(continued from previous scroll)
The breeze stirred a fig loose from the tree and it struck the earth with a muted thud. I bent to retrieve it, rolling it gently in my hand.
“What about fear?” I asked. “Did you feel it when they gave you new clothes, new food, a new name?”
“Yes,” he said. “But fear is only dangerous when it becomes your master.”
I looked at him. “And whose servant were you?”
“The One who does not change.”
He fell quiet then, and I let the silence stretch, as if the city itself were listening.
After a time, he said softly, “Tell me your name again.”
“Nabu-shumu-ukin,” I replied. “My father named me after the god of scribes. It means ‘Nabu has established the name.’”
Daniel gave a wry smile. “And has He?”
“I believed so,” I said. “Now I’m not sure who wrote it.”
Daniel gestured toward my tablet. “You came to record my story. But your own is being written as well.”
I hesitated. “I didn’t expect that.”
“None of us do,” he said. “But every scribe eventually discovers which master he serves.”
A bell rang faintly from the palace wall. Our time was near its end.
Daniel stood slowly, brushing dust from his robe. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I will tell you of a dream that was forgotten by a king but remembered by Heaven.”
I bowed and turned away, unsure whether to feel chastened or blessed.
Back in the scriptorium, the sun had begun to bake the upper bricks. The smell of drying clay mingled with the smoke from the kilns. Bel-iddin sat hunched over a half-formed tablet, muttering to himself. He looked up as I entered.
“Well?” he said. “Did the Hebrew tell you the secret name of his god?”
“He spoke of names,” I replied. “The ones we are given. The ones we keep. The ones we answer to.”
Bel-iddin sneered. “Poetic nonsense. A name is a sound. A scratch on a tablet. It carries no power except what people pretend.”
“And yet,” I said, “you’re still using yours.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s called consistency. Not belief.”
I took my place across from him, smoothing the surface of a new tablet. “Daniel said that to forget who gave you your name is to lose yourself.”
“He would say that,” Bel-iddin muttered. “All exiles cling to words. It’s all they have left.”
I thought about that. “Maybe that’s why their words survive longer than ours.”
He paused, his stylus mid-air.
“You think the old man’s God is real?”
“I think,” I said slowly, “that He is not silent.”
Bel-iddin looked at me with something almost like pity. “Be careful,” he said. “The gods are jealous, even when imaginary.”
That night, I climbed to the roof of the archives. The stars had begun to appear, pale silver against a deepening sky. The great ziggurat loomed in the west; its shadow cast long across the city. I sat with my knees pulled up and watched as the last embers of the sun were swallowed by the horizon.
My name was etched in wax across the top of my tablet.
Nabu-shumu-ukin.
Three years ago, I had spoken it with pride. I had signed it at the bottom of every copied hymn and omen record. I had traced it in the margins of my schoolwork, carving it into the bark of the myrtle tree outside the scriptorium.
But now, it felt heavy. Like armor I had forgotten how to wear.
Daniel had not told me to abandon it. He had not preached. But his name, the one he refused to let go of, had spoken louder than his words.
I looked up at the stars—Nabu’s realm, they said. But I felt no presence there.
Tomorrow, Daniel would speak of dreams. And I would listen with ears not entirely my own.