Angels at the Gate

by T. K. Thorne

  The air sucks from the room as if a demon spirit has entered.

  “Nami, stay,” I say quietly, but loud enough to be heard. I am afraid to give her the hand signal and hope she hears me.

  “Do not move, Lila,” I add in the same tone. Her face is angled to me. I can see her lips tremble to match her hands, and the pinch of skin around the eye visible to me. Other than the tremble, she is motionless, her gaze connected to the snake’s, as if they are bound together.

  The cobra lifts its head and a section of its body into the air, a thin, split tongue tasting. It is a large serpent. Normally, it would flee from danger, but it does not see well. If it perceives a threat—

  I swallow. How can I reach Lila? What can I do? My grasp on the staff is as tight as Danel’s hand on my arm. I fear if I move, it will strike, but Danel is behind me. “Have you your father’s skill with the throwing knife?” I ask him under my breath.

  “No,” he whispers back. “I would more likely hit her or the wall than a snake!”

  “Lila.” I try to keep the fear from my voice. She needs to hear only calm and sureness. She must know the beat of her heart calls to the cobra with a sweeter song than a lover’s. Perhaps she feels the throb where her finger used to be.

  Another pod falls from her shaking hand, striking her lap with a tiny plop.

  A swift coil … and black lightning strikes.

  Lila screams.

  I pull from Danel’s grasp and stagger toward her, ignoring the jabs of pain in my hip and leg. The serpent has latched onto Lila’s forearm, sinking its fangs into her nut-brown flesh.

  With a swing of Ishmael’s staff, I knock the snake aside, and Nami is on it faster than I can shout at her. I raise my staff again, but dog and snake are too entwined to risk another blow. A coil of cobra has wrapped about Nami’s neck, but she has clamped down on a part and dances about, shaking her head.

  Philot kicks out at them, narrowly missing Nami. Danel has dragged a sobbing Lila to safety. “Adir,” he shouts, reverting to the name he has called me all of my life and most of his. “Get back!”

  But how can I? I can do nothing more for Lila, but my Nami—

  I watch for an opening to apply the staff, but they are now even more intertwined and moving constantly. Finally, it stops, but only appears so. The snake’s body remains coiled around Nami’s neck. Her teeth bear down just behind the cobra’s head, forcing open the curved fangs that drip venom. If Nami releases for a better grip, she is doomed.

  The coils tighten in desperation. The cobra does not crush its prey, relying instead on its poison, but I can see Nami’s eyes bulge from the pressure. Still, she does not relinquish her position, slowly bearing down through the thick muscles.

  It is only now I think to call upon my god. I fall to my knees. I do not know if he will hear me or heed me without the sweet incense of a sacrifice on his altar, and I am not his beloved, Abram, who has his ear. El, I am daughter of Zakiti of Abram’s tribe. You have claimed me as yours. I beg you to save my Nami! Save my heart.

  A strangled sound comes from Nami’s throat; she is choking.

  “Adira!” It is Lila who calls me now, but I cannot turn my gaze from the dog and snake. I want to cut them apart. My knife! How have I forgotten it? I fumble at my sash, my hands now trembling.

  “No, Adira, stay back!” Danel shouts.

  As I start forward with a hazy plan to cut the coils from her neck, a sharp crack startles me. Nami gives the head a last shake and opens her jaws, dropping her opponent. It falls with a dull thud beside the basket, still twitching.

  I change my plan in mid-lunge, laying the bronze blade into the wound Nami has made and pressing down with all the weight of my body. Behind me, the tail, which has released Nami, whips, snapping up and striking my back. I ignore it, not satisfied until my knife severs the bone.

  The shaking that had affected my hands, now courses through my entire body. I turn to Lila. She holds her arm where the snake struck, her face white.

  “Find a healer,” I snap at Danel.

  “Yes … I know one close by.” He breaks free of his immobility, and he is gone.

  Nami steps forward and licks my face with her bloody tongue. I press her to me and then make her lie still on her side while I run my fingertips over every bit of her, hardly daring to breathe, lest they find puncture wounds.

  Lila gasps, “Is she bitten?”

  I look up and meet her worried gaze. I do not miss that she can show concern for Nami though bitten herself.

  “No wounds on her,” I say with great relief.

  WHEN THE HEALER comes, he inspects Lila’s arm and examines her for signs of poison. Then he makes her a poultice. I wish Mika were here, but this man seems to know his business. He says prayers over her and promises to offer a goat to the goddess. I put a silver finger ring in his palm.

  “Sometimes no venom is released,” he says, curling his long, stained fingers over the ring.

  “It was knocked away quickly,” I agree, wiping sweat from my face.

  “That is very fortunate. The desert cobra requires time to release its poison. I believe she will be fine.”

  Lila turns to me when he has left. I take her into my arms and let her sob. Danel looks on in the awkward manner of a man who does not know what to do with a crying woman.

  At last, Lila sniffs and pulls away from me, touching my shoulder in apology for soaking it.

  Nami lies with both paws on the snake’s carcass. Pleased with herself, her tail sweeps a clear swath among the floor rushes.

  I take a deep breath, my gaze drawn to the severed head of the cobra. “Well,” I say on the exhale, “Tonight we will have lentils and snake.”

  Danel looks on in perplexity as Lila and I burst into a somewhat crazed laughter and more tears.

  It is only later, when we have poured tea for Danel, that a thought occurs to me.

  “Lila, did you come directly home from the market after you bought the lentils?”

  “Not directly,” she said. “I went to purchase a new pot.”

  “What did you do with the lentil basket?”

  Her face pales as she grasps the reason for my question. “I left it with the vendor at the Gate.” She takes a quick breath. “Surely, you don’t think—?”

  “Why would anyone put a venomous snake in your basket?” Danel asks, his hands clenching into fists.

  “We are hated here,” I remind him, thinking of the stone that found my head when I last went out alone.

  CHAPTER

  49

  How can I keep silent? How can I stay quiet?

  My friend, whom I loved, has turned to clay.

  Shall I not be like him, and also lie down,

  Never to rise again through all eternity?

  —Epic of Gilgamesh

  WHEN WE NEXT VISIT WITH Jemia, I expect Nami’s gamboling greeting at the door, her dejection at being abandoned forgotten in the excitement of my return. But she is not at the door. Could she be asleep in the courtyard or the sleeping room? I move swiftly through the house, my heart a stone.

  “Where is Nami?” I demand of Lot.

  He spreads his hands. Pheiné marches from her room to his side. “He jumped through the window.”

  “She,” I sharply correct, as I run to the window and lean out, calling for her. “Nami! Nami!” Why did I leave her? I worried she would try to follow me. Panic beats in my chest like the wings of the trapped bird from moons ago.

  Stricken, I leave the house, Lila and Danel at my side, and hobble through the streets like a woman who has lost her senses, calling for Nami, asking everyone if they have seen a black dog that looks like a small gazelle. They know her, yes; she is well known as my shadow, though I am not often out. A few seem to forget I am despised and pity my obvious devastation, but they have not seen her. We search until it is dark.

  Numb, I allow Lila and Danel to guide me back.

  FOR A WEEK, I search for her, Danel accompanying me. He feels b
adly that I lost Nami because of his request, but I blame myself, not him. I taught her to jump out the window.

  I cannot eat. Lila is concerned and makes me drink water or, better, goat’s milk, though I cannot taste it. My behavior disturbs Lot, but Pheiné cannot comprehend it and complains of my laziness. When I am at home, I sit in the window, looking out at the sea. Thamma, in general, ignores me, but once, when Pheiné is not around, she pauses beside me and whispers, “I am sorry.” It is a small thing, but I wonder what kind of person she might have been without Pheiné’s influence.

  At night, when they are all asleep, I climb the hillside. My feet now know this path so well, it does not matter if there is moonlight or darkness. My hands recognize the touch of the stones—which ones protrude and which are smooth and recessed. I know the path, even without the gleam of white on Nami’s tail that has always led the way.

  CHAPTER

  50

  “And this is the first law of the luminaries: the luminary, the Sun, has its rising in the eastern portals … and its setting in the western portals.”

  —Book of Enoch

  IT IS ALMOST DUSK. THE wild doves are calling, and we are about to eat the evening meal when someone pounds at the door. Lila goes to answer it in my name. She returns with Danel behind her before I have managed to rise. My usual pleasure in seeing my brother dissolves at his flushed, sweaty demeanor. “What is wrong?”

  Danel takes a moment to capture his breath. “Angels,” he says, gulping air, “at the Gate.”

  “What?” My mind cannot grasp what he is saying.

  He takes a deep breath and says more clearly. “Raph and Mika are in the courtyard inside the Gate.” Danel looks toward Lot, who has emerged in clean clothes from our room, where he was washing off the grime of his journey from his fields.

  “Who is at the Gate?” Lot asks, having only heard part of Danel’s announcement.

  “El’s messengers,” Danel says again.

  My heart is a loud drumbeat in my ears. Mika? Here? It is impossible; and yet somewhere buried in my being, I knew he would come.

  Danel adds, “The people’s mood is not welcoming.”

  I can barely hear him over the thunder of my pulse, but I understand at once, and so does Lot. Since their presence here almost two summers ago, Lot’s preaching has included frequent pronouncements about the visit of his god’s angels, hinting their return would mean El’s punishment was imminent.

  It is obvious to me, however, that Lot is surprised at the angels’ return, despite his public predictions.

  He points at me. “Prepare. I will bring them.”

  Danel has caught his breath. “I tried to get them to come to my grandmother’s house,” he warns, “but they insisted they would sleep in the Gate with the merchants.”

  “No,” Lot says. “They do not understand the danger. I will bring them.” He glares at me as if I am the cause of this problem.

  “All will be ready,” I manage, my thoughts whirling like a desert dust demon.

  We have already prepared the meal, so Lila spreads freshly beaten rugs in the courtyard and shoos the chickens aside. We roll out more guest rugs for sleeping pallets.

  Pheiné does nothing useful, but stands in the middle of the courtyard, her hands on her hips. “We have no room for guests with that cursed donkey here.”

  I ignore her, rearranging the cushions to make a place for them around the cook fire. Pheiné hates being ignored.

  “At least that disgusting dog is gone.”

  I am passing near her, and I spin around without thought, the flat of my palm meeting her right cheek with a loud smack. She staggers back with a sharp gasp.

  Thamma, who had been helping Lila with the rugs, freezes, her eyes widening. Lila turns her head away, but not before I catch a fleeting smile.

  Pheiné takes several outraged breaths before she manages to speak. “You struck me!”

  I say nothing.

  “You serpent!”

  She takes a step toward me. I am taller than she, but she knows I cannot move quickly. I narrow my eyes and grasp my staff tighter. When I do not back away, she stops, her nostrils flaring. “My father will not allow this in his house.”

  “I am wife here,” I say as calmly as I can. “The house is mine, as is discipline of the children.”

  Her left cheek flames to match the right one. “Children? You are the child!”

  “It is true I am younger in age, but it makes no matter. I am wife and this is my household. Now, do something useful or get out of the way.”

  WE ARE READY when Lot returns. I greet them courteously as they enter, but Mika grabs my shoulders. “Adira!”

  I cannot hear for the gallop of blood in my ears.

  Raph, beautiful Raph, puts a hand on Mika’s arm. “Brother.” It is all he says, but like Lila’s soft word to Danel, it captures Mika’s attention, and he releases me.

  I bid them sit on the plaster bench that lines the wall in the greeting room, the same seat where Hurriya washed their feet in the traditional welcome to travelers. How surprised would that young Adira have been to know in only two summers’ time, she would be in Hurriya’s place. I am dizzy with the disorienting thought and grateful to be on my knees, closer to the earth.

  Pheiné positions herself to minister to Raph, angling her face so he does not see the red mark on her cheek. She has avoided speaking to me or acknowledging my existence.

  Mika protests when I remove his sandals. I am certain Raph has told him of all my injuries, if he cannot see for himself that I move like an old cow. I keep my head down, grateful for the thick braid that falls over the injured side of my face.

  I wash the dust from his feet with tenderness, my hands trembling, remembering the touch of his hands on my flesh. The memory still sears—only so, I tell myself, because another man’s touch has not replaced it. And now that half my face looks as if an ox stepped on it, a man is not likely to touch me, unless I slip out in the night during the Spring Rites and keep away from the torchlight. I silently mock that young girl-in-boy’s-garb who worried about the slight bump on her nose.

  When I am finished, Mika helps me stand. Still I keep my gaze down, though I can feel his desire to have me look at him.

  I cannot hide myself when we sit for the evening meal. I sit with Raph between Mika and me. Raph is much easier to talk to. He was at my side when I looked far worse.

  “I am glad to see you, Adira,” he says, “but you are so thin! What happened to the flesh I put on you in Mira?”

  “I too am glad to see you.” I smile, aware of the way my mouth twists at the right corner where my cheek hollows into a depression.

  “Where is Nami?” he asks.

  Suddenly I cannot speak.

  “She jumped out the window,” Thamma says hastily, her eyes still wide and as full of Raph as Pheiné’s.

  Raph gives me a look of sympathy. He understands my love for Nami and my suffering.

  “Has El sent you because of Sodom’s sin?” Lot asks after we have begun to eat. It is not good manners to speak business before the meal is over, but he cannot restrain himself.

  “I seek … something here,” Mika says.

  I remember he came the first time seeking ancient knowledge, something from his people’s dim past when they lived beyond the sea in a land of rolling hills as thick with green grass as a tightly woven carpet. So many times he has told me of his homeland, that it is as real to me as the desert or the sea outside my window. My gaze travels the white plaster walls of my house. To my surprise, I have to wipe at a tear. Perhaps, I hope, no one saw it.

  But I can feel Mika’s gaze. He saw.

  “If El sent you to find something, I will help you find it,” Lot says eagerly.

  Mika’s jaw twitches. With Mika, this signals irritation. “Do you know then the instructions to build a time-temple of stone?”

  Lot’s thick lips part. “I know not what this is.”

  I remember something Mika to
ld me when we spoke out on the desert.

  Our oldest name is “Watchers.” We have watched the sky from the beginning of time. My ancestors built temples of stone that measured the heavens and brought the goddess into them.

  As it had then, a passage from one of Sarai’s teachings presents itself in my mind, but this time I speak it aloud: “And they brought me to a place of darkness, and to a mountain the point of whose summit reached to heaven. And they showed me all the secrets of the ends of the heavens, and all the chambers of all the stars, and all the luminaries.”

  Into the quiet that follows, Pheiné says, “I am certain our guests do not wish to be bored with that old tale.” She smiles sweetly at Raph.

  Lot’s expression clearly conveys he thinks his wife has lost her senses. “Why—?” he begins, but Mika raises his flattened palm toward Lot in a command for silence.

  Mika has never taken his eyes from me, and I have nowhere else to look but in them. They are as green as the lands of his ancestors, and they fix on me as if I have uttered the words to the knowledge he has long sought. I blink.

  Mika does not blink. “Speak those words again,” he says in a voice I have never heard from him.

  I repeat the quote.

  “Is there more?” he asks, almost hoarse.

  “Yes.”

  “Say it.”

  I do, the words coming easily to my mind, though I have not recited them since I last sat at Sarai’s feet with Ishmael before our journey to Sodom. They speak of Enoch’s journey to a high place where he saw El and his angels, a place of many portals arranged in a circle. The angels taught him which stars rose in the circle. Now my heart is beating faster. This structure, this palace of El’s, could it be the time-temple?

  Mika and Raph stare at me.

  CHAPTER

  51

  A stranger has big eyes, but sees nothing.

  —African proverb

  I AM AGITATED WHEN LOT DECIDES to sleep in our bed. Perhaps he is jealous of El’s angels and the attention they have paid me. I need not have been concerned. Lot drank heavily after the meal and snores almost as soon as he lies down. If I had wanted sleep, I could not have found it at his side. When I slip from the room, I am not surprised to see both Mika’s and Raph’s pallets empty. I am surprised, however, to see Lila sitting up against the wall, her blanket around her shoulders.