"إذن، أنت," Barra Sohail said after opening the door to her apartment and seeing the young girl she had known now grown into a woman. So, it is you.
Beth nodded her head as her ears took in the Arabic dialect that she had not heard for years. It was the only answer she felt she could give the old woman that did not end with her crushing Barra's head like a grape.
Barra walked deliberately back into her small home. She winced as she settled gingerly into an overstuffed chair that was faded and worn while she continued to speak in her native tongue. Her voice had gotten thinner in the decades since Beth had last heard it. "My daughter is not here, and I do not know where she is."
Beth closed the door behind her and took a breath before testing her voice. If Barra suspected how close she was to death she gave no indication. "I'm not here for Safiyah, I'm here for you."
Barra took her cue from Beth and switched to English, which she still spoke with a heavy accent. Beth wondered how often the old witch spoke it now that she was as close to retired as any former member of The Many Arms of Death could be. "If it is revenge you seek, then you should be speaking to Lilith. I had you for a short time. Or was she the previous stop on your road of retribution? Am I the next name on your list? Did Safiyah precede me, or does she come after? How many more deaths must occur until this debt is marked paid?"
"Tell me about my mother," Beth said flatly. If Barra hadn't been concerned for her safety before, then Beth's words, spoken like a pronouncement of death, erased any doubt in the old woman's mind. Beth could see the blood leave Barra's face. But when she spoke again her voice was steady.
"I see. Finally you have begun to put the pieces together, and they have led you here."
Beth waited. She glanced at the plastic bottle of pills on the side table. The powerful woman she had known in her youth was no more immune to the ravages of time than anyone.
Barra looked up at the dangerous woman who was standing before her. Beth's eyes chilled her to the bone. Her hand shook as she indicated the other chair in the room with a skeletal hand. Beth took her cue and sat down.
"Very well. What do you know of Asherah?"
Beth had never heard the name before. "Who?"
"She was consort to Yahweh by all accounts. She is referred to as The Mother Goddess."
Beth's shaking head when she replied. "Mother Lilith's catechism for her daughters didn't cover ancient Hebrew lore."
"The Hurrian's called her Hebat, the mother of all living. She was considered a goddess in ancient Semitic religions."
Beth's voice was thick with skepticism. "A goddess. Really."
"In ancient times any woman wielding such power was labeled a goddess. Asherah was very gifted, some would say blessed."
Beth had sat through enough of Barra's lectures in her abused youth, and had no desire to repeat the experience. It took effort for her to unclench her jaw before speaking.
"Fascinating. Really. I'm on the edge of my seat. But it's not what I asked you."
"Your manners have not improved I see. Neither has your patience. You asked me a question. May I be allowed to answer it?"
Beth's body was a wound spring. She took in the room where they sat. It was filled with a life's worth of collected odds and ends. Old wallpaper. Places where pictures once hung, their outlines marked by dark stains. A threadbare carpet that had lost most of its color. The smell of recent incense lingered in the drapes and upholstery. And, surprisingly, an old framed photo of Beth and Safi. The shock of that picture acted almost like a narcotic on Beth's psyche as her mind flashed back to the summer that picture had been taken. When her vision returned to Barra she was calmer, her voice formal.
"I apologize. Please continue."
"Asherah's teachings began the practice of Kabbalah Ma'asit. It was permitted by practitioners who were powerful enough to reject influences that were qlippoth, evil, and embrace those that were holy and pure, tumah and taharah.
Kate should be sitting through this, not me. She might at least understand some of it, Beth thought.
She leaned forward, elbows on knees. The old assassin still smelled like gardenia. It was a fragrance she would always associate with Barra. And Safi. She remained silent and allowed her former teacher to continue.
"The practice continues to this day amongst the dwindling community of those women skilled enough to apply it."
"Groups like that still exist? After all this time?"
"Yes. Through careful planning."
"What sort of planning."
"We will come to that in a moment. Be patient just a bit longer."
Beth dipped her head once in reply.
"You may also know that Halakha forbids divination. But the Talmud condemns many practices that persist to this day. The most common being oneiromancy, the prophetic interpretation of dreams.
Beth sat straight up, and her heart began to race.
dreams
Do you begin to understand why it is I tell you this?"
"I asked you to tell me about my mother," Beth said as he mind resisted making the connection. A chill ran through her body, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention.
Divination. Dreams.
"That you did, and I began by speaking of a goddess who walked this land five thousand years ago. There must be a connection. You were always a bright student. Tell me what it is."
She couldn't bring herself to speak the words. She could barely think of the possibility without screaming.
"Must I draw you a heraldic tree that you may see for yourself the line that connects Gabrielle Kane, and you, to The Mother Goddess?"
Barra stood before walking stiffly to the ancient stove in her small kitchen and began to make coffee in the traditional way, putting powder-fine grounds into an ibrik that seemed just as old as the stove on which it sat before filling it with water from a clear glass jar and turning on the flame.
Beth was light headed when she stood and followed Barra into her tiny kitchen. Her hands felt cold, as if she was going into shock. When she spoke her voice was unsteady and sounded strange to her ears.
"What was your connection with her? What did you want with her? What did you want with us?"
"The answers to those questions begins with your heritage, child. You are daughters of Asherah. You and your twin sister, as Gabrielle was. That is why we wanted you. We wanted your power."
"Did you get all that?" Beth asked Julia several minutes later. She had verified their secure connection just before knocking on Barra's door. But the old section of the city was known to have terrible reception for a host of transmission types.
Her friend's voice, so familiar in her ears from countless missions, was a welcome comfort as she walked away from Barra's front door.
"We got it all. Kate might need to go back and rewatch some of it. She's pretty upset. I'm not doing so great either."
The temperature was in the upper fifties, the skies overcast and threatening more rain. Beth was wearing a leather jacket that still bore traces of the last burst of showers. Barra's small apartment had been quite warm, and Beth was enjoying the coolness of the late November breeze as her mind replayed what Barra said.
"We sought out your mother. She declined to help us. We thought to try again, but failed. She was very powerful. She could see what we intended, and the potential outcome, as if it was written in plain text. She avoided both easily."
Beth's mind replayed the image of her mother standing in their bedroom doorway as she continued to walk. Her tone of voice had been conversational when she'd said, maybe you should ask Barra. Nothing to indicate the revelations that would come from the suggestion. She had no way of knowing that the same thoughts were going through Kate's head.
"When she became pregnant we saw another path. Once again we were denied when she bore twin girls."
"You just said we were daughters of Asherah. Me and Kate," Beth had answered defensively. "What was denied you?"
"Asherah's blood runs in your veins. But you are only half of a whole. Your mother's power would have been passed down entirely if she had borne only one of you. But she did not. It is divided, and in such a state it is useless."
"Useless," Beth said.
Useless, Kate thought. Then Mom died for nothing. What was the fucking point?
Her own heart had begun to race when Barra had spoken her daughter's name.
"Or so we thought. There was a way. That path opened when you and your sister began to bloom, and your powers began to flower. It was then that we attempted to take you."
Brick buildings loomed over her on both sides, their coatings of plaster or stucco showing gaps. She walked down the narrow street, a succession of stone steps guiding her in the direction of the sea.
"How are you doing?" Julia asked, bringing Beth back to the here and now.
The few rays of the sun that found their way through the clouds failed to reach Beth and the other pedestrians nearby. "I'm not sure. Probably not any better than Kate. Jesus. Did you know any of that beforehand?"
"No, but I'm not Jewish. And I'm not up on ancient Hebrew goddesses. Yahweh's girlfriend, for crying out loud."
Barra's voice was still echoing in Beth's mind when the sea came into view.
"The rest you know. We failed to acquire both of you, and it was either both or none. I should have killed you. I had planned to, in order to keep your power out of the hands of others, should someone else succeed where I had failed. But I was weak. I had grown fond of you. So I gave you to Lilith, expecting that you would not survive the training. But you flourished."
Barra had been stirring the mixture in the coffee pot as she spoke. She turned off the flame and brought the pot and two diminutive cups to her small kitchen table.
"Sit," she said as she poured into each cup.
Beth sat across from the woman who had taken her, only to reject her and give her to Lilith. Barra sipped her coffee and Beth, out of habit more than desire, did the same before she spoke again.
"Why didn't you ask for me back?" Beth asked. Even after all these years she still felt hurt that Barra had given her to Lilith. "You didn't need me anymore?"
"I needed both of you, your combined gift to foretell what was to come. But we failed and the moment of need passed. One more failure in a long list of failures that involved your mother, and then you."
Beth thought back to that night. The night that she'd been taken. The night her mother died. IT was a failure to Barra. It was a life altering tragedy to Kate and Beth.
"Many lives were lost because of my failure. I barely survived. No, I never asked for you back. In any event, Lilith would never had parted with you. She loved you too much, as did Safiyah; and separating the two of you...my daughter would have hated me to eternity and back again if I had taken you away from her, and as I said, by then it was pointless."
Beth had heard of the culling of the The Many Arms of Death. Barra was reported killed. It was more than a year later when Beth learned Barra still lived. "Did Lilith know? Did Safiyah?"
Each mention of her name was like a dagger in Kate's heart, a sharp reminder of what she'd found, only to lose it.
"Lilith knew of our interest in you and your sister, but not the reason. Safiyah knew nothing at all."
Beth took some measure of comfort in that knowledge. She and Safiyah had been inseparable, two Daughters of Lilith that had entered together, survived together, and graduated to the highest levels of the order together. They had become lovers after a time, a common occurrence in communities comprised solely of women. For both of them it had been their first. For Beth it was still her longest. Ten years, just about, since they had parted. Beth assumed Safi had found someone else, at least Beth hoped she had. She knew how terrible it was to be alone.
أنت جميلة, Safi had said, almost the first thing that she had taught Beth in Arabic, وأنا أحبك. you're beautiful, and I love you.
أحبك أيضًا, she had replied. Many of the first Arabic words she had learned from Safi had been words of love. In that respect they had been the most common of lovers. But in all other ways their relationship was unique. I love you too
"Does my father know?"
"About your mother? I assume so. He is a part of your heritage, tifl. Jacob can also trace his lineage back to Asherah, much good may it do him. He inherits nothing from it directly, being merely male. But you do indirectly, as your sister does. If Gabrielle had born one girl she would have inherited immense power, courtesy of both her parents lineage. You asked what sort of planning kept Asherah's communities alive. That sort of planning. The careful study, and joining, of bloodlines.
Beth didn't believe it. "You brought my parents together so they could have a powerful daughter?"
"I?, no Isha. That plan was the product of another mind. I merely sought to take advantage of another's efforts. But it was not to be.إرادة الله ربما. Who can say. I shudder to think what could have happened if you had possessed such power. You were such a damaged creature, you could have done much harm. You seem changed now; calm. I will not say serene, since you still have my murder on your mind, but you appear to have mastered your demons." God's will, perhaps
Beth sat stunned for almost a full minute.
"Finish your coffee, Isha'," Barra said, "then do whatever it is you have come to do."
Beth drank her coffee down until the mud layer at the bottom was visible. She had learned long ago not to venture farther than that. She hated the feeling of sand between her teeth.
"I've already done it," Beth said as she stood and walked through the small wooden door, leaving the dim light of the interior for the overcast skies of Sidi El Houari. She had come seeking information about her mother. In that respect her mission was a success. It was the sheer weight of what she'd learned that caused her to walk on unsteady legs.
She pulled her keffiyeh up to protect her head and face from the Sun's rays, as well as the eyes of any observers. In the distance the Fort of Santa Cruz stood guard over Oran and the Alboran Sea. Beth noticed little of it, her mind still held captive by everything she had heard.
Beth didn't really believe any of it, certainly not the biblical aspects of it. But she knew Kate did, and she should have realized that her sister would be much more affected by what she'd heard. "One of us, Kate or I, needs to have a very uncomfortable conversation with our dad."
Julia had started Googling as soon as Barra began explaining. She was busy putting together a dossier on Asherah and Kabbalah Ma'asit as well as anything remotely resembling reports of women prophets from Semitic countries in the past two hundred years. It was one of her coping mechanisms, she knew; it suited her better than punching a heavy bad, or running.
"How did Barra come to know all of this? It's not like she could look up birth records in a database, or follow a long line of begettings in some obscure Dead Sea Scroll," Julia said.
"I can think of a few ways, starting with her knowing my mom, maybe my mom's mom. She said Daughters of Asherah. Daughters, plural. A group of women. Dating back five thousand years. Groups like that keep records."
"Could be how they tracked down your mom. Might be how they knew about your dad. But would he have known? His power never developed, him being a lowly male and all. He would never have felt the need to ask what was happening to him, since nothing actually happened to him."
"Shit," Beth said as she stopped dead in her tracks, "his powers. His powers, that he said turned on when he was fourteen; and there was no one who could tell him what was happening. No one he could ask. No one there to teach him, or guide him."
Beth was confused. "You dad?"
"No, Aric. Except that he's a man, it fits. It's the same thing."
"But your abilities, if they'd developed, would have involved seeing the future, predicting it. Interpreting dreams for...Jesus," Julia said before stopping as her mind went back to the conversation she and Beth had had, when Beth had told her about Kate's confession, "dreams."
"You read my mind, no pun intended."
"Kate started having them again when you came back, but they got stronger after you and Aric..."
"After he pried my mind open and reassembled it."
"But dreams, seeing the future, does he do that? He can do...well...a lot. But can he do that?"
"I don't know. He may not know. He's never talked about it. It's not like he came with an owner's manual. He can sense things remotely; things, and places. It's how he travels. Could there be commonalities buried in those two sets of abilities that we're not seeing, his and my mom's?"
"I don't know, and right now I don't care. Please come home now. You've done what you went there to do. Kate needs you here. I need you here."
"I'll be home in a few," Beth said as she looked at her smart watch which she has set to show both local time and Chicago time.
1:05 PM local time, 6:05 AM Chicago time.
"Maybe we can get breakfast?" she asked.
"Anything you want, just come home now."
Beth ended the call after promising to come home. But she took some time to simply breathe. Her steps took her closer to the Oran Seafront where she eventually stopped, looking out over the blue water. She didn't need an ability to predict that she had two uncomfortable conversations in her future.
Kate was upset, though not only for the reasons Julia assumed. The details about her ancestry, hers and Beth's, and their mother's, was enough to put anyone into a tailspin. Add in that fact's connection to their mom's death, and their abduction - which had partly succeeded, robbing Beth and Kate of two decades of shared existence. But what had shocked Kate Kane so strongly that she felt her heart stop momentarily was hearing the name of her former girlfriend, Safiyah; and not just her name, but her connection with Beth as well.
my daughter would have hated me to eternity and back again if I had taken you away from her.
Could they be the same woman? she wondered even though in her heart she knew the answer to that question.
How long? Kate wondered, How long had they been lovers, and how long once they'd parted before Safi found me?
It finally made sense. Safi's reaction to seeing her, to meeting her. How they seemed to naturally fit together, like two mating pieces of a puzzle. How happy they'd been until one day Kate came home and Safi didn't. Kate had been too busy keeping her own secrets to notice that Safiya had her own well hidden skeletons.
Is that why we were so happy? Both of us lived double lives, and we were free to do so because we never asked the questions a normal couple would have asked? Where were you? What were you doing? I was so happy she never questioned me. I guess she was just as happy, and for the same reason.
Kate had looked for her for two days, after which normal people would have filed a missing person's report. But Kate Kane was not normal, and she knew that any formal report would shine a spotlight on her, and that was the last thing she needed. She'd used her contacts to find out that no one matching Safiyah's description had turned up in any hospital, or on a stainless steel table in the medical examiner's office. It was like she'd just vanished. No note, no nothing. She hadn't even taken her clothes, not that there had been much to take. Kate never understood what happened or why. Until now. Safiyah Salomon, aka Safiyah Sohail, daughter of Barra Sohail, former head of The Many Arms of Death. Former girlfriend of Elizabeth, and then later Katherine, Kane. Safi hadn't been interested in her. She'd been interested in Beth, or the next best thing. Was that it? Safi had finally realized that Kate and Beth were different animals, as well as different people; too different? Was that why she left? Because I wasn't Beth?
Christ this is so fucked up. I knew Kara before Beth did, Beth knew Safi before I did. Beth's jealous of Kara, and now I'm jealous of Beth. How is she gonna react when she finds out about me and...
No, that was definitely not a good idea. Kate hadn't seen Safiyah in ten years. No way of knowing when Beth saw her last without asking her, and no fucking way she was going to do that. It sounded like Safi's own mother didn't know where she was.
They might be descended from a fucking goddess, and all she could think about was that Safiyah had been with Beth before she'd been with her. How fucked up was that? And on top of that every time Beth and Aric had sex Kate had a front row telepathic...
What the fuck was happening to them?