The heavens shrieked,
The earth bellowed,
A storm gathered,
Darkness came forth,
A flash flamed,
A fire shot up,
The clouds thickened,
It rained death.
Then the brightness vanished,
The fire went out,
The blaze that had fallen
Turned to ashes.
—Epic of Gilgamesh
WHEN WE EMERGE FROM THE grave chamber, I grasp both of Danel’s hands and make him look at me. “Brother, you cannot go back to your house.”
For the first time, I have his attention. “Why?”
“Today is the last day of Spring Rites.”
He shrugs, uninterested, even though we stand in sight of Mot’s Tongue licking the sky. I turn him so he faces the spouting flame. It has not ceased gushing fire, although the rain of pitch and ash has stopped.
“Why has this happened?” I ask him, determined to make him think, though I know he must be numb with his loss.
He shakes his head. “I do not know. Nor do I care.”
“I loved Jemia too, Danel. But she wants you to live.”
With a sigh, he lifts his hands and lets them fall. “I am alive.”
“We must convince Lot to leave this place. All of us.”
“What are you talking about, Adira?”
The others stand near, watching and listening, but do not interfere.
I struggle to put my thoughts into words. “I do not think we have seen the worst of this. For the past several moons, the sea has belched foul air.”
“It always does.”
“Not like this—great bubbles, sometimes strings of them. I spend much of my time by the window, watching it.”
Lila nods. “She knows more about the Dead Sea than the pitch fishers.”
“What is this to do with me going home?”
“Something is stirred that has been shaken loose.” I search for words to explain my fear.
“The gods’ anger? You do not believe the rites will appease them?”
I shrug. “Perhaps Mot or Baal is angry at Lot and shook the earth to release the foul air and spit on us, or perhaps El is angry at Sodom and did so, or perhaps it is a matter of the gods we have no hope to understand.”
“Or perhaps it has nothing to do with us,” Mika says, studying the tower of flame and moving in its direction.
“Brother—” Raph warns. “Leave it.”
For a moment, I smile, remembering how Shem and I had to pull Mika away from the mating camels. He is curious about everything. Perhaps that is because the blood of the Watchers pulses in him.
“What does it matter?” Danel is restless now.
I take a deep breath; I know he is full of sorrow now, but he must understand the danger. “Sodom’s anger for Lot has been simmering for a long time. This—” I nod at Mot’s Tongue. “This may push that anger to boil. You are part of our family. That makes you a target. We are safer all together.”
With an indignant frown, Danel says, “Spring Rites are celebrated in all the cities of the Vale since anyone can remember. No one has ever been hurt, save perhaps in a few harmless fights over a woman. The rites are holy.”
“Perhaps so. Perhaps I am wrong, but I do not want you to be alone. Jemia would not want you to be.”
“She speaks truth,” Raph says. “It is plain to see. I know a threat when it lies in the grass.” His gaze flicks to me, and he flinches, perhaps belatedly, remembering a time he did not recognize danger when it lay in the hearts of the guards who escorted us from Babylon.
“All right,” Danel concedes. “Where will I go?”
“To your sister’s house, of course,” Lila allows no space for any other thought.
He snorts. “Am I to sleep beneath the donkey?” He turns to me. “Your house will burst apart.”
“You will fit in our sleeping room.” I do not relish Lot’s reaction to this, but Danel is family, and it is my house.
Lila’s hands are on her hips, ready to scold him should he refuse. His cheeks flush. “Very well.”
I wish we could go the long way back to the city, bypassing the south gate and entering at the eastern gate, which is much nearer our house. But that is not possible, given the terrain from here. We must pass back through the burning pitch pits.
The heat has grown unbearable. Sweats drips from us. Breathing is difficult. Ahead, Danel stops, so I almost plow into his back. “What is it?” I pant.
For answer, he points down to our left. I follow the line of his arm and gasp. Bubbles dance on the surface of one of the pools of pitch. Black liquid, less viscous than the pitch, as if it has mixed with water, oozes from the pit’s bounds. It creeps on oily fingers outward from the center.
“What is happening?” I ask.
Danel shakes his head. “I do not know. I have never seen or heard of such.”
The bubble quickly becomes a gushing fountain of oily water, sweeping toward us.
Lila clutches his arm. “Mot reaches for us! Let us leave this place!”
We do, with all the speed we can muster in the oppressive heat.
WE RETURN TO the city when the sun has almost set to find the Gate empty. Everyone has flocked to the goddess’s temple, which we must pass to reach our house. As we approach, the press of people becomes tighter, making it difficult to stay together, possible only because Mika and Raph have put themselves in front and behind us. Danel and Lila flank me. Mika, by dint of his stature, is able to make a slow path for us.
All of the men wear only a cloth wrap around their loins. The women have adorned their wrists, arms, and throat with gold or silver—or copper, if that is their best. In spite of their terror or perhaps because of it, they are dressed in their finest, their skin smoothed in oil. The women’s dresses are a single cloth, tied at one shoulder, leaving the other bare.
When we finally reach the temple, we can see the standing stone and the wooden asherah pole rise over the crowd, the pole’s upper portion carved in the slender likeness of the goddess and adorned with ribbons.
At a point almost in front of the temple, we are forced to a halt. Not even a drawn weapon would cut us passage. Wedged tightly, we turn and look where everyone’s attention lies—on the third level of the tiered temple. There, the chief priestess stands. She is dressed in white, her throat, wrists, and arms wrapped in Egyptian gold. Tall and slender, she lifts one arm to the sky and reaches down with the other toward the second tier where her chosen consort struggles with a man hooded and robed in red—Mot, god of the underworld.
We are immobile in the press of bodies as the sun crawls toward the horizon and sacred words are spoken. Mika is entranced, but Raph is restless. He is better at swords and at making women’s hearts flutter than at religion. Many languid eyes have appraised him, especially those nearby. Mika, too, is the object of appraisal. Either these are people from outside the city, or city dwellers have forgotten their animosity toward Mika and Raph in the heat of the rites.
Sweat runs down my chest and sides and pools beneath my breasts. We have escaped a pot to land in a fire. The heat from so many bodies, so close, is palpable. But the people, rapt at the drama before them, seem oblivious to discomfort. At stake is the fertility of their fields, their anxieties heightened by the presence of Mot’s Tongue in the distance. The priestess before them is not a mere woman, but Asherah, the Mother Earth who waits for Baal’s seed to bring life to the fields. Below her, the struggling king is Baal, the matching half to the goddess. Together, they are Life. If Baal does not find his way from Mot’s embrace to Asherah’s, no rain will fall. No grass will flourish to feed the sheep, goats, and cows. No crops or herbs will grow.
Famine.
Half of my heritage is of Abram, but these are also my people through my grandmother, and I am swept up into the single, beating heart that unites the crowd in the mystery enacted before us, the mystery that allows us—mortals of body and blood—a part in the world of the gods.
A man and a woman appear. The man is covered in gold. He is Shapash, the sun god. The woman, who grasps a spear, is Anat, the goddess of war. Together, they fight the hooded Mot on the temple steps, enacting the ancient story.
With a final wrench, Baal breaks free of Mot’s arms and ascends the steps to embrace his waiting Asherah. Her hand lifts with aching slowness to her shoulder and unclasps her robe to welcome him. Everything has slowed, as though the air is honey. Her dress drifts to her feet in folds of white, like the salt foam the sea offers to the land. The crowd inhales with one breath. The goddess stands naked in only her gold adornment and reaches both hands to Baal.
I am aware of my body as I have not been since I was the goddess for Mika. I feel the touch of skin on my skin, but I cannot look away. Mika’s hand has found mine.
Slowly, all about us, the women reach to their shoulders and loosen the knots there. The sound of cloth falling from so many is like clouds touching, something heard with senses other than the ears. The women step into the open arms of the men.
Somehow, a space has opened around us, as bodies that could not move closer together, do. Mika seems to be the only one of us who still has his senses, perhaps because he has been in the goddess’s arms before. He pulls my hand and calls to Raph. I look back at Mika’s brother. The centers of Raph’s eyes are dark. Is he thinking of his own lover? I stand between Danel and Lila, but their longing for each other crackles around me like the blue lightning Mika once held.
“Hurry,” Mika says. “This may be our only chance.”
He is right. We shake off the hands that reach for us, and they are soon clasping others. In the sea of hunger and need, we are not hindered, except to keep our own heads above the water of desire that laps at us on every side.
Behind us we hear the chant from the temple, “Aliyan Baal lives; the prince, lord of the earth, is here!”