Page 31 of Cloud Storm

With their eyes, my four brothers were telling me that they weren’t sorry to do that for me.

After what I assumed were a couple of minutes, my mother came to see me, to take me to the entrance of the house. My brothers were already there, shirtless, with their hands tied in front of them, waiting to serve their sentence.

The punishment for something they didn’t do.

Minutes later, although they were the ones who received the lashes of the whip, forced to witness that vile spectacle, I felt that every blow fell directly on my back. They endured with admirable stoicism, none complained, none moved. And I was scared to death.

Shaking.

Afraid that, because of me, my brothers would lose their lives, and that was a burden that my conscience could not bear. The pain would have overcome me, because they were innocent.

That night I tried to treat their wounds the best I could. I cleaned them with a mixture of water and vinegar, and then covered them with honey and a few pieces of cloth that I had ripped from my bedsheets.

Incapable of crying, I knew they deserved better. Their sacrifice was too big to allow me to crumble.

Two nights later, they had recovered enough to dine with the rest of the family in the kitchen of our house, when without preamble, my father unleashed his verdict.

“On Sunday, after the service, the leaders will come here with your future husband’s family. They do not come from this village, so this will be a very special occasion,” he proclaimed as I shivered in fear. “Try to behave, lest you end up like your brothers.”

There was no turning back, my destiny was written with fire on a stone.

Or so I thought, but that same night, while the sky cried with me, my four brothers showed up in my room.

It was raining so heavily the noise of their footsteps was muffled by the raindrops falling on the roof of the house.

I had not been able to catch a wink of sleep, so as soon as they opened the door, I sat up in bed, ready to talk with them.

They were my pillars, my refuge, and I loved them dearly.

“Listen, sister,” Joshua said, as always taking his role as the oldest brother very seriously, as he sat on the shaggy bed beside me. “You have to leave, because if you get married and moved to another village, we will never see you again.”

“But running away will also mean I won’t be able to see you,” I said regretfully as I hugged him tightly.

How good it felt to be glued to his body. Joshua was seven years older and had somehow assumed the role of guardian to all of us.

“But at least we’ll know you have a chance to live your life,” he consoled me. “Listen, Aaron has a plan, it may work and, in addition, we have this.”

Then Ezekiel handed me a ball of old socks. I frowned because I didn’t understand what that meant, until Nahum, taking it from my hands, untangled it.

There were several rather battered dollar bills and some coins that I had never seen in my life.

“This is your ticket to freedom,” Aaron murmured, “it’s all we have.”

“Where did you get this?” I looked at the four of them. Even in the dark I could recognize their features perfectly. Their gray eyes shone with hope, at that moment I thought it was because of the emotion.

Now I know it was because of their unshed tears. More than an escape route, my brothers were offering me the gift of a new life.

“We’ve been saving for years, a couple of cents here and there,” Joshua said. “Our father is very lazy at doing the math, so every time we sold our goods in town and were left with some change, we kept it. And now it is yours.”

“But… but…” I was going to cry, and tears stung my eyes. “This is such treasure, Joshua.”

Then he hugged me so tight and we all knew that hug was destined to be the last.

“You are our treasure and we want you to live as you deserve, to get out of here, Ariel. Be happy in a place far away from this hell.”

“And you, what about you?” I asked fearfully, because if they had received such a terrible punishment for defending me from what I considered a mischief, I did not want to imagine what would be done to them when they realized that I had escaped.

“We are men,” he replied, swelling his chest. “We know how to take care of ourselves.”

---