She stood in the opening to Jonathan's tent and softly called his name.

"Come in, Mother," he answered in a faint voice.  He rose from his couch, only to slump on a mat of reeds and, like a little Bedouin boy, fling his arms around his knees.  He refused to look at her, but stared at the far wall of the tent, black goatskin above a cedar clothes chest, as if he could find an answer in its shaggy night.

Ahinoam knelt beside him and placed an arm on his back; smelled the scent of him, the fragrance of grass and leather; yearned to hold him and rout the demon of melancholy which, after Nathan's death (and David's visit?), had returned to torture him.

"Half the women of Israel are in love with you," she said.  "The other half want to be your sister or your mother."

"And I must wed and produce a male child to inherit the throne.  Father has told me as much a hundred times."

"You must do what is in your heart.  If you do not choose to wed -"

"I chose to die in place of Nathan, my friend, but little good it did me."

"Let me tell you a story."

"Stories are for children."  He looked like a frightened child.

"What about this one?  You are not Saul's son."

"Not Saul's son... ?"

She could read his thoughts: Not the son of a marauding desert chieftain who believes that to rule means to conquer cities or to take a concubine and father stalwart sons....

"Whose then?"

"You are twenty but you haven't a beard."

"I don't want a beard.  It would be dangerous in battle.  An enemy could seize it and cut my throat."

"Other Israelite boys grow beards long before they are twenty."

"It will come in time."  He shrugged.  "What has that to do with my father?"

"Look at my back."  She bared her shoulders and stood in the light of a large lamp, a cruse of oil with seven wicks like the tongues of salamanders.

"Wings," he gasped.  "Like mine."

"Did you ever wonder how you got them?"

He struggled to speak his thoughts.  "When I was a small child, you taught me never to show them.  A deformity, I thought.  Or worse, the work of a demon.  I supposed the others would kill me if they knew.  Samuel would hack me to pieces as he did King Agag and then blame Yahweh."

"They are natural characteristics of your race.  In the Golden Age, our wings were built for flight.  Now they are petty things.  But all things dwindle in these paltry times."

He looked incredulous.  To an Israelite, a creature with wings was either a demon or an angel.  The demon was wicked; the angel, terrifying and full of Yahweh's wrath.

"Have you never wanted to fly?"

"Haven't all men?"

"No.  Some men want to sail ships to the Misty Isles or the Dusky Sea.  Others, like Saul, want to trample enemies and raze cities.  When they catch one enemy, they find another."

"Mother," he pleaded.  "Tell me who am."  His eyes were green and questioning.  The forest was in them, the fresh new green of spring-awakened grass; shy, tentative, not yet assured of winter's departure.  The ocean was in them, halcyon-still above a reef of coral.