“Anah” by Jordan Dilley

Back and forth, back and forth. Anah repeats this litany, barely aware of the words as she pushes and pulls the grindstone. Her body heaves forward, the sleeves of her simlāh grazing the quern, picking up bits of flowery hull. She does not stop to brush them off; eventually a breeze will catch the chaff and send it cascading down the small hill on which her house stands. And if not, it does not matter. Who is there to impress?

When the sun reaches midpoint in the sky, she sets aside the grindstone. She rubs feeling back into her aching hands, trying to remember a time when they were unlined, when the joints weren’t pinched and gnarled. She closes her eyes and imagines soft hands, undarkened by the sun, perfumed with precious oils. Anah smiles at her own foolishness, happy there is no one nearby to chide her. 

She reaches into the quern, holds the flour in her palm. It is fine. Like powder, it falls between her fingers, the slightest breeze able to blow it past the quern and onto the floor. Anah’s bread is the finest in the village. The other women complain to each other. If they didn’t have husbands and children to look after like Anah, their bread would be fine too. They’d dip great chunks of it in oil and honey, eat until their bellies ache. With no one to care how they look under their simlāh…but it is better to have a husband and children they tell each other. 

In the afternoon, when Anah goes to the village to buy wool for her loom, everyone keeps their distance. The merchants stack their fleeces high on the tables, grateful to put any barrier between Anah and themselves. She negotiates a better price because they are so eager to have her leave their stalls. The merchants raise their price on the next customer to make up the difference. The women who sell wine, dried fish, and little dishes of stewed chickpeas, throw sheets over their stalls and pretend to be closed when Anah enters the marketplace. They watch her from windows as she directs the loading of fleeces onto the cart her servant boy pulls. Every swish of her simlāh, every little cloud her sandals make as she strides down the dirt street makes them wish her a thousand bad things.

Her father died when she was a child, but so what, they tell each other, she has brothers to guide her. No family disgrace, no deformity, nothing to prevent her from leading a respectable life. It must be perversity that leads Anah to live without a male guardian, to practice her arts, and make the finest bread. 

When Anah returns home, she helps unload the cart, her nose twitching with the smell of sheep. One of the women of her house approaches the cart. 

“Hadassah, will we be having burnt lentils for dinner, then?” Anah clucks. 

Hadassah does not see Anah’s crooked smile and stammers. “Mary is watching the food.”

“Of course,” Anah sighs. For years she has tried to coax Hadassah into smiling, would give her best goat to hear her laugh. She always imagined it high and sparkling, like a stream after a spring swell. 

Hadassah grips Anah’s hand. Anah winces when she recalls how smooth Hadassah’s hands were when she first came to her. “It’s a messenger. He would not say where he comes from.”

Anah’s stomach sinks, though she acknowledges this piece of information with a frown. Ever since the king outlawed her practice, she has lain low. There are reports of killings carried out by the king’s men, though anyone wise enough has scattered since the prohibition. She only consults with people from the village, their shame at coming to her for help guarantees their silence. It is enough to keep her and those of her household fed, though little else. She frets over money, counts each loaf, each sack of lentils, weaves their cloaks thinner than she did before. 

It is hard not to hate the king. On her pallet at night, Anah’s mind drowns in what-ifs. If the kingdom’s prophet hadn’t given in to the people’s demands, stood strong and never anointed such a rash man as king. If men weren’t jealous of women like her, women with power and the good sense to know what to do with it. If the villagers would acknowledge their own hypocrisy. Life would be as it had been when Anah was a young woman, still sensitive to the joys of life and not bound so tightly to its cares and concerns. 

She follows Hadassah through the door and into the courtyard. Mary is bent over a bubbling pot. Anah’s stomach growls at the smell. Mary glances at Hadassah and Hadassah gives a nod of approval. Anah smells onions, cumin, perhaps a little goat. She frowns. She was planning on saving that last bit of meat to dry in the sun, insurance against the future. 

The messenger is waiting in Anah’s best room. Here she keeps vestiges of better times: rich carpets, pots and jugs with intricate designs from across the sea, and her best lamp. The room is tiled, an extravagance the village will never forgive her for, though her clients enjoy its cool smooth surface in the summer. 

Anah and Hadassah enter the room. The messenger is crouched next to a red amphora, tracing the folds of Hestia’s tunic with his fingers.

Hadassah steps forward, raises her hand in remonstrance; she knows the vessel’s worth even if he does not, but Anah stops her. She shakes her head, no.

“It’s from the island of Crete, do you know it?” Anah asks the man.

The messenger ignores her question. “My master requires your services.”

“Does he need someone to deliver his child? Or perhaps someone in his household is sick?” Officially, these are the only services Anah performs. 

The messenger looks at her sardonically. “We both know those aren’t the only services you offer.”

When Anah opens her mouth to protest, the man holds up his hand.

“My master knows of you; he will not punish you for being a necromancer. And he will pay handsomely for your services.” His eyes sweep over Anah’s simlāh, dusty from the road and patched near the hem. 

“My mistress—,” Hadassah begins.

“—would be happy to receive your master.” Anah says, gripping Hadassah’s hand.

When the messenger leaves, Anah says, “Better to see how things progress, I think.”

“What if it is a trick? Perhaps the villagers alerted the authorities?”

Anah gives a harsh laugh. “Did you see his sandals? And his cloak? Dirty with travel, but new. The fine leather and wool, the rich dye. No, whoever his master is, he is powerful. More powerful than anyone around here.”

****

The next night, as Anah sweeps the floor of her best room, and lays out her best carpet, the one she keeps rolled against the wall, her servant boy runs into the room. In between breaths, he tells her of the messenger’s approach. No, he did not see the master, he says when she asks. The curtains of his sedan were closed against the night chill. But in the moonlight, he could see the carvings. His eyes glaze over in rapture as he describes the designs. Anah dismisses him. She twists the broom handle in her hands as she makes a silent petition for help in navigating tonight.

Fifteen minutes later, Anah sits on her cushion. The wine is poured, a courtesy she never extends towards the villagers. It is her second best. She looks the picture of womanly respectability. She must give this man what he wants but do so in a way that does not anger him, does not tempt him to alert the authorities. It is a dangerous balance to maintain.

Anah sees a shadow in the gap between the door and the floor. The hairs on her neck raise and her palms begin to sweat. She experiences similar sensations before going into a trance, though at this moment she doesn’t feel the same pull towards the edge, towards the threshold of unconscious perception. All her senses remain with her as the stranger walks through the door and into the light cast by her lamp. 

At first, relief courses through Anah as the stranger moves through the shadows toward her table. He is wearing plain robes, undyed and coarser than Anah’s own simlāh. Deep lines crisscross the leather of his sandals. But then the stranger comes fully into the light and Anah’s heart sinks. His hair, face, and feet are clean, free of dust. As he sits before Anah, she observes his hands. They are clean and smooth, like a boy’s. His beard is neatly combed and the smell of something earthy and musky drifts across the table. Spikenard. Once, Anah possessed a tiny vial of this perfume herself. She used the last drop long ago. She keeps the empty vial in her private room, unstopping the top when she wants to remember different times.

The stranger sips Anah’s wine. “I need to consult a spirit,” he says, regarding Anah carefully.

Anah controls the panic rising in the back of her throat enough to say “The king has prohibited such practices. Would you forfeit my life?”

The man smiles, and in that moment Anah knows who sits across from her. “I promise, no harm shall come to you,” he says.

Anah nods. “Who—”

“The late prophet,” the man whispers.

Anah swallows. Despite the wine, her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. Consulting anyone who lived their life with mystic abilities has never gone well for her clients. The first time Anah had assumed the spirit was annoyed at being disturbed and intent only on frightening the young woman who had come to her.  But over the years, the calamities these clients suffered had mounted. 

“Are you sure?”

The man draws something metallic out of his cloak and places it on the table. It is a broach with a milky white stone in the center surrounded by worked bronze. Bits of dirt cling to the grooves in the metal. “I am sure.”

Anah watches as the lamplight catches flecks of blue in the stone. The surface is glassy, and as Anah watches the progression of shadows across its surface, she feels the room and the stranger slip away. She moves closer to the threshold, toward the realm where spirits are just as real as the man sitting across from her. Like drifting off to sleep, she passes over.

Whisps weave in and around Anah’s arms, legs, and head. She moves her fingers through them with intention. Finally, the whisps coalesce into the form of an old man. His hair and beard, wiry and opaque enough to be visible, rustle in the breeze. His hands pass through the folds of his cloak. Panicked, he looks to Anah. 

“Where am I?”

“Nowhere. This space does not have a name,” Anah explains. 

“Why have you summoned me? I thought I had finally been called to the Lord for judgement. I was resting…” he says, looking over his shoulder to a place hidden from Anah’s sight. 

“This is not judgement, and I am not your Lord. I am Anah. The King has asked me to summon you, though he did not say why.” 

“What does he want with me? Shall I never be free of that man?” The spirit’s eyes darken, and he takes a step away from Anah, toward the place she cannot see.

A voice penetrates the gloom, frantically calling after the prophet.

The spirit turns back to Anah. “I hear him, yet I cannot see him.”

“You can hear him because I am here. I am a bridge. Do you want to see him as well?”

The spirit quickly shakes his head. “His voice is trouble enough.”

The king’s voice is weary this time. “The Philistines make war against me. God has turned his back on me. What shall I do?”

The spirit’s face is drawn, and he distractedly clutches his beard. “If God has turned his back on you, what do you think I can do? You did not obey the Lord and he has torn the kingdom from your hands. Tomorrow the Philistines will overtake you and you shall die. What am I to do?”

Anah hears wailing and the beating of fists against her table. What will become of her now that the spirit she’s summoned has upset the king? He may die tomorrow, but a day is enough to punish her if he chooses. What will become of her household? Hadassah and Mary? Will he spare them? Or will her association doom them too? 

The spirit turns toward Anah. “Please, release me.”

Anah lets go, loses her intent in her anxiety about the future. The prophet walks toward the invisible region and fades to nothing. Anah is again sitting at the table across from the king. His face is tear streaked and he grips his hair as if he will pull it from the roots. He has knocked over his cup of wine. A puddle is at his feet and the table is stained as if by blood near his elbow. 

Anah feels his pulse, it is weak, and his breaths come in gasps. She walks toward the back of the room, toward the remnants of the dinner she shared with her household. She fills a bowl with lentils and tears a chunk of bread from a half-eaten loaf. At least the bread is fine, she thinks, looking at the cold bowl of lentils, brown and unappetizing in the growing shadows. She knows she should slaughter her old buck for the king. His meat might be tough, but it is meat, a meal more fitting for the man that sits at her table. But she will not waste meat on him if he means to condemn her for following his orders. She will not take meat away from her household.

Anah sets the bowl before him. “You must eat and restore your strength. How will you fight your enemies in this state?”

The King lifts his head from the table. His cloak had fallen off his shoulders and his hair has turned every which way. His eyes are bloodshot, and his lips move though no sound comes from his mouth. “What is the point?” He finally gasps. “If I am to die tomorrow? God has turned from me, I am alone, helpless!”

Anah puts a spoon in his hand. “Listen to me. I’ve contacted many spirits since I was a young woman. Do you see these gray hairs? The lines on my hands? I’ve talked with many more than those put together. Do you know the most important thing I’ve learned from them?”

He shakes his head.

 “They don’t always tell the truth.”

The King regards Anah skeptically, looking to her head for the gray hairs obscured by the weak light.

“And why should this surprise you? Though they’ve abandoned their bodies, spirits are just like you and me. Spurned by the same worries, jealousies, doubts. Truth isn’t their prerogative.”

The King lifts a spoonful of lentils to his mouth, followed by a second and a third. The light returns to his eyes and his color improves. When the bowl is empty, he sits up, rights his cloak, and combs his hair with his nimble fingers. “You are right. No one is infallible. How do we even know it was the prophet you summoned? I asked him for no proof.”

Anah opens her mouth to speak, but the King lifts his hand. “You misunderstand. I do not blame you.”

She was about to remind him of the brooch. Still gleaming in the lamp’s light, at the edge of the table. A trail of grave dust dots the table’s wood planks. It is not a question of skill. If that is truly the prophet’s brooch, there’s no question who the spirit belonged to. 

The King stands and wraps his cloak against the night chill. Even in the dim light, Anah can see his golden skin, the developed muscles of his calves. Every inch of him proclaims his kingship. He claps his hands together and motions toward the middle of the room when his servant enters carrying a heavy chest. “For your service, and your silence,” he says as the servant places the chest on Anah’s best carpet. 

They leave before Anah can mutter a word of thanks. She watches them from the door until they are two dots on the horizon, then lost. She pads across the room, intrigued. 

The chest is polished, made of wood Anah can’t identity. Warm and rich, Anah drags a finger across its glassy top, marveling that anything could be so smooth. When she can’t wait any longer, she lifts the lid. 

Anah stumbles back, the edge of her sandal catching on the carpet. She throws out her arms for balance, never taking her eyes off the chest. It is more money than she’s ever seen. She sinks her hands into the chest, allowing the cold coins to numb her fingers. All of a sudden, she’s making plans. Perhaps she’ll move to a new village, somewhere they’ve never heard of her. She can tell the villagers she’s a widow without family, that her husband was wealthy, that they were never blessed with children. 

Hadassah stands in the doorway. Anah shrinks before her, flushed with greed. Like a good servant, Hadassah does not flinch, or comment on the chest of money.

“A woman from the village is here with her child. He’s in distress.”

With Hadassah’s help, Anah pushes the chest behind a rolled-up carpet and throws a ripped grain sack over it. Anah follows Hadassah out the door and into the night. She can still smell the King’s perfume lingering in the courtyard. 

Featured art - “0023” by Richard Hanus

Jordan Dilley lives and writes in Washington. She has an MA in literature from the University of Utah. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Woven Tale, JMWW, Reunion: The Dallas Review, the Heavy Feather Review, and the Vassar Review as well as other publications. You can find her on Twitter @JordanDilley.