Marai smiled a crooked smile and tried to look beyond the things she wanted him to see. He reached to touch the back of her head so he coule draw her face close to kiss it. He wanted to explain that he would never even be able to use her body as so many had done, but...
Another woman had entered the room, giggling. Her merriment distracted him.
“Oh....” He almost laughed as he climbed out of the pod, almost eager to get away from Deka’s sullen reflections. “Oh look at you!”
Ariennu, once known as Wise MaMa, had reawakened as a refined, mature woman.
The shepherd assumed she had been older than he was when they met. Now newly remade, she chose to remain older but much more vital than any elder woman he ever knew. At once, she was striking rather than beautiful. Her hennaed and over-lightened, frazzled hair had grown out a deep-rich, nearly black color with red-brown lights. It hung in looser ringlets to her shoulders and partway down her back. The yellow skin of her disease was gone, replaced by the tawny light brown color of most Kina women. She stood tall now, as tall as many men. With her wide and muscular shoulders, it almost seemed that the children forgot they were making a woman, and made something in-between.
Ariennu stroked her large, round and gently lowered breasts, shaped her slightly curved belly with her hands, and smoothed her undulating, softly pebbled thighs.
“Look at this! Oh…look at these!” she pranced and held her breasts as if she was embracing them. “Oh great El...I’ve become some kind of a queen...” her low, almost hard voice tittered wickedly, rising to a squeal of delight. “Like I never had to work a day of my life...just laying about soaking in oil and asses milk...” Her mouth dropped open and her throat filled with even more laughter...
“Oh how I sound ...I can hear again, even better than when I was a girl!” She moved closer to Marai, wrapping one arm around his back and stroking his chest, lovingly with her other hand.
The elder woman had been too ill to think of the shepherd’s appearance when she first met him. Now she swept her newly hungry eyes over him, studying every part of him, grinning in approval and chuckling knowingly.
“Ooooh…eeee!!” She laughed aloud, dancing around in a tight little circle. “Look how delicious you are for me! You’re a honey tree that has no bees! Like to lick you all over starting with that toe there...make you scream...” Her voice trailed.
“I wanted to say it before, when I was sick. Are you laughing at me?” Wise MaMa Ariennu paused. “I could run in on you...put you on the ground and begging for mercy. You know that it’s true about me from in here don’t you?” she pointed at the new opalescent stone glimmering in her brow. “You can see some of the men...and women...and things I’ve done with this here!” she pointed to the dark patch between her thighs.
Marai wanted to laugh. Ariennu was a lusty peach of a creature before, a thief’s mistress and a procurer who loved sex and stopped short of well...nothing when she put her thoughts to it. All of that had been brought forward with stunning clarity. He embraced the woman tightly, putting her at rest with a glance, then briefly looked back at the pod.
Deka had quietly crawled out of the pod and wandered into the ever-present mist of the star boat to explore some more parts and discover more of the secrets. She had become cold, but Ariennu became as bright and warm as a late spring day, now that the veil of her illness had been lifted.
“Oh beautiful man, let me bring you to your knees and make you howl like a dog for me!” she danced a little and shook out the cascading curls of her hair. “I can make it worth your while...” Her confident, throaty laugh whispered as she closed in and nipped at his ear. She walked him backward to the pod, meaning to have him right then and for a moment the prospect seemed so delightful that his mouth found hers.
He rocked her gently backward against the side of the pod and sat with her in his arms.
She stared calmly into his black under silver metal eyes, trying little erotic touches.
He stilled her fingers and kissed her hand.
“Lady, you’re coming at me like grass on fire.” he shrugged her away gently, still chilled at the thought of pleasure.
She was arousing him and eagerly taking notice of that…reaching and sinking down to him…
He stopped her.
“Ah…you’re killing me!” She scoffed, continuing to touch, insistently “What’s wrong with you? A good quick one, eh?”
Deka despised her body before, calling it ugly. Her new beauty gave her poise and confidence, but drove her into a new remoteness. Ariennu was proud and vulgar and wanted to strut. The difference between the two women was jarring.
Marai hadn’t understood until now how close to death the woman had actually been when he found her. He saw nothing of that illness now. This new Ariennu welcomed herself like a rogue who had lived with men and who had been treated like one. She could fight and drink, party all night and even rape like all of N’ahab-atall’s men. She was one of his men. She was that brief male image from Marai’s vision of the day when the thieves took Houra and her family. She had been rough and manly, but caring enough to give his sister something for her pain. He put the thought away, not wanting to let her know how much of her past he had seen.
“The quick part…” Marai laughed, shivering in delight at the completeness of her beauty, but still haunted by the vision of her past.
“Coward!” she teased, reaching up to smooth his hair. Her face grew a little solemn, looking down and away as she sat in the pod with the shepherd. She suddenly thought of something else. “Know what? I’m glad N’ahab is dead. You know...he deserved to die for turning on me like that after all we’d been through...how many times I’d come to save him in a rough place. Would have done it myself if I hadn’t been so sick.” Her eyes fluttered “Never ceases to amaze me why the men get to be such monsters when they don’t want you anymore.” Then feigning some amount of disinterest in that memory, as if it had become the last moment of her life she would think of him, she looked directly into the shepherd’s eyes again.
“So!” she shrugged “Because you’re my champion, since you did the deed for us… I owe you a good one...maybe twenty-eight good ones and twice extra for the nasty bastard.” She flopped backward in the pod, tugging the former shepherd forward, so he might slip and land on her. “Come on, a little off the top, and we’ll get to the rest of it later, eh?” She beckoned, stroking the side of his upper thigh with one of her bare feet.
Marai really didn’t want to think about the way the men had died in the wilderness. He didn’t want to be rewarded for it with sex. He didn’t want to think about women either…not right then, anyway.
“What we need to think about is Kemet, MaMa Ari, not how we will enjoy ourselves. I’m just a plain ordinary shepherd, not your king. You weren’t re-made just so you could be my jolly concubine, either, so why even think about it?”
He turned his face away. He wanted her desperately. There was something just so rewarding about all of that self-joy. He didn’t think women were made like that considering Houra had been forbidden to him and Ilara never entirely warmed up to any of the people in his tribe or even he, himself. A particularly vexing thought gained ground over all of his other thoughts.
Why would a man and three wives or concubines and of some apparent wealth be going to Kemet over the Copper Road virtually alone, without an entire cadre of slaves, porters and a protective detail? Another wild tale like the one I invented for N’ahab-Atall is likely to bring the same result. The four of us will need a much better story.
Ariennu nodded sensing his thoughts, as Marai leapt out of the pod, then turned to and help her step out. “Oh, but a quick one would have been sweet.” she sighed.
Marai didn’t hear her. The vision of the goddess as she had appeared on the side of the vessel had formed again not too far away from both of them. It emerged from the gleaming mist, walking toward him as if the image itself was in a trance.
When the shepherd had fir
st arrived outside the vessel, the image he saw had been one of a giantess. This image was normal sized and much more lifelike. The vision turned, lowered its head so that rivers of dark hair, loosely pinned up, swayed back and forth. The image stepped lightly as a sprite, dancing dreamily, and twirling, with inward turned eyes.
“Oh...” It said. “There you all are...They do good work...” the musical voice breathed like a shimmering pearl translated into sound. “I ....” the vision looked once, wide-eyed and tremble-lipped, hands reaching out dizzily, but knees buckling.
Marai, without a second thought, rushed to catch this vision from near fainting. Lifting her easily, he carried her to the pod, realizing what had happened only as he gently laid her out on the glowing, vibrant bed.
Oh sweet goddess...This can’t be... The little fat one...she’s...how could it... The shepherd trembled, knowing at once that the woman the Children of Stone had named Naibe-Ellit had indeed called down Goddess Ashera as she was going to sleep. On waking she had become the very flesh of her image. Why has The Lady allowed it, unless...? His blood ran cold, all the way through to his barely believing stare.
That face, once so twisted by some bizarre deformity, so that her eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets like bulging animal eyes, had straightened itself. Her addled eyes cleared, to show they had become large, deep wells of shining, golden-rimmed light brown. The expression in them was so full of golden stars that it riveted him to them, rendering him powerless. Her once almost missing chin had grown into a demurelooking jaw graced by full and trembling red lips that gasped open in a combination of fright and ecstasy. Blackest hair billowed and fell from a few fat braid loops to just at the inward curve of her buttocks. Her stunted body had stretched into at least average height for a woman. The stone at her brow, now receding into complacency, was blue lapis...the Lady’s favorite stone.
“Look at you...” Ariennu’s own astonished voice trailed “Damn, girl... sell your soul to them? You’re the very image...like all the statues in the temples...”
Marai wasn’t listening.
“Naibe-Ellit, who calls my Lady...” He reverently whispered. “You did call her, didn’t you... but how could you even know of her?” He reached forward, wanting to touch her to see if the image would vanish, but not able to give himself permission. He bent closer, examining from a distance.
Brown Eyes, now transformed, blinked slowly, thinking of the right words, then swallowed hard.
“I...I don’t know what to say...my gentle King...” Golden bells chimed in her voice. Marai reeled, once again unable to fathom all he was seeing and now hearing. It was Ashera’s voice; the one he had heard in a thousand dreams, and heard again the night he first slept.
“Everything feels so new and good...but there’s such a dread inside me...my voice... my...I’m so...so...very...fright...” she murmured, her voice trailed into trembling, a little glow starting in her face.
Marai heard her words, but he quickly lost all sense of place in the study of her arms, her belly and her legs. He marveled at the way they seemed to be muscular and firm, yet round and soft at the same time. Her breasts, large yet buoyant, heaved with her quickened breaths. Her nipped-in waist created a line that swayed back out into a most exquisitely firm yet ample high rump that begged for a man’s hands to fit on it and draw it up beneath him. Everything was the same as the image on the vessel had ever been. Marai had never felt so terrified of a woman in his life as he was of her at that moment.
The woman, Naibe-Ellit, stared suddenly as if she was puzzled at the thoughts rushing through her and began to smile just a little. She had been a monkey-woman; an idiot. Now the clarity of thought stunned her. Still numb, she allowed the shepherd to help her out of the pod and lead her, around the vessel.
Ariennu tagged along, listening as he explained the different areas in the vessel to her as they passed each one.
I see what’s going on, my beauty, Ariennu laughingly sent little darts of thought to Marai as she trailed him. Little Lady has you charmed, looking like your goddess...but we’ ll see how that works. You and me? Together? It’s a promise!
Deka was seated by the strange table at the water’s edge when Marai entered the green area, leading Ariennu and Naibe one on either side of him.
“Look...” She smoothed her wondrously fluffy black mane and smiled a little more easily than she had before. “I was thinking of what we might eat.” She explained “The voices asked my thoughts the question and these things came up from the water when I answered...” She indicated a fine repast on crystal dishes with golden cups. The shepherd and the women sat down to a fine dinner of roast lamb in a minted fig sauce, warm breads of several kinds, mixed lettuces and root stew, grapes, a little honey wine and the same fortifying nectar Marai had been given the first time he wakened on the vessel.
“I’m still bound for Kemet...for Ineb Hedj.” The shepherd munched on a piece of the bread he had dipped in the pepper sauce.
Ariennu still attempted a little flirty seduction by popping a grape in his mouth.
“Even if there isn’t anything to this, I have to see if any of my family lives.” He wanted to tell the the women they were free to go, but he already knew the thought was ludicrous. If the Children of Stone had changed them as greatly as they had changed him, the women were already part of their plan.
Ari bowed her head a little, almost dismayed.
The shepherd wanted to ask her what the trouble was in this beautiful place, with this wonderful food, but Deka’s voice distracted him.
“Then I will go with you, Man Sun.” she said. I am from a land far up from there... The red land. If you need to go to Ineb Hedj, I will then go there with you on the way to seek my original home...to learn my own story.” Her long lashes swept her light brown-green eyes, almost demurely.
Marai knew she was searching for that man from her past who had hurt her. He intimately knew the price of obsession, but also knew that sometimes such a devotion had small rewards. One of those was seated gloriously at his left arm.
“Good.” He turned hopefully to the goddess woman he would begin to call Naibe-Ellit. “And you? Will you come with us?” He asked her, pausing in the dread that she would suddenly find a reason to go her own way.
Her eyes flashed golden.
“How could I not come, my king, How could I not?”
It was all the shepherd needed to hear. Her voice had already sent him beyond heaven.
The four companions in the vessel finished eating and watched as the meal and everything they ate magically folded into shimmers of hexagonal honeycomb rainbows and vanished.
We have reflected on your coming journey.
The chorus of child-voices filled the thoughts of the shepherd and the three women.
We have made some simpler things,
Listened to numbers of human stories
As you nourished your bodies.
Consider, They suggested
The life of a wandering merchant.
Come and see...old things brought and
Many things which have not been here before
Once again, the small orbs of light materialized cheerfully in front of them, leading all four to the blue area where Marai had found the wealthy clothing earlier.
Ariennu, who had never seen the lights, grabbed for one as if it was a firefly. It shimmered and bounced away. She cackled again, then sobered and fell in with the group.
Full and sturdy baskets had been placed in the center of the blue area, awaiting everyone’s inspection. Some of the baskets contained the goods Marai and the women brought from the wadi, suitably cleaned, folded and bundled. They could be used in trade. The materials inside suggested the shepherd and his new family would be a sellers of temple incenses and herbs for purifying and creating sacred smoke.
Once again, Ariennu was bragging that she had some minor experience with temple work. She decided to be the teacher in this case and approached the supply basket. Inside she fou
nd bundles of highest quality sage and hyssop, cinnamon bark and powder. All of these were smooth and free of insect or mold. There were jars of unguents for anointing the sick. She marveled over the quality of the goods. There were also women’s medicines; herbs to clear the womb, to refine the menstrual blood so that it flowed easily. There were astringents to make it slow after a birth. There were herbs to bind a man to a woman with a magical spell.
I’ ll use these on you if I have to, my pretty... Her thoughts laughed, eliciting a dirty look from Marai.
“You know how to use these things?” Marai asked her, quickly. “The right way?”
She sighed, admitting her temporary defeat. Her experiences in the temple had been more of drama and less of experience.
Deka pulled clothing out of another basket. This time the garments were simple and almost like peasant garb. There were simple shirt tunics and tube shaped skirts of patterned cloth with plain sashes and sheepskin or woolen cloaks for night time outer wear. There were tan skinned boots for walking the dirt and rock for everyone. The women had bright head scarves or turbans for their heads or ribbon and dressing for braiding it in more of a Kemet fashion. The uppers of the women’s dresses were lightly jeweled, modest, double breast straps in the Kemet kalsiris style. They could have appeared as wives or relatives of any moderately well-off traveler, even though travel with three women and no attendants was still unlikely and strange.
All four quickly decided on a tale to tell, even though Ariennu had warned everyone several times about making such fiction. She frowned that any merchant who could afford three “wives” would go by boat out of Tyre. In all of her years as a thief, she knew traveling like this would put them in the category of fools to be easily overtaken and conquered. No one would believe that they were what they claimed to be. They would be challenged at every turn. She knew they would be able to defend themselves, having seen the way Marai had dispatched her former comrades, but travel in a heightened state of worry made for misery among all of them. No one wanted resort to fighting whoever they encountered as a first choice.
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