nano progress is back on!

so...my word count has been crawling slower than a slug in the freezer, but i've been working my butt off!

i hit a wall, my first real big wall since starting this book. normally, or rather id like to say previously, this would have meant months of nothing in the keystroke department, but with a climbing target on my stats page and the little stair of progress acting more like a plateau i knew i needed to keep trudging along, trying everything in the book, in order to break that wall. I did, cleaned the debris and am using the nice flat surface i've made as a runway.

so my biggest nano victory to date is having punched this wall, (called by some writers block, but i don't believe in writers block...ill post a thread about it)...right in the face until it crumbled.

this is why it took me some 6 years to finish my first novel. id hit a wall then sit on my brain for months on end. finally id get an idea and get back to work...then id hit a wall again.

the good news is creativity can be forced, "writers block" can be kung fu-ed in the neck and brutally decapitated like a Quentin Tarantino movie. and while nano hasn't really taught me this, it has forced me to really implement it, to an eye opening degree which i believe i shall not lose.

here's the next line of the next bit of my post-wall word monsoon...

“I’d kill for some air right now!”

Homunculus and the Cat: Chapter XI (nanowrimo day 1, 12-3am)

Chapter XI

The cat was perched lazily atop the bowsprit, her favorite part of a boat, and considered death. She had only died twice, but she was beginning to enjoy it. It felt good. She wondered how it would compare to sex.

She couldn’t ask anyone of course, as she didn’t know anyone who fit the criteria of being, or having recently been deceased. She considered finding a ghost, spirit or perhaps another one of her kind, an Eneddi. She wasn’t even sure why she compared it to sex, only it seemed that humans enjoyed it and she enjoyed dying. She had never tried the other. She was still just a kitten after all.

“Ankh’Si,” Tyro called her new name from across the deck.

The cat opened her eyes.

“Guess what’s for dinner?”

‘Maybe I’ll ask the homunculi if any of them have ever been destroyed.’ It probably wasn’t at all alike, but she’d have to now that she thought of it.

“Karl made sushi.”

“Hell yes!” Ankh’Si had no idea what the words meant, except that Tyro used the term often. It wasn’t Atlantean, or Egyptian. The cat didn’t even think it came from one of the other languages that the others spoke, and there were a lot of those.

The ship was full of refugees from across the globe. All of whom were just looking for a place to stay. Rare magical homeless bums, that’s what they were. They were sailing to Troy, with a commission to retrieve unknown cargo for some rich and coincidentally fat lord in Atlantis. Nobody trusted him but they were out of options.

“Mermaid’s garden snake,” Karl announced as they assortment of bodies made their way below deck. “Olympian tuna, and blue triton-tail.”

The cat salivated.

“What god gave you those?” Tyro asked.

“These gods!” Karl stuck his fists in the air above him, below him and all around his sides. The hekatonkheire clenched each of his hundred fists with pride.

“Easy to catch a fish with a hundred hands.”

“I guess.” Tyro conceded.

Conversation slowed as the sushi was passed around.

“How’s the weather?” Petra, a Satyr and head of the sanctuary, asked.

The question was non-conversational and directed at the designated seer. Redbeak. He was an imp and damn good at prognostication.

“Rain tomorrow.”

“Storm?”

“No, just big clouds and wet air.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll be arriving in Troy then anyway. If the storm does get out of hand-”

“It won’t.”

“How-”

“Galemakers.”

Petra scrunched her forehead. They didn’t have any real galemakers on board. Two or three of the homunculi had an affinity towards the craft but none had any real training. Sione, the resident wereboar was one actually, but he was still recovering from a nasty transformation and woldn’t be much help on his own. It usually took about three galemakers to abate a bad storm, six if you wanted them to last and still keep the ship on course.

“The Persians have better galemakers than Troy.”

“What?”

“The Persians have more too. The sea will be calm as long as the siege is on.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Tyro butt in, “What do you mean the siege?”

“Master Tyro, the city of Troy is under siege by the Persians, do you not divine these things for yourself?”

Tyro had nothing to say. Everyone believed him to be a proficient at divination despite what he told them. He was right of course. He was crap at that stuff. Seeing and foretelling were close to being the bane of his existence. But, he had a smartphone and the habit of using it on occasion in this world was something he couldn’t suppress. It was probably a good thing the internet didn’t work on it. But he had apps and for some weird reason functional gps. It made no sense but what was he going to do about it in Gaia, where magic existed in technology’s place?

“I,” he paused, “was unaware.”

“I suppose you were too pre-occupied with the other current events to notice another siege on troy.”

“Yes, between that and the sanctuary burning to the ground.”

“Indeed.”

“So how will this siege affect our contract?”

The imp looked at Petra with puzzlement “I had thought,” he reproved, “That this would have already been accounted for.”

The rest of the present crew had silenced themselves to listen. Petra wasn’t the ship’s captain but she was the ranking staff from the sanctuary. She was the director of the organization. She had some of the management and staff, including Tyro, aboard the ship with her, but she called the shots.

Tyro had only recently been promoted to a full-time position but the management was required to stay in Atlantis. He was unsure how he felt about the mantle placed upon him. He hadn’t stayed at one job for this long before, but he believed in the cause. He was almost as passionate about it as Petra was. Just because homunculi had no souls, it didn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated like animals or worse, in many cases.

So what if they were man-made? So what if all the best alchemists could transmute homunculi? That didn’t meant they should be slaves. Soul or no soul, being created intentionally by a mortal did not negate one freedom. People have children on purpose all the time and don’t get to force them into servitude or sell them as commodities. Of course even the worst case scenario is a reality somewhere, but in civilization, such things are illegal.

It didn’t seem right to Tyro that just because homunculi were made artificially that they deserved anything different than other sentient creatures. And they were sentient. Most homunculi could think and act of their own volition. Tyro had seen them during his previous apprenticeship in Japan. He had worked with the alchemists that were forced to produce “false-humans,” as they were called, for the Yakuza. When Herakles made a plan to escape Tyro resigned and joined them. It was perfect timing for him too. Any longer and he was sure to have been roped into more Yakuza affiliation.

“There’s no way were getting into Troy!” Someone said.

“We might as well turn around now!” Said another.

“Hesperides will never give us funding now!”

“We might as well take the ship and disappear.”

There was a chorus of agreement with a few mingling suggestions of new destinations and ideas of what to do when they got there.

“Listen!” Petra shouted. “We’re not going to become whalers in Greenland. And we’re not going to all end up in whatever underworld you- Look,” she said, “We are going to go to Troy. We are going to appeal to the Persians or wait out the siege. We’ll explain it to Hesperides when we get back and apologize for the delay. We’ll get our funding and re-build the sanctuary.”

“Hesperides,” one homunculs argued, “won’t give us funding, he hates us.”

The small cabin exploded in debate once again. Petra grabbed her plate and left. Tyro followed her and the cat followed him.

“Are we really going to appeal to the Persians?” Tyro asked as the three of them walked to the forecastle.

“It’s worth a shot.” Petra said. “They’re going to quarantine our ship anyway. There’s no way we can get close to Troy without the Persians knowing, not while a siege in going on.”

“What’s the deal with the siege anyway,” Tyro asked.

“It’s a demonstration.” The cat said. “The Persians are protesting Greek tariffs.”

“You knew about this?” Petra asked incredulously.

“Well,” the cat said, “I just overheard some stuff at an oracle parlor one night.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t think about it until now.”

Petra sighed.

“So,” Tyro asked, “It’s not a war then?”

“No, the Greeks are just getting a little out of hand on taxing imported Celtic and Viking goods.”

“Good.” Petra sighed again. “A war’s the last thing we need.”

“But,” Tyro said, “If the siege is about imports and exports, they’ll be less likely to just let us in to Troy and pick up our cargo.”

“That is a problem isn’t it?”

“By the way, has Redbeak had any luck scrying what the cargo is?”

“No, none at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that means it’s something big.”

“Big?” The cat asked.

“Expensive, or important or something, we’re not just going after a boatload of really nice pillows or anything.”

“Well duh!” Ankh’Si said. “Why do you think he sent us? It’s probably something illegal. Drugs or something.”

“Boy I sure hope not.” Petra added.

Silence followed. The three of them gazed in the direction they were headed. East. Toward Troy, the Persian fleet, and their unknown cargo. The salty air filled their lungs and the stars overhead shone comfortingly to them as they each wished according to their own traditions. Petra silently implored her goddess for help. Tyro adopted a weak hope in nothing in particular and Ankh’Si considered getting some more sushi.

“You know Hesperides,” Tyro said, “he’ll find a way to make us all his slabs, not just the homunculi. Even if he does give us our funding, there’ll be a catch.”

“What about your mother?” Petra almost pleaded with the cat. “I know you two aren’t on the best of terms but…”

‘Best of terms?’ Ankh’Si thought, ‘I slit her throat!’

“I don’t know, she said. I guess we are even now. I won’t say there isn't a chance.”

Petra turned and reached to the cat for a hug.

“It would mean to world to me, and the sanctuary if you could at least talk to her.”

The cat’s fur changed to a dark purple as she allowed herself to be hugged.

“I promise I’ll talk to her.”

NaNoWriMo

so, ive finally decided to take the plunge. im doing nano. i am going to finish Homunculus and the Cat for it. this is not cheating as i will be doing 50k NEW words on it. and if i have to maybe ill tack on a false beginning just to make it stand alone for nano.

for more information on this project please use the link above.

hopefully there wont be any updates from me until december. (as i should be focused entirely on H&C)

Arachne

coming soon

also i am thinking about cutting it back to a monthly series instead.
i am going to try my luck with NaNoWriMo this year and im trying to get my ducks in a row for that.

but i promise im going to do the story of Arachne

also on my list are:

Balor
Baba Yaga

Monkey King

Karkotaka

Hercules' trials

Izanagi

The Amazons

those are just the ones in the que, i dont know when ill get to them or in what order but theyre on the "id like to do" list

thanks for looking

p.s. i will be posting some of my other stories though so check back!

Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Wisdom

I didn't plan on eating the salmon of wisdom. But I did, accidentally. If I had known how easy it was to eat the fish, I’d truly have been more inclined to do it purposefully, and pretend it happened exactly as it had. But I did not. And I did eat it.

My master had searched for the thing for longer than I had known about its existence, for longer even than my master had known about mine. And he had been there at my birth. He was not a fisherman, but he labored with that river long enough that he should have been, were it not for the obsession that undermined the experience.

We had been fishing that day, just as we did most days, sitting on the bank of the Boyne. Master Finn told me often how glad he was for company. I suppose this was true, in part, but I had witnessed the slight grins and shortened breaths as he supervised the extra fishing line. That’s what he really cared about. Though I gladly received the knowledge he had to offer in return for the extra lure I bore.

“Thus, from the nine hazelnuts, the salmon gained all the wisdom of mankind.”

I wasn’t paying attention. I knew the story well. He knew this, and I was never scolded for my inattentiveness. I could recite it all, in his own words, back to him. As long as I kept on my line, or net, or whatever method we used that day, I had earned my keep.

I did marvel however as I sat and pulled the grass, how knowledge could be carried through the nuts of a Hazel tree, sacred or not. I had eaten Hazelnuts, usually prepared with salmon, for the better part of seven years and the only wisdom I had gained came from a wild and feral old poet. Often I believed he might have been a druid who became a bear at night under the light of the moon. But from him, on no occasion, did I witness the use of magic.

Other times I feared his mind was addled.

Finn Eces was a poet of some renown and he knew the ways of the warrior. Quickly I learned them from him. This was our agreement. Whether he was touched by the gods or possessed, it concerned me little. I learned his poems and trained in his techniques.

Finn lurched from the grass into the river.

“Fionn!” He called for me. “Fi- Fionn! I’ve got him!”

I grabbed the net and leapt into the water. I swam upsteam and outward. I cursed myself for my reaction. I should have run along the bank for a ways. I was going to drift too far to reach them. I dove under the surface and battled the current. Maybe I could get Finn to come to me. I stretched out the net, or tried and failed. It had become twisted and ineffective

I gasped for air as I came above again. I saw Finn, wrestling the great beast. If there ever was a time to be a were-bear. I knew at once it was a sacred fish. Its scales shone in the fading sun and the thing was the size of a seal.

“To me!” I shouted.

I don’t know if he heard through all the thrashing, or if Finn’s head was above water at that moment. But if I kept trying to swim toward them, I knew the river would bring them to me. I kept trying to untwist the net.

I could see that my master had jammed his pole into the salmon’s mouth, or gills, maybe through both. Blood was discoloring the water.

They came to me and the fish’s tail beat me like a Formoriian warhammer. Water filled my lungs as I sank and blackness conquered my mind. But it was momentary and I choked back to consciousness. I kicked my feet against some loose rocks on the river bed. I tumbled and banged my joints on other rocks. Before I drowned, I surfaced again, long enough to take a breath for a second round of river current.

The salmon whipped its tail and writhed with fury, but Finn held the rod. Each time the salmon struggled it had less power.

The river bent and I rolled onto a pebbly beach. I got to my feet as quickly as I could, which is to say not at all. And I looked about me. There was a log nearby and I went for it. Heaving it into the river I leaped on it and rode it like a raft. I heard the wood crack as My master and his catch slammed into it. But it held long enough for me to put my hand in the salmon’s mouth. It clamped down and tore my flesh, but I held its jaw and reeled it, slowly, despairingly, back to the shore.

My net had tangled itself around Finn and the fish. It had nearly cost my master his life but it had hindered the fish.

“Well, worth it.” Finn said.

We lay there on the dark sand and gravel for some time. I learned much of the blood in the river had been Finn’s and not the salmon’s. But I was too fatigued to tend to his wounds, or mine, and neither was fatal.

We woke some hours later to the sound of wolves. The wind whistled through the dark forest behind us and the river rolled on at our feet. I was shivering violently and acutely aware of the pain in my arm.

“Finn! Master Finn!”

He got up, checked his prize and begged Avalon that this was indeed the one. I silently added my oblation to it.

“We should leave this place.” Finn said, looking across the river in the direction of his cabin.

I agreed.

He made me fetch the wheelbarrow.

“Too excited to sleep.” Finn squeaked as he saw to the fire.

I changed into dry clothes. Finn did likewise as I set myself on the preparation of the salmon. It took a heroic effort just to scale the fiend. But I got my revenge. After little tribulation, the salmon was gutted, cleaned and on the fire.

Finn dozed while I turned and jabbed at the thing. Over the past seven years that I had been here, cooking salmon had become to me, so familiar, that my mind idly wandered as I did so. But this fish was so large that it took all my attention to not burn the edges or under-cook the middle. I poked and prodded, always being careful not to taste it.

My stomach growled like the wolves in the forest but I did not give in. I could not deliberately disrespect my master. The smell of the meat touched my nose, like the stories of the gods touched my imagination, but I did not eat it. I did not even taste the fish. I pretended to fear it, like an ill omen. And the salmon neared completion.

The thought of finally being done with the ordeal and done with salmon was as sweet to my mind as any meal could have been to my body that night. I tested the thing one last time, pressing it with my thumb. The grease burned me. Even in death the fish found ways to torment me.

“Finn!” I yelled sucking on my blistering thumb. “Come eat your damned fish!”

 I was tired and overwhelmed by the night. I felt my mind fatigue and my body lose its vigor. Suddenly the world was too much for me. I thought I would retire that night with an empty stomach and I was at peace.

“Fionn,” Finn said to me, “have you eaten the salmon of knowledge?”

“No master.” I told him truthfully.

“I can see it in your eyes!”

“No!” I removed my sore thumb from my mouth, “I have not taken so much as a single bite.”

“You-” Finn stammered.

I knew he was right. I knew that all the knowledge of the fish had been condensed into that small amount of grease that burned my thumb. And I ate it. That was not all that I knew. I had gained all the wisdom of the world at that time. My mind had filled with knowledge beyond mortal capacity and comprehension. I knew how the sacred Hazel trees bore enlightening fruit and how those nuts had dropped into Nechtan’s well. I knew the salmon, Finntan, had eaten them and gained all the wisdom of the Tuatha Dé Danann. I knew Boann and how she begat the river Boyne. And I knew of all the men who had tried and failed to capture Finntan the salmon of wisdom.

Finn Eces, my master knew it too. It did not take the magic of the well of knowledge to see the light in my eyes.

That was the last I, Fionn mac Cumhaill, ever saw of him. He bade me eat the salmon, which I did and I left the next morning.

Pantheon ch: 1 - Gaia

Black knew exactly what he was doing. Stealing wasn’t just about taking stuff. It was about keeping it.

“Anything good?”

“What?” Black jumped back, retracting his hand from a backpack that was not his.

“Did you find anything you like in there?”

Black had found something he liked, precisely what he was after. His fingers tightened around the slender bit of plastic The attached headphones dangled to the floor. In his other hand there was a small case for games and memory cards.

Every foster mom and volunteer rec-center dad he had lived with, knew he stole. As far back as his memory went. But they could never prove it.

“I...um…”

Being caught in the act was unthinkable.

 “Look kid, I’m not campus security. In fact I’d like to offer you a job.”

 “Wait, what?”

“I happen to be the world’s greatest smuggler.”

“You look like a bum.”

“I’ve pulled jobs that would make casino vaults look like candy stores run by a babies.”

“Look, if you’re not gonna-”

“No, I’m not going to call security or whatever.”

“Good, I’ll see you later then.”

“Actually you will. I need you to steal the sword of Hsin Lann.”

“The hell?”

Black stared. The man hardly looked like a professional thief. His hair was unkempt, his clothes ratty and he smelled disgusting. He was a cardboard sign-sob story.

“What if I told you that Earth has an identical twin, magic and mythology are real and I can teach you to steal from the gods themselves?”

 Black didn’t know how to react to that. But, in truth he didn’t care one way or the other. The man was obviously insane.

The student from whom he had stolen was returning. Black shook his head and made for the door. The stranger walked outside with him but turned to go a separate way.

“Be ready by nightfall.”

Safely inside a UNLV exhibition hall, away from stray bums, Black went over the conversation in his mind. He couldn’t get it out of his head. That guy was so weird. But a part of him wanted to believe the crazy dude anyway and abandon his life.

Black wanted out. He was sick of foster homes and boy’s ranches and their lame-assed “field trips” to cut rate campus exhibits. Black wondered why he hadn’t run away sooner. Free food and scarcity of cash were just excuses.

He could get by. Even tonight he would have taken the whole backpack, but anything that big was too hard to smuggle back to his current correctional facility. The PSP would have to do. Hopefully the careless co-ed had good taste in music.

Black could survive on the street, he had the know-how. He had the sticky fingers for it. He had once again confirmed that this evening. He conned the rest of the boys from his ranch to try and make it to the casino strip for some fun. Black never met them at the rendezvous spot. Instead he hit up the campus library and lifted backpacks. Like he would really go up against casino security, and try to gamble with stolen wallets and purses.

What use were some vacationer’s credit cards anyway? A few chips were nothing to him in the middle of a go-nowhere boys’ ranch compared to eighty gigabytes of memory sticks, loaded with free music, movies and games. Black couldn’t help laughing.

‘What were they thinking, allowing us to be taken on trips to the city?’ Thanks to that lapse in judgment though, he was enjoying his new toy. The headphones ran, under his shirt and hoodie. Black made sure his music was loud enough that he didn’t have to hear the adults discussing the dorm situation for the night and trying to discipline the other boys.

The commotion all around the young teenager couldn’t break his gaze out the high windows. Black was comfortably defiant, ignoring the mess he had caused. An arid, rainless tempest grew outside. Lightning flickered in through the window and bounced off the marble floors, casting twisted split-second shadows on the other delinquents as they were searched for contraband. From behind his black cheek-length hair he looked past the prison-like bars into the vacant sky.

Black wondered if he was close-by the place where he was once abandoned. At five years old Black was the victim of a doorbell-ditching at a Las Vegas City fire station. The only thing he had besides a pair of shorts was a note tied to his leg with scratchy twine.

“Keep alive.”

Dropping a half-naked toddler on a porch didn’t seem like a great way to keep him alive. All his life he wondered what kind of idiots would leave a note like that. And everyone who knew him since then, at some point, felt a hot desire to disobey the explicit command. In a sadistic sort of humor he would often wonder if his death would make his parents failures.

Las Vegas declared him Caucasian. He never understood what that meant. No one ever offered a straight answer when he asked where Caucasia was. Adults either scolded his attitude or chuckled and ruffled his pitch hair. By now he had stopped asking questions, but they were always there in the back of his mind. ‘Who am I? Where did I come from? Why was I abandoned?’

Then there were the big mysteries. ‘When’s my birthday? How old am I?’ Most importantly ‘why can’t I remember any of it?’ Still in his teens at least, he knew he should have memories of the fire station and before. The answers, like his parents, simply escaped him.

They gave him a name. He never used it. He went by Black. It was his favorite color and dress code. He liked it so much that he dyed his already black hair just to make it look deliberate.

 He was the black sheep of the lost Vegas boys. No foster family kept him. Valiant couples took him as a parenting challenge or divine project. The better that people got to know him, the more they tried to “help” him. It made him sick. Sooner or later he always bounced back to the state, and he preferred it that way, not that he liked the state, but Nevada nagged a lot less than would-be-mothers on a mission. Above all he didn’t like the feeling that he belonged anywhere. He needed to keep moving.

Leaning against a wall, he imagined a drunken homeless guy bursting through the doors trying to convince the disgruntled social workers to let him take a kid. Black envisioned the epic jailbreak it would require. ‘If he could do that, and avoid the cops, then maybe the hobo would be a decent smuggler.’

Again Black considered running away. ‘If the homeless guy could make it work…’

Black jumped away from the wall, back sweating. Half expecting to see that he had been standing against a broken radiator he saw the wall melt from the top down. He gawked as the stranger stood alone in the opening. The storm was blowing his stringy hair around the edges of a hood. A black coat ran to his knees. He wore tall boots and his hands were bandaged.

Black scowled. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I was expecting a professional thief, not some cirque du sideshow.”

The sunken-faced man peeled himself back from the opening, offended.

“The con-artists of your world-” He cut himself off. “I don’t have to prove anything to you. Stay here if you want. I hear you enjoy digging latrines over at that delinquent labor camp.”

‘Finally’ Black thought, ‘someone real.’ The stranger bore no façade, he had no intentions to candy coat the world for Black’s sake. It seemed as good a time as ever to run away. None of the state workers would miss him. They would just miss their jobs. Isn’t that what unemployment was for?

The possibility taunted him. Even after seeing the wall boil down into nothing, the prospect of finally getting out was more real to him now than it had ever been.

The stranger beckoned with a follow-me motion and turned towards the night.

Black didn’t trust him, but he had never trusted anyone in his entire life. Why start now? Besides, whatever might happen, this beat the alternative.

Coping with the shock over what had just happened, Black envisioned walls melting all over the world. Glass display cases, vault doors and even prison bars in his mind disappeared effortlessly with each imagined caper.

 “Ah, what the hell.”

 The air was filled with a cool storm breeze. Though lightning flashed the sky, still no rain fell in the city, there was only wind and shadow. As they tore away from the exhibit hall, Black saw the wall close up as if nothing had happened. That was the night he disappeared.

Black left behind his “Camp Fix-me” duffel, hoping to leave the impression that he simply vanished. He wanted them to wonder why he didn’t take anything with him. Having just shown up one day, now he was gone.

They had gotten off the main roads, out of sight from the bright lights and traversed seedier alleyways and derelict parking lots. Descending into the deep shoulder of a freeway underpass, the rushing of sixteen wheelers on a four lane highway wrenched him back into reality. They stepped down into the ditch stopping at a metal grating guarding a drainage hole. The man’s touch melted it. He grabbed Black’s arm and pulled him to the hole.

“Get in!”

“Yeah right.”

“Do it or I’ll stuff you down myself.”

Black nearly pulled out his knife but his better judgment took over and he cautiously climbed in. He was no match for a wall melter and whatever else this stranger was, nor did Black think it wise, presently, to find out. Too soon, his feet hit a splashy ground that he didn’t know was coming. But, he only fell to one knee.

“Not bad kid. A natural faller. You might add up to something.”

“Thanks?” Black paused, “What’s your name anyway?”

“Yuki. I guess you’re going to hear it sooner or later.” It was a meager offering.

After a little walk in pure darkness, being pushed from behind by Yuki, Black saw a bright flash and felt a sharp pain in his head. He didn’t realize what had happened. There weren’t enough seconds between he the floor to find out. Black was unconscious before his body fell.

Black became aware of a sewer-like stench. As he grew more alert, he noticed he was wet, lying in rancid water next to a set of wide steps. His eyes adjusted to the dim light emanating from something above him. The surroundings were unrecognizable. Black looked around, trying not to seem awake.

Soon the darkness beyond the steps became an archway and there appeared a light. It was jagged and incomplete, obstructed by whatever contained it. As the light drew nearer it grew a pair of arms and then a body. Someone was holding a bright object in the palm of their hand. ‘Son of a bitch!’

“Sorry kid, it was necessary, would have been mounds of trouble. We’re here now so get up.”

As Black got to his feet he opened his mouth but was cut off.

“Just shut up and listen. I need to know everything you have on you, down to every little hairpin and piece of string. Put it on the table or it’ll be your head.”

“What?”

“Don’t make me ask again.”

Black started emptying his pockets.

“Everything!” Yuki barked.

There wasn’t much, a utility knife, a little cash and a lighter. Black wasn’t about to hand over the new mp3 player he had just recently adopted.

“If that’s not everything you’ll be dead or in prison in less than an hour, and believe me you won’t like this sort of prison.”

Black subdued his nerves.

“Do you have any necklaces or jewelry?”

“No.”

“No piercings?”

A ring and a bar went from his lip and tongue to the table.

“Happy?”

“Don’t get smart, runt.” Yuki set a glow-in-the-dark rock on the table and reached into his coat, pulling out a small black and brown box with a square hole in one end. He held it so the hole faced outwards and touched the hole-side of the box to the knife. It melted and disappeared. Then the piercings.

Yuki used the lighter to burn the cash. Then crushed it underneath his shoes and tossed it aside.

Black stood with a protest deep in his throat.

“No more questions squirt?”

Black dared, opening his mouth-

“Good, stay shut up, you’ll live longer.”

“No,” Black complained, “I need information. Choose what you’re going to tell me, it won’t matter what I ask, but you’re telling me something before you or I make another move.”

With a wide grin Yuki retorted, almost sinisterly. “Ok kid, you’ve earned it, but keep your shorts on. I work in a little different line of smuggling than you think. This is a border unlike any you’ve ever seen, and I always have plenty of tricks up my sleeve. This box is a smuggler’s hole. It can store huge amounts of just about anything, even someone unconscious. How’s your head by the way?”

“You put me in…that’s-“

“That’s what, impossible? Or magic? I told you it was real.” With that Yuki touched the side of the box, stroked the corner, closed his eyes, and pulled a three foot long sword out of the box.

“This, once belonged to a man named Gilgamesh.” His proud announcement was met with a blank stare. “Don’t know your history, eh?” He traced the box, closed his eyes, and pulled out “something you might have heard of, the staff of Merlin. And this,” he boasted as he pulled a third time, “is the helm of Hades, worn and lost by Perseus.”

Something about the last item felt familiar but the name to which the staff belonged, he knew. “So what?”

“So what?” Yuki repeated in disbelief. “These artifacts are hundreds of years old and worth a fortune. I told you I’m the world’s greatest smuggler. This box can hold just about anything you want. I put you in there.”

“So where are we going?”

“I’ve already told you.”

He didn’t actually believe there was some other world did he? What did he say it was, an identical twin to earth? ‘Doesn’t make any sense.’

But, Black knew when to quit. Questions got people like him into trouble, not authority trouble but trouble with trouble itself.

Ignoring Black, Yuki  stared at the box for a minute or two then jammed two of his fingers in the hole. While saying something under his breath the box began to melt. Yuki pulled his fingers apart and turned the box inside out. Then he clapped his hands together around the box. There was an absorbing silence that followed and he opened his hands to show nothing but air, like a magic card trick when the card ended up in your sleeve.

“Reversed the magic. Put the box in my hands. Painful,” Yuki winced, “but they’ll never find it.”

Black saw a deep red smear on the palm of Yuki’s hand. Curious, he looked at the other hand and saw blood seeping out of a cut so deep he expected to see through to the back of the hand. Pulling long strands of cloth from his pockets, Yuki dressed the wound like it was an involuntary response.

 ‘Ok this guy gets some credit,’ he applauded mentally, jaw gaping. He was growing more convinced of all the crazy stuff Yuki had said before about magic and mythology.

 “Great marring,” Yuki continued, “will stand out under the Aigian lights.”

“The what?”

“Aigian lights, named after the shield of Zeus, the aigis. It means protection. Think of the lights as magical x-ray scanners. You’ll see what I mean. Come on.”

He pointed at some heavy metal doors on the sides of the walls. “Almost nothing of this world can be taken to the other, vice versa. I take what I want where I want.” With that Yuki went over to a chest next to some lockers opened it and started rummaging.

“You still think I’m going to believe this other world stuff?”

“Believe what you want. Here put these on.” Yuki held a bundle of interesting looking cloth.

“No way!”

“You’ll wish you did.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Alright kid,” Yuki chuckled. “You know best. Come on, time to go.”

Inanna and the Me

Inanna didn’t sweat if she didn’t want to. Though she considered perspiration for a moment as means of cooling the mortal form she wore. She thought better of it. Utu, her brother, sun god of the Sumerians was tempting her. The sand was crisp and abrasive against her toes. It burned at her earthly skin. She liked the pain. It felt like condensed passion. Hurt, heat and dehydration were exotic.

Inanna compounded her energy where an earthly being would have involuntarily expelled it into the desert winds. Traversing the scalding dunes, she bore the harassment. She was the goddess of sex. There were ways of getting even.

Eridu was close anyway. She wouldn’t have to travel far.

Inanna smiled as she and her servant approached the city walls. A small contingent of militiamen huddled in the entrance, against the wall, where the sand had accumulated in tiny mounds. They dropped their triangular dice and jumped to their feet as the pair of women approached.

The sentries’ lips were dry and their tongues scrapped around in their mouths as they tried to find a proper way to address the princess. That is what they thought she must be at least. Impossibly white robes hung loosely around her neck, exposing her chiseled collarbone. Her dress was laced with gold, bearing a myriad of lapis lazuli stones. Dark hair hung, part of it braided, past her shoulders. Gold, blue and orange shone from her headdress and carnelian earrings.

The guards bowed, marveling as much at her presence, as the fact that she had apparently come alone, with her handmaiden, out of the desert. But they did not question her. They kept their eyes down, resisting the urge to look up, or over at the board game they were playing.

Inanna left them standing there, bowing, like perfect statues. She imagined having a scene like that sculpted for her. Maybe she would have a new temple built with a colonnade of kneeling guards. The mortals in Uruk would do it gladly after she finished what she set out to accomplish. But first, in the place Abzu, there was a party to attend.

In mortal skin, Inanna had no trouble seducing her father in law. She let her skin sweat a little, releasing pheromones along with it. Her skin had a shine, uncommon in arid Sumer. And he drank like the god that he was. The wine was sweet. Incense burned around them. Laughter boomed through the hallways of Abzu. She pressed once more and expressed her lips.

“Your wisdom is great Father.”

Enki blushed, and hiccupped.

“But I,” she taunted, “own cunning.”

Enki bellowed. “Such a fine daughter.” He raised his earthen bottle and his servants cheered. “I Enki, who knows all things, who,” hiccup, “the holy laws of heaven and earth,” hiccup, “heart of the gods,” hiccup, “who knows all things,” he repeated. “In my name, and my power I give my daughter the Me!”

“I receive them!”

In his drunken stupor, the fool listed them one by one, “truth, the art of the hero, the art of power, the art of lovemaking,” as if that wasn’t hers already. “The enduring crown, the dagger and sword, smithing, animal husbandry…” Every Me, every aspect of culture and knowledge had been in his custody. Now they were in hers. She repeated them, adding each one he had forgotten and naming them only once.

The servants of Enki fearfully obeyed their master. They gathered the Me, inscribed on tablets, in jars and manifest by statuettes. All that night the effigies of human culture were brought to the quay and loaded, for the goddess onto the ship Heaven.

Inanna, with her servant, left their host babbling in his stupid sleep, mumbling praise to his daughter as they moved out onto the Euphrates.

The palace Abzu reeked of debauchery and excess. The dull stink of sand, spilled alcohol and lethargic guests eddied around the quiet hall. Enki woke, cursed the mortality he still donned and moved to take upon his godly visage. Enki felt diminished somehow, weak, like he was out of the mortal breath that he did not need. He searched for his crown, but could not find it. His head pounded. He didn’t bear pain as Inanna did.

“Sukkal! Sukkal!”

His call still echoed the place when his servant was just at his side.

“Sukkal,” Enki strained. “Isimud, good, you. Where is Inanna?”

“She,” Isimud’s voice broke. “The goddess of war has-”

“Where is she?” Enki roared.

“On the river Euphrates my lord, aboard the vessel Heaven. Not far, sailing upstream, only to the next pier.”

“Where are the Me?” Enki lowered his voice as he sat near an altar.

“With her, my lord.”

“Go.” Enki sounded terrible, like a beast of the world below. He growled with the growing wrath of an angry god. “Take the enkum!”

Isimud hurriedly obeyed and he rode through the city on the coarse backs of the horrible creatures. With bestial vigor, they howled as they overtook the boat of heaven.

“Return the Me,” Ismud ordered in the name of his god. “And you may go back to your city Uruk in peace.”

“Enki is a liar!” Inanna cried. “He has betrayed me! Enki is not a god who knows all things.”

The wet hair of the enkum beasts reeked as they clutched the plies of the Heaven. They scratched at its bow and rocked it from side to side. They pushed it backward toward Eridu and Enki.

“My sukkal, Ninshuber, faithful to me, my champion,” holding one of the stolen Me, Inanna roused her servant. “Save the Boat of Heaven.”

New power surged through Ninshuber. Her mind enlightened and her body augmented with divinity, she slashed the air above the beasts and screamed with the motion. Hot streaks of power hung in the air. The force of them together rent through the thick enkum flesh. Her hands arced toward the sky above her, and the servant heaved the beasts from the water and flung them, with Isimud, back to Abzu.

“My-” Isimud said.

“Go, again!” Enki seethed, “With the Eru!”

A legion of giants, air-bound churned the river with their beating wings as they caught up to the Boat of Heaven. They reached for the sails and mast of the ship seeking to turn or sink it. Inanna bestowed a second Me on Ninshuber and she battled the giants. The sukkal, with colossal strength and speed tore off the arms of the nearest giant. She plucked out the wings of another and dropped him over the side. Ninshuber grappled as the piled on her, ripping them apart. The water-space of Dulma churned with bobbing and bloody appendages as the rest of the giants fled.

Enki raged in Eridu as his sukkal reported back. Enki sent his servant again, with an army of Lahama. Isimud torpedoed through the water with a phalanx of sea serpents, in pursuit of the Boat of Heaven. The swarm dove beneath the ship and shot upward, bearing it out of the water. They writhed and squirmed over each other, and began carrying the ship back toward Eridu. Ninshuber set herself upon the monsters. Her slashing arms stopped on the thousands of scales. Again Inanna gifted her consort the power of a Me and Ninshuber flew through the air. Twisting and dancing around the nest of sea-snakes, she sheared the scales from the Lahama then severed off their heads and tails. Unscathed and un-bloodied she landed, dry, on the Boat of Heaven. Inanna let Isimud flee back to Abzu.

Isimud returned by command with the kugalgal, the shrieking dragon. It opened its mouth and sent a wave of force to rip the skin from their bones. Ninshuber received the Me to withstand it and the blast passed over them like a calm breeze. The dragon circled in the air, yelling, calling forth waves from the river to drown them. The dragon’s roars ripped the rocks from the shore and catapulted them at the ship. But the boat remained protected. Furious, the kugalgal dove at Ninshuber. She tore out its tongue and cast it into the water. The beast flailed and writhed in agony. Ninshuber pulled its jaw in two and with its dying breath it leaped from the ship and flew off to die.

Enki’s fifth trial was the enunun and the Boat of Heaven survived. Throughout the night Ninshuber and Inanna battled demons and beasts. They sliced through flesh with blue light. They ripped away claws and horns. They shocked, burned and froze every foe Enki sent. And they were almost to Uruk.

A gang of men, Enki’s greatest assassins, the watchmen of the Iturungal Canal sat quietly and waited for the goddess and her warrior. Her brother Utu was gone, leaving night in his place. With the power of the stolen Me and the Me Inanna already possessed the goddess and her sukkal had kept themselves unspotted from the gore of the day. And they were alert.

Against the current the Boat of Heaven passed through the Iturungal Canal. Shadows slipped into the cracks and corners of their boat. The first assassin stabbed at Inanna but Ninshuber was there. She twisted his arms and sank the dagger into his heart. His body dispersed into shadow. Assassins leapt at their targets all at once, daggers aimed perfectly. Inanna began to shine. Silver light radiated from her skin and robes. No blade so much as pricked either of the women. Instead they turned, sticking another assassin or evaporating into dark mist. Inannas light burned away at them and soon the night was clear.

“Queen,” Ninshuber spoke, “Let thy glory shine in Uruk. Let thy power brighten the night of man and let the people rejoice when the Boat of Heaven enters the gate of Uruk.”

Inanna smiled and put her arms around Ninshuber and hugged her.

When the Boat of Heaven came into the white harbor the people of Uruk gathered. They flocked toward the ship and marveled as Inanna presented to them the Me. Her people unloaded them astonished as the knowledge of the gods filled them. Through the city they passed around the tablets, opened the jars and esteemed the statues. And more Me that Inanna had stolen appeared. The people sang and danced in the streets and praised their goddess as all the aspects of culture were imparted to the mortals.

Then Enki appeared. The crowds halted and silence drew over them like the mists of the assassins. The god gazed at Inanna. Then he turned and looked out over the city. He turned and looked at the people as they cowered.

“In the name of Enki, god of wisdom and in my power!” Enki bawled. “In the name of Azbu,” He paused breathing deeply. “Let the Me you have taken from me, be kept in the holy shrine of Uruk. Let Uruk prosper as allies of Eridu. Let mankind and Uruk be great!”