“Wife...” she called to the others “Kotharat intended I never be one of her worshipers...a wife... I’m laughing...” Ariennu knew so many girls prayed to the goddess of marriage and pregnancy when she always prayed for decent men and brief company...Anything other than being bound by one.
“I could be a widowed elder sister of yours, and Brown Eyes here, could be my daughter. Deka, you be his wife!” The henna haired woman scoffed. “On the other hand...” she giggled evilly enough to let Marai know she wasn’t really upset at his temporary rejection. “A wife’s the one thing I’ve never been before.” she tossed her head, “Best to get us all ready, if we have to carry all of this on our backs.”
Marai knew there had been seven asses bearing their things from the wadi. He knew he had brought them into the vessel and had demonstrated how the cleansing fire had worked on one poor beast. There had been no healing sleep for the animals as far as he knew and none were seen ambling about in the vessel.
The burden creatures you call asses
Were released from the place where they were kept.
We have acquired new beasts.
When you are ready,
These animals will greet you on the outside.
It is near evening of your day.
Marai knew there wasn’t much time to waste. Silently putting on his clothing, he gestured for the women to do the same. When they had finished, Ari located the large bundled tent materials and several poles. She helped the shepherd lash them into a drag for the animals they were going to find outside.
“You know, I could so be that...Your wife I mean...” she laughed. “So to this Ineb Hedj place then...as spice merchants?” The elder woman asked.
Marai shrugged. He wanted, for some reason he didn’t entirely understand, to go back to what had been Wadi-Ahu for one last time. If his vision had been correct, the station had gone into Kemet hands and had become a garrison on the Copper Road. The story of how the four of them came to be wandering fully laden in the wilderness? He knew they were just going to have to work on that, as they walked.
The women turned briefly, their arms around their unlikely hero. The ovoid opening magically closed and the marvelous star boat submerged in the whirling sand as if it had never existed. Gathering the seven asses left for them was another matter.
Simply put, Marai scanned the area for the animals when he first emerged. Not seeing them, he almost felt betrayed. No asses were seen until Ariennu started cursing about the idea of carrying all of the goods themselves again. Suddenly, as if it had been the children’s oversight, a frightened braying emerged out of the distant air.
“There...” Deka had pointed to a nearby mound of windblown sand.
Fortunately, the asses they spied wandering in the sand of that dune had rope bits in their muzzles and trailing leads to seize. Without those, even magic couldn’t have brought them in.
Marai instantly broke into a quick run down the sandy hillock topping the vessel. He chased a slower mare until he could seize the lead draping from her muzzle, then held her
Ariennu stood open-mouthed and amazed that the beast calmed herself just as if the shepherd had spoken to her. Gradually, the other six asses made tentative returns to the crowd, but stayed a safe distance away from their new human masters.
Go to them...Speak to them with your inner voice... Marai silently instructed the women. It’s not one of the children’s gifts to us. It’s just what I do in herding...
Deka, following that guideline, proved her expertise in talking to the beasts. She was able to bring in three asses.
Naibe, who had never fetched anything in her life, led two animals.
Ariennu became so aggravated with the ass she was trying to bring, that she sat in the dirt grumbling while the ass locked his legs and stood. The ass would not budge until Marai returned to “speak” to the beast. After that, the journey to Marai’s old wadi station home was uneventful.
The half-spent day felt almost too fresh and bright, when Marai led his entourage toward what had once been Ahu Wadi. It didn’t seem like a Kemet garrison at all, Marai noticed as they approached.
Was my vision of this place wrong? he wondered.
Seven or eight young men nocking arrows in their bows greeted them at the perimeter of the encampment. Two more men were coming down from the area where Marai’s cave home had been, also armed. The shepherd assumed, if the settlement was large enough, that they had all been seen by a small group in the higher hills who sent the alarm back to the center of the camp.
None of that concerned him. In fact, the shepherd almost laughed aloud in relieved joy when he hailed the owner and received a response in Khanite; one of the Kina dialects. That was unthinkable luck. Marai smiled openly while they were looked over and spun his tale of murder and theft in the caravan they supposedly took out of Mari. He told of how his way to the sea had been cut off and how they had all been forced to flee south into the wastes.
The tired-looking man ordered his grown sons to close in for a moment, not trusting a word in the story they told, just as Ariennu had predicted. He shouldn’t have believed a tale that wild, especially since the former shepherd looked like he was making it up as he went along.
Soon, however, the patriarch stopped pacing. Marai volunteered his things, except for the small bag holding the Children of Stone. He asked Ariennu, Deka and Naibe to allow the man’s wives and older daughters to search their possessions, without squabbling. The owner scratched at his hairy belly after a few moments, and shrugged.
“I know you’re not telling me anything close to the truth, Man of Ai.” he announced, after studying all of the goods laid out on the earth in front of his house. Two young men continued to stand guard, ready to feather anyone making a false move toward the station owner. “...but I do know the famine’s driving enough of our people this way. We don’t get lost merchants through here too much, but if you want to take your chances waiting, some poor bastards will eventually come along. You can try your luck with them. We’ll let you stay a few days for some of that evil-eye incense right there...” He paced and pointed to the dark linen packets on the ground. “If no one comes in three or four passes of the sun, off you go to Mis-el to try with them.” The wadi man turned and pointed to a place not far from the well where Marai could put up their new double tent. “Throw in an amulet and you get enough grain and salt meat for a meal.”
Famine and evil eye...Mis-el is still working... Marai thought. Times have always been hard, but now a full famine? He stared at the empty place where his climbing trees, the three date palms growing from one trunk, had been. Only sand, shaded by other less stately trees, remained.
Maybe there was a flood or storm that took them down...wonder if that could happen in so few years. He felt the heat of the sun beating through his wool-cloaked shoulders. On the walk here he had just learned from Ariennu, that N’ahab-Atall had occupied and worked the camp for five years, so the shepherd assumed another five years might have passed during this sleep.
The Children of Stone had created a fine wool double tent for Marai and the women, which Ariennu insisted that she, Deka and even Naibe could put it up without his help. She wanted him to go on learning as much as he could from their new host. It was the way she had always done things when she and the band of marauders had been traveling from place to place before they settled and how they learned the strengths and weaknesses of any travelers coming through.
Some of the youths, impressed by the women’s beauty, and not wanting to believe the shepherd had a hold on any of them, joined in to help them lash and stake the poles.
When Marai went about the business of trade and conversation at the owner’s hut, the women of the station came over to Naibe, Deka, and Ariennu to introduce themselves and to glare the flirting men away from the assembling of the tent. When these women began to prepare food for the encampment at a communal fire, Naibe and Deka penned the asses and went to help them.
Ariennu said sh
e wanted to lie down, but instead, she crept around the back of the hut, listening to everything the men were saying. It delighted her to be able to hear so well now that she could listen to conversations all the way through the sun-brick walls of the manager’s dwelling.
Sheb and Houra’s old house had grown another room and two storage houses to accommodate this larger tribe. Tents stretched out beyond the watering area to the foot of the cliff rising to the place where Marai’s cave home had been. The shepherd couldn’t tell if it was being used for storage or if someone was living in it, but he sensed a few elders and some older children were out grazing sheep or goats on the high plateau where he used to roam with his half-sister Houra.
The natural pond which was always scarce of water during the dry months, had been dug out into a reservoir so that the underground river feeding it pooled into fresher water for washing and a deeper well which yielded even better water for cooking and the making of beer. The station, now known as Wadi Epharath, had finally become every bit the peaceful village his father Ahu had envisioned. Marai shrugged that it must have been the will of the gods or his own ancestor’s spirit to see this wadi prosper, but in other hands.
As Marai and the women ate with the family in the encampment, and idle chatter continued, the shepherd tried to determine how much time might have actually passed. If he and the ladies had slept five years, perhaps the old man Djedi whom they were going to meet truly had died.
When Marai thought less casually about the magician, or spoke the word “Djedi” into the universe, he sensed nothing of the old man’s presence hovering near the land of the living. The only urgent reason to go to Kemet now, if the man was indeed dead, would be to find his family.
Will they even know or accept me? The shepherd wondered. He actually sensed more of Houra than he did of the old magician. He envisioned her toiling at her baskets and chopping weeds in a row on someone’s farm. At least she would know and receive him, he thought but knew he needed to hurry. If time had stopped for him, it had not stopped for all of those he knew and loved. His thoughts of Houra were frozen in time. In his visions of her, she looked as young as she had the last day he saw her, perhaps ten years earlier. The shepherd knew she would have aged plenty since then and people didn’t live so long when they were poor. The Children of Stone would just have to wait until he, as their ever-young avatar, had spent some time with his own people.
Marai thought of that until his host’s rambling about how they stumbled onto the wadi about five years before met his ears. Their ragged troupe, the man related, had been wandering away from the same famines of the eastern lands that continued to push people to the west. They were besieged, Epharath the wadi man said, in a horrific storm. Coming out of it, blind and lost, they stumbled onto this abandoned place with the house nearly destroyed and many trees blown down. The water had hardly been more than a dark stain on the earth. Epharath and his people had seen the scraps of mens’ bones bleaching near the cave.
Come to Kemet.
The hushed whisper suddenly spoke inside Marai’s thoughts.
The station owner told of how they buried the bones, then camped patiently in the distance, waiting for death. When they didn’t die, they began to start a settlement. The man told of how the soldiers came by almost instantly for the tribute. Epharath was barely able to meet the tax they demanded. His tribe gave up nearly everything they had brought with them, except provisions for a few days. The militia didn’t stay, but turned away stating that this land had a curse of death on it and that people were said to go missing in the night from this place. That meant either they had been told of the abduction of the people who had lived there or they had been told of Marai’s own vanishing. Epharath’s family had no resources to leave a cursed land and so they stayed, having no other option.
Yahweh had smiled on them and made a miracle, the man said. The Kemet men never came back. No one sickened or died or starved because the food was always traded in, and the sheep were double lambing. He slapped his crossed leg and passed his cup to his sons and then to Marai, stating:
“This place of evil has been good for us. We just keep the offerings going and the incense burning at night.”
The Goddess? Marai wondered, Did she bless this place after all had gone, drive out the Kemet men who wanted to oppress us? If not she, then maybe some other God, Yahweh-Sin perhaps, El... or was it the Children in the guise of these gods who secured favor for this tribe? Maybe it was just outrageous luck! The shepherd really didn’t know what to think.
Go to City of the White Wall
The bell-like whispers began in the shepherd’s thoughts again, interrupting his listening to the wadi man’s amazing tale of salvation in the wilderness.
“Ah then be praised” Marai spoke suddenly, knowing he would have to get up and be apart from the others to fully receive the words the Children of Stone were speaking. He politely excused himself.
Naibe looked up for a moment, followed by Ariennu. Both women sensed his bladder was not the problem.
I need to think about something alone. He sent a thought back to them. Stay some moments here. If I don’t return in a while, then come to bed. It will give me time to sort something out, without being rude. As soon as he got up, he went to the wonderful tent the Children had given him, but paced back and forth behind it in nervous anticipation. Soon:
Wisdom there is hidden.
City of the king
Where loved is the Art
Once trusted in the form of Djedi
Has begged the need
For you to seek the heir of his knowledge there
We cannot see more until a path is chosen.
The voices of the Children of Stone which were always controlled or at the most happily excited, seemed almost anxious this time.
Marai wondered about this “heir”. It meant his suspicions were correct. Djedi was indeed dead. Now he was to look for the “heir”, but which man was it? Was the heir the heavy gentleman he saw near the one who didn’t want him there or was it the other way around?
Once again, the nagging thought returned, that he ought to abandon the idea altogether and look for a piece of prime land along this very road. He certainly had the wealth to pay off anyone’s debt and enough to get more than established if he found a place in need of improvement. There he could beget a couple dozen brown and tan children. He would give his women sons who would be strong, wise and tall; daughters who could tempt gold out of kings or be kings in their own right. Why did he even need to go to Ineb Hedj? He shuddered, embarrassed by his own wayward thoughts.
We are children made of stone
The voices within his thoughts grew distant and crackly sounding, as if they were speaking through the distortion of a great storm wind brewing in the distance... Marai knew these storms were frequent in the dry season, but he never worried about them. Maybe a fierce one wiped out or frightened off the garrison of Kemet men before Epharath and his people arrived. Was it, not the goddess but something like Resheph, a demonic god of the wind, giving these people grace, but exacting tribute in the form of evil eye incense?
The Children whispered.
We, must rest as you have rested...
Listen...think of these words...
The shepherd paused in his circuit around the tent and pressed his brow, trying to clear his thoughts a little more.
The mother fades after the birth of her little ones...
Listen to her words
For a moment he felt a weakened pulse from the voices, as if their words were being buried in the stinging whistle of a distant sandstorm.
Lions and dust in the land below foam. They whispered, growing fainter
Baskets at the gate of the sacrifice
Stones of the children
In the hand of grieving bird
Marai tried to hear their words but couldn’t quite make them clear.
The horizon is split for a weeping warrior
Etched in stone, ensl
aved in time.
Slave to time and power
Alone, yet with us, he journeys
We are grains of sand
Drifting at the end of oblivion.
The small voices spiraled and sank into the shepherd’s brow like young animals scurrying into a warm burrow.
Marai had never thought of the Children of Stone as being anything but magnificent and powerful. Now they seemed frightened and tentative. Had the old wizard levied some kind of a curse on them that made it hard for them to speak plainly? Did he do it as he died? According to his own beliefs, death utterances were always the most powerful, sometimes cascading through several generations that came after the initial curse.
The shepherd drew a deep breath and tried to clear his thoughts again. An image of expanding darkness tightening around the star-boat in the sand entered his thoughts as if he remembered what had happened while he slept. In that force was an absence of light, more than a darkness. Something hidden was in it...a sinking and horror-filled void made manifest. It was that feeling of dark, unknowable horror again. Thorn-like particles of that dark entity were changing the prismatic pattern that surrounded him and the women while they slept together in the pod. It lasted for only a few seconds. Slowly, the light of the childrens’ power gradually absorbed all of that dark, as if eating the evil it generated. The hexagonal pattern on the surface of the vessel gradually shifted back to its normal, glittering rainbow-like image, but it was weaker and drained. The Children’s energy had been sapped in the battle against whatever it was.
In a moment, the apprehension in the children’s voices faded into feelings of comfort. Now that they had left Marai a message, they could relax and drift until they were stronger.
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