Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  He’d wept that word over his dead wife Ilara’s little grave and whispered it with unequalled fever into her own hair. It meant grieving. It meant passion. Now it was trying to describe a new feeling of all those things combined with the joy of knowing Ariennu. This odd creature that was part hardened wretch and part ancient seer disguised as a bad-boy urchin with a dirty face and a filthy, but caring soul.

  “Oh damn you, Marai...” Naibe felt the woman sobbing into the sojourner’s chest, even as pleasure and ecstasy overwhelmed her again. “I can’t get this knife out of my heart. I wanted to be old and wise as I was, but better when they changed me.” Her head sank to his shoulder in anguish as if she almost expected him to push her away again. “I wanted to be above ever needing a man to love me...I mean love me not just have some good times with me.”

  He stayed gentle, kissing her eyes and stone tenderly again and again until she felt ready to break apart with joy.

  “It’s alright...” he whispered. “I will gladly take that knife from your heart, sweet Ari, my true wife. Let no man or distance between us ever put it back...One day maybe...” he paused. For a moment she thought she heard him say

  One day you’ ll be the one who takes the knife from mine...

  She’d said it herself, outside Sheb’s hut on her first new day. It was the only game she’d never really been called to play...a good man’s wife...a woman of years and kind experience, secure in the knowing that she was valued for so much more than the firmness of her thighs, the bigness of her breasts or the ripeness of her womb. A true Wise MaMa.

  “Marai...oh my sweet Mother...” she sobbed uncontrollably against his chest, unable to breathe or even move with him. She hung in his arms, devastated and yet filled with rapture, feeling all of his thoughts coursing through her. “What have you done to me? I never needed anything of a man but the goods I could get off him...the good times...I’m too old to be needing it now!”

  “But you do my wisest one...” he had said. “Even more than the others…”

  Ariennu sat in the sun with her eyes closed, hands raised slightly, trembling again, remembering his hands tangling into her hair, and lips tracing her throat, kissing away the tears that couldn’t stop as he pressed her to him that last time, then let her go on weeping in his arms. She shook her head, and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Ari?” Naibe-Ellit touched her arm.

  “Oh...stop...” She whispered, “Don’t talk to me, don’t dig at me...Just stop...” It seemed so much like a compliment that time...

  Marai and Deka were putting away the things for the day. Soon the women would put together a quick evening meal. After they had cleaned up a little, then what? Ariennu, the bad girl of Tyre honestly didn’t know.

  “I see you rested well...” Naibe’s eyes flashed with a different fire when Marai returned to the market, late that afternoon.” The light in them spoke more of the jealous goddess hiding deep inside her which has so far been obscured by Lady of Every Joy.

  Jealous? Naibe? Uh-oh! The big man nearly dropped the cumbersome barrel of packed dates he’d hoisted onto his shoulders. He was moving it forward in the booth so the contents would be easier for the women to reach.

  Now why would you think that, beloved? She reassured him with another flash of her golden brown eyes. Naibe-Ellit understood Ariennu and Deka were eventually to become as intimate as they already were, but she was letting him know he was to be no less devoted to her. Smiling, she put the containers of dates out and covered them with gauze cloth to protect them from the flies and the bees. She sat in his lap for a few moments before slipping back to her usual place on the bench.

  Ariennu remained pensive and quiet for only a few moments that afternoon after Naibe had seen into her memory. Neither woman mentioned what happened again. In the daily market work and at home, they returned to their usual exchange of wit; and to the running commentary on villagers appearances as well as the spreading of rumors.

  That afternoon had been as mystifying to Marai as it had been to Ariennu herself. Loving Naibe-Ellit had wakened passion in him that whipped itself into an almighty frenzy. Ariennu became more regal and sedate, gaining a comforted restfulness that puzzled everyone. It was intensely passionate, but quiet. The first few evenings, she didn’t prowl the waterfront or alleys, but one night, a week later, Marai thought she stayed away too long on a trip to the well. Knowing she was in no way discontent or bored with any part of her life, he wondered if something he couldn’t yet sense had gone wrong. He went out to look for her and found her lurking in the alley next to the bulding where they lived, waiting to trap him.

  Had to...for old time’s sake...So what are you going to do about it, Huh? She laughed, lunging forward to bite his lower lip gently. Some time later, both of them collapsed, winded, against the wall, laughing themselves silly at their own audacity. Ariennu was like that.

  After that afternoon, all of that wise and bitter experience had translated itself into laughter. Naibe became the author of dark and passionate desire...Ariennu became Marai’s burst of sunlight. And Deka? More than ever, she seemed determined to slip from their sight even though her thoughts were always somewhat linked to theirs. That she had danced quite lovingly for the sesh who was doing the duty of a servant still struck Marai, Naibe, and Ariennu with awe, but in the rush of the events that followed, the memory of that dance faded.

  The sesh never came back, despite his promise to connect Marai with information about the successor of Djedi. His brief encounter with Marai and his family hadn’t seemed to make any sort of difference in their future at all. The Opening of the Year and the Flood festival came and went. The sowing season had begun and had another month to go. Bast was being celebrated in her boat and in the temples. The four sojourners marked their first year in Ineb Hedj.

  Perhaps, Marai thought, the man forgot to tell his teacher in the midst of all of his duties. More and more, Marai began to wonder if it was wiser to abandon the search for this assistant of Djedi and start making his own life in Little Kina-Ahna with his beautiful wives. The desire to get on with the starting of a family begged him to forget any promise he had ever made to the Children of Stone.

  Etum Addi’s business flourished and soon, after the tribute adjusters visited, the spice merchant received a writ to renovate the lower part of the building in which Marai lived. The two men cleared out the stable on the lower floor and began to make it suitable enough to lease to human inhabitants.

  Because flood was over, many of the temporary workers had made the journey back to their homes and farms to plant and till their own crops. This meant there wouldn’t be a tremendous need to hurry on the repairs. The work could be done in the cool of the evenings before the weather got too hot for such labor in the night or in the day.

  About the time the men got the packed earth flooring scrubbed, some old reed rugs put in, and a new sheltering pen for the beasts built on one side of the building, the Sangir’s wife, Gizzi, brought some news.

  She told him she had heard of a family of poor farmers from an outlying area who had not returned to their homes. They had been literally sleeping in their booth on the waterfront, despite the danger at night from the crocodiles. By day they had been selling melons, beans and various cut-rate items during the flood festival, while the husband had been across the river working on the great king’s eternal house. The family should have returned home after the flood, but some unknown thing had happened. The husband was still working across the river.

  If that was true, Marai thought, the man must have been given a better position. The whole family should have all been living in the worker’s village, not sleeping in the market. It was a good and godly work. They shouldn’t have been destitute. The story was that the woman was very pregnant.

  Gizzi suggested that the women and children might stay in the lower room at least until the child was born.

  Etum Addi agreed, but then found out to his annoyance, that this “family”
was bigger than either he or his wife originally thought. Even so, only the woman and a sister and the children were going to move into the lower room. The woman, a dusky skinned plump thing named Raawa and her sister Nene, a widow, moved in with the children and Nene’s child, but they kept to themselves. Each morning they returned to the waterfront in silence to make their meager wage.

  The boisterous and hearty Sanghir merchant was so pleased with Marai and the three women, that he often teased the big man about being a sorcerer, and of using magic to tempt people to his booth. To that, Marai smirked that customers were just coming up to look at the pretty women and he took advantage of the situation by bartering with any customers as soon as they began to stare at the ladies.

  Ineb Hedj had been the king’s city for several generations. People of all ranks and social status came to make devotions to the various gods in their local temples and to the king at his estate. These pilgrims always needed cedar chips for the aromatic coals, myrrh and occasional medications when the festivities, which were almost daily, took place. For that, Marai needed no magic...just the good business practices that had been taught to him by his father and uncles when he was a child.

  Proud of the success Marai had brought, Etum-Addi began to talk of setting up a booth across the river for the following flood season. The Sangir said they would need to know more about each of the gods and goddesses in this land, so they could tailor what they were selling to the more priestly buyers on the other side.

  We’ ll need “connections” to set up nearer to the temples. the merchant had suggested. The sesh who came by and the priest you were seeking... Perhaps another try...

  So…There it was, staring at him like a specter, in the middle of his respectable life as a merchant and his attempt to avoid the nudging of the Children of Stone. He needed to contact the priests, just as the Children of Stone had requested in the first place

  That night, after he had gone to look at part of the festivities on the water, the sojourner stood in the small courtyard near the well. He stared out to the river tonight, tired from the days work. Today had been hotter than usual and the next day was promising to be the same. Marai wondered if Etum-Addi realized that once he, his new business partner, went to the priests and became known, the dream of running more than one store with him stationed in the booth across the river might never come to pass.

  These warm days of sleeping on the roof gave Marai a new longing for the open wilderness. There, on the more unbearable summer days, he could always find a cool cave or at least revel in the blast of arid wind that worked up a presence among the sun scorched cliffs.

  Tonight, he didn’t feel like sleeping. He climbed up on the ridge of the well in the center of the small plaza, imagining for a moment that none of this had happened and he was back at home in the Sin-Ai. When he breathed in the air tonight, however, it wasn’t clean and dry. It was brackish and smelled of city. He sighed, sadly and turned to see Deka seated quietly near his feet at the well.

  “Oh, you’re awake, Man-Sun,” she whispered gently. She was mocking the first words she had spoken to him when he had awakened in the Children’s vessel.

  Marai leapt down and sat on the edge of the well, urging her to sit beside him.

  As she had done before, Deka regally extended her hand to him. He took it in his own hand and kissed it, then reached to smooth her soft hair.

  The Ta-Seti woman wore it braided back along her head and close to the scalp now.

  Most of the women of Kemet usually kept their hair barbered short or chin length if it wasn’t fully frothy. They wore marvelous extended braid work of black wool combined with their natural hair, or fanciful wigs that looked like hair braided into a waterfall-like feature. They filled this false and real hair with golden braid tips, beads and jewelry. Somehow Deka’s hair always seemed so much more elegant than the most royal of women’s hair styles.

  “Not for long, I hope.” The sojourner sighed, shaking his head. “In four days, Etum wants to...” He stopped himself then; his eyes growing quiet. “You know...I have to start looking for them again...” He touched the stone in his brow with a little gesture like a salute.

  Her fingers rose and touched his brow too, then pulled his head down a little so she could kiss the place where the Child Stone lay.

  “So you will then.” Her voice grew so dark that it seemed to be aching, even though there was no hint of disappointment in her words.

  Marai let her hold his head for a few moments, feeling her unrest rising almost to the surface. Naibe-Ellit had come to him and drawn him out over a year ago. He had completed the blessing of what she had done for him by beginning the healing in Ariennu’s heart. Through all of the other’s spiritual changes, Deka remained aloof and apart from them. She turned more and more inward each day. Had he failed her somehow, Marai wondered? He wanted to touch her and to soothe her. He wanted to show her some kind of kindness she would accept, but every time they were alone her thoughts would cry out

  I want you, Man Sun but I cannot have you ... It is not for me!

  “There you go again...” The sojourner looked up into her eyes a little. “Still pulling away from the rest of us.”

  “You mean from you...” she quipped, pushing him up and slightly away from her.

  “But see...There ...You’re the one pushing me away, when you know I’d never hurt you...never!” He re-emphasized.

  Deka sighed, frustrated.

  “I know...and it all comes to this with you, my most lovely Man Sun.” She looked up into his eyes, searching them. “You’re so good to each of us...There’d be magic beyond what the gods could know in your arms. You already know I’ve already been there when we first woke.” her cat-colored eyes fluttered shut, once.

  “You’re something special now...wonderfully special...and...” She gripped her own arms again, as she was if holding her body closed and away from him. “I do so want that...” When her green-gold eyes opened, she continued. “I just know so much that great ill and sorrow would come of it if I yielded to my desire.”

  Marai felt a slight ache in his chest and back that he couldn’t explain, but thinking it was only their shared sorrow at the gulf between them, he gathered her into his embrace and began to sway gently side to side. He consoled her with gentle kisses on her eyes.

  Her wiry strength seemed to be melting in his arms...sagging and needing.

  “No...” her voice rose in a half-sob. “Don’t...break my heart this way...I can’t...” She whispered and shook her head, but was loathe to tear herself away from him. Deka was fighting a war inside herself. Part of her wanted his love so desperately, even if it was nothing more than physical, but the other part of her, the spirit and the soul, still pushed him away.

  “Deka...you would be good to love, even if only from the heart...” He said, and for a moment he saw her sweet face and form as a young girl. She was playing in a room where the sunlight streamed in. Her skin was bright like darkest cinnamon. A storm lay in wait outside. She noticed it and put down her things. As if by magic, she drew herself tall and grown, becoming a young goddess in all of her finery. It was the same image Naibe had seen in her own vision.

  “Shh...Deka, my sweetest spice. Brother and sister..or Father and daughter if not husband and wife, which ever way you will have me.” Marai tried to laugh. “Just make a quiet place for us in your heart...a gentle bed for two hearts to lie.” Marai touched her lips with his fingertips quietly, as if hushing any greater protest. “Now, come up with me to sleep. There’s so little time before morning.” He hopped down from the well wall and lifted her down with him, embracing her just once more. “Your heart opened a little more tonight...just for me...be glad pretty woman, be glad.” He smiled and received her in his arms just one more time.

  He followed her up to their pallets on the roof. Ariennu and Naibe-Ellit were already asleep. She drifted, comforted, but Marai lay awake for a few minutes longer, gently stroking her arm and wondering. The din of
birds and waterfowl had already begun to rise up from the river, signaling the start of day.

  Marai thought he had only begun to sleep when he was suddenly jolted awake by a commotion in the courtyard below. The slit of dawn sun nagged at the horizon. The women must have been awake and bustling about because their mats were already taken down to the apartment. Peering over the edge of the roof, Marai saw Etum Addi frantically gesturing for him to come down at once. The new tenant below had gone into labor in the night. The merchant’s wife Gizzi and his son’s wife Lalla who had occasionally been down to the waterfront looking after the woman’s three little boys, during market hours and the tenant’s sister Nene were already with her. Etum-Addi’s son, Ninka had gone to cross the river on the first boat, to find “Djerah”, the woman Raawa’s missing husband. Ninka had hopes of persuading the crew foreman to let the young man he come across the river for a day or two.

  The sojourner learned through the ensuing din that the woman and the rest of the family had started out living across the river in the crew village as the flood commenced. The fever pitch of the construction and the noise of the shift crews had kept this woman named Raawa awake and exhausted. Some of the family had come over to sell vegetables and brought her with them. On this side, it was quieter which had allowed her to rest.

  This fourth labor wasn’t an easy one. For most women, the first or second labor were the tough ones. By the fourth time, it should have been easier, if not quicker. Marai tried to ignore the goings-on. He fixed something to eat and settled down to a day of work, but by mid-morning the women brought the boys aged about two, three and nearly five years old up from the waterfront to sit or play at Marai’s booth.

  The women fetched Ariennu for help because of her knowledge of herbs. Ari brought in heart-fennel normally used to “clear the womb” of an unwanted child. In cases of hard labor, it was said to make the progress quicker.