Two Horizons

by Hank Lawson

Chapter 23

  REMEMBERING TO AWAKEN

  Drone blaring in his ears, Anhur hoed a channel in the Ptah Temple fields. Watching water flow through soil quieted the drone and soothed his nightmares, terrible dreams he saw even in the daytime no matter how tight he shut his eyes. In the dreams, he was walking, forever walking across vast sands. Endless slip and rise. His feet ignited on infinities of tiny suns. The suns like scorpions flung their stingers into his eyes.

  Days and nights passed. Anhur hoed. His nightmares eased. As did his daymares. The aching in his head slackened enough that his eyes opened in daylight with less pain. The drone began to fade. Hearing became sometimes a pleasure.

  Along with feeding Anhur heavenly meals and allowing him the comfort of work, the priests told Anhur stories about the wicked King Khufu. Khufu enslaved people to build his pyramid. His closing the Hituptah Temple meant that only under threat of death could citizens pay tribute to God Ptah. Anhur didn’t like this evil King.

  A week after the young man’s appearance, High-priest Siptah himself presented the morning meal to Anhur. Anhur squinted in the full sun’s glare hiding Siptah’s face. The High-priest asked, “How do you feel, dear Anhur, about your stay here?”

  Anhur managed to mutter, “Home.”

  “Excellent. That’s how we want you to feel.” Siptah reminded Anhur how the priests helped many needy people such as him. “So might you consider helping us?”

  Anhur held up his hoe.

  “I was thinking of a special help?”

  Anhur nodded. Pleasing the High-priest was like a drink of water.

  “Good, we will talk of that later. For now, I have a gift for you. It’s a chant.” The High-priest put a hand on Anhur’s shoulder. “Repeat after me: It is Ptah and only Ptah—”

  “It is Ptah and only Ptah—”

  “—who created the world and me.”

  “It is Ptah and only Ptah who created the world and me.”

  “My dear Anhur,” the High-priest said, “you possess a talent for lessons. Say this chant whenever you wish to express your gratitude for your home with us. Say it often.”

  “It is Ptah and only Ptah who created the world and me.”

  That night, Anhur fell asleep reciting the chant. And it changed his nightmares, if not for the better. He dreamt of himself as the evil God-king. Evil and dead.

  At dawn near his Per-O lake, the God-king Anhur listened to the swishing of sycamores outside his linen pavilion. Inside, before a dozen dignitaries, his body stretched upon a stone table carved with a lion’s head and legs. Though the weather stung with heat, his body cooled. Prince Hordedef, on a cane and wearing the Controller of the Mysteries stripped robe, trickled a palmful of water from a golden goblet onto the dead God-king. Vizier Shaf, in the Lector Priest white gown, recited from a scroll trailing to the ground. “As the sun arises, bathed by the underworld Nile, so the cleansed Anhur arises.” On the slab, Anhur gladdened that he still sensed his Nile.

  Vizier Shaf recited, “Osiris was slain by his brother Seth, the desert god of disorder, but our God-king walks evermore in the Underworld. He detests inertness and so repels decay.”

  Hordedef dug into bag upon bag of natron. He sprinkled the white crystals all over Anhur. The moment it touched his flesh, Anhur’s tissues began to shrink. The natron piled upon him. When he emerged, everything will have changed.

  My new immortality.

  The royal officers posted guards around the pavilion against curious citizens or a jackal eager to drag off a well-salted limb irrespective of the host’s divinity. Anhur set about expelling his liquid night after night, day after day.

  Princes Hordedef and Shaf returned to the white pavilion. They cast away the damp natron from their father’s corpse. Under the salt laying, his skin had sucked back onto its bones as black as charred wood. His taut face seemed to grimace. But when Hordedef massaged juniper oil, honey and grape wine into the skin, his expression relaxed and lustered. Through the prince’s warm fingers, the dead God-king measured how cold he’d become. Anhur’s sons and daughters affixed garnet, jade, pearl and emerald rings on each of Khufu’s toes and fingers.

  Then, with precision, teams of priests affixed long strips of finest linen around the dead Osiris King, resin adhering one layer to the next. Encircling head, chest, hips and legs, bonding limbs with trunk, they cocooned the God-king. The Royal Artist painted the green of resurrection in Anhur’s likeness onto the facial linen. His ka would thereby recognize him and occupy his body to feast on offerings for his ba to survive and his people to thrive.

  Hordedef presented a polished gold mask with silver teeth and lapis lazuli brows over his father’s face. Shaf recited, “The vital breath, the life in us everyone, this god grants himself. That which animates the chick to break from its shell, the sycamore leaf to grow green and the sick to be cured breathes into you.”

  Hordedef alighted the gold face onto the last of his father. Anhur looked at his new world through gold eyes.

  Anhur woke in a panic over why he’d dreamt of himself as the evil King. Yet, he noticed that his breathing had eased its scratch and that his eyes had ceased their itch. His mind seemed to settle like the water he hoed into soil. This reviving must be due to the chant. “It is Ptah and only Ptah who created the world and me.”

  When he was at his hoe that afternoon, sunlight prickled Anhur’s neck like a sharp knocking at the door. Between his feet, a circle of sand grains shone like gems on a necklace. His knees began to tremble. This wobble worked into his thighs, into his back. He dizzied with it. Inside him, mirages of faces and voices began to waver feverishly, tangling and tumbling, until they swept him into a dream.

  He clawed through a sandstorm. Hot gray sand, walls of sand, acrid smell and taste of sand. Burning, scratching. A whirring, buzzing drone. Everywhere. Droning. On the farthest horizon of sand, a gray man stooped. Gray and suffocating. Slack arms, collapsing knees, head bulging with the drone. Each successive moment repeated the same nothing. Hot, gray null. Parched and coarse. Sand tore at the gray man, flaying him. His insides spilled out hot gray sand. The simoom whirled him into the drone.

  Anhur heard a scream and found himself on the ground—in the dirt—tears in his eyes.

  A priest comforted him. “My boy, my boy. Come, we’ll calm you with a small treat. Come, little Anhur.”

  As Anhur trailed the priest, new troubling images rose in his mind: an ill female, another female pointing. He blinked them away. “Ptah and only Ptah created the world and me.”

  In a corner of the grounds, shaded by acacias, Anhur soaked in cool water poured slowly over his head. It soothed him the heat in his mind. He seemed to float. Clean skin thrilled him. Then, from the drone bobbed up the image of a female. She had a dimple. Anhur strained to remember her.

  “Here, Anhur.” The priest gave to him a goblet containing a red liquid. “This has the essence of the lotus flower.” When he drank, the liquid on his tongue tasted sweet. And sweeter with each gulp. Swallowing, warmth skittered down Anhur’s throat and chest, body parts he hadn’t been much noticed before. With a clean body and eased mind, Anhur welcomed to his min soft images of amulets, whiskers and a white-outlined smile. Though he couldn’t place them, they greeted him as a cool breeze.

  In the following days, the drone and Anhur’s night terrors dwindled; more and more images sharpened. He could almost remember names. One morning, twenty-five days after Anhur’s arrival, an assistant priest brought him into the temple itself. The priest opened a limestone gate set in the ground. Through it, a corridor stretched below. Anhur hesitated. He remembered something like this happening to him a long time ago: large hands pushed him into another long corridor where he didn’t belong.

  “Why are you stalling, little Anhur?”

  “My trespass in a temple is … blasphemy, isn’t it?” He hadn’t spoken so many words since he didn’t know when.

  “Not when you are invited.”

  Anhur spread his grin, r
isked himself forward and clapped his feet onto the limestone floor. Its chill braced his heart. In the muted light of the corridor, he thought he saw the images of a home: amulets on its walls, a carving of God Bes, an empty mattress. He balked again.

  “Hurry, you donkey.” The priest tugged him past each hallowed space in the temple— ritual chambers, offering niches, the Hap Bull corral. Anhur took in the sight of grand limestone and alabaster, inspiring the recall of that similar deified building.

  “Due to the way you came to us,” the priest said, “we believe you to be a special friend of the great God Ptah. Since the God deems Anhur so highly, Anhur shouldn’t think twice of obeying Ptah’s wish for him.”

  That God Ptah would even consider him caused Anhur to rise taller as if stones had tumbled from his shoulders. Blood surged into his heart. The drone hushed. Completely. And then, friendly voices and countless images of smiling faces emerged. One woman had a dimple, a young man wore a bandana and an older man had uneven eyes.

  The priest deposited Anhur in an anteroom off the corridor. From an adjoining chamber, two men spoke. One voice belonged to High-priest Siptah. Anhur instead heeded voices he imagined. One in particular. It was female. It soothed his ears. He concentrated. Her words grew distinct: “Excuse me, but do I know you?” The words alarmed him. Anhur could not place a name or face to the voice, but his heartbeat quickened. He should know that voice. Anhur closed his eyes, trying to remember.

  Words spoken by the two men in the next chamber intruded on his thoughts.

  “During the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, the princes wear the jackal mask,” Siptah was saying. “Neutralize one of the princes and conceal yourself in his robe and mask.”

  “You mean, I kill him,” said a second voice.

  That voice. Anhur’s gut shook. Like a rock had been pitched at it. He remembered a rock thrown at his stomach so hard that it left a red welt. It was thrown by—

  “In any event, whatever is required.”

  “Show me the diagram,” the voice said.

  “The princes will convey Khufu’s mummy to the sanctuary at the rear—here—of the mortuary temple. Therefore, prior to that, you must have infiltrated yourself into the procession. Are you certain you’ll be invited?”

  “I am a dragomen. A King’s friend. I’m invited with the best of them.”

  Anhur started. That voice ...

  Siptah said, “Quite so. And invading the valley temple presents you with no problem?”

  “If you’re not lying about having a puppet.”

  As if doused in cold water, Anhur shuddered. He knew that voice.

  “Our young man,” said Siptah, “will be dutiful in creating a diversion while you maneuver yourself into the mortuary temple.”

  The voice he was remembering said, “I don’t have to slog the mummy all the way back to Hituptah. I can take care of it.”

  That’s the voice ... of ...

  “No!” Siptah said. “No! I must be certain the mummy is destroyed. It is the only way to prove the Gods’ disfavor for the King.”

  The King. The King’s mummy? They mean to destroy the God-king’s mummy? My dream—the dead God-king. The King was not evil. He saw a vision of a young woman with deep-set eyes saying, “Do something.”

  “So who’s this puppet you got?” His brother’s words lurched in his mind: “Father is a tomb-robber,” “Angry that your girl was stroking me?” “He’s after you now.”

  “Call him.”

  “Anhur.”

  He was already running down the temple corridor, stumbling as if the cold stone was breaking up under him like thin ice.

  “Anhur! Anhur!”

  Through the secret entrance, he escaped into the blistering heat. Tears shook from his eyes. Blindly, up a hill, he raced as hard as his awkward body allowed. On a plateau, a quarter-mile from the temple, he crumpled to his knees, breathless, crying, tears hot on his face.

  “Mehi.”

  A familiar voice—

  “Mehi.”

  His name, his childhood name. Mehi pulled up his head. He saw, standing by him, a man— uneven eyes, white beard, large hands on his hips, wide smile on the face—the old man Mehi had been seeing.

  “Mehi, I’ve missed you.”

  Faces, voices and odors jumbled in Mehi’s mind. Queasy with them, he shook his head. The man squatted and put his arm around his friend. “Cry, Mehi. You need it.”

  Mehi remembered the man’s name. “Djedi?”

  “Yes, Mehi. Kenna told me that he saw you here at the temple. As for what you’re doing here, I can’t imagine.”

  The horrid words of his brother’s plotting worked on his heart like a stone grinder. “My brother. My brother.”

  “Peace, sweet Mehi. Peace.”

  “My brother.”

  “Come home with me. We’ll get you well.”

  Sebek agreed to visit An-khi at her office early one morning. He had seen his visit as a first step in his eventually assuming her position as governor. After all, dragoman duties bored him now. As governor, he’d meet daily with rich people seeking judicial and other appointments, escape from conscription and taxes, or a favorable decision in a lawsuit. They would each invest in his favor for a flattering price. He would command a standing army. Not even the Khufu had that.

  But when he sat down on pillows across from An-khi, presiding behind her low table, he learned that she had her own intention.

  “I have become aware that the Hituptah priests,” she started, “are resorting to a campaign of feeding the poor while indoctrinating them into believing that God-king Khufu should be blamed for death and disease resulting from this drought.”

  Instantly, Sebek knew she wanted something from him. He was in negotiation. “No more than he deserves.”

  An-khi’s eyes narrowed and her tone hardened. “Provincial records show that rates of death this year are no higher than in previous years.”

  Sebek suppressed a shrug.

  An-khi said, “The priests coerce no differently than whipping people at the stake.”

  Sebek squirmed.

  “I have tried every persuasion with Head-priest Siptah, but to no avail. So—

  Sebek thought, Here it comes.

  “—with your influence with the Hituptah priests, judging by your ability to smuggle me into their secret ritual,” she said with a smile, “that you might see what you can do in this area.”

  Sebek was relieved. This wouldn’t be such a trial. “I may have some pull there. But they’ll want something tangible in return for their food.”

  “Isn’t doing the right thing the reward?”

  Was this woman as simple as Mehi after all? “That’s why you’re governor.”

  An-khi put her hands on the table and pushed herself back. “Cooperation, Sebek. Mehi knew it. I wonder whether you have this quality.”

  Sebek knew this was her negotiation. He’d follow her bidding—or at least a semblance of it—for any chance of mating her—and asserting himself as governor. “I see what you mean.” Actually, as the High-priest’s assassin, convincing Siptah would be simple. “Consider it done.” For the time, he would cooperate, but taking orders from a woman sat like rotted fruit in his stomach.

  On a morning when love songs of hoopoes and gold orioles seemed to have returned to the sycamores, An-khi walked through Hituptah to check on Sebek’s promise. She turned over in her mind her illustrious weeks with him. As she had seen when she first met him, Sebek was every bit the personal force her father had been. And, she saw Mehi through his brother. Sebek certainly appreciated the finer things like exotic food, wines and entertainment.

  Still, An-khi knew that before things between them developed further she must exert some control in the relationship. She had to test not only his loyalty but also his commitment to cooperation. Cooperation Egypt required today and that had been so much of Mehi’s nature.

  When she reached the Hituptah Temple of Ptah, a crowd had gathered as us
ual outside the main entrance. Priests handed out onions and bread to them, but no priests were walking among the people. They weren’t whispering their slanted view of the God-king and the God Ra state religion. This confirmed her scribes’ reports from the local and outer areas of the province. The priests fed the citizens only food, not fear.

  Yes, Sebek just might be the perfect combination of her father and Mehi.

  Mid-afternoon, in bed, Khufu prodded his body among the pillows and blankets to dance with the jangling harps and laughter wafting to him from the New Moon Festival. He imagined his stores of pumpkin and watermelon, roasted geese and gazelle, as well as red wine and black beer disappearing into his citizens’ smiles as they chattered, sang and danced.

  Khufu’s ear infection had wormed into his head where Djedi, Pese’shet nor the Per-O physicians could any longer retrieve it. During the year’s last month, citizens no longer mourned for the Nile searching out water like a parched tongue, but cheered for their God-king who would soon kiss the earth, pass on his voluptuousness to the succeeding king, restore ma’at to Egypt, invoke the Inundation, fertilize the land and again feed the belly and heart of his people.

  “They’re dancing, are they, Hordedef?” Khufu’s voice rasped like shredding cloth.

  “Like red fish, Father.” The second prince stood with the other children at the foot of their father’s bed.

  His sleepy eyes wandered from the windows to his children. “Luxuriate in your body. Exhilarate your soul.” Khufu stopped to inhale. “If you do not shine, we are dark.”

  “Is that from your book, Sire?”

  Khufu winked.

  Attendants waving palm fronds on either side of Khufu’s bed lightened the heat. Blue lotus perfume masked the God-king’s odor of moldering leaves. Prince Khemtatef and Princess Merysankh knelt before their father and then kissed his lips. He searched their faces. “Sweet memory.” He laughed—without much sound. “Say I am not beautiful to conceive such children.”

  Next, Heru pressed his cheek to his father’s cheek.

  Khufu managed to lift an arm to brush his son’s hair. “O, if wish alone ... empowered me to return your twin to you ... Peace, Heru, sleep and giggle ... as you did as a babe.”

  Heru flung his arms around his father.

  Dedephor, next in line, didn’t move forward. His head hung.

  “Go,” Shaf told him.

  Khufu countered Shaf with a shake of his head. “Those who craft humor are often the most sorrowful.” His eyes on Dedephor, he arched an eyebrow. “You always managed to cheer me, dear. I desire laughter when I depart this flat earth for the round sky. That’s something ... you can do for me.”

  Dedephor looked. A playful smile crept into his cheeks. He stepped up to kneel beside his father. “This duty to maintain Egypt’s divinity that you inherited from the original Gods has been of no purpose, your Majesty. For—as your father Seneferu once informed me—you were adopted.”

  Khufu’s laugh burst out. “‘You were adopted,’” he repeated to his children, coughs mixing with his hoots. “Wonder ... wonderful.” Agony in his ear shooting through to his jaw cramped his laughter. His head spun. A moment later, he recovered enough to pat Dedephor a good-bye.

  The four younger children exited the suite.

  “Of all days, I must be a god today. Inside this ruining flesh ... my spirit rages.”

  Shaf said, “A god you are, KhnumKhufwey. A god prior to coming to us, you will be a God where you go.”

  Shaf’s timbre denoted a depth of sincerity that so surprised his father that Khufu checked to be sure it was Shaf who had spoken.

  In turn, Hentusen, Shaf and Hordedef highlighted God-king Khufu’s advances in architecture, irrigation, education, mining, trade, citizen petition, labor organization and—the ultimate wonder—his perfect pyramid. The God-king realized that the next instance he visited his pyramid would be his last.

  Then, eager, Khufu strained to present his hand to Princess Hentusen. She clasped it. “My coldness,” he said, “hurt you and me. Be assured, daughter, I traced your growth ... from infant to girl to woman. My heart quaked I loved you so.” Her eyes widened. “I now give you ... a hundred times every one of those kisses missed.” Hentusen’s father kissed each of her cheeks in turn until he couldn’t hold up his head.

  Swallowing, the princess whispered, “Consider Father, I am equally at fault for not each day requesting you to kiss me as you have today.” Hentusen drew Khufu’s hand to her breast. The princess bowed as she withdrew.

  Shaf immediately rushed forward and thrust forward his arms in the pose of a wrestler beginning a match. Khufu grinned, dragged his arms from under the covers, and intertwined them with his son’s. They tugged and twisted, Shaf cheering on his father. The God-king growled as he could and snorted in glee. Then, Khufu’s arms dropped from his son. He panted. Dizziness swirled his head until his mind seemed to float away. Yet, Khufu’s smile shone from his pale orange face. Shaf kissed his father’s forehead, bed, the floor tiles and departed.

  Khufu listened to laughter pealing from the festival. That’s the north wind blowing my immortality toward the afterworld. He all but fell asleep.

  His eyes opened onto Prince Hordedef, the last child he’d kiss. “Here is a man.”

  Hordedef’s eyes flickered.

  “Through the years, I wounded you,” Khufu said. “Forgive me.” The prince seemed about to speak. “Yet, you remained true to yourself. I say to you, the man forgives and the god finds peace. Peace comes by deeds, not rest. And because I forgive, I discover that you have attained the aerie of a perfect son.”

  The God-king gulped a breath as did Hordedef.

  Khufu turned over his hand to show the prince his fingertips. “Witness how these designs whirl to their center and vanish there. That is my path now.”

  Hordedef slid his palm beneath his father’s head. “Vanishing is not in you.” The prince’s complexion inflamed.

  “Son,” Khufu resumed, “Ramose carries the document I’ve signed as to who will succeed me as God-king. Shaf carries on as vizier, but as my father passed on to his son and his father to him ... I bestow Ra’s magic over the Inundation to he who is most worthy to revive it.” Khufu poised a shaky hand above Hordedef as if to crown him. “The next god on earth, the next God-king of Egypt will be you.”

  Hordedef, staring wide-eyed at his father, bowed under his father’s hand.

  “You are Co-regent and heir apparent.”

  Hordedef then wrapped his arms around his father and rested his head on Khufu’s chest.

  The two spoke for an hour of Egypt’s future.

  Khufu woke twenty-six hours later.

  He dismissed his physician and attendants, and called for a royal scribe. The young man entered and kissed the tiles. Painstaking and anxious against disturbing the fragile God-king—Khufu observed—he sat with folded legs, steadied his tool tray on a knee, papyrus sheet on the other and poised his quill. Khufu demanded, his voice breaking, “Why treat me with such disrespect?”

  “Sire?” The scribe’s eyebrows and chin quivered.

  “What deceives you to believe ... that I don’t welcome human noise? Never. I go out laughing, boy. Ring out some human clatter ... or an old man’s whoops will drown you out.”

  The scribe broke out a small smile.

  Khufu narrowed his hawk’s eyes. “Boy? Do you have a woman?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Do you demand that she share her thoughts with you? Do you share your thoughts with her?”

  “Um, um ...”

  “I found a woman,” Khufu interrupted, his eyes unfocused. “A queen.”

  “Of course, your Majesty. Grandmother Meritates.”

  “No. But speaking of her, do you have enemies?”

  “None that I know.”

  “My enemies—this very minute they come at me as sure as Ra to pick at the gold on my mummy’s toes and eyes—I forgive them. And that zealot with the wet face of hate
: ‘It is Ptah Ra and only Ptah Ra who created the world and me.’” Khufu laughed. Pain stabbed in his head. He continued laughing.

  Menkau waited.

  Khufu nestled in the bed to sort his bones. He gazed through his suite’s window at the late afternoon. “Yes, let them go, Mehi.”

  “Sire, my name is Menkau. Son to Vizier Shaf.”

  “Prepare your pen.” Khufu recited, listened to the scribe read it back, and corrected it “to be more pleasing and to the point.” The scribe read its final form.

  The Imperishable Stars and I

  Sail north in the Nile

  Soar south in warm breezes

  Rise easterly with Ra

  And settle in the west forever

  Death extends me everywhere

  “So,” said Khufu, his eyelids drooping, “am I really so frightening?”

  “No, Majesty,” Menkau said with a smile, “not at all.”

  “Tell me ...” Khufu forgot what he meant to say.

  “Yes, Sire?”

  “What is the hour, timekeeper?”

  “Tepi m’sheru, your Majesty.”

  “Son, describe the sun’s finale for me.”

  Menkau bounded up to the window. “The sun is setting.”

  “No, no. Tell me. Is the sky a field of wild roses?”

  Menkau shrugged. “No, Sire.”

  Khufu closed his eyes. “Does the whole of the sky blush with pinks and rich orange? Does the sky even curve like a rose petal? Son, is it rose?”

  After a long pause, Menkau said, “Yes, Sire, if you will.”

  “Good. And at the horizon, are there whorls of silver clouds drawing away to infinity?”

  “Yes, Majesty, I see them. Radiant silver.”

  “And in the middle of this floats the sun as buoyant as a lotus.”

  “It’s ever so like a lotus.” Menkau’s voice pitched. “Violets and scarlet and, over all, a blood orange haloes it.”

  “Yes. Colors pursue the sun like the train of a royal robe draping the horizon.”

  “Or like cleaving an agate to find pink and violet whirls.”

  “Yes, yes. Yes.”

  Over the next minutes, Menkau painted with words the sunset’s pastels mingling into indigo. Khufu’s eyes fluttered in his drifting toward sleep. “Majesty?”

  The God-king stirred.

  “Pardon me, Majesty ... are you afraid to die?”

  Khufu shook his huge head, difficult as it was. “I don’t fear death. I fear losing the love of life.”

  The two men paused.

  “Good night, great God-king Khufu. Sleep well.”

  “Good night, Mehi.”

  Khufu lapsed between dream and daydream.

  Under turquoise skies, he and Theormi meandered beneath the garden pergola. The lovers enwrapped one another while their hands and lips explored unguided. He dreamt up tales to fascinate her. She laughed with the purity of a child. Past sycamores posed like dancers, the two slipped into the greenhouse, breathing in the sweet humidity.

  Spotting the interior pond’s lotus flowers, Khufu’s face lit up. “Ah, yes. I’ll fulfill my promise.” The God-king lumbered into the pond and stumbled.

  “Careful,” Theormi called.

  He giggled. “I’m a bull when excited.”

  Khufu leaned down and plucked eight blue lotus and a young vine. He curled the blossoms onto the vine and draped the garland around her neck. “A circle—as your orbit with me since the day I pledged this garland to you.”

  “You remember,” Theormi said, bouncing the garland atop her chest.

  “How could I forget?” His brows lifted. “This garland symbolizes how we continually join at one bloom and retreat until the next bloom.”

  “Medjau,” she said smiling, “every time you’ve come to me or I’ve come to you—”

  “—pesh-it.”

  “—I conceive more of myself.”

  “Linked by the lotus, we are Egypt.” The God-king tugged a blue petal from Theormi’s garland. He crushed it along her wrist, lowered his face there and inhaled. He eased back. “Beside you, I am more, more Khufu, more God-king. You render me peaceful.”

  Theormi grinned. “You supply me grand meals of red fish.”

  Khufu pitched back his head and roared laughter.

  The pair stopped at the roses. She said, “We played a game here years ago. You shut your eyes and guessed from which bush grew a particular blossom. I never conceded that it was not a trick on your part.”

  He winked at her before closing both eyes. “Begin, my dear.”

  After a moment, she passed a rose under his nose and he breathed in the fragrance. His brow twitched. He wavered.

  “Another pass?”

  “No need,” he said with a flick of his hand. “That’s certainly from the third bush.”

  The rose was from the second bush. Each of the following three attempts was also incorrect. She did not let him know of his errors.

  He opened his eyes with a victor’s glee. “That proves my talent with flowers was no trick or I would have used the trick again.” He kissed her. “That’ll teach you to doubt your King.”

  “Oh, my pesh-ti, I never did that.”

  The two lovers lingered in the perfume and warmth. King and Queen whispered of their citizens, all heroes like Mehi, and the perfection of their love.

  At noon, Queen Theormi of the Medja-Wawat exited the Per-O suite of the Osiris God-king. In the corridor, Co-Regent Hordedef greeted her.

  She said, “I’m not certain he knew I was here.”

  “I’m certain he did.”

  “He may not be fully with us, but he won’t be gone.” Theormi reached to touch Hordedef’s forearm. “I’m sure you’ve read his book.”

  “Yes, indeed. A great poetry.”

  “In the book, Khufu emulated your wisdom. He aspired to be as wise. You are the God-king now, Hordedef. You will be so in your unique way. He wrote, ‘You are the kingdom and the King.’”

  The next God-king paused, his pupils enlarging.

  “He loved you, Hordedef.”

  “Ah, Theormi, I realize that—now.” He looked away, then back to Theormi. A slight smile came to his lips. “The Medja-Wawat have a wise Queen. Will you stay?”

  “Until Khufu is prepared for his funeral, my place is with my people. When he is placed in the pyramid, I will return.”

  In the dusk between dreams, Khufu saw his ka fly up and hover alongside him. Balancing onto one shoulder, sensing his brittle body and slowing heartbeat, he reached up and hugged the fluttering ka to his chest. Father, mother, sons, daughters, Theormi and every citizen came forward and warm in his arms also danced with him like bees in the hive. The God-king’s eyes alighted on the gold sun peeking through the window.

  Wake forever.

  The mortal Khufu submitted to the sun in his final sleep. He dreamt of himself as a blue lotus ejaculating one bountiful Inundation after another after another after another ...