The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  Peter opens the drawer in the closet and finds a metal cylinder, like a mini thermos, with air lock seals. He opens it to find a small scroll. Animal skin parchment, with drawings looking like Hs. These progress to two abstract figures with their hands in front of them, forming an H. A tall male figure with a long face, long ears, and large dark eyes points to a long-tailed star. The other, a smaller female, points to an oblong shape under a series of dots. A third female figure has one hand pointing at the series of dots and the other at an angle of sixty degrees. Adjacent to the figures is an area with some sort of characters.

  “What is this, Pappy? How old is it? What is this part, writing?”

  “Peter, what you’re holding is faith. My faith. Now our faith. When James showed me this parchment, my faith was renewed. It’s a dialect of Akkadian cuneiform, Peter. Right after the war, carbon dating was just being introduced to the archeological community. Through my war buddies, we got a sample of this tested.” Pappy pauses to catch his breath. “It’s four thousand years old, Peter. Four thousand.”

  Stunned, Peter sits on the side of the bed. He stares at the parchment and his mind races with the possibilities. He takes several snapshots with his MoxWrap and turns towards Pappy, asking, “Do you believe in God?”

  Looking down with a dour expression, Pappy responds, “Peter, my boy, with what I saw—with all that happened—there could not be a God.” He pauses and sighs. “At least, not one who loves us.”

  “Hence why Ma wanted to distance herself from you,” Peter laments. “She so wanted me to believe, to have faith. To have faith in her God. But your faith, this animal skin in my hands, is my faith too. These are aliens, Pappy. These are aliens who met the Akkadians in 2000 BCE.”

  Pappy holds his hand out so that Peter can hand him the parchment. He turns it upside down and sideways and says, “It could be aliens. It could be God’s angels. It could be Akkadian Halloween.” He gives the parchment back to Peter.

  “Your father was working on translating the cuneiform. It’s an old form and a rare dialect from the northernmost reaches of the empire. He became lost in dozens of interpretations when your mother forced him to stop. It’s now up to you, Peter. In this digital age, in a world that is interconnected, maybe it’s you who will find the answer.”

  “Mr. Gollinger, how are we doing today?” Dr. Fontaine greets Pappy. “Did Peter tell you? He’s offering to work with me on a new book on religion and the psychobiology of the soul. With what you’ve passed along to him, his talents will be especially invaluable to me,” she says as she winks at Peter.

  Pappy glances at Peter and gives a thumbs-up. “Go for it, my boy. She’s a keeper, this doctor.”

  And the nonagenarian Gollinger takes the doctor’s hand so he can rub her palm. “And, Doctor, if you could do me a favor and take my grandson home with you tonight. He’s behind on his ancient obligation to make more Gollingers who can continue our search for our precious object.”

  The beet-faced Peter just wants to crawl under a bed somewhere and hide. But the good doctor turns and takes his hand into hers and says, “I have to say, with your grandson’s killer dimples, his eyes that emote adorable innocence, he is cute. But if I married him, I would lose my best editor.” She winks at Peter and says, “We couldn’t do that, now could we?”

  She then spies the parchment in between hers and Peter’s hands and says, “May I?”

  She gently examines the antique animal skin, carefully scanning both sides, then looks at Peter and says, “I have to wonder if this is related to your grandfather’s dreams. I would love to learn more, Peter. But I have to get back to Mrs. Fitzgerald and adjust her medications again.” She leaves, writing notes down on her clipboard.

  “Pappy, exactly what did you tell her about Grandma? From Beverly’s, I mean Dr. Fontaine’s recounting, she thinks sex is the treatment protocol for your condition,” Peter jests.

  “Peter, my boy, I’ve surmised that you’ve already found out that sex helps. It calms your nerves so you can grapple with what the dreams, and your inability to remember the dreams, do to you.”

  Shaking his head, Peter exclaims, “Ma says you told her she had to have sex with Pa every night, in the middle of the night. She thought you were just passing along ancient male power plays over women, so she resisted your ideas.”

  Pappy shakes his head too. “Peter, do not mistake my words. I should have said passionate bonding, not necessarily sexual bonding or, more crudely, physical penetration.” Pappy pauses for oxygen. “The touch of passion creates bonds between you and your mate. Bonds that create dialogue. Bonds that will help the two of you decode the dreams. You need to talk about what you’re coping with in order to make any progress in understanding what is happening.”

  Pappy stops to catch his breath, and then he says in a fatherly way, “I think you need—the tradition requires that you are paired with a woman. A good woman to find the answer. The answer to our traditions. The answer to that scroll.”

  A frown passes over Peter’s face as he ponders his failings with Sarah. “How do I know what makes a woman ‘good’ according to your definitions?”

  His grandfather closes his eyes, and a warm uplift of his mouth arises. “You will know, my boy. You will know first from her touch, her smell, her voice and the sounds of her heart. And only then can you know her with your eyes.”

  Closing his eyes too, Peter tries to remember Sarah’s touch, her smell, but he can only remember the shame, the failure of discovering her in their bed with that alpha male muscleman. Everything he is not. And that deep pain wells up, and water seeps from the corners of his closed eyes.

  “Peter, my boy. Are you all right? Did you have one of those damn flashbacks?” asks Pappy.

  “I’m sorry, Pappy. I just had one of those moments. I’m okay.”

  Pappy stares somberly down at his hands. “I’ve had those moments for near eight decades now. Seventy-five years, only to have failed my father. Peter, please don’t let me fail you as well. Please.”

  Scrolling his MoxMail to find that message, the message, Peter says, “Pappy, I have the solution. I’ll apply for the junior editor position with MoxMedia in their Middle East correspondence unit. I’ve been sitting on this invitation to apply for a couple of days, hemming and hawing about whether I have what it takes. I won’t fail you, Pappy. I’ll make sure I have what it takes.”

  Chapter 2

  I talk all night long with a dream image. About the tales of my pain; Thus my sleeplessness comes from these tales.

  —Amir Khusraw,

  thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet

  9620 BCE

  Northern shores of the Black Sea

  The woods. The low-hanging fog. Or to these three hunters, the low-hanging cloud that makes finding their prey just that much more difficult. In the fog, they effectively only have ears to listen for their prey. In contrast, their prey has eyes, ears, noses, and animal ESP, which pierce through the fog, and so do those who hunt them.

  It is Orzu’s birthday. Born on the seventh day of the sixth moon, he has seen seventeen cycles of the sun. In a few more sun cycles, it will be time for him to find a wife. His grandfather, Parcza, has taken him and his sister Illyana into the woods so Orzu can master the art of providing meat for his family. Parcza doubts whether Orzu will ever become a good provider for a new family, for Orzu has yet to kill during the hunt, any hunt.

  Illyana, on the other hand, is a natural-born hunter. But Parcza knows that the young men of the village will not be selecting Illyana based on her hunting skills, for she has become a very handsome young woman, at fifteen cycles of the sun. Two sun cycles ago, her breast buds began to blossom and she begrudgingly had to alter her clothing to accommodate these changes, asking why she needed to dress differently than Orzu.

  Orzu has taken point, softly and slowly moving forward in the dense undergrowth of the forest. They have gone farther north than normal as the lands near their village seem depleted o
f game. He peers back at Parcza to see if he is doing well in his grandfather’s eyes. Parcza has been a surrogate father for Orzu and his sister. Six sun cycles ago, the Reindeer People, the giants of the north, took their father as a slave; they took their mother and their grandmother, Parcza’s wife, too, for unspeakable reasons. Thus, Parcza has done his best to mother them as well as father them.

  A shuffle of a leaf, and Orzu stops, holding his hand up. He moves his bow up and draws the arrow shaft back, just as Parcza coached him this morning. His arrow has a normal stone head for smaller game. He and his sister have a few special arrows for larger game, with a very shiny black stone that is extra hard and sharp. Parcza found these on the Reindeer People’s arrows and spears after they massacred a nearby village, and he kept a collection for their use. Parcza is holding a spear in case they are the hunted, as these woods have two types of animals—the ones much smaller than they, which can be killed by arrows, and the ones larger and sometimes hungrier than they, which may or may not be deterred by even their spears.

  Orzu scours the forest for the source of the leaf sound, and he sighs in relief. It’s a rabbit. Unlikely to jump at them and rip their limbs off. He aims along the arrow shaft as he watches the rabbit nibble some leaves and wiggle its nose. Orzu finds it cute. He’d rather have it around the house than dead with an arrow through it. I cannot kill this animal, he thinks. It is not right.

  Whoosh. His trance is broken as Illyana’s arrow splits apart the head holding the cute wiggling nose.

  “Orzu, what were you waiting for?” Illyana admonishes as she goes to retrieve the carcass, which is convulsing as if the head were still attached. “What were you thinking of? Inviting the rabbit home to dinner?” Parcza glances at Orzu, shakes his head, and goes over to Illyana, congratulating her on her fine kill.

  Joining his family, Orzu leans down to look at the blood-oozing animal and also compliments his sister on her shot. Parcza begins his next lecture, especially for Orzu. “Your ability to kill with one shot is vital to your survival, and the survival of your family. Not only do we need to eat meat many times each moon cycle to be strong, we need to be ready to defend against attacks, by animals and by the giant Reindeer People.”

  Orzu and Illyana have only seen the Reindeer People once—the night when they raided their old village several sun cycles ago. Parcza came to their house to hide them and their mother while their father joined the other men of the village to fight these giants. Orzu remembers seeing the Reindeer warriors lift two men of village at a time and throw them a distance longer than ten strides. They towered over the tallest of the villagers by nearly three heads and could lift boulders seemingly with ease.

  Orzu held his dear Illyana tightly and covered her eyes as they hid in a secret compartment and watched the Reindeer warrior search the rest of their house. As the Reindeer warriors assembled their new slaves, Orzu’s mother gasped, seeing her husband terribly wounded, captured as a slave. Overwhelmed by her sense of love, she abandoned their hiding place to go to her husband’s aid and was grabbed by a warrior, stripped of her clothes, and raped mercilessly over and over in front of her hapless husband.

  Parcza escaped with the two children out the back way into the woods, knowing the warriors would come back to search their house again. Illyana saw more, much more, than Parcza had wanted her to. But she was strong. She told Parcza that she wanted to learn to hunt, learn to kill, so she would never have to hide again. And so Illyana came with Orzu on this hunt, and every hunt.

  “Orzu, your sister asked the right question. What were you thinking?” Parcza asks in utter dismay. “You had a clean shot. Your draw was perfect, as was your aim.”

  Looking at the ground, Orzu meekly replies, “Parcza, isn’t it true that the Reindeer Giants kill indiscriminately? They kill animals not only for food, but for their pleasure, just like they kill their slaves when they are no longer useful. I heard they drink their blood and eat parts of their body.”

  Parcza nods yes. Illyana purses her lips in disgust at the thought.

  “Thus, Parcza, if I kill for my training, am I not like them? What separates me from them? Killing is not good,” Orzu laments.

  With anger in his eyes over Orzu’s dangerous logic, Parcza gives a stern recounting of the ills that the Reindeer People bring. “Orzu, do you love your sister?”

  “Yes, of course,” Orzu replies, putting his hand on her head, “I love her with all my heart.”

  “Orzu, you love my rabbit in a kettle more than me as you can’t kill one yourself,” a smiling Illyana rebuts.

  With the most serious face, Parcza reminds him, “Orzu, if taken, you will work to your death lifting stones that weigh more than an entire village to make their pyramids. I have not taken you there to see these giant structures, which stand more than twenty men tall, as the horror of our men dying on their feet is too much for even me to bear. Mark my words, Orzu, the horror of what they would do to Illyana is far, far worse.”

  Illyana peers at Orzu with distress and dismay. Even though she had only nine sun cycles of age that tragic day, she has nightmares of her mother’s screams at the unforgiving hands and members of the Reindeer warriors.

  “Orzu, you may not want to kill to save your own life. But maybe you’ll need to kill to save your sister’s, if you love her.” Parcza pauses, then adds ominously, “Be clear on what would happen to her if she were caught. They do not care how young she is. They take girls as young as thirteen cycles. They are inhumane. Maybe not even human. If caught, after having been raped repeatedly by several warriors, your sister would be selected by one to be his sex slave until she can perform no more. Then, they would feed her sex organs to their next sex slaves to increase their sexual desirability. They believe it is their right to have our women in this way as they are the ‘chosen’ descendants. Children of descendants from the sky, from the heavens.”

  “Orzu, listen to me. They will make your sister dress in ways that are meant to incite lust, showing her sexual organs at all times. They will teach her to paint her lips and tint her eyelids. They will teach her how to make potions for lust and delirium. Worse, they will make her perform depraved sexual acts. So painful and depraved will these acts be, she will long for someone to kill her.” He pauses and continues, “Orzu, you would kill to save your sister from such a fate. You would and you must, just as she would do for you if you were to be enslaved.”

  Parcza pauses, his eyes growing moist. “They took your grandmother too,” he says with a crackle in his voice. “I tried to follow her as they took her to their pyramids. I heard her crying in the night as they repeatedly violated her, but I couldn’t free her. I was tormented for numerous sun cycles, until I got enough villagers to come with me to rescue our women.”

  He pauses to collect his thoughts. “Finally I saw her, with her lips painted and eyelids colored, and her breasts and loins exposed. Holding her hands were the children she bore for her tormentors. The oldest was on his way to being a giant, already your height, Orzu, in only a few cycles. I will never forget his face. Like his mother’s, but so long and distorted.”

  He wipes away the tears forming in his eyes. “Then she saw me. She said to go. I should have killed her before, but now it was too late.”

  Parcza stops again as he sees his grandchildren are catatonic.

  Illyana has hidden her face in her hands, which are covered in rabbit blood. With the blood running down her cheeks, she cries at Orzu, “You must kill. If you can’t kill the bastards, then you must promise me that you will kill me before they do to me what they did to Mother.” She glares at Orzu. “Promise me that.” Orzu nods and hugs Illyana.

  Taking a deep breath to inspire her inner courage, she takes out the three super-sharp black stone arrows from her quiver and holds them out to Orzu. “Big brother, rest assured, I am not solely dependent on you to save me. I can shoot three of these deep in the chest of any Reindeer man in less than the count of three. Unlike you, I have learned from P
arcza how to be a warrior. I will not be taken.”

  Parcza changes the topic. “Orzu, it’s time to recite the tradition. As my grandfather has passed to me, as his grandfather passed to him, I pass to you. So start.”

  Orzu is caught off guard and stutters, “Tens and tens of cycles ago, the long-tailed star came and our lands became cold and winter came. The giant reindeer dominated…”

  Orzu stops as Parcza slaps the back of his head. “You must memorize it word for word. If you change it, your children will change it. And their children will get the wrong message. Their survival depends on it. The children of the children of your grandchildren—their lives depend on your knowing each word precisely.”

  Illyana pipes in, reciting the tradition in just a few breaths. “Tens upon tens upon tens of cycles of the stars ago, the long-tailed star came from the sky and our lands became ice, and winter became forever. Only the giants of the reindeer prospered, because of the power from this star. Thus, the forefathers of our forefathers’ forefathers moved away from the land of the ice. We prosper as we move farther away each generation. Keep looking for lands rich in animals to hunt, water to fish, grass to harvest, and settle there. Make alliances with neighbors for safety. And be wary of the giant Reindeer People; when they arrive, move away from the direction of ice to seek safety. The bright star, the tail of the bird, will be your guide. Watch for the long-tailed star, which came from the direction of the bird. For when it returns, lands will again become winter, and the lands and animals and even man will change again.”

  She sticks her tongue out at Orzu and then recites it backwards: “Again change will man even and animals and lands the and winter become again will lands, returns it when for.” She sticks her tongue out again.

  Parcza pats Illyana’s head in approval and says, “Orzu, that’s another reason why you need to keep your sister safe. For only she will be able to teach your children the tradition.”