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.

Japheth

(Context: Genesis 7:10)

Reaching out, reaching high into the night to touch the sky, to touch your stars, I fall again to earth. Here, in the mud, the dust, the ash, I cry, cry out your name. Nothing echoes, here on this sodden plain that we once knew as desert. My voice fades into emptiness, heard only, if at all, by this angel and by the moon.

Each ray of light cast through the dark brush here paints shadows of your form, spells with images of branches the letters of your name. I close my eyes and see in my internal sky the grace of your dance, hear within whispers of wind the streams of your song, feel in the tracings of the rain your hands as you once touched my face, my tears as I heard you leave, the waters as they swept away what I dreamed would be our home.

But when my eyes open, all I see are bones, bones upon bones.