Silent Teraphim
By Marissa K. Lingen

Illustration by Jenny Ladner

hen we crossed from the peninsula into Egypt, the household gods went silent. My mothers worried but said nothing; the maidservants wailed aloud. My brothers' wives slapped their maids for their grief and, more importantly, for their noise, but one look from my blood-mother quelled them all. She still ruled among us, even in our journey, even with her failing eyes.

"Dinah, come to me," she said. "I want you where I can see you, child."

I was no child any longer, but I sat closer to my mother in the last few years than I had since I was a babe on her lap. Her hand closed around my wrist like a manacle, always strong and sure. "Take the teraphim to the river tomorrow. Wet them down with fresh water. See if the household gods will speak to us again."

"Yes, Mother."

"Don't submerge them all the way," she said. "The gods aren't fish any more than we are. They can't accomplish everything."

That last was said with a sneer; my father, Jacob, had a god who could do everything, or so he said, but I was far too old to charm him if I asked whether his god could swim. I didn't even mention it to my mother; her temper flared where she thought my father or blood-brothers were threatened.

And though she would not say it, she thought they were threatened on the way to Egypt. My long-lost brother Joseph had attained high rank in the Pharaoh's court there—by all accounts, he had stumbled upon it—and had invited us to make our home with him there. He was the son of my mother's long-dead sister, Rachel, and had been my father's favorite before his presumed death.

And now he was back, good as new or better? No wonder my mother was suspicious. What would he do to her sons, who had gotten rid of him so many years ago? How would the foreign land treat my father, who grew no younger from day to day? There was even fear for herself, I think; my mother's failing sight meant that she relied upon familiarity where once she had had perception. The novelty of the journey did not quiet her nerves. No wonder the teraphim's silence alarmed her.

I took them to the river as she had asked, little clay forms wrapped in my skirt like so much laundry. I didn't want my brothers to see: my father has taught them to deplore the household gods, but he couldn't bring himself to care whom I served, especially after we left the city of Hamor's people. But no one paid attention to me. I kilted my skirts up and stepped into the rushes.

The river flowed clear and eager around my legs. I set the household gods on the bank beside me and held the first among them, a rounded, fertile female figure. The clay soaked up water and turned a little shiny, but when I pulled her out of the water again, her color went flat. She didn't say a word.

I did the same to her warrior male companion, to the harvester and the water-bearer, the maiden and the baby and the one we don't understand. None of them responded with even a flicker of thought. I dried them on my skirt and took them back to their basket on one of the oxen.

"The teraphim are still silent, Mother," I reported as we walked together.

She sighed and said nothing. None of us spoke of it again, even when we settled into my brother Joseph's palace. We were all too afraid, skittish in our new surroundings and unwilling to admit that our old supports were missing.

My brothers were immediately caught up in a whirlwind of social dinners and Pharaonic audiences. Joseph did not come to see me or his mothers for days after we arrived. He was a busy man, I suppose, and we were only women. I wanted to remind him that the women knew nothing of our brothers' treachery and would never have betrayed him so, but he would not have listened.

And when he came, he hugged each of us perfunctorily and said, "Just think, all these years without a word from you."

Nothing had changed. We were all still to be punished because we were not his dead mother. He had the same sneer, the same eyes, though he now smelled of strange spices that tickled my nose. "We all thought you were dead," I whispered.

Joseph's face darkened. "Not all of you did. No, not all."

"My sons never told me of how horribly they treated you," said my mother with great dignity. "And my oldest tried to rescue you."

Joseph unbent a little. "He did. You are Reuben's mother. And, I have forgiven the others."

My mother Leah bent her head. "It was very kind of you. Your hospitality is overwhelming." My other mothers, Bilhah and Zilpah, added their thanks. My mother kicked me hard in the ankle, and I bent my head and thanked my brother, too, though I had no choice but to accept whatever hospitality he chose for us.

"I try to give my family the best of everything," said Joseph with a hearty laugh. "What's the use of managing a country through a famine if I can't manage my own family, eh?"

"Your father did the best he could," said Bilhah in barely more than a whisper.

Joseph nodded. "Of course he did. He brought you here. It's all for the best, now isn't it?"

"Of course it's best to have the family together again," I said, and he smiled at me as if we were still children and playmates. The gods knew, and Joseph himself should have remembered, that I had reason not to want to be clasped to the bosom of some of my brothers.

If the gods knew anything at all. I was dizzied by the thought of the teraphim again, and missed a bit of the conversation. I was jolted back to attention when Joseph knocked over a tray of nut pastries offered to him by Issachar's wife.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "It's been so long since I could eat with anyone."

"How lonely that must be," said Bilhah.

"One grows accustomed to it. It's the first days that are the hardest. I know it must be strange for you now to be among so many foreign gods," said Joseph. "I remember when I first came here. Everything had a statue." He shook his head. "So odd. But you'll get used to it. And our god is still with us."

My mothers smiled at him politely, but I could see the strain in their eyes: we had our household gods, but the teraphim had been silent since we crossed over, and we had not heard the voices of any new gods, either.

"The god of your fathers is still with you," repeated my mother in a voice that was meant to be encouraging, but I recognized her curiosity: it was not that all gods were silent in the land of Egypt, then, but ours alone.

Joseph's visit ended abruptly when he got bored with us, and we were left to huddle in the women's quarters, bickering among ourselves and speculating about our future there in Egypt. We scarcely saw my father in those first days. When our older brothers had come back without Simeon and told Father that Joseph was alive, I thought the joy would kill him as surely as grief would have. But the old man rallied, and he couldn't get enough of his son, his blessed son, his favorite son. And our brothers were the same way, falling all over themselves to show how repentant they were, and how glad to see Joseph. None of them had a moment to spare for us and our silent gods.

After a week, I could stand no more of being shut inside with my brothers' wives. I manufactured an errand in the kitchen garden and fled down its paths. The hot sun on my face cheered me a little. Though the garden smelled foreign to me, it was a familiar foreign, if there was any such thing: a smell of spices and earth and growing things, flower perfume and the undertone of buzzing insects.

I found a little bench in a far corner, just before the kitchen garden went between some trees and became something grander, close to the great river that could do nothing for our gods. I closed my eyes and sat with the sun in my hair and breathed the fragrances of growth, quietly, peacefully.

When I opened my eyes again, I was not alone.

He was as hairy as an Ishmaelite, but not as fair; nor was his skin as dark as the Egyptians'. And he was huge, far taller than any man I had ever seen, and broader in the shoulders. His hands, each the size of my head, were covered with dirt. I tried to remember the words my brother Naphtali had taught us to say for "I speak no Egyptian." But before I could do more than open my mouth, the gardener spoke: "Don't worry, I speak your tongue. My name is Medan."

"How—how did you learn it?" I asked, without a thought for proprieties. And, after all, it was a bit late for proprieties for me.

"My father spoke it. He came here as a man with a child in tow. A foreigner like your brother, eh?"

"I hope not so misfortunate, then," I said, not knowing what else to say. Then it occurred to me: "You know who I am, that I'm not just one of the servants."

"You are my lord Joseph's only sister. Everyone knows who you are."

"My lord Joseph's disgraced and unmarried elder sister," I said bitterly.

"No one here knows of any disgrace," said Medan. When I didn't answer, he said, "But it is clear that you have loved in your life."

I turned my head away from him. "Yes, I am defiled," I said.

"I said nothing about knowing a man; I said you have loved," he said gently. "And lost, I see."

"My brothers, Simeon and Levi—watch yourself with them. Tell the other servants." He waited for me to go on, and after a moment I was able to say it, though I had never told anyone. "I loved a prince, Shechem, son of Hamor. We traveled through his father's lands, close to where my grandfather grazed his flocks. He loved me. He would have married me—we were promised—but my brothers thought he treated me like a whore, and they—" I had to swallow hard to go on. "They tricked him and his kinsmen into injuring themselves in a rite of my father's god, and then they slaughtered the whole family where they lay recovering."

Medan shuddered. "I'm sorry."

"So am I." And I thought I should be sorry to tell all of the sordid tale to a stranger. Instead I felt free.

"And it is this grief that drives you out to the garden by yourself? Forgive me; I will leave you to it."

"No," I said, not knowing why I didn't just let him go. "No, it's just that there are so many of them in there, my mothers and my sisters-in-law and all my nieces, and the maids, and then my youngest nephews, too, and now great-nieces and great-nephews coming..."

Medan laughed. "That's quite enough for anyone. You are welcome in the garden at any time."

"Thank you. Who are you?" And what are you? I wanted to ask. The longer I looked at him, the more I noticed that he didn't move like the large men I knew, but lightly and gracefully. And yet he made me feel like one of the household gods beside him, like someone could wrap me up in a bit of robe and carry me off.

Medan seemed to know what I really was asking. "You would call people like me nephilim."

"Your father was an angel?"

Medan laughed. "My mother was an angel," he corrected. "My father was the Pharaoh's gardener—not his chief gardener, just one among the masses, but not the lowliest of them."

"The son of an angel and a gardener," I said wonderingly.

"Which makes me a gardener," he said. "Not an angel."

I laughed, and then looked around, hoping no one was there to see me laughing with a strange man. I reminded myself that I was the defiled one, so what did it matter? I laughed again, and he smiled approvingly.

"I'm a very good gardener, though. Watch." Medan reached his hand out to one of the pomegranate trees, and it bent to him, spreading its fine green leaves around his fingers. The fruit turned until he could pluck it with the lightest touch. He split it open and handed me all but three of the seeds. I ate a few, watching him carefully. He bent and poked them into the loose earth near the bench, plunging his hand all the way up to the wrist. He brought his hand back with a twist, and green sprouts followed it. They grew long enough to twine around his wrist, giving off golden sparks. I heard a faint hum.

I did not gasp, not wanting to appear giddy and foolish, but I did ask, "The same seeds?"

"Oh yes." He smiled. "I encourage them. They like me."

"It appears so," I managed. Angels were always said to have powers over life and death, but most of the tales we heard featured death, not life. I had heard of no priest or magus who could do such a thing.

"I've distressed you," said Medan. "I'm sorry. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable here. When you need a haven again—"

"I will come out here." I was regaining my composure with each second. "But now, I fear my mother will want me, so I must take my leave of you."

He nodded. I could feel him watching me as I went. What had he done? By whose power did he compel the seeds to grow? His own, most likely, I thought; if he was the son of an angel, as he had said—and what else could he be—who knew what he could do? Had he compelled my confidences like the flowering of seeds? Was the comfort I felt with him as artificial as the sparks around the seedlings?

But thoughts of Medan's power were soon dispelled. When I entered the cool of our rooms, my sisters-in-law were pondering; I could see it in their faces. "Your mother has a question she must have answered," said Asher's wife. They were all afraid to go in to her, I saw, so I entered my mother's rooms, Bilhah and Zilpah following me silently.

"It's Dinah, Mother," I said. "The others said that you...?"

She nodded. "Dinah, my only daughter. It will have to be you."

"What will be me, Mother?" I felt a pang of fear: were they talking of marrying me to some Egyptian? After all these years, surely not; surely one of my nieces would form a family bond and make a much more suitable wife than I. And yet, it would take me away from Simeon and Levi to go, and after all these years, that was still something I wanted desperately.

"I need you to find something out for me, child. No one else has spent enough time with the teraphim to do it."

"But the teraphim are still—"

"I believe your brother Joseph may be dead. We need to find out if that is so."

I spoke slowly, trying to collect my thoughts. "Mother—if Joseph is dead, then who is that running the house, feeding our family, consulting with Pharaoh?"

"Joseph," said my mother calmly. "But dead."

"He walks, Mother. He talks and laughs and eats and fathers sons."

"And is dead, or may be." She stroked my hand. "Dinah. Listen to me. Joseph has said that the god of his father is still with him in this foreign land. Might not that god keep him propped up, seeming life when he has none? All these years I felt in my bones that he was dead; I didn't doubt it for one second. And this is clearly Rachel's child. So...he may be dead and walking."

"Why wouldn't the god just bring him back to life, then?" I said.

"Strange are the ways of the gods," said my mother. "It has been known to happen before. I have seen it. If you take the teraphim—"

"The teraphim are silent still, Mother."

"I know it. You must find a way—"

"He isn't dead, Mother."

"Watch the glow in his eyes, Dinah. I can see it even with the dusk falling in my sight. See if you can find a pulse in his neck. Your sisters-in-law haven't seen it. He smells strange, stranger than the Egyptians, even. And that may be why the teraphim are silent—your father's god may have shut them up, to keep them from telling us."

"Mother—"

"We don't know that he sleeps or eats or fathers sons, Dinah. Recall how he contrived to spill Issachar's wife's tray?"

I had not paid close enough attention to see whether it was a ruse or genuine clumsiness. "But the teraphim don't speak."

"You are young and strong." She pressed my hand. "You will find a way."

The woman of the household parted before me when I emerged from my mother's room. Zilpah gave me a hopeful, hesitant smile. "I will do my best," I promised, not meeting any of their eyes. "I will see what I can find out."

They said less to me than they had, but their eyes followed me at every moment. I had no idea how to call the voices of the gods back into the teraphim. I tried, more than once, to get my mother to tell me how, or to admit that it was impossible, but she refused to do either.

So I tried on my own. I anointed them with milk, with sweat, with blood from a goat, from a cut in my finger, from my monthly courses. I sang them songs and spoke them chants. I offered them food, earths, cloth, precious jewels, everything I could think of.

I think they stayed back in Canaan where we belonged.

Finally, driven to distraction by the constant, silent attention, I fled to the kitchen garden. I intended to keep walking until I found Medan, but he came up the path behind me instead, calling my name to keep me from taking a fright when he drew close.

"Need sanctuary from all the people?" he asked sympathetically.

"Actually, I came to ask for your help. But first, there is something I must ask you."

He crouched down on the garden path and ran his hands through the dirt. He was still almost as tall as I. "Ask away."

"What gods do you follow?"

Medan twisted his mouth into a smile. "That's a very serious question. A man's gods are his own."

My father's god, I thought, seemed to think that it went the other way around. "You take your gods quite seriously, then?"

"Quite so."

"And mine?"

His smile faded. "I don't know your gods, unless they are your brother's."

I pulled the strongest of the teraphim, or the one who used to be the strongest, from my skirt pocket. "This was the mother of our household gods. Now she doesn't speak to us."

"Now?"

"Ever since we came across into the land of Egypt," I said.

He held his hand out, and after a moment's hesitation, I gave him the mother of the teraphim. I could not expect him to help me without touching them, after all, but it gave me a twinge to see her lying there so small and empty in the huge hands of a stranger. I tried not to hold my breath while he had her.

"I can't call your gods back," said Medan after studying her. "But I could do something with the bodies of the teraphim themselves. I have some skill with the earth, as you've seen."

I backed away from him a few steps. "My father says that his god made us out of dirt. You are not a—"

"I am not a god," said Medan. He used the voice my brother Reuben employed to calm spooked horses. "I cannot create men out of earth, or even the seemings of men."

"But then—the teraphim—“

"Oh, no," he said, realizing what I meant. "I couldn't call new gods into them. No. But the old spirits—" He gave me an intent, searching look. "They won't return, Dinah. This clay is empty. The son of my mother would know it."

The angels, they say, are closer to the gods than we, or closer to my father's god at least. I closed my eyes. "What will we do now?"

"It could be that your gods have not abandoned you, but are just no longer speaking."

"What good are gods that don't talk?" I blurted.

I thought he would laugh at me, but instead he nodded thoughtfully. "If it's important to you that your gods interact with you, perhaps you should try the Egyptian—"

"No!" Embarrassed, I lowered my voice. "I mean, no thank you just the same. My mother would never be content with foreigners' gods."

"Is she content with your father's god?"

I shrugged. "That's nothing to do with her."

"Your brother thinks your father's god would see it differently."

"My brother doesn't think nearly enough," I murmured.

Medan raised an eyebrow at me, but he chose to go on, saying, "If your mother needs her own gods, I'm afraid I can't help her, or you. I can only change the teraphim you have."

"That's no good," I said. "We need the old ones back. They're the only ones my mother would trust to—" I stopped.

Medan 's other eyebrow shot up to join the first one. He waited, but I didn't finish my sentence, and he didn't press it. "If you change your mind, let me know," he murmured. He rose and walked away, and he was beyond the bounds of the kitchen garden before I could even contemplate catching up with his long strides.

I was left to think about it some more. But I kept noticing how much I liked that he didn't push me to tell him what I chose to leave out. He would let me have my own thoughts in a way that my brothers never would have, if they had considered the matter at all. I was ashamed to have suspected Medan of coaxing my confidences.

One afternoon, I felt a tickling in the back of my head. I thought I'd have a soothing cup of tea when my work was done, but the tickle grew into a warm glow and spread to my arms and fingers. By the time I got to our quarters and picked up the teraphim, my hands were tingling.

I hurried into the alcove off my mother's room, the only place I could get quiet to work inside. Mother had not seen me slip past her, and I worked silently. I held the youngest of the teraphim in my hands and reached back for the glow. I tried to mentally shove it into the little clay figure, and for a moment, I thought I could see light and color dancing around my hands, poking at the statue. But the light went out, and the household god was still not speaking. I tried again with the oldest of the teraphim, and even as the sweat ran down my forehead, I could feel the tickling and the glow fade. I was as alone as before.

I slipped out without ever alerting my mother that I had been there.

By then, my father spent more and more of his days with us, and Joseph came to see him less often. Perhaps he was secretly ashamed of being the son of a sheepherder; perhaps he was just bored of us. Or perhaps the Pharaoh legitimately commanded more of his time in dealing with the famine. It was hard to know.

When we heard that Joseph was still alive, and that he had a high position in Egypt, with food to spare during the famine and easy access to the Pharaoh's ear, we thought it was a miracle, and maybe it was. But my brothers only saw the power and the prestige; they came home and told us that Joseph was ruler of all Egypt. They didn't mention that the Pharaoh was actually still ruler, and that instead of being the head of his tribe, my father would be the subject of a king. When the thrill of seeing Joseph wore off, he didn't like it.

We women were used to not being the rulers of our domain, but Joseph's wife, Asenath, was the daughter of a priest and used to having her own way. She tried to be a dutiful daughter-in-law, but she had borne two sons without having to be any kind of daughter-in-law at all. Also, she could order the Egyptian servants in ways that my mother and sisters-in-law could not, with no common language. Asenath reigned in the women's quarters.

I was sure someone had to snap; it turned out everyone did. My mother yelled at the servants for doing things she couldn't see; my sisters-in-law slapped their children and boxed their servants' ears on a whim. My brothers drank too much and quarreled among themselves, in a muted, sullen way, not wanting to attract Joseph's attention. And my father demanded the accommodation of his smallest whim, which invariably would change as we were in the middle of accomplishing what he had asked.

I was picking mint leaves for his tea when I heard Medan's footsteps. I had encountered him in the garden a few times since I had asked about the teraphim, but our conversations had been brief, and I didn't want to misread their warmth.

"Good afternoon," I greeted him.

"Dinah, I have an idea."

My heart jumped. "About the—"

"No, not about the teraphim." He made a little face, self-deprecating and wry. "I think you should marry me," he said. "I think you should be my wife, Dinah. I could teach you things, and you could teach me—"

I put my hands over my ears. "Do you remember what my brothers did last time I was to be married? I know I told you. And we barely know each other, and—"

"We know each other better than most who marry. And I think we could suit each other well."

"I'm not young," I told him. "Surely you must see that. I've never borne children, but the Pharaoh's manager is my younger brother."

"I know it," said Medan. "I don't want a young woman. I want you. I want your wisdom and your strength and—"

"How would you know if I'm wise and strong?" I cried. "A handful of garden encounters tells you nothing!"

"Your honesty and your ability to bear up under all this change and uproar," he said. "That's what I see in the garden. That's what I see in you."

"My brothers will—"

"Talk to your mothers," he said. "I will ask your father for you honorably, and never lay hand on you until we are wed. I promise this. You would never be able to ask for a more honorable—"

I spoke clearly over him. "My brothers will never consent to marrying me to a gardener. Never. They would rather keep me shut up alone and miserable than that."

"Are you miserable, Dinah?" he asked gently.

I looked away. He had praised my honesty. "Not miserable, but not happy. Not living the life I should live."

He nodded. "All right. Then you still know the life you should lead."

"I think so."

"I wonder if you do. Humans have their own set of talents, Dinah. Are you finding yours?"

I shook my head, not able to trust myself to talk about what had happened with teraphim and my mental glow.

"I think you are," he said. "I think you just don't know it yet."

"Maybe," I said.

"If you don't want me to talk to your father, I won't," he said. "I'll leave you be. But remember that I am not merely a gardener but the son of an angel, one of the servant spirits of your father's god. I believe that may sway him, and with him your brothers."

"Maybe it will," I said. "Maybe—yes. You can try that. Yes."

He laughed in joy and left me standing in the garden without touching me. So different from Shechem. But Shechem was long-dead. I stumbled inside, clutching the mint leaves tight enough to release some of their juices on my hand. I deposited them in the kitchen, which seemed to be in more of an uproar than usual. I stopped one of the youngsters to ask what was going on.

"Didn't you hear, Dinah?" said Serah, my favorite niece. "We're going to live in Goshen."

" Goshen," I said distantly. "How nice. I'm sure you'll enjoy that."

"Won't you?" asked Serah with innocent surprise.

I patted her shoulder. "Go along, Serah, your mother will want someone to supervise the maids' packing."

She left me with a puzzled glance over her shoulder. I wandered on to my mother's rooms, where she was directing Bilhah and Zilpah in the packing. "I am not going to Goshen," I announced without preamble.

My mother blinked. "Dinah? Is that you?"

"I am not going to Goshen," I repeated, "and yes, it is Dinah. I will stay here."

"Joseph will be coming with us," said my mother. "You can't stay here. Asenath is leaving the barest handful of servants—the place will be entirely empty—and there will be no one to guard your safety or your virtue. It's out of the question, Dinah; you're going to Goshen."

"I will stay here and marry Medan, who is the gardener. Arrange it with Father for me. Medan will come to speak to him."

Zilpah and Bilhah gasped and fluttered. "The gardener!" said Bilhah.

"He is the son of one of father's god's handmaidens," I told my mother, "and he has powerful works with the earth and living things."

"Can he help with the teraphim?" asked my mother.

I contemplated lying to her about it, but there was no point. "No."

"Not very powerful, then."

"A different kind of power," I said, but I knew that she was not going to be convinced.

"You will go to Goshen with us. I won't condemn you to living a servant's life in an empty house."

"But you'll condemn me to—to this."

"This house is not a condemnation," thundered my mother.

Shaking my head, I turned and walked out.

Zilpah followed me and caught my sleeve. "She means the best for you."

"She means—" I choked on the words. Finally I managed, "What she means has never meant much for me."

"You cannot blame her for Simeon and Levi."

"This is not about that." It was. But it wasn't. "I have to have the chance to live past that, beyond Shechem. I hope you'll understand."

"Our only daughter," Zilpah whispered. "If you had been mine or Bilhah's, you'd have been taken from us long ago." She stroked my hair. Her hand shook. It was easy to notice my mother's failing eyes and forget that my other mothers grew old as well, and got less rest and respite than my mother did.

I didn't know what reassurance I could give her, so I said, "I love you."

Zilpah's hand stilled on my hair, resting on my head in benediction. "Oh, child. I love you, too."

In all the uproar, no one had time to check up on me; they all assumed that I, the dutiful daughter, would comply with their wishes. That I would be packing for Goshen. I was not going anywhere, but I had worries of my own.

There was still the matter of the teraphim.

"All right," I said to my father's god in frustration. "You're the only one left. What now?"

That has always been up to you , said my father's god.

I started in amazement. "I didn't think you'd talk to a woman. A defiled woman."

I have always spoken to men and to women.

"Nobody ever said so," I said crossly.

Perhaps the women had the sense to keep their mouths shut. Look at what happened to Joseph when he told everyone how favored and wonderful he was.

"You mean you didn't want Joseph to run his mouth off like that?"

What I want rarely has anything to do with it.

Gods are peculiar sometimes. "But you're the god," I said lamely. "You could just give orders and...." I trailed off, realizing that obedience was not my father's strong suit, nor my brother's. My father even limped proudly from where he said his god had wrestled with him and pulled his hip out of joint. "All right, so the orders aren't the best way to go. What about advice? Do you do advice?"

Maybe a little. When it seems warranted. I tell my children what I think they need to know—if I don't think they can figure it out themselves. My father's god sounded contemplative. I like it when they figure it out themselves.

That probably meant I should figure out for myself whether Joseph was alive or dead. "You're not so much a god for doing things or helping people, are you?"

I am that I am , said my father's god, and I will do what I will do.

I made a brief, rude noise. "That's true of all of us, isn't it?"

I had the distinct impression that my father's god was laughing. That was new to me. I did make you in My image.

"Well, you could have had an easier image." This was getting me nowhere. "Do you like Medan?"

He is my child.

"I thought he was the gardener's!"

You are all my children.

"Do you think...do you think I should marry Medan? Will you tell my father to let me?"

If you handle your part of things, I will handle mine.

"That's not a very specific promise."

I know.

I thought about my father's reactions to conversations with his god. "Why are you always jabbering on to them anyway," I asked, "if you know it makes them puffed-up and proud, and half the time they get you wrong?"

If I only spoke to those with clarity of understanding, how would that help anyone?

"Are you going to help me, or not?" I demanded. "I can be just as dense as Joseph is, I promise you."

How comforting. The voice paused. You must take another path. You have tried to use what was; you should think instead of what will be.

"I'm not a god, to know what will be!"

There was a silence. My father's god had gone.

What would be? We divined that with the help of the gods—sacrifices, entrails, patterns of all kinds, but given to us by the gods alone. And all the gods were silent but the maddening one who had just, it seemed, left me alone.

I slept fitfully that night, and it was well before dawn when I got up and crept outside. The faint starlight and overhanging trees made it almost impossible to see what kind of soil I had in my hands, but I could smell the rich loam.

"You were once household gods," I told them. "But now I have no household, and you don't want to be my gods." I thought about what my father's god had said, about moving forward. "So be something else."

This time when the glow gathered in my head, I didn't try to push it into the teraphim. I let it play around them, one at a time. The clay grew slick and soft in my hands, as if it was new, but I didn't have to do any of the reshaping. The new shapes formed themselves: a mouse, an ox, a turtle, a crocodile, a cat...they went faster and faster, until I had a skirt full of animals and the glow receded to the back of my head with a gust of wind.

I looked at what I had made. Were they Egyptian gods? I didn't think so; they had no human bodies, nor human heads, but were all animal. And the faint vibrations from them were not the speech of any kind of god I had known. They were something different entirely, new and more beautiful than they had been. I stood up, still holding them in my overskirt, and turned towards the faint sound of voices.

Joseph was up early with his two sons, tossing them into the air and laughing. I ducked behind a tree and watched them unseen. My mother was frightened, and it made her irrational. Joseph was alive. Anyone could see that—or it was such a near counterfeit that it made no difference. And having talked to my father's god, I couldn't believe that he would prop up an automaton of my brother. That was Joseph himself, rude and proud and clever and powerful.

With a rush, I realized that it no longer mattered to me whether my mother believed that or not. It was true, and that was what mattered. I bent down and set the former teraphim in the dirt. They hummed briefly and then were silent.

I turned away from my brother and his sons and saw Medan appear from the house. "Dinah!" he whispered. "What are you doing out here? I haven't talked to your father yet, and I don't want him to think—"

"I talked to my father's god," I whispered back. "He said he'd take care of his side of things if I took care of mine."

"What does that mean?"

"My father's god isn't much for explaining himself," I admitted. "But I think it means that we have a long walk ahead of us."

"Where are we going?"

I wasn't quite sure. But Medan started walking with me readily enough, and the tickling glow was always in the back of my head. The silence of the gods and the noise of my family no longer seemed to matter.