The Watchers in the Garden

"When the sons of men had multiplied, beautiful and comely daughters were born to them. And the Watchers, the sons of heaven, saw them, and desired."

-The Book of the Watchers

***

The king—who was so wealthy that he never ate twice from the same golden dish, and who could have spent the rest of his life counting the jewels in his vaults and died without seeing them all—said that she could have anything in the world that she wanted.

Gold, jewels, spices, slaves—"Name it," he said, "and it will be yours."

But all that she asked was to be admitted to his private garden. This, and nothing else, she craved.

And this was the one thing in the world that he said he couldn't give her.

***

She'd been born a slave, the youngest of nine children and the smallest, and also the only one to live to an age where she could work.

This was in the time when people thought the world had just four corners, and that a camel could carry you from one end of it to the other, and that beyond the sea there was a land of monsters, or an endless abyss, or nothing at all.

One man alone ruled all of this, and would rule for the rest of time—or so it was said. For people like the girl (who had no name), life was so far removed from such things that they might as well have been fables. Living wasn't about kings and far-off places, living was about where your next mouthful was coming from.

The girl's mother died when she was barely old enough to remember her face, another body for the plague pits. She was expected to die of the same too, but for some reason the pox never touched her. The law said that if a slave child had no parents she should be set free, lest she become a burden on her owner to care for.

Being a scrawny thing and still young, her mother's master had not much use for her anyway. Besides, he was a superstitious man and found something unnatural about the way she'd cheated the pox. So he turned her loose without balking—though it did him no good, and he died of the plague himself not long after.

She owned nothing except her own ragged clothes, and the markets and other busy places were run by gangs of children who pelted her with stones and bits of broken pottery if she tried to beg for food or money there.

With no other choice, she worked for the lowliest and most vile sorts of people, the blackguards and the scum lower even than thieves and the killers: necromancers, body-eaters, lunatics, traders in obscene and blasphemous things.

Her thin frame could slip in and out of tombs and graves, and her small hands were useful for getting into things supposedly sealed forever. Small as she was, she could hide, eavesdrop, and escape with ease. She was useful enough.

In this way, she learned the secret history of the world, the tales of desert places where men and monsters mingled, stories of black cities, fallen stars, comets and omens, of insect-men and serpent-women, of sorcerer-kings and organ pits and the forbidden teachings of the Watchers, and all manner of heresies and depravities—the unknown, the unknowable, and the unspeakable, all the way back to the days of the accursed city of Chorazin.

She worked in boneyards and in madhouses, and she again expected to die, if not from the work then because of the company she had to keep.

But again she didn't die. She grew up, and in time she learned to distinguish myth from truth, ravings from facts. This was also when she got her first name: they called her "Pes-Gi," which meant "rat."

When the time came that she wanted to quit such dealings, her latest employer, a bodysnatcher, tried to object, thinking she knew too many of his secrets. But one day he poisoned himself drinking a tea brewed from dried organs, and she was free to go.

When her eighteenth year came she sold herself to a pleasure house, where she'd be fed and lodged and could work until she one day made enough to buy her own freedom again, plus a little more.

Although she knew almost nothing of the things men and women did, she found that people thought her attractive enough. She didn't speak much or trust much, but this seemed a comely coyness to others. And besides, she never complained or refused to do anything that a customer asked—she'd seen far worse don, in much darker places.

Here they gave her a new name: "Munus-Kin," which meant "whore."

One of the men who fell in love with her there was a scholar of sorts, one who tended to tablets and scrolls of the sacred library. When she found out, she stopped accepting money from him and instead asked him to be taught to read. Which he did, laboriously at first, but soon with efficaciousness that surprised her instructor.

Eventually she demanded payment in manuscripts, pieces of scrolls, fragments of tablets—anything that could go missing without being noticed. Anything she could learn from.

Before long, someone did notice these things that they thought would never go noticed, and the other scholars put the young one to death for betraying his oaths. But they never found or punished her. By then she'd learned almost everything she could this way, so she bought her freedom again and then became a priestess, one of the sacred courtesans.

The temples were happy to take on new initiates who already knew the craft—after all, her role here was still the same, exchanging her body for money. But now it was in the service of a goddess, and they shortened her name to just "Munus," which meant "woman."

It was here that she learned how to differentiate the sacred from the profane, and the most important lesson of all: how to transform one into the other. For most, this would have been the end of the story. She'd come far from meager roots, learned more than mortal minds were perhaps meant to know, and could have lived long in the service of the temple. And if life was not necessarily happy, neither was it desperate, violent, or mad.

But for her, this was not enough. So on the altar one night she sacrificed a young hog and, as she'd learned to do in her youth, poured out its entrails, so that she might examine them and thus learn her future. For in such things the gods hide glimpses of their will—especially in the liver, the seat of life. Thus she learned that the god-king would soon visit their temple, and of what nature he was, and how she could inflame his desires as no one else had.

This king was more than a king, and far more than any other man. He knew, always, when crops would grow and when they would fail, and when disease would come and when it would pass, and which men's souls might brew treachery against him and which were truly loyal.

All things, they said, he knew, and thus he kept his kingdom—the entire world—safe, secure, and unified. But in some ways he really was no different than other men, and had the same appetites for the flesh as any who visited the temple. She appeared before him nude, and when questioned she said that soldiers wear their armor in his presence and scholars their robes of honor. So she also wore the uniform suited to the execution of her duty.

And this reply, even more than the shape of her body, excited his intrigue.

He came to her that night. She waited for him with all light smothered, so that only when the sun rose the next morning did they set eyes on each other. God or king, with the lights out he was no different than any other man.

He left the next day. As she expected, he ordered that she come with him, to become one of his second-wives. Now she was known as "Nin," which meant "lady." Her home was no longer a temple but a palace. Now she answered to no one except the king of kings, god and man together, the man who would rule the world for eternity and who for the time being wanted her by his side.

The king had many other second-wives, and he was always obligated to honor his first wife and queen above others. But before long it was clear that he prized his newest companion over the rest.

So much luxury attended to her now that in time she started to forget that it was even there. That was the nature of excess—to have so much that, in a way, you forget the having of it. Her old lives—orphan, beggar, outlaw, whore, and even her time with the priestesses—seemed far off, like the memories of another person. Despite this, she was careful never to let herself truly forget; even if that past was someone else's, she would safeguard it in her mind.

Of these things she said nothing to the king, and naturally being a man he showed no real interest in matters of her past. When they talked she talked of idle things, or simple pleasures and easy observations—or she talked of him, the subject which invariably pleased him the most.

"To think," she said one day, "that after having conquered the whole world you would exercise no less dominion over my heart. Most men are satisfied with only one great conquest in their lifetimes."

And the king beamed with pleasure.

Naturally all of this excited some jealousy from the rest of the harem—and the rumor that she'd seduced the king not with her wit and charm but with witchcraft. Some even whispered that she wasn't a woman, but an evil spirit, and in a fit of anger another of the second-wives tried to drive her away by reciting, "O flyer in a dark chamber, go away at once, O Lilit!"

But these were petty things. What mattered was that the king loved her—as much as he could love any earthly thing.

Not long after they met, the king told her for the first time that she could have anything she wanted. He offered gold, jewels, spices, slaves—nothing was too lavish. "Name it," he said. "It will be yours."

She chose her words carefully; what she said next could undo everything if she wasn't careful. But this might be the only chance she ever had...

"You have, oh Lord, a garden in this palace. Not the public gardens, nor even the private ones, where many times we've walked barefoot and hand in hand beneath the ivory moon. This one is a secret garden, where they say you are the only person who has ever entered, or will ever enter, from now until the end of time."

Surprise etched its lines into the king's face. Undaunted, she continued:

"Let me visit that garden for one night. This is all I'll ever ask from you."

Baffled, the king didn't know how to reply. When his speech finally returned, he repeated his previous offers: the finest of things from any corner of the world, nothing too rare or too strange, no quantity too extravagant, no expectation too high.

"Ask for anything," he told her—anything else.

But her answer stayed the same: the garden was all she wanted.

Furious, he left. She waited all night and all the next day to see what would happen. He might have her sent away. He might have her imprisoned. Maybe even killed.

In the end though, he did nothing. Soon they returned to their normal life together, and neither of them said anything about what had happened.

But she remembered.

Months passed, then months more. The world was troubled, but as always the king knew what was best, and he protected the people from the worst that disaster could hold, and as always the they were grateful, and knew in their minds that their king was a god in all but name, and that the world would continue as it always had under his protection.

When the calendar rolled over and the remembrance of the day they'd first met came, the king again offered her anything she wanted: a palace of her own, no less costly than his. A monument in her image, built by an army of new slaves, all dedicated to her. Her enemies scourged, shamed, humiliated, exiled.

He even said that he would have her declared a god, just as he, so that fires would burn offerings to her in the very temple where they'd met. All of this, to prove that his love for her had no limits.

She, gracious and humble, thanked him for his beneficence. But none of these things pleased her.

"All I wish, oh Lord, is to be admitted to your most private and secret garden. This, and only this, in all the world I desire."

Again he grew stormy and left her in anger. This time she was confident already that he wouldn't punish her—but neither would he grant her wish.

So that same night, on the terrace of her apartments in the palace, overlooking the million burning lights of the great city, she slaughtered a ram with golden horns, and poured its entrails onto the stones, hoping that there she could read her future and learn the key to her one desire.

Perhaps, she feared, there WAS no answer; that even the wisdom of the gods would fail because, in the end, there was nothing she could say or do to press the king to her wishes. Was there anything in the world truly impossible? Could the will of any man be so resolute? In the past she would have said no, but now?

So it was with some apprehension that she approached the ram's entrails and, with it steaming guts laid out before her, peered once more into the future, the storehouse of things that could be, would be, and were destined to be.

The next morning she sent her slaves into the market to bring back every kind of egg they could find—big and small, ordinary and exotic. She spent a night passing each one through a burning brazier, and when she found the one finally that didn't crack or burst or burn but merely sat, placid amidst the flames, she left it there as her charm.

The weeks to come were a time of caution, a time of planning, a time of ambition. She visited the king as often as she could, excluding almost everyone else from his company when possible, and even accompanied him tending to matters of state that in the past she'd always claimed bored her. Though surprised, the king ceded to her presence.

She insisted on making love twice as often, confessing an unquenchable desire for his touch. More and more frequently they held these rendezvous in her rooms, where she kept the egg and the fire hidden but blazing all day long, with instructions to her most loyal and reliable slaves never to let the flames batten.

It took months—much longer than she'd expected. But when the day finally came that the shell of the egg turned gold, she knew that she'd succeeded. Solemnly, humbly, she presented herself to the king and told him the news:

She would carry his child.

Stunned, he could say nothing for sometime. She was careful to keep her eyes on the floor, kneeling in front of him, her every move calculated to express submission. The king had wives and second wives and lovers aplenty all during his reign, but never once a child. It was said that he could have no children—that being as he was somewhat divine, the body of a mere woman wouldn't restrain his seed.

This mattered little for the kingdom—there was no need for an heir, since the king himself would rule forever. But—and no one in the world knew this, had ever known this, had ever been given reason to suspect it for even a moment—this private barrenness pained him, and filled up the few hours of his life that he'd spent with regret.

When he finally realized what she'd said, the dam of the king's feelings burst, and he took her in his arms with such force that it was almost violent. Was she sure?

"Yes, oh Lord," she said. "I've never been more sure of anything, except for my unending love for you, and in the face of that how could there be anything to doubt?"

His eyes shone like two lamps. Nobody had ever seen the king shed a tear, but they came dangerously close to this blasphemous spectacle then. He called her the pinnacle of women, but she demurred, saying only that the real author of this miracle must be he—how could it be otherwise?

As she expected, sometime later he offered her the ultimate tribute: He'd break his marriage to his first wife and install her in that place. He'd declare her a queen, almost equal to himself. Their union would be written in the stars. No person could have any greater ambition in the history of the world.

She thanked him. She praised his generosity. His wisdom, she said, was unimpeachable, and for his sake—and perhaps the sake of the kingdom—if this was his wish then naturally she would grant it.

But for her part, she wanted none of it. She wanted nothing in the world except to remain by his side always. And also, perhaps...

"I do still wish to visit your secret garden, oh Lord. This one small thing is all I ask. All other honors I accept in your name, but I am only a simple woman and could wish for no more than this."

Baffled, the king flew into a rage. What impudence was this? What womanly madness? Why did she persist always in this frippery? His voice sent servants and guards fleeing, and later some of them said that the walls of the palace—the entire city, perhaps—shook.

But she didn't flinch. In a very small voice, she replied:

"I'm told, oh Lord, that in this hidden garden, where you and you alone ever are admitted, you keep the one thing in the world that's most precious to you. What this is I cannot know, and being as I am a woman and simple in my understanding, I have no doubt that I would never really appreciate its value, whatever it is.

"But if I were to be in your garden, then I could imagine that I am the thing that's most precious, and there's nothing else in the world that I could possibly desire besides that."

These were the words she'd read in the flayed bodies of the sacrificed animals. Their power over the king was swift and profound. Now she imagined she could see HIS insides too, the secrets of his body and blood unfolding before her as this confession worked it magic.

He didn't answer her right away. The message didn't come that night either, nor the night after. But on the third day, a magister came and told her that while the king was away tending to matters of state in another city, she'd be admitted to that hidden place.

It would be for that night and only that night, and she'd be forbidden to repeat these things to anyone. Even the magister had no choice but to end his own life after delivering the message, by submerging himself in the sacred waters of Lake Hali. (But to this he had no objections, as the king promised him as a blissful and rewarding afterlife for carrying out the errand.)

That was morning. She spent the entire day watching the sun's tiresomely slow trip across the sky, sitting on her terrace and observing the shadows as they grew first shorter, then longer, watching the stalls in the marketplace appear and then disappear, listening to the chatter of a thousand thousand voices swell and fade again as hour passed into hour. The waiting hurt.

Finally, mercifully, the first star appeared. She felt brittle as she waited. What if no one came? What if the king changed his mind? What if—?

A rap at her chamber door. The man waiting for her was a mute eunuch slave, one of those who conducted the king's most secret affairs, nameless and faceless.

In all the palace, only he knew the way to the door that he guided her to. The path beyond that he did not know, as he'd never gone that far, but on a tablet the king himself had inscribed directions. The eunuch could not read, and would never know what the message said, but still she smashed the tablet to pieces when finished, and crushed the shards until they were almost dust.

And then, alone, she ventured into the tunnels. This was the oldest part of the palace, built first, and few knew that in fact it was much older than the palace itself, older even than most of the city. Everything else had been built around this.

It hadn't always been a garden, but the king had made it such more years ago now than anyone else remembered. A hundred-hundred gardeners from all four corners of the world had helped design and build it. And they were here still, planted deep beneath the soil they themselves had cultivated. The price of knowing a king's secrets...