Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  To Kemet officials the shepherd turned sojourner merchant was something of a wealth-making phenomenon. When the tribute collectors came around for the priests’ tithes and the kings’ share, the Sangir’s business was always flourishing and the tax was ready to be paid. No one needed to sweat over the required “offerings”.

  Before Marai had joined him, Etum-Addi had made only a little above his minimum. With Marai’s help and advice, the merchant could now afford to make gifts of the spices and candy for the men to take to their supervisors. Marai thought less and less about visiting the temples or of his ultimate mission in Kemet with the Children of Stone. At some point, if life had gone on unchanged, he might have pushed everything aside in favor of his new life as a spice and incense merchant.

  At the start of his changed life, Marai had warned the Children of Stone plenty of times that he had a stubborn nature, and really didn’t appreciate being led from task to task. He hadn’t relied on the stones for his visions at all since the night he had called on the Children to undo some of the damage on young Salim’s burned hands. By this time, however, he had traded the worn leather satchel and basket along with some of his incense for a lovely carved and inlaid box. The stones were silent; contented with their new place of repose.

  After a long, hot day of working in the market, Deka always sat in the big open window which overlooked the path that opened onto the central court. She smiled more, now that the journey to Kemet was over. She loved the sounds of the night in the city. Even though her smiles and warmth increased, she was still an enigma to Marai and everyone else in the new little village where they had settled.

  Most people from Ta-Seti, the Land of the Bow or from Ta-Ntr, Land of the Gods lived across the river and far into the southern rocklands between upper Kemet and Kush, not in lower Kemet. It was a holy land and a land of ancestors. All of the priestesses and oracles traced their own lineage back to the holy and wise women who had come from that upper land.

  Because of her mysterious nature, Deka was often asked about her family or if she was one of the daughters of the wise. She would lower her eyes politely, silently reflecting on everything she was asked. Deka had no memory of these names or places. The only thing she could see in her dreams was herself in the red skirt, looking like a young goddess and of herself flying like a bird over leagues of rolling grassy and rocky land.

  “You could ask them, you know.” Marai brought the new carved box of Child Stones to Deka one evening, just as Naibe and Ariennu were getting ready for sleep. It had been a very profitable day. Those days, though exciting, were tiring. The sojourner knew the deep-skinned woman’s look. It was his own.

  Her eyes were turned inward, as she sat in the big window, looking out across the courtyard and down to the river. Her face and every fiber of her body, through to her soul, searched for some hint of her lost self. Her head turned, as if she had been wakened from a dream.

  Taking the carved case from Marai, she opened it and began to turn the stones lovingly, the way a mother hen turns eggs in a nest. She counted them, basking in their gentle glow for a few moments; reveling in the purring feeling that flooded through her hands. The light seeped up through her fingers as she covered the stones with them gently. She hummed a vague little melody that seemed almost like a lullaby, clearing her thoughts in readiness for any message they might wish to give.

  The Children were still markedly silent.

  Marai contemplated the only message either of them had known was for her.

  Be at peace.

  All will be revealed to the mild and joyous heart.

  “It’s all they ever say, Man Sun...Perhaps I shouldn’t search so much...but it burns me inside, it burns me!” she whispered, shaking her head a little.

  For a moment, Marai sensed tears. He sat with her in the window for a moment, draping his arm gently over her back after she put the stones back in the box.

  “They want you at peace, pretty Deka.” the sojourner sighed, comforting them both with his words. “They want both of us at peace.” He helped her down from the window perch.

  Ariennu and Naibe were heading outside with their bed rolls. They went up to the the roof for sleep as all of the other residents of the little neighborhood did in hot weather.

  “Coming?” he asked. “Etum might have to go down the river in a day or two for more trade goods...I’ve told him what we could use, but that means we’ll have his part to sell too. We should sleep...”

  That was what all of the women loved about Marai. He was tender and caring; truly concerned that they get enough rest for a hard and hot day of work at the market.

  At first, Marai thought Ariennu might get jealous of Naibe, since she had openly campaigned for his affection until the night he and the young woman became intimate. His eyes inquired; his cocked head and quizzical look asked the question

  You upset with this, Red Ari? he asked.

  Go ahead...I don’t care. Brown Eyes suits you for now...Watch out for me one day, though. She scoffed in return, laughing and returning to her work at weaving or sewing, or making the food.

  Ariennu settled into the role of mother and housekeeper for the others. She chatted with the women of the courtyard, giving marital advice, and preparing her herbal remedies. She spoke of her tour as a “divine quadish”, which Marai knew was such an absolute lie that he could hardly keep from laughing. She had taken refuge from a bad relationship once in a temple at Kina and had learned midwifery and medical arts while sheltered there. She was never a priestess, not even a minor one, because no one believed she was capable of the periodic celibacy required of a holy woman. She had been little more than a Harimtu or common kuna working the perimeter of a temple. She never spoke of the rest of her life: the time as a concubine of a wealthy Sangir, or of her life as a thief, or as a procurer who had female and male prostitutes working for her. She never mentioned the years of being with N’ahab-Atall in the wilderness either. Most assumed that her first husband had died and Marai was the second husband. She told her new neighbors she was “sadly” barren. That was harder to believe. It didn’t match her look. The fire in her eyes and her lascivious smile never disappeared. Naibe and Deka didn’t mention it, but Marai understood she had continued to prowl after dark. She never made it a secret that her appetites could match or surpass any man’s and if he wouldn’t “see to her” she could help her own self to what was available.

  Just as she had done in the caravan as it traveled to the city, she walked alone after dark, in order to pick out someone she liked, enjoy them, and then cause them to forget the whole thing. She returned her “victims” to the spot from which she had plucked them and came back quite refreshed. Sometimes she was exceptionally daring, allowing a man to grapple with her in his own house while others slept nearby. She was always willing to whisper about her adventures to Naibe and even to Marai, just to let him know what he was missing.

  After weeks of futile effort, Marai began to wonder if this “Assistant of Djedi” even existed at all. He knew he wanted to find out soon, so he could move on with his life. He and the three women had arrived two months before at the end of Peret, or the sowing and growing cooler season. It was Shemu, the middle of the warm harvest season now. After this the flood season or Akhet would commence. Business was now at an all-time high. The crop had been better this year, their neighbors told them, but not stunning.

  Marai and the women had lived the best days of their lives for over five months. When Naibe whispered to him that she wanted so badly to make him a child, his heart wanted to burst, but he sighed a little and she understood.. She had promised him she would wait until he had seen the priests, and watched her moon carefully in spite of her needs. She didn’t want to resort to the use of the popular pessary made of crocodile dung. She might use one of honey and acacia, perhaps, but the other was desperation, in her opinion.

  “Hurry and make another try for the priests, my best love!” she whispered into his hair. “Every part of m
y body sings that I must bring a son to you, beloved.” she would say “I see his spirit waiting on us, and he is beautiful... He tells me: Mother I will love you so... Give me life!” These passionate whispers sent his thoughts back across the river one more time, that summer night. He stood on his roof, under the light of the next full moon, thinking of how good it would be to see his little family begin to grow. Impulsively, he sent the thought:

  I am here, son of Djedi, see me

  Something new is here

  That has never been here before

  He stamped his phrases with his image, showing his cheerful work in the market. He sailed it through the air, across the Great Asar, and into the temples of learning, as if it were a new clay tablet affixed with the royal seal of those who sent him.

  Nothing returned to him that night.

  After that, Marai almost forgot about the message he had sent from the roof in search of the priests. Instead, he continued to enjoy his new life as a merchant.

  Over the five months since his arrival, Marai immersed himself in his new craft and his new life. He smiled, as warmly as the sun, at the people who passed by his and Etum-Atti’s areas.

  After the tribute collection, he traded for some bundled staves and wove bright uprights to make a three sided booth. Over the top, he lashed more of the leftover tent material. This made a nice shelter for customers to come inside and sample the wares he and the Sanghir merchant had set out on hewn stone and reed tables. Now they sat on benches inside, instead of squatting on their haunches. If others had been jealous or had ideas that the four sojourners were binding customers with enchantments, these thoughts faded in light of the big man’s grin. He laughed and sang so warmly from beneath his bright blue and white headband, shading his kohl-painted eyes with his hand. Each time someone approached, Marai asked what household or family he was assisting. His speech was always so melodious and poetic, that few could resist stopping by the booth to deal with this elegant and friendly man.

  On a particularly hot day, about a month before the start of Wep Renpet, the annual Flood Festival and New Year celebration, a tall, dark-skinned young man strolled proudly amid the booths in the East Shore market. He wore a crisply starched white “khat”, to protect his close-cut head from the noonday sun, and a short white shendyt-kilt, about his loins. His finely honed and oiled muscles spoke of a warrior, or a peace officer, but his plain garb and lack of weaponry except for a short travel daggar, said he was a servant

  Marai had been closing a transaction with an elderly woman, when he saw Deka suddenly taking notice of the man.

  She sat up, rod straight. Her eyes closed, as if in a trance, as she sensed something of a spiritual nature lurking beneath the approaching man’s vague sensuality.

  Lions...Lions in the dust...her thought-words poured into the sojourner’s’s heart. He stared, open mouthed at the young man in front of them. The dark purple-brown of the man’s skin meant he was probably of Ta-Seti or Ta-Ntr origin, if not Kush. That was Deka’s mythical land of the gods. Both Marai a and Deka had heard men who worked on the river speak of such a place. For Deka, it meant the land was no longer a dream or an empty word. The mysterious land lay just to the south of Kemet, between the first and second cataracts. It was a place barricaded by swift water and rock, where boats could not pass. It was truly the ancestor’s land.

  Once, it had been a place of gods in the days when they walked as humans. Now, rumor had it, the land was more of a constant sore spot for the kings, sown more often than not with seeds of rebellion. The man instantly singled Deka out, asking her, in a strange, watery-sounding dialect of the Kemetu, if this was the booth where he had learned the best cinnabar in Ineb Hedj could be found.

  As their eyes locked, Deka quietly and elegantly rose from her bench, then stepped into the bright daylight. Swaying her flat belly and slim, high hips in a dance-like motion, she moved fluidly around the man in a semi-circle. It wasn’t a come hither or a tease. It was a salute to the common ancestor in both of them.

  Marai frowned, puzzled at first, then gave a low, amused whistle.

  She’s found something...knows something... he thought, beginning to tap his straw sandaled foot in time to the sound of a reed pipe someone at a nearby salt fish stand had begun to play. The big man reveled in the sight of Deka’s slim hands weaving an elaborate, mystical pattern, up into the face of the quite startled young man. For a moment, Marai thought he saw tongues of flame rising above her on each side, teasing and beckoning him, but the dance was over as quickly as it had begun.

  Deka quietly dropped her arms, returning to her quiet and somewhat somber self, then drifted eerily to her end of the booth.

  Ariennu’s face reflected an amazed stare and Naibe-Ellit’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  After a frozen moment, Marai cleared his throat, as if he was saying:

  Well then, back to business... He gave his standard, effusive greeting that ended with the question:

  “Whole bark or powder?”

  The golden, left-facing wdjat-eye head pinned on the knot of the young man’s shendyt reflected a twinkle of sunlight into Marai’s eyes as if it begged to be noticed. Marai knew servants often wore some emblem of their employers’ household, but these emblems were usually made of carved schist or bone, not gold. Only lower ranking servants from lesser noble houses came across the river to trade for bargain goods. Marai had never seen a “servant” from any of the priestly groups, and none wearing that particular cult symbol. His thoughts told him at once that the pin represented the god of wisdom, Djehuti.

  Ha! Marai grinned, almost maniacally. Now you come. Just as I had given up all hope. I can almost smell Djedi’s ghost on you!

  “Powder...” the man, still entranced by the woman’s dance and the woman herself, hesitated. Deka had quietly returned to her work of packaging sweets with Naibe. She appeared oblivious to her own dance of moments ago.

  “Powder it is.” Marai tried to clear his thoughts of anything other than the business transaction, indicated his scales and reached for the urn behind his bench. Eyeing the handhigh red clay jar the man had placed on the scale, he balanced it, filled it with powdered incense, and rebalanced it with more weights, until he knew the worth of the amount.

  “Is that the lunar-eye?” the former shepherd quietly inquired about the man’s shenydt pin as he set the weights back in their box.

  “It is.” the man whispered quietly, then apologetically “I meant only praise for the dance of the god...the woman...” The man’s voice hesitated. His eyes reflected an urgent side to side glance, as if the air around him had become suddenly and spiritually chilly.

  Who is watching him? How can they see him in the middle of this market unless they are following him on a spirit journey? Marai wondered.

  Marai knew at once this man was more than the image he presented. He acted reverent and even fearful, like a slave, but slaves were uncommon in Kemet. A Ta-Seti or a Kush would never have been a slave unless debt bound and then it would have been temporary. especially noble looking Ta-Seti or Kush slaves. Even though the man was attired plainly, he wasn’t wearing the peasant’s shenti, or basic loincloth of a “servant”.

  “My Deka is beautiful.” The sojourner/merchant laughed a little; a sure and confident smile returning to his face. “She danced for you, but I see it’s made you lonely for your own wife’s dance.” Marai tried. It was easy enough for him to see the man’s more unguarded thoughts even though he knew whatever stirred in the man wasn’t lonliness.

  He was married. Most men in Kemet were paired off at an early age, so that was a good guess. The wealthier a man was or the more high-ranking, the more likely it was for him to have quite a number of wives and concubines, though few were official.

  “And you’ve been away from your wife too long, haven’t you?” Marai’s teeth flashed as he became aware of a deeper thought. You’re fasting...preparing for something important...containing yourself as I did for so many years. I denie
d myself momentary sweetness, preparing for the sacred. Marai blinked quietly, waiting for the reaction, knowing.

  Deka’s dance had wakened some kind of other memory in him.

  The customer tensed and drew back, stunned that this foreign merchant had been able to look into his heart so easily. He was also startled that he had been able to hear a mere peasants thoughts as clearly as if they had been spoken aloud.

  “I do live far away...beyond the cataracts...” he took a step back, defensively, casting his eyes down so Marai could not enter his thoughts through them again.

  “The lunar wdjat and the ibis or the baboon represent Djehuti, don’t they?” Marai severed the thought-link between himself and the tall young servant, attempting to go back to the transaction.

  “They do...Are you ‘one of us’, then, my good man?” The man spoke a little nervously as he took some leaf-wrapped, honeyed dates Ariennu brought over to him.

  Marai smirked, mildly amused at the way Ari’s eyes, too, were going over the taut muscles in the man’s arms and belly...watching him grow even more uncomfortable. She knew Marai was toying with the man and couldn’t resist adding her own torment.

  The customer trained his eyes on Marai as he gracefully re-affixed the dark wax jar lid so securely that his hands seemed to melt the wax into place. The flies had discovered the new location of the candy in his hand and were beginning to light.

  “Go on; eat some of that before the little fellows get on it. It’s a gift from my ladies and me.” Marai eased the young man’s tension, but beckoned him to bend closer into the stall so he could ask him something else in a semblance of privacy.

  “Can you tell me of Djedi, an old lector out of Sneferu, who has been in his horizon about five years?”

  The man choked on the sweet he had greedily stuffed into his mouth, in wide-eyed surprise.

  “Five years?” he sputtered, startled. “Easily fifty or more!” He wiped his lips with his wrist, then licked it. “My grandfather was brought to him as a boy when the old one came up the river to inquire of him after old Khufu had died. Three kings later, the men in my family are still chosen to study in the temples year round. Sometimes we study in the temples of our brothers and sometimes at the major temple in Khmenu.