Chapter 24
DIVINING THE DREAM
Under Djedi’s and Pese’shet’s care on a front room mattress, Mehi tossed in uneasy sleep—limbs rickety and breaths scant. Each day for hours, Pese’shet brushed his skin first with rough cloth and then with satiny linen. Djedi waved sizzling garlic and fermenting barley under his nose. Those moments Mehi wakened—without opening his eyes—they fed him milk, soup, pigeon stew and of course pomegranate seeds.
Faces and voices, including the woman with the dimple saying “Do something,” filled Mehi’s dreams. Most calmed him. One did not. Over and over—Mehi writhed to avoid it—his brother said: “I’ll kill him.”
After weeks, Mehi finally woke with fully opened eyes.
Blinking, he adjusted to the room’s dim light. All was quiet. With a small groan, he pushed up from his mattress, steadied himself, rubbed his face, and stepped out the door. Outside, the honeyed night layered upon him. He traced his fingertips across his ribs and belly and shivered like a newborn touching air for the first time. Inhaling a deep breath, he lifted his head and eyes. Yellow and orange frosted the stars. Their constancy lightened his heart. Another constancy was the image in his mind of dimpled An-khi.
An-khi is all around me yet she’s so far away. She’s everywhere yet my voice is too quiet for her to hear. Waving air toward his nose, he inhaled the aroma of Egypt’s barley, limestone and blue lotus. He remembered Sebek’s voice and cringed. But it was too fantastic to believe that his said those things. Could anyone be that evil? Was Sebek even in Egypt? And the Ptah priests themselves involved? No, Mehi must have dreamt it.
Yet, Mehi did not return to sleep though its tempting of him was beautiful.
Before dawn, Djedi and Pese’shet entered the front room to see Mehi sitting up and grinning. “That’s the old Mehi,” the magician said.
“The new Mehi,” corrected his wife, pouring cool water for him.
The two sat together, but Mehi couldn’t answer their questions about his eclipse—it had lasted for a month, they told him. Trying to remember anything from that time knotted his stomach.
They heard shouting from outside as if from a group of people running past the home.
“What’s that?” Mehi asked.
Djedi lowered his eyes. Pese’shet rubbed her husband’s hand. “The God-king has kissed the earth, Mehi. God-king Hordedef set the gold mask this morning.”
Her answer pierced Mehi like a chisel. Was he too late? Too late to stop his brother? “Is Khufu in the pyramid?”
Djedi slowly replied. “That will occur the day before the New Year.”
“What’s today?
“The final day of the year. Heriu Renpet begins tomorrow.”
Mehi still had a chance. I have the five days between the years. I can be certain whether I dreamt Sebek’s plot. Five days. Mehi sat back. He began to remember vague images of Prince Hordedef lowering a gold mask. Had he dreamt it? “My good God-king. Senbeb.”
Mehi knew Egyptians would grieve for the Osiris King in ways they didn’t yet know. He wanted to spread his own spirit over everyone. Protecting Khufu’s mummy was now his calling. He decided against telling Djedi what he might have heard his brother say. Djedi would be duty-bound to report it to the Per-O, threatening Sebek’s life, not to mention the life of a High-priest. Mehi couldn’t be the cause of that based on what he might have dreamt.
Pese’shet said, “This will please you, Mehi. Khufu declared your friend Prince Hordedef to be the God-king to follow him.”
Mehi laughed. His long-unused facial muscles smarted.
Djedi said, “Hordedef has endured much and deserved Khufu’s tribute. However, it will be difficult for him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not five minutes after the selection, Vizier Shaf scorned Hordedef by saying to him, ‘Your ill health won’t keep me waiting long.’”
Mehi said, “Why couldn’t the vizier just congratulate his brother?”
Djedi added, “I can only hope that Shaf waits for Hordedef’s natural end before he continues his ambitions. His plots insult their father.”
Pese’shet and Mehi nodded.
Gripping his beard, Djedi looked hard at Mehi. “Khufu goes to the stars to see his father Seneferu.” The magician paused. “And it is time for you, my friend, to go home to your father.”
“Father?” Mehi felt inside him something akin to a knife cutting a pomegranate.
Pese’shet said, “Don’t you want to see how he’s getting on?”
Djedi added, “I let him know you are coming.”
Waiting for his answer, Pese’shet and Djedi both leaned toward Mehi.
He glanced back and forth at his friends. Mehi tossed up his hands. “Tu, tu. I’ll go.” He surprised himself that he wanted to visit his father.
As if he’d stepped onto shore after a long voyage, Mehi wavered on a rise overlooking Mer’s clustered huts. The third-quarter moon over his shoulder, he watched the town’s orange lamplights flicker in the evening as hot as his grief. Here resided the ruins of his family following the tomb-robbery. His mother and brother were gone. And though his father was at least partly responsible for both absences, this is where Mehi would find his family.
He scuffed down the hill.
The village clearing was ragged with weeds. A year ago, Mer villagers celebrated Khufu’s Heb-Sed with roasted goose here. Walking into the honeycomb alleys of huts, Mehi saw children through gaps in the huts’ thatch walls staring their thin, dirty faces at him. He didn’t hear or see any goat, sheep or even pig. Surely they’d been sacrificed to Set, deity of desert and drought. Some villagers had painted vases of blue water on their huts, tributes to God Osiris. Osiris ruled the Nile, water, moisture and—the last sigh of life—humidity. Khufu was now the Osiris King.
Thirst scratched across Mehi’s throat. Before his month-long void, he hadn’t noticed these effects of the drought.
Of earlier droughts, his father had told Sebek and Mehi bedtime stories about citizens robbing gravesites for food offerings or fathers selling their daughters. The worst was—Horemheb’s voice would sharpen dagger-like when he told this story—cannibalism. Neighbors standing on rooftops would “fish for people in the alleys, flinging down huge hooks on ropes.” Remembering that story, Mehi glanced up to the rooftops. He avoided the faces of the few men and women he passed so he wouldn’t wonder if their hunger was that extreme. Still, he sensed hunger exuding from them like sweat. One man greeted him with the prayer, “Osiris is water.”
Pese’shet had told him that Kenna had called on Mehi while he slept. Remembering the sweat of their arms during their pyramid work reminded Mehi of another arm, An-khi’s arm, pointing at something. His gut twisted. He next pictured his mother becoming sick on herself ... He’d also find and visit Wabt. He’d explain to her, somehow, about his behavior during their marriage.
With a shiver, Mehi came to the head of his parents’ alley. Here, after witnessing the tomb-robbing pit a year ago, he’d feebly confronted his father. Perhaps Mehi’s recollections hinted that his health was improving, but he wished he could choose which memories returned.
Inside the courtyard, he faced the family home. It was painted blue—for homecoming. Could this be for him? Mehi amazed himself to feel grateful for a place to come home to.
Stepping between the entry’s blue doorframe, he smelled traces of clay soap as he had when his mother was alive. In the dark hut, his eyes sifted through shadows. Its sparse furnishings came into view. Then, Horemheb. He was sitting down against a wall stroking a cat. Khety’s cat. It had been tame only for Khety. Horemheb hummed to it. This wasn’t the father Mehi remembered. Horemheb seemed small and peaceful.
“Father?” Mehi whispered, tuneful and gentle.
Horemheb yanked up the cat as a shield. He searched for whoever had invaded his home, his pupils enlarging.
“Father, it’s Mehi. I’m home.”
Bit by bit, Horemheb’s pupils focused on his younger child.
His eyebrows lowered and his hands shot up, the cat leaping away. “Son.” Horemheb wrenched himself up, stiff and off-balance.
Mehi edged a second step onto the home’s dirt floor.
“I got scared.” Horemheb chuckled at himself, eyes welling. “Tem me—and I knew you were coming.” He butted his hand against his forehead, holding back tears. “Forgive an old man. I’m happy. I don’t know why I’m flooding.”
Mehi’s mouth dangled open. Imagine—his father crying. And Mehi the reason for it, merely arriving home. His father melted into a human being right before his eyes. Awe alone stemmed Mehi’s tears. All those years he’d blamed his father ... what for now? The bitterness he tasted was for someone who seemed to no longer exist.
Horemheb clapped his palms on the top of his son’s shoulders. They pressed closer and nearly attained a hug.
“Here, come along,” said the father. “Sit with me.” The two reclined on pillows, the cat jumping back onto Horemheb’s lap. “Some old guy said you’d be coming.”
“Djedi.”
“I knew when I got Sebek to hunt for you, he’d fetch you home.”
“Sebek? What about Sebek?” Mehi spoke more loudly than he’d intended. Horemheb appeared befuddled at how he might have upset his son, his eyes widening and his mouth hanging open. Mehi softened his tone. “Tell me about Sebek.”
“He used his important friends, plowing his contacts to get you home.”
“He’s here?” Mehi admitted that, oddly, his brother had brought him home, though not in the way their father believed. Let Horemheb have his happy confusion about that. “Yes, Father.”
“Your mother and I are very proud.”
Did Horemheb believe that Khety was alive?
“You been scribing in ...,” began Horemheb. “Which province?”
Mehi wondered if he had been a scribe. No, no. More of his father’s muddle.
Horemheb answered for him. “One of those big ones up north. I forget which. My mind doesn’t work like it used to.”
Forgetting—that was Mehi’s trick. He’d forgotten more than his father ever had.
“Well, tell me about your scribing anyway.”
Mehi decided he should create a story. Before he could think of one, Horemheb said, “It’s festival to have you home. This’d be your mother’s happiest day.”
Good, Horemheb did realize that Khety was gone.
“That reminds me. That girl of yours is coming over.”
“What? You mean An-khi?”
“I don’t mean that other one,” said Horemheb with the cruel laugh that had always made Mehi cringe. “Tu, An-khi.”
Mehi loved hearing her name. Notes plucked on a harp. His father had permitted Mehi to say it again. He licked its taste on his lips.
“She’s a good one,” Horemheb said. “Smiles like your mother. Said she’d be here. Any minute now.”
Mehi’s heartbeat sped. Sweat broke on his hairline. He wouldn’t be able to hide his lost month from her. He should bolt out of there. He paced the room. Maybe his father was confused about who was here and who would be arriving.
“Mehi.”
He spun toward the raspy voice. He’d forgotten its sound if not its power. In the doorway, An-khi’s silhouette cut its shape. Like no other. Ready to spring like an antelope. She ran and hugged him. He set his arms around her, stopping short of touching his palms to her back despite his hands’ urge. Her body sparked Mehi like the tingling of a leg or arm after it had fallen asleep. Like all of him had fallen asleep.
“Let me see you,” she said, holding him at arm’s length. “Ah Mehi, you’re safe. We were persuaded you’d be missing forever.”
An-khi again in my eyes and arms. Her eyes’ niche, her lips white shadow, and her voice dropping off like stones skipped across water. Mehi’s boyhood grin spread his cheeks.
“Well, Father,” An-khi said to Horemheb, “isn’t it wonderful that Mehi’s finally home.”
“Beautiful.”
“Let me see you.” Putting her arm on Mehi’s shoulder, An-khi led him to an oil-lamp she lit. “We have to catch up.”
Mehi shuddered.
They sat together on either side of the flame. Its orange hue played on their faces though it didn’t penetrate the recesses of An-khi’s eyes.
“Where were you? What did you do?”
Mehi yearned to enthrall An-khi with story after story throughout the night. Yet, he had no stories. He had achieved nothing since he’d last spoken to her—when she pointed at the stones. How could he tell her that?
When Mehi didn’t speak, Horemheb jumped in. “He’s been scribing down at that province. I told you that.”
His father’s anger completed a cycle—it once bullied Mehi, now it defended him.
An-khi lowered her eyes, indicating to Mehi that she understood Horemheb’s confusion. She halted her questions. The dark wells of An-khi’s eyes then steadied on Mehi. He longed to meet her again, afresh, a second chance for that day in the water, the Inundation imminent, the world new.
“You’d be pleased, Mehi,” An-khi piped. “I serve food at the pyramid. Me. Since Khufu’s illness, Egypt’s organization has lagged. Vizier Shaf seems more concerned with designing his pyramid and disrupting Co-regent Hordedef.” An-khi giggled. “I’ve even helped to route food to the pyramid site. I’m cooperating, just like you, Mehi.”
Mehi’s mind spun. An-khi had come to admire what mattered so much to him, Khufu’s pyramid—the Horizon of Sunrise and Sunset. During his absence, they’d drawn closer.
He had to say something to her. Fill in this silence. Perhaps if he simply started talking, true words would come forward. He’d hurry out every thought no matter what they turned out to be. Mehi opened his mouth to begin when a shadow at the front doorway drew his eyes. His grin froze. “Sebek.”
“Hello, little brother.”
“Son.” Horemheb hurried to his elder son as he had to his younger one. “This is beautiful. Both my boys back in the house.” Their father clutched Sebek’s arm and beamed at Mehi. “Your mother is smiling on us. She’s proud of me for getting us all together.”
Horemheb beckoned for Mehi to join them. Mehi stood and shuffled to him. Between his sons, Horemheb curved an arm around each of their shoulders, smiling back and forth to them. “It’s like nobody ever went away.”
Sebek smirked at his brother, mocking their father’s giddiness. Mehi turned his face away. Tomorrow, he’d begin trailing Sebek to confirm whether or not his brother was a traitor. He’d gather evidence to square his uncertain memory. Ma’at required proof. Yet, tonight, the dread of spying on an innocent brother or establishing his guilt, Mehi began to sweat like a fish too long in the sun.
“Just like it was,” Horemheb said. “Mehi and An-khi will get together again and get a house together.”
“Uh, Father,” said Sebek, “that would be nice, except that An-khi lives with me. Remember?”
Mehi didn’t hear that, couldn’t have heard that.
“Oh tu,” laughed Horemheb. “She’s with you now, huh.”
The dirt chilled beneath Mehi’s feet. An-khi is living with Sebek?
“Who blames me not remembering right in all this excitement?” Horemheb turned to An-khi. “Come on over here, daughter.” He pulled her into a tight huddle, their eight shoulders squishing up.
When they broke apart, Sebek gazed down his nose at Mehi. He smiled as if a cat playing with a trapped mouse. “Little brother, offer your congratulations.” He thrust an arm about An-khi’s middle. She squirmed in his grasp. “Me and An-khi is great news to come home to. Isn’t it?”
Mehi gawked at An-khi, straining to comprehend who she’d become. Darkness beyond her high cheekbones hid any answer.
He withdrew to a corner, folding his legs under him, and let the others visit without him. An-khi talked about her combating the drought on the estate. Her voice’s rasp kissed him, her hair’s waves swept through him, and her eyes shut him out. Sebek recounte
d how he’d argued a garlic buyer into a “superior” trade. Mehi recalled as a child a game of catch with Sebek and his gang. Sebek had purposely struck Mehi in the gut with a rock he’d thrown with full might from close range. The resulting welt caused Mehi less pain than knowing it meant Sebek didn’t want his brother near him.
Then Mehi realized this punch to the gut was just what he’d done to Wabt. The shadow of a chisel crossed his heart. How could he make it up to her? Was his penance the marriage of An-khi and Sebek? Mehi thought of their marriage bed—the caress and press of skin, wet kisses, slip of tongue and An-khi’s myrrh perfume … Mehi’s flesh itched. Couldn’t he just crawl back into the cocoon of sleep? Couldn’t life protect him from these attacks of imagination? Would he always have to imagine An-khi with Sebek as one body joined?
As An-khi and Sebek spoke, their words sounded to Mehi like barks and squeals of desert hyenas.
Soon after, Mehi excused himself from his family’s home. His father said, “Don’t be gone so long this time.”
Mehi wandered into the black desert. Its blank rhythms drained him while its heat gnawed at him. The drone in his head began anew. In it he tried to submerge Sebek’s voice announcing his crime and marriage. His brother claimed everything he had ever clamped his hands on—including An-khi—and still he would betray his nation. No thankfulness. Mehi was sure he had heard his brother plotting with the High-priest.
Feet in the desert, Mehi’s legs drained as if he was falling into the Underworld. He clutched his knees. In his mind rose the word setcher, to lie down in sleep or death. As his sister and mother had.
But as he continued to stomp in the sand, he considered how setcher also described the Sleepless One, the Eternal One—God Ra. In Mehi’s dizziness, he began to imagine that it was his sister and mother who had retrieved him from his wandering in the desert. They had been here in the desert when he was here. They had been sleepless and eternal.
To repay them, Mehi would embark at once to save the Good God Khufu. Starting tonight and for the next five days until Osiris Khufu’s entombment, he would trail Sebek whenever his brother left his—and An-khi’s—home.
Mehi pounded feeling back into his legs. However much he evaded thinking about his brother’s plot to defile his family further, he must do something.
Only he could.
He turned heel on the desert and made for home.
Mehi needed help. He sought out Kenna.
Before the next day’s dawn, outside Kenna’s family hut, Mehi waited until his friend emerged. After his confusion about who was lurking in the dark, Kenna recognized Mehi. He whooped and, dropping his clapnet, wrapped Mehi in his burly arms until Mehi hurt. “You’ve returned, old boy.” Kenna pulled back and playfully slapped both sides of his friend’s face. “Come on, give me that grin. Ah, yes, there it is. You’re really back.”
“I am, I am. Thanks to you.”
Kenna bowed. He adjusted his bandana and then retrieved his clapnet. The two began walking down the alley.
Mehi said, “You’re doing well with the fishing then?”
“Good enough. Fish is more valuable than ever. Even fluke.” Kenna stopped. “Tem. I didn’t mean … about your mother.”
Mehi shook his head. “Don’t worry.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
Mehi waved a hand at the net on Kenna’s shoulder. “You’re still a one-man business?”
The two began walking again. “Yes, yes. What I make I keep to myself. You want to help?”
“Actually, I was hoping for your help.”
Kenna bowed. “At your service.”
“When I was at the Hituptah Temple—“
“Yes, what were you doing there anyway?”
Mehi faltered. “That’s a long story. I don’t remember large parts of it.”
Kenna took a long look at his friend. “Hmm.”
“When I was there, I overheard my brother … I heard my brother plotting with the Ptah High-priest.”
“Your brother? Plotting what?”
“I think it was to attack God-king Khufu’s mummy.”
“You think?”
“I can’t be sure. I was in a daze when I was there. But it was my brother’s voice that woke me up.”
“Hmm.” Kenna paused. “Your brother’s a dragoman, right?’
“Tu.”
“Well, you can’t report it. No one’s going to believe you against a dragoman and a High-priest. It’s a pretty crazy story.”
“I know.”
The pair came to the village clearing. They turned under a pair of sycamores down a path toward the Nile. Kenna said, “You said you wanted my help?”
Mehi began to speak rapidly. “I need to follow Sebek. See where he goes, who he talks to. You know, to get something to back up my story. Or to prove I was hearing things. If my story is true, he plans to attack the mummy when they take it into the pyramid. That gives us five days to follow him.”
Kenna paused. He seemed to be considering something. At last he spoke, slowly. “Your brother is in An-khi’s manor house, right? The tem governor’s house?”
Mehi hung his head. “Tu.”
“Right. Mehi, I’m your friend. This isn’t easy to tell you. But … I think you’re working something out. For yourself. Some kind of thing between you and Sebek, and you and An-khi.”
“You mean I’m making this up … because of jealousy.”
“No, no. I’d wager my net that you think you heard your brother. And you probably heard right. I just mean that this is something you need to do by yourself.”
Mehi tried to speak but he just stammered. That wasn’t the answer he expected.
“I’m not insulting you. I mean, I don’t mean to insult you. When you saved my life—there’s nothing else to call it—I couldn’t have picked a better person to be with. You risked himself willingly as much as I was accidently. Hanging off that pyramid. But, you know what? You’ve always been like that.” Kenna paused to look at Mehi. “Now, there’s this other side of you that needs to, well, to come out.”
Mehi was beginning to feel queasy. “What’s that?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Whatever it’s called, but it’s doing something alone, by yourself. And maybe for yourself. Tu.”
“You mean you don’t want to help?”
“Tu, I can help you. But you need, I think you need, to work out whatever’s going on in you. To have that ... achievement. That’s something I know something about. I don’t know much else.” Kenna adjusted his bandana. “When I accomplish something on my own, it feels good, so good, almost like I’m exalted. Maybe it’s not magical, but it feels like magic. And I’m changed somehow, better than before.”
The words of his friend coursed Mehi’s mind. He wanted to believe he was making up the story about his brother’s plotting. Kenna’s explanation was a reasonable alternative.
Kenna said, “Somebody like you who’s already got that ability to sacrifice himself—which not too many people have, my friend—well, when you get the independence ability too, you won’t just become noble, but maybe even royal.” Kenna threw his free arm up in a great circle. “You always wanted to be the God-king, didn’t you?”
Mehi had to laugh. He didn’t tell Kenna that he’d dreamt of himself as the dead God-king. He’d fix this alone.
Part 4
DAYS BETWEEN YEARS