I kiss your ankles
Daring not to seek your mouth
Return to your servant in the night
Shuddering with new understanding of the magic his song had wrought, Marai hung his head for a moment, then scooped up the stones. He couldn’t bear to see any more, so he put the stones gently back into the leather bag.
The vision inexplicably depressed him. All of these years, he had sung for the goddess Asher-Ellit, but these creatures made of crystalline stone, who were so far removed from anything on or above the Earth had heard him far across the universe and had accepted his songs of love instead.
“So you did choose me on a song...” He sighed, understanding that they must have certainly loved him, if his song caused them to come to a place where they could only exist in the form of a stone. Maybe it was the goddess, after all. Maybe that’s what they had tried to tell him. They were the goddess, but at the same time they were more than that particular goddess or any one god or goddess.
“Woman of wonder...Mother of us all... so that men would have to protect and carry you.” he shut his eyes to see if more clarity would come to him. “You knew it would happen. So why’d you allow it, why with all of your power? Why not go to a place where you could be free.” he asked the air. “We poor humans and our poor gods...We’re nothing to you.”
As you observed
They replied in the gentlest of voices. The goddess was speaking.
We fell in love with your world, long ago.
It was so young then, so fresh!
We chose flesh like yours for a time
Yet, called to our place,
We have ascended far above your realm
and its physical nature.
We rest in stone,
spirit being ennobled.
To explain...You have a small creature....a butterfly
It crawls as a worm.
It feeds, it rests and becomes another thing,
taking wings.
We have taken our wings.
Shall we become worm again?
To return, to teach,
we assume a different shape
It is a soul and a memory within stone,
each different, but each the same.
One thing holds us here...
One thing undone.
We accepted the task.
We have inscribed in a language of man
All any in this world will need to know
“The golden tubes?” Marai shook his silvery head, bewildered by the mysterious tale the children were telling him. “I don’t read words, but I can do counting work.” he thought aloud.
The wisdom of Great Djedi of Sneferu will teach you
You will learn much.
In Kemet is a place called White Wall
Seek his energy there
Through it you will grow
In the wise crafts of his chosen ones.
Taught by those who were here before
Marai shrugged. He knew, without any depth of thought, that the man with the old and young form from his vision wouldn’t want to see him. The shepherd decided that if he could see the old man in a vision, the old man’s own vision would have carried him into the Children’s Star Boat. There, he would have seen two images of Marai himself: a wilderness man, and a man who had been transformed into the likeness of a god. The Children, without understanding human mortality on an intimate basis wouldn’t truly comprehend how all men, no matter how educated, feared death on some level.
Something horrid entered Marai’s heart the instant he looked at the elder’s reflection in the arranged stones. It burst through the vision, with eyes as piercing and angry as a man who has discovered his wife naked in another man’s arms. That expression locked into his own thoughts before he put the stones away. The children sensed the shepherds’ reluctance.
“He won’t want to see me...not if he thinks you were supposed to come to him and came to me instead. Men are like that...”
We sense a change.
A new one has come.
And with this one, the fear of being obscured
We do not understand this passion of defeat.
It is unlike the teacher...
Unlike the soul we knew before,
And unlike you, Man of Ai.
We have gifted this new one’s name,
so that it will live beyond
The flesh vessel into which it has so briefly stepped.
This one will see you,
He is unable to resist having a part in destiny.
Marai had already seen the great faith the Children had in him because of his ecstatic singing to his goddess. After fifteen years, he knew they found him at least persistent. Making his way to the red hall he found the golden tubes fastened securely in the wall, just he had seen them in his vision. He wanted to take them out; to see if he could read anything on them, but a feeling of urgency overtook him.
Gentle Marai.
Hasten to the White Wall
We have a new understanding
The Hidden returns.
Given strength, it grows in the brightest of hearts.
It regrets a loss...
“He’s lost his hope...” Marai shuddered with wonder and fear. It was the same anger he’d felt as a boy when his father sent him out to guard the sheep alone at night for the first time. He had been armed with only a staff, a sling, and a horn when there were a dozen brothers, cousins and in-laws who could have come with him to watch through the night. It was a rite of passage for any twelve-year old boy. He would only feel pride when the sun rose above the top of the mountains. In the growing night he felt anger and fear.
At thirty-three to thirty-five or so years and newly reborn, this journey the Children of Stone had prepared for him was another rite of passage. He was supposed to forget the grieving for his wife and even the singing to his goddess and begin to live his life as a sojourner, taking these “Children” to Ineb Hedj in the service of some unknown wonder.
Even now, he didn’t really want to go. Marai felt in some way, trapped but fascinated enough to at least start on the journey. That the Children of Stone needed him was questionable. They could come from another place and time, but could not move without being carried in the form of pretty stones once they arrived? It didn’t add up.
Marai knew they sensed his doubt and were tirelessly working on curing him of it.. He sensed thoughts unlike his own sorting through his fears and converting them into curiosity.
“What if wolves come?” he heard his own twelve-year-old voice protest inside his thoughts.
There will always be wolves.
The children whispered in the voice of his father.
Take your staff and your horn
The shepherd stood by the wall where he had entered the star boat, watching the whirling of the opening. Securing the satchel of stones to his belt, he left without a backward glance until he stood outside of the Star Boat. When he did turn to look, he saw nothing more than drifting sand falling behind his feet in the shape of a slight depression. It was as if the Star Boat had never existed, except in his dreams. The journey had begun.
The instant Marai looked up at the night sky for his directions he knew something was terribly wrong. The night his adventure began, the sky had been dark. He would never have found his way to the mysterious star boat without the little orbs of light bouncing and marking his path in the sandy wastes. Tonight, Sin’s brightness showed a strangely full light. It was high in the sky, signaling the approach of the wet season, not the end of it. Before, the nights had been growing warm. Now, the alignment of the stars and the raw chill in the night air agreed with the gods’ odd decision to change the season. Every bit of the overdressed clothing the children had given the shepherd was suddenly a comfort.
Turning around several times to stare at the sky in open-mouthed amazement, Marai decided four months must have passed while he lay in the Children’s crystalline fig. How he could have slept so lon
g without any ill effect was another mystery beyond his pondering. Right now, he knew he had to make his way to Kemet. In order to do that, he would need to get better bearings. He decided to go back to the wadi station where he knew the stars position for every season. Marai also wanted to check on Ilara’s grave.
He knew the station was in other hands by this time, if four months had passed. He wouldn’t be able to trust anyone living there, but he thought he would at least be able to hide out in his cave for a day. He could leave for the next station after a good rest. If he was lucky, no one would even notice he was there. With that in mind, Marai began walking home by the stars he saw, certain he’d feel less lost as soon as he came close to some grouping of rock he recognized.
Wild dogs were out and howling at the moon, but tonight he wasn’t afraid of them. Marai thought about joining in their astonished noise for only a moment, but he hurried on so they wouldn’t sense any fear or weakness in him. An occasional titter of a distant jackal rose, separate from the howls. The Shur, this far away from the smell of men, was always lively on a night with such a bright moon. Marai walked by clump of brush and rock that held the lair of dogs, but only one of them showed any interest in him as he passed. That was odd. He should have been an irresistible meal for a hungering pack to overtake.
A big, shaggy, battle scarred beast snarled, curious at his passing, then paused. The animal snuffed at the air and the ground, whined once, then went back to his lair in the nearby pile of rock, as if he’d made a mistake and had smelled nothing.
Soon, eerie calm fell over the stretch of wasteland on the way to the open arms of rock at the mountain foothills. A glint of silver snow shone back at the moon from a high peak in the distant range of blue-black mountains. It was the mount of Sin; Sin-Ai. For many years it would be a place of gathering for his people and later it would be a place of law.
Marai’s head pulsed, but his thoughts moved firmly back into the present time. Sheb, Houra and the rest of his relatives wouldn’t be there to greet him this time and might not recognize him if they were still there. If some months had passed since he left, they would have possibly waited a couple of weeks at the most, then decided he was either mysteriously dead or that he had abandoned them. They would already be in Kemet.
Why go back? He asked himself as he trudged toward the first rock formation. Turn around! You see the arm of stone! If you get into the rock, you can turn and still get to the next eastward wadi Mis-el by daybreak.
Travel alone was risky. He needed to give up the idea of hiding in his cave, go to the station openly, make a deal with the men who were now running the station and perhaps await another caravan heading east along the Copper Road.
Wadi-Ahu lay below a ridge where he pastured his sheep and below the pass in a flat and hot gully, partially ringed by stone. When he took that wide road around the camp, he could climb to the ridge then descend to his cave virtually unseen.
He stood on the ridge. The moon picked out enough of the camp below to let Marai know there were no sheep in the pen. That immediately made him uneasy. As his descent brought him closer to the opening of the cave, he saw that more sun-brick had been added to the little house in the center of the station. Now it was connected to the storage area. The shepherd scratched his beard in new concern. In the pen meant for the sheep, six or seven asses reposed for the evening. Marai grumbled, slipping down to his cave home to think before first light. If he sat quietly and spread out the stones, he might have a better idea of what to do next.
Sudden alarm radiated through his brow like the prickle of heat lightning in the air. The cave opening had been bricked in. A reed door had been roped into a brick frame. It closed the opening, creating a rough barricade. In a flash Marai sensed the desecration of his Ilara’s little grave. As if it had been a dream remembered, he saw rough-looking men digging up her goods and discarding her bones and the tiny bones of her stillborn daughter while he slept.
Clambering up the face of fallen slabs and boulders, with no other thought than revenge, he grabbed and flung the door open wide. The shepherd barely noticed the dancing patterns of shadow caused by the light from a newly placed lamp.
There are always wolves... His inner guardian mimicked Ahu’s voice again. Marai was too stunned to understand what he was seeing. Light shimmered over stacks of boxes, baskets, and woven sacks crammed to overflowing with every sort of item. The sight of jewels, gold, fine wool, skins, sequined and embroidered linen, wool, idols, gaily painted vases and urns displayed before him, bolted him back in alarm.
Right...wolves...two-legged ones. Silently dropping to one knee, Marai instinctively knew to touch the place on his brow where the Child Stone lay with one hand, and the earth with his other hand. His thoughts turned to the encampment below. In moments the vision of what had happened while he slept formed like a waking dream.
Grains of Sand...the children hushed
To be told...
Marai saw Sheb pacing and distraught as he discovered the vanished encampment the next morning. The shepherd saw Houra was trying to explain that something not of this earth had happened to them and that it wasn’t just drugged beer.
What caused everyone to stay asleep? Marai se searched his thoughts. Did the Children of Stone’s spell come upon his family so they would sleep and not stop me from my destiny? He remembered how still the encampment had been that night. When he left it has been as if he was dreaming and walking in his sleep.
The image of Sheb and his family looking at the gutted tent where his cousin Naim’s family lived and seeing the blood on the shattered pot came into his thoughts. Marai watched the re-play of Sheb hitting Houra. His thoughts whispered to her in an attempt to comfort her, even though he understood his cousin’s ire over what was a silly statement in the midst of an emergency. He sent his thoughts back through time to her that morning that he was alright and that he would somehow see her again.
Prepare your mate and young
Look to the others.
When you wake
A change has come
Wolves have come
More with the sun
Understand, what begins in pain
Will end in complacency
Do what you must
Marai had spoken those words to her, but now he realized she never knew who spoke them. When Houra heard the words sent back through time, she thought she heard the voice of an angel.
The men who approached his family were heavily armed this time. Sickened, Marai saw Sheb getting his bow and telling his boys to go take the sheep up to the heights and to not look back. He pressed them close and told them they were men now and to take their mother, Houra, but she refused. If she stayed, she might double her husband’s chances of escape.–Marai bowed his head in anguish, knowing Houra was making the worst decision ever.
The men approached, fully courteous. One of them introduced himself as the man who would take over the wadi and exchange it for the supplies Sheb’s family would need for the journey. The courtesy hardly worth his effort.
Sheb didn’t trust these men and plainly asked if they knew anything of men who took the other families in the night. He grumbled that there could be no business transacted until the rest of his family was found.
Bold Marai thought. Bold and stupid!
Almost instantly, the men dropped all pretense. They surrounded Sheb and Houra then sent men to fetch their sons Iarel and Tisehe from the cave. The four were tied up, threatened and slapped about. Houra scolded one strangely built male and spat on him, whereupon five other men fell upon her, carrying her off to a tent. The insult was complete when they dragged Sheb in to watch.
Houra screamed and cried out for a while, but eventually her cries trailed into numb whimpering. When she was pitched out into the sand, the odd looking male dragged her by the arm to his own tent. Thinking her misery had only begun. Marai couldn’t bear to see any more.
Sheb... Houra...Naim and the others! Wrath of Nergal on those beasts.
..He bowed his head in brief anguish. Why weren’t they killed outright? Marai trembled. Were they sold into slavery to the Shinar?
Thieves such as these men were part of the vast network of shady gangs allied by the Kemet work bosses. From a distance the group of men and sometimes a few women could appear semi-respectable, bringing no harm to large groups of travelers. They could trade goods or information if needed, and even travel with groups to a new location by craftily infiltrating the others. At some point on the journey, they would strip smaller caravans right off of the road. The Kemet men from the outposts who came around on a timely basis to collect the kings tribute had little use for real slaves harvested by these gangs. Sometimes they collected menial workers, especially if they were told the people being offered were insurrectionists or other sorts of malcontents. If the Kemet militia wasn’t interested, captives could be sold to the Shinar and the Shur slave traders.
All of his life, Marai had heard grisly stories of the slavers from the east. These devils chained the men and the youths out in the nearby hills in sun baked cages. When buzzards began to circle, they would go out to see what or who had survived. Any women or girls were kept for a few weeks until they had been made suitable as concubines for the cruelest of keepers. If these men had similar plans for Sheb and his family, Marai knew it never became their fate. Someone in the camp took pity on the family and helped them escape within the week
Marai visualized a woven cap squashed down on deep russet curls.
Is that a woman? Among these beast-men? Marai was getting so upset at his vision that he couldn’t picture the horror clearly. He wanted them all dead. Soon, the only thing he saw in his vision was the suffering etched in Houra’s face. Rough hands seized her jaw and forced something into her mouth, then gripped her mouth shut, chopping at her throat until it forced her to swallow.
Death to them all, then. The shepherd sighed, still kneeling on one knee in the cave Threefold agony for each act. Something stirred behind his thoughts for a moment. It felt like a slight rise in the wind, the way a breeze hushes right before descending with fully grown storm vengeance.
Marai...Houra’s voice whispered. Marai paused, barely able to sense her sound through her own weakness. I live... Come to us from your place on high. Do us justice. Avenge us! She prayed to him as if he had become a god.
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