Going Forth By Day

by Mary R Woldering

  Has everything I dreamed of been destroyed? Is there nothing but this shade of memory because I died? the sojourner blinked sadly as he watched the vision he and Wserkaf were creating.

  For a moment the stone in him followed the inspector and Ariennu, even though he desperately wanted to stay with Naibe. The woman who gently waved a greeting to Naibe was beautiful and elegant. She was no longer the witty prankster who loved to laugh and play away lazy afternoon rest times, or naughty evenings on the roof or in the alleyways of Little Kina-Ahna. This woman’s eyes were hard and cold, as if they had seen and known far too much to ever be bright again. Her lids were fiercely lined with kohl green paint. Her lips were reddened with a mixture of henna and pomegranate in fat. She was resplendent and proud, as if she was truly the Goddess of pleasure merged with the image of a wise elder. She was not his Ariennu.

  Marai’s eldest wife remained silent and stone-faced through the trip with Wserkaf. At the last moment, just as she and Wserkaf arrived at the rear entrance to the women’s villa, her fingertips crept to his hand.

  Wserkaf got out first when the litter was set down and then turned to help Ari stand. For a few moments, they stood together while they waited for the guards to pass word into the room that she had arrived. Marai saw through the inspector’s memories that even though the sun was bright that morning, the air seemed sad and gray.

  “She got to you, didn’t she?” the woman spoke almost shyly.

  For a moment, the inspector thought she had called down the spirit of his mother again as she had done on the day they met one moon ago.

  “I can’t believe it,” she giggled a little bit, amused, and then stopped when she recognized the great sadness in Wserkaf’s eyes. “All this fear these royal and high-spirit god-women have of ladies like us… when we’re nothing but their own mothers, seen through a different window. Were they afraid of their mothers?”

  The inspector didn’t answer her.

  “Love? Nah, don’t tell me that! Thoroughly bewitched loins, maybe, but…” she turned to face him gently, as if she felt suddenly sorry for him. “Awww. You sure?” she asked, but didn’t need his answer. Ariennu touched his sad face and felt the memory of every moment he shared with Naibe. “Yeh, I guess you must be one of us too. You don’t have a Child Stone yet, but maybe in time you will. Maybe one day when this is all sorted out, like she said, you’ll come to us.” She embraced him then, and kissed eyes and lips just the way Naibe had kissed him… the way Marai had kissed her some weeks before. “All this because Marai’s gone. I still can’t believe it, I just still can’t,” she sighed.

  Wserkaf returned her firm embrace impulsively, as if he tried to hold on to memory of Naibe-Ellit through her.

  “Oh, now don’t get me started with you. I’m too old,” she mocked, knowing fully that age no longer meant a thing to her. It was only another game to play. His silence was too painful, though, so she broke it again. “You know Princess Dainty Mittens and her little priestesses just had to tease the damn secrets out of me. They want a child just that bad, when all both princie and she need to do is relax and enjoy each other… stop trying so hard. Doesn’t have to be a ‘Son of his body’, not really a problem. They could adopt a seemly one. That’s what some say Shepseskaf is; adopted,” she shook her head. “Felt like a cow in a goddess-cursed breeding pen. At least here that’s not going to be the main thing I do. Majesty’s got plenty of girls, I hear. He just needs wise talk and tea from me. It’ll be a relief for a change, especially if he lets me go out once in a while to see to my own needs.”

  Wserkaf knew that Ariennu was almost relieved her stay at Shepseskaf’s house hadn’t worked. “I have to go to Khmenu,” his voice was quiet as he reflected on his own plight. He hadn’t listened to anything she said. “Can you somehow see she’ll be alright?” he asked.

  “Mmmm. She got you bad,” Ariennu clucked, half in pity, half in fun. “Your wife didn’t like the competition much, did she?” she began, almost mirthful at the thought of another princess alarmed at her and Naibe’s new spell-casting abilities. She couldn’t tease him, though. She knew he had decided to do something far more manly and brave by setting Naibe-Ellit aside in order to return to his beloved.

  “Six weeks away from Ineb Hedj with constant cleansing and fasting can heal many things,” the inspector mused, “I just need to know she’ll be safe.”

  A blink of light almost broke Marai’s concentration. Rainbow shimmers became stars that sparkled around their edges. For a moment, he thought he was about to collapse. Then, he felt the warm summery rush of Ariennu’s presence. Somehow, his meditation and reaching through time had created a bridge. Perhaps he would be able to speak to her. Ari, he whispered. Woman, I am with you. I’m not a ghost. Just say where you are and I’ll come to you. There was no response. When he returned his gaze to Wserkaf and firmed his hand on the man’s shoulder, he realized he was seeing Naibe again.

  Stunned, Naibe followed the maids who had been sent to the doorway to greet her. They led her to the room where she would stay. The small, slightly roundish young woman who had followed Naibe and the serving girls suddenly pushed ahead and stood facing her with her arms folded. The girls continued on and put Naibe’s few possessions by a tiny sleeping couch made of lashed cane. The little bed was in a room with five other couches: the women’s room. Princess Khentie had only had one personal maid, Mya, who slept in her mistress room. Wserkaf’s other servants stayed in a row of tiny brick rooms by the garden and the stable. This much more peopled greeting showed Naibe how much larger Shepseskaf’s household was.

  The young woman who stood in front of her, though, wasn’t a servant. Her quiet and imperious air identified her, even though she was plainly dressed.

  New princess… Naibe wavered, unable to smile.

  The woman came right up to her and then eyed her up and down, visually inspecting her.

  “Oh!” her young voice chimed as if she had just been given a wonderful present, “you are so like a little Kina-Ahna goddess doll. You’re made of tawny dark ivory and ebony with such sad golden eyes, such fine hair and form. You would be able make a fine looking child for us. Ah look, little serpents on you! It’s as if you even know our stories,” the woman’s linen mitted fingers reached forward to bat and jingle the wonderful belt of serpents Wserkaf had given her.

  Naibe-Ellit had wanted to wear the belt when she arrived so that it could be help her gather her flagging energy and perhaps even protect her from the woman’s heka if she used it. The little woman gave a sign for her to sway her hips and make the serpent-belt sing. “Yes. I. My Lady,” she began to twirl a little nervously, her hips twitching with a slight shimmy.

  “Call me Your Highness for now,” the woman giggled at the sound of Naibe’s belt as it jingled. “And you have such a pretty speaking voice. Do you sing as well? I understand you dance exquisitely. Let me see some of it,” she phrased a gentle command, but she could not hide her breathless anticipation.

  “Uh…” Naibe cast her eyes down, shyly. “Wh—what part? I don’t… There are no… ” she tried to say that there were no particular set moves, just instinct and exuberance of spirit.

  One of the attendants bowed slightly and then whispered something in the woman’s ear.

  “I see. So, it’s a spirit dance for you? Not something you just …do? We dance this way as well in worship,” the young princess paused, “but we have a variety of structured dances and songs, too.”

  Naibe thought of opening her thoughts so she could pull a secret from the young princess, but the sight of mittened hands gave her pause.

  The princess sensed Naibe’s un-asked thought about the mittens and chose a new question. “Put out your hands then, I must show you I intend no harm.”

  Naibe-Ellit put out her hands, palms up, and then saw the woman pose her own hands over them, palms down. The princess removed one mitt for this, but did not touch Naibe’s skin.

  Her hands look good. They are soft and healt
hy. I wonder why… Naibe started as the princess continued to examine. Now she looks for tattoos or marks of my power, like Deka has on her breasts. She won’t see any, Naibe felt a little mirth but not enough of it to overshadow her nervousness.

  Something did catch the young princess’ attention as she swept her hands through the air over Naibe’s fingers, but it wasn’t anything on the young woman’s hands. She paused and then frowned as if she had felt a chill in the air.

  “Humph. Will you try to use your heka here? To seduce my king and husband?” her eyes seemed so very earnest and absent of hostility. It was as if she thought any of Naibe’s attempts might come across as feeble in this household.

  “I…” Naibe started, but was keenly aware that this princess and Wserkaf’s Princess Khentie knew each other very well. Of course there had to have been gossip between them. “I never sought to cause harm, Your Highness. I only wished to return the love I was given. It was nothing more.” She felt dizzy and bowed her head, spontaneously going to her knees. This is going to be horrible, Naibe gasped inwardly. The image the woman pushed into her thoughts was that she would be bathed, perfumed, stretched out on a couch with her legs wide to receive the prince’s seed and only treated with a little more respect once her belly filled with his child… and that only if a child was born healthy. She would not be allowed to draw out the heart of the prince when they were together.

  “You seem healthy, and younger than the one with red colored hair. A child from your womb will have fairer skin than I would like, but good form and shape.” she commented as she continued her circular walk around Naibe. The woman stopped and stepped back, suddenly. “Forgive me for being rude,” the corner of the princess’ mouth twitched. “Your name is?”

  “Naibe-Ellit,” her voice was a whisper because, although she had very little reason to be frightened, she shook with doubt. Still on her knees, she looked up at the woman who stopped, folded her arms beneath her breasts, and stared narrowly.

  “Speaking with My Lady?” the princess translated roughly. “Who named you this?” she said indignantly. “This is a Goddess Name, a name reserved for those of royal blood. Are you Kina-Ahna nobility then? Whose house?”

  “I… I…” Naibe stammered. She tried to think of an answer, but knew she hadn’t really had a name. She, like Deka, had known only of descriptive epithets signed to her, the kindest of which had been Deka’s name for her: Brown Eyes or Ari’s Little One because of her former short stature. Having been all but an imbecile until she was given her gifts, she knew of words like “stink kuna”, “pop-eyed she-devil”, “howling monkey-girl” and a host of others. In those days, she thought names like that were compliments. The Children, she remembered, whispered the name Naibe-Ellit to her as she had drifted into sleep in their crystalline arms on the vessel in the sand long ago. They taught her what it meant, too. “Don’t know, Highness,” she mumbled, her heart in her throat. “Women in a temple far away nursed me. It was Hazor, I think. I did not know my mother. She birthed me in the year after she did her ritual. They say my sire was a god, but I never knew him either.”

  “A god?” Princess Bunefer paused in her circuit of tiny steps around the kneeling woman. “I did not realize you had been trained as a prophetess! That would explain much of your charm,” the princess continued her scrutiny.

  Naibe didn’t want to be there. “No, Highness, I have not been trained. I just…” Naibe Ellit was about to tell the woman that she simply called on the Great Goddess once long ago and was gifted for it, but realized just in time the folly of such a revelation.

  Then, there it was again: the horrible realization that Marai was really and truly gone. Now, gentle Wserkaf could have no part of her either. Once again, even though she fought it, tears and trembling sobs came from her. She sat on her heels with her face in her hands, unable to say anything more. The princess stepped back in a combination of stunned and puzzled silence. The interview ended. Some of the serving girls helped her up, cooing and attempting to hug her as they coaxed her to rest on her little bed.

  For a long time that night, Naibe-Ellit lay on her bed. Even though the night was hot and there was little breeze, she shivered and tried to comfort herself. She had already decided she didn’t like it here in this beautiful place. All afternoon, as she rested, she heard women as they came and went in the women’s apartments. They looked in at her, tittered among themselves and discussed her as if she was something they had picked up at the market; a splendid new female animal to breed. It was too much for her to take in.

  Princess Bunefer returned later in the afternoon to help Naibe get ready for her reintroduction to Prince Shepseskaf. The woman sat primly on a stool, with an attending handmaiden gently waving the short-handled nefet over them.

  “I know you thought I was rude this morning,” the princess stated almost apologetically, even though her tone remained matter-of-fact. “You’ll forgive me, but the other woman who was brought here betrayed my beloved with her heka. It insulted my gift of prophesy for her to think I could not see her age or her inability to bear any sort of child. I knew right away that her young look and form was indeed some kind of sorcery, thus I needed to discover its source. Then, when I heard of the intrigue at my dear sister’s house, I needed to draw you out, to see if there would be more trickery.”

  Naibe finger-combed her hair with perfumed oil gel and stared at her reflection in a shiny bronze mirror. She wanted to see if her eyes were still puffy. She didn’t want to listen to anything this princess had to say. The thought that she and Ari had been led into another trap for royal men’s entertainment galled her. And MaMa goes to the king for what reason? Another trick, or just his amusement when I understand he already has a queen still alive and a house of handmaidens? Naibe gasped. Oh, sorry, she almost thought she spoke aloud.

  Bunefer’s mittened hands crossed each other in a brief dispelling gesture as she tried to make Naibe feel more at home. “I do need your magic, though…” her voice quieted but still sounded like a nasal sing-song meow. “If your heka could awaken my womb from its slumber, I would ask for you to use it on me.”

  Naibe had heard of the young woman’s poor fertility. It seemed to be chronic among women of royal houses, necessitating plenty of concubines. Meanwhile, women like Raawa, who had lived in the room beneath her in Little Kina-Ahna, had birthed up four healthy children in five years. She should have been the kind of woman destined for the royal harem. Naibe felt her own prospects for giving birth seemed gloomy indeed. She hadn’t begun Marai’s child before he had gone from her life. How could they know she would have a better success with the prince?

  “I ask you for nothing but safety and shelter, Your Highness.” Naibe whispered, shifting on her bed, determined not to weep again over words that seemed like accusations. “I had thought I would be with my Ari again, yet she is gone too, as is anything which has ever brought me joy. I do not steal men,” she sighed. Naibe wanted to get up, run out of the entire estate and vanish into the unknown parts of royal Ineb Hedj.

  She knew she had spoken the truth. She didn’t steal men or even seek them out for a few moments of joy as Ariennu did. Men, even when she was a wretched and pitiable thing, came to tease, harass and finally use her. Her sexual antics amused them. Now, because of the gifts the Children of Stone had given her, being with a man had become a much more powerful and commanding thing. Men were inexplicably drawn to her as if they had indeed been captured by some spell she had woven about them. Once she took them in her arms, they were powerless to live without her.

  The princess reflected on the young woman’s statement about not stealing men, almost as if she has been reading Naibe’s thoughts on the matter. Suddenly, as if she was humbled and even worried about the coming liaison with her husband, she stared at her mittens for a moment.

  As the princess stared in worry, a thought as pure as the whiteness of a dry dawn, suddenly came to Naibe. “You’ll bear a child for your king yourself,” she stated.
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  “You just saw this?” the princess’ eyes widened. The corner of her lips twitched. The woman knew that hopeful seers, eager for some morsel of a reward could say they saw anything. She didn’t know if she trusted Naibe enough to believe yet another prediction by a woman in a desperate situation.

  “Just now the thought came to me. I…” Naibe answered quickly, but then paled as the shadow of the stormy dark lurked to one side of her thoughts and began to grow. An old, familiar but dreaded hidden thing was watching her again. Something else was with it this time. A smaller, slim creature regarded her. The worst part of it was that both the figure as large as the sky and the smaller one were advancing toward her. The afternoon Wserkaf had come she had sensed the other being but thought it was Deka. Now, she wasn’t sure.

  “No,” she whimpered. “Not this… not now…” she dropped the mirror in her lap and gripped her arms to ward off the sense of horror that suddenly enveloped her.

  “What?” the young prophetess bent forward, concerned. “Do you see something else? Is it a bad thing about the child I’ll have?” the princess started to remove her glove in order to send some protective energy but paused as Naibe shook her head in a warning that the princess needed to protect herself instead.

  “A Storm; I see a storm in my thoughts. I had thought it was about my Marai, his death, but it’s back again. When I tried to see…” Naibe suddenly looked up at Princess Bunefer and realized she had pulled the image of the storm from the prophetess’ thoughts, not her own. For just an instant before she locked the image away, she saw the young woman in front of her clad in shining golden clothing and wearing a vulture crown. She was performing some sort of ceremony and weeping bitterly as she did. Nearby two children about age seven stood. It was a boy and a girl. They held hands. A young woman just beyond girlhood was also in the vision. She stood beside a grown man perhaps ten years older, who was dressed in priestly garb. Before Naibe could see anything further, the storm arrived to obscure the rest of the image in black and red rolling clouds of storm dust. “I see two children near you – one boy, one girl.” Naibe pretended the anxiety had passed and hoped the news of two children born would be so thrilling that the young seer wouldn’t notice her own terror. The boy turned as if he knew someone was peering into his world. His eyes blazed gold fire and his dark, nimbus-shrouded head became part of the storm. He rose into the air with a murderous scream, pointing at her. The scream sounded like “Mother! I live!”