they do. “Smooth-shaven Egyptians want to extend their empire,” said my brother. “Traders say Egyptian chariots are heading north. Hittites look southward. Soldiers from the great eastern cities, home of your late husband’s tribe, are staking out territory. They’ll fight along the coast road and in the desert. You’ll be safer in Laish. Eliel must continue on to our ancestors’ tribe in Damascus.”
     Suddenly I wanted to go to Laish. Or rather I wanted to leave my brother, everything I knew. Enough of living in one place, milking goats, making cheese, and bartering with the guileless wives of shepherds. I wanted to be traveling again, trading in town markets, weighing the value of goods and getting the best of bargains. I first went traveling with my husband when I was 14. At 17 I returned a widow, in fear of my husband’s brothers. Now that my only son was off trading in far places, I had few ties here.
     “Understood,” I told my brother, my last connection to our clan and tribe. “I’ll go north. I know the route to Laish well. When Alitum was alive I traveled there twice.” My husband’s donkey caravan had bartered for copper utensils in Laish.
     “When your husband was alive, you went by the coast road, then turned inland. This season, you’d run into Egyptian or Hittite chariots on that road.. The king in distant Hattusha is sending his soldiers south to demand tolls on trade from Tyre. The Egyptians will fight to keep control of the tolls. Better for you to travel where you’ll meet neither army.”
     I agreed. His knowledge of armies was greater than mine.
     He looked to the other side of the hard dirt expanse. My nephew Eliel stood under a carob tree, idle as men and older boys often are when in camp, for women cannot set men to the tasks of little boys. Eliezer nodded a signal to his son. My nephew joined us. Eliel’s legs had grown long and his shoulders were wider this year than last, but his beard was patchy fuzz and his voice betrayed him to girls’ laughter. Eliel wore a short-sleeved town-sewn garment he had bought in Be’ersheva to fit his growing body. His sandals, made by an itinerant cobbler, were just old enough to be comfortable. “Your aunt and I speak of your journey northward,” Eliezer told him. “You’ll go north together until you find kin to take you to Damascus.”
      The boy answered the way a youngster does, proud of knowledge he thinks his alone. “We must go south on the hill road to Be’ersheva, then eastward. I’ve seen men come up to Be’ershva from the valley of the Little Salt Sea, and I’ve heard that men can walk the shores of that sea northward, then follow a river farther north.” My nephew spoke as if he had something to teach his aunt. “Because of the sweet water they call that sea the Sweet Sea.”
     My little goddess murmured, softly, We’ve been there, he hasn’t. Out loud I said, “They charge tolls on the way down from Be’ersheva. If we can find a way without tolls, we should choose that route.”
     “Soldiers charge tolls, but they keep bandits away,” said my nephew.
     “True, but our salt trader knows other ways down to the Little Salt Sea, a shorter route without first going south. And I’ve never heard that bandits trouble him.”
     “Due east? Those ways are too steep for a donkey,” said my nephew.
     Basemath brought us cool curds with mint, cucumbers, and a bunch of grapes held back from winepress and drying rack. Barefoot maids had been sent back to their families to eat what their fathers could provide. Most domestic work now fell to Basemath, a good wife.
      My brother told his son, “You should avoid both bandits and soldiers. The salt trader knows a good path.”
     After he ate, Eliel had the sense to agree with his father’s choice of route.
     Shadows stretched eastward. My brother walked with me towards my hut. “The madman has come your way more often this year than last,” Eliezer said. “He thinks you lonely with your son Udish gone and your foster daughter Ana with him as his wife.”
     “Then I may soon ask the salt trader to be our guide,” I said.
     “You’ll see my son to the safety of his tribesmen?”
     “I promise. Go in peace, my brother.”
     “Go in peace, my sister.” He turned back with the solid steps of a man of honor.
     I walked with lighter steps. I managed my own goods. I owned goats and made excellent cheese from their milk. The cloth I wove brought a good price. What trade goods should I take with me? I asked the little gods who hung suspended between my breasts. Jewelry, my personal goddess told me. Cloth, advised the other godling.
     Should I marry Namzu? Even in this tiny place I had offers of marriage. Laughing Hirah the Adulamite wanted me, but he already kept two wives happy. I had no desire to be a third in any household. Traders who came up from the coast asked my brother for permission to court me, but Namzu had sent his offer directly to me. Namzu’s children were grown and illness had taken his first wife from the land of the living. Maybe I would marry him. Maybe not. I could marry whatever man I wanted. But I would help my brother by taking his son to safety.
     The next day the salt trader appeared on the sunrise hill. He stood, checking that the men were in camp before he approached. I sent a daughter of Benjamin’s to bring the earthen water jug and his young son to fetch curds and a loaf of the morning’s bread. The salt trader approached me and bowed. I returned the bow. In his deep-set eyes I saw my own reflection. Ah, my gods, I whispered so softly that only they could hear, if I give this man any sign I’ll marry him, he’ll ask. “Come sit and let smooth curds cool your throat,” I said aloud.
     He thanked me, Before he sat he looked across the valley. “Your hills are beginning to look like mine,” he said. “The greens have turned grey and brown.”
     I agreed, for the prospect was even more sere than in a normal summer. “There’s little pasture for the sheep,” I answered.”Springs have dried early this year.”
     “In my valley, the places between the springs are brown through most winters, but around ever-flowing streams grows greenery for gazelles.”
     I laughed as we both sat on the ground. “Gazelles are graceful,” I said, “but I think no one milks them.” I doubted he kept sheep or goats, for he was always happy to trade salt for cheese.
     He laughed in response. “I value gracefulness.” He sat on the opposite side of my trading rug, sinewed legs folded under him. After he drank and ate, he set out a pile of salt, taken from a pouch on his belt. My bowl of cheese and pile of oil-cured olives awaited his approval. Beside the olives was a small woolen sack of wheat. After a poor harvest, wheat was worth more than the salt he brought. I pushed the wheat forward.
     “Too much,” he said. A man has more than one reason for setting a price.
     “You speak for the wrong side of the bargain. This trade is the same as last year’s.”
     “Last year the harvest was better.”
     “Not by much.” I heard myself say these words, words that should come from his side of the trading rug. Why should I offer him special favor? Yet I wanted to please him.
     He looked straight into my eyes. “Two bad years. Three,” he said in a gentle tone.
     “Then next year will be better. Should the price change between old friends?”
     A leather thong held the trader’s hair back from his face. “Can traders be friends?” he asked. “Or more than friends?” He turned his eyes to me, but they were different, warm, holding a question not quite the question he had asked.
     I caught my breath. He reminded me of Hirah the Adulamite. But Hirah always laughed and turned the thoughts of my heart to some jest. What did I know about this man? He told stories about little creatures that ran between rocks on steep hills. His soft voice made the call of cranes, the dove’s coo, the songs of birds I wanted to see fly above his home. How well did he know songs of men and women? I pulled the olives back. Even so, the trade was to the salt trader’s advantage. “This is our last trade,” I said. “I won’t be here when you return. Before the moon grows and wanes again, I’ll be gone. Famine threatens here, so I go north.”
     “In the midst of bare rocks, my garden blooms and produces sweet fruit. I’d show my garden to you. Come with me there, and eat sweet pomegranates and clusters of grapes.”
     My breath stopped. My belly burned. Not go to Laish with so many inhabitants none knew all their names? Go instead to a hidden garden? Go not to Namzu but to live with this nameless man? I was not a young girl to run off with a man because he made me shiver with heat. I kept my voice steady and breaths even. “I’ve promised my brother to take his firstborn to the safety of his tribe. Will you guide us to the mouth of the river whose course we’ll follow northward?”
     “I’ll guide you,” he said. Without bargaining, he agreed.
     “I’ll see those places you sing of.” Heat rose to my cheeks. The trader had only spoken, but to me his words were songs. Yet I was the mother of a married son, a woman of substance, owner of goats and looms whose advice was respected by all women and by men of sense.
     We made our arrangements that day. My brother brought my nephew to me. Eliel was followed by his favorite dog, the spotted one he had taken with him when his father sent him south to learn traders’ skills. “The dog can’t come with us,” I said. “We’d have to feed a dog.”
     “The animal will hunt for his own food,” Eliel said with disdain in his voice.
     The salt trader said the dog would go hungry or get lost looking for game.
     Eliel looked from me to our guide and back. His father sat silent. Eliel took the dog to the boy keeping a nearby flock of goats from eating tree bark. When he returned, without the dog, my nephew sat while our guide explained we would travel by moonlight as much as we could.
     “A dog would protect us from bandits,” Eliel muttered.
     “No bandits eastward,” the salt trader said. “A bandit can’t survive on the few travelers who go that way. A bandit needs travelers as a lion needs gazelles.”
     By that evening we were ready to leave. My flock of goats, looms large and small, and household goods stayed with my brother. In return Eliezer brought me trade goods. Besides those rugs, scarves, and lengths of woven wool, I packed bread, cheese wrapped in thyme and mint, raisins, carob pods, ointments and salves made at the proper times with the secret incantations.
     Out of our guide’s hearing, Eliel complained. “Why do we trust this madman? Why do we put ourselves into the hand of this stranger?”
     “The salt trader who has sat opposite me on the trading rug year after year is no stranger.”
     Surely the great gods laughed.

Copyright 2012 Jane Schulzinger Fox