friend has to leave.”
“Your brother has probably gone to the Essenes,” Judah said, and withdrew into the darkness.
I heard him drag a boat from the shore and launch it into the Sea of Galilee. I imagined myself wading into the water and climbing into his boat. But I stayed on the shore as he rowed himself away, the light from his torch flickering faintly until it died.
* * *
The next morning, the group from Cana separated themselves from us. They believed it was too dangerous to travel with anyone associated with Judah ben Hezekiah. Alone again, Father, Naomi, and I turned south and followed the paths along the Jordan River for three days. Walking was easier for me than it was for Naomi and Father. I have big feet, and trailing after Lev had accustomed me to sustained physical exertion. Naomi complained that she was hot; then she was cold. She couldn’t get to sleep; she couldn’t wake up. She was frightened; she was bored. Father developed a limp and leaned heavily on his walking staff. He needed to rest often. Each time we stopped, he checked his treasured scrolls to make sure they were securely bound to the old donkey’s back.
On our third day along the Jordan River path, we came across a forest ravaged by wildfire. The groundcover and shrubs had been reduced to ash; some of the trees still smoldered. Had we arrived there a day earlier, we could’ve been caught in those flames. Naomi and I held hands as we picked our way through the blackened landscape.
All along the Jordan River, Roman forts, menacing reminders of the crucifixions we’d witnessed, loomed above us. At night, jackals and leopards hunted in the nearby hills, and the screeches of their victims pierced our restless sleep. We knew that thieves preyed on pilgrim groups enroute to Jerusalem, and this threat gnawed away at us. Our only weapon was Father’s staff.
Throughout our long trek along the river, I often thought about Lev, and wondered where he was and what he would be doing now. Father must know more about this than he was telling me. “Are the Essenes foreigners, Father?” I asked.
“No,” he answered sharply, maneuvering around a huge rock that had fallen onto the path.
“Magicians? Bandits? Soldiers?”
“No. No. And no.”
“Who are they then?”
“Jews, like us. I need to catch my breath. Sit on this log with me and be quiet.”
“What kind of Jews—Pharisees? Sadducees? Zealots?”
“None of those.”
“Why are they called Essenes?”
“I don’t know. Please get me some water.”
While I filled the water jug, Naomi stayed on the log with Father. “My father calls the Essenes ‘Sons of Light,’” she said.
“Some do call them that.”
“Where do they live?” I demanded.
“Qumran.”
“Where is Qumran?”
“In the desert.”
“Do they live anywhere else?”
“Probably. Let’s just keep walking. I’m getting no rest anyway.”
His habit of secrecy infuriated me. The parents of my friends told stories about growing up in Nazareth, marrying the spouse chosen for them by their families and gradually falling in love with that person. They talked about their aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws. I knew more about Naomi’s and Miryam’s families than I did about my own. I knew only that Father and his first wife had had one child, Chuza, and that they had lived in Jerusalem. After this wife died, Father and Chuza moved to Nazareth, where Father met and married Mother, who had fled from the country of Nabatea to our village. Mother was much younger than Father, closer in age to my half-brother Chuza than she was to Father. Her name was Nahara, which means “light.” I couldn’t remember what she looked like, but my fingertips still held the memory of the soft curve of her cheek and the dip of the dimple in her chin. I longed to know more about her. And about Father. I began to suspect that Lev was wrong: Father was silent not because he was thinking great thoughts, but because he was keeping great secrets. I would not give up.
“What do the Essenes, these ‘Sons of Light’ do?” I asked Father, as we waded across a flooded stretch of the pathway.
“They prepare to fight the Sons of Darkness.”
“Who are the Sons of Darkness?”
“Their enemies, of course.”
“I’m tired of hearing about these strange people,” Naomi said. “And look, I dropped my sandals and now they’re soaked.”
“Who are their enemies?” I probed. “Romans? Other Gentiles? Jews?”
“They have many enemies.”
“Do you think any Essenes live in Jerusalem?”
“Probably. We should sit and dry our feet now.”
The tiny possibility of finding Lev with the Essenes in Jerusalem caused my feet to dance along the gnarled river path. For the first time since we had left Nazareth, I didn’t worry about thieves, Romans, snakes, or thunderstorms. I carried the hope of seeing Lev again with me, in my hands. My hope was a real thing, warm and soft and pliable, like a wineskin.
After we had hiked in silence for some time, Father spoke without my having to prod him. “Danya, the Essenes are a male sect. Women can’t be members. You weren’t thinking you could join them, were you?”
“But surely, Father, there are some women. Lev and the other men don’t know how to bake or spin or weave. How could these men survive without women?”
Father shook his staff at me. “They will survive without you, Danya. That is certain!” Losing his balance, he turned his ankle. “Ouch! Now look what’s happened.” He hobbled to the riverbank and soaked his leg in the cold water. Naomi clucked over him, binding his ankle tightly in thin strips of cloth. I dropped the subject of the Essenes. No one could win an argument with Father, Lev always said.
* * *
At daybreak on the fifth day, we split away from the Jordan River where the pilgrim path turned towards Jericho and climbed to the top of a cliff. From that height, we could see the Jericho oasis, improbably lush and green, springing up from the brittle desert besieging it on all sides. But columns of smoke smudged the sky over the city.
Naomi scurried forward. “My father told me that King Herod had three palaces in Jericho,” she said. “And a swimming pool. And a sunken garden, whatever that is. There’s even a bathhouse, like the Romans have in Sepphoris, that my father says is the work of the devil. Please, please can we see it?”
Father said, “Naomi, child, I’m afraid that you won’t see a bathhouse or anything else in Jericho. That smoke is a bad sign.” A foul odor, like the diseased figs we had to burn a few harvests ago, hung in the air.
The footpath that led down from the cliff fed into a road that sliced across the Jericho plain. Smaller roads, coming from
