The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  Quietly, she slid out of her husband’s embrace. He curled into the place she’d just been. Leaving her sandals, she moved to the front of the house and opened the curtain. The avenue outside was so quiet. A cat scurried away at her appearance, its eyes shining with glassy moonlight. She inhaled the scent of the desert, the dying fire smoke, the distant river.

  The truth about the gods was about to be erased.

  The gods and goddesses of the past still lingered, even though no one living remembered life before the Romans came, before her people were told what to believe. For over a hundred years the native people had not been able to openly worship as they once did, for fear of punishment or death. Some, however, still traded whispered stories and prayers. These few braved entrance into the old temples under cover of curiosity, in order to worship in secret. Some had been caught. Some had not.

  Now they couldn’t even do that. Perhaps the emperor had finally grown tired of finding offerings at the feet of gods and goddesses that were not his own.

  The Romans’ god didn’t stir Ramsesh’s heart the way Isis did.

  Ramsesh stepped out of the house and turned her face to the stars. There glowed Isis in sparkling light form—the eye of the dog sitting at the heel of her hunter-husband Osiris.

  Never had the stars felt so far away. Did Isis know she was about to be abandoned? Would her star fade into the night sky if no one believed in her anymore? Would all the gods’ stars wink out once their followers died?

  If she’d had children, she would’ve taught them about Isis, regardless of the emperor’s decree. In secret, she would’ve guided their chubby little hands as they drew the ancient texts and spoke the words of prayer.

  She slid her fingers over her flat, empty belly. For reasons known only to the goddess, Isis had not granted her prayers for fertility. Forgiveness and understanding for this had been a difficult journey. But she still had Amonteh, despite everything, and that had to be enough.

  “What are you doing out here?” Amonteh’s soft voice parted the wind.

  She turned, her hands dropping to her sides. But he saw where she had been touching herself and his eyes saddened.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, to cover the horrible silence. “I wanted to see the stars.”

  “Come back to bed.” He stretched out a brown hand with such grace, and she let him pull her back into their modest home.

  “I am so sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry I never gave you a child.”

  He took her in his arms and surrounded her with his scent, his warmth, the familiar feel of his skin. She pressed her face to his smooth chest and listened to the perfect rhythm of his heart. He stroked her braids from the roots to the ends dangling at her waist.

  When she pulled away, all she saw was the cold, hard birthing box in the corner near the door, forever void of life. Neither of them had had the heart to dismantle it, always praying. Always hoping.

  Amonteh had sacrificed everything for her, including a life of some privilege, and while he always called her foolish for thinking of her infertility too often, she knew it made him sad to be reminded of what they did not have.

  “Why do you say that? Why are you thinking of this now, in the middle of the night?”

  Strangely, there were no tears. “Because if we had children, we could teach them about Isis and Osiris and Horus. Tell them the truth about the world and the deities who rule it. We could let Isis live on.”

  “She still has you. And me. We will still be with her in the afterlife. I believe that.”

  “You’re right, my husband. She does have me. But does she know it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t abandon her. I just can’t leave the temples cold and forgotten. What will happen?”

  He traced her hairline with a finger. “I don’t know.”

  She squared her shoulders. “I do. I know. Isis needs to know she’ll not be forgotten. She needs to know it tonight. Before her temple is desecrated like the others all up and down the river. Before they turn her place into something it isn’t.” On the shelf sat a heel of bread, hardened but still palatable. She held it up. “I will take Isis hetep. A final offering.”

  He stared. “Tonight? Now?”

  Warmth bloomed in her barren belly. “Yes, yes. While the centurions are asleep.”

  “No.” He moved between her and the curtain. “No, it’s too dangerous.”

  She placed a hand on his head. The thick smoothness of his hair never failed to make her smile. It still felt as it had when they were children, though she’d plucked the first strand of silver from it not a few days past, and they’d both had a laugh because he was so young.

  “Then stay here and draw prayers for me.” She glanced at the basket in the corner that held parchment and ink pots from when they scribed prayers and tales in secret, then burned the papyrus before anyone might see. “If I’m not back by morning, tell anyone who might ask that I went to visit my mother.”

  It was partly true; she’d long looked to Isis as her mother. Anyone who might ask would not know the extent of the lie.

  “No. I’m not letting you go.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes with such a plea that it made the bread tumble from her hands. Above everything, he was the most important part of her. She pulled him close and kissed him.

  She let him lead her back to the reed mat. Under the linen sheath he fitted his body to hers. He kissed the soft place behind her ear. Though it made her eyes close with the burn of love, it wasn’t she who fell asleep so quickly.

  #

  It was easier to slip away the second time. Amonteh’s breathing turned deep and regular, and she knew he wouldn’t wake until morning.

  She didn’t want to disobey her husband, but the need to step foot on Philae Island burned too strongly. She’d go and return before the Roman centurions stirred and Amonteh opened his eyes to the birth of Re.

  The bread heel still lay in the dirt near the cooking pit. She lodged it between her breasts then wrapped the beaded shirt she was to have traded around her waist. Over everything she draped a clean sheath, tightening the strings. Once outside, she laced up her sandals and ran with a whisper down the dark passages, toward the river.

  Two ferrymen rowed boats across the river to the temple islands. What they would do to earn their living after tomorrow, she didn’t know. One of the ferrymen bowed to the Romans and attended their church regularly. Even if he only pressed his hands together to avoid the lash, she couldn’t trust him tonight.

  The other ferryman had arrived in their village shortly after the annual floods. Rumor claimed he had come from Nubt, after the Romans had destroyed the local temple to Seth. Why a follower of Seth chose to come to Philae, to the place of Seth’s enemy—Isis—she couldn’t guess. The villagers murmured that this ferryman did not sleep, but kept vigil for Seth day and night. That frightened some people.

  Tonight, it gave Ramsesh hope.

  If he still followed the old ways, he would tell no one of his midnight sojourn across the waters.

  He lived in a room set on stilts above the water, his long boat tied to a pole below. The waves toyed with his craft, pulling it north. Toward the sea. Away from Egypt and the Romans’ presence.

  A pale light burned in his window. She raised her hand to slap the door, but it opened before she could make a sound.

  Hundreds of trips between the village and the island temples under the unforgiving sun had severely lined the ferryman’s face. His thick black hair hung tangled to his elbows. His stare snagged her like a hook. He looked not at her, but into her. Without modesty, without respect.

  “Everything is different now.” His shoulder twitched under a ragged robe. He blinked rapidly and she could smell his rancid stench from five paces. “Nothing will ever be the same.”

  She should have expected senselessness from one of Seth’s followers. Anyone who worshiped the god of chaos above others was bound to not be of straight mind.


  Still, he was her only chance, because she didn’t dare attempt this during daylight tomorrow. With a shaking hand, she removed the beaded shirt from her cloak. “Please. I ask you to take me to Philae. Right now.”

  The way he smiled made her shiver—an animal baring its teeth to its prey. Without a word, he snatched the shirt. As he clutched the shirt to his chest she noticed he wore identical rings on his thumb and forefinger, hammered with the likeness of Seth: a frightening beast head atop a man’s strong body. He clicked them together, again and again.

  The ferryman eyed her, his head weaving from side to side. He seemed to be…taking her measure. The course of his gaze felt slick and awful, and she almost turned and ran back home, when he whispered, “Isis will like you. Yes. She will. This is good.”

  He waved Ramsesh toward his boat, taking up the heavy oar with little effort, despite the fact he was a man smaller than Amonteh and didn’t look particularly strong. Hand on the rope knot tethering the boat to the pole, he gestured to the seat in the bow.

  He had the shirt now—the one she’d spent days carefully beading—and she was still clutching the bread heel. She couldn’t turn back now.

  The slow river current helped to guide the craft toward Philae. As he rowed, the ferryman’s eyes burned into her back.

  “What is your name?” The sound of his eager voice startled her, and though she opened her mouth, it was too dry to speak. “Your name,” he pressed.

  She licked her lips and swallowed. “Ramsesh,” she replied before thinking she probably shouldn’t give it to him. “And yours?”

  “I am Tuthotsut.”

  Knowing that eased her, though only a bit. She knew his name now. They weren’t entirely strangers.

  “You go to the island because you believe,” he said. “She will like that. Yes.”

  His tone made her shiver and she turned around in the seat to look at him. “Yes, I believe.” She looked pointedly at his rings. “As do you.”

  She wondered why a ferryman would own such fine pieces. Had he robbed a tomb?

  The boat rocked past the isle of Biga, and Ramsesh glanced up at the arched tomb of Osiris, which had already been partially converted into a church. That place had already gone dark to her. Philae, and Philae alone, drew her attention.

  How long had it been since she’d last walked on Isis’s island? Since before she and Amonteh had been married. At least ten years, then. She’d gone with her mother.

  She remembered the first time she’d noticed the temples as a very young girl. The questions she’d asked her mother and father had started them whispering stories about the old gods to her before she’d fallen sleep. Because of her curiosity, they’d instructed her in the hidden prayers, the secret worship. And she’d believed.

  Now she was about to visit again. For the final time.

  As they drew closer, Philae’s structures loomed as heavy, shadowed mountains that blocked out the stars. Isis’s temple had been constructed in the center of the island, with smaller temples and places of worship to other gods scattered around the island’s perimeter. Two giant pylons—thick, flat walls carved in relief, the ends angled in and reaching up to the sky—marked where Isis took worship. The majestic, intimidating sight drew Ramsesh’s stare.

  Tuthotsut pulled the boat down the western edge of the island, along the walls rising from the water and past the graded nilometer once used by the priests who lived on Philae to gauge the river’s level. A colonnade stretched from the southern entrance of Isis’s temple to the tip of the island. There the land sloped enough to allow Tuthotsut to ground the boat and let her disembark.

  A breeze circled down from the temple and fluttered her braids. It told her welcome.

  “I will wait here.”

  She turned at the gritty sound of the ferryman’s voice. He looked not at her, but up at the ancient stone structures. His eyes glittered with madness and she shivered again. She hurried away from him, splashing to shore. As soon as she was out of his sight, she calmed.

  The last time she’d been here she’d walked with tinier feet, yet the walk down the length of the colonnade now seemed to last a lifetime and the great pylons at the end a destination too far to ever reach. But she did reach it, and as the moonlight washed over their surface, she saw the first of many monsters.

  The faces of the gods had been destroyed.

  The stone statues, even the relief carvings, had been defaced, the mouths and heads chipped at until they were no longer recognizable. A deep sorrow demanded she kneel before each of them, assuage them, but time and worry forced her feet onward and closer to Isis’s temple.

  How else would the Romans destroy this sacred place? What more could they do? Would they dismantle the temples stone by stone and throw them into the river? Would they eventually decide that old structures weren’t good enough for their god?

  She passed beneath the first pylon. There, next to the colonnaded birth house, she got her answer. Foundation stones—cut from the same golden rock her ancestors had used for Isis’s place of worship—outlined the footprint of a new building. The church.

  There was no time to delay, but she hesitated to enter the temple proper. She was dirty and unkempt, and she and Amonteh had recently lain together. She wasn’t shaven or oiled. She hadn’t been purified before coming here.

  But she was a believer. That had to be enough.

  As she walked under the second pylon, she imagined what this place must have been like generations ago, before the omnipresence of centurions. She pictured the scurry of worshippers and priests, the hum of prayers, the scritch scritch of quills upon papyrus.

  A forest of painted columns made up the temple courtyard. Once their colors had been bright and dreamlike. Now they were sentries guarding the past. Only they’d been recently defeated, and they now hung their heads in shame.

  Beyond the courtyard lay the inner shrine, the home of Isis. The stone figure of the beautiful goddess stood at the back, and tears filled Ramsesh’s eyes as she approached it.

  Someone had chipped off Isis’s face. Dirt and dust hugged the crevices of her body. No one had been here in years to wash the effigy. The statue’s clothing and jewelry had long since disappeared. They were probably in Rome, sitting forgotten in the emperor’s coffers.

  She and Amonteh hadn’t voiced the phrases of greeting and offering in a long time for fear of being heard, but standing there now, she opened her mouth and said them. Once the first words came out, others followed so quickly and easily that she couldn’t stop herself. Love filled her body as the prayers poured from her lips. The memory of her mother’s voice, teaching the prayers to her youngest child, constricted her heart.

  She removed the bread from between her breasts and placed it at Isis’s feet. Dropping to her knees, Ramsesh lifted her face to gaze into the holes where Isis’s eyes should have been.

  She told Isis about the first day she’d held a quill, how she’d learned to transform her devotion into written form. How she’d taught Amonteh to scribe as well, and how they still did it, burning the papyrus afterward. How she still saw Isis’s magic every day. How she didn’t blame Isis for not giving her a child, and how Isis’s love kept her and Amonteh together even after their families had abandoned them in the face of infertility.

  She told Isis that her heart belonged to the past, not to the present or the future. She told Isis she was beautiful and that the goddess still gave her hope.

  The space around the effigy shivered. Waves of crystal wind sloughed off the stone.

  My child. My daughter.

  Isis’s carved lips didn’t move, but her whisper slithered to the corners of the shrine. Ramsesh fell backward into the dust, awe and wonder and doubt filling her body. Was it truly the goddess speaking to her?

  You are the only one who came back. When Re is reborn and his light shines upon the valley, I shall be forgotten.

  Ramsesh breathed in and out. In and out. Yes, it was Isis. Speaking to her. She could feel t
he goddess’s voice on her skin, in her blood. She gathered her courage and replied, “Never. You will never be forgotten.”

  If my effigy is removed from this temple, I fear something far greater than neglect will come to pass.

  “The Romans.” She shook her head in anger and frustration.

  No. My brother, my enemy.

  Though her body went still with eerie cold, her thoughts drifted to the ferryman and his rings of devotion. “Seth.”

  He and I are part of this world. We have fates, like you, designed since Geb and Nut gave us life. We have a beginning and we have an end, like you. The world is a circle. The time of Seth and Isis and Osiris has passed. But it will come again.

  Ramsesh was still reeling from the sound of Isis’s voice within her mind, but she gathered her thoughts and pieced together the goddess’s meaning. “When? When will it come again?”

  A very long time from now, when the world will not be as it is now.

  Tears pressed against her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  You do not have to, my daughter. I know my fate. I have accepted it. But Seth has not. He is angry at those who have turned his followers against him. He wants vengeance against those who have disregarded him. He wants to remain in his place. He wants to be worshipped.

  She gasped, fearful. “What will he do?”

  He wants my power of life, of healing. He wants to possess the opposite of his own abilities. When he has taken it, he will be both chaos and stability, death and life. He will hold complete control and no one will be able to ignore him. He will then shape himself into a new god and challenge those whose beliefs have turned against him.

  “A new god?” She tasted dirt as her fingers came to her mouth.

  He will bring death and chaos to the world. More than has ever been witnessed before, in any war. When it grows into its most terrible, assuming its most hopeless state, he will wield the power of life he stole from me and watch as the people bow to him as savior. They will not know they kneel before the very being that tried to destroy them.