Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) Read Online Free PDF Page A

sister to be compared to. She had never had even a brother for her father to love more than her.
    “So could I borrow your memories of your father sometimes?” said Leah. “Could you tell me about him and let me pretend that we grew up sisters, and that he liked me as well as you, and always treated us both the same?”
    Bilhah nodded. “I’ll share him,” she said. And then she thought of something funny. “It’s always easier to share what you don’t actually have,” she said.
    They laughed and cried together for another moment, there in the garden, and then they picked beans together tillthe job was done, and then weeded together till
that
job was done, and that night Bilhah went to sleep in Leah’s tent, at the foot of her bed, the way the harness maker had once slept at her feet, to be her true friend and protector in the dark of night.

PART II
     

THE GIRL
WHO COULD
SEE
     

CHAPTER 3
     
    R achel could see two things at once. Not all the time. Not when she was talking to someone face to face, or pulling a thorn from a lamb’s foot, or trying to herd a he-goat without getting butted for her pains. At times like that, she saw only the thing she needed to see.
    But other times, sitting on a grassy slope on a sunny day, or huddling by a fire on a cold night, or staring up into darkness inside her tent, then other visions would come to her mind. To her
eyes
is how it seemed to her, but she knew that what she saw wasn’t really there. If she moved her hand, then the vision would vanish and all that would be left was the nothing-in-particular she had been looking at before.
    Sometimes the visions were meaningless, just strange shapes in the air, constantly shifting. There was a beauty to it, but if she tried to concentrate on any part of the shifting pattern, it would disappear.
    Sometimes the visions were like dreams, with people doing things, events happening, but this kind of vision always ended with waking. Then she would know that she had merely dozed off, and the dream meant nothing. For a time it worried her that she was able to fall asleep with her eyes open, sitting up, but now she was used to it.
    There was another kind of vision, though, which did not end with waking. There was always a voice—though not always the same voice. Sometimes it was a woman, and Rachel used to think it was her mother, though she would have no way of being sure. Usually it was a man, and the voice didn’t belong to any man she knew.
    The voice would start talking to her without her even noticing. She’d be looking at the sheep or the stars or a fire or the darkness and she’d realize that she was hearing someone saying things to her.
    The first time she remembered this happening, she was five years old, and she thought someone was calling her. “Who is it?” she said, and when no one answered, she went looking for the man, but she found no one. A few weeks later it happened again, and she looked again, but eventually she learned that there wasn’t anybody real talking to her, and instead she tried to listen to the voice.
    It was hard, because the voice was usually just out of reach, like overhearing somebody in a brisk wind, with words being snatched away so that you could catch phrases but never understand anything.
    But when she
could
understand, then visions would come with the words. She would see things.
    When she was eight years old, she was lying in the dark of the tent, Leah asleep beside her—they shared a bed in thosedays. The voice was calling a name, but it wasn’t hers. It was saying, “Rebekah” and then something about “drawing water from the well” and then “Rebekah” again and something about the household of Abraham.
    Of course she knew the story of Aunt Rebekah, how she had gone to draw water and found a stranger there, and shared her water with him—and he turned out to be the servant of the great Abraham, who had come looking for a wife for Isaac. The way the story got told, Rebekah was