Running Wild Novella Anthology Volume 2, Part 2

By Curtis Smith, Jon Benham, John Rathbone Taylor and 4 more

In Part 2, a smattering of the novellas are a young Irishman's escapades as he experiences that the local legend isn't really a legend in The Washerwoman; help a young orphan find her biological parents and unearth her family's secrets in Looking for Home; experience the lives of a prisoner and his torturer in The Inquisitor; find out what Horatio really thinks of Hamlet in Horatio; and check out the follow up to Newly Minted Wings and salty French Fries in You Want Me to Clean What?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Running Wild Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947041189

Curtis Smith

C. R. Smith lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area.

Book preview

Titles

MIDIAN

Edge of the Judgment of Days

By Daniel Uncapher

In 1190 BC Canaanite city dwellers fled the destruction of Ugarit for the inhospitable wastelands of Midian, Land of Judgment, near the deserts of northern Arabia. Twenty years later Danel, son of the last Ugarite, struggles to adapt to a new and uncertain world of mysterious Sea Peoples, cultic Bedouin, and the divine intervention of the Elohim, the Elder Gods, Goddesses and Demons. Historical fiction, 16,000 words.

The drunken soldier says,

"Tell me, Maiden Anat:

Would you really have me kill him?

Slay the darling boy?"

The Maiden Anat says,

"Pay attention, drunk, and I’ll tell you:

I’ll turn you into a vulture and fly you

Like a raptor in my pocket.

When the darling boy sits to eat,

The son of Danel sits to dine,

Over him vultures will soar,

A flock of raptors will coast.

Among the vultures I will circle,

Above the son I’ll set you free.

Strike him twice on his crown,

Three times across his ears;

Pour the blood from his head like sap,

Like juice running down to his knees.

Let his breath escape like wind,

His soul like vapor, like smoke from his nose.

I will revive him."

- Epic of Aqhat

Ugarit, c. 1200 BCE

1

We live on the edge of Judgment. We are all alone and we are scared. There are three of us. Our herd has thinned to two. Of wine vessels we have one.

The sky has emptied of clouds as the cities have emptied of people. Fruit rots on the vine as the trees turn to ash in the dust. Father dreams of rebuilding Ugarit and he still refers to us as Ugarites. Even after all that we have been through and all that remains between civilization and us.

There will be no New Ugarit.

2

My name is Danel. It means Judgment of El - that’s a laugh.

Danel was a prophet from Canaan who rose to power as a hostage to the King of Tyre. He prayed for a son and El gave him one, a boy named Aqhat. When Aqhat died and went to the underworld Danel went after his son and saved him.

The King of Tyre has been usurped; Tyre doesn’t exist anymore. El has Judged, and found me wanting.

This is how the old world ends.

3

I call my father Abba.

My mother’s name is Uanna, Light of the Heavens, but I call her Ima. She is in her ninth moon of pregnancy. The matriarchal earth goddess Asherah promised her a daughter. I am glad; I have always wanted a sister.

My father worships El, the patriarchal sky god, and is deeply afraid of mother’s Asherah. He doesn’t allow talk of the goddess in his presence. Mother in turn doesn’t talk about El.

Mother and father don’t talk very much anymore.

4

My mother blames everything on my father.

My father blames the Greek.

It is true that the Greek brought us into this darkness, and that he did so by his own volition. He calls his motive honor; Abba calls it greed.

It’s true the Greek plundered the Valley of Kings and bloodied the Nile. He came into the evergreen valleys of Phoenicia and Canaan and salted the earth with his poisonous seed. He even reached Sumer, in the land of Eden between Two Rivers where magicians and astronomers worship the wisdom of the First People, and he destroyed their observatories and burned up their libraries.

This is all true. But the Greek did not invent the desert. The Greek did not brighten the sun, boil the rivers to mud, ostracize the clouds and spoil the harvest. When the skies darkened and the wheat turned to ash the Greek hungered, and when the heated metal touched his skin he bled. The Greek can no more be blamed for this than my unborn sister. He is reacting, as we all react, and he is doing a remarkable job of it.

5

In the dunes beyond blame the demons wait.

They watch from the safety of their shapeless mirage and count each of our breaths to our last.

My father refuses to acknowledge them when I ask, but at night he sleepwalks and he says their names. They pull at his lips in his half-sleep like fishhooks and lure him south, towards the desert.

He sees them all: Samael, the winged satyr of the red planet; Lilith, the womb-eating wanderer with things like feathers and the song of the screech owl in her throat; Azazel, who feeds on the sins of the shepherds, wiping the blood of their whitest goats over the desert and painting streaks of red in his wake.

So, too, he talks of the Seirim, the race of ancient, faceless pleasure instruments of Lilith. They haunt the ruins with their hair hanging like moss between their legs and the golden crowns of ancient kings stacked around their necks like necklaces. And the Rephaim, the shades of the dead stuck in the underworld seek atonement for injustices long erased from living memory, haunting the hidden graves buried by sand in the timeless pursuance of justice.

This is what my father says when he talks to himself at night, the pale red sand reflected darkly in his half-dead eyes: he says, You will not take my son from me.

6

I kneel on the edge of the desert and I pray in secret to my secret god, the Maiden Anat. I am supposed to worship Baal, the son of El and the ruler of civilization, but Baal is pathetic. Every six months he dies and is taken to hell, and every six months his sister, Anat, comes to rescue him.

Anat is a resurrector, a virgin demon-slayer who answers to none but her own devotion to family. I pray to Anat in such secret that even Anat doesn’t know.

7

I find my first well on the eve of the New Moon in the month of Sivan, when the unrelenting sun is at its highest.

The discovery saves our lives. We drink like dogs. Our mouths had swollen shut from dehydration. We serve the goats and cattle next.

No sooner has Abba moistened his lips then he orders me to pitch the tent.

Don’t, says Ima. This isn’t our well.

Pitch the tent, Danel. El has not saved us today just to kill us tomorrow.

Ima turns her back to him, as if to say, El has not saved us all. I pitch the tent.

Abba washes out the three remaining wine vessels rescued from the Temple of Baal and fills them with fresh water. The cows groan under the refreshed load. If we lose another cow we would have to abandon a vessel, which was a loss that we could not afford; three vessels had barely been enough this time.

When the sun sets and we go to sleep father suggests that we take turns watching over the camp, but that he would take first watch. I was too tired to argue.

I dream of unsynchronized shadows on unsteady ground and wake up with the light of the red planet in my eyes. I lay outside the tent near the well. I get up and offer Abba a break.

I find him wandering into the desert, staring at the red planet twinkling in the absolute splendor of Tiamat’s Tail (or as Greeks say, the Milky Way).

The Edomites call the red planet Samael, Wrath of El, the angel of their hairy ancestor-god and the paternal creator of demons. The Greeks called it Mars, the blood-letter. The Red Crescent dunes of the far desert reflect Samael’s presence like moonlight on the silvery scales of writhing snakes.

I call out to my father. What are you doing, Abba?

He stops. Wrath, he says. What wrath?

I catch up with him. Let’s get back to Ima. You need some sleep. We have a long drive in the morning.

From the tent comes the bone-chilling scream of my mother.

8

Abba and I race back to the well. My throat seizes and I lose my breath. By the time I arrive the screaming stops.

The tent was cut to pieces. Five men in cloaks of white wool and gold thread surround Ima with the curved Bedouin swords at their necks.

Father stands frozen before them like a frightened deer.

Who are they, Abba?

Bedouin, says my father.

The shortest one with the most gold across his chest shouts commands in an unintelligible language to his slaves huddled around a caravan by the well. They gather around our wine vessels and pour them over, spilling water into the dirt.

We can’t let them do this, I say.

Relax, Danel, he says. I will take care of this.

He falls to his knees before the Bedouin. Forgive us. We have borrowed your water without permission and for that I beg you to forgive us. We are a simple people. We have nothing left. Without this water we are dead.

They ignore him. The servants tie our five remaining goats and two cows to the back of their caravan and stack the wine vessels on top of a pile of rugs.

Abba pulls at his hair like a fallen king. In the name of El the Ancient of Days, I beseech you: don’t abandon us here!

I grab him by his collar and pull him to his feet. I hate seeing him grovel; I have never seen it work before, and it was not working now.

Ima stands up and drops her robes to her feet. The Bedouin lower their swords and tilt their heads in interest. Her lips move in an invocation to Asherah of Ugarit, Lady Athirat of the sea, she who treads on the sea, creatrix of the universe and mother of earth.

The leader sheaths his sword and bows before my mother. He orders the clothes off his bodyguard’s back and wraps them around Ima.

Alilat, he says. The Bedouin lay down their arms and bow.

Athirat, says my mother, cupping the leader’s head in her hands and kissing his brow.

Abba throws his hands up. They’re cow thieves! Wolves! She’s exposing herself to the wolves!

Their leader smooths a section of mud with a wipe of his palm and fingers the letters M-I-T-R-A in the earth.

What is that? I ask.

Mitra, says my father. The primordial mountain goddess of primitive people. Her name means covenant. They are offering us treaty.

Mother lays the stranger’s head on her belly and pats his hair.

It looks like we accept.

9

We ride camels straight for the heart of the desert to the south. The familiar frontiers of ashy Midian disappear behind the screen of heat and sand. We are in Arabia.

The Bedouin treat us well. Their leader has become mother’s new devotee. He feeds us curdled camel’s milk and pickled dates. The strange new food is sour and delicious. Abba vomits against the wind and everyone laughs at him.

An elder with a gold-banded snake thicker than my thigh coils over his shoulders like a living shawl feeding the creature mice from a box hanging on his camel. I watch with a mix of revulsion and intrigue as the giant animal swallows the squirming rodents one by one.

On the second day of riding he lets me touch his snake, and I let it come over my chest and constrict me. Abba watches with disgust.

Snakes are a symbol of the Matriarch. Father hates snakes.

10

The third day I lose sense of time and direction. The sun spins senselessly over my head. The dunes rise and crash like ocean waves on peripheral shores.

The moon arrives with the night, its crescent slices rounding the shadow of the retreating sun. We camp in a circle and the Bedouin servants play tribal music, a droning, high-pitched repetition of sounds in rhythm with the haunting moan of the ever-shifting sand dunes.

They practically worship Ima. It makes me uncomfortable. Father is absolutely furious. But we can do nothing about it and mother, for her part, lavishes in the attention.

The chief’s attendants rub her womb like an egg with a scented miracle salve. He burns powerful incense that smells like sour honey and tints our vision with the foam of the rolling red-sea.

Long after our family would have usually gone to sleep the Bedouin are still awake. They hand a drinking cup in the form of a gilded skull between themselves and share the contents. When the chief sees that I am watching, he bids me approach. He only has four fingers on his left hand.

He offers me the cup. It looks like diluted goat blood and it smells acidic. Everyone watches me expectantly; I taste.

The blood has fermented. It tastes like a saturation of spit, copper, and spoiled pomegranate seeds. My entire body revolts as it passes from my lips to my stomach and I vomit straight into the fire in the center of the ring of roaring laughter.

11

We arrive at the Bedouin camp the next morning.

Hundreds of painted cows, goats and camels graze freely on a patch of wild barley along the left bank of a glistening, crystalline oasis. Dates and pomegranates grow on heavy-limbed trees and cast clusters of long shade across the peaceful water.

It’s paradise, says Abba. Mother cries to herself. I can’t help but laugh. Is this the work of the Matriarch?

Twelve large tents and innumerable smaller ones line the right bank of the spring. Our leader marches us down the dune and through the camp.

We draw a crowd. Children walk beside us staring at the wine vessels from Ugaritic Baal. They run their fingers along the painted epics of Baal and Anat that decorate the bodies of the massive urns.

Whenever our short chief passes, the people fall to their knees and praise him.

We dismount before the largest tent in the center of the camp. Towering statues of a rain god and a snake goddess stand on either side of the entrance. Drapes of royal cloth hang between the two idols and cool the ground below in shades of gold and purple.

Servants lead the wagons away and armed guards replace them. They carry Ima into the tent while Abba and I follow with knives to our back.

12

The Bedouin call their king Agag. He is fat. I have never seen a man half so fat in my life. I am immediately jealous.

Three women lay beside him on his gilded cushions: a grandmother, a mother, and a maiden. They are better dressed than him.

Our captor presents us before his king with unintelligible enthusiasm. The king responds in perfect Semitic. Abba’s eyes lighten up when he hears the familiar words.

My son introduces you as Israelites. That would bring great honor to him. But you don’t look like Israelites to me, he says, looking directly at my father. Father falls prostrate before the king. I follow his example.

Rise, says the king, And speak, if you understand me.

We rise. Abba speaks.

You are correct, my lord. We are not Israelites. We hail from Ugarit in the valleys of Canaan from the house of the High Priest, Abba-gal.

The king looks to his elderly consort and smiles. You see? Canaanites. How strange. They must be in the worship of Baal, then – yet my son calls the woman Asherah.

My wife is in the worship of Asherah, explains Abba. My son and I worship El, the Ancient of Days.

The mood changes in the room. Our guards press their blades against our spines in gentle reminder of their presence.

Agag leers at Abba. "Then you are Israelites," he says. He looks at Abba’s guard, who knocks Abba behind his knees and pushes him down.

No! I step forward. We’re not Israelites. We don’t worship El. El is what my father calls Baal. He’s unwell.

I avoid my father’s hurt gaze and maintain eye contact with the king.

Your son insults you before Agag, he says to my father, who clasps his hands together.

Forgive my son for his outburst. He was born in Edom. He knows nothing of Canaan or Israel.

Agag calls the guard off. He helps Abba back to his feet.

You are standing in the Moon Tent of Agag, son of Alilat, inheritor of the Red Crescent. My son Abdul al-Lat, Servant of Alilat, brought you before me not as prisoners of war, but because he mistook your wife for an incarnation of Asherah.

My mother’s turn to speak comes.

He’s right, she says. A murmur goes through the court.

Go on, encourages Agag.

Asherah guides me. She speaks to me in waking dreams.

The crone at his side whispers something into the king’s ear with a flick of her tongue. He leans forward and beckons my mother to approach. She walks up to him before the scrutiny of the entire tent. Father watches through wincing eyes.

Agag takes Ima’s hands in his own and counts all ten of her fingers with a press of his lips. He takes her by her waist and pulls her forward until her womb hangs suspended before his face. He puts his ear to it and listens.

He pulls his ear back and raises a glass in toast. The crowded tent responds with a mix of cheer and piety as Abdul, our captor and the crown prince, bow down in deference to my mother. Even Agag lowers his head in respect. I had never seen anything like it. It was all I could do not to laugh.

Father buries his face in his hands on the ground.

From then on Agag only addresses Ima.

You are guests of Alilat. Tonight you will dine with us. We will sacrifice many goats in her name. Tomorrow you will be paid for the acquisition of your herd and your urns, and your son will be adopted into my own House as a vassal of my son Abdul al-Lat, if it suits you to do so.

My father throws his head up and speaks. And if it does not suit us to do so?

Agag looks directly at my mother and caresses her belly. Then I will sacrifice your son, marry your wife, slaughter your cattle, smash your jars and abandon you to the strange folk in the weeping wilderness of the Red Crescents.

My mother returns Agag’s focused stare. You honor us, my king.

Our guards sheath their swords and help us back to our feet.

13

We feast on dates, pomegranates, barley and goat’s milk harvested from the oasis. The water sparkles under the colorful twinkle of the stars as a warm evening air blows in over the hills and ripples across the spring. Clouds of incense pillar through the air like smoke signals from the bundles of mysterious wood and spice.

Dinner begins with sacrifice. They elevate Ima as the guest of honor. Every Bedouin in camp comes to pay their respects. They touch her belly and pour libations of honey, oil and juice to her.

Abba refuses to celebrate. He eats a single pomegranate by himself under a tree overlooking the southern desert. Even I do not bother trying to talk to him.

Abdul al-Lat does not speak of a word of Semitic but proves to be a generous host. He drinks the fermented goats’ blood until his eyes swim freely in their sockets and he dances with his personal harem around the sacrificial fire.

I have seen people dancing before – my father often dances in a futile attempt to induce rain from El – but never like the crown prince and his harem dance. It is open, uninhibited, formless and openly sexual. They kick up the dirt until it mixes with the sweat on their skin and makes mud.

I like it. It doesn’t make sense but it is exciting. I stand close to them and watch. Someone hands me the gilded skull and I drink from it. The hot liquid pierces the back of my throat but this time I swallow it down.

Abdul sees me and whispers something to his consort. She and two other concubines come to me and hang golden chains around my neck. They take me by my arms and lead me to the torch-lit shore of the spring, where they strip me of my clothes and bathe me in the shallow water. They dry me with scented perfumes and the youngest one paints my face like their own, reddening my lips and darkening my eyes. I look like the prince.

They wrap thin gauze around my waist and take me back to the fire, where they teach me how to dance their strange and seductive dance. We move like snakes at the bottom of seas, copiously and in place, as they lead the movements of my hips and shoulders with their own fluid hands.

Even the snake charmer joins in. He drapes his python over my shoulders and teachs me how to handle it. I stroke his scales and listen to the unsettling ebb of his tickling hiss against my ear.

My father runs up to me with a jug of water and pours it over my face. What have they done to you, my son? he cries and takes his ragged robes in his fists and wipes the smudged paint from my dripping face.

I want to throw him into the fire. Stop it, I say, quietly at first but then louder: Stop it!

I have never spoken back to him before. There are many firsts for me that night.

14

Abba shakes his head and stands among the drunken dancers as I retreat, dripping wet, to Abdul’s tent.

Inside I find a boy my age in princely clothes lying on Abdul’s mattress. I hadn’t expected him. He ignores me.

I lay down on my own rug and pretend to be asleep.

The boy speaks to me in with a song-like lull to his voice. Are you enjoying yourself?

The voice and the question both surprise me.

Well, yes, I say. I think I am.

The boy rolls over and props his head on one hand. Good. That’s what they need. Good.

I look at him. Black paint lines his eyes that peal as he laughs at my streaky face. I frown. Why do they need me to enjoy myself?

My name is Amel. It means Lamb. You’re Danel. You’re very lucky. Do you know why?

No, I say. I don’t. I feel embarrassed. So many open questions. Is he mocking me?

He turns away from me. Then you’re even luckier.

I roll my eyes at the peak of the tent above us. Smoke collects in a wafting swirl before dissolving away.

What is the name of this place? I ask.

Blood Oasis. Because of the pomegranates. It’s a silly name. We are not a very creative people.

Do you live here?

No, says Amel. We’re nomads. We live in tents. In the morning we’re going to the lost city of Tayma, to the west. Then you’ll go to Dedan, where the treasure-bearers live. You’ll like Dedan. It’s a true paradise, not like these backwater oases. Everyone is happy there.

It’s hard for me to imagine a paradise in the desert, I say. Although it’s hard for me to imagine paradise anywhere, anymore. Why don’t you just settle in Dedan?

Amel gets out of bed and stands over me. Because of the covenant. Don’t ask stupid questions like that anymore.

I say nothing as he walks out of the tent, adding one last word before he left: Pay attention in Tayma.

I fall asleep dreaming of snakes and water springs.

15

We leave for Tayma in the morning.

Agag takes an interest in me during the long drive. I finally get the courage to ask him about demons. He seems happy to oblige me.

The demons are real, he says. But they are not your enemy, no more than the sun during drought or the rain during floods. They are simply manifestations of natural will. They are agents of the divine as you or I are, or as the wind is, or the force that holds us on the earth. They’re just a natural expression of strength.

Abba doesn’t believe in demons, I say. Father stays in the back of the caravan with the slaves. We haven’t spoken since leaving the oasis.

Abba is an outsider in this world, says Agag. Many people are. I don’t think you are, though, are you, little Judge?

16

The ruins of Tayma surround what must have been the largest well ever built by mortal men, a brick structure sunken deep into the earth with a complicated wooden apparatus straddling either side some 18 meters in diameter. There is enough water in that single well to sustain a small city.

We immediately relax under the leafy palm trees that grow along the broadways of the ancient city as the servants work to re-build camp. I walk up the wide avenue looking at all the crumbling mud-brick structures from the past.

I find Amel doing the same, admiring a two-story building with mosaics still on the wall.

Why don’t we sleep here tonight, instead of in a tent again?

Amel scoffs. Why don’t we sleep at the bottom of the well? I don’t understand his attitude.

The sun sets softly on the western horizon, passing over the mountains of Sinai into Egypt and the Great Sea. Amel slips into the building and I decide to leave him alone and walk back to camp, where they’ll light the fires of sacrifice and begin cooking dinner.

I join Abdul for dinner but Agag invites me to his side. Ima sits beside me while Abba eats with the slaves. I look for Amel but cannot find him.

It is a delicious meal. Spices and herbs turn up from somewhere in the ruins flavored fatty, soft meat on beds of barley and goat curds. The ceremonial skull with the wicked concoction of blood still pass from lip to lip, but so do vessels full of regular wine and beer, which I taste eagerly and drink at liberty.

Our stomachs bulge until we all look like my mother. Even the moon seems to be bulging. I point this out to Agag and he laughs.

17

After finishing the last course the attention of the court turns to the sacrificial fires, behind which the dual primordial idols of the sky god and snake goddess stand in primitive authority. The manipulative incense smoke fills our noses and mingles with the alcohol in our blood. The idols seem to expand and shrink like breathing things.

Three young slave women walk between the blue flames and disrobe before their attentive audience. A larger group of musicians line up to the side and play their lutes, flutes, and goblet drums. A woman dresses herself in a manjur of rattling goat hooves as additional percussion. I fall in love with her on the spot.

An elder shaman guides a blindfolded and cloaked man past the diners and up to the sacrificial stage, where he pulls back the hood and reveals Amel, the prince. The three women descend on Amel like vultures, pulling the cloak from his naked torso and stripping his underwear down his skinny legs.

The shaman tends to the fires while the maidens work on the prince. He stands in place and tries not to react to their desperate petting and fingering, but when they take him in their mouths he gives into it; the audience applauds.

I stare. I feel afraid and I cannot explain it. Some of the highest caste Bedouin discard their clothes and begin dancing along to the darkly sexual music.

After growing the flames the shaman leads an all-white she-goat onto the altar and sacrifices it with a crooked dagger. Its blood pours down the sides of the altar and onto the naked necks and open mouths of the worshippers. The maidens take the freshly cut skin of pure white fur and drape it over him like a cloak. Blood streams down his hairless body and he comes for them.

Agag puts his hand on my shoulder. Watch closely, son.

18

From the well up the hill comes a scream like a screech owl.

The ceremony stops. Agag leaps to his feet, sways in place as the blood rushes from his head and then leads the rest of the diners in a charge up the hill to investigate the warning.

I stay exactly where I sit and stare at Amel, shivering and panting in the arms of his three maidens, and wonder what could possibly be going on that would explain any of this at all.

Father appears at my side. I find myself relieved by his presence. What’s going on?

Nothing good, he says. Stay here with your mother.

His advice makes me want to leave so I leave him alone with my mother and run after Agag.

The Bedouin gather around the well, peering into the black depths and arguing incomprehensibly together. I squeeze between them for a view.

Corpses of naked Bedouin slaves float bloated and pale in the moonlit water.

Engineers throw in hooks on ropes to fish the bodies out, but when the curved metal struck the lacerated bodies they ripped into fleshy pieces and disintegrated into the deep black down below. The hooks fell helplessly through with a splash.

Somebody poisoned the well.

19

Agag draws his scimitar and waves it above his head. The Israelites have come! Israelites!

The Bedouin run in their dining clothes back to camp to arm themselves for battle. Abdul and the rest of the fighting-age males flee in panic from the center of camp and run right into us. The Israelites have arrived, they say, and they already took the town from them.

Agag threatens to cut his son down on the spot if he doesn’t turn around and lead the counter-assault. The women and children in camp scream and run in all directions as the Israelites loot the tents and take prisoners. The cry of their women gave Abdul al-Lat the courage to turn around and run straight back into the rout.

I remember my mother and I run through the shadows between the ruins to Abdul’s tent to look for her. She isn’t there.

Although the Bedouin are completely drunk, caught by surprise and generally unarmed, they rush straight into battle against the well-disciplined invaders who stand shield-to-shield like the Sea Peoples fight and brace for the impact.

Father hisses at me. Come here, Danel! This isn’t our fight!

I spin around in surprise until I see him hiding under a roll of rugs and cushions. I sigh. Get out of there, Abba! We’re under attack – they’ve taken Ima! Did you see them come in here?

Father grabs my ankle in his bony hands. Listen to me! This is not our fight. These people are Israelites – Strugglers of El. They are on our side. I’m not hiding from them – I’m hiding from Agag. Hide with me until the battle is over and then we will leave with the Israelites.

What? I yell, pulling myself free from his talon-like grip. Why should I trust that? Why should I trust anything you tell me now?

Why wouldn’t you trust your father?

You kept mother and me half-starved and wandering the long way through Midian for my fifteen years, worshipping a non-existent god, when there was paradise not but three days walk to the south!

Shadow covers Abba’s face but his voice falters when he spoke. Is that really how you think this works, son?

20

An Israelite stumbles into the tent, stares at me with pearl-white eyes, and then collapses on his face with a dining fork in his back.

I’m going to find Ima and help Agag fight, I say to my father. I won’t tell anyone where you are.

I walk over the fallen Israelite to the front of the tent, but the sounds of fighting through the fabric and the puddle of blood at my feet make me pause and give in to second thoughts. I run back to the rear end of the tent and sneak out the way I came in.

A pair of Israelites poke about nearby looking for something. I turn the corner of the tent and watch from my hiding place. They enter Abdul’s tent and come out a moment later hauling a rug, but there is no sign that they notice my father.

They enter the next tent and come out a moment later with Amel between them. I can’t resist shouting his name; he doesn’t seem to hear me. They steal a pair of camels and ride out of the oasis to the north into the darkness of the desert.

I can’t believe they got Amel. I run straight to the center of the camp to find Agag or Abdul and tell them.

The battle has turned. By force of desperation and persistence the Bedouin overcome the invaders and execute their new victims with vengeance, removing the heads and limbs of every fallen Israelite with care and precision before moving on to the next.

Agag fights hand-to-hand with the mightiest of Israelites. Both Bedouin and Israelites give their leaders room to engage in fair and honorable combat. I crouch behind an overturned table and watch.

I see father rise out of the shadows behind the Bedouin and creep up behind Agag, a bronze dagger glimmering faintly in the flames of the fight. He does not see me, his gaze staring at Agag’s exposed back while the king duels with his opponent, totally oblivious to the threat behind him.

Father, don’t! I yell, but my voice disappears in the din. I jump over the table and sprint straight towards the old man, tackling him and rolling across the ground together just before he reaches the king. His ankle snaps and he clutches it in shock, throwing the knife in the dirt. My lungs seize and I can not breathe.

What were you doing? I ask between red-faced, hoarse gasps.

What have you done? He returns, cradling his foot.

Agag kills his Israelite and beheads the corpse. As he bends down to cut through the last sinews and flesh he notices my father and I writhe around before him.

What are you trying to do here, Canaanites? he asks, wiping the blood from his beard with a smear of his wrist.

Abba reaches around clumsily in the dirt for his dagger but I kick it away from him and change the subject. The Israelites have kidnapped prince Amel, my lord.

The color flushes from his face as I speak. He rips the head of his enemy with a final twist, holds it in the air, and rallies his men with a skin-curdling scream that pierce the ears of every creature in Tayma.

The Bedouin cheer and the remaining Israelites panic, break ranks, and flee in a rout. They head west, and before I can say anything Agag and his tribesmen mount their camels and give chase.

I sit on the ground with my father surrounded by dismembered corpses and sigh as the dust settles over the ruins. They’re going the wrong way, I say.

Abba moans beside me. I remember what I’d done to him. Oh, father, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you – I just wanted to stop you from killing yourself. I had to stop you.

He looks past me to the western desert and stares. I repeat myself: I’m sorry, father. I’m really sorry.

Take a camel and go find your mother and sister, he says. Don’t come back without them.

21

I follow the wide tracks of the pursuing Bedouin until I arrive at the remains of the Israelite camp. Along the way I pass the occasional limb or torso sinking under the sand. The desert seems impossibly wide when alone; I have never been alone before.

From the crest of my hill I look down on the camp and watch the Bedouin continue their slaughter. The camp was little more than a scattering of tents and famished animals. Their cattle look like ours did in Midian before Abdul kidnapped us.

The whole scene reminds me of Midian. What my father said to me suddenly seems true: the Israelites are like us.

Agag and his loyal guard move from tent to tent in systematic execution of the panicking survivors. They take nothing with them for there is nothing to take, but when they enter the tents of the wives and the maidens they linger, and I listen to the screams softened only by the bloodstained walls of their tents.

When they finish raping they drag the women into the open desert and chop them to pieces like they did the men.

The sickening labor of rape and dismemberment continues for twenty minutes. Agag’s white robes now drip scarlet-red across the sand and his sword turns dull from cutting the surface of tendons and bone.

They even slaughter the herd, which, too weak to avoid it, accepts its fate in dumb, simple resignation. The goats and cows stand in place bawling and bleating while their guts fall out of their bellies and their legs are sawed out from under them.

The thirsty desert earth drinks up as the corpses bleed dry.

22

Despite the total genocide of the Israelite camp Agag is unsatisfied. None of the hostages were found.

He rides up to me and snarls. Amel isn’t here, he says.

I came to tell you. The kidnappers left camp to the north.

Agag roars and drives his camel past me with the flat of his sword. His bloodthirsty men follow their king on either side of me like a stampede around a lone boulder. I stand in their dust and shiver.

The dust settles. The moon waxes gibbous and lights up the desert, which has already started to swallow up the pieces of its slaughtered children. Sand soaks up the blood and buries the bodies as it blows across the broken earth.

I ride back to Tayma. I take my time, enjoying the cold solitude of the moment and process what I had just witnessed. I peal my eyes for demons; I see nothing but the scattered Israelite limbs.

23

I arrive in Tayma just as Agag returns with Amel, Ima and the rest of the hostages.

Amel looks at me with hate in his eyes. I don’t understand.

Ima, however, is glad to be back. Her entourage crowds around her. The Israelites haven’t laid a hand on any of them.

A shaman binds father’s ankle in a splint and fashions him a pair of canes to support him. It is only sprained, not broken, but he remains with the slaves and broods.

Meanwhile the warriors celebrate their victory by stripping together under the bulbous moon while their harem cleans them. Servants bring out a vessel of Baal filled with the fermented blood of she-goats, the familiar stench of which gags me as I imagine the quantity of goats needed to fill such a mammoth urn.

Every Bedouin in camp lines up for a drink. I join them even though the drink makes me sick to show my support. I even let myself take some credit for the safe return of Amel and Ima.

The line moves quickly. Father limps towards me on crutches and takes me by the arm. What now, Abba?

Don’t drink with them, he says.

I have to, I say. It’s important to them. Don’t you see that they saved our lives?

Father grabs my chin. I pull away but he holds it with a force I didn’t know he still possessed and he turns my face towards the ruins nearby, lit up with torches and reeking of incense.

Look! he cries.

I look.

24

Israelites hang by their feet from cedar rafters. Abdul and his men carved the skin from their captives like deer. Israelite blood gushes over their exposed organs and flapping flesh and splash into a vessel of Baal waiting beneath them.

I look away.

25

Abba speaks to me with unusual clarity.

These aren’t Bedouin, Danel. These people are called Amalekites, Lickers of Blood. They are the primitive enemies of El and all decency: they are cannibals.

My vision starts to swim so I stare my father in his eyes for stability. Even in his paranoia he looks healthier than I had seen him since I was a child. Does mother know?

He looks down and sighs through his nose. Yes, he says. I think she must. She knows it and she wants it because the goddess Asherah drove her mad in Midian. We can’t blame her though; your mother is an Amorite, and Amorites are very superstitious. You and I, however, are Ugarites. We are sane; we believe in right and wrong. We do not dine with cannibals. Do you understand me, Danel?

My heart flutters. The clarity of his words only makes them harder to trust. Too many things are in flux, too much information being kept from me.

The line moves.

26

We have to go now if we’re going, says Abba.

What if you’re wrong?

They’re Amalekites. I’m certain of it now.

Not that, I say. Everything else. These Bedouin – Amalekites – we’ve lived with them for weeks. They eat cheese and dates like we do. They drink water, they dance together and they rest at night. Even their animals are better fed than the average Midianite. While the rest of the world lives in ruin, these people live in uninhibited wealth. Who are we to say what’s virtuous?

Father falls on me with all his weight as though his legs disappeared beneath him. I catch him and hold him up. He is lighter than I expected, like the body of a desiccated bird, and I almost drop him out of shock.

Don’t do this to me, son, he says, pulling his hair. Don’t do this to me now, or it’s all been for nothing.

I stand him up and look at him closely. What’s been for nothing?

The drums return. Fire roars around the idols of El and Asherah and Agag leads everyone back to the altar of sacrifice.

The ceremony, says Abba. They’re resuming the ceremony. Now is our chance to escape. You don’t want to watch anymore of this.

I have to.

27

The shaman and his priestesses lead Amel to the altar and bind him with ropes to the stone.

From the tent of Agag comes his three wives: the crone, mother and maiden. They walk to the altar between the sacrificial fires of the dual deities and speak in prayer together.

The crone turns to us and speaks in Amalekite. I can’t understand it but her voice carries like a thunderclap over my head and I feel the effect of it, soul-ridden, as it sweeps out over the desert. Many cry; I do not.

The mother disrobes while the crone speaks and straddles the hips of the boy-prince. She works him up and rides him in plain view of the all-illuminating moon, descending it through the far hours of the night.

The maiden draws a ceremonial dagger and shows it to the statue of Asherah. The drums beat louder and the wind blows the sands through the camp, fanning the flames and carrying the words of the crone ever further. The maiden cradles his head in her lap and kisses him while the mother shakes him; they convulse.

The maiden drives the knife through his chest cartilage into his heart. The air leaves his lungs for the last time as she pulls her blade down to his pelvis, opening his organs to the light of the world. She rips out his liver and hands it to the mother, who reads it, proclaims it good and eats it.

The crone fills his chest cavity with bitumen and the fire lights inside him.

28

I ran straight for my mother.

We’re leaving, I say.

Abba hears me and disappears into a tent.

No, says Ima. I pick her up like a baby and carry her away anyway; when she screams, I cover her mouth.

I’m sorry, Ima, I whisper repetitively, I’m sorry, but we have to leave.

I carry her towards the camels where I find that Abba has already prepared a wagon with our own two cows instead. A single vessel of Baal is on it.

I put Ima on the wagon and run back into Abdul’s tent, where I grab everything I can carry – mother’s rugs, sacks of pomegranates and dates and even a bundle of their special, powerful incense. I’d grown especially fond of the stuff, and I suspect Abba and Ima did too.

Abdul throws open the flaps and stares at me. I blink at him and run away to the wagon.

Abdul has seen us, I say, throwing my loot on the wagon. I hear him rally his men around the fire. Ride north. I’ll steal a camel and lead them west. Stop when the sun rises and rest until I find you.

Abba looks at me through the folds of his heavy, wind-worn eyes, smiles, and then drives off to the north.

I run back through camp to attract Abdul’s men after me. I steal Amel’s shaved camel Hiba (gift), most prized for her speed and temperament, and spur her west. They chase me for hours, but as soon as I leave them in the dusty horizon behind me I bank right, perpendicular to the rising sun, and ride until I find my parent’s camped out in the dunes waiting for me.

We made it, I say, as the gravity of the previous night pulls at me; I crawl into the tent and fall asleep without saying another word to the familiar words of my mother’s endless prayers.

29

Taking the dates was a mistake.

Dates by themselves are an illness of purge. We drink all the water in the urn and then spend it back into the desert sand at night.

Mother takes it the worst. She complains of cramps. She calls my father mean names like cave dweller and Edomite.

Father talks to himself to cope with it.

We shall call it New Ugarit, he says. New Ugarit shall be its name. Danel will be king. I will be High Priest. We shall rule as father and son. We shall not rule apart. We will rule New Ugarit.

On the third day we arrive back in the wastelands of Midian.

Smokestacks rise over the north and south horizons. Lights twinkle from the caverns high in the ancient copper mines and caverns of the western mountains.

Let’s go to the mines and make peace with the Midianites, I suggest.

The miners are slavers.

Then let’s go east, to Eden.

Even the Amorites left Eden. The ziggurats have fallen and the Euphrates is but a trickle of mud through violent, tribal flatlands.

Then what is our option?

This is our option, says Abba, stabbing his crutch into the crusty ground. This is it. New Ugarit.

His chest swells with pride. I laugh.

What?

This is the kingdom of New Ugarit, he repeats. I am the High Priest of El-Hadad and you are King Danel.

This is not going to work, I say.

30

We are living on the edge of Judgment. We are all alone here and we are scared. There are three of us. Our herd has thinned to two. Of water vessels we have one.

The sky is empty of clouds as the cities have emptied of people. Fruit rots on the vine as the trees turn to ash in the dust. Father still calls us Ugarites, and he still dreams of re-building Ugarit. Even after all we have seen of this earth.

There will be no Neo-Ugarit.

This is how the old world ends.

31

The ending begins not with deluge, as the wisemen foresaw, but with drought.

The pharaohs stole the secrets of fire and bronze from the priests and raised personal armies to build mountains of their own immortalization, giant buildings that breached the heights of heaven beyond any High Place of El, Baal or Asherah.

El saw that the pharaohs and kings considered themselves better judges than he and responded as they wished: he let them rule. He removed himself from the world.

The pharaohs failed.

The hill folk called it Armageddon: the unprecedented battle between Thutmose III of Egypt and a coalition of Canaanite kings in the hills of Megiddo. The pharaoh won, and the valleys of the lower Levant ran red with the remains of the fallen armies of all the great cities, from Ugarit to Sodom and Sharon.

When El fled from the pharaoh’s great power, Shamash the Sun emerged from the eastern mountains and, upon seeing the power vacuum in El’s wake, took the cosmic throne for himself.

The Sun grew and scorched the earth. The Nile turned to mud. The Euphrates turned to brick.

Baal, feeling threatened, opened the molten maws of his mountains and blackened the sky to challenge the supremacy of the Sun. Blackness inhabited all things. Fire and iron fell from the sky like rain and hail choking the country with ash.

But when it settled, Shamash loomed larger than ever over the warming earth and boiled the creatures of the underground out of their burrows and graves. Even the Moon went into hiding.

Once the Sun won, the wheat stopped growing. When the wheat stopped, famine came.

The hunger took less than a week to collapse all international trade and politics as though they had never existed. Starving nations disintegrated along tribal lines as individual families vied hand-to-hand over the last stores of grain on the planet.

On the seventh day came the Sea People.

32

The Sea People represent strength. They believe they represent human strength. It seems to me they represent the vengeful strength of the Elohim. What better instrument for divine wrath than the technology of mass destruction?

They came from the barren frontiers of the far west called Achaea, or Greece, where islanders fight with axes and clubs and their wives copulate with giant bulls (at least that is what my father says). The pharaohs and kings gave them weapons and boats and sailed them east to civilization to fight their wars of hubris, paying them with the bread and beer that rose freely out of the fertile lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia but hardly grows in the rocky western isles.

When the rain stopped, so stopped the bread and beer, and the horde of mercenaries hungered. Instead of turning on themselves, they united into a horde and turned on Egypt, Canaan, and the rest of civilization. The pharaohs called them the Nine Bows and cowered when they came in sight. They came to eat like locusts and like locusts they ate.

33

The shores of the Great Sea darkened with the grey spread of uncountable ships bearing unstoppable men. The desperate priests and petty lords of Canaan mounted a final defense in the golden chariots of their patron gods. They met the mutinous horde in suits of shimmering bronze and made battle in the coastal plains.

But the Sea Peoples had a secret weapon, a material harder, sharper and darker than bronze, gifted to them from the fiery mouth of the patriarch Zeus, the Shining One. They brought Zeus to Canaan and the bronze arms of the Ugarites melted like pig fat under his burning caress.

They named this weapon Iron, the Strength, and with it they swallowed the Old World whole.

The only substance capable of destroying iron was found to be rain, the holy water of El. Rain makes the metal bleed brick red and crumble into harmless sand.

But El has abandoned us and taken the rain with him. Iron is unstoppable.

34

The Greek arrives on our second night in Midian.

He sneaks up under the beaming light of a full moon, walks into our tent swinging a giant club and double-headed axe between his legs. His muscles glisten in the silver moonlight and strands of solid gold hang from his neck and shoulders.

His weapons reflect the dark of the night: they are iron. He has the Strength.

Abba recoils. What is this?

Call me Achaeus, says the invader in our language.

My father’s expression shifts between a moan and a scream. Achaean!

Cretan, he specifies, sitting down and hefting his axe over his shoulder. I’m from Crete.

Why do you speak Canaanite?

The Greek burps a stench of beer. I’ve spent some time in Canaan, he says, eyeing out sacks of rotting fruit and dusty rugs with suspicion and burping again.

You’re a villain, says Abba. I knew it. ‘Spent some time there,’ he says. Did you spend time in Ugarit, then?

The Greek looks at my offended father and laughs in his face. No, but my brother did. What a waste that was. The city was deserted before he even got there. No blood, no loot, no honor. Stripped dry; even the walls had already crumbled.

Abba sits up straight. I can’t believe this. You! A Sea Person! In my tent! You’re the cause of all this – you’re the Leviathan!

The Greek rolls his eyes. Why does everyone call us that? Call me by my name, Achaeus, or I’ll gag you with your own balls.

Despite the casual delivery father takes the threat seriously, falling back on the rug and hangs his head in submission. I’m sorry, Achaeus. You are welcome in my tent. We have many fine dates and rugs. They are yours if you want them.

I hand him a sack of dates. He whiffs and gags, throwing the entire thing into the desert outside. This isn’t food, he says. Who are you people? You can’t live like this.

It is as I have said, repeats my father; This is all that we have.

Achaeus shakes his head. "No, I can’t take that. But I have to take something. Look at me – nothing to show for twenty years of adventuring but women’s jewelry and a few barrels of beer. I have to take something from you."

Abba smiles warily. We have nothing left to offer you.

But Acaeus turns to my mother, who whispers prayers under her breath as she does when nervous. I think you do, he says.

He crawled towards my mother and pushes her legs open. She spits in his face and shoves him away but he grabs her wrists and holds them down. He tears off her robe and slobbers on her round belly as she weeps.

35

I stand up in the tent and yell. Stop - my father’s a liar!

Everyone turns to me in surprise.

You’ve found what you’re looking for, but it isn’t in my mother, I explain.

What’s that? asks Achaeus and Abba in unison.

We have lived among Bedouin in the Crescent Sea. They showed us lost cities of great treasure, totally undefended.

Achaeus releases my mother. She scrambles out of his drunken grasp and curls up in the far corner of the tent.

Go on, he says.

The greatest one is Dedan. Its underground ruins are stocked with treasure from all corners of the earth.

He eyes me closely. You’ve seen this treasure yourself?

No, I admit.

Then you’re lying.

No he isn’t, says my father, joining my side. I smile. My son is being honest; the desert is full of treasure. Go now and leave us. We have just returned from the desert and are too weak to return. But you are strong; it is perfect for you. Go now and seek it.

I grimace at his over-delivery; the Greek remains unimpressed. You’re liars.

Where else would we get dates? Here. I pull a stick of the special incense from a roll in my robe and offering it to him. Smell it, burn it. It’s magic smoke. They have entire cellars full of it.

Achaeus crumbles the incense between his fingers and snorts it. He sneezes and throws it on the ground. I don’t need that, he says. I need silver, gold and honor. I need bastard sons. Is there honor in the desert? Are there any other Greeks in the desert?

There were no Greeks there, I say. You would be the only one. More gold than one man could possibly carry. All yours.

I like it, says Achaeus. He rubs his hands together. Well done, Canaanites. I like it a lot.

Father bows. Thank you, Achaeus. You are wise.

Mother spits on his axe. Get out of my tent, Yam.

Ignore her, says Abba. You should leave right away. The Bedouin could return any week now. I’ll tell you how to get there. You’ll have no trouble; you won’t even need a map.

I know I won’t, says Achaeus. I’ll have you.

You’ll what?

We stare at the Greek with despair.

Like you said: too much gold for one man to carry. So four men it is.

Mother clutches her stomach and moans. When the Greek laughs at her she vomites on his feet. He wipes it on her rug.

No, says Abba, his face gone pale. No, that’s out of the question.

No question at all, agrees the Greek. Don’t worry; if you’re right about this Dedan, your family has nothing to fear from me, nor anyone else. You will find I live up to my word.

Abba looks at me as if to say, Idiot, what have you done?

36

Achaeus leaves the tent to hitch our wagon to his own.

I follow him out. I change my tactics. You misunderstood me, I say. We almost died in the desert. We can’t go back. We are dead men there. The demons haunt us. The Bedouin call themselves Amalekites. Blood-lickers; they torture wanderers from Sinai and Edom who get lost in the sands. It isn’t safe for us!

He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes long past hurting. And you would have me go alone and blind into this land of demons and cannibals, would you?

I clear my throat and look at my father for guidance.

He sighs. We’ll take you to Dedan. But as soon as we arrive you must let us go, with all of our possessions and enough food and water to safely return to Midian and start a new life.

That’s fine, says the Greek. He lets go of my shoulder. Get the wagon loaded and the animals roped up. Don’t forget those funny amphorae of yours.

The sun rises. Birds fly across the empty sky in listless formations. Achaeus drinks beer and talks to me while I do as he asks me to do. I’ll be glad to have some company again, he says. I should think you would be too. Midian is a shit place and Midianites are shit people. But none of us are Midianites.

I nod.

But listen to me, he continues. If you steal one wet thumb’s worth of sugar from my wagon, I’ll cut off your fingers and feed the vultures finger pie.

Six hours later we are back on the shores of the Crescent Sea.

37

We are in the timeless desert. The moon begins her long wane, a shadow appearing across her brow, slender at first, just a sliver, and then wider.

Abba and I agree to take the Greek to Tayma instead of Dedan. All of us walk except mother,