Shahla fingered the rough-woven belt she'd found on her windowsill last night, along with a pomegranate, the symbol of eternal love. Fashioned from twisted grasses gathered from the three sacred grains, emmer, einkorn, and barley, it was not the kind of belt a girl would be proud to claim woven by her own hand, for the braiding was rough and lumpy, with ends jutting out in the wrong places. It was the workmanship of a craftsman who had never had occasion to weave before, patched in places where the work had been started and stopped many times until it had finally become recognizable. It was the belt a girl wore on her wedding day.
Her parent's voices grew louder.
"Do you think the chief will continue these trade missions?" Her mother's voice took on a tone that was calculating. "Or will he renege upon them the moment you get the information he wants?"
"I got the information he wants," Laum said. "But I only gave the Chief a taste of what the Uruk are up to. They are flush with gold right now from this new enemy the winged one speaks of, which is why they are so anxious to trade with us. They want access to our village so they can gather information."
"What kind of information?"
"They asked questions about the winged one," Laum said. "How many men he trains. What he teaches them. And is it true he has taken the healer's daughter to be his wife."
"You didn't!"
"I only told them a little," Laum said. "Just enough to grease the wheels of trade. Not enough to give them the location of Immanu's house. With every Ubaid village sprouting archers, they weren't sure which village the winged one actually lived in."
"So what the winged one says is true?" her mother said. "There really are lizard demons?"
"The Uruk have never seen these lizard demons first-hand," Laum said. "Only the Amorites who come bearing gold to fund every attack. The Uruk emissary did not come out and say so directly, but I think the Amorites may be raising an army."
"Did you tell the Chief?"
"Not in so many words."
Shahla ran the braided marriage proposal between her thumb and forefinger. Much as she would like to believe this proposal had come from Jamin, that his anger had cooled and he believed her when she said the child was his and not some other man's, the truth was she knew Jamin would stoop to no such sentimentality. Wedding-belts were always woven by the woman as a symbol of giving her fertility to her new husband, not the man. The pomegranate had the appearance of one which had been unsold because it was overripe and no customer would trade more than a token offering for it, the kind of fruit a poor man would buy when he desperately wished to give his beloved a treat he could not otherwise afford.
A tear slid down her cheek. Dadbeh had let her know he would marry her, no matter what. Even if the child was not his…
The voices grew louder from down in the main room.
"Why didn't you tell them where Immanu lived?" her mother's voice grew shrill. "That daughter of his swooped in and snatched our Shahla's beloved from her arms, and then shat him out again the moment she found something better! It is her fault our daughter is in this condition now."
"Do you think I would give away such information for free?" Laum asked. "Or that these inflated prices they offer for our flax-cloth are because they wish their wives to make them fancy shawls? No. What they trade for is information. Not cloth. The longer there are hostilities between the tribes, the more time we shall have to make such trades at inflated prices."
"What of Jamin's threat to bring witnesses before the tribunal that the child cannot possibly be his?" her mother said. "Needa said Shahla is at least five months along. Jamin claims he did not lay down with her again until after he had passed the wedding day he had set with Ninsianna, after the summer solstice?"
"We shall tell the tribunal the truth," Laum said. "The correct truth."
"Which truth is that?" her mother asked.
"That she came to us after Jamin broke off his engagement with Ninsianna and begged us to give her a fine shawl because Jamin had come around again and she wished to encourage his affections."
"That much is true," her mother said. "We paid the weavers to make it for her in March, and gave it to her the same week the winged demon came to our village in April, when Jamin confided in her he'd realized he'd made a mistake. The weaver with testify to it."
Shahla fingered the coarse-woven belt again and inhaled the scent of the pomegranate, bruised, but so sweet smelling it called out to her to take a bite and let the decadent juices drip down her chin. It was said that once you accepted the pomegranate and ate it, that a girl had accepted a boy's proposal of marriage. She had not eaten it … yet.
What was true? That it was not Jamin she had lay down with after she had gone to him wearing her fine shawl and bared her breasts to tempt him, for Jamin had told her to stay away from him and pelted her with sand.
No, it had been her dear, sweet Dadbeh, who had seen her coming out from the long grasses crying, and let her weep upon his narrow shoulders until that urge came over her she felt whenever the world began to close in around her, the urge to be held in a man's arms and feel the thickness of him inside of her, grew overwhelming. It had been she who had seduced him, and he had cried as she had brought him up to ecstasy, and held her in his arms afterwards and told her he'd been in love with her for a very long time.
That urge was upon her now, had been upon her ever since the night Jamin had pounded on her father's door, demanding to speak to her, and screamed her shame out in the streets for the entire village to hear. Her father had gone out and told him he would marry her, or he would take him before the tribunal.
"What if she doesn’t want to marry him," her mother asked. "She sits in her room in cries, claiming that he beats her."
"She has a viperous tongue," Laum said. "She shall learn to sweeten her words with truths her husband wishes to hear."
"And if she balks?"
"Then we shall turn her out into the street," Laum said, "for dishonoring us, and send her out into the desert for the jackals to feed upon. We have three fine sons with good reputations to think of without the burden of a daughter no man will wed."
And Shahla knew it was true. For after Jamin had left that night her father had come into her room and threatened to beat the baby out of her belly, but her mother had prevailed upon his common sense. Without a baby, they had no way to compel Jamin to marry her, and without Jamin, they had no way to make the chief open up trade to the rival Uruk tribe, a tribe covetous of her father's fine-woven cloth.
That urge to feel a man inside of her, to feel powerful when a man quivered beneath her touch came upon her, so powerful it made her wet between the thighs. Once the morning sickness had passed, the urge had become all-consuming, so much so that this past month when Jamin became distant it had caused an ache which made her belly hurt for the need to feel him inside of her again. But Jamin would never touch her again unless forced marriage and hunger caused him to resort to her, and each union would come with a beating. Of that, she was certain.
Just as she was certain that Dadbeh loved her. And he would marry her. No matter whose child tapped now at the inside of her belly, tempting her to take a bite of the pomegranate.
Should she take a bite?
She needed to talk with her best friend. It was risky, sneaking out of the house behind her parents back, but she needed to talk to somebody. Gita had not come to her house since that day she had found her in the fields. With her parents keeping her under lock and key, she had not had a chance to search for her, unfaithful friend! Why was her best friend avoiding her?
Her hands found the coarse rungs of the ladder that went up through the skylight, her heart pounding each time there was a lull in her parent's conversation. If they looked up and spied her escaping through the roof, they would beat her! Lucky for her, they were more interested in how much money they would make once she was married to the chief's son than to look up and see their frightened daughter cling to the ladder. Oh, how she wished she had wings! L
ike Ninsianna's beautiful winged husband!
She ran across the rooftops until she came to a ladder down, clinging to the shadows, fearful to avoid Jamin, who would beat the truth out of her if he found her before he'd been forced to say his wedding vows. With marriage came property rights, whether or not he ever slept with her again, rights her father was eager to procure.
Gita's house was in the outermost ring of the village, part of the wall which fended off attack, a ramshackle thing, maintained only because the Chief ordered it be maintained because it was part of the outer wall. She knocked, her heart beating as Merariy came to the door, sober for once instead of staggering drunk as he always was. It was as though she stared into Immanu's face, Ninsianna's father, with that same broad nose, bushy eyebrows and wild, dark hair peppered with grey, and eyes. Especially the eyes. Only unlike Immanu, who had inherited the tawny-beige eyes of a shaman from Lugalbanda, a warrior-shaman so powerful it was said he could stop a man's heart simply by giving him a look, Merariy's eyes were an ordinary brown, the whites bloodshot and flecked with veins from too much alcohol.
"Excuse me," Shahla asked. "I'm looking for Gita."
"Accursed child!" Merariy grumbled. "Ever since she took the notion into her head to become a man, I would not even know I had a daughter."
Shahla had to agree with him. Merariy appeared to be sober at the moment, but she did not dare voice that opinion or she knew it would earn Gita a beating later. She looked past him, into the cluttered room comprised of nothing but a cracked table and a single chair, with no place for Gita to sit, to see if what her father said was true. Gita slept in the loft above as most Ubaid villagers did, but she doubted she was here. Merariy would not lie for his daughter.
The scent of the pomegranate she clutched in her hand wafted up, so sweet and ripe it called for her to go to him. To go to the man who loved her and let him fill the ache which grew stronger by the moment, the need to have power over a man, to feel his flesh tremble beneath hers and cry out her name. The fruit would not remain edible for long, already bruised and overripe, before the harsh Mesopotamian sun turned it rancid. Dadbeh would not wait for her forever…
"Do you know where she might be?" Shahla asked him.
"Who knows," Merariy said. "She seems to prefer their company to her own father's."
He shut the door in her face before she had a chance to ask who they was.
She needed to think things through with someone who told things like they were instead of saying what people wanted to hear. She moved through the streets, searching for her friend.
"Excuse me, Liwwaresagil," she asked an older woman, bent nearly in half carrying a bucket of water from the well. "Have you seen Gita?"
"Sorry, child," the old woman said. "I haven't seen her. I hear congratulations are in order?"
"Yes," Shahla gave her a weak smile. "They are."
"Don't you let that boy shirk his obligations to you," Liwwaresagil pointed a finger at her. "It's a disgrace, the way he's been carrying on ever since Ninsianna broke things off with him. There isn't a person in this village who doesn't know he seduced you while you were still nursing a broken heart! I'll testify to that before the tribunal! You know I will!"
"Thank you, Liwwaresagil," Shahla said.
The old woman shuffled off, careful not to spill a single drop of precious water. Shahla moved further into the village.
"Excuse me, Ilakabkubu," she called after a man in his thirties, one she had lay down with in the past, even though he was married. "Have you seen Gita?"
"Shahla," the man stepped closer to her. "I hear congratulations are in order?"
"They are," Shahla said. "I'm getting married."
And that was the truth. The question was, who? Who would she marry?
"Pity," Ilakabkubu touched her cheek. "The men around here will miss you. Do you know who the father really is?"
He stood too close, too familiar, too brazen. Shahla slapped him. Ilakabkubu laughed at her.
"Don't think the entire village doesn't know what you are," Ilakabkubu said. "Jamin came to my wife and asked her to testify against you should the case be brought before the tribunal. She has not forgiven you for your little lapse in discretion."
"What about your lapse in discretion?" Shahla shot back. "I did not make you lay down with me!"
"I only thank the gods I fell a long time ago so that I am not in the same predicament as Jamin," Ilakabkubu hissed.
All around them, people pointed, people whispered. She could hear it closing in on her, their eyes that could see through her lies. Their whispers about the way her belly now showed, the baby growing inside of her, a baby with no father. There were few places a woman in trouble could go if her lover abandoned her. That need that ached in her belly, the need to feel a man inside of her so she would not feel so empty, grew stronger, so palpable it felt as though she was almost in labor.
She ran. She ran from the central square to the widow-sister's house where Gita often bartered work for food, an older house that had once been well-maintained, but had fallen into benign neglect with the occasional newly-repaired shutter or patched brick attesting to where the two elderly women had bartered.
"Excuse me, have you seen Gita?"
Zhila, the younger of the two widow-sisters, and blind as a bat, peered out, not certain whose face was at the door. The scent of baking bread and fermenting beverages wafted out, so delicious she could almost taste it.
"Who's that?" Yalda shouted from inside.
"It's … Shahla," Zhila peered at her through rheumy brown eyes, blue with cataracts.
"What's she want?"
"Gita."
"Gita's not here," Yalda shouted from the back.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," Shahla said.
Zhila's face wrinkled up like a dried date, left too long in the sun. For such a blind old woman, few women could see things like the widow-sisters.
"You going to force that boy to marry you?" Zhila asked.
"Force?" Shahla asked.
"Don't parrot me, girl," Zhila asked. "Are you going to take your case before the tribunal?"
Shahla gulped. Zhila did not sit on the tribunal, but her sister did. Yalda was the oldest person alive in their village and therefore, under Ubaid law, the head judge in any legal dispute.
"M-m-my father said he would if Jamin doesn't do the right thing," Shahla stuttered. If the widow-sisters were already against her, she did not stand a chance.
Zhila's wrinkled face softened.
"Gita brings us water from the well every morning," Zhila said. "She's been worried sick about you ever since you started cavorting back with that boy."
It felt as though a sudden weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The widow-sisters knew she'd been laying down with him again? They would not believe Jamin if he denied it.
"If you see her, can you tell her that I'm looking for her?" Shahla said.
"Certainly, child," Zhila said.
Shahla turned to go.
"Pity you didn't stay with that nice boy you were seeing at the summer solstice," Zhila added. "Now him I like. Nice boy. Very respectful to his elders. You would have been better off with him."
Shahla felt as though she might faint. Was Zhila toying with her? Did she know? That feeling of being watched, of people whispering about her extracurricular activities, closed in on her. If the widow-sisters knew she'd been cavorting with Dadbeh right up until Jamin had come to her, after the summer solstice, she'd have a hard time passing the baby off as his.
She hurried towards the secondary well, the one where the young women gathered to fill their goatskins before going down to the fields to practice archery and marched each night after dinner. The women who wanted to be men the other villagers called them, though these days those taunts were often paired with admiration as well as scorn. The shadows lengthened, earlier and earlier each night as autumn progressed. They taunted her, those shadows, whispering that everybody knew.
Maybe
it was a blessing. Yes. Maybe the gods were trying to tell her to marry Dadbeh, even though he was poor? Yes. She would talk to Gita, and then they would go to Mikhail and tell him the truth, about how her parents were pressuring her to lie and say it was Jamin when it really wasn't. That way, Jamin would back off and so would her parents.
No! They would disown her! Her father had left brick-marks on her cheek after Jamin had left that night, warning they'd turn her out on the street if Jamin's accusations turned out to be true. Dadbeh loved her, but his family had no land. If her parents refused to give her a dowry so Dadbeh could buy some, she would spend the rest of her life bent over in somebody else's field!
The scent of the pomegranate grew sickly-sweet, the scent of fermented fruit, almost past the time it was good for eating. That hunger that dwelled inside of her, the one that could only be filled by the sense of power she felt whenever she felt the thickness of a man inside of her, grew so strong it felt as though her belly was a fist, clenching around her baby. She tripped on a rock and landed face-down in a pile of goat dung. With a cry of dismay, she kneeled, sobbing as she picked the foul substance out of her hair.
"Are you okay, Shahla?"
She stared up into a shadow that dwarfed the sun, so tall it seemed as though she stared up into a mountain, into a pair of eyes so blue it felt as though she was staring into the heavens, framed by a head of sable hair. She blinked, not sure if she was dreaming. His face was unsmiling, as it always was, but his eyes were filled with sympathy.
She burst into tears.
"Here," he reached down, his hand so large she thought it would swallow her smaller one alive. "Let me help you up."
She took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Usually he stood away from the women of the village, afraid of arousing Ninsianna's ire after that first time she had made the mistake of issuing him a none-too-subtle invitation to lay down with her in front of the entire village, eager to show that she could subdue such a powerful male. Usually his body language said 'stay away,' but right now he simply seemed concerned.
She stared up into those eyes, ready to give him a sassy answer, and nothing came out. Gods, he was beautiful. The most beautiful creature she had ever seen, even without his wings. What would it be like, to be loved by such a man? To be carried into the sky and wake up in the luxury of his downy wings?
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 40