Twilight in Babylon

by Frank, Suzanne

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  To Susan

  with everlasting gratitude and abiding affection

  Before time was a line, it was a circle.

  Before history was about war, it was about water.

  Before the divine was male, she was female.

  Before Babylon, was Ur.

  Part One

  The Fire

  Fire! Fire!”

  Cheftu could see smoke billowing upward from the city wall. A bad day for a fire; last night’s rain would cause the limestone to crack and explode as the heat expanded it. There was no way to avoid that danger; in Jerusalem all the houses were made of limestone.

  His house even, was made of limestone.

  The plume of smoke was gray against the spring-afternoon sky. It seemed to stab at the breast of heaven from the outer wall of the city. The fire must be on the outer wall.

  His home was on the outer wall.

  Cheftu hastened his steps. He should anyway; Chloe would be overjoyed they were leaving the city. Cheftu had just been made ambassador to Egypt. He climbed up to the highest point of his walk. From this position, he could see the fields. Everyone was out today, planting the terraced sides of the valley.

  He wound around another corner as he walked down to his house.

  “Is anyone inside?” the voices of concerned neighbors echoed out to him.

  “He works for the king. She’s usually here. Just a wife, you know. Barren, poor thing.”

  He worked for the king; Chloe was usually at home. His wife—barren.

  Cheftu took the last steps two at a time, up and around another corner, across the courtyard, and up and around again.

  The wooden door was black with smoke.

  His wooden door was black with smoke.

  “Chloe!” he shouted. Cheftu covered his face, then kicked the door open. The heat seared through his sandal. “Bring water,” he yelled at the two old women. He ran inside.

  He was lost in the gray heat; where was the kitchen? The sleeping platform? “Chloe?” he shouted. “Chloe!” Wind funneled from the back window through the hallway, and fueled the fire. Cheftu dropped to his hands and knees and felt around for her. Limestone popped, and the fire’s roar became stronger. Heat singed his skin. He smelled burning hair. “Chloe,” he coughed out.

  An arm.

  A lifeless arm.

  He shook her; her skin was rippled and blistered. Black smoke unfurled through the window. Fire crackled behind him. He dragged Chloe’s body over his shoulder and back, then ran for the window, hunched over and coughing. He threw her out onto the narrow walkway, then clambered after her.

  His neighbors sluiced down their homes.

  Cheftu coughed, gasped for air, and spat black phlegm on the white stone. He turned to look at Chloe. His physician’s glance was quick and conclusive: burns to 70 percent of her body. A head wound, sticky with blood, staining the stone with red.

  He wrapped the remains of his kilt around her head, but it didn’t change the facts. She would die, very soon.

  Her chest fell in labored breaths. There was no part of her untouched by fire, no inch not black and oozing, burned and bloody.

  The first block of limestone exploded, sending shards flying into the air. Cheftu shielded Chloe’s body as he pulled her around a ledge. She was beyond his help. Beyond all but the Almighty’s assistance. He looked up. A beautiful day; how could this be the day that Chloe would die?

  Above him the sun shone golden on the walled city of Jerusalem, this spring equinox, this twenty-third of March. The designated temple grounds with their caverns of—

  “There is one thing, chérie,” he whispered to his unconscious bride. “One way to save you, if God shows His mercy.” He gathered her in his arms and ran to the edge of the outer wall, then up the walkway, up the hill, up the plateau, ever leading up. To God.

  Fabric walls shielded the space, and a gold-encrusted tabernacle graced the center of the flat-topped hill. Priests must be close by, but Cheftu knew the grounds better than they. A wooden trapdoor concealed an entrance to the tunnels beneath the Temple Mount, but Cheftu found it. Opened it and stepped down inside with Chloe.

  It slammed shut above him.

  Sealing him inside the catacombs.

  Pain stabbed at his body, but he ignored it. Engorged blisters on his arms and legs, what felt like deafness in the cool silence of this cavern, were nothing to him. “It’s been so long since we’ve been here, chérie,” he said to her. Years since they had chosen to stay in this place, to make Jerusalem home. A mistake, he knew now. Cheftu swallowed painfully. Thank God she still breathed. Raspy, but alive.

  He adjusted her head on his shoulder to straighten her neck. Cheftu leaned against a smooth-carved wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the night all around him. “I don’t remember where the chamber is,” he said. He began to discern the shadows of archways and passages. “But we can find it.”

  For hours he walked, looking into every room, following the warren of walkways, ending back on himself again and again. The wound on her head had scabbed over, but all the other wounds had gotten worse. He’d never felt so helpless, so powerless. It was divine will, what happened next.

  She hadn’t murmured; it hurt him to speak. Blinded by the sweat of his efforts, he sagged against the wall. “Bon Dieu,” he whispered.

  When he opened his eyes later, the halls were filled with a faint blue glow. It bounced off the limestone walls until the whole space looked as though it were submerged in tropical, paradisical waters.

  Cheftu staggered to his feet and picked up Chloe. Heart pounding, he searched for the source of light. “We found it, chérie.”

  The archway glowed, a familiar fire. Safe. A healing flame. He laid Chloe’s body beneath it. She still inhaled and exhaled, but barely.

  “I know it is not the correct time,” he whispered to the One he believed listened. “You have set times and appointments in place, and abide by them.” He looked into the face of his beloved wife. She must have hit her head, fallen, and somehow started the fire. With her as its fodder. A terrible accident; a slap from the hand of fate.

  “I don’t ask special compensation because I think I am a good man. I ask because I know you are a good God. You love this woman far more than I, in mortal flesh, can.” He looked at her body. Ruined. “She still has so much to give. Let her live, let her find purpose.” His voice broke. “Let her know matchless love.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Give her another chance. Give her life.”

  The blue light of the chamber continued to flicker, glittering along the sides of the true Ark of the Covenant—hidden there to protect the people from its terrifying power—the curved ceilings of limestone, but there was no roar of wind, no mighty thundering voice. Cheftu spun when he heard the scamper of claws. A rat watched him inquisitively, upright on its hind legs, the reflection in its glassy eyes, blue.

  Chloe’s breath caught.

  It stopped.

  Cheftu watched her, waited, his hand on her ravaged chest. It didn’t move. He closed his eyes, his head bowed. Almost of their own volition, hi
s lips moved. “Thy will be done.”

  It seemed his heart should stop also, but it plodded on for moments and minutes and quarters and halves and an hour. He remembered the first time he’d seen her, green eyes flashing with excitement and life. Chloe, named for the freshness of a green field. How vibrant she was, springtime every day. Even in the past years when sorrow had licked away at her until he feared there would be nothing left.

  No child, no family, no career, no passion.

  I’m so sorry, he thought. I lost focus. Each day your eyes were rimmed with red from weeping was a day I knew I had failed you. I couldn’t get you pregnant, I couldn’t get you a career, I couldn’t get you to be happy. Then I stopped trying. Forgive me. I wasted our days. Inside him, he felt a crack, a gap inside, and he knew that nothing mattered anymore. Chloe was gone; he would stay here until he was gone, too.

  Her chest seemed to sink.

  He opened his eyes.

  Before him her body was melting into clay.

  He reached to close her eyes, but a green fire sprang from them. Cheftu ducked away.

  The wax and dust of her flesh and the fire of her soul danced and swirled in the blue light until all that was left of Chloe Bennett Kingsley Champollion was a scrap of bloodstained wool, a melted wedding band, and a shocked, charred, hopeful husband.

  Part Two

  The Star

  Chapter One

  The stargazer felt her breath catch in her breast as she watched the flocks in the night sky move. The star of Inana, which burned on the edge of the horizon, bright enough to be seen by day, glowed purple tonight. With trembling hands, the woman consulted the chart she’d been working on for years, now. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” she muttered to the stillness of the night.

  Before her eyes, the moon took on a reddish hue.

  She alone stood on this flat rooftop, overlooking the commonwealth of Ur. A few torches burned in their holders in the streets below, lighting the way for those too besotted with drink to see clearly, but it was so late that even the guards snored softly now.

  Her chart was simple enough; as Shinar, the plain between the two rivers, was divided into four quadrants, so was the chart. Action in the night sky revealed which section of the plain had need of fear. She craned her neck back, then turned to the chart and counted: Sumer, in the south; Elam in the east; Amurru north; and Akkad, west.

  She watched intently as the shadow on the moon passed. If it moved from west to east, it foretold bad luck for Sumer.

  As the minutes ticked by, the moon’s redness shifted—from west to east.

  She covered her mouth, so as not to strengthen the demons by voicing her thoughts. With a quick prayer to her personal god for fortitude, she turned to the other chart she was composing—a diagram of the flocks in the sky.

  This was far more complicated, a division of 360 slivers that comprised the whole of the heavens. Each twelve slivers completed a house, and each of the houses had its champion symbol that rose and fell according to the seasons and the wishes of the gods.

  “This isn’t usual either,” she muttered, peering at the tablet and leaning back to look into the sky.

  The Hired Man of spring was visiting the house of the Goatfish of winter. Somehow, for a moment, the skies were pretending it was the season of rains and chill.

  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.