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@beth20

Okay, here’s the prologue for my book. (It’s grammar definitely needs work though.)

 

Six year old Chena Batjehoshaphat’s chest steadily rose and fell, her coarse sheets just barely brushing her closed, dark lashes. Her lips turning upward, and face smooth, she dreamed of their goat, and clouds.

That was cut short as she was yanked from her bed.

“Chena!” Her mother’s voice was urgent, “Get under your bed. Hurry girl!”

Chena began crawling beneath her bed, her mother shoved her the rest of the way. A mass of straw, old rags, and creepy crawlies followed her less than a second later. “Stay here Little Bee. And under no circumstances; no matter what you hear, do not leave this spot.” Her mother raced to the door, then turned around to say, “I love you.”

Chena sucked in quick, dusty breathes, eyes wide in the darkness. Screams and crashes resounded just a room away. The floor trembled. Tears rolled down her soft cheeks as the little girl heard her mother’s sobs. Chena sucked in gulping breaths. Straw flew into her throat, and Chena muffled her coughs into some dirty rags.

“YHWH help us!” she whispered with trembling lips.

There were more crashes, more tremors. The Roman’s were there. Chena knew it as much as she could tell bugs shared the hiding place with her.

The child’s ears tingled, at the sound of her father begging someone. His usually diplomatic voice was despairing, and frantic. “Merenda, sir, please I beg you in your Roman wisdom don, don’t hurt my wife!? She, she is with,” those were the last words Chena heard her father speak.

Chena bit her tongue to keep from joining in the resounding screech her mother let shake the night. Had they hurt her mommy? Daddy or Malachi? (Her elder brother) What would happen to Ruth, or Jaden? (Their pet goat and cow)

“Please YHWH?” she quaked, crying more, and more. Crashes resounded, her life breaking apart. Jehovah will they burn our home? Will they make us all slaves? Will they burn mommy, or poppy? Is Malachi safe?

Chena wrapped herself into the rags until she couldn’t move her arms, and the fabric squeezed her from all sides, crying harder. Then she froze. The dirt floor she was on vibrated as heavy footsteps battered her room.

Chena heard the clay jar mama, and papa had given her last Purim smash. The blankets covering Chena’s bed were chucked out the doorway. Then the bed-frame flung against the side wall with a resounding CRACK!!! Chena jumped, and would’ve screamed, if Fear hadn’t clutched her throat so tight it cut off her air. She clenched her eyes shut, Oh, L-rd Jehovah? I love You! Help us! Help Your children!? Please?…

The strips of rags, and hay laying beside her were lifted and sifted through. The man grunted, and one large foot stomped beside her head, shuffling through the mess. Chena’s eyes popped open. Large toes in the issued sandal ‘boot’ greaves, and cleaves. Three inch spikes glaring at her.

Couldn’t he see her? Why hadn’t his foot crushed her face yet? Or kicked her?

He whispered something in Latin, grabbed Chena’s only piece of jewelry from a stand, and stuffed it among his clothes. He abandoned the pile of filth which had been stuffed under Chena’s bed, and proceeded to destroy everything else in her room.

After he left several other soldiers came in and searched as well.

Why were the Romans doing this? More tears snaked down Chena’s cheeks. She kept her small hands cupped over her mouth as she watched men move about her room as if she were invisible.

Her papa was just a simple farmer?  He paid his taxes. He wasn’t outspoken. Chena loved him, and trusted him, and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt him?

The men casting glances over their shoulders drifted her room, their sounds fading. All the marauders had moved outside, where there were a growing amount of curses and her mother’s screams.

Get out. The words beat inside her brain and chest. Run now! Leave! Hurry! Get up and flee!

“But what if they kill me?” she whispered in a blub.

More curses railed outside their mud house.

She didn’t wait for the whisper to come again, Chena just obeyed. She got up from the bower, legs working like blocks of wood beneath her as she scampered into the main room where her mother mended clothes, and cooked. It was their living space, where their family would play games late into the night with laughter, looking out the door to the stars. It was silent now, and dark outside. Aside that is, from the glow of torches, and curses still railing in the side yard.

Had they found her brother? Or had YHWH spared him as well? What of her mommy, and daddy? This all flashed through her mind in just seconds.

Then one question was answered as something sticky, and wet splashed onto her running foot, and leg. Chena may have screamed, she may have not. She could never recall, but in any case none of the men came in to get her as she knelt by her father and touched his stricken face. His stomach had been cut open, entrails and blood covering the floor.

Her foot had splashed a puddle of his blood as she ran. She swung about; eyes wide, and hands clapping to her face as she stared at her daddy. Then crying, muttering words she could never she knelt down beside him, her knees leaning into the pool of his blood as she cupped her father’s cheeks in her hands. His dark eyes stared up at her unseeing. Forever frozen in pain.

“Papa.” She whispered, her whole body convulsing over and over. “Oh Papa!”

Then her brother was there, lifting, then pushing her in course whispers to run into the tall grass surrounding the property; to wait there for him. When she couldn’t move Malachi spanked her hard, and she ran. She ran, and ran.

At some point she fell down, and couldn’t get up. She sobbed, whole body convulsing, pushing her face into the dirt. Two foot blades of grass surrounding her in all directions. Her father’s image haunting her un-blemished mind. She convulsed, wishing her mother’s arms were around her. Or even Malachi’s. She didn’t know when but she finally no more tears would come, so she lay a while hiccupping, using her arm as a pillow, and fell into a besieged dream.

If she had been awake Chena would have heard a cry in the late night. She might have known it was her brothers, she might have not. Malachi had bolted out of the house when the smoke from the fire the Roman’s had lit got too thick. One of the officers had chased the youth but a minute before he was grabbed, and taken him away.

Truly only YHWH could save His people.