Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online

you, Lady Rachel.”
    “You look drier than the sheep,” she said. “Go ahead.”
    He grinned. “You saw the test of my strength,” he said. “What about the test of yours?”
    She glared at him. “I’m just a child, but I can draw water well enough.” She lowered the bag into the well, then braced herself and drew it up, full, and without letting the rope rub against the sides of the well, either.
    “Done like a shepherd who knows the value of rope,” said the traveler.
    “Done like a shepherd who has plaited many a rope andhas better things to do with her time,” said Rachel. “Now will you dip into the water bag or do I have to do that for you, too?” She tried to conceal how much she was panting from the exertion of lifting the water straight up.
    The stranger took his own cup—a rather fine one of bronze—and dipped, and drank. He did not tip his head back and pour the water over his face, the way some did, to show off how thirsty they were. Instead he sipped carefully, husbanding the water, swishing it in his mouth several times before swallowing.
    She watched him and thought, Is this the man from my vision? She couldn’t remember what that one had looked like—it had been too long ago, and maybe she had never actually seen him, in that peculiar way of dreams, where you know that a man is standing there, but you don’t actually see any part of him. And what if it
was
the man? This was no servant of Abraham, come to woo, for there was no chance that his bundle contained enough presents to impress a man like her father; and besides, Rachel was too young to wed, and she knew her father would never allow it.
    Then she realized that she had been thinking of this man as someone who might marry her—an attitude she never took toward any of the men who came to visit Father, even the ones who
were
sizing her up as a mate for themselves or one of their sons. And she wondered if that was the point of the vision, to make her think of strangers at wells as having something to do with her future.
    Having drunk his fill, he put his hands into the water and, bowing over the waterbag, brought two cupped handsful to his face, to wash. And then, before she could suggest doing it, he carried the bag to the trough and emptied it.
    The sheep, of course, were quite interested in this, and crowded around the trough. The traveler laughed. “Sheep don’t bother to hide their passions, do they. Water! Grass! That’s why God didn’t give them speech. They would only need a couple of words to cover the entire range of their desires.”
    He lowered the bag into the well himself this time, and drew it up far more quickly than she had. But she saw how he was careful to spill nothing between the well and the trough—what he drew was to be used, not wasted on the ground. He poured it out into a second trough—but the two of them had to drag sheep from the crowd milling around the first trough, because they were too intent on the water there to notice water that was much more easily reached.
    She saw how he handled sheep, and knew that though he might be dressed as a traveler, he
was
a shepherd after all, and a good one. He used just the right amount of strength to bring the sheep, murmuring peaceably to them as he turned them smoothly and pulled them toward where he wanted them to go. And once a few of the sheep were drinking from the second trough, it was enough simply to turn the other sheep that were not already drinking.
    He left Rachel to that task while he fetched yet another skin of water and filled the third trough. When the flock was evenly divided among the three, he continued drawing and pouring, ignoring Rachel when she said, “Surely you’ve done enough now. The work
is
mine.”
    “The work is Laban’s,” said the traveler, “and I want it to be seen how readily I labor in his service.”
    “Have you traveled so far, without knowing whether my father needed another servant in his household? And you’re