”Two sons, lest” he said again, and this time was there a flicker of amusement in his eyes? “Your husband’s name should fall to the ground and never be picked up.”

My whole body filled with horror. It was an idea I couldn’t countenance couldn’t upset. My hands shook. My body shook. “Lord,” I said, and I detested the weakness I heard in my voice, “I am an old woman.”

He raised a perfect eyebrow. “Doubt you the power of the Lord your husband follows?” I shook my head. No, that was not it, as he knew it was not it.

At last I gathered my strength and looked at him and there was kindness in his eyes.

“Sarai, it is as you fear…and much more wonderful than that.”

I look up at him in surprise, but kept silent. He reached his perfectly manicured hand across the table and covered mine, warmth shooting through me.

“You know the myths of your people. Do you recall the story of Inanna?”

I nodded my head. Of course I did, though I had had no mother. Inanna was the goddess of our people, and no woman could escape especial knowledge of her, though her city was not Ur, but Uruk. She was the goddess of fertility and the spring, the princess of heaven. All flowering things, all fruitfulness came from her.

“To which story do you refer, lord?” I said.

“The story of Inanna’s descent to the underworld.”

I nodded. I did. One day, the stories said, while walking heaven’s fields the lady of heaven made up her mind to descend to the underworld, there to combat her sister, Ereshkigal, who sat the throne of hell.

Ereshkigal won, and Inanna was forced to remain in the underworld until, after six months, the elder gods interceded for her. Six months a year she spends below the Earth and no life begins in the world above. Then, for six months she is allowed to return and the Earth flowers.

He smiled at me. “Do you not understand, dear? If the princess of life is forced down into death, yet she is also freed. In residing in both worlds, she has brought them together. She has become like us who, from birth are headed towards death—but she has also shown us the way to return.”

“In a land called Greece they call Inanna Persephone, and in that story they say death tricks her, that she eats the seeds of the fruit of death and that these bind her to the dark land, one month for each seed. Death is the seed within our skin, ripening as we grow towards it.

But doesn’t this too work the other way? Doesn’t it mean that beyond the veil, under the Earth, because our Queen has removed down there for half the year, there is something, even in death, to give us comfort? What is the seed within the skin of death?

They say that Inanna lost her battle, that she stayed because her sister was the stronger. But it is no surprise the death, at last, defeats life. The point is that our queen is down there too. She waits for us on the other side, to comfort us, to bring us peace; the light of her pale beauty brings to those grim halls a thing which will permit the retention of some part of our substance.

Life, the bride of death. We are meant to read that for reasons unknown the princess’ role was always to be a part of each world, to leave a gap in one, provide light to the other, and to be the nexus at which they intersect.

Life does, inexorably move towards death. But from death, if there is life, we can be reborn. The Princess is the symbol of the life of the world. She is rebirth, and continuance, the expression of the fundamental paradox of life. We humans are terribly mortal beings, living in a mortal world. But life itself, at least we hope, is immortal. Each individual blade of grass dies, but grass there is always. Each generation fades but another comes to take its place. What can perpetually exhaust itself, and always have full strength? What can fail every moment and always succeed?”

The life of the world is always old, and always, always, forever young. And I ask you, my darling daughter,” and he smiled at me with a smile that froze me into place, “in what way can youth preserve itself, but by ensuring that it never grows old?

I felt my eyes blurring with tears, my will breaking. I looked at him. “My lord,” I whispered. “Why have you come to me?”

His eyes were kind and sad. “The Lord cares for you, Sarai. It is to be your decision, after all. The world needs your children, but, perhaps, you do not need the world.”

“Abraham, should have had another wife,” I said, half-joking, my nose running.

“No,” he said seriously. “You must understand what you do.”

A voice from faraway and long ago whispered to me again:

One day a man came up out of the desert

But just a man

Only I saw that his feet would not touch the ground

And he held two mirrors, and he said

Choose thou,

Sarai

And I looked, and one hand held a red world

Wrapped around with angry voices, shouting,

And one, blue as a still lake, peaceful and beautiful, but

Hollow, and the sound the wind made on it

Was like God's lips on a flute

He held out his hand. “Come with me.”