Climbing the Date Palm Read online

  Climbing the Date Palm

  By Shira Glassman

  Copyright 2014 by Shira Glassman

  Smashwords Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Climbing the Date Palm

  Torquere Press Publishers

  PO Box 37, Waldo, AR 71770

  Copyright 2014 © by Shira Glassman

  Cover illustration by BSClay

  Published with permission

  ISBN: 978-1-61040-770-0

  www.torquerepress.com

  Songs 7:8, as translated by Dr. Alana M. Vincent, Lecturer in Jewish Studies, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Chester, UK

  Don Karlos, Infante von Spanien, Act 5, scene IV, as translated by Shira Glassman

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. PO Box 37, Waldo, AR 71770.

  First Torquere Press Printing: July 2014

  Dedicated to the labor rights activists of north central Florida.

  Those who are rooted in justice shall flourish like a date palm.

  --Psalms 92:13

  Chapter 1: The Horse’s Baggage

  Aviva was not surprised, only annoyed, when a strange horse interrupted her walk home from Market and tried to nose its greedy way into her purchased bag of malabar spinach; the surprise came a moment later when she realized that sprawled across its back was a very attractive, well-dressed young man who seemed near death.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “My goodness, Horse, what stall were you shopping at?”

  But beneath the askew pile of hair, the talk of nonsense, and the constant turmeric stains beat the heart of a woman who had tended to a sick mother and then a sick sweetheart for nearly all her young life. Slipping into the caregiving role to which she was accustomed -- or as she thought of it, God’s purpose for her -- she put a finger to the man’s temple and saw that he yet lived. She also saw that dried blood had collected around several places that looked as though they might have brought him to the edge of survival.

  Hefting the lightweight but unwieldy sack of leaves over one shoulder, she took the horse by the bridle and led it back toward the palace. Aviva was the second cook there, but her primary duty was as Queen Shulamit’s personal chef. She had a habit of going to market herself instead of sending kitchen servants like the head cook of the palace did, because it gave her ideas to wander among the colorful bounty of the stalls, and it gave her pride to manage the quality. This way, she could buy what had grown well that week, or what struck her fancy. She could also keep track of the cleanliness of her products that way -- the queen’s body had odd reactions to both wheat and fowl, and although Shulamit wasn’t so sensitive that she couldn’t bear to be in the room with it, Aviva felt safer buying the malabar if she knew it hadn’t had a chicken’s carcass resting up against it in a basket.

  Aviva protected the queen’s health with a devoted fierceness, for she was also the queen’s sweetheart. Or “favorite,” as the fashionable word went. What a word -- it did make her feel a little bit like a halvah or something. Ooh! Halvah! When she could coax a true, full smile from Shulamit’s usually intense and studious face -- for Shulamit wasn’t one to smile unless genuinely happy -- a sweetness just like halvah flowed through Aviva’s body, and she resolved to tell her so the next time they had a comfortably private moment.

  Even during this frivolous mental wandering, however, she never took one eye off the man on the back of the horse. His hair, like hers, was dark; it was curly and a bit of a mess. His skin was a little lighter than hers. Most likely this meant he had come from the west. A bit of stubble had grown across his face, but only just enough to hint he had stopped shaving because of his wounds. He was thin but healthy, except for all the blood. There was so much gold decoration on his clothing that her first thought was that he must be some sort of actor. Surely, nobody would wear anything like that on purpose.

  Then she noticed the royal ring.

  Queen Shulamit, sovereign of Perach, was sitting in the shade just inside the palace gates with her ladies in waiting. Her face broke into a broad smile when she saw her love returning, but of course she noticed the horse and its rider right away and raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

  She opened her mouth to ask who it was, but Aviva beat her to the punch. “Your Majesty, we need a peaceful room and the doctor. A horse showed up with a dying prince on its back.”

  ***

  The doctor and his nurses spent two hours with the prince in that quiet room, tending to his wounds and treating him with herbs and salves. Meanwhile, Shulamit paced outside, her thoughts dancing nervously around memories of her father’s deathbed. The resemblance of circumstance was only superficial, of course, but waiting outside a room, worrying while doctors worked, reminded her of those awful days in the past when she’d been inches away from a throne she was about to purchase with every last tear in her body. Then she was only a child-woman, and now she was grown and had settled into her crown. But she would never forget.

  An open door and movement shifted her reverie back into attendance. “Is he awake?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said the doctor.

  “Will he live?”

  “It’s too early to tell.”

  “May I come in?”

  “I suppose so,” said the doctor, “but don’t overtax him.”

  “I’ll try to be gentle.” Shulamit stepped inside the room and took her first good look at the foreign prince. Yes, he was definitely from the west. There were several small city-states beyond the borders of Perach, but she wasn’t sure which one was his. Most of them had multiple princes. She began to narrow it down by age and style of dress. Poor man! She hoped he wasn’t going to die so far away from home. Did his family know where he was?

  She had moved closer to him with each thought, and now she stood directly over him. “Who are you?”

  With great effort, he opened his eyes. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “Would water help?”

  “He’s had water,” said one of the nurses.

  “I’m going to give him more. He’s trying to speak.” Shulamit picked up a jug and poured some water into her hand. She cupped it against his lips and tipped it up.

  He did his best to drink. His breathing sounded strange and dangerous. “Do you know who I am?” Shulamit asked. “Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

  He blinked, deliberately enough that she knew he had heard her, and understood.

  “Can you tell me who you are? You’re among friends. Whoever did this to you, it wasn’t us. We’ll protect you.”

  His lips moved again, and finally, with what seemed like all the effort from his entire body, he spoke for the first time. “Captain... Malabar. Only.”

  Shulamit’s jaw dropped. What?

  “Aviva found you, and she was carrying malabar. Her name is Aviva. She’s my cook. Do you want her to come back?”

  His head twitched to the side. Was that no, or an involuntary gesture?

  She reminded him about the blinking, and he blinked twice.

  Then he said one more syllable, “Riv,” and passed out.

  Shulamit clapped her hands to her face. Riv. Riv of Bitter Greens, Riv Maror. A strong warrior with a peppery personality, the captain of Shulamit’s palace Guard had easily earned the nickname, which was a variant on the origina
l “Beet-greens” that had referenced an illegitimate conception and a farmhand father. Shulamit realized it must have gotten twisted into Riv Malabar as the legend of the northern mercenary had gossiped its way across into the west, into the prince’s land. For a moment, she was struck by how ill it fit Riv, given malabar’s mildness.

  Captain Riv Malabar indeed.

  But what did the prince want Riv for, anyway? “Where is the captain?” Shulamit asked the guard who was attending her at the moment. “I know it’s his and Isaac’s day off, but are they still hanging around here someplace?”

  “No, Majesty,” said the guard. “They went off this morning out into the countryside.”

  “We’ll just have to take care of him until they get back.” Shulamit felt strangely reluctant to leave the room, but she also wanted to see her darling, bizarre Aviva. Trust her to go to the marketplace for greens and come home with a dying prince!

  Chapter 2: The Warrior and the Dragon

  A coach drawn by two horses wound across a wide swath of high grasslands that cut between stands of banana plants. Two light-skinned men sat in the front of the coach, driving the team and talking in the northern tongue about horses and women.

  “I swear, one more night in that place and I would’ve had both those women’s names.” The man on the left slapped his thigh and then drank from his canteen. “I don’t know why she made us keep going, anyway. The letter said to wait in Ir Ilan and send word.”

  “Maybe to keep you away from the fruit sellers,” quipped the other.

  “Aw, she doesn’t care what I do. She didn’t care back in Riachinho Estela.”

  “Estrela.”

  “Whatever. I can’t speak Imbrian.” He scratched his beard. “How much longer ‘til we get to Home City?”

  “The map says that we need to go through that valley--” He pointed down across the sloping landscape, but as he followed the line of his own finger, he saw unexpected movement in the foliage. “Hey! Tiny! Look over there!”

  “What?”

  Down in the valley that lay directly before them, a battle was unfolding between a ferocious dragon and a sword-wielding warrior. The dragon was several times larger than the man, with wings almost as long as its body, a powerfully muscled tail, and enormous back haunches. Two golden horns were the only parts of its body that weren’t a green so dark it was nearly black. Here and there, silvery whips of light emerged from its claws, and it was these that the warrior met with sword strokes as he crashed through the ground cover of lush green philodendrons. Big, broad leaves shook and waved violently in the combatants’ wake.

  What glimpses they could catch of the man as he darted in and out of sight around the dragon revealed him to be well-built and an expert fighter, clad in a sleeveless leather tunic and loose-fitting trousers. He was wearing a helmet and a mask obscured the lower half of his face, but they could still see the light skin of his bare arms and the space around his eyes, and the explosion of dark-blond hair pouring from beneath his helmet.

  “He looks like he’s from up by us!”

  “What do you think he’s doing in Perach?”

  “Fighting a dragon.”

  “I can see he’s fighting a dragon, you schmendrick. But why down here? Unless you think he followed the dragon all the way from--”

  “Oh! Ouch!”

  “No, he’s okay. Oh, wow, look at that!”

  “Nice.”

  “Good one.”

  They were watching the battle now almost as if it were a tournament. “Hey, do you think we should go help him?”

  “He doesn’t look like he needs us.”

  Just then, the dragon pounced on the warrior with all four limbs, knocking him to the ground. The sword wasn’t in his hand anymore, and they appeared to be grappling in a tangle of arms and legs, blocked from view by leaves as big as shields. “Are you sure about that?”

  “But what about her?” Tiny jerked his head back at the coach.

  “Milady, we’re going to go rescue someone,” his companion called back loudly, spurring on the horses. “Hyaa!”

  “What?” called a female voice from behind them as the coach picked up speed, moving bumpily across the landscape.

  “There’s a man fighting a dragon, and we think the dragon’s winning.”

  “A dragon? I don’t want to get close to a dragon. What are you doing?”

  “What’s that, Milady? I can’t hear you over the hoofbeats,” lied her escort, his blood fizzing inside his veins at the prospect of adventure. This whole journey had been far too tedious, schlepping a wealthy passenger miles and miles from home with only the female-obsessed Tiny for company.

  As they got deeper into the valley, it became harder to see what was going on; from above, they’d been able to follow the fight, but down here there was too much tropical foliage and underbrush. They followed the sounds of thrashing wings, and when they could see bits of the dragon up close through the leaves, the two men sprang from the coach with swords unsheathed. “Back, you!” yelled Tiny, thrusting his sword at a patch of dark-green scales.

  The next thing they knew, a whirlwind of humanity had kicked Tiny to the ground with one bootprint to the groin and now held his friend against a tree, a sword at his neck. “Al tigu bo!” the warrior hissed in a guttural voice from beneath his cloth mask.

  “What?” squeaked the imprisoned man, dropping his sword. “We were just helping! We were saving your life! He was gonna eat you!” He was still talking in his own language, even though he understood some Perachi. He thought maybe the man had said Leave him alone.

  The warrior glared as he kicked away the sword on the ground. “You’re going to be very embarrassed in about ten seconds.” Then his eyes narrowed and he squinted, leaning his face in closer. “Wait. Hersch?”

  “How do you know my--”

  The warrior peeled away the cloth mask. “Hersch, it’s me. What are you doing down here? Who’s that? Is that Tiny?”

  There was a woman under the mask. And he knew that face. “R--Rivka?”

  “You haven’t changed at all,” moaned Tiny from the ground, where he was clutching his gonads.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you were stabbing at my husband with a -- that, you call a sword?” She snorted. “I just acted on instinct.”

  “Husband?” And then Hersch looked over and noticed that the dragon had nearly finished transforming into a husky middle-aged man in clothing similar to Rivka’s -- the powerful tail quickly disappearing into his backside and the horns melting back beneath neatly cropped dark-blond hair. His mouth was ringed by an afterthought of a beard and mustache that seemed sketched on with a paintbrush. “Is that Isaac the wizard? I thought he died in one of the Apple Valley attacks.”

  “It’s a long story,” said Isaac, holding his hand to his thigh oddly.

  “Did he get you? What’s wrong?” Rivka released her grip on Hersch and rushed to him.

  “Just a scratch. Don’t worry about it.”

  Rivka turned back to face her bewildered countrymen. “Why are you down here?”

  Just then, a well-dressed woman stepped out of the coach. “I hear a lot of chatter. What’s going on?”

  The warrior’s face lit up. “Mammeh!”

  ***

  Rivka pressed her sword into Isaac’s hands and ran through the foliage to her mother’s side. She hadn’t seen her in three years, and she was glad her journey had been a safe one.

  The two women hugged, and then Mitzi held her daughter out at arm’s length. “My goodness, you look so big and healthy. I would have taken you for a man.” She stared wide-eyed at Rivka’s huge biceps.

  “That’s the idea,” said Rivka. “Everyone at the palace except for the queen and her sweetheart call me Riv and think I’m male, so nobody gives me any trouble about being captain of the Guard. And Isaac turned Beet-greens into Bitter-greens. Riv Maror -- doesn’t it suit me?”

  “But what about him? What’s he doing here?” She cast her eyes over
to Isaac, who was standing placidly at a distance, watching them.

  “Remember in my letter how I said I was married...?” Rivka grinned awkwardly.

  “Him, you married? But the wizards are all celibate! What about the curses that would make him explode if he even touched a woman?”

  “They thought he broke his oath and cast him out of his order under a curse -- it’s a long story. Why didn’t you wait for me in Ir Ilan like I said in my letter? We’d rather have come to get you. It’s easier to keep my secret without those two running around the palace, now that they know.”

  “We can go back to Ir Ilan now, if you can take Lady Miriam’s luggage back with you,” Tiny promptly offered.

  “He wants to go back and chase women at the market,” Mitzi whispered to Rivka, far too noisily to have genuinely meant it as a secret.

  Rivka looked at Isaac. “What do you think? Can we fit all this on your back, somehow?” She waved her hand at her mother’s things.

  “Can he carry some of it in his paws... hands... legs... whatever dragons call them?”

  “Hand injury,” Rivka reminded her, making a little grasping motion with her hand.

  “Oh. Right.” Isaac’s right hand had healed improperly from being sliced open in battle, leaving him unable to close his grasp. He made no attempt to hide the scar across his hand and forearm, and it had led to their compatriots’ belief that their Captain Riv’s mask hid a similar and even more horrifying scar.

  “I think I can get all this if we use some ropes to tie it around my waist,” said Isaac, approaching them.

  Luckily, Hersch and Tiny had ropes.

  “If I transform back, you’ll leave me be this time?” Isaac asked them wryly.

  They quickly nodded. “We’re sorry, sir, we didn’t know,” Hersch pointed out.

  “It looked like you were going to eat him -- her--”

  Isaac raised one eyebrow, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned back slightly, giving them an impish half-smile.