“When the sons of men had multiplied, beautiful and comely daughters were born to them. And the Watchers, the sons of heaven, saw them, and desired.”

-The Book of the Watchers

xxxxx

The king—who was so wealthy that he never ate twice from the same golden dish, and who could have spent the rest of his life counting the jewels in his vaults and died without seeing them all—said that she could have anything in the world that she wanted.

Gold, jewels, spices, slaves—”Name it,” he said, “and it will be yours.”

But all that she asked was to be admitted to his private garden. This, and nothing else, she craved.

And this was the one thing in the world that he said he couldn’t give her.

xxxxx

She’d been born a slave, the youngest of nine children and the smallest, and also the only one to live to an age where she could work.

This was in the time when people thought the world had just four corners, and that a camel could carry you from one end of it to the other, and that beyond the sea there was a land of monsters, or an endless abyss, or nothing at all.

One man alone ruled all of this, and would rule for the rest of time—or so it was said. For people like the girl (who had no name), life was so far removed from such things that they might as well have been fables. Living wasn’t about kings and far-off places, living was about where your next mouthful was coming from.

The girl’s mother died when she was barely old enough to remember her face, another body for the plague pits. She was expected to die of the same too, but for some reason the pox never touched her. The law said that if a slave child had no parents she should be set free, lest she become a burden on her owner to care for.

Being a scrawny thing and still young, her mother’s master had not much use for her anyway. Besides, he was a superstitious man and found something unnatural about the way she’d cheated the pox. So he turned her loose without balking—though it did him no good, and he died of the plague himself not long after.

She owned nothing except her own ragged clothes, and the markets and other busy places were run by gangs of children who pelted her with stones and bits of broken pottery if she tried to beg for food or money there.

With no other choice, she worked for the lowliest and most vile sorts of people, the blackguards and the scum lower even than thieves and the killers: necromancers, body-eaters, lunatics, traders in obscene and blasphemous things.

Her thin frame could slip in and out of tombs and graves, and her small hands were useful for getting into things supposedly sealed forever. Small as she was, she could hide, eavesdrop, and escape with ease. She was useful enough.

In this way, she learned the secret history of the world, the tales of desert places where men and monsters mingled, stories of black cities, fallen stars, comets and omens, of insect-men and serpent-women, of sorcerer-kings and organ pits and the forbidden teachings of the Watchers, and all manner of heresies and depravities—the unknown, the unknowable, and the unspeakable, all the way back to the days of the accursed city of Chorazin.

She worked in boneyards and in madhouses, and she again expected to die, if not from the work then because of the company she had to keep.

But again she didn’t die. She grew up, and in time she learned to distinguish myth from truth, ravings from facts. This was also when she got her first name: they called her “Pes-Gi,” which meant “rat.”

When the time came that she wanted to quit such dealings, her latest employer, a bodysnatcher, tried to object, thinking she knew too many of his secrets. But one day he poisoned himself drinking a tea brewed from dried organs, and she was free to go.

When her eighteenth year came she sold herself to a pleasure house, where she’d be fed and lodged and could work until she one day made enough to buy her own freedom again, plus a little more.

Although she knew almost nothing of the things men and women did, she found that people thought her attractive enough. She didn’t speak much or trust much, but this seemed a comely coyness to others. And besides, she never complained or refused to do anything that a customer asked—she’d seen far worse don, in much darker places.

Here they gave her a new name: “Munus-Kin,” which meant “whore.”

One of the men who fell in love with her there was a scholar of sorts, one who tended to tablets and scrolls of the sacred library. When she found out, she stopped accepting money from him and instead asked him to be taught to read. Which he did, laboriously at first, but soon with efficaciousness that surprised her instructor.

Eventually she demanded payment in manuscripts, pieces of scrolls, fragments of tablets—anything that could go missing without being noticed. Anything she could learn from.

Before long, someone did notice these things that they thought would never go noticed, and the other scholars put the young one to death for betraying his oaths. But they never found or punished her. By then she’d learned almost everything she could this way, so she bought her freedom again and then became a priestess, one of the sacred courtesans.

The temples were happy to take on new initiates who already knew the craft—after all, her role here was still the same, exchanging her body for money. But now it was in the service of a goddess, and they shortened her name to just “Munus,” which meant “woman.”

It was here that she learned how to differentiate the sacred from the profane, and the most important lesson of all: how to transform one into the other. For most, this would have been the end of the story. She’d come far from meager roots, learned more than mortal minds were perhaps meant to know, and could have lived long in the service of the temple. And if life was not necessarily happy, neither was it desperate, violent, or mad.

But for her, this was not enough. So on the altar one night she sacrificed a young hog and, as she’d learned to do in her youth, poured out its entrails, so that she might examine them and thus learn her future. For in such things the gods hide glimpses of their will—especially in the liver, the seat of life. Thus she learned that the god-king would soon visit their temple, and of what nature he was, and how she could inflame his desires as no one else had.

This king was more than a king, and far more than any other man. He knew, always, when crops would grow and when they would fail, and when disease would come and when it would pass, and which men’s souls might brew treachery against him and which were truly loyal.

All things, they said, he knew, and thus he kept his kingdom—the entire world—safe, secure, and unified. But in some ways he really was no different than other men, and had the same appetites for the flesh as any who visited the temple. She appeared before him nude, and when questioned she said that soldiers wear their armor in his presence and scholars their robes of honor. So she also wore the uniform suited to the execution of her duty.

And this reply, even more than the shape of her body, excited his intrigue.

He came to her that night. She waited for him with all light smothered, so that only when the sun rose the next morning did they set eyes on each other. God or king, with the lights out he was no different than any other man.

He left the next day. As she expected, he ordered that she come with him, to become one of his second-wives. Now she was known as “Nin,” which meant “lady.” Her home was no longer a temple but a palace. Now she answered to no one except the king of kings, god and man together, the man who would rule the world for eternity and who for the time being wanted her by his side.

The king had many other second-wives, and he was always obligated to honor his first wife and queen above others. But before long it was clear that he prized his newest companion over the rest.

So much luxury attended to her now that in time she started to forget that it was even there. That was the nature of excess—to have so much that, in a way, you forget the having of it. Her old lives—orphan, beggar, outlaw, whore, and even her time with the priestesses—seemed far off, like the memories of another person. Despite this, she was careful never to let herself truly forget; even if that past was someone else’s, she would safeguard it in her mind.

Of these things she said nothing to the king, and naturally being a man he showed no real interest in matters of her past. When they talked she talked of idle things, or simple pleasures and easy observations—or she talked of him, the subject which invariably pleased him the most.

“To think,” she said one day, “that after having conquered the whole world you would exercise no less dominion over my heart. Most men are satisfied with only one great conquest in their lifetimes.”

And the king beamed with pleasure.

Naturally all of this excited some jealousy from the rest of the harem—and the rumor that she’d seduced the king not with her wit and charm but with witchcraft. Some even whispered that she wasn’t a woman, but an evil spirit, and in a fit of anger another of the second-wives tried to drive her away by reciting, “O flyer in a dark chamber, go away at once, O Lilit!”

But these were petty things. What mattered was that the king loved her—as much as he could love any earthly thing.

Not long after they met, the king told her for the first time that she could have anything she wanted. He offered gold, jewels, spices, slaves—nothing was too lavish. “Name it,” he said. “It will be yours.”

She chose her words carefully; what she said next could undo everything if she wasn’t careful. But this might be the only chance she ever had…

“You have, oh Lord, a garden in this palace. Not the public gardens, nor even the private ones, where many times we’ve walked barefoot and hand in hand beneath the ivory moon. This one is a secret garden, where they say you are the only person who has ever entered, or will ever enter, from now until the end of time.”

Surprise etched its lines into the king’s face. Undaunted, she continued:

“Let me visit that garden for one night. This is all I’ll ever ask from you.”

Baffled, the king didn’t know how to reply. When his speech finally returned, he repeated his previous offers: the finest of things from any corner of the world, nothing too rare or too strange, no quantity too extravagant, no expectation too high.

“Ask for anything,” he told her—anything else.

But her answer stayed the same: the garden was all she wanted.

Furious, he left. She waited all night and all the next day to see what would happen. He might have her sent away. He might have her imprisoned. Maybe even killed.

In the end though, he did nothing. Soon they returned to their normal life together, and neither of them said anything about what had happened.

But she remembered.

Months passed, then months more. The world was troubled, but as always the king knew what was best, and he protected the people from the worst that disaster could hold, and as always the they were grateful, and knew in their minds that their king was a god in all but name, and that the world would continue as it always had under his protection.

When the calendar rolled over and the remembrance of the day they’d first met came, the king again offered her anything she wanted: a palace of her own, no less costly than his. A monument in her image, built by an army of new slaves, all dedicated to her. Her enemies scourged, shamed, humiliated, exiled.

He even said that he would have her declared a god, just as he, so that fires would burn offerings to her in the very temple where they’d met. All of this, to prove that his love for her had no limits.

She, gracious and humble, thanked him for his beneficence. But none of these things pleased her.

“All I wish, oh Lord, is to be admitted to your most private and secret garden. This, and only this, in all the world I desire.”

Again he grew stormy and left her in anger. This time she was confident already that he wouldn’t punish her—but neither would he grant her wish.

So that same night, on the terrace of her apartments in the palace, overlooking the million burning lights of the great city, she slaughtered a ram with golden horns, and poured its entrails onto the stones, hoping that there she could read her future and learn the key to her one desire.

Perhaps, she feared, there WAS no answer; that even the wisdom of the gods would fail because, in the end, there was nothing she could say or do to press the king to her wishes. Was there anything in the world truly impossible? Could the will of any man be so resolute? In the past she would have said no, but now?

So it was with some apprehension that she approached the ram’s entrails and, with it steaming guts laid out before her, peered once more into the future, the storehouse of things that could be, would be, and were destined to be.

The next morning she sent her slaves into the market to bring back every kind of egg they could find—big and small, ordinary and exotic. She spent a night passing each one through a burning brazier, and when she found the one finally that didn’t crack or burst or burn but merely sat, placid amidst the flames, she left it there as her charm.

The weeks to come were a time of caution, a time of planning, a time of ambition. She visited the king as often as she could, excluding almost everyone else from his company when possible, and even accompanied him tending to matters of state that in the past she’d always claimed bored her. Though surprised, the king ceded to her presence.

She insisted on making love twice as often, confessing an unquenchable desire for his touch. More and more frequently they held these rendezvous in her rooms, where she kept the egg and the fire hidden but blazing all day long, with instructions to her most loyal and reliable slaves never to let the flames batten.

It took months—much longer than she’d expected. But when the day finally came that the shell of the egg turned gold, she knew that she’d succeeded. Solemnly, humbly, she presented herself to the king and told him the news:

She would carry his child.

Stunned, he could say nothing for sometime. She was careful to keep her eyes on the floor, kneeling in front of him, her every move calculated to express submission. The king had wives and second wives and lovers aplenty all during his reign, but never once a child. It was said that he could have no children—that being as he was somewhat divine, the body of a mere woman wouldn’t restrain his seed.

This mattered little for the kingdom—there was no need for an heir, since the king himself would rule forever. But—and no one in the world knew this, had ever known this, had ever been given reason to suspect it for even a moment—this private barrenness pained him, and filled up the few hours of his life that he’d spent with regret.

When he finally realized what she’d said, the dam of the king’s feelings burst, and he took her in his arms with such force that it was almost violent. Was she sure?

“Yes, oh Lord,” she said. “I’ve never been more sure of anything, except for my unending love for you, and in the face of that how could there be anything to doubt?”

His eyes shone like two lamps. Nobody had ever seen the king shed a tear, but they came dangerously close to this blasphemous spectacle then. He called her the pinnacle of women, but she demurred, saying only that the real author of this miracle must be he—how could it be otherwise?

As she expected, sometime later he offered her the ultimate tribute: He’d break his marriage to his first wife and install her in that place. He’d declare her a queen, almost equal to himself. Their union would be written in the stars. No person could have any greater ambition in the history of the world.

She thanked him. She praised his generosity. His wisdom, she said, was unimpeachable, and for his sake—and perhaps the sake of the kingdom—if this was his wish then naturally she would grant it.

But for her part, she wanted none of it. She wanted nothing in the world except to remain by his side always. And also, perhaps…

“I do still wish to visit your secret garden, oh Lord. This one small thing is all I ask. All other honors I accept in your name, but I am only a simple woman and could wish for no more than this.”

Baffled, the king flew into a rage. What impudence was this? What womanly madness? Why did she persist always in this frippery? His voice sent servants and guards fleeing, and later some of them said that the walls of the palace—the entire city, perhaps—shook.

But she didn’t flinch. In a very small voice, she replied:

“I’m told, oh Lord, that in this hidden garden, where you and you alone ever are admitted, you keep the one thing in the world that’s most precious to you. What this is I cannot know, and being as I am a woman and simple in my understanding, I have no doubt that I would never really appreciate its value, whatever it is.

“But if I were to be in your garden, then I could imagine that I am the thing that’s most precious, and there’s nothing else in the world that I could possibly desire besides that.”

These were the words she’d read in the flayed bodies of the sacrificed animals. Their power over the king was swift and profound. Now she imagined she could see HIS insides too, the secrets of his body and blood unfolding before her as this confession worked it magic.

He didn’t answer her right away. The message didn’t come that night either, nor the night after. But on the third day, a magister came and told her that while the king was away tending to matters of state in another city, she’d be admitted to that hidden place.

It would be for that night and only that night, and she’d be forbidden to repeat these things to anyone. Even the magister had no choice but to end his own life after delivering the message, by submerging himself in the sacred waters of Lake Hali. (But to this he had no objections, as the king promised him as a blissful and rewarding afterlife for carrying out the errand.)

That was morning. She spent the entire day watching the sun’s tiresomely slow trip across the sky, sitting on her terrace and observing the shadows as they grew first shorter, then longer, watching the stalls in the marketplace appear and then disappear, listening to the chatter of a thousand thousand voices swell and fade again as hour passed into hour. The waiting hurt.

Finally, mercifully, the first star appeared. She felt brittle as she waited. What if no one came? What if the king changed his mind? What if—?

A rap at her chamber door. The man waiting for her was a mute eunuch slave, one of those who conducted the king’s most secret affairs, nameless and faceless.

In all the palace, only he knew the way to the door that he guided her to. The path beyond that he did not know, as he’d never gone that far, but on a tablet the king himself had inscribed directions. The eunuch could not read, and would never know what the message said, but still she smashed the tablet to pieces when finished, and crushed the shards until they were almost dust.

And then, alone, she ventured into the tunnels. This was the oldest part of the palace, built first, and few knew that in fact it was much older than the palace itself, older even than most of the city. Everything else had been built around this.

It hadn’t always been a garden, but the king had made it such more years ago now than anyone else remembered. A hundred-hundred gardeners from all four corners of the world had helped design and build it. And they were here still, planted deep beneath the soil they themselves had cultivated. The price of knowing a king’s secrets…

Since no one came here, the garden was meant to tend to itself. No trimming or cutting or pruning happened; it was a wild place, a primeval place. But its wildness was designed and tailored, like a landscape preserved in a stele.

At first there were just the tunnels, twisting this way and that. If she hadn’t memorized the directions she’d surely die lost in the endless corridors. The floor was bare sand, dry, and the walls and ceilings simple mud bricks, the occasional penetrating roots indicating how far below ground she was.

There was no way to know how long this went on, but she knew when the air turned sweet that she’d gone the right way. The passage opened up ahead, emerging from a hillside and into a beautiful, wild, green place, tucked like a valley in the very heart of the palace, a treasure house of growing things, open to the sky overhead, where only the stars and the moon could witness this place.

In the darkness, everything was blue-black. The space was perfectly square, four hundred feet on a side, and arranged in terraces, supported by stone pillars as wide as the roots of a mountain, thick with the endless tangle of vines and reeds.

Here were forests of date palms and almond trees and figs, and great cedars, with fertile grapevines twined like the arms of lovers around their trunks, and sumptuous rosewood.

Here grew lilies, both along the garden paths and in the quiet, sunken, tranquil ponds that dotted the way, along with roses and anemones and jasmine. Here even grew nightshade, which she knew from her youth could kill but could also, in the smallest amounts, purge the body of all other poisons.

And also here were images of the gods, idols and effigies, some as small and stout as a gardener’s pot, some so tall they were all but colossi, swathed in clinging and trailing and climbing plants and vines like robes of honor, with crowns of flowers blooming naturally around their heads and patches of buries sprouting in their beneficent shadows.

The paths here were paved with nothing but sacred lapis lazuli, the substance of the highest of the three heavens, every shard of it a fortune to itself. Of all the riches in the palace, this garden was worth well more than all of it combined. It rivaled at least the lowest of the three heavens, a seat of such natural grace and beauty that to look on it, to feel it, to taste the air and walk on the paths, might even be a sin.

It was the place of ultimate sumptuous pleasure in all the world, rich, secret, guarded. Alien.

But none of these things mattered to her.

Speedily, dutifully, she cast off her clothes and left all of her jewelry piled up here at the entry, and even threw away her jeweled slippers, so that she could walk utterly naked in the depths of the hidden garden.

The night air felt good on her skin. The moonlight caressed her fine limbs, her resplendent body. She followed the sound of water—for it was so quiet here that the merest ripple in any of the ponds made a noise as clear as day.

When she came to a pond so still and clear that its surface was like black glass, she dipped one well-turned foot into it. Finding it achingly soothing, she slipped in up to her calves and then, daring to break the crystalline stillness of the night, she splashed the waters over herself, delighting in wetness.

Sinking further into the blue-black depths, she swam in lazy circles, a sister to the lilies. The full white moon danced in the rippling waters and she chased after it, like a child. Thick tree trunks and dark leafy fronds surrounded this pool and leaned in overhead, forming a vault on every side.

Here she could imagine she was the only person in the world, that the garden had swallowed up the palace and the city and everything else from horizon to horizon, and that everyone had simply faded away, leaving nothing but her, the garden, and aloneness forever. She, who had spent her entire life in the dusty, crowded, stinking confines of the city, had never felt such a prized and delicious sense of solitude; even in her most private chambers, with strict orders not to be obeyed, she had never been so far from any other person as she was now.

Or so it seemed. The truth, she was not alone at all.

Perhaps the thing knew about her from the moment she first arrived. Or maybe it was only the sound of her body in the water that attracted its attention. Either way, the shape of her figure in the dark held its attention.

How long was it there before she realized? Did she become aware of its presence with time, or only because it chose to reveal itself? There was no way to know. Nevertheless, something stood on the very edge of this pond, watching her.

At first she ignored it—pretended to ignore it, really. Turning on her back, she swam facing the night sky. The crystalline surface of the water reflected the stars, so that it looked like she was swimming through the universe. The blackness of the water hid her when submerged, so that every time her figure surfaced again it was like she was being created out of nothing.

This went on for sometime, the thing in the garden watching her and she pretending not to be watched. Finally, when she could take it no more, she swam to shallows and, all at once, burst up onto the land, scattering droplets like jewels in her wake. Swiftly and decisively, she turned to look at her new companion fully for the first time.

In many ways it resembled a man: arms, legs, face, figure, all manlike in their form. But no man could look like this. It was too tall, for one thing—no, too great. Its proportions were too much. And its skin was smooth, perfect, glistening, as if polished from head to toe. Even in the blue-black night, the figure shined.

It could also be mistaken for a statue, another of the idols of the garden, one created with divine detail by the greatest artisans. But this was wrong too, because the creature’s eyes—such eyes it had, like onyx, eyes that could see forever—revealed that it was no carved thing, no ornament.

There was a mind behind those eyes, like none other in the world: rich, secret, guarded.

Alien.

And when it finally moved, extending its hand to help her out of the water, its touch sealed her certainty. This hand did not feel like flesh, but neither did it feel like anything else. There was no mistaking this thing for anything but what it was. And what it was hardly anyone alive could say.

She sat on the shore, drying herself in the moonlight. The thing sat opposite her, crouched so that they saw eye to eye. She posed in a way that advertised her body to the most sensuous degree.

Surprisingly, she found that she did not become afraid until it spoke. She was uncertain what the voice of such thing might sound like, and that ambiguity was suddenly terrifying under these circumstances…

But in fact it sounded almost entirely ordinary, in a way that might have disappointed her if she’d had any expectation at all. Gesturing to itself, the thing said, “I am—”

“Penemue,” she said, before it could finish.

The surprise on its face was familiar, an echo of what she’d seen before in the face of the king.

Bolder, she ventured on: “That’s right, isn’t it? You’re Penemue. The Fourth Watcher.”

Turning its head a little, the thing said, “How do you know?”

Relaxing her pose a bit, she said, “It was a story I heard a long, long time ago. A heretical story, one of the ones that it means death to repeat.”

“Someone repeated it to you.”

“And he died. I was smarter and told it to no one. But I’ll tell you now if you want: They say that when the world was young that certain creatures—angels—came down from the highest heaven, to watch over the first people and to see all that they do.

“And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied, that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Let us choose us wives from among the children of men, and beget children.’

“To seduce the first people they offered the secrets of heaven, things never meant to know: charms and enchantments, the cutting of roots, the making of swords and armor, of the ways of the stars and the clouds in the sky, the ways of the earth and the sun and the moon—all the things that were not meant to be shared. Because they’d become drunk with the ways of the world.”

Here she leaned in a bit closer. “And the fourth greatest among them was called Penemue, and he taught men to understand writing, so that secrets could be shared and travel to far places. And this knowledge above all of the others was most dangerous, and by this many perished when its power consumed them.”

For a time the thing said nothing, merely crouching among the reeds, silent and still. Then, “And what happened to these Watchers?”

”Some were punished for lying with the daughters of men and sharing the secrets of the heavens. Some cast into fire, others into darkness. But other things happened to some.

“Like Penemue, who came one day to be the prisoner of a certain man—a man who was no smarter or more fit than any other, but who, by luck, came to know the Watcher’s secret name, the name he’d been given in the heavens, and in this way had power over him.

“And from the Watcher this man learned all the secrets of the world, so that he knew when things would grow and when they would fail, when war would come and how to win, who was loyal and who was not, which words were true and which weren’t, and the outcome of every endeavor before it happened.

“In this way the man became a king, and declared himself a god, and he outlawed the telling of the old stories so that no one would suspect the source of his power. And as for the Watcher, he kept him always, a prisoner in a great garden at the center of his palace. A garden that the king alone ever visited, and which the Watcher alone among all creatures tended.”

Finished, she spread her hands. “So my tale is told. …except it’s not really over, is it? You ARE Penemue.”

“That’s a name men called me,” the Watcher said. “In the old days, the first days.”

“Is the story true?”

”Some of it. Much of it.”

”Which parts are wrong?”

”None wrong. Simply…imprecise. Some things happened that you would have no words for. No mind for. Things not of the world. But of all the things that you can know? Yes, those things happened.”

Leaning forward further now, she slipped her arms around the Watcher’s neck. “Then it’s true that you fell from the heavens because you wanted to know the pleasures of flesh. I’m with you now: I’ve been a harlot, a priestess, a concubine; I know all the ways of men and women. Do angels know any pleasures that we do not? Teach them to me, and I’ll practice them on you as well.”

She felt its body go still at her touch, a dangerous stillness that spoke of unpredictability.

“Why would you do this?”

“Because I’ve spent almost all my life finding this place, and you. Because I want to know the truest secrets of the world, all hidden things, from the first days and earliest days. You can teach me, just as you taught the first people. And you can see that the daughters of men are still just as comely now as when you first came into the world. Or even more, perhaps?”

Her lips found the angel’s, which were cold and strange. But the way that he kissed back, and the movement of his loins beneath hers, were the same as any man that she’d ever known, and as she clamored on top of his body and ran her hands down his bared flesh she saw silver writing on his flesh that was visible only in the moonlight, illuminating all of the secrets of heaven.

Leaning down, she placed the tip of her tongue against the creature’s heavenly body and traced these lines with wet kisses up and down its perfect form. Beneath her kiss, the smooth, polished skin felt strange, but enticing.

The Watcher shuddered with pleasure, so she continued. Mounting its body, she held its frame tight between her thighs and let her fingertips trace the outline of its figure. The feel of the creature, the taste of it on her mouth, the sensation of it pressing needfully against her—these things all helped confirm its reality in her mind.

Finding the creature’s sex erect, she slipped it into her mouth. The waters of the pond lapped against the shore nearby, and she used this sound to keep her rhythm as she went up and down on it.

Closing her eyes, she tried to shut out everything except for that sound and the insistent throbbing that she felt as she moved her tongue across that member. Yes, here was a desire at last that was suited for her talents; not the weak and yielding passions of men or even kings, but hot, ancient lust, so sharp and powerful that it drove even the most sacred creatures out of the heavens.

Nothing could be more holy or sacred than this, she decided. Removing her mouth, she held the length of it in her hands and stroked the whole thing from one end to the other, purring the whole time.

“Come on,” she said, “show me what gifts you brought to the world of men. Show me what the children of heaven lusted for in those days, the first days.”

Lying on the grass, she opened her legs wide and placed two fingertips at the entrance to her body. “You must remember the desires the enticed you from those lofty heights. Surely that’s not a thing that one forgets? Show me what it was that you couldn’t resist, even to the point of breaking your oath to the gods. Let me know what the daughters of men learned in those days.”

She meant to say more, but at that moment the Watcher came on her, and as she slid inside her body a sensation somewhere between pleasure and pain accompanied it, and she cried out in the same voice that the children of heaven had heard in the days she talked about.

It was like riding a lightning bolt. Spreading her thighs more—as much as they could go—she tried to gather the Watcher’s entire body against herself. But there was simply too much, so instead she lay back and let it act on its natural impulses, rocking her body against the body with each stroke and thrust.

Everywhere it touched her, painting her naked skin with the silvery lines of its own naked body, her nerves sang. Holding on as tight as she could, she swiveled her hips, and her moans grew louder and higher, until soon she was making not words or even noise but just the silent, eternal, pantomimed gasp of utter indulgence.

It was the feeling of a storm, a flood, an earthquake, a volcano. It was judgment poured down from heaven: heat, color, sensation, time, all blended together into one moment and one place and one feeling, the feeling of the heavens falling to earth, like a shooting star, leaving nothing in its wake but burning and light.

Alone together, they wiled many hours by the bank of the pond this way, underneath the vault of the heavens and the light of the eternal stars.

…but they were not really alone.

More than any other creature in the world—even more than the Watcher itself—the king knew the secret ways of the garden. Distracted as the two lovers were, they failed to notice his observation from the trees.

The king was no smarter and no more fit than any other man. But the knowing of secrets itself created a kind of cunning, and before his most beloved—but most willful—second-wife came to this secret place, he was already here, secured to watch her.

He had of course always wondered at her insistence on this visit. And it did not escape his notice that she shouldn’t know such a place existed to begin with. That some people knew was unsurprising—no matter how grave the penalty, there was no such thing as a secret that went forever unshared, because a secret that no one knew ceased to exist.

But this woman had known before she came here. Had asked about it mere days after her arrival, when she’d have had no time to discover it through ordinary means. This always troubled him.

He didn’t know what he expected while spying on her. The words he overheard—and the sights that he saw—filled him with a rage that shocked him in its purity. He wanted to pour that wrath onto both of them and watch them burn underneath it. To see their bodies blacken and curl into themselves. He imagined destroying the both with a word, a look—a thought.

But he didn’t. Instead he left. The king returned to his own chambers. He waited. It was a long time until his second-wife returned to hers, but he was patient. And while he waited, he watched.

***

She was not surprised when soldiers came for her that morning. She said nothing, surrendering to arrest without complaint or comment, and in silence they led her away.

They didn’t take her to the lowest prisons, the worst prisons, where those who most angered the king lingered for decades without seeing the sun, until they became strange, pale things no longer quite human. Her prison was one where the prisoners might have hope again of ever seeing freedom.

But she wasn’t fooled; the king didn’t intend to release her, no more than he ever meant to free the Watcher itself. But she was still carrying his child, and the king—who was not a god, and would not rule forever, and whose beard already showed marks of gray—wanted her healthy until it came.

The cell they brought her to had one narrow window, barely more than a slit in the wall, and that slit opened onto another wall just opposite hers. But there was the smallest bit of sky visible at the very top of the opening, and she spent all day kneeling on the hard stones and looking up at it.

She waited. She watched. And eventually the blue square turned the color of dusk, and then it became the black of night, and there was even a star that peered down. And after waiting and watching at that barest of windows all day and part of the night—

The door to her cell opened. Although it was almost too dark to see anything—there was no light here at all—the silhouetted shape in the doorway revealed who her visitor must be:

The Watcher.

It held its hand out to her. She took it, and together they left the prison. No soldier stood in their way. None seemed even to know that they were there.

Just as easily as they left that place they entered the palace again, coming all the way to the king’s bedchamber. He slept alone tonight, with a light burning, like a child, and his face looked fitful.

The Watcher handed her a knife—the same one she’d used to open the bodies of the sacrificial animals. Poised over the bed, she waited until the king stirred and moved his head just far enough to reveal the soft spot beneath his chin…

His eyes sprang open in alarm the moment the tip of the blood touched his skin, and in another instant his screams would have brought the palace down on them—but it was too late by then. Her knife pushed in and severed his tongue, and all that came from his lips was a gush of blood.

Together, they bound the king hand and foot, hanging him from the ceiling with his own bedsheets. Working swiftly and with rigor, she used the sacrificial knife to open up his body and pour his entrails out onto the floor.

Here, in the sacrifice of a king, she found the signs of all the things to come, just as the Watcher told her she would: when crops would grow and when they would fail, when disease would come and when it would pass, and which men’s souls might brew treachery and which were truly loyal. The outcome of all endeavors before they happened.

Spilled on the floor at her feet, she saw her own destiny, and the destiny of the world, and the words on the scrolls that the gods had written, at the beginning of time and at the end. When the king’s body was discovered the next day, she was already gone. She and the Watcher both left the city, and went beyond the four corners of the world, to the invisible lands beyond.

There she found kingdoms of her own to rule, with palaces and temples to be built in her image. And there she kept knowledge not walled up in a palace or hidden in a garden or locked in the heavens, but shared it with anyone who would learn.

Some used secrets wisely, and others foolishly, to their detriment. But to everyone knowledge was free. This was her only tenet. And here they gave her another new name: “Ishtar.” Which meant the morning star.

THE END