Climbing the Date Palm Read online

  Shulamit clapped her hands. “Hey!”

  The roomful of chattering, well-dressed women instantly fell silent. Each lady-in-waiting’s eyes snapped to her queen, curiously waiting to find out why they’d all been gathered here in the Hall of Records. Shulamit greeted their curiosity with her characteristic awkward smile, her head held high but the fingers of one hand clutching the end of her filmy scarf.

  Riv was there too, with her recently arrived mother beside her. Mitzi had made a pleasant, if shallow, impression on the ladies of Shulamit’s court; her conversation, halting as she navigated their language, had been mostly about clothing and jewelry and whether or not men were good-looking. Of course, Aviva was hovering near the queen as usual.

  “All of you know by this point about Prince Kaveh from the City of the Red Clay,” Shulamit began, “who joins us as a fugitive from his own father, King Jahandar. He’s healing up well and should be back on his feet soon, thanks to the doctor and to Isaac.”

  “What did Isaac do?” whispered one woman to another.

  “Who knows? Isaac scares me. He can turn into a snake, and he has so many secrets,” replied the second.

  Shulamit ignored the chatter. “When he’s well, I hope to make Kaveh my prince consort. Quiet!” she had to add as the room erupted.

  Several of the women looked at Aviva. The cook responded with grace to everyone’s stares, throwing up her hands and smiling wistfully. “What can I say -- too many hens, not enough roosters.”

  The room fell into an uneasy silence.

  “Now that everyone’s good and embarrassed,” Shulamit continued, rubbing her eyebrows with both hands, “I’ll explain why I need you to help me right now. Kaveh and I will have a political marriage only -- I need an heir, and he needs someone to help him rescue his companion from his father’s prison. Yes, his male companion. See why this is so perfect?”

  “Where do you keep finding these people?” piped up a voice from the middle of the crowd. Lots of the women were looking at Riv.

  “God must want everything to make sense, is all I can figure,” said the queen. “Let me explain the situation. Kaveh will only marry me if I can rescue this Farzin of his, and also get his father to pay some workers who built a bridge for him. I know I can send Riv and the rest of the guards in there to do this by force, but I don’t want to make an enemy of the king. Besides, people could get hurt. It’s my theory that if we look into Jahandar’s life, and become scholars of him, we can find a peaceful way to accomplish this goal.”

  She gestured to a pile of parchments and books that rested on a table beside her at the front of the room. “Each of you will take one aspect of Jahandar’s life: his childhood, his views on love, his views on war -- Riv, I guess that’ll be you -- his offspring, his rise to power, whatever. You’ll read these books and become an expert on that one topic. Then you’ll report back to me.”

  “I want to be the expert on Prince Kaveh,” said one of the women. Those around her tittered slightly.

  “I’ll look into anything to do with King Jahandar and food,” offered Aviva.

  “Good.”

  “Why aren’t each of us reading an entire book?” asked one of the ladies-in-waiting.

  “If you did that, you’d only know one biased author’s opinion of lots of topics on a surface level,” Shulamit explained. “This way, you’ll get a broader, more objective picture and be able to see one specific topic more clearly.”

  “Why can’t we just ask Prince Kaveh about his father?” asked another.

  “Each of you will interview the prince after you’ve already read about your topic in the literature. That’s the best way to ensure the information he gives you is in addition to what you’ve read -- you go to him and tell him what you’ve already discovered, and then ask if there’s anything he can add. Otherwise you’re likely to get only the same obvious information that would be in the books anyway.” Shulamit paused to sip at a goblet of guava juice. “We can’t afford to miss any information -- even the tiniest detail may prevent a war.”

  “Excuse me, Your Majesty,” said Mitzi, putting her hand up slightly. “If we’re supposed to learn all this about a man, shouldn’t we have a man in here to help us do our research, for some perspective? I mean, a real man. I mean--”

  Rivka was staring at her, and everybody else was staring at Rivka.

  “I’m sorry,” Mitzi added hastily. “I just-- you know-- eh...”

  Shulamit cringed, ruefully glad that Mitzi’s slip could be passed off as prejudice.

  “I can get my father,” offered Aviva. “I’m sure both he and Ima would be happy to help.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Shulamit. “The more people we have helping us, the better our chances are of not missing something.” She paused for emphasis. “We have three weeks. At the end of three weeks, Farzin’s scheduled to be executed, and even if we don’t have a peaceful solution, we’ll have to rescue him however we can.”

  The women filed up to the front of the room, to collect their parchments and books and pick out the aspects of Jahandar’s life on which they were to focus. When Leah and Benjamin, Aviva’s parents, joined them later, they received topics as well.

  “What are you going to research, Majesty?” asked one of the ladies.

  “Everything,” was the queen’s answer. “I’m going to read all the books. Like I said, I don’t want to miss anything.”

  More than one pair of eyes grew as large as oranges in awe.

  “Aviva, while you’re reading about food, don’t forget to keep the snacks flowing,” Shulamit reminded her. “One feeds an advancing army, and what are we if not an advancing army of brains?”

  Then she sat down and opened the first book in her stack to page one.

  ***

  Over the next few days, the research team read and digested the material in the library pertaining to King Jahandar, his family, his reign, and his city. Shulamit stayed up late into the night, sometimes reading by candlelight while Aviva dozed in her lap. She turned pages as quietly as she could with one hand while idly stroking her sweetheart’s hair with the other. So much did she absorb that she began to have dreams about the king. None of them made any sense, and she awoke in disappointment, realizing that the brilliant solution her sleeping mind had concocted sounded very silly now that she was awake.

  Meanwhile, the other women of the court, plus Benjamin -- and Rivka, who behind her mask didn’t count herself as one of the court women -- began to come to her with their reports. Most of them had enjoyed their interview with Prince Kaveh, and everybody agreed that Shulamit must indeed not like men at all “that way” if his dark, curly hair, sympathetic eyes, and tall, regal nose had been unable to turn her head. How lucky, then, was this unknown man they were working so hard to rescue! Sometimes they wondered about Riv and Isaac -- Isaac definitely had his own way of being attractive but he was weird, and while they admired Riv as a great hero, they had never seen his face -- but with Kaveh they could definitely understand anyone wanting him, male or female.

  ***

  “Ow!”

  Aviva shook herself awake. She’d fallen asleep again on the divan beside her partner. “What’s the matter?”

  “Paper cut.” Shulamit had balled her hand into a fist.

  “You’re up too late.” The bosomy woman unfolded herself from the position in which she’d been napping, reaching out a hand to languidly close the book Shulamit held. Then she wrapped her fingers around the queen’s offended thumb and pulled it over to her mouth.

  A low, pleased sound came from the back of Shulamit’s throat, and she leaned back into the generous softness of Aviva’s arms. “Don’t forget, I’m doing all this work so that we can keep on living like this forever.” But she didn’t stop Aviva’s creeping hands from traveling across her nipples, her waist, her thighs.

  “I thought you said that any man you marry would be prince consort, not a real king who could boss you around and take over Perach?”
Aviva’s lips moved against Shulamit’s tender neck while she talked, and the response of Shulamit’s body reminded Aviva of sunlight emerging from behind thick clouds . “Why would that only apply to Kaveh?”

  “No, you’re right. Aba set it up like that because he raised me to be queen... But I feel safer with someone like Kaveh -- someone like us. I mean, I trust him.”

  “But can you bear to wade in his pond?” Aviva felt Shulamit’s body tense up at the idea, and tried to soothe her with calming caresses.

  The queen swallowed before answering. “I don’t know. I guess all I can do is try. But...” She paused. “I’ve been spending a lot of time around him to make sure. At least he seems like he’ll be gentle, and careful, and listen to me if I say something hurts.”

  “We can always practice that part,” Aviva reminded her.

  “I wish you could do the whole thing!” Shulamit whimpered. “I never wanted to love men... but... this is so inconvenient.”

  “What do you think Kaveh would say if he knew about Rivka?” Aviva wondered, out of nowhere.

  Shulamit drew in her breath sharply. “That doesn’t sound like a fun conversation. Right now I think the whole ‘Captain Riv’ mythos is the only source of pride he has. His father managed to convince him he’s a waste of space. Riv is his proof that men who love other men can be... strong. Brave. Heroes.”

  “He needs to learn how to become his own proof.”

  “I think Farzin was helping him with that. Kaveh sounds really proud of his work on the construction projects.” Shulamit shifted positions because parts of her body were beginning to get tingly from being scrunched up. “Rivka’s keeping her secret, though. That uncle,” she shook her head disdainfully, “he hurt her badly. And her mother believes a lot of it too.”

  “Rivka doesn’t chew her cud for days the way you do,” Aviva pointed out. “She swallows her prey whole.”

  “Yeah,” Shulamit agreed. “She’s got ideas in her head she’s just always going to have because she never thinks about them long enough to question them.”

  “Would she be wrong, though?” Aviva undid the cord on the edge of one of Shulamit’s braids and began to run her fingers through her thick, wiry hair. “Sometimes I think about the path we walk, you and I -- the things we fight for. Rivka never has people thinking her thunder is only from monthly bleeding. They don’t think Isaac is her master. They don’t care whether or not she’s pretty. She’s there already.”

  “I guess we’re taking the long way around,” Shulamit agreed. “But I don’t have to breathe into a mask in boiling hot weather.”

  ***

  After a few days, Isaac regained his ability to perform magic, and it was time for him and Tivon to leave for the City of the Red Clay. He stood with Rivka in the courtyard in the gray hour just before dawn, holding both of her hands in his -- as well he could, of course, in the case of his right hand.

  “Kiss me so I’ll be able to feel it when we’re apart.”

  Pushing aside her cloth mask, he obliged.

  “I can’t wait to hear what it’s like over there -- the king, the prison, Farzin,” she commented when the kiss had finally exhausted itself. “We’ll need to know everything we can if Shulamit’s plan doesn’t work and we have to attack.”

  “Of course.”

  “I hope this isn’t all a waste of time and the horse that carried him here isn’t really Farzin under a curse,” she jested, thinking of Isaac’s own history.

  Isaac chuckled and gazed at her with impish eyes. “I’ve spent enough time around that horse to be pretty confident there’s no human soul hiding inside.”

  “I’m glad we have an expert, then.” She rubbed his beefy chest through his tunic. “You make a much better man than mare.”

  “How fortunate for us both that I prefer it that way myself,” he said dryly. “However, for the next day or so, the man must give way to the dragon.”

  “My dragon.”

  He held her and kissed her again, then transformed. She remained by his side until Tivon appeared, carrying their provisions for the journey.

  “Travel safely, and report everything you see,” Rivka reminded them. She trusted Tivon, who was a reliable and honorable man, if more traditional than progressive, but it had been jarring to find him sent in her place.

  Tivon nodded. “Good luck with your research.”

  “Thank you.”

  A noise over at one of the doorways made them all look. Prince Kaveh, who had been able to stand and limp about as of the day before, was hobbling toward them. His face was full of wonder as he beheld Isaac in his dragon form. The light of the sun wasn’t yet there to show the black-green scales and golden horns to their best shimmer, but he was still a sight to see simply by being so large and powerful. Tivon fit comfortably on his back with room for two more passengers, perched between the enormous wings.

  Shulamit had decided, however, that Kaveh would be staying in her palace for now to recuperate. As much as he longed to go and rescue Farzin himself, he was staying safely behind.

  “You don’t have to be scared of him,” Rivka reminded him. “He’s still Isaac.” To illustrate, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed the scales of his cheek.

  Kaveh was clearly impressed by how Riv approached that mouth of enormous teeth with no fear. “I’ve never seen a dragon up close.”

  “You can get closer. I promise he won’t bite you.”

  “I save that for Riv, and you can’t watch,” growled the dragon flippantly.

  Kaveh reddened a little, but he drew nearer cautiously, taking it all in -- the huge tail, the haunches, the claws... “You said you were going to use your lizard form to spy around and talk to Farzin?”

  “That’s the plan.” Isaac’s serpent powers didn’t end at the dragon form. He could also transform himself into an unobtrusive lizard, and an enormous python of dappled cream and yellow.

  “Please... please tell him I love him... that my love for him is like food to me, or like air, and make sure he knows that my agreement with Shulamit doesn’t displace him in my heart.”

  “I will, Highness.”

  “I wish I could come with you.”

  “You aren’t well enough. It’s too dangerous for you, and Shulamit has forbid it,” Riv reminded him promptly in a no-nonsense tone.

  He nodded sadly. “In that case, good luck.”

  After affirming that Tivon was ready, Isaac flapped his great wings and lifted them up into the sky. Riv and Kaveh watched them disappear into the gray side of the sky as the sun rose behind them to follow them west to the City of the Red Clay.

  Chapter 7: Our Bridge

  In a prison built of bricks of red-gold clay, a young man languished in a dusty cell. Outside, he had been Farzin, the engineer; here, he was just Prisoner #15, a mouth to feed until the end of the Month of the Sun. At that time, by the orders of His Most Royal Majesty King Jahandar, he would be taken from the cell and hanged, in punishment for the treason of believing that workers deserved to be paid fairly, and for the decadence of daring to love the king’s son.

  When he had enough energy, Farzin kept himself occupied by deriving equations in the dust on the ground with a pebble he had found in the corner. When he didn’t, he simply rested against the corner of the room and prayed.

  People like me aren’t supposed to wind up sentenced to death, except maybe for making really bad puns, he spoke into his head. I’m an academic, not some violent firebrand trying to overthrow the throne. I should be sitting in Mother Cat’s, talking politics with my mouth full of falafel and thinking up new ways to make Kaveh smile. He was bewildered about how wrong things had gone, and the enormity of an actual death sentence was so hard to grasp that there were moments when he didn’t believe it. It was easier to be upset about hunger pangs than about being put to death by the state. He fantasized about food, even though it was torture. Falafel, dripping with tangy tahini... chewy cheeses... chickpeas... At first, he kept his dreams mea
tless in honor of the Month of the Sun, to make the illusion more real. It was an attempt to hold on to his dignity even though he was beginning to smell awful.

  There were different moments when he was too terrified for such distractions, but even then, he still thought about others. If he had done everything right and still wound up in here, was it possible there was no safe way to fix injustice? Maybe so, but he couldn’t allow himself happiness if others were being exploited right there under his nose. The men on the bridge had families, and there was absolutely no pride in being a Citizen of Red Clay if all the beauty and grandeur and modern conveniences had been built by lies and coercion and cruelty.

  He was convinced his actions on the bridge had been necessary. If he hadn’t prevented the men from tearing down what they’d built, they’d have all gotten arrested or even killed, “defense” not counting in the Month of the Sun’s prohibitions on executions. If he hadn’t bought them food with every coin of his salary, they wouldn’t have had the resolve to continue until word had gotten out to more supporters.

  And if he hadn’t come running after Kaveh and given himself up, his handsome sweetheart would have been murdered by a father who would never miss him. To comfort himself, he pictured Kaveh’s face -- his sculpted nose and cheekbones, his smooth skin, his carelessly disarranged curly hair. Farzin felt bittersweet pride that in these last months he had been able to make Kaveh happy, and to give a direction and purpose to his restless energy. He often slipped deep inside his mind to relive their most recent memories together, their sweetness his most powerful balm.

  Had Kaveh survived? He didn’t know. Rather than face the uncertain and most likely bleak future, he wrapped the past around him like a cloak, a past where he held Kaveh in his arms.

  They had been so blissful, that night underneath the newly completed bridge. After bringing each other pleasure, they’d clung together and kissed -- thorough, minute-long kisses that lived in a time between times. It wasn’t today, and it wasn’t yet tomorrow; they existed in a little world inhabited only by themselves.