ffended their _fadommt_ Mum-god," Aaron said. "The
Sarki has granted us a week to make ready to go into the wilderness." He
sat on a coffee-colored kitchen chair, his head bowed and his big hands
limp between his knees.

"Stoltz, where can we go?" Martha asked. "We have no _Freindschaft_, no
kin, in all this place."

Aaron tightened his hands into fists. "We will not go!" he vowed. "I
will find a way for us to stay." He broke open the box of cigars that
had been meant as a gift for Musa and clamped one of the black stogies
between his teeth. "What is their _heidisch_ secret?" he demanded. "What
does the Mother want of me?"

"Aaron Stoltz," Martha said vigorously, "I'll have no man of mine
offering dignity to a heathen god. The _Schrift_ orders us to cut down
the groves of the alien gods, to smash their false images; not to bow
before them. Will you make a golden calf here, as did your namesake
Aaron of Egypt, for whose sin the Children of Israel were plagued?"

"Woman, I'll not have you preach to me like a servant of the Book,"
Aaron said. "It is not for you to cite Scripture." He stared through the
window. "What does the Mother want of me?"

"As you shout, do not forget that I am a mother, too," Martha said. She
dabbed a finger at her eye.

"_Fagep mir_, Liebling," Aaron said. He walked behind the chair where
his wife sat. Tenderly, he kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck.
"I am trying to get inside Musa's head, and Kazunzumi's; I am trying to
see their world through their eyes. It is not an easy thing to do,
Martha. Though I lived for a spell among the 'English,' my head is still
House-Amish; a fat, Dutch cheese."

"It is a good head," Martha said, relaxing under his massage, "and if
there be cheese-heads hereabouts, it's these blackfolk that wear them,
and not my man."

"If I knew what the die-hinker our neighbors mean by their Mother-talk,
it might be I could see myself through Murnan eyes, as I can hear a bit
with Hausa ears," Aaron said. "_Iss sell nix so_, Martha?"

"We should have stood at home, and thought with our own good heads," she
said.

"Let me think," Aaron said. "If I were to strike you, wife," he mused,
"it could do you great hurt, and harm our unborn child, _Nee?_"

"Aaron!" Martha scooted out from under her husbands kneading hands.

"_Druuvel dich net!_" he said. "I am only thinking. These blackfolk now,
these neighbors who were before last night our friends, speak of Light
as o