Inanna, page 24
“Can you put your feet down?” She stood peering down at me from the bank, naked and still very dry.
“No, I can’t.” I turned onto my back, abandoning all efforts to keep our things dry, and kicked my way over to the far side of the canal. There I pushed the wings, already battered, and the awkward bundle, now soaked, onto the grassy bank, and then laboriously pulled myself out, gasping. I had a flashback as I did, remembering the marshland north of Eridu, and trying to find dry land there, and the feeling that I might drown simply out of exhaustion before I could find something hard to stand on.
I sat, looked over at Inanna, trying to catch my breath. My ribs still didn’t feel right, from when Enki attacked me.
Inanna was standing there watching me, but then she turned, her attention caught.
As if in a dreamscape, a little canoe came floating between us. A little boy, also naked, very brown, sat at the helm, his eyes upon Inanna. Where had the boy appeared from?
“Goddess,” he said. “I saw you coming. May I help you over the canal?”
“Oh!” said Inanna. “I would like that. I would bless you. I do bless you.”
The boy, with a grace born of long practice, in one motion wedged the little boat up close to where Inanna stood. “Step in, my lady.”
Inanna was able to step in quite neatly, and in such a queenly manner that she might have been dressed in the finest cloth. I saw the face she gave him: a soft face, like a dove.
Moments later, they were across, the boy’s biceps working.
Inanna stepped out warm and dry onto the bank next to me.
“Not a drop on me!” she said.
It was impossible not to feel just a little bad-tempered.
“I have nothing precious to give you as a thank you,” she said to the little boy.
“You owe me nothing at all, goddess. Serving you is reward enough.” He let go of the bank, and drifted off downstream, his back to the current, his lovely eyes still turned on us.
“All hail Inanna,” he shouted, from a safe distance.
“Oh, my heart,” she said, smiling. “What a lovely child. But I think it’s my mee that attracted him to me.”
I stood, picking riverweed off my thighs.
“Well, we are over,” I said, and began to unpack my bundle.
* * *
For five long days we crossed the river lands, sometimes wading, waist high, through flowing water, or marsh. Sometimes picking our way around bogs, or crossing canals. When all the palace food had gone, I got a knife into a passing river rat, and we ate it raw, since there was no firewood to roast it over.
“I am grateful to be eating,” Inanna said, chewing very seriously on a small bone, “but I do prefer river rat cooked.”
“Even dogs prefer it cooked,” I said.
“Although I am not sure I have eaten river rat before,” she added.
On the sixth morning, we saw a herd of thin-striped gazelles, grazing in the distance, and stopped for a while to watch them.
“I was a great hunter, in my own land,” I said. “I was a great runner.”
“I do not doubt it,” Inanna said.
I sensed a change coming in the landscape, and sure enough that afternoon we saw hills, rising slow and gentle, ahead of us.
“Inanna, what do you think you will find in the underworld?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I feel it calling to me. Before my mee began to work, the underworld was only an idea to me, a story. But now I know it is important to me and my people. I am connected to it. My melam speaks to it, not just my mee.”
It was not obvious until we got close, but as we pressed on through the day, we realised there was bush ahead: bush that we must get through, if we were to reach the hills beyond.
At first the bush was thin, but soon enough it thickened, and to make progress we had to squeeze between vines and under low-hanging branches.
Two large vultures seemed to be monitoring our progress, hopping between branches far above us.
Inanna said: “It’s my mee. I think it is attracting things to me. All these animals and insects.”
She had begun the journey slow: now, she was a great deal slower. Sometimes she would waste even more time by stooping down to exclaim over some crawling thing.
I was carrying her wings by then, as well as all her other things, and it was becoming difficult not to worry that we might never, ever clear the jungle.
“You will be a thousand years old before we make it even to the foothills,” I said eventually, although I hoped not unkindly.
“Oh, I am slow, I’m sorry.”
We were whispering; the close jungle seemed to demand it.
A large biting insect landed on my cheek, and I slapped it off. “Why is nothing biting you? Is it the melam?”
She pulled up, turned to look at me. “Yes, insects have never bitten me. Although they would feast upon my friend Amnut.”
It was then I heard it. I listened, intently, for a few heartbeats. “Do you hear that?”
“Like a roaring?”
“Yes.”
We pushed on through the bush, and then, abruptly, it gave way to open sky.
And an enormous, roaring river.
Not just a canal. This was a great river of the Earth. Indeed, it could only be the Tigris, which I had heard much of, but, of course, never seen.
“Did you know this was here?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I’ve never been out here. Although now you say it, I knew that that it was here in theory. I knew it was to the east of Uruk. And I suppose, had I been thinking differently, I might have guessed we would meet it before we got to the mountains. That it would lie between Uruk and the underworld. Yes, you know, it would make sense that it would be here.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That this makes sense.”
There was no obvious crossing place in sight. Only the astonishing stretch of the water, with trees and vines all along on either side. Huge turquoise butterflies, the size of singing birds, lifted up off the trees as we stood and watched.
I had a downcast moment. No little boy could help us with this river. But even so, it was good to have that smell in my nose and lungs, the good and thrilling smell of a clean and daring river.
“It’s very beautiful,” I said. “And what fresh air. If I was alone, I would just wade in.”
Strong as I was, could I swim across, dragging another with me?
“Perhaps we could find something to float across on,” she said, but she did not seem overly confident in what she said, and I, certainly, had no confidence at all in her plan. The more I looked at the river, the faster the water seemed to run.
“I think we do need to get across,” she said. “We need to climb up those hills that we saw before. I am certain it is this way.” I had begun to recognise the look she had when she was communing with her mee – a sort of thoughtful absence.
“I am a great swimmer,” I said. “I swim like a dolphin. But this is dangerous. Even if I get across, I may not get across with you in tow.”
“I think perhaps we should stay here tonight,” she said.
She sat, trying to be no trouble, as I gathered wood and made a fire.
Everything was just a little damp, there in the wet jungle at the edge of the world. I was attacked by waves of biting things, and as I slapped at my skin, I could not help throwing some rather vicious looks at Inanna, who sat entirely serene.
“I suppose it must be my melam,” she said, nodding.
With the fire lit, though, and smoke blowing on me, my mood eased.
We ate the last of the river rat, unsavoury as it was, and as we chewed, we looked out together as a stag came down to drink on the far side of the river. He kept his eyes on us, even as he waded into the water, to drink and then to eat river weed.
Inanna shut her eyes, opened them. She seemed ill at ease. Soon after she lay down and I put my cloak over her. I could see that she was not herself.
“Ninshubar,” she said. “I feel a dread mounting in me.”
“What is it you dread?”
She looked at me, almost desperate. “It might be this mee. It’s working now, but it has only just begun to show itself to me. And it’s connected to what lies ahead of us.”
“We will work it out,” I said.
“Perhaps, perhaps. But I feel it is a darkness that is pulling me there.”
“Inanna, you will feel better in the morning.”
* * *
In the very early morning, we stood again upon the bank of the great river, looking out over the great surging of the water. The mist floated only an arm’s length above our heads.
I could not see how we were going to get over, but I was glad at least that Inanna’s mood seemed to have lifted.
“Perhaps I could swim it,” she said, turning a hopeful face up to me.
I was about to scoff, when, over the far bank, shadows appeared in the mist.
Elephants!
They all saw us, at the same moment we saw them. We were all, I think, equally shocked.
“Put your hands up,” Inanna said, “to show you have no weapons. To show we are here in peace.” This we both did.
The elephants dipped their trunks to drink, but they were all watching us as they did. At the centre of the group there was one much larger than the rest, with long, ivory tusks, and I felt her eye on me the hardest.
“Have you seen an elephant before?” I said. “We have them in my country, you know.”
“One was brought to Ur, but we couldn’t keep it alive. We were very sad when it died.”
“They are my mother’s spirit animal. Very, very dangerous.”
“Ninshubar, I need to concentrate.” She put her hand out on my arm, so that I would not be offended by this.
The largest of the elephants waded into the water.
She seemed to be looking at Inanna.
“I think she wants to help me,” Inanna said. “She is coming to me.”
We both stood and stared as the elephant kept on coming towards us, until she was swimming, her trunk raised before her.
“It’s my mee,” Inanna said.
I had my heart in my mouth as the elephant began to be pushed downriver. She turned into the current, and kept swimming, only her trunk and the top of her head visible. Twice she disappeared entirely from view, and Inanna grabbed at my left wrist, holding my skin so tightly it was painful. Twice the elephant appeared again, her trunk and then her head breaching the water.
Long and agonising heartbeats passed before she reached the safety of the shallow water upon our side of the river, and got her feet down. Finally, her sides heaving, she rose up to tower over us.
What a sight she was, close up. Her huge body was a slick black with river water, and her tusks looked very bright against the darkness of her flesh.
“Very, very dangerous,” I said, my hands moving for my weapons.
“Ninshubar, there is no need for that,” Inanna said. “She is here to help us cross the river.”
Very reluctantly, I put Harga’s knife away, and then his axe.
The elephant lifted her trunk a little, and made a low sound that we could only just hear. The elephants on the other side of the river stamped their feet and flapped their ears.
“I will go first,” I said. “Then you come to me.”
I got down into the Tigris, feeling silt below my bare feet. I was surprised by how cold and fast the water was, even so close to the riverbank.
I made my way over to the elephant very carefully, feeling my foothold each time before the next step, to be sure I wasn’t about to be taken by the water. Then I was there, beneath her, enveloped in her musky scent. I put one hand on her great leathery shoulder, and kept on looking up at her. She turned a huge brown eye to me, watching me, but she made no attempt to shrug me off.
“She is here for you, you are right,” I said. “Inanna, what a witch you have turned out to be. Now are you going to come and get on her? I will help you up.”
She was only in her dress; she looked about her for the rest of her things.
“I will go back for everything,” I said. “You just come to me.”
Inanna turned around to climb in, her hands on the bank. Then she waded slowly over to me, her eyes wide with alarm. “How cold it is! And how fast!”
Finally, I caught her by the hands. She was up to her waist, looking up at the elephant.
“She’s so beautiful.”
“Inanna, I do beg you to hurry,” I said.
The elephant curled her trunk around, and seemed to smell Inanna, touching her neck and cheeks very gently. Inanna stood stock still for this treatment.
“I think if I stepped onto one of her tusks, I could climb up her,” Inanna said.
Of that I was doubtful.
“You just let me hold you, and I will help you up on her.”
There was then something of a tussle as Inanna tried to climb onto a tusk, and the elephant and I struggled to help her. But soon enough, with the help of the elephant, I finally managed to push her up.
For a while Inanna simply lay on top of the elephant’s head, her legs and arms akimbo, her face in the animal’s back.
“I am up,” she said. “But I think if I move, I might fall.”
By this time, I was getting cold, and feeling that if it was not for the elephant standing in my path, I might already have been swept away.
“You wait there, just like that, and I will get our things.”
I waded back out, and shoved everything we had into my cloak-bundle, including my boots. There was no time for ceremony, and Inanna’s extraordinary eagle wings were shoved in with the rest.
“Inanna, I am going to climb up too,” I said, ploughing back into the river.
“She will not hurt you,” Inanna said, from her face-down position on the elephant’s back.
As quick as I could, I slung my bundle over my shoulder, and I heaved my way up onto the elephant, standing on her left tusk to push myself up high. I had to push Inanna out of the way, and bully her into a sitting position, all very hard while I was trying to carry a bundle with a gold crown in it.
Once I was up, however, I felt quite triumphant. I had a marvellous view across the river to the other elephants. They were in the water, and all looked alarmed by what was happening.
“She is very nervous,” Inanna said. “But she is brave. She will take us over now.”
I put my arms around Inanna’s waist, and gripped her narrow hips with my thighs. “I’ll keep you on.”
The low cloud had lifted, and now with the sky over Sumer lit up pink with the flames of dawn, the elephant carried us over the river, first wading, and then, for a magical period, swimming, the river water flowing up over our thighs.
Such glory!
There were a few moments when I was worried, when the water caught at us, and I had to hunch over Inanna, grabbing at the elephant’s ears, so that the mighty river could not drag us away. But then the elephant was wading again, up strong onto the bank. All the elephants came up to surround her, and we saw now for the first time that one amongst them was newborn, and still covered in wisps of hair.
Our elephant stood still, breathing heavily, as I first climbed down, dropping easily to the ground, and then as I helped Inanna clamber down.
We both stood there then, looking up at the elephant.
“Thank you, elephant,” I said.
“Yes, thank you,” said Inanna. “Bless you.” She put one small hand out onto the elephant’s side, and the animal seemed to shudder. A heartbeat later, the whole herd moved off, far quieter than I had expected, and was gone into the green of the jungle.
We walked on a few paces, the sun beginning to dry us.
I burst out: “I have ridden an elephant! And it isn’t even breakfast time yet! Imagine what might happen before lunch!”
* * *
Again, we faced dense bush, but Inanna was certain of the way. I led us forwards therefore, now and again hacking at something with an axe, and by the time the sun was hot enough to worry us, the bush was thinning and we were climbing upwards, gently but surely, onto grassland. In the distance we spied low hills, the tops rocky red.
I told Inanna stories to cheer her along, of the people in my country, at what they would think about the slippers. I told her also about the long run, and how I had lost my Potta, although I tried to make the story a light one. I told her about the sacred running words: One step and then the next.
After a long period of thoughtful silence, she said: “Ninshubar, when I was a baby, it was said in the temples that I would one day be Queen of Heaven and Earth.”
“And you surely will be,” I said, smiling.
“Yes, I do believe I will be,” she said, with no smile on her. “And when it happens, when I do become Queen of Heaven and Earth, we will go and find your Potta boy, this boy who you adopted, and bring him back here to Sumer.”
I nodded, but said nothing, turning my face to scan the land.
She stopped, turning to me, her hands out. “This is a sacred promise, Ninshubar. The undying promise of a god. When I am crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth, we will leave at once to fetch your Potta.”
I had that strange feeling I had had when I first saw her in Enki’s temple: a lurching feeling inside me.
“We will find your Potta,” she said.
She turned and walked on.
First her steps, and then my steps, following on behind her.
* * *
It was cold that night. We lay together in a dell, out of the wind, with me behind and my cloak looped over her, so that it kept us both covered. She was strangely warm to hold, just as her mother had been. For a while, a set of owls kept us awake.
“What a noise,” I said.
“It’s the mee again. I can feel it calling to them.”
“Tell me more about this underworld of yours. I thought you could only get there if you were dead.”
“My family, the Anunnaki, they come and go. In the stories, anyway. I am told that Enki has been there. Enlil too. And others, I think. I wish I had asked my mother now.”
