I finished off a small honey cake. “We could use a warrior now, Your Majesty.”
“Just Gilgamesh,” he replied. “I don’t rule over anything anymore.”
“I wish my brother were here. He was your biggest fan.”
“Where is he?” When Gilgamesh saw my expression, he got it immediately. “I’m sorry. I lost someone dear to me, too. It was centuries ago, but I miss him as much now as I did then. All this”—he gestured at the lush trees and flitting butterflies—“is because of Enkidu. He loved nature.”
“Centuries…” I said, my stomach sinking. “The pain never goes away?”
“It evolves into something else, Sikander. The emptiness in your heart is gradually filled with the joy of having known him.”
I thought I heard Belet mumble, “That’s not enough,” but I could have misunderstood her. She glowered at her tower of treats as though it had insulted her.
“You’re not how I imagined you’d be,” I said to the demigod.
Gilgamesh shrugged. “A man changes, given time. And I’ve had plenty of that. But enough about me—tell me about your brother.”
Belet banged her fist on the table. “What has this got to do—”
“Indulge me, Belet,” said Gilgamesh. “Go on, Sikander.”
I talked as we ate. I told him about Mo’s fascination with botany, and how he recorded every flower he found. About the pressings he’d made since he was little, and the cuttings he collected. About how, since we only had an apartment, he’d spent all his spare time working at the local community garden, and how it had been named after him.
“Sounds like a man after my own heart,” said Gilgamesh, brushing the crumbs off his beard. “Since you’ve come this far, I think I owe you some explanation. Right, Belet?”
“I’d rather have your help,” she grumbled. Her lack of respect made me squirm in my seat, but a part of me respected her boldness. Between her and Gilgamesh, Nergal didn’t stand a chance.
“Perhaps this story will shed some light.” He sipped some rose water before asking, “You know the tale of how I found the flower of immortality in a cave at the bottom of the endless ocean?”
I nodded. And helped myself to another slice of cake. It fit my mouth perfectly.
“All that is true. And what’s also true is that it was a long swim back to the shore.”
I began circling a date tart. “And you fell asleep and a snake came along and ate the flower.”
Gilgamesh smirked. “Sounds a bit convenient, don’t you think?”
Belet hadn’t touched anything on her plate; she was too agitated. “Then what really happened?”
“This.” Gilgamesh plucked a flower out of a vase and popped a few petals in his mouth. “I ate part of the flower right there and then. Afterward, I fed the rest to a snake basking on a rock. It slithered off and that was the end of the matter, or so I thought.”
Now I understood. “You didn’t want humanity to learn the secret of immortality.”
“I’d been around long enough to know that the wrong sort of people would be after it for all the wrong reasons. Best not to tempt them. I returned home to Uruk and told my scribes the snake had stolen it. A few years later, I faked my death, stepped aside from history, and took up gardening.”
Gilgamesh had lied. And Nergal knew it.
“That’s it?” Belet asked. “You’ve been pottering around for the last four thousand years just…gardening?”
“It’s not easy. Still, I feel I’ve made some solid progress.”
“That’s all very sweet, and we’d love to hear about your vegetable patch later,” continued Belet, “but right now we need the skills you’re more famous for. You need to deal with Nergal. Right now.”
“I put down my weapons a long time ago,” said Gilgamesh.
This was not turning out as I’d hoped. “But you wielded the Sky Cutter itself, Abubu. What did you do with it?”
Gilgamesh pointed to the big shovel resting against the table.
I stared at it. “You turned the greatest weapon of all creation into a gardening tool?”
“I could hardly dig with a sword, Sikander.”
Belet took a deep breath and, very reluctantly, held out Kasusu. “Here, then. Take mine.”
The blade hummed with excitement. “Now this is more like it. It’s an honor to be working with you again, lord. Perhaps we should start with a few simple stretches, then—”
“No,” said Gilgamesh. “I’ve renounced all weapons.”
“What?” Kasusu shrieked, loud enough to crack a nearby glass pane.
I finally caught on. “You’ve become a pacifist.”
He nodded. “It was the only choice. I was born and raised in the Middle East. It’s my home and I love it, but has it ever enjoyed a time of peace? At first it was hard not to get involved. To fight the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Judeans, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Saracens, the Crusaders, this group of people or that. All wrestling over a patch of land, most of it desert and uninhabitable. What should I have done? Killed them all?”
“So you gave up being a hero?” asked Belet.
“I gave up madness,” said Gilgamesh.
“But you’re the greatest warrior the world has ever seen!” I exclaimed. “You can’t give up fighting!”
“I can, and I did. And if I can, so can everyone else,” he said. “I plow. I seed. I grow. In this small way, I try to make amends for all the damage I caused. This dirt on my hands is there to cover the blood. I concern myself with creating life now, not ending it.”
“Yeah, but you can make an exception, right?” I asked. “This is a jihad, Gilgamesh. A righteous cause. The classic good-versus-evil showdown.”
Gilgamesh laughed. “There are always righteous causes.”
How could I argue with him? Our family’s history had sprung from war. Everyone we knew had a tale of homes destroyed, families torn apart, and heartbreaking loss. How many sacrifices had Gilgamesh witnessed before realizing how futile they all were? He was totally right. So why did it feel so utterly wrong?
“It’s simpler than that,” said Belet, glowering. “He’s scared of Nergal. I don’t believe it, but Gilgamesh is a coward.”
“Belet…” I warned.
“What’s he going to do? Throw a cookie at me? He’s given up fighting—he said so himself.”
But Gilgamesh didn’t rise to her bait. He met Belet’s gaze calmly. “Believe what you wish, daughter of Ishtar.”
Then it came to me.…
I sighed, hoping I wasn’t overdoing it. “Of course, there’s a simple way to prove Belet wrong. I’m not saying you need to fight Nergal, but I bet just showing your face would make the god reconsider his recent life choices. His demons wet themselves when I merely mentioned your name, so imagine how they’d respond to a personal appearance.…” I looked over at his spade. “You could take that with you. It’s big and heavy.”
One corner of Gilgamesh’s mouth lifted. “You know the quickest way to start a fight?”
“No…”
“Show up.” Gilgamesh passed around another plate of cookies. “Though I appreciate your attempt to appeal to my ego, Sikander, I’m not going to start a war to prove a point, to you or Belet or anyone.”
Belet slammed down the cookie plate. “Then what use are you? Mother was depending on you!”
“Your mother helped me go into hiding, Belet. She agreed with the path I’d chosen, despite being the goddess of war. In return, I gave her my ring, just in case she might need my help one day. I owed her that much at least.”
So that was why she’d been so cagey when I’d asked her about the truth between her and Gilgamesh. She’d kept his secret until the very end.
Belet crossed her arms. “And she sent us to you so you could kill Nergal.”
Gilgamesh gazed calmly back at her, and I saw pity in his eyes. “If you think the answer to everything is violence, then you truly are your mother’s daughter.”
“And I’ll give it freely, Sikander. But I will not raise a weapon ever again.” Gilgamesh stood up and walked over to his herb garden. “What’s the problem you need solved?”
“Nergal? We just told you?”
“No. He’s the cause, not the problem itself.”
He seemed like a pretty big problem to me, but what was it I wanted, really? To cure my parents. “The problem is the diseases infecting the city.”
Gilgamesh plucked a leaf and handed it over. “You know what this is?”
“Fenugreek. Mama uses the seeds to make aish merahrah flatbread.”
“It can also manage diabetes.” Gilgamesh pulled out a stinging nettle. “Urtica dioica. Effective in treating kidney disorders, hemorrhages, and gout.” He gestured to his herb garden. “Every plant here has medicinal properties. Somewhere in the Amazon forest there’s a plant that will cure cancer.”
I wasn’t convinced. “Nergal has brought on the apocalypse, and you’re talking about herbal remedies. This isn’t like treating a cold with a slice of lemon.”
“Actually, it is,” said Gilgamesh. “I’m living proof of that, and so are you.”
Okay, now he’d lost me entirely.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “You know the beginning of my story, but what about after? Did you ever wonder what happened to the snake that ate the flower of immortality?”
“It lived forever?” guessed Belet.
Gilgamesh rolled his wrist, prompting me. “And fertilized the earth…?”
I knew what he was talking about, thanks to Mo. “It ate the plant and swallowed the seed. Then the seed worked its way through the digestive system and…out it came. Animal droppings often contain undigested seeds.…”
“It’s the most natural thing in the world,” Gilgamesh agreed. “So, this seed settles in the soil of Mesopotamia, and it grows and blossoms into a flower. The strain flourishes in some lonely place in the desert until, one day, thousands of years later, a keen botanist stumbles upon it.”
An electric shiver shot up my spine. “Like Mo.”
“He sent you a cutting. Somehow you accidentally digested part of it—perhaps a piece of the leaf. Or maybe a few drops of its sap entered your bloodstream through a cut. It happened so easily, you didn’t even realize it. It’s in your system, Sikander.”
Belet stared at me like I’d grown a second nose. “The train.”
Not just that. There was also the night at the deli, when I’d been bitten and stung by insects, and the day when I’d been beaten up at the docks. Each time, I was back to full health within twenty-four hours. It wasn’t normal, but in all the chaos I’d ignored it.
“I’m immortal?” I asked, hardly able to say it out loud because it sounded so ridiculous, so impossible.
“What did you do with the cutting?” asked Belet.
“I must have planted it. In Mo’s community garden. That’s what I did with all the cuttings he sent.”
“It must have bloomed by now,” Gilgamesh said. “The flower of immortality. The cure to every illness, even death itself.”
Belet sprang up. “We need to get to that garden of yours right now.”
She wasn’t wrong.
GILGAMESH FACED US BOTH, ARMS FOLDED ACROSS HIS massive pectorals, and for a moment, he was the man in charge once more—the king. “Nergal is being devoured by the very plagues he spreads. He is literally rotting away. He’s dying.”
“Okay, but so what?” I asked. “He’ll end up back in the netherworld to try all over again?”
“No,” said Gilgamesh firmly. “Nergal broke many sacred laws when he escaped Kurnugi—laws that govern even the gods. If he fails here, he fails forever and will be utterly annihilated. That’s why he wants the flower. He needs to cure himself so he can go back to being the god he once was. He risked everything coming to New York, Sikander, and he’ll risk everything to ensure he succeeds.”
“So can’t we just wait this out? How long has he got left?”
“Too long.” Gilgamesh shook his head. “Look at how much damage he’s done in less than a week. How much of Manhattan will remain if he survives another month?”
Not much was the answer. Once again, it was up to just us.
Belet put Kasusu back in the pillowcase. “I’m ready.”
It was all falling into place at last. Mo had always been on the lookout for new plants. I could picture his excitement at finding a flower he couldn’t categorize, growing in some lonely, desolate part of Iraq. I didn’t remember which cutting it was; he’d sent so many, some to be pressed when he got home, others to be potted, and some to be transplanted into his garden. Now that I thought of it, it could have been his final shipment. Little had I known then that it would attract the god of rot.
Gilgamesh wrapped up some cookies for us to take along. “Get the flower and bring it here. I should be able to use it to make a healing potion for the pox Nergal is spreading.”
“A lot of people are already infected, including my parents,” I replied. “How are we going to cure them all?”
“First things first, Sikander. Get the flower.” He tucked the cookies into a net string shopping bag.
“These magical?”
Gilgamesh smiled. “The food? No.”
“Do you need this back?” Belet asked, showing the ring to him again.
“Leave it here. I’d rather it not fall into less deserving hands.”
Belet frowned, and I knew she wasn’t happy about parting with any object her mom had once treasured. Still, she handed it to the demigod. “We won’t need it to return?”
“Once you’ve been a guest in my house, you can always find me again.”
I wasn’t paying close attention to their conversation. I was still trying to get my head around the fact Mo had found the flower of immortality. I inspected my hands. No bruises or cuts at all. I didn’t feel so much as a twinge of pain, despite having been flattened by a train three days ago. “So I’m gonna live forever?”
Gilgamesh paused. “How about you get through the next few days before worrying about the next hundred years.”
“But…is it lonely?”
“That depends on you. The ones who manage it best are those who continually find fresh purpose.”
“Like gardening?”
“Like nourishing others.” He pulled two oranges off a branch and added them to the bag, then pulled it shut with a stone toggle. “My advice is to start off as you mean to go on.”
“You mean spend the next thousand years running a deli?”
Gilgamesh stopped. “A deli?”
“Mo’s. It’s on the corner of Fifteenth and—”
“Siegel. I know it well. That Baghdad sauce of yours is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even an eternal lifetime.” He fanned his mouth. “Anyone who can eat a whole kebab covered in that will never have to prove their courage any other way.”
Wow. Our first ever celebrity customer. I know the fate of Manhattan was at stake and all that, but the one and only Gilgamesh had eaten at our deli! I scratched the back of my neck, feeling a little awkward about making my next request. “Could you put that on Yelp?”
Belet looked around the small clearing, scowling as usual. “Cookies and fruit. Is that it? No magical weapons?”
“I’m a gardener, Belet,” said Gilgamesh.
“You must have something useful,” she persisted.
He held out the net bag. “Take this.”
I took it and slung it over my shoulder. “Shukran,” I said, throwing a glare at Belet. How was it that she had absolutely none of Ishtar’s graciousness? Gilgamesh took us to the ziggurat entrance and then turned to me. “Be careful, Sikander. You’ve cheated death, and that has consequences. There will be an…urge within you, and around you,
to redress the imbalance of being alive when you shouldn’t be. It happened to me, and the next thing I knew, I was trapped in Kurnugi. I had to serve my time until opportunity presented itself to leave.”
“You think the same thing will happen to me?”
“Just be prepared.”
“Can I take a moment to fanboy? That was Gilgamesh,” I said. We were back out on Fifth Avenue. “The actual in-the-flesh Gilgamesh!”
“A bit of a disappointment, if you ask me,” said Belet. The subway was shut down, so we stalked the street, searching for an available cab. “I really don’t know what Mother saw in him.”
“Come on, Belet. The guy is literally a legend.”
“And Ishtar was literally a goddess, so forgive me if I’m not impressed.”
“He’s trying to help us.”
“With homeopathy!” she snapped. “He turned Abubu into a shovel!”
“I’m sure he knew what he was doing. A sword named Sky Cutter doesn’t sound like such a big deal.”
Kasusu screeched from inside the pillowcase. Belet just stared at me in horror. “That statement is so outrageous, I’m amazed you haven’t been struck by lightning.”
I ground my teeth, trying hard to keep my temper. “Why are you so angry about everything?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because being angry won’t bring Mo back,” I said.
Belet sighed. “Where’s the garden, Sik?”
“Downtown, not too far from the deli. Mo would head there once a week, right after Jummah prayers.”
“And you?”
“I worked, of course. Fridays are our busiest time—all the clubbers need their carbs before pulling all-nighters. Mo asked me to look after the garden while he was away, but he was away too much. And then he…Anyway, gardening’s not really my thing.”
“So…the plants tended to die?”
“Not all of them. The weeds were doing great last time I checked.” Drizzle started to fall, increasing the already cutthroat competition for a cab. Belet paced up and down the street, trying to hail one.
The package had arrived a week after Mo died. It had been freaky, seeing the box with our address in his handwriting. The cutting was in a small airtight box with some soil, still a little damp. He’d stuck a Post-it on the front with a simple message—Plant this!—and the initial M hastily scrawled in the corner. I’d almost thrown the cutting away, thinking that the garden didn’t matter anymore. Mo would never see it again. But that had felt wrong, so I went ahead and fulfilled his last wish.
City of the Plague God Page 16
