You, Inanna, are a young girl and a woman and a crone all at once. That is the wonder of the gods, that they can be so many things without effort, when we poor mortals struggle to be more than one thing at a time. You never lost your girlhood, as I did. There never came the day when your whole life changed as did mine. When the girl named Joy became a memory, when the lacuna ended and the lines took up again. Was I already old then? Perhaps I became an old woman when the king my father’s steward came for me, with two guards hefting spears at his left and right, while I was eating figs with my ladies in the shade of an acacia tree. The day the steward bowed before me and told me to come with him, that my father had requested my presence.

I should have demanded to know the reason why. I should have turned and ran and let them chase after me, hot on my heels as the gallu-demons chased Dumuzid through the desert. I should have cursed or spat or called for help or god or Baramu. But I was a girl, and girls never think anything will happen to them, never realize they will not be girls any longer. Princesses most of all. So I did not ask why my father had sent armed guards to escort me to him, nor why his steward placed a firm hand on my shoulder as he led me away.

I bid my friends farewell and followed as he led me through the garden gates with their bronze inlays, up the many steps and down the long corridor with its dizzying bricks of red and blue and gold and black and white. We walked past stone lions and garish painted demons, eagle-headed guardians clutching pinecones and pails of holy river-water, goggle-eyed Pazuzu with his serpent penis and his talons pointing up and down, the mantra of the augurs, as above, so below. We walked past the slaves and servants of the Great Household, past courtiers who stared at me more than usual, whose eyes almost burned the semblance of modesty into me, across sparkling tiles that spelled out again and again SHARRU-KIN THE GREAT. We walked past my father’s throne room, past the stair to his private apartments, past any place where he might normally have received me.

And I did not ask “Where are you taking me?” No, not until we had passed out of the Inner Gate, and the Lesser Gate, and the Outermost Gate, so that we were out of the palace altogether. Not until I saw the king’s private docks on the Idiqlat and the shining city beyond it. Not until I saw the great longship with white sails and a red hull roped there and the figures that stood beside it with a brace of guards, splendid in their robes of royal red, in their shining jewelry of amethyst and lapis, malachite and carnelian. Two small boys and two strapping young men, beside a king like a sword.

Then I asked it, when I saw my family. “Where are you taking me?” and the steward did not answer, and gripped my shoulder tighter. Then I asked again, and again, and my voice cracked and grew frantic and I fought to pull away from the steward’s grip but the guards laid their hands on me as well, and for the first time in my short and stupid pampered life, I knew fear.

“Where are you taking me? Where are you taking me?” I said it over and over. It was the only thing I could think to say, the words became my own mantra. Perhaps the gods would answer. As above, so below. I thought of the story of the rape of Lady Wind, whom Enlil dragged crying and pleading from her father’s house, who bore him Nergal and Ninazu and Enbilulu, gods of death and stagnant water, of deception and tears. But my father was before me, and the rest of my family as well! I scanned their faces but my father was a chunk of diorite, my twin brothers princes, my other brothers boys.

As one the guards and steward bowed before my father, forcing me likewise to my knees. My father! My father, the True King. Had I done something to offend him? I scarcely knew how to speak to him, and could think of no reason, unless--but it was impossible. There had been no one in the gardens to see Baramu and I, I was nearly sure of it, unless Ishtar herself had seen it, unless the shade of my grandfather still lurked in gardens, whispering advice to the planters. Could my father’s wrath have been roused so quickly? And if it had, what was the reason for this strange pretext? For the ship, which I now saw was fully staffed with oarsmen on either side and bore a carven image of Ishtar at its head?

Foolish girl! Why think of Baramu? That was over already, his many colors wasted, and the mind of the True King made up and your fate sealed like a stamp in wet clay on the lip of an oil jar. The guards and steward stepped away from me, keeping their heads inclined and never turning away from their King.

“It is ten days’ sail from Akkade to Ur,” said my father the King, using the northern name of the city I now call Urim. He did not move towards me. “Down the Idiqlat, then west along the coast to the mouth of the Purattu. The preparations have already been made. Lugal Kaku of Ur shall receive you and lead you in triumph to the House of the Great Light, the Temple of the Moon. You shall have every comfort along the way, women to attend you and guards to protect you. Your brother Manishtushu has agreed to be your escort.”

Manishtushu stepped forward and took my hand. “You should rejoice, sister. You are to be married.”

My heart stopped. Married! I remembered the foolish prattle of the other young maidens of the court, who whispered and giggled to one another about my twin brothers, who dreamed of spreading their legs to let strong young princes in and spreading them again to push strong young princes out. I was a princess, I was the princess, the only one, Princess of the World. And who was this Lugal Kaku? Lugal, Great Man, was a name my father had not managed to kill altogether, though he had changed its meaning. The petty kings of Sumer were all Lugal before my father took away their crowns, and now they were Lugal still, but it meant governor, not king. Was I to be married off, then, to the Great Man of Ur? I had seen several of the Lugals of the South when they came to lay tribute before my father at court, but I could not place this one’s name or face. For all I knew Lugal Kaku was as fat as a water buffalo, as old as Utnapishtim who ate the Plant of Life. I thought of Baramu and my hand on his chest in the gardens of the palace. It seemed to have happened a long time ago.

“The En of Ur, the Chief Wife of the Moon, is dead,” said my father. “An ancient woman, sister to Lugal Kaku’s grandmother. It has long been custom for the kings of Ur to name ladies of their bloodline to the office of High Priestess. But now Ishtar has smiled on us, and Lugal Kaku, a true friend of his King, has made me a gracious offer. Ur is the pride of my Empire, the greatest port of the South, and Sin its greatest god. The Moon must have a wife in Ur and she must have the blood of kings. But now there are no more kings in Ur, nor princesses. There is only one true king in this land, and only one king’s daughter.”

My eyes widened. “Father,” I said, only the one word, though in that instance, more than ever before or after, he was not my father but my king. I broke away from my brother’s comforting hand. I took a faltering step backwards and said, “Please.” Though in my heart I was saying Baramu, Baramu. Every city had a god, and each male god had his High Priestess who planned his festivals and led his praises and fed and clothed the statues of his temple. In the cities of goddesses, like my father’s own, it was the king himself who was married to the goddess, who lavished gifts on her temple and claimed to rule by her favor. But though a king could share his bed with Ishtar as much as with his rival’s widows and any other plunder, the mortal wife of a god could have no mortal lover. It was not to a governor husband that my father was condemning me; it was to the cold light of the moon, and I was not certain which was worse.

“I will not,” I said softly. Then, louder, “I will not do it! Please, Father--Manish, Rimush, I…” I fought to keep my voice from breaking, and my words when they came out were the petulant words of a spoiled child. “I don’t want to be a priestess. I’ve never even been to Ur! I don’t want to leave Akkade, or you, or--” Baramu, Baramu, Baramu! At court my mother had taught us to refer to Sharru-kin as “my king” and Highness, but now I called him Father, only Father, in the hopes that he would feel it in his heart. But his heart was the heart of a king, as hard as the bones of the Zagros Mountains.

My father placed his hand on my shoulder. It was a simple gesture, such as any father might give his daughter, yet I had never felt anything so heavy. His eyes met mine, and he said, “You will do as your king commands you. You will go to Ur and marry the moon god and care for his temple. You will claim the Enship of Ur and bring the South firmly to your family’s side.”

I looked upon them, my family, who had been told about my marriage before I was. I wanted to shriek and tear my hair like your unnameable sister beneath the earth. I was not sure whether to feel relieved that one of my brothers would be with me. “But father,” I said, blinking back tears. “It--it has long been my wish to marry. To give you grandsons.” Perhaps if I reminded him I was a girl still, and worth something to him? But of course, it was because of my value that he had already sold me.

“I have four sons,” he said. “I shall have grandsons aplenty who carry my name. Say your farewells.”

My two little brothers ran to me. I knelt down to hold them and told them I would visit them, that they would see me. My father held out his arm, stiffly, and I kissed him as I kissed stone idols in the temples of the gods, with a dry and solemn duty.

I turned to my eldest brother. Rimush took my face in his hands, already rough with the business of learning to be king, and looked at me, and in his eyes I saw a pity that made me want to weep. “It is not easy for us, who found empires,” he said, and I knew that he meant it. “We stand alone, so that others may come after. There will be princes and princesses alike in this land, someday, but now there is only you. You are the Princess of the World. The only princess. Who is fit to be your husband? No governor or his son is good enough for you, nor any foreigner from over the mountains. Would you marry one of your brothers like the red heathens of Musur? You, poor maiden, are the blood of the True King, and you have no fit husband but a god.”

After that there was nothing I could say because I knew that he was right. At least, he seemed right at the time. I was proud, in those days, though not so proud that I did not have the same dreams and desires as any other young girl. So I took Manish’s offered hand and boarded the ship, thoughtfully provided with a retinue of slaves and retainers, with my bridal chest and my offerings for Lugal Kaku packed away with my hatred and resentment for ballast, with my girlhood dissipating like steam. And that night I wept on a linen bedroll as the light of my betrothed streamed in through the window.