Esther M Friesner - Giants in the Earth, Angielskie [EN](4)(2)
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- Chapter 11
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- Chapter 11
Giants in the Earth
Esther M. Friesner
"Have you ever had one of those days where you just can't get a psalm started?" King David sat back on
the royal throne of all Israel and drummed his fingers on the gently curving cedar armrests. "The
opening line's the hardest part. I've got everything else down pat: rhyme scheme, subject matter, nifty
metaphors that do
not
involve sheep, for a change. Sheep! Don't get me started. You grow up as a simple
shepherd boy—what the hell else
is
there to do in this country?—and right away you can't write a psalm
without everyone picking it apart, looking for hidden references to sheep, sheep, sheep, 'til the cows
come home. To say nothing of those so-called 'jokes' the men used to tell about me back in my army
days. Soldiers,
feh
! As if
they
never—"
"Your Majesty was saying something about an opening line?" Tirzah asked amiably. As concubine
du
jour
she had certain assigned tasks, not the least of which was keeping King David's conversation on
track. When a man spends the better part of his youth on the lam from a crazy king like Saul and the rest
of his salad days amassing a comfortably
haimish
empire, his body may cease wandering but his mind
often does not.
"Oh, right, right, a catchy first line, yes, hmm . . ." The ring-encrusted royal fingers, each adorned with a
precious stone the size of the rock that slew Goliath, went back to drumming on the armrest. "Listen, my
subjects, and you shall hear . . . When that Goliath with his spears and arrows/The men of Israel had
piercéd to the marrow . . . Whose sling this is, I think I know . . . There once was a giant from Gath . . ."
"Perhaps Your Majesty should work on a different psalm?" Tirzah suggested, popping a grape into her
mouth. "I've found that when I reach a point where there doesn't seem to be any solution to the problem
at hand, it helps to switch projects entirely."
The king gave her a smarmy smile. "You're a concubine, my dear," he said. "What problems do you face
that can't be solved by a new necklace or an extra dollop of myrrh?"
Tirzah opened her mouth to answer, then thought better of it and stopped her gob with a handful of
dates. It didn't do for a woman to backtalk the king. She understood that, as a concubine, she had only
two career paths: Cling to the king's good side like moss to a stone or spend your days locked up among
the women.
Not that there was anything
wrong
with being locked up among the women, but as JHVH was her
witness, it was
boring
. The ladies of the royal household seemed able to talk about nothing save
clothing, cosmetics, candy, kids, and the king's elusive favor. Those who'd managed to get a colt off the
royal stud formed an exclusive clique whose favorite pastimes were sneering at their less fertile
colleagues and zealous jockeying/backstabbing in order to get their child in line for the throne.
As much as Tirzah despised the snotty Womb Supremacists, she knew that her only hope for
advancement lay thataway, and the more she hung out with David, the better her odds of hitting the
royal jism jackpot. All of which was why she swallowed her pride along with a mouthful of chewed-up
dates, smiled ever-so-sweetly, and replied:
"Yes, O my beloved king. How silly of me. Your life is much more important than mine, of course.
Me
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (2 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
daring to suggest anything to
you
? Tsk. What
was
I thinking? Can you ever forgive your po' li'l
featherheaded Tirzy-wirzy who wuvs 'oo so vewy, vewy much that she just can't wait to get you alone
and perform the Babylonian Basket Trick for your intense, unbelievable pleasure?"
"Wuzzah?" Despite Tirzah's almost-never-fail employment of that tempting combination, fulsome baby
talk and promised perversity, the king wasn't buying. He'd chided his concubine and gone straight back
to wrestling with the uncooperative psalm.
Tirzah frowned and double-checked her breasts. Yes, still firm, still golden as a pair of melons, still
exuding rare floral essences imported from Egypt at great expense. When it came down to cases, she had
no doubts about her physical attractions; but when the match was Concubine vs. Blank Parchment, best
two falls out of three, she was stymied. What was it about the composition of a psalm that managed to
gobble up the king's full attention?
"Yes, dear," she muttered under her breath. "You just go back to composing that psalm all about how
you slew Goliath, big whoop. I'll be right here when you finally want me. Where else do I have to be?"
"Gath . . . wrath . . . bath . . . Sheba . . . huh?" said the king, blinking as he looked up at her from his
labors.
"Nothing," said Tirzah wearily. "I was just thinking about how much I love you. Wildly. Madly. Passion
without bounds." Her voice was only a little flatter than her taut young belly, but the king wasn't really
paying any attention and she was past caring. "Yea, verily, I would do anything to prove my love for
you, yep, sure, you name it, just—"
"Of course you would; it's in your job description. Why the blazes do you have to gabble about it,
woman?" King David demanded. He might have said more, but at that moment the calm of a summer's
afternoon in the royal court was broken by the abrupt entrance of the king's majordomo. He was an
overly excitable Moabite whom the king had hired as lip service to valuing diversity somewhere in the
palace besides the royal harem.
"Majesty! Majesty!" he cried, scuttling into the throne room, wringing his hands. "Oh, the unspeakable
horror! Oh, the devastation! Oh, that ever this should come to pass!" He threw himself facedown at the
king's feet, gurgling prophecies of generic doom.
"What is it?" the king demanded, toeing the Moabite firmly. "And it had better be good. The last
unspeakable horror you reported was a wild donkey that got loose in the marketplace and ate three
cabbages. When it ate a fourth you escalated the event to a full-fledged devastation. I hope you're not
wasting my time with another four-cabbage disaster, because tomorrow is the anniversary of my battle
with the Philistine champion, Goliath of Gath, and if I don't finish this psalm about how I slew him,
I'll—"
"But you
didn't
slay him, Majesty!" The trembling Moabite raised his eyes to the king's dire
countenance. "He's back. Goliath of Gath is back, he's waiting outside the gates of Jerusalem, and he
says he's not leaving until he's got your head on the end of his spear!"
* * *
A table had been fetched and King David's council had been summoned into the throne room with such
haste that no one had thought to dismiss the concubine. Thus Tirzah found herself wandering around the
periphery of the strategic huddle, nibbling a fistful of almonds, and peering over the shoulders of David's
most trusted advisors as they discussed the situation in hushed, intense tones.
"But it
can't
be Goliath!" King David protested. "I
killed
him! I killed him
good
. First I whapped him
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (3 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
with a rock—POW!—right between the eyes, and when he hit the dirt I took his own sword and I cut his
head off. They don't come much deader than that."
"As Your Majesty says," one of David's generals replied soothingly. The royal council was made up of
nothing but generals, the Mighty Men of Israel, with a case-by-case visit from the occasional prophet-
without-portfolio. "And yet, evidence to the contrary is even now standing without our city gates, single-
handedly blocking traffic and interfering with peaceful commerce."
"What I don't understand—" said the king. "What I honestly do
not
understand at all, no matter how hard
I try, is
why
in the name of the Unnameable you, my so-called generals, haven't just sent out the army to
deal with the, er, impediment to peaceful commerce. Giant or no giant, there's only one of him."
The generals looked sheepish enough to give David bad flashbacks to his boyhood. At length, one of
them broke the uneasy silence.
"True, Majesty, that would be the sensible thing to do. But before we could dispatch so much as a patrol
of spearmen to confront the giant, he issued . . . the
challenge
."
"The challenge?" David echoed. "What challenge?" He was leaning his fists on the conference table and
Tirzah noted how very white his knuckles were turning, coupled with the fine beading of perspiration on
his brow. He was also breathing a bit raggedly, all of which indicators led her to believe that he knew
damn well
what
challenge.
"The challenge to single combat," General Eliezar said. "The same challenge he gave to King Saul's
troops the first time you killed him. The time you
thought
you'd killed him." He was the youngest man
on the king's council and as such did not have the brains of a kitten when it came to survival off the
battlefield. He simply did not know any better than to assume that when the king asked a question, he
wanted an honest answer. His colleagues exchanged looks that were equal parts pity and thankfulness
that Eliezar was there, about to take the royal slingstone for the team. Better him than them.
"I . . .
did
. . . kill . . . him." The words only just managed to escape the king's mouth through tightly
gritted teeth. "Not for the
first
time; for the
only
time! I cut off his bloody
head
! Don't you know
history
?"
"I know there's more being written every day," Eliezar replied, as obliviously cheerful as ever.
"Good. Then go write some," David snapped. "Get your scrawny butt the hell down to the barracks, pull
together a troop of men, and take down that giant!"
"Majesty?" Eliezar raised one eyebrow in bewilderment at his sovereign's orders. "Goliath's challenge
wasn't leveled against the army. What he said was—"
"
How many times must I repeat myself?
" King David's bellow shook cedar dust from the throne room
rafters. "That is not Goliath! Goliath is
dead
."
"Not according to him. He says he's Goliath, he's got Goliath's armor, and his appearance has attracted a
whole bunch of veterans from King Saul's army, all testifying that they recognize him as Goliath. He
says he's not leaving until you come out and face him in hand-to-hand combat to the death. No backup
troops, just you and your armor-bearer, if you need one. He says you'd
better
wear armor, because he
can put a spear through a twenty-five-year-old plane tree at one hundred paces."
"Is that all?" The king's voice had gone very low and growly. It was a warning sign the young general
did not seem to recognize or heed.
"Yes. Wait, no: He also says that after all these years you've probably gotten fat." Eliezar smiled
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (4 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
radiantly, duty done. He was woefully unaware that the rest of the council were edging away from him
as he spoke. Older and wiser, they had no intention of becoming collateral damage when King David
finally lost his temper and flattened the lad.
To their surprise, instead of a royal explosion, King David's reaction was merely to sigh deeply and
pinch the bridge of his nose. "Bugger," he said. "If he's drawn a crowd of Saul's old army buddies, I'll
have to fight him, whoever he is. People are watching. I'll bet drachmas to dromedaries that a whole mob
of our foreign trade community is out there too, waiting to see what I'll do. If I don't fight it'll be a
shonda
for the
goyim
."
"A what?" Like many on the council, Eliezar had a hard time understanding his king when David lapsed
into the local dialect of his youth.
"Just fetch my armor, dummy. And will someone please clear away that concubine?"
* * *
All the good seats for the big rematch were taken. Tirzah tried to squirm her way through the press of
women hogging the few windows that had a decent view of the road where the giant awaited King
David's appearance, but was firmly rebuffed.
"We outrank you." Leah sniffed disdainfully. She was a skinny creature, relic of David's brief flirtation
with the philosophy that Less is More. He'd tired of her bony embraces, but not before she bore him a
son. "We are the royal mothers."
"I'll say you are," Tirzah grumbled.
"What was that?" Hulda asked sharply. She'd been a concubine-of-last-resort until she'd lucked out and
birthed a baby boy.
"I said that for all you know,
I'll
be a royal mother some day, too, so maybe you should be nicer to me."
Tirzah waggled her hips at the women. "I found an old Babylonian bedroom manual last week and it's
got plenty of sure-fire tricks to guarantee—"
"Ha!" Hulda was one of those annoying know-it-alls who was likewise a say-it-all. "If our lord David
loses this battle—which he won't, unthinkable, JHVH forbid,
p'too-p'too-p'too
, I never so much as
suggested the possibility—you'll be nothing. It takes two to make a royal baby. Or didn't your
Babylonian smut book mention that?"
Tirzah stared, horrified. The truth of Hulda's words was inescapable. If David fell to Goliath's spear, her
life was over too. What happened to concubines when their master died? Those with children of the
royal blood would be looked after by the next king, if only so he might keep tabs on potential rivals.
Those who were still virgins due to bureaucratic oversights might find employment elsewhere. For those
like Tirzah, neither maiden nor mother, the game was over.
Oh no! she thought wildly. What will become of me? Being a concubine is all I know how to do! That
and watching sheep, but I will see myself chopped up and served over cous-cous before I go back to
doing that again.
Memory conjured up the image of her mother on the day Tirzah announced that she was turning in her
shepherd girl's rod, staff, sling, and lambing kit in order to audition for the king's harem. "I want to smell
of myrrh, not manure," she explained. "Is that such a bad ambition?"
"Fine," Mother said in a way that made it obvious how very far from fine it all was. "Go. Be a
concubine. See if I care. Break a mother's heart. All I'm saying is that you could do better. This is an
honor, to share the bed of a man old enough to be your father without even he gives you an engagement
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- Chapter 11
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NextContentsfile:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (1 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
Giants in the Earth
Esther M. Friesner
"Have you ever had one of those days where you just can't get a psalm started?" King David sat back on
the royal throne of all Israel and drummed his fingers on the gently curving cedar armrests. "The
opening line's the hardest part. I've got everything else down pat: rhyme scheme, subject matter, nifty
metaphors that do
not
involve sheep, for a change. Sheep! Don't get me started. You grow up as a simple
shepherd boy—what the hell else
is
there to do in this country?—and right away you can't write a psalm
without everyone picking it apart, looking for hidden references to sheep, sheep, sheep, 'til the cows
come home. To say nothing of those so-called 'jokes' the men used to tell about me back in my army
days. Soldiers,
feh
! As if
they
never—"
"Your Majesty was saying something about an opening line?" Tirzah asked amiably. As concubine
du
jour
she had certain assigned tasks, not the least of which was keeping King David's conversation on
track. When a man spends the better part of his youth on the lam from a crazy king like Saul and the rest
of his salad days amassing a comfortably
haimish
empire, his body may cease wandering but his mind
often does not.
"Oh, right, right, a catchy first line, yes, hmm . . ." The ring-encrusted royal fingers, each adorned with a
precious stone the size of the rock that slew Goliath, went back to drumming on the armrest. "Listen, my
subjects, and you shall hear . . . When that Goliath with his spears and arrows/The men of Israel had
piercéd to the marrow . . . Whose sling this is, I think I know . . . There once was a giant from Gath . . ."
"Perhaps Your Majesty should work on a different psalm?" Tirzah suggested, popping a grape into her
mouth. "I've found that when I reach a point where there doesn't seem to be any solution to the problem
at hand, it helps to switch projects entirely."
The king gave her a smarmy smile. "You're a concubine, my dear," he said. "What problems do you face
that can't be solved by a new necklace or an extra dollop of myrrh?"
Tirzah opened her mouth to answer, then thought better of it and stopped her gob with a handful of
dates. It didn't do for a woman to backtalk the king. She understood that, as a concubine, she had only
two career paths: Cling to the king's good side like moss to a stone or spend your days locked up among
the women.
Not that there was anything
wrong
with being locked up among the women, but as JHVH was her
witness, it was
boring
. The ladies of the royal household seemed able to talk about nothing save
clothing, cosmetics, candy, kids, and the king's elusive favor. Those who'd managed to get a colt off the
royal stud formed an exclusive clique whose favorite pastimes were sneering at their less fertile
colleagues and zealous jockeying/backstabbing in order to get their child in line for the throne.
As much as Tirzah despised the snotty Womb Supremacists, she knew that her only hope for
advancement lay thataway, and the more she hung out with David, the better her odds of hitting the
royal jism jackpot. All of which was why she swallowed her pride along with a mouthful of chewed-up
dates, smiled ever-so-sweetly, and replied:
"Yes, O my beloved king. How silly of me. Your life is much more important than mine, of course.
Me
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (2 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
daring to suggest anything to
you
? Tsk. What
was
I thinking? Can you ever forgive your po' li'l
featherheaded Tirzy-wirzy who wuvs 'oo so vewy, vewy much that she just can't wait to get you alone
and perform the Babylonian Basket Trick for your intense, unbelievable pleasure?"
"Wuzzah?" Despite Tirzah's almost-never-fail employment of that tempting combination, fulsome baby
talk and promised perversity, the king wasn't buying. He'd chided his concubine and gone straight back
to wrestling with the uncooperative psalm.
Tirzah frowned and double-checked her breasts. Yes, still firm, still golden as a pair of melons, still
exuding rare floral essences imported from Egypt at great expense. When it came down to cases, she had
no doubts about her physical attractions; but when the match was Concubine vs. Blank Parchment, best
two falls out of three, she was stymied. What was it about the composition of a psalm that managed to
gobble up the king's full attention?
"Yes, dear," she muttered under her breath. "You just go back to composing that psalm all about how
you slew Goliath, big whoop. I'll be right here when you finally want me. Where else do I have to be?"
"Gath . . . wrath . . . bath . . . Sheba . . . huh?" said the king, blinking as he looked up at her from his
labors.
"Nothing," said Tirzah wearily. "I was just thinking about how much I love you. Wildly. Madly. Passion
without bounds." Her voice was only a little flatter than her taut young belly, but the king wasn't really
paying any attention and she was past caring. "Yea, verily, I would do anything to prove my love for
you, yep, sure, you name it, just—"
"Of course you would; it's in your job description. Why the blazes do you have to gabble about it,
woman?" King David demanded. He might have said more, but at that moment the calm of a summer's
afternoon in the royal court was broken by the abrupt entrance of the king's majordomo. He was an
overly excitable Moabite whom the king had hired as lip service to valuing diversity somewhere in the
palace besides the royal harem.
"Majesty! Majesty!" he cried, scuttling into the throne room, wringing his hands. "Oh, the unspeakable
horror! Oh, the devastation! Oh, that ever this should come to pass!" He threw himself facedown at the
king's feet, gurgling prophecies of generic doom.
"What is it?" the king demanded, toeing the Moabite firmly. "And it had better be good. The last
unspeakable horror you reported was a wild donkey that got loose in the marketplace and ate three
cabbages. When it ate a fourth you escalated the event to a full-fledged devastation. I hope you're not
wasting my time with another four-cabbage disaster, because tomorrow is the anniversary of my battle
with the Philistine champion, Goliath of Gath, and if I don't finish this psalm about how I slew him,
I'll—"
"But you
didn't
slay him, Majesty!" The trembling Moabite raised his eyes to the king's dire
countenance. "He's back. Goliath of Gath is back, he's waiting outside the gates of Jerusalem, and he
says he's not leaving until he's got your head on the end of his spear!"
* * *
A table had been fetched and King David's council had been summoned into the throne room with such
haste that no one had thought to dismiss the concubine. Thus Tirzah found herself wandering around the
periphery of the strategic huddle, nibbling a fistful of almonds, and peering over the shoulders of David's
most trusted advisors as they discussed the situation in hushed, intense tones.
"But it
can't
be Goliath!" King David protested. "I
killed
him! I killed him
good
. First I whapped him
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (3 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
with a rock—POW!—right between the eyes, and when he hit the dirt I took his own sword and I cut his
head off. They don't come much deader than that."
"As Your Majesty says," one of David's generals replied soothingly. The royal council was made up of
nothing but generals, the Mighty Men of Israel, with a case-by-case visit from the occasional prophet-
without-portfolio. "And yet, evidence to the contrary is even now standing without our city gates, single-
handedly blocking traffic and interfering with peaceful commerce."
"What I don't understand—" said the king. "What I honestly do
not
understand at all, no matter how hard
I try, is
why
in the name of the Unnameable you, my so-called generals, haven't just sent out the army to
deal with the, er, impediment to peaceful commerce. Giant or no giant, there's only one of him."
The generals looked sheepish enough to give David bad flashbacks to his boyhood. At length, one of
them broke the uneasy silence.
"True, Majesty, that would be the sensible thing to do. But before we could dispatch so much as a patrol
of spearmen to confront the giant, he issued . . . the
challenge
."
"The challenge?" David echoed. "What challenge?" He was leaning his fists on the conference table and
Tirzah noted how very white his knuckles were turning, coupled with the fine beading of perspiration on
his brow. He was also breathing a bit raggedly, all of which indicators led her to believe that he knew
damn well
what
challenge.
"The challenge to single combat," General Eliezar said. "The same challenge he gave to King Saul's
troops the first time you killed him. The time you
thought
you'd killed him." He was the youngest man
on the king's council and as such did not have the brains of a kitten when it came to survival off the
battlefield. He simply did not know any better than to assume that when the king asked a question, he
wanted an honest answer. His colleagues exchanged looks that were equal parts pity and thankfulness
that Eliezar was there, about to take the royal slingstone for the team. Better him than them.
"I . . .
did
. . . kill . . . him." The words only just managed to escape the king's mouth through tightly
gritted teeth. "Not for the
first
time; for the
only
time! I cut off his bloody
head
! Don't you know
history
?"
"I know there's more being written every day," Eliezar replied, as obliviously cheerful as ever.
"Good. Then go write some," David snapped. "Get your scrawny butt the hell down to the barracks, pull
together a troop of men, and take down that giant!"
"Majesty?" Eliezar raised one eyebrow in bewilderment at his sovereign's orders. "Goliath's challenge
wasn't leveled against the army. What he said was—"
"
How many times must I repeat myself?
" King David's bellow shook cedar dust from the throne room
rafters. "That is not Goliath! Goliath is
dead
."
"Not according to him. He says he's Goliath, he's got Goliath's armor, and his appearance has attracted a
whole bunch of veterans from King Saul's army, all testifying that they recognize him as Goliath. He
says he's not leaving until you come out and face him in hand-to-hand combat to the death. No backup
troops, just you and your armor-bearer, if you need one. He says you'd
better
wear armor, because he
can put a spear through a twenty-five-year-old plane tree at one hundred paces."
"Is that all?" The king's voice had gone very low and growly. It was a warning sign the young general
did not seem to recognize or heed.
"Yes. Wait, no: He also says that after all these years you've probably gotten fat." Eliezar smiled
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Esther%20M.%20Friesner%20-%20Giants%20in%20the%20Earth.htm (4 of 10)26-1-2007 22:53:34
- Chapter 11
radiantly, duty done. He was woefully unaware that the rest of the council were edging away from him
as he spoke. Older and wiser, they had no intention of becoming collateral damage when King David
finally lost his temper and flattened the lad.
To their surprise, instead of a royal explosion, King David's reaction was merely to sigh deeply and
pinch the bridge of his nose. "Bugger," he said. "If he's drawn a crowd of Saul's old army buddies, I'll
have to fight him, whoever he is. People are watching. I'll bet drachmas to dromedaries that a whole mob
of our foreign trade community is out there too, waiting to see what I'll do. If I don't fight it'll be a
shonda
for the
goyim
."
"A what?" Like many on the council, Eliezar had a hard time understanding his king when David lapsed
into the local dialect of his youth.
"Just fetch my armor, dummy. And will someone please clear away that concubine?"
* * *
All the good seats for the big rematch were taken. Tirzah tried to squirm her way through the press of
women hogging the few windows that had a decent view of the road where the giant awaited King
David's appearance, but was firmly rebuffed.
"We outrank you." Leah sniffed disdainfully. She was a skinny creature, relic of David's brief flirtation
with the philosophy that Less is More. He'd tired of her bony embraces, but not before she bore him a
son. "We are the royal mothers."
"I'll say you are," Tirzah grumbled.
"What was that?" Hulda asked sharply. She'd been a concubine-of-last-resort until she'd lucked out and
birthed a baby boy.
"I said that for all you know,
I'll
be a royal mother some day, too, so maybe you should be nicer to me."
Tirzah waggled her hips at the women. "I found an old Babylonian bedroom manual last week and it's
got plenty of sure-fire tricks to guarantee—"
"Ha!" Hulda was one of those annoying know-it-alls who was likewise a say-it-all. "If our lord David
loses this battle—which he won't, unthinkable, JHVH forbid,
p'too-p'too-p'too
, I never so much as
suggested the possibility—you'll be nothing. It takes two to make a royal baby. Or didn't your
Babylonian smut book mention that?"
Tirzah stared, horrified. The truth of Hulda's words was inescapable. If David fell to Goliath's spear, her
life was over too. What happened to concubines when their master died? Those with children of the
royal blood would be looked after by the next king, if only so he might keep tabs on potential rivals.
Those who were still virgins due to bureaucratic oversights might find employment elsewhere. For those
like Tirzah, neither maiden nor mother, the game was over.
Oh no! she thought wildly. What will become of me? Being a concubine is all I know how to do! That
and watching sheep, but I will see myself chopped up and served over cous-cous before I go back to
doing that again.
Memory conjured up the image of her mother on the day Tirzah announced that she was turning in her
shepherd girl's rod, staff, sling, and lambing kit in order to audition for the king's harem. "I want to smell
of myrrh, not manure," she explained. "Is that such a bad ambition?"
"Fine," Mother said in a way that made it obvious how very far from fine it all was. "Go. Be a
concubine. See if I care. Break a mother's heart. All I'm saying is that you could do better. This is an
honor, to share the bed of a man old enough to be your father without even he gives you an engagement
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