Anna peered around the hide hanging in the doorway of her house. Finding the front room empty, she snuck inside and busied herself tending the fire. Moments later, her mother slipped through the partition of goatskins that walled off her private living area. She had changed into a fresh blue robe.

Anna kept her eyes low, staring at the hem of her garment.

“Where have you been?” her mother asked.

“At Grandfather’s,” Anna said. “He threw cheese at me.”

Her mother tossed her a skeptical look. “And did you let the cheese go to waste?”

Anna shook her head. “Zahra ate it.”

Before she could hide it, a smile of approval swept across her mother’s face. Then, just as quickly, it disappeared. “Your father will be here soon,” she said. “See if the bread is ready.”

Anna went to the flat rock nestled in the coals. A thin disk of bread was baking, curling brown at the edges. She lifted it from the heat and set it on a linen cloth.

Her mother knelt slowly, negotiating her considerable weight.

Anna marveled at how big her belly had grown. “Mother,” she asked, “how will the baby get out?”

“He will find a secret passageway. Just like you did, my little dove.”

Anna nestled close to her mother, bending until she could lay her head in her lap. Gazing up, she relished her beauty—her dark eyes flecked with hints of olive, her long onyx curls framing cinnamon-dusted cheeks, her neck curving gently as a wheat stalk, her lean limbs rippling with the strength of sycamore branches.

Anna’s father called her Mari, though the women who gathered at the well once a week to wash sleeping mats had said that was not her real name. Hiding in the bushes behind the gossiping women, as she often did, Anna had also heard them whisper that her mother came from a distant land, far to the south. Which explained, they said, why her face bore the fuller features of the desert dwellers and why her words sometimes rose on a musical curl.

Mari began to hum as she smoothed her daughter’s hair. Anna loved to listen to her mother’s songs. The melodies were simple yet uplifting. And though Mari was careful not to enunciate the words, sometimes a phrase or two would slip from her lips and Anna would hear, “Queen of Heaven around us,” or “Bless the earth that is to be blessed.” She noticed, too, that her mother would never hum such songs when her father was near. Since she had never heard anyone else singing the particular melodies, Anna came to believe that the songs were special, and something her mother shared only with her.

“Hurry, both of you!” her father shouted from the doorway.

“What is it, Yoseph?” Mari asked.

“A surprise. Come look!” he answered.

“Can it not wait until after our meal?”

“No, no! Come now! I want to show you.”