‘How did we get involved in all this?’ I ask equally miserably.
‘When we were born, in the hospital; a doctor there secretly gave us our very first tattoos.’
He touches the snail on the side of his neck.
‘This? It’s not a birthmark?’
I touch my own mark nervously; I’ve seen the power of tattoos, even small ones. What could one do if it was administered when you were fresh out of your mother’s womb, still forming, still easy for the sprits to form to their needs if they’ve got a portal into you, an easy access?
Anat; Tana. Somehow, they even made sure I had a reversed version of her name.
And Zeb too, of course; Baal-Zebub. Though in his case they didn’t even bother reversing the name.
‘I’ve always hated it,’ Zeb admitted, consciously stroking his own mark once more. ‘So I went looking for a tattoo to cover it up; obviously, Yatpan talked me out of it – talked me instead into having other tattoos. Like the doctor, she’s a Bent-Anat; a Daughter of Anat, a follower pledged to raise her once again.’
‘But the mark never bothered me that much,’ I point out. ‘I’d never have gone for a tattoo if Lisa hadn’t – ahh! Let me guess; they gave Lisa a free tattoo, right?’
‘Probably,’ Zeb agrees, at last grinning once more. ‘There’s not muc– look out!’
Firmly grabbing me about the shoulders, he pushes me almost brutally aside.
Whirling around to follow his frightened gaze, I see why.
A hawk is hurtling down towards us, its sharp beak and claws held in readiness to strike.
*
Perhaps Yatpan has made a mistake in giving me all these powers before her mistress has had chance to completely take me over.
A deadly mistake for her.
I move fluidly, quickly, withdrawing the sword from its sheath across my back, a motion that flows effortlessly into a rising, curving strike; all expertly timed to cleave the plummeting hawk in two.
And, if this had been any hawk but Yatpan, I suspect that that is what really would have happened.
Yatpan, however, was fully aware of the skills she had granted me.
The hawk quivered in mid air, breaking it’s own flight, brutally halting it’s own seemingly unstoppable plunge towards my whirling blade.
Just inches from me, the hawk becomes a woman who lands gracefully upon her feet.
But it’s not Yatpan; at least, not the Yatpan I know.
This is a woman every bit as athletically built as I now am.
She might even be considered beautiful too, if you’ve got time for considering such things.
‘Don’t trust him!’ she snarls, glowering at Zeb like she’s about to kill him and I’m the only thing stopping her.
‘Did you kill a child?’ I ask her sternly, glowering back at her every bit a hatefully as she’s staring at Zeb.
Somehow, I can see what happened.
It’s an attack of eagles, of vultures, upon an old man as he tussles with a younger one over possession of the bow and arrows. Then Yatpan, as the hawk, swoops out of nowhere between them all; she snatches the bow, the quiver of arrows.
But the boy crumples to the floor, dead.
Yatpan tries to get away, but now the eagles swoop time after time after her. She gets way, but it seems she drops her prize, the arrows and bow tumbling into a raging river.
Now she looks at me, her gaze full of sadness,and guilt.
‘Yes, I killed a boy,’ she admits ashamedly.
She appears to rapidly melt, to shiver and swiftly dissolve in the air.
Then she’s a hawk once more, rising up and away from us.
*
‘What happened there?’ a relieved Zeb asks me curiously, adding with nervous grin, ‘You were lashing out there like you had an invisible sword!’
‘Well, yeah, I know it sounds ridiculou–’
‘Believe me, nothing sounds ridiculous to me anymore!’
‘Yeah, it’s an invisible sword; at least to you, and any other normal human.’
Did I really just say that? ‘Any other normal human’?
Am I seriously saying I no longer consider myself human?
‘Though not, of course, to Yatpan,’ I add hurriedly, hoping Zeb doesn’t notice my weird slip up.
‘Obviously,’ Zeb agrees with a nod, a narrowing of his eyes. ‘She was Anat’s maid–’
‘How long ago are we talking here?’ I gasp in surprise. ‘I mean, sure, she looks ancient, when she’s in the form we see when she’s in her shop; but I reckon if we’re talking of a goddess here, we’re stretching one heck of a way back.’
Zeb shrugs.
‘Who can say?’ he admits. ‘But as we are talking goddesses, I suppose time doesn’t really come into it. It was Yatpan’s mistress, Anat, who sent her to retrieve the bow from the boy.’
‘So, this Anat is just as responsible for the boy’s death as Yatpan?’
Zeb nods in agreement once again.
‘Er, I know this is a little off subject,’ I begin edgily, ‘but I don’t suppose you have any idea what this bow looked like, do you?’
He gives me another shrug.
‘I’m not sure,’ he says, rubbing the snail on his neck once again as if wanting to rid himself of it, ‘but Anat used to adorn herself in what’s called Tyrian purple, a dye produced from the murex snail. It might be decorated with a snail; just as we are!’
My heart sinks; this has to be the bow once belonging to the dead child. The purple grip, the spiralling embroidery?
‘You’d think, wouldn’t you,’ Zeb continues thoughtfully, ‘she’d be associated with something more bloodthirsty.’
‘Bloodthirsty?’ I repeat hesitantly, fearing Zeb’s reply.
‘Well, this isn’t your kindly goddess we’re talking of here,’ Zen says, his grin half amused, half terrified. ‘She’s your original stroppy, uncontrollable teenager, who enjoys nothing more than wading through the blood of vast armies she’s killed just for the thrill of it.’
‘Ahh,’ I sigh miserably, recalling my barely controlled impulses to go out killing masses of – well, let’s face up to it now, right? – people!
Great; just great!
Here’s my big chance to be some wonderful, all embracing goddess; and I get to pick a mass murderer who makes Stalin look like good old Uncle Joe!
*
‘So, what do we do now?’
I’m thinking it, but it’s Zeb who asks it.
Obviously, neither one of us is quite sure what to do.
‘I suppose,’ Zeb continues, his tone even more uncertain, ‘the fact that I’m okay shows everything doesn’t have to fall their way.’
‘But you almost died,’ I point out. ‘I can’t be too sure that my death would have the same results.’
‘Yep,’ he agrees, flattening the brief fluttering of hope within me that he might have worked out a way to safely replicate his own experiences, ‘that’s way too risky; playing with death.’
‘At least you’ve warned me what to expect, what I’m up against,’ I add a little more brightly. ‘I suppose I’m just going to have to confront Yatpan; tell her she’s got to stop this – or else!’
‘Or else what?’ Zeb asks, his eyebrows arching curiously.
‘Well,’ I say sternly, ‘I am the world’s archetypal vicious teenager, aren’t I?’
*
Chapter 16
‘Okay, yeah; let’s head there,’ Zeb says, taking my hand to lead me back out into the storm.
The storm’s nowhere near as violent as it was only moments ago; but the rain is still falling heavily, the gusts still furious enough to pick anyone up off their feet if they’re wearing too voluminous a coat.
‘You don’t have to–’
‘Yes I do,’ Zeb interrupts. ‘We need to watch out for each other.’
The streets have remained more or less deserted since the storm began. Now, however, there’s a man struggling against the wind a
nd rain, his head bowed to protect his face as he heads in the same general direction as us.
Another man appears from around a nearby corner, his head also bowed, a raised hand covering his crown.
He’s heading our way too. Not quite as far ahead of us as the other man, but on the other side of the street.
A third man appears, one posing so many similarities to the other two they could be triplets.
Wouldn’t you know it; he’s heading our way too.
*
Zeb clenches my hand a touch firmer.
I can see by the way he’s anxiously watching the men, his eyes flitting quickly from one to the other, that he also feels apprehensive about their sudden appearance.
‘You don’t think…?’ he says.
‘I think,’ I reply.
Even so, the men aren’t approaching us; they’re rapidly drawing closer to each other.
Amongst the wailing of the wind, there’s now a howling, but it’s something far more animalistic in its tones than I’d expect of even a storm like this. Moreover, its not coming from the men gathering together ahead of us, but from behind. From either side of us too, as we cross a street.
Glancing to either side, I watch, startled, as the howling seems to be coming from the middle of the road. Here the heavily falling rain is swirling, as if caught within the grip of miniature tornados.
A fleeting look over my shoulder tells me it’s happening there too: the howling is either forcing the rain and wind to chaotically whirl, catching up within its embrace anything like leaves or debris, or the coiling of the air itself is causing the bestial yowling.
Either way, the result is the same; the serpentine spiralling is rising to the height of men, expanding too, taking on the forms of yet more shady figures.
Now there are two more men behind us, and one to either side,
The three men ahead of us finally draw together, slewing to an immediate halt. They whirl around as one to glare at us; and as they do, they also become spiralling forms, merging into each other, until they loom over us as a three-headed giant.
Oh sh*t!
And to think; all this surfeit of joy is all down to me wanting a bloody hare and moon tattoo!
*
Chapter 17
The giant’s not in any real hurry to mash us to pieces.
He’s confidently striding towards us, a malicious grin on each of his three ugly faces.
Unlike his three heads, his arms and legs have merged to become huge arms, powerful legs. His body, too, is one, only one of gigantic proportions. And doubtlessly every bit as powerfully strong as at least three men.
I briefly consider dragging Zeb after me down the road to my right, where only a single man is blocking our path.
But I suspect that’s what they want me to do; all the man has to do is hold me up long enough for the giant to fall upon our backs.
Better, then to take the giant head on.
I reach for my sword, wishing I’d had the good sense to string my bow, wishing I hadn’t worried about the rain spoiling the string, wishing I hadn’t felt so embarrassed about carrying these weapons.
Wishing I wasn’t wasting my time thinking about all these useless things.
As I reach for my sword, I spring forward in the same motion, bringing the sword down in a viscous whirl against the giant’s chest, hoping it cleaves flesh and muscle in two.
Unfortunately, his flesh and muscle moves even swifter than my blade
As before, his body becomes perfectly fluid, impossibly curling away from my strike as if I’ve merely disturbed water that ripples away from me.
His whole body narrows, elongates, like the stretching and bending of rubber. The necks below each head are also now rapidly elongating, snake-like in their curling and coiling as each head rises up and rushes towards me, the faces abruptly reptilian in their angry snarling and snapping.
I whirl my blade again and again, but each blow cleaves through nothing but empty air, the writhing heads and body avoiding my every move as if pre-empting my own thoughts on where to strike out at next.
I’m nowhere near as expert at wielding this blade as I was in my dream; probably because I’ll only reach that level of skill once Anat has fully taken me over.
Neither am I anywhere near as graceful, as athletic, as she was.
Out of the corner of an eye, I can see the other four men swiftly approaching an unsuspecting Zeb, who’s too busy anxiously watching my failing efforts fighting the serpent.
I cry out a warning, but like my increasingly useless strikes with the sword, it’s too late.
The four men grasp him firmly, his struggle to escape their combined grip as fruitless as my own attempts to defeat this writhing monster. I try to leap out of the way of the three snapping serpentine heads, to turn towards Zeb and at least offer him some help and free him.
But as soon as my whirling blade is no longer holding them at bay, the heads sense an opportunity to strike.
One rushes in below my still swinging sword, aiming for below my waist; it bites hard, ferociously, its huge fangs sinking deep into my flesh.
A surge of heat rushes through me, its venom flooding into my muscles, my veins.
The second head snaps its jaws around my lower chest, the third about my waist.
The pain’s unbelievable, the rush of injected venom like flames hurtling through me as if I were nothing but straw.
The fangs are withdrawn, the serpentine heads pulling back, their grins a mingling of glee and malevolence.
At least the men have released Zeb.
My arms hang limply, my legs crumple beneath me. My vision is blurring, darkening.
I’m dying; there’s no doubt about it.
Zeb worriedly rushes over to me as I hit the floor.
He’s bent over me, weeping, tenderly stroking my face.
‘Tana! No, no; don’t leave me!’
*
Chapter 18
It’s as if the serpent had swallowed me whole, rather than biting me multiple times.
I’m swirling down and down inside what could be apparently endless coils.
The world’s worst waterslide.
Finally, I’m sort of spat out into what could be a regular if very dark room.
It’s dark despite having a surprisingly large amount of windows.
Then again, it’s even darker outside.
If this is death, where is everybody else?
All the spirits of the dead? The ancestors?
Isn’t your aunty or gran or someone supposed to be around to welcome you when you die?
Or at least a couple of angels.
No gates, no clouds, either.
Just a dim room. Despite all these windows.
I’m still wearing my sword, my bow and arrows.
Obviously, they can exist in both worlds.
And my body?
Strangely enough, it’s the same body I had while alive, complete with all the tattoos.
I know this because, apart from the weapons slung across my back, I’m completely naked.
*
The darkness by me swirls, that spiralling whirlpool effect I had witnessed in the rain.
Once again, the whirling quivers, shudders as if disturbed; and then an old woman is standing beside me.
She doesn't speak.
I don't ask her anything.
As she approaches, I silently obey her visual instructions to raise my arms, to hold up my chin, to display my wrists, my ankles to her.
She’s inspecting me, much as a doctor might perform a medical examination.
After a close observation of my inner ankles, she rises to her feet, smiles; then vanishes.
Alongside me, there’s another swirling of the dark air. It forms once more into a woman, but this time a young girl of about my age.
‘Anat?’ I ask unsurely.
She laughs, pleasantly, rather than the malicious chuckle I might have been expecting.
‘Hardly,’ she says in reply to my hesitantly asked question. ‘I’m Pagrhat, niece of Anat – who killed my brother for the bow you’re wearing.’
*
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, noticing that mentioning her brother has caused Pagrhat to sadly frown sadly, ‘but if it helps, you can have the bow–’
She raises a hand to stop me from taking the bow from my back.
‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘but you can make more use of it than I can; and I need your help to help me find Anat!’
‘Me? How can I help? Aren’t I…well, dead?’
‘The way I see it, you’re merely on another part of your journey; a journey heavenwards through the Many Lodges.’
‘Then I’m not in heaven?’ I ask, glancing about me at the surrounding, dull room with a mix of relief and foreboding: after all, you’d think the one advantage of death was that all your cares would be over, wouldn’t you?
‘Who was the old woman?’ I next ask, realising Pagrhat doesn’t need to answer my first question; quite obviously, this isn’t heaven!
‘She performs an identification of whom you are; if she failed to recognise you, then she would push you back into the darkness, sending you plummeting back to earth!’
I nervously look behind me, expecting see a precipitous drop hidden somewhere within the darkness; but the floor seems level, stable.
‘I can’t see any drop there,’ I admit, adding hopefully, ‘Besides, I wouldn’t mind going back to earth.’
‘Ah, but as what? If you hadn’t gained her approval then, believe me, the floor would have opened up behind you; and you would have no hope of ever gaining admittance to the spirit world again. This, of course, is what happened to your poor friend.’
She shakes her head sadly.
I’m horrified.
‘To Zeb? Oh no! Then – what happens to him; when he dies again, I mean?’
‘He may think he’s alive, but his sprit is trapped in a body that, unfortunately, is still dead.’
All this is getting more horrifying by the second.
‘Then – his body will rot about him? About his spirit?’
‘Eventually; the reappearance of his spirit has only temporarily slowed down its decay.’