“It was a prison,” his father said. “A death row prison. Nobody got out alive.”
“Nobody ever gets out alive.” Tommy regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth, especially when his mother turned away and slid a finger under her sunglasses, clearly wiping a tear. Still, a part of him was glad that she let herself feel something real instead of lying about it all the time.
Their guide bounced up to them, rescuing them from the moment. She was all bare legs, tight khaki shorts, and long black hair, barely winded by the long climb. “Glad you guys made it!” She even had a sexy Israeli accent.
He smiled at her, grateful to have something else to think about. “Thanks.”
“Like I told everybody else a minute ago, the name Masada comes from the word metzuda, meaning ‘fortress,’ and you can see why.” She waved a long tan arm to encompass the entire plateau. “The casemate walls protecting the fortress are actually two walls, one inside the other. Between them were the main living quarters for Masada’s residents. Ahead of us is the Western Palace, the biggest structure on Masada.”
Tommy tore his eyes away from her lips to look where she pointed. The massive building didn’t look anything like a palace. It was a wreck. The old stone walls were missing large sections and clad with modern scaffolding. It looked like someone was halfway through building a movie set for the next Indiana Jones installment.
There must be a deep history under all that scaffolding, but he didn’t feel it. He wanted to. History mattered to his father, and it should to him, too, but since the cancer, he felt outside of time, outside of history. He didn’t have room in his head for other people’s tragedies, especially not people who had been dead for thousands of years.
“This next building we believe was a private bathhouse,” the guide said, indicating a building on the left. “They found three skeletons inside, skulls separated from the bodies.”
He perked up. Finally something interesting.
“Decapitated?” he asked, moving closer. “So they committed suicide by cutting off their own heads?”
The guide’s lips curved in a smile. “Actually, the soldiers drew lots to see who would be responsible for killing the others. Only the last man had to commit suicide.”
Tommy scowled at the ruins. So they killed their own children when the going got tough. He felt a surprising flicker of envy. Better to die quickly at the hands of someone who loved you than by the slow and pitiless rot of cancer. Ashamed of this thought, he looked at his parents. His mother smiled at him as she fanned herself with the guidebook, and his father took his picture.
No, he could never ask that of them.
Resigned, he turned his attention back to the bathhouse. “Those skeletons . . . are they still in there?” He stepped forward, ready to peek inside through the metal gate.
The guide blocked him with her ample chest. “Sorry, young man. No one is allowed inside.”
He struggled not to stare at her br**sts but failed miserably.
Before he could move, his mother spoke. “How’re you doing, Tommy?”
Had she seen him checking out the guide? He blushed. “I’m fine.”
“Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?” She held out her plastic water bottle.
“No, Mom.”
“Let me put some more sunscreen on your face.” His mother reached into her purse. Normally, he would have suffered the indignity, but the guide smiled at him, a stunning smile, and he suddenly didn’t want to be babied.
“I’m fine, Mom!” he spat out, more harshly than he’d intended.
His mother flinched. The guide walked away.
“Sorry,” he said to his mother. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be over there with your father. Take your time here.”
Feeling terrible, he watched her walk away.
He crossed over to the bathhouse, angry at himself. He leaned on the metal gate to see inside—the gate creaked open under his weight. He almost fell through. He stepped back quickly, but before he did so, something in the corner of the room caught his eye.
A soft fluttering, white, like a crumpled piece of paper.
Curiosity piqued inside him. He searched around. No one was looking. Besides, what was the penalty for trespassing? What was the worst that could happen? The cute guide might drag him back out?
He wouldn’t mind that at all.
He poked his head inside, staring at the source of the fluttering.
A small white dove limped across the mosaic floor, its left wing dragging across the tiles, scrawling some mysterious message in the dust with the tip of its feathers.
Poor thing . . .
He had to get it out of there. It would die from dehydration or get eaten by something. The guide probably knew a bird rescue place they could bring it to. His mother had volunteered at a place like that back home in California, before his cancer ate up everyone’s life.
He slipped through the gap in the gate. Inside, the room was smaller than his father’s toolshed, with four plain stone walls and a floor covered by a faded mosaic made of maddeningly tiny tiles. The mosaic showed eight dusty red hearts arranged in a circle like a flower, a row of dark blue-and-white tiles that looked like waves, and a border of terra-cotta, and white triangles that reminded him of teeth. He tried to imagine long-ago craftsmen putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle, but the thought made him tired.
He stepped across the shadowy threshold, grateful to be out of the unforgiving sun. How many people had died in here? A chill raced up his spine as he imagined the scene. He pictured people kneeling—he was certain they would be kneeling. A man in a dirty linen tunic stood above them with his sword raised high. He’d started with the youngest one, and by the time he was done, he barely had the strength to lift his arms, but he did. Finally, he, too, fell to his knees and waited for a quick death from his friend’s blade. And then, it was over. Their blood ran over the tiny tiles, stained the grout, and pooled on the floor.
Tommy shook his head to clear the vision and looked around.
No skeletons.
They were probably taken to a museum or maybe buried someplace.
The bird raised its head, halting its journey across the tiles to stare up at Tommy, first with one eye, then the other, sizing him up. Its eyes were a brilliant shade of green, like malachite. He’d never seen a bird with green eyes before.
He knelt down and whispered, his words barely a breath. “Come here, little one. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”