886 B.C.
Jezebel held her sister by the shoulders at the edge of the fire pit. Priests surrounded her, dancing and calling to the goddess, their red robes stirring the dust, raising a filthy veil around them.
Jezebel’s feet slipped near the edge, but she caught herself. The swift movement jerked her sister’s limp head up, and Temereh opened her eyes. Jezebel stared at her reflection in the glazed orbs. Temereh’s pupils were now huge and black, fully dilated, the last muscles in her body that seemed able to work. Temereh was her identical twin. Together, they would have turned twelve years old in another month.
“What do you see?” Jezebel whispered against her will. She had to know. The sorcerer who had sold her the paralytic drug she had given her sister said that victims often saw the goddess Asherah just before death. The old man meant it as a word of comfort, seeing how distraught Jezebel was. He did not know that Jezebel’s grief was not for her sister, not for what had to be done. Not at all. Jezebel grieved instead for herself, for those years when she had been at the mercy of her sister.
The rising white smoke from the fire, burning bright far below, stung Jezebel’s eyes, making them water. She blinked hard to scare the tears away; Temereh must not think Jezebel wept for her death.
A confusing stench rose with the smoke, the foul tang of burning hair and sweet roasting meat. Jezebel’s heart beat faster.
Temereh’s face darkened into hatred, and her lips trembled. She made an odd gurgling noise, trying to spit in Jezebel’s face. Her mouth did not work. Jezebel watched, fascinated, then looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. No one else had drugged their sacrifices, though, so they were busy holding flailing children and dragging them to the edge. It still hurt that no one noticed her, not even now. But every family had to sacrifice one child, the most beloved one.
No adult moved to stop Jezebel or save her sister. All were consumed by their own sorrows. Jezebel hated them for that. No one would save Temereh or the other children being sacrificed. No one would stop Jezebel. Jezebel wanted this done, wanted Temereh to die. Temereh deserved to die, because she was the beloved child. But Jezebel wanted to be rescued from the burden of killing her.
Temereh’s eyes filled with the old familiar disdain. If Temerah saw the goddess (and Jezebel doubted she would), the miserable liar would keep it from her sister.
Sparks flew upward from a burning tunic as another child was tossed into the pit. Bright orange and yellow flames burst through the roiling white cloud. Heat boiled the skin under Jezebel’s fingernails.
It hurt.
Jezebel let her sister go.
Temereh’s face never lost its mask of hate as she fell. She didn’t scream, though. That was an insult to Jezebel, but then she remembered the drug. Temereh couldn’t have screamed. Jezebel sighed in disappointment.
Jezebel looked around as adults stumbled past her, their faces red and swollen from heat and tears. No one congratulated her. From the temple above them, Jezebel heard her father’s loud wail. He knew Temereh was dead. He was already mad with grief after their mother’s murder. And now, to lose his beloved daughter, to face life with only Jezebel at his side? She was a poor reflection of the child he loved, like a bronze mirror darkened by fire.
Jezebel knew how bitter tonight was for her father, a cruel demand from Baal and Asherah, the god and goddess he served as the highest priest in the Phoenician empire. Her father was powerful, but he wasn’t strong. Not strong enough to do this, the ultimate sacrifice required by the god and goddess. She had to be strong for him, even if he didn’t love her. Someday he might, if he saw how strong she could be.
Years of abuse at Temereh’s hands had given Jezebel that strength. Jezebel had stopped loving her sister long ago, and she learned the hard truth that to feel nothing was to be capable of anything.
The next week, Jezebel followed the priests as they set out to bury the bones from the fire pit. The sacrifice of the beloved was the most honorable sacrifice Baal and Asherah ever demanded, done only in times of great peril and uncertainty. But bones did not burn. Bones never burned. They could only be buried. She knew that from scavenging the trash heaps. She often found bones from the kitchens during her searches late at night, when she was hungry and dared not disturb anyone to care for her needs. Bones were not like the other kinds of trash.
If bones were not buried well, predators came. Six years ago, when Jezebel was five, she had rummaged along the beach where a group of sailors had held a bonfire before departing. No one watched over Jezebel; no one cared for her. She had no gifts, not like Temereh. In the womb, Temereh had sucked everything good from Jezebel and kept it for herself. Jezebel knew that whatever good she found in this world would be by accident, or wit. And the sailors had left good meat on the bones. Jezebel judged the carcass to be a leopard, because of the feline skull lying upright in the sand nearby. She had run her hand through the silky gray ash at the edge of the pit, selecting a delicate bone with plenty of meat and sinew left near the top ridge. She had just sat on her haunches to eat when a snub-nosed hyena with a torn ear wandered onto the beach. Its glittering eyes went to the bone she held, and it began to giggle. It wandered toward her, eyes sweeping side to side as it giggled softly. Jezebel dropped the bone and ran, but the hyena leaped the last distance between them and bit her, hard, on the calf. The bite took months to heal, and Jezebel never forgot the lesson. Bones had to be buried deep, or bad things came.
Now Jezebel was relieved to see the priests go deep inside a cave, dig a pit, and use plenty of dirt, with big rocks placed on top. Sometimes, she knew, they threw bones in the caves and did not bury them, especially if hungry children watched. So this burial was good, she thought. And these bones were useless to anyone, she told herself. There was no meat left.
She wished her legs would stop shaking. The king was dead, but Jezebel had given Baal and Asherah exactly what they had demanded. She had proven herself worthy.