The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin

Author:Stephen M. Irwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction Suspense
ISBN: 9780385534659
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Gelareh Barirani squinted in the doorway. Her hair was an electric frizz, and a little spot of dried saliva rode the corner of her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Oscar said. He’d forgotten that she was a shift worker. “I’ll come back.”

“It’s okay,” she replied, pulling her hair back from her face. He watched her eyes rove over his cut and bruised face. He had washed and changed, but combing his blood-matted hair had hurt like hell, and he was sure the job looked less than half done.

“Rough night?”

“Interesting night,” he replied.

She stood aside and let him in. “Tea?”

His stomach was still a precarious tightrope, but he nodded. She went to the kitchen and put water on the gas flame.

“I got your better photos,” she said. “But I haven’t had much time to work on them.”

“I have something else, aside from those,” he said. “Quite a tricky thing.” He lifted the clanking plastic bag and pointed to her tabletop. “May I?”

She nodded.

Oscar set aside the candlesticks and placed the bag in the middle of the table. He folded it down, revealing the dozens of earthenware fragments.

Gelareh sauntered over. “This is not old pottery,” she said, inspecting the edges. “Contemporary. Brand-new, I think. Recently broken.”

“Yes,” Oscar agreed.

She looked at him archly.

“An accident,” he said, shivering at the memory of the leathery, sharp-clawed foot that had flung the bag with such purpose into the oilcans.

Gelareh began picking over the potsherds with careful fingers. “So, what was it?”

“I’m not sure. Some kind of idol. About yea high; this round. That’s a horn there. It has two horns.”

“A bull?” She began sliding pieces together.

“A demon, I think. An owl. Wings. But it’s a she.”

Gelareh’s eyebrows rose a little.

“Breasts?” she asked. “Sex organs?”

“Both. Quite exposed. And a seven-pointed star on her back.”

The corners of the researcher’s mouth turned down. And suddenly her fingers stopped moving. She leaned closer.

“This is writing.” Her fingers traced the patterns that Oscar had mistaken for feathers or scales. She looked up at Oscar. She was smiling. “I can read this,” she said.

“You can put it back together? Translate?”

“Transliterate,” she murmured, excited. “Again, it’s not just one language.” She leaned close. “Wait.”

“What is it?”

She headed over to the shelves at the side of the room.

“I found something like this on your photographs.” She returned with the blowups and tracings. “From the girl. I didn’t know if I was reading right, but now I think I am. So, here.”

On the paper were small traced ligatures that looked like arrowheads and staves. She pointed.

“This here, it looked to me very much like Akkadian cuneiform.”

“Arcadia?”

“Akkadia. The empire before Assyria and Babylonia. About 2400 BC. Akkadian has a small alphabet—fourteen consonants, four vowel sounds.” She picked up a shard of pottery and her fingers traced over the wedge-shaped symbols.

“What does it say?”

“Door,” she replied, delighted. “And that ties in with the vévés, don’t you think? And this, I’m almost sure it’s Assyrian cuneiform. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. It says, Li-lit. Lilith.”

“Lilith?”

“Lilith, the first wife of Adam.

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