Justin Allen

“Want to know why I brought you here?” Uruk asked, flinging the last of the now clean bones into the bushes.

Adah shrugged. As a slave she’d learned not to let her desires show. Certain Niphilim – the women mostly - took great pleasure in dangling hope before their captives’ eyes, only to snatch it away.

“Let me show you something.” Uruk pointed to the hole in the brush, through which they’d climbed the night before. “Sit here.”

Adah crawled over, one fist still closed around the remains of her breakfast, and was surprised to discover that she could see the entire valley, from the storehouse where she kept her brooms to the open field where the Niphilim did their exercises. She could even see the Withered Hills, extending south all the way to the horizon.

“What do you see?” Uruk asked her.

Adah squinted. “Buildings. Workers.” When she was a girl, Adah’s father used to herd his goats into the high mountains, searching for fresh grass. He’d promised to take her when she was old enough. You’re just an ant from up there, he’d told her. Now, looking down this mountain, Adah saw that he’d been wrong. The people weren’t like ants at all. Even as small as they were, ants still had distinct heads and abdomens. Their legs were readily identifiable. The people she saw were fuzzy, like fish seen through cloudy water. Adah couldn’t distinguish men from women, or Niphilim from slaves. From this height they were all the same.

“Look at the forge,” Uruk suggested.

She was surprised to see that there was no smoke coming from the chimneys. “The fires are out,” she said. In all the time she’d been working among the Niphilim, Adah had never known the fires to go out.

Uruk nodded.

“Why?”

“They are hauling everything into the mine,” Uruk said. “Tools, food, even the slaves themselves. The army of Kan-Puram must be close.”

Adah squinted at the hills again, half-expecting to see soldiers come pouring over them. But the hills were just as dry and empty as ever. The only thing moving was a pale blue wave, nearly transparent, hanging between earth and sky. It certainly didn’t look like an army. Nor did it resemble the grasslands she knew to be on the other side of those hills. In fact, it looked like water. Adah gaped. She’d never seen the ocean, but she’d heard of it. A river with only one bank. That’s how her father had described it when she was a little girl. Adah pointed. “Is it the sea?”

“No,” Uruk said. “There is no water out there.”

“My father told me that there’s a great sea beyond the plains.”

“He was right. I have been there. Not so long ago.”

“You’ve seen the great water?”

“Many times.” Uruk patted her on the shoulder. “But it is so far away now that I doubt I ever will again.”

“If that’s not the sea, then what is it?”

“Maybe the sky reflecting off sand, like a mountain reflecting off a still pond.” Uruk shrugged. “When I crossed the desert, I saw it often. At first I hurried toward it, thinking it was water. It never was.”

“You crossed the desert?”

Uruk nodded.

Adah wasn’t sure whether to believe him. It was a lot to take in. If not for the quiet assurance with which he’d made his astonishing claims, Adah would have considered Uruk a liar. But this seemed like more than big talk, as her mother used to say. If anything, Adah sensed a kind of shame in Uruk. Because of that, she couldn’t help believing everything he’d said – no matter how ridiculous it might sound.

“How long have you been a slave?” Uruk asked her.

“Since I was thirteen. Almost three years.” Adah looked down at Dagonor, wondering who had been forced into taking her place in Anth-Kane’s sanctum. A troop of slaves was marching past the temple. From that distance, the baskets they carried looked like enormous heads, balanced precariously atop comically undersized torsos. “They aren’t even looking for me, are they?”

“Of course they are.” Uruk pointed. “In the hills, south of the temple.”

“Why there?”

“I changed the markings, made it look like you ran that way. If they thought you were up here, they might eventually find us.”

“Why steal me at all?” Adah asked. “You still haven’t told me.”

Uruk looked at her.

Adah had never been so thoroughly sized up in her life. It made her feel like a little girl again. Her father used to look at her that way just before telling her to wipe her nose. She couldn’t help wondering if Uruk had noticed the welt on her cheek, or the blemishes on her forehead.

“I am looking for someone,” he said at last.

From Slaves of the Shinar

The Overlook Press 2007

© Justin Allen