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 FIVE
“Cut off my hair, daddy!”
“But why, my child?! You hair is so beautiful!”
“I fear our road, once we reach land, will be no less treacherous as that we have encountered thus far. Therefore, I must pass as a boy!”
“But why a boy, my darling daughter?!”
“For I believe bandits and kidnappers will look past my usefulness as a potential slave-girl.”
Ninshubur handed the merchant a blade, then, after throwing off her tattered dress, knelt down in the keel of the skiff, her trembling back facing him.
“To what length, my child?!” Said her reluctant father, nervously pressing the blade to a fistful of black strands.
“All of it.” His daughter said cooly, her eyes wincing in dour expectation. “As close to the scalp as you dare!”
The two were now alone on the boat, which was, at last, sailing northward up the Bitter Sea towards their Sumerian home. The Sea Land, a great expanse of labyrinthian marshes between their skiff and true solid ground, were now in plain sight.
The pair’s one seafaring companion, and only other survivor of the doomed voyage from Punt, was now dead. They had become well-acquainted during their crossing of Socotra, the island the wayward band had found themselves mercifully washed ashore on. As the notion of finally reaching civilisation had became apparent, the sailor had begun making demands regarding the sharing out of the trio’s possessions. The spoils had been violently liberated from a pirate camp, which the survivors had found on the eastern shore of Socotra. The pirates were a vicious sort, who had chosen not to provide our gaggle of castaways with safe passage to the mainland.
“I have lost my boat and my crew,” the sailor had said, with a malevolent sneer, “so I shall take all but the clothes on your back and the sandals about your toes!”
After one simple glance shared between father and daughter, Ninshubur had thrown an empty sack over the sailor’s head and arms, while her father had lunged forward and driven the blade, now being used to cut his daughter’s hair from her head, into the sailor’s portly stomach.
Ninshubur’s nine-year-old body could not hold down the sailor for long, which her father had soon became well-aware of, so he resolved to push the blade up through the sailor’s abdomen and skewer his still-beating heart. The merchant had then wrapped his fingers around the sailor’s throat until his victim appeared to give up any further attempts at defence.
Father and daughter had lain over the prone sailor’s body for perhaps ten minutes, making sure he could not make one last attempt at freeing himself during his death-throws. The silence that had fallen over the skiff was unbearable.
No attack came, simply an involuntary spasming of the sailor’s legs.
The merchant had then handed his daughter the blade.
“Be sure to puncture his lungs, that way we can be sure his body sinks to the bottom of this accursed sea!” He had said, Ninshubur taking the bloodied blade with minor hesitation.
“Ouch, be careful!” Said Ninshubur, as her father nicked her scalp with the blade.
“I must shave over it one last time, to make sure it is even.” The merchant said, apologetically.
“I do not see his body floating.” Ninshubur said, shielding her eyes from the piercing late-morning sun. “We are safe.”
“Good.” Her father said, brushing away the last of his daughter’s black shavings.
Ninshubur snatched the blade off her father and began tearing he dress into long strips. She stood up, the lapping waves making her balance unsure, and proceeded to wrap the torn-up garment around her waist and up through her legs, creating a rather elegant loincloth.
The girl turned to her father with her hands on her hips and flashing a mischievous grin.
“What do you think?” She said.
With the girl still not showing any signs of growing breasts, coupled with her relatively masculine gait, her father nodded in approval.
“A boy you have become, my beautiful daughter!” He said, wondering what it was the girl grimly anticipated within the Sea Land. “Now, help me take down the sail, we must enter the water ourselves and tow the skiff by hand.”
“It is still so far!” Said his daughter, weakened by their fight with the sailor.
“We must!” Said the merchant, impatiently. “The reeds will provide perfect cover for unseen assailants who wish to ambush us! Our boat must act as a shield from arrows only, our spoils shall be stored around our necks.”
Ninshubur, with her head stinging from her father’s blade, bundled half of their meagre belongings into what remained of her repurposed dress, wrapped it all tightly around her neck, then climbed down quietly into the marshy water.
While she remained at the stern kicking away at the accursed sea behind them, her father pulled from the bow in an attempt to steer them. Neither felt they were making much progress, until the vessel suddenly hit ground.
“Shit!” Said Ninshubur, her tiny form crashing against the skiff’s sharp rudder.
“Silence, child!” Said the merchant, listening out intently. “I hear voices ahead!”
As the pair continued on blindly through the marshland, they came within a quarter of a mile from a sparse collection of reed huts, some lying on islets, some rising out of the water on great stilts.
“There!” He whispered, gesturing towards a group of small children playing amongst the reeds.
“What do we do?!” Said Ninshubur, lightly swimming over to her father.
The merchant handed his daughter the blade.
“They are lookouts, for sure! I will continue on with the boat, but you must silence them quickly.” He said, the look in his daughter’s maturing eyes telling him she did not need further coercion.
At this narrative juncture, the author will not divulge the grisly details of Ninshubur’s exploits more than is necessary. Needless to say, the girl dutifully cut the throats of the young lookouts, gathered up any possessions found amongst them that might prove to be of use, then diligently slipped back into the water to rejoin her patriarch.
Turning past one of the dizzyingly-similar islets, what she saw sank her little heart down into her belly.
Boat. Father. Harpoon. Neck. Blood. Fishermen. Laughter.
The two marshland natives, presumably in command of the deceased lookouts, had plunged a harpoon through the merchant’s neck. As the fisherman climbed aboard the now-confiscated skiff to search for loot, they clasped one end of the harpoon each and inelegantly hauled Ninshubur’s still-alive father up with them. His eyes were wide with surprise, horror, helplessness, and unprecedented agony. Once all three bodies were out of the water, the cackling fishermen sliced open the merchant’s abdomen, as if he were one of their usual piscine catches.
“I’ve traded with this cheap bastard in Uruk!” Said one.
“Then today is the day you receive a refund!” Said the other.
Ninshubur let herself sink under the water, if only to silence the scream brewing quickly within her chest. After two minutes and with her eyes acclimatising to the murky water, she could tell the hull of the skiff was being towed back towards the fishing village. Half of her and her father’s belongings, the more lucrative half, was now in the hands of the bandits.
Ninshubur rose to the surface, being sure to remain hidden amongst the sea of reeds.
A cry of despair rang out from the village, sending birds fleeing into the sky. The fishermen had found their slaughtered lookouts. Ninshubur grinned with tearful menace.
Her vengeance had been foretook.
END OF PART ONE
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