And it was true, Moses knew that. Now that the word of God was not being flung at him by Aaron and Miriam in the effort to bend him to their will, he could see that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was different from all the gods of Egypt, and that the faith required to believe in him was different from the faith he had grown up with. In Egypt, the gods were given credit for everything, but in fact one could never see them doing anything. Moses had realized at an early age that it was the priests and the Pharaohs who decided what it was the gods had meant by what they did. If there were no gods it would not change what was written about them.

  But the God of Abraham was not to be tamed by scribes or rulers. His intentions were not invented by men to give divine sanction to their own actions. He spoke his own mind, and it was often at odds with the will of the men who served him, and they had to change their course to fit what he designed. Sometimes they obeyed when he spoke to them; other times he had to shape events against the will of the men who either did not understand him or opposed him openly. This was a God who was alive. This was a wild God, in that no man could ride him; rather it was the men themselves who had to be broken to the will of God, so he could ride in their hearts and guide them as a man guides his chariot.

  “Is the age of . . . prophets over?” Moses asked Jethro one night, as Jethro copied a manuscript and Moses studied what was written on another scroll. “Did it end with Joseph? And why are there no . . . prophets of Midian?”

  “The age of prophets is never over,” said Jethro. “But sometimes the prophets fall silent because there is no people willing to listen to them.”

  “The . . . people of Midian aren’t willing?”

  “They don’t listen to the scripture that they have. Why do you think it was Isaac and Jacob through whom the line of prophets descended, and not Ishmael and Esau? My forefather Midian knew of God, but did not devote his life to serving him. Even Lot, who was nephew, brother, and son to Abraham, was no prophet. He tried to be a good man, a decent man, but he was a man of the world. Abraham could never have lived in Sodom, but Lot could, because that’s what his business required of him. That is the lineage through which I come. That’s why the scrolls I copy hold the tales of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Joseph and his brothers, and not of Midian, Esau, and Ishmael.”

  “So why did the . . . prophecies stop? Why didn’t Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and . . . Manasseh, . . . carry on in their father’s work?”

  Jethro shrugged. “How can I judge men I never met? Of individuals I can say nothing—they might have talked to God, and God may have told them to keep their mouths shut. But as for why Israel didn’t listen, I can tell you that: Egypt did it to them. Power and prestige did it to them. Civilization did it to them.”

  “Took away the voice of . . . God?”

  “Took away the will to listen to that voice. Egypt had so much wisdom, the Israelites became ashamed of their own. They despised the lore of their fathers because the Egyptians were so rich and so refined. So the Israelites became scribes and rulers, and fancied that they were as Egyptian as the Egyptians. Not until they lost their wealth and power did they remember God. And by then, these books were lost to them.”

  “Lost? But I heard some of these stories from . . . Jochabed and Miriam, and heaven knows Aaron spoke of the . . . promises of Abraham until I thought I had them . . . memorized.”

  “They pass on their corrupted stories, yes, by word of mouth,” said Jethro. “But no one ever laid out a scroll like this for you. You didn’t even know that Hebrew could be written down, did you?”

  “Some . . . tried to write it in hieroglyphs, but the sounds didn’t . . . fit right, and it was a mess, unreadable by Egyptians or Hebrews.”

  “You see how Satan works on people,” said Jethro. “He doesn’t tell them there is no God. He doesn’t fight openly. He just makes them ashamed of themselves. He makes them admire the world. He makes them trust in the learning of the world and despise the primitive myths of their ancestors. And even when they reached out to try to recover those old tales, did they really understand them?”

  Moses shook his head. “No, they just . . . picked and chose the . . . parts that were useful to them. Aaron was full of stories of the . . . destiny of the children of Israel, but I never heard him speak of the . . . covenants and . . . commandments. He kept telling me to submit to the will of . . . God, but he never taught me to . . . pray.”

  “So it was his own will, not God’s, he wanted you to submit to?”

  Moses smiled. “I don’t think it ever occurred to him that there might be a . . . difference between the two.”

  “So. Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Pray?”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “And?”

  “God knows the feelings of my heart, doesn’t he?”

  Jethro shook his head sadly. “My son, you don’t know the feelings of your heart until you discover them by praying. You have to ask. You have to choose to speak to God, not just expect him to do what’s right for you. After all, every man has every possible desire. What if God granted all our wishes? Our path would be strewn with dead enemies. The weather would be a nightmare, as one man’s healing rain was another man’s disastrous flood. We have to choose which desires are the ones we want to act upon. Then we put those choices into words and pray them to God.”

  “I have no words.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I have no choices.”

  “And that one I know is false.”

  “Jethro, the only life I have is one that’s . . . borrowed from you.”

  “Not borrowed, given. And not given, either—I still have it. It isn’t gone. So what you really mean is that the only life you have is the one you learned from me, and I’m telling you that my life is a life of prayer, and you aren’t praying.”

  “Teach me how.”

  “You hear my prayers.”

  “But you . . . pray for your daughters, for the villagers. I’m not a . . . father, and I’m not a . . . priest.”

  “Both shortcomings are remediable, but that’s another matter.”

  “Why should . . . God hear me, Jethro? He already closed every . . . door in my life. I think what he wants of me now is a life without . . . choices. A life of humility. To be reconciled to my losses until I think of them as . . . gains.”

  “Very good. Very plausible. But are you right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you never will until you ask. Right now you’re just like those priests you talk about in Egypt, always able to invent a story to explain the meaning of omens, to show what the gods meant by everything. You’re inventing your own story of what God wants for you, and acting on it, but I’m telling you again as I’ve told you before, God will not open the next door for you until you choose to knock on it!”

  Moses smiled wanly. “Jethro, I’ll . . . try again.”

  “Do. And again after that!”

  * * *

  Jochabed was too old for these changes. It was a bitter new life that was beginning for the Israelites now. Aaron was all for starting a revolution, but cooler heads prevailed, and instead Aaron submitted, as they all submitted, moving from their homes, scattered throughout the Egypt, and gathering in the wet clay brickmaking lands along the swampy edges of the Nile in the edges of the delta. Miriam was the one who claimed it was the mercy of God. “After Moses fled, the Egyptians were ready to start murdering Israelites again. So gathering us together and separating us from the Egyptians is saving our lives.”

  But when Jochabed’s back ached from bending over to pack and smooth the mud in the forms, or from laying out straw on the endless acres of wet bricks to help them dry faster, she did not feel her life was saved. She felt as if the Lord was punishing her and all of Israel, though for what she did not know. Oh, Moses, what were you born for, why did I suffer such pains for you, why was I shown the way to put you in the river, why were you lifted up, when your whole life came to this: False hopes, now dashed, and your people restored to bondage?

  And then, when she was feeling most embittered, she would remember that the Lord’s love for Israel was like a parent’s love: Sometimes children had to be set to tasks they hated because the work needed doing, or because it was good for the children even though they didn’t understand. God’s hand has been in our lives, doing extraordinary things, so why should I doubt him now? Somewhere Moses is alive. Somewhere God is working with him, shaping him as I shape these bricks. Moses was simply in the wrong mold here. He had to be cast from it, then kneaded and remade in a new shape. God’s hand is here as well. I’ll certainly be dead before his work is finished, but I have no doubt that from my womb came the Lord’s true servant.

  Moses, wherever you are, look for God’s hand in the road behind you—it is so clear, so obvious how God has chosen you. And when you’ve learned to see his hand, look for it in the road ahead. Take his hand, follow where he leads you, for only in God’s hand will you be free. Only God can bring you back to Egypt, to your people. To me.

  Chapter 8: Fire

  It was the end of the day, and it was spring, and the new grass was so sweetly green that Moses wanted to gambol like the lambs in the meadows. The sun’s ruddy slanted light brought the rocks to blazing life, and the girls were all happy and frolicking, and there were village boys with their hearts set on Hamar and Asa and Sarah and they rather liked the attention and even liked the boys, a little. So there was joy in Jethro’s household from morning to night, and laughter and teasing and fun. And here in the uplands where the sheep nibbled on the new grass, there was joy in Moses’ heart as well. In all his years in Egypt, the seasons had come and gone with no meaning except a change in his duties. In the time of flood, the business of the government was distributing the stores of grain; when the flood subsided, there was planting; when the harvest came, there was gathering and storing. All these things he saw, but his own connection to them was to hear reports of how the harvest went, and what the surpluses were, and where the excess grain might be shipped and sold.

  Here, though, he felt the grass beneath his feet, felt the blood and slime of the newborn lambs on his hands as he helped with the hard deliveries. He had felt the trembling flesh of the sheep under his hand as he held them to be sheared by those with some skill at cutting wool without cutting skin. He had smelled the stink of life in his nostrils, and now the freshness of spring came to him with such power that for the first time since coming to Midian he did not miss his old life in Egypt. Indeed, he felt that for the first decades of his life he had been cheated, because he lived a life of words in which his only physical labor was in learning how to fight and kill for the kingdom. Now, though words still filled his mind and heart, his hands were strong in the business of life. The sun beat down on a back that was bent in labor.

  In Egypt the rich despise manual labor, he thought, yet they are the ones who are poor because they make nothing with their bodies, but only please themselves. The rich are poor; the poor are rich, the world tells its lies, and the wrong people are envied for all the wrong reasons.

  The day’s work was done, but Moses did not want to go back down the mountain to the tents of Jethro, for even though he was caught up in the book of Enoch, that great prophet who led his people to such perfection that God removed them from the world and took them to himself—even though he was eager to read more of that prophet’s words and works, his body could not bear to leave the cool grass. So as the girls put on their sandals for the rocky trek, Moses left his off. “I want to stay till dark,” he said. “I know the way by now.”

  “But you must go down,” said Zeforah.

  Sarah made a hooting noise, and Hamar laughed.

  “Why?” asked Moses.

  Zeforah was silent, unwilling or unable to explain.

  “Oh, this is stupid,” said Sarah. “Zeforah has always stayed up the mountain after dark on these first green nights of spring. She makes us leave and keeps the meadows for herself.”

  Zeforah’s lips were set—she hated Sarah’s tone, but it was clear that what Sarah had said was true.

  “Isn’t there room enough for me here, too?” said Moses.

  Zeforah rolled her eyes. “Of course. I just didn’t want you thinking I was staying up here to be with you.”

  Again, hoots and derision from her sisters.

  “Then I’ll go down,” said Moses. “I’m not here to take your customary pleasures away from you, and I understand about the need for solitude.”

  “I think the meadow is large enough for the two of us,” said Zeforah.

  That had the other girls so amused they could hardly breathe for laughing.

  “Do you sometimes think,” said Moses, “that your sisters are insane?”

  But after a while the girls left, driving the sheep before them. And Moses and Zeforah were alone. He made as if to walk to the far end of the meadow, but she caught his arm. “No,” she said. “I don’t want you far away from me. I’m here because I love this place in springtime. I wouldn’t make my sisters leave, except they get so silly it spoils the mood. You won’t be silly, I think.”

  So she didn’t mind him being there. Like Hebrew letters, her moods were so hard to read. They meant nothing except themselves. They could not be compared to anything. Zeforah was Zeforah.

  Moses knew that Jethro wanted him to marry her. But what did she want? He didn’t want a wife who married him out of filial duty. He wanted what he had always wanted, a marriage between equals, the kind of marriage that Hatshepsut should have had but didn’t. He had nothing but contempt for the marriages he had seen, in which middle-aged men married young girls, to father children on them but treat them otherwise as servants or children themselves. It took a weak man to prefer a wife like that, who wouldn’t dare to answer back when he was foolish, or to insist when he had neglected a duty. Zeforah would certainly not be one of those child-wives. Talking about the scriptures with her was often as invigorating and challenging as talking to Jethro. And she was the only one of the girls who was patient with him as she taught him about shepherding—and so he learned more from her than from any of the others. And she was lovely, especially now that she had joined him in his custom of washing his face and hands every day in the sheep’s drinking water. She was not so stubborn that she would not let him teach her, too. He liked her. He could easily love her. If they were supposed to marry, it would be a good marriage, and he would love the children she gave him.

  Furthermore, the time of decision was coming near. He had come in autumn, and now it was spring. Through these seasons that sheep were always close enough to be herded home every night. But during the summer they had to take them up to the highest meadows, out of the killing sun, and in those days they would not come home at night. He could hardly sleep up there, night after night, without being married to one of them. The scandal in the village would be impossible. There would have to be a wedding, or Moses would have to stop working at shepherding. Well, that would be fine with Moses.

  But what did she want? Each of the other girls—even Keturah!—had gone through a flirty stage with him, trying to catch his eye. But not Zeforah. She was all cool business with him, talking about the question or problem at hand, and when she joked with him, it was like a brother. He did not want to be her brother. But that distance remained between them. That sense that he could stand outside the door but was not quite welcome yet inside. He did not know what the barrier was. But he did know that Zeforah was the only one of the daughters that he could happily marry; and she was the only one who had never given him even a hint that she wanted him as a husband.

  Until now. Was this a hint, letting him remain with her in this meadow? Letting him share her ritual of springtime?

  And what was that ritual? Did she lie in the cool of evening and count stars overhead? Did she sing with her voice echoing among the stony canyon walls? Did she shed her clothes and prance like a lamb in the grass? That idea had some appeal for him, he could not deny. But no, she would hardly have invited him to stay for that.

  So he sat down in the meadow and looked at the sunset. And she came and sat beside him, and watched it, too.

  “All that color in the sky,” she said. “And the green of the grass. Why green? Why red?”

  Moses was taken aback. “Why not?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “God could have made it any way he wanted. He didn’t have to put such fire in the sky.”

  Moses pulled a blade of grass and held it up. “The beauty of variety,” he said. “And the beauty of the familiar. This green must come every year.”

  “And yet it never grows old.”

  Her smile, the tenderness of her voice. How he wanted to take her in his arms. Did she want that, too? Was that why she stayed?

  Just as he was about to test the theory with the touch of his hand on hers, she drew herself up to her knees, facing the sunset. Out of reach. Had she sensed his desire and wanted to avoid the awkwardness of refusing him? Or was it pure chance, and she had no idea of what was in his heart?

  Even as he thought these thoughts, he babbled something about the sunset. “Of course these colors probably come by necessity. Dust low in the sky turns red when the sun shines through it. The green of living plants is probably part of what makes them alive, and we find it beautiful because we love life. Or because it’s familiar.”

  She looked at him with benign pity. “Does anything beautiful come by accident? Toss some stones—will they come up a temple? God made a garden world for us to tend, and then he stepped away to watch and wait. Someday he’ll come to harvest. To weed. But look at the sky tonight. You can’t tell me that all that grace and glory is undesigned and undesired chance.”