Twilight in Babylon (2 page)

Quickly, she consulted the stars for the powers of Ur. The largest star was for the
lugal
and
en,
the leaders of war and commerce. It hung as fat and orange as a fruit, well out of harm’s way. The moon was a token of affection from the god Sin to his bride on earth, the
ensi.
It was still red. Not a good sign for the
ensi.

As she watched, a star streamed down from the heavens in a bold arc that seemed to drop it in the river, just outside of Ur. The fiery blue streak faded in the sky; it had fallen from the north, through the house of the Tails. Rudi shivered from the cool of the evening and shivered again, for she watched the movements of the gods when clay creatures were to be at rest.

She gathered her tablets and charts and slipped down the stairs.

The council would have her head for not predicting the blood moon—so she certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the star, though its portents were clear.

Trouble came from the north, trouble that would be water-borne.

And trouble came from the skies.

*      *     *

The marsh girl bobbed in the water and squinted through the darkness to see if anyone else had survived the massive rush of water. She was wary of hitting her head, and afraid to make noise, which would anger the gods. Above her the stars seemed close enough to use as a ladder. One came crashing down.
It’s not going to hit me,
she thought.
Stars don’t fall on humans.

But something did hit the marsh girl. She sank, through a black, seemingly endless tunnel. Down through bath-warm water, down through the earth, into the very soil she planted and sowed.
I’m going to Kur,
she thought.
I’ll eat dust and live in shadow for eternity. My service to the gods is over.

The Crone of Ninhursag had predicted that because the marsh girl had been born after two battles of darkness—when the moon hid its face—the marsh girl had two destinies. The marsh girl had twice as much of a task on earth as most people, and twice as much responsibility. “For you,” the black-eyed crone had said, “you will live two lives.” But now the marsh girl felt blood coursing down the side of her face, and closed her eyes. The Crone of Ninhursag was wrong. She was going to die. Her life had been solitary and counted for nothing.

She missed the fire of blue that surged beneath the water and enveloped her body.

A fire of blue that bore a remarkable likeness to the marsh girl, a DNA match that was exacting, despite the five millennia that separated the two. A fire of blue, born of another eclipse, another birth date, her other destiny.

Two lives that were preordained to meet and intertwine, for they were the same.

Infused with new energy, the marsh girl kicked and fought away from the darkness, away from the earth, up to the day’s light. Long grass wrapped around her ankles, but she wrenched free. Her lungs about to burst, she broke through the surface of the water and gasped for air.

She looked, turned around, and looked again.

The whole world was water.

Blue sky mirrored blue water from east to west and north to south. Everything was placid, blue and the same.

“Sacred dung,” she whispered to herself.

Propelled by her arms and legs, her head swinging back and forth like a creature in search of prey, she pushed herself farther through the water. Still she saw nothing but more water. Maybe those tufts of green meant something. She started toward them. Things in the water grabbed at her hands and reached for her feet.

A long brown shape slithered by, and she held her breath, aware it meant danger. She continued toward the sprigs of green. The sun reflected off the water’s surface to blind her. Gnats and biting flies attacked her face and arms. When she reached up to brush them off her head, she discovered her head was bleeding. “Sacred dung,” she said again, though she didn’t know why.

Though dung was sacred—it was fuel for cooking and night heat and useful in poultices and medicaments—when she had ever acknowledged this aloud, she didn’t know. The sentiment she felt when she said it was more of amazement and a little bit of shock than anything worshipful. As though the meaning were lost in the translation.

What was translation? What did that mean?

Her arms were tired; her legs, too. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her tailed wool kilt and the bangles she’d been given by the Harrapan traders. She reached the green. They were popular, crowded with birds. She grabbed the fronds and realized they were palms. The crowns of palms.

The waters were at the tops of trees.

Using the last of her strength, she climbed on top of the palms, scaring away birds, stomping the fronds, and perching gingerly on the crown of the tree. All of Shinar was water. No huts, no water buffaloes, no
guf
or
mashuf
boats disturbed the surface.

Where were the other humans? Had her village been so loud the gods drowned the humans again, like they had in the Deluge of generations before? She pressed her lips together, so not to cry out. Her mother used to warn her as she and her siblings played along the marsh to be quiet, or the gods would grow weary of humanity and silence it.

She put a hand to her mouth to hold back the shrieks she felt building inside.
Yet if I’m the only one left, what does it matter if I scream?
The sense of loss was staggering, but she couldn’t remember whom she’d lost. A face, indistinct, was in her mind, but it had eyes like she’d never seen before. Eyes like her bangles. Gold eyes.

She clapped a hand over her eyes. Was she thinking of a god? Why would she think of a god? Why would a god come to her? She was no one, with no influence, no power. She peeked through her fingers. No sheep either.

Somehow this seemed a much more serious concern than a god’s eyes. And easier to understand. The flock was gone, which meant the goat was, too. And her fields. Her vegetable garden. How she had slaved, carving out the straight irrigation channels, making sure they flowed freely, clean of silt and salt. No leeks and onions, or peas. And forget about barley, about beer.

She suddenly tasted it, heavy with spices and sweetness, rolling over her tongue. She loved beer. It was the best early in the day, when the sun just started across the sky, the air was cool to her skin, and the beer was warming to her belly.

She cradled her stomach for a moment, then looked down at herself. For some reason her body, though healthy and strong, seemed repulsive to her. Hairy. She looked at her legs, lightly furred with black. Hair was good. If she slicked bitumen over it, she was protected from biting bugs. Her womanhood was safe. Her arms, the heat of her armpits, covered. The hair of her head served as a gown at night, to allure and seduce her mate.

Golden eyes.

The pang was back.
Missing.

Better to think of beer. It was concrete and useful.

She adjusted her position in the tree, sitting on her legs so the spikes of date branches didn’t poke her, and looked at the water. It was hard to remember what the village had looked like, where anything had been.

Where were the trees I’m sitting on,
she thought.
Which clump were they?
Her mind was blank as a slab of clay. If her village was gone, were the neighboring villages gone also? She craned around, waved away birds who tried to steal her spot, and looked for anything familiar. She’d never been outside her village, only as far as the common grazing grounds. Only the Harrapan traders and the Crone of Ninhursag had come to her village, brought news of a world outside.

Had there been a village on the other side of hers? She tried to visualize the size of her village and fields and grazing grounds, then another village, fields and grazing grounds beside it, and a third village beyond. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even remember her own village clearly. Just impressions.

Reed huts, and a warm dung fire. The squishiness of the ground that indicated it was time to put down new matting so the marsh didn’t seep up through the floor. The lowing of the water buffalo before they slept. The blackness of the sky, when the gods held meetings. The summer, when the gods had feasts and poured heavenly wine on the fields.

Her head was aching, and she reached up to rub it. Then she remembered the sore and stopped. She didn’t even have mud to put on her sore, because there was no ground. That made her angry. She glared at the sky. “This was stupid of them,” she told the chamber keeper of the gods. “If we are supposed to serve them, then drowning us means they won’t get served. Then they’ll have no one to complain to except themselves.”

The chamber keeper didn’t speak. Of course, she didn’t have a sheep to slaughter for its liver, or an exorcist to read the liver, so she would never know if the chamber keeper responded.

“The waters have to go down,” she said, liking the sound of her voice against the blue sky and blue water. “A flood can’t last long.” Birds that usually landed in the marshes would be along in the afternoon. If she could catch one, she could eat. Pigeons, who sought the greening fields, were especially good, and they would be too tired to fly away.

She tore green dates off one of the branches—she couldn’t eat them, she’d get sick—then bent the branch back and forth while the sun moved higher in the sky. Finally, it broke off. Careful to spit any of it out, she peeled the edges of the wood back with her teeth and fingernails, sawing the end against the fronds to make it sharp for stabbing and cutting. When she got thirsty, she lapped at the water around her.

Flood water wasn’t salty, at least not much.

As the sun lowered, she watched for birds. But the only place for them to stop was her treetop. Reluctantly, she slipped into the warm water with the branch between her teeth and waited for a fat pigeon. When one finally came and plopped down for a rest, she leaped on it. The bird tried to fly away, but she stabbed its neck with her branch. Piece by piece, she plucked its feathers, then stabbed at it to get the blood out. It was the only taboo that couldn’t be broken: Never eat anything with blood, and never spill blood unless to eat.

She didn’t remember when she’d heard those words, but she knew they were true. It was the only restriction given by the god above gods after the Deluge. She wiped at the bird with palm fronds, sloshed water through it to get it as clean as she could, then tore into it with her teeth.

It would be better cooked, but she didn’t have any dung or tinder. Besides, she was hungry. She threw the carcass onto the treetop beside her and watched the bigger birds, the desert birds, tear at it. She watched them through her fingers, to keep her eyes protected so they couldn’t blind her, then eat her, too.

As the sky was painted by the gods, and the god Shamash went away, she saw the animal carcasses float by. Onagers and oxen, their legs raised to the heat, their bodies swollen from the day’s sun, passed by like rafts on the current of the water. Water tinted with lavender and pink, gold and orange.

Twilight.

This was the assurance of the gods: One day ended and another began. The girl knew if she saw twilight, then after a period of darkness, day would come back. The sun god Shamash, the gods of water and wind and soil, would rise to flog and command their slaves who worked the Plain of Shinar. The twilight was a promise, an assurance. There was comfort, even if she was the only one left. Since she saw twilight, the sun would rise tomorrow. Drawing her hair over her shoulders, she put her head down on her arms and slept.

*      *     *

Three days later, the waters had receded down the trunk of the palm tree. Debris had begun to show up on the face of the waters. Swollen bodies and faces she didn’t remember. Bits of huts. And, finally, the skin of a
guf
boat. Without the outer rim, it did her no good to find the bottom, but still she took the skin, wrung it out, and draped it over the newly emerged palms to dry.

On the fifth day, she set off through the waters, looking for useful things. The outlines of islands and levees began to peer through the water. By twilight of the sixth day she had found cloth to tie around her at night, a bone knife to kill birds and fish with, and an oar.

In two more days, the marsh had become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, the water had been poisoned by the rotting remains, and salt had dried on the tree trunks. The water was also shallow enough to walk through, to spy crocodiles before they saw her, and to see the ground on which she trod.

Nothing was left of Shinar; it was wiped clean. She hadn’t seen another live animal or person. She’d seen hundreds of corpses. The crocodiles were dining well. If she were the only human left, then she would walk on until she came to the south sea. If she weren’t, then maybe there would be people on the south sea. The Harrapan traders said they stayed there, and on the island Dilmun.

In Dilmun, they said, there were tall trees with soft and solid leaves, not like fronds of date palms. They also had orchards, where fruit other than dates grew on the trees. The ground was dry, like Shinar in summertime, but it didn’t crack. It had just enough wet and just enough dry to stay green all year. The air smelled good, and the trees were made of incense. The girl would go to Dilmun, see if it existed. Maybe the Harrapan would take her in. She was good with sheep, and she wouldn’t drink too much beer.

So she tied the animal skin up into a knot and put it on her head, threw the cloth for a cloak on her back, and clasped her knife in her hand, then set off south. South was the direction that the rivers, when they stayed in their beds, flowed. Marsh birds were plentiful, and fish swam in the shallows. She didn’t have fire, but she ate well.

The sun was hot on her body, and eventually she found mud and covered her skin so the mosquitoes wouldn’t bite. She watched for crocodiles as she walked, and stopped walking when the sun went to sleep. At night she made noise, to frighten the hungry hyenas away. When she could, she climbed up the rough bark of a palm tree and stayed in the fronds, safe enough to sleep in.