Free Esther by Rebecca Kanner

full of wine, a jewel from the king, or for no reason at all. Of this I am as certain as I am that the sun will rise in the East, and that we will not see it.”
    I did not allow myself to cower as she came to stand only a few cubits from me. She smelled of wine. Her eyes moved over my body. You create a hundred moments in the first one, my mother had told me after some girls had teased me one day at the well. Do not let them see that their words have any effect on you and they will stop wasting them.
    â€œYour feet have lost their prettiness to the road,” she said. “And your hands are even more worn.” She hit her rings against my fingers. I jerked my hand away but then let it fall back against my side as though it did not hurt. “You have washed bowls in boiling water and have probably lost most of the feeling in your hands.” She looked to my legs. “How unfortunate. The blood upon your knees does not mask their roughness. You have spent a great part of your life kneeling.” Her gaze returned to my face. “Are there no trees where you are from? Are you kept outside with the goats, beneath the sun?”
    My goat. A loss I had not yet thought of.
    â€œYour skin is not fair like mine or any of the girls the king calls to his bed more than once. He does not like dark flesh.”
    Then Halannah yanked off my head scarf, the one Erez gave me, and went silent. I let her search for something cruel to say, something to undo the beauty of my hair. But she said nothing and this gave me courage.
    â€œI have been told that my hair is the richest brown in all the world,” I said. “Even the shyest boy will gaze upon it and forget his shyness for a moment.”
    A great hot breath gushed from Halannah’s nostrils and she grabbed at my chest with her fingers. It was modest compared to hers, but still there was plenty to grab onto. I did not allow myself to flinch. Instead I hit her hand away. She laughed and pinched my hip, then reached around to grab my backside. “This tiny morsel is not enough to sate a man’s appetite. The king will only want you once, or perhaps less.”
    Once. A fate worse than death, to spend my days growing old in this room as an unwanted woman. Except that I had seen no old women other than servants.
    Halannah took her hand from my backside and looked over her shoulder at Bigthan. “Girl,” she called to him. I stepped away from her, relieved. I just wanted her to go back the way she had come, getting smaller and smaller until I could tell myself she was not so huge as she seemed.
    Instead she turned back and reached for my face. To keep her from grabbing my chin I lowered my head to my chest. Her reach was so great she did not even have to step toward me to press her nail against my chin. “This insolent peasant gazes down but stands upright. She is fearful but stubborn. It is your job to break her,” Halannah told Bigthan. Then she took a deep breath and sighed loudly. “Yet I will be a little disappointed when you do.” She was so much like her cousin Parsha that it seemed I had not escaped him after all.
    With that Halannah pushed me. I fell hard upon my tailbone and a jolt went up my spine.
    â€œClumsy,” Halannah said. She turned and began to walk back to the pool. As though I could be discarded as easily as a piece of trash. I felt my face flush.
    â€œIt is your breath I stumbled away from,” I called, rising to my feet. “I have never smelled a rotting vineyard before.”
    Halannah turned back. Instead of lashing out at me, she gently asked, “How old are you?”
    I thought I should lie to her, not just about my age but about everything. Give her nothing to use against me. But for some reason I told the truth.
    â€œFourteen.”
    â€œSo old.” She shook her head sadly. “None have wanted you for a wife and now it is too late.”
    â€œThere was no man worthy of me in