Rebekah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card

she boldly wrote, “You already know what God wants me to do. Why do you try to persuade me to choose between God’s will and yours?”
     
    Pillel reached out a hand and took the writing stick from her. She looked at his face—as passionless as ever—but knew that he was angry, or he would not have, in effect, forbidden her to speak more to her father.
     
    Laban was not so restrained. He laughed. “What, you think you’re a prophet now? Able to see into the mind of God, and Father’s mind as well?”
     
    But Rebekah turned away from them and faced her father, staring into his eyes and daring him to deny what she knew he knew.
     
    At first he was defiant, meeting her gaze angrily—but he said nothing, even though he opened his mouth as if to speak. And after a long silence he looked down at the ground where she had written her challenge.
     
    “Yes,” Father said. “I know that you can’t marry Ezbaal. Even though I will never find you a better marriage than this one, I have known from the moment he arrived that you could not be happy in his house.”
     
    Pillel and Laban both recoiled from his words. “What’s going on with you two?” said Laban in a whisper.
     
    Pillel also whispered, but he meant her to hear. “I see now that you do control him.”
     
    Control him? What could Pillel possibly mean by that? Had there been some rumor that somehow she ruled over her father? But of all people Pillel had to know such an idea was absurd. She didn’t have time to deal with him now, though.
     
    She knelt up, reached out, and took her father’s hands in hers, bowed over them, and kissed them. Then, taking the writing stick, she answered him. “God will provide a husband for me, if I am to marry.”
     
    Pillel reached for the stick and wrote in large letters, “Ezbaal will make a dangerous enemy.”
     
    Father frowned. “Just because a man is disappointed in love . . .”
     
    Pillel wrote quickly. “He goes home. Rumors fly. He’s embarrassed. He gets angry. He needs to restore his pride. He looks for chances to hurt you. The wound festers.”
     
    Father shook his head, but Rebekah knew that Pillel was right.
     
    “Soon the slightest offense becomes a pretext for war,” the steward wrote.
     
    “He came for a marriage,” Rebekah said to Pillel. “So let him go home having made one.”
     
    Pillel looked at her as if she were crazy. “Who else would be worthy to marry Ezbaal?”
     
    Father slapped lightly at Pillel’s hand. “Write, don’t talk. I want to hear this.”
     
    Rebekah took the stick from Pillel. “Ezbaal brought his sister, the one who calls herself Akyas,” she wrote. “She was married once, but no longer, and you are also unmarried.”
     
    Father laughed. “Me?”
     
    “Tell him your daughter is too young to marry, you’re not ready to let me go. I never had a mother’s training. But you want the families to be united.”
     
    “I know nothing about this Akyas,” said Father. “Her name even means that nobody wants her!”
     
    “She’s the sister of Ezbaal,” said Pillel, and Rebekah wrote his words.
     
    Then she added her own. “She’s something of a beauty, if she doesn’t hide behind her hair. And very smart. And strong.”
     
    “Then let her marry Laban!”
     
    Laban loudly said, “No!”
     
    “She’s a grown woman,” wrote Rebekah. “It would be like Laban marrying his mother.”
     
    Father laughed, but she could see he was considering it. He looked at Pillel.
     
    Pillel took the stick. “If Ezbaal says no, then you are matched, refusal for refusal. No shame.”
     
    “But what if he says yes?”
     
    “So what?” wrote Pillel. “You already have your son and heir. If you hate her, let her have her own tent and pay no attention to her.”
     
    “You have a bleak view of marriage,” said Father.
     
    Pillel said nothing.
     
    “Let me think,” said Father. “All this talking—all this waiting for you to write—it makes me