The Very Best of Kate Elliott

  A male voice shouted for the captain. With a frown he signaled to them to stay put as he stepped away around a corner and into a guardhouse. Across a courtyard, a closed gate in a high wall promised access to the city beyond.

  “I can’t believe you told the truth, Ami,” said Felicia under her breath. She was still holding Rory’s hand, and with obvious reluctance she released him. “About Rory, I mean.”

  “The benefit of telling the truth is that so few people believe you. You must go, Rory. Though I’m sorry to lose you so soon after finding you.”

  “All will be well,” he assured them. “The highness will never suspect you.”

  At that moment, out of the depths of the princess’s wing, a mighty shriek cleft the night like the anguished howl of a wounded monster.

  “My chub’ums! My Coco! Aieeee! Ramses! HOW COULD YOU?”

  Rory smiled smugly, imagining how sour Ramses must look with his nose smeared in blood and his paws dabbling in the moist remains. The two women looked at him with wide eyes. He kissed each one on her warm, willing lips, and stepped away as the captain returned, looking grumpy.

  “Hurry, lass. Get out of here, as the lord general is bound to make his rounds with all this fuss. Cursed women! Either scolding or wailing.”

  One last glance was all he was permitted as the captain hustled him to the servants’ gate and thrust him out into the cold night. The captain shut the gate.

  Rory stood on the cobblestone street, savoring the adventure. That had felt good! And he had learned something important about himself, just as Cat would have urged him to do: By understanding what it meant to flow and change, he could now shift from cat to man and back again whenever he wished. Sadly, he knew he would never be able to tell Cat about all the best parts of the night, because she would no doubt be affronted and embarrassed.

  A curious watchman paused to eye him and, when Rory snarled, hurried on. He stripped off the gown and shawl and folded them up to carry. He took in a draught of air. Beneath the many heated smells of the city, he sought his sister’s distinctive scent, blended of both worlds.

  Dressed in his man’s clothes with his soft woman’s drawers beneath, he sauntered off in search of her. Sometimes things did work out. He had righted a tiny wrong, done some good in the world, maintained his honor, and been well petted in reward.

  It was good to be a man.

  MAKING THE WORLD LIVE AGAIN

  LIKE A CREATURE OUT of the old stories, caught between earth and sky, Eili stood with mud coating her feet and the sun rising at her back over the endless tidal flats and marshlands.

  “‘Hiai! Hiai!’” she sang. “‘Before the first grass grew out of the mud, before the first tree grew from the ground, before people sprouted from the earth, before the first house was built, before the first village came to be, before the first city was made, the sea existed, nothing else. Then Eridu was built.’” Mud splashed her ankles as she danced.“When I’m a woman, I’m going to travel to Eridu and see the big temple for myself!”

  “If you don’t get back in the boat,” said her brother, “we’ll get home late. Then the only place you’ll be going is to dredge the old canal with the slaves.”

  “And I’ll take the dates with me!” she retorted, laughing.

  “Not if you don’t get in the boat!”

  Eili swung a leg over the side, balanced the basket of dates against her hip, then slid in as her brother poled off. Thick with reeds on its shoreline, the low island hillock was crowned with a cluster of date palms whose bounty they had just harvested. The palms broke the flat expanse of water that glittered under Anu’s morning rays.

  “Look!” said Indu as his eyes swept the shore where Eili had danced and sung.“Some animal’s been hurt. Do you see the blood?” He pointed with the pole as the boat slewed round in the water. A few drops of bright red blood spattered the muddy verge.“Hiai!” he muttered.“What kind of sign is that? Should we tell the priest?”

  As they stared, a swell of water eased over the tracks Eili had left, obliterating all trace of her passing as well as the mysterious blood. “Huh.” Eili grunted, dismissing it. “It’s nothing to do with me.” She set down the little basket of dates and settled her feet on a pile of rushes left by the last occupant.“A whole city built all of bricks! What do you think of that, lazy Indu?”

  He grinned, teeth a bright flash against his face. Indu had been blessed by the gods with an endless capacity to be cheerful. “I think it would take some poor artisan many long days to make so many bricks, and some other poor sore-backed laborer would have to lift them all up into place!”

  She snorted.“You’re always going to stay in the village if that’s all you can think about!”

  “I can think of things much more interesting than the big temple at Eridu which such as us will never see the inside of, no matter what we do.”

  Her breechclout had caught under her thigh; she hitched herself up and tugged it free. Like all girls, she wore a bare leather cord around her waist. She ran her fingers along it now, tracing it. When she became a woman, she would get to decorate it with beads, shells, and feathers to show she was of marriageable age. Indu had become a man last year at the New Year Festival, so he could wear a man’s kilt over his breech clout: a length of cloth wrapped at the waist and reaching to his knees.

  “Hiai!” she exclaimed as the marshflies swarmed round them. Not even a breechclout could protect against stinging flies and all the other voracious bugs that loved the marshlands and tidal flats. “Can’t you move us any faster? These flies will eat me down to the bone.”

  “Rain’s coming.” Indu shielded his eyes from the sun as he peered eastward.

  “Rain comes almost every day in the winter, Master Wisdom!”

  He only laughed and lowered a hand to trail it in the water. Expression brightening, he shoved the pole into her hands, then touched a finger to his lips for silence. She poled while he fished. His hand trailed in the water as the boat skimmed along almost noiselessly. Reeds brushed its wood belly. In her hands, the pole dipped and rippled through the water as quietly as a heron’s stalking. This boat, made of wood floated down from the faraway place called “Upriver,” was the visible mark of their family’s prosperity.

  Indu darted forward, hands clapping together under the water. He twisted and silvery perch flew through the air to land in the belly of the boat. It flopped around until Eili took a clay net weight and clubbed it on the head.

  Indu smiled triumphantly, and they poled on while he trailed a hand again through the water. Birds sang among the rushes or called to each other. She knew their voices: the harsh crow, the cheerful ducks, the croaks of night-herons settling in to their daylight nest. A cormorant stood on a sand bank, wings outspread.

  Indu darted again, twisted, and flipped another fish into the boat. In this manner he caught five sea-perch before the shoreline came into view. Reed houses, their entries framed by thick pillars woven of reeds, marked the farthest limit of the village, which was set on the high ground above. Beyond them, under the shade of date palms, Eili could see the square block of the mud-brick village shrine set below the levee just outside the village. A stand of pines grew along the banks of the big canal and several small plots of cultivated land lay between the village and the marshlands: lentils, flax, and herb gardens.

  Her mother squatted in the garden, thinning the onions. In the village, women sat before their houses. Some wove reeds into baskets and mats. Others painted pots or hunched over a grinding stone while their young daughters laughed and chatted behind them, spinning flax to thread and watching over the smallest children. The men would be dredging the canal against the spring floods, or weeding in the grain fields out in the irrigated lands, or watching over their sheep. Day in, day out, year in, year out, Eili watched them plant and harvest, bake pots over fires and paint them and then bake more, cook, fish, bury those who died, birth babies, and take offerings to the temple. It was always the same.

 
“There’s nothing new!” exclaimed Eili. “Same old village! Same old work! Same old people! How can you be so cheerful?”

  “Nothing new! The sun is new each day! New water flows down the river each day! Every year we grow new crops!”

  “Same old crops! I want to see the world!”

  Indu grinned and gestured toward the sky, where clouds moved in from the east like sheep headed homeward, then at the marsh behind and the village ahead. “The world is here! The world is where you and I are.”

  “Oh, you’ll never understand.” Disgusted, she stood in order to pole the boat precisely in against the earth jetty.

  “Hiai!” Indu leaped out of the boat and into water that lapped his knees. The boat rocked wildly under Eili, but she steadied it quickly as she stared at her brother, now gone crazy. He splashed up to the shore and ran toward their mother.“Nin-Imah! Nin-Imah! Come quickly!”

  Two pigs, foraging on the verge of marsh and land, ambled over to investigate. Ahead, her brother was gesticulating, talking to their mother with wide, sweeping gestures of his hands yet careful in his excitement not to touch her. It was only when Eili had settled the boat and brought it up beside the jetty that she looked down to see what had so startled Indu. Blood stained the wood bench where she had sat.

  It had not been an animal’s blood at all, on the marsh hillock where they’d gathered dates. It had been hers.

  Nin-Imah sent Indu off to the little temple house to warn the priestess and then came over to Eili. She chased off the pigs, then helped the girl out of the boat, and leaned in after to touch her finger to the smear of blood on the bench. Touching the blood to her tongue, she considered its taste with great seriousness while Eili watched her apprehensively.

  Nin-Imah was very old, so old she had a living grandchild who could already walk and talk, and Eili was her youngest child. But to Eili’s eyes the white ringlets in her mother’s coarse black hair represented just another sign of her great strength and wisdom. Stout of body, she had sharp, black eyes in a face wrinkled from endless hours working under the Anu’s bright rays. Eili couldn’t remember her looking any other way. Maybe one day she’d look like that, but she couldn’t imagine being so old.

  Nin-Imah smacked her lips and nodded.“First blood,” she said with satisfaction. “Your time is come, Eili. Now you’ll be a woman and we can accept that offer of six sheep and the brindled ox from Natum’s family as your bride-price.”

  “Hiai!” Eili jumped out of the boat.“Marry Natum!”

  “Natum is a good boy,” scolded Nin-Imah.

  Eili made a face, but since it was true, she couldn’t disagree. “Why can’t I go to the big temple in Eridu?”

  Nin-Imah snorted. “You and your talk of the big temple in Eridu! I know what you dream about, but your father can’t afford that kind of dowry nor your brothers the upkeep it would cost every year.”

  She had practiced this response for a long time now, ever since her father and Natum’s father had first spoken of a marriage contract between her and the young man.“You’ve no one to marry after me, Nin-Imah. Think of what a fine honor to our family it would be to send me to be a servant of the goddess at the temple in Eridu.”

  Nin-Imah only grunted, but that was enough for Eili.

  “I know you’ll convince Father.”

  “Huh. Don’t pester me. You walking all the way to Eridu!” But she had that secret little half-smile on her face. She had some things of her own, did Nin-Imah, certain beads and precious shells, a copper knife and even a few rods of silver tucked away, that could be added to her husband’s wealth to make up a dowry for the temple.“At least it would relieve me of all your questions, day in and day out. But you must go to the priestess now. I’ll speak to her of this. There’ll be some kind of test, to see if you’re suitable.”

  Eili wasn’t afraid of any test, but she knew better than to say so out loud. After all, the demons might be listening and hatch a plan to ruin all her hopes.

  Her mother tossed the fish into her basket with her thinned onions, then set the smaller basket of dates on top of them with a frown. With an efficiency that betrayed long years of practice, she bundled up the rushes that lay in the bottom of the boat. “Come, girl. All this you’ve gathered today will have to be offered to the goddess.”

  “Even the fish? Indu caught the fish.”

  “That fish could poison the men if they ate it. A girl’s first blood is very powerful, almost as powerful as birthing blood. So you come with me and don’t touch anything or look at any men! I’ll have to scrub down the boat and even then the priestess will have to purify it before your brothers or father can go out again in it.” She clucked her tongue between her teeth, thinking no doubt of the gifts they’d have to lay on the offering table so that the priestess could do all this work. Any change in life brought a great deal of trouble with it; everyone knew that. Demons hovered round all the time, though no mortal person could see them, and waited for people to do something wrong. That was where they got their power from.

  She and her mother gathered up everything that had been in the boat, even the old rushes, and carried them together to the temple. Nin-Imah announced loudly to every passerby that Eili had started with her first blood so men would know not to look at her and possibly get themselves hurt. Eili had to keep her gaze on the dirt, once colliding with a pig, but it was better once they arrived in the temple precincts. Here she didn’t have to stare at the ground. The priestess was very holy and the old priest powerful enough that women’s blood wouldn’t burn him as it might an ordinary man.

  At the gate that led into the courtyard, the priestess met them. A fringed skirt and a woven winter shawl with shells and beads sewn into it draped over her arms. Silent, she dressed Eili in these garments, then permitted the girl to enter the temple precincts carrying the offerings. While Eili hesitantly walked into the empty courtyard, the priestess remained at the gate to speak with her mother. Eili waited until the old priest emerged from the temple itself and beckoned her inside.

  Eili had never been in the temple before. Like any house it had a packed dirt floor, but there the resemblance ended. It reeked of incense: juniper, and myrtle. The walls had been white washed, and in each niche a bright painting flared like an animal caught in life: a lion, a bull, a twining scorpion, an ibex with its curling horns. There, in the center, stood the offering table, and at the far end, illuminated by a high, open niche in the wall, rested the altar with a number of small clay figures sitting on it. She tried not to look too closely. What if she wasn’t strong enough to see such things? What if the goddess’ power struck her down? She tried to keep her gaze on the dirt floor but couldn’t help sneaking peeks.

  The priestess returned, looking grave. She indicated to Eili that she was to set the offerings on the table. The girl set them down carefully, the dates, the basket of sea-perch and onions: and the rushes bundled into a sheaf.

  Then the priestess led her outside to the back portion of the courtyard, enclosed by the same man-high mud-brick wall. Here stood three small reed huts as well as a hearth fire ringed by stones, a small earth platform with a grindstone and clay pestles, and a flat stretch of ground patterned with small holes where, in the dry season, a ground loom would be pegged out.

  One reed structure, more of a lean-to, rested up against the wall. The priestess gestured to her to go in, and Eili ducked under the low threshold. Inside it was dank and musty, strong-smelling with the scent of women’s magic. She hesitated, wanting to ask what was expected of her, but the priestess’ footsteps whispered away over the dirt. She was alone.

  There wasn’t much to look at. Even a poor man and his family lived in a better house than this, a big mat of palm leaves and sticks woven together and leaned against the mud-brick wall to form a shelter. A few narrow holes had been drilled through the thick wall. Peeking through them, she saw slivers of the village beyond, just enough that with her knowledge of the buildings she could piece together the whole in her mind?
??s eye. She heard pigs grunting as they rooted through a midden, and the laughter of children.

  A hush like pattering feet rose up from the marsh: the rains had come. They swept over the village, drumming on the dirt. Rain leaked through the reed canopy above her to drip on her bare shoulders. It was cool and she shivered, crouched down to wrap arms around knees and tighten the shawl over her shoulders and hair. Her belly ached. Blood dripped from between her legs to dampen and blend with the musky earth.

  The rain moved off. No one came. She heard the ordinary sounds of life around her, but nothing else. Nothing unusual—nothing new at all. It was a long day, waiting, and when dusk shuttered down with its quick hand and Anu sank westward into the underworld, she even got a little scared: she, Eili, who was scared of nothing and wanted to know everything.

  Maybe being a priestess wasn’t such a good thing after all if it meant sitting alone in huts all day and night. Maybe it would be better to marry Natum.

  “Eili!”

  The whisper came to her through the drill holes. She squinted out through them but it was too dark to make out more than shadows.

  “What is that? Who are you?” Could it be a demon, speaking in a voice meant to sound human? She didn’t recognize the voice, and couldn’t even tell if it was man or woman, muffled as it was.

  “The Great Serpent is out tonight.”

  “Hiai! You’re scaring me.”

  “You’re safe, you’re safe, woman,” the voice replied and then laughed softly, a pleasant sound that made her feel easier. “You’re on the island, the first island, the old island. You’re protected by its magics and the power of your first blood. You belong to the goddess while you stand on her sacred ground. Go outside and tell me what you see.”

  She rose, groaning with the stiffness in her legs, and ducked out under the threshold. Outside, she looked around. It was hard to see anything but shadows though she could easily make out the square temple walls that loomed beside her. Then she looked up and gasped. Above, a winter shawl of brightness cloaked the night sky. She didn’t look at the stars much. Usually she was asleep by now.