Namtar pulled a little on her collar as he started to move into the crowd. As they walked along, a lot of the men stared at her. Every so often, someone walking by would cup her breast or give her behind a little pinch. She gasped aloud as it would occur, but the men seemed all the more amused by her reaction. Aavi watched the expressions of those who were touching her; they had big grins on their faces, as if prodding her was some kind of joke that only they found funny. She had no idea what that was all about, but she decided she didn’t like strange men or gods putting their hands on her in such a familiar way. If she had the chance, she would tell the High Sulgi about this. Maybe he would tell them to stop. She looked at his broad shoulders and his wings. Aavi decided she liked his wings, but was less certain about the rest of him.
He led her to a table where two gods sat. One of them was heavy-set, dressed in a red and purple robe similar in style to Nianzu’s clothing at Buddha’s Retreat. The other god was dark-skinned and inhuman. He had eight eyes and four insect-like arms in addition to his regular limbs. This one wore only a fur skirt and sandals. Both gods were eating and drinking, which reminded Aavi that her mouth was dry. She wanted to drink something, but the strange smells of this large room had depressed the slight hunger she possessed.
Namtar spoke to the gods. “Greetings, Cai Shen. Welcome back to the Flesh Market. And Anansi, it is always good to see you again.”
Anansi waved a furry spider arm at Namtar as a greeting and continued to drink his ale. The god in the colorful silk robe responded as he looked past Namtar and right at Aavi. “Good tidings to you, Namtar. So what have you brought us today?”
Namtar pulled Aavi forward to the table. “Something very special. I just acquired her. She may be the finest virgin we will ever sell. I call her our Princess.” Namtar put his hands on Aavi’s shoulders and forced her to turn around so the buyers could see her from all sides.
Cai Shen looked at Aavi with great interest. “Princess?” he chuckled. “Well, she is exquisite, and a virgin you say? When does she go up for sale, Namtar? Perhaps I will bid.”
Anansi spoke up. “Yes, she is very unusual, but what does she sound like?”
Namtar pulled the chain on her collar very slightly. “Princess, you may speak, but mind what you say,” he whispered to her through his beak.
Aavi knew that asking for her freedom would be fruitless and probably get her in trouble. But this might be her only chance to say anything, so she decided to say something that might actually help her. “Please, High Sulgi, may I have something to drink, and did you know that people have been grabbing and pinching me? Could you ask them to stop?”
The two gods sitting at the table suddenly burst out laughing. Anansi was pounding the table with his multiple limbs as he roared with mirth. Cai Shen’s eyes were watering as he said, “Oh, I see now why you call this one Princess! She is most amusing! Get her a drink then, Namtar!”
“And don’t forget to tell everyone to stop pinching her!” Anansi managed to say between guffaws.
“Here, girl, have some of my ale!” Cai Shen slid his mug toward her, grinning.
Namtar tried to look amused, but he was fuming with anger. The other gods were laughing as if he was some street clown. Dark thoughts of punishing Aavi for her foolishness rose in his mind.
Aavi didn’t understand why they were laughing at all, but she picked up the mug with both hands. She looked furtively from Namtar to Cai Shen, making sure she was allowed to drink. No one moved to stop her, so she raised the mug to her lips. The taste was very bitter, but it quenched her thirst. She drank quite a bit until Namtar took the mug away. Aavi immediately returned her hands to their place over her stomach.
Cai Shen managed to suppress his laughter and addressed Namtar in a more serious tone. “So what else can you tell us about her?”
“She will go for sale tomorrow, after she’s had a little more training and other buyers have been notified. Princess has two special attributes, although they are minor but very interesting mysteries really.” Namtar paused for effect and to make sure he had Anansi’s full attention. The spidery god stopped grooming himself and folded a set of arms across his chest to indicate he was still listening. “For one thing, she has some kind of spell cast on her that repels dirt,” Namtar continued. “And the other mystery is that she has no navel.” As Namtar finished speaking, he moved Aavi’s hands out of the way to reveal the blank space where her navel should have been. Both gods leaned forward to get a better look.
Anansi did not seem to like this fact. “I don’t know. That seems like a bad sign to me. Does that mean that she was never born?”
Cai Shen was intrigued. “Your princess is a most interesting puzzle. No navel? I suppose a spell could make a navel disappear, but why would someone bother with such a trivial matter? The dirt repelling spell I can at least understand. Most interesting indeed.”
Aavi was embarrassed, yet riveted by their discussion. Their words made her think. Had someone done something to her to hide her navel? Cai Shen’s other theory made little sense. How could someone not be born? And what was this about a dirt-repelling spell? No one had mentioned that before. She hoped they might say more, but Namtar cut off the discussion.
“If you want to discover all her mysteries for yourself, Cai Shen, come tomorrow for the auction. I hope to see you then,” Namtar said as he prepared to circulate Princess past a few more potential buyers.
“Perhaps you will. I am intrigued,” Cai Shen chuckled as Namtar and Aavi moved off into the crowd.
Aavi turned around quickly when Namtar pulled her away from the table and immediately noticed a strange spinning sensation in her head. She felt dizzy and a little too relaxed as Namtar stopped at several more tables. As she was examined by the gods, she paid little attention to any of them. She felt like she was in a happy fog that separated her from the rest of the world. Aavi swayed a little as she followed Namtar, but no one seemed to mind.
As they passed a god with a red beard and a metal helmet with horns, he reached down and gave her behind a little slap. Aavi started, pointed at the god, and said in a loud voice “Hey… you …you stop that!”
The red-bearded god leered at her. “I think this one shows some spirit!”
A thin god wearing a dark cloak standing nearby remarked, “I think she had too much ‘spirit’ to drink!” And the group all started laughing.
Namtar, his anger rekindled, gathered Aavi’s chain up short in his fist and growled into her face. “It’s time for you to learn your next lesson, Princess. You still do not understand your status as a slave. We need to change that, right now.” He shoved her toward a nearby exit.
His words sent a shiver of fear through Aavi which sobered her up quickly. She did her best to keep up without stumbling as he led her through the crowd of buyers and slaves, then outside across the cobblestone courtyard into a foul smelling stable. Its pens were filled with slaves, lots of them. There were dozens of slaves in each pen. They barely had room to sit down. They were a miserable lot, haggard, dirty and many of them injured.
Aavi couldn’t help herself. “Oh, no! That’s terrible, those poor - ” But before she could finish her sentence, Namtar yanked on her collar chain so hard that she fell to the filth encrusted ground at his feet.
“I did not give you permission to speak, slave!” Namtar snarled at her. “You have no more rights than they do, ‘Princess’. I could just as easily throw you in one of these cells as take you upstairs and put you in your private cage. The only reason I don’t is that you are worth more to me unsullied. If I put you in there, you would be beaten and raped before you could even scream about it. Then you would only be worth half as much!”
“Why are you so angry?” she cried. She didn’t understand where his rage suddenly came from, but she had felt it building in him since they talked to the first two gods. She had seen his glow getting darker from that point on. She had tried to obey his commands, but had apparently failed.
&nbs
p; This time Namtar pulled her up by her collar, choking her till she stood up. He had to hold her arm firmly to keep her from falling again as she coughed. He put his sharp beak right up against her cheek. “That’s the second time you spoke without permission. Now I’m going to show you what happens to slaves who disobey.”
Namtar turned to one of the slavers in the stable. “Get a female, one about her age.” He nudged his beak at Aavi as he lifted her arm up.
“Yes, High Sulgi.” The heavy-set, bearded slaver pulled a skinny young woman with dark, matted hair out of the pen. She looked terrified as she stood with head bowed, a ragged dress hanging by a few tattered ties to her shoulders. Her arms and legs had dirt and smudges on them. Now Aavi understood what the High Sulgi had meant when he said she had a dust repellent spell on her. She never got dirty like they did.
Namtar squeezed Aavi’s arm hard. “If it weren’t for the fact that I don’t want to leave marks, you would get five lashes of the whip for making me look like a fool in front of my clients. So instead, this slave is going to suffer for you and you are going to be right here to see it. Then you’ll know what will happen to you the next time you disobey.” Namtar looked at the slaver again. “Tie the slave to the whipping post. Five lashes on my command.”
The slaver immediately took the dark haired woman over to a tall, brown-stained wooden cross that was on one side of the stables. He turned her around and tied her hands to either side of the cross using thick leather straps that were nailed into the wood.
“Remove her garment. I want our Princess to really see this.” He looked at Aavi intently with his round black eyes. “And I’m warning you, if you close your eyes or turn away, this slave will get an extra lash for any you don’t watch,” he said with a deadly serious voice. “Now, Begin!”
The slaver ripped the clothing off the back of the poor woman and threw the rags to the ground. She was now as naked as Aavi, and it reminded her of own clothes and what had happened to them. Another man handed the bearded slaver a coiled leather whip off the wall and he moved to stand a few feet behind the dark haired woman. He held the whip in one hand as he moved his arm as far back as it would go and then swung it forward very quickly. The whip slapped hard across the woman’s back and she screamed in pain, a red mark suddenly appearing on her back, just below her jagged dark hair.
“No!” Aavi screamed as she tried to move toward the poor woman to try to stop this madness. The collar was snapped back and Aavi again heard the horrible sound of the whip cutting through the air. It seared the woman a second time, putting an “X” across her back. She screamed again and convulsed in agony. That should be my pain! And suddenly, she could feel the anguish coursing through the helpless woman as if it were her own.
Aavi and the woman were as one. Both shared the pain of the whip.
Aavi was in shock; she had never seen, not to mention felt, such raw brutality. She was aware that High Sulgi was watching her, so as the tears ran down her cheeks all Aavi could do was cry and force herself to watch someone suffering because of her.
The slave girl was slumped over, having fainted from the pain. Tiny trickles of blood flowed from the five red marks the whip had left on her back and buttocks. After receiving a nod from Namtar, the slaver untied the poor girl, dragged her back to the pen and pushed her in. He threw her ripped dress in after her as well. It was over.
But Aavi couldn’t move. She just kept staring at the cross where the woman had been. She was crying and shuddering uncontrollably.
Namtar’s anger began to clear like a summer storm. As quickly as it had raged in him, it faded away. He collected himself as he stood triumphantly over his Princess. “I think you have learned what it is really like to be a slave. I’ll carry you back to your cage and you can think about what you have seen. Now perhaps you understand your place.”
He bent over and picked Aavi up. She was like a rag doll in his arms. Namtar walked out of the slave pens into the open courtyard then flew up to the balcony. He put Aavi back into the cage, where she curled up on the floor and cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 12 - Loyal Es-huh
Several hours later, as the sun was setting, Aavi was awakened by someone gently touching her arm. Her eyes still stung from all the crying she had done, but she opened them to see a dark-haired, olive skinned woman crouching by the cage and reaching through the bars.
Aavi slowly sat up. The woman reminded her of the poor slave that had been whipped earlier in the day, but this wasn’t her. She was not as thin, and this woman had longer hair that was groomed and pulled back into a ponytail, held in place by a silver clasp. Still, she looked as if she was somehow part of the same clan or group. Dressed in a dark green cotton belted skirt with slits up the sides, a loose sleeved top, she wore no shoes. The first thing Aavi checked was to see if she had a belly navel, which she did. Next to her was a hand-woven basket filled with a variety of fruits.
After they exchanged glances, the woman spoke. “The High Sulgi ordered me to bring you food and drink, if you wish some.” She pointed at the basket, which Aavi noticed also had a thin glass bottle of some liquid in it.
“Y-yes, I guess I would like something to drink.” Aavi realized she was quite thirsty. Perhaps all the water she lost from crying needed to be replaced.
The woman pulled the cork out of the bottle and passed it through the bars. Aavi took the dark green bottle, sniffed it and took a sip. Unlike the bitter drink from earlier, which had made her feel foggy, this one had no color or taste, but it was very refreshing and cool.
“Thank you. Is this water?” Aavi asked, drinking some more. She was pretty sure it was, as she had drunk water at Buddha’s Retreat the other night.
“It is. Would you like fruit?” the woman asked, as she offered a red, shiny, round fruit through the bars. Aavi put down the blue bottle and took it as the woman moved from a crouching position to sit on the floor, folding her legs under herself and gently leaning against the bars of the cage.
Aavi looked at the red fruit for a moment, not completely sure how to eat it. She had been given some fruit at Buddha’s Retreat and one of the young ones there had shown her how to peel it, but this seemed to have a different skin. Aavi passed it back to the woman. “I’m sorry; I don’t know how to eat this. Can you show me?”
The woman looked very surprised and responded with a short embarrassed giggle, which she tried to repress by putting her free hand over her mouth. She quickly recovered “This is an apple. You just bite it like this.” She used her teeth to crunch into it then handed the apple back to Aavi. Aavi looked at the bite mark and felt embarrassed and foolish.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that easy.” Imitating the other woman, Aavi took a bite of the apple. It was sweet, crunchy and very tasty. She decided she liked these apple fruits.
The woman chuckled as she watched Aavi eat. She placed her hand over her chest. “My name is Es-huh. I have been slave here since I was child.”
Aavi swallowed a bite of apple as she slowly repeated the woman’s name. “Es-huh. I am Aavi, though your High Sulgi calls me Princess.”
The woman looked seriously at Aavi. “Then I must call you Princess, and he is not my High Sulgi, he is High Sulgi of all of us. We are his.” Es-huh pointed to herself, Aavi and then gestured to indicate everything around them. Aavi noticed that Es-huh used her hands quite a bit more than most people she had seen, to emphasize a point, or communicate ideas only hinted at in normal speech. It was pleasing to watch her as she talked. Aavi wondered if it was just her habit or if all of Es-huh’s people did this.
Aavi finished another bite of the apple. She wasn’t sure if it was the food or the presence of someone who meant her no harm, but she was feeling better. Aavi moved and sat cross-legged nearer to Es-huh. “Do you like being a slave, or would you rather be free?” She was earnestly curious for an answer, after seeing the helpless girl whipped in the pens and accepting that she herself was now a slave. Aavi was having trouble im
agining what it would be like to be a slave for one’s whole life.
“I have always been in service to Lamasthu and the High Sulgi. I do not think I would live for a day without them. They provide food, shelter and reason for living. What higher calling could I have than to serve them? I only hope that you will be so lucky, Princess. That you will go to a good house where you will be happy to serve as I do.” When Es-huh said all this, she again used her hands to gesture to the food, the room, and the world beyond these walls.
Deeply moved by Es-huh’s answers, Aavi could only say, “I hope I end up at a good place too, Es-huh. I’m glad you are happy here.” There was no doubt that she was happy with her life as a slave. Aavi could see it in her heart. Still, slavery seemed wrong on some basic level. Even with Aavi’s missing memories and identity, she somehow maintained a sense of right and wrong that was separate from these missing aspects.
They sat together for another hour talking and sharing the basket of fruit. Aavi told her life story, but as she only remembered yesterday and today, there wasn’t much to tell. She was far more interested in hearing Es-huh tell the story of her life as a slave to Lamasthu and the High Sulgi. Aavi learned that Lamasthu seemed to hold a higher standing than the High Sulgi. Apparently there were different rankings for gods. Some were actually the servants of more powerful gods in a complex hierarchy that Es-huh wasn’t able to really explain to Aavi. Es-huh knew that the High Sulgi was subservient to Lamasthu, and that there were gods more powerful than Lamasthu and gods who were less powerful than the High Sulgi. From Es-huh’s life story, Aavi could see that being a slave was hard work, but that Es-huh found small joys in even the most mundane of tasks. That, and a sense of family and her devotion to the gods, had given Es-huh the ability to see past all the cruelties and hardships of being a slave.
Eventually, Es-huh had to attend to other duties and left. Aavi lay back down in her cage with a full belly. Things seemed a little better now that she had made a friend. As she fell asleep, Aavi didn’t notice the bat-shaped creature perched outside on the balcony, watching her longingly with luminous green eyes.
CITY OF THE GODS: FORGOTTEN Page 11