A fearsome, smiling guardian blocked his way.
The doll on the windowsill was no doll at all, but a canopic jar, or at least he took it to be that for Karoy had never seen a Russian doll before.
Skittle shaped with a painted body and head, the guardian at the window wore the face of a female. This was rare for a canopic jar, he thought. He shrank from it, even though the painted face had a painted smile on its lips.
Where was the girl? Was her bed in an alcove around the corner?
First he had to get past the guardian to reach a dresser and then climb down to the bedroom floor.
"Stand aside. Let me pass, guardian!"
The Russian doll did not budge.
"What do you hold - the heart, the lungs, the liver... or some other impure horror? In truth I have never seen a canopic jar like you before."
It was unnerving the way she kept smiling but said nothing. It was as if her smile hid a secret knowledge and that reminded him again of Heka and he shuddered.
A breeze came up outside and stirred the blind behind him, brushing it against his back and against the silent guardian. It gave Karoy an idea. If words would not budge the guardian, then perhaps a push would help. He bent his head and passed under the blind to the outside. He grabbed the weighted bottom with both hands and gave it a shove. The swinging blind hit the guardian with a solid crack. He heard another muffled bump as she landed somewhere inside the room.
He let go of the blind, but now it swung back, hitting him. He reeled back on the windowsill. He teetered on the edge. His eyes became great splashes of white and black in his wooden face as he gaped down at the two-storey fall.
Karoy steadied, drew back from the brink. That was close. He bent and climbed back inside again. The guardian was gone from the sill.
But she had not gone far. He saw her lying on the top of the dresser where she had split like an egg into two halves, but hold - another smaller guardian had popped out and taken her place, identical in shape and with the same smile on her face. What manner of magic was this? A canopic jar that contained not organs of the dead, but smaller images of itself?
'It is as well that I did not touch her,' he thought, 'for her touch must bring great disaster.'
But again a guardian blocked his way.
"Let me pass, smaller guardian."
The new canopic jar merely smiled. She was no more talkative than the first.
He would have to dislodge her too if he was going to get past. But how?
Karoy clambered down from the sill onto the surface of the dresser. He arrived on a wooden surface where the guardian sat along with a small jewellery filled wooden box on a lacy white cloth.
'If I pull on one end of the cloth, perhaps I can topple this guardian too,' he thought.
Edging around, careful to keep his distance from the smiling guardian, Karoy bent and grabbed the edge of the cloth.
One, two, three - heave!
The smaller guardian tumbled as if an earthquake had hit her. She struck the jewellery box so hard that it split her apart, but then, horror of horrors, another canopic jar appeared, rocking on its base, before steadying in a vertical position, this one smaller still but wearing the same smile.
A guardian who could recreate herself endlessly! Surely this was the most formidable enemy Heka had placed in his path so far.
"Is there no end to you?" Karoy whispered to the strange jar.
The tiny Russian doll that had sprung from the belly of its mother was steady now and fixing him with a smile it had inherited from its mother. She must be toppled too. He saw that she had ended up at the edge of the dresser. Perhaps another pull on the cloth could tip her over. He tugged, triggering another earthquake. The guardian rocked. Karoy tugged again, more vigorously. She lost balance, disappeared over the edge. She hit a rug with a thud. He went to the edge, looked down. She had split in half on a rug and he glimpsed another smiling guardian shoot out of her belly.
'By Ptah, the creator god, she has given birth again!"
Karoy shuddered as he made his way down the dresser, using drawer handles and partly open drawers to arrive on the floor, giving the Repeater of Births a wide berth.
Where was Tiy?
He went around a corner and found himself in front of a model house. It was a dolls' house, but Karoy had never seen a dolls' house before.
Was it a soul house like the ones made from clay and placed in a tomb? he wondered.
The door was open and so he went inside.
He stepped into a crowded room.
"Greetings, I am Karoy and I am looking for the Lady Tiy."
His sweeping glance took in a room filled with furniture, chairs, tables, hangings on the walls, and model people and animals in both standing and sitting attitudes. They had paused in mid movement, perhaps on hearing the approach of a visitor, Karoy guessed. But not a word of welcome greeted him.
"Has anyone here seen the Lady Tiy?"
They looked blank. "The little girl brought Tiy here from the museum," he explained. "Tiy is a beautiful Egyptian noble lady carved in sycamore and with long, beautiful tresses."
He approached a woman holding a baby. "Have you seen a stranger come this way?" The plastic face looked back at him pleasantly but emptily. He turned to a furry creature with shiny button eyes.
There were no bears in Egypt. "Have you seen her?” he asked the Teddy Bear. No?" He swung around. "Anybody?" They stared unblinkingly back, their faces frozen, yet smiling pleasantly. "So, along with the guardian of the window, you are all joined together in a plot of silence. No matter, I will find the lady Tiy on my own."
'I am glad I was not shut in a tomb with such models for company,' he thought, departing the doll's house.
He walked across a bristly rug that tickled his bare feet and came to a bed, dimly lit by a small nightlight on a table beside it. He could hear a child’s sifted breathing coming from above.
Perhaps the little girl had taken the lady Tiy to bed with her. He peered up. The bedcover, blue-green in colour like turquoise jewels mined in Egypt's Western desert, had loops of thread that he could use as a rope ladder.
Karoy went up, scaling the side like a soldier climbing a siege ladder. The sound of the girl's breathing grew louder as he ascended. Almost at the top. He poked his head cautiously over the edge to make sure that she was truly asleep.
Yes, he glimpsed the child. There she was, her head on the pillow, eyes closed, lashes spread on her cheeks like little fans - and, joy - the Lady Tiy lay tucked in the corner of her arm!
Karoy fought an urge to call out to her. He climbed up on to the cover and trod lightly across towards her.
Closer and closer he crept. He could see Tiy’s form emerging more clearly now. But at the sight of her, joy and shock clashed like waves dashing against each other.
“What has come of you, Tiy?” he whispered, aghast.
Tiy’s eyes sprang open and she shot upright.
“Karoy! Can it be?”
Her startled eyes surged with joy to see him, but they found little answering joy in his eyes. Karoy could not hide his horror.
The lady Tiy was splitting and crumbling. A hollow gaped at her cheek and lips. Splits ran like dark rivers through her hair and down her sycamore body.
The words he had spoken to the magical Heka doll came back to mock him.
"She is already perfect," he had said. "And I like her the way she is."
"Yes, maybe. But would you still admire her if she were no longer perfect? What then? What if your precious Lady Tiy suddenly began to show her age, her skin grew lined and cracked and her body began to crumble? Would you still want to gape at her for another thousand years?"
‘But she is my Lady Tiy, damaged or not,’ Karoy thought. ‘I have not come this far and loved this long to abandon her now.
Yet there still remained the problem of freeing Tiy from the child's grasp. How could he do it without waking her?
A soft grinding sound near his head d
isturbed his thinking.
Mosquito. The open window had let the insect fly in.
That was it.
He would give the child’s arm a tiny pinch like a mosquito bite and, when her arm flew out, he would pull Tiy free, but he must remember to duck his head or risk being knocked flying across the room.
Karoy edged closer to the child's arm. The skin was faintly downy, he saw as he reached to grasp a pinch of her skin with thumb and a forefinger.
Nip.
The child's arm flew out. Karoy ducked not a moment too soon as her arm passed overhead. He froze, crouching on the cover, waiting until he heard the child’s breathing steady.
Free of the child's embrace, the Lady Tiy sat up. Karoy took her arm and pulled her to her feet. He noticed that one of her hands was missing and also a foot.
He was going to have to carry her. "How is it possible that you are here?" she said. She could still manage a whisper from damaged lips. "Not now. Throw your arms around my neck and I will carry you on my back." Tiy gave an anxious, shivery sigh, but obeyed. She slid her arms around his neck. "Brave Karoy," she murmured in his ear. "What have you risked for me?" "I would risk more far more, but right now I must get you home."
Karoy was already exhausted from his night's exertions, but having Tiy's arms flung around his neck buoyed him as if he were floating, just as Tiy had seemed to float earlier that night when the torches of the children turned on her like so many suns as she stood in the safe, airtight world of the display case.
Safe, airtight world.
Could he really hope to get her back to its safety?
How would he carry her all that way? How would he cross the stream without a boat?
Don't think about that now.
"Hold on, we're going down."
With Tiy hanging from his neck, he went over the edge of the bedcover and hooked his foot in the nearest loop of turquoise thread. Every muscle of his acacia body ached and his glued and pinned joints creaked like an old wooden boat, but he loved Tiy with every grain of his heart and he would not give up.
Down to the next loop, and the next.
And then it was time to begin climbing again, this time scaling the front of the dresser to the window, pausing every few moments to catch his breath.
Karoy rested from his exertions at the windowsill.
“Are you going to carry me down there? I will surely be too heavy for you.”
Not as heavy, he thought, as the knowledge I have held in my heart for centuries that I was afraid to tell you of my feelings for you.
He knelt, grasping the ivy stem in his hands before easing himself and his precious cargo over.
Slender as the Lady Tiy was, with an extra body on his shoulders it was hard to slow his descent. He shredded leaves from the stem in a rapid fall that had her gasping in his ear.
Snap, snap, snap.
They landed back on the ground with a thump.
“Are you all right, Tiy?”
“I am fine, you do not handle me nearly so roughly as that little girl.”
But now came another problem.
How did he carry her alone, all the way back to the museum?
Karoy lifted Tiy once more and set off for the park.
"So, you started ahead of us, did you?” said a voice from within a patch of deep shadow beneath a tree. We have been looking all night for you, but it is plain you are none the worse for your joy flight with the bird."
Karoy spun. Stepping into the moonlight, their eyes wide in their whites and their teeth gleaming in smiles, stood his three spearmen Planki, Weji and Hefti.
"You wanted all the credit for yourself, is that it?" Weji complained.
"Put her down now. I will carry Tiy from here," said the strapping Hefti, returning Karoy's spear and shield to him.
"Let us hurry before the boatmen mutiny and go back across the stream without us," said Planki. "They came with us as far as the edge of the park, obviously fearing to be left alone without military protection, I would say."
"You came," Karoy said gulping. "Even though you must have believed that I was gone forever."
"We knew it would have been your last wish to save Tiy," said Weji. "But don't start getting misty eyed again. It is bad for your paint."
They set off for the journey back, resting Tiy on the surface of the papyrus boat like a queen on a carrying couch.
Karoy heard it first, a distant surge like an ocean coming through the grass.
"Halt!" he said.
"Halt, halt, halt," the command went back down the line, but not in time to stop Hefti, who drove the hull of the papyrus boat, carrying the Lady Tiy, into the back of Weji's head with a dull thump.
"Ouch! That's my head you hit with your boat!"
"Then we'd better stop - we've hit shallows!" said Hefti, grinning, paying back the little man for his jokes.
"Sh-sh!" said Karoy. "Listen".
As the surge drew closer, it seemed to spread out across the horizon.
"I do not like it," said Planki, with a nervous shake in his voice. "I get this strange, tickling feeling in my stomach when I hear it, a feeling of dread, yet surely I have never heard this sound before. And yet ... I seem to have a distant knowing of it, far, far back..." This was strange talk coming from the plain-speaking Planki and it added to Karoy's sense of unease. "I shall scout ahead and see what it is." Planki left the column and went closer to peer into the dark of the woodlands. What could it be? The surging sound changed in nature to a dull roar, which turned next into the drumming of feet, thousands of feet - an army on the march... Planki went closer, turning his head to one side to listen carefully. Karoy gulped.
Something of Planki's dread began to stir in his own stomach. It was as if he knew this sound too, in an age before his creation.
Just one came first, an army scout with a great orange head and brutal, long-toothed jaws.
Termite!
He saw Planki freeze.
Karoy felt an icy shudder. This was the natural enemy of every wooden being. He had known this fear since the time when he was still in the wooden womb of his mother acacia tree.
Wood devourers...
Now he saw them, soldiers in military formation - long insect columns. A termite horde was descending on them.
Had Heka called them up with her magic?
These vandals were the enemies not just of young trees, but of every creation in wood. Termites were the original tomb raiders who came digging not for gold but for the prize of precious wood, chairs, caskets, statues, richly carved coffins.
This was an enemy civilization that created its own city states and built its own pyramid mounds to rival those of the pharaohs.
"Come back, Planki - run!"
But the wooden soldier's legs had turned to stone.
The sea of legs, heads and hungry jaws hit the wooden spearman like a tidal wave. He stood straight and true. Karoy and Weji gasped as they saw him raise his shield and spear above his head, not to defend himself or to attack, but to a shake them in defiance, before the wood eaters boiled over his head and reduced him to sawdust.
"Planki - no!"
He was gone, grain by wooden grain - in seconds.
"To the stream! It is our only chance."
The destruction of his comrade turned Karoy's body hollow as if termites had already invaded him. He ran on shaky legs. Only the water could save them now. How far were they from the stream?
Poor Planki.
He has died, straight and true. But it is because of me and my reckless vow to save the Lady Tiy.
As if he could hear Karoy's thoughts, Weji growled beside him.
"This is all the curse of Heka. That wooden witch has much to answer for!"
The blind army surged to catch them. Karoy glanced over his shoulder. Soldier ants led the charge, catching fast.
"Weji, protect the rear!"
They must defend Lady Tiy as well as the bearers carrying her boat from the advancing attackers.
/> Karoy and Weji broke from the formation and let it pass. They fell in behind it, keeping a watch over their shoulders.
The insect soldiers' jaws were not all the same, he noticed, but were fitted with a complete carpenter's arsenal to deal with wooden flesh. Some had weapons that were toothed, others like knives and chisels and still others had jaws that were serrated like saw blades.
A leading soldier gave a burst of speed. It caught up and ran at Weji. He twisted and blocked it, rammed his shield into the orange head. Karoy swung with his spear and jabbed at the head. The angry soldier clamped hold of his spear and would have snapped it in two if Weji hadn't jabbed his spear blade into its sensitive mouth.
The creature turned tail, but not to escape.
"Careful, it is going to spray!"
They took cover behind their shields backing hurriedly away. A jet of smelly liquid exploded from the termite’s abdomen, barely missing their heads. They fled to catch up with the others.
The stream ahead. Karoy could smell it in the air between his gasping breaths.
Could the termites scent it too? Water would stop the termites.
The fleeing group parted the grass and there it was.
A stream, glittering in the moonlight, the bank on the far side faded to a shadowy smudge. Hefti and the boatman lowered the boat. They all got behind it and shoved it through the grass down to the water's edge. Karoy could hear rippling sounds in the stream, but it was soon drowned out by the surge of ocean breakers rolling in behind them. The prow of the boat splashed into the water. Hefti held it secure against the current while the others jumped on board. Karoy and Weji fell back to protect the rear.
"There are too many for one trip!" said a boatman. "We'll sink. Two of you wait here. You will have to fight them off until we can come back for you!"
Hold off an army of wood eaters?
Squat heads like orange shields floated above the wave. Karoy made a decision.
"You go with them Hefti. Weji and I will fight."
"Never! I stay and fight with you."
"Do not argue. With your strength rowing you will get back faster! That is an order!"
Karoy pushed the big man on board and he gave their bobbing boat a shove from the shore. It broke free and headed into the stream. Eager hands worked at the oars, pulling them away.
THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST Page 18
