a treasure in the woods, and wished to show a friend, a rare butterfly or an orange mushroom, lifted the lid of a large circular box and proceeded to remove and open a smaller box, and so to the seventh and smallest, which held a big green bumblebee.
He handed the bee to David. “Watch out. He stings,” he said in an ominous voice.
David dropped the bee as if he had already been stung. Jonathan smiled and returned the bee to its nest of boxes. (But why does he never laugh!)
“He’s not real. He’s carved from a tourmaline. My mother says the dolphin folk carved him, before their arms became flippers.”
Miracle succeeded miracle. A wooden fennec, crudely but lovingly modeled from clay, stood on his head, and his feet held an oil lamp in the shape of a coconut. A terra-cotta hyena-a highly unpopular animal in Israel-sat on his haunches and begged a bunch of grapes from a wooden shepherd boy who looked disconcertingly like David. Live animals, too, frolicked among the boxes with the freedom of the woods: a gerbil, a hare, and yes, a small white bear who collided with his master and raised his snout for a pat of forgiveness. Jonathan stroked his fur.
“Go to David now. He’s my friend.”
The bear advanced upon David with a look which could only be called inscrutable.
“Is he going to bite me?” David asked. He was used to the large brown bears which sometimes threatened his flocks.
“Mylas likes you, and he doesn’t like many people. He’s very old, you see, and cantankerous, and wants to be left on his goatskin rug except when it’s time to eat. Or when I come from a battle and he licks my wounds and helps them to heal. He liked Nathan too, but you and Nathan are almost the only ones. He bites every woman except my mother. Once he tore off Michal’s robes and bit her on the backside.”
In spite of the reassurances, David did not expose his rear. “Where did you get him?” There were no white bears in Israel except Mylas. Had he come, like a phoenix, from the Woods Beyond the World?
“He came to me from the sea,” Jonathan said without explanation. “And as for my bird,” he added, unlocking an ivory cage and lifting its occupant of lapis lazuli, which he handed to David as if it were mere crude clay, “he’s for you.”
“For me?” David cried. “He’s a gift for a king!”
“Of course,” laughed Jonathan. (But he never laughs with his eyes.) “Why else would I give him to you? Keep him in the cage except when you want him to sing. No one will try to steal Mm. He’s bewitched against thieves. Hold him in your right hand. Caress his head-so-with your left hand.”
The bird began to sing, quietly at first, and with notes instead of words.
“It’s the music of Ophir,” said Jonathan. “Once a great queen of that land visited Philistia and loved a seren of Gath. At last she had to return to her own country. ‘My heart will break when you leave, like a piece of coral in a stormy sea,’ he said. But she answered him with a gift: ‘Wherever you go, my bird of lapis lazuli will speak for me, and you will be companioned.’ And he took the bird and was never without her.”
“How did you get him, Jonathan?” He liked to speak the name: Jonathan-“gift of the Lord” (or the Lady?).
“I met the seren in battle, oh, long before Michmash. I was just a boy at the time. The seren was wounded but he could still have killed me, since I was also wounded and very weak. He was too kind, though. The Philistines aren’t a cruel race. We fight them because they keep us from the sea. The seren and I helped each other into his tent. ‘You remind me of my son,’ he said, ‘and I am going to let you live. But I have a wound which will be the death of me.’ He opened a casket of yellowing ivory-the old kind, very rare, from Ophir. ‘Here, take this bird and think of the man who loved you as a son, though he saw you only once. At the proper time you will understand.’”
The quiet notes became words, and the words were an incantation.
“Bird from the Wanderwoods,
Transfixed in flight
By lapis lazuli,
Blue heron
Climbing like my thought
To bluer height,
And open-mouthed in cry
No bird
Has heard,
When you alight
In that blue land,
Will I,
Will I?“
Roughly David returned the bird to its cage. “It’s too much for you to give me,” he protested, though he could not explain his unease. The song had charmed him with its strange, bell-like endings. There were no rhymes in the songs of Israel. “What the heart gives is never too much.” “You never gave the bird to Nathan, did you?” “He would have liked a flute or a shepherd’s crook. I saved the bird for David, who perhaps can understand its song.”
“But we only met today. I’m not even sure if I understand you.”
“Once in a dream, I saw a boy with red hair and big, strong fingers which could coax magic out of a lyre-or choke a lion. We walked together in a field of chrysanthemums, and he understood my heart.”
“Do you have second sight?” asked David, puzzling over the dream.
“Sometimes,” smiled Jonathan. “My mother has it more often.”
“They say,” David ventured, “they say that your mother is a sorceress or a goddess and she came from Caphtor, the Island of Green Magic.”
“I don't know,” said Jonathan. “I truly don’t know what I am or where my mother came from. Does it matter?”
“It makes me afraid of her.”
“And me?”
“A little at first. Not now.” It was Jonathan’s power to make the wonderful familiar or, just as effortlessly, the familiar wonderful. He was not like those witches and sorcerers who frightened or threatened you with their magic; he was not even like his mother, who seemed to have no enemies, but also no intimacies except with Jonathan.
“I was afraid of you too, David. Afraid for you to read my soul and perhaps turn away from me. You see, there is so little time. At night I seem to hear the thunder of chariots and feel the terrible grinding of their wheels.”
“But you are the son of the anointed king!”
“Am I, David? And does that mean that I will one day rule in Israel?”
“Yes, and in Philistia as well, perhaps.”
“Some men are meant to rule kingdoms. Others-”
“To what?”
To love.“
“And you've loved, haven’t you, Jonathan?”
“Not as I would choose.”
“Why, half the women of Israel-wives included-would lie with you.”
Jonathan’s eyes did not waver. “I do not want to lie with the women of Israel or any other land.”
“Not even the virgins with breasts like pomegranates?”
“Least of all the virgins.”
The thought unsettled David: that any young man would avoid a beautiful virgin except out of fear of her father! How would Jonathan get an heir to the throne and perpetuate Saul’s line?
“You’re afraid of being unclean in the eyes of Yahweh? But he only requires that a man keep himself from women before battle.”
“I do fear him,” Jonathan admitted, “but not for the reason you think.”
“And you’ve never lain with a girl?”.
“Never.”
“Or loved one?”
