Heart of the Lotus

by Mary R Woldering

  “They went out to the river to assist the guards,” she paused, aware that he was about to ask if she had discovered anything about them. “Raem and I know they are not men, but I believe we may be the only ones who know it. I release them from time to time. They bring blood to me. I was going to see if I could release them from their servitude as men when this was over; free them before we returned to Ineb Hedj. Oh…” Deka realized she had said too much. “They call me MaMa Menhit… but…” she had been delighted by the fantasy, but after having seen herself as a beautiful lion, too much had fallen into place. Nefira Sekht – Beautiful lion. Maatkare calls me that. And I… “I cannot accept what you say… that I too am enchanted as the guards and this is the reason why I do not remember? It is not true. I remember being a little girl from time to time. I remember Ta-Te…” she felt the old man’s gentle hand go to her knee as if he wanted to get her full attention.

  “This Ta-Te has become distant. You needed to show him what you have become so that he would come back to you,” he paused to look more earnestly into her eyes. “And now you must remember how you are the lion woman men call and fear as Menhit. You are the first lion and woman of the water. You are Tefnut and the Avenging Eye for him, as he became the sunset Ra-Harakhte or Sutekh or Resheph, as they will call him in the East when he is there… You are the one who slaughters to avenge for the king disgraced.”

  “The lion shape…” Deka’s voice trailed in a strange sense of pride but in a deeper horror. But I am not really a lion… not really… it is just a shape; an illusion, she thought. She knew the story of the god Ra grown old and who sent Sekhmet to avenge him as a bloodthirsty lion whose thirst could not be stopped. Many said Menhit was the elder name of the same goddess.

  “What you wanted now bothers you because you see it was always true? I see the light of knowing in your eyes. Know this truth. The gods of Kemet are spirits with certain duties and forces under the Hidden One, but can become more than one god, given time, because they are all interconnected one with another. Are you surprised I can know this?”

  Deka tore her gaze from him and tried to turn her shoulder away so she couldn’t see those eyes: one green and one black, but he grabbed her hand and held it tightly. She snarled and turned to face him but saw a smile that had widened enough to show oddly perfect teeth.

  “Let go of my hand!” she ordered, “or I will have your heart!”

  “Take it, then,” the Akaru replied, tersely. He squeezed her hand harder, placing it over his chest. His eerie smile grew until his face visibly blurred into black and red when she looked at it. “I am not afraid of death. See how my heart does not even quicken at the threat of it?” His voice became gentle again, his face more pleasant. “I know seeing you has completed my life and even so it is no more than a single moment in the course of my soul’s journey.”

  She hissed, bringing her free hand up and across his face, marking it. Blood welled in the three marks her nails had made. A laugh of desire formed in her throat.

  “Ah!” the elder winced, sucking in his breath at the sting of the wounds. He leaned to her, instead of away in fear. “Come, then, take your taste of me,” Akaru yanked her closer by the hand he still held.

  Her lips grazed the deep scratches she had made on his cheek, but then he released her so he could lift his pectoral collar and expose his heart.

  Bleeding. Blood, she thought. I want that, but not as a drink or food for my hunger. I must taste, Deka bent forward after a brief hesitation and lapped the scratches she had made on his face. He has done this out of love, not fear. Why could he love me? Why? she paused in her thoughts because she felt the man suddenly sigh and begin to sob as her tongue gently soothed the marks. She tasted tears mixing with the blood and stopped to stare, not quite comprehending.

  The elder governor buried his face in his wrinkled hands, his shoulders heaving as he wept.

  “Why are you now weeping?” she daintily licked her lips, savoring the taste. No anger now. No hunger, she shook her head. Why not? Her hesitation returned as she wondered: “Is it because you are finally frightened of me?” Her voice darkened with the pleasant revelry of the taste she had taken. He tasted sweet. I would like more but I could never slaughter that one. Slaughterer. A cruel joke. The gods are laughing at me. This isn’t real, it’s madness.

  “No, it’s not,” the Akaru wept, “and I’m not afraid. I could never be afraid,” he gasped, staring into her flashing eyes. “You cleaned me. I felt you even think it. It was not because you hungered, but because my blood had stained me. It felt so right to me, like something missing from me from the dream I sent you. It was so loving and so sweet, as if the sting of the hurt was needed for your tenderness to emerge.”

  Deka’s shoulders sagged. He’s right. I did feel it. I could have ended him and had my feast for the crime of grabbing my hand that way.

  One word tore itself from her lips.

  “Ta-Te?”

  Her voice quavered in a forbidden question. “Ta -Te?” She gasped, realizing in that instant, that the coppery and grey waves of balding hair and the two-color eyes might have seemed brighter to her and both green when she was younger. No, not Ta –Te, because this old one’s skin is light like frosted, dead flesh. I remember a deep ruddy red-brown skin. The lions thought the child was sick because of his white color. The child, she paused, horrified at the progression of her thoughts. The child has deep brown spotty freckles on his face like this one here.

  “No. No, you know I’m not your Ta-Te. He’s gone. Gone from both of us, just as you were gone from me all of my long life.”

  Deka felt a chill that began in the arms she had placed around the old man race through her.

  “What?” her mouth trembled. Her hand reached forward to touch and inspect the man’s face as if she was checking for some detail she had missed. Then she stopped as he began to explain.

  “I am the Akaru here, that is true, but my name is slightly different. They used to call me Mtoto Akaru Sef, the same way some called you Deka. Do you remember the meaning of the words in my name, sweet lady?” The elder shook as if he wanted to spill out all the truth he had hidden for it to suddenly become part of her reality.

  Deka bowed her head, unable to look in his varied eyes any longer. She had hoped the stone in her brow would not know the answer.

  “A child of the lion god yesterday,” she whispered, her voice halting. She understood and closed her eyes. She felt a myriad of emotions: sorrow, agony, joy, and rage flit through her body. She knew his name, but knew it was still more of a title. Ta-Te. He gave me that name, but called me Deka. I liked the name so long ago. There was magic in it. It meant I had pleased him above all the others and there had been so many discarded ones, perhaps even my own mother; a lost goddess he said.

  Now more than ever, she wanted to know about the woman who bore her, but that would have to be on a different day.

  Maatkare would return soon. What will I tell him? Should I tell him the things I’m learning? Will he believe me? Her heart had begun to race again and oddly enough she had begun to cramp slightly. Her hands pressed her slight belly. A distant music whirled in her thoughts. She wanted to get up and dance, but more than dancing she wanted to run. Raem will reject me if he knows. He cannot know, she looked up at the concern mirroring in the old man’s face.

  “There were other names…” she sniveled, growing even more disturbed by the wakening thoughts. “He called me Kentake Mother and Lady Raine. Tefnut… He took me to the black water and placed me there to strengthen me, to ease my burning.” Her voice halted because something wasn’t right. Her body was changing. The lion was coming forth and she could not control it.

  Deka, my little one,

  My precious Kentake,

  Do not pitiful be to me.

  We are complete - finished now.

  I must go far away.

  My time with you is done

  You will survive.

  I have made you strong eno
ugh.

  She heard him speaking inside her thoughts like a ghost of something too far buried. His voice had been tender that day. There was nothing for her to beg about, but it didn’t stop her from trying.

  Do not leave me. You said I was better than the rest. Why leave me? Let me fly away with you. The women of the village say if a man loves a woman he will cling to her and never leave her. You said you did love me. Why can I not go with you?

  But he had laughed at her as if she was being ridiculous.

  You do not need me.

  I have completed what I came to do.

  You know it is true.

  This time his voice was stern.

  No, Ta-Te. See, my child, my Amenemhat, will be born soon. She revealed her belly, but it wasn’t news to him. Don’t you care that I will give you a son and that he will be a god among men?

  As Deka stared into space past the Akaru, she remembered Ta-Te’s silence and then a low, under the breath laughter that wasn’t joyous this time. It was the kind of laugh that came as a defense against dread. He was fading out of her reality and had brought her into a place that twisted and didn’t seem real. As she reflected on that image she began to wonder if everything had been a dream even back then and her belly fruit the result of a careless and momentary coupling.

  Take me with you, Ta-Te. Take me to your boat of the starry sky. I know the people here mock and dis-believe you, but I will bring them and lay their corpses at your feet. You are their king and their god though they disrespect you. I will get them back for you.

  You do not understand, little one.

  You are not like me.

  In this I failed.

  Be grateful I did not destroy you,

  But I cannot take you.

  I formed you in their flesh through a female of their kind,

  But I had still failed.

  You are superior, but not as I am.

  You can never be.

  Listen to these creatures here.

  Go and be one of them.

  “No,” she had screamed as he rose up then shot like a magical arrow across the open wasteland. His voice spoke into her thoughts as if he was still beside her.

  You are my precious one who balances water and fire…

  The lioness is your strength,

  Your cover, little one …

  I will not be with you now, for many years.

  One day I will return and I will take you flying.

  Raise the child, Mtoto Akaru Sef Ameny, well…

  Be the mother I could not be to you.

  Deka’s lower lip trembled.

  She remembered running after him as the lights surrounded him and he ascended the same fiery warrior’s stair that he had used to take the dead into the heavens. Then the horrid wind, the sand, the shaking earth came.

  “No… no…” she cried. “Am I not your chosen one? You made me for you pleasure. You made a child in me for us; our Ameny! No…” and she lay in the sand sobbing until the lights had faded and the stair was gone. There had been no starry boat. He was still gone and he had discarded her. She closed her eyes and darkness followed. Next she remembered, she was gripped by great fear that he would come back to take and raise young Ameny himself, unless she hid him in the grass near the forest by the water. She became the lion then… protecting… She went into labor and bore him.

  Slowly, she looked in Akaru’s eyes, drained.

  “I died there. My child died too. My love died. My life died,” she whispered mournfully.

  “No, Mother, I did not die,” Akaru whispered. “You did not, I did not,” the old man tilted his head to one side. His fingers went forward to her face to cup her cheek. As he did, she sensed his own vision of his birth and how the two of them came to be separated in the grass. “I forgive you. You were hurt by our father; used by him.” Akaru smiled, his expression filling with hope.

  “They rejected him. I know they did. They mocked him,” her voice became resolute. “He wouldn’t have left us. Don’t you see these mortals must be punished? Not one of them needs to live,” she implored but saw his captivated face looking back. It bore no anger at her mistreatment; only acceptance of the fate they had been dealt. That disgusted her.

  “Then you are not mine. If you cannot feel rage over what happened to me. You are as he said: polluted. You try to govern them and bend them to the ways of the Lower Land. If you were truly my Ameny, our fire would boil away the last of your blood until all their hearts were yours.” She turned, still not wanting to accept the memory because it was too painful.

  “I can’t feel anything anymore and I thought the truth would heal me… all these years and searching and I am but a puzzle made by a god; a puzzle that never could be put together well?” she bowed her head. “I’ve tried so hard to find him for so long, and all that’s left is you… a child I pushed from my body, cleaned, and gave first suck on the day my life ended.”

  Tears wanted to well in her eyes.

  Akaru extended his arms to gather her up as if she was the daughter rather than he the son.

  Reluctantly she went to him, too tired to object.

  “Rest with the thoughts,” he said. “He did not abandon either of us. He just knew he could no longer be in our lives,” the governor cradled her neatly braided head. “He found someone to raise me as a prince is raised…”

  “But what about me? Did you ever wonder?” she asked.

  “All the time I cried for you when I learned I had been lost from you. The night the star was singing to me, I heard Marai bin Ahu singing from his home far away. I laughed and told the ones who had taken me as their child that it was my father’s people coming. I knew it then, but I never said anything more except that he would return.” Akaru petted her head.

  In a flash, the feeling of peaceful reunion passed. She sat erect again, sober faced. He has been back then. He’s not dead. I must be ready to greet him then.

  “You are so nice. Perhaps on a better day, when the new Ameny is born for Prince Maatkare Raemkai…” She began, but she suddenly realized something dreadful. Ameny. No. Say it’s not so… her heart cried out punctuated by words: “I have to go. I can’t stay here,” Deka struggled out of the governor’s arms and pushed herself to her feet. “I know where he’ll be. I must find him; show him I can make them all pay.

  “No. Stay. You cannot. He is not the same. He grew into the scorn as you have grown. He will destroy all when he comes. I have seen him and pleaded. I hoped you would be the peacemaker between he of the sky and we here below. I told Marai…”

  She whirled with a sharp feline hiss, then fled. In the distance, as if it had been a dream or a spirit invasion, a low, under-the-breath laughter sounded. It was the kind of laugh that came as a defense against dread.

  Chapter 21: The Rogue

  Marai expected Maatkare to be furious after he spoke to him. Irritating the young general had been his underlying intention. Despite the artificial pleasantries the sojourner had learned and exhibited, he knew the prince and he were unlikely to ever become much more than barely tolerant of each other. He hadn’t been able to resist telling Maatkare about the dark side of being a host; suggesting that hosts were “owned” by the Children of Stone, and that he would hear their voices forever whether he wanted to or not.

  That thought so galled the prince that he had been mute for several minutes. Then, as if he heard several inner voices moving through him and realized the sojourner was right, he rose with a curse, and the epithet “this is pointless”. He stormed inside the inner wall toward the dry well which served as a makeshift “Pit of Chaos” for Aped, the younger governor. Marai followed close behind, hoping he wouldn’t have to stop the man from doing something everyone would regret.

  “You stay back from me, I warn you,” Maatkare barked. “You might be able to see my thoughts and take my sight for a moment, but if you even dream of controlling my acts, I will fight you until one of us is dead.” But then, as if mysteriously lulled into complac
ency, he slowed in his pace and let Marai catch up with him.

  “I already told you, I don’t like it that she made you a host. You don’t fit in with us. Still, I know deep down there’s a part of you that’s thrilled about it or you’d already be begging me to take it out of you even if it killed you.” Marai snarled into the man’s blazing expression.

  The moment they arrived at the well, Maatkare stared down, began to unfasten his sheath as if he intended to piss on the young priest, sensed Marai’s disapproval, and instead ordered his guards to step back so he could see the prisoner better.

  Marai peered down into the hole with him and saw Apedemeketep seated with his knees up and head embraced on them as if he was asleep. The young governor startled and looked up with a peaceful smile as if he expected nothing, but wanted the men above him to know he was not suffering.

  Maatkare spat in the well, disappointed.

  How about giving him a drink? Marai’s thought forcefully prodded Maatkare.

  Turning on one heel, Maatkare winced at the intrusive thought and then gave an order to the guard: “Lower some beer down to him. One jug only, maybe some bread. I don’t feel like starving him right now.”

  The guards scampered off to the storage room and then to the cook fire the other men were using to get some bread.

  As the provisions were lowered, Marai‘s thoughts sought Deka, now that Maatkare was too distracted to notice. He and felt her rage and a sense of panic and guessed what had happened. Akaru told her too much. He shouldn’t have done it, but I suppose he needed to say something to her. I know she didn’t want to believe it. I know it’s made things much worse.

  Marai knew Deka had left the main building in sheer panic several moments before they had started their return. Oddly, they had not passed each other in the path. She had become so upset that she forgot to privatize her thoughts to anyone but Maatkare.

  “What’s going on?” Maatkare paused, his eyes filling with sudden concern. “You know I feel something, too.”

  “Deka,” the sojourner stated. “Something’s off. She’s been blocking me mostly and to some extent she is even trying to block you now, but…”