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Chapter 2 The next morning, Arrom woke to the smell of venison cooking outside his tent. He looked over at Arrah’s bedding, but it appeared that either she hadn’t returned to him or that she was up already, as the blankets and rugs were neatly folded in a pile. He shook the sleep from his head and ran his hands over his face. She must have been out all night. Arrah was definitely not an early riser. As he dressed, Arrom wondered about the meat cooking outside. Usually, they were given bread by Shamda’s wife, Akilah, in the mornings. He had been lead to believe that meat was a rare and special meal reserved for feast days. Shrugging he acknowledged that he did not know when the next feast day was, so perhaps this was one. As he pulled back the tent flap and secured it with ties to the outer post, he saw Arrah coming from her bath in the lake. It was strange to the tribe how important cleanliness was to him and Arrah, but everyday both of them felt compelled to travel the long distance to the icy pool and wash. Arrah waved at him as she came closer, a little smile lifted the corners of her lips. Her face and hands were flushed beneath the Aegean blue caftan she wore, and he would swear that she had never looked more enchanting. It took a moment to remember that she would probably be leaving him, that her smile was not for him but because she was planning to begin a life with another man. Perhaps she spent the night with Cemal, and her smile was one of satisfaction… No, he seized control of his thoughts. He would not think about her in the arms of another man. It made his entire body ache to picture such things. “Good morning, Arrom,” she called, as she stopped in front of the fire to check the meat held aloft by carefully arranged sticks. Wait, he thought, Arrah doesn’t know how to cook. Arrom frowned at her, his brows creasing. “Who brought you this meat, Arrah? Is this an early wedding gift from Cemal? Akilah? I know she is one of the few women who likes you, but does she really need to court you on behalf of her son before I’ve declared us divorced?” Arrah’s smile faded as she passed by him, jerked the tent flap down and entered. From inside, she called, “I really don’t want to fight today. Can’t we just try to get along until I leave for the fields?” Forgetting that she had just returned from the bath, Arrom flung the tent open and stormed inside. Stuttering to a stop two feet from Arrah, his breath caught at the sight in front of him. Arrah was pulling the caftan over her head, and he gasped at the image now burned into mind, of her pale naked skin. His eyes followed the line of her shoulder, over the planes of her back, down the curve of her behind, to rest on her long shapely legs. “Arrom!” she cried, catching his slow appreciation of her. Remembering himself, he quickly turned his back. “I’m sorry,” he choked, as he closed his eyes and rolled over the memory of her body in his mind for just a few more minutes. He had seen her naked before, on the day that they were discovered, but he had been so disoriented then. He hadn’t realized just how perfect she was. He could hear the rustle of fabric and then it stopped. From behind him, he felt Arrah approach and hesitate. Arrah smiled at her husband’s back. She was outrageously pleased with herself. Last night, Akilah had stopped her on the way back to her tent and asked to speak with her for a few moments. Once they were inside Akilah’s tent, she chastised Arrah for what seemed like hours about the dangers of driving her husband away, and then she offered words of advice and helped her devise a campaign to secure peace between her and Arrom. “My dear,” Akilah lectured. “You have been exceedingly stupid.” “What?” Arrah asked, more than a little affronted. “Not only have you openly defied your husband in public, but you have reminded him of another man’s interest.” “B-but, I thought…” Arrah began. Akilah nodded sympathetically, “You thought that another man’s attention would bring him to heel, but instead you’ve boxed yourself neatly into a corner.” Pausing for a moment as she determined the best way to explain, Akilah glanced toward the tent flaps. Then she gestured as if to indicate the men sitting around the fire outside. “All men are stuffed with pride, but your husband is also very sensitive. He is not by nature a fighter like you. I know that the other men in the village discount his abilities because he is sometimes a little clumsy and he does not know how to keep the flocks out of the brambles, but do not allow their vision of him to blind you. He is strong, but his strength comes from a different place than yours. Because you have not indicated otherwise, he believes that you truly want to be with my son. And while I would be very proud to have you as my daughter, I have seen the way you look at Arrom, and I know that he holds your heart. I want better for Cemal than half a wife, and better for you as well.” Arrah rolled her eyes to the ceiling of the tent impatiently. “I think I love him. I must have loved him before… But he makes me so angry.” Akilah shook her head. “You must focus that anger on winning him, not on pushing him away. Women have been conducting battles of will in such ways for centuries.” “I don’t understand what you’re talking…” “I know you do not. That much is very clear,” Akilah corrected her impatiently. Then she sighed dramatically, “You must have lost all of your mother’s lessons along with your memory, so we will begin again… Arrah, you are very honest, and that is a good trait, but you must cultivate other weapons in the arsenal of love… For example, you seem to have a strange need to prove that everything you do is as it should be. You are so uncompromising… But what you need to decide is whether you want to be in the right all of the time, or if you think it might be better to be sublimely happy. If you want to be happy, then sometimes you need to allow Arrom to believe that he is right.” “How? If I know that I am right, then why shouldn’t I tell him?” she inquired. “Remember, everyone wants to be right some of the time. They may not rage against the possibility of being wrong like you do, but they still want to feel that they are intelligent, capable, and respected.” Arrah nodded as her mind raced. How could she make him feel respected? “What do I do?” Akilah smirked. “Well, the first thing you must do is find the path back into your husband’s bed.” Arrah blanched. “What? But he’s never said anything… I thought… I assumed that that would just fall into place. I didn’t think that I should try and rush…” Akilah shook her head, “Rushing? Who said anything about rushing? Arrom must think that joining with you is entirely his idea. You must go slowly. Seduce him. Call the animal in him to you. Be playful and soft… sweet. Allow him to be the strong one occasionally - as all men need to feel needed. Brush against him, show him your body, begin to put his needs and desires first, and make him think it is all unintentional, a natural evolution.” “I still don’t know what to do,” Arrah hedged. Akilah smiled mysteriously and ushered her from the tent. “You will know what to do when the time is right, young one. It is not difficult if you do not make it so.” Pulling Arrah from her reverie, Arrom suddenly turned around and ran right into her. Her face smacked against his chest and her body seemed to mold itself to his as she wrapped her hands around his shoulders for balance. The blood in her veins sang warmly at the stiffness of his desire pressed against her lower stomach. “Arrah! I’m sorry. Are you alright?” he asked as he steadied her on her feet. His hands lingered on her shoulders for a heartbeat too long, and then he stepped back allowing both of them some room. “Of course. I’m fine,” she breathed soothingly, as she brushed past him to tend to their breakfast again. Arrom watched her go and then followed distractedly behind. There was something different about her this morning. He had expected her to protest at his intrusion, but she seemed conspicuously unfazed. “What’s going on with you?” he asked suspiciously. Arrah smiled at him indulgently, as she lifted the cooked meat from the spit and lowered it on to a clay platter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?” he mocked gently. “Oh, so you acknowledge that I’m your wife this morning,” she teased. “That’s good. I was hoping that you weren’t about to pack my clothes and set them outside the tent.” “About last night…” he began. But Arrah interrupted, “Last night we had a misunderstanding, as all couples do. I went to talk with Akilah and she made me feel better. When I arrived at our tent you were asleep and I was restless, so I decided to go out walking.” Softly she shrugged and informed him casually, “I came across a deer and decided to bring it back for breakfast. This morning I woke up early and Akilah helped me to season it for our meal. I promised to share with her and Shamda, so eat what you want and I’ll take the rest to their tent before I go to the fields with the shepherds…” Arrom pulled off a piece of venison with his hands, and mid-bite he shook his head at the information overload. “Whoa… wait. You did what? You know better than to go off by yourself, the big cats have been coming closer to the herds and the village everyday… And how did you kill it? How did you catch it? You’re going where?” Chuckling softly as she sat down next to him, she replied, “Ok, from the beginning… I know I shouldn’t have ventured into the woods by myself, but I had a lot to think about. I promise I’ll be more careful from now on. When I saw the doe, somehow I knew that if I tried I could catch it. It wasn’t a memory exactly, I just acted on instinct. After I caught it, the deer tried to escape, so I snapped its neck. Again, I don’t know where I learned to do that. Maybe I hunted with my family when I was growing up… Anyway, I brought it back and hung it from the tent post so that it wouldn’t attract predators over night. Then I went to bed.” Sighing, she rested her hand on his forearm and continued warily,” I know you don’t want me to go to the fields because it’s something the other women don’t do, but I’m not like them. And you are not like the other men. We’re different. But that doesn’t make us wrong.” Arrah looked in his eyes, hoping for some kind of sign that he understood. Then she continued softly, “All I ask is that we try to find a balance, a compromise as you suggested last night. I want things to be good between us, Arrom. I think they must have been good between us once. Maybe we’ve been given a second chance…” Relief washed through him. He wanted so desperately believe as strongly as she did that things between them would normalize, that together they could calm the raging seas of confusion and find a sense of belonging. He wanted to pull her to him, but quickly decided not to test the tenuous peace they had reached. Instead, he laid his hand over hers on his arm and squeezed lightly. “I am sorry about last night. I don’t want you to…” To what, he wondered. To leave him? To find solace with another man? “I know,” she smiled. “I know you don’t want me to go to the fields today. But maybe I can go until mid-day, and then return to the village. I promise to work very hard to learn from Akilah. She has promised to teach me to sew today.” Arrom gazed at her in amazement. She was trying so hard. As he finished his meal, he stood and brushed his lips against her forehead. It seemed that she was slowly finding her way to fit in with the tribe. He suddenly felt very proud of, and inspired by her. “Well, it sounds as if you’ve got a good plan, and a lot of work to do. I’m going down to wash up and then I’ll…” He hesitated. Over the past several days he had been wracking his brain trying to come up with a way to be useful to the tribe, but as of yet he had come up with nothing. Arrah smiled as he absently helped her up. “Maybe you should study the stones,” she suggested. “I know that you can read them. I’ve seen you…” Arrom blushed slightly and looked away under her intense scrutiny. “Yes,” he agreed, as he swiftly regained his composure. “There may be something there, something to suggest why the people who lived here before left or died out. Shamda did say that the tribe has only been here for a few seasons. If there’s a danger here that we don’t know about, the elders should be informed.” Pride shone in her eyes as she smiled up at him. “You are the wisest man. I am very lucky to have you for a husband,” she declared suddenly. Then as if surprised by what she had said, she rushed, “I’ve got to go… the shepherds will have already moved the flock to the new grazing range.” Then she raced off down the path leading north. “Oh… Ok. See you this afternoon,” he called to her swiftly retreating back. “Mmm-hmm, see you,” she yelled back without turning around. Raising his eyebrows at the strange change in Arrah, he noticed that she had accidentally left their breakfast behind. Smiling to himself at the changes she had wrought in him that morning with just a little bit of kindness, he picked up the platter and made his way to Shamda’s tent. If she had forgotten the food as recently as an hour before, he would have condemned her in his mind for her apparent inability to focus on important things. But now, after she had been so warm and complimentary, he found her little idiosyncrasy charming. It was as if she needed someone to look out for her… Startled as he realized that he had reached Shamda’s tent and nearly passed it, he stopped. From inside, Shamda greeted him. “A man who shares, gains more than he gives. “Your gift is most welcome, Arrom. Won’t you sit down? I know you have had your meal already, but perhaps you would care for some tea?” “I would, thanks,” Arrom said as he sat down next to Shamda. Akilah passed him a cup of tea and they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while the older couple feasted on the venison. Without censure in his voice, Shamda mentioned, “I understand that Arrah has gone to the field to work with the shepherds this morning?” “Yes, actually, yes… she did. But I was a little concerned about the dangers…” Arrom began. “Nonsense!” Shamda chastised. “A woman in love needs to be true to herself, and not constantly bending to the will of others, including her husband, or that love will die and decay, resulting in a most odiferous, bitter resentment. She is not alone with the sheep. She will be fine.” But Arrom’s mind stalled at the words ‘a woman in love’ and the rest of the message slipped by him in a haze of vowels and consonants. “A woman in love? She doesn’t… She can’t… Can she?” he repeated questioningly. “I find it strange that you would doubt your wife’s affection, as I overheard her express it here to Akilah last night. Akilah has been telling all the women of the village that they need no longer fear that your wife is intending to steal their husbands, and that you are planning to start a family. Surely you knew that they other women disliked your wife for that reason? They were afraid that since you had no children between you that she was free to seek the bed of another man.” Arrom shook his head indignantly, “The hell she is…” Then as his mind accepted the rest of what Shamda had said, he stammered, “And she said that? She said that she loves me and wants us to start a family?” “Well, as soon as I recognized her voice, I stopped listening and went to visit with Gadil by the fire, until I saw your wife leave my tent,” Shamda said slowly, as if he were recalling every nuance of the night before. “I did not hear her say that she wanted children, but she did confess to loving you. And women in love are always in wont of children. It has been so since the dawn of man. Why? Do you believe that Akilah would exaggerate? Exaggeration leads to mistrust and disrespect… Akilah would never seek those things…” Swimming in joy, Arrom hadn’t heard a word Shamda was saying beyond confirming that Arrah said she loved him. From the first day of awakening, he had hoped that eventually they would remember being in love, but he never thought that she could love him without their memories. Why? Why would she love him? Apparently, she could have chosen virtually any young man in the tribe. From over his head, he heard Akilah’s voice muttering, “He’s not listening to you, my love. Look at his face. His mind is full of thoughts of his wife in his bed tonight, perhaps even this afternoon...” Then she harrumphed, “Men and their rushing... Always rushing to tumble with a pretty young thing, and take, take, take. Never mindful of what she needs. Selfish…” Suddenly, Arrom protested, “Hey! I’m not! And I wasn’t thinking… Ok, I was thinking about that, but mostly I was just…” “You were just not carefully devising a plan to woo her, to earn her trust. I know very well what you were ‘thinking’ about,” Akilah remarked gruffly. “Wooing?” Shamda snorted. “Ha! What does this generation know about wooing? When we were young, wooing was an art. Why…” “I can too, woo!” Arrom interrupted, “And I can plan. I’ve just been trying so hard to regain my memory. I thought that if we remembered…” “You have been moping and arguing, not remembering or wooing,” Akilah mocked with a chuckle. Then Arrom stood and strode resolutely toward the tent opening, and she challenged, “So what is your plan, oh great hatcher of plots?” But Arrom did not stop to answer her, instead he took a left outside the tent and walked down toward the lake, his mind reeling. Shamda and Akilah ventured out and watched as Arrom almost walked into a tree. “You are a very devious woman, wife,” Shamda murmured as he reached for her hand. A slow smile spread across her face as she pulled Shamda back inside. “It will be hours before our sons return with the flock. Why don’t you tell me more about this art of wooing, husband?” Previous Chapter Path From Heaven Menu |
