by Jean Rabe
Hilimaz smoothed at her robe and closed her eyes again. It seemed to Bridget like she was waiting. A silence eased around them. It was almost unnerving. Bridget expected to hear sounds beyond the potter’s shop—people moving in the community that certainly must stretch beyond the doorway. Or the people in Adiella’s pit talking or slapping down playing cards, the distant rumble of a subway train. But there was nothing, not even trees rustling in the breeze that continued to wash into the shop. Not even Otter’s voice.
“I’m from very far away,” Bridget said. “A land you wouldn’t know of. I came here—I came here—”
“—because you need Hilimaz’s help.” The potter’s smile turned sad. “So an Aldî-nîfaeti troubles you.”
“How did you know—”
“—people come to me to rid their homes of Aldî-nîfaeti. And to sometimes trade for my wares. But Bridget the strong-willed ghost would not need my pottery, and so you need my help with a demon. But tell me, how can a demon vex a ghost?”
“I’m not a ghost. Not exactly.” Bridget regaled the blind potter with a tale of New York City, her psychometry ability, the ancient pot she delved to get here. She finished with her tale of the buckle and her personal demon, as well as explaining about letting the pair of demons loose in the museum.
“A curious thing you are, little ghost. I think I like you, but I do not think I would like your New York City.”
“It is rather noisy,” Bridget said. “Hilimaz, I know you can catch them, the demons. The pot I delved. It has a demon in it.”
“That pot? That one contains Ku-Ninsunu.”
“Yeah, that’s the fecker’s name. I had a hell of a time getting past her and—”
“—into my shop.”
“Yes.”
“And so you have come to Hilimaz to learn how to catch the Aldî-nîfaeti that you released in New York City.”
“Yes,” Bridget said. “Essentially yes.” To learn a spell that she could get Adiella to cast into a bowl. So she could catch the demons she let loose and maybe save some small part of her soul. And hopefully find a way to be free of her own demon.
“Tonight I go to the place of Enmebaragisi, little ghost. He and his wife have been troubled by a persistent Aldî-nîfaeti. I will catch the creature and add it to those on my shelf.”
“Catch it in a bowl like you snared Ku-Ninsunu?”
The potter nodded. “You may come with me and watch. I am very good at capturing the Aldî-nîfaeti. I will teach you, Bridget the strong-willed. Then you will be very good at capturing the Aldî-nîfaeti too.” The potter rose and reached her hands toward the bench and selected a reed tool, flicking the dried clay away from the end, and then turning back to her wet bowl. “Watch me now, little ghost, this is part of the learning.”
“You are engraving a spell.”
Another nod. “Each spell is different and yet the same. You must have the name of the Aldî-nîfaeti, and that must be woven into the words. Names are power. In all ages names have been powerful. Saying the name calls it to the bowl. The Aldî-nîfaeti cannot resist. I say it now as I write it, and I will repeat it at the place of Enmebaragisi. You must invoke names of gods, too, as that righteous touch makes the clay stronger. Now watch and listen.”
Though the potter was blind, her marks were precise and even. She started at the center of the bowl, where she drew a stick figure, then etched characters in a spiral away from it. “I Hilimaz call Pua-tuma-sin, Aldî-nîfaeti of the house of Enmebaragisi. I take her by the scruff of her twin necks and her many horns. I poke out her dark and evil eyes that she may no longer look upon the family of Enmebaragisi. Sahtiel help me in this catching. Aid me that I might grab Pua-tuma-sin by her thick necks and her many horns and say ‘remove the curses and the pain from the hearts of those you have raged against.’”
Bridget remembered that particular sentence from delving the bowl at the museum: “Remove the curses and pain from the hearts of those you have raged against.” There were other similarities to the spells, but that part was word-for-word. Distracted, she’d missed some of what the potter had said.
“—I adjure you in the name of Ruphael and Sathietl and in the name of Prael the great. Bother no more Enmebaragisi and his wife Shag-ana. Descendants of Ekur must be teased no longer, teased nevermore, cursed no more, Aldî-nîfaeti-vexed no more. I am Hilimaz the binder and the cleanser. I turn away all things fetid and foul. I protect Enmebaragisi, descendant of Ekur, and I protect the wife of Enmebaragisi, Shag-ana and her coming child. I bind. I bind in clay and powerful words. I heal and annul. With these words I catch I bind. Weapon of clay, mother wet-earth, in the names of angels Sariel and Barakiel—”
Ruphael, Sathietl, and Prael, they’d been mentioned in her previous delving. Ruphael, Sathietl, Prael the great, and she thought Barakiel, too. Bridget committed all those to memory.
“—I, Hilimaz, shackle the Aldî-nîfaeti named Pua-tuma-sin. In so doing I free the hearts of Enmebarasis and Shag-ana and her coming child. I ease the troubles of the descendants of Ekur. I, Hilimaz, protect this house from all vileness. Bind and seal and capture forevermore the Aldî-nîfaeti named Pua-tuma-sin.” The potter rubbed the wet clay off her engraving tool.
“You said you were going to catch this demon tonight. But the bowl won’t be dry by then.”
“Dry enough,” Hilimaz tutted. “Wet or dry, if I handle it with care it will work well. I do not want Shag-ana and Enmebaragisi to endure their Aldî-nîfaeti even one more day. Shag-ana is big with child, and I fear Pua-tuma-sin waits for its birth. Aldî-nîfaeti are known for eating the young.”
“And killing in general,” Bridget muttered.
“Come, little ghost, I will show my city.”
Bridget thought of Otter sleeping and wanting to return to him. All she needed was the spell. “But I haven’t time for this. I want to watch you catch the demon. That’s very important. I need to listen to the spell again. But that’s all I have time for.” And repeat it to Adiella so she can write it all down. “I want to watch the spell work, and then I need to be on my way. I have demons to catch in my city.”
“You will see my city first. It is not yet time to go to the home of Shag-ana and Enmebaragisi.” The potter poked out her bottom lip and shook her head. “Bridget the strong-willed, it will take more than one catching for you to understand and learn. You will see my city and learn my spells, and that will require time.”
“I don’t have time,” Bridget argued. She thought about Otter stretched out on the cot in the witch’s pit. She had to be over and done with this and to find a way to keep him safe. “I need to catch two demons and banish one back to the hell it came from.”
The potter rose and stepped to the doorway. “You will see my city first, on this I insist.”
Bridget felt compelled to follow, like she was a fish tugged on a line.
“You have no choice in the matter, Bridget the strong-willed. You gave me your name, and so I have power over you. I will make you my apprentice, for there are not enough witches in this world who can capture demons. And you are no competition to me here.”
“I’m not a witch—”
“Yes you are.”
No! Bridget railed against that notion. “I am a psychometrist.”
“I do not understand that word—”
“Psychometry, object reading,” Bridget explained. “It is a form of ESP … extra-sensory perception … that allows me to learn the history of an object I hold. The object, your bowl in this case, has an energy, and that energy transfers and translates its past and experiences.”
“So it is you who does not understand. That is being a witch,” the potter continued. “You will make an apt student.” She reached to the back of her robe and tugged a hood up and over her head. Only her chin showed. “Come, little ghost.” She stepped through the doorway and beckoned with her hand.
Bridget followed, but she wasn’t sure it was of her own volition.
“I will teach you m
y craft and then you can catch your own Aldî-nîfaeti,” Hilimaz said. “As for banishing? I cannot do that. I catch them only.”
“But I need—”
“You need to learn. You gave me your name, and so you will be mine for a time. Until I judge that you are ready.”
“I have your name, too,” Bridget said.
“Ah, but Bridget, ghosts have no power over me, even the strong-willed witches among them.”
***
Thirty Two
It must have been early spring, Bridget guessed, from the looks of all the flower buds sprouting outside Hilimaz’s pottery shop. Sounds assailed her the moment she passed through the doorway: the happy cries of children were the loudest, a dozen played in an open field. Like Adiella, Hilimaz must have been able to keep out sound on a whim, letting her craft pottery in her shop undisturbed.
The area was green as far as she could see—grass, fields being readied, the air mildly warm and thoroughly pleasant. The scents were rich. Bread was baking somewhere, everything so very far removed from the desert-like conditions of the country in Bridget’s day. The dampness in the air hinted a body of water was nearby.
Men and women wore simple robes, some with beautiful feathered headdresses and gold armbands, a few were heavily perfumed. As she followed the potter, Bridget looked through open doorways of homes, one side of the road wattle and daub construction, the other side larger buildings made of clay bricks. It was as if she was looking from a middle- to upper-class neighborhood in New York. She noted beds, stools, and chairs, some carved with legs that resembled those of oxen. Fireplaces, small fire altars, some appearing recently used. Tools were laid out in many of the homes, knives, wedges, something that looked like a saw, drills. There were weapons on a few of the people passing by. She noted that only one woman had nodded to acknowledge Hilimaz, the others all looked away from her.
At the far edge of her vision, a woman worked at writing on a large clay tablet with a metal engraving tool. Closer, inside a building that was a rather large smith’s, she saw three men hammering copper, silver, and gold into plates and jewelry.
A few nodded to Hilimaz, only one spoke. He addressed her as Ruabi-ruve. Later, Bridget heard others whisper and point, again calling the old potter Ruabi-ruve.
“It is the name I go by here, Ruabi,” Hilimaz said, apparently aware of Bridget’s curiosity.
“Because names are power,” Bridget mused. “And you do not want the people to have power over you. But me … it’s all right that I know your name because a ghost can’t have power over you.”
“Clever student.”
“But in the pottery. You use Hilimaz there.”
“Because names are power. The people I help with my spell and bowls, they never notice. They never hear me use my real name in the spell.”
“Because they don’t pay close enough attention to what you’re doing.”
Hilimaz nodded. “Their fear and worry keeps them from being clever, little ghost.”
“There is our leader.” Hilimaz nodded to a man standing in a doorway. He had a shaved head and carried a feather headdress loosely in front of him. “He is largely responsible for invoking the laws that prevent women from taking more than one husband. To be caught now doing so is to risk stoning.”
Bridget shuddered. She’d delved into pieces before that revealed cultures’ barbaric practices, and she would never be able to accept violence against women.
“I will not take another husband,” Hilimaz said. “Mine died many years ago to an Aldî-nîfaeti, the first we tried to capture together. My husband and I were just learning the necessary spells and how to shape the bowls. Taught by his mother, we were. Always women are the more powerful witches. My husband, he died horribly, and I was forever scarred by Yaqrun, a most formidable Aldî-nîfaeti, and one I much later caught. I am lu, a free person now.”
Yaqrun. That name! Bridget had heard it. Where? Yaqrun, it niggled at her brain.
“The demon, the Aldî-nîfaeti that killed your husband and scarred you. Its name was Yaqrun.”
The blind potter growled. “A foul, foul Aldî-nîfaeti, that one. My husband and I … we took it on too early in our training. And we paid the price. Would that I had died instead of him. Pursuing Yaqrun was my idea.”
Yaqrun. The museum! When she’d delved one of the bowls in the museum. Bridget remembered that delving. “Huseff, son of Nogress,” the potter had intoned, the words sing-song and flat. “From Huseff’s men-sons I heard the voice of the frail and of other men fighting and of angry weeping women. All are cursed and afflicted, pained by Yadun and Yaqrun and Azada. Yadun and Yaqrun and Azada, one will be taken with this bowl, seized by its scales and hair tufts upon their heads—”
“Hilimaz, does this demon, Yaqrun, spew lava? Does it have tentacles for feet? A head like an ape? Is it tall?”
“Arms like snakes?” Hilimaz stopped and cocked her head. “Little ghost, how would you know this demon?”
Bridget told her. “I need to recapture it. I need—”
Hilimaz’s sightless eyes narrowed and her face drew forward until it looked painfully pinched. She made a hissing sound and Bridget saw the potter’s hands clench. “—to most certainly imprison her again. She is most foul, one of the worst. She was too strong for my first attempt, I told you. Yet I later caught her, on the anniversary of my husband’s death, when she kept the company of Yadun and Azada. You had best be a most apt student, Bridget the strong-willed. That Aldî-nîfaeti is a difficult one. To set such a beast loose—”
“I don’t know the name of the other one I freed.”
Hilimaz made a scratchy tsk-tsking sound. “Names are power. Without the name, the Aldî-nîfaeti you loosed remains free.”
“So how do I learn the other name?”
Hilimaz didn’t answer; she turned and resumed her walk. Her hands did not relax.
There were sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle, all tended by young men, and all clearly domesticated. In a field past a row of small homes, Bridget saw oxen pulling plows to work what appeared to be a hard, stubborn field.
By the side of a larger home was an enclosed garden with ornamental trees. Other homes had plants growing in pots and vases, perhaps herbs. There seemed to be at least one date tree outside each residence. Ancient Sumer was much more civilized than Bridget expected. She tried to take it all in as the potter walked down a main road and then turned down a path between long buildings. In the distance she saw irrigation ditches.
“Here we honor our gods, Bridget the strong-willed. Do you still recognize them? Enlil, god of wind—”
Bridget remembered her demon spitting that word out like a hunk of something spoiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard of Enlil.”
“He is one of our most powerful gods, controlling the fertility of the soil and the destructive nature of storms. It is good to fear and respect Enlil.” She gestured to a three-walled building, the front of which was opened. Frescoes covered the walls, and there were impressive sculptures of bears and bulls. “Enki, god of the earth, also directs our rivers and wells and is responsible for crafts.”
“How do I learn the names of the Aldî-nîfaeti, Hilimaz? I need to catch what I let loose. And I’ve another demon, one that seems to be attached to me. A horrid gobshite of a demon that is a murderer. I need to find its name. And I need to get rid of—”
Hilimaz raised a hand to cut her off. “All demons are murderers. You are the student, little ghost. I will teach you everything you will need to recapture Yaqrun, slayer of my husband.”
“How long—”
“It will take as long as it takes, little ghost. I will not let you leave until you are ready.”
“I have a son.” Bridget tried to pull her senses back into the bowl, not caring if she had to battle the Aldî-nîfaeti-snake-thing again. She thought of Otter and the pit in the subway. But she couldn’t budge from Hilimaz’s side. “I need to be with my son.”
“Then you had better learn quickly, littl
e ghost.” Hilimaz pointed to another fresco. “You will learn about our gods and our way of life, for the Aldî-nîfaeti are a part of that.”
“Go on then,” Bridget said, intending to hurry the teacher along. “Tell me more.”
“Ninhursaga is the goddess of mountains and vegetation. I believe she is the mother of all of us. Utu is the god of the sun, Nannar of the moon, and Inanna of the morning and evening, war and rain. Divine and immortal, yet we can influence them and learn their will.”
“Enlil,” Bridget said. “Tell me more about Enlil. I remember reading that Enlil was banished from the gods’ home for raping Ninlil.”
“When he was young and lacked wisdom,” Hilimaz returned. “When he thought passion was love.”
“That Enlil eventually was forgiven, right, that he had several children—”
“Godlings.”
Interesting term, Bridget thought. “And that he taught the godlings how to slay demons.”
She nodded. “Yes, when he was banished to the underworld, he studied Aldî-nîfaeti and learned how to defeat them and control them. The godlings passed onto a few mortals the tricks of the spells and clay.”
“You’re one of those mortals—”
“No. My husband’s mother was. Enlil’s eldest godling taught her directly. Then, she taught me. And I will teach you. Women have the true power, I believe. Men can try. But a woman’s mind can better handle these things.”
“Quickly,” Bridget added. “I am in a hurry. Teach me quickly, Hilimaz. My son—”
“Again I say that it will take as long as it takes, and you will not leave before I have given you the skills, Bridget the strong-willed. You will stay by my side, I say again, until you are able to deal with Yaqrun. And as for the other demons, taking them is your concern. Yaqrun, with all my soul I despise that one. You will stay with me until I am certain you can catch Yaqrun.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand with all clarity, little ghost. You will have the tools to recapture Yaqrun, slayer of my husband and tormentor of my soul. Few in this world have gifts such as you and I, and those gifts must be enriched and practiced. You should not concern yourself with time. To a ghost, time means nothing. Be pleased that I am willing to teach you. Be very pleased that I demand that you learn.”