Yaya loved working with her mother, but she thought she had to work too hard. Meshie was older and stronger than she, but he didn’t have to do as much. It seemed to Yaya that this was only because he had a penis. He and his father got to sit around while the women kept going even serving them food and drink, as if the men somehow worked harder. Somewhere. Meshie knew it, too. He had a way of sitting behind their father and making faces at Yaya that neither of their parents ever saw. An insolent way of requesting that she bring him something, soup or beer, so if she refused she would appear even to her mother to be mean. Meshie was not smart but he was sly.

Their climate was mild but they definitely had a winter. Occasionally it snowed. Yaya loved to bundle on her cot under a warm woven blanket while she drifted into sleep after a day’s work. She’d imagine that she was sinking deeper and deeper into a welcoming place. She’d envision the patterns of weaving in degrees of wool and twine. She had ideas for incorporating ceramic beads into her work. Guarding her precious seeds from the birds, she even had some notions about filling blankets with small feathers and making tassels of large ones, but the problem, always, was that she had too much work.

As much as she loved retiring under her blankets, she hated to emerge from them on winter mornings. The air on her lower legs stung like a slap, the water was cold, and she was still tired. She avoided her grumpy brother as she started the morning meal. She greeted her mother with affection and usually made a plan with her for some secret weaving. She saw her father watching her. She knew he was arranging her marriage, assessing her as nubile, needful of metal and sheep. She considered her few options, for she was twelve but she was not naive, and she decided to hope for a kind man who wouldn’t take her far away.

The religions of the area, even in that last degenerating decade, had nothing to do with afterlife and everything to do with a person’s time on earth. And there were enough cases of senile dementia around Yaya for her to understand that personality has no necessary permanence, even in life. She had to take her best shots while alive. The thought depressed her. Best shots. She was constrained by her father. If he wasn’t around, Meshie was in charge of her. To be superseded by a husband. She wasn’t likely to get too far with her creative ideas. No farther than her mother …

Yaya figured her best bet was in progeny. She could raise fellow-weavers and thinkers. And they, at least the female ones, could raise more.

She gathered her best beads together, some feathers and her only gold ring, and she tucked those treasures in the suede bag she wore under her shift. While her mother combed the hemp field and her father dreamed of bride-price and her brother schemed for the coin to get drunk and laid that evening, Yaya piled up a little shrine near the river. She made a private sacrifice to Inanna, for health and babies.