Ancient Things We Hold

Chapter 3

The Naivety of Childhood

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Back when the two were new friends and did not know very much of one another, questions were asked all the time. He was endlessly interested in her and her way of life. As they grew older together, the questions became less and less frequent. However, the memories of his little interrogations remained fondly on both their minds.

He found her sitting in the tree, swinging her legs and reading over a pile of old papers which were bound in a worn strap of leather. He clambered up beside her, then cast her a look of surprise.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You can read," he said. She smiled a little at his open comment, causing him to say, "Oh, I am sorry. I only meant that not many of the villagers can..."

"Reading is important to us. We are a religion of the book. Our beliefs are all written down. The rabbi is teaching the book to me himself. I write on all I know. I write all the time," she said proudly, before adding quickly, "Girls don't normally get taught it. We just worship with it in private,"

"What is a rabbi?" he asked.

"He is the man in the village that teaches and leads us," she said, "He is a scholar, very intelligent. Even though we all know the Bible, he will tell us the interpretations and what it means and what we must do. For example, a man called Daniel was sentenced into a pit of lions for praying to G-d, but he stayed loyal and so G-d shut the mouths of lions. When the King opened the den in the morning, everybody saw that he had been saved. The rabbi said that is a moral of how we should follow G-d despite all troubles,"

A great interest was ignited within Aldwyn all of a sudden. Seeing as the only books he read were family legacies and biographies or about history, he thought that sounded so utterly exciting. "May I read it?" he asked, "The book? Would I be allowed?"

For some reason, she began laughing. "Are you teasing me?" he asked with a smile.

"No," she promised, before admitting sheepishly, "Well, a little." She lifted up the old papers she was holding and placed them in front of him, "Look. You can read it, if you want,"

All he saw was a mass of squiggles on a page, sprawling in strange directions and with odd spacing. "Oh," he said with a bashful grin, "It's in that language of yours. How do you know that language and the language of everyone else here?"

"We have to. Our village is surrounded by the others, who come in for this and that. We're supposed to avoid them if we can, though. Our parents are all terribly scared of them,"

"Well, we're not all bad. I don't see what is supposed to be so terrible about you anyway. You speak another language and dress differently, but why everyone's so bothered about it all..."

"Oh, I don't know, but people do get upset over differences, don't they? We just have to be careful, which is why we're so quiet with important services,"

"Like your bat mitzvah," he said.

"You remembered!"

"Even though there is an awful lot of stuff to remember. Why are there so many rules for you?" he asked.

Hodaya wished he could read Hebrew so she could just pass him the pages and let him read all about the original sin, the covenant and the mitzvah and why her becoming twelve meant she is now responsible for her actions and must follow the commandments exactly, even if she could atone for her sins at Yom Kippur.

"There are a lot of rules for you too, you know. It's just easier to follow them when you have all your life,"

"It's easy to abandon them as well," he said. They shared a mischievous look together, then turned to the slow silence as she began reading again and he lifted his head up to the sky and saw the sunlight dancing on the leaves above him.