The Lamp of Darkness, - [any book recommendations txt] 📗

Shimon ben Azai said: Do not despise any person, and do not dismiss any thing, for there is no one who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place.

Pirkei Avot 4:3

Looking off into the brightening east, Uriel stood at the edge of Uncle Menachem’s land, hands folded over the top of his staff. “Why have you come, Lev?”

I stared up into the prophet’s ancient face, but couldn’t read his eyes; his shaggy brows cast their own shadow. “My uncle told me I was hired…” I held up my kinnor, “…for my music.”

The navi pushed himself to his full height, towering a full head and a half above me. I craned my neck to hold his eyes. “So you are here because you were sent?” His face was unreadable as a stone.

I hitched my sack higher on my shoulder, wishing I could put it on the donkey that waited at his side. I hadn’t asked this old man to tear me from my family—what did he want from me?

“Know, if it is only by your Uncle’s will that you come to join us, then it is my will that you remain here.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the olivewood door of the house. My family’s reactions to my early return flashed through my mind: my aunt’s disappointment, Eliav’s sly grin. Would Dahlia be happy I was back, or think I’d failed?

“You fear being shamed for turning back.” Uriel gave voice to my thoughts. “Do not. Your uncle will be relieved. There is much you can do here to help your family.”

“Are you offering me the choice?” The last word caught in my throat. My family’s rhythms were ruled by routine, and my own life had been shaped by the decisions of others. I had never chosen to come live with my uncle, nor had I sought the life of a shepherd. I may have complained to Dahlia about not having a choice, but I never really expected to be given one.

Uriel’s eyes kindled. “The nevi’im inhabit a world of devotion. Our Way is a path of choice; its servants are not for hire. So tell me now—do you choose to come with me, or are you being sent?”

A breath of eastern wind pushed the dry scent of the olive grove between us, carrying with it a vision of an unknown future. Was it true? Could I choose to let the prophet leave without me? But the breeze died and the illusion faded. My uncle had spoken, and I would not upset my aunt.

I glanced toward the King’s Road in the distance. We wouldn’t move until I told the prophet what he wanted to hear. I drew in a deep breath, drinking in the smell of dew on the leaves of my uncle’s grapevines. This narrow valley held the only life I knew. Straightening my posture to mirror Uriel’s, I peered into the prophet’s eyes and lied. “I choose to come with you.”

Uriel held my gaze, as if he had heard all my thoughts, weighed my words, and knew them to be empty. “So be it,” he said at last. “Put your belongings on Balaam.” The sharp lines of his face relaxed as he stroked the lone, ragged ear of his ancient donkey, whose head sank with a murmur of enjoyment.

When I finished tying down my things, Uriel clicked his tongue and started down the path; his donkey followed without being drawn. The footpath from my uncle’s farm skirted the city walls. When it joined the cart track that zig-zagged down from the town gate, Uriel increased his pace and extended his strides, moving nothing like an old man. The donkey trotted, and I pushed myself to keep up.

I knew every rock and tree along this stretch, the spots where the first shoots showed after the early yoreh rains, and where small pockets of grass could be found even in late summer. We passed my favorite fig tree, the heavy bottoms of its tear-shaped fruits already ripening to a reddish brown. In two months’ time, the fruits would all be gone, the low-hanging ones eaten by other mouths, the higher ones fallen to the ground to rot. My eyes lingered on the shade beneath the leaves, the place where I’d seen Uriel shaken by prophecy the day before.

I felt the prophet’s eyes upon me. “You have a question?”

How did he know? “Yes…” I caught myself before using his name. The couple yesterday called him Master Uriel, so did my uncle—was it disrespectful for me to do so? I could just call him Master, but I was hired to play music, not serve. Grandfather? It worked for the village elders but didn’t seem right for a prophet. Better not to address him at all. “Yesterday, when the couple came to you,” I glanced back at the fig tree, “You used prophecy to find something of theirs?”

“They lost a valuable ring.”

“You find rings?”

Uriel chuckled, slowed his pace, and turned toward me. “You thought navua was only for more important things?”

“Well…yes.”

“I assure you,” Uriel’s eyes no longer laughed, “that ring was immensely important to them.” He turned back toward the road, resuming his driving pace.

The silence felt heavy as I followed behind. I hadn’t meant to say that what he did was unimportant—I was just surprised. I ought to keep silent.

But there was another question I wanted to ask, one that had been on my mind since I woke that morning, and hadn’t my uncle always said that the bashful never learn? I increased my pace until I was back at the old man’s side. “And then you received navua about me?”

The old prophet slowed his pace again and fixed me with a hard gaze. “About you?”

“Yes, about hiring me?”

Uriel’s arrow-straight posture relaxed just slightly, and he again turned his eyes up the road. “No, Lev, I did not receive a navua about hiring you.” “Then why?”

Uriel watched me out of the corner of his eyes. “Why what?”

The tips of my ears grew hot as a faint smile pulled at the edge of his mouth. Was he playing with me? “Why me?”

“What do you mean?”

I took a few more steps in silence, sharpening my question. “I mean, why me? There must be better musicians. I’m just…” My voice trailed off. What was I?

The donkey’s grunts were the only sound as Uriel contemplated the question. “So you want to know what, other than navua, would have driven me to hire a shepherd boy to play for the prophets?”

I nodded.

“That is a wise question, and thus deserves a response.” Uriel stopped and faced me. “My heart told me.”

His heart? Those blue-gray eyes scanned mine as I thought about his answer. I started walking again so I could drop my eyes. “You didn’t want to…” I scratched the back of my sweaty neck, “…check?”

“I have learned never to use prophecy to question my heart.”

“But prophecy—”

“An open heart knows more than you realize. At times its intuition is more valuable than prophecy. There is no faster way to dull its voice than to doubt it.”

Even if he was right, what did it matter? How many times had I watched the distant hills, dreaming of a mother who would never return? How many times had I questioned my uncle about land that would never be mine? I learned long ago that an open heart could also betray. “Isn’t prophecy more powerful than intuition? Your heart couldn’t have found that lost ring, could it?”

Uriel combed his long fingers through his thick gray hair. “True, it could not. Yet, my heart is mine to know, while prophecy is not at my command. Yesterday I was unable to receive navua until I heard your kinnor.”

“My kinnor?”

“Your music is pure and beautiful. It cleared away many barriers.”

The road from Levonah dropped into a broad valley where it met the King’s Road. An expanse of vineyards flowed into the distance all around the crossroads, on land owned by one of the noble families of Shomron, the Kingdom’s capital, and worked by farmers from the village. As we turned south, I recalled the stories my uncle told me about the prophets. Beauty was rarely involved.

“You are confused,” Uriel said. “Your uncle told me you learn the stories of our Fathers. Tell me, after Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, how did they deceive their father Jacob?”

“They dipped Joseph’s coat in the blood of a goat. Jacob thought Joseph was killed by a wild beast.”

“Good, I see you know the story.”

Every boy in Israel probably knew that story, but I still stepped lighter with the praise. I plucked a fennel blossom from its tall stalk off the side of the road and squeezed its seeds into my hand.

“Now, do you understand it?”

My hand paused on the way to my mouth.

“Jacob was a navi and a wealthy man. Shouldn’t he have known his sons were lying to him? Couldn’t the Holy One tell him where Joseph was held in Egypt? Why didn’t he go down and redeem him from slavery?”

I stopped walking. I’d known this story most of my life—at least I thought I did. “I don’t know.”

Uriel continued in silence. I followed but didn’t push myself to keep up, drifting further behind as I chewed on his question. I popped the fennel seeds into my mouth, savoring their pungent flavor. How could I know why Jacob didn’t ask the Holy One—and what did that have to do with my music? I focused on Uriel’s back as if the answer lay somewhere between his shoulder blades.

My uncle told me that Jacob mourned his son every day he was gone as if he’d died that very morning. That’s why the story stuck in my mind. I knew the darkness of grieving, like a black hole in my chest. What was left to me of my parents? A memory of lavender wafting from Mother’s hair, the weight of Father’s broad and heavy hands on my forehead—every shard of memory was shrouded with longing. Had Jacob felt that way for twenty-two years? I tore ahead, slowing only when I drew even with the elderly prophet. “Was it his grief?”

Uriel slowed his pace without turning his head. “Are you asking me a question or giving me an answer?” The prophet has no interest in making things easy for me.

A hot breeze drove a parched thornbush across the road. Where had the vineyards gone? We’d already crossed into wilder country, without my noticing. I inhaled deeply and replied in a clear voice. “Jacob couldn’t receive prophecy because he was mourning the loss of Joseph.”

Uriel smiled, the first show of warmth I felt from him that day.