Free The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

along, so that her milk would give us sustenance if we found nothing else. He gave me the flask in which he carried water and the last of the barley cakes. I took these things, though I was seized with the impulse to give it all back. As a gift marked a beginning, so, too, did it signify an ending. Something was happening as we said good-bye. He was giving me all he had, and yet a curtain had been drawn between us. I could feel my throat closing up, my heart hitting against my chest. I looked upon my beloved’s face, but he no longer saw inside me. I had become transparent, no more to him than air. It was as it had been on the day we left Jerusalem, before he spied me sifting through the mud for water, before he knew my name. I thought perhaps this was the way an assassin said farewell, fiercely and with dignity. I had no idea that he could already read what had been written.
WE LEFT when the morning was dark and there were hawks spiraling across the sky.
My father and I went without knowing how long it might take to find a cure or if there was indeed anything for us to find. Mistrust was everywhere, and for good reason. We were as likely to be murdered as we were to reach a settlement. Bands of robbers occupied caves all across Judea. There were escaped slaves, thieves, rebels with nothing more to lose. The wilderness was enormous. Every limestone cliff resembled ones we had already passed. We circled, lost, for several days to avoid soldiers from the Roman Legion, the goat that I led mawing to warn us of our mistake. There were those who wandered here for all eternity, who were never seen by civilized people again. I had heard stories from the women at the well in Jerusalem of a lost young girl who lived with the hyenas, who would run with them, and eat carrion, and sleep among them,and who, when she was found, had sharpened teeth, for she was no longer human.
When we passed the same cliffs for the third time, I had no other choice; I took the scarf my brother had given to me and tore off strips of silk. I tied the flares of blue to the thorn trees to help guide our return.
A few days into our journey, my father surprised me by speaking to me. I shouldn’t have wished for such a thing, for he had nothing good to say. He ranted, blaming me for entrapping Ben Simon, as though convinced that I was the lion who had devoured this man, taking him from his wife. I looked at my father, defiant, wondering what he would think if I walked away and left him to fend for himself. He went on to inform me that if Ben Simon’s two boys survived they would owe me their lives and would be my sons as much as they were Sia’s. His eyes blazed with anger. “Maybe then God will forgive you.”
I didn’t defend myself. I often ran my hand over the cuts etched into my flesh that marked off our time in the desert, stopping when I reached the day Ben Simon first came to me. In truth I had walked into the wilderness to search for a cure as a way to bring him back to me. I had not thought of the boys or Sia until this moment. God wouldn’t forgive me for that.
My father and I made camp as dusk fell. In this season the nights were cold, and I gathered twigs along the way to make a fire at night. When there was no other fuel, we burned our own excrement and that of the goat, and the smoke reeked foully. Surrounded by that dreadful blaze, I feared we had wandered out of God’s sight. At night we slept sitting up, back against back, our cloaks around us, the folds of the cloth burdened with grime. We heard creatures in the dark, wild dogs and jackals, once a bear lumbering toward its cave. This was a route not many walked, for we were without a glimpse of water. We had heard of the fate of Sodom, a place which had been burned to the ground by lightning. Peoplesaid there were trees filled with beautiful fruit, but once plucked the fruit turned to smoke and ash in your hand. In the daylight hours our every breath burned. We dared not visit any oasis