The Lightning God's Wife: a short story (3 page)

Revida wondered if she’d ever catch enough breath in her
lungs again or if her heart would ever slow its mad beat.  “Not blasphemous
names then.  Your sister is the fish goddess.  And the man—your father:  truly
that cannot be the lightning god I dragged into a cave?”

Ninun shrugged.  “He is.”

Her thoughts reeled.  “I don’t understand...”

The voice of her dream lover spoke from the forest of stone
teeth behind her.  He leaned against one of the pointed columns, as ragged and
unkempt as when she left him but with a cerulean aura dancing around his body. 
“My brother Sumarimis wrecked the world with his jealousy.  I and mine need
you, Revida.  Will you help us?”

***

She stood hip deep in the pool with the lightning god. 
Ninun had left and taken Derketo—returned to human form—with him.  They waited
above, waited to be freed by their father’s crippled power and a human woman’s
uncertain aid.

In any other scenario, she would be nothing more than a
burnt corpse, roasted by the lethal marriage of water and lightning.  But she
lived and breathed and faced the creator god whom she’d comforted and then
loved in her dreams.

Atagartis traced the length of her arm with one finger. 
“You are lovely, Revida.”

She turned her face away, mortified, and stared into the
shadows cast by the pool’s glow.  “Please don’t,” she said.  “I’m old—weathered
as hard as a sun-cured hide.”  She managed a small smile and a quick glance at
him.  “Were you truly human, you’d be young enough to be my son, maybe even my
grandson.”

She held still as he stroked her coarse hair.  “I’ve
searched the world for you, Revida.  The woman I see before me is the same one
I see in my dreams.”

Revida shivered, awestruck and confused by his
affections—and his words.  “Why were you looking for me?”

Fear closed her throat as Atagartis’s features darkened and
blue sparks danced in his eyes.  His touch remained gentle on her body.  “In
his jealousy, Sumarimis destroyed our wife.  Nirari loved him as much as she
loved me, but it wasn’t enough for him.  When she refused to abandon me and
cleave solely to him, he became enraged.  If Nirari wouldn’t have him alone, no
one would have her.”

The great storm with its punishing winds, fierce lightning,
and drowning rain—a battle between gods and all for the affections of a
goddess.  She’d felt Nirari’s death all the way to her soul.  Revida hadn’t
known then what had brought about the sudden emptiness that filled her, only
that she’d wanted to scream her agony to the stars.  She had cried until she
grew sick and then cried in her dreams until Atagartis sought her there and bid
her weep no more.

“It’s been more than twenty years since the rain fell,” she
said.  “The crops withered and the livestock died.  Men spilled blood over the
control of streams more mud than water.  The world dies because of a lover’s
quarrel.”

She didn’t bother to hide her resentment, her bitterness. 
Atagartis might strike her down for her impertinence, but he would know what
chaos he and his brother had brought on all who dwelt on this parched earth.

Atagartis didn’t smite her; he did embrace her, his wet
hands caressing her back.  “We’re trying to save the world, Revida,” he
whispered in her ear.

“As an injured man with two small children?”

His low chuckle tickled her neck.  “Not quite.”  He stepped
away from her but held her hands in his.  “Sumarimis found a way to imprison us
as humans.  We don’t age, and we don’t grow ill, but we have many of your
weaknesses and almost none of our power.

“We’ve been able to hide from my brother for many years. 
Cloaked in spells, hidden by sorcery, always searching for you.  We’ve found
you, so we don’t have to hide anymore.”

Revida frowned.  “I’m willing to offer any aid, but I’m an old
woman.  What could I possibly do to help flesh-bound gods escape one of man’s
own creators?”

Sorrow swirled black clouds in Atagartis’s eyes.  “Remember
when I told you to save your tears?  They are all that’s left of Nirari—a
thread of essence she bestowed on her most powerful priestess before Sumarimis
destroyed her.  Would you weep for me, Revida?  Give up the tears you’ve held
inside you for so long?”

She shook her head, confused by what he asked of her.  “Of
course, but I still don’t understand.”

Atagartis closed his eyes for a moment.  “You’ll see.  Trust
me.”

He touched her forehead lightly.  “Weep, priestess.  You’ve
carried this burden long enough.”

***

Her grief tore her apart, turned her inside out.  Images
flashed behind her eyes.  Revida saw herself fleeing the village in which she
was born, a pariah to those who once valued her connection to the goddess, then
threatened to kill her when that connection was severed.  She watched herself
bury her husband’s broken body, her small son’s—ravaged by fever.  She’d done
these things dry-eyed and grim and become a lonely nomad, growing old in
exile.  She had consigned herself to a fate in which she’d die alone,
desiccated to dust or her bones picked cleaned by starving scavengers.  And she
had not wept.

Until now.

Atagartis held her as she sobbed, tears flooding her eyes
and sliding down her cheeks to drip on the god’s shoulder and into the pool. 
Revida cried until her head pounded, and her eyes swelled almost shut.  She
hung limply in Atagartis’s arms, emptied of the sorrow that had hung so long
over her spirit like a crow over a corpse.  A dull numbness replaced  the
anguish, and she might have stayed in Atagartis’s embrace forever.

He cupped her face in his hands and pressed a soft kiss to
her lips.  “You have saved us, Revida.”

She opened her swollen eyes and gasped.  The entire chamber
was lit brighter than a courtyard under a noon sun.  The god she knew from her
dreams, entrapped in a human body, had transformed.  He still wore traces of
humanity—a thin cladding through which a celestial radiance blazed and
crackled.

Though she felt no painful shocks, the pool’s surface
sizzled as tiny bolts of lightning danced across the surface.  She gazed at
Atagartis pulsing with light.  “What’s happening?”

His voice was different, as if he spoke with many
voices—none his.  All his.  “Nirari bound the last of herself in your tears,
Revida.  You were her favorite priestess.  I couldn’t allow you to weep, not
yet.  I locked those tears inside you before Sumarimis imprisoned me.”

“You searched for me all these years to unlock them again
and free yourself.”  He had used her.

A return to godliness must have restored many powers,
including hearing others’ thoughts.  “I didn’t use you,” he said.  “You were my
comfort when Nirari died.  I hope I was yours when your husband and child
died.”

She couldn’t deny that one.  Those dreams had seen her
through the years of wretched mourning.

A low rumble vibrated the ground, distracting her from
rebuking him more.  “What is that?”

Lightning shot from Atagartis’s fingers and ricocheted off
the walls before dissipating.  His wide grin was feral and triumphant.  “That,
my priestess, is the call to battle.  My brother is here.”  With that, the
chamber flashed with a blinding radiance.

Revida covered her eyes with her hands.  When she could see
again, she stood alone in the still-illuminated water.  The rumbling had
swelled to a roar, and even here, in earth’s deeper sanctuary, she heard
inhuman howls of rage.  She slogged her way across the pool as fast as her
shaking legs could carry her.  Gods warred with each other; she refused to
cower in here, wringing her hands.

***

Had she surviving children, hers would have been a tale to
pass down the generations.  Revida stood at the cave entrance alone and watched
the spectacle before her with her heart jumping in her chest and her throat
closed in terror.

Twenty-five years earlier, the rain stopped falling.  The
lightning faded and the winds ceased.  Revida had not lived near the sea, but rumors
had spread inland—of dead calm waters and fish that disappeared into the great
deep and avoided fishermen’s nets.

She didn’t know what might be happening to the seas at the
moment, but the skies above the plains had gone black, painting out the sun.  Whirlwinds
spun out of the miasma of shadows, spinning across the landscape and ripping up
soil and scrub brush.  Lightning raked across the dry storm, flashed inside the
twisting winds and illuminated the same two silhouettes she’d seen as Ninun and
Derketo fled before the wrath of Sumarimis, the Bitter Dark.

Within the cauldron of shadows, the god-brothers fought for
hours, until finally a great cracking sounded above Revida, and the earth
heaved beneath her in response.  Lightning flashed until she had to cover her
eyes.  Silence, deep as night, descended, followed by a sound Revida thought
she’d never hear again in her lifetime—the patter of raindrops striking ground.

She opened her eyes.  The sun remained obscured, but this
time behind gray clouds swollen with rain.  The sky wept, as Revida had wept in
the pool.  Rain fell harder and harder until she could no longer make out the
horizon.

Revida began to laugh and cry at the same time.  She ran
from the cave’s sheltered entrance and was instantly drenched.  Water sloughed
off her hair and sodden clothes.  It poured into her mouth and trickled into
her ears.  Heedless of the mud caking her shoes, she spun in a circle, threw
back her head and screamed Nirari’s name.

The dead goddess didn’t hear her, but a living god did.

Atagartis strode toward her.  He’d shed all vestiges of
lesser humanity.  The being before her shone so brightly, she had to squint. 
His voice echoed around her, soft as a whisper, colossal in its power.  “It’s
done, Revida.”

She wiped rain from eyes.  “You destroyed Sumarimis?”

“No.  Only defeated him for now.  He’s my brother, and
unlike him, I understand that the world needs the darkness as much as it needs
the light and the rain.  We will battle with each other from time to time. 
He’s angry—as much with himself as with me.  He was too blind to see that
Nirari loved him as much as she loved me, and now she’s lost forever to him as
well.”

Revida gazed at the heavy clouds.  “I saw Ninun’s
whirlwinds.  What of Derketo?”

The god shifted, took on the human appearance with which she
was familiar.  Revida smiled her thanks.  “Fishermen will no longer have to
pray to a child who cannot hear them.  My daughter has reclaimed her power, as
I and her brother have.”

Revida cupped her hand and let the rain gather in her palm. 
“This is Nirari?”

Atagartis nodded.  “And Revida.  Her spirit and your sorrow
returned the power Sumarimis robbed me of at Nirari’s death.”

The rain plastered her hair to her head and weighted her
clothes so they hung on her skinny frame like rags on a scarecrow.  The
lightning god remained dry.  Revida grinned, unashamed by the comparison. 
Maybe one day, farmers could raise scarecrows again.

Her grin faded at another realization.  “There’s still no
rain god.”

Atagartis’s eyes, pale and inhuman, flashed.  “Isn’t there?”

She caught what he inferred.  “I will always be Nirari’s
priestess, but I’m neither her replacement nor her revenant.”

The god closed the gap between them and pulled her into his
arm, uncaring that she was wet and bedraggled.  “You’ve become more, Revida. 
Nirari imparted her last whisper of power on you for a reason.”

Revida broke from his embrace.  “This is ridiculous.  You
are a creator.  Immortal, powerful beyond comprehension.  I’m human—an old one
at that—no more than an insect in the eyes of the lightning god.”

Atagartis grinned.  “Then I fell in love with a cicada.”

She stiffened and blinked back tears, grateful for the rain
that would hide any that might fall.  “You mock me.”

His grin vanished, and his mouth thinned to a grim line.  “I
would never mock you.  I loved Nirari, Revida, and still grieve her death. 
That doesn’t mean I can’t learn to love another.  I have.  I do.  Can you not
love me in return?”

His question was rhetorical.  She’d loved him since her
youth, when he’d courted her in dreams and comforted her in sorrow.

Even though he likely heard her thoughts, he continued to
coax her.  “The world needs you.  I need you.”  Atagartis held out his hand,
inviting her to take it.

Revida stared at his hand and then at him.  A burgeoning joy
made her lightheaded.  “You would make this old crone young again?” she teased.

Lightning sizzled in his pale gaze, yet he remained
unsmiling at her jest.  “You will be neither old nor young, just everlasting. 
Walk beside me, priestess, and I will show you the vault of the heavens.”

Revida laughed and took the hand of the lightning god.

_____________________________________________________________________

Rain drenched the grove and washed the heat out of the
stifling air.  The steady flash of lightning bolts illuminated a sky thick with
clouds as the storm rolled toward Neith.  If their luck held, it would last
through the night and thoroughly water the orange trees’ thirsty roots.

Martise clasped Silhara’s forearm where it rested above her
breasts.  His other arm encircled her waist, and his finger traced the outline
of her navel through her shift.  Grateful for his warmth against her back now
that the storm had brought in the cooler air, she snuggled into his embrace.

“So this priestess runs off with the lightning god and
consigns herself to an eternity of weeping because she loves him?”

She rolled her eyes, unsurprised by his less than romantic
interpretation of the story.  “Of course not.  Her tears only invoked the others’
powers.  They say when the big storms come, like this one, it’s Atagartis
making love to Revida.”