Her Disturbing Presence, Part One

By Shana Marie

Thrust into his father's profession long before he is ready, Pyrq must navigate the trade routes in the West. What he finds there challenges the beliefs he clings to: that women are a weak liability and that men must be dominating like the formidable patriarch of his home village, the Bael.

But the West is restive, and Pyrq himself unwittingly becomes a key figure in a major shift in leadership among two communities. While one community succumbs to the changes brought about by the Neolithic Revolution, another desperately cleaves to the ways of its mothers. Pyrq surprisingly finds himself seduced by the customs of the latter, and he struggles between the allure of its sensual priestess and the forceful, masculine domination he has come to accept as normal and rightful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shana Marie
• Release date: Jun 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370443192

Shana Marie

Shana Marie was born and raised in Kentucky, and graduated from Western Kentucky University. She now works in the education field in Tennessee. When she is not writing or working, she can be found sewing, catching live music shows, drinking gin and tonic, talking to her multitude of houseplants, or harassing her ornery tabby cat.

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Her Disturbing Presence, Part 1

by Shana Marie

Copyright 2017 Shana Marie

Cover art by Aimee Simes

Cover Design by Nieves Uhl

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Families

Chapter One: Heka

Chapter Two: Hina

Chapter Three: Heka

Chapter Four: Hina

Chapter Five: Heka

Chapter Six: Lada

Chapter Seven: Gedda

Chapter Eight: Heka

Chapter Nine: Heka

Chapter Ten: Hina

Chapter Eleven: Heka

Chapter Twelve: Nansh

Chapter Thirteen: Gedda

Chapter Fourteen: Almah

Chapter Fifteen: Pyrq

Chapter Sixteen: Ahur

Chapter Seventeen: Pyrq

Chapter Eighteen: Pyrq

Chapter Nineteen: Pyrq

Chapter Twenty: Pyrq

Connect with Shana Marie

Acknowledgments

About Shana Marie

Introduction

I began this project in 2014. During the time I researched and wrote this book my eyes were becoming open to and my imagination was being flooded with what humans are truly capable of and how much we limit ourselves in our present state. The political events that have transpired of late have made it evident that this very time in our history—perhaps more than ever—needs the ideas this book hopes to reintroduce. We stand on a precipice. It is not a new one. It is one that half the world’s population has been standing on, falling from, and coming back to for thousands of years.

This story on the proceeding pages takes place at a time when that precipice was being created. Before dominator cultures became the norm, many human cultures celebrated and revered women above all. It was a time when women led partnership societies—some of the most artistically prolific, peaceful, and innovative cultures the world has ever seen.

Though not all archaeologists and anthropologists agree about the way in which these partnership societies were eventually infiltrated and quashed by dominator types, it is generally agreed upon that the usurpers came to Europe from the East. I argue that geography is mostly arbitrary where this is concerned. Cultures that center on dominant males have always been in existence around the globe. I certainly do not believe that eastern peoples are evil and responsible for all the ills of the world, but eastern peoples seem to have been the first to mount horses, and with this new mode of transportation, their roles as dominators were sealed. The domestication of horses coupled with the onset of agrarian dependence (which had already emerged in Europe) made protection, defense, and eventually militaries necessary. Land that had once been looked at and worshiped as being the very body of a goddess mother was now a valuable thing to be owned, cultivated, and in many cases exhausted. (Some might say the earth was raped, and the raping continues. Indeed, the earth is also being suffocated with asphalt and concrete.) With the introduction of farming, humans experienced a population explosion, so resources began to be intensely coveted. The combination of all these factors obviously makes for a quite insecure environment, one in which one’s property must be protected.

All these things transpired just as agriculture was getting off the ground and we were entering the time Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anna Belfer-Cohen refer to as the point of no turning back. As humans began to view the earth as a thing to be dominated and exploited, so did they begin to look at their fellow humans (especially women) in the same light. Defensive structures and attitudes then became necessary. And religions that celebrated the cyclical nature of life (which is undeniably reflected in and by the female body) became things of the past and were replaced by mountain and thunder gods who could not be seen or touched, but were punishing, unforgiving, and male. These gods favored men who were destructive and victorious.

The book takes place at a time and in a place where agriculture is taking a foothold but horseback riding has not yet been introduced. The setting is around 5,000 B.C.E in Central Eastern Europe. I did a fair amount of research before I began to write the story of Gedda, Heka, Hina, and Pyrq, whom you will soon meet; but I have taken several liberties with elements that are debated among experts in the fields of archaeology and anthropology. The people of the past still hold many unsolved mysteries; we may never know why they did some of the things they did or how they did them. It was enjoyable for me, a writer of fiction, to imagine the world in which my characters lived more than 7,000 years ago. I incorporated as many as I could of the incontrovertible facts the detectives of academia have uncovered, but I’ve embellished and imagined where it was necessary—since much is still unknown.

To be sure, I carefully chose the proper nouns and invented vocabulary to reclaim them from the bastardization they have suffered for more than a millennium. I encourage you to research the origins of names that you hear or read in patriarchal religious texts and philosophy. You will find that almost every example was at one time a positive notion, but because patriarchal strategists sought to dominate and colonize, the invented stories meant to negate a term’s original meaning. Many things modern folk are taught to fear and be ashamed of were actually once celebrated as life-giving and honorable. (The overwhelming majority of things patriarchs demonize were once things that gave women influence—like nature, blood, and sex.)

At times in this work, a reader will notice that the point of view changes back and forth within just one chapter of the story. This illustrates how some characters are connected on a spiritual level—so much so that one cannot often discern definitively where one character starts and another begins, what one character experiences versus what another experiences. This is because they are experiencing some events together, not just side-by-side but as if they are one.

This shift in point of view also illustrates, especially in the case of the three generational representatives—Gedda, Heka, and Hina—the onus of decision-making. For in their culture there is no such thing as power, which only exists in a dominator society. Theirs is a partnership society, so there is decision-making, not governing. In fact, Heka and Hina become important partners to each other and to Gedda, not threats to one another's influence. Instead of having competitors, Gedda now has allies who assuage the burden of leadership.

Finally, a note on time: the characters in this story—particularly the mattas, who are goddess worshippers—do not understand time as we do today. They have no words for tomorrow, tonight, yesterday, or next year. To the mattas there are only suns and moons, all operating in tandem with the cycles of their own female bodies. The concept of history has not yet been invented.

And the story itself is not linear. The idea of a timeline is a patriarchal one, and it has no place here. The story moves forward, things happen to characters and there are resulting feelings and actions, but the story is not always a simplistic straight line between numbers of occurrences, as you will see.

I am fortunate enough to be living in a time in which artists and other creatives have access to any number of venues for their work; and it is unnecessary to go through the traditional, or hierarchical, obstacle course to being read (or heard, or seen, or felt). Furthermore, to put a price tag on my work would only be to discredit what it seeks to represent, which is a world in which artistic expression, above all other human capability, is the single most important action. Artists should be able to create without being fettered by vulgarities such as monetary value or salability. But, at the same time, it is artists—not billionaires—who should be lifted up and looked to for wisdom. Oftentimes, people concerned only with the accumulation of money and wealth are the least creative people; and creative people generally have more sight, while their exploiters have less sight.

It would appear, then, that since the dawn of agriculture, which led to a concentration of power and influence being with the person who could accumulate the most things (and later, money) by whatever means, the natural order has been inverted and become anything but natural. So, we’ve had it all wrong for thousands of years. What do we do now?

We learn. When we spend our time learning, which is the act of attempting to understand, we grow. It is essential in this era wherein patriarchy and miseducation are anachronistically exalted that we turn all our attention to learning and understanding, and away from isolating and dividing ourselves. And we must love and embrace those who mistrust the learned, for only our guidance and our understanding will bring them around to accepting knowledge and truth.

-Shana Marie, December 2016

Chapter One: Heka

The early sun found Heka’s house later than it once had, for now it had to climb over the buildings that had been erected across the road in order to finally shine upon Heka and Nansh, whose ritual was to congregate on the bench outside Heka’s door and enjoy a piping brew before they went on with their work. In their childhood this spot had provided a view of all their friends’ houses, which were situated pleasingly around the central courtyard. But now, sitting on the same bench their mattas and their nannas had sat on, all they could see was a putty-colored wall made of sun-dried bricks. Beyond that wall and to its sides was another wall, and another, and another, forming a labyrinth of houses. Some of the houses had been added onto until they touched the houses next to them. But slim alleyways formed where walls didn’t meet.

Do you remember the vine that used to grow on Nanna Aki’s house? Nansh drew the bowl to her lips and sipped the hot, fragrant brew.

A long time had passed since either Nansh or Heka had seen Nanna Aki’s house, or Aki’s daughter Hebe, who still lived there. Heka imagined Hebe had pulled Aki’s vine up by its roots to disallow its flourishing long ago.

Aki prayed when she pulled leaves off that vine. She made a poultice from its leaves and put it on my knee when I skinned it. The smell of it stayed with me for many moons, Heka said.

Heka heard Nansh swallow her mouthful of brew. I remember. I always think of you when I make that poultice, said Heka.

Now there was a long pause while they looked out in front of them at the collection of walls. Traders dragging laden carts passed Heka and Nansh on their way to the central market from their campsites on the outskirts of Mens. Some of them nodded to the two wermadn; others remained aloof and trudged on without acknowledgement.

Long ago some traders suggested a marketplace be constructed in the courtyard at the center of Mens. Some of the new residents of Mens were keen to accommodate the traders, but the mattas had forbidden the center of the courtyard from being desecrated in the name of commerce. The spot held a large fire pit around which they would gather to worship Ma and celebrate Her bounty. New buildings eventually overran the courtyard, however, and the mattas lost their fire pit to the traders and their allies.

Now an excitement engulfed the village when traders arrived because they brought exotic news and goods. Many of them returned again and again to Mens, so the people in the market had come to know them well, but Heka and the other mattas had not bothered to form relationships with the interlopers.

The wermadn watched them carefully from their side of the road, especially as Heka’s son, Ista, bounded out of the house. A trader stopped Ista, reaching inside his cart and producing some little trinket. He cooed and explained to Ista the allure of the object, but Ista quickly lost interest and bounced down the path away from the traders. Heka and Nansh, observing from their bench, exchanged a glance, then continued sipping their brews silently. The impotent salesman slithered off in disappointment.

His disappointment would not last in the crowded courtyard’s marketplace. Plenty of villagers looked forward to being wooed. They fell in behind the procession of traders to a spot inside the chaotic, rambling courtyard where the traders would display their wares: vessels from distant islands, dyed cloth the traders claimed faraway rulers wore, and black rock they claimed could only be found at the foot of exploding mountains.

Nansh murmured, They are only interested in trading with the Bahartr. They don’t talk to wermadn.

With Mens’s original road separating them from the courtyard of foreigners and its lively central marketplace, Heka and Nansh were like two she-wolves waiting in the shadows, watching men perform their curious customs. The she-wolves tilted their heads, unable to fathom such foolishness, and they bared their teeth with disapproval. But it was inevitable: they would eventually shake their blue-gray manes and turn back in the direction of their cavernous homes, leaving the inexplicable ways of men behind them. And as they turned, they might look back over their sinewy shoulders to capture a memory; for men would perhaps encroach upon their dark abodes, and all that would save the world of the wolves was the observations they had made and their knowledge of men’s fecklessness.

Heka, Nansh, their daughters, and some of the other mattas who were natives of Mens spent this sun as they spent most suns: nibbling the shared bounty they collected at the edge of the forest and working on their arts. Heka’s house was an intimate hive of weavers and spinners, their arms gracefully reaching and pulling, their fingers nimbly moving thread among thread. The air from Nansh’s house next door carried on it the aroma of her and her sister Mabal’s herbal pursuits. Mabal crafted many of the mattas’ brews using ancient healing recipes that had been handed down through generations of Ma-worshipers. On the other side of Nansh’s house was Erua’s, where one would find Erua and her daughter Tait with wet, clay-smeared hands glistening in the sunlight that stretched over their pottery workshop. Tait might be found carving images and shapes into the vessels with tools that she herself had created from sharpened bone.

When the sun began its descent, the mattas and their children suspended their work and gathered for a meal at Heka’s house. Afterward one by one they drifted back to their own homes to retire. Nansh and Heka, always ones to extract all the joy they could from temperate weather, drifted to their outdoor bench again with their bowls of brew. The sun had completely given way to the darkness now, and a chill that foretold the coming cold season pulled the wermadn together for warmth. Heka leaned her head onto Nansh’s shoulder, which had been draped in a cloth of muted blue that looked even more beautiful now across Nansh’s slender neck and graceful shoulders than it had on Heka’s loom. Nansh smelled of a unique combination of roots and leaves that reminded Heka of the bounty that hung from the rafters of Nansh and Mabal’s house: bouquets of flowers alongside precious leaves procured from the forest’s edge that would be dried and stored for healing and comforting brews. Nansh and Mabal had done their best to keep their Matta Panlat’s renowned healing arts alive, though even they had forgotten many of Panlat’s remedies.

After a time of silent reflection, Nansh drained her bowl and returned the empty vessel to Heka’s hearth. She came back to the entryway with her daughter Cadda’s hand in hers. Cadda embraced her dear Matta Heka. Nansh took Heka’s hand and raised it to her lips, pressed it to her cheek, and closed her eyes briefly for a flood of memories to rush into her mind. Heka kissed Nansh’s hand, and they parted for the night. Nansh would take Cadda home where they would both sleep on the roof in the mild night air.

Heka stayed perched on the bench outside her door sipping her brew later than she usually did, long after Nansh had gone home. Inside the house, the children did not stir in their deep sleep, even as Heka stepped through the doorway and retrieved a moonstick that was housed alongside a little blade in an inconspicuous space near the threshold. She turned and glanced up at the moon. Then she made a mark with the blade on the stick—a mark that was the latest of a series—replaced the objects to their home and returned to her seat outside to savor her paramenstrual state of mind, from which she frequently drew some revelation or innovation. She took a deep breath, inhaling a strange energy in the night air. She felt restless.

It was as if she was waiting for him—the ambling trader who appeared. He was enjoying a stroll and a pipe, and probably his solitude.

Good moon, trader, Heka purred.

Ah! Hello, woman.

She sipped her brew, and he puffed his pipe.

For a moment both of them thought he would stroll on past, but he paused as if he were arrested by some sudden inspiration and he looked upon her carefully.

Finally, he said, I never see you in Mens’s market. We bring gorgeous amulets from the eastern coast where the blue sea can be seen in the sparkle of every woman’s eyes. Do you not wish to see them, woman?

Our ancestors sometimes wore nothing at all, Heka replied.

The man was speechless. He stood like a stone for several moments, then raised his pipe to his lips again, his eyes never leaving Heka.

He shifted the weight of his body as if to move away from this place, but Heka said, Please, trader, come sit with me. Drink a brew with me. I have one steeping as we speak. Let me get it for us. Sit.

She finally returned, and when she had settled the breast-shaped bowl of brew into the palms of his hands, he asked, You have lived in Mens a long time, Matta?

I have always been here. When I was a girl there was a courtyard there. She gestured to where blocky houses clustered across the road. I could see across the courtyard to my sisters’ houses. My people would often gather there in the space where there are now houses crowded together, where the marketplace is.

That was long ago, Matta.

This tactless reference to her age hung in the air for a few long, awkward moments until Heka reached up and retrieved it, barbing, There was no market then, no traders bringing their gaudy fabric and finery.

He was silent now. He hid his face by bringing the bowl to his lips and indulging in a good, long draught. It was a bitter brew that filled one’s sinuses with acridity, and he was probably anxious to be done with it.

Heka reached a long, slender arm out in front of her, pointing directly across the road. "Our Nanna Aki lived there, across the courtyard. I could see her from here when I sat here as a little girl with my matta. I would