CHAPTER SIX
OUR CAMELS PLODDED those searing sands for hours before we found shade beneath boulders during the hottest time of the day. If not for the wide, flat stretches between the dunes we would have had to rest much sooner. In that shade we rested several hours before mounting again and pressing on.
We drank no water, only milk, which was already beginning to sour from the morning’s draw. To this end Judah placed a stone at the bottom of a bowl and poured milk to the top of the stone. This much he served to each of us in turn, for no Bedu man will take more than any other, and they gave me the same portion.
Judah and Saba favored the sour milk more than I, but with such a parched throat, I relished each drop. And was this not true also of my parched soul? The thought of how far we still had to travel tormented me.
“When will we reach a well, Saba?” I asked as the sun began to set.
“We pass no wells where we go,” he said. “Only when we reach the other side.”
I was alarmed. “And how far?”
“Ten stages with good fortune.”
“We have enough water?”
“With good fortune. The water is for the camels. We drink only milk.”
I had counted the sagging skins of water—there were twelve, each quite large, two of which were seeping moisture. It is said that Bedu can live for a month on camel’s milk alone, for it is food as well. I knew that camels could endure five days without water, but struggling over such steep sands, Shunu looked haggard already. Yet if Saba said it was enough water, I would believe that it was enough.
“And with bad fortune?” I asked.
“There will be no such fortune,” Judah said. “You are safe with us, Maviah.”
But I didn’t want his optimism then. I wanted to put my fear to rest with reason, which Saba provided.
“We have enough for eight days,” he said. “Then we will be out of water and the milk will no longer flow. We can then travel for another two days. With bad fortune it will take longer.”
“Yet we have the male to slaughter,” Judah said. “This will give us more time. You will see, Maviah.”
My mind then began imagining all manner of bad fortune.
“I’ve heard that many get lost in the Nafud,” I said. “By night you have the stars, but by day only the sun. The desert looks the same to me—only sand and more mounds of sand. How can you know we travel true?”
“The sand speaks,” Saba said. He indicated the small dune ahead and to our left. “The wind at this time comes from the southeast, making the horns of this dune point northwest. Our path is now west.”
“How do you know the wind comes from the southeast?”
“Because I know,” he said. “And when the largest dunes fail to bend with the wind, or we find reason to detour, then three sides is the quickest way around.”
I glanced at Judah, who looked at me as if this should make perfect sense. It didn’t. But I wasn’t leading the way.
I had other concerns and found no reason not to express them in turn.
“What if we meet other Thamud ahead?”
“Then we will avoid them,” Judah said.
“What if they see us first?”
“Then we will kill them.”
“What if one of the camels breaks a leg?”
“Then we will eat it.”
“What if a sandstorm comes?”
To this neither gave a reply.
“You have many questions for a woman,” Saba finally said.
Judah ignored him. “If the sands blow, then we will pray.”
Unlike most Bedu of the north, Saba rode shirtless in the heat, baring his well-muscled chest, arms, and back to the sun. It is known that a cloak keeps sweat from drying too quickly and so preserves one’s water and cools the body, but this wasn’t the way of his people, who were Bedu from the far north, he said. I knew that he’d come to my father when his tribe had been slaughtered by the Thamud while he was tending to a caravan far away. Under Rami, he lived only to seek vengeance.
Judah wore a white undershirt and an earthen-colored aba. His headcloth was white as well, held in place by a black woolen agal. And yet even he periodically stripped off his aba and his cloak to bare his skin for a short while.
My own cloak was the color of the sand. I wore my long black hair bound up beneath a dark blue mantle, which kept the sun from my head and face.
That second night we made camp early in a parched wadi, and after eating my meal of bread with dates and butter, I wanted only to sleep. But try as I might, I could not. Judah’s camel, Raza, lay close and he reclined against her leg, ignoring her grunts and complaints. The other camels wanted also to be near, so we were surrounded by three of the beasts. I wasn’t accustomed to such smells and so much noise so close.
In addition to this, Judah set Saba to talking, and neither showed any interest in sleep. I didn’t want to leave the camp, so I turned away from them, closed my eyes, and silently offered prayers to Isis, who might be watching and listening, however unlikely it was.
“Tell me why a man makes himself the slave of a god he cannot hear or see,” Saba said.
“God is heard through the prophets and seen in the stars,” Judah said.
“And how will you know that what you hear from these prophets is spoken by your god?”
“It is also written on stone and parchment,” Judah said.
“And how do you know that what is written are the words of this god, not mere man?”
“Because what is written will come to pass.”
“Then you believe blindly in the future as foretold by men who only say they have heard from the heavens. And for this, you will die?”
“I am not righteous enough to know and observe the Law as some do, because I’m a warrior from the desert who only knows a little,” Judah said. “And yet I know that my God sends the Anointed One to free the Jew from the Roman. I will find this Messiah and I will wage war in his army to scatter the Roman and restore holiness to our sacred land. You will see. It is written.”
“And if he does not?”
“Neither Jew nor Bedu understands that he has made the gods in his own likeness,” Saba said. “Gods who become angry and kill and inflict great suffering when offended by man.”
“You are Bedu, Saba,” Judah scolded. “All Bedu serve the gods. And yet you have turned your back? Why is this?”
Saba seemed reluctant to answer, and when he did his voice was low.
“Before coming to the Kalb, my people in the north traveled the trade paths to the distant east, far beyond Babylon to the lands called China. I took my gods with me as a boy and learned that they did not hear me in that distant place. Only much later did I also learn that they are deaf in the desert as well.”
“How can you gaze at a child’s face and not see his maker?” Judah pressed. “Or into a woman’s eyes and not see a greater truth?”
“No god saved my family when they were slaughtered,” Saba said. There was such sadness in his voice.
“But you have a woman, yes?” Judah asked. “A wife in the north?”
“I have no wife,” Saba said. “Nor do I long for one.”
“Then I pity you, Saba. I loved a woman once. She was killed by the Thamud in a raid, as were my mother and father. As you know, it’s the reason I first came to the Kalb three years ago, knowing Rami stood against the Thamud.”
All the world was filled with death.
“I long for this love once again,” Judah said. “Perhaps the love of a woman surpasses even the love of God.”
Saba grunted. “Perhaps.”
One of them poked the fire with a stick.
“I think we are in the presence of a queen,” Judah said softly. “And one so beautiful I have never seen.”
“The Bedu know no queen.”
“She is a star in the night sky, I can see it in her eyes. A woman who shed the blood of the Thamud and escaped their clutches.” Judah gave a soft chuckle.
“You would do well to remember that it is Rami you serve. She’s only a woman. A woman who knows how to draw blood will bring much bloodshed.”
“May the Thamud and Roman both drown in it,” Judah replied. “Through Maviah, salvation comes to the Kalb.”
And this was the last either spoke.
I fell asleep with Judah’s tender words whispering through my head. Perhaps the love of a woman surpasses even the love of God. I dreamed of Johnin’s breath on my cheek in Egypt. Such love felt distant here in the desert. And yet Judah’s words brought it one stage closer.
FOR SIX days we traveled through that inferno called the Nafud without any terrible trouble. Each day seemed hotter than the one before. My throat returned to its cotton state within minutes of my taking milk, and from head to toe my skin was surely made of sand. My cloak was dusty and my hair in need of washing. Many Bedu of the deep desert cleanse their hair in camel urine, which kills any flea or mite, but this was not my way. As a slave in Egypt I’d learned to bathe frequently using perfumed soap.
The camels dragged along, one plodding foot after the other. Their humps seemed to shrink, and their bones seemed more pronounced. Perhaps I was only imagining. In many flats I thought I could see water far ahead, but the shimmering waves of heat rising from the sand assured me that this was only a trick of the desert, a mirage promising hope where none waited.
When I complained one day about the oppressive conditions, Saba regarded me graciously. “A fish in the sea cannot help but get wet. As much, a man in the deep sands cannot help but suffer.”
Then Judah added, “It seems a woman as well. But this will pass, Maviah. We are almost across.”
And yet we were not almost across. I had to smile. Saba the man of the head; Judah the man of the heart.
The scorching sands and the hardship of survival each day put some distance between us and the tragedy at Dumah. I mourned my son’s death with each breath but was coming to accept that he was no longer in my life. Nothing would be the same as it had been before. I had to embrace my fate.
Saba guided us by day, keeping mostly to himself except when he engaged Judah, more for sport than for true argument, I thought. He frequently rode to a higher point and studied the sands, searching for the way ahead and for any sign of life on the horizon.
Twice he detected traveling Bedu, and these we avoided in detour. Cutting across the tracks of the second group, Saba and Judah confirmed that they were Thamud—a small group of seven, all men. The camels were from the west, three male and seven she-camels. All had taken water two days earlier. They were headed north, perhaps toward Petra.
Ordinarily such sightings would be welcome, for in the deepest sands even an enemy may offer food and news. Such is the Bedu way. But the Thamud and Kalb were now in open conflict, and even these distant Thamud might know of it. Our food and water, though quickly dwindling, were adequate, and the success of our mission could not be risked.
Judah did not seem to know any form of discouragement, and for this I was grateful. His soft song kept me and the camels and even Saba company during the longest days. Never once did I hear so much as a grunt of complaint or condescension from him.
He had called me a queen and, although he may have been given to overstatement, I believe a part of him truly thought of me as such. He often went out of his way to give me his attention, however small the measure. I was always the first he served. He constantly inquired as to my comfort both in camp and on the camel, offering his own blanket to give my seat more padding and my body more warmth at night.
I was familiar with the courting habits of men. Many in Egypt had shown me small kindnesses in hope of what I might offer them. And I believed Judah found me beautiful, even in my haggard condition. His eyes made his attraction plain.
But his kindness toward me seemed to be rooted in something far deeper than lust. Perhaps he thought helping my mission to succeed would earn him favors from Rami. Perhaps he saw me as his means to reach Palestine and the Romans, whom his new king would crush. Or perhaps he was truly taken with me, as one who could love him in a way that his god could not. Hadn’t he said as much?
As the days passed I found myself drawn to the warmth of his hopefulness and the smile that expressed it. When he left camp to scout, I noticed his absence more than I noticed Saba’s.
On the sixth day, as the sun set in the west, Saba decided that we should cross a shallow canyon rather than take the time to find another way. We traversed the steep, rocky slope, leading the camels on foot, then remounted and resumed our ride. Without warning Raza, Judah’s camel, snorted in pain and stumbled to her knees.
With a cry Judah was off and tugging at his mount’s leg, which had been caught in a hole between two boulders.
“Raza!” he cried. “Stupid, stupid Raza!”
Unable to free the leg, he slid around and tugged at one boulder. The stone rolled away but the camel only protested with greater pain, jerking away as her leg flopped beneath her. With a mighty crash, she collapsed.
We could all see the damage, for her leg had been snapped below the knee. The sight made me ill.
“She’s broken her leg!” Judah threw his legs under Raza’s neck and cradled his camel’s head in his lap, stroking her fur. “No, no, Raza. No! Forgive me! I beg you, forgive me!”
I watched as he clung to Raza as he might a child, rocking, distraught. It was the first time I’d seen Judah troubled. We all knew what this meant.
Saba watched, face flat, as Judah poured out his heart.
“Forgive me, Raza… you are the ornament of the sands. There is no camel as magnificent as you. The stars tell your story to the whole world. Forgive your careless master. Forgive me, Raza…”
I thought he might cry, but he gathered himself and hushed his mount until Raza’s panicked breathing calmed. Then, whispering a prayer to his god, Judah quickly withdrew his curved dagger and slit the camel’s throat.
Raza did not struggle as her blood spilled onto the rocky path. She rested her head on the ground and closed her eyes, as though welcoming the one fate that surely freed her from a harsh existence.
I watched in silence, remembering my son’s fate, wondering if my own would be similar. Could I die so gracefully? Perhaps Raza and my son shared the most fortunate fate among us.
Judah was quiet that night. He and Saba harvested Raza’s liver and heart, welcome treats after a week of only bread and dates and milk. We did not have time to dry any meat, so we ate only what was most nourishing and left the rest for any buzzards that might venture so deep into the Nafud. Without Raza’s milk our daily portions would be cut, but this would not cause a problem, Judah said.
The other camels were by now attached to Raza, and they wandered about the camp, moaning and staring at her corpse near the rocks.
We rose early and left the camp while it was dark. Never had I been so grateful to be out in the open sands once again. Within the hour Judah, now mounted on the male camel, began to sing again. He would not allow himself to dwell on Raza’s passing, for camels live and die at the whim of fate, and man is master over beast. This too is the Bedu way.
But the smile he offered me as a red sun rose over the dunes behind us wasn’t as bright as it had been the day before, and I knew that he mourned Raza still.
“We are almost across the sands, Maviah. Soon you will be in Galilee and in Herod’s courts.”
“Soon,” I said, returning his smile. Indeed, we were more than halfway.
But then thoughts of what I would do if I did gain entrance to Herod’s courts overtook me.
“How are women seen in Palestine?”
“They will accept you, Maviah. You have the dagger of Varus.”
“Yes, the dagger, but I am a woman. How do the Jews count a woman?”
“I am a Jew,” he said. “And I count the woman who rides beside me now as a star in my sky.”
I blushed. Saba had heard and turned our way. Why I should feel bashful, I didn’t know. Perhaps because I was afraid to acknowledge my own longing even though I could not deny that I was drawn to Judah.
“They say Herod’s lust for beautiful women knows no end,” Saba said. “Rami is no fool to send his daughter.”
Judah glared at the dark warrior. “You dare speak this way in front of her? What is this madness?”
Saba’s right brow arched. He glanced at me, then faced the sands ahead. “I mean no offense, Judah. Maviah is well equipped to know the truth.”
“This is the truth: I will sever the arm of any man who dares lift a finger against you, Maviah.”
“Rami does not ask for Herod’s arm,” Saba said. “Only his favor. At whatever cost.”
“Pay Saba no mind. I will not allow Herod to touch even one hair on your head!”
And yet even as the sun rose high, I did pay Saba’s statement some mind. Truly, I was even more concerned about this king who had such lust for power and pleasure.
But all my thoughts were swept away that afternoon when the winds rose at our backs. The sandstorm came so quickly that even Judah and Saba were caught off guard.
We were spread wide on rolling white dunes, plodding under a glaring sun. Judah was slumped in the wooden saddle, haggard, I thought. Saba rode far ahead and to my right, cresting the next low dune.
It was then that I looked up and saw Saba waving his hands. His shout was distant but urgent. Judah’s cry of alarm joined it. He’d turned his mount and was headed toward me.
“Down! Take Shunu to the ground!”
I twisted in the saddle and saw the storm then, only a hundred paces behind us, a churning wall of sand approaching with such speed that for a moment I thought it was sliding down a large dune.
The hot wind hit my face and I gasped. Even in that gasp, before the chaos was fully upon us, I sucked in the leading sand.
Shunu roared and jumped into a run, nearly toppling me from her back.
“No, Shunu. Slow, slow!” She slowed, and I dropped to the ground, lead rope firmly in hand. But the moment I landed, we were smothered by darkness. The sand swallowed us, and Shunu bolted again, tearing that lead from my grasp.
I screamed at her. “Shunu!” I stumbled in the direction she’d gone, instinctively hiding my face in the folds of my sleeve. “Shunu!”
My second call didn’t reach my own ears, for the roar of the wind tore it away from me. I could not see, nor could I breathe. The sand was too thick, swirling around me so that I lost all sense of direction.
And yet the thought of losing Shunu was more terrifying to me than the sand. She was the companion upon whom I depended for survival. It was her milk that I drank, her back that I rode, her nose that pushed against my neck when I was lonely.
So I lunged wildly, praying with each step that I would run into her.
“Shunu! Shunu!”
I had been in storms before, but never without shelter. It is known that the darker sands in the southern Nafud are heavy and do not blow so freely. But we were in the white, and the ferocity of that wind flung the sand at me with biting fury.
It had just become clear to me that I must stop and protect my eyes and face from the sand when the ground beneath me gave way and I tumbled down a long slope.
When I came to a stop, I was sure that a mountain was crashing down on top of me. I pulled my mantle over my face, bowed to the ground, and waited as the wind roared over me.
Where Judah was, I couldn’t know. He was surely as blind as I. I understood now that he’d wanted me to pull Shunu to the ground, perhaps even hobble her forelegs to keep her from rising. Any attempt on his part to find me now would be futile. He could not abandon his own mount.
It was dark and difficult to draw clean air, even beneath the covering of my cloak. The finest sand pierced straight through, coating my face and hair with dust. Only by slowing my breath could I manage not to choke, and then only by drawing at the air through clenched, sand-filled teeth. I kept my eyes closed.
There are two kinds of sandstorms. The first and the kindest is called a haboob, which often arrives before a thunderstorm and is short-lived. But in the deepest desert, even a haboob may come without cloud or rain.
The second, called the simoom, brings no rain and may last for days. I prayed we had been visited by a haboob, because I knew that I could not withstand those conditions for long.
The howling wind seemed not to care about the plight of anyone in its path. Many said the sandstorm was the fury of the gods visited on those who had not properly sought their mercy. If so, I knew not how I had angered Isis or Dushares. Or was this Judah’s deity, angry at him for showing kindness to a woman who was not a Jew?
But I refused to believe any of these thoughts, and instead I prayed for the mercy of all deities.
For a very long time I remained huddled on the ground, and still the sand blew until, to my horror, I realized that it was building up around me. Indeed, I was already half-buried. So I crawled forward to be free of that grave.
Once again my breathing quickened in panic.
Once again I had to calm myself so as not to suffocate.
I was utterly alone in that storm. My prayers could not reach past the sand. I imagined Judah’s voice calling out to me, his arm snatching me from the ground. My heart ached for rescue.
None came.
Once again the world mocked me. In one moment my father and all his great power had been crushed. In one moment my son’s life had been snatched away. So in one moment this storm had come from a clear sky to smother us, uncaring of the waste it would leave behind.
What security, then, was there for me?
I crawled out of the sand six times before the wind began to calm. And then, nearly as quickly as the wind had risen, it departed. And soon after, the dust.
I pushed myself to my feet and looked at my cloak, somewhat surprised to be alive. It was covered in dust, as were my head and hands. Sand was my new skin. Gazing about I saw a desert that I did not recognize—whether the sands had been reformed or I’d wandered farther than I’d thought, I didn’t know.
Above, the sky was blue again. There was no sign of life.
“Judah?”
I scrambled to the top of a dune and studied the horizon. To the west I saw receding dust clouds. In every other direction, only white sand.
“Judah!” This time I screamed his name.
I heard a very faint reply.
I stumbled forward, calling out as I plunged down one smaller dune and ran up another, my sandals slipping over the sand.
I saw Judah on his camel when I crested the dune. He rode in a fast trot toward me with Saba hard on his heels. The sight of him striking toward me filled my heart with gratitude.
He slid from his mount and rushed up to me. Not concerned with propriety, he threw his arms around me and pulled me close.
“Thank God, thank God.” He drew back and quickly began to brush the sand from my head and shoulders. “I feared you were lost.”
He looked like an old man with white hair, white eyebrows—even the hairs of his arms were coated in a film of dust. I laughed, not because he looked strange but because I was flooded with relief. But I blamed it on his appearance.
“Just look at you,” I laughed.
“And you! Is it a woman or an ash tree?”
Saba slowed his trotting camel as he approached. “Where is Shunu?”
Silence engulfed us as we looked at the sands for any sign of my camel.
“Two of the skins broke when I went down,” he said. I saw the wrinkled waterskins hanging behind his saddle and knew immediately that we were in more trouble than even I had imagined. Shunu had been carrying the rest of the water, except for a single nearly depleted skin on the male Judah rode.
If we could not find Shunu, we would be left with only one she-camel, and without more water, she would not yield much milk.
“She last drank three days ago,” Saba said. “We must find Shunu.”
“Yes, we must,” I said.
But even I knew that finding her would be a significant challenge. The blowing sand had erased all tracks. Shunu might have wandered in circles, disoriented, looking for a way out. To my knowledge she’d never been caught in a dust storm save in the oasis, where shelter was near.
Judah and Saba searched in widening circles for an hour before returning empty-handed.
“I’m sorry, Maviah,” Judah said, somber. “We cannot find her sign. She is surely out of the storm and searching for us. We will pray that God leads her to safety.”
He was showing me kindness, because I knew as well as they did that Shunu could just as easily be buried at the bottom of a valley. Although the loss of her pained me deeply, I chose not to burden the men with my sorrow.
“If she is meant to find us, she will,” I said.
“If God wills it, she will find us,” Judah said, dismounting and pulling his camel to the sand. He motioned for me to mount. “You will ride Massu now.”
“We can both ride him.”
“Yes. But for now I walk.”
And so I traveled upon Massu, led by Judah, who walked, and Saba, who rode ahead to scout the way, keeping an eye out for Shunu.
The sun now seemed hotter and each step heavier, weighed down by our knowledge that only the best fortune would deliver us to water before we dried up. This was how the Nafud swallowed its victims and spit them back out as bleached bones upon its dunes.
When Judah began to lose strength, he climbed up behind me and seated himself with one leg folded under him and the other resting on the camel’s rump. How he didn’t fall off, I could not fathom.
His closeness relieved my anxiety, and when we had the energy, we talked quietly. There, on Massu’s back, I listened to his gentle voice as he spoke of adventures that had taken him into more raids and battles than I could imagine, for he was often chosen by my father to champion and avenge clans who’d suffered loss to raiding tribes.
Rami chose him because he wasn’t Kalb. Indeed, if Judah had been of Kalb blood, a clan might have been insulted at the suggestion that they needed the help of a single champion. But because he was a bond servant in the service of their sheikh, all clans welcomed his sword and bow.
I learned also of his own tribe and of the woman he’d loved before coming to the Kalb. And Judah learned more about my time in Egypt, of my education and of Johnin, whom I had loved. Truly, I had never spoken so freely with anyone since leaving Egypt, and I found myself wanting to tell him everything. But I didn’t want to be tedious, for I knew that he would patiently listen to hours of talk, even if bored by it.
Judah had called me a queen, and yet I felt he was the more honorable.
We had hoped that Shunu might find her way to us while we camped, but when we rose in the predawn hour and detected no sign of her, we knew that she was lost to us. If she was still alive, other Bedu might find her and treasure her, for she was a beautiful animal, friend to all men.
For two more days we plodded on. The stretches of silence between us lengthened, as talking itself robbed us of energy. We would make it, Saba and Judah both said. It is known that a man can live thirty days without food, and only two without water or milk, and yet the Nafud might cut these spans in half. Still, we had just enough for the three days required to reach Aela.
But then, on the following afternoon, our ninth since leaving Dumah, fate dealt us another blow. Saba’s she-camel, Wabitu, went searching for a morsel during a short rest and returned with her waterskin torn by a sharp rock or thorn.
The last of our water had leaked out.
Saba invoked the names of many gods in cursing the she-camel, who only looked at him past her long lashes, too dumb to know that she might have just sealed her own death.
Judah looked from the camel to Saba, then to me, then at the horizon. I had come to expect the most positive outlook from Judah, and his silence unnerved me.
“It’s too far,” he finally said, turning to Saba.
Saba did not dispute the claim.
“We must head south and try for the well at Sidin. There was a rain in that region eight months ago. The well may still have water clean enough to drink.”
“South?” I asked. “We are meant to go north, to Palestine.”
“We cannot cross the sands without water,” Saba said. He regarded Judah. “I have only heard of this well. You know the way?”
Judah looked to the heavens, then thoughtfully at the horizon. “With stars I will know where we are and where we must go.”
“If there is no water?” I asked.
Judah said nothing, which meant everything. There were no other wells near the Sidin. If the well was dry, the journey would be our last.
“There is no better option,” Saba said. “We rest and wait for the stars.”
What struck me even more squarely than the dire nature of our predicament was Judah and Saba’s acceptance of it. All surely dread death, but they, who lived so close to it at all times, showed no fear. Facing death was a way of life for them, but I knew that one could walk into the face of death only so many times before being consumed.
We found shade at the base of a jagged cliff, surely the same rock where Saba’s she-camel had consigned us all to ruin. She looked sad and wore the same perpetual pout all camels wear, though I was sure she sensed Saba’s displeasure with her. Camels are far more sensitive beasts than horses, far more inquisitive and affectionate, always seeking the attention of their friends and their masters. Wabitu had suffered the loss not only of Shunu and Raza, but of Saba’s approval as well.
I approached her and rubbed her neck, whispering words of comfort. She sniffed at my hair and smacked her lips near my ear to show her appreciation.
I could only look at her with compassion now, for she did not know the consequence of her mistake. Were we not the same, awaiting the turns of fate at the mercy of ambitious gods?
We rested until dark. There was little to speak of, and even less energy to speak at all. Even so, I wanted to shake off my concerns.
“Are you worried, Saba?” I asked.
“It will be as it will be.”
His words offered no peace, so I looked hopefully at Judah, who’d reclined against the rock after offering me the saddle and the blankets on which to rest my head.
He smiled, but I knew it was for my sake alone. And in his eyes I finally saw fear’s shadow.
“No, Maviah. God will see you through.”
I briefly thought to ask why his god, if he could see, had led us to this desolate place, but I held my tongue. I was too preoccupied by my fears.
If Judah was afraid, then I should be terrified.
And suddenly I was.