Liberation (a board for Senet)

Silence and darkness. Those are two powerful ideas to begin a story with. Or to end it.

They speak to us through the echoes of a forgotten eternity we all came from, and through the premonitions of an unknown one we’ll all depart to. They are the default state of matter, they need to be actively broken to stop being, disturbed by light, by sound, by the energy of life. Any life is that: the disturbance, the unrest, the movement. A flickering of energy, a pursuit of light and sound.

Life is a desire.

I’m laid down on my left side on a marble plate at the foot of the sarcophagus in the burial chamber of my husband-father Beqarah, also known as the shekh or Pharaoh of our people, nebtaui. He’d been preparing this tomb almost all of his life, since he raised to the throne at the same age I am now: seventeen.

For thirty years since then the mountain was slowly turned into a pyramid: its slopes evened, its edges aligned, its sides laid with the divine quartz that absorbs the energy of the sun and stores it in the silver columns that heat and illuminate every home. The sacred temple rays were used to burn the passages and chambers in the rock. It has always been the Pharaoh’s right to spend the energy on creating his tomb because at the moment of his death a miracle occurs and every nebtaui-shekh ascends into the realm of divine, becoming a god Oziree, one of the many facets of Mallaah Almighty, by whose will all things happen between heaven and earth.

I, being my father’s beloved new wife, am buried alive in his tomb, immersed by the master embalmers into complete darkness and silence and prepared to follow my Pharaoh to the blessed kingdom of Kheret-Nepher.

There is nothing left in my body that is unclean and all its opening are sealed so that uncleanness cannot enter it. They stitched me up with the threads of gold and because of the length and intensity of my suffering, and the natural way my body will mummify after I die under the mountain, I will be granted a great power in the world of spirit. Light will be my steps on the waters that wash the shores of Kheret-Nepher and a great asset I will be to my husband-father Beqarah. As close to divinity as it’s possible without the real ascension.

When neither light nor sound, nor smell nor feeling can penetrate you from the outside, then eventually through the dread of the flesh and mortal trepidations a great calm rises from within. And in its light one can truly see herself, not the young woman once called Meresank but the eternal entity who is one with all the seven facets of Malaah and with all the things that are alive.

All the sensations that are available to me come from my own body and I suddenly come to realize what it’s been telling me and feel most shaken.

I’m not dying anymore. I’m healing. My wounds are closing.

For many long centuries the priests directed the flow of the sacred blood of the Pharaohs, always seeking to condense it more, never allowing a single drop to leak outside of the family, hoping to eventually awaken the dormant power once possessed by our ancestors from the faraway stars.

And here it is. Now. In me.

My eyes are hot in my head like two balls of living fire, like the stars, for that’s what the stars really are, what they do: they burn. That’s my body regrowing the lenses and corneas destroyed by the temple rays a few hours earlier. I can feel the flesh around my lips and anus expelling the golden staples it had been stitched with.

I can’t rip apart the strips of the silver linen that bind my arms to my sides, I’m not strong enough. Yet. There is hope in “yet”.

I swallow. I’m very thirsty.

“Meresank” means “She who loves life” or “Alive in defiance of”. I’m true to my name.
And I have only one way to prove it.

***

“And the nebtaui, who knew all the seven true names of Malaah Almighty, built the Arks that could travel between the stars. Hundreds of thousands of people those arks had inside them and many kanak kaemvas of all kinds. Some could create the edible from the inedible, others could isolate applicable from the infinite, or to keep the memory of the things impossible to remember. But passing between the worlds was made possible only by the Aker Anh, the mighty leaders whose blood now runs in the veins of the Pharaohs.”

“In ours? In mine too?”

“Don’t flap your arms like this, Meresank. Yes, you can see the lines of your veins right through the skin and yes, that’s where that blood runs. But it’s not as strong as the Aker Anh’s was… Yet. And you look sleepy.”

“I’m not, I’m not! Please tell me more, Mother! Please!”

“Aker Anh were very beautiful and strong; their flesh healed most wounds and knew no decay of aging. They opened gateways between worlds and the Arks slid through them, like a thread passes through a hole punctured by needle, even through the toughest of leathers and hides.”

“But where did they all go then?”

“Well, it so happened one day that the hide the Ark tried to pierce was too thick and tough…”

“Like a begemot’s?”

“Not unlike it, yes. So the Ark got crashed like a clay pot if it’s dropped onto a marble slab from a height. All the Aker Anh died in that crash, most of their people died with them, and many kanak kaemvas got broken irretrievably, and those containing the soul shards of their creators died forever.”

“When did it happen, Mother?”

“Tens of generations ago, Daughter. But ever since then have the priests been trying to call on the Malaah’s covenant with nebtaui and to revive the Aker Anh. None of those who survived had blood pure and strong enough. That’s why we are not free to love, Meresank. We have to keep condensing our blood under the guidance of the priests. My sister’s and mine husband used to be our annoying older brother and we still remember fighting and quarrelling with him when we were children. Oh, we truly hated him sometimes! But on ascension to the throne the boy became the Pharaoh, lost his human weaknesses and is now the vessel of the divine seed. The priests’ calculations tell who should take it. They say the victory is near. Three children have we birthed for our husband-brother Beqarah. And none of you seems to be Aker Anh. I don’t know how many more generations it would take, but the priests will never stop.”

“But Mother, what about the Ab Shuit? Why do the priests keep the Lower Harem? I’m so very afraid of them!”

“That’s also part of the Malaah’s will and covenant… as interpreted by the priests. As we have the conscious mind and the immortal soul breathed into us by the gods, our duty is to sow them wherever we can. That’s the duty of the nebtaui, the burden of our high blood. The priests seed the fields. We don’t know whether the crops would grow but need to keep seeding.”

“I miss Akha, Mother. Is he also being put to bed now? Why can’t we be together and go to sleep together as we’ve always done?”

“That is the right way now, Meresank. Don’t question it, try not to think of it. Just accept things. Sleep!”

***

A teenage boy with a braided pigtail at the top of his shaved head, wearing a simple linen dress, was trying to reach behind a silver pillar and take the thick square of opaque glass from a girl who looked very much like him.

“Give it! Now! Mother, tell Meresank to give it back! It is a men’s tablet, you are not allowed to even touch it, now your hands might shrivel and fall off! You are so stupid Meresank, I will never ever marry you!”

“How very unfortunate that is, Akha! I think I might just cry so hard that this tablet will get wet with my tears, sparkle and never turn on again!”

Their mother sighed heavily, reached from behind and took the tablet from Meresank.

“Out, both of you,” she said, putting it away into a slot inside the silver column. “Neither of you is old enough to use it yet. And it is a men’s tablet, Meresank. Some of its content would be inappropriate for you to see.”

Meresank smiled wryly. Now she just had to steal the tablet sometime and give it a thorough look. But Mother frowned at her and Meresank quickly looked down and bowed obediently.

“Go and play together,” Mother said and stroked the girl's head, smooth except for a pigtail at the left temple. She pulled at the braid lightly as if it were the tab of a bell, and smiled. Meresank knew then which Mother she was, the more affectionate and merrier one. The other Mother was stricter and almost never smiled. But it was her who told the most wonderful stories.

Meresank and her twin brother Akha stepped into the courtyard filled with greenish midday sun.
“What a fool you are!” said Meresank. “We could have taken the tablet away together. Would be hidden somewhere looking through it right now. I have an hour to kill until my next lesson. You?”

“Same.”

“Now what to do for an hour?”

She tugged on the pigtail on her brother’s head and he laughed.

“We could go to the Lower Harem?” he suggested. “Watch the freaks for a while. I'll share the sweet dates I have. The real ones, from a tree, not from a kanak kaemvas.”

“With a pit inside?”

“Yep. Shall we go?”

“I don’t know,” Meresank hesitated. “I'm afraid of them.”

“We’ll sit on the wall, it’s high up so very safe.”

The Ark of the palace housed the Higher Harem where the nebtaui girls lived, “Those who came from the stars”. Once in ten years every high-ranking family had to give one of its daughters to the Pharaoh. Their children were considered honourably born and often made it to the priests’ Listings.

The Lower Harem consisted of the female Ab Shuit, “Shadows cast by the Gods”, animals born of this world. The particular species were chosen by the priests’ discretion. Some looked almost human-like, but had broad flat tails and four pairs of tits, others had powerful muscles bulging under the silky fur and long fangs dripping with slobber. Sometimes the nomadic nebtaui tribes, those who preferred traveling the mountains or plains to living in the cities, brought particular female animals for the Lower Harem. Rare curiosities caught in strange places.

Of course, no men of the Pharaoh’s blood laid with those beasts, that would be abominable before the gods and very dangerous. The priests used their special kanak kaemvas and long-shafted paralyzing spears to “sow the fields”. The hybrids, nebedzh they obtained from it rarely survived. The ones that did scared Meresank greatly. Even the most dangerous of the original animals possessed simple, natural grace and seemed to belong to this world. The nebedzh did not. Their bodies were monstrous and disfigured, often they could not walk or swim, some had difficulty breathing due to the bone deformation, or suffered deep cracking of their skin. But the priests did not let them die easily. Nebedzh were kept in special enclosures and bred again and again.

***

Meresank and Akha are sitting on the wall. They are kicking their legs, chattering and eating the dates: Akha has shared them fairly, a dozen for each.

Meresank-on-the-wall is eating mindlessly but without rush. It’s not every day one gets to savour some real fruit, grown in a tree and not converted by a kitchen kanak kaemvas from a pile of waste, or whatever the food was derived from that day.

I, Meresank-in-the-pyramid swallow painfully at the memories of those sweet delicious fruit, of Akha’s laughter, of knowing his feelings without even looking at him as the twins can do. Of that carefree sunny morning of my thirteenth year.

Is Akha knowing what he’s done to me now? Is he feeling it? Before the execution the old embalmer politely but without meeting my eye offered me an amber bead that takes away the pain of the body once you’ve melted it in your mouth. The trapped sunlight was glimmering in its honey core. It was pretty. It was the last pretty thing that I’ve seen as only a few minutes later I was blinded. The bead’s action didn’t last all that long.

Is Akha feeling my pain? Are his eyes burning as he is observing preparations for his ascension? Can he hear the pounding of blood in his ears as the shreds of my eardrums are growing back together? All around him the drums must be beaten, the drums of joy, the sistrums of grief as people are greeting the new Pharaoh and saying farewell to the old one, Beqarah and his daughter-queen Meresank, forever sleeping at his feet.

"Rise oh my daughter, rise from your left side and turn right to this fresh water and to this warm bread that I have brought for you," they will sing, as they had sung to the dead for thousands of years.

***

“Why do the priests even need the Lower Harem?” Meresank asked thoughtfully once she was done with the dates. They were sitting on a wall above the big enclosure with trees, a stone canopy and a dirty pond in which a big and ridiculously ugly creature was resting. She had a thick-skinned body of a begemot, a long tail like a snake’s and a horrible flat head like no other creature Meresank knew of. The monster was panting, obviously finding very little joy in the warmth of the bright greenish sunshine.

Akha shrugged.

“An army,” he said. “They need strong and dangerous monsters with the sharpest claws, the most powerful bodies. They need them capable of snapping, tearing, killing quickly and a lot. They need a variety of them for different kinds of attacks, because that is important in the military tactics. That’s why they are trying to make them so that they are capable of swimming, jumping, crawling, flying.”

“But why are they sowing them with the nebtaui seed?” Meresank asked, not taking her eyes off the stone canopy below. She thought she saw a long tail with a dark tuft of hair on the end.

“Mind,” Akha replied curtly. “An army should have at least some rudiments of reason to be managed. A crowd of animals is not an army, a monster driven by instinct alone is not a warrior. Very wise it is what the priests do. They are making us into the Aker Anh who could open passages to other worlds, and them,” he nodded toward the maze of cages and enclosures, “into an army capable of conquering those.”

He started throwing date pits at the bloated begemot in the pond. A stone hit the female in the eye and she raised her head and looked directly at Meresank. She shuddered as the monster’s eyes looked very human-like, large, bulging and full of pain. The creature opened her maw and roared.

“Stop it,” said Meresank, grabbing Akha’s hand.

“It amuses me,” Akha said, moving his hand away and taking aim again.

Meresank reached further to knock the pit out of his hand and suddenly lost her balance. She cried out. Akha, frightened, tried to grab her but was too late, and Meresank slid down the wall and fell awkwardly to the ground.

“I'll fetch the guards and ropes,” Akha shouted to her, getting up and turning to run.

“Wait,” Meresank squeaked in fear. “Do not leave me!”

“You’ll need to hold on for only a few minutes,” Akha said. “From here I can’t do anything but watch if you get hurt. The faster I go now the faster we'll be back and pull you out.”

He jumped off the wall into the garden behind and disappeared.

The girl looked around, pulling on the pigtail at her temple nervously. The begemot monster noticed her and roared again. This time Meresank saw the huge flat teeth in her mouth. Slowly the creature rose to her thick legs and headed towards the girl.

Meresank tried to get up and shrieked: her foot was hurt, she couldn’t stand up.

“Help!” she cried, getting on all fours and crawling away, cutting the skin of her hands and knees on the sharp rocks but somewhat increasing the distance between herself and the scary begemot.

“Help me!”

A shadow briefly shaded the sun and the ground trembled when the heavy paws hit the dust right next to Meresank. The girl did not see the creature as the sun was directly over its head. She could only make out a tail with the dark tuft of hair on the end, as thick as her arm, beating angrily at the ground. The creature hissed. The she-begemot responded with a roar, she was already so close to Meresank that the girl felt the foulness of her breath, hot and sickening. The other creature crouched, spreading its huge dark wings and growled so lowly that Meresank’s ears went deaf. The begemot stopped in her tracks, gave Meresank the last angry glance, turned around and slowly trotted back to her pond.

Meresank didn’t dare to catch her breath. She didn’t know whether the creature was protecting her or just wanted to eat her itself. At any case it was a couple of minutes closer now to Akha’s return with the guards.

Moving gracefully and quickly, the creature spun around and sat in the dust nearby. Meresank pressed hand to her mouth, speechless with surprise. The great dark wings were folded to the sides of a giant desert predator baast’s body, but the head on its shoulders was human and the face of the monster was the face of Meresank herself, or of her brother Akha. The same bright green eyes, dark golden skin, slightly upturned nose and large lips. Thick hair fell onto the shoulders in dark tousled waves. The monster cocked her head, watching the girl, then stretched in the dust so that their eyes were at the same level.
“Sesh-sh-shep,” she hissed. “Am Sesh-shep. Seshep.”

She obviously struggled with the sounds of human speech, but her eyes shone with intelligence and she did not look dangerous. And she had just defended Meresank. The girl glanced at the pond and saw the she-begemot still watching her with intense menace.

“Meresank,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest. “I am Meresank. Thank you, Seshep.”

“Meressank. Sisster,” said the monster.

No, not a monster. Seshep. Maybe a sister, yes. The priests store enough of the Pharaoh’s seed to have a lot of it sprouting among the Ab Shuit.

Meresank tried to stand up again, but the foot hurt even worse and she swayed. With the same fluid motion Seshep came closer. Her back was level with Meresank’s chest.

“Hold,” she said. “Fall not, Meresank.”

The girl grabbed the base of the creature’s wing and stood up straighter.

“Can you fly?” she asked with interest.

“No,” Seshep said, squinting her bright eyes.

Above them a great bird atef cried as it cries at the sight of prey, before diving from the sky and only slowing down at the very last moment. Seshep raised her head, looking at the bird eagerly.

“So,” she said. “Seshep desire.”

Meresank stroked her wing, thick, strong, with long silky feathers. But the body, indeed, was too great and heavy to take to the air.

“Meresank!” Akha shouted from the wall. Behind him two guards could be seen. “You are alive, you are whole! Priest Wadjee, the key keeper, is coming for you!”

A section of the wall moved aside and the priest ran into the enclosure, tall, dark, hook-nosed, he looked extremely worried. Seeing that Meresank wasn’t in imminent danger, he caught his breath, slowed down and bowed to her.

“Let me carry you to the Palace, my lady,” he asked after learning that her foot was damaged.

“Goodbye, Seshep,” Meresank shouted before leaving the enclosure. “Thank you! I will come back to you soon and talk to you again.”

Seshep tilted her head and smiled, then went back to her canopy. Her powerful tail was whipping the dust around her hind legs.

“This female is barren,” Wadjee said. “We keep her as she is such a good nebedzh, but if no further fruit can be obtained…”

“Please leave her be,” Meresank asked. Wadjee shrugged.

“We intend to, for now. We will continue to try sowing her. Great pity that she turned out to be too heavy to fly.”

Meresank’s foot bones were all broken but, in the morning, turned out to be whole again. The Mothers pursed their lips, looked at each other and ordered Meresank not to tell anyone about it.

When Wadjee came over to check on the girl he was told that the healer had made a mistake. And the prints of her fractures in the kanak kaemvas’ memory could not be found as if they were never made.

Meresank visited Seshep a couple of times a week. She was not allowed to go down into the enclosure so she usually sat on a wall. Sometimes the girl stuck her tongue out to the she-begemot and the monster roared, baring her large flat teeth.

Seshep was learning new words eagerly and was speaking better and better with each Meresank’s visit. She grew particularly fond of riddles and rhymes.

“What can run but never walks,

Has a mouth but never talks,

Has a bed but never sleeps,

Has a head, but never weeps?”

Seshep found great pleasure in trying to guess, to imagine, to translate symbols and allegories into the things and meanings of the real world.

“It's a river,” Meresank said and Seshep froze with understanding, then growled with delight, laughing, rolling in the dust like a playful cat.

Meresank loved her very much.

***

I'm trying to guess what is Seshep doing right now.

I would like to think that she is still there, under her stone canopy in the Lower Harem, watching the pinkish Elder Moon rise over the distant mountains, waiting for it to be joined in a couple of hours by its Younger Sister, yellow as honey.

But I do understand that Akha will have to get rid of everything that is related to me, and very soon he will personally choose which infertile nebedzh should be sacrificed to Seth, the dark facet of Malaah Almighty.

I'm gathering all my strength and starting to stretch the strips of bandages that bind my right arm to my body. Flex the arm three times and relax. And again. And again. I do not have that much time, but I probably have enough. I'm not afraid.

I trust my fate.

Often people panic and suffer because we are afraid to believe that whatever happens to us happens for a reason, to take us from wherever we are to where we need to be. That the hardship and pain will not last forever, and once over would be forgotten. That we mustn’t worry about what the future would bring, if the pain of a rejected love would subside, whether the people we haven’t yet become would have enough power or health. We need to become them first. And everyone has their own path to that.

Mine is to alternate tension and relaxation, and stretch the bandage between my body and my arm, painfully straining the right shoulder. And that’s all there is to it for me, nothing more.

After six thousand pulls the bandage gives a little, so I can pull a bit stronger.

Another five thousand and the gap between my arm and my stomach in palm-wide, and my whole body is covered in cold sweat.

The tomb of the Pharaoh holds many sealed jugs of beer, honey water, strong wine from faraway lands. I will drink my fill; I just need to get up from this marble plate.

The bandage crackles and snaps, my right arm is free. But I just lie there motionless, panting, listening to my heart, gathering my strength before the next move.

I’m thinking about the time when my father taught me to play Senet.

***

“The priests will announce the Listings,” Akha whispered into Meresank’s ear. His breath felt hot. “You'll be mine. Soon.”

“If Malaah wills it so,” she said, smiling a little and releasing her hand from his. Akha waved dismissively as if he had not heard her.

“You are very beautiful,” he said, and put his hand on her side. She lowered her eyes and raised an eyebrow: “why is your hand on my side?”

“Put yours on mine,” Akha asked hoarsely. Meresank did. So they stood facing each other, his fire against her chill, as if ready to whirl in a dance with the sound of sistrums.

“You are beautiful, like me,” finally said Meresank. “I know your hands; I had touched them before we were born. I know your feet, they kicked me in our mother’s womb.”

“Like this?” Akha asked, tackling her legs with a sudden sweep. If Meresank had been taught a little worse, she'd fall back onto the stone floor or would have to hope that Akha catches her before she hits it. But she was taught well and managed to jump aside, fast as a cat.

“Yes, like that,” she laughed. “But with less room to get away. Come on now, Akha. They are waiting for us. And I’m very eager, I’m so bored of shaving my head every day. I want to feel like a proper adult now.”

Holding hands, they walked the cool corridors of the palace to the Temple, where the coming of age ceremony awaited them and the other young nebtaui. The pigtails on their heads were to be cut off, the skin anointed with a sacred ointment and irradiated with the light of a particular kanak kaemvas. After that the hair would stop growing and the now adult person would be allowed to wear wigs.

Their Mothers had a lot of wigs: curly blond wigs, auburn long ones and the wigs black as pitch, braided into many thin braids. Always the same for both so that telling them apart was impossible.

Meresank was born half an hour before Akha, so she was the first one to walk up the steps and sit on the silver altar plate. Akha watched, frowning, as if just now noticing her birthright. Meresank’s pigtail was cut off and laid on her lap, her head was crowned with the heavy, dimly golden nemes.

The ceremony was performed by Wadjee, the former priest of the Lower harem, and now the Keeper of the Ark: the part of the palace built around what was left from the ancient nebtaui. The priests said the ritual words, Wadjee raised his hands and the nemes emitted a flash of heat which Meresank saw with her eyes tightly shut and guessed in it the white light of the stars through which the Arks of her ancestors travelled, free among the worlds.

The priests sang in triumph and Meresank rose from the altar as a grown woman, not a single hair on her smooth head and a wide “at last” smile on her lips.

Her sisters and brothers, Mothers and hundreds of people in the altar room clapped their hands and smiled at her, too. There was a tall man standing at the entrance and Meresank knew it was her father, nebtaui-shekh Beqarah. She had not seen him for many months. Meresank stopped and bowed to him, happy.

"Sing, rejoice o my father, for by the grace of Malaah thy seeds have grown, and perfect are their shoots, and the harvest will be generous."

People were turning and greeting their Pharaoh with joy and reverence. Beqarah smiled, bowed his head, leaned on his tall golden staff and kept watching the coming of age ceremony performed for his children and the children of his people.

***

Akha and Meresank were sitting on a bench in the gardens of the Upper Harem. Both were wearing wigs as the symbols of their new status. Akha chose the long straw-coloured hair and Meresank had green curls down to her shoulders. She slid her finger underneath the wig and scratched.

“It’s so hot with it on!” she complained. “Why no grownups ever talk about it?”

Akha smiled. A group of beautiful young women wrapped in thin flowing fabrics walked past them. The last two giggled, looking at Meresank and Akha, parted their lips and bowed slightly.

“I can go to them every day now,” Akha said, looking after them. “If I wanted to.”

“What don’t you?” Meresank asked, getting up and picking up the bundle of honeyed cakes she had made for Seshep.

“I’m waiting till the priests announce the Listings of Osiree,” Akha said, “for them to say that you would be mine. I’m waiting for you, Meresank.”

She hesitated a little, then hugged the bundle to her chest and left without answering.

Mothers came to Meresank at bedtime, when she had already washed the daily paints from her face and took off her wig and clothes. They sat on the floor, cross-legged, and Meresank obediently sat between them. Mothers were looking at her with love and concern.

“Tomorrow the Listings will be read,” the Mother on her right said at last.

“We know what’s in them,” the other Mother said. “Wadjee of the priests had just left our quarters.”

“Akha?” Meresank asked without looking up.

“No,” Mothers said in unison.

Meresank thought intensely. The answer must be unexpected, otherwise Mothers wouldn’t have violated the secrecy. So, who have the priests chosen for Meresank?

“Wadjee felt that you need to know in advance,” Mother-on-the-right said and Meresank knew she felt saddened and anxious. “For what is in the Listings hadn’t happened for four centuries. But the priests feel very eager, they seem to think that the Aker Anh is within reach. Just one more condensing of the blood and one will be born.”

“Who is to be my husband?” Meresank asked in a dead voice.

“The Great Pharaoh Beqarah, your father,” the mothers said at the same time, and because of this strange double-echo Meresank’s head rang and swam, and she fell back unconscious, and her bare head thumped on the floor plate.

“No!” Akha was spitting words as the sand rekhem spits venomous barbs. If you’re unlucky to get one in your leg, that leg would be numb for a week. “They cannot! He wouldn’t dare! You are mine!”

Akha leaned forward, breathing heavily, his face flushed. A few girls from the Upper Harem were standing nearby, chatting excitedly. Surely, they were gossiping about the Listings, wondering who will be named with whom. Meresank waved her hand to them: “come here”, they approached and bowed.

“Take care of the prince,” Meresank said. “He's not himself.”

She turned and walked towards the Lower harem, to see her Seshep.

“Meresank!” Akha called after her. She turned around. He tried to resist, but the girls have already surrounded him, he was already distracted by their light touches, their silky laughter. “Meresank...”

But he didn’t really know what he wanted to say and she didn’t know what she wanted to hear.

Meresank carefully lowered herself down the wall onto Seshep’s back and they rode around the enclosure for a while.

“Wish to fly you up,” Seshep said, spreading and folding her huge wings. “But is very hard.”

Meresank understood the feeling all too well.

“Where is the she-begemot?” she asked, looking around.

“Taweret barren,” Seshep said with regret. “Is killed. Her flesh was bitter. Seshep alive for Meresank.”

Meresank clung to the mane on her back and wept hot and slow tears.

According to the tradition, after the Listings were read all those present at the Temple prayed and offered their worship to Malaah Almighty.

So did the great nebtaui-shekh Beqarah. The expression on his beautiful golden face was impossible to read. He probably was forewarned by the priests too.

But there were many couples that got happy results from the Listings, their hopes come true, the promises fulfilled. They thanked the gods and smiled happily, and laughed, and held hands, but all the eyes kept returning to the Pharaoh and Meresank. Their surprise was palpable, but no one ever disputes the priests’ Listings.

For Akha they didn’t choose anyone this year.

He was at the ceremony with two girls from the Upper Harem: full-bodied and nimble, they were wrapped in colourful silks and had their faces hidden behind the masks.

Akha’s face also looked like a mask, a green-eyed mask of anger.

***

Meresank was walking down the palace hallway towards the Ark.

After the reading of the Listings Wadjee the priest approached her, leaned to her ear and whispered quietly that if she doesn’t comply willingly, she’d be paralyzed, put into a kanak kaemvas and fertilized like a female animal, as one of the Ab Shuit.

There could be no shame and humiliation worse than that.

Meresank was wearing the wedding garments of her family: long flowing silks, stripes of green and gold. She could already see the huge silver door ahead. In the Ark the doors didn’t swing in and out but slid upwards silently if the door’s kanak kaemvas recognized you, and if you had permission to be there in the first place. The walls around her changed from the yellowish sandstone to the otherworldly grey material, dense, smooth and warm to the touch.

Meresank walked ahead, holding her back very straight and her chin up. So, when a strong hand suddenly grabbed her and yanked to the side, she wasn’t fast enough. She lost her balance and fell onto Akha’s chest. It was dark in the niche and all she could see was the wet glistening of his eyes and teeth.

“Give me your clothes and wig,” Akha said. “I will go to the Pharaoh's chambers instead of you.”

“And then what?” Meresank asked.

“And that’s it.” Akha answered and his fingers lingered on the hilt of a dagger at his belt.
“You are mine!” he said again.

“I’m not yours,” Meresank said quietly. “I am my own.”

She wriggled out of his arms, jumped out of the niche and quickly ran down the hall to the tall silver door.

“You're out of breath,” her father said, turning and smiling to his daughter. He was sitting cross-legged at a low carved table by a silver column that was glowing softly.

“I ran,” Meresank said and in one smooth motion she was out of her dress. She stepped over its silken waves and stood naked in the light. The Pharaoh looked at her with a mixture of sadness, joy and admiration.

“I am Beqarah,” he said at last, “the first of my House, nebtaui-shekh of the people who came from the stars. I will not be the priests’ breeding bull anymore, nor dance as a puppet to the sounds of their sistrums.”

He took a deep breath.

“You are perfect in your beauty, my child. Get dressed and come here. Sit opposite me. Say, Meresank, do you know how to play Senet? Look here. The playing board has thirty squares. Me and you, the players, control five pawns each. We move them so that they can pass off the board, like we all one day will pass from this mortal world into another, more perfect one. Since this is something that both players want but only one gets, as we play, we’ll be killing each other’s pieces. The dead pawns can be reborn on this square, in the House of Neheh. It symbolizes that all shall eventually be well for everyone, forever even if not immediately. The House of Water square is a trap, see the symbol of Chaos? Here the pawn has to drown...”

Father patiently explained the rules to me, we played seven times. I won once. He brought me a blanket and I slept until morning at the feet of his bed, like I sleep now at the feet of his sarcophagus.

Far, far away from that golden evening, deep under the pyramid I open my eyes. I see only darkness and can’t know whether I’m still blind or there is no light at all. My hands are free now, I push up from the marble plate and sit up. My legs are swaddled with the linen strips, I find the ends and unwind them. Carefully I pull out the golden threads stitching shut my mouth and vulva, it is very painful, I cry and scream, but I know the rips would heal quickly.

I blink the tears away, trying to see something, anything around me. And then I do, there is a faint golden glow ahead and I walk to it, and I touch it. The light comes from my father’s golden staff that is laid on his chest.

The priests use the same kanak kaemvas for mummifying the dead as they do for irradiating the heads of the children coming of age. The same star light, the same white heat. I was told so by Wadjee the priest. They wanted to kill me at first by letting my blood out, and then mummify my body straight after my husband-father’s.

It was my Mothers who changed it, they insisted that I deserved much worse punishment and persuaded the priests to bury me alive. I think that it was an act of love. That they did believe that I was Aker Anh, that I would survive and escape this pyramid.

I find strength in believing in their love. I don’t want to be divided into two in my mind anymore. The happy girl from the past and the doomed suffering creature, locked in her own body are both me.

I am one.

I am Meresank.

***

On the second night we talked of the other worlds, of ruling over the people, of the gods and the priests.

“They are right,” my father said. “The Aker Anh are close. Watch, Meresank.”

And he crossed his hands, and when he slowly moved them apart, I saw a glistening surface of a window into another world. Under the different stars a wide river was flowing and the white light of the only moon shimmered on its dark waters. A large animal splashed in the reeds. My father’s hands shook and fell, and the vision was gone.

“I am a very weak Aker Anh,” he said. “That's all I can do. You will be stronger. I will teach you, daughter. We have time.”

He was wrong.

On the third night the kanak kaemvas of my father’s chamber would not let me in. I knocked and knocked again, and knocked very loudly, and put my hand to the eye of the door.

“You are Meresank,” the door said in a cold swishing voice. “But Meresank is already inside.”

It is impossibly stupid to try to argue with kanak kaemvas and I was about to start to. But the door suddenly slid up and my brother Akha stood on the threshold; dressed exactly like me, wearing a green and gold dress, and short red hair.

“What have you done, Akha?” I asked in horror.

“I have set you free, sister,” he said, holding my eyes with his and handing me a bloody dagger by the hilt. Without thinking, I took it and stepped past Akha into the room.
Our father was dead, he was lying with his throat cut at the low table for Senet. His blood flooded the board, puddling at the House of the Three Truths and the treacherous House of Water.

I fell to my knees, pressed his still warm hand to my lips and the time froze still.
Akha was saying something to me, then stopped, then left. Sometime later the guards ran in, then the priests. Someone took the dagger from me. Someone was shouting accusations. I remember Wadjee’s swarthy, hook-nosed face and how his eyes shone. I remember my mothers’ faces: for the first time in my memory they behaved differently, one was weeping, the other biting her lips, white with rage.

“How could you, Meresank!” she exclaimed.

“It was not me,” I said.

“All the kanak kaemvas and the guards of the Ark confirmed that no one entered here tonight except for Meresank,” Wadjee said and looked at me harshly. “So, who else could have done this?”

“Who, Meresank?” the other mother begged with pain.

I bit my lip hard. The priests lifted my father’s body, his head fell backwards, revealing a terrible gashing wound on his neck. I burst into tears.

This is when Akha returned. He stood in the doorway, wearing men’s clothes and a silver wig. Mothers looked at each other briefly, obviously thinking the same thought.

“Where were you tonight, Akha?” they asked softly.

Before answering, Akha glanced at Wadjee. The priest closed his eyes and nodded curtly.

“I spent the evening in the Upper Harem,” Akha said. “Three girls can vouch for me. I was with them.”

And then just for a moment he looked at me. There was sorrow in his eyes, but triumph too.

“You are your father’s firstborn child and his last wife,” Wadjee said. “If Beqarah had died any other death, you would have become the nebtaui-shekh. But you have rebelled against the will of the gods and committed an abominable villainy. I saw the body. Beqarah was sitting there relaxed, not expecting your cowardly and cold-blooded attack. You are as one of your beloved Ab Shuit, a cruel and bloodthirsty female. You will follow your father to the Kheret-Nepher kingdom to be his slave and servant for the countless ages to redeem yourself. You'll be killed and buried at his feet.”

“What about Akha?” I asked.

“Your brother will be the Pharaoh,” Wadjee said and allowed himself a little smile with the corner of his mouth. “We'll get Aker Anh from him. You have a younger sister. We may have to wait for another generation, but we are good at waiting. No one except those who already know of your crime will learn about it. The people will believe you a loving wife who is following her husband and father by her own free will.”

The Mothers walked me to my death along a hallway, long, dark and empty. They were silent, but I could feel the rushing of hope and fear in their hearts. One was firmly holding my left hand, the other my right one. Before letting me go through the door to the embalmers’ chamber they pressed my hands to their trembling lips, then to foreheads.

“Aker Anh,” they said softly and tears were running down their faces. “Goodbye, daughter.”

Akha did not come to say goodbye to me.

***

I prostrate myself on my father’s chest, I kiss his hands, cold and hard as rock.

The thought of what he had suffered, dying from what appeared to be my hand hurts me more than anything else. But I can do nothing about it and therefore must let it go. We can’t drag our guilt and pain behind us, so we must just live on the best we can, do what is possible and leave the impossible to the gods. When my time comes, I shall walk on the waters to the blessed shores of the Heret-Nepher kingdom and fall to my knees at the feet of my Father and my Pharaoh. I will kiss his hands, they will be warm and soft.

“Hello,” I'll say to him. “I loved you. I am so sorry.”

“Sit with me, Meresank,” Beqarah will answer. “Tell me, have you finally learned to play Senet?”

I take the staff and turn around, holding it above my head to see the tomb. It is wide, but the ceiling is low, I can feel the weight of the mountain above us. I think I can see a movement at the far end, by the wall. I walk there, squinting to see better, and scream in surprise.

The wall has four rings hammered into the rock and to them four Ab Shuit are chained, all of them the hybrids, nebedzh. The priests gave their Pharaoh some mighty slaves for the afterlife, at the same time culling the Lower Harem. Two of the nebedzh are males with the dark-skinned bodies and animal heads: a sand dog anubi, a bird of prey atef. Both are well built and possess an eerie beauty. They are still alive, but a female with a water snake’s body on their left had died and is decomposing fast, her stench strong and sickening.

The big creature in the middle is tightly wrapped in the burial linens, so it’s impossible to tell what it is and whether it’s alive or dead. I go back to fetch the dagger from my father’s belt, the very one Akha sliced his throat with. It cuts through the shrouds with ease and I see a face like my own, its mouth sewn shut with golden threads, its eyes full of agony.

Seshep.

I scream and cut her bonds. She drops heavily to the stone floor, her sides rising and falling.

“Hold on, Seshep,” I ask her and pull the wires out of her lips with the end of my dagger. I bring a jug of honey water and make her drink. Then I offer the drink to the Ab Shuit males, they guzzle it, trembling all over.

I rub Seshep’s body, it is quite cold, her muscles stiff. She drinks more, then falls asleep. Anubis and Atef as I decide to call the nebedzh, have to sleep standing up: the chains, holding them to the rings in the wall are very short.

“Hold on, Seshep,” I beg her again and again.

She smiles at me with her torn mouth.

“What for?” she says. “Mountain here. No sky. Drink over soon. Then die again.”

“We will not die,” I tell her. “We shall live, live for a long long time. Drink and rest until you are strong enough to break the chains.”

Seshep’s sides are trembling, it takes me a moment to realize that she is laughing.

“My Meresank,” she says. “You love life.”

We eat the food provided to my father for his afterlife journey: sesame cubes, honey-coated jerky, dried dates. The dates are fake, they don’t have a pit, they are from a kanak kaemvas and not from a tree, but they do sustain us.

On the third day we run out of food, but Seshep rises and breaks the chains holding her and the other Ab Shuit to the wall. Anubis and Atef fall down to their knees, they cannot stand anymore. I rub them with oil, trying to relax their sore and stiff muscles, to make their blood run faster. They do not speak, but cry like little children. All we have left is a big jug of strong wine, and the four of us get very drunk, then we sleep.

In my dream my father comes to me and looks at me for a long time.

“Aker Anh,” he says softly.

I wake up and realize that I can see in the dark now and hear the vibration of the mountain. I cross my hands and think of the world that Beqarah once showed to me.

“I’m coming,” I say and spread my hands, tearing the fabric of the universe.

My hands are hot, my head is full of stars, I can feel the viscous passage of time and the icy breath of Malaah Almighty on my face. He watches me through the void with countless billions of shiny eyes, and his gaze is love, and power, and will, and the life eternal.

“Seshep,” I call, “Anubis! Atef! Here!”

They are stunned by the darkness cutting through the darkness, by the window into another night that I have opened. Then we all pass through the gape in the body of the world and it closes.

From my father's tomb I take his glowing staff, the dagger that killed him and the board for Senet that absorbed some of his blood.

And the memory of him.

***

The air here is sweet and pleasant, the people beautiful and bronze-skinned.
We walked along the river for a whole night and with the sunrise reached a large settlement of about five hundred houses. The people fell to their knees and worshiped us.

A month later the warriors of another tribe who had come to conquer the first one met us. They dropped to their knees and worshiped us, and their people decided to settle nearby.

Their language is similar to ours, but their civilization rather simple. They do not consider themselves nebtaui nor do they remember coming from the stars. But they do believe in Gods and their foremother, they tell tales and bury their dead on their left side.

They think that we are the Gods.

I rule them fairly and teach them to write and read, to build beautiful houses for the living and tombs for the dead, to cure diseases and paint pictures. And to play Senet.

I sketch the starry sky and watch how the world changes as the seasons come and go. The great river which is called Iteru overflows twice a year, flooding the fields and leaving behind the thick black muck that enriches the soil. The beer here is delicious and the fruit juicy and sweet.

Seshep lives in the courtyard of my little palace, which the locals call “the Temple”. When she feels craving for meat, she hunts at the edge of the desert, kills swiftly and eats her fill.

People had learned that she loves riddles and pilgrims come from afar to pay homage to her, look into her green eyes and to talk rhymes and puzzles. There is a rumour that she kills and devours those who could not solve her riddles, but it seems to rarely stop anyone and to amuse Seshep to no end.

The sun here is yellow, the colour of her fur, she squints in its sunshine like a huge cat.
I think she is happy.

Anubis and Atef are considered the living gods, they dwell in the anterior chambers of my palace and people bring offerings to them: fruit, roasted birds, the bitter honey of desert bees. They have become very strong and when we build houses and bridges, they both do the work of twenty grown men and can move enormous loads. They grow taller and taller as years go by; I barely reach to their chests now.

I do not know if they are happy, and whether the likes of them could be happy at all.

Sometimes at night, I rest on a lover’s shoulder, hot and salty, and spicy-smelling. There is plenty of seekers, they are ready for anything to spend a night with the goddess.

I look at the bright stars in the black velvety sky over my palace and think about my brother Akha. Sometimes I remember him with hatred, sometimes with anguish, but more often than not with fear. For we are the same, me and him, and so he, too is Aker Anh.

And one day he may realize it and step after me to this world, my world.

I am building a strong state and training an army.

I will be ready.