Eye of the Moon

by Dianne Hofmeyr

  15

  THE HEAD SCORPION

  We did as Anoukhet told us. We gathered water skins and goatskins and rags of wool and found leather boots as well. After the night of celebration and drinking, the people of the oasis were not too fussed about where they discarded their possessions. It was easy to find a pair of boots that fit and clothes that would keep us protected on the journey. Wherever we could, we stuffed our pockets and girdle bags with dates and nuts and crusts of bread. I found a whole uneaten fowl lying in a dish of spiced sauce and wrapped it in palm leaves and slipped it into a saddlebag.

  We were assigned no tents, so Tuthmosis and I found reed mats and pulled them up against a clump of palm trees at the place Anoukhet had suggested. Then we settled down to wait until the camp grew quiet and it was time to leave.

  We whispered back and forth but soon Tuthmosis was asleep from exhaustion. I sat awake, hugging my knees to my chest, glad that we would be gone by dawn. Glad that Naqada would soon be out of our lives.

  As time wore on, I began to get restless. The fires around us died down but still Anoukhet didn’t come. As the shadows closed in, so my own thoughts seemed to close in as well. The smallest rustle above me in the palm leaves, the slightest movement of shadow, set my heart thumping. A feeling of dread came over me.

  Where was she? What was taking her so long? Soon the sky would be streaked with light. Then it would be too late.

  I leaned across to see if Tuthmosis was still sleeping, then got up quietly so as not to disturb him and went in search of Anoukhet.

  It was hard to recall which tent I’d been in that afternoon. In the moonlight the camp seemed different and the paths confusing. With the flaps down, the tents all looked the same. My footsteps fell silently on the soft sand. Here and there dogs lay growling at one another, gnawing at bones and licking platters. From a tent nearby came heavy sounds of snoring, and somewhere a baby cried but was soon shushed quiet again.

  If I could find Kyky, I’d find Anoukhet.

  But it was the outline of Naqada’s hawk that I spotted first. It sat tied to its perch outside a tent, its feathers silvered by the moonlight. On the other side of the tent fabric came the sound of a muffled struggle. I stole to the side farthest away from the hawk so the bird wouldn’t alert anyone and strained my ears. Naqada was in there—I could hear his voice and the sound of his laugh. There was a girl’s voice, too, but it was muffled, as if something was being held, or had been tied, over her mouth.

  It was Anoukhet. I was sure of it!

  I slithered onto my stomach against the sand and edged a piece of the tent flap slowly aside. I peered into the shadowy space and waited for my eyes to get used to the gloom. Against the tent fabric, I saw the outline of Naqada. He had his back to me and was leaning over someone. By her wild tousled hair and the tinkle of bracelet charms, I knew it was Anoukhet.

  He had tied the neck scarf meant to ward off the terrors of Sekhmet so tightly over her mouth, she was barely able to utter a few grunts. Her wrists were bound behind her with the red ribbons.

  “So you thought you could mock me in front of everyone? A lesson must be learned. Do you remember Seth, god of the desert? Can you remember what he did?”

  Anoukhet shook her head from side to side and kicked her legs.

  Naqada laughed. “Yes. I see you do. It was Seth who gouged out the eye of Horus.”

  A strange sound came from Anoukhet. I felt my own breath pull in sharply.

  I saw Naqada grip her more fiercely. “My hawk is waiting outside. All I need do is snap my fingers and she’ll do my bidding. You’ve seen how it’s done. You should’ve known not to make a fool of me. You’ve been defiant too long. Now you need punishing. After this . . .”

  His threat hung in the air. Anoukhet gave another muffled cry.

  A blind anger rose inside me. It swirled like a sandstorm in my head until I thought I would choke. My jaw clenched. I slipped under the tent flap.

  Over Naqada’s shoulder I saw Anoukhet’s eyes widen as she saw me. She gave a choked cry and then looked away quickly, to prevent him from following her glance. She made small anguished sounds. Her head strained and jerked in a certain direction. It made him laugh all the more at her helplessness.

  I followed the direction in which her head moved. Lying just beyond her reach, on some goatskins, was her jeweled dagger. Its blade was unsheathed. Naqada had clearly wrestled it from her.

  I crept toward the dagger with the stealth of a lynx creeping up on its prey. The goatskins softened any sound. I reached and clasped. Then with every muscle tensed I turned and sprang at Naqada’s back in a rage. A sound more like that of an animal came from my throat. I gave no thought as to what I was doing. There was no time to think . . . or know what I was planning.

  I have no recollection of plunging the blade into his back. I meant to stop him. That’s all. To hold it at his throat, perhaps. But in my fury, as the weight of my body fell against him, I brought the dagger down against his back.

  The tip punctured his lungs. Found his heart.

  He gasped. A low cry came from his mouth. His arms flayed backward, and he slumped down with his cheek against the reed mat. For a moment I thought he was trying to fool us. Then I saw how completely still he lay. I saw his dull eye staring unseeing back at me.

  Blood flowed from his mouth, pooling on the reed mat. The silvery light had turned it black, and the black was everywhere. Spattered against the tent fabric. Running down his back. Seeping out from under him. My hands were covered with it.

  Suddenly someone was at my side. I spun around, fearing the worst. But it was Tuthmosis. His face was a mask in the strange light. He tried to ease the handle of the dagger from my clenched fingers. I realized I was still clutching it and flung it from my hands. I rubbed them against my tunic as if in the wiping I could wipe away all that had happened.

  “I’ve killed him.” I stared first at Tuthmosis and then at Anoukhet. I waited for someone to say something, unable to believe what I’d done. “I’ve killed him, haven’t I?”

  Neither spoke. Tuthmosis eased me up. I was drained of all strength. My hands hung limply at my sides. My legs were slack; I could hardly stand. Tuthmosis stooped forward and dragged Naqada aside. He slashed the bindings on Anoukhet’s hands with the dagger and cut the gag on her mouth. For a moment his hand rested on her shoulder. “Are you harmed?”

  She shook her head and rubbed the marks where the linen had dug into her.

  Tuthmosis nodded, turned to me. His eyes were flinty in the moonlight, his jaw hard-set. “He deserved it!” was all he said.

  I thought of the heart that had beaten against my ear in the desert storm. I thought of it still and soundless now. I began to shiver. I hugged my arms to my shoulders and shook uncontrollably as I stared from one to the other. The three of us were bound together now. Tuthmosis and Anoukhet had witnessed me murder a man. We were bound as securely to one another as if we’d pricked our fingers and written what we knew of one another in blood and then buried the papyrus.

  It was a blood bond as strong as any I’d had with Katep. This was a secret we would have to honor.

  Anoukhet stood up abruptly. Shrugged. With that gesture, she seemed to put it all behind her. She gave one last look at Naqada. Kicked at his legs. “Take his sword and his boots, Tuthmosis. They’re fine leather and too valuable to waste on him.” Then she turned to me and put her hands on my shoulders. “You’re not to blame. I would’ve done it—if he hadn’t wrestled the dagger from me. He planned to set his hawk on me.”

  There was a fearless look in her eyes. But all the same, I knew she thanked me.

  We moved quickly then. There was no time for stopping. We gathered our things and found the old camel tender waiting with two camels, as promised. We left the glowing embers, the scavenging dogs, and the upturned pots, passed below the last palm trees, and galloped into the dark night with nothing but the stars reeling out overhead.

  There was no longer any moon.
What happened to it? Where was Hathor now?

  We faced the desert, with Sophet low on the horizon and Sah the hunter and his three belt stars guiding us south toward the river. I prayed that these were enough. I prayed Katep would watch over me. I prayed the discovery of Naqada’s body would come long after dawn—long after the Medjay finally roused themselves from their wine-soaked slumbers.

  By that time we would be far on our journey.

  16

  INTO THE DESERT

  We rode by the stars in silence—each with our own thoughts.

  The old camel tender was up front with Tuthmosis behind him, followed by Anoukhet and me in disguise—dressed as men in ragged robes and long leather boots with woolen scarves about our faces to keep off the cold desert air, swords hanging from our waists.

  The jeweled dagger I’d not been able to touch again. But Anoukhet had wiped it clean against her thigh and tucked it back into its sheath at her hip.

  The fact that I’d killed a man was trapped in my head like a buzzing fly. I couldn’t shake free of it. Was it wrong to kill a man who was truly evil? I was tired, my head dizzy. Every part of me ached. I leaned against Anoukhet’s back and allowed the roll of the camel’s gait to lull me to sleep.

  I woke with a jolt when the movement stopped. We had come to a standstill. The stars had disappeared and the sand was just beginning to gleam and change color in the early light.

  The camel tender nodded toward an outcrop of rocky cliffs rising pale and chalky straight out of the desert. “That’s what I’ve been heading toward. The cliffs will provide shade and protection when it’s too hot to travel, while we wait for Ra to carry the sun across the sky. I know this place. There are deep crevices where we can hide from the burning sun.”

  “From the Medjay as well?” Tuthmosis asked.

  The camel tender nodded. “That too.”

  “Scorpions of the earth! We’ll fight them if they come after us!” Anoukhet spit into the sand from the height of the camel.

  My throat was parched. The sun was just beginning to rise and dust dervishes were already whirling along the horizon. High above us two dark specks floated on the warm air currents. Vultures. Perhaps an omen? I thought of Queen Tiy’s vulture crown with its sweeping wings, resting on its stand in Thebes, and whispered a silent prayer to the vulture goddess. “Protect us from the Medjay. Spread your wings over us.”

  We headed toward the cliffs. They rose in long, fluted columns smoothed and twisted into strange wind-torn shapes with jagged edges and holes worn by scouring sand. Between them, a gap made a natural passageway.

  We turned off the passageway and went up a rocky incline that took us into some deeper clefts. The camels planted their feet obstinately and started up a cacophony of moans. Urged on by the old camel tender, they eventually heaved us up with their splayed leathery feet spreading to get a grip, braying and complaining all the way. At the top he tethered them in the shade. They settled on their knees and were silent at last while he began unpacking the saddlebags.

  Anoukhet fiddled with something under her cloak and tipped some water from a goatskin into her hand. A pair of small, troubled eyes peeped out from a fold in the coat.

  Tuthmosis gave her a sharp look. “You can’t have brought it!” He pulled her cloak aside.

  Kyky sat clinging to Anoukhet with a dark, surprised face.

  “How can we travel with a monkey? You should’ve left it behind!”

  Anoukhet glared at him. “What? Left her to have her eyes gouged out by Naqada’s hawk? Or her body impaled in a frenzy of swordplay? Never!”

  “A monkey needs feeding and water!”

  “So?”

  “Our supplies are limited.”

  She gave a shrug, as if there was nothing to be done about it. “I’ll give up some of my share!” Then she turned and sat, petting and stroking Kyky’s head as she stared out across the desert.

  Tuthmosis glared at her back, then finally sighed and turned away.

  I walked to the edge of the precipice and looked out at the vast sea of sand stretching in all directions.

  “Stand back from there, Isikara!” Tuthmosis commanded.

  I gave him a look. He was jumpy. We were all jumpy.

  We sat in a dark patch of shade where the crevices were so deep that in contrast to the chalky rock, the shadows seemed purple. We took small sips from the goatskin water bag and ate the scraps of chicken I’d brought in silence. From time to time I glanced toward Tuthmosis. But he wouldn’t meet my eye. He seemed angry. Restless. What was he thinking? That I was a girl who had killed a man?

  I glanced across at Anoukhet. She was silent and seemed oblivious of us. She tore delicately at the chicken bones with sharp white teeth, like a gazelle nibbling the leaves from a bush. When she finished, she held out her fingers for Kyky to lick, then wiped them on her robe.

  Suddenly the camel tender lifted his head. He cupped his hands to the side of his face and focused far into the distance. I looked to where he was looking. There was nothing but heat wavering across the sand.

  “What? What can you see?”

  “They’re coming.”

  “The Medjay?”

  He nodded.

  Tuthmosis stood up to look. The camel tender pulled him down quickly. “Don’t break the silhouette. Keep in the shadow. The Medjay have very good eyesight!”

  I made a funnel with my fingers to focus on where he was pointing. All I saw were ribbons of swirling heat vapor, writhing and floating and dissolving far in the distance. I glanced back at him. “Are you sure?”

  He pulled his lips into a toothless smile. “I’ve not survived all these years in the desert for nothing. My eyes see what they see. There are five men. All of them Medjay.”

  “Five?”

  He nodded.

  Tuthmosis looked impatient. “How do you know they’re Medjay?”

  “By the glint of their swords.”

  “Scorpions!” Anoukhet hissed.

  I stared into the distance. I could hardly make out outlines, let alone the glint of swords. They were just shapes swirling and writhing across the horizon like trails of bleached cloth. There was no substance to them. Nothing anchored them to the ground. They simply floated closer and closer, dissolving and reappearing like apparitions in a dream.

  A feeling of dread came over me. Even in the bone-dry air I felt sweat begin to prickle and break out on my skin. I dared not close my eyes as I watched the shapes forming and reforming. “What will we do?” I whispered. “Can we outrun them?”

  “Ha!” Anoukhet’s dark eyes flashed at me from the shadows. “And let them see we’re cowards? No! We’ll fight them. We have our swords and daggers.”

  Tuthmosis shook his head. “We can’t fight them. They outnumber us. And if we make a dash for it, we’ll never outrun them. With one man to a camel, they’re lighter and will be much faster.”

  The camel tender shook his head. “We must do none of those things.”

  We all turned to look at him. “Then what?” I asked.

  There was a canny look to his eyes. “I know the Medjay. I know how their minds work. They’ll be in a hurry. In the mood for revenge. For an opportunity to slaughter. We have to outwit them.”

  Slaughter! A shiver ran through me. Visions of swords slashing, bones crunching, and blood spurting everywhere came to me. I felt the hot stickiness of the word. The butchery of it. The blood seeping from it.

  “How’ll we outwit them?” Tuthmosis asked.

  “By staying exactly where we are—hidden in this crevice high up in the shadow. We have the advantage. They have the sun blazing into their eyes. They won’t pick us up in the shade. They’ll pass through the passageway looking straight ahead, beating their camels in their hurry to catch up with us. They won’t know we’ve stopped. They think we’re on the run. Heading straight toward the river, by the quickest route.”

  Tuthmosis seemed unsure. “It’s quite a chance.”

  The camel ten
der nodded. “Our only chance!”

  Anoukhet shook her head as if we were all mad. “We must face them and fight.”

  I glanced at her. She was brave enough. In her tattered cloak and shredded headband and long leather boots, she seemed as much a warrior as the Medjay themselves. But I knew I wasn’t brave enough!

  I turned to the camel tender. “They’ll see our tracks. They’ll see we’ve climbed up here.”

  “What tracks? Look at the sand below.” He pointed to the passageway. “The wind has already smoothed them away and the rocks show nothing of the camels’ footprints.” He shook his head. “They’re not following our tracks. They’ve come this way because it’s the quickest way to the Great River.”

  He was right. There was no sign of where our camels had walked.

  “What if a camel brays just as they’re passing? Can we tie up their jaws?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Camels like to chew. If you tie their jaws, they’ll bellow more furiously.” He drew a leather pouch from the folds of his clothes and reached inside it. “I’ll give them dates. They love nothing better than the sweet stickiness to chew on. That’ll keep them quiet. Now get ready. Whatever you do, don’t stand up. Don’t break the silhouette. Stay in the shadow!”

  “Ha!” hissed Anoukhet with exasperation. “We’re cornered here in this crevice. Let’s face them in the open.”

  She began gathering her things together and wrapped Kyky in a bundle of cloth and handed her to me. I held her, not sure why I was being asked to.

  The Medjay were closer now. The camel tender was right. There were five of them racing toward us with their cloaks flying out behind them—all heavily armed. The image of them carved itself into my eye. In the vast, empty space where nothing else was moving, they appeared more menacing.

  They were coming after me.

  I was the one who had killed Naqada!

  My heart thumped in my ears, mingled with the drumbeats of the camels. They were so close now, I could see the foamy spittle flying from the camels’ mouths and hear the men grunting.