Hero Historia: Aea Watched 6
Aea Watched is the second chapter of the historical superhero web serial Hero Historia, set in ancient Sumer.
Learning the six-hundred written symbols took less time than Aea had feared. In less than a year she had learned the way of shapes, and in another she had learned the way of numbers as well. Mathematics wasn’t as easy for her or as interesting as the making of words, and she particularly enjoyed poetry. Much like she had grasped music, Aea could sense that there was an underlying system to the making of words, some code more subtle than that of mathematics, and thus, much more fascinating.
The routine of her classes had diminished the fear she felt over the unforeseeable future. Every day began with the recitation of the prior day’s tablets. After lunch they would memorize new tablets, take dictation from the Older Brothers and Sister, and pour over tablets containing vocabulary lists broken down by syllabic symbols.
Reading and writing made all of the other classes easier as well, as the school housed a great store of ancient but accurate tablet lists of all the creatures and places in creation. Each evening the students would choose a tablet and a subject and copy it, slowly building their own personal libraries.
Her classmates continued at their own pace. Mugga struggled with poetry, but could construct great and detailed stories about the children she’d grown up with. Sabit struggled in math, but mastered the lexicons immediately. Garre, to Aea’s annoyance, seemed fairly skill at every task save the lute, which he deemed “unimportant” and “stupid.”
As fond of Izbu as she was, Aea had to admit that he was lagging behind the others. Indeed, he didn’t seem to care for his classes at all, remaining preoccupied with the mysteries of their school.
Aea did her level best to put it out of her mind. There wasn’t anything to be done for it… and besides, there were so many tablets to read. So much of the world to discover. She might never see Ur or Drehem, but she could read about them. It was a poor consolation to actually being allowed to leave the inner city, but it was all she had.
It would have to do. For now, she would lose herself in the words of those scribes long dead.
***
On the second Holy Day of Nisānu, the month of Sanctuary, the eve of the anniversary of Aea’s arrival in Nippur, Puabi came to the girls’ sleeping quarters with a serious expression on her face.
“Put on your finest dresses, girls,” she said. “Today is going to be a busy day.”
Mugga looked confused, counting on her fingers. “Isn’t today a Holy Day?”
“It’s the Day of Anger,” Sabit said. “Dressing fine is forbidden.”
“It’s a very special Holy Day,” Puabi said. “And for you, the prohibitions are relaxed.”
“Why?” Aea had accepted that the rules the gods set forth were usually contradictory and confusing, but she did her best to keep them straight.
“Today you climb the Ziggurat.”
“What?” Mugga scrambled to her feet.
Puabi spoke slowly and with care. “Today you will read for Enki, for the gods. It is a very important, very special day.”
Aea’s heart leapt. “Is it the test?”
“Everything is a test,” Puabi said. “Every moment of your life, from birth to death, the gods are taking your measure.”
Mugga scowled. “Don’t tease, Older Sister. Not today.”
The woman shook her head. “I am not permitted to speak of it further. Put on your finest dress. Meet in the courtyard. And do not tarry.”
Mugga squealed and grabbed her nicest dress from the rack next to her straw bed.
Aea felt a lightness in her chest and a dryness in her mouth. “This is it. This has to be the test. It has to be. What else is important enough to go out on a Holy Day?”
“Do you think we will both be gods?” Mugga said, eyes sparkling. “Sister goddesses? Both us?”
“I don’t know,” Aea said. “But that would be amazing.”
“This will change everything.” Sabit clutched her arms to her chest. “Whatever happens. Nothing will be the same.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Mugga said, turning to Aea. “Whatever happens, we will still be as sisters!”
Aea clasped her larger friend’s hand. “Let us make an oath, then, to always be friends. No matter what.”
Mugga raised her hands and squealed again. “Get ready, you sluggards. We go to meet our destinies!”
Aea could scarcely contain he excitement as she fastened her cleanest linen wrap around her shoulder, fastening it with a bronze pin shaped like a lotus, a string of beads dangling from it down the back of her shoulder. She was still pretty sure she wasn’t a goddess, but Mugga’s enthusiasm was infectious, and it was hard not to be drawn into the excitement of the possibility.
Whatever the test was, whatever form it took, she’d try her best.
***
Izbu and Garre were already waiting in the courtyard when the women arrived. Unsurprising, given the simplicity of male fashion compared to what the girls wore. Both men wore broad leather belts fastening sheepskins that hung to their knees, Izbu barefoot while Garre wore goat-felt-lined sandals. Izbu had taken to wearing his curled hair long and free, while Garre still shaved his head.
The Older Brothers Dile and Husze, like Puabi, hadn’t dressed in finery. Aea didn’t see Tid, but she supposed it made sense that he would not come – all of the potential gods had felt the sting of his disciplinary lash, and while he was only doing the will of the school in enforcing its punishments, she too would be afraid of a young godling venting his new powers on a reviled target.
Aea couldn’t help but linger briefly on the sight of Izbu’s bare-chest and broad shoulders. He’d grown into a powerfully-built young man with clear piercing eyes and an easy smile.
Garre in comparison had seemed almost to curl in on himself. He was taller, but had a slight curve to his spine that hunched his shoulders forward, a posture born from late nights bent over a tablet, either reading or writing. It was amazing, they were so different, mentally and physically, yet remained fast friends.
Izbu caught Aea’s gaze and flashed her a smile.
She gave him a quick wave.
“Are we all together?” Kuwari took a number of goatskin pouches from Husze, slinging them over his shoulder. “Good. I needn’t tell you to all be on your best behavior… godlings you may or may not be, today you stand in the presence of Enki.”
Garre barely managed a weak smile, surprising Aea. She would have thought him more enthusiastic.
Kuwari snapped his fingers. “Follow.”
She wondered if this would be the last time the School Father would have the authority to order them about, or if tomorrow she would owe him obedience as an Older Sister to the next generation of students.
***
Kuwari led the way to the foot of Enki’s Ziggurat. When they reached it, he stopped and faced his students, a grim expression on his face. “Children. I need not emphasize the importance of the task ahead of you. You have been my students these last years, and I am proud to have known you. However this turns out.
“I can offer you no advice as to what lies ahead of you, as this is a test of character. You will fare based on your soul, your inner self. If you are a god, you will be a god. If not… well. Remember the fate the gods have decided is a fair one, even if we cannot see its wisdom.”
Aea looked down at her bare feet, then at the first steps of the ziggurat. The massive structure seemed to tower over them steeper than ever.
Kuwari took the goatskin satchels from his shoulder, handing one to each of the waiting students. “Inside each parcel is a tablet containing the holiest of holy scriptures, written by An, god of the sky. It will seem, upon first reading, simple and unimportant. But locked within these symbols is another layer of meaning, a secret knowledge known only to the gods. Knowable only to the gods. As such, I cannot help you with them.”
The students took the satchels with solemnity, drawn expressions on their faces. It felt unbelievably heavy in Aea’s hands, not so much physically, but with the weight of portent.
“Climb the ziggurat in silence,” Kuwari said. “At the top you will find cushions placed there by the priests. Kneel. Read your tablets aloud, again and again. If you are touched by the divine, your true self, that spark of the most holy, will awaken.”
The students stared up at the Ziggurat, at their destinies.
“What happens after that?” Aea asked, her throat dry.
“It is not my place to dictate to gods,” Kuwari said. “But there will be places of respect here for those that remain of earthly disposition.”
There was a small hitch when between those that remain and of earthly disposition. It was subtle, but after two years of listening to Kuwari’s lectures, Aea could not have missed it. There was more danger here than he was willing to reveal, but it didn’t matter now. There was no turning back.
All there was was the Ziggurat.
***
The gods were dredging the rivers,
Were piling up their silt
On projecting bends—
And the gods lugging the clay
Began complaining
Mix the heart of the clay that is over the abyss,
The good and princely fashioners will thicken the clay,
You, do you bring the limbs into existence;
Ninmah will work above you,
The goddesses will stand by you at your fashioning;
O my mother, decree its fate,
Ninmah will bind upon it the image of the gods,
It is man.
***
It was a poem, and on her first read-through, Aea didn’t find anything remarkable about it. The wording was odd, the characters used archaic, the phrasing unusual, but it was clear enough, telling the story of the creation of man. She read it aloud, as bidden, and could hear her classmates do the same.
The cushions were evenly spaced around the square top of the ziggurat, and Aea had chosen one on the far side of Enki’s temple. It was in the sun now, and when Utu was high overhead he would beat on her mercilessly, but after he had passed she would have the shade to recover. Not knowing how long this ritual would take, it seemed like a good choice.
To her left, at the corner, she could see Mugga kneeling with her tablet. She struggled with poetry, but there was nothing complicated about these words, so she would not be at a disadvantage.
To her right, midway between her corner and the next, Aea could see Sabit concentrating on her own. Beyond Sabit was Garre, at the next corner. Izbu was on the opposite corner, hidden from view by Enki’s temple. This too was her strategy.
Aea read on.
“The gods were dredging the rivers,
Were piling up their silt
On projecting bends—”
The tablet itself was fantastic, far more ornate than any she had before beheld, worthy of the creation of a god. It was two slabs of clay, hinged together, overlain with beeswax. The symbols themselves were precise. Perfect. Idealized forms of the alphabet she’d learned.
“And the gods lugging the clay
Began complaining–”
It was on her third read through that her mind started wandering. She felt nothing unusual or divine from the recitation. In a way it was a relief, a relaxation of pressure, this final confirmation of ordinariness, and it felt like a great weight had been taken from her shoulders.
“Mix the heart of the clay that is over the abyss,
The good and princely fashioners will thicken the clay,
You, do you bring the limbs into existence;”
She would stay on at the school, she knew, and teach the next group of children how to read. That was not a bad life, fed from the gods’ table, living in the shadow of the Ziggurat. It was better than breaking one’s back on a farm, or splitting your pelvis having child after child. True, when she’d arrived she’d wanted to run back home, but now she could see a life where she kept learning forever, never having to go out into the outer world to earn a laborer’s wage.
The sound of her classmates’ reading had changed. Mugga had stopped.
Aea flicked her eyes off the tablet to see why, and saw her friend staring at Sabit.
Sabit was glowing.
Aea’s tongue tripped and she lost the recitation, forgetting all about her tablet in her surprise and shock.
Was this apotheosis? Was Sabit becoming a god before her eyes?
She could hear Garre and Izbu’s recitations slow and stop as well, until all eyes were on Sabit, who alone kept reading.
Sabit’s fingers clenched her tablet tightly, and from where she stood Aea could see that the girl’s fingertips were actually pressing through the ancient clay. Her arms were tense, muscles straining visibly under her skin. The tendons of her neck likewise stood out in sharp relief, though most of the girl’s face was hidden behind her bangs.
Though her voice was still small and as strained as her muscles, Sabit’s recitation echoed in the silence.
“O my mother, decree its fate, Ninmah will bind upon it the image of the gods.”
Sabit lifted her head, and Aea could see that her eyes were white. Not rolled back, no, but shining from some inner radiance. If Aea hadn’t already been on her knees, she would have fallen to them.
Sabit’s arms twitched, and the tablet she held tore apart at the hinges before crumbling under her fingers as she recited the poem’s last lines in a voice that seemed to echo inside Aea’s skull.
“It. Is. Man.”
Garre peered around the corner of the temple, staring open-mouthed. “Sabit? You? A god?”
A wild shriek erupted from the girl’s mouth, and she was a blur, flashing towards him. She’d reached Garre before Aea could blink, pouncing on him like an animal. She couldn’t see exactly what had happened, but there was a spray of crimson and he was gone, knocked or fallen back around the corner.
Mugga screamed, and Sabit was upon her next.
“Sabit, goddess, no!” Mugga whined as the smaller girl grabbed her by the wrists, arms pinned wide, back behind her shoulders. “Please, sister!”
“You would DARE call me sister now?” Sabit screeched and pivoted, throwing Mugga into the side of Enki’s temple, as if the larger girl were nothing but a rag doll.
Mugga hit the clay with a crack, then slumped to the ground in a daze.
Sabit advanced upon her. “You would make Aea your sister, but overlook me, standing next to you?”
“Sabit, no!” Aea took a step, only to be grabbed from behind. She struggled to pull away.
“Stay!” Izbu hissed in her ear. “She’ll kill us all in her wrath!”
Sabit ignored Aea’s outburst, instead picking Mugga up by the shoulder and hip. “Now I’m good enough to notice?”
Mugga muttered something that Aea couldn’t hear.
Sabit didn’t seem pleased. “You didn’t know? Didn’t know that I needed friends? Didn’t know that I would have liked a sister? But no. NO. You only had time for Aea! AEA!”
Sabit took a few steps and pivoted, hurling Mugga again, this time into the air over the Ziggurat.
“Mugga!” Aea screamed and reached towards her friend, seeing her hurtling through the air, over the wall and into the outer city.
Izbu pulled her, kicking, away and around the corner. “She’s dead! We must flee, or Sabit will kill us next!”
For a brief moment Aea didn’t care, wanted to run after Mugga, but Ibzu’s words fueled her fear of the divine manifestation. She scrambled to her feet, and the two of them ran together towards the Ziggurat stairs.
Sabit fell like a stone before them, landing in a crouch, the force of her landing shattering the clay bricks beneath her feet and sending up a great cloud of dust.
“Stop, Sabit, we’re your friends.” Tears were flowing down Aea’s cheeks.
“Friends.” Sabit stepped forward, and Izbu scampered back, pulling Aea with him. “You were my friend. Until the others arrived. Then you were Mugga’s. And Ibzu’s. And I was alone, again!”
“No, it’s not like that,” Aea said.
“LIAR!” Sabit leapt.
Ibzu threw Aea out of the way, and the younger girl’s small but unimaginably powerful bulk hit him square in the chest, bowling him over backwards.
Aea ran with the momentum Izbu’s push had given her, making for the stairs at the front of the temple, but Sabit was on her before she could take three steps. She felt herself grabbed, held aloft over the small girl’s head.
“I am done with you!” Sabit screamed. “Done!”
Terror froze Aea’s heart, and everything seemed to slow down. Perhaps seeking to escape, her mind retreated from the present, away from the small hands gripping her, hoisting her, and back to the tablet.
She was going to die, and her last thoughts were about the structure of language. The way the symbols fit together, all six-hundred characters, in an incredibly complex code, meaings and words changing based on their grouping, context, and accent marks placed by the scribes who wrote them.
Aea felt herself being drawn back and knew that Sabit was going to throw her. She folded her hands over her chest, tablet still clasped tightly. If she was going to die, she’d do so with as much serenity as possible. Whatever her faults, Sabit was a god, and whatever she desired was her right, unfair as it might be.
There. On the edge of the tablet. An accent mark. A small wedge imprint.
She hadn’t seen it before because she’d been too eager to read Anu’s words, but always they had been taught to check the edges of any tablet for notation before reading. You sometimes forgot and the lack of contextual arrangement left the tablet’s writing confusing, but this poem, Anu’s poem, had made sense.
But the accent changed everything. She’d never seen it before, but somehow knew how it applied. Its meaning was subtle, but the sum total of everything she’d learned about language.
Sabit hurled her.
Aea went spinning like a missile, body rigid, her mind faster yet. The terror of flight and inevitable death filled her, but somewhere in the back of her mind her shadow-self was working, putting together the final puzzle, assembling the last piece.
One tablet. One poem. Eighty symbols. Two meanings.
The conscious Aea, the screaming Aea, the Aea that had been hurled over the city walls towards the desert, was aware of only a small fraction of the meaning. The hidden self, the god hiding behind her eyes, she knew.
She remembered.
She awoke.
***
Aea stopped.
In midair.
Just like that.
She stared down at herself, floating in the air. She stared down at the city below, at the Ziggurat.
This was amazing.
This was fascinating.
This had to wait. Izbu was still in danger.
Without really being able to articulate how, Aea turned and oriented back towards Nippur. As she flew she picked up speed, and somehow her vision was keen enough to pick out distant Sabit advancing towards an injured-looking Izbu.
Aea’s eyes narrowed.
It must have been something – maybe Sabit heard her, maybe her shadow fell over them, maybe it was some undefined god-sense, but Sabit saw Aea before she hit, looking up before impact.
It didn’t save her. Aea collided with the smaller girl, knocking her away from the stunned boy.
Sabit clung to her, screaming and crying, clawing and flailing with her hands. The blows that rained down on Aea were powerful, but she held on, lifting the girl up into the darkening sky above the Ziggurat.
“Sabit!” Aea shook the younger girl. “Calm yourself! Stop! Stop!”
“No! You cannot be a god! Not you too!”
“No, see? Now we can be sisters! Like you wanted!”
She knew she was lying as soon as the words left her lips. She couldn’t forgive Sabit. Not for doing what she’d done to Mugga. Not for harming Izbu. Not for trying to kill her. Sabit was a bad god, a selfish god, a small and petty creature, and Aea would never forgive her. But she did need her to stop struggling.
Lightning crashed behind the girls, striking the front of the Ziggurat. Sabit gasped, and their eyes followed its path down to the temple, where a lone figure stood staring up at them.
Enki had emerged.
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