Miriam

(Context: Numbers 12:15)

An infinite moment of silence. In the deepening darkness, here within the well, I am falling, falling, past where I should have struck the water, past where I should have struck the earth at the bottom of the well. I have been falling for so long that I no longer feel myself fall, save that my hair (long, suddenly white) is trailing above me in my wake. Features within the walls shoot past me, helping me see the direction in which I am falling. But when I close my eyes, I feel as if I am floating, adrift on dry water on a sea of muted wind.

The life from which I have fallen – in huts, in palaces, in hiding, in the desert – seems as far from me now as the vault of heaven is from the lands where I have dwelled. But the distance, the time over which I have fallen cannot erase the senses and memories of life. Memory is seared into the milk whiteness of my flesh, my hair, in the exhaustion of my voice, raw from singing, from shouting, from celebration, from tears.

If anyone had the right to confront Moses, to criticize him, it was I, the one who had saved his life so soon after his birth, who had taught him, who spoke for him before the people as our brother Aaron spoke for him before kings. When Moses needed to sing, I led the people in his songs. When he summoned water from the rock, I formed the rock into this well, which has followed us in our travels through the desert, from Horeb on to Hatzerot.

And when his wife Zipporah came to me in tears, in despair over how Moses was neglecting her, I went to Moses, bringing Aaron with me, to speak on her behalf before all the people, to remind him that above all, above his responsibilities to his people, even above his responsibility to his God, a man’s first responsibility is to his family, to his children, to his wife.

Moses said nothing for himself. He stood silent, the image of meekness. When we were done, he simply opened his arms and looked upward. And suddenly he and Aaron and I heard the voice of God summoning us to the tent of meeting.

There we saw the pillar of cloud with which the Lord makes himself known. He summoned Aaron and me inside.

And there God rebuked me, his words slapping me in the face. Yes, he said, Aaron and I were prophets, but not prophets at the level of Moses. While God spoke to us from within dreams, within clouds, he spoke to Moses face to face. How, then, he asked, dare we speak against Moses?

And he left me as I am now, drained of all color. When I returned to the well and looked at my reflection, I saw myself as a sketch of absence: white skin framed by white hair against white clouds, then the near-white walls of the well, surrounded and completed by the desert’s white sands.

They banished me from the camp, by God’s command, condemned to stay here, in solitude, for seven days. While the people had planned to move on, they have refused to travel without me (though I wonder if they have done so in solidarity with me or out of fear of losing the well).

There I sat for six of the days, with no one to speak to, no sounds other than the wind. I took to sitting by the well, listening to how the wind, blowing across its smooth opening like breath across a flute, caused deep resonances to rise forth, groaning and rushing like the sighs and whispers of the desert itself.

Then, at twilight at the end of the sixth day, I heard the sounds coalesce into patterns. The deep hums brought forth higher tones, coming up and disappearing, forming phonemes, letters, a name: they were calling “Miriam.”

I looked down into the well, and saw, as always, the reflection of my face. But the face was speaking, calling me, calling my name. “Have I gone insane so quickly,” I thought, “that I see phantoms calling out to me?”

“No,” the face said aloud, “I speak for the Lord.”

“Have you come to apologize?”

“No,” it said. “Not to apologize, but to explain, and to ask a favor of you.”

I did not reply.

“You were right about Moses, about Zipporah,” it said. “The Lord has told him to return to his wife. His relations with her would not compromise his holiness but will enhance it. But at this sensitive time, as he builds these tribes into a people and prepares to lead them home, they could not see his leadership questioned. So the Lord chastised you, banished you, punished you, bringing you to this place, to this moment.”

“And now,” I said, “I am to be returned to the people?”

“Not now. The banishment will last the full seven days in the eyes of the people.”

“And in my eyes? In the Lord’s eyes?”

“This is the favor that the Lord asks of you. You have an opportunity to step outside of time. You would be a teacher, a leader. You can create a school, a community of prophets, where people can come, can seek refuge and learn.”

“Why would I receive this supposed honor?”

“Because you are a leader, a singer, a teacher. Because you care about doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord, but also care about the people. And, most importantly, you care enough to have challenged Moses, to have challenged the Lord.”

“And what need I do to make this transition?”

“All you need,” the face said, “is to step into the well.”

“Do I have a choice in the matter?”

“Yes. You can either accept or decline the offer.”

“Does the Lord know which choice I take?”

“The Lord sees time from outside of time. You would learn to do so also. He knows whether you come to accept the offer. But the choice is yours.”

“Both cannot be true,” I said.

“Look at the path that a serpent has left in the sand,” the face said, “or the path that a river has taken in its voyage from the mountains to the sea. Each is made of a multitude of tiny chances and decisions, but viewed from outside the voyage, the resulting path is clear.”

“And if I do not choose?”

“That in itself is a choice. In either case, at sunset tomorrow, as you measure time, you return to your people, healed.”

“If I step outside of time, do I live forever?”

“Not forever, but for a very long time. The doorway out of time opened in your world when the Lord gave the tablets of the Law to Moses. When they return to heaven from this world, the doorway closes. But that happens after more years here than, according to your histories, have elapsed since the beginning of recorded time. You would live for a very long time, but you would not age further. When you would return to this world when that world ends, it would be as if no time at all had passed.”

“Would the work there have an impact here? Would it be remembered by history?”

“No, not by history. But traces of your actions would be felt in legends and in songs. To be most effective, you would work in secret. But when people need you, they would find you. And when the Lord would need to remember his covenant with humanity, you would be there to guide him, remind him, and, when appropriate, challenge his decisions.”

I sat in silence, contemplating. When next I looked into the water, the face within the well was silent. I opened my mouth to sing a long tone, to hear it resonate in the depths of the well. The reflection of my face opened its mouth as well, then shattered as the water responded to the vibrations of my voice. When I fell silent, the reflected face returned to being identical to my own.

These were the choices: I could jump or I could stay. I knew that I would not die in the descent, since the face had said that, either way, I would return to the people, healed, tomorrow. I knew that the voice was telling the truth, knew that the voices of prophecy, though they might confuse, would never lie.

I had asked the right questions. I had received appropriate answers. The choice was mine.

I sat by the well for a long time, long enough for the sun to finish setting and for the full moon to rise. As I saw the moon’s reflection move to fill the surface of the water in the well, I heard its voice whisper to me, “Miriam, your sisters await you.”

The well filled with a brilliant glow, as if the light of the moon had transformed into a milky lantern. I knew that I would have to choose, but did not know what the choice would be. All that I could do would be to move to the point of decision.

Certain that I was alone, I dropped my robe by the side of the well, and stepped up onto its wall. For a moment that felt, itself, as if it was outside of time, I hovered there, between constancy and commitment, between time and infinity.

Then I felt my body decide: evenly, with a certainty that my mind did not yet share, my left foot stepped out into the air above the well.

I stepped out, and I fell, and I am falling, down farther than the earthly well could have gone. I hear echoes of sounds pass me (a distant gong, the wheeze of reeds, a resonance of deep sliding trumpets) as I leave the sound of the desert wind. Images flash around me, glowing from the walls (other women falling alongside me, a hare in human clothing, a circle of lesser angels shouting from and to a falling girl, a blue house in a whirlwind surrounded by leaves), as the light from the moon above fades away, and a glow from below grows more brilliant.

I fall away from the land, away from time, and see a multitude of destinies surround me. They spread out over all of time, as if a map has been laid out showing histories past and future, extending in more directions than I can name. Endless rivers of emotion flow through me, starting, perhaps, in fear or uncertainty, but all running toward an ocean of joy.

I know (though I do not know how I know) that this decision is the right one. I do not know if I will ever land, or where, or how, or precisely what awaits me. For now, I let myself sink into the luxury of this moment, away from the pull of time, of earth. I throw my head back, spread my arms, and let the ecstasy of falling overwhelm my soul.

Sarah

(Context: Genesis 23:1)

“Hello, Grandmother.”

So it has come to this: after all these years, in the moment of my deepest grief, of my final betrayal, as my husband has led my only son off to die, a stranger has come to mock me.

“I am no one’s grandmother,” I say.

“No,” she says, “but you will be.”

“I have had enough of prophecy.” Sitting here on this low bench at the gateway to my home, I pull myself inward, away from those milk-white feet, clutching my knees even more tightly to my chest.

“This is not prophecy,” she says. “This is fact. Isaac comes back down the mountain, quite alive, and fathers sons, who father sons and daughters, and so on. I am indeed your granddaughter, seven generations removed. I am Miriam, known as the sister of Moses and—no, my brothers’ names will not yet mean anything to you. But I am Miriam.”

“I am Sarah,” I say automatically.

“Yes, Grandmother,” she says. “I know.”

“You say this as if this is history. Has the heart of time itself been broken? Has it flung me into the future?”

“We are still in your present time,” she says. “But I have stepped back into what, viewed from my lifetime here, is the distant past.”

“And why have you come here?” I say. “To confuse and to mock me?”

“I have not come to mock you,” she says. “I have come to take you home.”

“This is my home,” I say, “or as much of a home as I have ever had. Where would you take me? I lost my childhood home in Ur to fire long ago. None of us remain in the next city that we lived in, in Kharan. Abraham has dragged me all over Canaan and beyond, down to Egypt, up to this hilltop in Kiryat-Arba, and throughout all the rest of the lands that we know. His god told him to go for himself. He went. I followed. But since I was a child, I have never had a home of my own.”

The stranger’s feet step closer. “May I sit with you?” she asks.

I point to my right, “The bench is large enough,” I say. “Please pardon me, but I do not feel up to being a perfect host.”

“I understand.” She sits, and all that the corner of my eye sees is white upon white upon white.

I turn my head just enough to get a good look at her. She wears a robe of white linen, its hem faintly dusted and discolored by pale sand. Her skin is as white as the linen, and her hair even whiter than that. But dark eyes like mine peer out from behind pale lashes, and her features are like ours, not like those of the bleached travelers from the North.

“Tzara’at?” I ask.

She nods, tenses, waits, then relaxes. “You didn’t flinch away from me though you recognize the disease! I assure you, though, that this peculiar joke that God has pulled on me is not contagious.”

I shrug. “I am not worried. God’s joke on me was to make me young and keep me from aging. I no longer get ill, even from the most trivial or virulent of diseases. I am afraid that I may be forced to live forever.”

“Would it be a consolation to learn that you do not?” she asks.

“I suppose that it would.”

“Then,” she says, “I can tell you that you do, indeed, pass from this life eventually and rejoin the realm of souls.”

“When?”

She closes her eyes, tilts her head to the left as it trying to remember, frowns, tilts her head to the right and then upright, then opens her eyes and smiles slightly. “That is a surprisingly difficult question,” she says.

“So you are not allowed to tell me.”

“No,” she says, “I am allowed. But I only know part of the answer. As viewed by people here, you leave your life quite soon. But you should live for many more years elsewhere.”

“Where?” I ask.

She seems not to have heard me. “Tell me,” she says, “when you picture your life, the way that you wish that it had gone, what do you see?”

“Really? Other than having been dragged about by my husband’s missions and his god’s whims?”

“Yes. Try to remember who you were, and who you wanted to become.”

My eyes close, and I wait for ideas, for images. But all that I hear, all that I see is the jumble of my current life, all that I have endured, all that has exhausted me.

I feel the faintest of touches brush and then rest against my temples. I open my eyes and look into the stranger’s. Her voice seems to come not from her lips but from within my own mind. “Speak to me. Who are you? Where are you now?”

My sense of where I am dissolves as steam disappears in the path of a cooling breath. “I am indoors,” I say, “in a large room, in what feels like a very old building. This room, its walls, its floor are simple, solid, as are the tables and chairs. Threads of text are inscribed on all the surfaces, intertwining into patterns, symbols, diagrams that reveal more than the words themselves.

“Others sit in the room with me, in a circle. I am teaching them, learning from them, speaking of history, of art, of all the things that join us together, that make us who we are as people. Most of those in the room are my many daughters, and it feels as if all of them are. We all have been here for a very long time, though we are continually learning things that are new. There is a sense of stability, of warmth, of all the things that I have missed in my life.”

My breath catches. The image shatters, dissipates, propels me back, to my home, to this dusty gateway, to this low stone bench.

I pull back away from this Miriam, away from her gaze, her touch.”Why have you forced me to see this, to remember this? I had forgotten what my life could have been. I had almost grown happy with who I am.”

She smiles, takes my hand in hers, pale flesh surrounding dark. “I show you this because it is true. This is where I came from, where we are going. It is indeed a memory, not of your past, but of your future.”

“Where is this place?” I say.

“This is also a surprisingly difficult question. I can say where its entrances are, but the location of the school itself is an ongoing source of debate. We seem to exist in a different space, a different time, connected but not the same as here.” She pauses, releases my hands, and rises to her feet. “So shall we go?”

“Why should I believe you?” I say.

“Because your heart knows it to be true.”

And as she says this, I look deep into my heart, out beyond the world that I know. Time suddenly spreads out before me, not as a line but as a plane. I see the world through Miriam’s eyes, and know that I am to leave here, know that what we see will indeed be my choice, my destiny.

“But what of my future here?” I ask aloud. “How will Abraham and my Isaac continue without me? Will they come to hate me for abandoning them?”

“The stories say that you pass away here, soon, as or just after they come down from the mountain. None of us can step back into this world within the span of our natural lives. But once you pass away, we can return you here. They will find that you had died while they were away, quietly, at rest, at peace.”

“And will they continue well?”

“They will,” she says, “from what we know. You have set up your household to run well without you. Your friend, your servant Eliezer, will watch over them. Soon, he will find a bride for Isaac from within your clan, and generations will extend through Isaac as far into the future as we can see.”

Silence falls. I sit and Miriam stands in the fading light of evening. When my shadow has lengthened to the point that it darkens her pale feet, I, too, rise.

“So shall we go?” Miriam asks. “We have a long walk ahead of us.”

“What may I take?” I ask.

“Whatever you wish. Whatever we can carry.”

I step back into my house and look around. Though, like all our homes have been, it is a temporary shelter, it is cluttered, strewn with gifts and tokens that have accumulated in our travels and transactions.

Off in a corner, one item stands out, as if a different light shines on it: a doll, intended as an idol, I suppose. My father Haran carved it from the wood of an asherah grove. I had clutched it as my Abram saved me from the fire in my home, and kept it with me throughout all these years.

I walk to the doll, pick it up, and cradle it in my arms. I take a couple of favorite robes and scrolls of stories that I would like to remember and teach.

I turn to the door, then turn back again. Taking a reed and some blank parchment, I write a quick note to Abraham reminding him to complete our purchase of the caves at Machpelah. After what he has experienced and is likely to experience, he is likely to forget. And I do love that piece of land, and would like to be buried there.

I pause at the end of the note. Should I say goodbye to my husband and my son? No, better for them not to know that I left them. Better for them to believe that my passing was sudden, was unexpected.

I cap the inkwell and rest the quill beside it. Looking around for what I know is the last time, I try to engrave the image in my memory. Looking into myself to remember my feelings as I leave, I am surprised that where I expect to find sadness and resignation, I find excitement, anticipation, joy.

I turn again and step out of the house. Miriam reaches out wordlessly and takes some of the scrolls and robes to carry.

“Shall we go?” she asks again.

I nod. We start down the path, down this hill, away from what had been, for awhile, my home.

After we have walked for awhile, I realize that I have been considering a question for a while. “This place where we are going,” I ask, “does it have a name?”

“Not one that we know,” she replies. “But our group, our school, takes one on.” She looks toward me, the glow of her pale smile as warm as that of the horizon’s setting sun.

“We have always known that you would be be joining us. Even though you have not come to join us until now, we have always spoken of ourselves as the Sacred Sisters of Sarah.”

I stop, surprised, then quickly return to walking down the mountain. Yes, I am returning to the life that I was meant to lead. Yes, I finally am coming home.

Elisheva (Epilogue)

And now I am alone, alone except for my silent angel, who comes and goes in ways that I cannot understand. How long have I been alone? My sense of time has fractured, scrambled. I can no longer remember the sequence of events, other than by reconstructing patterns, believing that one thing must have caused another and therefore must have preceded it.

Elisheva (Prologue)

This angel sits here, silent, forever by my side. His head is bowed, but his eyes look up toward me, here as I lie on this soft stone bed of comfort. His wings, his feathers whisper without words in the gentle breeze that flows through this sealed room.

He says nothing. I can say nothing to him, cannot speak in my own voice. But his words emerge from the silence of his heart and hover in the air, at the archway of the doors between our souls:

Speak to me.

Who are you?

Where are you now?

The glimmers of myself that remain within my mind try to retain this little knowledge of myself: My name was, is Elisheva. I am the last of these prophets, of these women, the last of my kind.

I once knew other stories of myself, but they have drifted away, lost like a song hummed by a child in a meadow in the gentle rain. Now I only know my name, what people called me, in the time long ago when there were other people here to call my name.

But now my voice is silent. All that speak from me are the voices of others, of those whose souls have touched mine, have been parts of other souls that had included parts of mine. When I open my mouth to speak, I hear these other voices, speak with these other voices.

This angel sits here silent, listening, recording, remembering. Again he prompts me, and again: Speak to me.

I hold my voice in stillness until I cannot keep from speaking, until the voice of a life from another time, another world, forces itself through my lungs, my throat, my lips.

The angel nods in silence. Let the voice flow, his soul says to mine. You speak in safety when you speak to me.

I shudder, breathe more deeply, start to emit the sounds of speech after seemingly eternal silence, with a cough, a moan, a sigh. Speak to me, the angel says. Who are you? Where are you now?

I breathe in the angel’s silence, close my eyes, breathe forth the voices of ancient souls.

Serah

(Context: Numbers 26:46.)

They all died at sixty, all of them.

Those of us whose ages were greater than sixty when we crossed the Sea of Reeds did not immediately die: we lived as long as we would have lived otherwise, dying suddenly or gradually, in pain or in senescence, by injury, by disease, or by the silent decisions of our bodies that their lives had been long enough. But at sixty, the rest of them all died.

Now only the two of us old ones are left, Moses and I, here atop this mountain. He is one hundred twenty years old. I have lost count of my years, but they seem to exceed four hundred.

Terah

(Context: Genesis 11:31)

It has been too long since we have seen each other, too long since we have talked. But now, after so long, we are alone together. The house is quiet now. My son and what remains of my family have gone. They are finishing the journey that I began so many years ago.

Yes, we must talk again now, face to face. Here: if I hammer this thin brass nail down through your hair, along the fine wood’s grain, your head should stay on your shoulders for at least a while more.

Lot

(Context: Genesis 19:23)

He tells me that his name is Orpheus. He sits before me as I, too, sit, here at the base of of this mountain, on this plain that is cursed by fire, ringed with fire. As I sit, my back rests against mossy rock. His rests against nothing, supported only by his firm resolve never to look to the south again.

Adam

(Context: Genesis 3:23)

Snake stands tall beside me. His bronze scales reflect the steady sun as they glisten in this constant misting rain. My left hand rests on his strong shoulder, as his hand rests on mine. “So this is the end,” my thoughts say to him.

“The end of this existence,” his thoughts reply. “The beginning of the next.”

Around us, the garden is shrinking. All my life, it had extended throughout all that we could see, off beyond the horizon where everything grew vague. Now the garden has edges, and they are rushing toward us.

Seraiah

(Context: 2 Kings 25:18)

Fire — all around me — fire — wings of fire — tongues of fire — apparitions of angels and demons of fire. I rush through fire, through rooms of fire, halls of fire — through paths and patterns made unfamiliar by fire — until I pass through fire to the secret room — the home of God — the holy hall that only I can know —

Jephthah’s Daughter

(Context: Judges 11:40)

I am dead, dead to the world, dead to my father, dead to myself. Here, lying on this cold stone slab atop Mount Moriah, I have sworn to leave this world, to give over my spirit to my father’s god, to abandon this weary body and let my soul sink down into whatever fate this unyielding god has planned.

I have always been only my father’s daughter. No one calls me by my own name. I have only seen what he let me see, learned what he let me learn. And now I am to die, by simple trivial fate: He went to war. He swore to his god that if he won, he would sacrifice the first living thing that came through his gate toward him when he returned. I saw him coming home. I ran out to greet him. So now I am to die.

It is dark here, under this shard of the new moon, and nearly silent. The only light comes from the stars. The only sounds are those of wind, of distant frogs, and of a single repeating bleating from nearby.

I want to fade, to silence my mind, but the repeating sound keeps calling me back, holding me here. I try to silence it in my soul by breathing in its rhythm, but that makes it stronger rather than causing it to blend and disappear. So be it. I open my eyes, sit up and trying to find the sound.