Chapter 3: Dawn and the Beginning of a Journey

 

The two women set out the following morning at dawn’s first light so they could achieve a considerable distance before they were overtaken by the heat of the afternoon. Shulamit had been unable to sleep all night, her head filled with anticipation and dreams about both the journey and the woman she hoped she would meet upon it. It was therefore natural that within a few minutes of Dragon the Horse breaking into her gentle lope, the queen nodded off completely.

Rivka easily shielded her with the bulk of her body. The people of Perach were smaller in every dimension than those of the far cold north, and to the mercenary, Shulamit’s body almost felt like a child’s. She rode into the damp dawn air, holding back from her usual one-sided conversation with Dragon so she wouldn’t disturb her sleeping passenger, and instead kept her own counsel.

 

***

 

Shulamit woke when Rivka let Dragon rest in the afternoon, during the worst heat of the day. They’d stopped beside a stream flanked by coconut palms and pandanus trees. Under the uneven shade of their sword-shaped leaves, she dipped her hands in the water and wiped the dust from her eyes. “How far have we gone?”

“We’re halfway to Ir Ilan,” said Rivka. “We’ll stay the night there, and by the next night, if we push ourselves, we should come to the first of the temples. I know it’s at least a full day’s ride from any settlements.”

“You know your way around Perach,” Shulamit remarked. She peered into the stream curiously to check if the twisted knots of braided hair at the base of her neck had survived her horseback nap intact.

“I’ve been among your people long enough. Two years it’s been since I left...” Rivka’s voice sounded as though she had been about to say more to complete the thought, like “my people” or “home,” or even just “the north,” but then she just stopped. Behind her, the horse grazed peacefully on the bank of the stream.

There was so much Shulamit wanted to ask her that it was hard to choose where to begin. “Did you always know you wanted to be a warrior?”

Rivka smiled broadly. “As far back as I can remember. I used to pick up sticks in the courtyard of my uncle’s castle and embarrass him by trying to swordfight with his guards.” A sparkle like broken glass shone from her eyes, proudly defiant.

“Castle? Are you... are you of noble birth?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” said Rivka. “My mother is the younger sister of the baron of our valley. My father, he was a farmhand who worked at the castle growing vegetables. She was a lot younger than you are now when they ran him out of town. You’ve been around palaces and the politics of reputation and decorum all your life -- you can probably imagine how ashamed my uncle was that I dared to exist at all.” She looked away at the horse, then back at the queen.

“It sounds so painful -- but yet you’re so calm when you talk about it.”

“It was years ago,” said Rivka, “and I have my own life and my own accomplishments to be proud of now. Believe me, I have my grievances with my uncle, and our relationship’s basically beyond repair, but I found a way to forgive him on Yom Kippur. If I let my losses conquer me, I can’t fight, nor smile, nor live.”

“Your mother must have been a little bit like me,” said Shulamit. “I had a sweetheart once, from the palace staff too. She was our palace’s second cook. I love her -- loved her so much sometimes I felt like I could burst open just from looking at her.” Thoughts of a bosomy beauty with a goofy smile, her hair piled up on her head with a couple of sticks through it and some of it coming down around her ears unevenly, brought a tugging hunger to the queen’s heart. “She was the first person to cook me food that didn’t make me sick. We figured it out together, and became friends... and then... but then she acted distant and cranky, and I didn’t know why, and then one day she was gone. There was a note saying that she was leaving and that I shouldn’t ever try to find her or contact her. I went looking for her at her parents’ house anyway, but her father said she had decided to go work as a cook somewhere else -- somewhere far away. I figured if I kept looking for her after that I’d be crossing a line.”

“I’m sorry that was her choice,” said Rivka, “but I’m sure we’ll find someone out there for you. What was that bit about food making you sick?”

Shulamit looked at her a little timidly, used to the reactions of everyone else in her life. Oh, Princess Shulamit, her father’s precious little darling, can’t bear the thought of food unless it’s made of solid gold and served by holy women. She pretends to be ill to look delicate. “It started a couple of years ago. Nobody could explain it, and eventually they just decided I was shamming. Aviva -- the cook I was telling you about -- she fed me very pure foods one at a time until we figured out the foods my body rejects.”

“Rejects?”

“Do you really want details?” Shulamit grinned hideously, frightened inside. There was a part of her that had always wondered if Aviva had left because she was unable to contain her disgust anymore. Chicken was worse than wheat -- all bread did was knock her out with stomach cramps and indigestion, but chicken and other fowl -- she cringed with self-loathing, thinking of the mess.

“How about no. So what can’t you eat?”

“The short version -- fowl and wheat.”

“No wheat?” Rivka’s eyes widened. “No -- no pita, no... and wait, no chicken soup when you’re sick?!”

Shulamit nodded. “Tell me about it. So I make do. I’ve learned little tricks -- when I eat flesh, or cooked vegetables, for that matter, I have to make sure the cooking surface hasn’t seen a fowl, or has been cleaned recently.”

“Sounds complicated. How can you tell what’s making you sick? Are you sure you’re not being poisoned? The king of Imbrio--”

Shulamit shook her head. “No, that was the first thing they tested, when my father was still alive. I was the only person who got sick -- nothing was wrong with the food. Then he hired a magician, because he thought it might be a curse. But the magician said I wasn’t under any spells, and after that, nobody believed me anymore. The whole court decided it was all in my mind and gave up on solving it. The head cook even tried to trick me into eating the things that were making me sick -- she was convinced that if I didn’t know it was there, the symptoms would go away.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t work.”

“Then finally, after days of pain and not being able to keep anything down, Aviva came to me with nothing but a glass of water. She said that’s where we were going to start, and we’d try adding back foods one at a time, prepared simply, until something made me sick. Then we’d know for sure what it was.”

What Aviva had actually said was, We’ll add one new food or ingredient each day until we’ve found all the eggs the chickens have hidden in the grass. Her colorful speech complemented the rainbow of food stains across her clothing, mostly the brilliant orange-gold of turmeric.

“So what are you going to do about food when we get to Ir Ilan?” Rivka’s brow furrowed. “I doubt the local inns want you nosing around in the kitchen inspecting the pans, and you won’t be able to control stray wheat flour.”

“I know. I’ve been dreading their reaction all morning. People never believe me, and then they lie and say they’ve done what I asked them to do when they haven’t, and I have no way to tell until--” She waved her hand around helplessly.

“What about the public market? With the open stalls, you can watch the food cook and then just pick the ones who are doing it your way. Then you won’t have to convince anyone of anything.”

“That would be much better.” Shulamit sighed with relief. “Hopefully I’ll find someone selling lamb or vegetables.”

“We’d better get back on the road, then, or most of the vendors will pack up for the night before we get there.”

They passed the rest of their riding time that day singing, sometimes teaching each other new songs, sometimes singing ones they both knew in two-part harmony. Shulamit’s voice was a pretty soprano, but she couldn’t project very well; Rivka had a bellowing alto that was startling compared with her gruff, throaty “Riv” voice intended to imitate a male.

The women were still singing when they reached the gates to the town. Rivka pulled on the reins of the horse to pause her so she could tie the cloth mask around her face again. “Queenling, you should probably also be disguised. We attract less trouble if we attract less attention.”

“I guess you know best,” said Shulamit. She removed the filmy, decorative scarf from her neck and repositioned it as a head covering, wrapping it back around her neck when her black braids were hidden and her face in shadow.

The marketplace was a colorful paradise of food, flowers, and useful household objects. Brightly colored fruits and vegetables spilled out of woven baskets, and in one stall shoppers could buy a different kind of olive for every day of the week. There were also people selling honey or cheese, and a boy talking to everyone who would listen about the scarves his very pregnant mother, sitting in the shade at the back of the stall fanning herself and drinking out of a coconut, had hand-painted in hues of sunset and dusk.

A young man with bushy hair hovered at one of the stalls, examining several different piles of vegetables. He was carrying a large basket, and Shulamit watched him work out some sort of deal with the farmer behind the table. He walked away with the basket filled to the brim with stalks of kohl sprouts. From the quantity, Shulamit guessed it must be for a restaurant, and her mind drifted to a conversation she’d had ages ago, with Aviva.

“You went to the market yourself?” Shulamit had arrived at Aviva’s kitchen house to find the buxom cook unpacking a basket full of unusual delicacies. “Why didn’t you just send one of the kitchen servants like the head cook does?”

“What, with some list I got out of my head?” Aviva retrieved a strange vegetable from her basket. “How would I ever know what was new, or fresh, or get any ideas? Same old clothes is not what I’m good at.”

“What is that?” Shulamit studied the unfamiliar item. It looked like a fluorescent-green cauliflower, but instead of florets, each section rose into perfectly mathematical spiraling peaks. She was transfixed by its beauty and stood there staring, almost in disbelief that such a thing had grown naturally instead of sculpted by human hands -- let alone intended for eating!

“I don’t know, but we’d never have the chance to find out if I wasn’t the type to go to market on my own.”

The memory was so vivid that for a moment she almost felt as though Aviva was there with her, but the feeling faded quickly. Swallowing her loneliness, Shulamit hopped from stall to stall, peering inside at the cooks preparing their victuals. Of course, the most convenient takeaway food would have been anything in a pita, but that door was closed forever -- or opened into a night of indigestion. She eventually found enough to eat, because the man selling lamb kabobs didn’t have meat other than lamb, and the woman selling rice balls was wrapping them in banana leaves. She also picked up a mango, and then, after thinking about it for a moment, bought a second as well.

 

***

 

Meanwhile, Rivka kept one eye on Shulamit and the other eye on a display of daggers. Should she buy one for the young queen? Or would it just be a liability, because a weapon in the hands of an untrained innocent can easily be used against her? She realized it would probably be a good idea to start teaching Shulamit weaponless martial arts the next time they were out in the open.

They took a room in the Cross-Eyed Tiger, a wholesome-looking inn near the marketplace. An advertisement on the door bragged about the food, and the rates were reasonable. The story they gave the proprietor was simply that a woman had hired protection for her trip to the holy house, which wasn’t untrue.

Rivka put their things in the room and then stopped at the cook’s stewpot for a plate of something that looked like overcooked chicken and smelled mediocre at best. She could also tell by looking at it that it was going to be too spicy, so she heaped yogurt onto it until the cook glared at her. As if she cared.

 

***

 

Shulamit was sitting and eating her lamb kabobs and other finds from the market, when Rivka appeared with a loaded plate. “I should have done that,” Rivka commented. “Look at this.” She glared at her food.

“I bought you a mango,” said Shulamit brightly, handing her the second mango. Until that moment, she hadn’t been entirely sure whether it was Rivka’s dessert or her own midnight snack. To her surprise, she was genuinely happy that she had decided to give it to Rivka.

“Thank you, Shula!” Rivka began to attack her plate of strangeness with gusto.

Shulamit’s face froze slightly, so Rivka reminded her in a whisper, “I can’t call you Queenling here. Too risky.”

As if to illustrate her point, a group of drunk men at a nearby table had noticed them and began to heckle. “Hey! How come she’s got better food than the rest of us?” shouted one.

“They’ve got mangoes!”

“What is this swill?”

“I want some of that lamb.”

One of the men approached the women’s table. “That’s not fair. Why did he give you better food than everyone else?”

Shulamit looked up from her plate of food with an expression of deep anger, almost like a threatened animal, but before she could say anything, Rivka leapt to her defense. “She bought it in the market. Fowl makes her ill.”

“Yeah, well, this food would make anyone ill. Hand it over.”

Rivka stood up to her full height, towering over him. “You really don’t want to mess with me,” she growled at him, fingering the hilt of her sword. “Or I might have to buy you a drink with this steel.”

The man’s eyes opened into wide circles, and he backed away, stumbling. “My apologies, sir.” He went back to his table, and nobody bothered them again.

“A traveling comedian he’s expecting, not a warrior,” Rivka muttered, going back to her food. Shulamit was looking at her with an expression warm like the firelight that lit the room.

“Riv -- thank you.”

“Oh, that was nothing! Aren’t I your -- what did you say -- hired muscle?”

“No, I mean -- thank you for believing me.” She paused. “Back at home, I’m a queen. I used to be a princess. So many people think I made up my food problems to get attention, or that I’m just lying to get everyone to take my preferences more seriously.”

“Hey,” said Riv through a mouthful of chicken curry, “never underestimate your right to the things you like. You have a right to eat mangoes if you want to. Or chase women.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Shulamit, smiling with half her mouth. She appreciated Rivka’s support, but “chase” had made her feel awkward. There was a strong physical component to her longings, true, but she hoped Rivka knew that it went beyond that. She was looking for a woman to love, for the sweet mutual understanding of hearts that share each other’s secrets—not just a concubine. “But anyway, I really do get sick if I eat the wrong things, or even the right things prepared the wrong way -- near the wrong things, I mean. And I’ll get sick whether people believe me or not. Aviva was the first person to believe me -- and sometimes I feel like she’s the only person. Even though I’ve finally gotten the palace cooks to serve me food that I can eat safely, they all just think I’m being finicky.”

“No wonder you fell in love with her,” Rivka observed.

“So why did you believe me?”

Rivka smiled thoughtfully. “Because you talk to me like a human being,” she said, “and not like I’m just part of the peasant crowd beneath your feet. Because you’re not the type of person to play the game you just described. You’re interested in me and in my story -- I know there are questions you’re dying to ask and just haven’t worked up the nerve. I see it in your face. It means you see me as a person.”

They continued eating in peace, their friendship growing by the firelight like a sprouting plant under the rays of the sun.