After years of widowhood, ashes and black wool fell away from Judith like an old skin. High in her tower, she searched beneath her bed for the clothing that she’d put away after her husband’s death. Shaking away the dust mites, she unfurled a sea of magenta, plum and malachite. Then she kicked off her sandals and walked through waves of cotton and silk. When she reached an open window, she hung an old robe over it. Memories of her dead husband, Manasseh, filled the room. She pressed her face against the material in the places where his scent lingered. At the wrists, just below the waist, around the neck. The breeze washed him over her. When she closed her eyes, she felt his callused hands on hers. She directed his fingers over her lips and between her breasts. By the time her hand grazed her hips, Manasseh was gone.
Street talk rode in on the silence. Judith leaned against the cold stone and listened to the latest war news. The Assyrian army had dammed up the feeder streams with limestone and brick, leaving the village to die of thirst. Day and night, the elders sat in a circle around the parched well, a colloquy of beards. Squatting on their haunches, they rocked themselves back and forth to loosen their thoughts. Plans and possibilities dribbled down their chins and stained their gray cotton robes. Everyone else collected what little water they could find. The women went into the hills at sunrise...
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