“I’d rather walk than sit and wait for death.”
“Okay. We’ll walk,” said Hapu.
Karoya nodded. She sewed the sleeve back onto Ramose’s nomad coat as best she could with a length of fishing line.
“I’m sorry,” Ramose said. “Neither of you would be in this situation if it wasn’t for me.”
Ramose looked at his friends. Why had they chosen to take this journey with him? It was the duty of all Egyptians to serve the pharaoh and his family, but when Hapu started to help Ramose, he didn’t even know he was the pharaoh’s son. Karoya should have hated him. It was the pharaoh who was responsible for her being taken from her family and becoming a slave.
“You shouldn’t have followed me, Hapu.”
Hapu put his bag on his shoulder. “It’s the will of the gods,” he said.
“You could have gone to Tombos, Karoya. You would have been closer to your home. Why did you choose to come with me?”
Karoya shrugged. “You needed my help.”
Ramose had hoped that when he became pharaoh, he would be able to reward his friends for their friendship. It didn’t look like that was going to happen now.
Ramose turned towards the rising sun and started to walk. Hapu followed him. Karoya picked up Mery’s basket and set out after Hapu.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say. The sun beat down on them. It felt hotter than it had on the other days they’d spent in the desert. By mid-morning they had already drunk all the water. Ramose could think of nothing but how thirsty he was. He imagined large terracotta jars of water, pools and ponds; he remembered the Nile. He didn’t look ahead, but just stared at the sand beneath him, and his feet making one pointless step after another. They trudged through the valleys between the huge mounds of sand, skirting around dune after dune.
“Ramose,” said Karoya behind him. Her voice sounded dry and crackly like a piece of burnt papyrus. “You’ve turned south. We aren’t heading east any more.”
Ramose looked up at the sun. It was directly above them. When the sun was in that position he found it hard to tell which way was which.
“What does it matter?” he said, continuing to walk in the same direction.
Karoya didn’t argue. She followed in his footsteps. Hapu’s eyes were glazed over. Ramose had seen that look in animals that were close to death. He guessed his own eyes had the same look. Ramose kept walking.
The visions of water in Ramose’s head grew stronger. He remembered the jars and jars of water that the palace servants had poured over him day after day as they bathed him. He also remembered the lotus pool in the palace gardens. He pictured the irrigation canals in the Nile valley, recalling with envy the water poured on the rows of vegetables. He would have given anything for a cup of water, just the amount given to a single lettuce or onion plant. But he had nothing to give.
Images of his dear sister and Keneben, his tutor, drifted into his mind. The last time he had seen them was the day they had escaped from the high priest. The royal barge had sailed past them on its way to Thebes. Aboard it, Ramose had seen his beautiful sister, Princess Hatshepsut, and Keneben. He had thought Keneben was still banished in the distant land of Punt.
Ramose had also glimpsed his father on the barge. Pharaoh had looked unwell, but he was healthy enough to make the long river journey to Thebes. Ramose had splashed into the river waving and shouting, but they hadn’t seen him. They didn’t know where he was. They would never know what had happened to him. He had also seen his half-brother, the brat Prince Tuthmosis, and the boy’s evil mother Queen Mutnofret.
When darkness fell, they collapsed in the sand. When the sun rose, they struggled to their feet and walked again. They walked without thinking about which direction they were going in. They each stared down at their feet, as if a great deal of concentration was required to keep them moving. Their steps became slower and shorter, until they were merely shuffling through the sand a few finger-widths at a time.
Ramose looked up at the sky. The sun was lower. Was it morning or afternoon? He couldn’t remember. Was this only the second day of walking? Surely it had been longer. He looked around him. The dunes had softened and become smaller and lower. Instead of walking around them, they walked in a straight line over them. It was easier than having to decide which valley to follow. Ramose stopped. Up ahead he saw something glint in the sunlight. It was a reflection of the blue sky.
“The devil’s mirror,” said Ramose hoarsely, pointing to the reflection.
Karoya looked to where he was pointing. She nodded. Her knees collapsed beneath her, as if the effort of nodding had taken all the energy she had. She slumped to the ground. Hapu collapsed next to her. Ramose kept his eyes on the bright glint of reflected light. This mirage was more detailed than the ones he’d seen before. He could actually see faint images of palm fronds. Ramose thought it must be the effects of lack of water. He stumbled a few more steps. The reflection disappeared, but the image of the palm tree grew clearer.
“I must be close to death,” he whispered, though the words couldn’t get out of his parched mouth. “I’m seeing things.”
He shuffled up the gentle slope of the next sand dune, but his legs crumpled beneath him. He crawled on his hands and knees, as the palm fronds in front of him multiplied and tamarisks appeared as well. Suddenly, the sand beneath him sprouted tufts of dry grass. He crawled to the top of the dune. A green valley stretched before him. A forest of date palms, tamarisks and acacia trees sprung from the ground. In the middle of the trees was a pool of water, perfectly reflecting the sky. Ramose stared.
He croaked out a call to his friends. They struggled to their feet and made their way very slowly to the top of the shallow dune. They blinked as they stared at the brilliant vision of green and blue—colours they hadn’t seen for days and days.
“Is it real?” Hapu’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Or have we passed into the underworld?”
Ramose stood up and took a few steps towards the trees and the pool. They didn’t edge further away as he approached, as the heat haze had. Instead they grew closer. He could see that the palms were laden with dates. Ramose found a last reserve of energy and ran towards the pool. He splashed into the water and then fell full length. The coolness of the water took his breath away. He gulped in mouthfuls of it.
“It’s real,” he spluttered.
4
ORACLE OF THE OASIS
Karoya and Hapu approached the pool more cautiously. Karoya dipped her fingers into the water and scooped up a handful. She drank it and then sank to her knees to drink more. Hapu stood ankle-deep in the water and cried.
“I don’t understand how there can be a pool of water in the middle of the desert,” Hapu said, after they had drunk their fill. The water had a bitter, salty taste, but no one was complaining. They were sitting in the shade of a tamarisk tree chewing on the dried-up dates that had fallen on the ground. No one had the strength yet to climb one of the palms for the fresher fruit.
“It’s an oasis,” said Ramose.
“Without them nomads wouldn’t be able to survive,” said Karoya.
“But where does the water come from?” asked Hapu, still puzzled.
“It comes up from the great invisible river that runs beneath the earth,” replied Karoya.
Hapu shook his head in disbelief. “It’s like magic.”
Ramose didn’t want to spoil his friends’ good mood, but he was already thinking of what lay ahead of them.
“The Nile is still many, many cubits away and we only have one small waterskin and nothing but dates to eat.”
“We can live here for a long time,” said Karoya. “There will be snakes, birds, frogs. We can find things to eat.”
“And stay here until we grow old?” Hapu didn’t like the idea.
“No,” replied Karoya. “We will wait until the next nomads arrive.”
“That could be ages.”
“It might be months, yes. Do you have a better idea?”
Hapu didn’t.
The sun was low in the sky.
“It will be getting cold soon,” said Karoya. “We need to collect fuel to make a fire.”
The three friends walked around the oasis collecting dead palm fronds and dry grass.
“Look what I’ve found,” shouted Karoya. She picked up a dead branch that had fallen from one of the tamarisk trees. “We’ll be able to have a good fire tonight.”
Wood was very precious in Egypt and they wouldn’t have dreamt of wasting it in a fire normally, but out in the desert it didn’t seem to matter.
Karoya arranged some stones to make a fireplace. She laid a pile of grass and palm leaves in the fireplace and then she got out her fire-making tools. These consisted of three pieces of wood: a flat stick with a well dug into it, a smooth rod and a stick with a length of gut tied at each end like a small bow. She wrapped the string of the bow around the rod and placed the end of the rod in the well in the flat stick. Then she started pulling the bow back and forth so that the upright stick twirled at great speed. Hapu laid small pieces of dry grass near the well, waiting for the wood to get hot enough to burn the grass. Ramose picked up the dead tree branch and broke it across his knee. The crack echoed in the silence. A shrill sound suddenly came out of the trees.
“Eigh! Eigh! Eigh!”
The friends all spun round. Hapu screamed in terror. A small dark creature, covered from head to toe in black rags, appeared from among the trees. It was wielding a heavy stick. The creature ran straight at Ramose, knocked him to the ground and started hitting him with the stick.
“It’s a demon,” yelled Hapu.
Karoya rushed at the demon, trying to rescue her friend.
“Stop!” she shouted.
The creature turned with a whirl of tattered rags and set upon Karoya, scratching her with long, curved claws and growling like a tiger. Ramose jumped to his feet and grabbed the demon, pinning its arms behind its back. He was surprised at how easy it was. The creature’s arms were thin and frail. He pulled back the black rags wrapped around its head to get a better look at their attacker. To his surprise, he discovered it was an old woman—an ancient woman. She had a tangle of grey hair, milky-white eyes and a dark-brown face that was wrinkled like an old leather bag. She screamed out horrible sounds and feebly tried to escape from Ramose’s grasp.
“It must be the spirit of someone who died in the desert,” said Hapu, looking at her fearfully.
“I don’t think spirits can bash people,” said Ramose, rubbing the bump on his head.
“Where did she come from?” asked Karoya, peering around in the growing darkness. “There’s no one else here.”
“Where are your people?” Ramose asked the old woman. “Where are you from?”
The woman didn’t seem to understand him. Hapu waved his hand in front of her eyes.
“I think she’s blind,” he said.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Ramose. “You two see if you can find something to eat.”
Since their last meal with the nomads two days before, they’d had nothing to eat but a few dried dates.
“Hapu, can you climb up one of these palms and get some dates?”
Hapu nodded and started to climb a date palm.
“Dates,” said the old woman in an angry voice. “My dates.”
The three friends stared at the wrinkled face. She had spoken in Egyptian.
“We’re hungry,” said Karoya slowly. “Very hungry.”
The old woman’s brow wrinkled even more than it was already. She reached up and touched Karoya’s face.
“Children!” she exclaimed. She spoke with a heavy accent, and the word came slowly as if she was searching in a part of her mind she hadn’t used for a long time. “Come!” she said. “Come!”
The woman led Karoya by the hand. It was almost dark now, but the old woman walked confidently through the trees as if it were broad daylight. Ramose and Hapu looked at each other, and then followed her.
“I thought she was blind,” whispered Hapu.
“She is, but she must know the oasis very well.”
The woman led them away from the pool and through the grove of trees to a rocky outcrop. There was a fireplace with a fire smouldering in it. A piece of dark material, similar to the nomads’ tents, hung from a rock overhang. It was held in place by stones. The woman must have slept behind this rough curtain. There were cooking pots and baskets. Tethered nearby were three goats.
“It looks like she’s lived here for a long time,” said Ramose.
The woman made them sit down. There was a cooking pot on the fire. Something was simmering inside it—something that smelled like meat cooking. Such delicious smells had seemed unimaginable half an hour ago. The woman made bread from flour. She gave them each a gourd bowl and filled them to the brim with the goat stew. They ate ravenously.
“It tastes wonderful,” said Hapu, gratefully.
While they were eating, the old woman made sweet cakes with honey and dates. They ate them, still hot, with fresh goats’ milk. It was a feast.
“I think this is all a mirage,” said Ramose, swallowing another cake. “Like the heat haze pools we saw out in the desert.”
“Yes, but we couldn’t get near them,” said Hapu, draining his bowl of milk. “This isn’t moving away.”
An angry miaow came from Karoya’s basket. Karoya leapt up to open it.
“I forgot about Mery!” she said, letting the cat out. “Poor Mery, you’re hungry too, aren’t you?”
Mery wailed miserably. The old woman jumped at the sound. Karoya put down her bowl of milk and let the cat drink. Mery purred. The old woman was puzzled by the sound. She cocked her ear to listen more closely.
“It’s a cat,” Karoya replied. “It’s my pet.”
The old woman had heard of cats, but thought they were imaginary beasts like griffins and camels. Ramose smiled to himself, remembering the camel. Karoya guided the woman’s hand so that it stroked Mery’s fur. The old woman’s grim little mouth broke into a smile.
“Warm,” she said. “Soft.”
Now that the friends had eaten their fill and were warmed by the fire, they began to relax. The old woman, speaking slowly in a half-forgotten language, told them her story.
They discovered that her name was Jenu. When she was a young girl, her father had been the chief of a nomad tribe, just like the one they had travelled with.
“One day we went to Kharga, an oasis so big it takes a week to walk from one end to the other,” she told them. “Egyptians were there, building their temples. They took away all the young people for slaves.” Jenu shook her head sorrowfully. “I lived for many years as a slave in the house of an Egyptian.”
When her eyesight started to fail, her master didn’t want to feed a blind slave. She was taken to the edge of the desert and left there; told to return to her tribe. Of course, she had no idea where her people would be. She wandered for many days and was close to death when a tribe of nomads came across her. It had been a bad year in the desert and the nomads had lost many of their goats. They could not take on another mouth to feed. Instead, they brought her to the oasis, gave her some food and left her there when they moved on. If the gods will it, you will survive, they had said.
“And the gods did will it,” said the old woman. “May they be praised forever.”
After the food ran out, Jenu had lived on dates and frogs. Then other nomads came to the oasis and each tribe gave her a little of what they had.
“I give them something in return,” said Jenu.
“What?” asked Ramose. “What do you have to give?”
She told them how, as her vision of the world had disappeared, she had discovered an inner vision was growing in its place.
“The gods, in their wisdom, have made me an oracle,” she said. “I can read people’s futures.”
Stories of the Oracle of the Oasis had spread among the nomads. Now, whenever they visited the oasis, they
asked Jenu to look into their future.
Ramose and his friends sat wide-eyed listening to Jenu’s story, forgetting their exhaustion.
“Can you see everyone’s future?” asked Hapu.
Jenu shook her head. “Only those who the gods favour.” She reached out and found Ramose’s hand. “She will lift the mists on your future.”
The old woman wouldn’t say anything else and disappeared into her tent, telling them she was tired.
The following morning the friends awoke to find Jenu making breakfast. After they had eaten fresh bread, goats’ cheese and dried figs, they explored the oasis. It was quite small, perhaps a thousand cubits from one end to the other. Ramose remembered courtyards in the palace that were bigger.
As well as the tethered goats, Jenu had a small garden where she grew a patch of wheat, some herbs and onions. Other food, gifts from nomads, was stored in jars and baskets. Nomads had been there only two weeks earlier, so her stores were full.
Jenu had a list of things that she wanted her visitors to do for her. Her simple weaving loom had broken and she wanted them to mend it for her. She wanted someone to climb the trees and knock down fresh dates. The sharp-edged stone that she used for cutting had shattered and she needed a new one.
The oasis was a pleasant place. Karoya and Hapu spent the whole day helping the old woman. Mery skipped around, attacking tufts of grass and chasing birds, delighted that she was no longer squashed in her basket. Jenu was enjoying the company of her young guests. She no longer looked like a frightening old witch. Overnight she had transformed into a smiling grandmother.
Ramose busied himself around the oasis, but he wasn’t laughing and chattering like the others. He was thinking about what the old woman had said the night before. Could she really see into his future? If she could, did he want to know what she saw?
In the evening, after a filling meal of tasty goat stew, Karoya and Hapu sat around Jenu’s cooking fire as if they hadn’t a problem in the world. Jenu sat spinning goat hair into thread, twirling it with her fingers. Hapu told funny stories that made the old woman laugh. Karoya mended Jenu’s tattered tent cloth. Mery lay with her stomach towards the fire. Ramose sat to one side, poking at the fire. He knew that his problems weren’t over yet.
Sting of the Scorpion Page 3
