By noon, Deka had gone in to relieve Gizzi who was about to faint from the heat and residual animal stench in that lower room. Still later, she had come back out to fetch Naibe-Ellit. By late afternoon, when Ariennu was brought in a second time, the elder woman was grumbling and cursing the Raawa’s husband as well as his virility.
“What kind of man is it who respects his woman so little that he seeds her this often when he can barely feed the ones he has! Better he had never come home from the crew work!”” she cried “Four children in barely so many years? Oh he feels like a big man with a proud planting stick, sure, but four hungry mouths and a woman dead on the bricks? Will he crow over that?”
The woman Nene snarled in her sister’s defense and mopped the woman’s brow. No one else seemed to care.
Ariennu kept her thoughts to herself the rest of the afternoon, suddenly sensing from Naibe that there was a lot more to the story than they had originally thought.
Marai worked the entire booth while women taking leave from the lower apartment turned birthing hut took turns managing the unruly and crying children. He tried not to think about the women’s business. Everything about it reminded him of the time his Ilara had died when he was out in the hills with the sheep so many years ago. As each woman came out to rest he tried to encourage them. Finally, when the news came that all was well and a fourth son had drawn breath, the market was already closing and it was dark.
Word came not long after that the young husband would be arriving soon with more goods and some gifts from the very few women still living in the worker’s village full time.
Marai, wanted to meet with him the following morning, because if Etum-Addi was going to expand his business to the other side of the river, the young laborer might be able to tell them who to see. Going up the brick steps and taking the rope ladder to the roof, Marai found the women collapsed, emotionally drained and settling for sleep. They were strong enough because of the superior fitness given them by the Children of Stone, but none of the three women felt like pulling a meal together after such a long day. Realizing that, he quickly went back down to a closing vendor and bought a big meal of warm bread and pickled fish home for everyone. He ended up eating his portion in silence on the roof. The women already lay sleeping as soundly as napping children.
The night air lay on the city like a sticky demon poised to suck the air out of the sleepers mouths. At some point, Marai realized he must have been nodding a little. He had been sitting on the edge of the roof wall for several minutes, but startled for some reason. Looking around, he saw Naibe-Ellit’s pallet was empty. When he climbed down the ladder to look for her, he found her slumped in the doorway of their apartment, asleep like a homeless beggar.
Sitting there beside her, he put his arms around her and held her until she woke. In a desperate instant, she clung to him.
“Ohhh....I thought the day would never end!” she gasped. “The poor woman! That child was a big one, and her womb nearly done in this time. I should hope that if I create a child for you, beloved, that I will not suffer so! If Deka hadn’t started singing, we would have lost her, I’m sure. Her voice...” she started.
“So...More unannounced good magic from her then?” he remarked aloud.
Marai felt the memory of her low, soft voice, weaving it’s way into his thoughts. It wasn’t loud, but it was an oddly soothing melody. He couldn’t make out the words, but knew it was in a foreign tongue and was like a lullaby and a prayer. No one had asked her to sing her song, but at the very worst of the woman’s suffering, when it seemed like she would not be able to go on, Deka had just suddenly started her song. The woman began to calm. When it did, Deka’s her song ceased just as quickly.
Magic then? Marai thought. All silence and regret of us, but now, suddenly a magical utterance from the pit of our sister’s secretive soul? He could have listened to that song singing in Naibe’s thoughts forever. The purity and sensuality of it lifted him up beyond the brick stoop where he sat. Knowing Deka was still so guarded from him and from the other women made the rhythmic and chanting feel of that song all the more painful.
On impulse, Marai distracted himself from those thoughts by stroking the stone in Naibe-Ellit’s brow. He loved the way she sighed so passionately...how her eyes blazed with golden star fire when he touched her there. The woman shivered a little, rolling onto her back to glide up into his arms.
“You don’t have to be with Deka, my love...” she began. “I can see her in your eyes sometimes, where I have been.” one of her hands meandered delicately up to frame his face. It was a gesture he could hardly refuse.
She was jealous again. Now that jealousy had turned from Ariennu to Deka, but that was the nature of Ashera, Marai Knew. She would always be a jealous goddess even though Naibe knew from the start that all three women were meant to share him in every way.
“I want her to be open to me, Naibe” he reassured her. “Like it is with you and Ari...” He realized exactly what she was thinking. “Somehow you think that it means husbanding her? It doesn’t have to be that way. You know I’m not some unsated wolf or wild dog...”
He had given Ari the freedom to entertain herself with other men if she ever desired it. She hadn’t sought anyone else out since they had become intimate, but she knew it would be allowed. He supposed he would extend the same courtesy to Deka, but Naibe-Ellit? That, he didn’t think he would be able to take. She was the goddess who had healed him, after all.
“And you are still there in my eyes...” His hands played over her belly, just enough to know it’s softness and to further waken his own desire. Perhaps they could creep into the apartment... They both knew she always rendered him quite helpless with just those small glances and gentle touches. Tonight was no exception.
“Sometimes I think the Children could have run out of magic with me, when I know I am not your only desire...that I cannot burn your eyes closed to other faces, weaken your loins to other wombs.” She complained almost good naturedly, laughing a little as she did.
“Oh hush, you...” He whispered, his eyes drifted closed again as he rocked her in his arms.
She began to nod.
Suddenly, Marai felt her startle.
“Oh,” she gasped a little “Just when you did that...” she smiled winsomely “The little ones spoke inside my thoughts again.” She blinked, then stared up at him again, seductively. “They hope you understand that our passion together makes them so weak with joy. It’s why they provoke it in us so much!” Her fingers toyed with his beard, hoping he wanted more than talk tonight even though it was miserably hot and she was tired.
“I gathered that.” he touseled her hair back.
“When they changed us, they tried to make our wishes real, but they wanted us to be more like them so the workings of men’s evil wouldn’t undo us or make us mad. They already saw what grief had done to your heart...They wanted to help us be stronger in the faces of sadness.” She laughed a little, giving him a peck on the nose. “And they so much love to help us, when we are together. They want us to find energy and inspiration in each other’s touch!”
Marai knew that, but knew how humans love one another or share that intimate love couldn’t have been the only thing that drew these beautiful creatures to his world. It wasn’t just his singing or his sorrow that drew them to his cave in the wilderness either. There was so much more to learn about them, but they gave only bits at a time. He knew they worked together and thought together as one will, much of the time like ants in a hill or like bees in a hive. How strange it must have been for them to see all of the different hearts, thoughts, and wills often working at crossed purposes and warring with one another. Did it baffle them that distrust and hatred grew among people when they were separated by their skin?
Lovemaking. This was why they loved it. When two persons loved, and the emotion was more than self-serving, it approached that oneness they knew at all times. Coming into them as they did, he understood that they tried to cre
ate a bond by implanting themselves into the very fiber of humans in order to raise them up.
They were wise, but this wisdom had also given them a natural curiosity. What would it be like to be separate, but wise, they had once wondered? They were not entirely successful. He showed them this time and time again.
Ariennu had certainly shown them this. Humans had become much more complex creatures than they were the first time the Children attempted this project. Humans were unpredictable and quite uncontrollable when it came to the expression of their emotions.
Marai gave Naibe-Ellit passion but now she needed friendship. He gave Ariennu friendship when all she had wanted of him was a rollicking romp to go down in legend like the trysts Naibe had received. The healed man was now the healing man.
“Oh but you make me weak, Lady Mine...” He lay back ac across the threshold with her, cuddling her.
“Something or someone laid a curse on the children, you know.” she sighed, her inspiration suddenly coming from the heart. “It was someone they trusted with secret wisdom long ago.” her head propped up “The knowledge they gave that person can be used to limit us...to make us like the one who has gone before, and not better.” Naibe-Ellit shut her eyes. “Do you think it was that old priest in your vision, beloved?” she asked. “If it was him, then I worry about you looking for him.” She grew silent for a few moments. “The bad dreams are back, Marai.”
“Shh...shhh...” Marai toyed with the looser ends of her hair. “That man is dead, beloved...perhaps his evil died with him.”
It’s your fault. She thought to herself as the sojourner rested with her in the doorway. You’re just too good to us! Naibe-Ellit knew it went with the rest of the gifts given him: the strength, the wisdom, the agility and the beauty. “They really made you into a god disguised as a man” she breathed out, uncomfortable... “more than they made me into a goddess.” she winced suddenly.
“Ohh...” her hands pressed into the stone in her brow. “These infernal headaches!”
“Right now?” Marai frowned, rubbing her shoulders and neck gently then covering her pulsing blue stone with his fingertips.
Peace, little ones...be easy with her... he related through his own stone, a little worried.
She nodded, remembering the night at the wadi and wanting this small intimacy to start the same fire blazing in him again.
“I never used to be sickly like this...just a stupid, fat little hump...before... we ladies couldn’t be apart. In those days we needed each other. “See...we only had regular men before, most of them bad. But she...she was with some demon-god who used her up and blotted out her memory of it...I’ve seen him, Marai...standing like a dark storm cloud... maybe it was even Enlil…that big…I think he was the one the Children said got away from them so long ago...Maybe that’s what they really want us to do...Get him back...or kill him...They can’t do it themselves because he was their own kind.”
Marai stared out over the city of Ineb Hedj and down to the lighting of torches around the distant palaces. He heard Naibe talking about Deka but wasn’t really listening to anything she said...just the enchanting sound of her voice. The noise quieted in the streets. From time to time, old men on the rooftops coughed, laughed, swore lightly, and got up to urinate. Halfway between the commoners’ places and the better dwellings, a tavern had grown a little livelier. A woman was dancing.
Nothing changes... Marai thought of Sheb’s one-time dream of being a partner in a tavern, but that was a long time ago. He shook his head, knowing the life from which he had plucked these women went on and on forever.
Naibe-Ellit’s eyes drifted between their natural light brown and the goddess-like shimmering gold. It was late, but Marai couldn’t bear to think of going up to the roof to sleep after looking into those eyes. It was a little cooler now...maybe sleeping inside wouldn’t be so very bad. He knew the power of another vision was enveloping her in its floating warmth and he wanted to be with her. Everything she saw, had wrapped around and replaced her real world very gently...like the curve of Marai’s powerful arms around her when they rested after they shared their love.
She knew it was safe to relax and drift with her beloved holding her here, just inside the doorway. With her eyes half-open in pleasant reverie, she raised her hand to trace his brow again. In her vision she could see stacks of baskets and hear crowds milling and walking by. Men shouted orders. In the distance workers chanted their labor songs. There were thoughts, but there were also wide-open spaces and cloudless bright sky shadowing his tanned face now framed by short curly dark (What?) hair and a nicely trimmed chin beard.
“Baskets...made ‘nother one...” her voice gurgled a little astonished, at the thought coming through to her lips. “...at the gate of the sacrifices.”
Marai’s gaze narrowed and a chill crept over his heart. The first marker of the verse the Children had given him had been Deka mentioning the lions. Now, the second phrase came to the surface through Naibe tonight as she lay gently in his arms.
“They’re so good and so strong, but they can’t even bring us enough for a bit of beer bread a day...so old and so much pain, but they promised me I would see you...comequickly to me so I may rest, my sweetest Marai...Oh take me with you to our home … My place of the turquoise sand...the hill where yellow flowers grow in the mist…where we would lie down as innocent children…”
The man who had been a shepherd in those days nodded, almost tearful in that long ago memory. His heart skipped a beat in anticipation.
“Houra...” he whispered. “You’ve seen...”
Naibe-Ellit felt his invisible tears start and pulled his head down so she could taste them on his lashes. She kissed his trembling mouth. He knew she was talking to the dead.
“Where? Little Houra…I hear your words, but how lost in time are they?” His words grew sick at heart, but he spoke them aloud as the whisper. If Naibe heard those words, he thought, maybe Houra’s ghost would hear them too.
Naibe paused, feeling the fragile yet metal-like strength enter her and understood exactly what had happened. Just as she had been given the gift to call down The Lady, she had suddenly called down Marai’s poor dead sister. But...
“Not lost, you big lunk. You’re the one who’s lost. The gate of the sacrifices is where they cross the river, where we are every floodtide so the men can work the crews...Your goddess has blinded you with her love, so that I could never steal you away from her.” Her voice whispered and Marai saw Houra’s sweet young face mirrored in Naibe’s face. It was the way she looked that day in the mountains when they had kissed and cried as she begged him to run away with her to Kemet where it was not too unusual to marry one’s half brother. They both knew she’d been promised to his cousin Sheb, but Marai had been too afraid of Abu Ahu to take her away from everything they knew. They loved each other dearly, but such an act would have been nothing more than defiance against their father. They could have run away to any of the teeming cities beyond the wilderness, not just Kemet, but they knew such a flight across the wilderness with no supplies would have been futile.
The sojourner recognized the place where he would find his long lost sister. Something had been drawing either him or Ariennu to that ugly and worst of waterfronts every night from the moment the flood waters had begun to rise. Crumbling edifices, half brick and half tent, were temporary homes to the migrants.
During the four months of flood, the strong and able gladly took their families along with the farmers and other displaced craftsmen, across the river to work on the building projects. Those who were too infirm plied their usual trades or sold the goods they’d made all year. Even the family in the apartment below him had been part of that force until the head of the family found work on the crews.
“She’s alive!! But where do you think she is?” Naibe-Ellit gasped, suddenly shaking off the invasion of Houra’s spirit and throwing her arms around Marai’s neck. For half of an instant he thought of dashing to that grim neighborhood and go
ing tent to tent among the sleeping tenants. It was folly. Taking a deep breath, he snuggled Naibe happily, then pressed her and scrambled into the apartment with her. Collapsing to the mat, they kissed again joyously but soon nodded, then settled to sleep.
Marai thought the Children of Stone had worked another unannounced miracle on his behalf when he woke to the sound of Etum-Addi gleefully chugging up to the second level the next morning. He had noticed the heat of the day, which meant he had slept until just after dawn.
Naibe-Ellit heard the merchant calling out to her beloved and mumbled something unclean. She waved “Go Away” motions with one arm.
Etum Addi pushed into the apartment without waiting to be beckoned. He had to tell Marai that he had just received permission to take on as many workers down by the water that he feelt were needed.
The two men knew they could both use a little help could use help for the next festival when offerings were made to Renenutet so she would protect the king and the growing of the grain. The rumor among the merchants was that offerings were to be especially important this year because of the marking of the end of the unhappy prophecy the king had received from Buto six years earlier. If the offerings reflected a newfound plenty, it would be a sign the gods had relented in the stern feelings toward their brother-god. Some workers might have trouble meeting the extra steep King’s portion for this year’s jubilee. Older men around the neighborhood grumbled that now the king’s demands were matching those of his father and grandfather.
The spice merchant had every confidence in Marai and his consorts. With that in mind, he tottered up to the big man, showing the linen scroll that he could barely decipher, and that Marai couldn’t read at all. He tugged Marai to his feet so he could hug him for all of this good fortune which had come their way. Perhaps the tenants below would even be able to get out of debt. Perhaps even more families...he continued excitedly.
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