IN THE SHADOW OF MOUNT SINAI

NOA WALKED ALONE, amid a chaos of bleating sheep, braying asses, clouds of dust, and a long shambling line of people. She preferred it. As the Israelites plodded into the desert, away from Egypt and slavery, being alone within the crowd gave Noa time to notice without being noticed.

Her mother saw her as ripe for marriage. At sixteen, Noa saw herself as ripe for the land her father promised, for streams splashing down verdant hills, for anything at all. She looked to the dry hills on the horizon, so different from the Nile delta. A tiny sunbird flashed overhead, catching her attention with its sapphire plumage. As she watched it fly to a red-flowered vine winding through a lone acacia tree, Noa heard a voice behind her.

"Like a jewel in flight ... yes?"

Noa turned and saw a young woman about her age, stunningly different from most. Freckles sprinkled her nose and the crests of her cheeks. Golden, wavy hair framed her face. Noa stared. She had never seen anyone so pale and shiny.

"Everyone stares ... at first."

"I'm sorry, I did not mean ..."

"I'm used to it," she said. "My name is Yoela. Do you mind if I walk with you?"

Embarrassed that she had stared, Noa was, for once, without words, so simply said, "Please."

"What do they call you?"

"Call me?"

Noa could not seem to catch the rhythm of conversation.

"You know ... your name," Yoela urged.

"Noa. Noa! Oh, I'm not usually this blank."

She looked at Yoela, who was biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing. Then both burst into giggles.

As they walked, they told what they had brought out of Egypt and what they expected to find at the end of their journey.

"My father trained Malah and me to breed flocks for the best traits," Noa said, leaking pride. "And he tells of the green land we are returning to. There I will lie on soft grasses under the shade of trees and watch goats I bred milk themselves."

A smile lit Yoela's face, pleasing Noa.

"You have a far different father than most. We have few sheep and goats, and no name to speak of. So, I will be happy with one tree. But anything is possible."

They walked in silence for some moments, each imagining possibilities.

Then Yoela said, "I saw you with another maiden. Your sister?"

"Yes. That's Malah. She ran up to walk with the daughters of Manasseh's headmen. She prefers to walk with the highest of our tribe. My parents should have switched her name with my sister Milcah. Malah thinks she is the Queen."

"So, there are more of you?"

"You ask a lot of questions. But, yes, three sisters besides Malah. Younger. And you?"

"A brother. Two years older."

"Like my sister. But Malah would never marry a man with no name. Me? Noa is name enough for me."

"I knew a Noa. She was married to a mouse."

"Impossible!" Noa laughed.

"Truly. But she, too, was a mouse. And what happened to them in Pharaoh's storehouse?"

"Better than what happened to us, I hope."

"Listen. I will tell you ..."

Yoela bubbled like a spring in the desert and was full of stories that helped pass the time.

THE TWELVE TRIBES had traveled beyond the boundaries of Egypt days before. After the Angel of Death took Pharaoh's first-born and the first-born of every Egyptian, Pharaoh finally released the Israelites. Setting out in darkness, their stomachs soured by fear, they took what goods they could and glanced furtively behind them. But the Egyptians were mourning their dead.

Zelophechad and his wife Ada kept their five daughters close, fearing Pharaoh's revenge. After their two older daughters were born, Ada had prayed for a son. Yet, their third child was another daughter — Hoglah. When a boy-child came crying into the world, Ada thanked the goddess Asherah. But Pharaoh had decreed death for all Israel's newborn males, a guarantee they would not rise up to challenge him. While her husband slaved in Pharaoh's quarries, the Shadows of Pharaoh stole into their mudbrick home. Two held her down as the third smothered her baby.

Ada birthed a fourth girl-child, Milcah. Then another baby boy, another death. Tirzah, the last of their children, was born writhing and bawling like a cornered cat. Ada favored her and let the honey-haired girl run wild, barely tamed by her sisters.

Exhausted by the trials of Egypt, Zelophechad spent the remnants of his energy on his two older daughters, pointing them to a future in their ancestral lands.

"We will return to these lands," he said, "where wheat and barley swell like the sea, watered by sweet streams. They are yours. Don't forget. And if anything should happen to me ..."

Malah spit against the Evil Eye.

"Nothing worse will happen," she said, assuring herself.

" ... if anything should happen to me, pursue your share of our land."

"But we are daughters, not sons," Noa argued. "Who will hear us?"

"Vow that you will."

Zelophechad planted seeds of the land he had never seen, and the need to claim it.

WHEN THE ISRAELITES reached the Sea of Reeds, the vast assemblage stopped. There, on the sandy banks, they huddled like animals, covered only by stars.

Lulled by the waving plumes of reeds along the water's marshy edges, Noa slept deep into the night, until she was startled awake by shouting.

"Up, up!"

"The Egyptians ... they have come for us."

"We will die in the wilderness."

Surprised by the Egyptian army's sudden appearance behind them, people panicked. They crowded forward toward the water in the pale light of the moon, afraid to go forward and drown, afraid to stay and be cut down by Pharaoh's warriors.

Finally, one man, Nachshon, stepped into the water. As he pressed forward, the water rose to his waist, then his shoulders.

"He will be smothered by the sea," Noa gasped.

Hoglah and Milcah turned their heads so they would not see him die.

Then the wind rose and stroked back the waters. Wind-charmed waters fell back from Nachshon's shoulders, from his chest, until only a puddled path lay ahead. He turned and motioned for people to follow. They began to cross, feeling their way through the night with their feet. Sea creatures spangled the rich ooze. They slipped on the knobbed backs of starfish and smooth clamshells that cobbled the sandy bottom. Crabs pinched at the toes of the miracle-dazed people.

The tribes struggled across the sea bottom, they and their camels and asses loaded with goods, their sheep and goats agitated by the rumbling waters on either side. As they dragged themselves ashore in the emerging dawn, they heard the war cries of Egyptians pressing their chariot horses on. The chariots' heavy wheels churned across the sandy bottom, then lurched to a stop, stuck halfway across.

The soldiers and the people on the shore watched as the sea came roaring back, wrapping waves around warriors, horses, and chariots, white foam spewing furiously against dawn's pink glow. When the waters calmed, all that remained was the sea's placid face shining up at the new day.

In the miracle of morning, Miriam the prophet, Miriam the sister of Moses, sang a song. She danced, shouting God's greatness. She danced, in a joyful fury. She danced, keeping the beat with the cymbals of her timbrel, the weight of her age lightened by holy ecstasy and...