by Ava D. Dohn
Symeon and Hanna smiled at their handiwork. For several weeks, they assisted with the construction of the small room that was to be Ishtar’s new home for the moment. Drorli’s team was meticulous with the duplication of the girl’s old bedroom. Hanna was valuable in offering up tiny details that research information might well leave out, like the medicine smell of the old cowhide robe that was rolled up on the cedar chest near the foot of the bed, or the patched arm of the girl’s favorite doll that she had saved since childhood. Symeon helped as best he could, making suggestions here and there. When the team was finished, both he and Hanna said it looked and felt just like Ishtar’s room.
It was about twelve feet wide by sixteen feet long. Hanna told Drorli that it was used as a storage room for sales goods. After Ishtar’s father died, she demanded it for her sleeping quarters, they reminding the girl so much of her father. It being near the back of the home and away from the family quarters, the girl’s mother resisted until finally being worn down by Ishtar’s constant requests. Hanna said that many of the musty scents and odors lingered long after the room was emptied. She thought those might be some of the reasons the girl like the room so much.
The stucco over red, baked bricks appeared aged and cracked, the ceiling sooty from the smoke of countless fires burned in the stone fireplace. Even the oaken floor was shiny smooth from the endless mopping and heavy foot traffic. Hanna said the room was used as servants’ quarters before Ishtar’s father bought the house when the family moved to the city. He did little with it other than clean it out and paint on a thin coat of whitewash. That was the way Ishtar left it after she acquired the room.
The decision was made to reproduce this room because it had only one door, and all the windows were bricked up long before Ishtar’s day. Also being far from the central living quarters and away from the street, it was a quiet room, much easier to replicate the living conditions of the day that way.
There was a small, half-burned tallow candle sitting beside the chipped earthen basin on the washstand that was located just to the right of the blazing fireplace - Hanna’s idea, she remembering that Ishtar always had it placed on the washstand so that she could get a better view of her face while primping before the tiny wall mirror. Ishtar also obtained those particular candles from the butcher’s wife because of the peculiarly pleasant, pungent odor they produced when being burned.
It was this kind of little detail that Hanna brought to the table when assisting in Ishtar’s returning. At times, she fussed over the smallest of them, charging that Ishtar was very inquisitive and the slightest thing out of place would instantly be noticed. Although Hanna complained the loudest about the ‘spoilt child’, her love for Ishtar was nearly as deep as Symeon’s. In fact, it was later said by her that she believed her peevishness was more to quiet her own adoration for the girl, other than to find fault.
Hanna was as excited as Symeon as they awaited Ishtar’s awakening, though she kept most of her emotion hidden away from the others. Drorli noticed, but said nothing. He did make special time for her, though, requesting her assistance at little, unimportant projects, or just chatting casually with her about her life in those bygone days. Hanna was grateful to him for it, realizing the man’s motive. His reward was her occasional gentle touch, and her radiant smile, showing the woman’s deep appreciation.
“I feel old all over again. Even the aching in my bones troubles me.” Symeon wryly commented as he peered into the dressing mirror. He touched the side of his wrinkled face with hands covered in age spots and sporting tired skin. “This stuff feels so real that I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ve woken up from a wonderful dream and am back in my old world.”
He turned and looked at Eurawha who stood near in her smock beside the makeup table. Smiling, he added with reassurance, “Nope. I’m still here. You’re still here. And all your fancy toys are still here.” He looked over at Hanna who was sitting there half-naked, her upper body being done up to appear like a woman in her late middle years. At the moment, she was musing over how saggy her new breasts were, the attendants having recently applied the prosthetics over her round, full, natural ones.
Hanna smiled at Symeon. “I don’t ever want to be old again. It makes a person feel so… so… ugly. That’s why I always hid myself in all those heavy robes. I guess I was vain, but I did really feel ugly when I got old.” She looked over at Drorli. “The proverbs telling about dying old and satisfied might have been inspired, but was not written by the aged, that I know. I was satisfied only when my decrepit body was finally surrendering to death and letting me leave life with what little dignity I still possessed.”
Drorli frowned. “Life is such a precious thing…”
Hanna shook her head, disagreeing. “I’ve watched your kind clinging to life when their body was in a frightful state, the hope being that, as long as power coursed through their veins, there would be an eventual return to a healthy life...”
Hanna let out a sudden cry of surprise as an attendant applied some very cold paste to exposed skin just below her armpit. The attendant apologized, grinning as he continued to apply the goo. Drorli and the others laughed. Hanna fussed about how it reminded her of other unpleasantries she wallowed in when she prepared for her visit to Symeon long ago. Raising her hands high, with curled fingers, she bared her teeth, threatening, and whined with a hiss, “Not hungry now. No! Not hungry now.”
Everyone laughed, recalling the tale of the little stinky creature.
When the laughter subsided, Hanna finished making reply to Drorli’s comment. “That was fine for your kind. Our kind, on the other hand, saw there was no renewal for our old age. We saw nothing but a relentless sickness steadily eating away at us until we became weaker, uglier, more forgetful, and… and when your breath smells like rot and you can’t even control you bladder anymore… well, maybe you get the point.”
“Anyway, for my kind, the cancer of old age only offered us certain death. Our hoped for renewal came for us on the other side of it… death I mean. Death then became something to search out, at times to yearn for, but it had to be hunted down discreetly so that others – the foolish younger ones who still valued life - would not believe you callous over such a wonderful gift as living in a body that was slowly decomposing around you.”
She raised a hand, pointing toward her heart. “I was still a blushing maiden here, when I went to my final rest, but up here…” She placed a finger to her temple. “I was a deplorable old thing that was happy to leave all Hell behind… whether there was a future for me or not.”
Waxing romantic, Symeon offered his response. “My dear Hanna, should you be ever as beautiful as you are looking now, I would still find you the most attractive of all female kind. I loved you from the first day we met, although I never spoke of it because you were with a husband. Later, when you were widowed, I so much wanted you as a companion, but alas I had duties and obligations that led me far away from your company. My hope was for us to meet again on the other side of the universe. And look! I hope no more.”
Hanna eyed Symeon, her mischievous gaze aflame with jealous suspicion. She hissed accusingly, “It says it loves me. It does. It does. I sees it look at her… and the other beauties. It says it loves me, all old looking, but I sees it desire the other pretties, the nubile, sweet ones. Ifs it really loves me, come prove it with a kiss on these old woman’s lips. Make it real, my lad, or I’ll say you’ve the tongue of a cad who weaves music to suit his own fancy. Now gives this old lady a kiss.”
At first, Symeon thought Hanna was seriously jealous. When he caught sight of the others smirking, he began to catch on. He defended himself, exclaiming, “Well I do love you! Always have.”
Drorli chimed in, motioning toward Hanna. “Well then, give the lady a kiss, or I’ll take her up on the offer and you’ll be outside in the cold.”
Symeon harrumphed, “You’ll do no such thing!” And, with that, although he was
embarrassed to express such forms of endearment so openly, he got up from his chair, walked over to Hanna, took hold of her arms, and planted a huge kiss right on her lips.
“There!” He declared. “I told you I loved you, and now I’ve proved it right in front of everyone here.”
Hanna looked deeply into his eyes, her face so serious, and pouted, “You needed to be shamed into admitting it, though. My dear Drorli sounded so much more sincere when he said it.”
“You’re impossible!” Symeon sputtered as he glared at Drorli. “This is my woman, at least for the time being. Keep your distance if you know what’s good for you!”
Drorli threw his hands up in mock concern. “Yes sir! Yes sir! I’ll be sure to keep my distance. Don’t wanna come between a man and his woman!”
Hanna was not pleased, the woman’s voice reflecting her not finding any humor in the men’s jousting. “Enough! I’m not a piece of meat seasoned to titillate your tastes...either one of you! I live not in this universe to please a man. To satisfy my heart, I was delivered here… at least when we have returned sanity to this Hell. In the meantime, I shall choose whom I have an affair of love with. My choosing!”
She eyed Symeon. “Don’t call me ‘your woman’ again, or I’ll take the next man I find and give him my love in front of your eyes, making you watch the rich romance he can offer me and my impassioned cries in response to his lovemaking. I love you because I want to love you, always have. I love Drorli, too. He mentored me long before you entered this world.”
Hanna now turned her attention to Drorli, chastising him. “Stop encouraging this fellow! Symeon always was a bit jealous over me and you don’t need to stir those feelings up in his heart. I’ve had many suitors that equal your manly abilities...and a few that make me swoon just thinking about their endowed majesty and their mastery of such gifts to deliver a woman to an intoxicated state of ecstasy. It is not your size nor abilities that have made me fall in love with you, and love you I do… very much.”
She frowned, looking back and forth between Drorli and Symeon. “I do not fall in love with a man who stirs passions between my thighs… any man with a tool has that power.” Touching her heart, she exclaimed, “I fall in love here!”
“Now...” Hanna pointed at herself. “if you two do not learn how to treat this woman with a little more care and respect, she’ll gather herself back to the arms of someone who understands her feelings…” She motioned toward Eurawha, “and does not attempt her possession.”
Eurawha blushed, not from Hanna’s reference to their occasional romantic interludes, but to have someone so openly confess such deep love for her. She smiled ever so faintly. “Of your kind, only with you have I shared the blood grape. My heart aches for the hour when again we share that wine of love and dream wild visions of a maiden descended from the Daughter Dragon Who Dances on the Stones.”
Hanna puzzled, curious. “What…?”
Eurawha turned away, pretending to examine some of the equipment while checking the viewing screen.
Drorli apologized. “My lady, I was insensitive concerning your feelings regarding this matter, forgetting, in the merriment of the moment, the oppressive world from which you have arrived. My deepest regrets for acting so uncouth...”
Symeon was about to also apologize when screams and panicked cries came from the nearby room. Drorli and Eurawha glanced around at the various gauges and then up at the viewing monitor while Hanna and Symeon bolted for the door to Ishtar’s room.
“Stop!” Drorli cried. It did little good.
Eurawha was out of her chair in a flash, catching Symeon by the wrist before he could turn the door’s latch. “Don’t do that!” She chastised, anxious. “Leave the girl be or she may suffer in abhorrent ways!”
Symeon stopped, but held his grip while looking around into Eurawha’s face, dumbfounded. In desperation, he excitedly exclaimed, “She’s suffering now! Something must be wrong!”
Shaking her head, Eurawha ordered Symeon and Hanna to go back and sit down. “We’re in charge here, you being our assistants. Finish your duties and we will ours. Do as you’re told!”
As the two hesitantly retraced their steps, Eurawha explained again to them the process of the reawakening. “Do not tempt Time. It is a most vicious foe. As you both should recall… for Drorli and I thoroughly explained this to you… Mother sometimes dabbles with her children as they sleep in the Web of the Minds. This creates a dilemma in the person’s subconscious. Now, during the flesh’s waking hours, the subconscious has to assimilate all that new information with life experiences recorded while awake in the flesh.”
She motioned Hanna to go back to her attendant to finish preparations while at the same time sitting Symeon down in his chair, cautioning, “We showed you how the brain functions and described how the mind works. Ishtar’s mind must incorporate all her former logic with the new logic given her while she slept in the web. This cannot be accomplished until the child returns to her living sleep, which only began a few hours ago. If anything interferes with her current sleep cycle, she may be stricken with nightmares, or even worse night-terrors. No matter what happens, we must leave the child be until she wakes on her own.” Then wagging a finger at both of her wayward assistants, Eurawha threatened, “If you go near that door again, before my permitting it, I’ll throw you both out of here until the girl is up and about. Got it?!”
Symeon glanced at Drorli for solace. Drorli shrugged. “I’d listen to her if I were you. She runs things around here. I’m only aboard for the ride.”
Over the next few hours Drorli and Eurawha monitored Ishtar’s progress while Symeon and Hanna nervously finished preparing for the girl’s waking. It was difficult for Symeon to do nothing while hearing the crying moans and whimpers coming from the adjoining room, but he dutifully obeyed Eurawha’s admonition to leave the child be.
(Author’s note: Queen Ishtar remembers little of those frantic hours when her mind and heart were assimilating all the information given her with that of her living days’ memories while she slept in the Web of the Minds. “Fitful and frightening, to say the least,” has been the woman’s common statement. Her most vivid recollections during these waking hours were recently revealed to me when seeking information for this book.
“I remember well the baker - Travet, I believe his name - being shoved headlong into the animal pit. The few seconds he writhed in agony appeared to last for hours for me, the man’s screams piercing my ears to the point of head-wrenching pain. And then there was the chilling laughter of Governor Claudesius… to this day I have not been able to forget it, though a thousand times he has begged my forgiveness.”
“Oh yes! Merna, sweet Merna and her little one, Hilen… Hilen is a beautiful woman, as much so as her mother. She tells me she has no recollection of that time at all. To this day, my heart shudders when I think of those terrible events.”
“Anyway, those are the most memorable of the dreams I recall from those hours. Eventually, my fits of terror and panic eased, my heart calmed down, and I drifted off into a quiet slumber. My following dreams, I recall with greater intensity. They, I believe, were intended to be so, Lowenah wanting me to remember them.”)
As the time slowly passed, Ishtar’s frantic cries and distressful moans gradually subsided. After a bit, she drifted into another deep sleep that would last several more hours. Symeon and Hanna watched through the viewing screen as their little girl rolled on her side and began a quiet snore.
For the time being all was peaceful, the attending company patiently waiting for the girl’s wakening. But across that universe, another treasured child was being prepared for a far different role that she was to play a part in. The Singer of Songs and Laments, Sirion, a child so dear to Mihai’s heart, was being readied for her grand entrance at the upcoming Prisoner Exchange.
