Forty years earlier
AIKAH PULLED UP THE BROKEN REEDS. His barely
muscled arms could carry only a few damp, dirty clusters. He wanted to please
his father Sheva, a man whose days haunted him while the nights bathed him in
sweat and anguish. Aikah tried to imitate every care his mother Tama once gave his father. Tama’s
long, black braids would sweep over his father’s legs as she vigorously rubbed the sore joints.
Aikah fondly remembered his mother’s braids because they warmed and tickled him when his mother embraced him during cold
nights and sang to him – her voice soothing like the sea breezes in
Everlasting.
As early as Aikah could remember, his mother was teaching. She guided his
chubby fingers to hold a stylus and create markings on clay tablets; she stored
the tablets beneath a single window in their hut and taught him to read from right
to left like their forefathers.
When it was time for Aikah to attend school, the priests were
astonished by his acumen. They suggested he join the priestly class, but Sheva
forbade it. The priests were the greediest people in Seth, his father often
complained. Begaida’s farmers continued to lose substantial profits because the
priests demanded huge amounts of barley, wheat, fish, dates and chickens as
offerings. Farmers barely sold enough at the local markets to cover their
business costs from season to season. This sly form of servitude disgusted
Sheva.
Tama longed for her son to experience the aristocratic life she
enjoyed before she married her respected, but impoverished soldier. Her families
were scholars and merchants, and if Aikah became a priest, he would be exposed
to the upper classes. She believed her son would flourish in Seth’s larger cities,
instead of irrigating fields in Begaida. For a couple that loved each other
deeply, Tama and Sheva’s arguments belied that passion; their clashes were icy, harsh, and
persisted for weeks. Finally, they reached a decision that favored Sheva’s
position. Aikah would become a warrior, like his father, then a farmer when he
retired from service. It was dependable and honorable.
Tama’s usually laughing eyes never fully regained their glow after
that row with Sheva, but her eyes became unexpectedly morose one autumn evening,
when he was about eight years old. Though the days were still warm, she huddled
in every tattered garment she owned. Everything but her face was covered.
Sickness sprang from her pores, swelling her body until she fought to breathe. The
once majestic coils dulled, thinned. The stench of rottenness clung to her body
and to the walls of their mud house.
To escape her suffering, Aikah walked the
fields so he could breathe in the river breezes and weep. Sheva coped with his
grief by daily curling his twisted body in their house shrine, pleading
with Nanna to take his farmland and his own life—but to graciously spare his
wife. Aikah often found his father at the shrine during the early mornings,
gripping a hand-sized statue of Nanna, his eyes bloodshot and pleading.
Despite Aikah’s protests, Sheva killed a lamb that followed Aikah
through the fields and along the river bank. Although the priests insisted that
the lamb would offer a place of refuge for the demon which caused Tama’s sickness,
her health continued to fail. After months of watching her condition worsen, Aikah
and his father were returning from the river bank, just as daylight waned, when
a loud scream burst from their house. When they ran inside, Tama was dead.
SHEVA WATCHED HIS SON as he placed the reeds near the
river bank. The reeds would be used in the evening’s sacrifice, when the people
would stand before the new moon at dusk and implore Nanna for a plentiful harvest
of wheat. The people of Seth were expected to travel from as far away as the
Cities of the Kings to the sacrifice, thus sustaining Begaida’s brief notoriety
among the cities. In Seth’s history, drought had never overtaken Begaida,
which boasted rich, irrigated fields that fed wheat and barley to families from
the First Gate to the east, to the Fifth Gate to the southwest. When famine
devastated the rest of Seth 50 years ago, hundreds died as they withered from
hunger, mournful that the gods had abandoned them to death. Many of them fled
to Begaida for refuge, for it alone remained prosperous, able to feed its
people and others as well. The elders spoke of that era sparingly, as if Nanna
would hear and strike them again with hunger. Sheva remembered the famine in
Tamiyn only through a child’s eyes; he survived because his mother did not eat.
His mother died for him, just like Sheva vowed to die for Aikah.
The work was finished. Aikah left the river bank and returned to his
father with the carefree steps of a satisfied child. “All done,” Aikah said. His
hands clasped behind his back as he rolled on the arches of his feet. “Just as
you taught me.”
Sheva’s brown eyes with their coal-black lashes softened as he gazed
at his son. “You learn a farmer’s ways well. Are you ready to appear before
Nanna at the sacrifice tonight? The temple priest granted you a high honor to
be an attendant.”
A grin started to crawl across Aikah’s face, but he willed himself
not to fully release it. He hung his head until the moment passed. He was consumed by
the chance to glimpse Nanna—beautiful with tresses flowing across her shoulders
like his mother’s, her voice a comforting whisper. Wasn’t that how Nanna appeared
to him before at the riverbank? Then Aikah’s mind seized an even more
delightful thought: Maybe his mother
really was Nanna.
“Yes, my father. I am prepared.”
“Good. Why don’t you prepare some chickpeas and bread? I’ll stay out
here for awhile. My body feels stronger in the heat of this afternoon.”
Aikah disappeared behind the door of their mud house. Sheva
distrusted the priests, but they invited young attendants randomly and their
choices could not be refused. As leaders of the temple, the hill of heaven, the
only person who could invalidate their invitations was King Kish, and he never
refused the priests. He was beholden to them and feared the outcome if they delivered
prophecies unfavorable to his reign.
“Not yet,” Sheva muttered, pounding the wooden staff he clamped with
both hands. “Not yet.”
THE MOON ROSE LIKE FOAM ON THE SHORE, covering the
temple with a silver glow. People pushed toward the clearing near the temple. Seizing
a chance because of the crowds, merchants sold ivory and gold, their small wagons
draped with gems and silk. Farmers hawked goats, pigs and sheep. The wizened priests
who had conducted this ritual for decades stood at the uttermost platform of
the temple, their faces tight with frustration at the throng pressing excitedly
at the temple’s base. The king’s soldiers at the base kept the people from
ascending the five layers of steps, which were lined with crimson and gold.
When the clouds suddenly gathered, people nudged each other in distress.
Would the clouds obscure the beauty of the moon? Just as the people worried
about the moon, a second group of priests, followed by children, including
Aikah, carried golden cups and platters. The crowds parted for them as they
made their way around the temple base and upward on the steps. About midway,
the children stopped and the priests joined the older leaders at the uttermost
part of the temple. As one they stood and looked upward, lifting their hands
and grunting in monotone as they waited for the moon to appear again.
Sheva moved agitatedly through the crowd at the base of the temple,
his body twisting between the people as he poked them with his staff. “Let me
pass. My son is helping with the offering.”
People looked annoyed, but they let the man with the huge, gnarled
body pass among them. Sheva stood more erect as he caught a glimpse of Aikah,
who looked down from the steps and stole a wink at his father who was at the
temple base. The clouds seemed as stone and the sky nakedly dark without the moon. Finally, the white orb bloomed for everyone to see. It shone with
such clarity it seemed near enough to fall upon them.
A voice bellowed from the sky in mocking feminine tones.
“What do you have for me?”
In unison the priests called out: “You have the first fruits of our
harvest, should you make it bountiful.”
“What else?”
“Six children.”
Sheva, gripping his staff, shouted with all his strength, to the
irritation of the crowds surrounding him.
“No! Aikah is only helping with the dedication. He is not one of them…”
“Shut up, Sheva,” yelled a burly man near him, his face splattered
with circles and triangles. “Be proud of your son.”
Sheva screamed repeatedly but no one listened. Aikah was too far away
now to hear. He and the other five children
carrying golden cups or platters stepped forward at the base of the temple, slowly
moving upward. Their red garments whipped about their bodies as wind poured over
them from the sky. Aikah looked around expectantly, holding his golden cup
carefully, while trying to see Nanna. He
only saw clouds mingled with darkness.
The boy beside him, Haran, whispered: “You’re taller than us. Can you
see anything?”
“It’s like looking into a cave,” Aikah croaked.
Another boy, almost as tall as Aikah, leaned toward them. “I hear she
is like a marred lion, far from beautiful,” said Chazon.
“She is beautiful, she is like…” stuttered Aikah.
“Like a gazelle,” filled in Haran, though his terrified eyes flew to the
cloud as he clutched his platter.
“How would you two know? This is your first time at the
dedication. Just like me,” said Chazon,
as the winds gathered power.
“I heard about Nanna from my mother,” choked Haran, whose platter
trembled in his hands.
“Did she tell you to fear her,” Chazon offered sarcastically.
“Well...” Haran whispered.
“I know she is beautiful because she came to me in a dream,” said
Aikah, feigning fearlessness.
“Too many lentils in your soup, no doubt,” said Chazon, whose eyes
widened as a mist mounted around the assembly.
“Chazon, your feet and mind are tied to the ground,” said Aikah. “You
do not believe what is in the skies.”
The children were now only steps away from the priests.
“Who is your choice?” the priests said again as a chorus.
Silence.
A swirl of cloud surrounded Aikah. Haran and Chazon were pushed from
him by priests who seemed to know already what must be done. Aikah swooned as
the cloud cloaked him with darkness.
“Him.”
Sheva dropped his staff and fell into the crowd. Enraptured by the
throbbing light from the moon, the people ignored Sheva’s moans, trampling his
twisted body as they pressed closer to the temple and the pulsating beams of
silver light.
Copyright 2009 Judith Howard Ellis
