“Fifty?” Marai felt as though the ground beneath him had suddenly yawned into a vast pit. The lives of everyone he had ever known shrieked through him and faded into the mist of those years. The image of Djedi became young, slim, and hard faced at the doorway to his horizon. The memory of an almost shrill utterance replayed.
I will teach you and yours. Come to Kemet...as you will... Had the children been made so weak by that delicately strained, but courteous invitation to study, that they could only speak to him in coded riddles? Marai wondered if a curse more powerful than the great skills of Children of Stone been hidden in the silent folds of this “Djedi’s” words much the way the word Ntr had contained an underlayment o of power which could be secretively uttered by any adept in the sciences who had learned it.
Marai felt the clarity that had evaded him all these months suddenly leap into view. This version of “Djedi” must have made a last desperate attempt to seize control of everything the Children said to him or did for him. Had the old priest succeeded in cursing them? If this vision had been Djedi and fifty years or more had passed, would there even be an heir alive for him to seek? Was the Children’s silence and their speaking in riddles a sign of their own defeat or was it a kind of self-defense against a dying lector’s final act?
All Marai knew for certain, was that part of the riddle had been opened by Deka’s dance. Part of a drama had played in front of him. The noble classes of the Ta-Seti, he had learned in the course of his day-to-day life, were called “men of the Lion” and the warriors were “Men of the Bow”. Now one of these men was standing in the middle of the hot, sultry market, telling Marai that his entire concept of reality and time was wrong.
The sojourner knew the Children of Stone viewed time differently than the people of Earth viewed it. He also knew that something had nagged him more than once about the passage of all that time, but he had always refused to think about it.
Naibe’s seductiveness and his good life as a merchant had been most of the reason he had forgotten about everything else. His thoughts swam with renewed memory that he had been extra thirsty upon waking in the vessel compared to a minor craving for water the first time. In another glimmer of insight, he realized why three “Eternal Houses” stood across the river, and more great temples rose further south when, in his original vision, he had seen only one tall one. This had to have been the real reason why the date palms at Wadi Ahu were suddenly gone. The owner of the old way station had discovered someone elses skulls, not those of the thieves.
Houra’s image, the thought of her working rows of crops and making baskets faded into the sullen river vapor that hung motionless over this noonday plaza. She was dead after all. No one was left of stubborn clan Ahu but himself. Few people lived to be eighty years old unless they were wealthy and cared for. Most women of the sand died of exhaustion by the time they were forty sun years. When he had begun the journey at about age thirty-four he had been on the crest of old age, even though he had not been sickly or become infirm. Marai knew life was even worse for the poverty-stricken of the city. Houra had to be dead. Now, when the merchant called his family to mind, he sensed only her sad memory of dying without knowing what had ever become of her half-brother. The promise his heart had made her so long ago had not come true. Now it could not.
“I...er...News travels slowly, I guess.” Marai mumbled, hanging his head. He tried to clear his thoughts of the myriad of emotions and anxieties now crowding them. His brow throbbed and ached beneath his blue striped headband. His vision clouded and grayed as surely as if some spell had been brought forward through the presence of the sinewy dark-skinned man in front of him. Something had indeed been watching him through this man in the market.
Naibe’s dreams of darkness and a storm, which she’d known along the journey months ago, were coming into focus.
In his struggle to appear calm, Marai began to feel faint. Tears filled his eyes, as the obverse side of Djedi’s dying utterance rang clearly in his thoughts. For the first time he heard the ancient utterance clearly:
Watching as one adrift, alone...
Without rest, without place.
Trapped in time
All shall silently witness
The error of the ages come to pass.
Marai knew he had to find out more before the man, already startled, darted into the crowd and disappeared, but the memory of the words were stabbing through his forehead like a knife.
“Anyway...I understand he had an assistant here. Perhaps I could contact him.” the big man rasped, seizing the servant’s hand as it took up the jar of cinnabar. The man took two small gold bees from a leather pouch at his belt, then left them on the table as payment.
“I was to contact the most exalted of them.” Marai glanced up, still locked in a desperate struggle against the pain.
Bees...goddess...a royal house kings and high ones pay with gold bees...and look at me about to puke like a woman new with child. He searched the young man’s eyes for a glimmer of recognition and found none. Marai’s shoulder’s sagged in ache and defeat. “Never you mind then.” he sighed.
Ariennu frowned, suddenly sensing Marai’s mounting distress. She moved a little closer, worried she had missed something. Deka and Naibe never looked up, engrossed in the wrapping of the candies and the shooing of flies.
“This Djedi you speak of never was one of the five who serve Great Djehuti...so there is no other one.” The tall “servant” who, was likely an initiate of some level of wisdom sent by his teachers on a mission, added. “He was a simple lector-priest, though they say he was wiser than the most schooled of them.” The initiate spoke, now carefully guarding his thoughts. “Any disciples he had, if they were even still alive today would be very old men by now. Perhaps I could speak to my teacher if he knew any ...as a young man... when he himself first studied...” The man returned a more incisive gaze as he caught a glimpse of the spiritual struggle behind Marai’s eyes.
“Were you tricked by someone into seeking him?” the servant asked, now fully concerned. He set the jar of cinnabar down, and reached forward to steady the merchant and to send him some supportive energy. He saw Marai growing ill and beginning to shake. “The sun’s too hot on your head. Maybe you should get inside and do a cleansing. I sense an evil presence about you...” He looked up, shading his eyes, as if the noon sun itself had become an assaulting demon. The man gestured a quick blessing and touched Marai at the throat to calm him.
“Yes...yes...inside is good...” Marai shaded his own eyes again, feeling he would collapse if he tried to stand up again. He knew the stone had emerged in his forehead. At any minute the dark man would think Marai’s headband was too tight and try to take it off of him. The sojourner couldn’t allow that.
Ari...His thoughts whispered, desperately.
Ariennu felt the disturbance in the air and stole even closer, shooting an accusing look at the “servant” of Djehuti. Taking Marai’s trembling hand in hers and noticing how icy his skin felt, she accepted the gold bees from the initiate as payment for the cinnabar, then motioned for Deka to give the man another confection before he went on his way.
The big sojourner wanted to vomit. His guts heaved as if that same sharp sound under the elder’s words in had rung through his head again. Bright, rainbow-edged blurs were starting to form on the edges of all he saw, but he managed to keep calm.
“Are you sure?”
Marai dimly heard the man asking Ariennu despite the pounding in his head. It ached to open his eyes in the light.
Ariennu assured him she would take care of her “husband” as the young man continued.
“I will ask my teacher if such a man even exists, this assistant of Djedi...and come back to you in a few days...just after my duty here finishes.”
“Your name...” Marai called once but the man, now exceedingly nervous about being accused of creating the spiritual turmoil had vanished into the crowd.
Other people in the market were starting
to stare. For this man Marai, who seemed as strong and healthy as a god to be fainting from the heat meant only that the young, dark man had shown him an evil eye or had spoken some other kind of utterance over him. The nearby merchants cowered back and showed amulets, murmuring their general distrust of the priesthood, tribute collectors, and their minions, as the tall initiate passed on his way back to the river.
Ariennu pushed Marai to his feet and steadied him, even though he wobbled like a new lamb.
It’s his spirit, not the heat. Ari glanced down at Naibe-Ellit and Deka’s upturned, shocked faces, following up the thought with a quick signing that she would take him upstairs to rest through the heat of the day.
Naibe-Ellit pressed Marai’s almost nerveless hand as the elder woman steered him away from the booth and to their apartment. Her eyes lowered as if she knew more secrets than she wanted to know, then her face brightened with her same charming smile as another customer approached.
After Ari had struggled Marai up the steps, she silently pulled the dark drapes down over the large window and door openings, then pulled back an upper flap in the top for ventilation. She knew of headaches that were worsened by noise and light, but knew today was too hot for her to completely cover any openings in the apartment. Tugging his pallet next to the window, she urged Marai to lie down, then lay behind him with her arms around his broad backFor long moments, he stared numbly at a crack running from the floor to the window.
“It’s about your sister, isn’t it?” She breathed against his back, tightening her arms and feeling him nod. “It wouldn’t have mattered how long it’d been if you’d just been able to see her once more,” she sympathized, understanding. “I know that. The little ones know that. I think it hurts them too, that they couldn’t grasp how long it had been for us poor folk here.” She soothed his neck with the back of her hand.
“But why did he do it? I never meant him any harm...Never...” he whispered, thinking for a moment about the image of Djedi old, then young and menacing, instead of Houra. He tried to re-gain some of his mental strength by talking about his thoughts, even if he felt Ari wasn’t really listening. It had always helped in the past. “Why didn’t he just kill me before I was changed? It would have been so easy for him! I would have died thinking it was just the goddess’ in her rage over my ineptness. He had the power to do it then.” But, Marai knew the answer.
“Who?” Ariennu asked “That priest we’ve been coming to see? The man we just saw told us he was dead.” She pulled Marai’s loose cotton day coat back from his shoulders, urging him to lie on his belly so she could work his tired, tense back. “Just let it go. Maybe you don’t need to go to any of them, then... Maybe the Children belong to us now and we can start living our own lives.” she suggested, pulling and pressing at the metal-like stiffness that didn’t want to give way beneath her fingers. “We’ll get through this...” she gently urged. “We’ve both taken on trouble in our lives before. Now we have all four of us together. We could be gods already, you know...just not yet learned what we can do with our powers. We haven’t used any of it too much or looked too hard because life’s been good to us. Somehow I don’t think we have to worry about following anyone else’s rules now that we know he’s dead.” she chortled.
Normally, her dry manner seemed careworn and even wiser than it’s years. This afternoon, Marai found it strangely comforting. He sighed, trying to relax. Taking a few deep breaths and shaking the dizziness out of his head, helped. The pain in his brow had almost stopped.
Ari straddled his back and worked higher on the big man’s shoulders. She cursed under her breath at the massive knots toward his neck.
Marai reveled in the feel of her on his back. It was warm and dark like the comfort of the room. A medley of thoughts plagued him: Houra was dead. He thought of the silent challenge from this “Djedi” person who was supposed to help him but took it upon himself to become part of their worst nightmare, then he thought of Naibe-Ellit’s wonderful body moving gracefully with his.
“Well...I’ve brought the Children to Kemet now, but now no one’s here to help me with them, it seems... thanks to that old man’s deathbed curse. The Children act like, half the time, they can’t even help themselves...or won’t because it’s some lesson they want me to learn about what kind of creature they’ve turned me...turned all of us into. Damn him!” Marai sighed, but continued sorting his thoughts and speaking them, while Ariennu pulled and dug at his back at his back.
“Maybe I’m giving him too much credit for what’s been happening. Maybe he was just some crazy old man who thought he was a god. Maybe he knew the Children enough that he could do something to them out of jealousy. Maybe he knew nothing more than I do. All this power they gave us and yet...it’s nothing if it doesn’t work out...” Marai rolled over on his back to stare up at the woman, noticing her usual life-wizened expression had softened.
Ariennu unfastened the sojourner’s headband and smoothed his silvery hair, pausing to study the fading darkness at his brow.
“If we get to them...to study, maybe we’ll be able to use our natural charm to change their hearts...” Marai thought aloud. “We do pretty well at this for Etum Atti’s business...Maybe that’s what this year was about anyway...practice for what comes next.”
The shaft of light that crept through a crack in the black wool window draping, caught Ari’s simple round gold earring peeking from beneath her deep black/red hair. She touched his stone, as if soothing where it hurt, then made a curious sign of joining as she touched her own brow.
Shh don’t think about it...don’t talk... her thoughts whispered.
“But, if I’m like a shepherd for the Children, I think I should know where I’m taking the herd instead of being like some rogue goat who’s wandered in among them.” His hand went up to shade his eyes from the silver-gathering light, but paused long enough to thump her hair out of the way, as she continued to work on him. He wanted to say something else to herd but lost track of the thought. The ache was slowly fading.
Ari kneaded his shoulders and ventured to his chest, glad in some ways that she had to hush him. Most men she had known would get either sullen or brutal in their bad moments, but he was not most men.
“They have to have more than the one plan.” She shrugged, dismissively. “If they can get across a heaven so great even the gods can’t take it all in they would have to...in case something went wrong.
“Yeah...” Marai sighed dismally, watching her hands and face quietly. “I think we’ve become that plan...at first maybe they didn’t really need us. Now they might just...” he sighed.
Marai liked to watch Ariennu talk. She didn’t flirt or sigh up at him breathlessly the way Naibe did. She really didn’t speak to him at all unless she could look him straight in the eye or look down at him as she did now. Wise MaMa, the others had called her when they met. In another time or place she might have been a seer, perhaps even an oracle. Houra was like that once, but she was gone. She’d been another man’s wife, anyway. To want her so long ago had been just another futile fantasy.
The woman smacked his chest in frustration and shook the cramp out of her hands.
“Goddess, you’re stiff...” She tossed her drooping hair back, with a bob of her head, “Now relax, will you, before I have to call on the power they put in me to pound you into submission.” Her mouth worked into a mean, flat line...which was followed by a smirk of delight...followed by...
“Well Damn Me...Seems I do have you where I always wanted you...on your back beneath me...”
Marai held her hand still on his shoulder for a moment, steadying his gaze up into her eyes. His shoulders hadn’t seemed to soften a bit through her diligence, when she knew she was capable of rendering a normal man to jelly.
“I’ve learned a lot from you.” she smiled, feeling suddenly awkward. “I felt your heart come out to me, when I was ugly, and sick to death with the yellows.” The woman stopped her attempt at massage.
Mara
i scooted himself up to sit against the window wall. His arm rested against his knee, understanding.
Ariennu’s eyes blinked once, and stared hard into his eyes. The only change in her expression was a slight crack at the corners of her mouth. She edged onto his lap.
I’ve always done what I wanted. Her thoughts penetrated his. And who I’ve wanted when I did...
“You’re such a sweet lady, Ariennu.” Marai smiled, then laughed just a little, “But your timing stinks.”
“Does it, now?” Her shoulders shivered in the pleasure of his warming touch. She unpinned her shift, without any of the dusky, seductive, whatever-it-was that Naibe-Ellit regularly used to sweep him away. “I can’t think of a better time, myself.” She laughed, suddenly. “You’ll relax when I’m through with you….Or is it only our little goddess-girl can move you?”
Marai felt her golden laughter well up inside him. He saw her sweep her hand up, then down, watching as the same rainbowing silver, like the glass inside the vessel drift over the window and door as if she had painted it with a brush.
See... a quiet space...No one needs to even know, either...
“Just so you know...” He sighed, resigned…“Not all miseries are solved this way.” He pressed her close for a moment’s affirmation. Her simple brown work shift dropped from her shoulders to her waist.
“Oh Heaven...finally...” she tore off the rest of her shift and lunged at him, kissing him so forcefully he almost fell backward.
Naibe-Ellit snapped her head around and looked up, when she heard the sound of someone approaching.
Ariennu stepped quietly over the bench between Deka and her then sat down heavily. It was near the end of the workday and the sun blazed low on the horizon behind the Eternal Houses and temples across the river. Most of the merchants had already rolled back the awnings over their stalls, hoping to entice a few last minute traders. The young woman saw that her elder’s eyes were wide and tentative, but rimmed in red. Always confident and quick lipped, Ariennu seemed shaken and trembling. She sniffed a little, then sighed.
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