Ever (4 page)

OLUS

I
SINK ONTO THE DRY GRASS.
I didn't know they practice human sacrifice here. In Akka it is not tolerated. Hannu sent earthquakes until people stopped.

Apparently Admat doesn't object or hasn't objected in a way his followers understand. Or there is no Admat.

When Senat swore his awful oath, I didn't make the altar flame flare, but I don't control my winds all the time. When they're not needed, I let them go where they will. The flare might have been the result of wind or Admat or an impurity in the lamp oil.

I am overcome by a craving for Enshi Rock, where my fellow gods may be thoughtless but never malevolent. My collecting wind gathers the goats. I untie my donkey from its tether behind the hut and mount it.

“You haven't tasted the grass on Enshi Rock,” I tell the goats as they rise, bleating pitifully, on my north wind. The donkey hee-haws and bucks in fright, and I have trouble keeping my seat. “You'll be glad I took you,” I tell the animals. My strong wind blows a cloud our way. We are enveloped in fog, which calms them as they grow accustomed to flight. The goats cease their bleating. The donkey stops braying.

When we are too high to be seen by mortal eyes, I dismiss the cloud and arrange the goats in single file behind me. My tunic billows in the wind. I am the kite and the goats are my tail.

Ha! Admat probably doesn't travel trailed by goats.

I sweep over Enshi Rock. After six months' absence I see it with fresh eyes. The white temple is stark against the cloudless sky. On the roof my canopy ceiling remains in place.

The temple is ringed by terraced gardens, farms, a lake, and workshops for the gods' purposes. A peninsula of land, like an open palm, supports the amphitheater.

What strikes me most, after my time in Hyte, is the absence of mud bricks. Here in Akka, where we have mountains and forests, we build with stone and wood.

I bring the goats and my donkey down in an empty paddock near the stables. Then I muster my courage and start for Puru's hut, which lies between the temple and the workshop of the goddess of love and beauty. I want to see my parents, but first I have questions for the god of destiny.

I've never visited him before. The hut, a single room lit by an oil lamp, is small and windowless. My heart hammers. I must leave!

“Welcome . . . Olus. . . . Sit . . . and stay with me awhile.” A chuckle emanates from his orange wrappings. He is seated on a painted chest, holding a tumbler of therka.

With my fresh wind whirling I feel less shut in. I lower myself onto a stool.

Puru lifts a flap of linen to drink, exposing a fringe of mustache. I imagined him clean shaven, as Arduk and I are.

“Greetings, Puru. I've come from the city of Hyte with questions.” I tell him about Senat and his family. “Will my landlord's wife recover? Will anyone be sacrificed?”

He's silent.

“Please tell me.”

He shakes his head and his linens rustle. “I . . . will . . . not . . . reveal your fate or the fates of these foreign mortals.”

“I didn't ask about my fate.” I wait.

He adds nothing.

I'd like to shake him. His hut has made my head ache, but I try one more question. “Where does the god Admat live?”

“I . . . have . . . not . . . heard of such a god.”

Outside Puru's hut I breathe deeply and wonder how
Merem is faring.

Hannu and Arduk are in Hannu's workshop. When I come in, they embrace me. Hannu's hug is so fierce, I feel trapped. Finally she lets me go and returns to her pottery wheel.

Arduk sits by the long window. He picks up his knife and the block of cedar he was whittling. The shape of a pear is emerging from the wood. “Are you home to stay, Turnip?”

I shake my head, embarrassed.

“He is still the pretend mortal,” Hannu says.

“Have you ever met a god named Admat?”

“You're the traveler, Turnip.”

As far as I know, no other Akkan god has sojourned in a foreign land or lived among mortals.

I tell them about Admat.

“There are terrible, vengeful gods in the world,” Arduk says. “We're not like them.”

I explain Senat's oath. “Can we prevent a sacrifice?”

“Of a foreign mortal?” Hannu says.

I'm too angry to mince words. “You don't care what happens to mortals, not even our own. Arduk doesn't either.”

“Turnip”—he puts aside his whittling—“we attend
their festivals for us. We—”

“Once a year we let them see us and we answer a few prayers.”

“I give them pottery designs.” Hannu holds up a double-lipped ewer. “Look at this one.”

“But you don't make any new animals for them, and you're not interested in them.”

“Not in this one or that one, Turnip.”

Hannu balls up the clay on her wheel. “Who can be interested in soap bubbles?”

“Mortals aren't soap bubbles. The people of Hyte aren't. Senat loves his wife. Kezi—”

“They don't last,” Arduk says.

“You become acquainted with one and
pop!
it's dead.” Hannu spins her wheel again. “Pottery lasts.”

But it can't feel.

“We should have had children after you,” Hannu says, as she has many times. “You would have had godlings to play with.”

I agree, although I've never told her so. I'm regretting coming here. Kezi's frightened face, Merem's palsy, Senat's desperation are always in my mind.

On my way to retrieve my donkey and my goats, I pass Arduk's orchid garden. Ursag, god of wisdom and civili
zation, tallest of us all, is there, peering down at a scarlet orchid. When I was younger, he was my tutor.

I ask him about Admat.

“There's no mention in my tablets of such a god.”

“Could he be the greatest god? Could he set the fate of men and other gods?”

“If this Admat were over us, I would know. And fate was written before any gods were born. Puru alone can read ahead.” He touches an orchid petal. “Isn't it a marvel?”

“Very nice.” I burst out, “A mortal lasts much longer than a flower. Why do we cultivate one and neglect the other?”

He smiles inscrutably. “Your mati raised Mount Enshi from the sea. Your pado planted the first grass seed.”

“I don't understand.”

“You're so young, you might as well be a mortal. Time passes for you as it does for them.”

That's true, but it doesn't answer my question. Or perhaps it does. He is agreeing with Hannu. He also thinks mortals are soap bubbles, not worth helping.

Ten minutes later I am on my donkey, surrounded by my goats, all of us descending toward earth on my sinking wind.

KEZI

A
FTER PADO'S OATH,
Mati continues to complain of pain, but she stops begging to die. In the evening she drinks duck broth seasoned with thyme.

“Fedo would be happy,” she says, giving me the empty bowl and making a face.

Thyme is one of Aunt Fedo's favorite remedies. Mati hates the taste.

I spend the night doing a restless bed dance. I listen for Mati's groans and Pado's footsteps. But the house is quiet.

When I bring her breakfast, Mati says the pain is gone. She sits up in bed. “Thanks to Admat, your pado may not
need a new wife.”

This is not very funny, but I can't help smiling. She eats all her breakfast and sends me back to the kitchen for a plate of figs. I cover the distance in leaps. My toes hardly touch the floor.

Pado is having his breakfast in the eating room outside the kitchen. He is smiling, too, looking very satisfied with himself.

Nia serves him bread and cheese. Her expression is serious, as always.

“Mati seems better,” I tell her, unable to keep silent about the good news. Then I think of Pado's oath. But Nia is safe, because she heard him swear it. Besides, a servant would never speak to Pado unless he spoke first.

Predictably, Nia says, “Thanks to Admat, sower of life, harvester of life.”

Pado answers with me, “As he wishes, so it will be.”

In the afternoon Mati goes to her loom in the roofed outer square of the courtyard. I'm thrilled, but now the three days of the oath begin.

If someone should congratulate Pado, whoever it is will have to die. The sacrifice is Admat's due. If it isn't carried out, his wrath will fall on Pado and Mati and me and even on my children and their children, down
through the generations. Breaking an oath is a grave sin.

Pado could tell people about the oath and then there would be no congratulations. But telling would make the oath empty and would certainly call down Admat's fury.

Doing Pado's bidding, I instruct Nia to sit outside the house and inform anyone who comes that the family is not receiving guests. Even palace messengers are to be turned away. Nia is the right person for this job, I think. Her glum face is not welcoming.

But maybe she'll close her eyes in prayer and a visitor will slip by her.

“Nia, you must be watchful,” I say.

“I will not fail in my duty.”

Together we carry a chair from the reception room and set it down in the street next to the door. I pick up the yellow sickness mat and take it inside, closing the door behind me. The mat warns people away, but leaving it down when everyone is healthy might cause Mati to suffer a relapse or make someone else sick.

I roll up the mat and place it under Admat's reception room altar. All will be well. Admat loves his worshipers and we love him. His flame burns as bright in our hearts as on his altars.

The three days will melt quickly into the safe past. I
rise on my toes, come down on my heels, spin on my left foot, spin on my right, raise my arms and smile, smile, smile, rejoicing in Mati's recovery.

I'm keeping guard too. From the reception room I can hold off anyone who comes if Nia falls asleep or leaves her post.

If Aunt Fedo had been there when Pado swore the oath, She would protect us. But she's still gone from Hyte and doesn't even know that Mati was ill.

“Kezi!”

I follow my mati's voice to the courtyard alcove. “Does your stomach hurt again?” I ask.

She is weaving. “I feel well. Keep me company.”

I sit at my rug loom. “Where is Pado?”

“Where would he be? In his counting room.” Mati's rhythm with her shuttle is as swift and sure as ever.

The rug I've been working on is a marriage rug. I meant it as a gift for Belet, my mati's brother's daughter, whose wedding is this afternoon. In the rug a lion stands over a lioness, guarding her. Clusters of dates are strewn at the lioness's side. The dates stand for children and wealth. The rug's border is a river that has no end, for long life. All that remains to be knotted in is the top edge of the river. I've already knotted in my name.

Now there is no hurry, since we aren't going to the wedding. Weaving will keep me here in the courtyard, but I want to have a reason to visit Nia.