Two Horizons

by Hank Lawson

  Chapter 15

  CHILLY SUN

  God Ra rose past the twelfth hour of night into dawn but had not yet warmed Khufu’s suite. Theormi padded through its silver door, onto the dark foyer’s floor and up to the gold curtains shielding off his suite. She slipped her hand along the silken fabric, parted it and peeked inside when she heard, “Stay.” The God-king’s small sound soughed from the darkness as if from a child, or a child’s ghost. No matter how small, this was the first time in nine days that she’d heard his voice at all. “Majesty?”

  Khufu laughed lowly. “No majesty here. I am mortal today.”

  “I’ll light a lamp.”

  “No. Dark shelters me.”

  Theormi could just then discern Khufu’s silhouette near a shuttered window, his back against the wall, his face angled toward the ceiling. “Merhet and Heru had the same laugh—a high giggle—a joyous sound.”

  “Yes.”

  “It crackled out of them. Sharp and clean. How long has it been since I heard that?”

  When Theormi thought Khufu would accept her, she eased herself into his chamber and to his side. This was the first time since Merhet’s attack on Hordedef that Khufu had allowed her this close. On his cheeks, a trail of dried tears glinted. She waited for him.

  An hour later, Khufu sat with Theormi on a lion skin divan. Cold-blooded, gray sunlight eked through the shuttered windows. She held his hand on her lap. Man and woman shared the weight of the room.

  Chamberlain Ramose begged entrance. “The Great Wife requires a forum with the God-king, your Majesty.”

  Khufu gazed at Theormi. His last wish would be to deal with Meritates. Their blight of love had infected Merhet and had bled into this latest horror. But Khufu did wish to bring together all horrors when he was already at his nadir. “We can’t evade this. Admit her.”

  Queen Meritates bristled into the suite. She waved her hand. Her captain lit two lamps. She waited for their light to take hold of her. “God-king Khufu, we are present here due to the threat to your health that still exists.”

  His mind flitting over the many threats, Khufu almost laughed. “Which threat?”

  “In her feeble attempt to be Queen of Egypt,” Meritates flicked an eyebrow at Theormi, “this odalisque.”

  Theormi gasped.

  Khufu hissed.

  Theormi said, “You are a Queen whose word is truth. Your Majesty—if you consent—please explain why I should harm the God-king?”

  Meritates fastened her eyes on Khufu. “Queen Meritates speaks not with a strange woman from foreign lands, a barbarian this land hates, who schemes to conquer our holy Egypt.”

  Khufu dropped his leaden view to the floor. His heart wanted to withdraw into darkness.

  Theormi tried again. “Please, your Majesty. How does attacking Khufu gain for me the status of queen?”

  Meritates said to Khufu. “Answer my assertion that this strange woman whored the spirit from our son, seduced him to madness, and instigated the bloody deed upon Hordedef.”

  “My answer is ‘I know she did not.’”

  “Queen,” said Theormi, “pull out my hairs one by one if my soul answers that I contributed a single speck to it.”

  “Hogs might well pluck her hair,” said the Queen. “I needn’t bother. I’ve recognized for some period of time our dear Merhet’s lunacy for this harem woman. She is a fiend. She is a demon. She exploited my poor exploited boy.”

  Khufu said, “When we released our children outdoors to play but told them to keep from the river, Merhet always returned wet.”

  “A trifle.”

  “No.” Khufu hung his head, eyes again staring at but not seeing the floor. “Merhet crumbled without the girder of my love. Point the dagger at me.”

  “You claim responsibility for everything beneath the sun, yet you misperceive the simplest element before your eyes. This whore is responsible.”

  Khufu tilted his head to examine Meritates. “How would Theormi’s attacking me relieve us of your queenly status?”

  “I am informed that for the assault upon Hordedef this odalisque furnished Merhet her clothes as disguise.”

  “No.” Theormi grasped her hands before her.

  Khufu waved a hand. “Your minions belch rumors. Merhet stole Theormi’s clothes as surely as others abducted her to the Kem-wer estate.”

  With a flourish, Meritates laid her hand to her chest, tipped up her chin and spoke as if addressing a larger audience. “My scribes shall dispatch my truth to the citizens. When the citizens learn that a strange woman from a strange country attacked your exalted throne and horribly wounded the second prince, they will thunder down the Gods’ own retribution upon her neck.”

  Khufu bolted to his feet toward the Queen. His hands clenched and re-clenched until they flexed white. His face blood red.

  Meritates blinked.

  Theormi shut her eyes. “Oh, Queen.”

  Meritates said, “I possess the blood.”

  Khufu glared at her so hard his eyes reddened. In his imagination, he saw the robust crimson of Ka’ab’s and Hordjedef’s spilled blood, but of Meritates he saw a sallow, tacky syrup. He shuddered. “Sister, again you desecrate the Gods. Suck the Nile dry. Death. You migrated from the Gods to consort with ... desert fiends.”

  Theormi touched Khufu’s forearm. Slowly, the God-king’s fists unclasped. He sat, again with his lover. He kissed her cheek. Looking into Theormi’s eyes, Khufu said to Meritates, “You are capable of such an evil. A queen would not.”

  “I am Queen.”

  “A queen sits beside me.” Khufu squeezed Theormi’s hand. He paused to smile upon his lover. “How fortunate for you, Meritates, that a plot against me should end your competition with Queen Theormi.”

  Theormi’s pupils enlarged and fixed on his.

  Meritates’ voice grew louder. “The Queen demands that, before any punishment comes to her son, this whore be put to death.”

  Theormi didn’t take her eyes from Khufu.

  He stroked Theormi’s wrist. “You know I cannot—to someone I love.”

  “You decree death upon Merhet—someone you love.”

  “He won’t be executed. Like the barley now full but soon gone, he’ll be banished.”

  “You must execute her. The Queen cannot allow her to live.”

  “The King decides.” Yet, even sounding defiant, Khufu felt his blood chill. “Distance ...” He pictured himself on an empty shore watching Ka’ab, Merhet and Theormi in the Nile’s rapids spiraling away into a single point on the horizon.

  Meritates said, “At this very moment, my scribes occupy the streets with stories to tell.”

  “You have delivered your misery. Leave us now. We wish to be with royals.”

  “The Queen intends as she promises.”

  “Tiny queen, remove your tiny soul from our love chamber.”

  With a final snarl for Theormi, Meritates glided from the suite.

  Once alone, Khufu turned to Theormi and took up her hand. “The day we met I told you I protect a delicate female. It is my duty. Because the Queen will make good her threat, I must protect you by sending you away. Forever.”

  Theormi’s mouth opened. Her eyes blackened as her eyebrows arched toward her hairline.

  Over a span of several minutes, Theormi’s bearing fell like a sunset from red alarm, dark sorrow to calm.

  Theormi and Khufu kissed, soft but lingering.

  Then, he drew his face to one side and whispered into space. “In this last month of recession tempering us for approaching drought, I will walk about my rooms while you walk into the distance. The air in my rooms will assume your shape. While wind will push you farther and fainter.” Khufu lifted his hand, reaching out to test the air. “I will no longer delight in your flowering or your flesh. But you will live—somewhere.” He dropped the hand to his lap.

  Theormi’s eyes waxed full on him. She then settled back on the divan.

  Even as Theormi’s eyes fell on him,
Khufu felt himself as distant from his lover as he was from the stars. “As in the first moment when land first rose from the first waters, we must create ourselves out of this oblivion. And, no matter our devastation, in time we will rise and live as King and Queen again.”

  For minutes, Khufu and Theormi remained in silence. Eyes plumbed eyes. His skin color warming into a deep orange, he absorbed all he could of the woman Theormi. He memorized every detail of her: eyes that filled with stars when she pondered the stars; curious pout when indulging her curiosity; flesh fragrant of boiling figs in cream; nose wrinkled when flummoxed by Khufu’s deep sense of smell; her smile when she danced and her dance when she moved. He must balance his memory of loving her with the ancient injury of loneliness in which she’d leave him. Khufu shall once more pass into her subtle body with his own.

  The God-king called for Ramose. “Bring us fruits, wine and red fish. Whatever is delicious in the palace.”

  Khufu offered to Sba aabti, “We’ll honor our love. We’ll eat, drink, recite and laugh. We share these hours.”

  Northeast of Egypt in the Kanana town of Ghazzat, perhaps two hours past dawn, new caravan driver Sebek woke with childhood dreams of strange lands filling his eyes. He stood from his mat, peering beyond the thirty riders asleep on the ground. He was surprised at the dingy surroundings of scrubby acacias, gray dirt and dun grasses. He had seen more when they camped last night.

  Past midnight, sun-scorched with the thirtieth day north out of Annu, Sebek had been the one caravan rider who agreed with the dragoman to push on and cross the border from Egypt before making camp. Sebek had quit Egypt, family and everything behind him. As a traveler, he’d trade for turquoise, cedar, olives, cypress and lapis lazuli. What a realm to hold such things. Sebek had snickered at himself for feeling as giddy as Mehi when he talked about the pyramid.

  So late in setting up camp, when the caravan finally cleared a small valley and plodded into Ghazzat, a wind had kicked up twigs and dirt. The riders pulled cloths over their faces.

  Then, out of the hazy dark, the most wondrous sight had approached the Egyptians. A tall, satin-wrapped animal sauntered forward with great, slow strides, swaying its rider on its humped back while paying no heed to the men or their trifling donkeys. On its hump, its rider sat enthroned on crossed legs, white robes whipping in the wind while concealing all but his eyes. This bold, mysterious man was the first person Sebek had ever wished to be. The dragoman greeted him in a strange tongue. Sebek thrilled to the exchange but cursed the wind for muffling the fabulous sounds.

  This morning, Sebek wondered where the man could be.

  Whatever Sebek had liked last night about this land must be farther out somewhere. He started up and hurried past the sleeping men. He found nothing pleasing at first, only common mud-huts, brush, dirt. He began to trot. His head swiveled. Where were the fantastic plants and houses he’d seen last night even in the dark?

  He galloped.

  Townspeople emerged from their homes, walking to the fields, wearing ordinary clothes, ordinary faces, ordinary smiles. Past every corner of every new road, Sebek found nothing like his dreams. He slowed his gallop to a trot, to a walk, to a stop. He didn’t know what to hope for now.

  Sebek turned and stalked back to camp. He had only Egyptians to return to.

  But there, he once more laid eyes on the regal rider, dismounted, speaking with the dragoman. Sebek ran to them. He’d see this strange man up close.

  In the sunlight and costume removed, the rider was only eyes, mouth and legs—an ordinary man. The beast itself looked like a worn-out rug. Long nostrils sat atop the oblong snout and its eyes sank too far behind and below the nostrils like a hideously large goat. Its mouth stretched into an imbecile’s grin like his brother’s. And the stink. Last night’s wind must have blown away this beastly smell.

  Sebek skulked away. The ordinary caravan trip would drag into other ordinary lands, loading and unloading ordinary goods.

  Telling himself it was the season’s cooling that stole his sleep again last night, Mehi tromped the canal road from Mer to Djedi’s home at mid-morning. Under the sparse shade of the shoreline sycamores, seasonally spare of leaf, he began wondering how Wabt could be so hopeful to believe a stranger would offer her the position of First Wife. You can’t expect too much, like his hope that someone he loved would love him. He yearned for hot days working on the sheltering pyramid when he could give his sweat and strain again.

  “Djedi, I have a plan,” Mehi said after greeting the magician chopping coriander at his home. The herb’s acrid scent distracted him from his news.

  “A plan? I prefer hunches.”

  “I decided I don’t need a wife. I don’t.”

  The magician regarded his friend.

  Mehi said, “I’ll put up with my schooling, become a scribe, then I’ll help my mother.”

  “Fine, Mehi, but isn’t there room for a woman in that plan?”

  “I can give that up because of, of ...”

  “Yes?” The magician halted his filling a vase with the seeds. “Your ability to give is a gift but each of us requires love.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “Congratulations, you’re the first.” Djedi set the vase of coriander seed on a shelf behind him. “Good for headaches.” Djedi faced his friend. “Mehi, women connect men to living things. Their monthly cycle measures the moon’s phases and changes of season. When pregnant, women pulse with two heartbeats. Similar to the relationship of soil and water, their bond with others is ingrained. We learn that from them, if we’re smart.”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “Mehi, you’re using ‘I’ and ‘don’t’ so many times this morning. So unlike you. I think there’s something going on behind your plan.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Your loss of your An-khi requires times and patience. And forgiveness. But this plan of yours actually proposes your running away. Consider that you abuse An-khi by your effort to escape grieving for her.”

  Mehi folded his arms. “You should be happy that I welcome the way the Gods will my life for me.”

  “You know the Gods’ will, do you?” Djedi smoothed his white beard against the cool breeze ruffling it from windows above him. “You once said that An-khi circulated love inside you. Somehow you reject that today?”

  Mehi stuck out his chin. “She left me. That’s the way it ended. I talked about this yesterday to Wabt.”

  “Wabt?”

  “The important thing is to accept what happened.”

  Djedi’s face fell heavy. “Accept it, yes. But don’t cover it up with his ‘plan.’”

  “That’s nonsense. Why would I cover it up?”

  “So you might hold on to your fantasy of loving and being loved by An-khi.”

  Mehi huffed hot breaths.

  “Lie to me, lie to An-khi, but never lie to yourself. It’s an ancient thing you deny.”

  “That’s it,” Mehi said, nearly panting. “I’ve decided the best way for me. You had good advice when I was a child but not anymore.”

  Djedi wagged his hand as if to swish away his friend’s words. “You spit venom, but not at me.” The old man’s odd-set eyes double-angled at Mehi. “You won’t hear me until later but ... grief festers in us like a wound. The woman you love left you. Forgive her and forgive yourself for losing her, then go on. Facing fears—that’s God. You’re looking for escape where there is none.”

  “No.”

  Mehi’s friend shook his head. “I’m afraid for you.”

  Mehi was running when he passed through Djedi’s doorway. He knew he must do something before he too didn’t trust his plan.

  The next dawn, Mehi sought out Wabt. She proved available—outside her parents’ home. Infants cried out and adults shouted from huts in the cramped alley. Lean-tos mingled with mudbrick huts. None had courtyards as in Mehi’s neighborhood. “I’ve been looking for you.” He again sought An-khi’s features on her.

&
nbsp; “You were?”

  Mehi spoke quickly. He moved them away from the squalling infants. “See, it’s funny we should meet each other right now. We’re both free.”

  “That’s a nice way to put it.”

  “It’s been natural between us. It always has. An-khi came from ... another place. My relationship with her wasn’t natural.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I want to start my home. You and I’ve been together longer than An-khi and me. I think it’s right you and I get a house. You and I should be together.”

  “What ... What are you saying? Do you mean it?”

  “It’s natural.”

  “Isn’t this, uh, quick?”

  “I’m just now understanding all this. We’ve got nobody and then we meet. We’ve been friends so long. It’s right.”

  Wabt looked around her, then at Mehi. “You and me? Can I believe it?” She began to pace. “Should we speak to our parents?”

  “We’re not children anymore. There’s no one to ask. We don’t need any contract like rich people do.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait? See how we go?”

  “No,” Mehi said. “I don’t want to wait.”

  He took Wabt to show her the mud and reed shelter he’d built. He didn’t say that he’d built it for An-khi.

  Mehi may have convinced Wabt that he and she were natural for each other. Convincing himself proved more difficult. His mother more difficult still. He ended Khety’s questions by telling her he’d now live in his own house with his own wife. At this, his mother, already exhausted from another long day in the fields, seemed to crumple.

  Wabt had hoped for a new home party but Mehi said, “Later.”

  She brought into the windowless hut what she could to make it a home—cushions, bowls, wildflowers and a small alabaster jar containing a perfume of sweet rush and oil of cinnamon. Her parents had traded their last reserves to present the perfume to Wabt on her first marriage as a First Wife.

  On their first afternoon as husband and wife, Wabt flurried about arranging the evening meal of fried onions and bread. Fry smoke hung in the air. She burned the butt of her hand. Mehi crouched in a corner, sweat on his forehead, watching her, waiting for her and wanting even more darkness.

  The newlyweds swallowed their meal.

  When they finished, Wabt cleansed herself with a fresh cloth. She applied her one perfume behind her ears, on her neck, and as low on her torso as she dared. Mehi stood by, rapping his hip, waiting. They moved to the bedmat.

  Mehi smothered out the lamp. In the dark, at opposing walls, they undressed. They guarded their bodies with their arms and edged toward the other. He put a hand on her shoulder, but that didn’t seem right so he reached to her forearm before she bumped away the hand as she was moving her arm toward his waist. Their four hands hovered between them in the air. They lay down.

  The last time Mehi did this, he’d been in love; this was probably Wabt’s first time while being in love. The room was cool but, with every movement, he and she sweated. Drops stung his eyes. Her hands and feet were chilly. Her heartbeat raced. Her embarrassment embarrassed Mehi as if he were intruding on someone else making love.

  Mehi guessed that he should soothe his wife, but in touching her he realized he had expected to feel An-khi’s skin. Wabt’s flesh felt alien. He couldn’t help but jerk away his hand. At each succeeding effort to touch Wabt, his stomach seemed to scurry with rats. His hands might have been digging a tomb-robber’s tunnel. He wanted to cry, then laugh. He thanked the shadows for hiding his confusion.

  To save his wife’s uneasiness, the husband supposed he should hurry. Mehi prodded himself into the act. As he held her, sat up into her, Mehi felt something less for Wabt. After he withdrew, he felt nothing at all.

  Their first day together ended.

  The next noon after a busy morning for Wabt setting up the house, Mehi drowsed face down on their marriage mat. He sensed the weight of his wife lowering her body alongside his. He did not disturb his rest for her.

  She groped her hand along Mehi’s back. It made his heart sink for her. Wabt lowered her mouth to his ear. If he reacted he would have to make love to her. He fell deeper into slumber, dreaming the warmth on his face was An-khi promising him every sweet thing he wished to hear.

  Wabt whispered:

  Since I have lain with you,

  You lighten my heart

  Beloved, my hand is in your hand

  Let the happiness of this hour go on forever

  Though half-asleep, Mehi accepted that he couldn’t let Wabt suffer like this. He had to do something.

  Days later, absent from his wife and school, Mehi helped Kenna carry a ten-by-six foot clap-net to the Nile. Its banks of papyrus sedge housed pintail ducks and gray geese under overcast skies. They slogged through the silt, now waist-high—half of what a healthy Inundation leaves this close to the river.

  Mehi said, “I admire how you’ll do anything.”

  Kenna shrugged. “Earn a bit of food here and there.” He wore fiber matting around his middle.

  “Don’t these nets take three men to use them right?”

  “Maybe, but I like doing it myself.”

  “It’s too much even for a brute like you.”

  Kenna smiled. “It’s a thrill to work my body. Besides, you’re here. That’s almost help.”

  When at the bank, Kenna set the net in the Nile. This burdened Mehi with the time to think. He had married a wife he could barely stomach and with whom he found nothing wrong. Rather than spite Wabt, he more often pitied her. While Kenna exercised what he called the thrill in his body, Mehi endured his own sick, empty carcass. His penis withered like a limb on a dead tree, sap crusted and brittle. Mehi still hoped for pleasure. “This is filthy work.”

  “You say that just because most everyone says that.”

  “Erecting the pyramid is noble.”

  “Tu, tu, tu. Anyway, why aren’t you home with the little wife? You never wanted to go birding with me when you were with that rich woman.”

  Flesh so close that words and pulses blend.

  Kenna tied bits of whitefish to the net webbing. He lowered the wooden ends below the low reeds and returned with the draw-rope to the shore. Dripping and muddy, Kenna punched his friend’s shoulder. “Understand, I’m not complaining that you’re here.”

  Mehi visited Kenna out of memory of friendship. Everything that once contented Mehi irritated him now, like sand between his teeth. “Is no woman going to trap you into marriage?”

  “They trap me all the time,” said Kenna with a laugh, his teeth flashing. “They’re just so grateful afterward, they let me go.” Indicating Mehi should copy him, he squirmed down in the bank mud to his neck, pulling plants across his face.

  “It’s this muck that’s terrible,” Mehi said sinking into the mud sucking around him in the tepid morning.

  “It’s like getting inside a woman all the way. I feel all of me.”

  Mehi felt so remote from men and women, he might as well be the only member of a third gender. “You can’t see the birds land. How do you know when to release the trap?”

  “You get a feel for it. Now be quiet.”

  Mehi’s body stuck fast in the mud but his mind whirled like the river along the shore: laws for first daughters, “do something,” and a poem:

  The wild goose alights upon the net

  And is held fast by my love

  Alone my heart meets your heart

  And we wander all the places fair