Free Love Amid the Ashes by Mesu Andrews

through his concubine, Keturah. Ishmael married Keturah after Abraham’s death and adopted Shuah, making Sitis and her brother, Bildad, grandchildren of both Abraham and Ishmael—double royalty, doubly devoted to Yahweh, according to Bildad. Sitis’s brother had been Ishmael’s representative at the House of Shem. He had demanded Sitis’s devotion to Yahweh, even when their parents died and she grew up alone. She was a princess among servants. Bildad had arranged her marriage to Job—and then Job demanded her devotion to Yahweh, even when her babies died. She’d been a mother with full breasts and empty arms.
    “Creator of all.” She laughed bitterly. “I don’t think so.”
    The cool night air lifted her dark curls from her neck, the desert chill prickling her skin. She let her robe fall around her shoulders. Her third-story balcony was nestled in the western red cliffs of a private canyon in the refined second sector of Uz. Only one other home shared the canyon—Sayyid’s. It was a smaller palace directly across the canyon, carved into the eastern cliffs. But it was late. No one would see her. The lamps in Sayyid’s household had long been dark, and tonight’s stillness was her last chance at freedom until Job’s next journey. She let her robe fall to the stone floor, the frigid wind ravaging her body, making her feel alive before she resumed her living death.
    Tomorrow Job would return with his shrouds of expectations. Sitis would again choose her words carefully and speak politely, avoiding her husband’s gaze. She would endure the loneliness because she loved her home, her children, her status as Job’s wife—the greatest man in the East. She glanced down at the oily glow of the golden goddesses in the moonlight. Tonight she would tuck them away safely so Job would never suspect their presence in his home.
    She glanced across the canyon at Sayyid’s dark balconies and windows. Would Job suspect that Sayyid had been present in their home? She’d said a tearful good-bye to her friend tonight, apologizing again that she couldn’t see him until the next time Job traveled or they had a chance meeting in the city market. Tears sprang up unbidden. “Why must I choose between my husband and my best friend?” she whispered to the night. She knew the answer. Job still blamed Sayyid for her refusal to worship El Shaddai.
    When Job had discovered Sayyid delivering Sitis’s offerings to the Chaldean temple on the day of Ennon’s wedding, Job ordered the temple destroyed and Sayyid banished forever from their home. But you cannot banish him from my heart.
    She braced herself against the railing and let her tears flow freely. Why couldn’t Job understand that Sayyid was like a brother? Closer than her own brother who had betrayed her heart. Sayyid always listened, really listened, when she was afraid or hurting—more than any other man in her life.
    Sitis knelt to retrieve her robe and placed a kiss on each of the goddesses. Carefully, reverently, she wrapped each image in fleece and placed it in the sacred stone cube. She slid the cover into place and stood, pulling her warm woolen robe tightly around her body.
    “We are all wrapped in some sort of shroud, I suppose,” she whispered, thinking of the golden images in their fleece-lined home. She glanced up at Sayyid’s eastern cliffs, dark yet alive with his presence. “Perhaps someday I’ll break out of my tomb and worship freely, speak freely, live freely.” Lifting the sacred cube, she turned toward her bedchamber. “Until then, I have a beautiful daughter to pamper and a betrothal banquet to prepare.”

    After trading all the animals for merchandise at Elath, the caravan traveled much more quickly. Still, the heavily loaded camels and the few donkeys carrying servants meant frequent water stops as they climbed to higher elevations. Though the drought had diminished the flow of natural mountain springs, the caravan guide was adept at finding every