Opener of the Sky

by Mary R Woldering

  “Does he ever hear anything that does not suit his every desire?” the elder laughed. “Of course not! He viewed it as a threat and then snapped at me that he had brought his own women this time. He expected me to have already smoothed his expedition with both Sutek and Nit.”

  “I should take it as flattery that he believes I can clap my hands and get gods and goddesses to jump. He went away mad and said he would return. I smelled a trap, dear Aped. That’s why we’ll post guards here for a few nights until he goes deeper into the brushland and has unknotted his tail with his women and drunk up the beer I’ve had delivered. I also sent him two guards for his time here,” his gaze lowered for a moment.

  “Guards?” the younger man couldn’t contain his shock “The Wawati? The charmed ones? Why?”

  “I saw other things,” the elder reached for a bit of bread a servant had just brought out and dredged it in the sauce.

  “What?” Aped asked.

  “That much would be revealed which has been hidden for many years and that a day was coming when the mighty and the proud would be humbled. I saw change in the frame of things and in our futures… in which our great wisdoms would be hidden and forgotten by the world of learned men; the way things are, lost and eventually covered in deep water when men came to control our dark mother. This is why I said to you, ‘It’s time’.” The elder munched the crust of bread. “I do not need to have a vision or watch the stars, especially when I pair the things I see with the tales you brought me last year.” His eyes twinkled.

  Aped paused, realizing that the many events in his life were suddenly moving together. “The sojourners in the marketplace?” he asked. “I had reported them and taken their incense and sweets to the Great One that day. It was a test of observations; to discover things not usually seen and report back – part of being the eyes of the Djehut.”

  “And you saw…” Akaru smiled and urged his grandson to continue.

  “A nearly giant man with hair like the moon in full who was looking for old Djedi, but didn’t know he had died some fifty years earlier. One of the women with him spirit danced with me in the manner of the ancestors. I left to report it to my teacher, but felt I somehow had seen her in my own visions. I’m sure she was of Ta-Seti. It was odd for her to be among ones who have so little, because she was so elegant… like one who should have been a goddess, but lost her way.” Aped watched the man’s expression mist in memory of something.

  “Our mothers keep the wisdom alive. For that we protect them. It is the way it has been and will be. Anything departing from it, corrupts. Any goddess prideful of it, loses her place and invites a conqueror.” Akaru inclined his pale head to one side as if he was dreaming or accepting another vision. “What do you remember of the legends of me? Of why I am even here in this world? Tell me what you know. It’s a fine story.”

  “That you came from the stars, some say, not of made Earth or of MaMa. You were always pining for your star people and knew the tracks they took in the night sky. You told the great elders this and made a hole in the roof over your bed so you would wait for them to come for you,” Aped began, shifting a little uncomfortably as he looked around. The plaza was quiet.

  “They say one night long ago, when you had a fever, you saw the stars of the Great Bat and her milk flowing down over earth, but something let your Star Mami come to you. The fever almost took you, but that night you lay down and she took you to the lions. That night, Mami Lion came and gave you the gift of walking with them.”

  “And so the tale went down the river to Sneferu and to the Ancient of Days: Wise Djedi, a god of sorcerers and wizards.” Akaru continued wistfully. “He came up the river with his very young student Prince Hordjedtef, who teaches you now.”

  The elder visualized the memory of his father Metaut pushing him forward to a very old and bent, but heavy set man. Djedi had smiled and nodded as if he knew a great secret he wasn’t prepared to divulge. He remembered a slim and haughty young prince whose cruel eyes worried him even then. Akaru remembered Djedi calling a lioness out of the grass to test him. When she came out, young Metauhetep remembered she was the one who had saved him from the fever. The prince, worried they would be attacked, drew his bow.

  I ran to save you, Mami Lion! He remembered how he ran and threw his arms around her neck, then nuzzled her warm fur when she happily flopped on her side. Her milk flowed and he remembered kneeling to suckle for just a quick and friendly moment. I told you to go and take your pride into the deeper brush and not come near the world of men, because they would hunt you for your pretty pelt.

  The lions moved into the wilder brush after that. From time to time, he thought he heard her call, but he never saw her again. The thought that she was no longer with the living ones still made him tear up. Akaru cleared his throat.

  Nothing was the same after that. The Ancient Djedi had told his parents that he had the marks of Akaru the Lion, son of Aker and one of the two guardians of the spirit gates. He predicted the boy would be a great and powerful one who would be able to command the very air around him, walk through flame, and talk to many wild beasts in their own voice. After that, he thought of the way he had been held close and eventually controlled by the royal families.

  They protected me and educated me in the upper temples of Kemet. King Djedephre and his brother, the Count of Nekhen Prince Hordjedtef dictated that I, because I was a compliant and well educated young man, would succeed the post of sepat prince. Despite the fact that my father Metauthetep had other sons and daughters of his own body. After Djedephre died, Khafre approved the appointment and still later his son Menkaure agreed on it too.

  “Because old Djedi chose me, my line succeeds me. But a time is coming when the heirs of the blood will have something to say about it,” he added aloud. “My place is in study, which is why you study. We are not warriors, but some of the blood sons want war and want us to shake away the yoke of the black land, grow powerful, and make it ruled by the Ta-Seti kings,” he said but reflected on his choice of peace.

  Life has been good. There’s even been no need of magic. I’ve been free to study and map the stars, learn the healing plants and substances, work the engineering formulae for temple building, take several wives, sire a dozen children, and govern my people with firmness and peaceful compassion. There’s prosperity, even if I must rule under the heel of the Lords of the Two Lands.

  He knew he would have to tell his grandson Aped what, or specifically who was coming soon, because the young priest would have to make some decisions about his own future. Much of the prophecy had been ushered in by the earlier arrival of Prince Maatkare Raemkai. Last night, he had meditated to prepare for the reading the prince would demand. He wanted to be careful, so he chose a pre-reading that might hint at what he would see in the morning. He knew the young man’s dark heart and quick temper, and knew the growing disquiet in his own sepat.

  Akaru had begun by calculating the position of the stars as they passed over his burnished brick observatory. As he scratched out notes and compared the positions with earlier ones and with some older historical ones, he saw something that chilled his heart. The position of these stars was different than he expected. It was as if something had moved or jiggled the positions a little bit. Something shimmered like a wilderness mirage up in the night sky, distorting the way the stars looked. He had seen that configuration once before when he had suffered from a fever brought on by a scorpion sting. It felt as if something looked in on him that night. Was it Sutek, or something much more loving? Now, it looked for him again.

  Star Mami, his old heart had raced. Shutting his eyes again, he breathed deep to calm himself. It wasn’t any such thing. There really wasn’t a ‘Star Mami’. It was something else… something dreadful. It wasn’t Sutek either. Sutek was dark and chaos… but this was total nothingness and absence of light. It howled after the soul of man, wanting it so it could walk as a man again. Apep. The Hidden One is coming back. It is coming like a cloud of a storm.r />
  He had waited and once again he heard the same song he had heard long ago coming from the north and east:

  Shine for one who begs to serve you

  Return to the night...

  CHAPTER 10: TRUTH IS HARD

  “I already know you don’t trust me, Djerah, so just ask me whatever you want. My wife Ari once said I’m a dreadful liar and I’m already tired of trying to be a better one.”

  The stonecutter had returned to the little hillock where Marai made a nighttime shelter for both of them. It was simple: just his walking stick rammed into the earth and his cloak stretched into a tent. Nearby, residents of a small riverside community gathered to celebrate the passing of the king’s soul.

  The sojourner had cleared some dry grass, bundled it, and had started a dung fire in a neat brick circle near the shelter. It was evening of the first good day of walking and both men were tired and irritated. He sat cross-legged in the opening of the tent and suggested Djerah sit by him and share the bread, dates, a piece of salt fish. He tried to keep silent about the trade being a cheat. Djerah had given far too many blue beads for too little food.

  The young man set the food down near the makeshift tent. At the small market near the farm where he had grown up, he had been easily swindled by supposed friends from childhood. When he told them of his mission to Ta-Seti, they had only stoked his doubts about going.

  “So you admit you’ve lied to me,” Djerah paused. “I know the leave given me by the king and that priest were true and they wouldn’t have smoothed either of us out of Ineb Hedj if you were a marked man, so was it about something else?”

  “Sit. Let’s eat the fish and drink the beer and talk. I just know if I don’t come forth with the truth, you won’t know what has happened to you. If I don’t speed things up, we’ll be too late getting where I need to go.” Then to himself he thought:

  Here goes nothing, nothing but seeing once and for all what sort of man the Children want me to take along. Here’s where I either scare him to death or start to teach him. He remembered how scared he had been the night of wonders when the Children of Stone first came to him. Even Wserkaf had been both amazed and alarmed despite his years of training in mystical things.

  For a few moments, the sojourner watched the young man chewing the tough salty fish and tossing the bones into the fire. After they had eaten most of the food, Marai began.

  “First, I have something to show you,” he began. He quietly untied his sash, opened the little leather purse it held and greeted the gentle light that immediately issued from the eight stones inside. When he smoothed the sash flat, Marai poured the stones out and smiled as a trembling sensation swept through both men. He knew the Children were whispering something into Djerah’s thoughts because of the way the young man drew back in fear. The sojourner placed the Child Stones in the eight-pointed star pattern and watched, the arcs of light formed unimpaired. As the glow spread upward, it reflected a rainbow pattern on Djerah’s stern young face.

  “I’m not interested in your sorcery, Bin Marai, so don’t try to charm me with these pretty stones.” He turned his glance away, but something in the glow lured his head back into the light spiraling upward from them.

  Marai gently passed his hand through the top of the image as if he caressed a lover. As the big man’s hand moved, he knew Djerah felt the same sigh of keenest pleasure well up in him. It made him fidget, embarrassed.

  “If you look where I’ve traced it with my hand, you can see a little girl, Djerah – and she was so sweet when she was young. I would have done anything for her in those days,” Marai pointed out the image of Houra dancing on the hillock outside his mountainous home in the wilderness. It was a scene from his own memory which had already become immortalized in the crystalline structure of the Children of Stone.

  “Where is this?” Djerah stared carefully, then blinked, uncomprehending at first. “Seems familiar, like stories my savta used to tell, but…”

  Marai caressed the light again, then noticed the color drain from Djerah’s face as he studied the young girl with the coal colored curls woven into braids and tied with yellow ribbons. “Her face… Savta Oora?” he shook his head in disbelief when he realized he was looking at the face of his great-grandmother as a young girl in the glowing image. “But she’s so young.”

  “Her name was Houra, Houra bint Ahu.” Marai smiled wishing himself into that scene for just a moment. In so many ways, he wished he was back in the wilderness watching her play in far simpler times.

  “How can you do these things? Make an image from so long ago just appear in light from these stones?” the stonecutter shifted, then gasped.

  Marai knew Djerah saw the image of the big, rough-looking youth lifting the girl high in the air while she squealed in childish delight.

  “That was me, before I was changed. You see, Houra was my half-sister. I lied to you about her being my aunt or even my great aunt,” Marai’s voice grew softer as he faded for a moment into the life presented in the vision. “There is no bin Marai, at least not yet. There is just me,” Marai shrugged, taking in the young man’s haunted expression in the flickering of the firelight and the glow of the stones.

  “I knew it! My savta said the same thing and stayed on with that until she breathed no more, even though I held her and told her it wasn’t possible. She scolded me as an unbeliever. Said you were Marai who Vanished, but we thought it the visions a dying person has. Why did you lie to me?” Djerah muttered to himself in disgust. “Did your priest know this about you? And what is the change you’re talking about? The man in the vision looks like men in our family, but you don’t. For all I know, you could be some wizard enchanting me into your service. This whole thing could be heka.”

  Marai tried to calm the young man with a hand gesture and an image of blankness and peace because at that moment Djerah had averted his eyes. The burnisher gave every indication he thought he was being bewitched.

  “The priest didn’t know at first, and it’s a really long story which I ought to save for later,” Marai clucked. “Let’s just say my life got stretched out really long so I could bring little stones like these to Kemet and not die of old age on the journey. Because it did, the children had to make some repairs to my body. I was almost an old man when this journey started.” He explained, sensing the young man easing a little; at least from curiosity. “In return, the priests were supposed to teach me some things. The old high priest wanted the secret of that long life from me. When he couldn’t get it…”

  “Damn you. You could have told me your real name. Even if I didn’t believe the rest.” Djerah tore at the last piece of the bread with his teeth.

  “When I went over there, I never thought they would try to kill me. I thought I would come back and share the whole story with you over time. But that time is now,” Marai swept his hand over the composition of stones as if he was divining a message.

  “So what are you doing now?” Djerah studied the glow and the gestures Marai was making.

  The big man grabbed Djerah’s hand and waved it through the glow. “Seeing if one of them likes you. Close your eyes and see for yourself. It won’t do anything to you.”

  The young man quickly shut his eyes. His hand reached over the faint glow and impulsively touched a pale whitish one that glowed like a moon. When he opened his eyes, he held it up and looked at it in the light.

  “Hmm… It’s changing shape as I hold it – round and now a crescent-shape like the moon.”

  Marai breathed a little easier. He had guessed the young man had a bigger thirst for learning than even he, himself did at one time. That curiosity alone kept him from dropping the stone and fleeing as soon as he touched it.

  “I feel something, but I can’t say what. It’s like it’s a small animal, still pink and blind, or a little bird. It buzzes and hums.” he whispered in astonished wonder.

  “The Iah stone. The moon stone,” Marai remarked, recognizing it. “You would say Yah.”


  Djerah turned the stone over and over, examining it and reveling in the feeling of the pulses of energy rolling up and down his arm.

  “Does it have any other heka or does it just show things from long ago?”

  “I’m still learning about them and what they are. Sometimes…” Marai answered, thinking of the women again. “They seem to be alive to me… with a ka… like all of us have. They’re not sorcerers’ crystal, though. They’re different from each other and yet sometimes they seem to be part of one great heart. They’re like children… impulsive, maybe a little foolish, very loving… but sometimes they seem to act without direction. I call them Children of Stone. The priests called them Ta-Ntr stones… Stones from the land of the Gods.”

  “These little stones? Stones of the Gods?” Djerah roughly translated the Kemet phrase, reverently returning the stone in his hand to the pattern.

  Marai looked around helplessly and set down the food. He didn’t want to reveal too much at once, but now he had aroused the young man’s curiosity.

  “Look, Djerah…” he started, but the young man interrupted him by craning his head up to see in to new lights and images that appeared floating in the center of the eight-pointed pattern. “How can I say this? I don’t think they are gods. Long ago, I thought they were part of my goddess Ashera. Houra may have told you I used to sing and pray to her. I don’t think they are her any more or even other gods. I think they are children of a kind; maybe sort of god’s children, but no god I have ever heard people speak of. They come from another world beyond the heavens.”

  “So not even malak? Savta’s spirits of the mountain?” Djerah breathed out, as if he had been told more by private whispers. “There are more of them, aren’t there? The scroll you read to us.”

  “A good box full of them… Sixty and six more.” Marai stared into the soft light, searching for an image of where the women might be, but found no image other than empty grassland and tall cliffs along the great river. “The priests wanted all of them together so their ‘power’ would be complete and thought this prince could get my wife Deka, who he had seduced, to tell where they were. They made Ari and Naibe go with her to convince her, but Ari suspected a trick before the devilish plan was put into play and traded these eight to Wserkaf for his crystal eye of truth and therein…”