The Lamp of Darkness by - (most recommended books TXT) 📖

listen to me. He thinks I’m too young.”

Zim laughed. “I was barely older than you when I started coming. You’re not too young—you just look terrified. Come on.” Zim walked past, waving for me to follow. “Emanuel!” he called with his habitual confidence.

The old man saw Zim, and a genuine smile stretched across his face. “Zimri. I was hoping you’d come back. We can use your drum.” Emanuel caught sight of me. “I told your friend to come back in a couple of years. We don’t need any boys playing.”

Zim shook with laughter. “You must have some group this year if you think your musicians are better than the King’s.”

Emanuel started, his eyes lit with curiosity. “The King’s?”

“This is Lev ben Menachem. I played with him at the King’s wedding. I told him to come to Shiloh—I figured you could use the help.”

“But he’s just a boy.”

“You judge too much by appearances.” Zim ran a hand through his wavy, dark hair. “Have you listened to him play?”

“No.” Emanuel scratched his beard.

“Lev, let’s do that song we played for the juggler. You start, and I’ll join in. If the rest of you think you can follow along, feel free to try.”

All eyes were on me again, but now it felt completely different. I took my time preparing to play, first stretching out the fingers on my left hand, then on my right. No one spoke as they waited. I closed my eyes and let my fingers go.

Zim picked the right tune. It was fast, and the melody jumped around a complicated rhythm. If I hadn’t spent so much time practicing before the wedding, I would never have been able to lead it. As it was, I struggled to play it on my own. Zim let me start solo, then filled in the rhythm underneath. After one round, a nevel added its voice, not quite in rhythm. A halil joined in with a high, warbling note, but struggled to stay in tune and fell away.

Before long, all seven musicians were playing—the quality of the music nothing near the caliber of the wedding. I played the notes as crisply as I could in order to guide the others—suddenly aware of how much my abilities had grown since the gathering began. All of Daniel’s lessons had taken hold. I had more power and speed than before, but that wasn’t all. I was playing more loosely now, as I did at the wedding after two goblets of the King’s wine. This time, though, the freedom couldn’t have come from drink. It must have been from that morning’s flood of tears.

We played through the melody twice, then Zim departed from the rhythm into short rapid beats. I brought the tune to an end, sealing it with a bold final note that continued to reverberate even as I removed my hand from the strings and opened my eyes.

Emanuel’s attention was locked on me, eyes wide and mouth slack. Zim held back a laugh. “You can stay,” Emanuel said. “Let’s try that song again. We can add it tonight if the rest of you get it sharper.”

A molten sun faded in the west as a full moon rose over the ridge on the eastern horizon. The crowds on both sides of the hill continued to grow as the day wore on, but still hadn’t mingled. The musicians set up on a hillside overlooking an expanse of trellised grapevines, their avenues or arbors forming shadowed lanes over the land that lay between the two gatherings. An old man approached the near group, and chatter ceased as they surrounded him. I could tell that he spoke loudly, but we were too far away to hear what he was saying.

When the old man finished, he left the first group and walked along the edge of the vineyard toward the second, passing directly below the musicians.

I nudged Zim and pointed. “Hey, that’s Master Yosef!”

“That’s right. He comes here every year. That’s how I got hired to play for the prophets this summer—he heard me last year and asked me to come to the gathering.”

“I’m surprised to see him at a festival.”

“He likes to come and make sure everything happens in ‘the right way.’”

“What has to happen in the right way?”

Zim cocked his head and examined me slyly out of the corner of his eye. “You really don’t know what happens here?”

“No, what?”

Zim threw me a mischievous grin. “You’ll see soon enough.”

The second group now gathered around Yosef. When he finished speaking, only a smudge of color remained in the western sky, and the moon glowed white and immense above the eastern hills. Yosef waved a flaming torch back and forth above his head.

“That’s our signal.” Emanuel raised his hand. “Lev, lead us in that song from the wedding.” I struck the first notes, and the others joined in, smoother than before, but still struggling.

The signal was not just for us. Both groups moved toward the vineyard, spreading out as they approached. Some men of the near group hesitated before walking under the bowers, but there was no such hesitation from the far-off crowd. Even from a distance, I could see that they were dancing, and moonlight reflected on their brilliant, white garments. Yosef sat beside a bonfire on the hillside below us, next to two of his disciples.

As they reached the edge of the trailing vines, I got a better view of the dancers. “Hey, those are girls!”

“That’s right.” Zim snickered, his head bobbing to the beat.

“How can Master Yosef agree to this?”

Zim laughed louder. “He says it’s one of the holiest days of the year.”

The last of the girls danced into the vineyard, and I could no longer make out anyone clearly. Hundreds of shapes moved beneath the vines, limbs twirling, their garments silver against the darkened ground. We performed our fastest songs, one after the other, and my energy surged as I imagined hundreds of girls dancing to my music.

Toward the end of our third song, a couple emerged from the vineyard walking side-by-side up the hill toward Yosef. They stopped before the prophet, faces lit by the fire, staring into each other’s eyes. The man appeared neither young nor old, with a severely crooked nose that distorted an otherwise handsome face. She was much younger than he and wore an elaborately embroidered dress, her long braids falling from a white scarf on her head. She was very pretty, and there was something unnervingly familiar about her.

I continued to stare until it came to me—I knew her. Her name was Hadassah, the daughter of one of the poorest families in Levonah. She looked so different tonight, I was surprised I’d recognized her at all. She must have spent hours, if not days, cleaning herself and braiding her hair. I had seen her only in dirty, tattered clothes. How could her family afford such an ornate dress?

Yosef addressed them, but his words were lost in the music. The couple glanced at each other and nodded with the expression of children getting away with something forbidden. They bowed their heads, and Yosef placed one hand on the man’s head, holding the other just above Hadassah’s. When he removed his hands, they gazed at each other again, clasped hands, and withdrew from the fire.

More couples emerged from the vineyard, ascending the hill toward Yosef, and waiting in a line that began to stretch down to its very edge. “What is he saying to them?” I asked Zim.

“Go listen.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Something about the expression in Zim’s eyes made my fears seem childish. I peered around for Emanuel, but he was nowhere in sight. With six other musicians playing, I wouldn’t be missed if I went quickly. I left my kinnor and crept down the hillside, stooping under a rocky shelf that projected out just behind Yosef. A new couple stood before him now, both rather short and broadly built.

“It’s hard to see in the vineyard,” Yosef said, “So I want you to take a good look at each other in the firelight.” The couple peered at each other and smiled. “You are certain of your choice?”

The man said “Yes,” and the woman nodded.

“Very well. Bow your heads. May the Holy One bless your home to be like the tent of Isaac and Rivka. May you be blessed to raise righteous children, and to eat from the bounty of the land.” Yosef lowered his hands, indicating the two disciples at his side. “These men are your witnesses that you have been bound today in holiness. You may go.” The man stepped away from the fire first, and his bride followed him into the darkness.

I returned to my place among the musicians, my thoughts a whirl. “They’re getting married?”

“That’s right,” Zim said.

“But I’ve been to plenty of weddings, why—”

“Nobody wants to get married this way. But some families can’t find good matches for their children. They might have no wealth, no connections. And look around, some of these people are just plain ugly. But they all come to Shiloh and find each other in the vineyard.”

“I recognized that first girl; she’s from my town. Her family is really poor, but she was wearing a fancy dress.”

“All the girls borrow dresses—it’s part of the rules of Shiloh. No one can tell who is rich or poor in the vineyard.”

“So how do they find each other?”

“The girls just go under the vines, dancing and calling out to the men. The pretty ones say ‘Come find yourself a beautiful wife.’ The ones from good families say ‘Find yourself a wife to build a family with.’ Inside that vineyard is the only place where the people of Israel don’t hold back.”

“So what if they aren’t beautiful or from good families?”

“They say, ‘Choose a wife for the sake of heaven,’ though I’m not sure why heaven should prefer an ugly wife!”

A place in Israel where no one holds back—no wonder Zim was drawn to it. “Did you ever think of going into the vineyard and finding a bride for yourself?”

“Me? Get married?” Zim threw back his head with a loud laugh. “I’m living in Shomron now.”

“So?”

“So Baal isn’t the only god that Izevel brought down with her from Tzidon.”

“Who else is there?”

“There’s Ashera.”

“Who’s he?”

“She. She’s the mother of Baal, the goddess of the Earth.”

“Yeah? Do her priests also cut themselves up?”

“Priestesses. And no, they don’t.”

“So what’s her worship like?”

“A bit like this. Except in the morning, you don’t wake up with a wife.”

The sun already blazed above the mountains when Zim shook me awake the next morning. My first thought was how strange it was for Zim to be awake before me, and then I realized I was bathed in sweat.

“You were screaming.”

“It’s nothing,” I said, sitting up, “just a nightmare.” But it wasn’t nothing. For the first time, I remembered a detail from my old dream. There was a horse, driven fast. I wanted to close my eyes, to hold onto the vision, to see more.

“You sure you’re alright?” The concern on Zim’s face appeared so out of place.

If I was going to talk about my nightmares with anyone, it wasn’t Zim. I opened the sack of food my aunt had prepared and pulled out bread and cheese, giving up on any hope of slipping back into the dream to learn more. “Come eat.” I watched Zim help himself to a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese. At least it was Zim and not Yonaton who’d heard me screaming. Yonaton’s concern wouldn’t have been pushed aside so easily, certainly not with a bribe of food.

In the vineyard and the surrounding fields, couples were