Ever (28 page)

I made Olus lonely. He calls himself the god of loneliness as well as of the winds. He has staved off boredom and solitude throughout his childhood by watching mortals and attempting to be like them. When he descends to earth to live, he loves them in general. When he spots Kezi dancing gracefully in her home and weaving her beautiful rugs, he is primed to love her in particular. If her personality were unpleasant, if she had tantrums and threw mud bricks at the servants, he wouldn't. But she's kind and has strong feelings for her family. Her appeal overwhelms him.

Kezi, when the action gets underway, has a crush on a young man named Elon, whom she doesn't know well but hopes to marry. I can't let her go on mooning over him, so I have him behave first brutally and then despicably, and I have Olus rescue her from him. Thus Kezi is primed to love him, too. And his god's powers, which she misconstrues, add to his allure. Moreover, because of her death sentence, love and marriage are now out of reach and thus painfully and irresistibly attractive. (Not to mention that Olus is exactly as handsome as a god, since he is one.)

But when Kezi discovers the truth about him (his immortality, his powers), her love turns to fear. He has to entice and charm her back, which he does by inviting her to kick him!
That
was fun to write.

OLUS

I
T IS THE
anniversary of my birth. I am nine, the only birthday that matters to the Akkan gods. Arduk and Hannu are in my bedroom with me, an unusual bedroom with no walls. My ceiling is the canopy Hannu insisted on putting up to keep out the rain. On fine days I roll the canopy away, and then my ceiling is the sky. Under the scattered rugs, my floor is the gently sloping stone of the temple roof. My smallest wind is stationed under two legs of my bed to make it flat. I have the best bedroom, with the freshest air and nothing to make me feel closed in.

To mark my birthday, Arduk has created a new vegetable, the turnip, and he has given it to me as my nickname—
Turnip
. He says my namesake is beneficial to humans for coughs and colds. I think it's delicious mashed with onions and clarified butter.

My gift from Hannu is a wide, shallow bowl that she says expresses my winds in pottery. The outside is blue-gray sky colors incised with swirls and whorls. The inside is midnight blue, on which she painted a cedar tree with wind-tossed branches and curling roots.

“Thank you,” I say into her chest as she hugs me.

She ties a belt woven with red thread loosely around my waist—red, signifying a great occasion. Arduk hands me a long wooden spoon, the ceremonial spoon. It's time to go to the amphitheater.

Almost the entire pantheon is present, except the fourteen gods who have chosen to sleep away the centuries. Everyone who's come wears something red—a pendant, a tunic, slippers. Puru, wrapped in his orange linen, holds a red peony. He sits at one end of the third row, next to a fluted pillar.

I take my place on the speaker's red and black tiles. A servant enters with a silver chalice of therka on a silver plate. Our servants are immortal, but with no powers. She gives me the cup. I see the golden therka lap against the inside of the chalice.

Therka is the beverage of the Akkan gods. The ingredients are honey, flower juice, Enshi Rock water, and a bit of each god's and goddess's power. It is time for me to add
my winds to the brew. When I do, I will make a wish. If my contribution improves the therka, my wish will come to pass.

My winds enter the stadium. The gods' tunics billow one way, are plastered against their bodies another. Their hair whips across their faces.

The winds eddy around me. I am the center of a cyclone. “Gods and goddesses,” I yell, “now I will add wind to therka.”

I separate my winds as they circle, because if I add them all, they will combine to nothing. So I pick a generous pinch of my gentle wind, hoping it will calm the god of war. Next I add my sweet wind for kindness, especially to mortals. I don't stint on my merry wind, but I keep my clever wind to myself. The gods are clever enough. I add a fistful of my strong wind, because the gods need strength to help people.

Through the clamor of my winds, I hear the goddess of mural painting say, “What's taking so long?”

I add the winds that will cause no trouble: my dry wind, my moist wind, my hot wind, my cold wind, my slow wind, my scent carrier. At the end I add another pinch of my sweet wind.

I'm finished. I blow my wind gift, no bigger than an
acorn, into the therka cup. As I stir with the ceremonial spoon, I repeat over and over in my mind:
I wish for a friend
.

KEZI

T
HE SUN IS
setting. I stand in single file with a hundred or so other nine-year-old girls. We're all dressed in undyed tunics to show humility. Our hair is hidden under woolen caps. My cap is bigger than anyone else's, yet my hair still pops out.

We are outside Admat's temple. In my opinion, a line of people standing still is a dance wasted. Humming softly, I step to the right, then to the left, although it's hard to dance while carrying a huge roll of linen, my gift
for Admat.

From behind me, my cousin Belet touches my shoulder. I face around. She is following my dance. The girl behind Belet joins in and then so does the next. The dance spreads until a priestess strides by, looking stern.

Tonight will be the dreaming ceremony. If we have prophetic dreams, Admat may grant our wishes.

Belet touches my shoulder again. “Will there be spiders?”

“Maybe.” I don't mind spiders.

The bronze temple doors creak as they open inward. A priestess stands in the doorway, holding a torch. We follow her inside, through small rooms lit by torches. Our procession reaches the main prayer room, where I've never been allowed before. The room is the shape of a liver, the most important organ of prophecy. The altar fills the narrowest curve of the walls, straight across from where we come in. Behind the altar is a wooden door.

A dotted line of small windows skip along the wall just below the ceiling. They let in only a little light now at the end of the day. Straw sleeping mats have been spread out in rows. A priestess takes my offering and leads Belet and me to our mats in the middle of the room.

“I'm scared,” Belet whispers.

“The spiders are frightened of us.”

“Not just spiders.” Belet's hand on my arm is cold. “Drafts. Shadows.”

I have my own fears. What if I can't fall asleep? Or what if I don't dream?

A priest glides to the front of the altar. He faces away from us and begins to pray.

Priestesses weave through the room, passing out tumblers of mint tea and plates of barley bread soaked in date juice. When my bread is gone, I lick my sticky fingers. I whisper, “Dream true,” to Belet, who echoes my words.

The priestesses sing, “Admat, the One, the All, sanctifier of sleep, sanctifier of life,” over and over. I lie back. Benevolent Admat, put me to sleep. Send me dreams. As You wish, so it will be. I close my eyes.

A dream begins.

“Did you dream?”

I open my eyes. It's morning.

Belet squats next to me.

I nod. “Did you?”

“I suppose. I remember scrubbing my feet, over and over. That's all.” She laughs. “They were clean when I started.”

A priestess bends over me. I tell her my dream while she stares down. She never changes her pose and never looks at me. I'm sure she's disappointed. My dream is useless to Admat. But when I stop, she nods.

I take courage. “Will my wish come true?”

“What is your wish?”

It comes out in a rush. “Ten children when I grow up and a husband who never needs a wig and likes me to dance and likes my rugs.” I laugh nervously.

She doesn't laugh with me. I think her face is more glum than before. “The future is still deep in Admat's chest. Omens are all we have. Dance now. Make your
rugs now.”

What was the impetus to write
Ever
?

I read the Bible—the Old and New Testaments—for the first time. The section about Jephthah and his daughter, which is quoted at the beginning of
Ever
, troubled and mystified me. When I adapt any story I look for unanswered questions. Jephthah's daughter is granted a sixty-day reprieve from her sacrifice. I wondered how she spent her final days—those days cried out for exploration.

How did your ideas change as you wrote?

I discussed the Bible story with a few friends, who each offered his or her own interpretation. I began to want to distance my book from the Bible to allow readers to come to it fresh. That's why I turned my tale into a fantasy of ancient Mesopotamia.

Originally, I thought Kezi would have to die, and in my earliest draft she does. At that point the book was intended for an older audience, high school at least. But I'm not comfortable as a writer of tragedy, and my wonderful editor, Rosemary Brosnan, persuaded me that my approach was suited for an older middle-grade audience and would reach up to high school students and beyond. So I moved away from tragedy. Still, I knew the story wasn't a comedy, although it has comic moments. As I wrote, I considered alternate endings. Gradually, the story evolved.

What inspired you to create the city of Hyte?

Mesopotamia was divided into city-states. I read a few books and visited the Mesopotamian exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. My research gave me an idea of what it might be like to live in a Mesopotamian city, what the streets and the houses were made of, the arrangement of rooms in a house. I started to feel comfortable, and then I was able to picture Kezi as part of a family living in a city-state. The lovely part of historical fantasy was that I could dip into both history and my imagination. If the facts didn't fit my story, I could abandon them. Religion is a good example of this: The major religion in the real Mesopotamia was state religion. Ordinary people worshiped minor deities and changed allegiances often. But a state religion didn't meet my needs, so I didn't use it.