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The Mountain of Cedars

The journey of Aleph, the scribe—Mount Lebanon and the myth of Khumbaba, guardian of the cedar forests—Palestine, the prehistoric site of Jerusalem, and the legend of Abraham and Isaac—Aleph tells of the invention of the alphabet

“Go and count the trees!”

Aleph lifted his eyes from the ground and looked up at the mountains that towered behind the city of Gebal. Above the narrow plain that ran between the foothills and the sunlit sea, above the terraces of olive orchards, above the pinewoods and the escarpments of bare rock, the cedar forests stretched from North to South, covering the slopes and valleys with dense green, and reaching up to the bare peaks with the white caps of snow that still lingered on the heights.

“Count the trees, Father?” said Aleph in bewilderment. “But there are so many!”

His father let out an exasperated breath like the sound of wind through the branches. “My son,” he sighed, “I think you have intelligence. I know you are idle! And you are rightly called the Ox, because you are certainly slow. But never before have I had reason to suspect you of actions that may bring disgrace upon your family. No!” he said quickly, holding up his hand to prevent Aleph from interrupting. “I do not want to listen to your explanations. As apprentice scribe at the temple you are entrusted with knowledge which is shameful and improper to impart to your young sister. You say you have done no such thing, and I hope with all my heart that this is true. I am only saying that it will be better for you to spend your time on a useful errand. And when I say count the trees, do not pretend to think I mean number all the trees in the forest. You are not as foolish as all that. I wish you to go up where the work parties are felling the trees, find out how many they have cut down, and return to me with the information. Is this too difficult an errand for you?”

“No, Father,” said Aleph. He felt relieved. He was satisfied that he had done nothing wrong, but he had not been sure whether he would be punished. He was glad enough for the opportunity to go up the mountains by himself, and the responsibility was not too great.

As he prepared to leave the house he was waylaid by his sister. “I’m not to speak with you,” he said. “Father is angry.”

Beth pouted. “We were doing nothing wrong,” she said. “And Father can’t mean you to go up the mountain with no food.” She was holding a bundle, and a birdcage with a white pigeon in it.

“Am I to eat that bird in the mountain?” asked Aleph.

“This is your food,” said Beth, handing him the bundle. “And this is my game, since yours has been interrupted.” She gave him the birdcage. “Take him up the mountain with you. When you get to where you are going, let him go. He’ll fly back and tell me you’ve got there. Good-bye, Aleph!” And she darted, away.

Aleph walked through the streets of the city to the landward gate, passed through, and set off for the mountains. He was not in a hurry. He was no mountaineer, but not so much of a townsman as to set an impossible pace for the first half-hour and collapse when the going got hard. With the help of his staff he picked his way up the stony ass-tracks through the terraces of olive trees. Above them he came to the pines. The track was now sandy underfoot, but there were thorns to scratch his legs if he wandered off it. In each round pine tree top the cicadas sang, and Aleph wondered idly what these invisible singers were that made this music. It might almost be the voice of the trees themselves sizzling in the sun, though he was of the opinion that on the whole trees did not sing. But life was too full of things to waste time on a mere insect, or whatever it was.

The track was really steep now, leading over piles of rough rock, and he had to help himself up with his hands, passing the birdcage and the bundle from one to the other. He was taking a deep breath with each step, and his throat felt dry. He scrambled to the top of a rocky outcrop and sat down to rest, looking out toward the sea. He set the birdcage on the rock, and felt sorry for the pigeon, a prisoner in the free mountains. But it was not time to let it go yet.

Down below, the town of Gebal was already shrunken by the height he had climbed. The harbor was a little blue rock pool, its rim lined with nutshells that must be boats. The city wall was like something a child might build with sand on a beach, and the palace and the temples and houses were like chippings in a mason’s yard. But this thought reminded him that he was indeed looking down on the busy city of Gebal, where traders chaffered over cargoes on the quays, where the priests plotted in the temple, and where his father was in a continuous state of fuss and anxiety as to whether he had enough stone and timber in hand for the King’s latest building project. And that was why he, Aleph, was here in the mountains. He had trees to count. He stretched himself. Heigh ho! it was so peaceful up here, with the wind and a nameless bird singing in the tree tops, but there was business to be done, even here.

He stood for a moment on his rock, suddenly doubtful if he was going the right way. The mountains looked simple from the coast, a great wall rising straight up along the whole of the eastern horizon. But when you were up in them they were more complicated, made up of ridges and watercourses and deep valleys and false crests. If you did not know the mountains, every now and then you would say to yourself, “A few more steps and this must be the top!” But of course it was not. When you got there it was an isolated outcrop or a minor peak, and above rose the higher ranges and at last the true peaks which held their covering of snow late into the summer. Not even the cedars grew at that height, and so he had never had occasion to go so far. But he had heard that beyond the range there was a flat and fertile valley, and beyond that more mountains, and beyond that the desert, and beyond that—he supposed the edge of the world. Some said a final mighty mountain range, some said merely a precipice into nothing, some said a great sea which poured over in a ceaseless waterfall for ever and ever. He would like to go beyond the mountains, but not perhaps as far as the edge of the world.

He decided that he would have to go along the edge of a slope toward the valley where the timber was being cut, and he set off, walking on the edges of his sandals, glad every now and then of a solid rock to stop him slipping down the slope. He struck a goat track that showed like a scratch along the thorny hillside and followed it thankfully, still gaining height. The sun beat down on the exposed slope, the lizards darted away from the stones before him, and though the air was no longer heavy and sticky he felt he was broiling like a piece of meat on heated hearthstones. Then over a crest appeared a dark green feathery shape. It could be a single pine or a scrub oak—but no, as he approached he could see that it was a cedar. A small one, fighting for its life on the stony edge of the forest. But it meant that he was there. There was always a special feeling about reaching the cedar-line, and if he had been put there blindfolded he would have known immediately where he was.

Soon he was in the shade of the trees, and he rested again with his back against one of the trunks. Out of the sun the air was cool and fresh again, and the breeze among the needles of the cedars was making its peculiar music. It was only a grove of young trees, or perhaps they were old but had never grown much because it took all their energy to cling to this stony slope, so steep that Aleph had to crawl or pull himself up by low branches to get up it.

He sat and looked out through the dark bars of the tree trunks toward the sea—the sea that was always with you in this land, whether it was roaring in your ears on the shore or climbing with you as you climbed. As it was now, the straight line of its horizon seemed to be halfway up the sky and truly looked like the edge of the world, so hard and definite was it. And yet he knew that beyond it, to the West, lay islands and coasts where people lived whose kings were even richer than the great King of Gebal. It was difficult to believe, but it was his own brother Nun, the sailor, who had told him, and, indeed, his ship went out loaded with this very cedar-wood and returned with wonderful things of gold and bronze that must have been made by very clever people—unless Nun traded with demons. Aleph liked looking at the sea, but he had no great desire to entrust himself to it.

Cedar wood! Once again he reminded himself of the work he had to do for his father—trees to be counted. No use starting to count just yet. He had another moment of doubt, as he stood up, whether this was the right part of the range, the right valley, the right grove. If it was, he should be able to hear the sounds of the woodcutters’ axes. He stood still and listened. There was nothing but the same sound of the wind in the branches, and somehow it seemed less friendly now; as if it did not care about human matters, about whether Aleph was lost or not. He realized that he was cold, and also that he would have to think instead of dreaming.

It would have been better if he had come up the bullock track down which the logs were dragged to the coast, but he had deliberately chosen this short cut, relying on his sense of direction. That was his way of doing things. He preferred to keep off other people’s tracks. If you knew where you were starting from and what you were aiming at, you usually got there all right. But now the thought came to him that he had been depending on following the noise of the lumber camp for the last part of his journey. Timber felling is usually a noisy enough process: the shock of axes, the rending of branches, and the cries of the loggers and bullock drivers can be heard from valley to valley. But here there was silence.

What had happened? Were they all just sleeping in the sun? If so, he would have to scold them for their laziness and tell them they would be punished. His father was always doing this, but he hated having to do anything of the sort. Had the slaves revolted against the overseers and run off? This was a situation for his brother Zayin, the soldier, not for him to deal with. Had they all been carried off by mountain lions, or mountain spirits? He shivered again. A tale came into his mind, told him by a foreign slave from the East he had once known, of the giant Khumbaba who lived on the Mountain of Cedars, whose roar was like the torrent of the storm, whose breath was like fire, and whose jaws were death itself. He was the watchman of the Forest and could hear even the wild cattle stir, sixty leagues away.

Aleph forced himself to stop thinking of such things. He took up the birdcage, grateful for the companionship of even a white pigeon. He moved off again along the hillside, keeping to the lower edge of the grove. The timber teams naturally always nibbled at the forest from the bottom edge, so if he continued along at this level he must eventually meet signs of humanity. Unless he should have been going in exactly the opposite direction, and that would just depend on whether this was his lucky day or not.

He skirted along the edge of the trees, often holding the fingers of the great lower branches to stop himself from sliding down the slope. As he came round the spur the whole of the next valley came into view, its upper slopes covered with cedars. On the far side of the valley he could now see the track, scarred by the passage of great logs dragged by the bullock teams. The disturbed earth and rocks were red compared with the usual grayish-white of the hillside. Where the track met the forest a great bite had been taken out of the dark green mass of the trees, littered with discarded tops and branches, and by the track were piled the trimmed trunks and usable limbs, the freshly hewn ends showing a rich orange-red in the sunlight. Smoke rose from bonfires of trimmings. But there was no sign of life.

Aleph made his way cautiously round the valley, clambered over the dry watercourse at the head of it, and approached the site. The red scarred earth and the severed cedar limbs made him think of a battlefield, though he tried to tell himself it was absurd to feel that way about earth and trees. He was hoping desperately that there would not be signs of human slaughter when he got there. He was not sure what was best to do—keep inside the forest so that no one could see him coming, or keep clear of it in case someone was waiting in ambush. Both considerations were equally upsetting, so that he went suddenly cold with fear in the hot sun. He thought of turning round and going back the way he had come. But it was absurd, even for him, who did not pretend to be a hero, to run away from an empty space.

He reached the clearing. There stood rough shelters in which the workers slept, thatched with withering cedar branches. Outside them were a few cooking pots, some of them broken, and some piles of garbage. He made himself go up to one hut; it was empty, except for couches of leaves and branches. He looked in the others. Nothing but one or two pieces of ragged clothing. By the track was a place where signs clearly showed that the draft bullocks had been tethered. But now there were none.

They must have gone home. He strained his eyes down the mountainside, but though the winding track was visible for much of the way down toward the coast, he could see nothing moving on it. Oh well, he could do the job he had been sent to do, count the marked trees and the felled trunks, and go back to town himself and report. And he had better be quick about it: he did not fancy staying the night alone in the camp.

He counted the trunks on the piles. Twenty-nine. He went round the edge of the clearing, looking for the crosses scored on the barks of the chosen trees, and eventually found eleven. Eleven and twenty-nine make forty, the total his father was expecting. Well, that was that. It was all he had been asked to find out. He was tired and hungry, but above all he was thirsty. He could see water in the bottom of the valley, so he would have to go down before he could drink, and then he could eat.

But it was strange, all the same, that the lumbermen should leave twenty-nine trunks by the road, eleven trees still standing, and just abandon the camp. And as he took a last vague look round he noticed something.

The newest tracks of the oxen led away from the tethering place—not down but up the mountainside.

He stood blankly for some time looking at the message printed in the earth by the hooves of the oxen, then he wandered around the clearing. True, the ground was mostly stony, but in the ashes of a fireplace, in a soft bank of fallen cedar needles he read the same sign, though still it seemed to have no meaning. He walked down the main track for some distance until he came to a sandy stratum of the mountain. Here there was no doubt at all. He could see clearly the tracks of men and oxen pointing up the mountain, but not one leading down.

He found that his brain was stupidly turning round the idea that he, Aleph the Ox, the slow-witted, had been left a message by his brothers the oxen, and that it was for him to make sense of it. Well, it was no use neglecting even the dumbest of ox-brains. He needed water, rest, and food. He followed the sound of tinkling water until he came to a small spring, plunged his burning face into a rock pool, drank until he was satisfied, and sat down in the shade of a rock to eat his bread and olives, sharing the crumbs with the pigeon.

As his stomach filled his brain cleared. After all there was no great problem. The lumber teams had come up the mountain to cut the forty trees ordered by Resh. They had nearly completed the job, and then had abandoned the clearing, and instead of going down the mountain they had gone up.

Why had they done it and where had they gone? There was no way of answering these questions yet. Aleph had heard that it was possible to cross the mountains by continuing upward from this valley, but it was a difficult pass and few had reason to use it. Beyond the crest of the range lived people who were no friends to Gebal. He had heard rumors of armies passing over the flat plains—Egyptians from the South, Assyrians from the East, Hittites from the North. But the people of Gebal were snug in their coastal city, protected by the great mountain wall. Why should they want to cross the pass?

Why indeed? Beyond lay nothing better than slavery. And yet these log-men had apparently chosen to go. Aleph suddenly stood up. He would have to find out. It was no devotion to duty that turned his footsteps up the mountain, it was not heroism. It was just burning curiosity.

If Aleph had known that he was as yet only halfway up to the top of the pass he might not have set off so lightly. The track was easy enough to follow, through the edge of the cedar grove, emerging the other side on to the slopes of a valley from where more and more high peaks could be seen. Skirting the edge of this valley, up another crest, over and down again before climbing steeply up the other side. Many times, as he paused for breath on a steep slope or stood on a crest appalled to see yet more rugged terrain appearing before him, he wondered whether he should not turn back. But as the deeper valleys began to fill with black shadows he knew that even if he did turn back he could not possibly reach the town by nightfall. He was in for a night on the mountain anyway, and he felt that he would rather pass it in the company of the loggers, whatever had happened to them, than spend it alone.

Rather than puzzle vaguely about the mystery of the disappearing log team, and to save his mind from imagining wild and improbable fates for them, he tried setting himself the sort of problem which he preferred to think about, and it was this. The only clear message that had been left for him at the clearing had been made by the hooves of the stupid oxen. The prints in the soft soil said unmistakably: “We went this way.” Now if the unthinking oxen could leave this for him to read, why could not Kaph, the overseer, an intelligent and experienced man, have left some indication of why they had gone? Because Kaph could not write. Of course he could not. Nobody expected him to be able to write. Writing was a mysterious skill known only to priests and scribes. They spent many years learning the meanings of the hundreds of symbols and their combinations, and once they learned them they took good care that no part of their secret was shared by the common people. The very idea that a simple overseer of a lumberman should have any knowledge of writing was absurd. Blasphemous, even. Writing was for the stories of the gods, and the affairs of great kings who represented the gods on earth, not for tradesmen’s messages. So? So an ox could print in the ground a sign which anyone could read as “Gone this way.” But though a man had a burnt stick and a piece of white bark to hand, there were no signs that he could make that mean “Back tomorrow morning.”

These thoughts took Aleph’s mind off the tiredness of his legs and the effort of his breathing. But they went no farther. He did not say to himself, “This is wrong,” or “Wouldn’t it be better if …” Indeed, alone up there among the abode of spirits, he felt uneasy when he remembered what he had told his young sister. Was that not impious? The gods might punish him for it.

He shivered in the mountain air that grew cooler and cooler as he climbed, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky. He was now coming to a mass of tortured rocks, twisted pillars standing against the skyline. He stopped. He hoped they were rocks. They might equally be the shapes of fiends and demons turned to stone—or at least, the towers and castles of mountain spirits. Or even if no supernatural beings dwelt in this desolate place, wild mountain men might. Among these pinnacles a traveler would be defenseless against ambush.

Aleph thought of his soldier brother, Zayin. Wasn’t there something he said soldiers did to guard against ambush? Send out scouts? Cover their flanks? But there was only himself. And what was it that his sailor brother Nun used to say? “When in Danger and in Doubt, always keep a Good Look Out.” But he was afraid of what he might see if he did look about him among these petrified shapes.

So he shut his eyes, and he felt himself turning to stone as he heard a rough voice shout “Halt!”

He kept his eyes shut. He was certain that he was petrified, that he had become merely another of the pillars of rock that stood for ever on the desolate mountainside. That was what they were, petrified travelers. He would never move again.

He heard strange incomprehensible voices—the language of demons—about his ears. Then he jumped. Something sharp had poked him from behind. He opened his eyes and turned round. There stood a strange soldier with a naked sword.

The soldier spoke again in the unknown language. But the gesture of his sword meant “Move!” and Aleph forgot his state of petrifaction and moved, his mouth dry with fear. As he came round the base of a great rock he came face to face with a number of men. Some of them were soldiers in foreign armor. The others he knew. Among them was Kaph, the overseer, sitting on the ground in an attitude of great dejection.

Aleph’s fright turned to anger, and his speech returned: “Kaph!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Why did you desert the camp? And—and what are those slaves of ours doing with those chains?” For two of the men he recognized as slaves from Kaph’s work party were advancing on him, carrying chains and manacles.

Kaph spat. “Ask them yourself. They’re the masters now. We’re the slaves.” And he lifted his manacled wrists. And as Aleph felt the fetters being put on his own legs, he began to understand what he meant.

That night on the mountain Aleph was more miserable than he had believed possible. He had not been looking forward to sharing a shelter with the rough log men at the camp. He had dreaded a night alone among the rocks. But here he was, chained to the surly Kaph, hungry, listening to the foreign soldiers laughing and eating round a fire while their captives shivered in the cold night air, wondering what the future held. He almost wished that his fantasy had been true, it would have been better to be changed to an unfeeling pillar of rock.

He could not sleep, but though Kaph, too, was wakeful, it was difficult to get him to talk. When he did, it was little comfort. “How’s it feel then, Master Aleph, to become a slave?” he mocked. “I reckon you must have taken a fancy to it though, following us all this way just to get caught. You and your bird and all.”

Poor bird, Aleph thought. He must let it go now. No reason why it, too, should remain a prisoner. But he would have to wait until daylight, it couldn’t fly in the dark.

“How was I to know you were captives?” he said to Kaph. “I saw the hoof prints of the oxen, and I followed them. I didn’t know what had happened. I still don’t. Who are these soldiers? Where did they appear from?”

“Appear’s the right word. That’s just what they did, appeared like spirits from the forest. There we were, working, and all of a sudden we were surrounded by them,” said Kaph.

“But where had they come from?”

“Over the mountain pass, where they’re taking us back now, of course.”

“What are they, though?”

“How should I know?” Kaph growled. “Foreigners. All I know is, our slaves who used to be log carriers—good workers they were though—downed tools and started hugging and kissing these soldiers like they were long-lost sisters. Then they have the nerve to come to me and say Pharaoh needs men, and the oxen and the tools and gear and all, and off they march us up the mountain.”

“Pharaoh!” Aleph exclaimed. “But these men aren’t Egyptians.”

“Don’t ask me! They’re foreigners, and from the South, anyway, they say. What’s the difference? I’m a slave and you’re a slave now. We can’t choose our masters.”

Aleph did not think he could sleep, but exhaustion, depression, and the thinness of the mountain air overcame him and he passed the night somehow in a state of frozen semi-consciousness. He dreamed, or at least he imagined very vividly the warm house by the seashore at Gebal, which he might never see again. But also among his dreams or imaginings were visions of fabulous Egypt. There was, perhaps, a future for him, even a life to live, in Egypt.

The prisoners were roused in the early dawn, while the sunrise was only a faint glow over the crest of the mountain range to the East. The soldiers seemed to have a little bread and water to share round and break their fast, but there was no food for the prisoners.

“One pigeon among the lot of us,” growled Kaph, looking at the bird in the cage. “Not much, but it may save us from starvation yet.” Aleph clutched the birdcage defensively, but the march moved off at once. Some of the soldiers scouted ahead, some of them guarded the prisoners and drove them on, and Aleph was too numbed and stupefied by the altitude and the cold to think of anything but the next step up the stony slope.

The sun rose above the crest as they climbed toward it. On the very top they all halted to rest and take their breath. Before and below them appeared a deep broad valley, still in the shadow of yet another range of saw-toothed mountains on the far side. Aleph turned back to look toward the sea and the coast. He was not even to be granted a last glimpse of his home.

He stood there wretchedly, holding the caged bird. If he let the bird go, he thought, it would probably find its way home through the clouds, planing down in almost a matter of minutes. Was not this the time to do it? And yet what had his sister said? His numb brain remembered slowly. “When you’ve got to where you’re going, let him loose! He’ll fly back and let me know you’re there.” But he was not there yet. This windswept mountain pass was not where he was going. It was not yet time to release his messenger.

The descent down the other side was steep, but direct. Aleph had hoped it would be much easier than climbing, but he soon felt that his leg muscles would collapse every time they took the weight of his body. However, the sun at least was warming, and as they went down the air, too, lost its bite, and they came again to a belt of forest where there was soil and soft vegetation underfoot.

There was a clearing in the forest, and in it were tents and huts, and lumbermen at work, and transport wagons and soldiers. The leader of their guards paraded the prisoners in front of a tent, and out of it came the person who Aleph supposed was the officer in charge of the camp.

The officer looked over the prisoners and the oxen without great interest, until his eye fell on Aleph: then he walked over and stood in front of him, looking him up and down. Aleph’s heart turned over. There was no way of telling from the haughty countenance of the officer whether it was in his favor to be singled out from the rest. Perhaps it was because he was the only one carrying a birdcage! The officer addressed him in Egyptian speech, but Aleph’s tongue was slow to reply in the same language, so the officer shouted for a man wearing Egyptian civilian clothes, who came over to interpret.

“The officer says you don’t look strong enough to be a woodcutter, and wants to know what is your trade,” explained the civilian, in Aleph’s language.

Aleph hesitated and tried to think quickly. If he said he was a woodcutter they might let him work in the forests here, and perhaps he could escape. If he said he was a scribe they might have no use for him, and kill him. But woodcutting was hard work, perhaps he was not strong enough for it, and surely the Egyptians needed slaves with education as well. Better to tell the truth.

“I am a scribe,” he said.

“So young?” said the civilian, and raised his eyebrows.

“Apprentice scribe,” corrected Aleph, blushing. “I can count, and I know a lot of the signs.”

“What were you doing in the mountains?” was the next question.

Aleph thought there might be a clever answer to this question too, but he answered simply, “Counting trees.”

The civilian and the officer consulted together, and at length the civilian said: “If you’re a tally clerk, we may have work for you in the South. Join the draft that leaves tomorrow.”

Next morning a column of soldiers and prisoners was formed, and the southward march began. There were plenty of guards and there was nowhere to flee to but the forest full of wild beasts, so the prisoners were not bound or chained and the pace of the march was fairly brisk. In this fertile valley there was no shortage of food or water, and Aleph settled down contentedly enough to the routine of daily journeying and nightly camps. He even took a positive pleasure in looking around at new landscapes every day.

The civilian overseer, Ish, who had questioned Aleph on the first day, was with the draft. As he spoke Aleph’s language and wanted to practice it, he sometimes walked beside him and they would talk. Aleph spoke of his family, and of his father who was a master builder, and he began to realize that Ish preferred his company to that of his own countrymen, the Egyptian soldiers.

They passed by the foot of a massive mountain in the eastern wall of the valley, capped and streaked with snow. Ish told Aleph its name, which was something like Haramun or Hermon. The valley narrowed and the floor of it became crumpled and rocky, and water was difficult to find for a while. One evening they came to a wooded gorge, where the source of a river bubbled up from the base of the rocks and flowed away to the South. After some discussion the escort decided to camp there for the night. The air was chilly and full of the evening cries of frogs and strange beasts in the forest, but the soldiers and prisoners were happy to drink their fill and wash away the stains of travel. They lit fires, and some of the soldiers began to sing, and brought out musical instruments, simple pipes and drums, to which they danced.

Aleph felt it must be a sacred place, as most springs were in that part of the world, and that it was right to celebrate the fact with music and dancing. But he noticed that Ish did not join in, and seemed somehow to
disapprove.

“Does this river flow to Egypt?” he asked Ish, but Ish laughed and shook his head and said he wished they could have such pleasant company all the way to Egypt. Then they talked of Egypt and of the marvels Aleph would see, and Ish revealed that he, too, had been a slave; but he was glad of it because otherwise he would not have had such good education and learned to calculate and write.

They followed the river south, skirted a swamp and a small lake, and continued on until they came to a larger lake, almost an inland sea, blue and sparkling among the wooded hills. There were fishing villages on its shores and Ish, who was caterer to the officers of the escort, obtained some delicious freshwater fish of which Aleph had a share.

Here there seemed to be an argument between the guides and the soldiers as to which way they should proceed. There was much shouting and pointing of arms, and the choice seemed to be between a new westerly direction and continuing south. It was southward they eventually moved: a difficult track where the river wriggled through jungle in a narrow valley, and the air became hot and steamy. At last the valley broadened out again and they came to inhabited and cultivated land. A copious spring gushed from the foot of an arid mountain, and guarding it stood a walled town. The column halted by the spring, and once again gladly washed and drank, for the air still held the heaviness of the deep valley. The commander of the soldiers was admitted through the gate of the town.

“He’s going to pay his compliments to the Governor,” said Ish.

Aleph asked the name of the town.

“Jericho,” said Ish. “It’s a very old town. Look at the stonework done by the Ancient People! Or some say by the old gods themselves. No one can tell how old those walls are—but we build better than that in Egypt now.”

There seemed to be no hurry to move on from Jericho, and there was little for Aleph to do but see that the pigeon was fed and watered. Aleph and his pigeon were the joke of the whole column. The soldiers were always offering to wring its neck and put it in a stew, but luckily there had been plenty of food for everyone so far, including the pigeon. Aleph was more worried about whether it was taking enough exercise. He still intended to carry out his sister’s instructions, and let it go when he reached the place he was going to. But he had no idea how much longer they would have to march, and he was afraid the unfortunate bird would forget the use of its wings. Once he tried the experiment of letting it out of the cage to fly around for a little, and tempting it back with corn before it took it into its head to fly off for good. He wondered whether it could ever find its way back to Gebal now.

Aleph saw Ish watching him with amusement. “Would you sell me your dove for a sacrifice?” Ish asked.

Aleph felt awkward, not knowing whether he was being teased again or not. “He’s not mine to sell,” he answered. “He’s my sister’s.”

Ish laughed. “Never mind,” he said. “Perhaps I can get another. I have permission to go with a patrol into the mountains. Would you like to come?”

“If the soldiers need a slave,” said Aleph, “I suppose they’ll pick one. Why ask if I’d like to come?”

Ish frowned. “You don’t have to talk like a slave any more. I told the captain I wanted you as my personal servant to carry my things. Now are you coming?”

“With pleasure,” said Aleph, and he picked up the bundle, and the birdcage, and followed Ish to where the patrol was waiting to set off.

As they marched across the plain toward the mountains, Ish talked. “I persuaded them that it would be a good thing to send a reconnaissance patrol this way to see what the hill tribes are doing. But really I’m doing it for my own interest. My people passed through here generations ago. They say there is a place here which is still holy to them, if I can only find it.”

They climbed up out of the oppressive atmosphere of the valley into the clear air of the mountains again. Their guide, a young man from Jericho, led them confidently into the foothills as far as a little village where he was greeted and embraced by his family. Then followed a long and excited conversation in the local dialect, while Ish and the patrol waited impatiently. At last Ish interrupted.

“We have no time to waste here, guide! Lead us on to Urusalim, as you promised.”

“Yes! Yes! At once!” replied the guide. “To Urusalim. I ask the way to Urusalim.”

“You said you knew the way to Urusalim!” said Ish angrily.

Urusalim, Urusalim … the word passed from mouth to mouth of the group of peasants as they seemed to speculate upon the existence of any such place. Their eyes and faces showed that the word meant little to them, and their fingers pointed to opposite points of the landscape.

“Well?” demanded Ish of the guide.

“Yes! Yes!” said the guide hastily. “My cousin, he knows Urusalim. He show us the way!”

The guide took his farewells of his family, and the guide’s cousin, a wild, ragged, dark-eyed boy, led the patrol, on confidently, farther and farther into the mountains.

But the farther they went the less confident became the leadership of this, their second guide. He began to look uncertainly right and left when they came to forks in the mountain track, and then he would stop and argue passionately with the first guide, although it was obvious that the first had no useful information to offer.

The corporal of the patrol, whose impatience was beginning to show, cursed the bickering guides and threatened them with the haft of his spear. Then he turned to Ish.

“This Urusalim, sir. If no one’s even heard of it, it can’t be very important can it?” He obviously wanted to say he thought the whole thing a waste of time. But Ish merely looked at him coolly. “It has more importance than you may think, Corporal,” he said.

Just at that moment there came round the shoulder of the hill a flock of sheep led by an even younger and wilder boy, who stared wide-eyed at the soldiers as he stood there, his sling and his staff in his hands. The two guides fell upon him with questions, but the boy stood his ground, and when he understood what they were asking he merely pointed with his finger at a distant hilltop and said the one word, “Urusalim.” Then he turned his eyes on Ish and Aleph and asked indifferently, “Is he going to kill him?”

As this unexpected question sank in, all the traces of doubt left the face of Ish. “The boy knows what he’s talking about,” he said. Then, “Ask him what he will take for one of his lambs?”

The guides and the soldiers stood boggling at this curious exchange of words, but after some hesitation on the part of the boy, for it seemed that the sheep were not his to sell, and then some haggling about its value, they bartered a lamb for some of their provisions; the boy and his flock set off down the valley and the patrol continued on its way toward the rounded peak that bore the mysterious, name of Urusalim.

Aleph could not restrain his curiosity. “How do you know the boy spoke the truth, and why did he say, ‘Is he going to kill him?’?” he asked as they climbed the stony path.

“The second question answers the first,” replied Ish briefly. He seemed to be sparing his breath on the steep ascent.

“But I don’t understand. Is who going to kill whom?”

“Am I going to kill you is what he meant,” said Ish, with a wry smile.

Aleph walked several painful paces, and his mouth felt dry in the dusty ravine. “Are you?” he managed to say at last.

“No,” said Ish.

Aleph felt better. “Why did he ask then?” he said after a pause.

“It seems,” said Ish, “that it is still a place of sacrifice. Maybe of human sacrifice. That is what makes me sure that it is the place I am seeking. Many, many years ago my people passed through this land on the way to Egypt. The leader of our tribe was bidden by God to sacrifice his own son on the mountaintop you see before you.”

“What had the son done?” Aleph asked.

“Nothing,” said Ish. “The son was innocent.”

“Did the father kill the son?”

“No. When he got there, God told him not to.”

“This God changed his mind?”

“That is the story our people tell.”

“Perhaps it was a different god that gave the order in the first place,” suggested Aleph.

“We listen only to one God,” said Ish.

“But you have many gods in Egypt!”

“My people are not Egyptians,” said Ish quietly. “Under the former kings some of us were people of importance. But now we are of no account.”

They walked on in silence as Aleph puzzled over these sayings. The day, much of which had been wasted by following wrong tracks in the mountains, was drawing toward evening. As dusk fell they came to the little settlement of Urusalim, on the side of a steep hill that fell away into a deep gorge. The soldiers commandeered rooms for the night, and Aleph slept deeply.

He woke with a start to see Ish standing in the doorway of the little room they shared with a knife in his hand that glinted in the moonlight. Beyond the doorway black peaks showed against the starry sky.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Ish. “It is not yet dawn. But I must prepare to do my sacrifice.”

“Do you wish me to help?” Aleph asked.

“No. This concerns only me,” Ish replied. “Sleep while you can.” As Aleph fell back into sleep he could hear the lamb bleating on its way to the high place.

When he woke again the sun had risen, the soldiers were preparing breakfast, and Ish was back and giving orders for the return to Jericho. Soon they were retracing their steps down the mountains. They kept up a good pace all the morning, and it was not until the noonday halt that Aleph had the opportunity to talk to Ish alone.

“Have we done what we came to do?” he asked hesitantly.

“We have,” said Ish.

“But—” Aleph hesitated. “But why have we come all this way to a place you’ve never been to, and nobody’s ever heard of? I don’t understand.”

“Many things are hard to understand,” Ish smiled. “For example, you have not explained what a young scribe from Gebal was doing in the mountains with a birdcage.”

Aleph was embarrassed that the conversation should be changed to his own affairs. He looked at his feet and shuffled them in the sandy soil.

“It was the writing,” he said.

“I understand even less,” said Ish.

“Not the real writing,” Aleph said hurriedly. “I would never dream of teaching the priestly writing to my sister. I should deserve punishment for that. This was more of a game we invented between us. But my father was angry, so he sent me on this errand to the mountains.”

“I am still puzzled,” said Ish. “What is this writing, that is not writing?”

“We thought of it only as a game. It seemed so simple and harmless. But I suppose being taken into captivity is my punishment for it. Do you think so?” Aleph asked.

“You will have to tell me more before I can answer that question,” said Ish.

Aleph looked around. In that remote mountain spot there were only the soldiers of the escort dozing in the shade, and the two guides. But he lowered his voice as if afraid of being overheard.

“You’re a scribe in Egypt, sir,” he began hesitantly. “You know the signs and symbols of the priests, which it is forbidden to teach to outsiders, or to women, of course?”

The other nodded.

“I was learning them,” Aleph went on. “But I’m slow. That’s why they call me Aleph, the slow ox. I hardly knew the first hundred letters. So I couldn’t have been teaching them to anyone, could I? But Beth wanted to know about the writing. Beth’s what we call my sister. It means ‘House’ really, and, well, poor Beth does have to stay around the house rather a lot since our mother died. I was sorry for her, so I invented this game. We chose letters that made sounds, and then made words with them. It’s strange—we found twenty-two letters were enough—so you see how childish it was, not a thing to concern the priests at all. But my father caught us playing it on the sand, and he was frightened and angry. And so here I am. Do you think I was wicked?”

“The priests of Egypt might well be angry at such disrespect for their mysteries,” said Ish gravely, “but I cannot think it was a sin. Show me though, these twenty-two letters which you have invented.”

Aleph blushed again. “They’re of no interest to you, sir, surely?” But Ish gently insisted, and Aleph squatted in the dust and took a thorn twig, and began to trace shapes on the ground. “Here’s my sign, the head of the ox—horns, ears, mouth:

or Beth used to draw it quickly, like this:

“And that signifies?” queried Ish.

“Well, that’s just it, sir, it doesn’t signify anything. I told you there’s no mystery to it. It’s just a sort of noise A-A-A— The first sound of my name, that’s all. Then there’s Beth’s sign too, the little house with the door:

or this way up if you like, it makes no difference. It doesn’t mean house, of course, just the sound, B-B-B—”

In the heat of the afternoon, in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, Aleph became absorbed in the game he had played at home with his sister. Then he suddenly became embarrassed again that he should be wasting the time of this educated stranger, and he stood up and said sadly: “It was like this that my father caught us, and sent me up the mountain to count the shipment of forty trees he was expecting from the loggers. And Beth gave me the pigeon in the cage, to let go when I got to the lumber camp. That was her idea. She keeps pigeons, you know, sir …”

But Ish was still poring over the signs Aleph had drawn in the dust, and the words he had made up with them, with grave concentration. At last he spoke.

“You must teach me these signs of yours, Aleph, my young friend. I find them very interesting indeed. But now we must return to Jericho, or they will wonder what has become of us.”

And Aleph blushed with pride, but wondered if Ish were not really mocking him.