NINSHUBUR AND THE THIEF OF NIPPUR
Outside time. Across worlds. Between rivers. Two children in ancient Mesopotamia become unwitting emissaries to heaven and the underworld, as gods and humans go to war over honour, love, and destiny. This work of historical-fantasy fiction contains period morality which may unsettle some readers.
PART ONE
OF THE SERVANT GIRL’S TRIALS ABROAD IN ACCURSED LANDS
CHAPTER THREE
There is something to be said about the resilience of our young heroine, in that she, along with her ne’er-do-well of a father, has survived a terrible storm upon the Arabian Sea. She has just been washed ashore on an island, lying, still clinging to a piece of driftwood, weathered and bruised, but, remarkably, still breathing.
“Enki has conspired against us!” Said Ninshubur’s hidden father, of their god of the waters. “We are lost!”
Ninshubur rubbed her eyes, still stinging with from a wash of seawater, and found her father, draped in slimy entrails of kelp, clambering from the rolling waves into the cove to rejoin his child.
“Are we alive?” Said Ninshubur, ripping her fingers from the small notch in the driftwood that had kept her alive for the past unknown period of time.
Her father looked around at the beach and the rocks and the mocking sky above them.
“I do not know.” He said, a look of terror in his eyes. “Inanna?! Queen of the heavens?! Are you there?!”
There was no reply from the god, or any other gods, for that matter.
Ninshubur stopped her father in his dazed wandering and slapped him as hard as she could across the face.
“Pull yourself together, man!” She said. “We need to find any other survivors and provisions, if we can!”
Her father touched his cheek, the shock and pain of his daughter’s strike barely noticeable to him.
“We are to die here.” He said, falling to his knees in the sand. “I have sold my cart and forsaken my family! What untold miseries lie ahead?!”
Ninshubur rolled her eyes and crouched next to the hopeless man.
“Only the sound of me shrieking at you for days on end for giving up.” She said, now stroking his hair affectionately back into place. “Now you just think about that.”
While her father knelt considering his near future, Ninshubur believed she could discern a wailing from just offshore. She shielded her eyes from the sun and scanned the rough seas for the source of the commotion. Suddenly, on the outcropping that walled-in the cove, appeared a gaggle of sailors clinging to a rock.
“There!” Ninshubur shouted to her father. “Survivors! We must go and rescue them!”
She began to rush towards the unfolding drama.
Her father, following her gaze, took stock of the men in jeopardy.
“Let them perish.” He said, in a somber mutter. “We are all to perish.”
Ninshubur ran back to the man and took hold of his water-shrivelled hand.
“Come on, you old fool!” She said, summoning the strength to pull him to his feet. “We are not done yet!”
The miserable sailors were far from thankful after Ninshubur and her father aided in their clambering onto solid ground. Indeed, they blamed the two strangers for inciting their voyage in the first place, an accusation which Ninshubur’s father solemnly pleaded guilty to.
“You are to keep your mouth shut, father!” Said the girl, as the party of now-five survivors began combing the beach for any useful wreckage.
“But, my dearest child, what hope have we upon this evil place?!” Said her father, dreamily collecting seashells in his traumatised state. 'We must give into our fate!”
Ninshubur found a prettily-painted and well-filled amphora, still sealed, and began rolling it towards the party’s burgeoning makeshift camp.
“We shall do no such thing!” She said, slapping him for the umpteenth time that day. “If we are to believe the men, we have washed up on the western tip of Socotra. There is a pirate settlement on the eastern side, no doubt with a boat we can commandeer.”
Her father looked his daughter in the eyes for the first time since the storm had hit the night before.
“Pirates?! But they will surely kill us or sell us into slavery!” He said, gazing down at the shells in his shaking hands. “A fitting end, I suppose.”
The shells dropped to the sand between their two pairs of feet. Ninshubur stamped on one. It shattered, catapulting a small creature into the air. The girl caught it with her teeth and swallowed it without a pause.
“Nonsense!” She said, wincing at the creature’s bitterness. “They will never know we were there, so you are to keep silent once we cross the island, do you understand?!”
Her father merely nodded.
“What did it taste like?” He said, only half-absorbing his daughter’s commands.
“It tasted terrible, but we must get used to making-do with what we can find.”
The party eventually erected a sturdy fortification of flotsam and rocks found around their camp. They, except for Ninshubur’s whinging patriarch, found their spirits buoyed by the admittedly impressive architectural accomplishment. One of the men claimed this not to be his first seafaring survival scenario, which Ninshubur found herself unsurprised by, given the nautical incompetence the man displayed whilst their ship had been still afloat.
The amphora Ninshubur had found in the sand revealed itself to contain a strong beer, which led the survivors to rejoice that one god or another had finally taken sympathetic interest in their plight.
As the beer began to run low, their spirits rose, with Ninshubur entertaining the bawdy men with a dance. The sailors knew many songs to accompany her with, none of which sounded like they had reached the borders of Sumer. At least, not in Ninshubur’s short lifetime.
As the fire began to go out, the men sat closer together to plan their journey set for the following day. They refused to listen to the young girl in their party, despite her insistence that she had heard a battle tactic or two from soldiers in her home city of Uruk.
“Never heard of the place!” Said one, barely able to keep his drunken eyes open.
The girl had angrily folded her arms with indignation and stormed out of the camp for a quieter part of the beach. Much to her surprised, she was left alone by all the men present, who seemed more inclined to prefer their own masculine company,
As she watched the stars and wondered who was watching from the heavens, she prayed for sight of her simple, mud-brick home and the sound of familiar voices. She was content in the knowledge that she had passed on the fateful tablet, entrusted to her by the boy-king of Kemet, to a scribe at Kush. Whether they would discriminate its desperate plee and bring about good fortune, the Ninshibur did not know.
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