The Story Starts Here

Chapter 1: Mean Girls

Wednesday 30 March 2016

Chapter 2: The Bereft



           
          The drop of blood fell onto the scarab and ran red into the cracks of the green stone. Amani-shakhete’s hand closed over his and turned it over, pressing her fingertips over the wounds in his.  “Enough blood, my husband.  She is still alive and my Ushera has not returned, so must still be seeking her.”

            Jahi stared down at his hand cupped in between hers.  She wiped the droplet of blood off his skin and pressed the sacrifice square of linen over it.  His fingertips were scarred with years of his blood letting for his missing little girl.  “Amani, I feel so helpless.”

            “I know, my love.  I and my advisors will begin the Flow tomorrow.  There will be enough power to try and cast some sight.  South this time.  We looked North and North-East last time before the Pharaoh blocked us.”

            Jahi, his hair streaked with white from where the Roc had injured him, snatching his daughter, his eyes no longer steady and his chin jerking sideways every few minutes, closed his eyes and his wife leaned forward to kiss him.

         “Love, it was a choice of seconds," she said.  "You delayed the monster long enough that Asteri could go after him.” She dropped her gilded eyelids, looking down.  “And I didn’t want to lose you too.”  It had taken a full blood bath to save her consort, seven days of seclusion and all the power that her closest and most powerful advisors could manage.  He’d been wrapped in bandages for a full twenty-eight days afterwards, before he could be re-birthed and rise up healed.

         “So you and your ladies are about to go into the Red Temple and try and stop this disaster that is coming?  Whatever it is?”


            “Sometimes we only get warnings, my dear, you know that.  This time we can’t even see what to guard against.”

            “When my mother saw it, first time, she said it was Fire.”

            “And when Namret saw it, she and her Bennu said it was Earth.”

            “So the country needs you.  You’re bleeding yourself dry, my wife.”

            She smiled and stood up, drawing him up from where he knelt before the altar to their daughter.  “It’s my duty as Candace.  Trust Asteri.  He would have come back and told us if he’d failed.” She waved at the scarab.  “Her naming scarab is whole so she is alive and it is bright. She is well.  Asteri will find her.”

            Jahi picked up the staff of his office, that he more often leaned on these days, the falcon headed lapis staff.  “I hear you, wife.  I will trust the bond of your blood.”

            She drew her hand down his face.  “Our blood, husband.”  Kehet-Ana’s Bennu came fluttering in the open window, singing, golden feathers flashing.  “Ah.  The Flow has begun.  I will see you in seven days, Jahi.” Kehet-Ana always started the Goddess’s flow first of the Candace’s advisors and her phoenix summoned everyone else.

            There were twelve women in the Candace’s advisory council, all synchronized to flow together, so they could raise their powers together out of their monthly blood.  Twelve women who would enter the waters of the Nile, dive down under the Red Temple and emerge inside the red sandstone walls, the red glass windows, the image of a red tent raised inside around the entrance pool.  The images of Nuit and Sehkmet gracing the inside walls, lounging on the red couches of power, light flowing from between their legs and out of their mouths and hands.  The pool in the Nile was the only way in or out.

            “I’ll raise you out of the waters myself.”

             “I trust that you will.” She smiled at him, took up crook and flail, and went to her duty.

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