What do you know of the evil we have seen? Watch out or it will seize you, my beauty, because you are so unaware.
One of the women with the other travelers, in an uncommon gesture of compassion, brought Naibe-Ellit some herbed beer.
Marai gave it to her, whispering over and over in her thoughts, as she drank, that he would never abandon her. A voice whispered inside his heart that, in some ways, he already begun to do just that.
On the heels of the brief windstorm, the long awaited updraft of wet air came. It wasn’t the same as the usual muddy rain that sometimes followed this kind of wind. Instead, it was a light, refreshing mist that finally brought the scent of the distant river. The following day the caravan would turn south, traveling to the gate at Heq-at. It was the last station in the eastern wilderness. All of the other stations were under the rule of Kemet nome governors. At that point, Marai and the women would go with Aruat’s group as far as Iunu. The newer family, led by a man named Madu, would go no further than Heq-at. There, they would get work at the shore and later go on a boat to Buto to work as fishermen in the marshes.
Marai slept mightily the night after the turn south. He dreamt of the times long ago, when he sang to his goddess from his cave porch. In so many ways he missed the simplicity of that life as a shepherd.
Years ago, when he thought he had been cursed, he daydreamed, tended his flocks and roamed free, never disturbed by other people coming to his family wadi who thought he might be mad. At night he sang of his limitless love for the goddess as her star rose in the sky. Now, the Children of Stone had placed him in an intrigue he didn’t fully understand. He was about to enter a land and life he once would never have even dreamed of knowing.
The shepherd’s eyes drifted open in the dimmest of silver moonlight shining through the tent wall pulled aside for cooler night air when he thought he sensed movement. She was there, sitting on her heels so that she faced him, a finger to her lips to hush him. Her other hand extended down to his chest, touching it gently. He sat, rose without speaking, in his dream and followed his goddess out to a smooth place by the stone-lined well. The shepherd gently placed his travel cloak out on the earth and eased his vision of the young woman into sitting with him. The bow of the Lady as Warrior had risen, nocked with her very star. He stared up at the heavens for a moment, unsure if he was asleep or awake. Naibe must have waked herself earlier, he thought. She had quietly crept to Marai’s side of the tent to sit and contemplate him while he slept. What woke him was her sweet-voiced thought entering him.
Maybe, she had thought to herself, he will wake... what then? Should we walk in her starlight, speak of the sweet star rising in me?
Marai didn’t quite understand what the thought meant, but felt it tug a little at his heart as if it had found a great prize.
“More dreams, Brown Eyes?” He asked after he had gathered her in one arm and sat with her. They leaned against the rounded upright outer wall of the well. Marai touched her eyes with his lips...the way a father might soothe a daughter who couldn’t sleep.
“Uh-Huh...” she lied, responding more to the unusual sensuality in his touch this evening. She knew he thought he was merely comforting her, but to her it meant more. His touch stirred her old instinct about what a normal man would want from her in a quiet place under the light of the evening star embraced by the moon. Marai wasn’t like other men. Whenever he looked into her eyes, or smiled his “fatherly” little half-smile, that very expression of reserve seemed to say he knew everything about her, like a god would know. The power of that thought coming from him once again, swept her away for a few moments.
Naibe thought of the way Ariennu chattered endlessly with her and with Deka about the weird sensuality the shepherd exuded at any time of day or night. Was it his aching beauty of form, the women had wondered, or was it something more?
Ari swore up and down that it made no sense whatsoever for him to be treating them like little girls who were still ignorant of men. They shouldn’t have made the odd tale about themselves being sisters or promised women. No one believed the story, anyway. She had said she could hear the snickers and whispers every time one of them passed another of the travelers. Each one of them, the elder woman insisted, should have been sharing the pleasure of his beautiful body from the first night, not sweating in yearning for the chance that never came
They all had such beautiful bod bodies now. They were all healthy. His excuse for abstaining from them, that the journey wasn’t a good time, was incomprehensible. The elder woman had always finished each grumbling session by grinning and saying:
I swear to you both...He can deny us all he would like for now, but on that first night we have a place with four real walls, I will work him over until he screams for mercy, then throw what’s left to the both of you!.
Wise MaMa Ari was always so funny, the way she joked about the men, Naibe laughed to herself. They had all laughed at the prospect of seeing silver-haired Marai so overwhelmed. Even Deka who was so pensive on this journey, had cracked a smile at the idea of a worn-out and fully sated Marai.
That was the way the three women had lived in N’ahab-Atall’s camp and before that time when they had been with others. If a man showed signs of strength they would ally themselves and compete for his affection. Tonight, the shepherd’s tenderness toward her told Naibe-Ellit the elder woman would not get her wish.
The bow of the moon was brighter tonight. It made the silver of his hair glow with such a pretty sheen. All of the voices inside her whispered gentle words through her heart.
Be soft for him
Daughter of the moon,
Woman of the sea and star
The ages watch
Walk with him on the water of the sea
Draw him into your warm ocean
Guide him and rule him
With your power
Heal him with your strength
“Was the dream worse?” He asked, cuddling her as if she was his frightened child.
She shook her head “no” then pressed it on his shoulder for a moment, moving her hand around the back of his neck. She drew his forehead down to hers, so that the stones in their brows touched.
“It’s time” she said. “See, my star has risen...” The fire of her request raced through his soul and locked it into his heart. The voice of the goddess combined with a sound like a thousand passionate whispers spun into a low sweet voice that raced through him. It was the voice he had heard invading his lonely nights after he slept. It hadn’t been real, he thought.
Words of the goddess...The shepherd stared into her upturned eyes for a moment. But she’s saying them from her own heart... Marai felt elated, yet drowsy at the sound of her yet unspoken words. The world and the sand were fast slipping away. He faded into the silent sound of her voice, falling wingless from the highest of mountains, yet knowing no terror of how he would land.
Come to me, lion
This night is not for sleep.
The stars watch for us.
She sighed gently at his lips, echoing over her own voice so that the Children of Stone chanted the words with her and through her. Her fingers caressed his temples, wove through his hair, and traced tenderly behind his ears.
Marai gasped a little, shivering at the way the touch of her fingers transmitted an unearthly glow of bedeviled sparks every place on his body they touched. He knew how much sense being with Naibe-Ellit, she who calls My Lady, suddenly made.
Golden bursts of sparkling stars flashed up in her brown/gold eyes. Her open mouth sighed in joy at his throat, then licked out tenderly at his lips, asking a question with her tongue.
He trembled and pulled away from her.
“Can’t...” words choked in his throat. “But ...Stay with me, anyway....” He held her tightly to his chest; afraid she would leap up and mock him if he asked her to do anything but stay a while.
Naibe’s hands gently played with the open neck of his tunic, wondering how this man in her arms could
still deny his feelings, when he felt like a veritable furnace of desire. Her hand strayed inquisitively to his loin.
He averted his eyes, ashamed.
“You say you can’t, but all of you, even this, says ‘I want’ a and “I will.” She breathed eagerly, walking her fingers back up to his chest again to lay them gently over his hammering heart. “You’re still afraid of me? Of this touch between us?” The shimmers of gold in her eyes shone like star fire spilling out over her face. “I know I can be vengeful at times, but I would never be so to you...” she smiled, smoothing his hair. A tendril of it twisted like a curved bull’s horn. “I am all you have begged and prayed for on so many lonely nights over your years! You so wished to be beloved to me...but now that I come to you, it unmans you?” Her magic eyes widened, catching him up in them and seeing through every part of his soul at that moment. “I could never curse you...I could only welcome you to me because your heart is pure.”
“It’s not that...” Marai started, wondering how he was able to speak at all. “You are she, my lady, I know that now but...” He shook like a frightened boy in her comforting arms.
Her hands reached up to trace his shadowed face.
He fully knew the dangers of wishing something up for so many years. Ilara’s poignant young face filtered over the beautiful face of the goddess-woman sighing in his arms. He understood, in that quiet moment, that his goddess-was the embodiment of all of his wishes. She was Ashera. She was Inanna. She was her own self and she was all women. He had never been cursed by any one but himself. The grief, the horror, and the helplessness over the death of his wife had been enough to nearly destroy him. Now, Ashera had come to him the way he had always hoped. She had come to joyously heal him.
Everything about Naibe-Ellit cried out “goddess” to him: the thick, sultry voice of a woman-child-goddess breathed even more desire into him. He was awake. This was no dream. He would be the shepherd king. Tonight and for many nights, he would become her Dumuzi.
“As your Ashera is, so am I...here to join your song to mine with our flesh.” Her eyes drifted gently shut for a moment, as if she, too, reveled in the passion of the words that were pouring from her heart. She spoke plainly, but her words were hauntingly seductive. “You think the small voices, the Children, have done this to me?” she suddenly asked him. “Believe it no more! Sweet King, I have always been she, from the moment of my marked birth in the temple at Hazor.” She gasped a little, because the name of the city where she had been born had never passed her lips until now.
Marai paused, because some of his own people had come from that city. He wanted to say something, but Naibe continued.
“I was an accident. I was never meant to be, but my mother was holy quadish. A spirit told her not to cause her womb to be emptied. The women tending her allowed it because they sensed a gift was to be born within me.” She grew silent, feeling every thought the shepherd considered. She shook her head a little, so that more of her hair came loose from its bindings. “I have been both a prayer to her and a vessel of her. I know it so well I wish I could dance for you once more. I know your heart saw me dance at the fire that night. You may think you have sung me up, beloved Marai, but I knew you would come. I danced for a hero to vanquish those who had profaned me.” The young woman moved her hands from holding him so that she could unfasten the sash that held his tunic shut. She parted the two sides, smoothing his broad chest. Her open lips and tongue followed the trail of her hand to his loincloth. In a moment, she reached behind her neck to untie the straps of her shift.
Naibe lay back, on the cloak he had spread for them. Taking his hand in hers, quietly guided his caresses, first to her face and then to her mouth so she could kiss the palm of his hand before she placed it to cup and stroke her full, round breasts. The sliver of moonlight cast a translucent paleness over her light bronze skin. She was the daughter of the moon and Lady of the Sea and Stars, lifting her breasts for him the way his goddess always did in his dreams. For the briefest instant, her skin seemed to shimmer with the light of a million pearls. The stars in her eyes swirled up to fill her hair with the beaten gold-starred diadem. Marai’s body nagged like a lead weight as she urged him to enjoy her touch.
“You do see the face of a ghost, when you come to any woman, not just me.” The young woman paused, understanding a little more of the depth of his self-inflicted curse “It forbids you your joy...” Naibe frowned a little, tracing Marai’s brow to reassure him. “She wants her story told, she tells me...just once more before she can release you to me. Your shame and grief has only given her ghost the power to remain here. It feeds her honey and sweetest cream...not the dust of the dead. Tell me of her, so that we may ease her, and speed her way into the stars... She has wandered here far too long...” The soft voice lulled. Her hand smoothed his hair again.
That she could see into his thoughts, comforted him. He knew at that moment, he could tell her everything in his heart. These were aching things that he had never told another person, not even his sister Houra. Marai reflected for a moment, becoming somber.
“Her name was Ilara.” he began “Her father or a man with her who said he was her father, I don’t even recall his name, said she was fifteen years old. It’s more than a good age to become a wife...They came out of the wilderness like so many do.” Marai paused, then shrugged, curiously lulled by the deep wells of Naibe’s eyes. “That’s odd...I hadn’t thought of it in so many years. Her father used the same story we’re using now. Their caravan had been struck down by a fever.” he shrugged “I think for them, though, it had been real.” The shepherd savored that memory just a little bit longer. “They were thin... almost bones, like Deka was before all of this, but they were also sickly.” Marai envisioned the man struggling along, bone thin and ragged, half dragging the pitiful girl by the hand when he should have been carrying her on his back if she was in such a state. She had such a withdrawn and resigned look on her face that she had evoked his pity at once instead of raising his suspicion.
“The man said they just needed to rest a few days and would go with the next group that came. They had no wealth whatsoever. They had lost everything. He asked if there were any young men wanting a wife at our station. If there were, he was willing to leave the girl, for enough of a trade to get to the sea, either in Kina or Kemet. My Abu Ahu looked her over, saw she was thin but that she looked as if she would recover with good food and a better situation. He wanted me away from my half-sister, Houra. I think that’s what it was really about.” Marai stared at Naibe’s glistening skin. He wanted to keep touching it and reveling in its softness as he told her the story.
“In many places a brother and sister marriage is seen as holy.” Naibe smiled, affectionately. It pleased her that the big man was relaxing in her arms a little more.
“It’s not our way.” Marai nodded. “She had already be been claimed by my cousin and had born him a son. It was never truly begun between us. We were always close, but I had found no other woman to suit me and I was well past the age to have a wife, at eighteen years. I agreed to take her, but I did not love her.” The shepherd sighed mournfully, thinking once again of opportunities missed with Houra, forbidden or otherwise. That son Houra had born, young Ebach, did not survive to see his fourth year.
Naibe-Ellit listened intently, eyes bright and wide as a child being told a wondrous, but sad tale. Her hands played gently over him, guiding his own hands and mouth to shape and kiss her breasts. She sighed, growing almost helpless with pleasure, before she reluctantly urged him to return to the story.
He didn’t want to talk about Ilara now. He wanted to seize the woman before him until oblivion swept them both away.
She made a hard little moan, when his tongue toyed with her nipples and hands moved toward her belly.
“You are so gentle...” She gasped, stunned. “Were you this way with her, when you took her into your bed?” She stayed his hand, quietly, knowing he might progress too quickly.
“N
o...” Marai’s caress stopped in renewed and bitter memory. “I found out later she was cursed...the daughter of lies...” He visualized Ilara sitting primly, apart from the men and apart from the women in his clan too, and shook his head with the memory.
“We lent her father a tent to put up on our border, but we watched him. Ilara was placed in a woman’s tent because she was of age. When the women spoke with her about the various womanly arts and the expectations of the men of Ahu, they told me she answered them in an almost unfriendly manner. My Houra, still recovering from her first childbirth, tried hard to be a friend because we had been so close. She wanted things to go well between us.” Marai understood as he talked, that his sister had sensed something about the young woman; that she and the man who was her “father” were both deceiving us.” he contined his tale. “Abu Ahu threw together a quick feast.” The shepherd remembered the looks of happy expectation on his father’s face as his youngest son by his first wife had towed her eagerly to his cave home where they both would live.
Marai hadn’t seen that memory so clearly in years. Through newer eyes, he saw Ilara wasn’t as aloof or disciplined as he remembered. She wasn’t the well bred creature fallen on hard times she pretended to be either. Deka was aloof. Ilara had not been like her at all.
Seeing into his own clearer memory through Naibe, he knew that look for what it was now. It was a stunned blankness. Some great dread was hiding in her heart. She had been terrified of something. That very night, the truth had been revealed.
“She went shy of me our wedding night..refused me, begged me to take her as a sister.” He whispered, wishing he could forget that part. “When I moved to touch her...she cried.” Marai rolled on his back, shading his eyes. He sighed, taking her fingertips to his lips again “Lady, this hurts too much to see it again…”
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