Vial of Tears, page 4
The woman furrowed her brow with a look of incomprehension. She tilted her head.
“Glen Arbor,” Sam said in English, and then switched languages again. “Arbor,” she repeated.
“Do you tend trees?”
“No… I…,” Sam started. She let her voice run out, almost certain her next question would be useless, but she tried anyway. “Do you have a… cell phone?”
“Such a perplexing dialect,” the woman mused. “Some of your words are like empty vessels. They hold no meaning.” She assessed Sam again from head to toe. “I shall let my master know you are here.”
“I’m not here to see anyone,” Sam said quickly. By master, she must have meant the man with the mask, the one who seemed to be the center of the party.
The woman’s eyes were round pools of amber. They darkened with what Sam read as curiosity laced with distrust. The feeling was mutual.
“My name is Zayin,” she said finally.
“I’m Sam.”
“A pleasure.” Zayin stepped closer, but instead of offering a handshake, she took a lock of Sam’s hair and spooled it through her fingers. “Would you like to swim?”
The nearby pool suddenly contained two other women, their clothes abandoned at the edge. Between the dark water and the dusky light, Sam could only discern flashes of bare skin.
“No, thank you.” She backed away from Zayin and flipped her hair over her shoulder, out of reach.
“But of course you will stay awhile.”
“I… I don’t know. I should go.”
“You must be hungry after your long journey.” Zayin retrieved a platter of food from a table and pressed it toward Sam. “Perhaps you have traveled through the mountains?”
“Not mountains.” Sam mentally leafed through words again. “A storm,” she tried. “A tornado,” she added in English.
“You endured a storm?” Zayin asked, her eyes on Sam’s. “In the name of Ba’al Saphon, this cannot be.”
“It wasn’t a storm. Not exactly.” Ba’al… who?
Zayin pushed the food under Sam’s nose, insistent. Sam chose a slice of fruit that might have been lemon, but the juice that ran across her fingers smelled more like liquor.
Zayin set the platter down on a table and circled the pool, lighting a row of small lamps along the perimeter. The firelight flickered across the water and caught silvery highlights in her hair.
“You may give me whatever you have brought,” she said, “if you are afraid to approach King Melqart. Or are you here to offer yourself to him?”
“What? No,” Sam said. Offer? She looked back toward the other room, where the man had commanded the party. “Why would I…? Who would want to…?” She swallowed. She hardly knew how to frame her questions; confusion dragged her in a thousand directions. She wanted to turn and run, but to where?
“Why are you here, then? What are you? You do not strike me as ḥayuta.”
Ḥayuta? Why would she take Sam for an animal? Sam hesitated. “A ghost brought me. A man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, putting the lemon down on a nearby table—it was definitely more alcohol than fruit. “He’s tall, with a dark cloak trimmed with fur. He has a short, curly beard. Strange golden eyes.”
The women in the pool went quiet. The sound of the drum and flute in the other courtyard was the only thing that filled the silence. Zayin approached Sam and gripped her by the arm.
“Strange eyes,” she repeated, squeezing Sam a little too tightly. “In what way?”
“His pupils,” Sam said, pulling away. “One of them looks like a keyhole.”
“Eshmun,” a woman in the pool whispered.
“You came here with Eshmun?” Zayin asked eagerly, looking around Sam as if he might be with her.
“We… we were separated.” Sam got the uneasy feeling she was telling Zayin too much. “I don’t know where he is.”
Zayin considered this for a moment, and then a smile bloomed across her face.
“And now you are safe here with us,” she said emphatically, suggesting that being with Eshmun was the opposite of safe. The music and laughter from the other courtyard grew louder. The women in the pool were joined by three others whose lithe bodies and elegant eye makeup made them look feline.
“Safe here?” Sam’s eyes went to the array of food on the long wooden tables. There were bright green olives, the color of springtime leaves. There was bread. She could smell meat cooking. Her stomach growled.
“You will stay,” Zayin declared, following Sam’s eyes. “You will dine with us. I will prepare a bed for you.”
“No,” Sam said, “I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.” She glanced up at the sky. She had to find Rima before dark. “You haven’t seen another girl like me, have you?”
“Another?” Zayin blinked, fanning her feather-like eyelashes against her cheekbones.
“I really think I should go.” Zayin was getting answers from Sam, but not giving any in return. Sam swallowed down the lump of desperation that had lodged itself in her throat. “I’m leaving now. Thanks.”
“But where will you go?” Zayin asked, tucking a gray lock behind an ear. Underneath her shining hair, she had huge, oblong lobes that were paper-thin and pierced with dozens of gold studs.
“Home,” Sam said, looking for a doorway that might lead out.
“But you said you were lost,” Zayin continued. “Eat and rest, and then you can continue your journey with a full stomach and a clear mind. You are quite a long walk from the nearest harbor. If you came with Eshmun, your ship must be in Sidon.”
“I didn’t come by ship,” Sam said. Sidon: another strange name. She rubbed her head. “I fell. I… fell…” She bit her lip, trying to find the right way to describe it. “I blacked out,” she said in English.
Zayin softened her voice into a soothing tone of sympathy. “You are distraught. Disoriented.”
“Yes.” Sam glanced at the women in the pool, and then down the dark corridors leading off the courtyard. “Where is the exit?”
Zayin didn’t answer her question. Instead she asked another of her own. “Tell me, my dear, why did Eshmun bring you here?”
“To reclaim his property,” a man’s voice called out.
It was him. The ghost.
He was suddenly in the courtyard with them, his face taut with anger, his powerful arms crossed over his chest. His golden eyes went straight to Sam.
Her stomach lurched. “No,” she choked. An electric current of fear crackled through her, and again her hand pulsed with a dull ache where she’d held the coin.
Zayin clapped her hands, her eyes flashing wildly. “My dearest Eshmun,” she cooed. She held out her arms as if to embrace him, yet neither of them moved closer to the other. “How our paths are destined to cross time and again.”
“We meet only because of wrong turns,” he said without a moment’s pause. Sam took small steps sideways, edging toward a doorway.
“Oh, Eshmun,” Zayin said coyly. “How you cast your blame in the wrong direction. The sun is behind you. That is your own shadow you see.”
“There is no sun here,” Eshmun said.
They were locked in an unfriendly standoff, both of them calculating. Zayin’s face shifted between a forced smile and a sneer; Eshmun seemed to be waiting for her to make the next move. More women had come into the courtyard, and they were all staring at Eshmun.
Everyone seemed to have forgotten Sam. She seized the opportunity and silently made her way toward a hallway, hiding herself behind one column, and then the next.
Zayin asked loudly, “We all want to know: Who is the beautiful young woman?”
With that, Sam turned to flee and ran right into one of the feline women from the pool. She purred at Sam, dripping wet, and pushed her back toward Zayin, who put an arm around her.
Zayin stroked Sam’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. “So pretty. So unusual.” Her stone-studded rings were rough against Sam’s skin.
“She is mine,” Eshmun said. He advanced with a few swift steps and clamped down on Sam’s arm. She expected an icy grip, but his hands were surprisingly warm. He wasn’t made of smoke. He was real. Solid. He yanked her against his side, out of Zayin’s reach.
“Let me go,” Sam hissed.
“Give me my obol,” he growled low into her ear.
“Why not stay?” Zayin asked him. “The party has just begun. We have all your favorite dishes, Eshmun. Food, drink, and”—she swept her hand toward the women in the pool—“otherwise.”
The women cast their eyes upward at him, emerald and narrow at the edges. Water trickled down their faces, and one of them seductively licked the drops from her lips.
“Once again,” he said bitterly, “you mistake me for my father.”
For one brief second, Zayin looked wounded—and then she recovered. “What are you doing in Baalbek?” She raised an eyebrow and turned sideways, tipping her chin toward her shoulder. “Did you miss me?”
“No,” he said curtly.
“Not even a taste?” Zayin asked, plucking a large, glistening grape from a nearby platter. She slid it across her lips before opening her mouth to take a small bite. She stepped forward and held it out to Eshmun for him to finish.
Sam turned away, feeling as though she was witnessing something far too personal. She twisted her arm, trying to loosen Eshmun’s grip.
“In the name of the gods,” he said, “we decline your generous offer.”
“There is only one god here,” Zayin snapped, as if she were correcting an ill-mannered child. Then she let out an apologetic laugh and smiled, taking the rest of the grape into her mouth. “Unless I am to calculate your diluted blood?”
“Insolence,” he said, raising his voice angrily.
Zayin pointed at Sam and then Eshmun, back and forth. “Do tell me. How are you two acquainted?”
“She is my servant,” Eshmun snapped.
Sam nearly choked. His servant?
“Are you?” Zayin asked Sam.
She opened her mouth to respond, but Eshmun spoke first. “She wandered off like an errant dog,” he said, which made the women in the pool snicker.
“What?” Sam gasped.
“Pumāk skur,” he told Sam sternly. Shut your mouth. He dipped his head in farewell, never averting his eyes from Zayin’s; there was a clear look of warning on his face. He spun on his heels and dragged Sam along.
“Let go of me!” she hissed. But he held on tight while Zayin’s taunting voice echoed after them. “Rhaṭēn!” she cried gleefully. Run!
Sam tripped along beside Eshmun as he navigated the labyrinth of passageways as if he knew them by heart. They hurried through a great entrance flanked by bronze columns, and suddenly they were outside, where a coterie of statues—women armed with bows and arrows, or pregnant with sun-shaped stomachs—watched with hard eyes. The sounds of the party faded behind them as they descended an immense white marble staircase.
“You’re hurting me,” Sam said. Her bracelets bit into her skin where he held her by the wrist. They’d started down a narrow road, a city sprawling dark around them. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“I demand my obol,” he snarled, finally releasing her. “The coin.”
“Where is my sister?” she countered. His eyes swept over her body and the front pockets of her pants; she pulled them inside out. “See? No coin.”
“It is under your tongue,” he said. He reached for her face, but she dodged his hands.
“What are you doing? There’s nothing in my mouth.” She glared at him. “Just tell me where Rima is!”
“Quiet, fool,” he hissed. “You do not understand the danger you are in.” He glanced back toward the temple, as if worried someone might be following.
Sam tried to stay steady on her feet. But this man—this place—those women. She felt like she was in the funnel again, the earth spinning underneath her; fear was sending her in nauseating circles.
“Come,” he demanded, hooking a finger at her.
She shook her head. Tried to clear her thoughts, to form some kind of plan. “I’m going back to Zayin,” she said. “She offered a bed.”
“Not for sleeping.”
She felt her cheeks turn hot. One look at Eshmun and she realized this should have been obvious to her. “Fine. Then I’ll go it alone.”
But now that she was outside, she knew beyond a doubt that there was absolutely nothing familiar about her surroundings. There were no signs, no recognizable landmarks, and the city around them was made of crude rectangular buildings and uneven walls of rock. The roads were unpaved and riddled with potholes. Even the trees looked wrong.
In the distance, a range of rocky mountains brimmed along the horizon. Sleeping Bear Dunes—made of sand—were the highest points back home.
This wasn’t home.
“At the moment I am your preferable option,” Eshmun said. “Unless you would like to ask these ladies for help?”
He motioned to a group of women sauntering down the road, tipping back dark flasks and wiping their mouths on their sleeves. Eshmun pulled Sam against a tree to hide. He put a finger to his lips. The women passed, dragging an animal carcass behind them—something with antlers—and leaving a shiny trail of blood along the road. Sam caught a glimpse of the women’s teeth: long and canine.
“Where am I?” she asked Eshmun, after the women had disappeared down the road. “What is this place?” she whispered shakily.
“The city of Baalbek.”
“Baalbek,” she repeated.
Zayin had said the same thing. Sam was sure she had heard the city’s name before—had seen it written somewhere, maybe. Almost, almost, she could conjure the memory: words penned in blue ink on the back of an old photo.
Eshmun took her by the wrist again, forcing her down the road and deeper into the tangle of buildings. His pace was merciless—until he stopped suddenly for a black shape gliding across their way, floating listlessly above the ground. It seemed to be made of dark strands of gauze, pieced together into the patchwork form of a man.
As it passed a lantern hanging from a post, Sam realized she could see through it. It looked at her with black holes for eyes, nothing in them at all. Two empty wells.
“Do not look into the eyes of the dead,” Eshmun warned. “They will use you for a taste of life.”
She violently jerked away and clamped a hand over her mouth, stumbling. Even as her heart pounded in her chest, she somehow knew that this creature had none of its own. It was a shell.
“Dead,” she finally managed to croak. “That thing was…?”
“Ruḥā,” he finished for her. “A spirit, a breath, the wind. Have you never seen one on Earth, or in your dreams?”
“No.” She stared at him. A lantern’s flames glowed just behind him, but no light passed through his body. “I thought I had. But you’re not dead, are you?”
“I am not dead,” he said, curling his upper lip. “Though I should be.”
An icy finger of dread traced Sam’s spine. She shivered while Eshmun spread his arms wide.
“Do you want to know where you are?” he asked. “Truly?”
She nodded hesitantly, now terrified of having the answer she’d demanded.
“This is the underworld,” he said darkly. “Welcome.”
4
The underworld. Sam let out an incredulous laugh. “You mean we’re in hell?”
“No,” he said. “Gihannā is yet another realm, one you should hope never to see.”
“But…” She paused, afraid to ask. “Am I dead?”
She desperately held her hands out in front of her. The blisters from digging the hole in her backyard were still fresh. She felt her pulse pounding. Blood was flowing. She was breathing.
And so was Eshmun. His nostrils flared as he glanced over his shoulder. “You soon will be dead,” he said, “if you continue to bleat like a lost lamb.”
“Are we being followed?” she asked as he took her wrist again and hurried them urgently between buildings.
“Possibly.”
“I’m not going with you,” she said, looking around for another route, another option.
“If you wander these streets alone, you will find yourself wishing for death.”
“Tell me how to get home,” she demanded. “Where is my sister?”
So many questions welled up inside her, one wave of them crashing after another. She felt sick with confusion. Why is Zayin’s skin gray? Where is Sidon? Who is Melqart? Why does everything here look so incredibly old?
“I need something to make sense,” she said. “Anything! Tell me—”
“Silence,” he hissed.
“You brought me here. I deserve answers from you. Why—” she started, but Eshmun put a hand across her mouth and pulled her away from the road once more. Her spine met with the side of a stone building, and she opened her mouth to bite his palm.
But a moment later, a woman hurried past. At first glance, Sam thought she was belly dancing, the way she undulated.
But then she saw what she truly was.
From the waist up, she was beautiful and human—but her lower half tapered into the form of a snake.
The snake-woman paused a moment, stretching up to lick the air; she was so close that Sam could see her narrowed eyes. She’d clearly caught the scent of something, and whipped off around a corner, her iridescent scales glinting as she slithered. Sam squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to scream.
Is she looking for us? Why?
“Come,” Eshmun whispered, pulling her into a narrow alley. “Hurry.”
Dazed, Sam followed him down the rough road lit by hanging lanterns. As a donkey cart clacked toward them, Eshmun swept Sam behind him, enveloping her in his cloak. She held her breath as the cart clattered by, and saw that it was full of clay bowls and jugs—just like the one from Jiddo.
Mom would have woken up from her nap by now. She would have gone outside to find the broken jug and the hose running. If she’d looked closely enough, she would have seen coins scattered in the mud. Sam could almost hear her calling for her daughters. Where did you two disappear to? She would search the house for a note, because unlike Mom, Sam would have left one. She would check the driveway for the car.
