“Betrest’s bread,” Aya corrected.
Her daughter smiled proudly.
After breakfast Kakhent took up his tamarisk crook and affixed his bull’s tail to his waist and seated himself in the shade of a palm tree not far from his hut and prepared to receive those in the band seeking aid, or those with complaints about others, or any who sought his advice. Aya was unaware of any particular issues for him to deal with. She suspected he’d have an uneventful day, as usual. She usually managed to head problems off long before they got to him.
While the girls carried the breakfast dishes down to the lake to wash them, Aya and Takhat took up two empty reed baskets and strolled together to the line of storage bins full of emmer and barley in the center of camp on the crest of the ridge. There were a dozen bins now, each dug down two feet into the earth and rising the same distance above ground, each four feet in diameter, their insides lined with clay, their tops covered with heavy lids sealed with a mixture of salt and sand. Each held eight hundred pounds of emmer or barley, the yield of between two and three acres, inoculating the band against starvation if the inundation ever failed, seeing the people through the months when gleaning was impossible. Aya still remembered the first bin being constructed just over a decade ago. The current number reflected the growing prosperity of her band.
The women joined to Aya’s stepsons and her father’s brother were already clustered around the closest bin, gossiping, waiting for Aya to arrive. As the patriarch’s woman, she was in charge of the daily distribution of grain. The others greeted Takhat warmly and Aya formally. Even after so many years since her joining with Kakhent, all but her sister still resented her for taking primacy over them. At Aya’s command, Siese, her father’s younger brother, wrestled the heavy lid off a bin containing emmer. Ladice, Siese’s woman, moved forward and held out her basket. Siese leaned over the vat and dipped emmer from inside and filled the container with the quantity approved by Aya. Once Bintanath and Behenu and Tabiry and Takhat and Aya herself had all received their allotment, they moved as a group to an adjacent bin full of barley and repeated the process.
After Siese filled Aya’s second basket, she bid the women goodbye and she and Takhat headed towards her hut. She heard Siese’s grunts as he wrestled the two heavy covers back into place. Once home, Takhat set out with an empty basket to gather seeds from the marsh and Aya placed her laden baskets next to a heavy flat limestone grinding stone that was positioned in the shade beside the hut. She knelt at one end, scattered a handful of emmer from the first basket onto the stone, took up a small limestone grinder, then began crushing the grain into flour by pushing the grinder back and forth rhythmically over it, her long hair swinging back and forth in concert with her movements. This particular grinding stone had been used by Aya’s mother and grandmother and great–grandmother and they had worn a wide shallow indention its entire length. Seeing it never failed to remind Aya of them. Grinding was mind–numbingly boring work, but Aya kept at it for several hours until all the emmer in her basket had been transformed. The barley would wait until evening. Aya scraped the last of the flour into an earthenware container, sealed its lid, then stood, knees and back and shoulders and arms aching, her entire body dripping with sweat. She called Pageti to clean the grinding stone, then went down to the lake and washed the flour from her hands and forearms. She filled her cupped hands with water several times and washed her hot face, then finally took a long drink.
When she returned to camp Ahaneith was in the final stages of making beer. She’d been soaking a measure of barley in water and then heating it while Aya was grinding the emmer. Ahaneith had since pushed the moistened mixture several times through a sieve woven from reeds. She was just about to add water, along with a few bits of dates for flavoring, to the mash. After, she’d pour it into earthenware jars, seal them with mud, then set them aside to ferment for a day. Betrest was a few paces away from her older sister, unsealing yesterday’s jars one by one and straining the thick, frothy liquid through a tightly–woven reed basket into new jars. The family would drink that beer today.
After a quick midday meal, Aya gathered up her daughters and led them to a spot a mile west of camp. There, along the sun–drenched shore, was a bed of clay and shale, the source of the material that Aya used to make pottery. Over the course of an hour, Aya and the girls filled several baskets with the substance, enough to make tall bag–shaped storage jars and hemispherical bowls and a few flat plates. Then they lugged the baskets to a low outcrop of bare rock partway up the nearest plateau. Each selected a section of the outcrop’s flat top, dumped the contents from her basket, then worked the clay, picking out small stones and impurities, adding water, kneading it until it reached the proper consistency, finally adding small bits of straw. When all the raw clay had been processed they refilled the baskets with the mixture and carried them back to their hut. They’d let the clay age for a couple of days, then work it once more before using it.
There were still many hours of daylight left. Carrying several empty reed baskets and a couple of earthenware jars, the four set out for the closest marsh, located at the end of the basin south of Meru’s camp. The marsh stretched north from the shore for nearly a mile, occupying the lowlands, bordered to the north by the open water of the basin, to the east by a low ridge, and to the west by Kakhent’s largest emmer field. Tall reeds and papyrus and marsh grasses thickly covered the wide mostly shallow oval. It teemed with birds and waterfowl and turtles. A small winding reed–lined stream connected the lake to the basin and sliced through the heart of the marsh; its low narrow banks were currently about a foot above water level. Aya intersected the stream about a hundred yards north of the lakeshore. At that point it widened into a large shoulder–deep pond, shaded by a grove of palms and edged on its eastern side by a jumble of waist–high boulders. Aya had set snares on a game trail that passed between several of the boulders yesterday. She checked them and found three ducks. Unceremoniously, she wrung their necks and placed them in a basket.
“Please, may we swim, Mother?” Pageti asked. Without waiting for a reply she shed her loincloth and plunged into the pool, followed by her sisters.
Aya tossed her loincloth aside and joined them. Like the rest of the band’s women, she and her girls usually bathed together each evening in the small inlet between the lakeshore and the peninsula. But this isolated pool had always been her favorite place to swim when she wanted to be alone, ever since she’d first discovered it after leading her people to the lake. She submerged entirely to cool off, rose to the surface, stood in the waist–deep water, threw her head back to let the water stream from her long hair, then waded into the midst of her shouting, laughing girls, splashing them back as they splashed her.
Afterwards, they all lay on a bed of grass on the ground along the stream’s bank and let the sun dry them, serenaded by the birds that flitted overhead and among the reeds. In the day’s heat it didn’t take long. As she gazed upon her daughters, the sense of dread and unease that had settled over Aya the day she’d met the barbarians seemed amplified. How would their lives be affected after the approaching joinings? Would Ahaneith leave the lake with Menna? Or would Ahaneith stay, but live in Meru’s camp, nearby, yet unable to visit Aya without Menna’s permission? The things Aya and her girls had always done together – swimming, working clay, gathering honey and tubers and other plants, singing, dancing – they might not do together again for years, until she herself was joined to Meru and moved to his camp. Tears welled in Aya’s eyes. She swept her eyes over her daughters, closed them tight, tried to fix the scene in her memory. Soon it might be all she had of them together. She whispered a prayer to the falcon god and the sun goddess and the fertility goddess and the crocodile god to help her find a way to keep her family whole. Then she rose, called her girls, and they dressed and followed the stream towards the marsh proper, singing, searching for edibles, filling their baskets as they went.
Before long Aya heard the buzzing of bees
and pointed and the four altered course. They quickly reached a dead acacia tree on a patch of high ground that Aya knew from past experience was rich with honey. The hive was inside the trunk. Bees were flying in and out of a jagged rent about four feet above ground level. Aya and the girls quickly set to work. Betrest produced dried dung from a leather pouch. Striking two flints together, Aya started the dung on fire, blowing on the first sparks until the fuel fully caught. When it was burning well, Pageti lay freshly–pulled slightly–wet marsh grass atop it. Immediately the grass began to smoke. Aya and her girls positioned themselves some distance away. Bees soon swarmed from the hive, first singly and in small groups, then great masses. Once the stream dissipated, Aya and Ahaneith wrapped strips of linen over their noses and mouths to keep out the smoke, then hurried to the tree. Ahaneith held a jar and Aya stretched on her toes and reached inside the trunk and ripped off sections of comb dripping with honey, ignoring the stings of the few stubborn bees who had refused to leave, gasping all the while for breath, eyes tearing from the smoke. When the jar was full she and Ahaneith quickly retreated to where the youngest girls waited, pulled off the linen, breathed deeply of the pure fresh air. Aya’s forearm and hand were puffy with stings and starting to throb and sticky with honey but she didn’t care. She rubbed more honey over the stings to soothe them, then she and her girls moved to the bank of the stream and dangled their feet in the cool water and shared some of the comb. Its sweetness made the pain worthwhile.
They returned to camp an hour before sunset.
“Meru will join us tonight for our meal, and Menna, and your father,” Kakhent announced to Aya. He pointed to a bloody carcass beside the hut. “Meru slew the lion.”
Kakhent seemed greatly irritated by the presence of the prize. Aya knew why without asking. The lion was obviously a message from Meru, a reminder that he was far younger than Kakhent, more capable, and thus the dominant patriarch at the lake even though so recently arrived. The lion was a visible expression of his supremacy, unmistakable to everyone in Kakhent’s camp. Aya had no doubt that the message was intended as much for her as for Kakhent, probably even more, given what she knew of Meru’s intentions for her. Still, Aya couldn’t help being somewhat impressed. Few hunters ever tangled successfully with a lion; hardly anyone ever escaped an encounter unscathed in some way. She assumed if any of the men had been hurt during the hunt she’d have been summoned from the marsh to tend to their wounds.
“Is Menna really coming?” Ahaneith asked her father.
He nodded.
Aya saw Ahaneith’s eyes shining with excitement. “Go get ready,” Aya told her resignedly. “Your sisters and I can take care of everything this one time.”
Ahaneith rushed into the hut. Aya and Pageti and Betrest set to work, plucking the feathers from the ducks, cutting them apart with flint knives, putting them in cooking pots along with various roots and vegetables. About the time dinner was ready Meru and his son arrived. Hannu came a moment after.
Kakhent welcomed the guests politely, but with little enthusiasm. Aya knew he was hosting this meal only because it was expected of him.
“Tell me about the hunt,” Ahaneith said to Menna excitedly as everyone settled into place near the campfire.
“I tracked the lion into the hills,” Menna boasted. “I’m the best tracker in my band.”
Ahaneith gazed at him adoringly. Aya looked at him askance. She hadn’t grown any fonder of Menna in the past months. She knew her daughter was enamored of him, blind to his faults, too young to have a clue about how he’d treat her once she actually belonged to him. But Aya was impotent in the matter – trying to influence Kakhent to negotiate with Meru for some other boy in his band to join to Ahaneith would be a waste of time. Her opinion meant nothing to him when it came to joinings, or anything else. He’d never confided anything of importance to her in all the years she’d been his woman, nor had he ever specifically sought her advice. That she oversaw the band’s agricultural affairs was not because he considered her an expert, but because he took no real interest in them. She knew her role, as he saw it – to warm his pallet at night, satisfy his lusts, bear him children, keep him fed and clothed, oversee the band’s women. But she’d learned much by simply listening as he talked with his sons and her father and her uncle around his campfire, and had for years subtly influenced his decisions with a few carefully chosen words. She’d gradually taken over some of his patriarchical duties as he’d aged, though he pretended not to notice. Kakhent was far too proud to thank her for all she did each day to ease his burdens. Truth be told, she didn’t really care. She hadn’t developed even a minimal affection for Kakhent in all the years they’d been together. He was now, that he’d grown old and somewhat frail, for the most part a decent and occasionally kind man. That hadn’t been the case the first half dozen years after their joining, when he was endlessly asserting his authority over her by every means possible. Thank the gods he wasn’t like Meru or his barbaric brothers or sons, or it would have been even worse for her, Aya knew. She sighed. Even if she could talk Kakhent out of joining his daughter to Menna, what boy in Meru’s band was any better?
“And I killed it,” Meru said proudly, eyes fixed on Aya’s. “One arrow, right in the heart.”
Such showing off, the purposeful display of strength and stamina and risk–taking, might excite most women, but Aya was not most women. Yes, it took significant knowledge about a lion’s habitat to track one down and corner it, and organizational and leadership skills to arrange a successful hunt, but Aya exercised exactly the same skills that a master hunter did on a daily basis when she directed the band’s women to acquire foodstuffs. She was not easily impressed by what she considered to be routine undertakings. However, in line with her vow to charm Meru, Aya mimicked the look of adoration that Ahaneith had given Menna. “I wish I’d been there to see it,” she cooed. “I’ll bet the lion stood no chance against you.”
“I never miss,” Meru boasted.
“Our band is in your debt once more,” Hannu told Meru. “That lion cost us several animals already. Who can say how many more he might have taken?”
Aya could tell from the immediate reddening of his cheeks that Kakhent was furious that Hannu had spoken out of turn. To state that the band was in anyone’s debt was a patriarch’s prerogative. Aya suspected that Kakhent would convey that message to her father directly once Meru departed the camp. She couldn’t wait to see Hannu squirm.
“I was pleased to do it,” Meru replied.
“Do you plan to make a ceremonial robe from the hide?” Kakhent asked.
“The lion is yours,” Meru said grandiosely. “Have Aya make you a robe, such as the one I wear to mark my authority as patriarch.” He turned to her. “Visit me in my camp, Aya. You can use my robe to make a pattern.”
“A kind offer, Patriarch,” Aya said, and smiled. She had no intention of ever visiting his camp. She knew exactly what would happen if Meru trapped her in his hut. “But I’ve already made a dozen robes from the pelts of lions that Kakhent himself has slain.” A not–so–subtle reminder to Meru that Kakhent had been strong in his youth, and still retained a measure of that strength.
“And now, let us eat. You must be famished,” Kakhent said.
Everyone gathered around the bowls and platters laden with duck stew, fruits, tubers and roasted seeds, and began plucking morsels with their hands. Betrest filled a cup with beer for each of them, while Pageti slathered pieces of bread with honey.
“We rarely find bee trees in our travels,” Meru noted as he helped himself to a third section of comb.
“I’ve been getting it from the same colony since the year we settled at the lake,” Aya told him. “We never lack for honey. It’s one of the benefits of living here.”
“An excellent benefit indeed,” Meru concurred. He took a bite of comb, chewed.
“Have you decided yet whether you’ll settle at the lake?” Kakhent asked.
Aya was surprised that for o
nce he was addressing the subject directly with the other patriarch. Perhaps his irritation over the lion had made him bold.
“The lake has definite benefits,” Meru said, and Aya knew from the way his eyes played over her body exactly what he meant. “The savannah in all directions is rich with animals to hunt. Why, for all practical purposes they’re just targets when they come to the lake to drink. No tracking involved. And my women tell me there is plenty for them to glean. And then there are the fish. The lake country clearly has advantages the river valley and eastern savannah don’t.”
“So you’ll stay?” Kakhent pressed.
“I’ve decided I will.”
That answer was exactly what Aya had expected. She saw from Hannu’s face that he too had expected it. Both knew that Meru would stay until she was his. But the question Kakhent should have asked, in Aya’s opinion, was whether Meru would remain at the lake permanently, and how his band would live. If Kakhent wouldn’t ask, she would. “Have you decided yet if you’ll take up farming and herding?”
“I know how to hunt,” Meru said, shaking his head, “not how to plant. Except for Qen, none of my people desires to be a farmer or herdsman. I won’t force them to be. So I would prefer to simply exchange the meat we slay in return for a share of your grain. Your people will farm and herd, mine will hunt and gather. We’ll continue to live as we always have, as will you.”
By that Aya knew that once she was Meru’s he’d lead his band away from the lake and resume his wanderings. By not adopting her band’s lifestyle, he was making it easy on himself in the future to walk away.
Kakhent failed to reach the same conclusion. He nodded. “I am amenable to that.”
“We are agreed, then,” Meru said.
“We’ll travel to and from the river together in season?”
“Why not? The river is a pleasant place too.”
Daughter of the Falcon God Page 20