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Rebekah was surprised how Father fretted about the wedding. Constantly finding some pretext to summon her to his tent to ask the same questions, over and over.

"I don't expect her to be pretty," Father said for the fifth or tenth or twentieth time. "I'm not a boy and she's not a girl. But why won't they let me see her?"

Rebekah didn't even bother to answer anymore. There was no point in scratching the same letters into the dirt. Laban joked that they ought to have engraved all their commiserations in stone and then simply pointed to the appropriate phrases. "It would have saved time."

"And when it's time for your wedding," Rebekah added, "we could reuse them."

"I'm not going to marry some girl I've never seen," said Laban.

"Oh, I know," said Rebekah. "But of course we can't let her see you in advance."

"That's not fair," Laban said. "Father says I can't beat you with a stick, and anything less won't make an impression."

But with Father there was no joking. "If she's not ugly or scarred or deformed, why keep her veiled until the wedding?"

Rebekah started to write an explanation, but Father waved away the stick. "You think I won't know what you're going to say? You were veiled when he was offering to marry you, so I had to agree to marry Akyas the same way. But I've agreed now, so what's the big mystery?"

Again Rebekah started to write, but only got as far as "His mother and grandmother and ..."

"But it's completely different!" Father said. "He had three women examine you, and they got a good look at your face. You said yourself that her face was half hidden under her hair."

Rebekah wrote, "She's not a leper."

"Oh, good. I always wanted to marry a non-leper."

Rebekah almost wrote a sharp retort, but she knew better and stayed her hand.

"I know what you were going to write. I'm deaf, so I can't be too fussy."

That was what she was going to write. But she had to pretend it wasn't, so instead she wrote, "A link with Ezbaal's family is a good thing, and ..."

"And I had to agree to let her worship her own gods, because they had agreed to let you."

She wrote: "It's all my fault, I know ..."

"It's not your fault. It's Pillel's fault, with all his talk about making an enemy of Ezbaal. Suitors get rejected all the time, and it doesn't make them enemies!"

She rolled her eyes. The answer to that one was very long and tedious to write, and Father already knew it by now.

"Don't roll your eyes at me."

So she flung her arms around him and kissed him hard on the cheek.

"What was that about?"

She parted from the embrace and took his cheeks between her hands. "You are a wonderful father who saved me from a marriage that would have made me miserable."

"You're talking too fast for me to read your lips."

"I love you."

"Yes, well, you should. The sacrifices we make for our children. The things we give up, so that they can be happy."

And with that she could leave his tent again, knowing that she'd be summoned back in no time.

Truth to tell, she was puzzled by this business of Akyas marrying Father with a veil on. For all her reassurances to Father, she had to agree with him that it was strange. If Ezbaal was retaliating for the fact that Rebekah had been kept veiled, it was petty and spiteful of him or else he had a mean sense of humor. And if he wasn't, if there really was some reason to keep Akyas veiled, then it wasn't right to keep it from Father. A man had a right to know whom he was marrying, didn't he?

But when she said this to Milchah, one of the old servant women, she only laughed. "Foolish girl," she said. "No man ever knew whom he was marrying, and no woman either."

"You may not know what kind of spouse they'll be, but at least you should know if they have a missing nose or something."

"What difference does it make? Two days after the wedding, his bride might be set upon by a lion and be so badly mauled that she has no nose, and no ears either, and then what, does he send her away?"

"Some men would."

"It takes a lot more than that to make a good man send away his wife."

"There won't be a lion."

"Oh yes there will," said Milchah. "Not the kind that growls. The lion of days, that nibbles at you and paws you every hour like a cat playing with its prey, but so gently that you don't feel it until one day you look at your husband and he's as sunburned and wrinkled as leather that got soaked in the rain, and you suddenly realize, I must look like that, too."

"But that's different. A husband and wife go down that road together."

Milchah looked at her with a sudden intensity. "Not always," she said.

"What does that mean?"

Milchah hesitated, then shook her head. "I'm an old woman, and I forget which stories are fit for children and which are not."

"I'm not a child, and I can hear anything."

"Compared to me everybody's a child, and some stories are not worth hearing."

"I'll go through the camp telling lies about you," said Rebekah.

"You're such a baby," said Milchah. It was an old game between them, which never changed, even after Rebekah took her place as mistress of the household.

"I'll tell them that you always add too much salt to the pot because you've completely lost your sense of taste."

"I'm not going to tell you anything important, foolish girl. But I did once hear a story about a bride who secretly taught her children to make offerings to a god that her husband hated, and one day he caught her and was so angry at the deception and the disobedience that he divorced her on the spot and drove her out of the camp."

"If that's a warning, you can be sure that's precisely what I would have done if they had made me go ahead with my marriage to Ezbaal."

"Make of it what you will," said Milchah. "It's time for my nap."

"What? Have I made you angry? Really, not just playing?"

"I'm always annoyed when young fools only hear what they want to hear."

"I heard you, Milchah, I always listen."

"Would you really have defied your husband, knowing that you were bound to be caught someday, and then you'd never see your children again?"

Rebekah hadn't thought through the story very well. "But ... when Father sent Khanea away, she got to take Belbai with her."

Milchah gave a sharp laugh. "Your father was sending Belbai away, and besides, Belbai was not your father's son. Do you think for a moment the head of a great house would let a disobedient wife take his children with her when he sent her away?"

"I never thought of that," said Rebekah.

"That's why God hasn't let me die yet," said Milchah. "So somebody can say something sensible to you now and then."

"That's why a woman shouldn't marry a man who doesn't worship the same god."

"Oh, now you're full of all kinds of wise rules, aren't you?" said Milchah. "What if her father promised that she'd be obedient, but he didn't tell her?"

"Father would never do that, so it won't matter to me."

"Yes, you're lucky that your father understands just how important a religious difference can be," said Milchah. But there was something nasty in her tone. Rebekah understood at once.

"Father came to his senses as soon as I reminded him of how important it is to raise my children in a house where only the God of Abraham is worshiped."

"And he loves having you speak of the God of Abraham," said Milchah, getting even nastier.

"But ... that's the only true God," said Rebekah.

"But his name isn't 'the God of Abraham.'"

"I've never been told his true name," said Rebekah.

"And still it doesn't occur to you that maybe your father would rather you spoke of 'the God of Bethuel'?"

"Father never said ... he always "

"All those stories of Uncle Abraham," said Milchah. "And Lot. All the famous boys. And here's Bethuel, trying to serve God as best he can, and even his own daughter says 'God of Abraham.'"

"If you're trying to make me feel bad, you're doing a good job of it."

"Don't feel bad, Rebekah, everyone does it. And now that your father's deaf, he never has to hear it. Maybe he thinks of that as a blessing. But now, please, don't you have something to do to prepare for the wedding?"

"I've given everybody their tasks."

"Well, give yourself one and go do it, because I need a nap."

The conversation with Milchah made Rebekah all the gladder that she had obeyed the will of God and refused to marry Ezbaal. And she wondered again what Father was getting himself into with this marriage. What if Akyas had children? Father had given her permission to worship her gods as long as she did it in private, but she could imagine Akyas defying him and insisting on taking her children with her to town for the festivals of Ba'al and Asherah. Akyas had a sharp tongue, and she knew her own mind. That would be interesting, watching the two of them go at it, head to head.

Rebekah thought back to the way Akyas had acted the one time they conversed, during that supper in her tent. She was a sharp one. She kept her face hidden, but she saw everything and understood many things that couldn't be seen. And wasn't she the one who had come up with the trap that Rebekah almost fell into? You can worship the God of Abraham, all right, but not a word was said about her children. Sly. Clever. Stubborn. It made Rebekah admire her strength, but also it made her afraid for Father. Akyas could be a difficult woman. Why was Father so worried about her face? It was a lot more useful to know how Akyas conducted herself in an argument.

Milchah was right. The lion of days would ruin beauty, but not right away. What about the bear of quarrels? There was nothing gradual about that beast. Father had a mighty roar, and when he was furious he could stay his hand but not his tongue.

Of course, it would be hard to sustain an argument with him now, when all Akyas's words would have to be scratched into the dirt.

What am I worrying about? Why should they argue? Akyas was married before, wasn't she? She knew what could go wrong in a marriage, and she would be on her guard to make sure it didn't happen again. Hadn't she said as much, that night in Rebekah's tent?

Still, Rebekah couldn't stop worrying about Milchah's warning during all the days of preparation for the wedding. Father had taken a great more thought and care about finding a spouse for Rebekah than Rebekah had taken about finding a spouse for him.

Finally, on the night before the wedding, with all the preparations done, Rebekah found that she could not sleep for worrying about Father and Akyas. She lay awake looking up into the darkness above her bed, and it occurred to her that on the night before the wedding, she was hardly likely to be the only one awake. In fact, in the stillness of night she could hear men's laughter in the distance Laban would be there, no doubt, and Ezbaal, too, celebrating with Father and commiserating with him on his loss of bachelorhood. Not to mention making ribald jokes, or so the women said the men did whenever they were alone together.

But what were the bride and her women doing?

The thought came into Rebekah's head that the person most certain to be awake was the bride-to-be.

Akyas. Rebekah's stepmother-to-be, who would certainly expect to rule over the women in Father's household. Tomorrow, as soon as the words were said and the earthen bowls were dashed back upon the earth, Rebekah would lose her place.

She should be either worried or relieved, but she was not aware of either feeling in her heart. She had done her duty when there was no one else to do it. Now it would belong to another woman, and Rebekah could easily return to her proper role as child of the house. As simple as that.

What an absurd thought, she realized. Nothing would be simple. She had no idea what it was like, to be daughter of a house ruled by a wife. Would she be pampered or scolded? Rebekah tried to think back on what Akyas had said and done during their all-too-brief supper together. That conversation was all about what kind of wife Rebekah would make, and the only other attitude of Akyas's was a bit of cynicism about marriage. There was nothing in what Rebekah remembered of that night to guide her in how Akyas might regard a stepdaughter who had once ruled in a wife's place.

And yet Rebekah still felt no fear. This woman would have the power to make her life miserable, and yes she felt nothing but peace at the thought of having her come into the family. That was very odd. Surely she should feel something.

Should I have called upon her? She was in seclusion, Ezbaal's man had announced, and would not see anyone until the wedding. Instructions had been given by intermediaries. It was hardly a circumstance conducive to making visits to the tent of her temporary hermitage. And yet Rebekah knew that whether or not she should have called upon Akyas before, she certainly should do so now.

At this hour?

Why not? It wasn't that late.

Rebekah rose quietly, so as not to waken Deborah who slept heavily in any case, gently snoring in her corner near the doorway. Covering herself with a simple robe, Rebekah slipped out into the cool air of a summer evening in the high grasslands.

No sooner did she begin to make her way toward Akyas's tent, however, than she felt a sudden dread. What could she do that was more foolish than to defy the bride's seclusion and waken her at some awful hour of the night?

Rebekah turned back to the tent, wondering what she could have been thinking even to consider such a course of action, when all of a sudden the fear left her and she again thought: But that's absurd. It isn't that late, and Akyas will be up, and why shouldn't the daughter of the household come to her to welcome her in advance? It would be a gracious thing to offer, anyway, and if Akyas didn't want her to come in, she had only to refuse to admit her at the door.

Rebekah turned again and strode boldly toward the tent of Ezbaal's women. At once the dread and doubt returned to her, but she paid it no heed, refusing to let foolish fear stop her from the right course of action. Soon she arrived at the tent door, and yes, a light flickered dimly within. Not wishing to clap her hands at this quiet hour for who knew how many people would think it was their tent into which someone desired entry? Rebekah merely snapped her fingers several times.

At once someone touched her arm. Rebekah whirled to see a stern-looking man looming over her, holding a lamp inside a pierced jar. Of course Ezbaal had set a guard to watch over the women's tent!

Rebekah waited to be recognized, but then realized that was stupid. She had not been seen without her veil by any man in Ezbaal's party, so how would this poor fellow recognize her? Indeed, if she had been thinking straight, she would have worn her veil in fact, she could not think why she had forgotten to wear it, since it had been second nature to her for years to put it on whenever she ventured outside, day or night. Yet tonight she had forgotten it, and so would not be recognized.

All this thought passed in a moment, and she was about to begin to explain who she was when the man's expression changed to one of embarrassment.

"Ah, mistress, no one told me you were abroad tonight," he whispered. "But why wouldn't you simply go in?"

His seeming recognition of her confused him. Had Akyas and the other women described her so carefully? And why should she simply walk in? "Am I expected, then?"

"You are careful, mistress," he said with a shy smile. "I hope I passed your test." Then he backed away into the darkness, taking the faint lamplight with him.

Different households trained their servants in different ways, apparently. What was there to do now, but simply part the flap and go inside?

The lamp flickered from a low table, and before it a woman knelt, praying to an image of Asherah, Rebekah supposed, since it was obviously of a woman while on two of the three sides of the tent, two heaps of blankets and the slight sound of breathing showed where Ezbaal's mother and grandmother no doubt lay asleep.

Rebekah was surprised that it was prayer that kept Akyas awake, and not conversation with the other women. But they were older, and had seen many a wedding, so no doubt they needed their sleep in order to make a good showing in the morning.

After a moment, Akyas for Rebekah supposed it was she, from the slightness of her figure and the fullness of her hair; and who else of the three would be awake the night before the wedding? finished her prayer, touched her forehead, kissed her fingers, then dipped them into a tiny bowl before the idol and anointed the statue's head and breasts and hips. Only then did she turn to see whose entry into the tent had made the wick of the lamp flicker and move within the oil.

Her eyes widened in surprise. So Akyas had been expecting to see someone, but not Rebekah.

Rebekah dared not speak loud enough to be heard across the tent she did not want to waken the others. So she made as if to leave.

Immediately Akyas beckoned to her, insistently, as if she would brook no argument. Rebekah came quietly across the rugs fine thick rugs, heavy for the beasts to carry, but just what Ezbaal was bound to provide for the women of his house. Akyas lifted the lamp and held it between them. So quietly that her breath did not make the lamp's flame flicker, Akyas said, "I hoped that you would come."

That might be true enough, thought Rebekah, but it didn't change the fact that she had been expecting someone else. "I would have come sooner," Rebekah answered, "but I did not know if your seclusion ..."

Akyas waved her hand dismissively. "Let's go outside to talk. Old women sleep lightly."

"I heard that," murmured Ethah.

"And thereby proved me right," said Akyas softly.

"Get out, you pack of hooting baboons," Ethah said; and then, almost as a continuation of the same sentence, she snored.

Akyas, laughing silently, led the way out of the tent. When they were well away from any one tent, Akyas spoke quietly. "I wish you could have met Ethah under better circumstances. She has quite a sharp sense of humor."

"Or you have," said Rebekah, smiling. Dim though the nearly moonless night might be, her eyes were used to it by now, and she could see that Akyas's face was not just pretty in the way people thought, but also lively and intelligent. "I'm so glad I came tonight, though I was afraid you wouldn't want me."

"Afraid?" asked Akyas, laughing softly. "You walked right into my tent."

"But your man outside told me "

"It's all right," said Akyas. "As I said, I hoped you would come. Ezbaal suggested that I stay hidden and veiled, partly I suppose out of pique he didn't like having to bargain for you sight unseen but I thought it would make everything simpler, too. The hardest part of my seclusion has been not seeing you."

"You flatter me."

"Not at all. I thought I might gain you as a sister, but will you mind too much that I will have you as daughter instead?"

"Not too much," said Rebekah with a smile. "I was the first to suggest to Father that there was more than one way to tie the families together."

Akyas reached out and brushed a wisp of hair out of Rebekah's face. "Who tends your hair?"

"Deborah, my nurse."

"You still have a nurse?"

"I was so young when my mother died, Deborah is the only mother I knew. She's also a kinswoman, and just a bit feeble-minded. She serves me well, and I plan to keep her with me all my life."

"You're loyal, then."

Why did Akyas still seem to be measuring her? "Loyalty begets loyalty," she answered. "Deborah would die for me. I'm the center of her life."

"So you have not been wishing for a mother."

"I see mothers all around me. I don't see how they treat their children differently from the way Deborah treated me. I think what I've missed isn't so much a mother as having a wife in my father's life. I see the other women with their husbands, and I think, was my mother like this with my father? Or like that? A nag? A scold? A cowering slave? Or a friend, a strong companion? Trusted or mistrusted? Things I'll never know."

"But haven't you heard stories about her?"

"No one speaks of her," said Rebekah. "When I was little, and I asked, they said Father didn't like to have her spoken of. I suppose it made him too sad."

"And what did he say?" asked Akyas.

"He just ... didn't answer, when I asked about her. But he got such a sad look on his face, so far away and regretful, that I learned not to mention her. Until his deafness, he was always with me, and I think I made him happy. I thought of that as my job in the camp, the way other women cook or farm or spin."

"And after he became deaf?"

"I took my place as head of the women. He needed that more, since even my presence made him unhappy then."

"You write to him, so he can understand you."

"Yes. Laban and I tried to invent how to do it but we got it all wrong. He taught us the writing of the holy books."

"I can't write, you know," said Akyas.

"But of course I'll teach you."

"Isn't it a holy language? I serve Asherah. You know that, don't you?"

"If I didn't before, I do now," said Rebekah. "But no, the language is just ... the common speech of every day. The letters aren't holy, only the books."

"Ah. Religious things can be so complicated. You never know what a man will get prickly about."

"And Father will let you worship Asherah?"

"In private. That was worked out in advance."

"And what about your children?" asked Rebekah, thinking of the problem she had faced.

To her consternation, Akyas laughed aloud, catching herself at once, but continuing to laugh silently, as if this were the most amusing question in the world. Finally she spoke. "I think it is safe to say that any children I have with Bethuel will grow up loyal to his god."

His god. Well, there was one person, at least, who didn't call him the God of Abraham. But hearing it said that way made it sound as if God were just one god among many. He wasn't the god of Bethuel, he was God. But of course he wouldn't seem that way to Akyas. This was going to be complicated. To have someone in the camp who didn't speak of the Lord as if he were the only living God.

"And that doesn't bother you? That your children will not serve Asherah?"

"I made my peace with Asherah long ago. If a woman has to choose between her children and her god, I think the children are the better choice."

Rebekah looked away. It was not the choice she had made. Or ... no, it rather was the choice she made, wasn't it? Not to marry a man at all if he might make her face such an awful choice.

Akyas touched her arm. "My dear child, I didn't mean to hurt you. Ezbaal will make some girl a wonderful husband, and he will have strong and mighty sons. But I saw that night at supper that you were not the one for him."

"Oh," said Rebekah. "I thought you had decided I was for him."

"I did. I did decide that, because I wanted you with me. But it was selfish of me. I was thinking that perhaps I could help you to be happy in spite of the problems that might arise."

"So you liked me, even though I was so awful to everybody?"

"I liked you because you were so awful to everybody. And that wasn't why I didn't think you should be with Ezbaal. I simply ... I know the kind of man Ezbaal is. He will have many children. In fact, he already does have many children. No wife, mind you." Her mind made a sudden turning. "I've heard that Bethuel has been chaste ever since your mother ..."

Rebekah blushed. She had never thought about that aspect of her father's life. It was rather as if all the flirting and affection she saw between women and men were something for ordinary beings, while Father was above all that.

"Of course you wouldn't monitor what he does in his travels," said Akyas.

"In all my life," said Rebekah, "he has never done anything to cause dissension in the camp."

Akyas blinked twice, and then apparently understood how obliquely but fully Rebekah had answered her question. "So there is no woman in the camp who will especially resent my coming."

"They will all be equally delighted," said Rebekah. "And I suppose they'll be glad not to take their instructions from a mere girl."

"You're hardly a mere girl any more. You're old enough to marry, after all!"

"I'll always be a child in this camp. No one doubted my authority, mind you, but most of them had seen me as a naked baby and they didn't ... well, they didn't ever come to me for counsel, if you see what I mean. Orders, but not advice. Everyone was my teacher. And that was good. I think I know every kind of work done in our camp."

"Which guarantees that when you do marry, it will probably be to a town man, where almost nothing you learned will be useful," said Akyas wryly.

"Was that a joke or a curse?" asked Rebekah.

"A memory," said Akyas.

"Ah. Your first husband was a man of the city?"

Akyas looked off into the distance for a moment. Rebekah knew the look. Akyas did not want to talk about her unhappy marriage. She could hint about it, so that people would know that she was not a woman who had reached this age without a husband, but what made the marriage so awful was not to be discussed.

"Rebekah," said Akyas. "Tomorrow, will you stand with me? To write my words for him? Since he can't hear my voice."

"But that's Ezbaal's place," said Rebekah.

"It's whosever place I say it is," said Akyas. "Ezbaal is my brother. Do you think Laban would dare thwart you if you wanted me to stand beside you at your wedding?"

"But my father is still alive, so that wouldn't be Laban's place."

"I need an interpreter," said Akyas. "Someone we both love and trust, to stand between him and me."

"Then I'll do it," said Rebekah. "Though I will not go into the marriage tent with you."

Akyas laughed. "No, there are some things that a deaf man has to do for himself, without interpretation."

"Why would you ... why do you say that you love and trust me?"

"Because I do," said Akyas. "And that's all the explanation you're going to get, because ... well, because you've never met you, if you see what I mean, so you don't know how easy it is for someone to love and trust you."

"I hope you're right," said Rebekah. "Because Ethah and ... 'Mother' ... didn't find it all that natural."

Akyas laughed again. "Oh, you're a delight. 'Call me Mother' indeed. But she ... simply has to be intimate with everybody the moment she meets them. But of course that means she's never really intimate with anybody, since everybody is at exactly the same level of intimacy, the stranger and the longtime friend and the family member, all the same. She's not Ezbaal's mother, you know. Or mine. She was simply Ezbaal's father's senior wife at the time he was murdered. His real mother died giving birth to him."

"I had no idea."

"Ezbaal is a loyal man. Once you have a place in his life, he's loyal to you forever. Unless you betray him, of course, and then ... well, he makes a marvelous friend. If he takes you under his protection, you are as safe as you can be in this world of wild beasts and marauding men."

And on they talked, about Ezbaal, about husbands, about city life, about the places she'd seen, all kinds of things, until it was so late that they were both yawning, and not for the first time, and Akyas finally said, "My dear child, my dear young woman, my dear friend, your coming to me tonight was the kindest thing anyone could have done for me. You were the answer to my prayer, in fact."

That made Rebekah a little uncomfortable, since of course Asherah didn't exist and therefore couldn't have answered anyone's prayer. But ... maybe God heard the prayers of those who believed in false gods, and counted their faith as if it were faith in him, until they learned better. "Well, you were not the answer to my prayer," said Rebekah.

For a moment Akyas looked taken aback, so Rebekah hurried to finish her sentence. "You were the gift that God gave me without my even having to ask. Because he knew I needed you, even if I didn't know it myself."

A smile spread across Akyas's face. "Oh, you have a silver tongue."

"If I do, I must have got it from my mother, since Father's as blunt as a camel's snout."

Akyas laughed at that. "Good night, Rebekah. I'm gaining so much more than a husband tomorrow. Will you ... even though I wasn't here to raise you, all these years you were growing up, will you let me pretend that I was? Will you let me think of you as my true daughter?"

"I hope I prove worthy of your thinking of me that way," said Rebekah.

"And I hope I prove worthy of your thinking of me, someday, as your mother."

Rebekah kissed her cheek, and in so doing realized for the first time that they were exactly the same height. How could she ever think of a woman who was never bigger than her as her mother? She remembered most of the women in the camp as being giants compared to her, when she was a child.

But that wasn't really what Akyas wanted, was it? She wanted reassurance that she would be welcomed in her proper role in the household, and not be resented by the woman who had been the ruler of women before she came.

So she answered with the words that would reassure Akyas while still being truthful. "I don't really know what it's like to have a mother," she said, "but with your help, perhaps now I can learn."

Rebekah insisted on walking her to her tent. "I've walked these paths for years, in darkness and light. There's not an insect here that I don't already know by name just from the buzz."

"Then I'm glad I have you for my guide."

They said their good-nights at Akyas's tent door and parted with another kiss and an embrace that surprised Rebekah by its intensity. She returned to her own tent, to her own bed, feeling glad that she had dared to go and visit Akyas.

Copyright © 2001 Orson Scott Card