Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible) Read Free Page A

though it were her very life.
    Devora knew at once something was wrong, badly wrong, and Zadok stirred almost imperceptibly behind her; he felt it too. The bundle the girl held drew the
navi
’s gaze.
    “What brings you here, girl?” she said softly, without lifting her eyes from the bundle. “Who has wronged you?” Those four words were her ritual, her invitation to any who came to speak with her beneath the olive. Her promise that she would hear them before making a judgment.
    The girl shook without speaking, and Devora saw the terror and wild hope in the girl’s eyes. She also saw that this was not a girl of their People; her sharp cheekbones and the kohl beneath her eyes, smeared from the girl’s tears, betrayed her. She was a Canaanite girl, though it was possible she was captive or wife to one of the People. Her features were those of the north, of the Galilee hills, and the state of her sandals and the half-healed scrapes on her shins beneath the ragged hem of her garment told the story of a long journey on foot, carrying her bundle down out of the hills to this olive tree.
    The anguish in the girl’s eyes was a loud demand, though silent; it made Devora wary. The girl was heathen, keeper of no Covenant, a threat to the sons of the People. Devora wanted suddenly to turn the girl away. She could do this easily. The girl was not of the People. And she had not been sent here by the seventy judges—she had walked right to this hill and tried to shove through the supplicants who were already waiting. Devora could just send the girl to Shiloh to wait.
    Yet.
    This girl had come willingly to the olive tree, in a land her strange, soft people had once possessed. She had come even asany daughter of the People might, to seek the
navi
’s knowledge and the
navi
’s justice. And the words of the Law spoke of how the People were to treat such as her:
     
Shelter the stranger you find in your land, for you also were strangers in the land of Kemet where none gave you shelter. Forget not your suffering in the land of Kemet.
     
    Even had there been no such words in the Law, this girl had come to her. To the
navi
. With that anguish, that demand in her eyes.
    She could not be turned away.
    Devora felt a chill, a premonition that was instinct and not prophecy. She made her voice stern. “Who has wronged you, girl?” But suddenly that seemed the wrong question. She could see it in the girl’s eyes. Whatever this girl might tell her, it would not be a situation where justice could be meted out between her and another. Whatever judgment she would ask would not be one Devora was prepared to make.
    “
Navi
—” The girl’s voice broke. Her hands whitened around the bundle she held.
    “You stand before the Law and the Covenant,” Devora said sharply. “Why have you come, Canaanite?”
    “Help me.” The girl’s voice was raw from crying. The plea in her tear-reddened eyes was one of panic, one woman’s cry to another. “They say you approach the Hebrew God without any veil between you. Please. Beg him to help me.”
    Her hand shaking, the girl peeled away one corner of the bundle, and Devora wrinkled her nose at a stench of ripe decay. The bundle was a swaddled infant, less than a week old; the girl’s back was to the other supplicants below, and only she and Devora and Zadok behind the
navi
’s seat could see the infant. See what was wrong.
    Devora’s breath hissed between her teeth.
    Unclean!
A wild cry in her mind, a cry as ancient and forlorn as broken tombs in a desert place. A cry her people had made around fires in the wilderness long before she or anyone she knew was born.
Unclean!
    The infant opened its reddened eyes and reached its hands feebly toward the
navi
, tiny fingers clutching at the air. Its mouth opened and let out a high-pitched moan. Devora felt terribly cold. The child’s skin was gray. Much of the infant’s left leg was gone, where some creature had bitten into it and torn away flesh and