by T. K. Thorne
“But,” he continues, “I have requirements.”
“Name them.”
“Regardless of what I am granted to see or if I fail, my brother, the contents of the box, and these with me—he sweeps his hand to include me and Chiram—go free with their possessions and with five bracelets of silver each.”
Chiram grunts.
Tabni looks grave. “The silver is not a problem and, as I have said, the king has already agreed to let them go. As to the box, that is for the king to decide. What else?”
“Only my brother will touch the box. That is not negotiable.”
She nods.
“And this. The rite I will perform has risk … and it requires a woman, one who has not been with a man.”
With a wave of her hand, Tabni dismisses this. “There are many such girls in Ishtar’s temple. You will have your choice.”
“No.”
I am more surprised than any there that the protest came from my lips. Not only that, but I have stepped forward between them.
Tabni eyes me calmly. Mika has not revealed any emotion until now. And I am not sure what I see on his face. Concern? Surprise? Chiram’s eyes are wide. His mouth flaps open and then closes as if he cannot find any words to express his confusion and objection.
“I will lie with Mika.” I do not say it as a request.
CHAPTER
34
At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.
—Book of Genesis 28:11-12
AS I FOLLOW TABNI UP the stairs of Ishtar’s temple, my heart races faster than when I chased after the raiders. My skin glows with heat from several scrubbings. Never in my life have I been this clean. Tabni’s holy women have washed me, rubbed me with sweet-smelling oils, lined my eyes with kohl, and done what they could with my hair, weaving saffron-dyed ribbons through it. Tabni gave me a delicate necklace of gold. I wear a thin, white linen dress off one shoulder that brushes my legs like a cloud as I step up and up.
I feel like a lamb readied for the altar.
This is my own doing, I remind myself, though I cannot grasp the exact reason for it. I made an impulsive declaration—for Raph, to save him. Why? Because so much depends on Mika’s ability to reach the ninth level, I could not have left it in the hands of a stranger. That is what my mind reminds me, but what do I know of ascending to heaven? Why do I need to be the one to help him up there? He did not ask for me, only for a woman who had not lain with a man. In fact, he had not even known I was a woman until a short time before.
My thoughts wrap themselves around one another. In panic, I instruct my feet to stop their upward march, but it is as if someone has slid a knife between my mind and my body, disconnecting them, and my feet continue to lift and propel me up the stone stairs.
Only Marduk’s temple is higher than Ishtar’s. Perhaps Tabni’s fears are not unfounded. The conquerors of this land, while acknowledging the Queen of Heaven, have gradually reduced her power. I wonder if El will do the same in my land. It would be better if they continued to reign together. Who would want the loss of the goddess’s blessing and risk fallow land and barren wombs?
Despite efforts to fill my mind with thoughts of religion, by the time we reach the top, I can barely draw a breath. When we finally emerge, it is not into an enclosed room as I expected, but a square area open to the sky with sidewalls the height of my waist. Four torches burn in each corner. In the center, about a foot’s length above the floor, sits a bed of woven fibers. Pillows of fine linen cover the bed and spill onto the floor. At one end of the bed is the cedar chest marked with the carven crescent and star. Beside it, a silver tray rests on a small stand. The tray holds two silver cups, a painted clay jug, and leather packets like those Mika carries in his bag. On the bed’s far side, neatly folded strips of cloth are arranged beside a large bronze bowl.
Mika waits for me. He has never seemed so tall or imposing. He also is dressed in a white robe. His flame-colored hair is clean and flows to his shoulders. His beard is trimmed and oiled and gleams in the firelight.
If I had the breath to move, I would turn and run back down the stairs.
For a moment, I stand behind Tabni, surrounded by the five young women who have accompanied me. I am at least a head taller than all of them. Each is beautiful, and all have straight noses. What if Mika is so put off by me he cannot reach even the first level of heaven? I am twice a fool to offer myself.
At some unseen signal, the women dissolve around me like salt in rain, disappearing back down the stairs and leaving only me and Tabni facing Mika.
“You have all you need?” Tabni asks him.
“Yes.”
“Then I call on Ishtar to bless you both.”
And Tabni also leaves me.
Again, though commanded to follow her, my feet remain rooted.
I stare at Mika. We are alone.
He strides to me, reaches for both my hands and holds them in his. They are warm to my cool, moist ones. “What are you thinking, Adira?”
“I … am wondering … if I will ever rule my contrary feet again,” I say, gasping for breath enough to say it.
He frowns. “What is wrong?”
“Cannot … breathe.”
“Come here.” He pulls me down to the bed and reaches for one of the folded pieces of cloth. “Hold this over your nose and mouth and breathe into it.”
My eyes widen in panic. I am already struggling to get enough air; this will make it harder.
“Trust me,” he says. “Remember, I am a healer.”
I nod and hold the cloth to my nose and mouth.
“Do you feel as if fluid is filling your lungs?” he asks.
I nod again.
“As contrary as it seems, you are bringing too much air into your body.”
This seems absurd, but I reason to myself I am the one holding the cloth, so if it gets worse, I can take it away. To my surprise, after a few moments I am breathing easier. Tentatively, I lower the cloth.
“Just concentrate on slow, steady breaths. Control it.”
He waits for several moments and then pours a dark liquid from the pitcher into both cups, offering me one. “Only wine,” he answers my questioning look.
I drink half of it, glad for the distracting burn in my chest. I need time. “Talk,” I say.
“About?”
“Tell me more of your childhood.” I want more distractions, and though we had many discussions in the desert, I talked much more than he.
He shrugs. “My people live in caves set into the northland mountains. As a child, I learned to climb before I could walk.” He smiles. “Those in the valleys called us The Goat People.”
I smile too. “You are too tall to be a goat.”
“As I have said, our true homeland is far to the west across the sea, or so our legends say. Where we lived before, that is lost in time’s mist.”
“Why did you let me be the one?” I do not know why such a question slipped from me. I did not mean to bring us back to the present. Now, I have lost control of my mouth as well as my feet.
“Because you chose it. There is risk in this, Adira, as I told you. You may not awake from it or you may awake … different.”
He has said this before, but there is a stir of disappointment in my chest. Was I foolish enough to think he might want me? Why? It is his brother I love. That is why I am here. It seems absurd. I am lying with Mika for the sake of Raph. The gods must be laughing.
“Do you think El cares I am reaching for heaven with you?” This has only now entered my thoughts.
Mika’s mouth creases. “It is his heaven too, is it not?”
I have not thought of that. Of course, it is. It occurs to me Mika’s goddess might not be the same as the ones I know. “What is your g
oddess’s name?”
For answer, Mika tilts his head up at the sky. There is no moon tonight, and the stars are woven thick and close above us in a shawl of light. “She has many names—Bright One, Morning Star, Sacred Knowledge. She is Ishtar, Inanna, Asherat, Asharah, Ashtarte, Lât, Zuhara, and Isis. She is Word and Wisdom.” He runs a light finger along my cheekbone. “Tonight, she will be you.”
A shiver snakes my spine. Perhaps she is already inside me. Perhaps that is why my body is not obedient to me. I drink the rest of my wine.
Mika’s large hands cup my face, and he leans to brush my lips with his.
I pull away, my hand rising to my nose as if to shield it from him.
Firmly, he pulls my hand down and kisses my nose.
I stare at him, which makes him laugh. “You do not think I am ugly?”
“No.”
It is the surprise in his eyes that makes me believe him.
“You are many things, Adira, but ‘ugly’ is not one of them.”
“But how can you … touch me? Until yesterday, I was a boy to you.”
He smiles. “You have not been a boy to me for a very long time.”
I gasp. “When? When did you know?”
“Since I first put my hands on you.”
My face flames. “What? What do you mean?”
“I remind you again I am a healer. The body is to me as wood to a carpenter or clay to a potter. Do you remember when you fell from your horse and your father called me in to attend you?”
It seems a lifetime ago, but still my chest hurts at the memory of my father’s concern. “Yes, I remember.”
“The first time my fingers touched your skin and felt your ribs and hip bone, I knew you were not a boy.”
I squint at him. “Is that why you were so mean to me?”
He looks away. “I am sorry if I seemed cruel. I needed to keep my distance from women.”
I think about this for a moment, and then ask, “You have lost someone?”
His fingers tighten into fists. “My wife … and my child.”
“What happened?” In all our time together, this is something he has never spoken of.
His jaw hardens. “She and my daughter drank unclean water. An animal died in a pool we drew water from, but they did not know. They died quickly, but in much pain, and I was not there to ease it.”
I say nothing, not knowing what to say.
After a long while, he looks up again at the sky and then down at me. “It would have been easier had some Hittite slain them. Then I would have had someone to hate, but I had only myself.”
“Where were you when they fell ill?”
He gave a short laugh. “Ah, that is the irony. I was seeking heaven for my people.”
“And your wife was not the goddess for you?”
A wistful smile curves his mouth. “She was so once, but the rite requires a woman who has not known a man, remember?”
“I am sorry,” I say. There still do not seem to be any right words for such a sorrow.
“It has been two summers,” Mika says. “It feels distant and yet, when I remember, I see them lying so still—”
It is only now, in the heart of his pain, I know the true reason I chose to be here with this man. The knowing pierces me. Beneath that little desert acacia tree, death bound us, but I did not know him. I did not know myself. All the nights that followed, when we sat beneath the starred sky and talked—so slowly I hardly knew it was happening—I learned this man—not the angel, but the man. And I gave this man who I was. We did not use lovers’ words or touch as lovers. We did not even acknowledge what drew us together. I do not even know if the name of this is “love”; it simply is.
I rise onto my knees and put my fingers over his mouth. Overhead, the stars spread a gauzy canopy over us, a canopy that fades at the edges where the four torches blaze. Our breath mingles for a long moment. The universe stills around us, paused in its infinite spinning. Slowly, I lower my hand and move forward until our lips touch.
Everything is new to me—the softness of his mouth, the warmth of his tongue. I am not certain how he has removed my clothing, but we are naked before one another, and I revel in the starlight that brushes his eyes and tells me I am his goddess … at least tonight. He guides me with gentleness until my own thirst matches his.
“We have all of the night,” he chuckles at my newfound boldness.
And we take every moment of it.
AT LAST, HE rolls over to kiss the top of my head and sighs, brushing aside a damp curl of hair. “It is time to seek heaven.”
“I thought we were already there,” I mumble.
He laughs and sits up. I grab for his hip, not wanting to lose the warmth of his body next to mine, and let my hand slide lower. With a long look at the sky, he sighs again and rolls over onto me. “Perhaps heaven can hold a few moments more.”
I AM ASLEEP when he wakes me, helping me to sit up. Groggily, I take the cup he puts in my hands. “Drink this,” he says.
I looked at his empty cup. “Have you already?”
“Yes.”
It is bitter. I wonder what he has mixed into it, and if I will wake from it. While I drink, he kneels before the cedar box and opens it.
My breath catches. Finally, I am to see the secret treasure Mika and Raph have guarded so closely.
Still naked, Mika reaches into the darkness of the box’s interior with both hands and lifts something. The muscles cord across his arms and back.
What he takes out is about the size of a newborn child and the color of milk in the starlight. He sets it with reverence at the top of our pallet where it makes a deep indention into the pillows. I touch the cool, flat surface. “A rock?”
Mika strokes it. “Not just a rock,” he says.
I lay my hand flat against it and look a question at him.
He presses his hand on top of mine. “In the land of my forefathers, the green land across the sea, it was a dreaming stone in the heart of the most important time-keeper temple.”
“The temple with the portals for the stars?” I ask, remembering our conversations in the desert.
“Yes. On a certain night, the goddess, the Morning Star, shines into the temple.”
He says more, but dizziness rises up like a fountain in me, and reality seems to split asunder. In one world, our hands remain pressed on the hard surface. In the other, they sink into the stone’s heart. As Mika describes it, I see the circular building gleaming white, with long portals cut into the stones. Starlight streams through a precise opening above the lintel stones and down a dark shaft to touch a stone slab.
My mouth has grown thick, as has my mind.
“Lie down,” he instructs, pulling me until I settle with my head beside his on the stone. Again, our breaths entwine, and I feel my cheek against the stone while I ascend into a place of mist.
CHAPTER
35
The next morning Jacob got up very early. He took the stone he had rested his head against, and he set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oil over it.
—Book of Genesis 28:18
I AM WITHOUT A BODY OR memories of who I am. Darkness surrounds me, but somehow I know the space is narrow, a tunnel. A circular opening of pure white light lies at the tunnel’s end. The light beckons. I must reach it. I do not question why. This is not a place of answers.
With all my being, I strive toward the light, moving by sheer will, because I have no body, no limbs. Closer and closer I come, each minuscule distance hard won, until—if I could find my arm—I could reach out and touch it.
Abruptly, I am snatched away. My eyes open, disappointment flooding me. I was so close!
Mika’s face hovers above me, lined with concern.
“Come back,” he is saying over and over. I remember now hearing him faintly in the tunnel. Did he drag me back? I want to ask him why he kept me from the light when I had worked so hard to reach it, but I have forgotten where my mouth is.
Something cool passes over my face, orienting me to my body.
“It is all right, Adira,” he says gently. “You can sleep now.”
With a sigh, I fall back into darkness, but there is no tunnel and no light … and no dreams.
THE NEXT DAY—OR so I am told—I stand on wobbly legs before the King of Babylonia. Chiram stands beside me, his hand on my arm to steady me. I do not have the strength to shake him off. Crowded along the room’s walls are men and women of influence and Samsu-iluna’s counselors. On the king’s right, grim-faced, stands the High Priest of Marduk, city-god of Babylon. The priest’s fingers knead the rich fabric of his robe, which is adorned with Marduk’s symbols—a triangular spade and a dragon. To the king’s left is Tabni, Ishtar’s High Priestess. For a moment, my gaze flickers between the golden, eight-pointed stars entwined on her robe and the memory of stars spun overhead and framed by the four torches atop Ishtar’s temple. I waver, and Chiram’s arm stiffens, steady as a pole, keeping me upright.
With a rub at my eyes, the scene returns to the present, and I remember the foreseeing given by Marduk’s priest contradicted Ishtar’s, and for that reason, Samsu-iluna sought Mika and Raph and the magic of the white stone.
Tabni never told us what she had predicted. She is fierce in her loyalty to her king, or perhaps she knows an honest foretelling is all that stands between her land and Babylonia’s enemies.
I admire her, and I hate her.
I am changed, forever.
Mika steps forward and inclines his head. Just behind him, Raph guards his left flank, scanning the room. He is no longer dressed as a slave, nor a merchant, as I have known him, but as a warrior, his true self. He is not allowed weapons before the king, but my gaze slides over the muscles of his arms and chest, and the way he stands with his weight balanced evenly between his feet, and I am certain he, himself, is a weapon.
On the other hand, Mika’s eyes focus on the king.
“I have spent a good portion of my treasury seeking you,” Samsu-iluna says, leaning forward, his voice tight with hope and warning. “Was it worth it?”