Daughter of the Falcon God

by Mark Gajewski

  “Then everything for the harvest festival is in order.” Kakhent leaned back on his stool with a contented sigh.

  “Menna told Ahaneith last night that his people will celebrate with us, even though their harvest is weeks from being complete,” Aya said.

  “Good. Sit. Rest.” Kakhent tilted his head towards an earthenware jar of milk freshly filled propped beside him. “Drink.”

  Aya poured a cup and sat cross–legged beside Kakhent and quickly gulped half the liquid down. She was thirsty. The sun was an hour or so above the western horizon, its slanting rays turning the savannah and the stubble–covered fields along the shore to gold, glinting on the wind–roughened surface of the lake. She’d been hard at work since sunup overseeing preparations for tomorrow’s festival. After making such arrangements for half her life she knew exactly what Kakhent expected, and unlike the first few times none of the women disputed her commands anymore. Everything was being done quickly and smoothly and with a minimal amount of grumbling. Takhat was overseeing the roasting and boiling of various cuts of beef over a fire in front of Hannu’s hut. Just a few hours ago Iuput had brought a cow into camp from the herd, tied its legs, flipped it onto its back, then slit its throat. Ahaneith had caught the blood in several jars and Kakhent’s sons had then butchered the animal. Pageti and Kheti and Tiy had gathered its fat and sealed it inside earthenware jars; it would be used for weeks to come in cooking. Not far from the fire Iuput was now chipping arrowheads out of flint cobbles Aya had gathered on the delta ridge as she was returning from the river. Some of the younger girls were lugging baskets of fruit and tubers – bulrush, clubgrass, various sedges – that were nearly as big as they were and placing them beside those filled with emmer and barley that Aya had already arranged. Several girls were carefully placing eggs in an earthenware container; they’d gathered them from the ducks and geese the band kept in a pen east of camp.

  The harvest had been exceptional. The offerings to the falcon god would reflect that fact. Every extra basket in camp had been called into service to store the massive yield, one that had far exceeded Kakhent’s expectations and had, to Aya’s chagrin, closely matched Qen’s prediction. It seemed he actually could determine how much grain could be harvested from a field just by looking at it. Hannu had already constructed two new storage bins at the end of the row upon the crest of the ridge to hold the glut of emmer and barley. Aya recalled the week–long threshing that had followed the harvest – Iuput walking cattle over the grain spread on the flat threshing floor near camp, she and the other women scraping the trod–upon grains and husks into large flat baskets and tossing their contents into the air, separating the grain from the chaff. She still recalled the choking dust, the white clouds rising and drifting away, the singing of girls who urged them on, the patiently–treading animals. She recalled plunging into the lake each night, washing the grit out of every pore and from her hair. Threshing was her least favorite activity, but one that she, as the band’s primary woman, could not escape.

  Ahaneith crouched a few steps away from Takhat, mixing the ingredients for several varieties of bread, assisted by Pageti. Aya could sense their excitement. They were, like the rest of the band’s girls, looking forward to the festival and the chance to mix openly with the boys in Meru’s band who were interested in them. Today Aya had seen more than one girl, between chores, trying on her finest loincloth and necklaces and bracelets and arranging her hair in preparation for the festivities, including her oldest daughter and sister. Many had gathered armfuls of sweetly scented flowers from the savannah and marsh to tuck behind their ears; some had even woven garlands to drape around their necks or press on their brows.

  Aya caught sight of Qen limping towards Kakhent’s fire, a rough reed basket tucked under his left arm, a leather pouch hung over a shoulder, his right hand working his staff. No doubt he was bringing offerings for the festival. His presence in her camp was not unusual anymore; ever since the start of the harvest he’d visited several evenings each week and spent hours talking with her before Kakhent’s fire about the growing of emmer and barley and management of the herds. In fact, he showed more interest in agriculture than any man in Kakhent’s band ever had. If Aya had known less about Qen’s deviousness he might have won her over, for he always welcomed her comments and insights, something Kakhent and her father and the rest of the family heads rarely did. Qen’s burgeoning interest in her people’s way of life did give Aya hope that he might be coming to accept the premise that his band should take up farming and herding. Kakhent shared that assessment. So whenever Qen visited, Aya made sure to be present, to feed him and keep his cup filled with beer. She hid her distaste and suspicion and did her best to make him feel welcome, part of her plan to sway him to see the world as her people did so that he might in turn convince Meru. Though she still did not trust Qen or his motives. Her sense of unease increased whenever he was around. It was infuriating, really, to need him as an ally, to actually like him in some ways, but to be totally unsure of him.

  As usual, Qen greeted Kakhent, who warmly invited him to sit.

  “The beer jar is nearly empty,” Kakhent told Aya. “Bring a new one.”

  She crossed the open area before the hut to the jar of beer she’d brewed yesterday. She retrieved it and returned to Kakhent and filled his and Qen’s cups. She resumed her former seat, took up clothing that needed to be mended, got to work. That’s how she usually spent her evenings, doing chores near the fire. Most of the time she told her daughters stories as they worked beside her, passing on the tales of their maternal and fraternal ancestors. Every few days the other women joined them for an hour so Aya could assign them tasks that would benefit the entire band.

  Night was beginning to fall and Pageti appeared with a few sticks of tamarisk. She placed them on the fire, which soon flared and began to dance. Then she noticed Qen and with a glad cry dashed straight to him and hugged his knees and then plopped down at his feet.

  “What did you bring me?” she asked eagerly, craning her neck and looking up at him.

  To Aya’s surprise and chagrin, Pageti and Betrest had immediately taken to Qen on his very first visit to Kakhent’s camp. They liked him, accepted him at face value. And Aya could tell he truly liked them. He’d never once ignored them as their own half–brothers and father did, but always made an effort to converse and seemed interested in what they had to say. Often he’d remained beside the fire long after Kakhent had retired for the night and regaled them with stories of his travels and the lands he’d seen. Aya herself had been caught up in his tales more than once, though she tried never to let on. Qen had recently taken to bringing the girls small trinkets on every visit, so that now her daughters expected them.

  Qen pulled a large object from his leather pouch and handed it to Pageti. “It’s a model of the reed boat I’m going to build after the harvest, so I can fish in deep water. I designed it myself. You and your sister can play with it in the lake. It floats.”

  Pageti held it up with both hands, twirled around. “Look, Mother!” she cried.

  Aya’s heart skipped a beat. She’d seen the boat before. In the falcon god’s dream. With her seated on its deck, surrounded by four daughters, holding an infant son in her arms. With the hand of a man she loved resting on her shoulder. “It’s beautiful,” she managed to croak. Her eyes sought Qen. She couldn’t help staring. Was he the man in her dream? No – that was impossible. In his presence she felt none of the happiness and contentment she’d felt in her dream. Besides, Aya was promised to Meru. If the boat in her dream was actually Qen’s, then he’d likely be steering it or poling it along, not standing beside her. He couldn’t be the man who’d give her a son. That had to be Meru. But Aya didn’t feel happy or content around him either. And in love? Never. But if the boat was real, the rest of the dream had to be too. Was the man on the boat Meru, or Qen, or someone else entirely? Aya was suddenly so confused she couldn’t think straight.

  She turned her attention to
the boat. It was simple yet extremely elegant. The model was two feet long, made of many small reeds assembled into bundles and neatly tied together. It was wide in the center and tapered at each end, a departure from the squared–off simple raft that Qen had been using to travel the river when he first encountered Aya. And unlike that flat boat, each end of this one swung upwards gracefully, like a papyrus stalk topped with flowers, towering high over the deck.

  “When I’m on the water and the wind’s at my back, I’ll raise bunches of palm fronds in the bow and the wind will push me along,” Qen said. “It’ll be like flying.”

  “Will you take me?” Pageti asked hopefully.

  “You, your sisters, your mother, your father, your friends,” Qen promised. “The real one will be almost thirty feet long.”

  Again, consistent with the falcon god’s dream.

  “How did you come to be a boat builder, Qen?” Kakhent asked, taking the model from Pageti, studying it closely.

  “I slow everyone down on land, Patriarch. But with a boat…. no one can keep up with me,” he replied. “Boat building lets me help my people in ways I otherwise couldn’t.”

  “How did it happen, Qen, your leg?” Pageti asked innocently.

  “Pageti!” Aya said, mortified. She turned to Qen. “I apologize… Pageti doesn’t know better than to ask such a question. You don’t have to answer.”

  Qen smiled, reached down and tousled Pageti’s hair. “I was six years old,” he said matter–of–factly. “I was on a small reed boat, a raft, really, in the middle of the river, fishing with my father and sister. Semat was five at the time. A crocodile swam from a patch of reeds. We didn’t see him until it was too late. I stumbled and fell overboard, then tried to swim to shore. He caught my leg in his mouth, ripped it open with his teeth.”

  “How did you get away?” Pageti asked, wide–eyed.

  “My father said he stabbed the crocodile in the eye with a bident,” Qen answered. He bent close to Pageti, winked. “But I think the crocodile didn’t like how I tasted, so he spit me out.”

  Pageti giggled.

  “Run along now,” Aya said. “Go show your boat to Betrest.”

  Pageti jumped up. She took the model back from her father. “I’m going to take it to the lake this very night. Thank you, Qen.” Then she dashed off.

  “I’m sorry, Qen,” Aya said sincerely. “She didn’t know not to ask.”

  “I really don’t mind. I’m sure people wonder.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  He nodded. “I nearly died. Many wished I had, then and since.” His eyes strayed to Aya’s, then he quickly looked away. “My band had to stay at our campsite an extra month because of me that year, lost valuable gleaning time. Many went hungry.”

  “A problem your people wouldn’t have if they grew emmer and barley,” Aya interjected.

  “A good point. Ever since my accident, because of my leg, I haven’t been able to pull my weight as a hunter. And I slow everyone down when we travel.”

  “There’s more to life than hunting,” Kakhent said ruefully. It still galled him, Aya knew, that he’d had to give it up.

  “I know that better than anyone. Actually, my leg’s forced me to compensate for my weakness, to develop other talents to make myself useful to my people.”

  “None of them seem to care,” Aya observed.

  Qen addressed her, a bit bitterly. “You’re right. They don’t.” He turned his attention to the basket he’d carried with him. “More offerings are on the way from my camp,” he informed Kakhent.

  Kakhent nodded.

  “What’s going to happen tomorrow?” Qen asked.

  “Aya’s in charge,” Kakhent said. “Aya, you tell him.”

  “At midday we’ll feast,” she responded. “Then there’ll be a series of games and contests – running races, swimming races, wrestling, target shooting, and finally a tug of war between the boys and men of each band.”

  “My chance to shine,” Qen said self–deprecatingly.

  Kakhent chuckled.

  Aya felt the slightest bit of sympathy for Qen. Everyone looked forward to festivals and the chance to compete and show their prowess. Except for Kakhent, Qen would be the only man in either band who wouldn’t participate tomorrow. For the first time, she considered how hard it must be to live with a disability like his. But then she remembered she didn’t like him at all, and perhaps the gods didn’t either. Otherwise, why would they have let him be mangled so? Maybe they’d caused him to fall into the river because he’d offended them. Likely he was getting what he deserved. “There’ll be more food after sunset,” Aya continued. “At moonrise Kakhent and I will present offerings to the falcon god on our people’s behalf.”

  “My people don’t know your falcon god,” Qen informed them.

  “You don’t need him, because you simply glean what the river and savannah provide,” Kakhent observed. “You don’t plant a crop, nor do you reap what you sowed. But we do. And so we implore the god to make our grain grow in abundance before we start planting, and then we thank him after we harvest it.”

  “What gods do you worship?” Aya asked, curious.

  “The goddess who swallows the sun each night and spits it out each morning,” Qen replied. “The god of the hunt, whom we believe takes the form of a wild bull. The god of the inundation. The goddess who protects women during childbirth, as well as small children. And several more who watch over the lands along the sea.”

  “We too worship the goddess of the sun,” Aya said, “and the goddess of fertility and childbirth, and the cow–faced goddess who protects our herds. The old tales say the crocodile god watches over this lake – in fact, that he created the world here. But for my people, all those gods stand second to the falcon god.”

  “Why is it that our gods are different, do you suppose?” Qen asked Kakhent.

  “All people create the gods they believe will protect them and maintain order in their lives,” Kakhent replied. “According to the stories passed down from our ancestors, the world itself was created in perfect order. Despite forces that try to destroy that order, the gods have maintained its perfection. The proof of that is in the great repetitive cycles we see all around us every day.”

  “Repetitive?”

  “Like the sun returning to the sky each morning, and the inundation returning at the same time each year,” Aya said. “And grain rising from the mud left behind. And rains coming each year to make the savannah bloom.”

  Kakhent nodded. “All of us fear the unusual or unpredictable, Qen, for they introduce chaos into our world. Chaos breeds fear. So we beseech our gods to shield us from chaos. We beseech them to maintain order.”

  “Just as we count on patriarchs to do.”

  “Yes. That is my task, and Meru’s.”

  Qen pondered for a moment. “My band leaves the valley when the inundation starts and follows game across the savannah for the next seven months. Then we return to the valley and move between the same five campsites for the next five months. That is our order.”

  Aya leaned forward. “Planting changed our established order, which was once exactly like yours, Qen. It created a new one for us. Part of my band leaves the valley for three months after we plant our emmer and barley, to graze our animals in the valley. The rest stay. Then we return from the river and conduct our harvest and live in the same place for nine months. That is our order.”

  “When your father challenged your old order and adopted herding and planting – weren’t your people afraid, Patriarch?” Qen asked.

  “Of course. We had to take what the people we found dying on the savannah said about the advantages of farming on faith. I won’t mislead you – for many years it was very difficult for my people to live the new lifestyle. We had to learn how to plant, when to plant, how to care for our crop, how to survive drought and pests. The same with animals. We had to learn how to be tied to one place, how to manage the local sources of food so we didn’t exhaust
them. It wasn’t until Aya discovered the lake country that we found land that truly met our needs, let us flourish as farmers and herders.”

  “Your band only has to look at ours to see an example of a successful transition,” Aya said. “You require no leap of faith.”

  “True. But to follow an example, one must seek an example,” Qen said bluntly. “I fear no one in my band will. Certainly not Meru.”

  “He has no curiosity about the way we live our lives?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  Aya couldn’t help concluding that Meru’s lack of interest meant that he intended to leave the lake after he was joined to her. That was bad news indeed.

  “Well, all it takes is one person to press for change,” Kakhent admonished.

  “Like your father?”

  “Or you.”

  Qen shook his head. “I’ve told you before, I can’t openly try to convince my people of anything, Patriarch.”

  “Does that mean you have something to convince them of in private?” Aya pressed.

  Qen smiled. “After considerable thought, I’ve come to see things your way. How you live is better than ours. I admit it.” He shrugged. “But even working behind the scenes, I fear I’ll do you little good.”

  “Your people would really settle here at the lake but continue to glean wild grasses instead of planting emmer, Qen, or leave the lake altogether?” Aya probed. She shook her head. “They’d willingly remain barbarians?”

  Iuput stepped into the ring of firelight before Qen could answer. He halted before Kakhent and Aya, unfolded a strip of leather that he supported with his palms. A dozen newly–made arrowheads rested on it, each flaked from honey–colored flint, with a v–shaped point at its top and two elegantly curved tangs at its bottom, with measured rows of tiny chips along the very sharp cutting edges. “Offerings for tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll add them to the collection of flint knives and scrapers and sickle blades, and the bone harpoons I’ve made.”