Aside from yak butter tea, fried pancakes, seasonal vegetables, and Guangdang wine, the guests were offered slices of pork from a pig which had been pressed and aged for seven years. When Elle explained to the visitors that seven-year-old pig meat was the equivalent of uncorking a bottle of 1921 Dom Perignon, they were suitably impressed.
While the festivities continued on into the night, Griffin slipped away to call Maddie with an update. When he reported back to his colleagues, he said the chatelaine would contact the Tibetan twins immediately. Rinchen was to fly to Lugu Lake to help Rou keep watch just in case the Nephilim arrived sooner than expected. Rabten was to fly to Indonesia where he would meet Cassie and Griffin to arrange transport for the real artifact. Rou seemed anxious about being left behind until she was told her role as lookout was critical to the success of their quest.
Once the party broke up, Elle made their complicated travel arrangements as Cassie and Griffin packed. They left early the next morning to catch the first bus back to Lijiang. The ride itself took seven hours over hazardous mountain roads. Once in Lijiang, they headed for the airport and a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Guangzhou on China’s southeast coast. The following day they boarded a five-hour flight to Jakarta in Indonesia. This stop included an overnight stay. Given their grueling travel schedule, the layover was not unwelcome. The next morning, they boarded a plane for their final destination—Padang City—the provincial capital of West Sumatra.
Cassie’s musings ended abruptly when she felt the plane jolt into motion as it taxied to the runway. She opened her eyes and sat up to watch the takeoff through her tiny window.
Once they were airborne, Griffin turned toward Elle with a quizzical expression on his face. “You still haven’t explained your choice of hiding place for the artifact. I’m sure Cassie is as curious as I am to know why you selected Sumatra.”
The pythia immediately switched her attention from the scenery to the sentinel. “He’s right. I am. Why Sumatra?”
“I suppose you’ve both noticed that Asia isn’t the most female-friendly of continents.” Elle grimaced. “In these parts, women are treated like second class citizens when they aren’t being treated like annoyingly verbal livestock. My Mosuo mother grew up in a completely different atmosphere where women were respected and had a lot of self-esteem. She raised me that way too. Life in the Big Apple isn’t so different from life around Lugu Lake. Pushy New Yorkers respect anybody who can shove back, so my mom and I fit in pretty easily there. My life would have been a lot simpler if your artifact was hidden in a cave in the States or even Europe. But no. I was stuck guarding a goddess artifact hidden in the global epicenter of patriarchy. Since I didn’t want to take the relic out of Asia, I had to find a pocket of matriarchy somewhere other than Lugu Lake.”
She paused in her explanation while the stewardess came through with refreshments. During their travels, Elle’s frosty attitude had thawed considerably. It must have dawned on her that Griffin and Cassie were rescuing her from the irksome duties of sentinel. In consequence, she became as cordial toward them as her abrasive nature would allow.
Once the attendant was out of earshot, the sentinel continued. “At first I considered Taiwan as a possible location.”
“Taiwan?” Cassie asked in surprise. “Why there?”
“Because it’s an island and islands seem pretty good at resisting the march of ‘progress.’” Elle made air quotes to emphasize her point. “Even after the Han Chinese took over, most of the local tribes remained matriarchal. To this day, some of the aborigines still follow the old ways.”
“Sounds ideal,” Griffin observed. “And yet we aren’t flying there today.”
“That’s because it belongs to patriarchal China,” Elle countered. “Who knows when some crazy new government program is going to mess with Taiwanese culture on a local level? I mean, look what happened to the Buddhists when China first invaded Tibet. I figured I was better off taking the artifact out of the country entirely.”
She paused for a sip of bottled water. “So, I had to broaden my search. At first, I struck out. The farther north I looked, the more male-dominated the culture seemed to get.”
“That’s because the overlords infiltrated China from the northwest,” Cassie informed her.
“Overlords?”
Griffin intercepted the question. “The less you know about our overall mission, the better. Suffice it to say that patriarchy was transmitted to Asia from the northwestern corner of the country to the southeast.”
“Hmm.” Elle pondered the comment. “You know that actually might explain a lot. Once I changed course and focused on the south, my luck improved. Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were once completely matriarchal.”
“We’ve been throwing the term ‘matriarchy’ around quite freely today,” the scrivener remarked. “Yet there are scholars who will adamantly insist that such a form of social organization doesn’t exist. Of course, they’ve defined the term so narrowly that it allows them to dismiss the phenomenon as a myth. They wish to classify matriarchy as the mirror image of patriarchy—a society in which women dominate and oppress men. Of course, that has never been the case. Female-centric societies tend to practice gender equality.
“Mainstream anthropologists have parsed the social structure of such cultures using a variety of terms to describe separate practices. When inheritance is traced through the female line, they call it ‘matrilineal.’ In cultures where the husband moves in with the wife’s family, they call it ‘matrilocal.’ If women in a particular culture are given more rights than
