The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

Short fiction by E.K. Anderson

Today we wait for the Ivory Ship. It will dock on the coast, on the pier of Al’ Abyad in Algin.

We will board it.

I will walk along with my Sisters upon the pier, customarily—hand in hand —-towards the sea. Then, we will stand upon the Threshing Pier, for seven days until the Merchant of Silk arrives. 

We will enter the Ship, and it will ascend toward the heaven A’bai, for that is the will of Al’ Abyad. 

I am Saia, and I long for this day.

Today, our Men attend to Us. They affix lapis lazuli to our dresses. They powder diamond to our feet. Ruby to our foreheads.

We are Three Sisters in all. Bound in Faith by the state of our medical marvels.

We are healers. Sooth-seers. Prophetesses.

Not your mythical healers, who rejuvenate through shamanistic panaceas. No, we can see Spirit and unravel the Malady, as one would a scroll. 

We do not dissect. We do not invade. We know.

And with the movement of our minds we eliminate Plague. We are the Seven.

We are bred elite —nigh perfection. Enough to be more than enough.

In the golden dome we stand upon separate dais, in our fathers Hall. Platforms built of gold, all of us standing within the Sky lit hall. Gold leaf wreathes our diadems. 

The seamstresses and tailors and the weavers on their looms splay sun-riven strings.

Brought from the womb of earthen sinews.

The people give tithes at the offertory. Our Ladies in waiting dollop our cheeks and foreheads with white rose petals. One by one, the Merchants take their offerings; one by one they petition for us in prayer. Our men caress our feet.

And the citizens of my father’s city of Al’Abyad come to us for healing.

The merchants come first, then the scribes, and the governors, but lastly it is the artists: the craftsmen, and the inventors. They are the last with Ailment.

The last was a woman, thin and ravaged by age and time hobbled in pain with her cane. 

She approaches the Dais.

She is known as the Mother.

Shiva spreads her right arms out. The hide of the old woman sheathes off. 

Eight hands spread from her torso. They crested above her head, where a lotus flower manifested above her head. 

She closes her eyes, and the petals light aflame.

She lights a fire with her breath in the center of the hall. The cobblestone, and marble melt from the lava that flows from her mouth.

Tongues of flame lick our feet at the bottom of the Dais. None of the Sisters move.

Shiva walks through the flame.

Her long, sharp tongue extends from wide jowls, and sharp teeth. She throws the skin of the old woman into the fire. 

We do not move.

A trial, Shiva says.

She constructs an altar from the cobblestone, erecting it in front of the Dais. She plucks her sharp teeth from her mouth

Blood oozes from her gums. Her nails extend from her fingertips and the razor-like extensions prick out feet like thorns. 

Our silver blood pools at the base of the Dais, on to her altar. 

She tastes the blood.

We do not move.

A worthy sacrifice, Shiva says.

She speaks to the heaven above the throne room.

They are worthy!

Then, in a plume of smoke she disappears.

*

The Second mother arrives. She wears the livery and armor of millions. Electric, blue sequins line her hips. Girded with a leather belt, there is lightning in her eyes.

Elera. Says she. 

Athena gazes at my sister. What fate do you choose? From her sheath she raises a silver sword gilded in lightning.

What do you choose?

Olympus, or the Ivory Ship?

I choose, Elera says, the Ivory Ship.

Very well, Athena says.

She bears the blade at Elera’s throat. The Blade electric, touches side of her throat. The jugular.

Again, Elera, what do you choose? Do you choose war?

No, Elera says. I choose the Ivory Ship!

So be it, Athena says.

Athena raises her blade. The sword touches the larynx.

The strike is swift. Within the blink of an eye, I see it swipe, as if wrought of light itself. I see the motion in slow motion, the trail of electricity passing.

Then when in contact, the blade shatters: Sprinkling into a myriad of diamond pieces.

Athena looks at the sword.

You passed, she says. You are worthy of Fatehood. Do not disappoint your father.

She tosses it aside, with nonchalance and rejoins her legion on the other side of the Pantheon.

The portal closes.

It is now my turn. I can only think of the Ivory Ship. 

I close my eyes, and imagine.

What more can I say of it, besides the lore that surrounds it?

What I can say, is that the Ivory ship does not come to Algin often. 

For one it is pearl-white ship: the last of the missionary starships that have left from Algin. 

A vessel untarnished by weathering, none know of the Builders – except the Last. 

I await my test.

For a moment there is a pause. We do not see what is to be but the greatness of my father’s hall.

A cat prances in the corner of my eye. Then a second. More cats coalesce about my vision. 

Then the grass of open pasture bloomed from outside of my periphery. Fields of gold, the likes of which I had never seen erupted in spectra. 

Suns and moons rose, vallies dipped and gullied; light waxed and waned. Arrays, and matrices speckled and spiraled.

I saw my mother, Freya then. Her porcelain face amidst a reddened mane of hair. Lithe legs prancing amongst bunnies, and daffodils, and lilacs.

First will come the coronation, said she. The shadow of a man followed her.

She collected a wreath of flowers. The stems she carefully tied into a crown.

This she placed upon my head.

I shuttered.

He awaits you, my Mother says.

A man: tall, broad, bearded and handsome walks towards me. He wears the markings of a war hero: hide of bear, scars of scythes, brandings of fire.

His hair is read.

Cuchulain.

It is time to meet him, my Mother says.

I look down and see I am dressed in a white dress.

As The Greater Luminary descends on the Plains, my heart sinks with it. 

I do not eat the offerings, I do not offer any more blessings. The Oracle descends down from the steps,  On High, and passes Us —inspects Us. 

“Stand tall,” he says to me. 

“Smile. You are a child of Al’ Abyad. You were bought at a High price.”

He smiles.

“I will make you my wife.”

He utters the same words to my Sisters. 

Then, I see my sisters taken in by one of the Courtiers. The First descending from Her dais. The Second taken into his dwelling, a harem beset with gold, and lapis lazuli. 

But I know it is all, but Illusion.

This is an illusion, I say. A farce!

Then my sisters are sacrificed one by one. They lie upon Odin’s statue.

Their silver blood flows pours from the lips of the statue. 

The brazen image gazes foremost, hauntingly.

It catches in the receptories first, conduces down the bronze tubes into the vats below the palace, where the People may drink our blood to restore themselves. 

With a chalice Our Father captures the last trickle of  torrent from the lips of the Venusian statue.

I see my father. He is built of Time.

He drinks the “water,” and before my eyes his countenance  changes. His complexion reddens, his flesh smoothens. The frost of white from his cataracts disappears, and he resumes his full stature.

He is now a young man.

Sunset rosy with a ship that comes once a century on the Day of Michael of the Seventh Lunar Year.

The children will be sacrificed in your Honour.

They will kill us, as sacrifice.

No, I say. 

The proprietors must make sure that the Kindred, being the ones in royal matrimony are in utmost form for this train housing the Faerie.

A woman must leave her family in forsaking this charge of not desiring to be a Christened Goddess. 

In so doing she allows herself to wear thin and wan – until the sunset of the trains arrival.

She does not venture out, even to see the sunlight on the plain of Mur, where stand the threshing grounds

It takes her away to the land of Faerie

Upon the endless plain, the Children of Ishtar stand.

Today I was selected for the Threshing. is the Festival of our patron goddess Ishtar. 

I am the President’s daughter. And I was the first selected for sacrifice. 

My attendants dapper me with

My people, the Kin of the north prepare for the coming of the vessel that will take them 

One day it will take Us all away, to the land of the Knowing.

But that time is not now. 

Premise the preponderance for violence in us all.

We afix diadems to Her crown, loop the golden ringlets about her ears, and smear blood to her lips.

The blood is our own, from all us who attend to Her – the Goddess Incarnate, the Golden Image of Ishtar.

The girl—for she is just sixteen—who stands upon the dais, gazes foremost 

We desire her to be as our Oenultimate, the standard of our people. From the deeply hearted wish of every man comes forth the Deity. 

She is beautiful – the Woman with Gold Skin. She is adorned.

There are several of us who envy her beauty. There are several of us who wish to kill her, but that is not for the Men to decide.

Soon it will happen, this killing but we know not which will do it.

There is a preponderance for violence is within us all beneath the surface. It lies strongest within the seemingly meekest of men – that Our pride is hidden in amongst the most humble.

Amass the groupthinknof society and assimilate it in a more tangible form determinant upon race creed or socio-economic splendor.

But the illusion fades. It disdopates into mist, and my mother’s face turns cold.

No I say. I do not want it. I await boarding the Ivory Ship. 

The majesty of the wedding disappears, and my father smiles before he disappears

Cuchulain falls to his knees. He is bound by ropes and fetters. He looks at me with malace.

You. You are the daughters of the Fates.

My mother Freya decomposes. Her dust returning to the plains and pastures. Back again, back again to the soil, and north of the orchids.

That is the final test.

On the crescent of the horizon, I see the whitest of ship sail in the sky. It gleams on the starboard side of silver, and elder etchings. It is not manned, but rather – like the Flying Dutchman – carrens her golden sails in the wind.

It stops at port in Algin.

And then, us Fates, three sisters board the Ivory Ship.