He brought the pickax into existence, the day came forth,

He introduced labour, decreed the fate,

Upon the pickax and basket he directs the power…

Ori sat in the scriptorium practising combinations of wedges in soft clay. Bidi was very pleased with Ori: he'd never seen such neat writing. Ori found the process of combining vertical, horizontal, and corner wedges to make complex words and sentences fascinating. Ori found the content of most texts less interesting.

Lists, lists, lists. Ridiculous stories about imaginary gods. Customer service complaints. Liturgical texts. And fart jokes.

Ori found the Warkan sense of humour totally unappealing.

It's worse than that, Prajapati chuckled. 4000 years from now, learned scholars from museums will be trying to understand those fart jokes. They'll write papers about them, with footnotes.

I've been wondering about something, thought Ori in the direction of Prajapati. Ori had found that scriptorium work was conducive to discussions with the unseen travel guide as long as Ori remembered not to say anything aloud.

Prajapati, why do you keep referring to things that happen in the future? It's confusing.

Prajapati responded with something combining a chuckle and a sigh. It made Ori's head tickle. My problem, kid, is that I'm outside of time. It's part of why I can't get in there to fix things. I can see the whole thing at once, so I get more than a few doses of back-vectored irony. When I'm watching you, I can even tease out a few strands and see where this is going. But if we're going to troubleshoot the issue we need to play it out.

Ori understood about half of that.

Around noon, Bidi let the scribes have the rest of the day off for the New Year's holiday. Since they had no duties to perform, not being 'initiated into the mysteries' yet, whatever that meant, they were free to go and have fun, whatever constituted fun in Warka. They even got pocket money. Ori decided to wander about the busy streets and see what he could find that might help Prajapati sort out this floor of The Building.

Ori bought some grilled vegetables on pita from a local stand and sat down on a bench to eat. The vegetables were yummy, served hot with just the right amount of spices and a cool yoghurt sauce. Ori watched the people passing by and the veggie stand owner's kids playing with hoops. One of them, a little girl about five with curly blonde hair, was in earnest conversation with a crow that hung around the stand picking up titbits to eat.

The crow peered up at the little girl. 'Bwaaack!'

The little girl spoke back. 'Caw!'

The crow seemed to think. Then it replied, clearly, 'Caw,' in a human voice.

The little girl's eyes got wide as saucers. Then, outraged, she ran to her mother. 'Mama, Mama! That crow is MOCKING me!!'

Ori almost fell off the bench laughing.

'Oh, Anunit,' laughed her mother, and to Ori, 'She's…got her own way of doing things.' The mother, whose name was Zimah, sat down with Ori and chatted. In spite of Prajapati's warnings, both men and women from the Warka working classes appeared to be outgoing, egalitarian, and friendly. Soon Zimah's husband Enli joined them, leaving the booth in the care of his oldest son Dagan, who looked to be about eight. Ori learned the names of the smaller children: Zana, six, and her brothers Gibil, three, and little Zu, a one-year-old tied to Zimah's apron strings so that he wouldn't wander off.

'He's very friendly,' Zimah said. 'Sometimes too friendly.' The baby laughed and proved the statement by clutching Ori's knee and bursting into happy giggles. Ori laughed, too.

'What a lovely family you have!' Ori said.

'Are you new in the city?' asked Enli. Ori nodded. 'Then you must come with us to see the festivities. As soon as the noon rush is over, we'll close up and go watch the parade.' Ori thought this sounded delightful. While the parents and Dagan attended to their business, Ori babysat Zu and let Anunit tell him many (possibly untrue) things about the gods.

'Gods eat pancakes,' said Anunit, and Ori agreed, yes, the gods definitely liked pancakes. 'And they get mad when Dagan doesn't play with me. So it's okay when I steal his toys and throw them in the goats' food so the goats eat them.'

Ori was less sure about that, but decided to leave family politics to Enli and Zimah.

'The boss god is Marduk,' asserted Anunit. 'His priest gets to hit the king today.'

Ori found this particular assertion extremely hard to believe, but let it slide. Ori and the kids played button buzz, whirling a clay button on a string until it made a buzzing sound. The children clapped in delight when Ori succeeded in making the sound. Then Enli and Zimah called that things were all packed up and the family, with Ori in tow, headed for the centre of town.

The crowd was enormous. The procession was colourful: priests from all the temples dressed in their finest and most imaginative, carrying or pulling impressive statues of all the gods. The statues were of course very clean: even the household gods were well-washed three times a day after meals. There were no dirty gods in Werka. After all, there was plenty of water.

Speaking of water, the procession was headed in the direction of the Euphrates River. The crowds followed, singing along with the musicians. Ori thought it was a nice song¹.

The procession reached the river. Before they were ready to carry the statues onto the boats, the chief priest came out to bless the statue of Marduk, the 'boss god', as Anunit called him. The king was with him in his finest robes. The king got down on the ground and prostrated himself before the statue of Marduk. When he stood up, he faced the chief priest.

The music stopped. Everybody held their breath. It was so quiet you could hear a brass pin drop.

Ori couldn't believe what happened next.

Anunit was right: the chief priest slapped the king across the face – as hard as he could.

And the king just stood there.

The crowd was deadly quiet. But then the chief priest leaned over and inspected the king's face. He nodded in satisfaction. With a finger, he carefully touched the tears on the king's face and held his hand up to indicate that yes, there were tears. This was apparently a good omen.

A cheer went up from the crowd. Everybody cheered for the god, the chief priest, and the king. The ceremony was successful: there would be good crops. The loading of the statues onto the boats began. The priests and government officials followed onto the boats. The boats started their journey to the big temple downriver. The crowd began to break up.

O-kayyy, said Prajapati. That was something new.

Ori didn't know what to think about it all.

Dmitri Gheorgheni