The Children of the Sun (13 page)

At last she came to the outskirts of her family’s fields and there saw a slave whose name she could not remember, hunkered down and pulling weeds. He glanced over at her briefly and then turned to stare, rising to his feet. Ashayt opened her mouth to say something, though she did not know what, and at that moment it seemed that a white-hot blade stabbed deeply into her left eye. She made a cracked, dry noise – not a scream, she couldn’t have managed a scream – and pitched forward into the dirt, and closed her eyes, and remembered nothing more for some time.

When she woke again, she was lying naked and clean on her simple cot of wood and stretched hide, covered with a single sheet of linen. Her foster mother, Nephthys, was leaning over her, pressing a cool, damp cloth to her forehead. The only source of light in the room was a single tallow candle, and yet it seemed to Ashayt as if the room were brightly illuminated.

“How are you feeling, little
mau?”
the woman asked, favoring Ashayt with a smile that managed to look both relieved and concerned at once.

“I … I feel better, I think,” Ashayt said. Her voice was hoarse, and she felt as if every last ounce of water in her body had been burned away. “But I am so thirsty.”

“That is no surprise. When the slave brought you to us, your skin was so hot to the touch that I feared you would die right there. I gave you a little water, but it was making you choke, so I had to stop. Here …”

Nephthys handed her a clay mug filled with water, and Ashayt drank from it gratefully. She could feel the cool liquid running down and through her, but it did not seem to slake her thirst, and after a time she lay back, breathing deeply and trying to will away the awful demons that must surely be infesting her.

“Ashayt, my Ashayt … where did you go?” Nephthys asked. “We feared you abducted, and when you returned you were
filthy!
Covered in mud and grime.”

“I awoke in a swamp by the river’s edge,” Ashayt said, staring up at the ceiling and trying to remember. “I don’t know how I got there. I don’t remember anything after … after …”

But of course, she could not tell her foster mother the last thing she remembered, which was falling asleep in Amun Sa’s arms as she lay with her head on his chest and listened to his breathing. After that there was nothing, just a great black span until her awakening in the reeds at the river’s edge, long after the day had begun. What had happened? When had she and Amun Sa parted, and how had she come to be in that place?

“After what?” Nephthys prompted, and Ashayt shook her head.

“After beginning the return from my evening walk,” she said. “I walked to the temple, and listened for a time to the chanting, and then I left that place.”

This, at least, was true. She had been early for her rendezvous with Amun Sa and so had walked first to the temple and listened to the monks therein, singing to the Gods. Then she had turned and headed not south, where her family’s farm lay, but instead northeast, to the little fisherman’s shack that had become their place of consummation. She’d waited for him there, naked and glistening with sweet balsam oil, and when he’d entered and stopped, stunned by her appearance, she had spoken not a word but had instead gone to her knees–

“You remember nothing more?” Nephthys asked, interrupting her reverie, and Ashayt felt her cheeks warming. She shook her head.

“Nothing, until I woke in the reeds. I … it must be the fever, again.”

Nephthys nodded, frowned, and glanced out through the small window opening on the west wall, as if she might find the answers to her questions written in the stars.

“I had hoped it would not return so soon,” she said. “But these are ill days, and the Gods are disturbed. Irrational. They strike down those who have done nothing to deserve it. First droughts and now sickness.”

Ashayt, who felt she had done much to deserve the wrath of the Gods, said nothing. She closed her eyes, and the world seemed to swing suddenly sideways. When she opened them again, some greater length of time had passed than she had expected. Nephthys was now slumped in her chair, leaning against the wall and snoring, and the sky had gone a beautiful royal blue that foretold dawn’s imminent arrival. The thirst raged still within her, and though she drank again from the ceramic cup, it seemed that no amount of water would satisfy it.

“Please,” she said then to the Gods, her voice cracked and broken and nothing more than the faintest whisper. “I am not ready to die. There might still be a chance for me, and for him, to make this thing between us right. We might be wed, if only he can convince the King, and then there could be children, and a life outside of the fields for these good people who have raised me. There might still be a chance for love, and life, and happiness, and I beg only that you let me live to see it.”

The Gods had never answered her before. Though she prayed now with as much fervor as she ever had – even as a girl, hiding in the bushes outside of her home and listening as her family was butchered – still they refused to give her the slightest sign that they had heard. Ashayt, exhausted again and unable to summon the strength even to keep her eyelids open, gave in to the sickness that assaulted her, and she slept.

* * *

Someone was knocking on the door. A thin structure made of branches and woven reeds, it shook and rattled with each hit. Ashayt, awake again on her cot, knew that the sound would carry throughout the meager three-room house of mud bricks. She heard her foster parents murmuring, wondering who it might be that would come calling. Her foster father, Bes, would be the one to open the door.

“Greetings and welcome to this, my most humble home,” Bes said to the visitor, as was custom. Ashayt knew there would be polite bowing to accompany these words.

“May your home and fields be blessed by the Gods with many long days of prosperity,” came the reply, and Ashayt found herself sitting bolt upright in her bed, a newfound energy coursing through her body. There could be no mistaking that voice; Amun Sa, her love and lover, the very reason for which she woke each morning, was standing at the entrance to her home.

“You have my thanks, stranger,” her foster father replied, and Ashayt could hear in his tone a wariness that suggested he had noticed the quality of Amun Sa’s trappings and understood that this man who had come to their home was of some greater class than had any business on the outskirts of the city. “Of what service can I be to you?”

“My name is Amun Sa,” her lover said, “and I would be stranger to you no longer. I am third-cousin by marriage to King Pepi, Lord of all the Earth, Descendant of Ptah the Maker, may he rule forever.”

Bes was clearly at a loss for words. He stammered for a moment before finally regaining his wits and saying, “My Lord, you bless our home with our presence.”

“Truly, it is I who am blessed to be here,” Amun Sa replied. “For today I have been given a great and wonderful piece of news, and it is because of this that I have come to stand at your doorstep. I have come to speak with you, sir, and to beg you if I must. I have come to ask permission to court your daughter.”

Ashayt was unable to keep herself from making some small, strained noise of joyous disbelief. If the words that Amun Sa was saying were true – and he would not have been there if they weren’t – then he had been granted permission by King Pepi to divorce. The thing they had both hoped and prayed for had happened.

Despite her weakness, despite her thirst, despite the fever that seemed to be raging through her body, Ashayt leapt from her bed and began to dress. She could hear her foster father stammering, again, and her foster mother making a sort of disbelieving noise.

“Are you sure you have the right home, my Lord?” Nephthys asked. “Our daughter is … she is not our true daughter, though we have loved her as such for many years. She comes from the south, from—”

“From the desert, yes. I know.” Amun Sa laughed. “I assure you, I have the right home. Her name is Ashayt, and she has lived with you as your daughter these past dozen years. She is dark skinned, with lovely, swirling tattoos that cover her body from head to toe, and she is the most beautiful and wonderful creature that the Gods have ever put on this earth, and I love her with every fiber of my being, and I cannot stand for one second more to be apart from her.”

“My love!” Ashayt cried, bursting now through the fabric that hung between her bedroom and the common area and racing toward him, seeing his face light up and his arms open wide. “Amun Sa, my beautiful Amun Sa!”

And then he was holding her, and she had wrapped her arms around him, and he was pressing his lips to the top of her head, and she put her face against his chest, and she was weeping, weeping with joy and love and the simple disbelief of all that was happening to her now, at last, after so many years of being alone.

She heard her foster mother say, “I told you she had someone,” in an amused tone.

“Please, sir, may I court your daughter?” Amun Sa asked again, still holding her close to him, and she heard Bes give an incredulous laugh.

“I’m not sure we have a choice,” the man said.

Ashayt had managed to get some amount of control over herself and turned now to face her foster parents. “I will have no other. I love him. I love him, and I will never love another as much as I love him, not should I live a thousand years or more.”

“Ashayt,” Nephthys said, a joyous expression on her face. “My lovely Ashayt, my tiny little
mau
… you don’t need to justify yourself to us. You are a grown woman, and you have earned the love of a fine man who can give you a life that we could never provide. How could we say no? How could we stand here and look at the love on both of your faces and tell you that we do not approve? All we have ever wished, from the moment we took you into our home, is that you would find happiness. Does this man make you happy?”

“More so than I have ever been in my life,” Ashayt told them.

“Then, by all means, marry him,” Bes said, and he laughed. “Marry him now, before he comes to his senses and realizes that a cousin of the King has no business with the daughter of a struggling farmer. In fact, good sir, could we not convince you to do this tonight?”

Amun Sa laughed as well, and he shook his head. “I would be happy to do it – happy to pledge the rest of my life, this very night, to the daughter of a struggling farmer, but I cannot. Not yet. My King has approved my divorce from the woman I was forced to marry, but it is not yet finished in the eyes of the Gods. In five days’ time I will be free, and I say to you now that I will marry your daughter on the sixth day. I will do it gladly, and I will welcome her and all those who love her into my family.”

Ashayt turned again and pressed herself against him, taking in the scent of him, the feeling of his strong arms wrapped still around her body. It seemed impossible, this thing he suggested – like a wisp of dream, borne upon the summer breeze, that must inevitably fall to earth. How could it be that she had come to have everything she had ever wanted? How could it possibly be?

“My love,” she said to him, and felt again the urge to weep with joy. “My love. My love.”

It seemed to her as if she could never say these words enough.

* * *

“I feared you had given up on me,” Amun Sa said. “You’ve not been at the market for two days.”

Ashayt smiled at this idea, and she shook her head. “No, I would never leave you. I have been … unwell.”

They were walking together under the moonlight, and while Ashayt supposed that Amun Sa thought the winding path he was taking terribly clever, he could no more disguise that he was maneuvering them toward the fisherman’s shack than if he had announced the destination out loud. Ashayt, for her part, did not mind. She lacked the strength to perform as enthusiastically as sometimes she did, but she still wished to be again with her lover after two days without.

Amun Sa glanced over at her, an expression of concern on his face. “Should we turn back? If you are not feeling well, my dearest, then I do not wish to … that is, I won’t make you—”

Ashayt laughed and touched her fingers to his shoulder. “I know where you are taking me and want nothing more,” she said.

“But you—”

“I am a woman in love who feels much better than she did during the day, and I want to be with you. I might still have some fever – I feel hot inside, though Nephthys says I am cold to the touch, and I am still so very thirsty no matter how much water I drink.”

“What have you eaten today?” Amun Sa asked, and Ashayt tilted her head, trying to recall.

“I … don’t think I have eaten anything, my love. Truly, I’ve had no desire for food. Just water and more water. I spent most of the day sleeping, if truth must be told.”

“I hope the Gods will favor you with a swift recovery, my Ashayt. We have many long years ahead of us to enjoy in good health.”

Ashayt shuddered with pleasure at these words and gave her lover a brilliant smile. Oh, how wonderful that plan sounded to her ears, to her heart. She felt the sudden and overwhelming physical desire that Amun Sa so often inspired in her, swelling up from within, and realized that she wished to wait not one moment longer, much less the fifteen or twenty more minutes it would be until they arrived at the fisherman’s hut. She took his hand and slowed, then stopped, peering around her. It was dark, now, and there were few people out of doors. Surely there must be somewhere …