The Blessing Stone (16 page)

Avram was about to wave to Caleb, the eldest of his younger brothers, when he saw something that made him freeze. An elderly woman, bare-breasted in a long doeskin skirt, her braided hair showing white roots beneath the henna dye, shuffled along the path almost over-burdened by the many stone and shell necklaces that weighted her withered body. But she was wealthy, and it was a woman’s duty to thus flaunt her family’s wealth.

Avram’s eyes nearly popped out. Why was his grandmother making her way along the path toward the Shrine of the Goddess? It both startled and alarmed him. What was she doing abroad at this early hour? It could only be an urgent errand. Had she found out about his secret desire for Marit? Was she going to ask the Goddess to cast a spell on him? Like most boys, Avram was terrified of his grandmother. Old women possessed power beyond thinking.

He automatically reached for the phylactery that hung on a leather thong around his neck. By tradition, when a child reached the age of seven and it appeared he was going to survive into adulthood—so many children dying prior to that age—he was given a permanent name and a small pouch in which to carry precious talismans: one’s umbilical cord, dried and shriveled, one’s first tooth, a lock of mother’s hair. Maybe a small animal fetish, a few dried leaves of a protective plant, all designed to keep one healthy and from harm. As Avram clutched the phylactery that held magic pebbles, pieces of bone and twig, he wondered if it was powerful enough to protect him from his own grandmother.

He watched as she made her way between huts and shelters, stepping around piles of offal and entrails, hurrying through the stink that surrounded the tannery where bloody hides were being stretched in the sun, and finally up the path that led to the small mud-brick structure that housed the Shrine of the Goddess. Avram saw Reina, the priestess, emerge from her small house to greet her visitor.

Even from here, Avram could see Reina’s magnificent breasts. In the summer, all the women of the settlement went bare-breasted so the men could feast their eyes upon the treasures of their women. This was what had triggered his new lust for Marit: when had she turned from a child into a woman? Reina’s breasts were high and firm, not the least bit sagging as were those of most women her age, because Reina had never had children. When she had been anointed priestess, she had dedicated her virginity to the Goddess. But that didn’t make her any less of a woman. Reina rouged her nipples with red ocher and perfumed her hair with fragrant oils. Her hips were wide and the belt of her doeskin skirt was slung low below her navel, just above the blessed triangle that was no man’s land.

Avram sighed again in youthful lust and confusion, wondering why the Goddess had created this confounding hunger between men and women. Reina, whom no man could touch thus making men want to touch her all the more. Marit, the owner of his heart and whom he could never have. Where was the pleasure in that?

When he saw his grandmother emerge a few minutes later from the Shrine of the Goddess, where the sacred statue with the blue-crystal heart was kept and cared for, he was surprised at the old woman’s haste back to their house, as if she were filled with urgency. A moment later Avram heard two voices in the house, rising in pitch. Grandmother and his
abba
were having an argument!

A moment later his
abba
burst from the house, as if in fury, and set out on the dirt path leading to the barley fields and the house where Marit lived.

It upset Avram to see Yubal look so distressed. A memory:
Yubal carrying him on his shoulders, big hands holding tight to the boy’s ankles, Yubal’s long strides bearing them both through meadows and across streams. Avram had felt like a giant and had rode those broad shoulders with such pride that he never wanted to climb down.
Avram didn’t know any other boys who enjoyed such a relationship with their
abba
.

Not all men deserved the honorific
“abba,”
which meant “lord,” or “master,” usually over a prospering business, sometimes over the house and children of a woman he had become devoted to. As few men stayed with one woman for long, especially once she started having children, Yubal was a rare exception, for he had been open in his affection for Avram’s mother, and had lived in her house for twenty years.

Avram watched Yubal—handsome in fine buckskins, his long hair and beard richly oiled as befitting his high status—go a few steps, then stop suddenly, rub his jaw, and turn away to take the path toward the settlement, as if suddenly changing his mind. A few moments later Avram saw Yubal take a seat beneath the shady arbor of Joktan the beer merchant, where three other men were already sharing a vat of beer. Yubal was greeted with cheers of welcome for he was one of the most liked and admired men in the settlement. Then he signaled to Joktan who brought out a reed that was roughly two arm’s-lengths long. Yubal dipped the reed into the tall vat, pushing it past the scum from the brewing process that always clogged the surface, and began sucking up the liquid underneath. Joktan’s beer was far inferior to Molok’s, but Yubal swore he would drink snake piss before he would let the beer of Serophia’s bloodline pass his lips.

Seeing Yubal, Avram redoubled his efforts as lookout. It was for his
abba
that he wanted to do a good job. He wanted Yubal to be proud of him. However, for all his efforts to focus on being a good guard, there were reminders everywhere of his new obsession with Marit and sex.

Glowing brightly in the morning sun on the door of the stone-polisher’s house was a freshly painted picture of female genitalia. The old man was hoping it would help his daughters get pregnant. Many families painted such symbols beside their front doors—usually breasts and vulvas—hoping to invite the Goddess’s fecundity into their homes. Such hopeful women went to Reina the priestess for magic charms, fertility potions and herbs with supernatural powers.

Men had no part in the pursuit of fertility for Avram’s people were not yet aware that men had any role in procreation. Conception was a mystery worked solely by women through the power of the Goddess.

A shout brought his attention back to the settlement and its activities. One of the criminals tied to a punishment post near the bubbling spring was yelling at the children who were throwing shit and rotten stuff at him. Although it was usually cheats and liars, trespassers and malicious gossipmongers who were tied to the posts, the man tied there now, naked and helpless, had gotten drunk on barley beer, climbed to a rooftop and urinated on unsuspecting passersby. His punishment might have gone easier if one of his victims hadn’t been Avram’s grandmother. Two other men were also tied to posts, punishment for raping a daughter of the House of Edra. Because these men were the target of wrathful women, who threw stones and dung at them, a group of bystanders were wagering on whether the rapists would survive until sundown.

Justice in the community was swift and brutal. Thieves suffered a hand chopped off. Murderers were executed. From Avram’s vantage point in the tower he could see, on the other side of the wheat fields, the corpse of a murderer hanging from a tree, his execution so recent that ravens were still pecking out the eyes.

Avram froze.

Then he shaded his eyes and tried to sharpen his eyesight. Was that a column of dust? Coming from the northeast?

He felt a lump rise to his throat. Raiders!

But then his eyes widened and he gasped. It wasn’t raiders at all but Hadadezer’s caravan! “Blessed Mother!” he cried, and because he couldn’t take the steps fast enough he fell the rest of the way down the ladder.

Avram ran shouting and waving his arms—the obsidian traders had come! There would be feasting tonight like no other. And in so merry a throng, with so many people drinking and taking pleasure, who would notice if two young people chanced to exchange a forbidden glance?

The caravan was always a sight to behold: a virtual river of humanity that had flowed over mountains, meadows, and streams, a thousand souls marching like drones, each man a beast of burden stooped beneath the weight of trade goods and supplies. Some bore wooden yokes across their shoulders with bundles suspended from each end; others hauled baskets on their backs attached to leather straps across their foreheads; heavier goods were hauled on sledges by teams of men yoked together. It was a long, slow, back-breaking endeavor to cover so many miles, tramping over thistle and rock, baking under the sun, freezing under rain, through mountain passes and scorching deserts. But there was no other way for it to be done. People in the south wanted what people in the north had to trade, and vice versa. Although a few brave men in the northern mountains were experimenting with cattle to tame them and train them to be draft and pack animals, the results so far had been unsuccessful. So upon the backs of men came malachite and azurite, ocher and cinnabar; goods made from alabaster, marble, and stone; pelts, furs, antlers, and horns; and the fine wooden tableware the north country was famous for—sauceboats and tiny eggcups, and platters with carved handles. All of this was being taken south where it would be traded for papyrus and oils, spices and wheat, turquoise and shells, to be hauled back north on the same bent backs.

There were women in the caravan, equally burdened with bedrolls, tents, live fowl, and cook pots—women who were following their men or who had joined the convoy along the way, some with children in tow, of which a few had been born during the caravan’s impressive southward progress. Some of these women would leave the caravan when it reached the Place of the Perennial Spring, and local women, for their various secret reasons, would run away from the Place of the Perennial Spring and disappear southward with the caravan.

Ahead of this enormous human convoy rode its captain, an obsidian trader named Hadadezer. Hadadezer’s personal mode of transportation was another wonder to behold. Hadadezer did not walk—anywhere. And certainly not the two thousand miles comprising his caravan circuit. A carrying platform devised of two sturdy poles with a webbing of branches and reeds was hefted on the shoulders of eight strong men. Here Hadadezer rode in splendor, sitting cross-legged on woven mats with soft doeskin pillows stuffed with goose down supporting his arms and back. Since everyone knew that a fat man was a wealthy man, judging by Hadadezer’s generous girth, he must be the wealthiest man in the world.

Hadadezer’s long black hair was impressively oiled and braided and reached his waist, as did his great black beard, likewise oiled and braided and threaded with a wealth of beads and shells. He wore a knee-length leather tunic that was covered entirely in cowrie shells, collar to hem, a garment so splendid that it made people gape in awe. Six thousand years hence, Hadadezer’s descendants would adorn themselves with gold and silver, diamonds and emeralds, but in this time, when precious metals and gems lay as yet undiscovered in the earth’s secret places, cowries were the ornament of choice. They were also the coin of commerce.

Hadadezer was known far and wide as being a shrewd man. In his younger years he had started a trade in frankincense, a resin collected from a tree called
lebonah
—which means “white”—that grew in the north. When lighted, the incense gave off a beautiful perfume and so it had become instantly popular and in high demand in both river valleys. However, although Hadadezer charged highly for the product, he in turn had to pay the resin collectors a high cost, too, which left him little profit. But one season, as he was passing through the heavily forested country in the north, he had discovered that the fragrant wood of junipers and pines, when powdered, adulterated the frankincense in such a way that no one could tell they were receiving a diluted product. In this way he stretched his supply of the resin, charged the same price and made a much larger profit.

Hadadezer never missed a thing. One reason for his success as a trader was that he employed a complex form of bookkeeping that only he understood. Since paper and writing still lay four thousand years in the future, the obsidian merchant relied upon a system of tokens made out of hard-baked clay, imprinted with symbols only he could identify, and strung on various cords and twine dangling from his belt.

The people of the settlement rushed out to greet the caravan in eager anticipation of the coming night when old acquaintances would be renewed, lovers reunited, enemies found and dealt with, contracts made, promises fulfilled, and all manner of goods and services traded. As the sun climbed and delivered a scorching day, tents were pitched, cook fires lit, wineskins and beer vats broken out. And just as the citizens of the settlement would seek entertainments and pleasures in the caravan encampment, likewise would the work-worn members of the caravan, having been laboring for so long, go into the town in search of bread, beer, gambling, and sex. Hadadezer would camp at the Place of the Perennial Spring for five days, after which his men would pull up stakes, shoulder their burdens, and continue southward to the Nile River Valley where they would camp again before turning around and making the northward journey home. Hadadezer made the two-thousand-mile circuit from his mountain home in the north to the Nile delta in the south and back to his home all in a year, coinciding his visits to the Place of the Perennial Spring with each summer and winter solstice.

Every man and woman who could walk, crawl, or be carried would be at the evening feast, for it was going to be a night of pleasure and diversion. The hardworking citizens of the Place of the Perennial Spring spent both halves of a year looking forward to the arrival of Hadadezer’s caravan. Tonight they were going to enjoy themselves.

With one unhappy exception.

After being allowed to observe the Procession of the Goddess as she was taken around the caravan encampment to bless the visitors and all commerce that was going to take place there, Avram had been sent back to the vineyard where he and his younger brothers were to patrol for thieves.

Carrying his flaming torch as he went up and down the rows of vines, Avram thought longingly of the men in the caravan and the wonderful stories they always told of savage hunts and seas that drowned men, of women with fire between their legs and giants as tall as trees. They had traveled up the Nile and encountered people with skin as black as night. In the far north, they had seen an animal that was neither horse nor antelope but something in between, with two humps on its back. Avram longed to be a trader. He didn’t want to smash grapes with his feet for the rest of his life.