From the Shores of Eden

by Shelley Penner

  “Yaramin?”

  “Mmm?”

  “There is a thing we can do, a way perhaps to seek retribution.”

  She had his immediate, wide-awake attention. She kept her back to him as she outlined her plan, knowing he would have objections, questions for which she had no answers.

  “But Aester…we are not sorcerers. What do we know of such powerful magic?”

  “It will not be magic, Yaramin, it will be a prayer to the Mother. The crimes of these goroshu are great…surely she will answer.”

  “It cannot hurt to try, and it is certainly something they would never expect. They seem to have little concept of earth magic as we know it. I will help as I can.”

  * * *

  In the center of the town common, in full view of a dozen witnesses, Amasa confronted Ja’pheth. The entire village knew Amasa’s family had shunned him for over a year now, for his part in the massacre of the Dana’ai. His wife had left him to return to her childhood home in Eytham, and Amasa now slept at Enoch’s hearth, when he slept at all. He knelt in the dusty street, blocking his brother’s path. Aester, following behind, almost bumped into Ja’pheth when he suddenly stopped. She peeked around him to view the ragged figure she could barely recognize. Amasa looked thirty years older.

  “Ja’pheth, I beg you…” Amasa’s voice cracked like an adolescent’s. Tears followed furrows of pain down his cheeks. “I can take no more of this punishment. The Dana’ai haunt my sleep. Water turns to blood in my mouth and food to ashes. I will do anything…anything you ask. Only relent and speak to me, please. I will serve as your slave. The Dana’ai even, I will serve them. Only please, forgive me.”

  Ja’pheth hesitated. Aester saw him swallow hard. “It is the pardon of the Dana’ai the murderer must seek,” he said relentlessly. “Woman of the Dana’ai, can you forgive this man?”

  She looked at Amasa and remembered him cutting Corandi’s throat, felt his weight pinning her to the ground as he raped her, and any shred of pity she felt crystallized into hatred. “No.” She felt a tremor go through Ja’pheth, then, without another word, he stepped around his brother and left him kneeling in the dirt, unpardoned.

  * * *

  Between the rows of vegetables, Aester scraped away the seedling weeds and left a low line of dirt mountains. Then she carefully gouged a riverbed between the plants, meeting up with the one she had dug through the last row. Every stroke of the hoe, every breath she took, became a prayer to the Mother. Over the past four days, she and Yaramin had worked in the garden whenever they could, carefully recreating the altar map on a scale the Tolmai would never recognize, even if they stumbled across some portion of it. No one questioned the Dana’ai’s sudden interest in cultivation. Today Shem worked nearby on the pretext of clearing out the irrigation ditches. An engineer, Shem felt rightfully proud of the system of channels and sluice gates he had helped to design. But as he worked, he remained ever watchful of the Dana’ai.

  Aester completed the last line of foothills and looked across at Yaramin. He felt her regard and glanced up, nodded briefly. A few minutes later he wandered to the end of the row and surreptitiously collected a flat rock. He planted the rock in the selected spot, then nodded again to Aester. She continued hoeing. Sometime later, she reached the point that represented Aridatha on the map. She crouched as if to hand-pull a stubborn weed and slipped the Eban-ha-Ezer from her hair. Placing it on the miniature altar Yaramin had provided, she picked up the hammer stone left there some days ago, and smashed it down on the crystal, shattering it into a million tiny fragments.

  “The garden is very dry,” Yaramin told Shem casually.

  “Yes,” the man agreed. “It is time to test the repairs to this part of the system.”

  As he and Yaramin opened the sluice gates, Aester stood on a low rise and watched the river water fill the irrigation ditches and spill over. The flood spread across the garden, filling miniature lakes and rivers, surging across the flat areas, rising to cover foothills and even mountains. She sang a quiet prayer of death to the Tolmai.

  * * *

  Father and son lay side by side on the flat roof of the temple, staring up at the glittering expanse of the heavens. Neither spoke. They watched the slow wheel of stars as they had on many nights since Ja’pheth’s early childhood. None of his brothers had ever shown any interest in stargazing, but Ja’pheth had always enjoyed the tranquility and the exclusive company of his father. He knew the names and the patterns of movement of all the constellations and planets, and could read the signs as well as the old astrologer, but the wealth of ancient legend and wisdom the old man held in his head remained something the son despaired of ever acquiring.

  “Look…” He pointed. “There, between Abhner’s eye and the Sisters.”

  “What is it? Your eyes are younger than mine…yes, yes! I see it now. How strange. I have never seen that star before.” His voice trembled slightly with disquiet. They stared at the pinpoint of light in tense silence. “Tell me, son, do you see a tail?”

  “It does seem strangely shaped for a star.”

  “This is an evil omen, Ja’pheth. As black a sign as I have ever seen. I fear the Rainbow Serpent has been set loose.”

  * * *

  The family gathered, anxious to hear the news that had kept Ja’pheth and his father in discussion all day with the priests and elders. Aester sat amongst the women, bouncing tiny Zillah on her lap. She felt strangely content, as if the symbolic drowning of the Tolmai had lanced the poison from her heart, leaving room for her to recognize friendship, and even love.

  “Miz’rahim would not listen,” the old patriarch announced. His shoulders sagged and his voice sounded leaden with defeat. “He said the People must have faith that El will protect us as He has in the past. I tried to remind them of the ancient prophecy, but they discount it as a tale to frighten children. They said it reeks of Mother worship.”

  “We must make plans for our own survival,” Ja’pheth said. “We must begin preparations at once. There is no telling how quickly the Serpent will grow in strength.”

  “Will it be so bad then, Noah?” Mahala asked. “We have endured floods before.”

  The astrologer shook his head sadly. “The prophecy says this flood will surpass anything the world has ever seen, that it will wash the land clean of life.”

  Zillah gazed up at Aester innocently, wondering why the knee on which she sat had suddenly stopped bouncing. Color drained from the Dana’ai girl’s face, and her eyes sought Yaramin’s.

  “We must build an ark, one large enough to hold the entire family, our animals and as much food as we can gather and prepare. We have no way of knowing how long it will take such a vast flood to subside.”

  “But an ark! What do any of us know of boat building?”

  “Shem and I will travel to Gamalyel on the coast to learn what we can. Ja’pheth and Ham will take warning to Eytham and Dagon, where others can spread word to the villages beyond. In the meantime, Yaramin and the older boys must begin cutting trees and making timbers, while the women and children gather and prepare food supplies. We have no time to waste, and every hand is needed.”

  * * *

  Yaramin and Aester lay unsleeping in the comfort of one another’s arms, within the locked walls of their nightly prison. Through the narrow slit of window they could see the star, no longer a distant flicker at the limits of human vision, but a bright pinprick of steady light.

  “We could escape,” Yaramin suggested. “With no men to guard us, I could easily slip away into the forest. And you, when you go out with the women gathering the wild foods.”

  Out of a silent core of hollow emptiness, Aester whispered, “What have we done, Yaramin? What terrible fate have we set in motion?”

  “The Mother protects her own, Aester.”

  “Does she? What of Ja’pheth and his family? How can we desert them now, when they need our help to escape what we have unleashed? They have saved
our lives, cast out one of their own for our sakes, protected us daily against the hatred of the Tolmai, treated us as a son and daughter of their house.”

  “And locked us up every night like slaves. Aester, I suspect this thing is bigger than our simple ritual. It would have come with or without our asking. The Dana’ai must be warned to seek high ground, to build what boats they can.”

  She shivered. “I am afraid, Yaramin.”

  “And I. Noah’s prophecy aside, that star has a name in the legends of our people as well…Ashtarth, the Serpent of Death.”

  * * *

  Above the deep blare of a ram’s horn, Shoshanna and Mahala heard footsteps pounded across the dooryard at an undignified tempo. They looked up from their work of cutting and laying out figs to dry in the sun as Orpah rushed into the kitchen.

  “Mother! Mother!” Orpah came to a halt, gasping, white faced and shaken.

  “Orpah, what is it? What’s happened?”

  “Aester and I…in the garden…the priests seized her…I couldn’t stop them.”

  The women exchanged dismayed glances. The men of the house had not yet returned, and even Yaramin had disappeared some days ago. His loss seemed a crippling blow, for in a house full of women and children, they desperately needed his strength. The mood of the townspeople grew increasingly anxious and ugly as the Serpent waxed in the night sky and pressure became intense for the priests to provide some sort of reassurance.

  “Gather your sisters,” Mahala ordered Shoshanna determinedly. “We must go to the temple.”

  “The priests will not listen to women.”

  “They will if we represent the house of Tzadhoq. They will have to.”

  They found the temple crowded, as everyone in town hurried to answer the summons. Miz’rahim rose to stand on the speaking platform with his flock of priests behind. When the high priest felt satisfied that all were in attendance, he lifted his hands for silence.

  “People of El, I have meditated long on the appearance of the Serpent in the night sky and have prayed to El for guidance. Today he gave me a sign and the knowledge of what we must do.”

  The crowd balanced on the edge of expectation.

  “We must re-establish our covenant with El. We must make the ultimate sacrifice to sanctify the earth once again under El’s protection. This time the blood of a ram will not suffice. Against this great evil we will need the power of a human Meriah.”

  Horror stirred the crowd like wind in the wheat. Who? Who, they whispered fearfully. Sister, cousin, uncle? To whom would this lot fall? They did not doubt the necessity for a second. A pair of priests dragged Aester forward and forced her to her knees before the crowd and the high priest.

  “The Dana’ai stole the Eban-ha-Ezer from the temple and loosed the spirit of the Rainbow Serpent upon us. What more fitting sacrifice than this woman of the Dana’ai?”

  A sigh went up from the crowd. Better a stranger than kin.

  “Wait!” Mahala cried. “The Meriah cannot be taken by force, but must be bought for a price. This woman belongs to the house of Tzadhoq.”

  “We will pay the price.”

  “No. I do not accept your ransom. I will not surrender this woman of my house. She is not of our faith.”

  “Will you offer then your daughter, your granddaughter perhaps? It was these Mother worshippers who caused the breaking of the covenant. They are evil. They worship the Serpent. Let us prove to El our faith by destroying one of his enemies.”

  A thin voice spoke out, trembling with some powerful emotion. “No! Do not add another murder to the crimes upon our heads!” Amasa rose, skeleton thin and filthy. He had taken to sleeping with the sheep, for even Enoch would no longer put up with the madness of his despair. A scowl of irritation darkened Miz’rahim’s face and his lip curled in disgust. Amasa straightened proudly, his ravaged face suddenly calm and peaceful. “I offer myself in her place. Is not a willing sacrifice more potent than one unwilling?”

  His argument remained irrefutable.

  “Your family has disowned you. Who would accept payment?”

  Mahala pushed at the crowd and it parted to let her through. She stood beside Amasa, pride and pain, grief and understanding etched deep in the lines of her face.

  “This is my youngest son,” she said, “in whom I am well-pleased. I will accept payment.”

  * * *

  Aester’s stomach cramped into a cold ball of sickness. She could not get her heart around the twisted logic of these Tolmai…was not even sure she wanted to. How could Mahala have sold her own son to the temple when she refused to surrender a slave? Aester tried to lie still so as not to disturb her new sleeping companions, Orpah and Bethel, but scenes from the day’s ritual tormented her, mingled with flashes of violent memory: the surprise in Corandi’s eyes as the sickle sliced open his throat; the screaming of the lambs as they were slaughtered; Tanitess, blazing like a torch, running, not to escape death, but to meet it; Amasa, bound to the Tree of El, his head shaved, his eyes aglow with ecstasy that seemed more insane than his despair; Mahala, bent with anguish as the people whipped her son with thorns until he was bathed in his own blood; the crowd descending on the Meriah like vultures to capture a smear of blood, of sweat, of spittle or tears, with which to anoint their own heads.

  With a human Meriah, the ritual differed—not the quick carving up of living flesh, but a prolonged, torturous ordeal. The longer Amasa suffered, the more potent the sacrifice. If he remained strong and clung to life, the ritual could go on for days. Amasa knelt in the dust begging forgiveness. Aester refused, seeing in the terrible emptiness of his eyes a dark, evil face looming over her as rough hands tore at her clothing. Not Amasa…not Amasa, the rapist. Amasa carried his share of guilt, true, but he had not killed Corandi, nor had he raped Aester. Because only he paid a price for what he had done, he came to represent the guilt of all the Tolmai, and her need to punish them. To forgive him, she needed to forgive them all.

  Aester rose and went to the kitchen. She brewed a strong herbal tea and sweetened it with honey. Then, by moonlight, she made her way along the riverbank, crossed the bridge, and climbed the hill to the Meriah grove. A pair of guards blocked her way.

  “Tea for the Meriah,” she said, holding it up for their inspection. One of them sniffed it suspiciously, but he could smell only honey. To slake the Meriah’s thirst would lessen his suffering, but it would also prolong his life. They nodded their permission and let her pass. Dread climbed high into her throat as she approached the Tree of El. Amasa hung like a thing already dead, but his head rose at the sound of her footsteps. She stopped before him, and they stared at each other in silence. Aester pressed the cup against her chest with both hands, uncertain.

  “Why?”

  He answered, “We felt afraid. We were farmers going up against hunters and warriors. We feared if negotiation failed to recover the Eban-ha-Ezer, we would all die in the attempt to take it by force. So we gave no warning. And our fear became madness.”

  “Why did you offer your life for mine?”

  His eyes, black in the moonlight, still glittered with a kind of madness. “Reparation. Only the blood of sacrifice can wash out blood. My soul will be sanctified before El.”

  He seemed lost…lost in a deep darkness from which there was no escape…except death. If she could have cut him down at that moment, she would have. If she could have put a knife into his heart, she would have done it for pity. And from her, he might have accepted such a blessing.

  “Amasa…I forgive you.”

  She pressed the cup to his lips, and he drank deeply.

  * * *

  The Tolmai felt disappointed to find their Meriah prematurely dead the next morning, and while some suspicion fell on Aester, Ja’pheth and Ham returned in time to forestall any attempt to seize her again. Half a moon later, Noah and Shem returned from Gamalyel and work on the ark began. The women gathered domestic and wild foods of all kinds and preser
ved them in the ways of both the Tolmai and the Dana’ai. They dried fruits and vegetables as they came ripe, mixed crushed berries with rendered tallow, dried and salted mutton and goat meat, made cheese and wrapped it in leaves and woven grass-cloth, filled sack after sack with threshed grain and wild rice. All through the late summer and fall and deep into the winter their preparations continued.

  The Tolmai sacrificed one Meriah after another, but the Serpent continued to grow. The house of Tzadhoq no longer participated in those ceremonies, and went armed at all times, for the mood of the town had turned against them, they who sheltered the ‘enemies of El’. Yaramin returned with the first snowfall and the family welcomed him home like a prodigal son. By the time spring arrived, they had almost completed the ark.

  Ashtarth hung in the sky like a second moon, her long tail shimmering with color. The earth trembled and shivered almost constantly and occasionally gave a prolonged shudder that toppled mountains and opened fissures deep enough to swallow the ark whole. The first such earthquake reduced the temple to a pile of rubble, burying Miz’rahim and four of his priests. But, miraculously, the ark and the house of Tzadhoq survived untouched.

  “How will we know when it is time to enter the ark?” Shoshanna asked.

  “When the Serpent plunges into the earth and disappears,” replied Noah.

  Just two days earlier, Shoshanna felt shocked to find Yaramin painting animal figures and power symbols all over the inside hull of the ark. When she protested this strange decoration, he calmly explained that if, as the prophecy said, the flood destroyed all life on earth, the ark would become the Mother’s womb, carrying the seed potential of all species. When they safely reached dry land, he could sing the songs of increase and call the animals back out of the earth. Less than a year ago she might have attempted to suppress this practice of Mother worship, but the sense of impending doom had grown so oppressive, she hadn’t the heart to deny him the comfort of his own beliefs. As Yaramin captured the spirits of the animals in paintings, so Aester collected seeds from every wild plant she could find and stored them in ram’s horns sealed with bee’s wax.