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Ash Storm
“He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens,
and by his power he led out the south wind.” Psalm 78:26
Atarah made her way down the mountain on wobbly legs. Her empty arms ached for the baby. Obviously, Tirza had stolen him to force Atarah and Shua back to the mountain. The woman needed slaves to bring in supplies and they fit her purposes nicely. Tirza knew they wouldn’t try to run without the baby. Used and deceived. Atarah’s heart tight fisted at the injustice. She pushed away thoughts of The Dream. The Light no longer comforted her. She tried to wipe her mind blank, but the truth tormented her.
Tirza would hold Gadreel captive until all the food needed by the community was harvested and stored, but by then it would be too late for Atarah and Shua. By then giants would have desolated the fields and spared nothing anyone could scavenge for a journey. By then Peleg would have forced his rancid self on both of them. Bile rose into her throat and she turned to heave.
She squared her shoulders. None of that mattered. She’d do anything necessary to spare Gadreel. Even if it meant adding her bones to a pile in one of the temples.
“Come this way.” Shua touched Atarah’s arm and motioned beyond the golden barley fields below. “One of Tirza’s men said the others are harvesting grapes and wheat. We’re supposed to collect pods from some of those tall plants beyond the barley. It’s too dark to really see them from here, but we’ll be able to see them when we get close.” She pointed to a dark area several fields away.
Moonlight shone on the white ash covering the ground, making the fields and meadows nearly as brilliant as day. The brightness was such a relief after the thick darkness of the underground. Atarah idly wondered if Mother might see them as dark moving dots if something prompted her to stare out over the fields below.
The two women moved along in ankle-deep ash which crept between foot and sandal, abrading their soles and toes. Until she felt the dryness of the light gray powder again, Atarah had forgotten the eruption they witnessed from the ledge. Strong winds had blown much of the ash off the tops of leaves and grasses. A piquant fragrance wafted up from the field. Atarah reached to her side and, without breaking pace, snapped a fuzzy green leaf from a waist-high plant. She held it to her nose. “Mmmm. Mint.” The smell made her feel cleansed. Almost alive.
“I knew I smelled mint.” Shua excitedly copied Atarah’s actions, pulling off a leaf and breathing in the aroma before stuffing the herb in her mouth. “I’d rather have mint as tea, but the leaves taste great after Hoda’s bread.”
“And Peleg’s breath.”
Shua laughed.
“The mint plants are all around us. We’re crushing stems with every step.” Atarah removed her scarf and tied the fabric in a knot and looped the scarf over her shoulder, forming a pocket at her side. Picking as she walked, she loaded the pouch with the perfumed herb. “Gadreel will love this.”
When the scarf began to bulge, she tilted her head as she massaged her neck and rolled her shoulders. A flash of color caught her eye. Orange rivers of molten fire threaded down more than one far-away slope. She turned first to one side then the other, surveying the mountains. The eruptions were directly in her line of vision. Why hadn’t she noticed before? She chided herself for her lack of observance. This was life or death. She couldn’t allow anything to distract her from seeing the obvious. Brilliant rolling color should have been the first bit of information her eyes picked up when she walked out of the cave.
“Look!” Atarah pointed and counted. “Ten. There have been ten eruptions.”
“Wow!” Shua scanned the slopes. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure, but Noah’s mountain seems unaffected. As always.” Atarah pointed behind them. “It’s that one.” From this lower vantage she couldn’t see the shape of the ark and vaguely wondered how she recognized the mountain.
Shua’s head swiveled to ascertain the location. “Hopefully, Tirza won’t send us there to collect.” She sounded nearly as afraid of the ark as of giants or Dagaar.
Atarah understood. Dread filled her when she thought of the ark, too. Even though her views about Noah had changed, long-held attitudes didn’t just evaporate overnight.
The sweet fragrance of allspice wafted on the shifting breeze and Atarah closed her eyes, basking briefly in the pleasure.
“The variety of plants is mind-boggling. There’s like a feast of smells here.”
“Unfortunately. Abundance draws the giants,” Atarah said.
She marveled that she could carry on a normal conversation while her emotions felt as though they were rotted with gangrene. She’d never realized before that her mind could run along on two levels simultaneously. The surface of her mind took note of the scenery and chatted with Shua. Yet all the while her deeper self refused to release the worry about Gadreel. Plus she stayed on the alert for giants and Dagaar and Peleg and Tirza and the danger of being too close to the ark. Maybe that was six levels. And occasionally her thoughts flitted home to stew about Mother. Who knew how many levels?
“I figured out why those bushes we’re supposed to harvest are so far away,” Atarah mused. “We’re giant-bait.”
A rueful smile lifted one corner of Shua’s mouth. “Our screams will give the others time to escape?”
“Yes.” Atarah scowled. “Even worse, I’m afraid Tirza deliberately sent us a long way from Gadreel. Scares me.” The image of the baby sent a flush of fear and powerlessness through Atarah. She paused to pull in a deep calming breath.
A revolting odor stung her lungs and the small hairs on the back of her neck lifted. “Giants!” she hissed. Dropping to the ground she yanked the slave down beside her.
Shua sniffed and her eyes shot open. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “The gods help us!”
Should they stay put or run? If they held very still they might escape detection. “Can you tell which direction that odor is coming from?” Atarah longed to cover her nose, but instinctively understood that as the monsters closed in the smell would grow stronger. She needed to know when that happened.
Hunkered down in the tall grass, the women sniffed the wind and scanned the fields. Another strong whiff of the odor sent a shudder through Atarah. “That way.” She indicated a broad field of chalky white flowers covering a rolling hill.
“Why can’t we see them?”
“Don’t know.” As she strained to pick up movement, a long-ago memory of an afternoon excursion to the valley with Father nudged Atarah. That smell. . . She gasped. “Buckwheat!” A husky chuckle escaped her lips. “That’s the smell of buckwheat. I’d forgotten how terrible buckwheat stinks.”
“That’s buckwheat?”
“Yes!”
“Oh my.” Shua pinched her nostrils. The two shook with quiet giggles.
“I’m surprised the smell is so strong at night,” Atarah managed to whisper between breathy snickers. “The ‘fragrance’ usually fades by noon. Also, I think the flowers may be blooming in the off-season.”
“Things are out-of-sync everywhere these days.”
A picture of Gadreel popped unwanted into Atarah’s mind. She brushed away the thought along with a loose strand of hair and retrieved her basket. She couldn’t let herself think about what might be happening to Gadreel. She glanced at her feet rubbed bloody by ash. Neither would she focus on her own pain.
“Let’s go.” Atarah retrieved her basket and took off at a determined run.
They pushed the pace for a few minutes to make up for lost time before tiring and moving along at a more reasonable speed.
“Tirza didn’t even bother sending someone to keep an eye on us,” Shua mused as they neared their destination.
“Didn’t need to. She knows I won’t leave the baby.”
Atarah led the way into a planting of bushes that rose to twice her height. “Here we are.” She gazed at the pod-filled foliage. “These look like small trees.” A spicy scent tickled her nostrils. “Do I smell cardamom?” Reaching high overhead she pulled down a branch and sniffed the three pods growing in a clump at the end. “Cardamom. These bushes belong to Father. He’s the only one around here who grows exotic seeds.”
“Ironic isn’t it?” Shua stifled a giggle. “You’ll be stealing from yourself.”
“Not from myself. Maybe from Dagaar.” Somehow Atarah managed to say his name without shuddering. “I’ve been disinherited by now.” She commenced pulling branches down and stripping them of pods as quickly as possible. The faster they filled containers the sooner they could see Gadreel.
“They don’t need cardamom, you know.” Atarah talked as she worked. “It’s a luxury and they’re in survival mode. They just sent us out here because the plants are so far away.” Since they’d already discussed their role as a warning system she didn’t mention the giants again. Atarah was too numb to fret about the dangers threatening her. She was exhausting all her energy worrying about Gadreel, even though she kept telling herself over and over the baby was not in danger. Tirza wouldn’t hurt him. She needed Gadreel to control Atarah and Shua.
Unfortunately, Atarah didn’t believe a word of it.
As soon as her basket was a quarter full, she decided to test the weight of the over-sized container. Plucking the pods off one final branch, she let the harvested limb snap upward. Bending at the waist, she lifted. Even though she’d grown accustomed to lugging a chubby baby, the weight of the green pods surprised her. “These will be too heavy if we can’t balance them on our heads,” she told Shua.
She gathered her muscles and jerked the basket upward. Pods spilled before she got past her shoulders. Distressed, she set the wicker on the ground and scooped them up. “Can you do it?”
“I don’t know. I’m a house slave, remember? Nobody ever taught me field skills.”
“Try.” Atarah hurried to help. Together they raised Shua’s basket and positioned it atop her head. She placed a hand on either side and practiced walking. “You’re right. It doesn’t feel too heavy this way.”
“Good. Now we just have to figure out how you’re going to help get mine situated.” But when either tried to help the other while balancing her own load, pods tumbled from their baskets. Eventually they filled Shua’s basket to the brim together and started back to the cave with it resting on her head.
Fixing her eyes on the white waterfall, Atarah half-dragged half-carried her partially-full load. She limped along shunting her basket from one thigh to the other with each step until Shua suggested they switch for awhile.
“That sounds good.” Atarah set her load on the ground and angled her head back and forth stretching her neck. She helped Shua lower her load before raising her tunic to examine both legs in the moonlight. She gingerly prodded her thighs where the basket thumped her.
“Bruised?” Shua asked as they settled the full basket on Atarah’s hair.
“Afraid so.” Atarah staggered a couple of steps before finding her stride. “The change helps. Thanks.”
Shua tried lugging her new basket the way she’d seen Atarah do it, then lowered the container of pods to the ground and walked backward dragging a path through the ash.
“Wonder what Tirza will do when she discovers we only filled one basket,” Atarah wondered aloud.
“Why don’t you pray to your god and find out?”
The slave’s disapproving tone surprised Atarah, but before she had time to say anything Shua exclaimed over the powdery grit seeping in through the holes in her basket. Her shoulders slumped in dismay. “I thought the load felt heavier because I was tired.” She sighed and lifted the basket, using Atarah’s method. She was obviously weary.
“Time to trade,” Atarah said.
“We don’t have to.”
“We should swap every little bit to make things easier,” Atarah assured her. “Help me put this down.”
Before Shua could reach for the basket, a sudden gust of wind threw Atarah off balance. She took a few running steps to keep from falling and plopped her load to the ground in a field of wheat. Cardamom pods popped up and out. She sat down hard amidst the golden plants and covered her face with her hands, brittle and teary. Though the waterfall was only a short distance away, she couldn’t go another step. Not even with Gadreel so close.
Shua sank down beside her. “We’ll never find all the pods.”
“We’re not going to try.” Atarah snapped off a head of wheat and rubbed it between her palms. “We’ll pile the lighter-weight wheat on top of the pods. That should make Tirza happy. It’s food.” Husks removed, she handed the meat of the grain to Shua and broke off another head for herself. “Eat.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
“On a trip with Father.” She shouted above a steady wind. “Years ago.” Revived by the bit of sustenance, the women pulled wheat and piled stems and heads on top of the cardamom. Wind lifted their skirts and whipped the fabric sideways. Mint leaves flew from Atarah’s pouch. Ash swirled in the air and field stalks bent double. And still the intensity of the wind increased.
“The wind will knock the basket off our heads,” Atarah yelled. “We’ll have to carry them in front of us. I’ll take the heavy one.”
Through the haze, Atarah could see other gatherers appear out of nowhere, rushing toward the cave. No longer balancing crops on heads, pairs carried baskets between them.
Step by careful step, Atarah and her slave pushed against the wind and ash. Their eyes remained fixed on the waterfall. Atarah ducked her head into her shoulder to avoid breathing grit.
“That ash stings,” Shua shouted.
“Cover your face.”
Atarah shielded her eyes and stole a glance at the scene behind. The base of Noah’s mountain had disappeared behind a wall of hazy gray.
That’s when she recognized the enormous dark cloud racing across the fields. What resembled a close-up version of the ash she’d seen bursting from the mountain during the eruption sped toward her along the ground. The ominous shape pulsed with intermittent light. Jagged spears of white fire shot back and forth through the cloud’s interior.
Atarah knew instantly that the massive cloud was comprised of ash whipped up and driven by the fierce wind. She’d been warned about such storms since childhood. She had also heard of lightning, but never actually witnessed the phenomenon and had no idea such power could be sparked by ash particles rubbing against one another.
Terrified, she lost her hold on her basket. She knew she should move, but couldn’t force her muscles to take action. The strange juxtaposition of the storm with the full round moon hanging peacefully in an undisturbed band of black sky above the chaos mesmerized her. It was surreal. Clutching handfuls of wheat stalks, she froze, transfixed.
Shua stood with her back to the wind and ash. Screaming. And screaming.
Finally, her screams snapped Atarah back to reality. She grabbed the hysterical slave’s arm and dragged her toward the still-visible waterfall, praying they wouldn’t smother in the thick air. The world turned black and the waterfall disappeared. Atarah yanked her slave to the ground. She covered her own nose and mouth with her robe and blindly helped Shua do the same. Breathing through several layers of cloth, the women located the granite cliff and felt along the smooth rock to the cave.
******
Prone on the wet cave floor, Atarah listened to the wind howling above the roar of water. Tears of relief seeped from under her closed lashes. They were safe. For now.
She pulled herself to a sitting position and splashed water into her eyes. Blinking, she opened them slowly, wiping away grit. Touching Shua’s cheek with the backs of her fingers, she shouted over the noise. “You okay?”
The slave’s eyes fluttered open and she grinned unexpectedly. “I’ve got ash in my ears.” Her laugh changed to a cough and she sat up to spit out black ash.
“Me, too. And look at my nails!” Atarah held up her hands.
“Your nails?” Shua said incredulously. “Look at your clothes and hair and the grime on your face and . . . Who are you anyway?”
Atarah felt her hair and laughter rang out for a brief moment. Then she remembered Gadreel. She leapt to her feet, her heart pounding with urgency. “How are we going to find our way to Gadreel without a torch?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” A torch flared, burnishing the rock walls of the cave. Peleg’s malevolent grin flickered in the light. Five of the muscular men who had accompanied Tirza earlier formed a wall of force behind him, arms crossed.
“Clean them up before you bring them to me,” Peleg commanded. He flicked the back of his hand toward Atarah. “I’ll take her first.”
City of a Thousand Gods
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There are forty-four chapters in the book.
There are forty-four chapters in the book.
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