Lilith -- Alethea Eason

Lilitu:  A female Sumerian demon who preyed upon children.

 

All we know, everything about our existence, our rising to face each day and the fate we have been given, whether we be a slave, a merchant, or a prince, is in service to the gods.  So who was I to rob them of the honor they coveted, of the gift of blood they had been promised?

 

My mother's people arrived two generations ago to the great city trading camels and tents for stone houses and brass trinkets that I sold in front of temples, emblems of the gods and goddesses forged by my uncle.  The city had several shrines, earthly echoes of their sky palaces.  In the early fall when I turned fourteen, I chose the temple of the goddess one morning for no particular reason. 

I had not been there an hour when I saw a family climbing toward me.  They were dressed as poorly as I, brown robes, meager sandals, mother and father with few teeth, a grandmother with none on the arm of the oldest brother.  Four smaller children walked in a line, the smallest riding in a sling around the mother's neck sucking at her breast. 

Families often came and stood at its base to wonder at its beauty.  The temple was made with the help of the goddess and was without blemish, but I wondered why this family did more than gaze, considering the business conducted there.  Their daughters were far too young.  Besides when their time came, they needed to be alone.

“Bring the goddess home with you,” I said, hoping to make a sale. 

As I spoke, my eyes must have shown my disgust at the sight of the younger son. The five year-old's mouth was split to his nose.  Babies like him were sacrificed to the wind and heat.  Why was he alive? 

His mother took my hand and filled it with enough coins to feed my family for a month.

“He is the blessed one,” she said.  “We present him before the goddess.”

I understood then.  I let her choose my uncle's most detailed icons, the ones interlaid with jasper and coral from the Great Sea.  Her son would be a sacrifice; as he was older, his death might end the drought.  The family had chosen wisely, to pay the price to keep him alive to be paid a greater price by the temple. 

“Your family is honored,” I said.

Her face was set like the white stones.  She said nothing more, but hung each icon around the necks of her children, even the baby's who put it to her mouth. 

 I watched them continue the long climb and felt, for the first time, the trickle of blood between my thighs as though the thought of the boy's sacrifice had summoned the flow.  I grew dizzy with a vision of how each person's body was a vessel, holding what the gods love us for the most: the fluid within us for which they thirst.  As I headed home, I wished I could have offered this sacrifice of my body as an atonement for the boy.

 

I do not know if the gods loved us enough to ordain my meeting the boy, or whether the grace they bestowed was happenstance, a seed that sprouted with my blood.  I did not know then they hungered for me to entertain them with terror and wonder, devotion to their power so that I could be received into their eternal embrace.

 

Two weeks later my mother led me to an old part of the city where many houses had crumbled with the last great trembling of the earth.   This night would change me. My cousin Nigba had returned from her initiation two years previously with mystery in her eyes, and though I begged her to tell me what occurred she shook her head and only said, “I met the goddess.”

Mother stooped and walked through the door.  I followed her into a room lit with candles, an unheard of expense.  At home we found our pallets early on dark nights.  I would lie with my eyes opened listening to the rutting of my parents, or my uncle and aunt, and once Nigba and her brother.  Nigba was quickly married to an old uncle, brother to a grandfather long dead, to keep him warm in his bed and to attend him as he made his journey to the great silence. 

There was something even stranger than candlelight.  A tin tub full of water.  Who possessed such luxury?  I looked at the thin faces in the room.  Each woman's showed hard work, dead children, and husbands who spent what little they saved on temple prostitutes.

“Take your clothes off,” my mother said.

I did so quickly. She led me to the tub, and I stepped into it.  As I stood in the tepid water, amazed it was clean enough for me to see my feet, I was bathed, lovingly and slowly.  Six hands brought water to my skin lathering olive soap on my body, soap that I had only known to wash the dead.  They reached into my armpits, circled my small breasts, and gently massaged my thighs and the place between my thighs Mother had told me I was never to touch.

They dried me.  The tub disappeared.  I heard the water splash in the street.  I remembered seeing caked mud in front of other doors, and now I knew why.  A rug was laid where the tub had been.

“Lie down, girl,” Gianna said, the one who kept the stories of our clan.

I did so, amazed at how soft the fibers were.

“Place your hands on your stomach.”

Gianna gently lifted them and guided my fingertips so they traced my soft flesh in small circles.

The women sat around me.  My mother.  Zana, my aunt. Gianna. 

“Close your eyes.” Gianna's fingertips touched just above my navel.  “There is much sadness and pain in a woman's life, but we are given one gift that we must learn to honor.”

Her fingers lifted from me. 

“Men do not know.  Their cocks are so big they think they're their brains.”

“Zana,” Mother hissed.

Gianna snorted and then leaned across me to kiss my forehead.  “Don't listen, child of the stars and whose body was made of the earth, dust to become dust.  Do not listen to them.  Take your fingers and brush the inside of your neck.”   All three women turned away.  “Take your time. When you are ready brush your belly with your fingertips again.”

And so slowly it went until, after a long while with Gianna's careful instructions, I gasped, and the goddess descended upon me.  Her wondrous oblivion pulsed deeply inside.  I filled with light as my body sang hymns of sweet paradise.  And then, while my body floated like a leaf upon Her breath, I gave thanks for this one gift mortals had been given.

 

Even the light inside our bodies pleases the gods, expanding like brilliant stars ebbing into the dark field of space, for it is in this light that we, their servants, are made.  We travel from oblivion to oblivion, unless innocent blood is offered to open their eternal hearts.

 

The next day the dust on my feet seemed holy, as did the ravens' shadows under which I walked.  I rode the waves of their caws as they called from parapet to parapet and down to the earth where they scavenged.  One stood in my place on the temple steps.

A woman veiled in a blue deeper than the sky stepped out of a wooden cage in which the rich rode, carved with ebony flowers.  My heart was stung through with how she walked, head high.  I followed her terrified to hold my head up.  I stepped between the women offering themselves for religious pleasure.  I had never been bothered selling my wares, as this was a holy brothel and no man would approach a girl before her time.  It was a woman's sacred duty to offer her virginity in the temple to the man she chose.

There were a couple of drunk harlots at the bottom of the stairs, one sleeping in the other's lap.  I had smelled their odor when I passed them.   A few men talked companionably, early risers from their temple sleep with their virgin or with one of the older women, widows mostly, who were allowed to support themselves here.

I thought of the little boy with the split mouth and winced.  An aberration, truly, yet his eyes were big and round, knowing something was wrong.  But the ravens had returned and the heat would end.  The rains that provided life would fall because of his sacrifice. 

“Thank you,” I said and then noticed a young man staring at me.  His hair was long and sleek, as dark as mine, his nose hawkish, and his body slim.  He had a hairless chest, and the muscles of his arms were firm.  The sweet place I had discovered the night before told me he was the one I wanted to take into the temple.  I scared myself with these thoughts, so I looked down with my heart beating hard, scooped up the little metal chips of deities, and began to sing my ware song. 

A minute later I ventured a glance up the face of the temple and caught sight of his disappearing into the portico above me. Twinges of possessiveness filled me; he must have been a regular visitor, like most men.  I had no right to expectation, I knew that, but I burned to know with whom he would lie that morning.  I climbed higher up the temple face than I had ever ventured.  If I were shooed away, I would go home to my dark house, lie on my bed, and imagine the young man next to me until Mother scolded me for laziness.

I expected to see men and women rutting everywhere, but I discovered a vast open space with the alabaster statue of the goddess reflecting in a marble floor that spread before her like a dark ocean.  Small alcoves laced the perimeter like the outside of a scallop shell.   Religion was practiced with our bodies.  The tingling for the young man turned into a deep ache as I heard the moaning of a couple ripple through the air.

But then I saw the hair-lipped boy hunched along a wall, eating nuts and small pieces of apple from a bowl.  I walked with my heart in my throat across the great expanse.

“Such a poor little creature,” I said squatting next to him and kissing his head.

I scanned the temple.  The sounds of lovemaking had stopped as though the whole world had fallen asleep in the heat. 

I had lost a little brother to a fever.  It would be pointless to help this boy; his fate had been settled as my brother's had been.  Once offered as a sacrifice, he would know a better life.  His stomach would never be empty; his new body would be perfect.

I placed a token of the goddess in his palm.  He cooed with delight just like my brother would have done.  I picked him up, and he clung to me.  Despite everything I believed, I did not want this boy to die.  I walked as fast as I could, carrying him and my basket across the black marble sea. 

The unblinking eyes of the goddess recorded my sin, but I continued until heat made me step backwards into shade.  I stared out to an empty city, set the boy down, and took his hand.  He tried to yank us back inside, but I dragged him down the steps.  Crossing the wide courtyard, the goddess watched me disappear into the small streets where the walls pressed upon us as we zig-zagged down to the port. 

“I need to get you on a boat,” I said. 

The boy's hand had grown sweaty; his crying now a soft whimper.  We came to a cistern, really one a ditch filled with water, but no one had sickened from it.  I poured water over him with cupped hands and splashed my face.  The brine in the sea air mixed with the smells of rotten food and ancient clay. 

The boy stared at me.  He was fatter and dressed in clean cotton.  I leaned next to him and smelled the scent of lemongrass in his hair. 

“What have I done?” I asked myself. 

Could I sell him as a slave?  The money would allow my family to buy a goat, feed for a year, a pen for it to live at my aunt's larger house.  The milk could be made into cheese and sold.  Perhaps someday I might buy fabric and wear a real robe instead of rags.  The boy would be alive as long as the ship did not sink, until a sickness spread through its hull, or the captain threw him overboard.  He would be hungry, dirty, and scorned.  His life at the temple would be short, but he would be treated like a little king.  Afterwards, he would live with the gods.  I scanned the ships in the harbor feeling foolish.  What captain would take a deformed boy dressed in temple finery?

I stood and held out my hand.  He took it like a lamb.

“I'll take you back.”

He smiled and said something unintelligible, but then his face fell as two of the temple guards turned the corner of the street and found us.   I was grabbed roughly from behind, my arm twisting in pain as it was pulled behind me.  All the tokens flung to the ground in soft thuds as my basket flew from me.  The other guard picked up the boy who screamed and kicked and beat his fist against his fleshy chest.  

As I was carried to what I was sure was to be my death, the young woman the men nicknamed Honey, gaped at me.  She had sat at the temple steps for two years because of her pockmarks and her narrow eyes set unevenly on her face.  Her body jerked almost unceasingly. Though it was her right to choose a man, all had laughed at her request. 

I had not been kind to her.  I had never even met her eyes, but she called out, “Oh, precious one.  Oh, beauty.”

I thought she meant the child.  Before we came to the shade of the archway, the guard set me down.  Honey, the ugly one, reached for me and shouted, “You are blessed, and you are cursed.  Oh, beauty, daughter of dark night, your flame rises from dust.”

The guard lifted his arm, but a woman called out, “Do not lay a hand on her.”

The priestess, in the veils the color the sky could never be, stood above us. 

“Bring both women to me, and give the child to his nurse,” she said and turned.

The guards stood for a moment like small boys and then did as they were told.

Honey and I were led behind the great statue of the goddess, down a staircase of onyx steps inlaid with stars and moons of lapis lazuli.  I thought that they held the beauty only the gods could provide, like sunsets or views of the desert and sea, coral sand and gray foam.

“They're going to slit our throats,” Honey whispered.  I tried to hush her with my eyes, but hers narrowed in anger.  “I've sat on those steps for too long to stay quiet if I'm going to die.”

“What were you saying out there?” I asked.

“I am blessed and cursed as you are.  I see things, and the things happen.  My words may be inspired by celestial beings, but I'm the forge they have to come through.”

Celestial... I whispered the word.  I had never heard a lovelier one. 

“What is my blessing?” I asked, not believing her. 

I had always thought she was a fool; seeing her cleverness frightened me.  If she were a prophetess, or could pretend to be one, how much more valuable would she be than me?

I heard water trickling the way rain does as it runs off roofs.  We descended and stepped into a room brilliant with torch light.  Mist covered my body from a small waterfall that splashed over a rock wall.  The other walls were also full of wonder.  Beings of light swirling around orbs.  Strange fish swam in this sea along with floating faces of lions and graceful ibexes.  Great naked bodies of a man and a woman covered the ceiling, his penis stiff, and her full breasts dripping milk like a trail of stars.

We crossed through the empty chamber.  Honey and I were barefoot, but the heavy footfalls of the guard echoed through the room.  I thought of the great statue and wondered how her weight was held by this empty chamber as we were led over a threshold into a small room that glowed in soft afternoon light from sunbeams slanting though high windows.

Golden threads in her robes shimmered as though the sun had sparked them into tiny flames.   Her hair, dyed with henna faded to the color of a dried orange peel, wound in waves to her hips.  Her nose was long.  She had the blood of one of our conquered people over the mountains.  I didn't think she had ever been beautiful, but she was tall and held her body with confidence. 

She nodded to the guard.  He turned, and we heard him step back under the magical sky. 

“You are odd little birds.”

Neither of us answered.  She wore a girdle of midnight blue and from it hung a knife from which she would take the life of the small boy I had failed to rescue.  She was death; possibly my death was housed in that slender sheath that lay by her thigh.

“When do we die?” Honey asked.

The priestess' eyes grew wide, and then she smiled.  “You are bold, little one.  The answer to that is if the gods deem your death when our king joins his mothers and fathers in the sky.  You will go with him then, if I still live, which is doubtful.  If not, you will bring the cup of death for his family and cortège, his servants and animals.”

I collapsed in relief on the floor.  The future seemed like eternity, a time that might never come. 

“Don't cry,” the priestess said.  The compassion in her voice shocked the tears from my eyes.  “Don't worry for your family.  Tonight they will mourn that you have been taken and celebrate that your life will have more comfort than they could have ever hoped for.”

She walked out of her sunbeam and knelt next to me.  I had never seen blue eyes before.  No wonder she had been chosen to become the goddess on Earth, though foreign born.  She helped me stand and, to my surprise, combed my rough hair with her fingers.

“You are brave, little dove, to try to rescue the boy.”

“I won't be punished?”

“If I had not arrived back here today, your body would be in the sea.  It was a foolish thing you did, but a kind one.  I need kindness and bravery around me now.”  She looked at Honey.  “My oracle died last year in childbirth.  I've been impatient for a new one, for both of you, as I am old and there is much to teach.  Can you continue to be brave?”

Speech left me; words evaporated from Honey's lips as well.

“The others will be jealous, especially Aea, even though I have told them all along none of them will be chosen to talk the blue veils.  I need purity and wisdom...outsiders, as I was once a stranger to this place.”

 

The first kiss of the goddess was fresh inside of me.  Promising to be brave was an easy gift to offer.  I did not allow myself to think about how I might one day hold a chalice of death.  I had yet to question why the gods would demand such a thing of me.  In that instant, I breathed in sweet air, and that was all that mattered.

 

Honey sucked seeds from the pomegranate.  I breathed in cool air scented sweet with the aroma of late fall and hope that rain would soon come.  I felt like a rabbit in a nest inside my cloak dyed as red as the wine in the bottle on the table.  I picked up a piece of cheese, let it melt on my tongue and walked out to the terrace.  The mountains looked barren, the color charcoal, but I was told that we might see them covered with snow before winter was out.  The maple trees were golden, and I could but marvel that I was alive.

I looked back at the other three attendants sitting near the fire.  Aea's eyes were daggers as she smiled.  Paubi had strategically taken us under her wing, but her exasperation with our lack of social graces sent her into waves of anger.  It was honest anger, though, and as we learned how to dress and speak, how to wear the various silver rings on the correct fingers, where not to run, and to eat the sacred herb without laughing ourselves silly, her tirades lost their power. 

“Kim truly loves Erish,” Honey had said, speaking of the youngest who was only a couple of years older than I was, one night as we fell asleep.  “Of all of the three, she is the most devoted.”

Honey's body jerked, and I scooted as close to the wall as I could.  An elixir had been concocted lightly laced with valerian that controlled the worst of her spasms, but there were still nights when she wrestled with the gods, singing strange songs in a language that sounded like the hiss of bees.  She sweated and batted her arms; I slept very little. 

“But she is afraid of Aea,” I said, “or she'd be nicer to us.  I think she'd like to talk to someone her own age for a change.”

The High Priestess, the attendants, Honey and I... now novices for almost three months, lived in a world as comfortable as paradise.  Well-fed slaves who had more teeth than most of the citizens of the city took care of our needs.  They were all made aware, slaves and attendants both, that if any harm came to us their lives would be taken. 

Erish walked in, a tightly woven shawl wrapped tightly around her.  I placed my hand on my thighs and smiled to myself at the small mounds of fat stored there.

“Wine for all,” she said, and after the old woman who was attending to us filled our glasses, she was allowed one for herself.  

The boy ran up the steps of the portico, squealing with all the happiness of a five year-old capturing a lizard, his tunic filthy and his face covered with mud.

His nurse huffed up behind him, smiling.  “We had quite a chase.”

How we loved him, and what a sharp little one he was, curious about everything, communicating as best he could despite the cleft in his mouth.  We all had to pretend to kiss the lizard and off he went for a bath. 

“Let us be thankful for the autumn as it passes,” Erish said, and then closed her eyes as she said, “And a long life for our king,” so quietly I could barely make out her words.

Especially, a long life for him, I whispered to myself. 

The sky was turning a lovely violet.  The golden leaves of the aspens were like feathers on the messengers of the gods.  My body felt porous.  A wave of panic washed through me; Erish had prepared me for what would happen when the king did die.  If tomorrow, I would be buried, probably in the beautiful cloak I now wore, in a layer of death which she told me was the portal of life.  His tomb would house souls of a hundred people, his wives, nobles given the honor to journey with him to the City of Paradise, enough slaves to make their lives in eternity as easy as it had been on the plane of Earth.  If he died decades from now, I would be the one who sent them all to their new home.

I looked down into my cup and saw the residue of herbs at the bottom.  One of the sacred herbs was in my drink, and the wine warmed me even more than my cloak.  I looked at Honey's face and felt the kiss of a serpent's tongue between my legs, breathing in slowly as I had been taught to allow the tongue to reach deeper inside of me.  Honey put her hand on a chair to steady herself.  Kim and Aea led us towards it to the pallet that lay next to the fire.  I glanced at the sky and saw the moon hang like an almond slice. 

The women sat around us, backs to us, as had my mother, my aunt, and Gianna.  Only Erish faced us, sitting serenely in a large chair that had been brought for her, her face as dark as the part of the moon that our world now hid.

Honey turned away trying not to giggle.  The gods filled the room with their breath, but I did not feel their presence, just my own awkwardness mixed with the expectation of Honey's bony pelvis touching mine.  Two servants undressed us. The breath of the old woman attending me said she had had more than the one cup of wine. 

“To serve the goddess you must learn how to open yourselves, my daughters.”

She had begun this way the other times we had been given the wine and the herb.  I did not want another tongue lashing from Paubi, so I closed my eyes.  I was to envision that Honey was my king so that when I came to him I would know how to climb the stairs to the celestial realms.  Honey was an ugly girl, not the king; I loved her ugliness; her sharp wit made me brave so far from my family. 

Had I not tried to save the little boy that day, I would still be listening to Gianna's voice with some other young girl.  The pairings sometimes bonded the girls for the rest of their lives, and it was known they would find a way to join together despite children and husbands who may or may not turn a blind eye.  I hummed a few notes from The Song of Lydisee which told of the tragic love two women and opened my eyes to the shadows from the flames, the forms of the Great Wheel of Creation, dancing upon the walls. 

To my surprise, the women around us began singing my song.  The rhythm pulsed with the flames and with the flaming snake's tongue within me.  Erish whispered last instructions.  Splashes of cool mist hit our bodies as she sprinkled rose water with a golden phallus that she had plunged into a basin.  She then led the women out to the night.  Honey kissed me; where they were going was not a concern of mine.

 

I learned to make out the messages of the pictures carved into the walls of our mountain temple.  While I had lived in the city, I had never understood that the walls of the city also talked, calling out the names of the great kings, our gods on earth and their mighty acts.  Here, the walls were laced with stories of how our world was recreated with the death and resurrection of our royal family.

“You have been chosen to live forever, my angel, not vanish like the dust,” Erish once said as she watched me measure and stir.   

“My mother will be dust?” I asked tasting unjustness on my tongue like bile.

“It doesn't matter,” she said.  “Dust feels no pain.”

To her the poor were the rubble that covered the tombs of the blessed.  

 

Erish had been a princess once, doted upon, a girl with toys and time with a father who had taught her to understand that her family were children of the gods.  And the rest did not matter; the blessing the poor received was the blissful rest of extinction. But I, a poor girl, was chosen to be eternal for reasons I could not fathom.

 

On the coldest morning, I huddled with Honey next to the fire in the great room to stay warm.  Clouds remained wisps in the sky, no rain fell below us on the plain.

Erish walked in, sat next to us, unsheathed the slender blade that lay at her side presenting the hilt to me.  I took it reluctantly.

Honey's body trembled as Erish said, “Follow me.”

We walked the long way to the lambing field where the bleating of the newborns filled the frigid air.  Erish picked up a small ball of black wool.  Its mother cried in distress as she carried it away. 

“Blood, blood, blood,” Honey moaned as the gods caught her tongue.

We stood under a bare maple.  Erish lay the lamb on the ground and traced its neck with her fingertips.

“Here to here.  Make the cut sharp and deep. There will be no suffering.”

“No,” I said. 

The cold seeped under my skin.  I did not want to be an instrument of the gods.  They erased all life soon enough.  Why did they need me?

Honey clawed at her arms.  “So many deaths.”

“Hush,” Erish scolded her. 

Honey took a step back shaking her head but didn't stop moaning.

“The boy's time must come or many more will die from this drought.  It will be easier if you cut the flesh of this lamb first.”

I let the knife slip from my fingers.  It thudded on the ground.  “I thought he had been passed over,” I said, though I knew it was only a dream I wanted to be true.

“He is our treasure, little dove,” Erish said.  “A treasure to whom we give the greatest gift.  His body will be made perfect, the gods will smile on our land from the pleasure of receiving our gift, and he will be reborn a king.”

“I can't...”

Erish placed the knife blade in her hand and offered me the hilt.  I did not know how she did not cut herself.  “You are chosen.”

I knelt.  My fingers melted into the warm wool down to the skin. 

Honey was screaming now.  “You are death!”

A new presence descended and entered my body; not the evening fragrance of desire but the smell of the underside of leaves and animal bones, a heavy mantle made from all who perished which surrounded the dark face of the goddess.  Her face was my own; the answer to my questions was that I had the power to give one child the gift of life, and the rest lay in the realm of mystery.

I leaned the lamb's head back and made my red signature. 

 

What is it in blood the gods love so much?  I have shed so much, and the only answer I can believe is that it is the most we can offer to them. 

 

The almond trees offered only a few small white buds when we returned to the city in late winter.  On the eve of spring Honey and I stood beneath the stone gaze of the goddess, the sea of the limestone floor cool beneath our feet.  The stones glowed with the hues of dusky rose in the first light of morning.  I wore sapphire robes for the first time, veils the color of lapis lazuli, draping down behind me in a train that rippled like waves on the floor.  

Honey had brooded since the day I sacrificed the lamb, refusing to answer my questions about what visions its blood had pulled from her mind.  She had called me death, her voice harsh like the ravens whose shadows swept over us as we wound our way from the gates to the temple.  We no longer shared the same room as sisters, but I slept in sumptuous quarters with painted flowers and hummingbirds on the walls.  She slept with the other attendants.  Aea masked her contempt completely now I had proven myself with the lamb and was deferential even to Honey.  I wondered if Kim was now more of a friend to her than I.

At this moment, though, we waited for what our love play had prepared us.  I was to meet the king, and she, my loyal shadow, would hear what the gods wanted foretold.

“Have you found a man to lie with you?” I asked, motioning to one of the alcoves where the love rites were observed. 

Honey's body was calm and her eyelids heavy.  She must have taken a strong dose of valerian.  “I do not need a man,” she said.

A very small thread of jealousy punctured my heart, but just as easily I pulled it out. 

“Kim?” I asked.

She did not answer, but she her lips made a crooked smile.

“I dreamed of killing the lamb,” I said.  “I wanted you to there to hold me.”

Honey took my hand and squeezed it.  “Which lamb?” she asked, but before I could answer she said, “That dream does not happen today.”

“But soon,” I said.

She nodded slightly.  “And more dreams you do not wish to wake to.”

I could not read her voice, if she spoke as friend or prophetess.  Erish's slippers lightly tapped behind us, and we turned to greet her.  She was covered with purple veils, and to my horror I saw that she carried her dagger and the narrow strip of its girdle, sewn new from the poor lamb I had made sacred and dispatched to the gods.

“I am passing like an old moon,” she said, and knelt to tie the dagger around my waist, heavy as the spoonfuls of poppy and nightshade I had learned to pour to make the bitter wine that could give a sweet sleep or death.

“The king awaits,” she said.  We followed her down the steps to the lower room with the celestial kingdom where the deities in their lovemaking were tattooed upon the ceiling above us.  A low wide pallet rested below them. Candles were lit in sconces.  The sweet smell of burning herbs filled the chamber. 

A servant girl walked up with a cup of the wine that made my time with Honey so silly and sweet.  I refused it; the goddess could speak through my body without the aid of herbs and magic. 

The girl looked frightened, but Erish waved her away.

“Today you take my place,” she said.  “Our land needs your virgin's blood.  You are my gift to our land and our people, my young beautiful princess.”

She kissed me on my forehead through the swath of cloth as a mother might do.  I thought of Gianna's voice, wishing she could guide me as she had in the humble house where a tub of water was such a precious gift.  I did not want to be a gift, but at least the king was not quite as old as the uncle my cousin had been given to.

I had expected a retinue of servants and banner bearers, lyres and tambourines, perhaps even his harem to help him climb the steps to heaven.  But he appeared in the room only with the young man I had seen on the temple steps, the one who made me ache from desire.  His raven hair hung to his waist, and his arms were marked with dark ink in the place I had wanted to grasp. 

The king stepped aside and took Erish's hand.  As he reached for her, I noticed that his face was pale and his body quivered.  He limped as they walked to her chamber.  I swallowed and breathed in deeply; I was alive, but for how long? 

Honey walked to where the waterfall had stopped seeping from the wall.  The drought had marked even this sacred spot.  She knelt, head bent, waiting to hear what she was to be told as the gods whispered through our young, perfect bodies.

 

For me a miracle had happened.  I longed for justice now, not for food, but who was I to question the gods?  If they chose silence, what was it to me?  I made what meaning I could from the inheritance Erish passed on to me.

 

I stood naked at the window, my heart flickering with anger at stars' brilliance.  When I turned, Honey stood behind me.  

“It is time.  The boy was so happy last night.  The others spoiled him.  They played every game he loved and gave him sweets and encouraged him to eat until the poppy they were laced with made him sleep.  Erish said the gods are preparing the breakfast feast for when he wakes with them.  Lili, my friend...” She rarely used my name.  She paused, and then continued.  “She and the king also wait with them.”

My spirit flew from me and hovered over us as my body absorbed her meaning, and the girl I had been dissolved into the dark recess of the cold morning. 

Honey whispered in my ear.  “Yesterday as I listened to the echoes inside my mind, there was nothing but my own thoughts.  I know, though, as your prophetess, that you now must dress and wear the dagger at your side.”

I put on the veils again, tied the dagger to my waist.  We walked to the portico.  The boy lay on a slab of rock dressed in a simple linen shift.  I wondered if he would be buried in the clothes of a prince.

Honey looked at me with her strange eyes.  “You will do this, and even more than you ever thought you could bear.”

She made an odd noise, swallowing the words ramming against her teeth.  The cawing of ravens cut through the air.  I raised my eyes and saw the blue black sheen of a hundred or more circling.  Would they fly over the sea and bring back the rain? 

I thought of a poor girl selling trinkets on the steps that lay below and of a mother's white face as she hung them on the necks of her children.  The boy and I, with no claim on eternity, had been lifted up.  It did not matter how silent or cruel the gods chose to be; they chose to love the two of us. 

 

If one desire of my heart could be granted, it would be that every child could be more than mere clay, that we could all be molded from the essence of eternity.  My dagger would be a joyous tool then.  Blood was the conduit; all I could do was take this one child home.

 

 

BIO NOTE

 

Alethea Eason is a writer, artist, and educator who lives in rural Northern California.