In The Shrine of the Vulture
by
Theresa C. Dintino
Çatal Hüyük, Anatolia
7000 B.C.E.
The room is quiet. I sit on the smaller platform. The larger one, the one smeared with red ochre is Ana’s. Her coverlet is spread neatly upon it. Its pattern of red spirals inside black lozenges stretches flat across it as though she pulled it up this morning after she got out of bed, neatly folding up the corners and edges with her long-fingered hands.
I yawn, awakening reluctantly as I do every morning. I used to watch Ana arrange her long, nut-brown hair into a plait upon her head while she sang, “The sun is up and so are we.”
Now, there is only silence.
I dress, remembering how I looked forward to her standing over me, her kind, russet face smiling down upon me as she said, “Come, Sera, there is much we must do.”
Morning light flows through the window high in the east wall. It trips down the rungs of the ladder that leans against the opening in the roof. I recall the soft scratching sound her feet made on that ladder as she left before me every day for morning meal.
I have done my work. I have held my role with her. I sat with Ana every day at the excarnation hut, in the place far beyond the village and fields where we built tall platforms for the newly dead. We bring the bodies there and present them to the vultures for transformation.
I went there every day. I climbed the ladder of the platform and sat with her. As the vultures pecked at Ana’s delicate skin, ate away the muscles of her long, strong legs, as they exposed her organs, and ate the porous flesh of her life-giving, horned womb, I sat with her. I brought her gifts of tumbled obsidian, small woven figurines, baked breads—anything to help her endure this most difficult transformation. I knelt with my head down praying, the hot sun beating upon my rounded back, the wood of the platform beneath me wet with my tears.
She takes whom She wants when She wants them, making a meal for Herself of the earthly flesh She has previously bestowed upon them. She ingests them back into Herself, Her long, wide wings tapping the ground clumsily as She transforms flesh that was only days before a divine being—a person of noble character, my friend—back into Earth.
I sat with her every day until her bones were cleaned by the vultures and bleached white by the sun. I waited for her. I waited with her. Now she is ready.
Today the villagers will be waiting for me. They will be watching me as, dressed as a Priestess of the Vulture, I walk to the place where Ana’s bones remain, clean and ready. It is my lead they will follow as I gather her into the basket, transporting her to the Shrine of the Vulture, returning her to Earth. Being chosen to serve as a Priestess in the Shrine of the Vulture is the highest honor in our village. Today, I would gladly give this honor away.
Our foremothers established the Shrine of the Vulture after the cataclysm. Earth had changed. The skies had changed. The planets had moved. It was a very frightening time. We did not know when the next dragon would strike. Food was harder to achieve. Unlike before where everything grew abundantly always, we now had to work to feed ourselves. The change in the skies made people weak and unable to thrive. Death was everywhere.
So much death means so many vultures, cleaning up Earth, returning us to ourselves, Earth to Earth. They flourished, birds that eat pain. They came in flocks that darkened the skies to take care of our loved ones. We were grateful to them. We learned from them. There were so many dead bodies that we were no longer afraid to look and watch as the vultures ate the flesh away. Instead, we grew interested in observing the inside of human bodies, especially a woman’s womb. We were surprised to find its shape so similar to the head of a Bull, even possessing horns. We witnessed new life in various stages of development within those wombs. We learned that wombs are required for life to thrive, that all of life comes from and returns to the womb. Because of what we learned, we understood that the womb of our planet was injured in the cataclysm and that it was slowly repairing itself.
From a young age, Ana and I were aware of one another. Born in the same year, we both possessed towering height. Always, in a crowd, I would find her brown, sunlit hair bobbing above all the others, equal only to mine. I knew she was also looking for me. We were the two tallest women to walk the Konya plain. Some said we were the tallest in all of Anatolia.
Our village of connecting rooms sits on a small hill, below which snakes the clean, flowing waters of the wide and nurturing river. Parallel to the river are narrow paths between fields of cultivated grains, which lead to the towering twin cones of the mountain of molten liquids. Our village has been here for many sun-moon cycles. We have left layers of ourselves in this soil. The stories of what happened to Earth are told over and over. The traditions are passed down. Our people moved here from the north, emerging from the underground cave dwellings once the light of the sun became safe again.
When Ana and I walked side by side down the narrow path between the fields of wheat and barley, searching for fallen vulture feathers, people stopped their work in the fields and watched us. When we donned our vulture masks for sacred rituals, the feathers rising high upon our heads, almost touching the ceiling of the shrine, mourners fell to their knees in awe.
During the initiation into our roles as priestesses we became friends. We shared a room, and even a shrine, until now, until She took her back. Of course, She wanted her back.
Though we wore the same thick, fur coverings—the pelts parting in the winter winds—the same thin white dresses flowing in summer breezes, though we were the same height, age and stature, though we carried the same title within our community, it was always clear to me that Ana was more.
I never ventured beyond what I had been taught or what was expected of me. Often I did not understand what she was doing or her reasons why. I let her believe that I did.
In the evenings we sat together by the fire in the small hearth we pulled into the middle of our room, weaving sacred passage baskets, baskets to carry life known to life unknown. It is essential to return the bones to Earth. She needs them back. The baskets are the vehicles that carry the bones back to Her. We gather special grasses and sink them into the magnetized water for days. Then we weave them into baskets. We bury the baskets with the bones under the beds in our rooms to have the ancestors near when we dream.
As we wove, Ana spoke of our work. She always considered it, tried to be better at it. She was the role and the role was her. No distinction could be made. She worked with a mourner until she was confident healing had begun, sometimes stretching months into years.
I adored her grace, the way her feet landed softly upon the dirt, flecks of dust brushing up from between her rounded and smiling toes as we carried jugs of water from the river to the sun shrine where we magnetized it.
When the recently bereaved approached Ana during these walks, she remained still, one arm reaching up to hold the handle of the vessel of water upon her head as she listened. Her calm composure never once revealed the discomfort of the weight of the water on her head. It was I who made them notice, my impatience revealed in the way I shifted the weight between my feet, alternated which arm was raised to the vessel. It was I they looked at when they said, “I have kept you too long. Your load is heavy.”
She neither agreed nor disagreed, only smiled as she bid them farewell and continued on her way. I sighed at the relief of moving on.
Though Ana was completely committed and trusting, returning the young who died presented her with the greatest challenge. At those times, she retreated in solitude to the hills with her mirror, returning clean and prepared—willing. Her power was riveting in the rituals for the children, her dark brown eyes swallowing us in deep trance.
The days we journeyed to the caves in the Taurus Mountains to gather stalactites were the only time she left the work behind. By the second full day of walking, much of the seriousness left her. She followed me into bubbling streams, kicking and splashing, wore crowns of flowers on her head and danced with the deer.
Etched deep into the rock within the caves of these mountains are images of times gone by, the time before the cataclysm and of the cataclysm itself. Ana took her mirror into the caves and studied them, learned from them. I waited outside. I was afraid of them. To me, these images of huge formations in the sky, light everywhere, people dying, were terrifying. It was hard for me to think of the cataclysm, to remember it. I often had nightmares about it. The cataclysm had left me fearful. It had altered my perception of time. I was certain the past was the future. I believed it was going to happen again. Ana reassured me it was in the past but I was sure it was not. She said the caves, the images on the rocks, were teaching her, talking to her. She said I should trust her. But I did not.
I stand now and bow to the east, land of light and rising sun. I bow to the west, land of darkness, setting sun. I raise my arms high in respect for Her power. I collect my Vulture robe from the peg on my right and put it on. Feathers I have gathered cover it. It hangs around my body loosely, reaching down to my knees. When I lift my arms to wear my mask, the feathers I have attached to the sleeves spread themselves into wide wings. I adjust the mask to my face. The vulture’s beak extends out from the middle of my forehead. Feathers stand tall upon my head.
“I will leave this place soon,” Ana said to me one day a few months prior.
We were collecting obsidian from the deposit area below the mountain of molten liquids. Crouched into a squat, I moved my fingers through the dirt and debris until they landed upon a shiny black clump of rock that was big enough to hold in my palm, large enough, once polished and perfected, to reflect an image. The obsidian was for the mirrors that we use in our work: the mirrors through which we review the past and interpret possible patterns in the future. Through her interaction with the mirrors, Ana had made sure the worst was behind us.
All I could see when I looked into the mirror was trauma, vultures, death. I was not good at divining. I was told my fear got in the way. And it was true. All I saw when I looked into the mirror was my own worry.
“Leave?” I said, holding the rock up to look at it in the light.
“You will have to take my place. It is you they shall look to after I have gone.”
“Whatever are you talking about?” I said, looking at her.
The smaller pieces of obsidian we took back to the village for trade. I had them resting on my center as I searched.
“That is an absolutely unacceptable question for a Priestess in the Shrine of the Vulture,” she said calmly, still picking at the ground.
I stood up quickly, spilling the obsidian findings from my lap. She looked up at me, her hand guarding her eyes from the sun.
“I cannot possibly.” I stumbled over the words that were there but unformed inside my head. “I could never do what you do. I am not good like you.”
“You are the one they shall look to when I am gone,” she repeated, continuing to search for obsidian.
We returned later than usual that day. The sun was setting behind the cluster of white buildings that was our village, sinking into the waters of the river below it. The light spread itself pink across the fields around it. I walked slowly, dragging my feet in long scuffs behind her, my dress stained black at the center.
I climb the ladder up out of my room. I cross three rooftops, fold myself into the entrance of the fourth and descend the ladder into the Shrine of the Vulture. I build a small fire in the hearth. It sends light throughout the cool room, exposing its red floors and wooden beams. I light a bundle of grasses and begin to speak to the space with it. I reach it high into the corner where she told me things often get stuck. I walk it past the sculpture of the large horned womb of regeneration that extends out from the wall. Red meanders encircle its rounded base. Long flowing crescent horns reach up out of it. I remember gathering these horns with Ana when we were moving into our shrine. Above the horned womb is the sculpted image of a breast that Ana shaped out of clay around the beak of a vulture. Ana said that we must incorporate what we now understand, the truth about nurturing. The truth we now know about death. “Nurturing is a job for the fierce and death is but a birth,” she said as she molded the clay breast around the sharp teeth.
On the larger platform, below a mural of flying vultures, the basket I have woven for Ana’s bones sits empty, ready to receive her. I kneel before it, standing the smoking grasses into the hole in the floor and speak prayer. The painted vultures’ enormous red wings sway and shift behind the smoke that swirls in front of the mural. In the basket with her bones she insisted I bury the obsidian mirror she had worked with. She said she had hidden a memory in it, put information in it for those she had seen finding it in the future. She left a message in time, she said. She said, “Put the mirror in the basket with my bones, so that, Sera, when we find it later we can remember this. We will understand the present through this memory we are sending to ourselves in the future.”
“We and later?” I said to her.
“Put the mirror in the basket with my bones, Sera,” she repeated.
“Certainly, I will,” I said. “I will do whatever you ask of me.”
“It doesn’t mean anything unless you understand it, Sera.”
I frowned. I was mad at the mirror. The mirror had told her she would leave me.
“Death will not separate us, Sera,” she said.
I walk the dirt path toward the excarnation hut, her basket extended out upon my arms that stretch far in front of me as feathered wings. People stop what they are doing and follow behind me. The procession becomes larger and larger until it turns into a crowd. When I arrive to the platform, I gather her bones, place her fine, long arms, her tender, rounded head, into her basket in the curved position of life’s beginning, life’s end.
I descend the platform and place the basket on the ground. I dance my Vulture dance around her bones of pure clean whiteness. My wings flap, my feet move. The crowd makes itself into a circle around me.
“We must contain their pain,” she said to me one evening as we rested beneath the stars, bright and sparkling in the absence of moon. “We must take it into us and, like the vulture, digest it, returning it to them as something new, something useful.”
I lift the basket and stumble, almost dropping it. A woman in the crowd catches its falling end and hands it back to me gently. I know this woman. She is a Priestess in the Shrine of the Leopard. She knows.
Each night after I returned from the excarnation hut, I sat weaving Ana’s passage basket beside the fire. I wove and wove until my fingers stiffened, my eyes watering from the sting of prolonged openness. Then, I undid the weaving, tearing at the knots with my teeth, and slept upon the grass that I knew would hold her, would be next to her. I rubbed my face into the scratchiness of the reeds I knew had touched her, my mouth searching for her, drinking in the smell she had left upon them. I didn’t want to ever be done with the weaving because then she would be gone.
Every night as I wove her passage basket, I heard the mirror calling to me. I knew she had left something there for me. I tried to ignore its call until the pain became too great, until I missed Ana so much that seeing her in a stone was enough.
As you hide the memory in the stone with light and a crystal so you also find the memory. The light stores and retrieves the memory. In the mountains, Ana retrieved memories the ancestors from before and after the cataclysm left on the walls. Into the rock they placed memories they knew we would need. She worked closely with the light, paying careful attention to its different qualities at particular phases of the sun-moon cycle.
At sunrise I took the mirror to the hole in the wall where the first light streams in and set the crystal in the proper place for discovery in front of it. Ana appeared in the mirror, a younger version of her, with a Priestess of the Leopard. She was sparring with the Priestess, dancing the dance that transmutes fear. I know this dance well. I have watched it often, but have never performed it myself. The memory ended. I watched it over and over to see Ana’s face before and after the fear was released from her, to be with her as long as I could, until the light was not the right light any longer. Then I put the mirror back for the women in the future, the ones who will find it later.
In the shrine now, the shadow of her horned womb, the one who will regenerate her, falls upon her bones lying peacefully within the basket below it. The basket’s edges curve up and encompass her. The white dove feathers I wove into it offer softness. It is time.
Standing up and spreading my wings, I chant the song of return into this shrine filled with people, appealing to the Goddess, praying for Ana’s safe journey back into the body of the earth. Mourners sing with me. The shrine is filled with people. Everyone loved Ana. And she was right. It is me they are looking to now that she is gone.
I will go to the Shrine of the Leopard. Like Ana before me, I will dance the dance. Once free from fear, I will go to the mountains. I will listen to what they told her. I will learn what she learned. The wisdom I need to find her in the future is hidden in the rocks. They have left it all for us, in the world within the rocks. “I understand now,” I whisper into Ana’s bones.
When the vultures take to flight, when they lift off the ground, their opening wings make a sound similar to that of soft wind blowing through large pieces of fabric hanging to dry on the rooftops on late summer afternoons. That sound has always been the most soothing to me. As I sat on the platform honoring Ana, as the vultures pecked and consumed her, I would not lift my head until I heard that noise. Once I heard it, I looked up and saw that another phase of her transformation was completed. As they pecked at her body, their wings tapped on the wood of the platform. Tap. Tap. Tap.
There was one vulture that came and, like me, simply sat with her. Her wings made no tapping sounds. I knew that She was transmuting something other than flesh, that her role was probably the most difficult. When that bird flew away, there was a different sound, the sound of very small and distant chimes. This is the sound I hear now as I stand over her basket, as I feel Ana fly away.
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