Heart of the Lotus

by Mary R Woldering

  Djerah slowed his pace and at that moment as if he sensed her thought about men but couldn’t identify it.

  Hmm, she continued her silent musing. So strange the Children chose you to be a host. They didn’t need to. They could have just had Marai and maybe Ari lay hands on you to heal your wounds. They must know something about your future that we don’t yet see, so maybe I’ll try to see what it is. She laughed to herself, curious but wary, recalling that a similar probe into Deka’s past had permanently distanced the Ta-Seti woman from everyone else in their new family.

  Let’s see. He’s tall but not as tall as Marai. He has such long and well-shaped legs – a good stride, but it’s not his looks that made them choose him, or his kinship to my beloved.

  Djerah stopped walking and toed the ground for a moment. Even in the dark Naibe sensed him blushing over her assessment of his evolving body.

  “Oh,” she giggled. “You read my thoughts then. Well, you are handsome. I can’t lie and say you aren’t.”

  “I know. I…” he breathed, exuding an air of melancholy over all of the painful memories in his life.

  “Let’s go over here…” Naibe saw he’d spied an outcropping of rock nearest the water and answered his unspoken suggestion:

  There’s no crocodiles or other things coming to feed at the water’s edge; just the slip of the moon showing us how empty the shore is. It’s still a risk.

  She remembered, all too painfully, the way Maatkare had killed an old guard then fed him to crocodiles when she and Ari tried to escape at Sokor.

  “I don’t know”, then “Eee!” she squeaked aloud as Djerah hoisted her into his arms.

  “And this is exactly what I’d do if we saw the crocodile you’re thinking about. You’re so light, I could even run all the way back with you up in my arms like this,” he carried her to the spot he had spied and set her beside him.

  “Is this good?” he made sure she was comfortable and then as if he had begun a new stanza of a song, continued their first conversation. “So, Asar, eh?” The green-faced god who dies and rises. That’s a name for a king, not a sojourner. Does he know you picked that?”

  “Well,” she giggled, raising her knees and embracing them close to her chin. “We haven’t actually talked out loud about it, but I know he will like it.”

  Naibe felt Djerah’s arm fit loosely around her back and immediately recognized her own warm yearning. Her fingers traced his smooth chest just under his collarbone and reveled in his sharp intake of air. Shy, like Marai was… she snickered, withdrew her hand, and projected a thought followed by gentle words:

  I know what you’re thinking, Djee. “Don’t be ashamed. It’s a natural part of being reborn to have the lotus points awakened to want some joy; especially the root of the lotus, which wants the body pleased.” She started to feel like a teacher. Imagine that. In my old life, I barely knew how to feed myself.

  “As far as Marai?” she answered his former question. “We’re part of each other, you know.” she reached up and touched the place on Djerah’s brow, then watched him shiver in ecstasy. The moon picks up the color of your hair: dark, yet kissed with gold and growing brighter... pretty.

  “My hair? I felt you asking me that, Naibe,” he laughed. “My Mother’s mother had golden hair. She was Tjemehu like they say one of Great Khufu’s wives was. Not many in Kemet have that color hair. As for these sky color eyes, I am growing; I have no idea why. They’re almost light like old men’s milk-blind eyes, but I see too well from them,” he paused, then stroked his chin. “Not having such a knotty old beard is nice. Maybe the whole thing will go away. I like a small beard I can braid like nobles do, but shoo-ee, the scrapes on my jaw from a blade.”

  Suddenly, his gaze lowered.

  “What’s wrong Djee?” Naibe patted the back of his neck, reassuring him.

  “You know, you saved my life; you more than the others.” Djerah stared out over the river. “Everyone helped heal me and so did these stones we have, but if you hadn’t stopped that monster from beating me there would have been no Djerah left for you to heal.”

  “Almost wasn’t.” she turned her glance away, remembering the horrid afternoon of torture and killing that had absolutely no merit other than the spending of the prince’s rage on a poor sack of flesh.

  “Ari and Maatkare both swore you were dead, but when Marai came here, he kept trying…” She waved her head back and forth to shake out the bundles and ribbons in it so it could stream in soft ringlets down her back. “I just couldn’t bear to see you killed, after you were so brave over something you didn’t even understand.” She smiled only tentatively, surprised he remembered anything of what she did. “I couldn’t let his highness lose his wits trying to finish you either. He wanted to hurt you because it made him mad that you wouldn’t speak. I think he got even madder he didn’t get to finish you. I haven’t figured that one out yet. He likes to make things suffer but the then again… he doesn’t. He gives mercy at the last. Said he wanted to do that with you when I stopped him. It was just enough,” she paused, beset by a foolish but thoroughly sensible question. “Did it hurt? I mean…”

  “I…” Djerah frowned, taken aback, “…really don’t remember that part. Just that I didn’t want to be there.”

  She knew he wanted to give her a better answer and that the question hadn’t been too silly, but then he sighed, tired.

  As they sat in silence together, Naibe sensed the strange music of his thoughts as he contemplated every detail of his surroundings: the shapes of starlight formed by the moon on the rippling water where some fish broke the surface, the scent of distant watch fires and incense from devotions, the humming roar of a disturbance of locusts replaced by the chirping of those nearby. Naibe felt him sighing in wonder and understood that his reformatted intelligence actively absorbed everything about the night, the air, and her presence next to him. In a way, seeing his reaction caused her to remember her own journey through the changes. For her, the clouds in her own thoughts drew away so quickly that slightest things like an ant crawling on the sand had frightened her.

  “Maybe we’d better go back.” She suggested, “Shame though. Such a pretty night.”

  Djerah looked away, his head in his hands.

  “Errrr!” He growled in what Naibe easily identified as frustration “This is what’s killing me now. If you didn’t…”

  “Have another man’s child in my belly, you’d want to tip me back yourself!” She laughed, showing him one more time how easy it had become to complete his thoughts. She was barely aware that her voice had shifted to the tone of the Goddess Ashera. It lulled like golden bells echoing into the soft night until she saw his eyes grow wide with misery-tinged yearning.

  “Please. Stop what you’re doing. I can’t…” he whispered, spellbound, then tried to turn his glance away.

  “Ah. That.” she checked her voice and returned it to normal tones, sympathy filling it as she watched him gasp in relief. “I know it happens, but I just have that power over men and women; so much more now that I am a host,” her eyelids fluttered down.

  “Make no mistake, Djerah,” she continued. “You would be so good to love, but I am with Marai now and always have been since the moment we first loved. All else you sense of me happened when he had died or before I knew him.” She placed her hands on his temples and brought his brow to hers so he could see how she looked before; what her life was like. She felt him tense, then break contact and move away from her as if stunned. Naibe knew her words sounding in his heart and her sweet breath on his face layered over the vision of her toad-like helplessness had been almost too compelling for him. When she felt those things, for just a moment, she wanted him. The young woman shook her head. After a short while, Djerah scooted back to her and rubbed the back of her neck, almost teasing her until a mournfulness she easily read overtook him again.

  “I’m alone for sure, then, unless another woman pops up just over the next field of grass. Not so fair, is it? M
arai has you and Ariennu.”

  “Ohhhh. Listen, you,” Naibe teased. She walked her fingers around the place on his chest where his heart lay. “Still so impatient!” she then reflected. “You’re a healthy man now; with honest needs.” Her voice trailed because she almost said, by instinct, Tell me about your wife. That had always been her seductress’ tool. She asked Marai that same question one moonlit night. It’s what I do. I charm their hearts and try to heal the empty parts. I’m drawn to hurt: Wseriri’s guilt for his part in Marai’s doom, Shepsesi knowing he, not his prophetess, was the barren one… poor Menkaure KhaKhet seeing how his daughter died through my eyes… and Maatkare. I got the back of his hand for trying. I couldn’t begin to get him to release his misery, only create some for me. She shook her head and considered Djerah’s crystalline blue eyes.

  “You didn’t get to know her? My wife Raawa?” he stared at the horizon, bitterly.

  “Not more than ‘Good morning, how are you? Do you need any help today?’,” Naibe reflected on how closed off the woman and her sisters had been and how she, Ari, and Deka had clearly known there was another man in the story as she labored to bring her child into the world. “We knew about her, but…”

  “That she had no faith in me?” his head bowed again. He radiated the sensation of shame so strongly that Naibe thought a spider crawling by would notice and pause.

  “Talk to me, though,” Naibe insisted, her hand patting his upper back in comfort.

  “Oh. Why not, then?” Djerah grumbled, his hand dropping to find a pebble and fling it out in the direction of the river. “She was the daughter of people who lived near us in the edge of the water up the river from the city. They were fishers. We gathered reeds for our baskets, hunted crocodiles for their hide and meat, caught birds, and fished for food near there. My Aba Esai thought it would be a good match to do fishing and baskets; to pickle or salt the fish to sell to people and put it in our baskets.” He paused, thinking of times when they hadn’t been distant from each other. “I was fourteen and she was twelve. It was good then. We were happy together. Then the fever came after Aliyan, my second little one was born. I was away with the militia in Ta-Seti when it struck and came home to all this death and dying. Then, I went across the river to the crew village to get more certain work.” At that moment, he stopped.

  Naibe knew not to press him about it.

  “The old man Akaru spoke it like a seer who knows, that she was just alone too long and needed company. Guess she didn’t respect that I was half-killing myself on the crew for our family,” Djerah pouted.

  “I guess not,” she shook her head, getting a sense of everything the young man wasn’t telling her. “Did you ever talk to her at night? After love?” Naibe asked, innocently. That was one of her favorite times with Marai and even when she had been with Shepseskaf and Wserkaf she liked the “talking time” that always went with tired snuggles and sweetness until sleep came.

  “Some,” Djerah hung his head. “I was just always so tired.”

  I understand. Naibe’s silence explained that she blamed no one.

  “And if I’d been there, not working; maybe begging, would a woman want a man to starve to death with her and be there to help her bury those babies?”

  A long silence followed. She placed a gentle thought in his heart:

  Djerah, look at me. Look in my eyes, you sweet man…

  His head turned hesitantly.

  Naibe knew Djerah was terrified that he would do or say too much and that he would have to answer to Marai somehow if he did. She wanted to kiss him just to make him feel better about the decisions in his life, but hesitated. She knew, if she gave him a few more minutes, his joy would suddenly turn sour and he would begin to dwell on the boys who followed him blindly to their deaths. If she kissed him she knew it could end up worse than doing nothing. Sometimes, being a goddess of love has its dim side, I guess, she shrugged to herself.

  “Oooh” she suddenly felt her belly. “Big kick!” she half-lied. It wasn’t that big; just the little one in there moving around because I’m not. If he had ever enjoyed being a father at all, Naibe knew this distraction would give him enough pause that he would temporarily stop mourning his past mistakes.

  His fingers spread gently out over her belly and he bowed his head to it.

  “Live, little man,” he whispered. “Make her glad, make Marai proud.”

  At that, she stopped caring what happened to either of them and seized him. They kissed hungrily for a moment, then both tore themselves away from each other.

  “Sorry” they both echoed at the same time.

  “Maybe we should get back,” she laughed, shivered, and shook her head.

  “Yeah,” he whispered, still stunned and staring at her. He touched his lips in disbelief.

  Naibe let him help her stand and knew he didn’t want an end to the evening they had enjoyed. She briefly rested her head on his chest and allowed his quiet, swaying embrace and felt him think:

  I could so easily fall in love with you. You could heal my heart the way this little Yah stone has healed my broken self.

  She faded into him in response, but then they both felt the next more solid kick.

  “And I think someone just told me to keep my hands off his mother…” he stepped back and shook his shaggy, bronzing locks.

  The two walked back in silence, but sent a thought or two…

  I’ll always take care of you and the little man, if Marai’s not around…

  She looked back up at him, but paused at the thought of Marai not being around. Another wave of alarm passed through her world, unbidden. “Something’s wrong,” her face paled and she hastened back up the rise from the bank by the river. “It’s the Akaru. We have to hurry.”

  Chapter 3: Walking the Petals

  Marai realized he must have drifted to sleep with Ariennu in his arms when, in what seemed an instant later, he was roused by an urgent whisper which blossomed into:

  “What?!” An angry shout. “Oh, say she did not do that!” Djerah’s voice wound up into a shriek. “A stone? Does Marai know about this? Does he?!”

  “Shhh Djerah, please. I’m sure she had a reason.”

  The sojourner recognized Naibe’s soft voice grow its enchanted layers of calming force as she spoke.

  “You will have peace of heart, Lord Akaru. Here. Take this calmness from my hand. Please…”

  Marai felt Ariennu’s head rise from his chest and felt her form an oath in her thoughts that never made it to her lips. In that instant, the distraction of an evening of love they had both enjoyed vanished.

  Djerah stormed into the bath area, looking right and left, and paused just inside the open breezeway.

  Oh… he averted his eyes, then: “Did you know about this?”

  Even in the semi-dark, Marai read Djerah’s expression of rage as keenly as if it glowed.

  “I sensed something was different about the evening, but I’ve learned to sort the thoughts that come to me and put the troubling ones aside if I sense there is no immediate crisis.” He felt Ari ease up into an almost protective pose.

  “No crisis?” the young man began to rant: “And I thought you were supposed to be our leader in all of this… this whatever it is you’ve charmed us into doing with these little gemstones. I’ll say it’s not a crisis. It’s a god-cursed emergency.”

  “Djerah,” Marai cautioned, then felt Ari tense. He put his hand on her back to keep her quiet. “Just slow down!”

  “No, you listen to me. That woman, Deka. She gave His Highness a stone. She made him a host just like us. The Akaru saw it in his vision quest tonight and it damn near broke his heart. We found him sitting in the plaza fallen over and mourning and you say it’s no crisis. Have you lost your wits or did you never have them to begin with?”

  “What?” Ari exclaimed and rose to look at Marai. “She did what, Marai? And you didn’t feel that? Didn’t your heart jump when it happened?”

  “Not really.” he said
and shrugged while trying to focus his thoughts. What in Nergal’s name… Not an ache, not a whimper? “And did yours, Djerah? I knew she might try that.” He squeezed Ari’s arm, got out of the bath, and dried himself. Wrapping up in the loose cloak and kilt he had abandoned before his bath, he then turned to help Ariennu out of the pool. “Just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you, even now?” she accused; her voice filling the room.

  Marai held up his hand to hush her, but she ignored him.

  “She’ll have to explain it to me. Of all the poor choices! He’s too wild for a child stone. He’ll learn its power and use it to kill people. Maybe he’ll even try to kill her and then make a move for goddess knows what.” She darted into the shadows to her sleeping area and quickly found a belt to wrap around the waist of her gown.

  When she came back, Marai noticed her stone had emerged and a rainbow flash glittered in her eyes.

  “Ari, be still. Don’t work yourself over this. You too, Djerah.” Marai cautioned them, then glanced out to the plaza where Naibe had remained seated by Akaru. This racket is going to make matters worse. Xania and her maidservant had bustled out to see what had happened while he and Ari dozed. “As for poor choices, I recall three women not so very long ago that one might have said the goddess forsook.”

  He pulled on his lower lip, still mulling over his lack of sight and wondering: I should have known. Djerah’s right. This shouldn’t have gone unseen, but none of us saw it. Did Deka cover this? Why? If she had a problem with me then why not brag about it.

  “Oooh!” Ari’s expression seethed, but at the same time she bowed her head in recognition of a bitter truth about her past. “This is not the same…”

  “And you still feel a bit ill-chosen for this luck don’t you, woman? How many times have we heard that?” He glanced sidelong at her as he fastened his belt then turned to Djerah. “And you. You might not even be here with us, but dead with your head caved in, outside the Prince’s tent. Even so, if you had never even come with me, do you seriously think the life you left would have been a better one with a woman who was waiting on your accident on the scaffolds?” Marai moved toward the open plaza to join Naibe and the others.