Kemamonit

  Chapter four

  Charlie walked over to the shelves beside the sarcophagus, he looked inside as he stood next to it. Kemamonit was still floating in it the look of pain on her face.

  He turned and looked at the first shelf and saw the first papyrus back in its place, he picked it up and unrolled it looking at the back. The spell was gone.

  “She can do that, but still uses an outhouse,” he thought to himself.

  Charlie picked up the next scroll, he noticed the papyrus of both scrolls seemed to be almost new now, and there was no musty smell or fragility to them.

  “Let’s read it outside, it’s creepy in here with her floating there,” Shelley said pointing to the sarcophagus.

  “Sure, it’s a nice outside and there’s lots of day left,” Charlie replied.

  They walked over to the table together.

  “I’ll throw the leftovers down the toilet, I’ve had some bad experience’s leaving food lying around in the wilderness,” Shelley scraped all the leftovers onto one of the platters.

  She walked back to the wooden building with the scraps and returned a few minutes later.

  Charlie and Mohammad had piled all the dishes off to one side and had rolled the papyrus out onto the table. The wine cups weighed down the corners.

  Shelley sat down on one of the chairs and took out a water bottle.

  “Here we go again,” Charlie said.

  The temple of Atum was a very strange place, it was an enormous building with many rooms and secret places. I was given shared living quarters with a number of young women much like myself.

  The women I was with were all from the city of Lunu most were there to pay off the debts of their parents.

  “You must stay a virgin,” one of them said to me giggling.

  “Are you a virgin?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes at me in an enigmatic way. I suspected that virginity was defined the same way here as in my village, a virgin was someone who had no children.

  I decided then I would stay away from men no matter what. I had no desire to spoil whatever Ahmes attraction to me was and destroy the tenuous existence I currently had.

  I was told that we were to help perform all the temple rituals that were required over the course of a year, since I had no formal dance training I would help out only with the ceremony of creation performed during all the major festivals.

  I was also to assist the temples principle scribe mixing his inks and making papyrus for him to write on.

  I was never told why I was here in the temple but I soon learned that Ahmes was one of the principle architects for the King of Lunu. I also learned that he had risen to this position by the marrying one of the Kings daughters.

  “She has the face of a hippopotamus, as well as the appetite,” I was told by a young woman who had befriended me.

  Isis was from a prominent family in Lunu, she had been sent to the temple by her parents in an attempt to curb her wild behavior. It hadn’t worked as far as I could tell, she was constantly in trouble with the temple priests, either for sneaking out into the city at night or for pilfering the ceremonial wine which she would share with the rest of us during wild parties in our quarters.

  Isis was awe inspiring to me, I had never met a woman so confident and fearless, she had long dark hair and large beautiful eyes which she made even more beautiful with the skilful use of makeup.

  She could manipulate almost any man with her charm and subtle gazes. I was pretty sure I would have been sacrificed to Atum if I had even done half the things she had gotten away with.

  Strangely the only person resistant to her charms was my new superior Danel the chief scribe of the temple.

  Danel was a quiet man of middle age, he was balding with a carefully trimmed beard. He had come to Lunu from far off lands in the east when he was a young man and had worked his way up the temple hierarchy.

  His facial features gave away his foreign ancestry he had a large nose and a tinge of red in his beard.

  “He thinks he can divine my thoughts,” Isis would always say angrily whenever I would talk of Danel.

  I also noticed when his name was spoken her eyes would flash not only with anger but with an intensity that she only reserved for him.

  My first day assisting Danel consisted of him teaching me how to mix the inks for his work. The ingredients were simple charcoal, tree sap, water and a bit of honey, but it was quite tricky to get the consistency just right.

  Danel showed me how to use a little cup with lines on it to mark the exact amounts needed for each ingredient.

  I mastered the process after working for a fair portion of the morning.

  “Excellent, little one,” Danel said as he tested my latest batch.

  Danel then showed me how to mix the color red using ochre instead of charcoal.

  “I will show you how to make papyrus tomorrow little one, we mustn’t overwork your delicate hands and diminish their beauty.”

  I looked at my palms, they were covered in calluses from pulling on fishing nets and carrying baskets. I looked at Danel but could see no humor in his expression.

  Danel showed me a small comfortable mat in one of the corners of his office.

  “You can sleep here during midday, little one. I will return with some food when the temple wakes.”

  Danel’s office was deep inside the temple, Ra’s fierce beams could not penetrate easily making the room cooler then outside.

  I curled up on the mat and fell asleep immediately.

  I was standing on the banks of the great river. Ra stood on the horizon glowing a deep orange color preparing to sleep for the night.

  I was by myself staring at the slowly moving water, looking at the odd branch or leaf as it drifted by. I heard a strange noise to my left, and turned with to look with a feeling of curiosity.

  I felt my eyes widen with fear as panic gripped my body. It was the River Master running towards me, his long powerful body whipping back and forth in rhythm with his lightning quick stride.

  I tried to move my feet to turn and run but they seemed to be stuck fast, I saw an expression of glee light up the River Masters eyes. He had me and he knew it, I saw the large jaws start to open as he prepared to snap them around my unmoving body.

  I jerked awake, my mouth open preparing to scream.

  “It was just a dream,” I thought as relief flooded through my body.

  I had had this dream a number of times, it seemed to afflict me more when I had misfortune enter my life.

  The events of the dream were based on an actual event in my life. The River Master was what we called the largest and most devious of the crocodiles that lived near our village.

  The River Master was as patient as a spider, as quick as lightning, and had the cunning of a jackal.

  My friends and I had been playing next to the small stand of brush all day. The River Master must have waited in the midst of it motionless the whole time knowing how I liked to stand on the shore and look at the river flow by before darkness fell.

  He must have watched me for days deducing my propensity for solitude at this particular spot at this time of the day.

  It was luck that saved me, I had coincidently turned and looked at the brush just as he leaped towards me. I managed to stumble backwards as he snapped his jaws shut in the space I had just occupied.

  I turned and ran as fast as I had ever run, I heard the River Master behind me as I zigged and zagged knowing he could not turn as fast as I.

  I was finally able to scramble up a small tree and look back.

  He stood about twenty cubits away panting, he raised his head and looked at me clinging to the tree, my body trembling with fear, and I could have sworn he had an expression of mirth on his long face.

  He turned slowly, walked back to the river and slithered in disappearing into the black water.

  I have had the nightmare ever since.

  I lay awake on the mat in Danel’s office staring at the high stone c
eiling. What was to become of me?

  Danel returned soon after I had wakened he carried a small basket filled with some dates a half a loaf of bread and a dried fish. He carried a jar of beer in his other hand.

  “Let us eat little one,” he put the basket in front of me and sat down on the floor across from me.

  “What will I do this afternoon?” I asked.

  “I thought I would start to teach you how to write. Would you like that?”

  I was stunned, I looked at his face to see if he was in jest.

  “Yes… I would like that, but why?” I said.

  “I need an assistant that does more than mix ink. I will teach you every afternoon unless I have important duties to perform.”

  “Thank you, I will be in your debt forever,” I replied.

  “No you won’t, always remember someone taught me too, thank the person who invented writing.”

  Danel started by showing how to hold the scribes brush properly and to dip it to get the right amount of ink. He then showed me a simple character and had me practise writing it on some on some pottery shards, he had a large basket of them in his office.

  I was on my way.

  “That’s the end of the Papyrus,” Charlie said.

  “No spell?” Shelley asked.

  “Nope.”

  “It’s getting kind of dark, why don’t we go to bed and start again in the morning,” Mohammad said.

  The three of them walked back to the wooden building, Charlie had rolled up the papyrus and carried it with him. Once inside Charlie put the papyrus back on the shelf.

  Mohammad and Shelley put the door in place and barred it shut.

  “How do we shut the lights off,” Shelley pointed to the lighting panels embedded in the ceiling.

  Mohammad examined one of the panels closely then grabbed a hold of a small handle connected to a wooden slider. He slid it to the other side of the grove it was in and the panel shut off.

  Charlie looked at the other panels, they all had the same lever.

  “I guess the whole light switch concept hadn’t been developed yet.” Charlie said.

  “I don’t think these use electricity,” Shelley said.

  “I wonder how you wire a house with magic?”

  They all picked a bed, then Mohammad shut the final panel off and they went to sleep.

  Shelley woke up feeling a slight breeze across her face. She was lying on her back and opened her eyes expecting to see sunlight shining through the cracks in the cedar cabins walls.

  Shelley gasped when she looked up she saw the entire expanse of the night sky above her. It was beautiful. The spine of the Milky Way stretched across the sky shining so bright it almost hurt her eyes.

  She looked around and saw the four other beds and the sarcophagus sitting on the buildings floor, the walls and roof of the structure had disappeared. The area beyond the wooden platform seemed to be the top of a large hill, it looked to be made of rock and was the size of a football field.

  Charlie and Mohammad had also sat up in their beds too, the light breeze having wakened them as well.

  “Where are we?” Shelley asked.

  “I recognize this,” Charlie said as he looked around, “I visited this years ago, we’re on top of one of the buttes in Monument Valley.”

  “Where’s that?” Mohammad asked.

  “Utah, there should roads all around here and a major highway.”

  They all put their clothes on and then cautiously stepped off the platform and walked towards the eastern edge of the hilltop.

  They stopped about five feet from the edge and looked out over the dark landscape, they could see other tall buttes in the distance as well as open flat areas. There were no roads visible.

  “I don’t see anything, maybe it’s just too dark,” Mohammad replied.

  “Why did she bring us here?” Shelley asked.

  Charlie looked up at the stars and pointed, “This maybe.”

  They stared at the stars for a few more minutes.

  “They sure are beautiful, I’m beginning to see how they would be pretty important for a society that spent a lot of time outside,” Shelley said.

  A thin line of dark orange light started to spread along the east, they all turned and watched the sun slowly rise above the horizon.

  “Wow, I should visit this place,” Shelley said.

  The combination of the early sunlight and the oranges and reds of the surrounding desert created a breathtaking panorama.

  “I don’t see any roads,” Charlie was looking at the landscape below.

  “Do you think maybe we’re traveling in time as well,” said Shelley.

  “No bars on my phone again,” Mohammad had his cell phone in his hand.

  “It’s all magic, who knows what she’s doing, I’m just glad she didn’t fry our eyeballs with a blinding flash this time,” Charlie said.

  They turned and walked back to the wooden platform that was all that remained of the cedar building. Charlie noticed that the shelves that held the papyrus next to the sarcophagus had disappeared.

  Charlie stepped onto the platform and walked over to the sarcophagus to see it Kemamonit was still lying in it.

  She was still there, motionless with the expression of pain on her face, he also noticed a folded papyrus held in place against the invisible field by a large smooth pebble.

  Charlie picked up the papyrus and read it.

  I hope you enjoyed your experience mysterious guests. I found this place in my many travels and loved the sunrise.

  When you are ready to leave gather everyone around my melancholy corpse and say my name three times. Pepi is still listening.

  Always stay together during this journey, it can be dangerous if you don’t.

  “That’s ominous,” Mohammad said over Charlie’s shoulder.

  “What’s it say?” Shelley asked, a curious expression on her face.

  “She says we should always stay together or else, and if we say her name three times the journey continues.”

  “Let’s go then,” Shelley said.

  “I’m closing my eyes this time,” Charlie said.

  “Kemamonit, Kemamonit… Kemamonit.”

  Charlie didn’t feel anything this time and opened his eyes after a few seconds. They were still on the butte.

  “Oh shit,” he said as the familiar flash of light blinded him.

  Charlie heard the muffled sound of the ocean, he could make out the walls of the building as his sight slowly returned.

  “The walls are back,” he heard Shelley say.

  Charlie also saw that the shelves with all the papyri had reappeared as well.

  Mohammad walked over to the door removed the wooden ties holding the door shut, he lifted the door up and put it besides the opening.

  The all walked outside.

  They were on a beautiful pink coral sand beach, the water lapping against it was so clear as to be almost transparent. Charlie looked behind the cedar building and saw a dense tropical forest.

  “Look over there,” Shelley pointed to what looked like a large stone slab resting on two stone blocks, it had a variety of clay pots and reed baskets surrounding it.

  Shelley walked over to the slab and picked up a pottery shard sitting on its top.

  “More ostraca,” she handed it to Mohammad.

  “It says that cooking meals together is an important part of life and that the slab is some kind of stove, I think, and it’s turned on by moving a leaver on the side.”

  Shelley found the lever and moved it, almost instantly the slab started to radiate heat. Shelley noticed there were lines etched into the slab making a series of concentric circles.

  “I think the further you go from the center the cooler the slab is, the lines probably help gauge the distance,” Mohammad said.

  Charlie looked into the various baskets and clay jars, the baskets were full of various types of seafood including live crabs, the clay jars had various ingredients including flo
ur, spices and a large amount of beer.

  “No water,” Charlie said to no one in particular.

  “Look, over there,” Shelley was pointed to a small shelf of rock protruding from the vegetation there was a steady stream of water cascading over top of it.

  “I think I could use a shower,” Shelley said walking towards it.

  As she got closer to it she saw a screen made of two wooden poles with linen attached to the lengths, leaning against the rock..

  Shelley pushed the poles into the soft sand stretching the linen between them blocking the view of the two men.

  Like most people with experience working in remote places in foreign countries Shelley always carried soap, toilet paper and a toothbrush at all times. She quickly undressed fishing her plastic soap container and tooth brush from the surplus army pants she had been wearing.

  The water was just the right temperature and felt wonderful.

  “Kemamonit thinks of everything,” she thought to herself, “wait, no towels.”

  Shelley waited for a few minutes to let the sun dry her off before dressing and re-joining the two men.

  Charlie and Mohammad were sitting on the beach talking, Charlie had a cup of beer in his hand.

  “Why do you think she is doing this,” Shelley asked as she sat beside them.

  “We were just talking about that, Mohammad thinks its Maat.”

  “What’s Maat?”

  “It’s hard to translate, but it sort of means the cleanliness of your soul.”

  “We’re cleaning her soul?’ Shelley said confused.

  Mohammad laughed, “She’s dead. Ancient Egyptian theology says that when you die you are to be judged as you journey through the underworld, if your soul is too heavy you get eaten up by a nasty monster. I think we’re the ones judging her and this journey we’re on is a trip through the underworld.”

  “I thought the underworld was supposed to be a horrible place, this is like paradise,” Shelley said.

  “I think that maybe we are judging her for another reason, maybe her resurrection.”

  Shelley had a shocked look on her face, “resurrection?”

  “This is all magic who knows what’s possible, her body is over five thousand years old and hasn’t aged, she can transport us thousands of miles in an instant. I don’t think resurrection would be much of a stretch,” Charlie said.

  “If she can do all these things why would she need us?” Shelley asked.

  “We’ll just have to keep reading the papyri to find out.”

  They spent the rest of the morning getting cleaned up and attempting to cook a meal with their Bronze Age utensils.

  Kemamonit had included a set of large obsidian knives and wooden spoons. The three of them had next to no experience cooking something that hadn’t come out of a can. Mohammad had helped his mother cook when he had been younger and had a vague idea of what to do.

  In the end they boiled the crabs and fried the fish in oil after dipping it in flour and some spices. It all tasted surprisingly good.

  “I think if you have really good ingredients it’s hard to screw things up unless you burn it,” Shelley said.

  Charlie thought back to his university days attempting to make pizza with his roommates. They had spent more in ingredients then it would have cost to get one delivered, and it had been inedible.

  “I think if Mohammad hadn’t been here we’d be pretty hungry,” Charlie said.

  Charlie got up from the meal and walked back into the wooden building he grabbed the next papyrus in the sequence and brought it back to the other two.

  “I guess we should start reading some more,” Charlie said as he sat on the sand leaning back against a large pot.

  I really enjoyed learning how to write and Danel seemed to enjoy teaching me even more. Every night I would practice drawing characters with a stick against a small flat rock I had hidden under my sleeping mat.

  When I was asleep I dreamed about writing, I wrote huge scrolls with many weighty and important passages.

  It was one of the happiest times of my life, I began to realize what an unquenchable thirst for knowledge I had.

  The only person who wasn’t happy with me learning my new skill was Isis.

  “Of what use is writing to a… a… peasant!!” she said angrily when I told her of Danel teaching me.

  I was hurt and confused when she acted this way. Once I even offered to teach her everything I learned so she wouldn’t feel left out.

  “I know how to write!!” She said as she stormed away.

  I was heartbroken, I would have felt better if I could fathom her anger and resentment. Isis had always been friendly and treated us all as equals, I had never heard her use the word peasant until I told her about my writing lessons.

  It wasn’t until weeks later that I finally deduced the real reason behind her anger.

  I had decided I would not talk about writing since it bothered Isis so much. I thought that if I would just tell her about Danel teaching me to make papyrus, a very peasant sort of thing to do, she would be friendly again.

  Isis sat haughtily as I tried to talk to her refusing to even look in my direction, I told her how hard it was to slit the papyrus plants and lay them down just right. I even embellished the difficulty and how demanding Danel had been, that he had grabbed my wrists roughly to show me the proper technique.

  The moment I had said Danel had grabbed my wrists a shock went through Isis as if she had heard a loud noise. She snapped her head around and stared at me with such intensity and vehemence I unconsciously backed away.

  “You stay away from him!!” She yelled at me.

  Isis’s odd behaviour suddenly came into perfect focus.

  “Oh Isis, you love him,” I said.

  “No I don’t,” she wouldn’t look at me again.

  I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. She let her head drop and I felt her body subtly shake as I saw tears fall into her lap.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about Isis, even if I was interested in Danel, which I’m not, I have Ahmes and Hippo face to worry about.”

  “Do you promise,” she whispered.

  “Let Sobek eat me alive if I’m lying.”

  Isis was civil to me once again after our conversation but I could now sense a slight melancholy in her voice and her gestures.

  I did look at Danel with more interest during our lessons, but all I saw was a man with a big nose and a passion for teaching. Women were becoming as confusing to me as men.

  After a few months I had become a serviceable writer, my handwriting was not as flawless and beautiful as Danel’s but it was quite legible. Danel had given me some scroll’s to read to increase my vocabulary.

  They were mostly boring contracts about wheat and taxes but there were a few that were interesting stories about gods and hero’s.

  Danel asked me once why I would show up tired with dark circles under my eyes sometimes. I told him about my bad dreams with the River Master.

  Danel thought for a moment then grabbed a sack of pottery shards and handed it to me.

  “I want you to write down your dreams every morning, the descriptions don’t have to be really detailed just good enough so you can understand them. The important part is to write them down. Will you do this?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “There is chance nothing will happen, but sometimes the gods do strange things.”

  I did what he said and started writing down my dreams. I had never paid much attention to my dreams and usually forgot them before I had dressed myself, now that I started to write them down I began to remember more and more details, soon it took two or three shards to write one down.

  I had been doing this for a few weeks when Danel’s words came true. The gods really do strange things sometimes.