Work Text:
The Judean wind rushes into the empty room, making the flame of the oil lamp flicker. Michal sits on the windowsill, the very same one through which she helped David escape, lowering him down a rope to save him from his father's spear.
Her ink-stained fingers tremble slightly. She doesn't sing—the music belongs to David. She writes. She engraves her pain so it won't suffocate her.
Shepherd of the hills, thief of thrones and hearts,
You left behind the smell of spikenard and sweat,
A mute lyre that weeps for the absence of your hands,
And a princess who watches for shadows on the paths.
I loved you before you were a king,
When you were just a song rising for my father,
A glimmer of reason in his night of anger,
A glimmer of innocence that I wanted for myself.
For you, I lied to the king, I betrayed my blood.
I placed the idol in the bed, simulated your torment,
Laughing in the face of death so that you can run,
While my own heart began to die.
Will you remember, in your caves and your deserts,
From Saul's daughter, from his arms and his chains?
Or will I be just a step for you, a mere name?
A line erased from the psalm of your renown?
The sky is brass, the silence is a cry.
Come back for me, or leave me to oblivion.
But know, David, that no other will know
To love the man you are beneath the king you see.
Mical puts down the reed pen. She rereads her words, knowing that this poem will probably never leave this room. She imagines him, surrounded by his warriors in Adoullam, or perhaps already seduced by other voices, other faces.
She remembers the gleam in his eyes when he returned from battle, the red dust of the land of Israel clinging to his skin. She had loved him with a fury that frightened even her father. Michal was not made of the restraint of her sister Merab; she was a tempest.
She looks at the rope she has kept, coiled in a corner like a sleeping snake. This rope is the symbol of her sacrifice: she saved the man, but she lost her husband. By letting him fall through that window, she sealed her own solitude.
She carefully rolls up the parchment and slips it into a cedar box. Outside, Saul's guards patrol, their armor clanking in the night. Mical stretches out in the too-large bed, closing his eyes to try and hear, beyond the hills, a harp note that only his heart can still perceive.