The tender grapes had appeared upon the vines, small and green, promising sweetness if only the season would hold. But with the promise came danger. In the cool of early morning, the Shulammite walked the terraces, her eyes sharp for signs of mischief. There—tiny paw prints in the soft earth, a cluster gnawed and scattered. The little foxes had come again, sly creatures that slipped through the stone walls and spoiled what was not yet ripe.
"Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines," she murmured to herself, echoing an old proverb of the countryside, "for our vines have tender grapes."
She set snares of twine and watched from the shade, but her thoughts were not wholly on the foxes. The shepherd had not come for many days now, and a quiet unease settled upon her heart. Her brothers had noticed the change in her—the lingering gaze toward the hills, the song upon her lips even as she worked. They spoke among themselves in low voices when she passed.
"This stranger who lingers like a shadow," said the eldest, sharpening his sickle. "He brings no flock, yet eats of our shade. We should send her to our uncle in the east until the harvest is past."
The words reached her ears one evening as she returned from the upper terrace, and they wounded deeper than any thorn. Far away in Jerusalem, Solomon sat upon the throne of ivory and gold that his father had fashioned. The hall was filled with the people's cries—disputes over land, over inheritance, over truth itself. That day two women stood before him, each claiming the living child as her own, the dead one laid at their feet like an accusation.
Solomon listened in silence, his eyes discerning hearts. "Bring me a sword," he commanded at last. The court gasped as the blade was laid before him. "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other."
Then the true mother cried out, her voice breaking: "O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it!"
Solomon raised his hand. "Give her the living child, and slay it not: she is the mother thereof."
Word spread swiftly through Israel: the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment. Yet even as the people praised his name, Solomon's heart was heavy. The throne demanded everything, and the simple joy of the northern hills seemed a dream fading with the dawn.
That night, unable to sleep, he summoned a trusted servant. "Ride north at first light," he said. "To the old cedar at the edge of the Shunem vineyard. Leave this within its hollow."
He placed in the servant's hands small parcels wrapped in linen: a vial of myrrh from the south, spices of cinnamon and calamus, a necklace of beaten gold hidden among them—tokens of a heart that could not yet speak its full truth.
The servant returned three days later. "She found them at dawn," he reported. "She held the myrrh to her heart and wept, though no one saw."
Solomon turned to the window, gazing north though the hills were hidden by night. In his soul he prayed the little foxes might be caught—the small fears, the hidden doubts, the duties that gnawed at tender love—before they spoiled what was growing between them.
And in Shunem, the Shulammite pressed the spices to her lips and whispered into the hollow of the cedar: "My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies."
Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.