Opener of the Sky

by Mary R Woldering

  Marai first thought his and Wserkaf’s talking and then their use of the Child Stones to seek his wives must have awakened the young man from a sound slumber. Then, he remembered a woman had crept from the man’s apartment to meet a lover and then had returned just before Wserkaf left.

  We woke you, Wse and I, but you slept through your wife betraying you. Marai grumbled to himself, truly disgusted at what he sensed. If you knew what I suspect, you’d want me to stay and tell you everything instead of pushing me on. Such courtesy! If you weren’t the only legacy of my father’s clan, I wouldn’t have even thought of coming back here. It’s too bad I need a place to rest.

  Marai remembered an old tradition from the wilderness that could ease this awkward greeting.

  He has no idea. Probably wasn’t taught a thing, the sojourner chided himself. I should just move on and sleep in someone’s booth until first light. He turned toward the young man with his palms upward while he remained seated at the well, then swept one hand to his sash to indicate to the young man that he had no weapon. The young man didn’t react.

  Marai understood why.

  A stone. He sensed the fingers of Djerah’s right hand stretched around a sizeable chunk of brick. He’d brought it with him when he came out to see who was gathering at the well at such an hour.

  Good. Protect the family, though they don’t deserve your care.

  He saw the young man freeze, consider the gesture, then step back and look away, shivering a little.

  Well. You recognized something, didn’t you? he thought. The sojourner allowed the congenial flash of silver and the strange light it produced show in his eyes. Djerah, heir of the sons of Ahu, Marai’s thought voice whispered the music of tales Djerah’s elders told him as he grew up in the wilderness. With every shred of my weary spirit, know I speak the truth and mean no harm, Marai pushed the almost musical sound of sand crushing beneath straw or leather booted feet through his thoughts. He projected images of wide open spaces, free air, the thrill of the approach of a caravan filled with trade goods and weary travelers, all eager for water, and shaded rest.

  The young man who stood slightly behind him had never known these things, but Marai knew he had heard the stories. If the thoughts he sent came through as illustrations to those often told tales, Marai knew the man might not feel so ill at ease.

  Marai yawned, wondering how much longer he was going to be able to stay awake. Maybe the utterance he was supposed to whisper as part of the resurrection had been wrong. Maybe I forgot something, the black water of the well invited him to succumb.

  Come, a sweet yet almost evil voice whispered

  I sit, I wait at the still water in the Land that Loves Silence

  My heart longs to calm itself

  Its search gone

  Its truth and the blood realized.

  Its oath remembered and understood.

  “Deka,” Marai put his head down again, feeling waves of nausea moving through his entire frame. His tremors had come back. For an instant, the visions passed through his thoughts and overwhelmed the new reality of near collapse at the well. His hand steadied his body on the edge wide brick surround. Deka’s face melted into Naibe’s face and Ariennu’s countenance as they became one bone face streaked with tears. “Come back to me,” He whispered at the faces fading in the water.

  “You have a fever,” the stonecutter backed away, worried.

  Marai weakly raised his hand for him to wait.

  The young man moved toward him again. “The woman, Deka, from far upriver. I heard you say her name. She’s not here. The others aren’t either. I told you that a moment ago. I thought you had begun to rave…” Djerah explained.

  “It’s the poison. The priests got me to drink it as part of a ritual.” Marai realized he was gasping for breath in fatigue and dizziness. “I only came back to hide another night; to sleep the rest of it off. This was the only place on this side I knew. If I can get to the roof without falling off the footholds…” The sojourner’s glance focused down into the flat undisturbed black of the water in the well that had been alive with visions and voices when Wserkaf had been there earlier. He felt himself starting to sway.

  “I told Etum Addi you had no business running after these madmen. You can never trust them. We work on their buildings and that’s fine. We march with them for the militia. We draw a wage – all these are good things. To go chasing after their secret knowings and ways? That’s sheer idiocy,” Djerah rocked leg to leg then stretched a little as he let go of the brick. “I heard your wives complain over that plenty. They didn’t want you to go either. What were you thinking? When the men came with the Inspector and got them, we all assumed you met up with them and were living over there working for them. Did you not find each other?”

  Sheb… He scolds like Sheb. Marai gestured lamely for the man to sit with him on the edge of the well. It’s like all the years have melted away and it’s Sheb talking to me of why I have to come with him and my sister to Ineb Hedj. Marai hoped the stonecutter had inherited his sister Houra’s sense of pity for helpless things and would help him get to a safe hiding place before he passed out in the courtyard. It would be dawn soon. Merchants would be trying to set up for the day.

  Someone was moving around in the lower apartment. The stonecutter cast a glance backward at a young woman holding a fussing infant in her arms at their doorway.

  “It’s nothing, MaMa,” he called affectionately and almost shyly then returned to his conversation. “My wife, Raawa, and my new son, Sheb bin Djerah.”

  “That tradition you keep well, Djerah,” Marai nodded. “Good health to the boy and all of your seed.” He smiled his way through an old blessing, even more disheartened by the thought that this young man didn’t even realize the division in his own house. So life goes on, he sighed.

  “When you have no true home, all you have is tradition.” The young man shrugged; his smile almost cryptic. “Men of the Sin will always wander. My grandfather used to say that.”

  True, Marai thought. Father Ahu wandered our ragged young tribe of brothers and cousins and their wives from Akkad, to the Shinar; all the way to the heights and valleys of the Sangir lands and back again before finding a place on the slopes of the Sin-Ai. We’ll always be a black headed people who wander looking to a prophet or plenty, warring and conquering… always divided.

  “So… Djerah is your name. Is your father...?” Marai began, barely able to keep coherent. He bowed his head and shut his eyes, then tried to ignore the sparkling random red and green patterns dancing before them.

  Djerah squinted, shuddering as if he’d suddenly felt some eerie disturbance, then answered. “Dead? Yes, Lord of all. We’re a people of widows and fatherless boys. Savta’s man Sheb died before I was born. Tisehe did live long, as did my own father Esai, but only because the fever made them unfit for other work. In the end they became weak as old women and we cared for them until they were gone from us. I was a little one, but I remember them. Even my poor Raawa’s two sisters are widows.”

  Marai held up his forefingers vertically… a sign for ‘Wait…’

  “Arrah! You must have been half-killed by those priests. You’re speaking Kemet now,” Djerah mused. “A moment before, I was struggling with the Kina words coming from your head.” The young man continued.

  Marai felt his head snap out a quick nod. He rubbed his arms, trying to stay awake a little longer. He was fading again. Djerah was still talking, but his words were as understandable in the sojourner’s ears as the gibberish of chattering monkeys. He began to regret finding his young descendent and wished for a moment that he had known of a different place to stay.

  “I shouldn’t trust you, but if you stay out here, as overwrought as you are, anyone might seize you. There will be peacekeepers here at dawn,” the young man continued.

  Marai startled convulsively as the stoneworker seized and tried to lift him, albeit clumsily.

  “Come on. Up you go. Damn… heavy…” the
stone cutter grunted in surprise as Marai stumbled onto him. “I’ll put you upstairs where you used to live overnight, but you’ll need to be gone as soon as you’ve rested.” He took a quick, deep breath, set his shoulders and back so he could support the big man, then quietly led him to the upper apartment Marai had not so long ago known as his own.

  CHAPTER 7: PEACEKEEPERS AND PLANS

  Marai was asleep almost before he stretched out on the pile of rags covering the floor in the rear his former apartment. At one time, the raised brick part in the back held baskets of everyone’s personal possessions and four mats: one for himself and three for his wives. The dark wool fabric, threadbare in places, had been repaired with enough tiny patches, stitched again and again, that it made the musty fabric feel soft. He didn’t even notice the cloud of dust that rose from the ragging as he fell on it.

  In a short while he felt his spirit rise from his sleeping body and soar up across the black river. He saw Prince Wserkaf get out of his wooden boat and whisper the words ‘Until now’ over the men who had ferried them across in secrecy. For a short while, he watched the scene unfold:

  The men blinked and roused themselves.

  “What was that?” one asked.

  “Did his Highness ever get here?” asked another.

  The third looked at an empty jar of beer.

  “Damned stuff must have been a higher grade to put us to sleep in the middle of the game,” he inspected the board and saw that the senet pieces were still in place.

  “Ay,” the first shook his head. “Good thing His Highness didn’t come here, after all. If he had caught us asleep…”

  Marai laughed weakly in his journey and focused on his friend Prince Wserkaf. The man had done an exceptional job on his end of the utterance for the boatmen to forget, even resorting to obscuring his own hasty departure. Some servants were there to greet the Inspector at the broken gate where, in anger, Marai had taken the form of an enraged bull-man and shredded it the night before.

  He sensed Prince Wserkaf speaking to them briefly as he went inside to gather some items then hurry on in the quickly-lightening dawn. By evening, the priest would be sequestered in the House of Life. Wserkaf would know, for whatever good it would do him, if Hordjedtef had poisoned the king.

  Marai, in his spirit form, made a little gesture like a salute and sent a sad thought.

  Peace, friend. I am well. Be wondrous; be effective today.

  At some point in his slumber, the sojourner shifted. Turning over until he lay flat on his back in the darkened room, he drifted again.

  Light streamed in through the remains of the old travel tent Ari had fashioned into a drape to cover Deka’s window. Marai knew she wasn’t there. None of the women were there. The apartment where he had lived was now an empty storage bin, full of dusty scrap and rag. By this time every morning, he knew the courtyard below should have been bustling with women cooking and men trundling out wares for sale, but the sojourner heard only guarded whispers outside. He noticed some more dusty cloth and wool ends scattered about him, as if someone had made a clumsy attempt to hide him under some of it. The sudden sound of movement outside the curtained entry door riveted his attention. Djerah glanced inside the drapery, but before Marai called out a greeting, the young man hushed him and darted inside with a clay jar.

  “What’s going on?” Marai yawned and stretched a little.

  “Shhh. Don’t talk, and above all don’t go to the rail to piss. Here. Use this.” The stonecutter cautioned, jamming his finger into his lips while his big guest eased himself to his feet to use the jar. Marai glanced sidelong at his host.

  “Someone looking for me out there?” he asked.

  “In full force,” Djerah whispered. “Peacekeepers have been through here twice daily, but we told them this room was a women’s private space for the families in the courtyard and that a woman with a fever was resting here. We covered you up. Yah, be merciful, they didn’t check.” Djerah indicated the rags on the floor as he took the jar from Marai and turned go down the steps and behind the two-level building to empty it.

  Marai watched him go, musing over the god name the young man had used. Iah is the moon god here. Yaweh-Sin is a moon god in the Sin-Ai. Makes sense he would call his god Yah. Peacekeepers doing searches, though. Wonder if the old man cracked Wserkaf’s secrets. If he did, I need to get moving as soon as I can, day or night. He stretched and began to go through the cleansing routine he had learned from the priests when he had studied across the river. Not much left of Hordjedtef’s poison today. Just a little ache. Now, I just need food.

  While Marai waited for the young man’s return, the absolute quiet of the market gnawed at him. He wanted to pull back the heavy drape over the window and peer out to see how everything below looked by day since three months had passed.

  Memories of his life as a merchant returned for a sorrowful moment. Nothing, not even the splendor of the Children of Stone’s vessel, had compared to waking in the morning with the women smiling and laughing around him. He recalled for just a moment the joy of snuggling Naibe, Ari, and Deka before they started their day of selling spices and date candy in Etum Addi’s stand below.

  That life’s gone and I need to be gone from here with it. Marai knew his ability to sense thoughts was once again at full strength. The markets would be closed today out of respect for the king’s death. Those who lived here would be in their homes contemplating his new journey and sharing stories of his greatness. Hordjedtef might still not know I’m alive if he’s been taken up with the death of his king and all initial rituals of passage. Wserkaf won’t have told anyone a thing if he still values his life. The sojourner nodded as Djerah crept back into the upper room with a plate of bread, a crunchy piece of dried fish and a bloated skin of some ‘windwater’ beer.

  “How long did I sleep? Is it just the next morning?” Marai guarded the volume of his voice.

  Djerah shook his head, then looked over his shoulder at the sound of the rising chatter below. Deciding it was a neighbor and not a peacekeeper, the young man whispered: “You’ve been asleep two nights and the day in between.”

  “Really?” Marai’s jaw sagged. Children knocked me out for a little more repair? That was risky. Any longer and they would have thought I died and buried me again. He understood why he was burning with hunger and reached for the food the young man had brought.

  As if the young man sensed Marai’s thought, he added.

  “It’s good you did wake up. Some of my family wanted me to wake you or decide you had left us and to tell the peacekeepers that you died of a plague, but I saw you didn’t stink or swell in this heat. King’s men have been here too often these two days. I haven’t seen the patrols prowl like this since your women were fetched and old Etum Addi and his family were pushed out. Are you a criminal?” he squatted before his guest and tore off some of the bread he had given the sojourner for himself.

  Marai sipped as little of the beer as he could tolerate, wanting to spit but not daring to be rude.

  Oh, this is nasty stuff. His women don’t flavor this with honey or dates to sweeten it? Guess I was spoiled with wine and sweetwater across the river. He thought of Deka’s sweet honey beer. Even in the wilderness, years ago, Houra knew how to make a decent grain beer. She should have passed on the recipe. This is awful.

  “So what do the Peacekeepers ask? I can’t think they are looking for me,” he paused when the young man didn’t answer him but ate a little more of his own portion of bread. He was about to ask again, but realized Djerah was getting increasingly uncomfortable talking to him and was worried about another pass by the patrol.

  “So three days later and you’re not back at work?” He tried. “How did the workers get the news of the King’s death?” Marai sensed Djerah was sociable when he wasn’t feeling threatened so he decided his best tactic for getting more information would be to get the young man to talk about his own life. At that point, as he had learned first from Naibe and ironically la
ter from Prince Hordjedtef, he could see into someone’s secrets.

  “They came early to us three mornings ago, just as we began the day shift. It was right before you came here. I think we were the first to hear about it,” the young man’s voice paused, suddenly full of emotion.

  Marai saw through Djerah’s memory of the moment almost instantly. The young stonecutter, had been riding with his team on a platform that was being hoisted by a crane. As the men moved up, Marai noticed more men on the ground gathering for an announcement made by a detachment of peacekeepers and militia.

  Djerah had been adjusting the sweat rag over his eyes when he saw everyone suddenly stop work. He didn’t wait for the men with him. Telling them he would see what was going on, he detached the leather harness that tethered his hoist gear to the platform and slid to the nearest level below the one where he had been stationed. After a series of maneuvers, he reached the ground and joined the growing crowd as they listened to the sad news.

  Marai saw that the grief of the working men was profound. Men and women milled for a moment, some crying out as if they had lost their own father.

  “When they told us, I knew work would stop for a day or two. I asked to go with the king’s men to the other side of the river to help spread the news. I’m to go back in the morning. For three days, no one is to open their shops except for the sellers of grain and oil.” The young man continued whispering in low tones, still uncertain if he was going to be heard by anyone passing below the big upper window. “We’re to go to the water only in the morning for those needs. Just this morning they came to tell us we could also fish or trap eels. I got a good sized perch and gutted it. Raawa is pressing cheese from the goat milk she strained the other day.” Djerah listened for more suspicious sounds. “Today, most of us are going to the waterfront to see the boats in some of the processions, then we will get into the reeds to find eggs.” He paused, remembering something. “You didn’t give me an answer, either… about you being a marked man. I don’t want you staying here another moment if lots are drawn on your head. I have a family.”