by Hank Lawson
Chapter 20
LINGERING EVENINGS
At Vizier Shaf’s devising, God-king Khufu ran with the desert beasts. In twilight on the northern oasis plain near Lake She-resy, the God-king chased a pride of ostrich through high, dry weeds and long shadows. While a zeal of zebra skittered away to a wary distance, three royal runners with five yapping greyhounds herded the ostrich toward Khufu. He concealed his human odor downwind. The wind resisted him, but he ran fast enough that to his eye his surroundings blurred. Hardpan cracked under his feet. Weeds gave way to his churning thighs. Under the crisp, clear sky, he imagined himself young again, escaping time. He existed as another wild beast competing to live another day.
Still, the day was closing and he had not yet brought down a single animal.
Yesterday, Hordedef had warned his father against this hunt, suggesting Shaf was maneuvering him politically. The vizier had invited forty nobles, one from each province, and clustered them at a vantage point nearby. Hordjedef noted Khufu’s “natural if temporary” physical decline due to the loss of Prince Merhet. Even while agreeing with his eldest, Khufu, as Egypt’s God-king, felt he must accede to the challenge. The more witnesses the better. Not so many decades ago, Egypt’s best hunter became its ruler.
The ostriches’ bare legs stomping the ground with huge claws, Khufu fought his body’s stiff, side-to-side swaying. “Haw.” He targeted what his eyes made out as an eight-foot height of black feathers veering to his left, separating from the pride. An attendant handed him a flint spear. Panting, Khufu pushed up the weapon. It teetered in his hand. Attendants pulled back from the God-king’s shaky aim. He steadied himself. He threw. The flinthead only nicked the ostrich’s leg.
“Another spear,” Khufu wheezed into the wind. Before aiming, he let fly the second spear. It wobbled and dove down, stubbing the dirt behind the ostrich. The animal clomped off.
The God-king watched the ostrich rejoin its pride. He slowed and then stopped altogether. His attendants edged away, not wanting to meet their God-king’s eyes. Khufu bent down and clutched his knees, his chest smarting for breath.
Shaf on foot and Hordedef on his palanquin drew alongside their father. Hordedef asked, “Shall we round them up, Majesty?”
Their father straightened with ragged breaths, legs straining, back knotted and heartbeat wild. The pain in his ear throbbed as hard as his heartbeat. Perspiration streamed down his wrinkles. Sucking for breath, he looked to where the nobles leaned together in pods watching the King and whispering. Perhaps Hordedef was correct; perhaps his body would require more time to recover from the loss of loves.
Khufu smiled. “This would not be pleasurable if it were easy. Gather them again.”
But he could not outrun the ostrich or the dark. The nobles shook their heads.
When it was finally too dark to hunt, Hordedef, now standing with a cane, said to his father, “The wind made hunting impossible today.”
Vizier Shaf said, “God-kings are not allowed loss of potency.”
Khufu nodded. He agreed with his second son.
Chamberlain Ramose came up to the royal officers to announce the arrival of a royal runner, who kissed the ground.
Hordedef’s brows jammed between his eyes. “Shaf, what is this? Another bad report finding Khufu in the field?”
Vizier Shaf shrugged.
Ramose said, “I apologize, prince. Grain in the south and fowl in the north are tardy in arriving at the pyramid site.”
“No food for the gangs?” Khufu flung up his arms.
“Barges of wheat and barley have capsized at the Zawty wharf while damage to pens in Hebyt allowed two thousand fowl to escape. Divers found holes cut into the barges.”
“Sabotage,” Hordedef said.
“Tem, tem,” the King cursed.
“There is sufficient grain to feed the pyramid gangs for but three days.”
“Three days?” Khufu and Hordedef said in unison. Thrusting his fist through the air, the God-king declared, “Prince Hordedef will immediately acquire food for the gangs.”
Hordedef had already turned to Shaf. “Why, vizier, are these reports reaching Father where they can be witnessed by citizens.”
Shaf bowed. “Shouldn’t these reports find the King where he is? The actionable news is timely.”
“Rather, the sabotage was timely.”
“Do you impute me with sabotaging the barges?”
“You or your mercenaries.”
“Boys,” Khufu said.
“Show me your proof.”
“I show you your ambition. It almost killed us against the Tehnu.”
“Killed us? You watched from your nursery room perch.”
Hordedef swung a fist at his brother. Shaf ducked but the blow caught him on the forehead. Head down, Shaf speared himself at his brother, striking Hordedef’s chin with the crown of his head, and then brought his arm up to slug his brother. Hordjedef grabbed the arm and the two men tumbled down.
“Princes!” Bending over them, Khufu flailed his arms trying to grab theirs.
Grunting and cursing, the two princes rolled on the ground, their once-bright robes blemished with thistles and dirt. When Shaf rolled on top, Khufu grabbed his collar, yanked it back and slammed his fist right on the vizier’s nose.
Shaf let go of Hordedef. He rubbed his nose. “Father?”
“You will get food to the gangs. Now. Go.”
Shaf stood. Once on his palanquin, he made off with his entourage of aides.
Khufu helped Hordedef from the ground.
“Sire, you struck the vizier.”
“At least I hit something today.”
“But Shaf’s plan to discredit you might be effective. The nobles will carry the message of today’s hunt throughout their provinces.”
“That gaggle? They’ll spill their loose bowels everywhere. The God-king will have to be ever more perfect.”
In the weeks after her arrival at the Medja settlement, Theormi helped cook their meals, sprinkling in wild mustard and marjoram; crafted ceremonial headgear for the tribe’s harvest festival; and toted water to sentries at remote western outposts along the border of their enemy the Wawat tribe, where few other Medja ventured. These tasks allowed her to visit all reaches of the tribe.
Then she made a personal connection.
One evening, standing outside the tribe’s campfire meeting in the dirt clearing, Theormi saw a baby sickened with symptoms that she recognized as those Magician Djedi had described to her regarding one of his patients. Deciding she must intervene with the baby, she roamed into the wild to collect fever leaf, black pepper and wild honey. She then explained to the baby’s mother how to process and apply them. A day or two later, when the baby recovered, the mother expressed her gratitude by looking into Theormi’s eyes as if seeing her for the first time.
That night, beside their central campfire, Theormi stood up before the tribe including their aged Chief Taharqa. She waved part of a honeycomb she had that afternoon shinnied up a tamarisk to nab, dulling the bees with a smoking stick. She dabbed honey onto her forearm. The villagers pointed at the strange woman and laughed.
To entice them to focus on her lesson, she passed around the comb. They giggled for the treat. Soon, ten mosquitoes danced in the honey on Theormi’s forearm. She grabbed warm ash from the fire and rubbed it over the smear of honey, driving off the mosquitoes. She held out her arm. She then washed off the ash and exposed the honey. No mosquito returned. Villagers rushed up. They poked at her forearm or stared at it and each other. Meanwhile, mosquitoes swarmed over the honey on their hands and chins. They ran to swipe ash on themselves. In moments, they were throwing ash at each other, giggling like children.
Seeing the new knowledge working in their eyes, even through their play, Theormi proceeded by picking up an infant and rubbing it with ash. The villagers chattered, passed the infant amongst them, explaining to each other in squeals how the ash shielded the child from mosquitoes and their diseases. The group cheer
ed the strange woman, squeezed her hand and took turns dancing with her.
The mother of the sick baby, its fever now passed, picked up a bedmat, walked to Theormi and pointed to the ground next to the fire. Still sitting, Chief Taharqa nodded his approval. Theormi could sleep that night as one of the Medja.
When the Medja had quieted and retired to their huts, the mother stayed with Theormi.
Rocking her baby to sleep, she began singing. The song soothed Theormi too. She had not only a home but a family. Falling into a happy drowsing, the mother’s melody and words played in her ears. She began to anticipate the song’s progression. Soon she was singing with the mother. With a start, Theormi realized this song was one that she’d sung to the son of Khufu’s gardener, a song she didn’t remember until she’d started singing it. The mother finished her song. Theormi began another lullaby that occurred to her. The mother smiled and hummed it with her.
Theormi had learned the songs here. If she had once lived here with the Medja as a native or a slave, she didn’t know. She didn’t care.
Fighting the wind, Mehi dragged along the Nile at sundown. The simoom wasted the river like the carcass of a fluke. Out of the bogs, it shucked mites by the thousands. People in twos and threes stood by wailing as if to a lost love, begging for the Inundation to return, knowing time alone could return it. But time had shriveled to a standstill. Dead as a desert. Mehi expected that the word “desert,” ntt mu, was linked to “motherless,” ntt mut, by loneliness.
Earlier in the day, Mehi learned that An-khi’s father had died. It wasn’t An-khi who told him. An-khi didn’t care whether he knew she was free of marrying her father. Even his mother’s death, which she as governor would know about, hadn’t been enough for her to visit him. And to see her, even to pay his respects, would have gutted him. And there, inside him, spread a dead, motherless desert.
If Mehi could, he would have stabbed the wind. Strike it, hurt it, cripple it. It blew away sound, isolating him in silence. Grit scratched into his eyes, nostrils and mouth. He could only wrestle against it on his route to his dead mother’s house. Mehi needed a question answered there.
He shouldered through the entry, slapping off dirt.
Horemheb sat hunched in a corner, a wet jug of beer beside him. Looking up, eyes unfocused, he said “Senbeb” too loudly.
Mehi may have grunted in response. He dropped to the floor in the opposite corner. The two men gazed at the ground. Outside, blown sand scratched the hut. Mehi sunk back. Listening to the simoom, he lost track of time and drifted like the sand.
Horemheb broke the silence. Slurring his words, he spoke more to himself than Mehi. “How ’bout that dog at the burial?”
Mehi barely listened. He waited with his own question.
“An animal’s followed me ... all m’ life. I don’t know. Without those beasts, my life wouldn’t be the same.” Horemheb cast eyes toward his son. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
“What in hatestt are you talking about?”
“That animal. Khety dies and there’s this crazy beast again. Happened the night I married her too.”
Mehi didn’t react.
“Right, what of it?” Horemheb took a swig from the jug and wiped his mouth. “Who cares about a dog who shows up on your wedding night and then right after your only wife dies?”
“I recall no animal present at the funeral.”
“What’s that fancy talk, big scribe? ‘I recall no animal present.’”
Mehi’s jaw set. “If you want me to go, I’ll go now.” He hadn’t asked his question yet.
Horemheb wagged his hand. “It’s just that crazy animal the other day and I’ve been drinking a little. You know. Did I ever tell you about the wedding night I walked to your mother’s folks and came home with her to my house? There was a dog then too.”
Intent on the simoom, Mehi said, “I see.”
“You want to hear this?”
Mehi was ready to ask his question. “Do you think she remembers me?”
Horemheb dropped his head but angled a glare up at his son.
“It’s said that facing her body to the east, she’ll be able to watch over us—like a sunset. Does she remember me?”
“How should I know? Go ask a dead man.” Horemheb immediately shook his head as if to take back his words, but Mehi snapped to his feet and began to leave the hut. His father staggered up, stretching out his arms and hands to his son. “I loved her. I don’t now.”
Mehi spun on his father. “I love her. I still love her. I’ll go on loving her.” He marched out the door.
“I’m not saying it right,” Horemheb said, chasing his son despite his drunkenness. “I don’t get to love her now. I don’t have her to love—now.”
Heading into a night’s cold wind whipping sand at him and the first-quarter moon etching itself into the lapis sky like a hieroglyph, Mehi could ignore his father’s words. Crazy old man. There wasn’t any dog at her funeral. Still, Mehi had missed large parts of that day.
Muddy clouds spewing muddier clouds over him, Mehi wandered into desert scrub and scree toward rocky hills. Beyond was open desert. Sweat slithered along his flesh like bugs. A hot breeze pasted grit on him. Lowering his head, Mehi straggled like a sick pig higher into the hills. A retching of clouds blotted out the moon. They choked the sky, distending not only across the horizon but down upon him.
Should it be this dark already?
Mehi rubbed at an odd tingling in his skin. He smelled something musty, dirty. Or did he? Troubled, he glanced up, worrying why everything had gone so quiet. The wind spiked. Gloom descended on every side. He stopped climbing. He gaped around him at the steeping dark his mouth opening and closing like a fish. His sweat thickened.
At Mehi, clouds projected out of the darkness. Like a knot of worms cast into sunlight, they convulsed, bloated and oozing. Flashes. Lightning gashed the sky. Then a boom—like a God stomping the earth—shook him and the ground beneath him.
Mehi’s flesh shook but his heart stopped a beat. He reeled sideways. Rain began to bombard his head and shoulders. Striking everywhere at once and faster than the baked ground could absorb, it also swirled under and around him. This was the month when rain fell, but he’d never seen a storm like this.
Another zigzag blasted the sky. Hot, fiery. In an instant, the Gods’ bellow rocked Mehi’s chest.
He sought safety. Somewhere. His sopping skirt wrapped around his thighs, staggering him. Rain drummed his ears. It struck like the stings of bees. He couldn’t think. Water gushed over his ankles and mud spurted on him. More savage light stunned him into a retreat down the mud. Then, blackness. Panting, slipping again and again, edging backward, Mehi palmed the rock’s spurs, eyes stinging and heart throbbing.
The next bellow pummeled his ears. He couldn’t hear anything for several minutes. His mother had told him that on the day of his birth, lightning struck every part of Egypt because Gods had paraded across the nation. Gods alone could survive this.
Mehi searched for a path out. None. Only more blackness.
The next thing he knew was his struggle to stand. He didn’t remember falling. Mehi scraped mud from his eyes. Mud whirled and constricted around his feet. Lightning bolts crisscrossed. Like war axes each battled for the sky. Cliffs and sky fused in a ghastly mass.
Down the hill, Mehi made out a gray shade in the murk. He scrambled for it, joints stiff with fear. Three times tripping onto all fours, he finally crawled until he could brace himself on the rock cliff. Water cascaded off the crags onto his head and shoulders. The pale shade appeared toward his right.
Roar—a terrible new roar. Mehi shook with its vibrations as much as its sound. This wasn’t thunder but water. Rumbling, rapid water.
Mehi pressed against the rock. It sliced his shoulders. Torrents scooped the ground under his feet. He slipped, knees smacking the ground. The rock and ground vibrated. Deafening, the roar grew from the blackness. In the surge, his body began to twist and slide. Tryin
g to stop himself, he slammed his hands down, but his one escape was down the hill. He rose but collapsed on his first step, the muddy stream as fast as the rain. He managed merely to clutch the rock and wait.
His wait wasn’t long. The din blasted into shrieks of a thousand Gods. Mehi heard nothing of his own scream. Flood swept away him quicker than he knew. His hands flung out in vain for any hold. The rocks battered him.
Mehi woke face down, groggy, throbbing. He accepted that he had died where the flood had delivered him. Wincing, he opened his eyes. In a half-light of morning or evening dusk, he saw the flood had etched in the sand its path toward the river. Pockets of water lingered on the soft topsoil. Mehi recalled the storm, how it had demolished everything in its way. Fantastical primal power. It matched the undeniable Inundation itself. Mehi loved its violence.
He pushed up to a crouch only to slump again. His head pounded. Sand caked in his mouth and nostrils. Mehi fingered a large cut at the back of his head. Looking back, he gauged the flood that had stampeded him here. Its brutality. Its indifference.
Mehi decided to seek out An-khi. He hadn’t given An-khi’s cat what it deserved, but he’d show its mistress his new power.
Mehi required several minutes to steady himself enough to stand and begin shuffling toward An-khi’s estate. He last visited there—when?
In the governor’s courtyard, a servant told him that An-khi wasn’t at home. But he guessed where’d she be. Mehi ran, even as his racked body resisted every stride, screwing left then right, his eyes searing for her, red hues confusing his search.
Climbing a dune east of Mer, he collapsed to his knees, exhausted and dizzy. Gasping, Mehi spied a tiny figure alone on the wet sands along the river. He recognized An-khi by the wrenching in his chest. Dredging up images of her family’s leaving the village those years ago, he said under his breath, “Always ready to get away, An-khi.”
Mehi must prove to her that he’d changed.
The orange and pink sunset blushed An-khi and her ankle-length tunic as she strolled along pools of rainwater moored in the lowlands. Freshets coursed through the sand. Fragrances of saturated earth rose to An-khi so rich her mind swam. Not wishing to disturb the plush surface, she tiptoed. Water bubbled up in her footprints.
That rain the night before—what a beautiful storm—as free as a man. As free as An-khi. It may not have quashed the drought but it eased her pain at the loss of father and Mehi. These wonderful men, and every man really, paid too much attention to their fears. Paser’s fear caused him to control others; Mehi’s fear caused him to recede.
Did she expect too much?
Near An-khi, a swallow alighted. The small blue bird skittered a few paces to a puddle, scarcely printing its triangle tracks on the sand. Three quick pecks at the water and then it flew off, echoing its song.
Watching it fly, An-khi tapped her muddy toes in a pool, splashing her ankles. Her eyes then skimmed the pastel horizon of carmine and saffron washing into the clouds and sky, palm trees and tamarinds, sand and air.
An-khi’s appointment as governor and her inheritance of the family’s property opened a world to her. She would select whom to marry. On this morning by the ponds, An-khi declared her independence. Already her unknown husband’s love mixed in her like honey in water. Where is he? Her husband must be as forceful as her father. Yet, could a man be forceful without attempting to control her as her father had? Lacking force, Mehi had nevertheless loved the Inundation with her. That was another requirement. Must she love this land alone? When will that strong man arrive who adores evenings like this? If a man would only flood her the way the Inundation had.
An-khi ambled beyond the pools, heading south beside the river, her toe occasionally drawing circles in the soaked sand.
Mehi scurried onto a dune of sand where he immediately set eyes on An-khi twenty yards below. He’d caught her. Rage got him here. He’d show it to her.
Dropping hard to his belly, Mehi then looked up at her, sand falling from his hair and eyebrows. He spied on An-khi as if he were nothing but two eyes, wincing for the pain in them. An-khi’s shifted so that he could see through one eye’s transparency the golden sunset. He would choose to be her mirror and daily reflect that face. As she strolled, her hair trailed so slowly that it floated like a phantom behind her. He could be her comb and give way to her hair stroking through him. An-khi patted sand from her hands, and he wished to be the last grains to cling to her skin.
Toes in the water, An-khi bowed her body as a reed leaning toward water. A perfect arc. Its sharp edge cut Mehi like a scythe. Something languid in her stride also linked her to water everywhere, shutting Mehi out. An-khi and water were the actual lovers.
When he last saw An-khi, she had pointed to his broken necklace and commanded, “Do something.” Maybe strike my new self at you? Mehi slammed his fingers into the hard sand, urging him. He must continually renew his rage.
Night settling, An-khi strolled away south along the river.
Mehi was ready.
He stood. His fingers twitched in and out of fists.
Do something.
Mehi pounded his fists on his thighs in rhythm to An-khi’s retreating steps. A better man wouldn’t wait. A better man would demand her love—force her to fulfill his wishes. Mehi’s legs bruised. He pounded.
Do something.
Another man would have killed her cat.
Do something.
Why couldn’t he love without this pain?
Do ... nothing.
Mehi stopped pounding his legs. His fists fell to his sides. He shivered on the drying mound. He watched her.
An-khi disappeared around an embankment that led into the cove where she and Mehi once ran arm-in-arm. A dream ago. She ebbed from him like a tide. Would he finally be like other men? Angry men like Horemheb, arrogant men like Paser? Would Mehi someday hurt An-khi as he nearly had today? Would that be good or unbearable?
An-khi’s footprints dissolved back into blank sand.
What does a man do who has love and nothing else?
Mehi screamed, louder than he thought possible, “An-khi, everything will twist upside down. The Nile will flow south. Ra will go dark.” His voice broke. “The pyramid will teeter on its point. God-kings will be buried with commoners. I will be royal.” His voice squeaked.
“And you’ll love, An-khi. You’ll love me. When the world is upside down, you’ll open a home for me.”
Mehi turned and dashed from the river, through the village Mer, and through the rocky hills for the desert.
He loomed out onto the sand. He fixed his eyes on the unbreakable horizon between sand and sky. He ran to a darkness behind the light. His heels squeaked in the red sand. Sweat spotted his face like a pox. His dirty odor sprayed the air. He mustn’t think about what he was doing.
Mehi came to a dozen onion plants that leaned into the wind, and a humming. An old woman stooped over bent knees, her bulbous breasts riding her thighs. Eyeing him, she snatched up a root. Dirt clinging to the onion, she bit into it whole.
He rushed farther west. Sand burnt his feet. The pebbled sand. His eyes teared, then dried. Their pain sharpened like on the points of two knifes. Faster he ran, needing the motionless desert. He stripped off his loincloth and let it drop. Farther, faster. Harder his legs worked. His heartbeat frantic. His lungs sucked for breath.
A scarecrow. Mehi wanted to be nowhere but here hung a scarecrow. Pretending to be alive, it hung numb and witless on a rod jammed in the ground. Its broken-stick arm flapped behind its body. The head fluttered rags from a vacant face staring deaf and dumb into nothing. No eyes to view no object, no ears to hear no sound, no mind to dream no future. But someone at some time had lived here.
Mehi sought a void of perfect nothing. Nowhere.
A solitary bush wasted thin and slanting. Its branches crackled at Mehi. He might be the only person ever to hear its sound. He ran beyond.
He saw nothing but black night and heard only gasps for
breath.
He didn’t sweat now. He breathed in air as hot and dry as the sand. Blistering inside and out, he spread his arms like a bird in flight, or a sacrifice, or a lover in empty embrace.
Then there was nothing.
No breath. No heartbeat. No thought. He did not see the creeping sand, feel the ground, or know his place in the world. Silence surrounded him. Silence emptied him. In it, all sound of his name slipped away into silence beyond the west horizon. Into nothing. Perfect nothing. Oblivion.
No longer obscured behind the noise of the living, a song emerged. Glorious and strange. Its low murmur echoed a million fold. It came from nowhere and it came from all around. The desert itself.
The lowing called to him. He belonged.
Slip into and join the song. How easy to crumble like dirt, drift into so many grains and scatter across the desert within its hymn of perfect calm. Surrender to the song.
How easy. How easy to submit.
