AMARA
Samson was coming. He would bring his parents but no one else for the marriage. As was the Hebrew custom, he would throw a feast for seven days. I could invite anyone I chose. For seven days, he would entertain and feed my guests, but it was on the evening of the first day that I would go up on the roof and become his wife.
We said nothing of the marriage to anyone in the city. Sirena noticed the deep wells under my eyes, the dark circles from mourning all through the night. I told her nothing. Talos and Neo asked Astra many questions, but she fled like a doe back to my side, and we glared at them until they shrugged and walked away. The gossips would find out the news soon enough anyway. They always did.
At night, though none of us had brought home much from the harvest, we did not count the grapes or weigh the wheat. We knew that our family would survive the coming year, not because of the harvest, but because I would belong to a Hebrew.
On one of these last sorrowful nights, when we had extinguished all but one oil lamp, we all remained on our pallets in silence. Golden light flickered against the walls in the darkness, making shadows leap and dance all around us. Astra must have trimmed this wick; she knew just how to angle her cuts to make the flame dance for hours.
Father spoke, and I listened. His deep soft voice joined the leaping shadows, until in the shadows I saw the tale he told spring to life.
“I have learned the tale of Samson and his people. Let me tell you of the man you will marry and the tribe you will join. Learn their ways, daughter. Become as one and live. Forget us and prosper. I could ask no more for my daughter.
“Twenty years ago, this man Samson was born under a strange star, and his tale is a strange one. A spirit appeared to his mother one day as she worked in her fields, and the woman conversed with the spirit freely. The spirit foretold of the child and extracted promises from the woman. She would be the one to guard his magic.
“This woman, you should know, is a Danite, the warrior tribe of the Hebrews. Though the Hebrews have twelve tribes, although they all look alike, we know them to have very different temperaments and to make very different neighbors. The Danites are born serpents. This was their blessing, pronounced by their forefather Jacob, a man known for stealing his own blessing. Jacob pronounced that the tribe of Dan would be a tribe of serpents, horned snakes resting on the path of their enemies.
“Forget us, daughter. You will dwell with serpents. Be as happy as you can. Once you leave, never return.”
“Why?” It was Astra who spoke. “Why does he want her? He won’t get any land with her.”
I was too numb from pain to take offense. I knew my beauty was not a logical answer.
Father sighed. “There is more to this tale, a strange turn. That fierce serpent, the tribe of Dan, refuses to strike. They were gifted the land of the Canaanites by their god and by their forefather Moses, yet they refused the gift. Why do they watch us, that serpent in the road, and not strike?”
A terrible silence dwelled with us as we contemplated his question.
Philistines had been always been anxious to strike, dealing a savage blow once to the fierce Hittites, burning their capitol and slaughtering their women and children. We devoured them so completely that even the pharaoh of Egypt, Ramses the Third, was awakened. He came after us with six-spoked chariots that glided across all the sand and rocks between us as if on air. And while it is true that we could not overcome him and lay claim to Egypt, we did not consider our prize to be a small one. We settled here along the Mediterranean, eating fish for our supper and watching the sun set over distant empires that traveled to us, begging for iron and knowledge.
Knowledge was our crown, and skill gave us a throne that none could take from us.
The Hebrews came to us before every harvest, asking us to sharpen their harvest tools. They used to come to us with their killing blades, held flat on their palms, asking us to sharpen them too. How could they make war against us if we were the ones who made their weapons work? Every year we sharpened fewer blades and more tools. The Danite warriors became craftsmen. Perhaps it was their real destiny; their god had asked their tribe to build an ark for him, to carry his belongings in. They said he traveled with stone tablets inscribed with his laws and a branch from an almond tree.
I giggled. What a strange god.
We were not fools. We watched their eyes when they walked among us. We watched them working out in their minds the layout of our cities, the location of our storehouses. We forbade them from watching how we sharpened their tools and blades. We watched them, as they waited in the open road for us.
“The Danites will attack us someday. The serpent will lift her head and strike,” Father said.
In the leaping flames, I saw a vision of that terrible, coming day. Astra threw a blanket over her face in dread.
“That is why, daughter, when you leave this house, you must forget us. You will become the mother to a brood of vipers who will rise up and strike us. If you do not remember us, your heart will be spared much grief.” Father’s voice sounded so cold.
I rose up, my face illuminated in the flickering light. “I will never forget you! How can you tell me such a tale and ask such a thing? What evil have you brought upon me?”
Father sat up to face me. The shadows played under his face, the soft glow of his gentle eyes turning to stone as I watched. Mother must have sensed the change, for she, too, sat up, resting a hand on his arm.
Father stood and fumbled in the darkness for his sword, a short blade that he wore only in times of urgent threat. He opened the door to the night. As moonlight flooded in, Astra gasped at the image of Father with a knife to his throat. Mother leaped from her bed and took the knife away, whispering comforting words. She looked at me, accusations in her eyes, and my thin robe left me very cold.
I stood in my house, thankful for the mercy of rain. The air was lifting, growing colder and lighter, and the heavy rains could at last break through the clouds and pour down on us. The heavy rains meant that the women did not linger when baking their bread. We covered our faces in the rain and scurried between house and oven, house and pen, house and refuse dump.
Several weeks had passed, and I knew everyone had heard of my shame. Who can know how such secrets escape? But they do. Secrets are not safe in Timnah. Sirena wept as she baked her bread then fled from me. Talos and Neo looked stricken every time they saw me. I was marrying another race, which was bad enough, but to marry a freak? The shame would never lift.
Astra opened the door and pranced outside, making her way to me, lifting her tunic to keep it clean.
My heart rose.
Astra sat beside me, nudging me over with her bottom. She dug her toes into the sand next to mine and shivered. Her tunic was old and thin. I put my arm around her, holding her close.
“Are you scared?” she asked at last.
“Yes. And no. What must be done, must be done. I will get through it.”
“You sound very brave.”
“I do not feel brave. If I love Father at all, if I have love for any of you, I will obey and go.”
“And you will forget us.”
“Oh, no, Astra. No. I cannot forget you.”
She began to cry. “I will never see you again,” she said. “It isn’t fair! Don’t go. Father will find a way to earn more money.”
I pressed Astra’s head into the crook of my neck. Releasing a deep sigh, I tried to breathe through the pain in my chest. The agony of waiting for the wedding only gave my mind time to think fearful thoughts. I groaned and looked away to the hills just beyond us. What I saw made me swallow a cold, giant stone. It tumbled down into my stomach, sinking, sucking all the air out of my body.
“What is it?” Astra gasped, righting herself. She looked at my face then turned her head around to look at the hills. She saw it too and raced back to the house. She did not mean to leave me there alone, I knew.
A donkey picked his way down the hill, carrying Samson’s mother. Beside it walked Samson and his father.
Today was my wedding day.
Astra and I crept up to the roof. Samson and his parents were outside in the courtyard. Everyone from our little village was here, the men gawking, the women clucking their teeth.
Astra and I clutched arms as we watched Samson’s mother for a clue as to my days. Samson would have my nights, which was for me the stuff of feverish, shameful nightmares, but this wrinkled old crone would rule my days. I would bake her bread, empty her toilet pot, wash her tunic, wipe her mouth.… If I lived a year it would be a gift from Dagon. Or a curse.
My attention was drawn back to Samson. Closer now, he announced he would teach the boys of my village how to hypnotize a bird. Samson caught one of our fowl by her feet and swung the poor squawking thing round and round over his head, then placed her gently on the ground. He took a step back, and the confused bird followed. Wherever he stepped, she followed, mesmerized by the confusion he had caused.
My face burned hot as I watched the coarse gestures that accompanied the demonstration. I was to be his little bird, no doubt.
MOTHER
The Philistines had a nasty surprise for us.
I had clearly instructed Amara and her sister on how I planned to serve the meal, and to whom, when a group of two dozen men or more walked up, uninvited, settling themselves at my table. Samson had been watching the hired men roasting the pig—that fatty, dripping abomination—but was at my side in a moment. He grabbed me by the arm, cautioning me. Were it not for his hand on my arm, I would have started the great deliverance right then. Arrogant, ill-mannered pig eaters!
Amara looked at me with both fear and admiration on her face when she approached. She did not like the men, either. I frowned at her. She blushed and went back to her work. I debated how best to ruin her wedding night. I decided to test her by asking Samson to serve her a brimming bowl of wine. She drank, and well.
I knew I had won. Drink, I willed her with all of my being, drink deeply. Again, I nodded and he poured. And she did drink, finally becoming so drunk Samson had no other honorable choice but to carry her inside and face the taunting men alone for the rest of the feast.
No matter. He had spent his life surrounded by taunting leers. My deliverer needed deliverance, but not from them. From a straight-hipped, flat-chested girl snoring loudly on her pallet inside that rat-infested house not twenty good steps away from me.
“If you will excuse me, I have to go and shake the hand of a dear friend of mine,” Samson announced to the men, who roared too loudly with amusement and pointed Samson to the latrine.
I hurt all the way into my bones, a deadening exhaustion overtaking me. Syvah had been complaining of weariness too, but mothers with young boys are always tired. They grow tired just watching their sons. My exhaustion came not from my body but from my heart. Fear wears a woman out.
I gave up fighting sleep, at last. Manoah led me back to our lodging. Samson had chosen his path, and the time had come for me to return to mine. I was his mother, not his conscience. Manoah had been at my side since I was a child; he would be there when I died. It was time for me to focus on him once more.
AMARA
As I hid on the roof, my wedding feast took shape below.
I had no appetite.
Samson’s mother requested that my mother give her the names of anyone we wished to invite. Mother was not anxious to celebrate her downfall, so she insisted that the only guests be Sirena and the other families we shared the oven with.
The tables boomed like thunder as the men rammed them together. I jumped from the shock of the sound. Samson had briefly retreated to his lodging house for a bath while his mother and father stayed behind and saw to all the details. I stole a glimpse as she crumpled her nose at my villagers. She avoided touching them too, but I saw a glimmer of hope in that: She might not slap or hit me once I was her daughter-in-law. Samson returned quickly, surprising me. For a people concerned with cleanliness, he did not take much time at his bath.
Nausea rolled up in my stomach, and I shut my mouth, trying to stop from heaving. The thought of his seed in me, his child growing large and violent within me, finally tearing itself free, made the sky spin around me hard and fast.
Why had Mother not stopped this marriage? What if I died when he took me? What if I tore, and he did not stop? What if I cried and he laughed, or I suffocated in all that hair? I did not want to become a wife, especially not his. I did not want to do those things that wives did. I did not want to be disrobed and touched and forced back on a pallet while men snickered at the feast below.
I couldn’t stop myself this time. I rolled over and vomited into a crock. Mother would probably have to break it and throw it out when I left.
The hired men set a bonfire at the far edge of the courtyard, partly for warmth, I guessed, and partly to keep the lions away. In the lean harvest years, lions were as hungry as we were. Fewer grains and grapes on the ground meant fewer rabbits, fewer small sweet things scavenging for their supper, and lions that came looking for us.
I could always walk past the fire into the night, my arms extended before me, making soft weak clutching sounds. I could be eaten by a lion. Better to be dragged away to my death by a lion, who would kill me within an hour, than to be dragged away by Samson. There was no humiliation in being eaten by a lion. I would not die a thousand deaths before I flew away to the underworld.
I was considering this death when the steady fall of heavy footsteps startled me. Talos and Neo had come, and they were not alone! With them was a group of Philistines; some were men from the village young enough to wield a sword, but not old enough to consider staying it. I gasped, and Talos looked up, by magic, smiling broadly at me. I went down to welcome them without a smile. Samson’s mother would think I had done this to her.
But these men had come uninvited, wearing knives at their sides and swords in their hands. Their hair was slicked back, and the red feather headdress of war sat on their heads. Red stripes had been painted under their eyes, and each had braided their beards into two rows, tied off with a bead. They had come to the feast prepared to die or defend me. I did not know which. Perhaps it was not really for my sake, either.
They still counted me as a Philistine, even in my shame! Samson parted the men and walked right through the middle of the pack, which was at least thirty men as I made a fast count.
Samson’s father was already asleep at a table, his head face down. The journey had been hard for the old man. His mother had her arms crossed, sitting beside her husband. She turned and spat on the ground, pronouncing a curse on my people.
I slunk back a little, unwilling to hear her words.
“What is this?” Samson’s voice was soft, disinterested.
Talos took a step forward. “We’ve come for the feast.”
“With your swords and knives? Really.” Samson twisted and looked up at me.
A smirk played on his full mouth, underneath those thick long whiskers. The scratchy cheeks that would soon be under my palm, and the lips that would be on top of mine. What would his mouth feel like?
Sweat beaded along my brow. I was two people at once, one filled with dread and terror, the other curious. I was a Philistine, though. I was born for the pleasures of the flesh. I was dying right here, leaving behind the girl I was forever, becoming a true Philistine, a goddess of pleasure. But I didn’t know it would all be for a Hebrew’s touch.
If I ever felt desire for Samson, I would have to carry that secret to my grave. Whatever he wanted, I would resist becoming. I would remain a Philistine in my heart, always.
But what was done, was done. The bitter reality shook me once more. What good were any of my secret pledges, my refusal to see my destiny? Just because I didn’t look at the horizon didn’t mean the sun would refuse to set.
The men were drinking and laughing. Astra and I hung back in the shadows, refilling wine bowls when summoned, lugging heavy crocks of beer to the table when we spied men frowning at their bowls.
My arms ached, and my stomach growled again, louder, filled with rancor at the closeness of food and my inability to eat any of it. I was terrified to eat in front of Samson. The act would reveal too much of myself. He would know that I was hungry. He would watch me choose what suited my tastes, and then watch my fingers pick the food up and carry it to my lips. He would know what I did with it, chewing, tasting, swallowing, wanting more.
His mother, who had grown no younger by the firelight, approached me in the shadows where I stood.
“Come here, girl,” she said.
Astra’s hand grabbed mine, and she pulled me further back into the shadows under our roof.
Samson’s mother stood there, one arm extended. She shot a horrid look at my mother, who was standing behind my father at the far end of the feasting tables. Mother pointed a finger into the shadows where we stood and then moved her finger toward Samson’s mother.
It had already begun. I was becoming the property of this old woman.
I pried Astra’s fingers off my hand and stepped into the fire’s light.
“Closer, please,” she said.
I crept toward her, uncertain of my fate.
She rolled her eyes and walked to me, finishing off the distance between us. Grabbing me by the arms, she spun me around and dug her fingers into my spine, testing it up and down, then digging those same bony of fingers into the space between each rib. I could hear her huffing in disgust.
“You’ve lost weight. You needed to flush out.”
My blank stare infuriated her. Her nostrils flared. “Flushed. Made fat. Like our breeding goats.”
I stopped breathing completely from the indignation, my breath frozen right in my chest. This woman wanted me fattened up, just like we fattened our goats before breeding. We checked the goats for the amount of fat between their ribs and along their backs. I was not a woman at all to Samson’s mother, not even a girl! I was a goat. I was livestock for breeding her little Hebrew half-beasts.
The men’s laughter died down as they watched us. Aware of all those glittering eyes on me, the darkness of the night, and the snapping of the fire, we all grew silent.
I moved back into the shadows and settled into Astra’s arms. I didn’t want to do those things that are done in the night, not with her son, and I didn’t want to breed his strange children. Breath flowed again into my lungs, cold night air, and I burst into sobs. Astra held me tightly.
Heat burst through my tunic from a huge hand resting on my shoulder.
“Why are you crying?”
I did not move. Astra turned me to face him. Samson stood before us. I felt like a child standing in his shadow, with my tear-stained face and running nose. One of his thighs was bigger than both of mine put together. And he had a strange gift, a magic that stole over me, making me feel safe and terrified all at once. He made my stomach forget its food and wince from sharp new pains, pains of a hunger that was strange to me.
“Do you want to tell me?”
I realized I had not spoken. I opened my mouth but could not make any sounds. I shook my head and looked away from him, at the ground. He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips. His lips grazed my hand, the gesture of a kind man, and my legs almost went out from under me from the shooting pains that attacked my thighs when he touched me. His lips were soft, softer than anything I had ever felt, and warm, and his whiskers scratched the skin where they touched me. Goose bumps rose all over my arms.
He did not release my hand. Instead, he led me to the feasting table and made room for me. He poured a bowl of wine and handed it to me.
Under the flickering light of a torch, I saw Samson’s mother smiling at me as I accepted the wine. She nodded in approval, and I understood. This was what she expected of me as his wife, although I did not understand the significance. Maybe wine brought fertility. I would ask my own mother tomorrow.
Little fool that I was, I smiled back at her, grateful to have perhaps earned her approval. I drank the wine and grew warm, letting the weight of so many emotions overtake me. I was unable to think, unable to act. I leaned against Samson and drank another bowl and waited for him to take me.
Samson did not lie with me on that first night of the feast. I was drunk for the first time in my life, so that much of what I remembered about the rest of the feast was told to me by Astra. I do remember the men dancing with women from the village, women who had crept near the bonfire, hoping for a bite of free food. I remember the moon, huge and white, lighting the whole night sky, like a bridal gift from Dagon.
I remember Samson’s warm skin, his arms like iron that slipped under my knees and around my back, lifting me when I began to doze off at the table. I rested my head against his chest like a child and heard his heart. It sounded like my own. That was a revelation to me, under that bright round moon. His tunic flapped open at the neck, revealing his tanned, taut skin and a few dark hairs from his chest.
I abandoned myself to him, rubbing my cheek against his flesh, letting myself be carried to our bridal bed. My mind told me to give in to him, to know why the women giggle at the bread oven when they speak of their men. Let it happen. You are too drunk to fight him off anyway.
Samson carried me into the house and to my pallet, ignoring the lewd comments from the men. He sat down next to me, leaning over me as he smoothed back my hair. He asked if I needed a blanket to keep warm or anything to settle my stomach. He had not seen me eat all night. Surely I needed something? Astra said I rolled to the side and curled up like a disappointed child, saying nothing. He laughed and found the blanket at the foot of the pallet, laying it over me. He sat there with me, she said, for a long while, just watching me sleep. He smiled as he did. He did not leer, she promised, or laugh, but smiled, like a man bewitched.
“I think he will be a gentle husband,” she added, as she dipped the linen in the crock of water and washed my forehead. I was still on the pallet, feverish and ill after too much wine last night.
“Where are Mother and Father?” I tried to sit up, but the weight of the room pushed me back down. The walls were moving in on me. My pallet was rolling side to side, too, I could feel it.
“Cleaning up. The men will return this afternoon at dusk. The second night.”
“Five more to go,” I whispered.
Astra slipped the linen cloth into the crock and lay down beside me, resting one arm around me. I closed my eyes, praying for relief.
“Five more to go,” she whispered back.