Twilight in Babylon Read Free

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.
    She adjusted her position in the tree, sitting on her legs so the spikes of date branches didn’t poke her, and looked at the water. It was hard to remember what the village had looked like, where anything had been.
    Where were the trees I’m sitting on,
she thought.
Which clump were they?
Her mind was blank as a slab of clay. If her village was gone, were the neighboring villages gone also? She craned around, waved away birds who tried to steal her spot, and looked for anything familiar. She’d never been outside her village, only as far as the common grazing grounds. Only the Harrapan traders and the Crone of Ninhursag had come to her village, brought news of a world outside.
    Had there been a village on the other side of hers? She tried to visualize the size of her village and fields and grazing grounds, then another village, fields and grazing grounds beside it, and a third village beyond. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even remember her own village clearly. Just impressions.
    Reed huts, and a warm dung fire. The squishiness of the ground that indicated it was time to put down new matting so the marsh didn’t seep up through the floor. The lowing of the water buffalo before they slept. The blackness of the sky, when the gods held meetings. The summer, when the gods had feasts and poured heavenly wine on the fields.
    Her head was aching, and she reached up to rub it. Then she remembered the sore and stopped. She didn’t even have mud to put on her sore, because there was no ground. That made her angry. She glared at the sky. “This was stupid of them,” she told the chamber keeper of the gods. “If we are supposed to serve them, then drowning us means they won’t get served. Then they’ll have no one to complain to except themselves.”
    The chamber keeper didn’t speak. Of course, she didn’t have a sheep to slaughter for its liver, or an exorcist to read the liver, so she would never know if the chamber keeper responded.
    “The waters have to go down,” she said, liking the sound of her voice against the blue sky and blue water. “A flood can’t last long.” Birds that usually landed in the marshes would be along in the afternoon. If she could catch one, she could eat. Pigeons, who sought the greening fields, were especially good, and they would be too tired to fly away.
    She tore green dates off one of the branches—she couldn’t eat them, she’d get sick—then bent the branch back and forth while the sun moved higher in the sky. Finally, it broke off. Careful to spit any of it out, she peeled the edges of the wood back with her teeth and fingernails, sawing the end against the fronds to make it sharp for stabbing and cutting. When she got thirsty, she lapped at the water around her.
    Flood water wasn’t salty, at least not much.
    As the sun lowered, she watched for birds. But the only