Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  As everyone walked on the journey from station to station, Marai would look up from their constant pace to see her tagging along slightly behind many of the men and women. He would always drop back to see if she needed to ride one of the asses for a while. She would break into a smile as joyous as the very sunrise, shake her head, and say “No”. Once she added:

  “I am so glad to know how things work now...I understand so much now. I just want to take it in..the beauty, beloved king...the beauty...” Sometimes he caught her walking at night, almost trance-like, drawing energy from the soft light when the moon was out. She would walk in that light whether it was thinnest sliver of light or the full face. She spent hours each night after the camp rested gazing star ward, extending her hands wide and upward as if drinking in that same moon and star light.

  Was she praying to the goddess whose look she bore, he wondered? From time to time Marai thought he caught the glimpse of a light bouncing into her hands, as if the energy of light at night had taken a form and come to visit itself on her. She would listen avidly to all of the legends at the communal evening meal, but shunned the admiring glances of some of the men. If she hadn’t portrayed herself as a promised woman, betrothed to a distant merchant, Marai and the others were certain someone would have begged him for her. She was as detached and contemplative as Deka had become, but in a far different way.

  Deka’s character and her personality were hardening into stone. Marai caught himself wondering if the Children of Stone had filled her up with this hardness or unlocked and brought forth something that was already in her heart. A rumor circulated in the camp that she might be an actual sorceress, instead of a beneficial seer and healer as she had stated.

  Marai assured them she wasn’t...even though it seemed true at times. When she passed, some of the women pulled small children away. Others fingered evil-eye amulets. When the shepherd asked her, in the same way that he asked all of the women with him if something was wrong, she gave a blank look for a few moments, but answered again and again:

  “I’m not sure, Man-Sun. There’s a thought inside me that wants to speak, but it can’t yet.” She looked away. “I am so close to remembering something about myself that it hurts me inside.” her eyes glimmered the green and gold when she looked back into the sun and into the shepherd’s eyes. “Just...please allow me to find it...”

  Marai asked her no more questions, for a while, because he thought he knew of her at least semi-divine origin. He contemplated every move she made from that moment on. Unlike Naibe, Deka drew energy from fire and sunlight. When she accessed that energy, the red stone in her brow flashed as if it wanted to burst into roaring flame. On the journey, she taught her spirit to soar past the sun, enclosed in an orb of light, while her gazelle-like form walked below carefully and quietly picked its way over the scorching earth and burnt out grass.

  Ariennu noticed that and explained to some of the newer friends that Deka was looking for her lost memory. If she ever made any discoveries along the way, she never shared them.

  Two weeks into the journey, Marai, Ariennu, Naibe and Deka sat around the communal fire at the evening’s way station. They shared a humble meal of barley grains, flavored with a little of the spice they donated, and bits of dried meat shared by some of the others traveling with them.

  The boys in the group had noticed the shrubs at a distance and thought they might find a partridge to roast. Instead, they found wild bees in a hive. Wrapping themselves in blankets head to toe, they brought smoking branches, and were able to get a small amount of honey...just enough to make into a sauce, before the bees came back.

  Naibe and Ariennu had minced some dates mixed with the honey.

  Tonight, the entourage celebrated. This evening’s stop marked the half-way point. There had been no further death, illness, or injury. Most importantly, no brigands had harrowed the travelers. The three women had joined the other women in a gentle sway and strut, dance but kept any magic or seduction out of their movements.

  Dancing that way was particularly trying for young Naibe, because the moon was just a new sliver of a bow in the sky and she wanted so badly to give all of herself to the dance. She knew there might be unintended and magical consequences, if she did. As she moved gracefully by the shepherd, her eyes sought him out, as if asking permission to give him her gift.

  Marai put up his fingertips and shook his silver head “No”. He didn’t really need to speak to her heart to explain his feelings.

  Later in the evening, the four travelers walked back to their tent. Deka, who was carrying the bowls, suddenly spoke more excited than she had been in recent days.

  “I saw a different place today when we were walking here...” She drew Marai, Ariennu and Naibe into a tight circle so she could reveal her secret to them. Her face blossomed like a rare flower as if her soul had finally unfolded. She became radiant as the morning sun. “The Land of Grass...” she continued “Is just below the second place in the great river, where the water boils about rock so furiously that no boat may pass.” Her eyes fluttered shyly as if she were a young girl lost in a dream. “That is my land. That is where I will go again one day soon.”

  Marai wanted to embrace her not even considering she was telling everyone she wanted no part of their company once they arrived in Kemet. The only thing he understood was that, just as the children told him, Deka’s joy was the key to her memory and to her fragile, dark beauty as well.

  “You speak of Ta-Seti...this is the Land of Grass, or it truly means the Land of the Bow.” Naibe-Ellit sensually licked some remaining sauce from her fingertips, shooting a far-too-knowing look, first at Marai, then at Deka. “I have learned of this place.” She tapped her brow. “Is that where it happened to you? Is that where you were once the toy of your god Ta-Te? Was that the place where he hurled you to the earth all bent and broken when he grew weary?” Her eyes played once over Deka and up at Marai, almost proud, but asking for approval of her own revelation.

  All of the brief emerging joy suddenly drained from Deka’s face. Something dark and cur-like flashed in her eyes the instant before she set the bowls down by their tent. She drew herself tall. For a moment, she tried to speak, but found herself struck as dumb as she had been before the children gifted her. So many thoughts flooded her soul that they doomed her to temporary silence. She fled, running past the opening of the tent to the station’s shallow pond. She stood, looking down at the water.

  Ariennu and Marai stared after her, open-mouthed, then back at Naibe-Ellit in disbelief.

  “Far-Seeing, Naibe?” Ariennu scoffed. “That was never like you. Have you found something in your heart that rightfully belonged in hers?” She scolded her sister’s sudden and uncalled-for revelation. Ariennu would have gone to the pond to console Deka, but Marai stopped her.

  “Shh...” He quieted the elder woman, turning her toward the younger woman instead. The sound of the disturbance caught the attention of the family in settling in the nearest tent.

  Marai signaled them that nothing serious had happened, then faced Ariennu. He held her arms and spoke even more quietly. “She’s just as surprised as the rest of us.” The shepherd indicated Naibe’s shocked, almost tearful eyes. “I think she has a gift...to see into secrets...She discovered that skill and thought Deka would be pleased. Maybe she even got it from my own thoughts when I read all of you the first day. It’s just going to take some time...for all of us.”

  Ariennu frowned, puzzled. She didn’t really believe what he was telling her, but stopped bristling.

  Marai, seeing Naibe’s crumbling face, released Ariennu and went to the younger woman.

  “I...didn’t mean to hurt her...” Naibe-Ellit’s face lowered. “It just came to me so easily...as if I’d always known the truth she’s been looking for. As if it was locked in my heart, instead of hers.” She shook her loosely coiled head balefully, hiding her eyes in her hands, about to cry. “I thought she’d be glad I could find something out for her.” Her voice
rose in a kind of sob. “Am I still an idiot to not know the heart of my own sister of fate?”

  Marai started to touch the young woman’s shoulder, but stopped himself. A magical spark wanted to leap from her arm straight into his heart, through her gentle poetic language and her shining golden eyes.

  “Maybe it just wasn’t your place to say it.” he smiled down at her, almost paternally. “Maybe she was going to let us know anyway, but you beat her to it.” The shepherd paced a little still thinking he might go after Deka, to talk to her. “Maybe none of it’s true. Maybe we just create these memories to fill in all of the missing pieces of our lives.” He smiled, suddenly wrapping his arms around and hugging Naibe, just a little. Just that touch made him reel at the way her breasts sighed against his belly. Her head fit so comfortably right below his chest, that it made him ache.

  “Then...it’s a dreadful curse...” She whispered into his chest, her left hand stroking the tightness of his belly. “I wouldn’t ever want to create a god for her who rejects her...” Naibe’s face faded out with her voice. “If this is what we can do, then I will create the wish for her that she finds him, or one enough like him to soothe her heart.”

  “But on her own terms...” Marai suggested, stepping away to save himself from the feel of Naibe’s clinging body. The younger woman nodded, quieted, and entered her side of the tent.

  The shepherd sat outside as the crescent of the moon rose higher. He watched Deka stare into the water. For a moment he thought she said something into the calm reflection. In a few moments, she turned almost before he gently whistled to her.

  “Sst..Here... if you need to say anything...”

  She shook her head dolefully, but let him gather her into his side of the tent, to coax out the misery she felt. She lay on her side, with her back to his embrace, still shocked and hollow, as if she almost understood the power that was at work inside of her.

  Oh, Ta-Te... her thoughts spoke into his heart Is this real? This here with you? Are you part of this man who is so kind to me? Her thoughts implored. I sense something so great and so dark when he is near, but is that you in his form? I want to know it is...and yet something else from my new life calls to me home.

  “Me? Dark?” He shook his head, shuddering a little. “You know better...I said that before...anyone who would cast you out should not even be looked for. I’m no god, and you know it too, Deka. None of us are...Of them, maybe...but not one of them.” Marai stroked her fat spray of loosely bound hair. He had known about the god Ta-Te and hadn’t told Deka or anyone else. In an unguarded moment, young Naibe had pulled that thought from him, and thought it was her own.

  As he closed his eyes, he saw and sensed a great wind gathering dust on the horizon. It was so violent that the sky turned black with dirt and red lightning rained down like fire. All was hidden. It was the same thing that had rocked the children’s vessel in his earlier vision. The hidden thing. That wind made a moaning sound at first which crescendoed into the lowing of a bull, but then pitched higher like the scream of a dreadful beast that yelled like a man, then howled like a jackal before fading. Marai lay awake for the better part of an hour, keeping that thought well guarded as Deka drifted to sleep.

  After that night, even though Deka pulled Naibe-Ellit aside more than once to say she was sorry that she had overreacted, a shadow grew over the spirit of young woman. Her innocent and winsome little smiles faded. Deka insisted she had just been terribly startled that someone else could see into her thoughts before she remembered them.

  Naibe’s nightmares began shortly after that. The first time she had one, she tossed and turned, crying out in her sleep:

  “No...no...don’t leave me, Marai...I’m scared...It’s so dark...I can’t see...”

  Ariennu sat up, sleepy and disgruntled.

  “Little One...Wake up!” she shook the younger woman. At first, Naibe hadn’t known what her dream had been about. She drank a little warm beer and settled back to sleep as if nothing had happened. Each night, however, the dreams grew stronger. By the third night, she remembered the dream.

  Marai sat with her when she woke, cradling her head on his chest and soothing her trembling body.

  “Shh...Shh...Naibe...” he lulled. “I’m right here...I’m not going anywhere.”

  “It’s dark...” She cried, still half asleep. “It wants me to go to it...It wants all of us to come to it...” She remembered only that an unknowable darkness had been pursuing the four of them across the wilderness. It had first come when the men died, then when they had been sleeping in the crystalline vessel. “One by One...” she wailed, unconsoled. “One by One...it will take us...It will destroy everything we are”.

  Ariennu patted the young woman’s back. Deka, hung her head but young Naibe saw the look on the dark woman’s face.

  “It’s because I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see, isn’t it?” Naibe insisted that her proud insight into Deka’s past may have opened the door to the darkness that stalked her own dreams.

  “Well I don’t have these dreams, Little One. You’re just getting upset from all of this travel. We’re half way through and we’ve had no problems since the old man died...Have this.” Ariennu urged, sitting on the other side of the young woman and offering another cup of beer.

  As nights went on, Naibe improved. Her dreams changed and soon included dancing and singing. She was happy again. No further thoughts were traded between the four travelers to Ineb Hedj, but Marai quietly puzzled over the thought that Naibe was being frightened by the very entity Deka had been seeking as her savior.

  Three more weeks passed for the small entourage on the Copper Road. By that time, the caravan had wandered ten days longer than their meager supplies had lasted. The already impoverished travelers had been forced to ration everything they ate and to dip into the goods they had planned to trade for their purchases in Kemet. The lack of wind and dust, during the daily walk, at first praised, became a curse. The daytime air never stirred or brought the longed-for scent of moisture. Each of the last five wadi-men had sworn A-bt and the eastern gates were two or three days away and to turn south at once, in order to avoid the criminals they would encounter there.

  Another small group of about ten people had joined the caravan four days earlier. Ariennu said she could smell thievery and desperation on them. She claimed it wasn’t a new skill given her by the Children of Stone but recognition from life with her own former fellows. Ari pointed out a bright but shiftless youth about fourteen years of age who always lurked close to Marai’s tent as if he expected to discover some unguarded wealth hidden there.

  Aruat, the patriarch of the Khenite group didn’t trust the promises of any of the station masters by this time. He considered them to all be in league with each other. Men living close to any well this near the A-bt garrison might guide travelers into a trap for a fine profit.

  In the choking hot afternoon of the eleventh day past the day they were to arrive, the sky hazed and grew tan with the roaring of a small, approaching wind storm. It wasn’t a bad one. The low level swirling of dancing dust-djin lasted less than an hour. Nevertheless, the wind still whipped up blinding sand and dirt. The men hurried to the packs and sledges drawn by the asses to seize tenting so the travelers could all hide behind and under cloth of some kind.

  Marai ordered everyone to huddle down behind flapping tent edges until the howling wind died down. His arms stretched out over the women’s backs and he whispered for them to keep their faces covered until it was over. Even with all of his care, Naibe-Ellit managed to slip away from the others. When the air and sand cleared and a gentle, moist mist showered down on the crowd, Marai knew she was missing.

  The shepherd was frantic. He wondered what under heaven could have made the young woman lose her wits so badly that she would abandon their strong arms and run away. Rounding up the men to comb every shrub or nearby pile of rock, he found her off to one side of the main group, behind a clump of grass.

  She cro
uched in a ball, wide eyed and frozen like a terrified child. Her lower lip sucked in and out. She tried to speak, but the fear of the howling of wind ripped only stifled sobs from her throat. Marai hoisted her like a child and ran to a slight rocky pile by the side of the road. He vaulted the rock and settled quickly behind it. Once Marai and the young woman were out of the way of the waning storm, he hugged her tightly.

  “Thank goddess!” he cried. “Why did you run, sweet one? We had you!”

  Her wide gold and brown eyes saw far beyond the shepherd or anything of earth. She sat transfixed on a horror only she could know. It was useless to ask her.

  “The wind is gone now...See?” Marai gave her an extra little affectionate squeeze and stood. Some of Aruat’s family members were dusting the larger tent and wadding it back into the ropes around the sledge.

  Deka paced back and forth in front of the asses like a caged lion as the tenting was being re-lashed. Above the dark veil she wrapped around her face to keep out the sand, Marai noticed her wild and rolling eyes. Even though he never tried to touch her, she shrugged him away. Her slim shoulders bounced as if they were animated in a strange and twitchy dance.

  “Something is looking to see where we are...do you hear it? Do you, Man-Sun?” She gasped, unable to mask the terror in her own voice. “It knows us...” She hissed, as Marai put Naibe-Ellit down with Ariennu and mouthed Don’t move! He caught the dark-skinned woman in his arms to stop her eerie prancing.

  “What’s all this? It’s just a little wind blowing the sand around...You two have lived in the wilderness long enough to know that!” He snapped, staring at Naibe and Deka, almost disgusted and certainly embarrassed that they had become so upset over a natural and quite regular occurrence. True, it had come out of nowhere and it had been the only wind they had encountered on their way to Kemet, but it certainly wasn’t a demon or djin trolling for them.

  A veil of sensibility drew over Deka’s face. She turned from him, calmed herself, and went about the business of inspecting the goods they had personally brought for wind damage. Her thoughts rang clearly enough: Although she didn’t seem upset to anyone else, Marai heard her thoughts quite clearly.