CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

by Mike Allen

  “Dawn is near,” he said—a fact she knew as well or better than he, but he did not have the tone of one lecturing. Rather he seemed to acknowledge the intrusion of his presence. “When it has passed, I hope you will spare me your time.”

  Nefret’s voice came out smoothly from her newly-wetted throat, not its usual dry rasp. “I have no blessing to give.”

  “I do not seek your blessing.”

  She scowled. “I will not marry you, either.”

  “I do not seek your hand.”

  “What, then?”

  The lines of his face settled in the pre-dawn light. “Your knowledge.”

  She stared for a moment, curious against her will. But the sun drew near; she had no time to spare for him. Nefret turned away and climbed the rocks, greeting Hathirekhmet from the pinnacle, basking in this, the goddess’ gentlest touch. Soon enough heat would scorch the water from her, as she hunted lizards to eat.

  When she descended, the man was still there, patient as stone. “I know nothing,” Nefret said, and picked up several likely rocks.

  “You know something shared only by a four-year-old girl in a temple,” the man said. “You know Hathirekhmet.”

  Nefret’s fingers curled around a sharp-edged fragment of flint. “I knew her,” she answered, voice roughening to harshness. “She is gone from me now.”

  The man nodded. “And that makes you unique. Nineteen years ago, I tried to find her who had been Hathirekhmet, only to discover she had been sold into marriage, to a husband who let her speak to no other. She is dead now, in childbirth. Eleven years ago, I tried again, only to discover she who had been Hathirekhmet hanged herself from her father’s great loom. She, too, is dead. There is only you, who understands the goddess better than any man or woman living—who understands, but is herself. I cannot ask these questions of Hathirekhmet. I ask them of you.” He paused, still seated on his rock. “If you will let me.”

  The stone hung heavy in her hand. The man’s eyes rested unwavering on her—on her, Nefret. Who was once a goddess, and for that he valued her. But not like the man Merentari would have sold her to. Her worth lay in what she kept, not what she had lost.

  “Ask,” she said.

  The man stood and bowed his gratitude. “Then I will begin. Of temple life, I have heard; I know the ceremonies and indulgences, the luxury in which the goddess’ avatar lives. But only you can tell me: what is the divine presence like?”

  The stone fell from Nefret’s limp fingers, thudding into the dust. Staring unseen into the brightening sky, she whispered, “I cannot remember.”

  * * *

  It was the truth no one spoke, and Sekhaf believed her. In the early years, Hathirekhmet dwelt often in the body of her avatar, but as the child grew the goddess came less and less. She still performed the ceremonies, for they had merit even if the divine presence was not in her; the avatar was the conduit from earth to heaven.

  But as Hathirekhmet retreated, the priests began their search for the new vessel. Nefret had not felt the goddess’ touch for a year before she left.

  Sekhaf sat by as Nefret sliced open the belly of a lizard and said, “Why? Why does she leave?”

  He was a philosopher, and did not ask out of cruelty. He had been with her among the rocks for several days now, carefully probing, shifting between topics arcane and obvious, questioning everything. Nefret licked the blood from her fingers and answered him. “Amuthamse. A woman is of the river’s world, not the desert, and Amuthamse is friend to Hathirekhmet’s brother the moon. Once we begin to bleed, we are no longer fit for her presence.”

  “But you said she leaves earlier, sometimes.”

  Six months after the last visitation, Nefret had bled for the first time. She had no such name to give herself on that day; the avatar thought of herself as Hathirekhmet, even when the divine presence was not in her. She knew no other identity. But Hathirekhmet did not bleed; Nefret did. She had stayed longer than most, the priests said, her voice remaining high and clear, her skin unblemished, her limbs slender—a far cry from her appearance now. Most girls lost Hathirekhmet sooner, before they ever bled.

  “She can sense Amuthamse’s approach,” Nefret said; it was the answer the priests gave. She could feel Sekhaf’s dissatisfaction with it. He loved the purity of thought, the clean lines of truth. Anything blurry or untidy displeased him.

  No one at the temple thought as he did. They had their scriptures and their answers; they had rituals to carry out, ceremonies to conduct, comforting patterns to shape their lives. None of them had Sekhaf’s restless, questioning mind. Nefret did not blame them; she had not questioned, either. Not until the philosopher came.

  And his presence, which she had feared would distract her, honed the blade of her own thoughts. If Nefret tested her body less often against the sun, she tested her mind more, contemplating the nature of Hathirekhmet. When Sekhaf went to the village for food, she meditated in silence; when he returned, she had new answers for him, new fragments of memory dredged up from the forgotten corners of the past.

  In the desert, there was no time. The rains fell in the mountains and brought the river’s flood, Amuthamse’s bounty for mankind; Nefret knew nothing of it. The villagers left their offerings and she ignored them, fish bones drying to glass in the sun.

  Other men came.

  One by one, following word of Sekhaf. Philosophers, men of the mind instead of the temple, their fingers stained from scribing. Some, meaning well, tried to hunt lizards for Nefret, so she might spend more time in thought. Sekhaf taught them better. They waited with patience as she dug out scorpions; they trailed after her in silence as she walked the rounds of her rocks, bare feet hard and cracked as horn against the stone. They did not lust after her, as that man had in Merentari’s house; one might as soon lust after the desert. But they asked her questions, and listened when she answered.

  “They say it is because we cannot draw near Hathirekhmet ourselves,” Nefret said, breaking a new flint to use for butchering lizards. Her hands had turned into bony, calloused things, strong as old leather. The sun warmed her filthy hair. “The ancient priests built a pyramid that reached up to the very sky, seeking the goddess, and were burnt when they climbed to the top. Ordinary people cannot bear her presence and live.”

  Men both older and younger deferred to Sekhaf here; they spoke among themselves, but only he spoke to Nefret. He said, “But the perfection of her avatars protects them?”

  “Imperfections are flaws that can break the vessel,” Nefret said, cracking a clean face off the flint. Pottery would be more appropriate, but she had no pots out here. “I do not think that is why she takes avatars, though.”

  The philosopher thought about it. One of the younger men murmured to him, and Sekhaf nodded. “They allow us to experience the divine presence safely. Yet why should that matter to Hathirekhmet? She is the sun’s hammer, the desert wind; humans are not meant to be close to such.”

  Nefret tested the edge of her flint with her thumb, feeling it press against her calloused skin. “It is not for us. It is for her, for the goddess—so she may experience the world without destroying it. That is what I think.”

  Why else should the avatar live so lavishly? She ate foods sweet and spicy, had garments of smooth linen and supple leather and delicate fur. It was a feast of the senses, for one who otherwise could never know such. If the sun descended to earth, she would burn it to a cinder. Hathirekhmet chose avatars because she was curious about the world she saw so far beneath.

  Nefret sometimes wondered if the goddess did not envy Amuthamse, who enjoyed all the earth’s bounty without fear.

  The men whispered to each other, voices rising in excitement. Sekhaf clapped his hands, sharply, and they ceased. “We distract her with our chatter,” he said. “Nefret, our thanks. You have given us much to think about. We will return tomorrow.”

  She rose from her crouch, feeling the flex and contraction of her wiry muscles. A body, imperfect as avatars never wer
e. Yet if the goddess sought sensation, why choose only the slender, the unblemished, the young? There was a whole world of experience, and Hathirekhmet felt only the merest sliver of it. “No,” Nefret said. “I will spend tomorrow in contemplation. When I am ready, I will leave a sign for you.”

  A lizard skull, placed at the foot of the path leading up to her shelter. Nefret had demanded solitude before. Sekhaf bowed. “As you wish.”

  The others began climbing down the rocks, talking more loudly as they went. Sekhaf stayed, hesitating, until they were well away, and he and Nefret stood alone atop the flint-littered plateau. “You have my thanks as well,” he said. Startled, she found herself wondering how long ago the others had come—how long it had been since they were just two, the philosopher and the young woman who was once a goddess. “I came to you hoping to understand something I could never experience for myself. I know now the impossibility of that—but you have given me something far greater. You may not be holy, as Khapep was. But you, Nefret, have wisdom no priest or scripture could ever grant. The world beyond this place will benefit from that wisdom for ages to come.”

  She blinked eyes dried by sun and wind. That men had come to debate these questions, she knew; she had never thought beyond that. What did the priests think of this woman in the desert, who spoke so familiarly of Hathirekhmet? Did they revere her, as the villagers did? Fear her? Dismiss her as a simple madwoman?

  Nefret might have thought herself mad, were it not for Sekhaf. He saw wisdom in her words. But if it was there, they had created it together, questions and answers dancing around and ever nearer to the truth.

  He bowed and left her, climbing down the rocks after his companions, and not until he was gone did she whisper “thank you” in reply.

  * * *

  She greeted the dawn from the pinnacle of her rocks, as she had for countless days.

  The soft breeze of morning blew over her skin, bringing warmth to banish the night’s bitter chill. Soon it would be heat, punishing and fierce, growing through the day, until at last the sun retreated, and night claimed the desert once more.

  Nefret understood that cycle as well as she did her own body. She knew Hathirekhmet’s shifting arc through the sky, and the way the wind answered it; she knew the textures of limestone and flint and the restless dance of the sand.

  She knew the seventeen perfections had nothing to do with any of it.

  Oh, the priests did not deceive. Those were the sign of Hathirekmet’s choice—but the priests mistook the sign for the cause. That certainty had grown in Nefret’s heart through all the long debates with the philosophers. The goddess did not occupy a body because it had skin of a particular shade, or a voice of a particular timbre.

  If that was not what drew her to a body, then it followed that the loss of those perfections was not why she left.

  Something else drove the goddess from her avatars.

  This was the question upon which Nefret fixed her mind. She put aside all other thoughts—lizards and scorpions, Sekhaf and the philosophers, Merentari and the man who would have bought her. Nothing but Hathirekhmet. She sat under the eye of the sun, not moving, letting the wind scour her dry. She had drunk no water since the previous dawn, and would drink none until the sun set tonight. She did not seek death—not as she once thought she did—but she seared all the river’s gift from herself, the better to know Hathirekhmet. To know the answer to this one question: why the goddess had left.

  The sun beat more strongly upon her with every passing moment. She felt the sweat dry upon her skin, until no more came; she heard the pounding of her own heart, marking the incremental movement of the sun.

  And she remembered.

  The presence she had gradually lost. The blazing glory of Hathirekhmet, pitiless as stone, but not cruel; cruelty implied a desire for suffering in others. Hathirekhmet did not desire. She simply was. And to pour a fragment of herself into an avatar was to be as she otherwise could not be, to feel and see a world otherwise distant to her.

  The luxury was the doing of the priests, because they thought the goddess wished it. They honored the one they believed Hathirekhmet’s gift to them, thinking it the respectful thing to do.

  They did not understand. And Nefret had not, either.

  She remembered that blazing presence, annihilating all other thought. As a child it had been easy: she lived in the moment, thinking neither of past nor future. She was Hathirekhmet. But as she grew, she changed; thoughts entered her head and did not leave. Dislike of one temple maiden, amusement at an elderly priest. Curiosity about a story from the scriptures. Ideas and feelings, which had to be pushed aside to make room for Hathirekhmet. It grew harder and harder, and the goddess came more rarely.

  Because she could not be both Hathirekhmet and herself.

  Understanding swirled through the reeling dizziness of her head. The goddess chose children because they were unformed, empty—vessels she could fill. Life was the imperfection, the cracks through which the world entered, changing little girls into young women. And day by day, year by year, the avatars pushed the goddess out to make room for themselves.

  Which meant she could reverse it. The sun’s hammer beat upon her, seeking entrance. All she had to do was step aside, and let the goddess in.

  Let go of Nefret, and become Hathirekhmet again.

  Then the goddess could experience something new: a grown body, twisted hard by the desert; a life austere instead of luxurious. Her skin pulsed, a fragile barrier between humanity and divinity. It was easy. Simple. The kind of pure answer Sekhaf sought.

  Sekhaf.

  She held in the palm of her hand all the things that barred Hathirekhmet from her. All the other thoughts, all the desires and annoyances and knowledge, all the things he called her wisdom. All the things that brought the philosophers to her desert refuge, that fueled their debates in the long heat of day.

  Everything that made her who she was.

  She could regain what she had lost—by losing what she had gained.

  Once, she would have found it no choice at all. Nefret had nothing; Hathirekhmet, everything. But in her seeking, she had found another life. One of lizards and scorpions, a muddy spring and a hard bed, and questions always to be answered. It was not the life she had known in the temple, but it was hers.

  Hers. Not Hathirekhmet’s.

  I was once a goddess. Now I am myself. And myself I shall remain.

  Nefret curled her hands around herself, filled her mind with thoughts of life—and bid Hathirekhmet farewell.

  * * *

  She awoke to stone, rough under her cheek and hand.

  Nefret opened eyes that felt dry as dust. She knew without thinking that it was sunset, heat slipping quickly from the air, familiar shadows consuming the world around her.

  One shadow was out of place.

  She spoke, and the word went little further than her lips. “Sekhaf.”

  He heard her anyway, or perhaps just saw her move. The philosopher rose from hiding and came to her side, shame-faced. “I should not have disturbed you,” he said. “But I watched from below, and saw you collapse. And I thought—”

  For once he did not share his thought. He did not have to. Nefret reached out, and he gave her the skin bag at his side. She drank greedily, tasting the leather, letting water spill over her cheeks and chin.

  When at last she stopped, he asked quietly, “Did you find your answer?”

  The one she had sought, and more besides. Hathirekhmet bore her no grudge for her choice; a grudge implied desire, and Hathirekhmet desired nothing. Not as a human might.

  Not as Nefret desired the life she had chosen to keep.

  “I found myself,” she said. “That is answer enough.”

  She could feel Sekhaf’s dissatisfaction with it. But that was all right. It was one of Sekhaf’s favorite sayings, that questions bred answers, and answers, more questions; he would ask her more before long.

  Together they would create wisdom, a new u
nderstanding of the goddess. And the time had come, Nefret thought, for that wisdom to go beyond this desert refuge, into the world without. To the priests, and the temple, and the little girl who was Hathirekhmet, who someday would become someone else.

  When she did, Nefret would be there to greet her.

  ANGEL DUST

  Ian McHugh

  It was a day when autumn’s bitter rain swept in off the strait. It rinsed the filth from the streets and beat against the black tower that rose from the heart of the city’s sprawl.

  In the plaza before the tower’s gate, a pair of statues stood on man-high plinths, rendered from the same black stone as the tower and overgrown with climbing briars. A female figure and a male, they wore the long-bodied forms of the race of Avalae, the city’s first masters, and had the high-domed skulls and small round ears, set low behind the jaw, distinctive of that vanquished folk. The statues reached, left-handed, towards each other, as though they longed to cross the space between, their unseeing gazes locked together. The woman’s outstretched arm ended in a stump above the wrist.

  Being statues, they were inert and unknowing, but had they ears to hear, they would have known the cry of dismay that arose from the ghettos below.

  The angel was returned.

  Always in the past, the angel’s homecoming had been greeted with joy, and the ears of the city dwellers had pricked up to listen for the strident chorus of the returning songships. But on this day, as copper sunshine found the gap between horizon and clouds, there arose no triumphant song from the harbour. Had the statues eyes that saw and legs of muscle and sinew to walk among the people, they would have seen the faces that turned up and watched the angel’s passage, tight with worry, and they would have marked his course, erratic as a butterfly’s, the beat of his grey swan wings laboured and inconstant.