I'm not all that happy with it, but I finished it.
1580 AD
The sea.
The sea is still and flat along the coastline, a dull grey plane in the pre-dawn light. The Persian Gulf, they call it now. Sisitu had been here before the Achaemenid Empire, before Parsis. Nobody today knows what they had called it back then and Sisitu doesn’t particularly feel like telling anyone. Just a gulf, not a real ocean. But it is salt water nonetheless.
The sea was humanity’s womb, it was said. Man had burst forth into the world when the salt water could no longer hold him. And so had things repeated for every birth since. Because blood is salt water, and inside every human there is an ocean.
Here, now, as the sun begins to creep over the flat, sandy horizon at Sisitu’s back, inside her there is a turning of the tide.
Here, now, blood flows. And she doubles over in pain, clutches her stomach and feels the sticky mess trickle down her thighs. She straightens up, wades into the gulf up to her waist. The grey water is dappled with orange now. She lets it wash her clean. Lets blood return to blood. And she returns to the coast, her long Arabic dress sodden and stained. Today she will find the mouth of the Euphrates. Follow it upstream for two days and she will find what’s left of Eridu.
Trudging along, dripping as the sun rises, Sisitu’s thoughts take her home.
3092 BC
When Sisitu remembers Eridu, she remembers barley. Field after field of green and golden barley, so wide there was no end of them. The marshy soil was so rich that every seed unfolded and thrust up its head. They had been surrounded by green and gold that scorching summer day. The barley stalks were flattened beneath her back, her white robe tossed aside. She had looked up into his liquid brown eyes, his jet black hair, with beautiful green and gold all around.
He had been sixteen, a year older than her.
Even the great ziggurat temple E-abzu smelled of barley. The stone was cool beneath her feel, even in the heat of a summer noon. When the guards came for her, they marched her through the fields in her spotless white robe with her hands bound. The gleaners stopped their work to watch. It was not often they got to see a priestess brought so low. She avoided their eyes. But the eyes of the Speaker-for-Gods held her so that she could not look away.
She knelt on the cool stone. The Speaker-for-Gods examined her like a beetle between his fingers. His face was unreadable, what she could see of it between his long beard and his golden headdress. Today people speak of the mystery of God. Back then, the gods were not mysterious. They crowded around, just on the edge of Sisitu’s sight. Anu. Enki. Inana. Enlil. Ninhursag. The great gods of Sumer.
“You are Sisitu,” the Speaker-for-Gods said “of whom the gods require both obedience and chastity.”
“Majesty, I am she.” Sisitu managed to keep the tremor out of her voice. “But I repent my sin and would find the gods’ favour again at any cost.”
“Indeed?” the Speaker-for-Gods’ voice was light and musical, not the booming heavy tones she would have expected from such an impressive man. “Then rejoice, Sisitu, for the gods will pardon you. Providing only that you take your life in the temple grounds.”
For a few seconds, she could say nothing. Her lips trembled as she forced the words out. “Majesty, I cannot. You know I cannot!”
“‘At any cost,’ you said.”
“Aye, any cost to me. But I am pregnant. I cannot kill my baby. If you would stay my sentence for just a few—”
The almost-visible forms of the gods crowded closer around her. She could feel their anger crackling through the air like a storm about to break. She knew their faces and names. She knew their domains. She knew their stories. She had devoted her life to them. The weight of their malice bent her spine. Her forehead touched the floor.
“Enough. The gods offered you death and you would not take it. Take their curse instead. You are an abomination heaved from their affronted sight. Death will not touch you now. When Eridu is dust, and the dust baked and built into cities still unthought-of, the sun will still look down upon your shame.”
1580 AD
Sisitu is awake before dawn in the old travellers’ inn where she spent the night. She stands naked by the window, watching for the first signs of the sun, holding a round-bottomed jar.
Her guts clench. The tide turns once again and runs down her legs. She is ready and fills the jar with her bright, fresh blood. After firmly corking the jar and fastening the top, she attends to her hygiene. Such things are important. She leaves most of the grisly payload on the floor. Let the innkeeper deal with it. She places the jar in her bag, along with her soiled clothes from the previous day, a skin of water, and the money she didn’t spend on this night in the inn, and unfolds her fresh, clean, white robe. The material is finer than any of the clothing they made back then, but otherwise it is exactly the same. She puts it on, smoothing it across her belly and thighs. Her robe was her armour, and her declaration of war. She wore it for the same reason she was returning to Eridu. It should end as it began. There was a rightness to this.
Sisitu takes a deep breath, girds herself for the day ahead, takes up her light luggage, and resumes her pilgrimage.
1067 AD
It was on a green hill they met. Unbelievably green. It was only a few miles west of Hastings, but untouched by the battle. Only months had passed since then, but it was agreed by all but the most foolish that William the Norman was king of England.
Sisitu dressed in the garb of a native peasant woman, but nothing could disguise her Mesopotamian features. She looked fifteen, as she had for more than four thousand years.
He was dressed simply as well, but it didn’t seem to be for the sake of inconspicuousness. She suspected he dressed in well-worn travelling clothes wherever he went. He looked old already, tired from the weight of the years, but strong. Unbelievably strong. She was glad of that.
“I understand what you want of me,” he said “and I came to see you out of respect for what you have already accomplished. But understand that I cannot kill you.”
Sisitu shook her head, refreshed by his bluntness. Too much of conversation was hiding what was really meant. It was the kind of thing that got tiring after a few millennia. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Just removed the curse and let me live out the rest of my natural days.”
“That would be killing you,” the old man said, “and you misunderstand me. Your curse was placed on you by the Sumerian gods in all their power and wrath. I don’t have the power to undo it. I doubt anyone does. No one you could, or would want to, contact anyway. If you want death so badly, take it up with your gods.”
It was as if she had been slapped in the face. There was no malice in his words, but the death of her one hope hurt more than any insult could.
“Don’t you think I’ve done that?” she snapped, trying and failing to keep the anger out of her voice “For four thousand years I’ve called to them, prayed to them, sacrificed to them. They never respond.”
He looked out at the meadow below them. Green, so vibrant green. Greener than the barley fields of Sumer, Sisitu thought. And yet this was such an old land.
“Time distils most things down to their essence,” he said in careful, measured words “If it were me, I’d bargain from strength.”
“You mean I can force them to answer my call?”
“It can be done. A sorcerer can summon all kinds of supernatural entities if he knows the art. Gods too, although that’s more difficult.”
Sisitu’s stomach rose to meet her heart. She held her breath, barely daring to believe what was being suggested to her. She couldn’t ask him to do it for her. He would refuse, she knew. “Will you teach me?” she asked, hoping against four thousand years of desperation. The old man didn’t meet her eyes. He kept staring intently at the green English meadow. “Do you know how my immortality works?” she pressed “It is the recycling of a single day. Every dawn, my body remakes itself just as it was when the gods first cursed me. I’ve had the same miscarriage every day for four thousand, one hundred, and fifty-nine years.”
The old man turned to look at her, his face as implacable as the Speaker-for-Gods’ so long ago. “You’ll have to start small,” he said at last “Imps and sprites, things of that nature. Becoming powerful enough to call down the gods will take time.”
“Time, I have.” Sisitu found herself smiling. The expression seemed so alien. Had it really been that long? She didn’t cry, not even for joy. The salt water reminded her too much of blood. “Thank you, Fixban.”
1580 AD
It is dusk by the time she reaches Eridu. The city was once a mud-brick metropolis. They used to say it was the first city in the world. Whether or not that’s true, it was probably the largest in its day. It straddled the Euphrates where it flowed into the gulf. Paradise for farmers and fishers alike. The course of the river has changed since then. The coastline has moved too. The landscape is an inhospitable desert now. And Eridu is a few piles of crumbling stone. It’s still possible to make out the outline of the great ziggurat temple where the gods cursed Sisitu, once upon a time the marvel of Mesopotamia. She notes with some perverse pride that it is still the largest structure as far as the eye can see. Hot and thirsty, her waterskin empty, her white robe stained with sand, Sisitu climbs to the top of the ruin. The wind picks up, tugging playfully at her as if the land itself was welcoming her home. It has been a very long time.
Sisitu sets down her bag and takes out the jar of blood from this morning’s miscarriage. She uncorks it, dips her finger in, and draws a wide circle on the rough stone, careful to leave no gap. Candles, pentagrams and eldritch symbols are for amateurs and dilettantes. This is old magic. Simple, powerful, and pungent.
Sisitu spent over two centuries studying under Fixban until she had surpassed him in the art of summoning. Then she had sought out others to teach her what he could not. Some of them had been human. When there was nothing more she could learn from others, she taught herself. In the specific field of summoning and binding, Sisitu of Eridu is the most powerful practitioner in the world. She has no doubt that she is ready to bind gods to her will.
Stepping outside the circle, Sisitu anoints herself with her own blood and begins to chant in halting Sumerian. How many centuries, how many millennia have passed since she last used the mother tongue? No matter. It’s like riding a horse. She does not beg. She does not entreat. That is behind her. She reaches out with her power and forces them to manifest before her. And they appear. With the scent of barley and the whispering of the grain fields, they appear.
She almost laughs at the absurdity. The great gods of Sumer crowded into her summoning circle like so many geese in a pen. They look so small. She expected this to be the most difficult thing she had ever attempted. She had trained for almost five centuries to become strong enough for this. And their combined power turns out to be no more than a mid-level demon or a ghost with a thousand years to its name. This is insultingly easy.
Sisitu falls to her knees, forcing supplication where there is only anger. “Gods of Sumer, your servant speaks to you. Sisitu of Eridu asks your forgiveness. Please?”
Their thin, reedy voices are barely audible above the desert wind. “...but your sin... is great...”
“...and not yet expiated...”
“...it is sacrilege...”
“...for you... even to call on us...”
Sisitu’s mouth tightens. Her hands clench. “You cannot imagine how little I care about sacrilege now. I ask you again. Will you remove the curse, and let me die?”
“...not yet...”
“...in a thousand years...”
“...we will... consider...”
“...and you may... ask again...”
Sisitu bows her head so they will not see her face. Inside, she screams. She rages. She tears herself to pieces with her own hands. Her head splits open and all her fury and all her power wash over the world and destroy every living thing in it. Outwardly, she remains motionless and silent. And in her bottomless rage, she finds clarity. Bargain from strength... strength that time distils... Fixban’s words to her five centuries ago. How could she have been so blind? It was there with her all along. She hadn't needed to become the most powerful summoner alive for a few decepit gods. There was always a much greater summoning waiting in her future. This is what she had trained for.
She doesn’t chant this time. The thing doesn’t understand words. But she reaches out with her power and finds it where it has always been, had she eyes to see it. She calls it into the material world,
“...Sisitu... hold...”
“...you must not... do this...”
“...we do not... permit...”
“Are you frightened, small gods?!” she screams at them “Does death not strike or stay at your command? Give me what I ask!”
“...our power...”
“...is too much... decayed...”
“...what we said... in the fullness of... our strength...”
“...we cannot now... unsay...”
“...we entreat... your mercy...”
“My mercy.” Sisitu repeats. Laughing madly, she spreads her arms wide and finishes the summoning. Time at last to be born.
The spirit called into the circle is a swirling mass of horror. Perhaps Sisitu can make out the barest suggestion of hands and eyes. Perhaps not. The thing is practically mindless. It has never been allowed to live long enough to develop a mind. Called into flesh a million times and expelled from the warm dark. It was never truly a child. It is a beast turned out of its den. It is very old. And it is very powerful. And it has been with Sisitu long enough to understand rage.
It takes a long time. Even in decay, gods don’t die easily. When it is over, the angry cloud roils and swirls in the circle of blood. Pushes against the walls of its magic womb.
Her baby. The reason she originally refused what she had spent so long searching for. Her first and only reason for living. As the first light of dawn stretches over the desert, the thing in the summoning circle melts away. She feels a familiar knife twist in her abdomen and her white robe is stained with red. She pulls the garment over her head and throws it away. The tide has turned once again.
The sea.
The sea is still and flat along the coastline, a dull grey plane in the pre-dawn light. The Persian Gulf, they call it now. Sisitu had been here before the Achaemenid Empire, before Parsis. Nobody today knows what they had called it back then and Sisitu doesn’t particularly feel like telling anyone. Just a gulf, not a real ocean. But it is salt water nonetheless.
The sea was humanity’s womb, it was said. Man had burst forth into the world when the salt water could no longer hold him. And so had things repeated for every birth since. Because blood is salt water, and inside every human there is an ocean.
Here, now, as the sun begins to creep over the flat, sandy horizon at Sisitu’s back, inside her there is a turning of the tide.
Here, now, blood flows. And she doubles over in pain, clutches her stomach and feels the sticky mess trickle down her thighs. She straightens up, wades into the gulf up to her waist. The grey water is dappled with orange now. She lets it wash her clean. Lets blood return to blood. And she returns to the coast, her long Arabic dress sodden and stained. Today she will find the mouth of the Euphrates. Follow it upstream for two days and she will find what’s left of Eridu.
Trudging along, dripping as the sun rises, Sisitu’s thoughts take her home.
3092 BC
When Sisitu remembers Eridu, she remembers barley. Field after field of green and golden barley, so wide there was no end of them. The marshy soil was so rich that every seed unfolded and thrust up its head. They had been surrounded by green and gold that scorching summer day. The barley stalks were flattened beneath her back, her white robe tossed aside. She had looked up into his liquid brown eyes, his jet black hair, with beautiful green and gold all around.
He had been sixteen, a year older than her.
Even the great ziggurat temple E-abzu smelled of barley. The stone was cool beneath her feel, even in the heat of a summer noon. When the guards came for her, they marched her through the fields in her spotless white robe with her hands bound. The gleaners stopped their work to watch. It was not often they got to see a priestess brought so low. She avoided their eyes. But the eyes of the Speaker-for-Gods held her so that she could not look away.
She knelt on the cool stone. The Speaker-for-Gods examined her like a beetle between his fingers. His face was unreadable, what she could see of it between his long beard and his golden headdress. Today people speak of the mystery of God. Back then, the gods were not mysterious. They crowded around, just on the edge of Sisitu’s sight. Anu. Enki. Inana. Enlil. Ninhursag. The great gods of Sumer.
“You are Sisitu,” the Speaker-for-Gods said “of whom the gods require both obedience and chastity.”
“Majesty, I am she.” Sisitu managed to keep the tremor out of her voice. “But I repent my sin and would find the gods’ favour again at any cost.”
“Indeed?” the Speaker-for-Gods’ voice was light and musical, not the booming heavy tones she would have expected from such an impressive man. “Then rejoice, Sisitu, for the gods will pardon you. Providing only that you take your life in the temple grounds.”
For a few seconds, she could say nothing. Her lips trembled as she forced the words out. “Majesty, I cannot. You know I cannot!”
“‘At any cost,’ you said.”
“Aye, any cost to me. But I am pregnant. I cannot kill my baby. If you would stay my sentence for just a few—”
The almost-visible forms of the gods crowded closer around her. She could feel their anger crackling through the air like a storm about to break. She knew their faces and names. She knew their domains. She knew their stories. She had devoted her life to them. The weight of their malice bent her spine. Her forehead touched the floor.
“Enough. The gods offered you death and you would not take it. Take their curse instead. You are an abomination heaved from their affronted sight. Death will not touch you now. When Eridu is dust, and the dust baked and built into cities still unthought-of, the sun will still look down upon your shame.”
1580 AD
Sisitu is awake before dawn in the old travellers’ inn where she spent the night. She stands naked by the window, watching for the first signs of the sun, holding a round-bottomed jar.
Her guts clench. The tide turns once again and runs down her legs. She is ready and fills the jar with her bright, fresh blood. After firmly corking the jar and fastening the top, she attends to her hygiene. Such things are important. She leaves most of the grisly payload on the floor. Let the innkeeper deal with it. She places the jar in her bag, along with her soiled clothes from the previous day, a skin of water, and the money she didn’t spend on this night in the inn, and unfolds her fresh, clean, white robe. The material is finer than any of the clothing they made back then, but otherwise it is exactly the same. She puts it on, smoothing it across her belly and thighs. Her robe was her armour, and her declaration of war. She wore it for the same reason she was returning to Eridu. It should end as it began. There was a rightness to this.
Sisitu takes a deep breath, girds herself for the day ahead, takes up her light luggage, and resumes her pilgrimage.
1067 AD
It was on a green hill they met. Unbelievably green. It was only a few miles west of Hastings, but untouched by the battle. Only months had passed since then, but it was agreed by all but the most foolish that William the Norman was king of England.
Sisitu dressed in the garb of a native peasant woman, but nothing could disguise her Mesopotamian features. She looked fifteen, as she had for more than four thousand years.
He was dressed simply as well, but it didn’t seem to be for the sake of inconspicuousness. She suspected he dressed in well-worn travelling clothes wherever he went. He looked old already, tired from the weight of the years, but strong. Unbelievably strong. She was glad of that.
“I understand what you want of me,” he said “and I came to see you out of respect for what you have already accomplished. But understand that I cannot kill you.”
Sisitu shook her head, refreshed by his bluntness. Too much of conversation was hiding what was really meant. It was the kind of thing that got tiring after a few millennia. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Just removed the curse and let me live out the rest of my natural days.”
“That would be killing you,” the old man said, “and you misunderstand me. Your curse was placed on you by the Sumerian gods in all their power and wrath. I don’t have the power to undo it. I doubt anyone does. No one you could, or would want to, contact anyway. If you want death so badly, take it up with your gods.”
It was as if she had been slapped in the face. There was no malice in his words, but the death of her one hope hurt more than any insult could.
“Don’t you think I’ve done that?” she snapped, trying and failing to keep the anger out of her voice “For four thousand years I’ve called to them, prayed to them, sacrificed to them. They never respond.”
He looked out at the meadow below them. Green, so vibrant green. Greener than the barley fields of Sumer, Sisitu thought. And yet this was such an old land.
“Time distils most things down to their essence,” he said in careful, measured words “If it were me, I’d bargain from strength.”
“You mean I can force them to answer my call?”
“It can be done. A sorcerer can summon all kinds of supernatural entities if he knows the art. Gods too, although that’s more difficult.”
Sisitu’s stomach rose to meet her heart. She held her breath, barely daring to believe what was being suggested to her. She couldn’t ask him to do it for her. He would refuse, she knew. “Will you teach me?” she asked, hoping against four thousand years of desperation. The old man didn’t meet her eyes. He kept staring intently at the green English meadow. “Do you know how my immortality works?” she pressed “It is the recycling of a single day. Every dawn, my body remakes itself just as it was when the gods first cursed me. I’ve had the same miscarriage every day for four thousand, one hundred, and fifty-nine years.”
The old man turned to look at her, his face as implacable as the Speaker-for-Gods’ so long ago. “You’ll have to start small,” he said at last “Imps and sprites, things of that nature. Becoming powerful enough to call down the gods will take time.”
“Time, I have.” Sisitu found herself smiling. The expression seemed so alien. Had it really been that long? She didn’t cry, not even for joy. The salt water reminded her too much of blood. “Thank you, Fixban.”
1580 AD
It is dusk by the time she reaches Eridu. The city was once a mud-brick metropolis. They used to say it was the first city in the world. Whether or not that’s true, it was probably the largest in its day. It straddled the Euphrates where it flowed into the gulf. Paradise for farmers and fishers alike. The course of the river has changed since then. The coastline has moved too. The landscape is an inhospitable desert now. And Eridu is a few piles of crumbling stone. It’s still possible to make out the outline of the great ziggurat temple where the gods cursed Sisitu, once upon a time the marvel of Mesopotamia. She notes with some perverse pride that it is still the largest structure as far as the eye can see. Hot and thirsty, her waterskin empty, her white robe stained with sand, Sisitu climbs to the top of the ruin. The wind picks up, tugging playfully at her as if the land itself was welcoming her home. It has been a very long time.
Sisitu sets down her bag and takes out the jar of blood from this morning’s miscarriage. She uncorks it, dips her finger in, and draws a wide circle on the rough stone, careful to leave no gap. Candles, pentagrams and eldritch symbols are for amateurs and dilettantes. This is old magic. Simple, powerful, and pungent.
Sisitu spent over two centuries studying under Fixban until she had surpassed him in the art of summoning. Then she had sought out others to teach her what he could not. Some of them had been human. When there was nothing more she could learn from others, she taught herself. In the specific field of summoning and binding, Sisitu of Eridu is the most powerful practitioner in the world. She has no doubt that she is ready to bind gods to her will.
Stepping outside the circle, Sisitu anoints herself with her own blood and begins to chant in halting Sumerian. How many centuries, how many millennia have passed since she last used the mother tongue? No matter. It’s like riding a horse. She does not beg. She does not entreat. That is behind her. She reaches out with her power and forces them to manifest before her. And they appear. With the scent of barley and the whispering of the grain fields, they appear.
She almost laughs at the absurdity. The great gods of Sumer crowded into her summoning circle like so many geese in a pen. They look so small. She expected this to be the most difficult thing she had ever attempted. She had trained for almost five centuries to become strong enough for this. And their combined power turns out to be no more than a mid-level demon or a ghost with a thousand years to its name. This is insultingly easy.
Sisitu falls to her knees, forcing supplication where there is only anger. “Gods of Sumer, your servant speaks to you. Sisitu of Eridu asks your forgiveness. Please?”
Their thin, reedy voices are barely audible above the desert wind. “...but your sin... is great...”
“...and not yet expiated...”
“...it is sacrilege...”
“...for you... even to call on us...”
Sisitu’s mouth tightens. Her hands clench. “You cannot imagine how little I care about sacrilege now. I ask you again. Will you remove the curse, and let me die?”
“...not yet...”
“...in a thousand years...”
“...we will... consider...”
“...and you may... ask again...”
Sisitu bows her head so they will not see her face. Inside, she screams. She rages. She tears herself to pieces with her own hands. Her head splits open and all her fury and all her power wash over the world and destroy every living thing in it. Outwardly, she remains motionless and silent. And in her bottomless rage, she finds clarity. Bargain from strength... strength that time distils... Fixban’s words to her five centuries ago. How could she have been so blind? It was there with her all along. She hadn't needed to become the most powerful summoner alive for a few decepit gods. There was always a much greater summoning waiting in her future. This is what she had trained for.
She doesn’t chant this time. The thing doesn’t understand words. But she reaches out with her power and finds it where it has always been, had she eyes to see it. She calls it into the material world,
“...Sisitu... hold...”
“...you must not... do this...”
“...we do not... permit...”
“Are you frightened, small gods?!” she screams at them “Does death not strike or stay at your command? Give me what I ask!”
“...our power...”
“...is too much... decayed...”
“...what we said... in the fullness of... our strength...”
“...we cannot now... unsay...”
“...we entreat... your mercy...”
“My mercy.” Sisitu repeats. Laughing madly, she spreads her arms wide and finishes the summoning. Time at last to be born.
The spirit called into the circle is a swirling mass of horror. Perhaps Sisitu can make out the barest suggestion of hands and eyes. Perhaps not. The thing is practically mindless. It has never been allowed to live long enough to develop a mind. Called into flesh a million times and expelled from the warm dark. It was never truly a child. It is a beast turned out of its den. It is very old. And it is very powerful. And it has been with Sisitu long enough to understand rage.
It takes a long time. Even in decay, gods don’t die easily. When it is over, the angry cloud roils and swirls in the circle of blood. Pushes against the walls of its magic womb.
Her baby. The reason she originally refused what she had spent so long searching for. Her first and only reason for living. As the first light of dawn stretches over the desert, the thing in the summoning circle melts away. She feels a familiar knife twist in her abdomen and her white robe is stained with red. She pulls the garment over her head and throws it away. The tide has turned once again.
I like this character. There are things I can do with her.
That is a beautiful idea.
