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

play in my mind. A melody whispered in my ears, and my shoulders relaxed. Thought and memory faded as my fingers worked strings they couldn’t feel, plucking the notes sharper in my mind than I ever did with my hands.

Yosef finally broke the silence. “What can you tell me about our guest?” The disciples turned toward their teacher, eyes still closed. I blushed, hoping no one would mention the incident with Dahlia at the spring. One replied, “He is a boy, Master.”

“Why do you say so?”

“His footsteps. It took him eight steps to get from the door to the chair. It takes me five or six. Also, his steps were soft, lighter than a man’s, but not hesitant like a woman’s would be on entering.”

“But slightly uneven,” the disciple next to him added, “as if he’s walking with a limp.” I touched my left knee, still aching from the fall that morning.

Yosef was not yet satisfied. “What else?”

“He’s a musician, Master.”

“Interesting. Why do you say so Nadav?”

“He’s tapping his feet.” I peered down; I hadn’t realized my feet were tapping out the melody in my head.

“Do only musicians tap their feet?”

“No, I even do it myself sometimes.” The disciple cocked his head to the side. “But there’s something different about the way he taps, the rhythm is more…complex…than when I do it.”

“I see.” Yosef’s voice gave nothing away, but he was smiling. “What else?”

The navi’s eyes swept back and forth across the disciples, but no one responded. Finally, the one who scratched his nose earlier said, “He’s uncomfortable with us speaking about him.”

“What tells you this, Elad?”

“When Nadav described him tapping his feet, he stopped, and he’s breathing faster than he was before.” Instantly my cheeks grew hot.

“Very perceptive.”

This was my first experience with using the ears to see, and I was amazed at how much the disciples were able to learn just by listening. Yet, within half a year, the skills of these disciples would seem basic to me. When one enters a place that light cannot penetrate, his ears become his eyes. I would learn to hear the difference between a wall and a doorway and to distinguish the footstep of friend from enemy.

“The time has come to take mercy on our guest who has provided an opportunity for so much insight. Open your eyes and greet Lev, a musician that Master Uriel has hired to play for us during the gathering.” Yosef smiled at Nadav, the one who had guessed I was a musician, and from the look of gratitude on his face, I gathered that a smile from Yosef was a rare reward.

“I must ask you to excuse us now, Lev. We will meet again tomorrow at the junction.”

The sun was approaching its midpoint in the sky when I left Yosef’s house. I walked back, barely thinking about where I was going, mulling over everything I’d seen and heard. In all the stories my uncle had taught me, the Holy One simply chose the prophet—there was never any mention of disciples or training. Yet, Raphael said that all prophets, every single one of them, had trained. Some could have learned from other prophets, as Raphael was learning from Yosef, but what about the others? Abraham and Moses had been alone, cut off from any other prophets—where could they have trained?

Unbidden, an image rose in my mind of sitting on the ground in our sukkah, listening to Uncle Menachem tell the stories of the prophets. This was my favorite time of year, after the grape harvest, when we moved outside for the seven-day festival, sheltered only by a roof of fallen branches. During Sukkot, we worked as little as possible, spending our time inside the sukkah, singing, feasting on a roasted ram, and telling stories. I couldn’t remember having my nightmare even once while sleeping inside the fragile walls of the sukkah.

These days, most men considered shepherds little better than illiterate thieves, respecting no man’s boundaries, and ignorant of the ways of Israel. But on each night of Sukkot, Uncle Menachem told the story of one of the seven shepherds of Israel: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aharon, Joseph and David. It always seemed strange that our greatest leaders came from a trade so widely despised, but I never thought to question how they became prophets. In the stories the Holy One simply addressed them—that was all.

I turned the stories over in my mind as I wound through the streets of Beit El. It couldn’t just be coincidence that they were all shepherds—could they have trained for prophecy while in the wilderness with their flocks?

As my mind wandered, my feet led me back to the gate of Beit El. I stopped just inside the heavy wooden doors, realizing that Uriel would not look for me much before sundown. I had time for myself, a rarity in Levonah. I turned my head up and sniffed—the scent of roasting meat hung in the air. I immediately knew where I wanted to go; I just needed to get there.

I hurried back to the main square and spotted a farmer drawing a lamb up a wide thoroughfare. I crossed the square to follow, and the enticing aroma of sizzling fat and meat thickened as I left the open plaza. I was on the right trail.

The road climbed gently, the stone pavers underfoot polished by the steps of countless feet. Flights of two or three stairs occasionally broke its smooth incline. Before long, we had walked enough to cross all of Levonah twice, yet we weren’t even at the center of the city. Of course, Levonah was little more than a farming village compared to the Holy City of Beit El, where Jacob—one of the seven shepherds himself—had built an altar a thousand years before. The street broadened into a marketplace. Open storefronts lined the sides, and freestanding stalls ran down the middle. The man leading the lamb disappeared into the crowd, but it no longer mattered—I had arrived.

The familiar animal odor of earth, blood and manure filled the air, and sheep bleated from a storefront on my right. I stepped in, seeing that the store opened out to a pen in the back, where lambs lapped water from a trough. “How much for one of those?” I asked, though I knew I didn’t have enough copper to buy one.

The burly shopkeeper eyed my dirty tunic. “The lambs start at three shekel silver, the rams go up to eight.”

“Eight shekel silver? We get only half of that for a ram that size.”

“A shepherd on your first trip to Beit El, eh? The sheep you sell are for eating; it doesn’t matter if they have a bad eye or walk with a limp. Mine have no flaws. If you get any big ones in your flock like that, bring them to me. I’ll give you a lot more than you’ll get from the slaughterers.”

A rhythmic cooing rose from dozens of holes carved into the wall. “How much for a dove?”

“I can give you a good one for half a shekel.” He pulled a small iron weight from a pocket of his smock and put it on one end of a scale. On the second pan, I dropped a few copper pieces, my earnings from the wedding earlier in the summer. Just as my fourth copper piece landed on the pan, it sank, bobbing up and down until it came level with the iron. It was most of what I owned, but I couldn’t miss this chance—plus a hefty sum awaited me at the end of the gathering. An image of Dahlia floated into my mind, her nose crinkling with envy when she heard I’d gone to Beit El a year early.

The shopkeeper stepped onto a short ladder, untied the reed cover over one of the holes, slipped both hands in, and deftly pulled out a dove. It struggled, then relaxed in his grip. “Hold it like this, with both hands over its wings.” He passed me the brown bird streaked with its purple feather-tips. “You don’t want it to fly away.” I gripped it the way I was shown. The small body squirmed in my hands, its heart beat wildly. Its feathers barely contained the bird’s fine bones; I felt as though they’d crack if I squeezed too tightly.

“Hold it firm,” he chided me. “If you let it struggle, it might get hurt. A pity to waste your copper on an unfit offering.”

I tightened my grip and the bird relaxed. “What do I do now?”

“Take it to the altar. Follow the crowd uphill toward the smoke.” Unable to contain my excitement, I snorted out a laugh. The shopkeeper’s eyes narrowed, and his beefy hand clapped onto my shoulder. “Wait, I forgot to ask. You’re of age, are you not?”

I shook my head. “Not for another year.”

He wrapped his big hands around mine, taking control of the passive dove and shaking his head with a half-smile. “I should’ve asked first. You can’t make an offering until you’re of age. I’ll not have you sin on my account.” He stepped up the ladder and returned the bird carefully to its hole, then placed my coppers back in my empty hand.

A stone rose in my throat. “Is there nothing I can do?”

“Go and bow before the Holy One. Anyone can do that.”

I stepped out of the shop and continued up the center of the marketplace, picturing Eliav laughing at me if he ever heard about the dove—I’d have to tell Dahlia when we were alone. As the street rose, the scent of incense overpowered the musky reek of sheep. Once I cleared the last of the stalls, the clamor of the caged animals faded and a new sound caught my ear. Floating above the hum of the crowd was a song unlike any I’d ever heard. The precision and delicacy of notes weaving into one another bespoke exceptional skill and countless hours of practice. I closed my eyes and filtered out the noise of the marketplace to better focus on the music. An elbow in my back broke my concentration as a thickset farmer stumbled against me and cursed. I’d chosen a poor spot to stop and gawk.

Slipping through the crowd, I sought the source of the music. The street leveled, opening out into a large square. Across the plaza, I found what I was looking for: seven musicians standing on a wooden platform, brilliant red robes falling to their feet. In the open air of the plaza, the incense was no longer just fragrant; it was intoxicating. Music floated on a cloud of cinnamon, clove, and myrrh, filling the open square.

The cry of a frightened sheep tore my attention from the melody. With the instincts of a shepherd, I sought out the distressed animal, but the thick cloud of smoke billowing up from the incense altar obscured my sight.

There was another sharp bleat, cut short by a grunt, and I spotted the lamb. Its blood flowed out in jets into a stone bowl held ready to receive it. The creature’s body sagged, lifeless, as a barefoot priest robed in white hoisted it on his shoulders and carried it up a ramp to the altar. A second priest lifted the bowl of blood and splashed it in a stiff-armed arc across the base of the altar.

Just beyond the bloodstain, a tall banner fell from the horns of the altar to its base, displaying the royal ox of the House of King Omri. As I stared, the cloth billowed out in the breeze, revealing a crack in the stone hidden beneath. The fissure ran almost the entire height of the altar, with a thin trail of ash surfacing from its depths.

Uriel’s words from the morning before came back to me: The prophets live in a world of devotion; the places they go are reached only by choice. I hadn’t really chosen to follow the old prophet; I only told him what he wanted to hear. But it was my choice to come to the altar and bow down before the