Reflections in the Nile

by J. Suzanne Frank

  The air was suddenly filled with static electricity, and Sennedjm broke off in the middle of a story to look to the east, where everyone else's scrutiny was fixed. Thut stood before them all, the papyrus scroll from Pharaoh still in his hands. The brittle yellow sky was obscured by a large metallic-looking cloud, so dense and so huge that it became like twilight. Chloe stood rock still, head craning back to see into it. Cheftu moved closer to her, his body tense, his expression somber. The wind picked up, blowing away the broken trees, causing kilts to fly into the air and wigs to fly off. And blowing the papyrus from Thut's hand.

  The group hurried under the protection of the portico and continued to watch. The wind began to blow away bits of the cloud, and a loud buzzing replaced the roar of the storm. Thut alone stood in the garden, his golden collar and wig gone, his legs apart in a soldier's stance, holding out against the buffeting of the gale.

  The cloud began to fall. It was raining locusts! Chloe screamed as they hit the ground, their bodies clinking with the impact. They were huge. Chloe had seen locusts before, had even eaten them on a dare. These, however, were enormous!

  Locusts were part of the grasshopper family, she remembered built with the same powerful legs and colored green, gold and brown. Instead of the usual two-inch grasshopper, however, these suckers were three to five inches long and striped black and yellow. Already they were stripping the ground of its grass, in a low roar of chewing. Thousands had fallen and were marching, militarily, across the garden, devouring every living thing in sight.

  It was like watching a color film fade to black and white.

  Cheftu looked over to Chloe, his jaw set and his lips in a thin line. She saw pity and regret in his golden glare. People scattered back to their apartments, and even Thut retreated to the portico. More locusts fell every minute, marching over each other, charging to the greenery, climbing up walls to eat the remaining vines, covering the trees, tearing away the protective bark, and eating the fresh green leaves. Chloe felt sick.

  Cheftu had moved to Thut's side. The prince was staring out at a brown, useless garden, and the locusts marched into another garden.

  “My Majesty,” Cheftu began, and Thut jerked toward him. He didn't even know we were here, Chloe thought. “Should you not go inside, Prince?” Cheftu asked.

  Thut's elongated brows drew together. “Nay. I will take my chariot and go to the fields. We must see the level of destruction in Egypt.” Cheftu bowed and turned, as Chloe heard Thut say under his breath, “Since we are responsible for it.”

  Others had not prepared their quarters for the locusts, so Chloe and Cheftu spent most of the day going into different apartments, sealing off the windows and passages and then assigning slaves to kill the remaining locusts. They were especially hard to kill, their bodies seemingly encased in armor. Eventually they were destroyed, and the inhabitants were ordered not to unseal the spaces. The weather was not cooperating. It was unbearably hot and dry, and by nightfall everyone's nerves were on edge.

  Word got round that Thut had spent the day in the locust rain, traveling through the delta to see the destruction. He sent couriers down the Nile to intercept Hatshepsut, living for ever!—everywhere, it seemed, there were locusts. When Thut got back he had gone silently to his apartments and dismissed all his retainers.

  CHAPTER 12

  When the sun the rose the next morning, Cheftu was gone. Chloe dragged out of bed and walked into the receiving room. He was kneeling by the garden door, patching the drying mud bricks in the doorway. A high squeal came from outside. She put her hands to her ears. “What is that?”

  “The locusts. They shriek in the sunlight.” He pointed to the table. “Put the wax in your ears.”

  After kneading the greasy tallow between her fingers, Chloe filled her ears; the annoying locust ringing ceased, but she was still able to feel the vibrations from millions of locusts. She put on her sandals and stepped into the corridor. It was filled with migrating locusts. Gritting her teeth, she stepped down, crunching some of the locusts to mush, while others walked across the tops of her feet. By the time she reached the kitchens, food was the last thing she was interested in, but she wanted to see exactly what they were going to eat. A few slaves moved about in the outer courtyard, the honeycomb-shaped ovens belching smoke and the aroma of fresh bread.

  The cook was surprised to see a noblewoman but seemed to appreciate the effort since she was so shortstaffed. Everyone was deaf with wax, so they communicated by sign language. Chloe was a little disconcerted to see one of the slaves shoveling in locusts to be used as fuel. She took several loaves of bread in her covered basket and a pitcher of milk. By the time she got back to the apartments, the top of the milk was full of locusts.

  I wouldn't mind them so much, she thought, if they just wouldn't fly at me and spit on me. Walking across the garden was like something from Hitchcock film. All around was the sound and a million echoes of chewing, biting, tearing, and destroying. Her sheath was covered with bugs, and she had to hold back screams as they crawled up her legs beneath her skirt and inside her linen wrap.

  When she reached the hallway, she shook off and stomped the locusts on her person, skimmed out the milk-covered, locusts, shook locusts out of her hair and dress, and stepped inside. Most of the morning was gone, and so were Cheftu and Ehuru. Chloe lit one of the smoking torches and seated herself, putting her feet upon the stool opposite and wrapping her skirt tightly around her legs. She tore off a hunk of bread and ate it, then poured some of the warm milk in a glass but couldn't drink any more after spitting out a spare locust leg.

  The locusts were working against the soft mud brick, and Chloe saw in the torchlight that it wouldn't hold much longer. Despairing, she went into the bedroom—crunch, stomp, crunch—and retrieved her lousy excuse for a notebook.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to picture the nightmare outside. The recently budded trees were bare below their bark, the walls were naked, and locusts clogged the pools. She recalled the resigned terror on the faces of those few people she had seen.

  The light gutted in its holder, leaving Chloe in tomblike darkness. Swearing, she slipped on her sandals and stifled a scream as her foot touched one of the locusts, then moved slowly toward the torches. They were all used, their oil gone, leaving a dry, straw-textured club. She peered in the direction of the garden gate, trying to discern any light through the cracks, but she couldn't see any. Surely I didn't sketch away the whole day, she thought. However, it seemed more and more likely.

  She shuffled toward the hallway door, gritting her teeth at the flutter and brush of wings and legs of the disturbed locusts. Upon reaching it, she yanked it open and stared into the dimly lit depths. She pulled a lump of wax from her ears. Blessed quiet! One torch glowed at the far end, and Chloe saw the starless night beyond. What I wouldn't give for a watch, she thought. Though I'd prefer a cigarette or even a decent pencil!

  Turning away from her unproductive thinking, she looked up and down the corridor, but there was no sign of life anywhere, unless you counted the millions of bulging-eyed eating machines scattered the length and breadth of Egypt. She walked outside—crunch, grind, pop. Her gown was spattered with the spit of the locusts, the brown stains looking like blood in the feeble light. Shuddering, she drew her arms close and looked around.

  The destruction was staggering. The topography was flat; every tree and bush that had stood was now level with the ground. Then Chloe heard the low buzzing roar of the creatures eating. She brushed them off her face and arms and looked back to the palace for signs of habitation. It was mostly dark, and Chloe wondered if the people had just gone to bed or gone to their town homes or country villas until this was over.

  Mechanically picking the bugs off her body and clothing, she walked back to her rooms, taking the torch and the spare that was kept behind the holder. Once inside she threw away the milk, which had curdled in the stuffy heat, squashed more bugs, and settled down to more bread, some locust-skimmed water, and a nig
ht of drawing.

  When she sat up and stretched at dawn, Cheftu had still not returned. Where the hell was he? She refilled her jug of water, locust free thanks to the expedient of covering it, and munched on the stale bread. Peeking outside, she saw the sun had risen and was already burning high and bright. She withdrew at the light and at the sight of the many locusts still gnawing away at what was left of the vegetation. She plugged her ears again. Exhausted, she stumbled over locusts to the couch, fanning the sheets to make sure they were clean, or at least locust free, and lay down, falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  She jumped when she felt the touch on her elbow and turned over to see Cheftu's servant, Ehuru. “By the gods! What happened to you?” He was blackened with smoke, his eyes red and bleary, and he had vicious-looking burns on his hands and arms. His eyebrows had singed off, and Chloe saw for the first time that he was shaven headed, having lost his wig at some point.

  He gave a sketchy reduction of his usual bow and said in a rasping voice, “We have been seeing to the Apiru all night, my lady. My Lord Cheftu was concerned you would worry and sent me to check on you.”

  Chloe got up and forced him to lie down. “Rest just for a moment,” she said, overriding his protests.

  “On my master's couch? It is unthinkable, my lady!”

  “Ehuru, do it. It is my order.”

  “My lady, I—”

  “Ehuru!”

  “This is for you, my lady,” he finally said, handing her a papyrus scroll before his eyes closed and his low snoring filled the room.

  Stepping into the main room, she broke the Oryx nome seal and read the hieratic scrawl. “Beloved—there has been a fire, many are wounded. I am sorry to leave you but must assist all I can. I shall return to you, keep faith this will not last long.” Then, instead of his name, he had signed in fluid, flowing script, “Francois.” Chloe smiled as she traced the letters with her fingertip, the locusts forgotten momentarily as she remembered his lovemaking.

  However, if her nineteenth-century-ancient Egyptian composite husband expected her to just keep the home fires burning until the men returned home, he was in for a shock. Fires were disasters. Misplaced and hungry people, disorganization, and chaos were her specialty. Cheftu would be dealing with the victims, but who would help the confused survivors?

  Chloe smiled to herself. I'm the up-and-coming Red Cross—no, make that Red Ankh —brigade. Would Cheftu like this? No. Would Ehuru let her come back? No. Would that matter? Chloe twisted her—RaEm's—ankh necklace. No.

  Actually, Ehuru wasn't nearly as difficult to badger as Chloe had expected. He didn't think the burned village was a place for “my lady,” but his eyes filled with tears when he admitted that aye, the Apiru did need help.

  They left in the afternoon, a horrifying, post-Apocalyptic walk. No greenery remained anywhere. Stubs that were once trees bristled obscenely from nude, dusty soil. Locusts covered the sides of buildings, eating vines and flowers, staining everything tobacco brown. The beautiful whitewashed buildings, clean and neat even among the rekkit, were discolored hovels.

  The sky, a brassy, alien blue, seemed harsh above the moving, living black-and-yellow earth. Chloe wept, her lips compressed to avoid the odd, flying locust.

  Doggedly they kept walking, stomping and crushing the bugs, staining their feet and ankles with locust innards, like a macabre vintners’ dance. She was certain her legs were numb, for even those bugs that crawled up her dress she blithely brushed aside. Praise HatHor she had fashioned a tight, impenetrable diaper.

  They arrived after atmu, and Chloe gasped when she saw the village. It was like an El Greco: eerie gray smoke against the night, tortured figures, and unholy, glowing flames in the distance.

  Cheftu and Meneptah had set up a makeshift surgery in a tent to the side of the remaining house. Light glowed behind the smoke-stained flax curtain, and locusts moved on the outside, weighing down the fabric.

  Lying on the locust-covered ground were bodies. “They are laid out in family groups,” Ehuru said, his voice flat.

  Chloe was grateful for the darkness, though the white glow of bare bone and the horrifying stillness were graphic enough testimony to the deaths. The stink of burned flesh hung like a mournful cloud over the smoldering remains, and Chloe's stomach was empty before they stepped into the square.

  The survivors clustered here. Those too weak to live had been given painkillers and waited to die, to meet their jealous God. Those who were relatively unscathed sat in shock, staring. The slaves had no organization: water sat in jugs a hand's reach from those dying of thirst.

  Everywhere, covering everything, were locusts. They buried the dead, they poisoned the wounded, and they crawled on the living.

  It was the closest thing to hell that Chloe could imagine. She felt scared and sick and wished violently that she'd never come. “The well is filled with locusts,” Ehuru said. “We cannot get to the water.”

  “My lady?” The harsh voice, tear filled and vaguely feminine, halted Chloe. She scanned through the darkness, the lumps of flesh moving and still.

  “D'vorah?”

  The Israelite girl stepped forward, and Chloe stifled a shriek. She had been badly burned; her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes were gone, leaving crusted dark wounds, a gruesome relief on the girl's sooty face. Her hands were bandaged, yet she smiled, her lips cracked and bleeding. “Why have you come, my lady? This is no place for you!”

  Chloe bit her lip to hide her revulsion. Medicine had never been appealing—she hadn't even been able to carve open her frog in junior high biology. Even cuts and bruises on her own body seemed foreign and horrible. It had taken three tries before she'd completed her first-aid training, and even then she'd been sick afterward. However, this was D'vorah, the young woman who had been with her through the miscarriage. The one who had held her hand when Chloe had spontaneously burst into tears. It wasn't just a sick, scabbed, wounded person. It was a friend.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, Chloe hugged her gingerly, feeling D'vorah's delicate bones beneath parchment-dry skin. The girl sobbed, racking sounds that led to globs of black phlegm bubbling through her lips. Chloe was pinned between pity and horror. “How is your family?”

  “Gone, my lady. All gone.”

  They sank onto the locust-covered ground, the wails of mourning blending with the low drone of destruction. Chloe held the girl, listening. To save their master's fields from the locusts, for he was a good man, the Apiru had started fires, using smoke as a deterrent. The foreman was gone, but it was a typical choice to make in a locust storm.

  It had worked well until the wind had suddenly shifted. Within moments the mud-brick village with its dried reed roofs had burst into flame.

  “I was sleeping downstairs,” D'vorah said. “With the children—Ari, who is five, and Lina, who is eight.” She put a blistered hand to her mouth. “They never even awoke!” She coughed again, and Chloe winced at the dark blood mixed in with the black mucus.

  “A popping sound woke me.” She crossed her arms on her knees, watching the locusts climb up her burned hands. “I carried the children to the window, but I could not put them through! It was too high, and I was too weak.”

  D'vorah said that while she had stood there, trying to fit her smoke-dead siblings through the clerestory window, the roof had crashed in, raining molten brick and the scorched bodies of her parents and older siblings.

  Meneptah had been outside and had battered the windowsill and dragged D'vorah through, but not before a jar had exploded, inflaming her hair and scorching her face.

  Chloe rocked the burned girl in her arms, caressing her shoulders, picking the locusts off her burns.

  “Lady RaEm?”

  Chloe opened her eyes to see a black figure bent over her in the dawn. She and D'vorah were lying together, arms around each other. Chloe twisted her body, protecting the girl. “What do you want?” she snapped, half-asleep and scared.

  The man stepped back hastily, cr
ossing his chest. “It is Meneptah, my la—”

  “Meneptah! I am so sorry! Please, I was asleep. Come, see D'vorah.”

  The Israelite bent over the sleeping girl. His hands were clean, the only part of him not black with soot. His touch was painstakingly gentle, reverent, and when Chloe looked at his face, the expression in his eyes, she doubted D'vorah would be without a family for long. She slipped away, seeing the destruction for the first time.

  It had been a much larger village than the one in which they were married. Forty, maybe fifty two-story homes had clustered around dirt tracks all leading to the center well and the square.

  Nothing but the shack at the end, where Cheftu's surgery was, still stood. Charred squares and rectangles were all that remained of street after street of homes. How many people had there been? How many had survived?

  The sun was already hot on Chloe's neck, and she couldn't fathom the agony for those who were burned. Shelter, water, and food were what these people needed.

  She needed Ehuru. She needed some slaves. Chloe bit her lip, wanting to see Cheftu but afraid to disturb him. His work was saving lives; she could wait.

  Chloe recruited five Apiru women, grieving and in need of a task, and sent them to the palace in the care of Ehuru.

  While they were gone, she and three teenage boys who were hurt, but not badly, proceeded to clean out the well, taking turns going inside to sift out buckets of locusts. Chloe was convinced that at least forty thousand locusts had fallen in the well. It was horrible, the dank, clammy darkness, the crawling bugs, grabbing handfuls of piled and drowned locust bodies, and throwing them in the buckets to be hauled up.

  When the well was clean enough—in other words, only thirty percent locusts—Chloe instructed the returned women to weave a linen well covering from the palace sheets.