Chapter Text
Part One: Messengers
Baba trusted the gods, but he never prayed for advancement. That was a matter entirely in his own hands, or his ears, as fortune would have it. While combing through the Memphis market, he chanced upon two charioteers grumbling about a stalled diplomatic trip to a desert stronghold. Their all-too-eager tongues were loosened with a friendly offer of beer.
“Postponed indefinitely,” one complained, “until Pharaoh names a replacement for the captain of the guard. He was meant to lead the trip, but he begged leave to stay in Memphis at the last minute.”
“He found his wife in bed with his most trusted slave boy,” shared the other. “Pharaoh told him not to make the journey until he put his own house in order.”
The charioteers argued over the lurid details. Did the captain—named Potiphar, like my father—discover his wife with the slave, or did his wife find him with the boy instead? Baba left them, unnoticed. He followed his ambition out of the market all the way to the great throne room of Pharaoh’s palace, volunteering himself as a substitute for the captain enmeshed in scandal.
Baba had no experience with diplomacy or foreign outposts, but he excelled at temple management during his seasons as a priest and was in good standing with the gods. Impressed by the young upstart, Pharaoh gave his consent and switched one Potiphar for another, allowing my father two days to prepare for the trip.
I refused to go. A journey east meant leaving my spot at the Nile’s edge, where the waterlilies grew thickest and where I had stationed myself faithfully for the past month. Baba allowed me to spend my days there, attributing them to my grief, as long as I did not swim. I was still young, and without his supervision, I could be swept away to a watery grave or carried off in the jaws of a hippopotamus. But when I could, I waded into the shallows and floated on my back, buoyed by clusters of lilies. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of my mother.
“An adventure,” he reasoned when he arrived home and found me with my ankles dangling in the river. “Mafkat is farther from home than you’ve ever been, and in the middle of the desert, Osnat. Imagine how bright the stars will be! And if you behave,” he promised, “I will buy you turquoise straight from the mines and fashion it into a ring when we get home.”
“We’ll be gone too long.”
“No more than three months.”
“But what if—?” I bit my tongue, fearful that he would chastise me. “What if she comes back and we’re not here?”
His face folded in on itself like a swath of linen. I instantly regretted asking. He struggled through several responses, none of them sensitive or encompassing enough, so he sank down on the riverbank and took off his sandals instead, dipping his stout legs into the water beside mine. We both smelled the air, greedy for that last remnant of Amma and her waterlily ka. Baba took my hand and avoided my question. “We wake up each day and we see the same rooms, the same sunrise over the same trees. The same shadows, over and over again.” He shook his head, resolute. “I want us to wake up to something new.”
On the morning of our departure, the sky was bitumen-black as Baba slung my drowsy arms around his shoulders and carried me out of the house, mumbling reminders to the servants in a hush. Half-asleep, I watched our home vanish as Baba carried me through the streets of Memphis, strewn with curled-up cats and onion peels, until the road gave way to the Nile where a yawning boatman lay in wait on a skiff to take us to the palace. While we drifted upriver, Baba whispered the story of the dawn to me as it unfurled across the sky.
“Ra won his battle again,” he told me, pointing to the first streaks of light on the water. “See, little bee? He survived his voyage through the underworld. What horrors do you think Apep dealt him last night?”
I thought of the huge coiled serpent depicted on the temple walls that Baba and Amma had pointed out to me the first year Baba worked there, its painted teeth poised to strike the sun god at the helm of his evening barge. “A snakebite?”
He chuckled. “Ra could withstand a snakebite.”
“Maybe Apep tried to knock him off the boat.”
“You think the great Ra can’t swim?”
“Then he tried to eat him.”
His laughter rippled over my ear. “Never thought of that one before.”
I dozed on his shoulder as Ra made his progress through heaven on his eternal circuit through our world and the next, missing my last chance for months to see the familiar riverside. Once we docked, I jolted awake again.
The palace overwhelmed my vision on all sides, painted gold and scarlet and cornflower-blue. I cowered behind Baba as he thanked the boatman and asked for directions to the royal stableyard.
A scream shattered the quiet morning.
At first, I thought it had come from me—the sound was high, young, anguished. I clapped my hand over my mouth, just in case. But it came from somewhere inside, disturbing a flock of birds that flew overhead, and Baba shared a bewildered look with the boatman before he helped me onto the dock. The palace swallowed us into its cool darkness.
The boatman was clearly used to back paths and servants’ quarters. His directions sent us wandering through corridors, past rooms where lazy butlers snored and kitchen maids threw on dresses, glaring at our intrusion on their private morning rituals. Baba paused, utterly lost, and instructed me to wait for him in the hall outside the laundry rooms while he asked someone for an escort to the stables.
There was another shout, this one much closer, and the muffled kicks of bare feet echoed against the limestone. I stayed rooted to the spot as two guards turned the corner. Pinned between them was some helpless slave, pleading with them in clipped Egyptian and cutting himself off to mutter urgent, foreign words—prayers in another language. The guards were unfazed by the slave’s begging. I flinched as they walked by, and the slave turned his head and looked at me.
The guards were already halfway down the corridor, and Baba was returning to me with a guide, so I saw him for only a moment. His eyes were vivid, water-green, the ringed kohl smeared by tears, and he opened his mouth as though to appeal to me for help, and then he was out of sight and Baba took my hand. We were out of the servants’ quarters and into the stableyard before long.
Our caravan was in the midst of assembly. Baba checked to ensure our chests were loaded onto the oxen. As soon as we identified the litter that would carry me across the desert, I dove inside, burying myself in the cushions.
“Osnat!” hissed Baba. “Pharaoh is coming!”
I refused to budge. He joined the rest of the throng lined up to receive the high priests’ blessings before the trip, angling to make a good impression. I thought of the slave. Why had he looked at me? What was he going to say? He must have known I could do nothing to save him. I was a child of ten.
Pharaoh dispensed last-minute advice, but I missed it over the din of my own thoughts and the stirrings of gossip at the back of the crowd. There was interest in my father. Mafkat’s loyalty and riches had to be secured. If he could oversee the installation of the new governor and establish a proper shrine to ensure the gods’ favor, a promotion was assured. Some charioteers’ wives remarked how well Baba would look in a leopard sash.
When we set off, I watched the palace shrink to a manageable size through the slashes in the litter’s curtain. Beneath it, like the abyss of the underworld, was a dungeon where the slave surely was by now. If he screamed, he was buried too deep for anyone to hear him. But somehow I still heard his unbroken wail.
The lush stretches of Egypt’s farmland, swollen and emerald-green from the flood season of Akhet, surrounded us that first week. Baba turned down the offer of a nurse for me, so when he was not befriending the new governor of Mafkat or studying the prospects of the stronghold, he was by my side. He built our fire himself each evening and unloaded cushions from our litter for us to stretch out on while he told stories of the gods. But I tuned them out. As night fell, the only thing I heard was the prisoner’s scream. It made a home for itself between my ears, burrowed deep in my head.
Every time the caravan stopped to draw water or rest the oxen, Baba and I would wander so he could fulfill his promise that I would wake up to a new sight each day. But while he pointed out birds and fish he did not recognize, or a fruit he had not eaten since he was a boy, I was always drawn to the things I knew and loved best: a patch of jasmine, a swarm of honeybees, and a nearby hive. “Little bee,” he mock-admonished when he caught me extracting some honeycomb, “I take you to see wonders far from home, and all you do is go looking for things you could find in your own backyard.”
What I was desperate for was the Nile, or some flash and bubble of running water where waterlilies could grow, but green gave way to chalky yellow and orange, and we entered the desert. Baba was pleased with our progress, but every hour away from the Nile, I grew more jittery, harboring panic under my breastbone. The first time he could show me the expanse of the stars, unobscured by torchlight or river fog, was the first night I realized why I could not get the scream out of my head, why the second thud of every heartbeat of mine reverberated with it. Even if I had not opened my mouth and cried out myself on the palace dock, that scream was mine, that exact agony, that same mortal terror.
Amma had disappeared from me. I could not breathe her in, not in the desert where nothing grew.
When we drew closer to Mafkat, I developed a baseless conviction that this journey had nothing to do with Baba’s aspirations, that it was a long, drawn-out, morbid surprise, and Amma would be at the end. I spent more time out of the litter, scanning faces for that distinct slope of her neck that my cheek fit into. My heart did not yet know what my mind understood.
The desert rose around us, its mountains and canyons reminding me of loaves of bread. It gave me the claustrophobic sensation that our caravan, like unsuspecting mice, traveled into the midst of a great oven and would be cooked alive. I could barely breathe for fright, which Baba mistook for dehydration. He cut my excursions outside the litter short and spent more time shut under the swaying canopy with me. I kept my hand pressed to my forehead as a means of quieting the scream, which grew accustomed to its hiding place and rang shrilly in my ears. Amma’s hands feel like this, I told it. Dove-soft. When we meet her in Mafkat, I’ll feel them again.
I fed my suffering little recollections about her favorite foods or her pitchy lullabies, but the deeper we went into the desert, the more I forgot. “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered at night. “If I can’t remember her now, I will remember everything when I see her.”
The scouts spied Mafkat’s garrison in the distance, a day’s ride away. Our beleaguered party shook off its weariness, thrilled at the prospect of staying put for some time. That giddy anticipation fueled my belief that a surprise was forthcoming. I selected my best dress and beat the sand out of it. I laid it over the back of my trunk, straightening out each wrinkle.
Though he could find no fault in my preparation, Baba sniffed out the shape of my secret. “You will behave tomorrow, won’t you?”
I said nothing, just hummed in agreement. Tomorrow promised everything.
There was no water to waste on washing, so I braided my hair at dawn; I was too young for a wig. Beaded necklaces fell from the folds of my gown when I put it on, gifts from Baba, who feigned being struck by an arrow when I ran to join him at the front of the caravan.
“My little bee,” he said fondly, tweaking my braid. His smile seemed conspiratorial. “Are you ready?”
He and the new governor talked at length as we approached the garrison about the shrine at Mafkat, the installation ceremony, and a thousand seeming inconsequential things that I tried to decipher for clues. Was there a code to it?
The sky was the same color as the rock formations for the duration of the morning, so it was not until we were at the garrison’s gate that I realized how tall the mountains around us had grown, like enormous waves kept poised at their crest, threatening to crash on us. One in particular caught my eye. It could not fail to, being the tallest and directly behind the garrison. To me, it seemed to glow. But I would not let it frighten me. I tried to copy Baba’s confident posture, the rise of his chin, so when Amma made her entrance, she would find me a little more grown up than she had left me.
Horns blasted to announce us, and the gates swung open to reveal the inhabitants of Mafkat. I studied each face, every disgruntled soldier, every dirt-streaked miner, every pregnant wife. There were so many faces and bodies of so many different hues, but not a single one was my mother’s. Yet Baba’s smile did not diminish one degree. How long would I have to wait?
I clung to his side, dutiful and quiet, as soldiers came forward and bid us welcome. The new governor, who did a poor job hiding his anxiety at being stationed so far from home, let Baba do most of the talking, and my father did not disappoint. He was in his element, making introductions as easily as if he had been born and raised in Mafkat. There were tours to give, concerns to hear, and a banquet prepared for that afternoon—but first, my father proposed, a prayer of thanksgiving to the gods for a safe journey.
His devotion was sincere, I am sure, but this was also his opportunity to observe the upkeep of the Mafkat shrine and the practices of the local priests. Corrections would be made if they failed to impress; pleasing the gods here would keep the turquoise yield on the rise. Wrapped idols, newly crafted, lay in the back of parked wagons to serve this purpose. The locals cast hungry glances back at them as they followed Baba to the shrine. It was distraction enough for me to slip away from the crowd, lingering by the gate.
Amma isn’t here.
I told myself this was a test of patience. A few more hours of laughing at the right places during Baba’s speeches, offering the right things to the gods, and sitting still through the requisite amount of the afternoon banquet, and our family would be rewarded. But how could Amma fault me for failing at this last juncture? I had shown enough patience on the journey here.
If my mother was not here in Mafkat, then she had to be somewhere close, and I would find her. Ducking between cart-laden oxen and fatigued horses, I withdrew from the caravan toward the sole exit from the garrison, becoming invisible in the dust clouds they stamped up.
Baba called out for me just as the gates closed. Then I was alone.
Where would Amma hide? I circled the perimeter of the garrison without seeing anyone, not even a soldier on the rampart. The well was empty, too. I looked up, uneasy, at the mountains that surrounded Mafkat, conjuring images of bandits, snakes, and scorpions that called them home. My conviction started to crumble, straining credulity. On the dwindling chance that I was right, and Amma was waiting for me to discover her, she would not risk hiding in these mountains.
Except, perhaps, one.
The sun had already climbed overhead, but the mountain behind the garrison still glowed faintly, like the sun was rising just behind it. It was formidable, in no way inviting, yet something about it drew me in. I shuffled to the foot of the mountain, sizing it up. This one seemed different. Without knowing why, I removed my sandals and took a tentative first step on its base.
A sound emanated from within it, a vague buzz that prickled at the base of my skull. I struggled to breathe for a fearful instant, stumbling forward and crossing some unseen boundary, and when I took the next step and the next breath, I knew—beyond any doubt—that what I needed was on this mountain. So I started to climb.
The atmosphere was heavy, even close to the ground. Not a speck of sand came free from the cliff face. The breath in my lungs was denser, like the air was half-water and moved in currents instead of winds. I did not see a single living thing as I walked, and I did not care about the time. I forgot about the dryness in my mouth and the cramps in my legs from weeks in a caravan, I forgot hunger, I even forgot my father. My singular focus was to climb deeper through the tunnels and higher up the mountain, to its very heart, where Amma waited for me.
The path narrowed into a crawl space. I got on my hands and knees and crept toward the pinpoint of light, which expanded into the seat of the mountain, shaped like a room without a ceiling. The walls shot up to the heavens, framing a portion of sky, and there were two smooth stones at its center, lying flat like a pair of fallen doors. I peered around the space, looking for another path or tunnel inside, but the only entrance was the way I had come through. And the room was empty.
Between the slabs was a crack like a seam. I heaved myself onto them and tried to see into it, to stick my fingers inside, to speak into it, with no idea of what I was trying to accomplish. For all I knew, the crack went all the way through the earth, but Amma was not inside it. I paced around the room, dragging my palms across the rock walls, and my deep breaths in the strange air became hiccups, which became moans, and then the scream I had been nursing for weeks, transmitted by the terrified slave boy, shook free.
I screamed because this journey had not been some kind of test, some magic trick that would reveal Amma alive at its conclusion.
I screamed because Amma had died months ago of fever and Baba and I had been captive, helpless spectators.
I screamed because every offering made in good faith to Ra and Heka and Isis had not proven enough to save her.
And when I was done screaming, I collapsed onto the stone and I wept.
From the seam in the stones emerged a honeybee. Its wings beat lazily in the dense air, hovering just above my face, and it landed on my cheek. I did not brush it away.
When my mother married my father and first moved into his house, trailing waterlily perfume, Baba took to calling her his flower, his garden. When I came, my parents struggled to find an appropriate nickname for me. I was a quiet, industrious toddler, but ant seemed too pejorative. I had a habit of attracting bees wherever I crawled. Baba assumed I was sticking honey behind my ears after breakfast, but I never did. The bees followed me, landing on my shoulders and chubby knees as I learned to walk. The nickname was born, and as a matter of respect for my namesake, I never shied away from them or did anything to cause them harm.
The bee on my cheek did not move. My sobs subsided, gasp by gasp, as I felt the light pressure of it, vibrating like a coo. Two more bees flew out of the hole and took up residence on my shoulder and hand, following the lead of the first: resting their wings, stilling their feet, buzzing low. It was strange but comforting, almost as if they were trying to speak to me, to offer solace by ensuring that I did not have to come to this dreadful acceptance alone.
My eyes drifted closed. The weight of the air coupled with the constant hum within the mountain, echoed by the hum of the bees that continued to fly out and arrange themselves on me, lulled me to sleep.
The search party found me a few hours later, led by my frantic father. They encountered no struggle to breathe, no peculiar sound, no unusual light, nothing worth remarking about—until they came to the heart of the mountain. Baba, beside himself with worry, burst into tears when he saw me, certain I was dead. The torchlight illuminated the tiny golden bodies of a thousand honeybees, draped over me like a blanket to protect me against the oncoming chill of desert nightfall. They dispersed when Baba scooped me up, smothering me with kisses and rebukes for running away, and the swarm disappeared back into the crack between the stones.
The locals considered it a good omen, though a puzzling one. Never before had they seen a bee in the desert. There were some failed attempts from the miners’ sons to find the hidden hive on the mountain and bring home the prized honeycomb, but most judged that the bees had been sent by the gods for my protection and as a sign of favor toward the new governor and the shrine renovations. They looked at me, and by extension at Baba, with respect, and so our time in Mafkat was a resounding success.
On our journey back to Memphis with carts piled high with turquoise, the old high priest of On died heirless. Pharaoh was appraised of Baba’s triumph in Mafkat, and after counting his new riches and receiving the first promising dispatches from the governor there, Baba was offered the position: high priesthood and permanent residence in the glorious temple of On with all the trappings of royal favor.
Baba changed his name from Potiphar to Potiphera to reflect his new dedication to the sun god whose worship was at the forefront of temple life in On. He started making private inquiries for me while I became acquainted with my new home.
Not a single part of the temple complex was off limits from my exploration except the Djeser-Djeseru, the Holy of Holies. The six gods of the temple each had one, their locked doors flanking the main courtyard. Baba was permitted inside to perform rituals for Ra each morning before sunrise, but to everyone outside the priesthood, the Djeser-Djeseru was forbidden.
But I had no interest in exploring there. I cared only for painting the finer details of On’s landscape in my memory, from its riverside border to its wheatfield boundaries. I no longer kept a vigil where the waterlilies grew, content to swim and enjoy the Nile when it suited me. Baba found me in our private courtyard, considering the looseness of the tiles and the likelihood that he would let me remove them to plant a garden instead.
“Little bee,” he declared, his hands coming down on my shoulders, “the gods have given you a gift. The time has come to develop it so you can employ it for their service.”
He took me by the hand and led me out of our rooms and down a route that would become dear and familiar to me: past the temple apartments and kitchens, around the south wall to the small classroom and storerooms where the temple beekeepers taught their trade.
Chapter 2
Summary:
Last time: a grieving priest's daughter came to terms with losing her mother--but gaining some new friends
This time: an apprentice learns her trade
Chapter Text
“The first time Ra cried,” Master Khet-ef began our first lesson, “bees sprang forth from his tears. Ra claims them as his own to this day.” As fearlessly as snatching a bead from a necklace, Master Khet-ef plucked a bee right off the hive we clustered around and held it up for inspection. “See the stripes of gold? Rays of sunlight, the mark of the sun god. Their mission in this world is to produce enough honey to feed their families, and the rest is offered to Ra through our work.”
Through the wide gulfs that separated the economic strata of Egypt, few things bound us together: our gods, our river, and our honey. Everyone used honey. It was the sole sweetener for our baking and an all-purpose binder for wounds. Since it was the one thing everyone, from beggar to Pharaoh, could offer, it was the most common gift to the gods. The temple apiary kept the altars stocked and the treasury full. Any pilgrim hopeful for the gods’ intercession could barter for honey for their personal shrines, and jars and sticky cakes disappeared each day into the naoses of Ra, Hathor, and Horus.
But the gods and their earthbound homes did not concern me. That was Baba’s purview. Mine was here, by the hives packed tight together like papyrus scrolls in the little wall several spans from the water’s edge.
“Bees are like gods,” he said. “They spend their lives creating, constantly renewing.”
“Psst!” a fellow student—Namrut—whispered behind me, tugging my skirt.
“You must treat them as you would treat an extension of Ra himself,” Master Khet-ef continued. “Respect them, pamper them when they require it, and leave them be when they wish it.”
“Psst!” Namrut’s breath was hot on my cheek. He pulled on my skirt again. “This is a class for boys, you know.”
“She’s only here because her father is high priest,” muttered a squinting boy named Mered. “She’ll run crying back to him when she gets her first sting.”
I ignored them and gathered my skirt in my lap.
“If the hives thrive under your management, the gods will smile on you and your place here will be assured.” As he went on, bees crawled over Master Khet-ef’s withered fingers, living jewelry. “Fail to care for them, and you will be sent home before you do too much damage.”
When the teacher’s back was turned, Namrut leaned over to the boy on my right. “Kanebti! Can you tell this girl to go home? I can’t see over her big head!”
Kanebti was the quietest apprentice, a boy from Cush. He had not spoken a word since his arrival until he looked me over and replied, “I’m not even sure she’s a girl at all.”
Even Master Khet-ef, half-deaf as he was, could not fail to hear the gales of surprised laughter that erupted from my classmates.
The barb seemed more than a little unfair. Beekeepers were the humblest dressers in the vain population of Egypt. Bees were attracted to the perfumes in hair and wigs, so many of us shaved our heads bald out of necessity. And the insects flew to the bright colors they interpreted as flowers, so eyeshadow, lip stain, and nail henna were all prohibited. A daily sting or two came with the job, but the way to avoid a dozen or more was to keep the head clean of odor and color. Still, I was almost a teenager. Even with our matching bald heads, my body did not look like a boy’s.
As our teacher struggled to bring the boys to heel, the stray bee from his demonstration drifted over and landed on my knee. At least someone believed I belonged here.
The first year of apprenticeship offered very few opportunities to fail and merit dismissal, but also few opportunities to shine. We were babies to the craft, learning the difference between a queen, a worker, and a drone, not yet trusted with anything sacred. Our life narrowed to a triangle—the classroom with its two benches, the storerooms stocked with dry river reeds and pots, and the shore where cylindrical hives lay stacked on top of each other, buzzing day and night—and we were the porters who walked the lengths of its sides with our arms full of supplies behind our masters.
The beekeepers had promised Baba to educate me, not to coddle me. Without his supervision, they allowed the teasing, chalking it up to the inevitable rivalries among apprentices. Namrut saw his chance to oust me from my position. But his comments would not be enough. Any claims that my apprenticeship had been won through nepotism could not get a rise out of me, not when I knew in my heart I was just where I needed to be.
A new strategy was needed. He convinced Mered and another boy, Shui, to bump into me whenever I had jugs in my arms so they came crashing down around my ankles, spilling honey and shattered clay over my bare feet, but Master Khet-ef caught on and gave them a stern lecture about how our pottery stores could not afford to be diminished by their roughhousing.
Before long, we were allowed near the hives for menial tasks: hunting for pests, making traps, and drawing the comb out of jars of separating honey. So close to the wildlife of the Nile, the boys grew more daring in finding creatures to slip under the neck of my dress. I pulled more beetles out of my clothes than I did out of the oil traps, along with guppies and moths. Gritting my teeth, I once stared down Namrut as I took off my dress without a single peep to dislodge a mouse he had commissioned Mered to drop down my back.
Kanebti alone did not participate in these games, but he never spoke a word in my defense. Already an infrequent speaker, I decided to match his silence. My teachers and peers alike assumed I was mute. Their conclusion suited me; I saved my words for home.
“Give me their names,” Baba demanded over a game of senet.
I shrugged, loyal to my bullies, as he threw the senet sticks. “They’ll warm to me one day.”
“They’d warm faster with a threat of a sound beating.” He moved his piece four houses forward, and before throwing the sticks again, he tapped one to his chin and mused, “Or unemployment.”
“Baba.”
“Fine, fine! It shall be as you say, little bee.”
Evenings of his companionship gave me surplus comfort for my work days. Any other friends would have been hard to come by. Work at the temple depended on the season. Lesser priests, musicians, and scribes were assigned lodgings and tasks for four months at a time. The apartments were in a perpetual state of packing and unpacking as they rotated through the rooms; high priests alone retained year-long residences. It gave us license to decorate our quarters lavishly, our private constant in that tiny world of change.
Amma and I had shared a pallet-bed back in Memphis, but here, I had a bed—lacquered, oily black wood covered in crisp linen sheets, with matching black chests and tables that cost a fortune. We had our own bath, which Baba used before sunrise to cleanse himself for his morning rituals, and a dining room lined with imported pillows.
After some cajoling, Baba ordered the tiles pulled up so I could plant my garden and summoned the chief gardener. Master Ebo was surprised when the high priest was not there to receive him, just his bald daughter who asked him in a tremulous voice if he could tell me how to plant a garden bees would frequent.
“No offense, my lady,” he said, “but I didn’t even know you could talk.”
“I can write, too,” I said, clutching my reed pen and an empty scroll. “Now, which flowers do bees love best?”
I took copious notes—poppy, chamomile, jasmine, and daisy—and insisted I do all the planting, watering, and weeding myself, which earned Master Ebo’s approval. What began as an order issued by his superior became a labor of real affection as he joined me in the dirt rows and shared his wisdom. “Chrysanthemum’s no good for bees, but it’s poison to mites that bother them,” he told me as we raked furrows. “Mash them into a paste and you have repellent for your hives. Give your chamomile stores to the sem-priests for their embalming and some to the healers to make tea to help with sleep problems—and poppies, too. Poppies are for pain.”
When the garden was finished—neat little rows surrounding a small pond full of waterlilies, all under a promising acacia—Master Ebo was baffled by the hordes of bees that came as though invited to a party. I sat on the bench installed beneath the tree as they drank from the pond and napped in my lap. For this magic, I had Master Ebo’s respect.
Mine was easier to earn. To me, Master Ebo was the architect of paradise. His tours of the temple gardens helped me to fall in love with the temple. There were blue lotus pools full of fish that ate bread straight from my hand, docile as dogs. Esplanades of trees blossomed pink in front of the temple gates and sprouted fruit in the back, ensuring a steady yield of figs, peaches, and dates for our breakfast bowls. I marveled at the medicinal gardens while Baba meddled in the vegetable ones, becoming a nightmare to the kitchen staff with his endless suggestions.
“My lord Potiphera, Horus has enjoyed these same honey cakes for the last twenty years,” a disgruntled baker informed him when presented with Baba’s newest recipe.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that Horus is undeserving of a little innovation?”
When the kitchen workers rotated out for the season, they passed along the warning that Potiphera fancied himself a culinary master as well as a high priest.
Master Ebo begged Baba and Master Khet-ef to let me pursue an apprenticeship with him instead, hoping his tours had been sufficient inducement to change my allegiance. Master Khet-ef deferred to Baba on the matter, who in turn deferred to me.
“How you choose to employ your gift is up to you,” he said. “Beautifying the grounds, planting new life, here at the birthplace of the gods—it would not make me any less proud of you, should you choose it.”
I shook my head. “I want to stay with the beekeepers.”
“Osnat, I worry about those boys. Perhaps I could exert a little influence—”
“Please don’t. I can manage them,” I promised. When he looked doubtful, I pushed back. “They will like me. Give it time.”
He relented, saying, “This patience must come from your mother. You certainly didn’t get it from me.”
I took that patience—and that promise—into our second year, when Master Khet-ef deemed us ready to begin our first garden plots. The Nile pulled its fingers from the land as Akhet ended, overturning rich black silt as it sank back into the riverbed, and the farmers who worked the land within the temple boundary surrendered a portion to us. The five of us assembled in front of our plots, crumbling damp soil under our toes, while Master Khet-ef enumerated all the bees’ favorite flowers that I had already learned. Mered, better suited for scribal priesthood than beekeeping, scrawled endless notes on a piece of papyrus half-destroyed by his sweat. I watched Kanebti look at the notes, his face screwed up with envy.
We were given the same instructions, the same seeds, the same plot sizes. Here was our first chance to prove ourselves. Namrut sprinted to grab the least rusted rake and set to work making his rows, flashing a grin at our masters to show his eagerness. Mered puzzled over his notes and seeds stuck to Shui’s palms and would not shake off.
Only Kanebti and I paused, considering the upturned earth in front of us, and in that pause, we looked at each other. He was a skinny boy, already two heads taller than me, and on the rare occasions when he opened his mouth, a little gap between his teeth showed. I saw a glimpse of it then, in Kanebti’s smile—What’s the hurry, eh?
“Kanebti!” shouted Namrut. “The dirt doesn’t bite, you know!”
He pursed his lips and began, wincing with each drag of the rake, looking behind him to check the straightness of his rows.
I still waited. Not for inspiration to strike—there was little room for creativity in the project. But the bustling energy of competition, the keenness to prove our worth, the undercurrent of fear that we would be found wanting, it felt all wrong. It was not the sort of feeling I wanted to carry into my work. I waited for it to leave me.
“She’s finally cracked,” Namrut joked over his shoulder, and laughter rippled through the plots. “Thwarted by a garden.”
“Bound to happen at some point,” replied Shui.
I grabbed an old rake, soft wood splinters coming off in my hand, and traced the outline of my plot without touching the metal to the ground until their laughter died down and the heat killed off any desire to fill the silence. When I started to make my furrows, I was dimly aware of what I was doing, just present enough to keep the rows neat and shallow. In my head, I was back on the mountain.
The bees there had been thick as a cloud around me without giving a single sting. Thinking of them, I crouched in the dirt and pressed the seeds down into the furrows. You protected me. You let me know I was not alone. As I fetched water from the shadouf and carried it back to the plot, I closed my eyes and imagined it blooming with huge, fragrant jasmines and poppies so ripe the petals nearly fell off the stem, attracting bees by the hundreds. I pictured the long journeys of those bees from the garden out into the open, humid air and back to the dark hives, where the nectar they drank would become honey through a mysterious alchemy I was desperate to learn.
You chose me. Let me show you how much that means to me.
I was the last apprentice at the plots, still plopping seeds into knuckle-shallow holes as Namrut and Shui departed to flirt with temple priestesses and Mered begged leave to visit the Per Ankh. Kanebti looked mournful as he backed away from his plot, casting a glance at me before running off. Master Khet-ef dozed in the fading afternoon as I finished watering my plot, and then there was nothing to do but wait.
Master Ebo was mistaken. I had no great talent for gardening, just a need to repay the favor to my guardians on the mountain. My flowers did not bloom any faster than Namrut’s or Mered’s. They were by no means more spectacular or unusual, either. But as soon as there was enough pollen to come off on my thumb when I brushed against one, the bees came.
I kept my smile hidden, dropped into my collarbone as I bent over the plot to weed it and scan for pests, but I felt them flying over my shoulder with a low, congratulatory buzz. To be fair, they were not uniformly loyal. Plenty flew to Namrut’s plot, and a handful visited Mered and Shui’s. But within days, my classmates started to lift their heads, unable to ignore the long drone of a hundred bees who bounced from blossom to blossom in my garden.
Master Khet-ef, wonderstruck, placed a shallow bowl of water at the edge of my plot for thirsty bees to drink from as they pollinated. One by one, the apprentices abandoned their plots to stand near mine, their arms crossed, while I worked without saying a word.
“How did you do it?” asked Mered.
“I didn’t believe it, but her father was right,” Master Khet-ef answered for me. “The gods have blessed her.”
It was an innocuous remark, one that Baba had repeated to me before, but something about it made me frown. A bee landed on my knuckle, with its legs so covered in pollen that I did not know how it would manage the flight home, and its sweetness and smallness seemed so far away from the enormous temple reliefs depicting the gods who had granted me the gift.
“How did you do it?” Namrut’s voice stabbed through that thought. I turned around and summoned the confidence to respond, trying to form some witty retort. But all I could say was the truth.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just wanted them to come.”
Starved for their friendship, I accepted Shui and Mered’s attention without any comment on their former treatment of me. Namrut melted into the background, suspicious and quiet. I raced home that evening to tell Baba of my success, and we raised a toast to the end of my torment.
The next day was scorching hot, uncommon for Peret. Three farmers fainted from the heat before breakfast, so we were given a rare day off. I laid on the floor of my bedroom, watching bone-dry air stir flower garlands in my window, but I could not keep my mind off my garden. Had anyone bothered to water the plots? Did Master Khet-ef’s bowl need refilling? After yesterday’s triumph, it would be the worst disappointment to have my garden wilt in the heat. Besides, the bees would be thirsty, too.
The corridors were empty. Everyone was resting and fanning themselves, determined that the day should pass like a dream. The fields were empty except for a figure in the distance, lingering by the garden plots at the temple boundary. From afar, I thought it was Master Pesahi or Ounnefer, watering our plots for us. It was too hot to shout, so I kept walking, ready to offer my help when I reached them.
But it wasn’t a master. It was Namrut. When he turned and saw me, he threw his water jug to the ground and sprinted off, disappearing over the hill before I could catch him.
Each plot was dry except mine, which was drenched in water. I did not understand why until I picked up the jug he discarded and tasted a drop left on its rim. It tasted of salt. I sank to my knees, too hot to chase after him, too hot even to cry. Within days, my first chance to prove myself was shriveled and dead beyond salvaging.
Namrut expected me to rat him out. His defense was just behind his teeth, ready to spit out as soon as I made the accusation. He watched me from behind the backs of our teachers who regarded my ruined plot.
“Maybe the bees drank the life out of the flowers,” Master Khet-ef said.
“To kill off a bad omen?” Master Ounnefer was especially superstitious.
Our harvest expert, Master Pesahi, scoffed at the idea. “Isn’t the heat wave explanation enough? Jasmines are not hardy flowers. Look at Kanebti’s plot!”
Poor Kanebti’s garden had not been doused with saltwater. It failed naturally. He shuddered under our teachers’ scrutiny.
Master Khet-ef clicked his tongue. “Such a disappointment. Pull the dead flowers, Osnat, and begin again tomorrow.”
“Master, I—” Just as I was about to tell him that I needed new soil, that this salted earth would yield nothing, I saw Namrut’s lips pull back.
“Yes, child?”
He glared at me, daring me to call him out. Kanebti saw the exchange, how I tucked my chin down and shook my head. Victorious, Namrut returned to his plot.
The master beekeepers directed their attention to the three apprentices whose gardens were coming along, dropping their voices to a whisper as they pointed at the parts of their grown flowers—the shiny stigma where the bee collects nectar from, the powdery filaments where pollen brushes onto its leg—while I pulled my poppies up by the roots.
Their plots watered, weeded, and learned from, Namrut and his lackeys left for the day. Our teachers offered some parting wisdom to Kanebti and me and left us behind in pursuit of supper. The sun was setting fast, but neither of us made mention of going home.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Hearing his voice surprised me so much I thought I imagined it at first. It was the same question I had been asking myself for hours. I stared up at him, dumbfounded.
“I know he did something to your garden,” he said. “I know you know.”
I sat back on my heels, brushing the dust off my knees. “I want him to like me.”
“You don’t,” he replied flatly. “Mered or Shui, I can understand. But do you really want Namrut for a friend?”
I considered my basket full of dead plants, memories of that mouse’s nails scratching my back, every hateful remark. And I realized he was right.
“Doesn’t matter, anyway,” Kanebti continued. “The masters will never get rid of you. They’d never risk angering your father. I wish I had your luck.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” I said. “It has nothing to do with Baba. I belong here. The bees know that, and so do I. If I can prove it…”
“That’s what you want,” he finished for me. “For them to know you deserve to be here.”
I nodded and lapsed back into muteness, returning to my work. The last of my plants was pulled up, and my plot was empty and invisibly infertile. Before taking the basket away, I peeked at Kanebti’s garden. He was tying his wilted daisies to little sticks with linen scraps, his brows knitted together with worry.
“I’ve never been good with plants. My amma never let me near her garlic. Said I’d shrivel it just by looking at it,” he mumbled, swiping at his eyes to catch any errant tears before I saw them. “She’ll be so upset if I’m sent home.”
“That won’t happen,” I assured him.
But between his drooping stems and my holes, our gardens were a sorry sight. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
Resolved to say nothing to our teachers, I could not have a new patch to work on. I would have to carry new silt over, enough fresh and undehydrated dirt to cover the old plot and nurture the roots without them growing too deep into the salted earth. It would be hard work, done in secret, but I had no other choice. “Start over,” I told him.
He left, his head hanging as low as his flowers, while I tossed my plants into the Nile. Scouting the farmland for a mound of silt that would not be missed, I kept looking back at Kanebti’s pathetic little plot. The moon would be up soon, and a servant would be sent to collect me for supper if I did not come home.
I dropped the basket and abandoned my search, sitting by Kanebti’s garden. Gently, I touched the damp flowers, and I thought of the bees again: adorable, roly-poly ones flying from daisy to daisy. I dug my fingers into the soil and closed my eyes, humming low, and then I heard them coming. He doesn’t deserve it, I thought, but he doesn’t deserve to go home, either. Not until he’s had his chance.
I arrived late to supper, the front of my dress covered in loose silt from all the trips carrying it from the field to my plot. Kanebti and I said nothing more to each other the next day, or the day after that, but we both watched with secret understanding as a slow but steady stream of bees came to his garden and strengthened his flowers. By the end of the week, my new seeds were planted, and his plot looked just like the other apprentices’. He was spared the critical gaze of our teachers for another year.
Once my seeds sprouted, I developed the habit of arriving early, staying late, and lingering in the fields on any days off. I was terrified that Namrut would be tempted to try again, that we would be stuck in an endless cycle of sabotage. Kanebti arrived early, too, afraid that the magic I sent his way would disappear if he was the least bit inattentive. When he found me in the shade one morning, an hour before class started, he sat down with me and said, “I won’t let him do it, you know.”
I raised an eyebrow, and he clarified, “Shui told me. You don’t have to worry. It won’t happen again.” Clearing his throat, he averted my gaze and said, “I know you did this for me. Don’t know how, but you did.”
“Your amma,” I asked, “has expectations for you?”
“She needs me to get a job here. I have three baby sisters at home.” Then he laughed. “Why would they give me a job when there’s someone like you, though?”
“They keep more than one beekeeper on staff here,” I reminded him.
“Then I guess I’ll have to settle for being second-best.” When Kanebti smiled, I got a full view of the endearing gap between his front teeth. “Won’t I, little sister?”
I stuck out my tongue. “Yes, you will.”
By Shemu’s harvest, my garden was resurrected, and Kanebti and I worked in silent accord to cut our flowers and dry them so we could distribute them to the sem-priests, healers, and perfume makers. We adorned each other’s bald heads with daisy crowns and pulled faces at each other during our lectures, and when we got the first tastes of the honey harvest that tasted strongly of jasmine, we knew that it was all the extra trips my friends had made to our plots.
Now that I was not a lone target, the teasing stopped. Mered, concerned foremost with excellence, could not fail to be impressed by the constant company of bees that I kept, how they settled on my head and shoulders while I worked and sang to myself. Shui, like most teenage boys in the complex, fell in love with a priestess and spent his time teasing her instead.
My first tormentor was my last hold-out. But by our third year, when we finally were allowed to work with the hives, Namrut was so outmatched by me that he was forced to surrender.
Chapter 3
Summary:
Last time: an apprentice learns her trade
This time: a harvest
Chapter Text
For almost ten years, I rarely saw Baba by daylight. He rose before dawn every morning to bathe and conduct the secret rituals in Ra’s Djeser-Djeseru, and every sunlit hour after that was spent monitoring the priests of the other gods and their rituals, overseeing the hundreds on staff, and corresponding with Pharaoh about every divine detail it behooved him to know. We saw each other after dark at supper, when we could confide our work woes and share temple gossip.
Only in Shemu—the harvest season—did I catch glimpses of my father in the sun as it streamed through the kitchen door, casting shadows into the pools under his eyes, the sagging in his cheeks. Though he had long given up his culinary hobby and left the cooks alone, Baba established a tradition of baking honey cakes himself for the festival of thanksgiving that concluded Shemu. As arthritis crept into his hands, he permitted me to assist him.
I held up a raw cake and considered the gift he would offer to the gods. “But how do they eat it?” I asked again.
Baba wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, scattering flour onto his eyelashes. “This is worse than when you wouldn’t stop asking me about how babies are made.”
“At least you gave me a simple answer then.” Beside us, on the table, a parade of offerings sat untouched. Every time I dared consider swiping a fingertip-full of garlic sauce from one of the dishes, Baba’s warning glare stopped me cold. I instead grabbed a fig from the pantry and sat on the nearest clean counter. “Tell me this. When the gods come to their shrines, what do they look like?”
He frowned and pinched the last of his dough into a triangle.
“Tall? Short?” I asked. “When Ra’s ka descends, how does he make the statue move? Does he speak? How does he eat?”
“Fetch me the paddle.”
I pulled it from its hook on the wall and handed it over, and we worked in tandem to load the raw cakes on it. He slid the paddle into the oven and deposited the cakes inside while pulling it back out again. We squatted in silence before the oven, watching the flames lick the clay sides and the cakes turn firm and golden brown.
“It’s not for you to know,” he said. “What happens in the Djeser-Djeseru is sacred, a sight meant only for those who minister to the gods.”
“I’m not asking to see it,” I reminded him. “Can Ra hear us all the way in here?”
My question was a little too cavalier, but he let it go. “You would have to promise never to tell anyone.”
I scoffed. “Who would I tell?”
“You might tell Kanebti.”
“Kanebti and I don’t talk about things like that.”
He shook his head and reached for the poker to push around the cakes, checking to make sure they did not burn. A drop of sweat fell from his nose, and he groaned and rubbed his aching knees as he sat back. Without a word, I offered him the uneaten half of my fig, reminding myself to stop by the healers’ rooms at the end of the day to pick up willow bark.
“When a god eats,” he said, talking more to the fig than to me, “they do not use their mouths. They…inhabit the food, taking its essence. When they are finished, the priests eat what is left.”
“The gods’ scraps?” I imagined the fish smothered in garlic sauce, tempting me across the room, wasted away to ashes. The priests had to be pious indeed to eat that every day.
“Not quite,” he said. “The food looks the same, but it is different. You would have to see it to understand.”
That explained why Baba had put on weight. How the priestesses of Hathor kept their slim figures while eating daily offerings in addition to meals was beyond me. “I’m glad someone eats it. It would be a shame to let it spoil.”
“The gods eat the food, Osnat.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” I grumbled. Baba’s feet were already anchored in the next world, but both of mine were planted in this one. It made me a poor worshipper. Every time I knelt before our household gods, my mind was already on the day’s work, the hives’ health, and gardening chores. In this regard alone I was lazy; as a woman grown, it should have concerned me more that I was doing so little for the security of my own ka, but I figured Baba’s devotion would somehow make up the difference.
I handed the paddle back to him, and he withdrew the cakes and carried them over the table. “What if we were in a famine? Wouldn’t it be wasteful to give the food we had to the gods and the priests, and not to the starving?”
“If we were in a famine, it would be more vital than ever to give offerings to the gods,” he said. “It would be proof of our willingness to sacrifice what we have for their intervention.”
I looked at the table with all its offerings—fish and dates, mugs of beer that had gone flat in the heat, glistening slices of melon, Baba’s honey cakes—and knew that if a famine struck, the priests would be the last group to worry about sacrifice.
“Say that a family starved that would have been saved by a meal offered to gods,” I said. “Wouldn’t the gods have preferred that the family survived?”
His brow furrowed. “You have a tender heart to think of those who would suffer, but appeasing the gods would be the best way to help everyone. It is through their displeasure that we would find ourselves in a famine. Only by reversing that displeasure could we be freed from it.” He gave the table a final nod of approval and said, “There’s no need to worry about famines, anyway. This year’s harvest is the best we’ve had since we moved here. Besides, even if every field in the empire went bare, I happen to know someone with a ceaseless supply of honey.”
“You think I could feed all of Egypt with just my hives?”
“If anyone could…” He trailed off with a shrug and patted my cheek. “Speaking of which, aren’t they expecting you?”
I nodded and pocketed two more figs, lunch for Kanebti and me. We would be breaking in the set of brand new jars Master Ounnefer commissioned for the harvest.
Past the south wall was the view I never tired of: the afternoon sun cracking open and painting my beloved riverside orange. Baba was right, this year was blessed. Thick, verdant curtains of reeds twice my height swayed on either side of the beach as the Nile surged past, and a cluster of new apprentice boys whooped and splashed in the water to scare away ducks looking to come ashore and peck on the surplus fruits oozing away in baskets under the trees. In the fields, there was a steady whoosh from the scythes hacking away at wheat and babble from women and children following behind and picking up fallen stalks. A new contingent of farmers had been hired to complete the grain harvest before Akhet’s flood rotted the extra away.
And there, a stone’s throw from the shore, were my hives. The logs were packed into a wall just my height, and they thrummed with so much activity that they shimmered like a mirage. Master Pesahi checked the spouts tapped into each end, from which slow trickles of honey fell into jars, and grinned when he saw me. “What do you say to a wager?” he called out to me. “A gold earring if Kanebti’s wrong and today isn’t the day?”
I spotted Kanebti making last-minute adjustments to his newest hive, breaking off the dried reed bits at each end and smoothing the dried river mud that held it together, and shook my head. “I wouldn’t bet against Kanebti, Master.”
“It’s today,” Kanebti confirmed, smiling at me. “Better get warmed up, little sister.”
While I hummed, practicing the low notes I would need, Namrut stood up and said, “I’ll take that wager.”
Kanebti and I raised our eyebrows, but we made no comment as he shook hands on it with Master Pesahi. At least Namrut was making a sure bet. By the end of this harvest season, two positions as permanent staff would be available, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind who would be offered them. Mered had bowed out two years prior to pursue scribal priesthood and now worked in the Per Ankh. Namrut and Shui might as well bring some riches with them when they were sent home.
Kanebti straightened up and hoisted his hive over his shoulder. Whistling over to the apprentices, who returned to shore and scooped up the frail body of Master Khet-ef on his stool to carry him to the hive wall, Kanebti pointed to the hive he wanted me to check. “Prepare to lose, Master,” he said.
I would have been able to tell which one he meant without the reminder. The honey flowed thick and fast out of the tap, and within, I could hear the peep of the new queen. My peers, our masters, and the apprehensive students watched as I removed the tap and the lid. They preferred to work with candles to light the hollowed inside and smoke to calm the bees. I used neither. Closing my eyes, I flattened my hand against the bottom, brushing past their pollen stores at the front of the hive, and felt the welcoming kisses of nurse bees I was careful not to crush.
My fingers brushed against the combs inside, feeling for the minute differences between the brood comb, puffier and full of bee larvae, and capped honeycomb, slightly deflated. I smiled when I felt rows of sticky honeycomb, too far up in the brood section of the hive, and said, “Pay up, Master Pesahi. It’s honeybound.”
Master Pesahi gave a good-natured groan as my hand trailed along the brood comb, feeling for the larger raised bumps of hatchling queens. A honeybound hive, the product of overzealous worker bees, cramped the living quarters of the hive with honeycomb. It was the prelude to a swarm. I lowered my head and pressed my ear to the edge of the hive. Inside one of the queen cells, I heard the piping of a queen about to emerge. “Get that hive ready,” I told Kanebti, and then I mimicked the new queen, pressing my lips together to make a low trumpet sound.
One of the new boys giggled and was promptly shushed. The new queen responded, and I pulled my hand out, encouraging her with my voice, one low coo at a time. Come out, I tried to tell her. We’re ready for you.
She trumpeted to me, I trumpeted back. Everyone went quiet, straining to hear. The buzz around her seemed to swell, and I knew without reaching back in that she had hatched. Hers would be the violent task of stinging her sisters in their cells, claiming dominance over this hive.
Most swarms separated of their own accord, dividing in half with one queen in tow to find a new home in a nearby tree. Master Pesahi used to pride himself on freeing a swarm from a branch with one shake, dropping thousands of bees into one of the clay logs we constructed each Peret. Now his pride was invested in Kanebti, who could identify a hive about to swarm better than anyone, and me, who dispensed with the branch-shaking business.
I nodded to Kanebti, who stood shoulder to shoulder with me with his new hive angled away from the old one. I sang something new, something wordless and reassuring and definitely not written in any beekeeping scroll in the Per Ankh. It puzzled me as much as it puzzled our masters, but it never failed—at the call of my voice, the old queen, followed by a retinue of thousands, flew in a steady stream into the new hive.
When the exodus of bees ended, Master Khet-ef instructed the new apprentices to take note of what they had seen while Kanebti and I loaded the hive onto the edge of the wall. We made sure Master Khet-ef did not notice that we did nothing to secure the hive permanently; it was a retirement gift we would send home with him at the end of the season.
The afternoon stretched into the best of eternities. All my thoughts quieted and narrowed down to the work of the harvest until we all could have been flat temple reliefs, no more than brushstrokes on a wall. On the river-facing ends of the hives, Master Pesahi and Kanebti lit slow-burning grasses that streamed smoke to quiet their bees. I started lifting off the lids and reaching inside to draw out the honeycomb. Some were half-filled, uncapped, and not ready to be harvested.
But nothing could match the feeling of pulling out a honeycomb that was heavy and covered with pale yellow caps on both sides. One feeling came close: knowing that the hives I had made that Peret, populated by bees I considered my own, made the most. Our laughter grew louder each time we pulled out another perfect honeycomb and threw it onto the wheelbarrow, whose stacks threatened to topple over.
“Never had to work so hard in my life,” Master Pesahi told us. “In my day, a successful beekeeper could expect three harvests a season, perhaps five if the weather was kind and the flowers plentiful. I’m getting too old to do this every two weeks.”
Kanebti laughed. “I think the bees are working a bit harder than you, Master.”
“Can’t imagine why,” he teased, patting me on the head.
When they ran the wheelbarrow around the hive wall, I lifted my sticky fingers to my lips. It was like drinking a garden. A bee landed on my forefinger, looking for praise, and I kissed its wings and said, “You are a wonder.”
Namrut and Shui were assigned to honeycomb detail. They sliced off caps and tossed the dripping combs into clay jars that the apprentices carried to the steps on the south wall. There Master Ounnefer guarded the jars as they warmed in the sun, wary that the new ones did not retain heat as well as the old ones, which were full and cooling in the storerooms. The wax rose and the honey sank, and any stubborn comb that would not separate was sent back to Namrut to be crushed and strained through cloth so not a single drop went to waste.
When Kanebti and I took our lunch, munching on figs, the young apprentices made their approach, mesmerized by the bees that crawled on me. “How do you do that?”
“She’s secretly made of beeswax,” Kanebti said. “That’s why she never smokes the bees. If she gets too close to the fire, she’ll burn up.”
I rolled my eyes, leaned over, and took a bit of honey from the nearest jar. “Come here,” I said, putting a dot on one boy’s forehead, another on an open palm, on the shell of one’s ear. When the bees flew from my body to theirs, the boys squirmed and giggled.
“They won’t sting?” one asked.
“Not if you’re gentle. Remember, they don’t want to sting you. It’ll be the last thing they ever do.”
Then came the frustrated wail of their unlucky friend, who ran to me, lip quivering over a fresh sting. I pinched the stinger out and traced the swollen outline. “Made them angry, did you?”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“I know you didn’t. Occupational hazard for us. Come on,” I said, tugging him toward the river. “Cool water will have that arm feeling better.” And a touch of honey on the wound would reduce the swelling and stave off infection. We used it in most of our medicinal recipes.
The sun set sooner than we were ready for, with half the hive wall still untouched. More work awaited tomorrow, and everyone stretched and licked off the honey left in the creases under their knuckles and between their fingers, complaining of heat and backaches. The jars were sealed and left out to continue separating overnight.
“Which one next?” I asked Kanebti as we walked the length of the hive wall, replacing the lids and taps.
He leaned in and listened to some of the untouched hives, waiting for the sound of a new queen singing to herself in her cell, and stopped near the end. “This one,” he decided, showing me a cylinder near the bottom of the wall. “Not for another week, though.”
“I’d better stay to check on it.”
“It won’t swarm tonight, Osnat.”
“It’s low to the ground,” I pleaded. “I won’t be more than a few minutes. Just to make sure no mice have gotten in.”
He shrugged. “And you, Master Khet-ef?” he shouted over to our teacher, who woke with a start. “Shall I carry you in for supper?”
“No, no,” he said, waving a gnarled hand. “I’ll stay a while. Not much time left to say goodbye.”
Kanebti joined the rest of the apprentices and masters as they went inside, clapping each other on the back over the success of the harvest and making plans to go on a midnight swim. Master Khet-ef closed his eyes and seemed to fall back asleep, so I went about my work.
I emptied the oil traps and smashed the beetles under my bare heels, then I sprinkled Master Ebo’s chrysanthemum paste on the brood side of the hives to kill any invading mites.
Pulling the lid off the hive Kanebti pointed out, I saw life teeming within. Nurse bees covered every brood comb, keeping the eggs warm as night fell. Hidden where I could not see her, the queen was laying thousands of eggs, aware of the encroaching honey that would cause the swarm Kanebti predicted, and new queens were developing in their cells for when that day arrived.
“Thank you,” I whispered to them. “I wish I could tell you not to work so hard, but I doubt you’d listen. Or maybe you would. Either way, thank you.”
“I thank them, too.”
My head whipped around to see Master Khet-ef, eyes still closed but not asleep. “I was embarrassed at first,” he said. “Thought it was too sentimental for someone in my position. But I’ve worked these hives and lived in these walls for over half a century, and do you know what I’ve learned?” He opened one eye to peer at me. “All the best beekeepers do.”
I grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind, Master.”
“I know you will. It’ll be up to you to teach gratitude to the next generation. But I can rest easy,” he said, reaching out a hand, “knowing this place will be cared for by someone as blessed as you.”
I took his hand and squeezed. At the unlikely age of sixty-three, Master Khet-ef had lived longer than most Egyptians could hope to. Too old now to teach or work, he had accepted the invitation of a granddaughter in Thebes to move in with her family.
“Go on, then,” he said. “Any mice in there? Mustn’t leave the bees undefended!”
Leaning back down, I inspected the inside of the hive with what remained of the daylight. “Not that I can see.”
“And your little invention? How is it working?”
Just behind the brood combs, I spotted the tight grille of rushes that kept the queen from crawling into the honeycomb. “Looks like she hasn’t gotten lost yet. I can see her—there!” On a brood comb close to the mouth of the hive, the queen—slender and gold, with long legs and short wings—rested as a circle of worker bees tended to her. They could almost be bowing to her, like a true monarch.
Like a god.
“There’s only one,” I said in a hush.
“One what?” asked Master Khet-ef.
I hesitated, looking closer. The worker bees wove around the queen in a tight, ecstatic dance, aware they were being observed. The dance was less like the behavior I would expect around a queen, be she insect or human. It was worshipful. They bowed and flocked to her and fluttered their wings, their buzzing swelled, like they wanted me to see something.
“You said bees are like gods,” I said, “when we began our apprenticeship. Because they spend their lives creating.”
“Did I say that?”
“But the queen is different. There’s only one,” I repeated. “One queen. She’s the one who lays the eggs, who makes the world around her, which makes the world around us. She’s the only one. She’s the god of the hive.”
“Like Nut,” he countered. “Mother of the gods.”
But Nut was the mother of four gods. A queen bee mothered over a thousand eggs every day, and much as I loved them, I did not consider each bee on the same par. They were not all like gods, or at least not like the gods of Egypt. There was just one with that kind of power, the kind to give birth to seemingly everlasting generations of powerful creatures, creatures that made hundreds of hekats of honey without giving any signs of stopping. The effect of one single bug seemed endless.
I placed the lid back on the hive and straightened up. “Let me help you inside, Master.”
We shuffled away from the riverbank, navigating our way around the sealed jars and through the entrance to the south wall where caretakers came to bring him to supper. My mind was still caught up in that dance.
How many times had Baba and the masters told me I had been blessed by the gods? That the bees were Ra’s tears rained down on earth, like gods, part of the gods? Yet I had never made the connection between the mysterious beings hidden away in their naoses and the simple, straightforward bees. I never saw one reflected in the other. I blamed my disinterest in temple matters, my preference for life outdoors. I treated Ra’s tears with familiarity that was incongruent with worship.
But there was only one queen. One god of the hive.
“Little bee!” said Baba when I entered his office, smiling and shoving aside his scrolls. He kissed the top of my bald head. “I was about to order supper. Did you put Master Ounnefer’s new jars to good use today?”
Spread out before us in looping hieratic were records from this year’s harvest so far, promising numbers, matters of the soil and sky and river I loved so well. But all the grain and produce either disappeared into offerings for the gods consumed by priests or was sold for temple wealth. Something about it felt wrong.
Baba noticed my look of consternation. “Bad day?”
“No,” I said. “One of our best, I think.”
“Whatever you want to say, say it,” he said. “You look about ready to choke on it.”
I did not even have the words for my question. But somehow, the fact that I had one filled me with embarrassment. “I was thinking about our discussion in the kitchen. About the famine.”
“The hypothetical famine, if I recall. I think the numbers speak for themselves,” Baba said, lifting a scroll that boasted record-breaking wheat. “You need not worry. I would never let you go hungry.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s not what worries me. It’s something else. Something about the gods.”
Baba pursed his lips, and while I knew I had leeway, I was coming to the end of what he was allowed to tell me. I tried to phrase it in my head with care. By a priest’s logic, a famine would be a sign that the gods expected better treatment and exacted punishment for humanity’s slight. But a queen bee never went on strike and stopped laying worker bees to prove a point. This seemed like human behavior.
All the stories Baba had told me over the years—Set, the god of chaos, murdering his brother Osiris and chopping him into pieces; Ra tricking Hathor with beer laced with mandrakes and blood; Isis expressing her aching desire for Osiris to stir him back to life to conceive Horus—were stories of selfishness, ambition, lust, power, deceit. All so human. You might as well worship yourself, if gods fell prey to human nature as often as you did.
I compared them to the small miracle of the hive. Every bee was born with purpose and set about their lives with industry and selflessness, knowing their role, collecting pollen or caring for the brood or making honey from nectar, all for the betterment of their shared universe. And it revolved centrally around one being, the being that gave them all life. That being never punished her children. She provided for them and they provided for her.
“Why would the gods punish us?” I asked. “Why would they want us to suffer like that? Shouldn’t they want us to be happy, to be safe?”
“When a child does something wrong,” he explained, “the parent must punish it. Otherwise, how can he learn?”
“But how do we know what we do wrong? What mistake could we make so huge that it would cause a famine, or a flood, or any suffering on a scale like that?”
He waved his hand, impatient. “The hour-priests are trained to interpret that. The answers come in the forms of dreams, omens, that sort of thing. And trust me, when you have been at this job as long as I have, you know there is plenty to kindle the gods’ anger. We fail to worship them the way they deserve.”
“But if they made us, then they know—”
“Don’t tell me I earmarked you for the wrong trade, little philosopher,” he said, pushing me toward the door. “Go call for supper. I will follow you in a moment.”
I turned back. “But it seems unfair—”
“Osnat.” His voice was firm. “That’s enough.”
Chapter 4
Summary:
Last time: a harvest
This time: questions
Chapter Text
“I think I’d die of fright,” said Kanebti. “I can hardly bear standing before a wrathful mother, much less a wrathful god.”
“But you’ve never considered it?” I pressed on. “There’s nothing more enticing than a forbidden room.”
He shook his head. “We’re not equipped to handle that kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Divine countenance. That’s what the priests are trained for.”
Shemu was drawing to a lazy close, and everyone finishing their harvest work on the shore and in the fields moved with incremental slowness, trying to savor the warmth and stillness of the air before the flood season brought its chill. Half the apprentice boys were loading the hive wall onto wagons under Master Pesahi’s supervision, while the other half prepared its new home further inland. Kanebti and I were alone in the storerooms, dividing our bounty up according to Master Ounnefer’s instructions.
I would not have felt safe bringing this up with anyone else. Fortunately, Namrut and Shui were outside, boiling and straining the last of the unseparated honeycomb and not privy to our conversation. Even so, I made sure to be quiet. “Not once? Not even a peek?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone all temple-headed like Mered,” he teased. “What is it you’re angling for? Is there a boy I don’t know about?”
I grimaced at the suggestion. “Of course not.”
“Because I doubt barging into the Djeser-Djeseru to beg the gods to turn his head will turn out in your favor. More likely they’ll strike you down where you stand.” He considered me as I hid my face behind the jars we carried. “There’s a boy, I can tell.”
“There’s no boy, Kanebti.”
“Only a boy would drive you to think of something so stupid. Treasonously stupid. Suicidally stupid,” he said. We poured honey from large jars into vials we would distribute throughout the temple and city of On. Here before us was the afterlife of our harvest; our honey would make its way into meals and offerings, carted off as wages for our farmers, mixed with medicines, and locked away in tombs for the dead to feast on.
“If you’re not after a boy,” he asked, “then why are you interested in what goes on in the Djeser-Djeseru?”
I want to see a god inhabit a statue like Baba says they do. I want to see one with my own eyes to know I was wrong to doubt them.
“You’re right,” I said. “There’s a boy.”
Kanebti crowed with laughter. “If you want his love, you don’t need to take drastic measures,” he told me, sneaking a finger into a jar and brushing its honey, my honey, against my nose. “Just offer some of this before your shrine at home. No goddess could refuse you.”
I stretched my unwilling cheeks into a smile as I stood and loaded up a tray to take with me. There was still beeswax to mold, shape, and seal, so I grabbed a pot and vials as I left and headed for the date palm esplanade where the hives would stay during the flood. The apprentices had done a fine job stacking them but not guarding them, distracted by a farmer’s dog and the promise of a chase. I found my hives and sat in their shade. At once, bees poured forth from their home and arrayed themselves on my shoulders. “You won’t be proud of me today,” I said to them. “I lied. I couldn’t even tell Kanebti.”
Setting my tray in front of me and crossing my legs, I settled into the work of scooping beeswax and stuffing it into vials. The sem-priests laid first claim on them for their embalming work, but they never needed much. Not every mummy needed a layer of beeswax finish. The majority we sold to wigmakers and cosmeticians in On.
“I think I just need to see one,” I confessed to them, careful that the apprentices were out of earshot. “It would put my fears to rest. Otherwise I won’t be able to understand. Do you think that’s selfish?”
A bee went sniffing around in the beeswax pot, smelling flowers it had already drunk from, and I picked it up before it got stuck. “Amma believed without seeing. Hundreds of generations like her, with lives much worse than mine, never had reason to doubt. I feel ungrateful, or disloyal, but when I look at you…”
I stopped myself, afraid to even say it. So I sang instead, just under my breath, the song I used to draw out the queen during swarming. Obedient as ever, the nearest queen responded to my call and flew to me, accompanied by her faithfuls. They floated in front of me, waiting for me to show them their new home.
“When I look at you, I feel so certain there can only be one,” I told them. “One god to rule over the workers, the drones, the eggs, the little universe. One god whose capabilities outmatch all of us. One without whom we would all die.”
Reaching out with my hands cupped, I watched as the queen settled in, and bees smothered every inch of my skin to crowd around her. I remembered how they felt on my skin when I was a child, knit tight as a blanket. “Am I right?” I asked in the tiniest of whispers.
I shook them free and herded them back to their hive, keeping my eye on the queen to make sure she was safe inside. It was thoughtless of me to call them out like that. I was not a snake charmer and queen-singing was no magic trick. But the woven sensation of them on my arms was so achingly familiar, comforting me in my doubt now as they had back on the mountain.
The mountain.
That half-water air, that magnetic pull that kept my feet planted and the dust still, the way it took hold of my mind and lungs and heart––if that feeling was anything like what Baba felt in the Djeser-Djeseru, it would all make sense. That was the closest I had ever come to holiness. Everyone in Mafkat called it a sign from the gods. If the gods were there on that mountain, then it stood to reason that wherever they went, the feeling followed. They would belong together.
The plan began to form before I killed it with Kanebti’s warnings about the colossal stupidity of the idea. The Djeser-Djeseru was forbidden. Besides, there was no mystery to what was inside. We all knew of the gleaming idols built to be receptacles for the gods they represented, but we could never look upon them. The priests and priestesses sworn to the service of a particular god could pray before them. To enter otherwise was death. Even if it was not the smoldering incineration Kanebti predicted, any intruder would be caught and executed for sacrilege. Pharaoh himself could not witness the rituals performed inside.
Was it possible that just beyond the threshold was the divine heaviness I felt on the mountain?
I abandoned the beeswax project and passed it along to the returning apprentices, looking for Baba. He could be anywhere inside the temple this time of year; though the farmers and outdoor workers enjoyed the last Shemu balmy days, everyone inside was working overtime to prepare for the harvest festival. The halls were filled with cult singers and musicians writing new songs and practicing dances, kicking up the smell of baking bread as they twirled. Messengers ran between the fields and the Per Ankh to deliver news and numbers about the harvest to the scribes, who scrambled to make copies for Baba and Pharaoh in addition to the records they would store in the vast scriptorium. Sem-priests and servants of the ka struggled to work with solemn purpose as they wrapped corpses, determined not to get swept up in the tide of excitement as lector priestesses chattered outside their doors.
I passed the main courtyard as I looked for him, where the Djeser-Djeserus stood with their three entries on each side. I could not stop myself from dawdling, lingering just a second longer than I had to just in case a hint of my mountain came back to me. No one was inside during the afternoon; rituals were conducted at sunrise. No one would know if I looked, just for a minute.
Not yet, I told myself, and then I amended, Not ever. Anyway, without a priest inside, there was no way of knowing if a god was, too.
A kitchen boy informed me that Baba was overseeing the temple granaries today on the outskirts of the complex, so I gave up and returned to our apartments, waiting for supper. Lying on my bed, I stared at the ceiling, my heartbeat urgent under my skin.
Not ever. Not ever. Not ever.
I watched Baba like a jackal over our meal, afraid he could detect a feeling in me I had not yet put a name to. Was it indecision or guilt at this point? But my quarry somehow did not notice. He lounged, nursing a goblet of wine, and gossiped about the ineptitude the newest high priest of Horus.
“Baba,” I said. The word sounded more like a croak. I kept my eyes fixed on my plate. “I had another question about the gods. In the Djeser-Djeseru.”
“Not again,” he groaned. “I tell you too much as it is. It’s dangerous to know more.”
“It’s my last question,” I promised. “Do you remember when you found me back in Mafkat, on the mountain?”
“It is not the sort of thing a father forgets. I was terrified I was going to find you torn apart.”
“I wouldn’t have run away so far,” I continued, “but something about that mountain…compelled me to keep going. It was unlike anywhere I’ve ever been before.” The next part was already beginning to feel like a lie, but I said it anyway. “Since everyone said the gods preserved me from harm that day, I thought maybe it stood to reason that they were on the mountain. Making it feel like that.”
He set the goblet on the table. I had never revealed any details about what happened that day, only that I had run away, that I had been grieving for Amma. I was the quarry now, and Baba leaned in, quiet and slow, so as not to scare me off from sharing more.
“How exactly did it feel?”
“The air was hard to breathe,” I admitted. “Nothing moved there or made any sound. But the mountain… It drew focus, somehow. Like there was just one thing to do when you set foot on it, and you forgot everything but that one thing until it was complete. I was wondering…” I cleared my throat and snuck a sip of wine to fortify myself. “…is it like that for you? When you’re in the Djeser-Djeseru, I mean. Is that how you know the gods are there?”
Baba reached across the table for my hand. “You never told me that. You must have been so frightened.”
“It wasn’t frightening, Baba. It was neither bad nor good, just holy. I know there’s a limit to what you can tell me. I would never do anything to endanger you.”
“Then why do you ask?”
I wished I could answer him. Not with the truth that continued to blossom inside of me without my encouragement, but with a good enough reason to ask him in the first place. It was bad enough to entertain sacrilegious impulses of my own, but to speak them aloud, to pose a risk to my father? It was the worst kind of selfishness.
I ought to have held my tongue and said no more. Instead, I gave him a partial truth. “It would comfort me,” I said, “to know that feeling existed somewhere else in the world, even if I never experience it again. Especially if I know you get to. It would make me happy, knowing you were blessed like that every day.”
He smiled and released my hand, leaning back and considering his answer with a thoughtful swallow. “It is different for every priest, I think,” he said. “We never discuss it among ourselves. Those thoughts are reserved for the holy hour when we are in the presence of the gods. But for me…yes. It feels like that. And that is how I know the gods are there.”
We returned to our meal, both of us a little sheepish. I pinched my slice of brown bread between my fingers, waiting for his confirmation to settle my doubts. Baba had never lied to me before. He had no reason to lie now. Even if he had, I would have known it at once. I could take him at his word that there was another domain of the gods, one that felt the same way, and that I had walked into one of their natural abodes as a child and left it unscathed, though the endeavor should never be attempted again.
It’s not enough. Dissatisfaction washed through me, cool and sour. I watched Baba plopping morsels of roasted duck into his mouth, wiping the grease from his fingers. This man was known in Egypt as the second-most divine in the entire empire. Pharaoh alone, a living god, was greater in the gods’ esteem. But I knew then that my father did not feel in the Djeser-Djeseru as I had.
“One more question.”
“Please, no more!” he laughed. “You will kill me with your questions! I am an old man, little bee, and too unpracticed in the art of refusing you.”
“It’s more of a request,” I said. “Our teacher, Master Khet-ef, retires to Thebes at the end of the harvest.”
“I heard,” he replied. “I am sure you will miss him.”
“Before he goes, would you say a prayer on his behalf?” The worry drained from his eyes as I spoke, relieved that I had moved on from such a perilous subject, which made me feel all the guiltier. “Perhaps you can ask the gods to bless him on his journey home and grant him a peaceful death, when it comes.” He thought I averted his gaze because I was feeling embarrassed, sentimental. But the weight of the lies pulled my head down by force until I addressed the pillows. “Ra will grant it to you, if you ask it.”
Baba smiled. “Consider it done.” He pushed his plate and goblet forward on the table and grunted as he stood, patting his belly. “And I shall make another petition—that his replacement will be as beloved by her students and fellow masters and she is by me.” He leaned over and tilted my chin up with his finger. “I was not meant to tell you until the harvest festival, but the masters are all decided. I could not be prouder of you, little bee. I wish your amma was here to see it.”
I ducked my head down again before the tears threatened to spill, feeling like the most treacherous daughter a father ever had.
Baba ambled off to his chamber and the servants dove in to clean up after us. I sat there, unmoving, while they whisked away the remains of our meal, taking scraps from my half-eaten plate when they thought I could not see. When the beeswax candles guttered and blew out, I rose and went to my garden.
Dusk painted the limestone columns purple. The waterlilies drifting in the pond were just luminous enough to see in the dark. I watched the wind push them around the water’s surface. Despite the hour, a few bees drew close when I sat under the acacia tree, like nervous attendants afraid to suggest it would be more prudent to go to bed.
It’s not enough.
I thought I had explained the mountain, as well as I was able, but Baba had not understood. I was not sure what would have tipped me off if he had, but I knew he had not, knew it like rain on my skin, like heat. But Baba felt something. No matter his ambitions, he would not predicate his life on a lie. Was it what I felt when I worked with the bees—simplicity, gratitude, home? Was the sensation of the mountain an aberration, some kind of grief-driven fantasy?
I still did not have my answer. And there was no one left to ask, no one I trusted.
Baba’s news of my upcoming promotion did not uplift me then. Maybe it would now. I tried to think of it, taking up Master Khet-ef’s mantle. I was already the first woman beekeeper the temple ever had, and now, I was on the brink of history again. Master Osnat. Shui might marry some priestess and I would see him one season a year. Namrut would be gone from my sight forever. Kanebti and I would work together on our hives, by our riverside, until we were as withered as Master Khet-ef. We would choose the next generation’s masters before we departed this life, sharing every bit of ancient wisdom before our last breath.
The bees flew close as I lifted up my palm, drawn to me even in the dark. I could not even see them. I felt the tread of their spindly legs on the inside of my wrist and wondered why they did not make me feel better, why the promise of the only future I had ever dreamed of was not a sufficient answer to my questions.
It’s not enough.
“No,” I said aloud, and the sharpness frightened the bees. Off they flew in search of home. I repeated it to myself again, quieter this time. “No.”
It had to be enough.
The moon in its fullness was reflected in my pond. I looked up and saw it encircled with stars. There were so many centralities in the natural word: one queen bee in a hive, one moon in the sky, never alone but never equaled. Ra was a great god, but he was not unmatched. Otherwise, how could he be at any serious risk during his nightly travels through the underworld, hunted by the god of chaos?
Even in the moonlight, it was too dark to see my way back to my room. But I knew the garden down to the last stone, just as I knew the corridors, the halls, the corners of every room in the temple. As I felt my way forward, brushing past columns without so much as a whisper, a dangerous thought occurred to me. Better than anyone living, except perhaps Baba, I knew the temple. I could walk through it at night without waking anyone, if I tried.
Like the great turning of a wave, the decision was made in my body before I gave voice to it. I was dragged under by its certainty.
I crept into bed, afraid of myself. A lifetime of teaching rebelled against my plan. Untold afflictions could strike me the second I set foot inside. If Kanebti was right, the gods would burn me on the spot. Or I could be stricken with disease, boils or sores, an agonizing death that would break Baba’s heart and make me wish I had never been born.
But that was if the gods were real, and as powerful as everyone believed.
If the gods were real, and they had mercy on me, there was still the matter of being caught. I was wrong; there were exactly six rooms in the temple I knew nothing about, and if I wanted to set foot in one, I might find there was nowhere to hide. If I got the timing wrong, if I was found by the high priests, they would have no choice but to arrest me. I remembered the slave boy in Memphis ten years ago, carried by guards who were deaf to his pleas, his horrified scream. It would be mine again, in truth this time, if I was taken away to the dungeon beneath the palace to await my trial. What defense would there be for me? Not even Baba could intercede on my behalf.
I shut my eyes tight against these possibilities. I was a creature beyond reason now. All I saw in my head was that queen bee, and all I felt was that single-minded purpose I had experienced just once before. The way to answer my questions was to find out for myself. I had to see a god, face to face.
Chapter 5
Summary:
Last time: questions
This time: transgression
Chapter Text
Never before did I fear the gods more than I did that night. I lay still, my linen sheets wrapped tight under my chin, a mummy in a shroud awaiting entombment. Baba had shared stories with me of Shu, Ra’s son and god of the air. On an overcast day, you could look into the sky and see his bones—fog hovering on the river, clouds like drifting ribs. If ever a god was to raise a protest against me, I heard it that night. The wind screeched a terrible tantrum at me.
I tried to tell myself that Shu had nothing to fear. If I stood before the naos of his father and felt holiness there, then my doubts would be forever put to rest. He and every other god in the pantheon would have my renewed devotion. I made Shu a promise: from tomorrow morning onward, my piety would rival my father’s, if I received my answer.
The wind never quieted. But even if Shu could read my heart and raise an uproar against the contradiction I nursed within it, his daughter presented herself as an ally. Nut, the goddess of the night sky, was said to swallow the sun at night as Ra descended into the underworld. Tonight, she delayed giving birth to it. Dawn came late.
It was strange, how these stories came back to me right before I betrayed them.
There was soft breathing everywhere, the rustling of blankets against the wind. Baba’s reassuring snores told me I had time, but I had to take precautions. If I could give the gods one less reason to smite me, I would. So I tiptoed down the hall and past Baba’s room to the chamber that housed his bath.
To go before the gods required absolute ritual purity. The water in Baba’s bath had been boiled and perfumed with lotus for his use. I had never been forbidden to bathe in it, but I preferred to bathe in the Nile like most Egyptians. Besides, the perfume was so heavy in the water that it stuck to the skin for days. A beekeeper could never have gotten away with it.
There was no alternative now. Careful not to slip and fall in the darkness, I sank to my knees and threw off my linen dress. I immersed each leg with irritating slowness, not daring to make a splash, and wrinkled my nose against the cloying smell. I would have to swim in the river as soon as I left the Djeser-Djeseru, or I would spend the final harvest scooping bees out from under my dress. The water was cold, raising gooseflesh up to my neck as I submerged to my ears, and with a quick breath, I ducked under.
Was there a prayer to say? Something to make the protection take effect? This would have to suffice the gods. I scrambled for the tub’s edge and pushed myself out, wincing at the sloppy sound of water hitting the sides. My courage wound down as I shivered, naked and uneasy, and groped around in the dark for my dress. I had not even thought to bring a cloth to dry myself. The drops coming off me would make a trail right to my sacrilege. I grabbed the dress, wiped myself down, and put it back on. The linen clung to my legs, damp and cold.
Here was the moment. Should I choose to, I could go back to my room, shrug off my wet clothes, and hold myself hostage until the sun came up. Maybe it was enough to see the gods in the parts of the world I already loved, in my garden, by my river, inside my hives.
No. It’s not enough.
I left the bath and went back into the hall, lingering outside Baba’s room. After all these years, I still did not know if he rose early by himself, the habit of a decade of service, or if a servant woke him. His face stayed with me as I walked past my room and into our courtyard, feeling the familiar stepping stones of the garden path under my feet. My Baba, my dear, soft, smiling Baba—he had looked so proud at supper, so certain that the gods had blessed his child. He did not deserve what I was going to do to him.
Once I made it out of our home and into the apartments where not even the bakers had risen to start their loaves, I considered altering the plan. I did not need to see Ra. Maybe I could sneak into the shrine of Hathor and watch her priests perform their rites. I could leave Baba alone. But when I made a left at the kitchens instead of my usual right toward the south wall, I knew there was no other way. To see any other priest speaking with their god would be like watching an apprentice painter practicing on potsherds. Baba was the master of his craft. My best chance in seeing a god lay in watching him with Ra.
The braziers and torches were unlit; the wind had blown them out in the night. I was grateful for their cover as I pressed against the wall of the main courtyard, making myself as flat as possible. Between the shadows of the columns, I made out the shapes of the doors and the fluid darkness of the pools in the central floor that I would have to avoid. Ra’s naos was just behind the second door on the left, painted with a relief of the falcon-headed god I could have drawn from memory for all the times I had passed it in daylight. I held my breath as I walked toward it, my arms stretched in front of me. Nothing, not even a fish, made a sound. My fingers brushed against gold gilt, and I anchored myself there, feeling for the seam of the door and allowing myself another tight gulp of air.
It was heavy, but unlocked, giving way with a little pressure from both hands. I did not know why I was surprised. If the door was locked from inside, how could the priests get in? I let the door creak to a close and thought of Kanebti. Really, I thought of two Kanebtis at once. The first, my laughing Kanebti with the gap in his grin, in the storeroom warning me of death if I passed this threshold. The second, Kanebti on the first day we had understood each other, his lip trembling with the mortal fear only a child can have of disappointing his mother. It was the one time I had seen Kanebti afraid. What friend would I be to him if I gave him cause to fear for my life, to wear that expression again?
I had no right to do this. But the door felt ordinary, just wood and paint. If true holiness was here, it was behind it.
The first red spiral of dawn curled through the sky. I had waited long enough. I pushed, and with an ear-splitting groan, the door to Ra’s shrine opened. I winced at the sound, wondering how I managed to sleep through such a deafening noise every morning, and slipped inside without thinking and slammed it shut behind me. The door made a loud smack as it closed, and I huffed, certain that I had awoken all of Egypt.
And then I was inside Ra’s Djeser-Djeseru.
I tensed, waiting for Kanebti to be proven right, and clenched my hands in fists to be comforted by the feeling of unflayed, unburnt skin on my palms. It was not as dark here as it was outside. Flickering oil lamps on the floor caught glints of burnished gold and ebony. Perhaps Ra would not kill me until I looked upon him.
There was no heaviness in the air, just the scent of burning oil and spoiling food. It might have been any room in the temple, with the same reliefs on the walls, the same dusty floors. I swiveled my head over my shoulder, grave as an owl, and there he was. In a naos more like a box than a house, inscribed with gold hieroglyphs too tiny to read from across the room, was Ra.
He was smaller than I thought. His body was fashioned from pure gold, and he looked as I had been taught to expect. The sun was his crown, and hair of lapis lazuli wreathed his falcon head. I waited for him to kill me.
We did not have much time, but I was patient. I gave him his chance. Looking into his empty gold eyes, my body was alert for any inkling of divinity. If I got closer, would I feel it? I would have traded the weight and silence of the mountain if I could feel the purpose of it. They said Ra had sent the bees to me as a sign of my future service to him. This was his opportunity to compel me again.
I took a step forward, and he seemed to get even smaller. It made me brave. “Well,” I said, just above a whisper, “do you have anything to say?”
Ra did not reply. I lacked the courage to take another step toward him, so I held my ground and cast my eyes about the shrine. At Ra’s feet, there was a burnt-out torch and scattered ash beneath it. Limp flowers were strewn between plates stacked high with fruit and cups of beer. I frowned when I saw honey cakes, untouched, and thought of what Baba said. He told me the gods inhabited it, absorbing its essence, and that absorption changed the food in a way I would understand when I saw it. But all I saw was wasted food.
The door creaked open again, and I hurtled to the side of the room, scanning for a hiding place. There was a lotus column on either side of the entrance. I sprinted toward one and threw myself flat against the wall behind it, knocking over a lamp as I went. It singed my heel and I hissed in pain, but the lamp was too far from me to set it upright. It sputtered but continued to burn as oil leaked out of it, and I shoved my way behind the pillar, scraping my forearms as I wedged myself deep enough to hide.
The space between the pillar and the wall was so tight that the limestone ground into my hip bones. I had to turn my head to the side. Somehow, the creak of those ancient doors seemed much quieter now as a fleet of priests swept through them with half-asleep solemnity. My heartbeat hammered away in my chest, too loud for me to hear the priests over it. They chanted something soft, lyrical. In the dim lamplight and their simple white sheaths, they could have been wisps of smoke.
I pushed my head far enough between the pillar and the wall that my cheeks lodged there, threatening to stick if I started to sweat. But I could see Baba in front, with his leopard sash on and a torch in his hand. He approached Ra’s naos and the burnt-out torch there, muttering an incantation deep in his throat as he stretched out his lit torch so the flame leapt forth.
For a moment, I was a child again, playing Baba’s game on the boat to the palace. Had Ra survived his journey? Had Apep defeated him overnight? This torch was meant to guide him home, and part of me hoped it would. Ra’s silence, his smallness, it would all make sense if he was not here, if lighting the fire was the signal that ushered him into the space. My eyes were fixed to the statue, waiting for the flames reflected on the polished gold to illuminate some hidden life inside him.
“Please,” I mouthed, more for Baba’s sake than my own. I wanted Ra to prove me wrong. I waited for something, anything, in the room to change.
Young, lower-ranking priests helped my father get on his knees. He threw his arms up as he knelt and then bowed until his nose and fingertips touched the floor. Rising, he did it again and again, praising Ra. Ra remained still, and I grew frustrated with him. Baba was getting older, yet he prostrated himself on the ground like a beggar before him. I blocked out the words of his prayers, words any pious Egyptian would have loved to know, and tried not to look at him, pained for him. My eyes narrowed on the statue.
What was he waiting for? His high priest bowed to him over and over in a humiliating circuit to appease him. Baba looked like an utter fool—and my father was no fool. When would Ra come alive and speak? When would he prove me wrong?
Was it because Ra knew I was here? None of the priests acted as if something was amiss. They whisked away the dishes from yesterday’s ceremony and swept the flowers back. This morning was nothing out of the ordinary for them. Two came up to Baba to help him to his feet, and one more joined them with a bowl and cloth. Baba unwrapped the linen from the statue, undressing it, and dipped the cloth into the bowl. He washed Ra with tenderness, murmuring prayers.
Every passing second made the statue smaller in my mind. Baba cleaned it the way Amma had cleaned me as a baby, which leached the dignity from the act. A fresh linen sheath was offered to him, and Baba fastened it around Ra’s waist and smoothed it down his metal legs. Another priest came forward with a smoldering pan of incense, waving it around the statue as he sang, and I struggled not to cough on the fragrant smoke.
Then Baba took a honey cake from a proffered plate, and I watched in horror as he pinched off a corner, leaned forward, and placed it in the statue’s mouth. It looked too much like a child feeding a doll. Somehow, seeing Baba put cake crumbs—my cakes, made with my honey—was worse than absurd. It was grotesque. My bees had worked so hard, harder than any temple bees ever had in generations, and this was the result, to put their work into the mouth of a lifeless statue and leave the rest on plates to go stale overnight and get eaten by privileged priests the next day. It would have been less insulting to feed my honey to a corpse.
Baba stood back, his arms flung wide, and the priests quieted and paused their work, all standing attuned to the statue. A minute passed. I shivered in my damp dress and pushed my head a little farther between the column and wall to catch a glimpse of the statue. The priests awaited communication. This was Ra’s chance to speak.
I stared at it, daring it to come alive. I would have welcomed being frightened out of my wits. The air did not change. There was no buzz, no deep hum.
Baba’s arms lowered to his sides. He nodded, turned, and smiled. The priests let out a collective sigh of relief, and the ritual was complete. New offerings were placed before the statue, and flower petals were tossed in the air. The old dishes were shared, passed from priest to priest as they ate in companionable silence.
Baba spoke in a hush that I strained to hear. “Send for the courier,” he said to one of his aides. “Give him a report that Ra is pleased with Pharaoh's devotion and will bless the final weeks of Shemu. And remind him that Ra requires the sacrifice of an ibis during the harvest festival. One from the royal menagerie will suffice, so long as it is his best.”
Ra said no such thing, I thought, because Ra is not here!
The statue had no power. None of them did.
My mind rebelled against it. I had been picking at a scab and found the wound bigger than I imagined; all I could do was gawk at the fresh torrent of blood. I had done little to prepare myself for the possibility that I was right. But here it was. Ra, the six gods of the temple of On, the entire pantheon of the gods of Egypt—they were nothing more than pictures on a wall or sculptures in a box. The work of human hands.
Yet everyone I had ever known was dedicated to them. My home, my whole world, was built for them. Everyone I had interacted with since I was ten years old worked for them, baked for them, prayed to them, played their music, tended their gardens, raised their bees. I had never realized how much of my life they occupied. Now there was a hole shaped like the gods in me. The emptiness demanded to be filled, and I had nothing to pour into it.
My first thought went to the bees. I had to go to them first, as soon as I left the Djeser-Djeseru and swam the perfume off. It seemed wrong that they should continue to breed and make honey and die for nothing, for waste. They had to know the truth. But I worried what would happen once they knew. If my resolution could shake them free of their allegiance to the temple to which they belonged, they might stop producing honey to dry up the offerings. Queens would die, one right after another, as though sacrificing themselves rather than serve false gods. The raw honey would go bad and ferment, and when I would go to pull out the comb, dead bees would fall into the sand, curled up and bereft.
But who was left to share this with? Did I have to live with it alone?
Baba turned to leave, taking his place at the head of the priests. Dishes were collected and the lowest-ranking priests swept what was left of yesterday’s crumbs and flowers back. Daybreak cast streaks of light onto the floor through the open door as they filed out of the Djeser-Djeseru. I wiggled out from behind the pillar and angled myself out of sight as they came close. When Baba crossed the threshold and disappeared from view, I suppressed a shaky sigh, shocked that I had made it through the ordeal without being found. There was very little time now, as the last priest swept the footprints away, to make it out of the shrine without being seen by someone in the courtyard. I would have to wait for the priests to clear the area, but not too long.
I thought of the bees again. Maybe there was a chance they already knew. If Ra never sent the bees to me, then who did? Where did my gift come from?
I entered the Djeser-Djeseru with one question, and its answer spawned dozens more. I did not know where to begin to answer them, but I knew they could be answered, because I had not imagined the sanctity of the mountain. Something sacred lived there—a Someone, like a queen bee, like the moon, central and unrivaled and not human.
No one else who set foot on the mountain that day experienced it as I did, but that was no matter. The bees could wait a few hours. I would bathe in the river, go to Baba, and ask him for an escort to Mafkat. My answers would be found on the mountain, and I did not intend to wait long to seek them.
I stepped out from behind the pillar and smoothed down the front of my dress. My head turned, and I locked eyes with the last priest, bent in front of me to clean up the oil from the lamp I had knocked over.
Running was a stupid impulse. I did it anyway, sprinting past the priest as he started to scream. “Intruder! Intruder in the Djeser-Djeseru!”
I ran straight across the courtyard, splashing through the pools, pushing past lingering priests as my witness dashed after me.
“Stop her, grab her! She trespassed into the naos of Ra!”
The priest’s shouts split the morning, raising a commotion among the rising janitors and priestesses. I headed for the south wall, darting between bodies whose heads spun between me and the growing contingent of pursuers. Without thinking, I sped through the kitchens and along the wall until the temple broke open and my feet hit the sand. The hives were gone, moved to the date tree esplanade, and there was nowhere to hide.
A hand shot out and grabbed my arm, yanking me back inside. I did not look to see which guard caught me on my way out; I tried to swallow up the riverside and store it away in my head as he pulled me away from it, as though I knew I would never see it again.
“Somebody call Potiphera!”
A crowd began to form, thronging at my sides as the guard brought me back to the courtyard where the priests assembled like a flock of disturbed geese. “That’s her!” the priest confirmed. “She was hiding behind the pillar! Someone call the high priest!”
“Ra will punish us for this,” wept a sem-priest. “The temple has been desecrated.”
“The high priest will intercede for us!”
“Oh, by the gods,” some priestess cried out, “it’s his own daughter.”
My panicked heart swooped low then. “No,” I whispered. “Please—don’t tell him—”
Some were already on their knees, bent toward the open doors of Ra’s shrine, begging for forgiveness, pleading for him to stay his wrath from Egypt. Those who did hear me scoffed, or looked away, or spit on the ground where I stood. They thought I hoped to escape my father’s punishment. All I cared about was keeping him from this shame.
Above them all, I heard the voice of my father. “Send for the courier!” he shouted as the crowd parted for him. He marched in breathless, his eyes glowing coals, vibrating with righteous fury at the prospect of his temple profaned. “We must send word to Pharaoh at once!”
When Baba saw me, his face went ashen. For an awful moment, I thought I had killed him. Everyone went quiet. The fury drained from him and left him crumpled, but not with disbelief, not with shock. He looked at me, and I realized that he already knew. My betrayal came as no surprise to him. He had heard my doubts, answered my questions as best he could, and known better than I had what was in my mind. But he had hoped I would not try anything like this.
“Osnat,” he breathed out, aging ten years in one sentence, “what have you done?”
Chapter 6
Summary:
Last time: transgression
This time: consequences
CW/TW: fear of SA--nothing happens, only the fear of it and only briefly
Chapter Text
I clung to the hands that held the rope that bound mine, digging my nails in the meat of the guard’s palms. Though he was of no comfort to me on the journey from On to Memphis, he was loyal to my father and had not let any harm come to me along the way. But his protection ended here, at the door of the dungeon.
Prisoners floated by the small barred window, crocodiles lazing in a circle around easy prey. The guard gulped. He did nothing to shake me off.
The prison warden did not bother to look up as he unfurled a scroll across his desk. He seemed unaffected by the darkness down here, the eerie coolness that had infiltrated my bones on the descent beneath the palace. Here, the walls sweated beads of moisture that accumulated on the windowless stone of his office and the prison corridor. I could not stop shivering, but the warden did not even need a shawl. He picked up his reed pen. “Name?”
My tongue was buried beneath dust from the road. The guard elbowed me, but I could not find my voice, could only stare down at my wrists, rubbed raw by the rope and twisted around his arm as though he could drag me back home with him. The guard grunted and spoke for me. “Osnat, daughter of Potiphera.”
That caught the warden’s notice. He looked up at me—disheveled, trembling, wearing a three-day old dress covered in dirt with a broken strap on my sandal—and his eyes danced with amusement. “Crime?”
“Sacrilege. Intrusion upon the shrine of Ra in the temple of On.”
The warden shook his head and set down his pen. “High priests have jurisdiction over crimes committed within temple grounds. You’ll have to take her back with you.”
My chin jerked up, scarcely daring to hope this was possible.
“This is an unusual case,” said the guard. “The high priest cannot rule on it.”
“Why is that?”
I hung my head as the guard glanced over at me in disgust. “She’s his daughter.”
The warden swallowed back a laugh at my expense. He bent forward and began to write. “And here I thought I’d heard it all by now.”
“We weren’t sure what to do with her,” the guard admitted. “She’s his only child, so we thought it unfair to ask him to deliver the sentence. The other high priests agreed it was best to send her to Pharaoh’s judgment.”
“As though Pharaoh doesn’t have better things to do than order little girls’ executions,” the warden muttered, finishing his record with a flourish.
I shut my eyes to stave off the dizziness. The warden saw me swaying on the spot and barked out an order, and suddenly arms were enfolding me and helping me slide down to the floor. I pressed my forehead against the wet stone and observed that the wall was not sweating at all. It was weeping, ceaseless and inconsolable. I thought of the slave boy who was taken down here the last time I was in the palace. Had he sat in this very room, struggling to understand the guards and the warden? Did he see the walls without windows and fear he would never glimpse the sun again? Had he died down here?
Judgments in Egypt sought practical solutions. If justice could be served by a harsh beating or chopping off a nose, then it would be carried out once guilt was confirmed. Worse crimes could result in months of hard labor. Bodies were rarely wasted. Our tiny jail in the temple complex was just a holding cell, a stopover between transgression and discipline. It took a great crime, treason that threatened the royal family or blasphemy that threatened the gods, to end up in prison, in the dark where nothing grew. Even then, for most of the criminals behind that door—planners of coups, brutal murderers, desecrators of sacred tombs—this was a place to bide their time until a spike was sharpened for them.
Was that going to be my fate?
“Did you send word of your arrival?” the warden asked, and the guard nodded. Then he whistled, and a messenger came running. “Inform Zafnat-Panea that the criminal is in palace custody and available for questioning should he wish it,” he instructed. “Any witnesses, I assume, can be found at the temple of On?”
The guard reached into the leather bag at his hip, withdrawing the testimony the priest had scrawled in the chaos between my capture and arrest. He handed it over. “Here’s the official account according to the primary witness. But she was seen escaping the shrine by dozens. I doubt even she’d deny it herself.”
The warden smiled, his black beetle eyes somehow shining in the low light, and asked me, “Well, daughter of the high priest? Do you deny it?”
Oh, Baba, I thought, you don’t deserve this.
“Speak,” the guard said, nudging my side with his foot.
I placed a shaky hand on the cold stone, trying to get my bearings. “No.”
The warden guffawed, rolling the scroll back up. “Like I said, you think you’ve heard it all after fifteen years in this job, but then a case comes along to surprise you. Mousy little priests’ daughters running around their temples, committing sacrilege! Now I really have heard everything.” He waved his hand at the messenger, who came forward to take the testimony. “Deliver this to Zafnat-Panea. And you may go,” he said to the guard.
The guard hung back, abashed. “I dare not go back without bringing a report to her father. What will happen to her?”
“Pharaoh will have the final ruling,” the warden explained, standing up from behind his desk. I heard his bare feet on the floor as he shuffled toward me, taking the length of rope out of the guard’s hands. “He is the son of Ra, so trespassing on Ra’s Djeser-Djeseru falls under his purview. But his vizier will gather the evidence and compile the report. They should come to a decision within three days.”
“Is it possible that…?”
I cracked one eye open and saw the guard wrestle with himself as his words failed him, torn between pity for my father and resentment for me. The warden understood. His lips pursed into a thin line. “No. I’m afraid not. Up, daughter of Potiphera.”
The rope jerked, and I scrambled to my feet as the warden tugged me out of the office, fiddling with the ring of keys around his neck. The guard followed. “Where will she stay until…then?”
All three of us looked at the door to the prison, with its rusted bars casting shadows onto the faces of the men inside, who looked back at us with interest. Even the warden looked hesitant to open the door. I found my voice again. “No!” I begged. “Please, sir, no.”
He sifted through the keys in his palm. “If I had an acre of land for every time I heard ‘please, sir, no’ in front of this door, I’d own all of Egypt.” Still, as he selected the right key and looked at me again, measuring my height, my youth, my strength, and pitting it against the dimensions of the men inside, he did not slide the key into the lock. “It’s just three days. I don’t let the boys get too rowdy, I promise.”
“Perhaps there is somewhere else she can await sentencing?” the guard suggested. “A prison for ladies, perhaps?”
“It’s not often that women are on trial for crimes of this nature. We’ve only had a handful in all my years here.”
“I swear I won’t run,” I said. I knew if I was locked behind that door, I would never come out again. The cell was full of men who had either gone years without seeing a woman or were days away from death with nothing left to lose. If by some miracle I survived them, I would spend the last three days of my life as their plaything. Death would be a mercy at that point. “Put me to work in the kitchens, or the gardens. I could even work here for you. I can read and write, I—”
“Men-nu!” a voice hovered over our heads, coming from somewhere up the stairs, and the warden cringed. He dropped his keys back to his chest and tightened his grip on the rope.
“No, no, no,” he groaned. “Turn back and walk up the stairs, my lady. This one’s off limits.”
But his advice was disobeyed. Into our midst, illuminated by dim torchlight, was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. More stunning than Amma, slender as a branch and resplendent in violet silk, she floated down to us, and I heard a sigh escape the prisoners behind the door, the guard at my side, and the warden despite his chagrin. I might have sighed, too.
Her smile was daybreak. She held out her hand to the warden. “Dear Men-nu, what’s this I find? I thought we had an agreement.”
He took her hand and kissed it. “I’m starting to think you want to see me behind bars. Or on the end of a spike.”
She clicked her tongue in mock disapproval. “I would never allow that to happen. But I will freely admit my disappointment.” She turned her gaze on me and I stared back in wonder as she reached out and took my dirty chin in her hands. “How is that I came to hear about this one so late? It seems I got here just in time.”
“You call this late? She only just arrived. How did you even know she was here?”
The woman raised a perfect eyebrow and winked at me. “I have ears everywhere. Might we take this conversation somewhere a bit more private?”
He pulled on my rope and led me away from the prison door even as he denied her. “There’s no conversation to be had, Zuleika. You cannot take her.”
The lady Zuleika moved her body, as delicate as finely wrought glass, with the poise required to keep drops from sloshing out of a cup. The silk dress made little intimate, rustling whispers as she took a seat at the warden’s desk and lifted her dainty heels off the dirt floor. “I hope you’re not thinking of going back on our deal. I think we both know that would make him quite unhappy.”
“I don’t serve him,” he replied, jerking me to a stop in front of the desk. “I serve Pharaoh.”
“And you do such a splendid job,” she said, leveling a long, patronizing look over her steepled hands. The tension in the rope slackened a bit. “You have your hands full with the boys. Why don’t you let me take her?” When he faltered, she turned to me. “Your name, dearest?”
“O-Osnat. Daughter of Potiphera.”
“Well, it seems we have something in common already,” she said. “You have a Potiphar in your life, and I have one in mine. I am Lady Zuleika, wife of Potiphar, captain of the guard, and I offer you a choice—you can serve the term of your imprisonment, for however long it may last, here in the dungeon with Men-nu, or you may stay with me in the palace. But hear this,” she continued, wagging a bejeweled finger at me. “I have no influence over your trial or your sentence. Whatever Pharaoh decides, his will shall be done. But I will protect you until then. You have my oath.”
It felt like a trick that my salvation should come so easily. But every self-preserving instinct that had lain dormant when I entered the Djeser-Djeseru came alive and screamed at me to say yes. Behind me, the guard’s relief was palpable.
The warden interrupted before I could accept. “This one’s small. Sneaky. She might try to escape like the last one.”
Zuleika let out a throaty chuckle. “Look at her, she’s a lamb, an absolute lamb. She won’t run. She knows what’s good for her.”
“She’s a high priest’s daughter who committed sacrilege in Ra’s Holy of Holies. Does that sound like someone who knows what’s good for her?”
Zuleika’s eyes widened to an almost comical degree, but she said nothing in reply. Instead, she looked over to me again, lost somewhere between finding me impressive and regretting that she had offered help to a madwoman. “You won’t run, will you?” she asked, her voice clipped. “Not when it would bring me such disgrace, to have extended my trust to you? And it would land poor Men-nu in such trouble. You wouldn’t wish to see us punished for trying to help you, would you?”
I shook my head. “I won’t run.”
There was that smile again. I did not even notice that Men-nu had dropped my rope to the ground and the guard had not bothered to pick it back up. They both stood, transfixed, as Zuleika rose from the desk and started to untie my hands, not even waiting for the warden to give permission. “You are kindness itself, Men-nu,” she said. “I will send down an excellent vintage from my husband’s vineyards tonight.”
The warden just grumbled as he sat back down and nodded his agreement. Zuleika undid the last knots and I gasped when air hit the blisters on my skin. She linked her arm through mine and steered me out of the office and back up the stairs, and the guard followed us.
A group of handmaidens awaited at the top of one flight, too frightened to follow their mistress all the way to the dungeon. Zuleika handed me over to them. “Bathe her, dress her, and see to it that she receives a hot meal and some balm for her wrists and heels. Bring her to me when she is ready.” She left with half the handmaidens in tow, while the others waited for me.
The guard shuffled his feet on the step. “Your father will be pleased to hear of your change in circumstances.”
Any temporary consolation Zuleika had brought with her rescue vanished. There was still Baba to think of, and the mention of him let loose the spiral of despair I had been winding down since I last saw his face. “If you could,” I asked, too timid and ashamed to manage more than a mumble, “please, tell him—tell him—”
There was nothing to tell. How could I send word that I loved him? My stunt had cost him his pride, perhaps even his position. Through no fault of his own, he could lose the job he loved, and Pharaoh would never consider hiring him again. But how could I tell him that I was sorry? It would be a lie. I had learned the truth in the Djeser-Djeseru. I was sorry that I was caught, and that was all.
The guard understood. He nodded and took his leave, and the handmaidens accompanied me up the stairs, out of the dungeon and back into the light.
The halls of the palace of Memphis passed me by, dreamlike, bright, and uninteresting, as the handmaidens ushered me through them. The anchor of my heart was still in On. I thought of where Baba was, if he was being treated well, what he thought of me. But each hour brought its own respite, warmth that chased the cold of the dungeon out of me. I did not even mind the perfumed water of Lady Zuleika’s bath, surrendering to it as the handmaidens scrubbed the dirt off my skin. They assumed my wig had been lost or stolen on the journey and presented new ones to me from her collection, each one with a small fortune sewn into it. I refused them all, and the cosmetics, too. It was habit more than anything. When I dried off and slipped on familiar white linen, spying my bald head and clean skin in the nearest looking-glass, I felt at least a little like myself, ready for a day’s work at the hives.
I wolfed down some bread and beer and wrapped my hands with aloe-and-honey-covered bandages. My hunger sated, my pain dulled, and my body presentable, I was allowed to see Zuleika again. I could not help my curiosity, which grew with each step closer to her chambers. I had assumed the palace apartments were not dissimilar to ours at the temple, but this place was a riot of color. The floor tiles sparkled even in the darkest corners, trod upon by peacocks that poked their beaks between the cracks searching for crumbs and ants. Herons swam in the private pond studded with flowers as rich as gemstones, and the walls were carved with lotus blossoms. Every surface and living thing glittered. Even the handmaidens who led me to Zuleika wore wigs beaded with gold.
The halls cracked open like a pomegranate into Zuleika’s presence chamber. The handmaidens curtsied before her chaise when they entered, then scattered around the room to join their companions in various servile pursuits, picking up ostrich feathers to fan Zuleika or instruments to join the soft melody playing when we arrived. I stooped low and bowed until my nose touched the tiles, and though I opened my mouth to speak, the gravity of what she had done for me was still beyond my comprehension.
“Rise, daughter of Potiphera,” she instructed, and I obeyed, confirming her loveliness in the daylight. Zuleika was older than me by a good ten years, with firm cheekbones, heavy eyelids, and a pout that hung from her mouth, begging to be kissed away. Her dark skin was rubbed with gold dust. With a king’s ransom on her back in silks and jewels, it was almost hard to look at her.
“You didn’t select anything more…fetching,” she said. “Were my offerings not to your liking?”
I took a handful of the offending linen, looked at it for a beat, and then shrugged.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
“No, my lady,” I said. “Not much.”
She exhaled and leaned back against the chaise. “Pity. I’d hoped you’d be a mite more entertaining.”
Disappointing her was the last thing I wanted, not if she would send me back to prison. But as though she could sense my anxiety, she raised her hand. “Peace, dearest. I gave you my word you could stay with me during the trial. I’d face more than your ire were I to go back on it. And you gave yours that you would not give me a reason to.”
“Yes,” I breathed. “Thank you, my lady. I’ll do whatever you ask, as long as you don’t send me back there.”
“You’d better,” she said flatly. “The last one promised to stay put and I found him at midnight, making a rope out of my best silks to throw over the wall. He was executed that morning. And not a single laundress in the palace could get the wrinkles out of my silks. I had to order all new.”
“You rescue prisoners often, then?” I asked, noting that her ‘last one’ was male, so I had not been rescued by virtue of being a woman. How did a prisoner come to be saved by Zuleika?
“Oh, you know,” she replied, flicking dust from her sandal. “Every noblewoman has her little charities, her hobbies.”
“Not a very glamorous hobby.”
She grinned, but there was no mirth behind it. “It really isn’t.” Suddenly she clapped her hands, and all the handmaidens stood at attention. “Leave us.” As they left with their fans and harps strewn on the floor, Zuleika folded her legs under her and made room on the chaise, patting the empty space. “Sit.”
I took my place at her side as she held out a plate full of grapes. “Help yourself,” she said, picking up a cluster and settling back against the pillows. “You intrigue me, you know. Most of the prisoners I rescue are so predictable. Delicate little foreign boys framed or coerced into slipping poison into Pharaoh’s wine, barely capable of stringing a sentence of coherent Egyptian together. All I can give them is a comfortable place to spend their last nights before…” Zuleika looked down into her lap, afraid to finish the sentence.
“Is that what’s going to happen to me?” I asked.
She blew out a breath through her teeth. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look promising, dearest.”
I plopped a grape into my mouth.
“Until then, we have time. Is there anywhere you’d like to go, anything you’d like to see?” she asked. “We could take out my husband’s barge, tour the gardens, anything you want, as long as we stay clear of Pharaoh.”
“Are there…beehives here?”
Zuleika wrinkled her nose. “That’s where you want to go?”
I nodded. “I’m a beekeeper back home.”
“Girls aren’t beekeepers.”
“I am,” I said. “I mean—I was.” I remembered Kanebti for the first time in days and the honeybound hive he had earmarked for our next swarming. It had been almost a week. Had they been successful in separating the hives without my singing? Did Kanebti know what had happened to me? To whom would my promotion go?
It had not occurred to me that those words, identifiers that had contained my entire life—beekeeper, home—no longer applied. They lost their meaning as soon as I spoke them. There was no hope of returning to the temple, to my father’s arms, to the hives into which I had poured my love. I felt a few tears slip down my cheeks, and once they started, they could not be stopped.
She reached out an awkward hand to pat my shaking shoulders. “I must say, for someone who says so little, you do inspire a great deal of questions.”
“Ask one,” I told her, wiping at my eyes. “I think you’re entitled.”
“Well, for one thing,” she said, handing over a goblet of strong wine, “why did you do it?” As my tears slowed to hiccups, she prattled on. “Trust me, I understand better than most the thrill of the forbidden, but the gods might have killed you for it!”
“But they didn’t. Wonder why?” I asked, a tad more bitterly than she deserved. Her brow crumpled in confusion, so I just took a sip of the wine and coughed the rest of the tears back. “Never mind.”
“You don’t seem stupid. You must have had a reason.”
“Not one I can share.”
“Have it your way, then,” she said, stretching and rising. “I will tell the palace groundskeepers to prepare a tour of the palace apiary tomorrow, and you will accompany me. That wish, at least, I can grant.” She looked down at me, softened by her sympathy, and added, “I’ll have Buia show you to your room. You must be tired, dearest. Rest tonight, and we’ll go see the bees tomorrow.”
A handmaiden came forward to guide me out of Zuleika’s presence chamber. I let her hand on my back direct me, closing my eyes against the glory of the palace and all but collapsing into the pallet-bed given to me. I drew the sheets up over my head but could not allow myself to sleep, not yet, not when the sands in the hourglass trickled down toward a time when my eyes would be closed forever. I stared at the warp and weft of the blanket, baffled by the nature of my own blasphemy.
Right now, somewhere in the labyrinth of the palace, a vizier and a council had the priest’s testimony. They were reading it, sifting through the evidence against me, determining the severity of my crime and the price I would pay for it. No one seemed too hopeful I would escape with my life.
But my mind was back in the Djeser-Djeseru, the moment before I was discovered. I had seen Ra for what he was, for what all the gods truly were. I had stepped over the boundary of Egyptian divinity and found it a pretense. How could Pharaoh, the priests, and the council be insulted by what I had done? Was I on trial for learning the truth about the gods?
Then I remembered. Pharaoh himself was not permitted in the Djeser-Djeseru. He had never seen what I witnessed. Even if he had, if every person in Egypt was allowed to walk into the Djeser-Djeseru and bow before the gods like Baba, there was every chance that they would continue to believe in them. They had never stepped on a holy mountain or been shown signs by bees. Their faith in the gods would go undiminished. My intrusion jeopardized their security. To Pharaoh, my crime could result in the end of this season of plenty or an onslaught of plague. The most expedient way to placate the god he considered his own father was to kill me.
Thinking of Baba was too painful. Thinking of Kanebti was equal torment. I thought of the bees instead. I pictured them zooming from flower to flower in my garden at home, pollinating the apprentice plots, thrumming with life inside the hives until I could hear them buzzing in my own heart. I could not bring myself to hate them for their involvement in my revelation. Without them, I would never have learned the truth about the gods. Whatever came next, I was happy to know it.
Part of me persisted in the belief that there was more they wanted to show me, a god connected to the mountain, to the central order of the world. I could not work out the details, only the certainty that they were right. I fell asleep hoping to dream it, but all I dreamed were smears of red—blood, or anger.
Zuleika collected me in the morning and took me to the palace apiary. Here, the hives stretched almost as far as they did at the temple, keeping permanent residence away from the Nile in their garden quarter. Zuleika shrieked and flinched when the bees came to us, attracted to the scented wax that melted atop her wig and the perfume on both of us, so I could not convince her to stay long. But I cried with relief as they flocked to me. They were not my bees, but they still came, compelled by my sorrow, brushing past my tear-streaked face to caress and console me. A few followed us back to her chambers while she shook them out of her fragrant clothes. They lingered in her courtyard as though standing guard for me.
“You weren’t kidding,” she remarked, watching with nervous interest as I held some in my cupped hands.
I implored her to let me go again after supper, but since she could not accompany me, I had to stay in my room while she dined with her husband. But she took me again the following morning, keeping a respectful distance from the hives while I wandered through them, observing the Memphis beekeepers as they finished up the last harvest. They cast wary eyes at me, unused to being watched by women. My offense against Ra made its rounds among them, and a warning look informed me that I was not to touch the hives and risk infecting them with the god’s anger.
Zuleika took her meal with me that night, her chatter more animated than ever, speaking twice as much so I did not have to say anything. I could sense her apprehension just as she could sense my distress. I had not been summoned as a witness at my trial to explain my actions. The decision was being made without me.
The next morning, I woke early and went to Zuleika’s presence chamber to wait upon her. But she was already there, sitting ramrod straight on her chaise with her hands on her knees, her gaze remote. She clutched a scroll that smelled of fresh ink. Our eyes met, and I knew.
Chapter 7
Summary:
Last time: consequences
This time: a sentence
CW: panic attack, the kind of spooky-confused thoughts you have when you're about to be put to death for sacrilege/treason?
Chapter Text
“Buia, bring my writing desk at once!” Zuleika sprang into action as if my execution was scheduled in half an hour. The scroll in my hand indicated that I had until tomorrow. I stared at it, reading the words over and over, but they made less sense the more I read them. The shapes dissolved into meaningless lines. Zuleika sounded very far away.
“…can be bribed, but it will be expensive, and my husband controls our finances. Do you have any?” She snapped in front of my face. “Are you listening?”
“What?”
“Money, dearest. Do you have anything of value?” she asked. Like a windstorm, she sucked up all the hysteria in the room; it climbed ever higher in her voice, but there was none left for me. “Anyone I can send for in On, someone with access to goods of yours that haven’t been confiscated? If I send a messenger within the hour, they might be back by tomorrow night.”
I looked up blankly at her. “What for?”
“To pay for your burial!” she said, exasperated. “I know a sem-priest who’ll perform a mummification, just the basics, but it won’t come cheap. Otherwise you’ll be thrown into some desert pit!”
“What?”
Her nails dug into my shoulders. “Do you have anything I can sell for you, or don’t you?”
My mind wheeled through images of things left behind in my room in On. Even though I knew there had to be some items of worth, festival jewelry and lacquered furniture, I could not recall them. All I remembered were the things that came free—dried chrysanthemum garlands hanging in my window, rows of little sprouts in our garden, the sun’s glow in each room at every hour, my slice of the Nile, my hives. “I—I don’t know.”
She let me go when her handmaiden brought the writing desk, a carved wood surface with inkwells that she set on my knees, thrusting a reed pen into my hands. “If you write a message, I’ll see to it that your father receives it.”
At the mention of Baba, I jolted forward and dipped the pen in the inkwell, letting it hover over the empty scroll. Something in me was surging forward. Drops of ink splashed onto the papyrus.
“If there’s no money, then there’s no mummification,” she said, more to herself than to me. “But that’s just as well, plenty of Egyptians go without. She’d be better served by some offerings—Buia!”
Her handmaiden came running back.
“Send word to the high priest of Osiris. Tell him I want to see him at once!” Off Buia scurried, and Zuleika sat next to me on the chaise. “Hori’s a friend of mine. He won’t need bribing. We’ll ask him to make offerings to the god of the underworld for you tomorrow morning.”
“No.”
“It might not make a difference, considering your offense, but it can’t hurt—”
“No.” I was going to die tomorrow for a god who did not exist, and I was not about to beg another one for intercession. “No offerings, no high priests. I—” I tried to focus, but the tide in me was dragging my breath out with it, and I could not look at Zuleika or the damning emptiness of the scroll in front of me. The walls themselves threatened to crush me. I stood up, and the writing desk clattered to the floor. “I have to go.”
“You gave me your word you would not try to escape.” Zuleika shrank in her seat. “Please. Don’t make me call for the guards. Don’t make me send you back there.”
There was a crack in the writing desk now. Ink spilled from it, creeping between the tiles. If she did not call for a handmaiden to clean it soon, it would stain the floor. All my choices did nothing but damage and rob the people who had shown me kindness.
“It’s not a pretty place, daughter of Potiphera. Spend your last night here, where it’s safe. You promised me.”
“I know.” I leaned over and picked up the cracked desk and pen. At least half of the papyrus was unstained and still usable. “I just need to be alone, to compose my thoughts. I won’t run.” I had already cost Baba everything, and I had probably caused Kanebti pain, too. Any escape attempt I made, certain to fail, would not bring me any worse punishment. But it would draw more attention to Zuleika and her protection for people like me in the future. To prevent her from helping others would be truly criminal. “I won’t run,” I repeated. “Could you—can I go back to the hives?”
She nodded and clapped her hands, summoning an escort of handmaidens. I should have turned around to face her and thank her, or apologized for breaking her desk. But I let the handmaidens lead me away, ink dribbling down the front of my dress as I held it close to my chest, the pen tight in my fist. There were so many practical elements to dying, ones I wished I had paid better attention to as Zuleika described them. What was I about to leave behind?
My hives back home would survive. Even if Master Ounnefer wanted to burn them to erase any bad omens I left behind, Kanebti would never allow it. His promotion was due any day. He would go on caring for my bees. I supposed I could write my farewell to him, reminding him to check the oil traps and use my recipe for mite paste. But he knew everything I would advise.
The palace apiary was enclosed by walls. The handmaidens stood between me and the single exit point, allowing me space but making it impossible to consider escape, just in case. But the apiary was otherwise empty. I walked between the rows of hive walls, wishing I could feel at home but feeling farther from it than ever.
I sat with my back to a hive wall and looked down at the mess I had made of the writing desk. All that was left in the inkwell would be sufficient for a line. It would have to be for Baba, but still, I had nothing to say. I could not tell him I loved him. What loving daughter would do to him what I did? It would be an insult. Nor could I find it in myself, even now, to be sorry.
Twenty years on this earth, and I was going to leave so little behind. Two men whom I loved, a legacy of beekeeping that burned out faster than a beeswax candle, and a body that would be ravaged by wild dogs and vultures within the week. I thought of Amma, how the fever wasted her and left her dry and wrung out. At least her body looked a little like her when she died. Mine, I observed with some detachedness, would be a mangled version of me. I wondered in which direction criminals were impaled. Would they shove the stake between my legs and out through my mouth so I died screaming around it?
Which corpse would haunt poor Baba more, Amma’s or mine?
I was comforted for a moment by thinking that I would be reunited with Amma soon. We would wait in the land of the dead together for Baba, and when he arrived, perhaps she could soften the blow of his anger toward me. I thought of the journey I was about to undertake. As long as I remained on the stake, my ka would not be able to travel. If Zuleika could at least arrange for a coffin for me after my body was released from its display, I would travel in it through the night sky to Nut, and then I would face forty-two gods to contest my worthiness before I approached that dreaded scale with the feather of Maat on one side and my heart on the other. I doubted I would make it past the first assessor, much less all forty-two. I doubted I would even make it that far. In a desert pit, I would have no vehicle in which to travel to the next world. I would never see Amma or Baba again.
Icy horror chased out any visions I retained of the afterlife. These stories belonged to the gods, gods I was about to give my life up for the sake of disproving. If there was no Anubis or Osiris, then there was no land of the dead. So where was I going to go?
Where was Amma?
The surge I held at bay finally broke over me. I did not cry. Rather, I suffocated in it. Gasping, choking on the nearness of my own death, I tossed the desk aside and clawed at my own throat. No words came out, no tears. I blinked at the sun above, wheezing, and could not breathe in any relief. My hands reached out blindly and grabbed the dried mud on the hives behind me. In my head was the last hive I had checked, on that harvest afternoon with Master Khet-ef watching me. It was honeybound by now, and so was I. My terror, my regret, my sorrow did not crash like a wave; it oozed, a wall of honey that filled me up to the very eyes.
In vain, I opened my mouth like I could sing. That was how I always used to protect the bees who had overproduced until their work imperiled them, singing a queen and her entourage out to a new home. It was my time to be free, to find a new home after I had filled my old self to the brim, crowding everything I knew with theories and questions and hopes. But there was no time left. I was going to drown in them.
“I’m not ready,” I managed on a puff of air. I tore off the lid of the closest hive and huddled next to it. “There’s so much I still don’t know.”
Bees poured forth and arranged themselves in an audience. It gave me courage. I swallowed hard and tried again, smoother, more confident. “You showed me there was something more. There’s something you want me to know about the god of the mountain. Whatever it is, you’re running out of time.”
The handmaidens noticed my rising alarm and whispered to each other, pointing to me, but I ignored them. “Please,” I begged them, “whoever sent you to me, ask for their help. If they care, tell them I need a miracle. Please!”
The bees flew up just as an imperious handmaiden stomped over and grabbed me by the arm. I struggled against her, craning my neck to follow where they went, to see if they flew east toward Mafkat. But there was no way it would work, not even if they somehow understood what I desperately needed. The mountain was too far. They would never make it in time.
When the sky disappeared from view, I might have died right then. Back in the shade, buffeted by the handmaidens under painted ceilings, I was as good as dead. Quiet instructions from Zuleika drifted by my ear. They handled me as they would a doll, removing my stained dress and bathing me again so I would go to my execution smelling sweet. I had no energy to request access to the Nile so I could at least smell like myself in my final hours. Whatever they wrapped me in was fleecy and warm, and I resurfaced in the dimness of an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar bed.
My head was in Zuleika’s lap. If I closed my eyes and listened to her tuneless murmur, I could pretend I was with Amma again. All that was missing was the scent of waterlilies. “My lady,” I asked, my voice barely a croak, “do all prisoners get this kind of special treatment?”
She chuckled. “Potiphar doesn’t take too kindly to finding men in my bed.”
I had heard that before, or something like it. I fished around in my memory for Potiphars, for palace beds, and a distant scandal echoed back to me: the gossip of charioteers Baba had told me ten years ago. I sat up in her bed and looked at the Memphis beauty who was the wife of the captain of the guard, the woman whose misconduct had led to my encounter on the holy mountain.
“What is it?” she asked.
A grin, audacious and unexpected, tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Nothing. I just…wanted to say thank you.”
She snorted. “Not much to be grateful for. No offerings to appease the gods to have mercy on you, no stay of execution, no proper burial.”
“Three days safe from the dungeon is more than enough to be grateful for,” I argued. “I don’t know how I got so lucky. But thank you.”
Zuleika opened her arms, and I fell into her embrace. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” she said. “You might be insane, daughter of Potiphera, but you seem resolute. I’m sure you had your reasons.”
“My father,” I spoke into the silk of her dress. “Will he be there tomorrow?”
“He was not…invited.”
“Will you come?”
She stiffened and pulled away. “I’m sorry. If I went to every single one, for every prisoner I take, my heart would break. I wouldn’t be able to keep doing it.”
I nodded and sat back, watching twilight descend.
“But in the meantime, we still have a few hours. What would you like?” she asked, trying to feign enthusiasm. “Strong wine? Some delicacy you’re craving? I could convince the healers to send a bottle of poppy extract. You’ll float away tomorrow without a worry.”
The prospect was tempting, but all I wanted was more bright sky. I put my wobbly legs on the floor and stood, unwrapping the blanket and depositing it on the bed. I could make no apology great enough for Baba, but I could do him one more honor in life by dying with manners. “You’ve done enough for me,” I said, sinking to one knee. “Let’s part now, before things become ugly. Tomorrow, I might say things I don’t mean, for fear of what’s to come.” I extended my hand, and she smiled and placed hers in mine. I kissed it. “Thank you for your many kindnesses, Lady Zuleika. May you be blessed.”
“And you, daughter of Potiphera.”
No one needed to retrieve me to take me back to my pallet-bed. I knew the way by now, and I walked without looking back. The one thing keeping the honeybound feeling subdued now was surprise. My gratitude to Zuleika was in earnest, and not just because she had kept me safe and untouched. I considered what would have happened if her husband had been free to go to Mafkat that year and Baba had stayed home with me. If I had never stepped on that mountain or found those bees, if Baba had never been promoted, if On had never been our home, I would have gone on believing in the gods forever. There was so much I wished I could take back, but not that. If I took nothing else with me, I took the truth.
I did not sleep that night, but neither did I think. Any endeavor to figure out the nature of the god on the mountain and how the bees figured into it was beyond my comprehension, and one night’s worth of philosophy would never answer my questions. Instead, I pulled my pallet-bed close to the nearest window and let the moonlight spill over me as it wove its way through the clouds. In the desert, the stars had felt dangerously close. I wished I had looked longer at them.
The moon disappeared from the window and the sky lightened, vivid orange, into a perfect morning. Sandals slapped on the stone just outside the room, pausing in the doorway. If they said my name, I did not hear it. I rose and folded the sheet over the pallet-bed, determined to leave as little mess behind me as possible.
When they saw that I would not put up a fight, the guards moved their spears to their outside hands and walked by my side, their arms loose, letting me walk freely but able to reach out and grab me if I made any sudden moves. But I was the opposite of sudden. I walked with methodical slowness, storing up peeks and glimpses of sky between the columns and wishing to see a bee or hear one in the distance.
For everyone else in the palace, it was an unremarkable day, so there was no gravitas to my march. Laundresses gabbed with baskets of wet linen at their hips and jostled the guards as they passed, and slaves darted between us with cups of beer, plates of fruit, and folded gowns. Their buzz was too loud for me to hear any bees over.
If the guards wanted to punish me for missing out on the torture of the dungeon, they went about it with creative slyness. We seemed to walk through every single corridor in the palace, bumping into every oblivious life inside it, until I had to wonder where executions took place. If there was a spot for public executions in Memphis, Baba had never let me see it as a child. Were criminals like me killed in public, so everyone could rest easy over a debt repaid to the gods, or would I be granted a private murder?
We made it as far as the stables, where the walls were less ornamental and men carried bridles and tools between the stalls. I saw wood shavings on the ground and a pile of logs, worn smooth and stained with brown rivulets. It stood to reason, wood being as expensive as it was in Egypt, that they would reuse their spikes for executions. I saw generations of bloodstains, and though I had tried to be stoic, I bolted.
The guards anticipated it and grabbed my arms before I could run. The air smelled of horse muck and hay was scattered on the dirt. Again, there was a well-practiced logic to it. In an immaculate palace, it was better to keep all messes confined to one place. We rounded a corner, and behind the stables, the royal tent was pitched. Men-nu the warden came out to meet us with another length of rope in his hands.
I breathed hard as he flashed me an apologetic look and bound my hands. He leaned down and bound my feet, too. “Courage, child,” he said. “Courage now.”
The guards lifted me the rest of the way so my toes dragged through the dirt. This morning had seemed perfect, so pristine, but now the sun was harsh overhead, and I could not see inside the royal tent when they brought me before it. The spike, newly sharpened, sat in the dust. Someone was seated inside among standing men—Pharaoh, I presumed—but I was bound and held too tight to bow, and if I had tried to beg for mercy, it would have come out a mere squeak.
“Osnat, daughter of Potiphera,” someone said from the shade, “we, the council of our most illustrious Pharaoh, have considered your case and found you guilty of willful and premeditated intrusion upon the Djeser-Djeseru of Ra in the Temple of On. Such an intrusion is an insult to the sanctity of the gods, and the gods demand restitution for the trespass.”
Their faces were inscrutable. The sun was too bright. I stared down at my hands, focused on the shape of my nails and the interlacing of my fingers. I tried to slow my breathing, but it grew more frenzied, more labored.
“With the council’s recommendation, Pharaoh Mernefer-ra, Lord of the Two Lands, High Priest of Every Temple, Son of Ra, has found you guilty of sacrilege and condemns you now to death by impalement upon a spike…”
I smelled incense, treacly and heavy over the horse muck. Was it to purify this offering to Ra, or did they just want to mask the stink of dung? Was I not even allowed fresh air to die in?
“…after which point you will be raised and left to hang for the duration of one week: a sign of our plea for the gods’ mercy and a deterrent for any who would dare to follow in your footsteps.” The men inside the tent stood at attention as the sentence came to a close. “May the gods grant innocent Egypt and her faithful Pharaoh clemency and place the blame where it belongs. May your death settle accounts.”
Priests stepped out into the sun, their leopard sashes tied back so no blood splatters would mat the fur, and picked up the spike. The guards pulled me up and dragged me backward to make room for it, and I stared down the length of it. It looked much larger on the ground, but from here, it was entirely too skinny. The agony would last longer if the stabbing did not destroy my chest cavity in one go. My head whipped around, trying to catch someone’s eye and communicate this. I had seen bigger spikes on the pile. It would not take long for them to switch one for the other. I could wait.
They brought it close to my chest, so close that the sharpened point pricked the skin of my breastbone, leaving a splinter. The priests squinted, trying to get the aim right, and drew the spike back.
“On your word, Son of Ra.”
I shut my eyes tight and tried to see Baba, or Kanebti, or Amma. I would have settled for Zuleika’s lovely face. Even Namrut’s sneer would have been a welcome last memory rather than the end of the spike. I tried to imagine just one bee, flitting in my palm. But there was nothing in my head. Not even a last gasp whooshed past my lips as I heard the priests grunt and lift the spike. There was nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Wait!”
I lost control of my limbs and collapsed between the guards, my chin sinking to my chest. The guards held me fast, but there was no rush of air as the spike came forward. My heartbeat thundered in my chest, the only proof that I was still alive, and I could not make out the voices over it.
That is, until I heard a voice I recognized. “Oh, thank the gods, dearest!”
“Zuleika!” My eyes snapped open. There she was, panting with exhaustion, her dress haphazard, wig askew.
“Put down the spike and let her go,” someone ordered, equally breathless, the same man who had shouted for them to wait.
To my shock, the priests obeyed. The spike thudded to the ground, releasing a cloud of dust. But the guards were not so quick to follow instructions. They kept me upright.
A priest wiped his hands on his tunic and frowned at the interruption. “Your Grace—”
“Son of Ra,” the man said, cutting them off and addressing Pharaoh. He crossed in front of me as he knelt before him, his arms outstretched. “I beg your leave to halt this execution until I speak with you in private.”
“This is not the sort of thing that can afford to wait,” another priest complained, eager to pick up the spike again. “This woman endangers us all as long as she remains alive! We must beg Ra’s forgiveness or suffer his wrath.”
“Peace,” a deep voice rumbled inside the tent. “I will hear what Zafnat-Panea has to say.”
“Thank you,” the man replied, and then he turned to me. The guards parted with a wave of his hand, and I fell to my knees in the dirt, shaking.
The shadow of him passed over me, and I felt a hand reach down to tilt my chin up. The man searched my face, his brow furrowed, and I saw a pair of rare, Nile-green eyes. They were the sort of color that could only belong in a foreigner’s face, a color I had seen once before, in this very palace ten years ago, in the face of a slave boy.
Whatever he was looking for, he found it. Zafnat-Panea released my chin and nodded. “You,” he said, still out of breath. “I’ve been looking for you all morning.”
You.
Chapter 8
Summary:
Last time: a sentence
This time: a wager
Chapter Text
Part Two: Dreamers
He reminded me of the Nile. The lines of him—chin to throat, shoulder to wrist, hip to ankle—made me think of arching sails and swift currents, and he shimmered from all the lapis lazuli on his breastplate and headdress like a river god. Even his Egyptian came out fluid as he dismissed the priests and guards. They cursed him under their breath as they abandoned me in the dirt.
“Sun-touched Canaanite. Mark my words, he’d do our jobs for us if he could.”
“Let’s find something to eat. Pretty boy will have Pharaoh’s ear for a while.”
Pretty boy. I craned my head around the shuffling crowd to get a glimpse of him. Zuleika had told me very little about the prisoners she rescued in the past, mentioning that they were predictable, her ‘delicate little foreign boys.’ I did not recall much about the slave I had seen that day; it was his scream that I had embedded in my memory more than anything else, adopting it as my own on the journey to Mafkat. Had he seemed delicate, someone worth her salvation? This vizier was not born Egyptian, and there was a certain prettiness to him. He must have taken after his mother. Zuleika’s intervention could account for the slave boy and Zafnat-Panea being the same man.
Zuleika ducked behind the priests and fell at my feet, her trembling fingers working to free my wrists. My chest pinched where the splinter stuck and a drop of blood trickled down my sternum. It smeared on her dress as she drew me into the safety of her arms.
“It’s a cruel thing to keep an old man from his breakfast,” Pharaoh said within the tent. “I hope your explanation is adequate. You yourself signed the death warrant for the girl.”
“A thousand apologies, Son of Ra.”
“I do not want your apologies. I want sacrilege punished before it can rot my temples and lay waste to my people. I want my morning pastries. And I want a competent vizier who can pass verdicts without reversing them at the last minute, who proves himself as valuable as he was first advertised to me.”
“You have the last one,” he replied smoothly, “and the first two you’ll have within the hour.” In a low, familiar undertone, he continued, “Come on, old man. Don’t tell me you weren’t at least a little entertained.”
The last lingering guard hissed at the intimacy, but from inside the tent came a single, heartless laugh. “And what prompts this last-minute reprieve?”
“It would seem El Shaddai has a flair for the dramatic.”
Like a bell had been struck next to my ear, the unfamiliar name woke me out of my shock. I sat up in Zuleika’s embrace, alert and alive, and felt a prickling near the base of my skull. “What did you say?”
Zafnat-Panea raised an eyebrow, like I had just confirmed something for him, but all I could do was stare back, bewildered. From beneath the tent’s shade, I could make out Pharaoh’s outline shifting forward and heard the chair groan under his weight. “Come here, girl.”
Zuleika hastened to untie the rope around my ankles, and I joined her, picking at the knots with my blunt fingernails without much success. But my heart and breathing were steadying now, finding their natural rhythms. In the cliff face of my terror, I had found a foothold. Zafnat-Panea joined us in the dust and made quick work of the knots.
“Say nothing at first,” he warned me, “until we come to the dream.”
“My lord, give the poor girl a moment,” Zuleika protested, her arms tightening around me. “For pity’s sake, she just looked her own death square in the face not a minute ago!”
He leveled a cold look at her. “She’s not out of danger yet. Leave us.”
“Let me stay with her. I can give her some comfort, some protection—”
“Your arms offer little in the way of both,” he snapped. “Now, if you please.”
Zuleika winced, but her body tensed around mine, reluctant to obey. I touched her cheek. “I’ll be fine. Do as he says.”
The pout that had looked so irresistible on her a few days prior now looked more appropriate for a scolded child. She stood and brushed the scraps of hay from her skirt, gathering all the dignity she could manage while Zafnat-Panea pulled the rope free. When she lifted her eyes to meet him, his glare could have summoned snow. She muttered, “As you command, my lord.”
He sighed as he rose. “Zu.”
She paused but did not turn her head. Nor did he turn to acknowledge her. They both stood, stiff and strained, as he said, “Thank you for telling me where to find her.”
Then Zafnat-Panea entered the tent, beckoning for me to follow with a flick of his hand, and a flurry of kitchen maids that seemed to appear out of thin air obscured Zuleika, so I might have been mistaken when I thought I saw her eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
With platters laden with cakes and tarts trailing steam, kitchen maids filed into the tent, and I crawled on my hands and knees behind them, not trusting my legs to work yet. My stomach was still in working order, however, and it grumbled at the smell. Pharaoh chuckled as the maids bowed and presented his meal. “Optimistic, were we?”
“I prefer ‘well-prepared,’” said Zafnat-Panea, picking up a pitcher of wine and pouring a glass for Pharaoh. One of the bangles on his arm knocked into a cluster of figs on the edge of a plate, sending a few tumbling to the ground in front of me. A meaningful glance as he lifted the glass informed me the mistake was deliberate. I snatched one and ate it as he raised a toast. “To your health, Son of Ra, and your infinite mercies.”
“You’re worse than my own son,” said Pharaoh, taking the glass. “Hoping to cajole me with sweetmeats and work your will.”
“Your Majesty is too wise to fall prey to such base manipulation,” he argued, “but if it works, it works.”
“Tell me, how is it that you can order an execution one day and sabotage it the next?” Pharaoh took a tray from one of the maids and waved the girls away, balancing the food on his knees. He was a king of folds––swaths of white silk, creases of skin over his eyes and mouth, folds of fat over his soft, old body. His frown quirked up in a challenging grin at Zafnat-Panea. “Go on, impress me. Did El Shaddai prove her innocence overnight?”
There was the name again, bringing with it a pressure change in the air. I looked between the two of them for some indication that they felt it. But Zafnat-Panea just sipped his own wine and leaned against one of the tent-poles. “El Shaddai revealed nothing to me about her crime,” he answered, “and I don’t dispute her guilt, but the girl cannot die today. He made it clear she has a purpose to serve in the destiny of Egypt.”
“A touch convenient,” Pharaoh observed. “And I suppose this revelation was not induced by a large bribe from her father? That old hippopotamus has been incessant with his petitions all week. I’ve half a mind to impale them on the same pole just for some peace.”
Baba is in Memphis. I forgot the name, my manners, and severity of my circumstances, reaching out to touch the hem of Pharaoh’s garment and pressing it to my lips. “Mighty Pharaoh, I beg you—”
“Heretic!” Pharaoh spat at me, and his foot missed my nose by a hair’s breadth. “You dare touch a living god after invading the shrine of his divine father? Do not waste your breath asking for a pardon, for I will issue none.”
“Your Majesty—”
“And you!” he said, wine sloshing over the rim of his glass as he pointed a finger at Zafnat-Panea. “You are confident that you can plead her case? You overstepped today, boy. I respect your god, but I serve Egypt’s gods, and whether or not you rescind your verdict today based on El Shaddai’s intervention, I have final say.”
Zafnat-Panea showed no sign of weakened confidence. “You said you would hear me out. If my counsel does not influence you, then you can proceed with the execution as planned. I’ll stake her myself if you ask.”
Pharaoh stewed in his seat, offended by Zafnat-Panea’s easy acquiescence. He stuffed a cake into his mouth, spittle and crumbs disappearing into the fabric folds, and said, “Tell me your dream.”
He stood up straight with his hands behind his back and delivered the report like a soldier. “Son of Ra,” he said, “last night my god visited a vision upon me that concerns your empire. I dreamed of your seven cows and your heads of grain again, and when they were consumed by the lean cows and the lean grain, all that remained was barren desert. Everything in Egypt was choked by yellow dust. But then, the sky was overrun by bees. And she sent them.” He pointed to me, waited for me to say something, as though I knew the next part of his dream. Those expressive eyes widened, indicating that I should go on, but I had no idea what he expected me to say. I might have been a blasphemer, but I was no sorceress. I could not invade people’s dreams.
That is — unless —
Those bees in the palace apiary. I had not expected them to save me, even if they managed to follow the direction of my heart toward the mountain. But maybe these Memphis bees knew better than I did and flew somewhere closer, to someone who could actually rescue me.
“Wherever she walked, the bees followed. Wherever she pointed, the dust turned to honey. The land was coated with flowing honey until it ran like a river under her feet. And it didn’t stop until new calves were born and new grain was sown and Egypt was out of danger.”
Pharaoh chewed, skeptical but curious. “One girl cannot make an empire overflow with honey.”
I remembered what Baba had once said of me. If anyone could… “I can.”
Pharaoh was unimpressed. Any prisoner would have said the same. “Did your god provide an interpretation?”
“The girl has an ability,” Zafnat-Panea explained, and it was strange that he should be speaking on my behalf for a gift I knew far better than he did, than this dream foretold. I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand to silence me. “A mission has been entailed to her, and it is El Shaddai’s wish that she fulfills it. You must see how you will reap the benefits, Your Majesty. There are six years left until the famine hits. We could use her help in preparing a supply.”
“My father, Potiphera, will tell you,” I agreed, taking courage in saying his name, “If you let me live, I will prove it. Your storerooms will see more honey than they’ve seen in years. Since they were built, even.” Such audacious claims were unnatural for me; they lacked Zafnat-Panea’s conviction. But he smiled. Evidently I had said the right thing.
“Was there more to the dream?”
“Some,” Zafnat-Panea revealed, “but nothing I understood. Once the land was restored, she directed the bees to the sky and stitched them into the heavens. They became stars.”
“It is unlike Him to withhold meaning from you.”
He crossed his arms and regarded me, his expression unfathomable. “I thought so, too. I rather hoped she would illuminate it for us.”
They both waited for me to interpret it, but I stared blankly back at them. Pharaoh’s open suspicion made the hair on my arms stand on end, reminding me that the spike was still outside the tent, waiting for me. I could lie, I supposed, and try to twist things my way. But I had no talent for storytelling and did not want to risk botching it. Let the vizier explain it, if he could.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what it means.”
My honesty caused no outcry. Pharaoh shrugged and sipped his wine. It was not given to girls to interpret divine dreams. Zafnat-Panea was disappointed, but he disguised it well. “You have found twofold favor in El Shaddai’s sight, Son of Ra. In your good governance of Egypt, He chose to reward you with me. In exalting me, He rewards you again with this girl. I strongly advise that you refrain from incurring His anger in sending the gift to death.”
“I fear Ra’s anger more than His.”
“A week has passed since she breached the Djeser-Djeseru, and your crops and your people prosper as ever.”
Pharaoh discarded his breakfast tray and rubbed his forehead, and I knew the battle was half-won. “I cannot let her go free for a dream. My laws are absolute. Even if she proves an exception, I cannot allow ordinary people to walk into shrines like a marketplace. Her death makes an example.”
“A stay of execution is all I’m asking,” he said. “If the famine strikes and she fails to perform as the dream foretold, then no one, not even El Shaddai, can fault you for putting her to death as planned.”
He talked about famine like it was a foregone conclusion, and Pharaoh did not gainsay him. I calculated what it would take to prove myself, visualizing the boundaries of the apiary in my head and seeing where new hive walls could be added. I thought of this past harvest in On, and while I doubted any literal rivers of honey would flow in Egypt, I felt sure that I could produce enough honey to supply the kingdom through a season of famine.
“How long did you have in mind?” asked Pharaoh.
“Six years of plenty remain. The famine will last seven after that.”
Pharaoh and I both marveled that he made such a bold request with a straight face. Thirteen years, more than half of them spent in a famine! Odds were high that I would die of natural causes before the day of judgment came. Even higher were the odds that Pharaoh would be dead by then. Pharaoh laughed at him. “You must think me out of my wits, boy!”
“El Shaddai thinks she can get us through the famine. It’s only fair that she be allowed the full length of time to meet expectations.”
If Pharaoh had stopped laughing, I would have felt compelled to take it up instead for despair. Years and years and years of building hives, nurturing bees, and harvesting honey could, in theory, be enough preparation to suffice Egypt’s millions for one season of famine. But there was no way I could produce enough honey for seven years’ worth of barrenness. There were limits to what I could do, no matter what a dream prophesied.
Pharaoh collected himself before crooking a finger to me. “You, Potiphera’s daughter. Come closer.” I crept forward, careful this time not to touch him, and he asked Zafnat-Panea, “You are certain she is the girl you dreamed of?”
“My eyes aren’t going yet, old man,” he said, daring another attempt at familiarity. “I recognized her well enough.”
“I see the resemblance now,” continued Pharaoh as he inspected me. “Pity you didn’t inherit your mother’s looks. Yes, I heard a rumor about you once, I think. Something about bees on a mountain. My priests thought it a good omen. Your father wrote well of your work in his temple reports. Tell me, beekeeper girl, are you any good?”
At least this answer I could provide with confidence. I took a deep breath and declared, “I’m very good.”
“Then it would seem the proper test for you is not one of time, but of skill.” He leaned back in his chair. “Thirteen years I cannot give. You shall have one year to prove yourself.”
“Your Majesty, you cannot expect her to produce enough for the famine in one year!” said Zafnat-Panea.
“Your god is on her side,” he countered, “and I never said that she would have to make enough to outlast the famine. We will test the girl’s ability. In one year, if she can produce more than my palace beekeepers, I will grant her a pardon—on the condition that she works for the remaining five years to make good on El Shaddai’s prophecy.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “I think it more than fair. What say you, Zafnat-Panea?”
The vizier hesitated and looked at me. It was not the result either of us wanted, but we both knew we would be fools to refuse it. “She alone can answer that, Your Majesty. It is her gift, after all.”
“So it is. And a much-boasted one at that, if high priest, vizier, and god all recommend her to me. I shall add a caveat,” he said, his smile broadening. “Your work must be your own. I forbid you to use the palace apiary and the tools therein. My beekeepers cannot assist you. What say you, beekeeper girl? Can you accomplish this in a year?”
Pharaoh knew so little about beekeeping that he did not understand the nature of his question. With a hive wall to myself, already constructed and populated, I might have made the quota within a full year, encouraging my bees to produce honey through the cooler seasons. But without those hives, starting from scratch at the beginning of Akhet when the weather was damp so hive constructions would take extra time to dry, all I truly had to work with was Shemu. Pharaoh, in truth, gave me only four months to make more honey than his professional beekeepers made in a year.
I drew on what little courage I had, knowing that Zuleika had saved me, that Baba was nearby, and that bees had come to my aid and, with any luck, would do so again. I stared Pharaoh down and said, “How would you like me to deliver the results, Your Majesty? Honey, cakes, beeswax candles, or perfume cones?”
He tilted his head back, impressed with my boldness. “Mastered them all, have you?”
“You won’t find their equal in all Egypt,” I promised, “in both quality and quantity.”
Whether he believed me or not—and I was not sure I believed myself—Pharaoh was satisfied. He held out his hand for me to kiss. “We have a bargain. Zafnat-Panea, this girl is now in your charge.”
“Me?” His disgust at the prospect was blatant. “I have my hands full with the granaries.”
Pharaoh shrugged. “She was in your dream, and she shares your mission. You will supervise her efforts for the famine supply in addition to your duties.” Before he could protest, Pharaoh lifted a hand. “I have spoken. Be content. You have bought the girl time, Zafnat-Panea. Was this not your intention?”
“I—”
“Be sure she does not fail,” he warned him. “It would cast your dream-telling abilities into serious doubt. You amuse me, boy, but if I cannot depend on you, then I have no use for you.”
Zafnat-Panea was perfectly composed. “I understand, Your Majesty.”
Once the deal was struck, the set for my execution was taken down. Slaves carried away Pharaoh’s chair, uprooted the royal tent, but left the stake where it was. Pharaoh disappeared behind the palace walls, and when the priests and guards learned they would not be summoned back that morning, they settled into a long breakfast. The only signs that I had been slated for death were the stake and four holes in the ground from the tent pegs. I peered over at the erstwhile instrument of my demise.
“What will they do with it?” I asked him.
Zafnat-Panea, who had been watching Pharaoh leave, spared the stake a glance. “Leave it for the next person who needs it, I expect.” I shuddered, then opened my mouth to speak again, but once more he held up a finger to interrupt me. “No. Not here, where anyone could hear us.”
I gulped down any words of protest as he inclined his head toward the palace, taking me in the opposite direction of Zuleika’s suite through unfamiliar routes. It had taken me years to commit the temple layout to memory; I wondered if I would live long enough to memorize the palace, too. Thinking of the temple sent a nauseous stab of homesickness through me. Baba was here in Memphis. If I begged Zafnat-Panea, perhaps he would let me see him.
Days prior, I had let the palace in all its glorious detail pass me by, too lonesome for the temple and full of dread to appreciate it. Now I observed it with my mouth agape. Zuleika’s chambers were something to behold, but they were a compact jewelry box compared to Zafnat-Panea’s wing. As vizier, he must have been afforded the best rooms of the palace, second to the royal family’s but not lacking in splendor. I followed him as the winding corridors exploded into rooms so spacious that our footfalls sent shivery echoes up to ceilings as tall as three men, wondering how the stone columns did not grumble under the weight of holding up the painted sky. The reliefs on each wall and pillar were so elaborate that each one seemed to be in perpetual motion: tiny armies marching, seas roiling, animals escaping a hunt, maidens seducing passersby. Every room was full of riches begging to be stolen. There were bronze vases from Anatolia full of fresh flowers and bird feathers, ebony from Punt and cedar from Lebanon fashioned into benches and chairs lined with embroidered pillows, ivory tusks supporting tables. The wealth in the room was dizzying, but Zafnat-Panea passed it all without comment until we reached his private quarters.
To call it a bedroom was not quite correct, though there was a bed, crisply made and off in a corner. The room was enormous and functioned more as an elaborate presence chamber, with plenty of seats and table settings for esteemed company. In the middle of it was a desk of exquisite carpentry. The fourth wall was missing, opening instead into a courtyard as vast as the main courtyard of our temple.
Zafnat-Panea dismissed the guards at his door and the young scribe woman seated on the floor by his desk. They departed the room, looking back at me with interest, as he spread his fingers across the desk and took a seat behind it. “I haven’t time for this,” he said, “so I want your answers simple and to the point. Who are you and what does El Shaddai want with you?”
I frowned at his open hostility. In the royal tent, he had seemed like he was on my side—giving me something to eat, bargaining for my life, even smiling at me. Why now did he watch me impatiently behind the desk, drumming his fingers on the wood? “I—I’m Osnat, my lord. Daughter of Potiphera, high priest of the temple of On.”
“Yes, I know that well enough from your trial. But that doesn’t answer my question. Who are you to my god?”
“I don’t know, my lord.” How I wished I did know. I wanted nothing more than to inhabit his mind, just for a minute, to find out.
“He was prepared to put me through a great deal of trouble to get you, and you will tell me why.” He waited for my reply with increasing restlessness, but I stood my ground and kept my eyes fixed on the carpet. “At least tell me about the dream. Now that we’re alone, you needn’t worry about what Pharaoh says. What did the stars mean?”
I shook my head, tired of his condescending tone. He was the one who had the dream. Why should I know?
“Are you stupid as well as suicidal?” he quipped.
“My lord, I told you, I don’t know your god,” I said tartly. “Neither do I know about this dream. It’s yours alone to interpret as you see fit, but you’ll get no answer from me.”
We stared each other down across the desk. Not a single sound echoed in the chamber, not even a ripple in the pond outside. After a minute, he leaned back and rubbed his temples, pushing his headdress back to show a glimpse of dark hair. I forgot to be indignant, too intrigued by it. Most Egyptians who wore wigs daily preferred to shave themselves bald to avoid unnecessary heat and unsightly bumps under the wigs. I wanted to know how short he kept his hair.
“I suppose it was too much to expect of Him to make it easy on me,” he said to himself. “Risking my own neck to rescue plain young priestesses. What will He have me do next?”
That should not have hurt as much as it did. I had always borne comparisons to other women of On throughout my life with measured indifference, comfortable with how I looked without a wig, without cosmetics, in plain clothes. But to hear it spoken aloud by someone so beautiful wounded me. I tugged at my hem, eyes downcast again. “Priest’s daughter, not priestess,” I clarified. “My lord, all I want is to see my father again, to go home.”
“That will be quite impossible.”
“It wouldn’t be if you arranged it,” I attempted, not willing to let the day pass without trying.
“I see now how you were foolish enough to get caught in the Djeser-Djeseru,” he said. “You don’t listen to basic instructions. Didn’t you hear Pharaoh? You’re bound to the palace for the term of your deal.”
“But if Baba is here in Memphis—if I could just see him—”
“Out of the question,” he declared in a voice that brooked no argument. “Even if Pharaoh could be convinced, I wouldn’t allow it, and neither would El Shaddai. You were saved for a specific purpose, and no distractions will be permitted until it is accomplished. Let’s waste no time getting started.” He called out for someone in the hall, and the scribe woman came back, a reed pen lodged behind her ear. She knelt at his feet, preparing a scroll for his dictation. “El Shaddai has informed me you can produce enough honey to make it through the famine, and you yourself told Pharaoh you were capable. So, Osnat, daughter of Potiphera,” he asked, and the scribe lifted her pen, “what’s your plan to save all of Egypt? Or was El Shaddai wrong about you?”
Both questions had such a vastness to them that I could not begin to answer them. It was better to work out the smaller pieces first. “The famine, my lord. Could you… That is, how…?”
He nodded. “Egypt has just completed a year of plenty, the first of six. Seven years of famine will follow.”
“Not how long.” That much I had gathered from inside the tent. “How did you know?”
Even anticipating his response, I was still taken aback by his dazzling certainty. “It was told to Pharaoh in a dream. El Shaddai provided the interpretation.”
Another dream, just as Pharaoh said. But Pharaoh surely had not been lacking in hour priests and dream-tellers at court. Yet on Zafnat-Panea’s hand, Pharaoh’s own signet ring sparkled in the low light. What set this Canaanite apart from the other dream-tellers enough to merit that?
The echo of the heavy name shouted itself in my head, demanding to be heard. El Shaddai. This god made the difference. And for the first time since I set foot on the mountain, since the bees gave me their clues, since I witnessed the falseness of Ra and faced down my own death, I felt I was finally—finally—close to understanding. “I will deliver on my promise to Pharaoh,” I told him, “if you tell me about your god, El Shaddai.”
The scribe’s pen clattered to the floor, dropped in surprise. But Zafnat-Panea was amused. “Not a bad listener, then,” he observed. “The plain young ‘priest’s daughter’ just has a talent for sacrilege.”
I deflated again at the insult. “I didn’t lie, I don’t know who––who He is, your god. But when you said His name in the stableyard, it was the first time I––it gave me hope, my lord. Maybe there’s an answer to the question I was asking, the one I went looking for in the Djeser-Djeseru. I didn’t find it there, but that doesn’t mean…” My voice was unsteady, in no way making a compelling argument. I was not used to speaking so much to anyone but Baba. “I won’t disappoint you. If you want me to make enough honey for a thousand famines, I’ll do it. If you tell me more about El Shaddai.”
“He’s a desert god, an old family god. What more can you want to know about Him?”
“Everything. Anything you’ll tell me. I’ll do anything, anything you want—”
“There isn’t anything you could offer me,” he said, “that I don’t already have access to.”
How could I fail to know that, in a room like this, with a ring like that on his hand? But I had no other options. “Please.”
He drew in a breath that sounded more like a cobra’s hiss. “If I had been a second later this morning, your blood would be painting the stableyard dust as we speak. Crows would have been pecking your eyes out, all for your little stunt in On, and here you are, plowing down the same path again.”
“It can’t be sacrilege if you know about it and believe it,” I argued. “Even Pharaoh said he respected your god. Tell me more, and I’ll make good on El Shaddai’s prophecy.”
“You will make good on the prophecy because it’s the reason you’re still alive.” He turned his attention to his astonished scribe. “Now, bring me a report of—”
“Fine. Tell me more, or I won’t,” I revised. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried for a smug grin. “If you won’t teach me, then I won’t lift a finger to build a single hive. I’ll spend this whole year lounging on cushions and eating grapes. I’ll walk to my execution with a smile on my face.”
He returned my smug grin with one of his own. “Fine. On your head be it.”
“Not just mine,” I corrected him. “You heard Pharaoh as well as I did. He warned you not to let me fail. If you do, you could lose his trust. Are you sure you can afford not to teach me?”
Zafnat-Panea’s eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing.”
I shrugged. “If I lose, I know exactly where I’ll end up.” To demonstrate, I pointed to the splinter and the trail of dried blood down my chest. I lowered my voice, allowing the shadow of the dungeon to seep into it. “Where will you end up, my lord?”
His face darkened, and I knew he understood. That might not have been fair. I was guessing, making assumptions out of memories. There was still no concrete evidence that he was the prisoner from ten years ago, but if there was a chance he had ever slept a night on the other side of that cell door, then he would be in no hurry to return.
The scribe clutched the pen so tight that it broke in her hand. She jumped and squealed, but neither Zafnat-Panea nor I moved. We mirrored each other, arms crossed, gazes cool, unyielding. This standstill lasted longer, and I was not sure who would win. As I wondered if the threat would be enough to force his hand, I heard bees in the courtyard, hidden somewhere among the flowers, and some of my resolve melted. It was not like me to make threats like this. Perhaps I owed him more than that.
“Whatever your god told you about my gift…it’s the reason I’m here,” I explained. “This might be the most important discovery I ever make. If you don’t help me, why shouldn’t I go back to the spike?”
He studied me for a long time. “You won’t be going back,” he decided, and for a moment, I had hope. “You will do what Pharaoh asks of you, to the best of your ability and with whatever resources I give you. You will not dishonor me. And if I ever allow you back in my presence before the year is up, the only words I expect to hear from you are ones of immense gratitude for saving your life.”
My hope dissolved in an instant. “But—”
“If you fail in any respect, rest assured that I will find ways to keep you creatively miserable,” he advised, dealing me the same look he gave Zuleika, green eyes now cold as brutal morning currents. “Let me disabuse you of any notion that I am a man to be trifled with. I am not. I did not come this far by mere accident, and I won’t be threatened by you. Do I make myself clear?”
My heart swooped low in my belly, cowed into obedience. I sank with it into a bow. “Yes, my lord.”
The name was fading, destined to become a memory like every other holy encounter of mine. I had been so close to weaving it into the fabric of my understanding, but now it would be something I was left to ponder, just like my time on the mountain. It was unlikely I would have much time to think about it, anyway. I knew I could never win the bet.
When I rose, Zafnat-Panea seemed dismayed. “You were injured.”
“What?” I looked down where he pointed, back to the splinter, and dug it out with my fingernails. “It’s nothing. Doesn’t hurt.”
“And you weren’t harmed? When you were with…?” He trailed off, and I realized he was talking about Zuleika.
“No. She kept me safe.”
Why that made him appear sadder, I could not figure out. “Good. That’s good. Take the day to rest. You’ve had quite an ordeal. Tomorrow we’ll discuss your plan.” He waved to the scribe, who rolled up the papyrus and stood with a bow. “You can bunk with the other serving girls. She’ll show you where. Ayelet, see to it that she’s cared for.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The scribe took me by the arm and steered me toward the door, in a hurry to get away from her master while he was in such a foul mood. The bees from the courtyard flew in front of us as we made our exit back through the palace wing. Two landed on my shoulder and stayed there, along for the ride. “Was that you?” I whispered, so quiet Ayelet could not hear. “In the dream? Did you save me?”
And if it wasn’t you that saved me, I thought, was it El Shaddai?
Chapter 9
Summary:
Last time: a wager
This time: nightmares
Chapter Text
The men at my execution who had whispered about Zafnat-Panea were not, I discovered, alone in their disapproval. In the room I had been assigned to sleep in, shared by nine other girls, more than half shared the opinion. Once the sun set and we settled onto our pallet-beds and under our blankets, maneuvering so as not to kick the girl below us, they gossiped freely.
“He went through three bottles of wine at supper tonight with Pharaoh,” supplied a maid who served his table. “The best vintage, and not even on a festival! I swear, he’s determined to rob our wine cellars blind.”
“His Grace probably needed the wine to soften Pharaoh’s resistance,” another offered, “so he didn’t protest when he found the vizier between his legs!”
That wrung gales of shocked, delighted laughter from the girls.
“You don’t suppose—?”
“He’s vain as a peacock. What do you think?”
“I did wonder. I’ve never seen a vizier manage to churn out so much policy.”
“Be well assured Pharaoh makes him ‘churn out policy’…”
Sheets rustled on the floor as bodies shook with suppressed laughter at their master’s expense. I tried to tune them out, exhausted from lack of sleep the night before, but without the benefit of a pillow to cover my ears, I would get no sleep until their prattle subsided.
The girls who did not partake in disparaging Zafnat-Panea were no less inclined to join in on the fun. “Then Pharaoh is a lucky man indeed,” sighed one of his wardrobe maids. “Zafnat-Panea is no peacock, he’s a lion. Would that he’d pounce on me!” Two other girls moaned in agreement, feigning a swoon.
“Foolish girl!” said another serving maid, the oldest among us, who stretched out on my right. “Never wish that. His Grace might be all too willing. Ask poor Lady Zuleika, she’ll tell you!”
The younger girls sobered at once, and there was no more discussion. They curled into their sides and cushioned their heads on their arms, turning to each other to have drowsy, private conversations until, one by one, they fell asleep.
Ayelet, the scribe into whose care I had been entrusted, was the lone counterpart to their criticism. “Don’t listen to these nitwits,” she assured me, lying by my left side. “They only see him a few minutes a day to tie his breastplate or fill his cup. I spend every day with Zafnat-Panea. He’s not like they say.” She giggled to herself. “Well, maybe the vain part. But he treats us better than most courtiers would. He was one of us once.”
“Who is he?” I asked. “What happened to him?”
Ayelet bit her lip. “Better not to say,” she said primly, “and I won’t dishonor my master by repeating old gossip.”
The proud jut of her profile informed me it would do no good to push. I scrutinized what I could of her face in the gathering dark. Without her wig, Ayelet was as bald as me, but her skin was not brown like mine, rather bronze like Zafnat-Panea’s. She had flower-petal eyes and a body as lithe as a stem. “You’re his scribe?”
“And steward of his household,” she said with pride. “A rare profession for a girl, I know, but I was uniquely suited to the position.”
“I’m a beekeeper. I know all about rare professions for girls.”
We both laughed at that, and the serving maid on my right shushed us. Ayelet huddled closer until our foreheads were almost touching. “His Grace can only read and write in the language from the land of his birth. I’m fluent in Egyptian, Akkadian, and Canaanite. Whatever he writes, whatever messages come to him, I translate, one tongue to another. And I manage his estates, not that he ever leaves the palace.”
I thought of Zafnat-Panea’s spoken Egyptian, word-perfect and full of courtly flourishes. Even Ayelet’s casual Egyptian lacked a certain something in the delivery. His speech must have been obtained at a great price. “You’re from Canaan, then?”
“Daughter of Reuel of the tribe of Esav. Zafnat-Panea is of the blood of our cousins. I can vouch for him personally—you can trust him.”
The serving maid scoffed at her insistence. “I know a lady at court who says differently.”
Ayelet rolled her eyes, but she said nothing. While the room filled with slow, easy breathing, I reflected on what I had overheard, what I knew. They said that Zafnat-Panea was once a slave. If he was the same one I had in mind, then he had been arrested, imprisoned, and somehow freed. Though my guess was all but confirmed, there was more cast into doubt now.
What did the serving maid mean about Zuleika? I had thought the answer obvious, but it no longer matched what I had seen. If Zuleika had rescued Zafnat-Panea, back when he was younger, smaller, prettier, from being ravaged behind that cell door, if she had been responsible for his lovely Egyptian and his rise to prominence, then there should have been no coldness between them that morning. Zafnat-Panea would feel as indebted to her as I was.
What I saw gave no indication of that gratitude. Zuleika had walked away crying. The serving maid had been able to silence every girl in the room by making mention of what had passed between our master and the lady. It sounded predatory.
When she heard the serving maid begin to nod off, Ayelet leaned in close again. “Old goat,” she said under her breath. “Don’t believe a word she says. Besides, it’s nothing you need to worry about. After that stunt you pulled in his presence chamber, I doubt you’ll see much of him. Never heard anyone speak to him that way!”
But Ayelet’s prediction proved false the next morning. The room was still sleeping in the early hours before dawn when I felt a sandaled foot nudge my shoulder and blinked up at a sheepish slave boy who averted his gaze from all the half-naked girls around him. He held a finger to his lips and gestured to the door. Too sleepy to be embarrassed by my own nakedness, I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and followed him out into the hall.
“His Grace has asked to see you.”
Suddenly I felt a chill go through me. I clutched the blanket tight around my shoulders and smoothed it over my legs. “Why?”
The boy shrugged. “He didn’t say. Only that I couldn’t delay.” Though he started to lead me away, I mumbled out a protest and stayed put. I had nothing to wear before Zafnat-Panea. My dress yesterday, given to me by one of Zuleika’s handmaidens, had disappeared into the laundry, and I owned nothing else. I looked back through the doorway of our sleeping quarters, wondering if I should wake Ayelet and ask where to find a spare one, but the boy, too fearful of his master’s reprisal, hurried down the hall without stopping. I ran to catch up with him.
The serving maid’s warning tailed me the whole way, jeering behind the shadows. Ask poor Lady Zuleika, she’ll tell you! Here I was, being summoned to Zafnat-Panea’s bedroom before anyone else was awake, wearing nothing but a blanket. What would Zuleika tell me if she were here?
In On, this concern rarely crossed my mind. Everyone, from the loftiest priest of Horus to the poorest seasonal farmer, recognized me as the high priest’s daughter. If I had ever come to harm, the best my assailant could hope for was to walk away from his trial with his hands chopped off, but alive. But here I was another servant. I owned nothing, knew no one. There was no protection for me.
“Wait!” I whispered to the boy just before we approached Zafnat-Panea’s innermost room, my panic threatening to choke me. The boy watched me, baffled, as I ran to the side of the room, where the windows and spaces between the columns showed sections of the courtyard garden. Below me was a shallow pool. I looked down at my reflection.
Pharaoh had judged my face accurately. I bore little resemblance to Amma. Women like her, like Zuleika, embodied the wind, moving with grace and lightness. Their faces had smooth planes and long lashes for the air to skim off and stir. Baba and I had the same round face, owlish eyes, and chubby limbs. I was short and stocky, well-made for tending the earth I loved so much. I had nothing in common with the sultry, slender maidens painted on Zafnat-Panea’s wall.
He knew that himself. Plain young priest’s daughter, he called me. I calmed down and stepped back from the pool. Would a lion have any interest in mating with a rabbit? And Ayelet had sworn he was a man I could trust, who had never laid a finger on her. Nodding to the messenger, I let him announce me and show me inside.
The room was lighter than the rest of the palace, swallowing great swaths of sunlight and storing them in corners as dawn broke outside over the treetops in his garden. Two oil lamps burned on the edge of his desk. But Zafnat-Panea was not composed like yesterday. He stood as soon as he heard me coming. His jerky bow to me was unexpected enough, and his eyes were red-rimmed, twitching. Any cursory attempt he made at a greeting came out as no more than a gust of air and a dismissive wave of his hand as I managed a bow of my own, careful to make sure the blanket was wrapped tight around me. His rich silver headdress was wrinkled and his jewels hung loose on his neck and forehead, the job half-done as his wardrobe maids were still asleep. His eyes look lined by a shaky hand. I watched him struggle for a few moments longer until curiosity overrode spite. “You asked for me, Your Grace?”
“How—” The words ground to a halt in his throat. He pressed the back of his hand to his lips, as though trying to force them back in, and then he asked me through clenched teeth, “What is it you wanted to know about El Shaddai?”
The question blew through me. He could not be serious. My unchecked response, again, was everything, starting from the beginning, sparing no details. I wanted to know all he knew and then more. But I had been dismissed too comprehensively yesterday. I would not make the same mistake twice. “Pardon me for saying so, my lord, but you look unwell.”
The tension in his face was split by a wry smile at my coyness. “I couldn’t sleep.”
My eyes flickered over to the bed in the corner, still neat and undisturbed. “Three bottles of the palace’s best vintage didn’t provide you any pleasant dreams?”
His laugh was the cackle of a crow. “No. Plenty of dreams, but no pleasant ones,” he sneered. “So I ask you again. Are you still interested in learning about El Shaddai?”
“Why?”
“Because He’s interested in you.”
It happened again, that prickling, pressure changing in the air. The breath in my lungs became denser. “How…” I swallowed, then tried again. “How do you know that?”
He made a scathing noise as he sat and buried his face in his hands. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
I took note of his trembling shoulders, his bloodshot eyes, the early hour. Zafnat-Panea was not recovering from a mere nightmare. He had endured a divine tantrum. The wrath of a god was burning up his mind. “You dreamed of me again,” I gasped.
“No, ” he said, “I dreamed of me. And all the ways El Shaddai intends to torture me unless I tell you what you want to know about Him.”
I forgot propriety at the same time I forgot how to use my legs, stumbling backward onto the lavish bench behind me. I was in complete freefall. My life—and my reason for it—had been restored to me by this mysterious name, this god I had never seen. He had deigned to save me from the spike yesterday and set forth a task for me, a destiny integral to the survival of my country. And now my desire to learn, like a prayer, had been heard. El Shaddai was my twice-defender.
Zafnat-Panea narrowed his eyes and looked at me through the web of his fingers. “You don’t strike me as a liar,” he said, “but I feel I have to ask you one more time: did you put Him up to this?”
“I told you, I don’t know your god,” I replied, startled by the venom in my voice. “Why else would I have asked you to teach me? If you suffered last night in your dream, it wasn’t my doing. You should have been kinder to me. Apparently your god agrees.”
“Why would He go to so much trouble for someone outside my family? Someone who doesn’t even know Him?”
“Maybe to teach you,” I said, “not to underestimate plain young priest’s daughters.”
He sat there with his chin in his hands, mouth open in surprise. After a while, it closed, and he nestled his head in his arms on the desk. “I suppose I deserve that.” Then he peeked up at me. “You take after them, you know.”
“After…?”
“The bees,” he clarified. “You sting. Consider me warned. I’ll never insult you again.”
It occurred to me how strange it was that we should know so much about each other without hearing a word of it from our own mouths. To him, I was words on a page, details from trial documents Ayelet must have translated for him. I had given him precious little to work with otherwise. And he was all my guesses, hopes, and worries, all at once. For a moment, I closed my eyes and willed myself to forget them and spoke to him just as a man, confused and afraid, a stranger.
“My mother died when I was ten,” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes and didn’t want to believe it. I kept waiting for her to come back to us. It was only far from home, on a journey with my father, that I came to accept she was gone. But the moment I did, I—it felt designed, like I didn’t come to it by myself. I was enabled to be there, on that mountain.” I opened my eyes to find him listening intently, betraying nothing. “There was a mountain, out by the turquoise mines. No one felt it the way I felt it, the way it moved me, how it brought me inside it. I found the bees there. Once I let Amma go, they were given to me, along with my gift. Almost like a trade, like they were going to protect me from that moment on in her place.” So quiet I could barely hear myself, I added, “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Why tell me?”
“So you know why I’m here. Why I was found in the Djeser-Djeseru, why I was arrested, why I want to learn. Since that day, the bees have been trying to show me something, something about the gods of Egypt,” I explained. “I had to know if they were real. I was prepared to pay the ultimate price to find out. But nothing has felt divine to me besides that mountain and my bees, not until I heard you say His name. And now you know the truth.” I wondered if it would be enough to sway him. I was lucky to have a god as my patron, but I needed a willing teacher.
Zafnat-Panea sighed. “I know I disappointed you yesterday. For hurting your feelings, I offer you my apologies.”
That was a good enough start. “I accept.”
“However, I have concerns. If my god will conspire to keep you out of harm’s way, that’s His business. But the danger is not yours alone.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promised him. “You can trust me.”
“I wasn’t referring to myself,” he contradicted me. “Famine is coming to Egypt, and the hourglass is draining as we speak. Do you know the current population of the empire?”
I bit my lip. “Very…big?”
“At least three million people,” said Zafnat-Panea. “Three million people who will need at least one meal a day, every day, for seven years of famine. It is my responsibility, and mine alone, to ensure they survive. Any second wasted, spent on frivolities I can’t turn to my advantage in any way, is a second I could have spent securing more grain for them. And thirteen years from now, when this whole mess is over, the death tally that falls on this desk will be my fault. I take that seriously.”
The full weight of his duty made me feel awkward, ashamed. I lowered my gaze to my feet and asked, “Is there no one else qualified for your job in the whole of Egypt, Your Grace?”
“No,” he said, “there isn’t. Which spells out disaster if you fail Pharaoh’s test and I lose his favor. So, if you’ll only work for me if I teach you—and El Shaddai will punish me if I don’t—then it seems you have your wish. I’ll teach you whatever you want to know. But it cannot interrupt the work I’m doing to save Egypt.” He extended his hand over the desk to make an oath. “Do we have a deal?”
I stood up and pulled my arm from beneath the folds of the blanket I held tight in my other fist, offering it. But when he closed his warm hand over my forearm, I wished I was wearing a little more. “There is the issue of payment,” he said.
I tried to slip out his grip, but his palm still firmly encircled my arm. “I told you, I’ll do everything in my power to win the bet.”
“That’s what’s due to me for saving your life,” he pointed out. “You still owe me for the lessons.”
“You said there’s nothing I can give you that you can’t already get yourself,” I reminded him, anxious that he could feel the sudden jolt of my pulse as it thrummed indiscreetly at my wrist.
“So I did. Let us endeavor to come up with a proper price at some point this year.” He released me, and I tripped backward, a breath of fear escaping me as I went. He did not miss it. “You needn’t worry, it won’t be anything too exacting.” Understanding dawned on him as I tucked the blanket around my shoulders again. Zafnat-Panea’s face fell. “I see my maids wasted no time in telling you all the sordid details.”
“Not all,” I hedged.
“Enough,” he said. He made no denial, no defense for himself, but said, “You have nothing to fear from me. You have my promise on that.”
I wanted to believe him. I could not countenance giving up on learning about El Shaddai, so I would have to take what I could get. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“And there’s another thing,” he said, wincing. “You can address me as Zafnat-Panea.” Before I could complain that this was too informal, he added, “Hearing you squeak ‘Your Grace’ makes my skin crawl. I won’t bear it.”
“You will be Zafnat-Panea,” I agreed, “and I will be Osnat.” This part of the deal I could get behind. I had been so many things: Baba’s little bee, Kanebti’s little sister, Zuleika’s dearest, daughter of Potiphera. To be simply Osnat would make for a refreshing change. “Shall we begin?”
Before he could answer, two wardrobe maids entered the chamber and stopped, aghast, at the sight of their master in private conversation with the newest among their ranks. Their eyes drank in my blanket, and I knew I would be the subject of new rumors today. Zafnat-Panea stood up and stretched before he addressed them. “Prepare the red tunic. I’ll be with you in a moment.” To me, he said, “Not today. I’m due for a meeting with Pharaoh’s council and a weigh-in at the granaries. But you should waste no time getting started.”
I grumbled, remembering the impossible task ahead of me. “Beehives in Akhet. Whoever heard of such a thing?”
“Are you magic or aren’t you?” he asked, a hint of humor in his voice, and when I glowered back at him, he raised his hands in mock surrender. “All right, all right. What do you need?”
I surveyed the courtyard garden and started to plan. If I could have none of the palace apiary supplies, not even a swarm of bees, I would have to find some way to attract them to me. There was nothing in Zafnat-Panea’s vast garden that would repel them, but I had to think strategically. “If I could plant some new flower beds, maybe…something a bit more practical, flowers I can depend upon to attract large groups of bees.”
“I’ll summon the royal gardener and a crew this afternoon,” said Zafnat-Panea. I frowned, astonished at his lack of protest, but he shrugged. “Level the courtyard, have it planted how you like. I don’t care. Oh, except—” He left his desk and walked out of the chamber to the edge of the courtyard, where the tiles of his room met the flat stones of the garden path. Pointing to the stones, he indicated a place a few arm’s lengths long. “Leave these.”
I squinted at the stones, wondering if there was something I was missing. They were unremarkable, dull, and gray. “If you insist.”
“The rest is yours to work with. Anything else?”
“I’ll need somewhere for river reeds,” I said. “Somewhere dark and dry, where no one will bother them.”
Zafnat-Panea puzzled over that one a moment longer, but he still arrived at a solution within seconds. Back inside his presence chamber, darting around the maids who unfolded his clothes, he led me to his bed.
“Your Grace—um, Zafnat-Panea, there’s going to be quite a lot,” I said. “Hundreds of delicate river reeds. You won’t be able to move them once I set them down.”
“I won’t touch them. Is that all for now?”
How was it possible that he would not need his bed for an entire season? I chalked it up to his ignorance of beekeeping matters and supposed he was within his rights to change his mind later. Besides, as last night’s chatter came back to me again, I realized that Zafnat-Panea might not have needed his own bed. There were probably plenty of willing women—and, if my peers guessed right, men, too—who let him spend the night in theirs.
“For now,” I confirmed. “Thank you.”
He cringed. “Don’t thank me, thank Him. I signed your death warrant, remember? A warrant that still stands, you should keep in mind.”
“But I don’t know how to thank Him yet. It’s up to you to teach me.”
“And I will,” he said, letting the maids lead him away and begin to undress him. I looked away, feeling like the messenger boy from this morning, while they shimmied him out of his clothes and rubbed away the kohl he had drawn on himself in haste before meeting with me. “Help yourself to papyrus and ink to design the garden, and stay put so the crew knows where to find you. When I have time, I’ll find you, too. I’m sure you’ll be needing a hand, anyway.”
“You’re going to help me?” I asked, incredulous.
“Pharaoh forbid the beekeepers from helping you, but not me,” he reasoned. “It can’t hurt to learn beekeeping from an expert, especially if Pharaoh does execute you in the end. A skill like that could come in handy for me.”
Very tactful. Still, my heart sang at the prospect. While I had no idea what I could manage on my own, having a work crew at my disposal and the occasional partner to work with increased my chances of living to see the next year. Emboldened by the equal footing we had found, I waited for the maids to finish touching up his cosmetics and fixing his clothes. “When you come to teach me,” I said, walking over and tapping the center ruby on his necklace, “don’t wear any of this. No perfumes, no oils, no wigs, cosmetics, bright colors, or jewels.”
The girls, who were busy tying his sandals and rubbing perfume into his ankles, gasped at my words. But Zafnat-Panea was more intrigued than affronted. “It’s appropriate for a vizier to attire himself richly.”
“First rule of beekeeping: leave your vanity at the door. Otherwise you’ll be sporting a few dozen stings that will match the lovely rubies around your throat. There’s a benefit to being plain in my business.”
His smile was downright wolfish. “On one condition. You find something a bit more…modest to wear than a bedsheet.” I looked down and remembered myself, mortified, as he clapped his hands, and the girls straightened up at his command. “Ladies, please take her to find some sensible clothes.”
Blood rushed into my cheeks with such a pounding fury that I struggled to hear him as they brought me out of the room in search of a new dress. If he laughed under his breath at my embarrassment, I was too far to hear it.
Chapter 10
Summary:
Last time: nightmares
This time: harvest out-of-season
Notes:
Hello, sweet and encouraging readers!
For anyone who read my Heartstopper fic Ezer K'Negdo, you might see some crossover in conversational topics as Zafnat-Panea teachers Osnat about his family's religion. I wrote this about four/five years ago, so clearly these questions have been on my mind for a while. I think I execute them better in Ezer, but it's fun to watch some early work unfold.
Chapter Text
Back when I could have believed such things, Baba told me the origins of On. In Amma’s lap, peeking out from around the column of her neck, I watched him draw swirls of ink on papyrus. “The waters of nu,” he pointed out to me. “In the beginning, they alone existed, chaotic as the river during the flood. From this chaos, Ra brought himself forth and formed a hill on which to sit. That hill is the foundation of the temple, little bee, and all the rich fields surrounding it.”
While my attention wandered as he explained the adventures of the gods, that On was the birthplace of the gods stayed with me. It was reflected in the great genius of the temple architects, who throughout the centuries had wisely partnered with its gardeners to strike the balance between structural majesty and harmony with the natural beauty of the gods’ first home. The temple complex, however enormous, had always seemed eclipsed by the countryside that seemed to be gaining ground each year, a steady infiltration. The limestone walls had shimmered so bright on a cloudless day that they blended right in with the sky. Gardens that sprouted within seemed to be in a rush to connect with the gardens outside, the fruit tree esplanades, the acres of endless farmland that undulated brown, green, and yellow through the seasons, with the wide ribbon of the Nile winding alongside it all.
Memphis boasted no such divine history. It was a capital city, not a holy one, and the high walls of the palace kept out most of the urban noises and smells. The palace sat on the river like a great barge, unnatural and ostentatious, and every plant inside it, however brilliant, seemed to be thankful for refuge from the city. I wondered how anyone could call it home. I spent a week in Zafnat-Panea’s courtyard waiting for my chance to escape to the riverside, feeling guilty as palm trees were uprooted and carted off and pools were drained, leaving a messy expanse ready for planting.
But now that I was here on this unfamiliar bank, with baskets slung over my shoulders and a blade in my hand, I could not believe this was the same river. Back home, Akhet promised a predictable gush of green water into the ready furrows of the fields, almost animate in its grace and generosity. In Memphis, the Nile flooded a turbulent brown.
The palace had no adjacent farmland nor need for immediate access to the river, except its harbor, which allowed visitors to enter by boat and courtiers to exit by pleasure barge. To find any viable river reeds, I had to wander down the city’s shoreline, accompanied by two teenage slave boys. At first, I thought they had been dispatched to make sure I did not run off. Now I realized their task was more likely to keep me from drowning.
I stared down at the Nile. Was it anything like the fabled waters of nu? If I had been Ra, perhaps I would not have bothered manifesting myself in the middle of all this. Gathering river reeds was a job beekeepers left for Peret, when the river had withdrawn, cool and pleasant to wade in as we filled our baskets. To do this in the middle of flood season would be a dangerous enterprise.
I dropped my knife into a basket, which clattered against the extra blade I brought, and threw them all at my feet, hopeless. The boys snickered at me while a few stray Memphisites poked their heads out of their mudbrick houses to stare at the wigless girl on the riverbank, stupid enough to try and wade into the Nile this season.
But I had to build an entire hive wall from scratch. I could not wait until Peret. Besides, I was a strong swimmer, and I doubted the crocodiles were up to battling the current to get their breakfast. Picking up a basket and fishing out my knife, I steeled myself against the cold and pushed back the tall grass. My feet sank into the mud as I waded through, and the water sped over my ankles, shins, and finally my waist when I reached the river reeds.
I gasped at the wriggle of minnows against my feet as they sought a new hiding place. The current was strong, and the basket bobbed on the surface next to me. I liked to keep the basket out of the water, over my shoulder like a quiver I could slide reeds into like arrows, but I needed full faculty of my limbs. Knife between my teeth, I tied some of the thicker reeds in a knot around the handle so the basket did not float away, and then I let out a wordless shout of frustration before I started.
Feeling my way through the thicket, I heard Kanebti’s disapproval in my head. “Bloated with floodwater,” he would have told me with a sorry shake of his head. “They’ll take twice as long to dry. Might as well let the Nile carry you off, little sister. Here’s a wager that can’t be won.” I made myself ignore him.
It was better to cut the reeds at their base, but they were already submerged. I found the full-grown ones and cut them at their thickest. The stems were tough, with a filmy residue of river muck, so it took a few slippery swipes of the knife before two came free and I could stuff them into my basket. I was up to two dangers now: drowning and slitting my own wrist by accident.
“Nothing for it,” I told myself, over and over. “Nothing for it.” It became my litany as I worked, grabbing a handful, hacking at it, putting it away in the basket. My sole comfort was that however slimy, chilly, and discouraging the work was, I was not running too far behind. Even in gentle Peret back home, it had taken me an entire morning to fill a basket.
The sun was right overhead when I emerged, bedraggled and pouring sweat, on legs so used to the constant tug of the river that I walked sideways out of the grass and onto the sand. The boys were still sitting there, one of them dozing off in the heat. I collapsed and dropped my basket, breathing hard and starving, and remembered that I had no money to go into the city and buy something to eat with. Resting my head against my battered knees, I fought to hold back tears and lost.
Something touched my shoulder, and I heard the slosh of liquid. I squinted and looked up to find a waterskin of tanned cowhide, offered by one of the slave boys. With a grunt of thanks, I took it and drank the clean water within, and he passed me morsels of bread, lettuce, even slices of peach. I wiped my mouth off and handed the waterskin back to him.
“Better?”
I jumped, alarmed at the sound of a familiar voice. “Zafnat-Panea!” It came out more like a question, because I was not entirely sure it was him. The timbre I recognized, but he was much altered. Gone were his jewels, like I requested, and gone were the clothes lined with golden and silver thread. “How did you know where to find me?”
“You didn’t make it easy,” he said. “I’m not certain we’re in Egypt anymore. Should I have brought a bodyguard?”
“You’re in no danger of an assassination attempt,” I promised him, not knowing how I could manage humor through my exhaustion, “unless you can’t swim.”
Zafnat-Panea turned a little green at the prospect, and it dawned on me that he might not. “I see now why beekeeping is a man’s job. The boys said you nearly drowned half a dozen times already.”
“Well, we don’t usually harvest river reeds in Akhet.” I turned my head back to the sleeping boy. “Where’d the other one go?”
“I relieved him of his duty for the afternoon. I had a promise to keep.” He stood up and brushed the sand off his simple white kilt, slipping his sandals from his feet and burying them in the sand to prevent their theft. All I could do was look at his hair, free from its confinement––curly, hart-brown, and sticking out around his ears, in need of a trim. “I didn’t want an audience for our first lesson, anyway. Egyptians are tolerant people when it comes to other nations’ gods, but…” He picked up the empty basket and shrugged. “Considering your history, it can’t hurt to play it safe.”
I scrambled to stand up. “Speaking of playing it safe,” I said, “do you know how to swim?”
“I’ve never had the time to learn,” he informed me. I had no idea how I could focus on his lesson, my task, and keeping him from a watery grave. I raised a skeptical eyebrow, but Zafnat-Panea laughed and waved his hand. “You have ample motivation to save me if I go under.”
The notion of filling another basket by myself today was motivation enough to obey. I led the way back into the reeds I had carved through, which had left enough room for both of us. Whatever word escaped him when his feet hit the water was definitely a curse word in his native language, but he held his mouth in a bloodless, grim line as he shuffled deeper.
“You won’t fall in,” I promised in a voice empty of confidence as I tied the basket to the grass. “If you think you’re about to lose your balance, grab the reeds where they’re stiffest. One big handful should anchor you.” I rummaged for the spare knife and handed it over.
I turned to my work and he stood there observing for a while. He pushed down on the reeds, tentative and discouraged when they sprang back up, flinching each time one brushed against him. “They won’t bite,” I told him.
“I know that,” he said, and then gamely he shoved down a patch of reeds and attacked it with the knife. We worked in silence for a long stretch, pausing to readjust our stance against the current. I saw him glance across the surface, no doubt looking for the snout of a nearing hippopotamus, and angled myself between him and the open water so he could breathe a little easier and begin. “I’ve been thinking about how to tell you about Him,” he said. “The easiest way to understand is through our stories, using the language my family has always used to understand, but it isn’t perfect. That frustrates El Shaddai. To Him, it’s too narrow, it encompasses too little. When I dream from Him, it’s usually tinged with that feeling: longing to tell me more, thwarted that He can’t.”
“You think He’s limited?”
“More likely that we are,” he revealed. “When my father taught me the stories of El Shaddai, the ones his father taught him and his father before him, I would go to bed each night and review El Shaddai’s corrections. They terrified me, those first dreams. My father told me in the beginning, there was only water in the dark. And El Shaddai hovered over it, and when He breathed out over the water and spoke, He brought forth light.”
I thought of the waters of nu. The story of Ra and El Shaddai started the same way. “Where did He come from?” I asked, keeping a close eye on how he hacked at the reeds. “How did He come to be?”
“He didn’t. He was just there.”
“No one can just be there. Did El Shaddai come from the water?”
“No, He was already there.”
“How can you say ‘in the beginning’ if things had already begun before then? El Shaddai, the water—”
He held a finger up to his lips, indicating quiet, but the same finger held the knife. If he slipped in the mud, he would slice his top lip off. “El Shaddai commanded light to come forth, and when He saw it, He marveled at how good it was.”
“Good for seeing things by? Good for making plants grow?”
“Not good as in useful. Good as in…” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Good as in worthy.” I placed a hand on his fist clutching the blade, showing him how to apply pressure to get the brace of reeds free without sawing back and forth. “El Shaddai saw the light was good, and He divided it from the darkness and distinguished night from day, the first day. On the next, El Shaddai divided water from sky, and on the third, He separated the water and called forth the earth, and He acknowledged that both were good.”
I tried to keep the tally of events in my head as I sank my reeds into the basket, careful to keep them straight and untangled. But the events were consumed by questions.
El Shaddai can only make two things a day. Does He need a break between creations?
Some things are good, like light, earth, and water, but why are they good, if they’re not useful? Are the other creations bad, or just useless?
“When El Shaddai saw the earth for the first time, He commanded it to sprout with plants, trees, flowers, fruits—”
“Why?” This question came out before I could stop it. Zafnat-Panea pursed his lips, exasperated. “Sorry,” I backtracked, “but you might as well answer. Did He want to eat them?”
“El Shaddai doesn’t eat.”
I nodded. This made sense. I remembered my horror at all the food offerings left before the idol of Ra, going uneaten. “So why all the plants, if He wasn’t going to eat them?”
“Why are you so sure a god has to make something to serve a purpose?”
“That’s how the gods of Egypt operate. All of them. When Ra came into existence out of the waters of nu, he made a hill because he needed somewhere to stand amid all that chaos. Why did El Shaddai make all the flowers and trees if He wasn’t planning on using them?”
“I think He just made them because they were good.” Zafnat-Panea was more methodical now, focused like an apprentice cutting his first reeds. It was almost sweet. He could have been a farm boy helping his mother make a basket, all ropy muscles scored with nicks and scars I did not see before when they were covered with rich sleeves. “I won’t deny that it can be confusing, trying to figure out His metric. It baffles me, too. But that’s how He saw it, according to the story. And on the fourth day, El Shaddai made the sun, moon, and stars so time would be ordered on earth. He called them good, too.”
Sustenance and time, but no humans on earth to use them yet. What was El Shaddai planning? There was an artistry in the tale, teasing that El Shaddai had an idea of what humans were going to need, but not saying what He had in mind. What need would a singular god, alone in the world, have for days and nights? They would serve to remind Him of how alone He was. There were no birthdays or festivals or holy days yet, no inundations or harvests, nothing to look forward to at that point.
“Then came living creatures,” he continued. “El Shaddai brought them forth from the sea, and birds from the sky, and every creeping thing—I imagine your bees were among their number—and He acknowledged their goodness as well. On the sixth day, He made the beasts and everything that walks on the earth, all good, all delighting Him, and then He made us.”
“To worship Him.”
“You seem to be under some sort of misapprehension that everything under heaven has a justification.”
“It’s scarier to think there isn’t one. With the Egyptian gods, you know why you exist. You’re stewards of their creations. You glorify them.”
Zafnat-Panea considered this. “The bees you work with. Do you love them?” The answer was so obvious to me that I did not bother to give it, but he did not know that yet, so he prompted me. “If they all stopped making honey one day and decided to spend the rest of their lives in flight, or sampling the best flowers, without ever offering you a drop, would you love them?”
“I love them for themselves,” I confessed.
He grinned. Exactly. And then his eyes widened, confused, as a passing barge sent a surge of water barreling down the shore, sweeping and plunging him backward into the river. Zafnat-Panea had no time to scream, and I had no time to think. Instinctively I thrust my hand out to grab him and found purchase on his shoulder, digging my nails into the skin and keeping my other hand moored in the reeds. His fingers found mine and I hauled him out with a mighty pull, and the danger was over as soon as it had begun.
He clung to the basket, visibly shaken by his first foray into the Nile, water droplets darkening his hair and dribbling down his nose. But his look to me was triumphant. “Told you.”
I shook my head, unconvinced. “Maybe you should take a break.”
“I’m fine. I know I can depend on you for quick thinking if it happens again.” Zafnat-Panea returned to his work as though it had never happened. Perhaps having faced his initial fear, he was released from some part of it. “El Shaddai is not like Ra. He didn’t make anything because He needed it, He just wanted it. The things He made, to Him, deserved to exist. The world was a better place with them in it. The same goes for humans. El Shaddai didn’t make humans to worship Him, not according to the story,” he said. “He fashioned humans to look like Himself, and when His work was complete, He blessed them and told them to populate the world. It was His gift to them, mastery over all living things. He let them take control.”
It was personal, almost touching, the idea that we were not created to serve, that we were given godlike shapes and dominion over the earth. The generosity of it was novel. “Let me guess,” I said. “El Shaddai took a look at it all and said it was good?”
“No,” he answered, deadpan, “He said it was very good. On the last day, El Shaddai saw everything He made and deemed the work finished, and He rested from the act of creation.”
“He seems to…” I struggled to find a way to say it without insulting El Shaddai. “…need a lot of breaks.”
Zafnat-Panea barked out a laugh. “You try making a world in one week and tell me how you feel. It’s tiring enough to cut these.” We both stopped and wiped the sweat beading on our foreheads. The basket was not even half full. “Let me rest from speaking for a while,” he said. “That might be all I have in me today to tell you.”
I nodded and returned to work. The water warmed under the sun, smelling worse but feeling better, and though I sensed the beginnings of blisters on my thumb, I found comfort in the rhythm of it—bend, cut, lift, stuff—and began to parse things out.
This was the first lesson in the story of El Shaddai. It was so simple, so similar to what I had grown up with: a formless void, water in the dark, a world made according to order. Pieces of it I preferred, like El Shaddai’s munificence, hints that He was working toward a goal. But the story fell short somehow. Perhaps I could chalk it up to the task at hand, but I felt none of the sensation I had come to associate with Him. If Baba had told me the same story and changed the names, it could have been some variation of Ra’s origin. I felt like I was betraying myself to think it, but it sounded like nonsense, not the sort of god worth risking my life and wasting Zafnat-Panea’s time for.
“Osnat.” It was the first time he said my name, just my name. “Something wrong?”
I swiped at the reeds a little too sharply, missing my finger by a small margin, and tried to disguise my frustration so he would not interpret it as ingratitude. “No.” But all the questions, the discrepancies! Where did El Shaddai come from? How could He be there at the beginning of everything? That implied there was a before, a before when El Shaddai came to be. If El Shaddai was alone with the water, why did He make light first? Did He not need somewhere to stand so as not to drown, or could He fly, since He was hovering over the water?
And why, why were things good, or very good, but some things valueless?
I folded my arms across my chest and watched the brown waves lapping at the stems. “I thought there would be more,” I muttered. “I thought it would make me feel different.”
“Different how?”
“Like everything would make sense. Like…” I chucked my knife into the basket. “Like when we started to learn, I’d feel a kinship with El Shaddai, the same kind I feel with the bees. But I don’t understand your father’s story. It sounds like something for children.”
“I told you El Shaddai had corrections,” said Zafnat-Panea.
“Did He have anything to say about how He managed to swim in all that water without a hill?”
“I don’t think the water was really there,” he admitted. “At least not how I understand it. My father’s story, our family’s story, it’s just what we came up with to explain what we were being shown—in my dreams, or in my father’s visions. But He doesn’t actually use words. Pictures, on the other hand, or feelings, strong suggestions…that’s how I dream. Wait.” Inspiration struck him. He reached out, his hands coming to rest on either side of my face, and I flinched away, thinking of Zuleika.
“What are you doing?”
He withdrew. “Let me try again. Telling the story I feel to be true, not the story I learned. The one I dreamed when I was a child. Is that all right?”
The possibility made me curious, but I was still apprehensive of him touching me. “Maybe I should have brought a bodyguard,” I joked weakly. “Are you going to push me under and assassinate me?”
“I think you have to be a person of some public significance to be assassinated,” he said. “Killing you would just be plain murder.”
Not in the least bit reassuring to hear from a man whom I suspected of having a criminal record. The giggle that escaped me sounded hysterical, crazed, and he lifted his hands again and said, “Close your eyes.”
I knew to expect them, but I still winced when his hands, warm and broad, came down over my ears. I knew he was not going to drown me; he was too mindful of keeping his own balance. I closed my eyes and felt the current’s pressure, but I could not hear the river or the city, not even a breath of wind to rustle the grass around us. Nothing to hear except the low hum of blood circulating through my brain, my ears, my cheeks. I focused on that rushing blood, the grounding, slow inhales through my nose, the swoosh of my exhales. They were comforting sounds, the sounds of being alive, of life going on as usual, unperturbed by big ideas and menacing doubts. The sunlight was deep red behind my eyelids. I lifted my hands to cover them, and then I was in the dark.
His hands and mine worked together to cradle my head, and I retreated into it, the warmth of palms on skin and the steady thrum of breath and blood. I could be a bee inside a hive, in darkness but totally aware of where the broods were, where the queen was, which combs to go to for food. Or I could be a baby again, resting in Amma’s womb, awaiting my arrival in the world.
Or I could be El Shaddai.
I started to understand what Zafnat-Panea wanted me to feel. I relaxed by degrees, forgetting my body one limb at a time until I no longer felt the water on my thighs or the mud under my feet. I was just a thought in the blackness of my head.
His left palm lifted over my right ear, just enough that I could hear a trickle of water. “In the beginning,” he said, “there was something.”
I tuned out the Nile and listened.
“Something—perhaps even Someone—existed. And there was nothing all around it, nothing we can think of or describe, not even darkness, not even space. Something was thinking to itself. It dreamed of the world and time, an infinity of masterpieces, but it also crunched the numbers on them, determining the value of each possibility.”
“I still don’t know where He—the something—comes from,” I whispered.
“Maybe He doesn’t know either,” was his reply. “That would make Him even more alone. At some point, something decided that there should be more than just something and nothing. Maybe you envision water—an ocean without a horizon, a river without a source, you might as well imagine what you want—and something was there, and it spoke, ‘Let there be light.’”
I took my hands off my eyes and let the sunshine color my lids, introducing scarlet back into my head. I thought of heat and light, brightness and darkness divided into color.
“Wheels of so, so many somethings spun forth. Things took shape, things came into being, desolate places and drowning places and livid places. The sun gave birth to the first calculable mornings and the moon gave birth to the first determinable nights. Expanses became air and land. Things bubbled, then they sprouted, then they swam and crawled and grew, they swarmed, they mated, they died. There were beginnings to things and ends to things. Do you see them?”
No, I wanted to tell him. I did not have his gift for dream-telling, for story-weaving. But I understood the feeling of being small, living inside yourself, safe and warm and completely alone. It was a feeling I was all too familiar with in my twenty years. I thought of endless loneliness and how I would begin to contemplate delight, to invent things that would please me if I was not alone in the midst of nothing. How I could cycle through an eternal daydream of the world and realize greater satisfaction would be derived from completing the work and seeing things made real. Things that were good.
“Something decided,” he said. “Something became operative. But what did something—Someone—want?”
It might have been El Shaddai that answered. I had no control over it. Where his hands touched my ears, a warmth, not dissimilar to holiness, flickered under my skin. “Maybe it wanted to hear another voice.”
“Maybe Someone was tired of knowing everything and wanted, just once, to be known,” Zafnat-Panea concluded. “That’s what I felt, when I dreamed of creation. That’s what I thought El Shaddai wanted me to know about Him, that first time. And now you know.” He took his hands away, and I opened my eyes, and he was so close, our arms were touching, and his eyes were the exact shade of the river back home, flecked with gold and brown. Without another word between us, I knew that he knew I understood.
As we finished filling our baskets, I contemplated what he told me. A major difference between El Shaddai and the Egyptian gods was that the gods divided the work of creation between themselves. El Shaddai, in accomplishing it alone, was more powerful by far, like I had told the bees in On: one god whose capabilities outmatched all of us, one without whom we would all die.
But the bees had their roles set from birth, their place in the little universe. I still had to discover mine.
With our baskets full and slung over our backs and the water turning sunset-red, we waded back to shore, where the remaining boy stood up and bowed, lightning-quick, when he saw Zafnat-Panea approach. He took the baskets and knives from us and headed back for the palace while Zafnat-Panea dug out his sandals and slid them back on.
“I hope I didn’t take too much of your time today,” I said.
“I had a productive morning. Silo designs for the southern cities are all finished and dispatched. I felt I could spare the afternoon.” He wiped his hands on his linen and watched the boy carry our afternoon’s work away, looking smaller and more pitiful with each step. “How many more baskets will you need?”
I spanned the size of the temple hive wall in my mind, trying to remember its arrangement. “About a hundred.”
His crestfallen look on my behalf shook free a deep belly laugh in me. I doubled over, wheezing. “I’m starting to wonder,” I said between heaving breaths. “How bad can impalement really hurt, after all?”
Chapter 11
Summary:
Last time: harvest out-of-season
This time: an awkward encounter
Chapter Text
“All those silk sheets stained with mud!” grumbled Ayelet, her theme for the morning. “Never seen anything like it, a bed full of sticks. You could have at least asked me to strip the bed before you ruined it.”
Zafnat-Panea’s bed was the least of my concerns. My entire life was mud. River mud between my toes as I filled the last of my baskets, mud under my nails as I wove reeds into logs and slathered them with it and set them against the courtyard walls to dry, mud in my dreams. Ayelet had woken me up several times to stop my frantic hands from cutting and weaving in my sleep. Today was a reprieve from mud; the promised crumble of a clod of dry dirt sounded as luxurious as the touch of velvet.
“His Grace did not seem bothered,” I told her, avoiding a cat that napped underfoot in the coolness of the garden storerooms.
“Well, he can afford new sheets,” she complained.
My fingers trailed along bags of seeds, scooping handfuls of old favorites from Master Ebo’s lessons and tucking them into my apron. “I’m sure he never lacks a place to sleep.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” I must have looked dubious, because she laughed at my expression and poured poppy seeds into the skirt she held open. “It’s the truth! I ought to know. If there was a lover, I’d be the one translating his poetry, delivering his tokens, that sort of thing.”
It seemed impossible. I had been at court now for over a month and seen courtiers in passing, and though there were plenty of strapping young captains and handsome diplomats, there was no competition. Nor was there a shortage of comely maidens to tempt an unattached vizier. “Maybe Pharaoh prevents him. Maybe a glorious marriage is being arranged for him.”
“I doubt it. I’d have seen the dowry papers by now. Honestly, the only person whose name has ever been linked with his is—”
“Lady Zuleika!” I thought I imagined her slender body outlined in the door, but her spine went as rigid as mine at the sight of me, and Ayelet jumped in surprise and sent her poppy seeds scattering to the floor. We stumbled through our bows, and in the shade of the storeroom, I could not see if her lips stretched into a smile or a grimace.
“Dearest,” she said, her tone warm, and she raised a hand to me. I leaned forward and kissed it. “I meant to ask after you, but what a whirlwind that morning was! It gladdens me to see you looking so well.”
I smiled back in deference to her polite lie. “I should have visited.”
“She’s been kept busy,” Ayelet chimed in.
“Ah, yes, Pharaoh’s wager. You were quite the subject of intrigue here at the palace.” Any uneasiness I perceived between us melted away as she looped her arm through mine and walked down the aisles of pots, shovels, and seeds. “You’ve no idea how many visitors I received that week! The handmaidens practically had to beat them back. I hope he let you enjoy your moment of popularity.”
I recoiled, thankful I had been too preoccupied at the riverside to receive curious courtiers. “What brings you here, my lady?”
“Oh, I’ve gotten turned around somewhere,” she said. “Potiphar wants olive trees for Peret, and the gardeners botched the job so thoroughly that I resolved to pick the saplings myself.”
“The nursery is down the hall,” Ayelet reminded her, replacing her lost poppy seeds with new ones and bundling up her skirt.
At the storeroom threshold, we ran into another unexpected shadow. Zafnat-Panea skidded to a halt in front of the door, and the room froze. Zuleika’s grip on my arm tightened. It was the first time I had seen them together since my execution, and I was struck again by the similarities between them, two links in the same golden chain. There was a tangle of eyes across the space, a full ten seconds of silence, and then manners won out. Zafnat-Panea swept a deep, courteous bow to her.
“My lord,” she said, “I did not expect to see you here.”
His response was flat. “I was looking for Osnat.”
“And you have found her. How fortunate.” She scooted me along between them like a payment.
I kept my head down in the quiet that ensued. Zuleika was afraid, but it was not a vulnerable terror. I spied traces of guilt. That guilt, if the serving maid had been right, should have been plainer on Zafnat-Panea, her purported assailant. But all I saw in him was pain.
Ayelet took an empty sack and funneled her seeds into it, handing it over to me. “Let me escort you to the nursery for those olive trees you wanted, my lady. We would not want to keep your husband waiting.” Zafnat-Panea stepped out of the way as Ayelet took Zuleika out of the storeroom.
Once they were out of earshot, I dared to ask him, “What was that?”
He did not answer. Taking Ayelet’s bag from me, he peeked inside and nodded in approval. “Gardening today? Excellent. I was just thinking my courtyard looked a little bare. And it’s the perfect subject for today’s lesson.”
We said nothing more on the way back to his suite; it was agreed upon that our lessons should never be overheard if we could help it. I lacked the courage to ask him anything more about Zuleika, and though Ayelet knew the story, her loyalty was too staunch for her to relate it to me.
A flurry of bees greeted us in the courtyard, spectators to our first day of planting. Zafnat-Panea remembered my advice too late and went inside to discard his wig, diadem, and jeweled cuffs. That the bees were here already was a good omen. I held up my hands to the sky, marveling at how they wound their way through my open fingers, as friendly as their On counterparts.
“I’ve got all your favorites in here,” I told them, patting the front of my apron. “But you’ll have to be patient for a few weeks.”
Zafnat-Panea returned in plainer clothes, but he had forgotten about cosmetics. They flocked to him, smelling the perfumed oil on his skin. Before he could swat one, I whistled to bring them back, letting them alight on my arm so he could see them without fear of being stung. Almost shyly, he tried to stroke the fuzz on the back of one. “I’d never seen a bee until I came here. The desert where I come from is too dry for them.”
“You must miss the land of your childhood.” With a slow wave of my arm, I set them free. They flew to inspect the dozen drying hives against the wall.
“On the contrary, I try not to remember my time there. After my mother died, there were no more good memories.”
Motherless, like me. A sudden pang of empathy rendered me breathless. I reached out without thinking, similar sorrows tethering us together, but I pulled back before I could make contact. It was too familiar, too intimate.
He noticed, but he made no comment. “Ancient history at this point. Now, what lesson do you have for me today?”
I surveyed the grounds. The laborers had left the entire courtyard empty except for the stones Zafnat-Panea insisted on, leveling the holes left by the roots and leaving a flat surface to work with, plowed with furrows ready for seeds. “If I have to attract enough bees to fill one hundred hives, I need to give them a reason to stay. Bees will drink from most flowers, but they have preferences, flowers they like best, smells they try to avoid.” I knelt in the dirt and motioned for Zafnat-Panea to join me. “Use your little finger,” I instructed him, dipping mine in the upturned soil. “Down to the second knuckle, you see? Three fingers apart.” I poured a measure of seeds from my apron into his waiting palm.
“What are they?” he asked, sifting through them.
“Jasmine. We’ll do ten rows of these, then ten of poppies, ten of daisies, ten of chamomile.” I crouched forward and started poking my fingers into the dirt. “Back home, we gave our chamomile stores to servants of the ka to use in their embalming, and some went to the healers to make tea to help with sleep problems. Poppies are for pain, jasmine for cosmetics, and daisies for decoration.”
“Practical,” he said as he followed my lead. “Your definition of good, then.”
“But not El Shaddai’s, apparently.”
“Then you’ll be pleased to discover that we’ve come to something El Shaddai thinks is ‘not good'—being alone,” he said with a triumphant smirk. “I have a garden to offer you today, too. The first home of mankind. After El Shaddai created the first man, He fashioned a garden for him called Eden. The man was put to work as Eden’s caretaker, and El Shaddai permitted him to eat from any tree in it but two: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If he ate from them, he would die. He allowed the man to name every living thing, but He observed his loneliness. Even surrounded by a world’s worth of delights, the man was missing something crucial.”
“Didn’t they have each other?” I asked, inching forward on dirty knees. “You said El Shaddai was lonely, too. Why couldn’t they have kept each other company?”
“If His relationship with Adam—that was the man’s name—was anything like mine, then I’m not surprised Adam was dissatisfied. The power imbalance alone is enough to kill off any hopes of friendship,” he dismissed with no small amount of bitterness. “El Shaddai lulled Adam to sleep and took flesh from his side and built it into a woman, Chava, for Adam to marry and spend his days with. They cared for the garden together.”
After a numberless eternity wishing to be known and finally having what He wanted, El Shaddai must have been so disappointed to learn the man was not up to the task. But instead of anger, He felt generosity. It moved me.
“When Chava passed by the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she spied a serpent lying on a branch, and the serpent asked her why she never ate any fruit from the tree. She explained El Shaddai’s prohibition and forewarning of their death should they touch it. But the serpent argued that El Shaddai had lied to them, and if they ate from the tree, they would become like gods in their own right.”
For a moment, I was unsure if I misheard him. “Is such a thing possible?”
“The serpent promised that if she tried some of the fruit, her eyes would open to all the knowledge of the world, just like El Shaddai.”
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked. “El Shaddai was lonely. He made a point of saying this was a ‘not good’ thing. If the humans could eat something that made them understand things the way He did, wouldn’t they be able to know each other better? To communicate?”
“I—” Zafnat-Panea had the grace to look sheepish. “That actually makes a lot more sense.”
“That isn’t what happened?”
“No. Chava ate of it and gave some to Adam. As the serpent foretold, their eyes were opened, but their first realization was that they were naked. To cover themselves, they sewed skirts made of leaves. El Shaddai found them hiding in the garden and called out to them. Adam confessed that they were ashamed of their nakedness. However, El Shaddai had never told them, in their innocence, that they were naked, so this revealed that they had partaken of the fruit. Adam blamed Chava, and Chava blamed the serpent.”
I paused and sat back on my heels. “Does that mean El Shaddai was lying to them?”
He was quick to refute me. “El Shaddai does not lie.”
“He told Adam they would die if they ate it, but they didn’t,” I contended. “The serpent told the truth. He said they would learn what was good and what wasn’t when they ate of the tree, and they did. They discovered it’s very not good to walk around nude. They made their first judgment, and no one died. Sounds like El Shaddai was the liar.”
Zafnat-Panea glowered at me. “You seem to have a special talent for sacrilege no matter the religion.”
It occurred to me that this was not a point I should rejoice over. What did it say about me to be selected by a liar god? “You said El Shaddai retold the stories in your dreams,” I said, hopeful for a denial. “What did He say about this one?”
“I don’t remember very well,” he said. “I was young, and it was frightening: lots of wriggling things in water, and lizards, and screeching monkeys. I couldn’t understand it, so He gave up trying to explain.” He wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and returned to the furrows, a little less gentle with seeds. “What I do remember is the story, preserved by my family for generations. Take care with your blasphemy, please.”
We finished the rows of jasmine as he told of their banishment from the garden, the punishments of childbirth and travail, their entrance into a world of pain. I ignored the apprehension I felt, increasing with each row we completed. Last time we had spoken, the first glimpses of El Shaddai had shown me His loneliness, His creativity and magnanimity. I could see His instinct toward goodness, how He wanted what was best for Adam even when it cut Him out. But to lie to them, to set them up for a test they seemed certain to fail, was eerily reminiscent of something an Egyptian god would do. I had no desire to trade one petty pantheon for another.
Poppies came next. We dug handfuls out of the bag and started on the next plot. “These you can scatter,” I said, bending low to toss them onto the plot so none went astray.
Did he detect the thread of discomfort bunching up in my voice? His reply was defensive. “I might not remember how it happened in my dream, but if you listen, you’ll understand it’s a story about growing up. If El Shaddai had never banished them, Adam and Chava would have been like children forever, wandering around the splendor of Eden in mindless appreciation. There would never have been an opportunity for them to grow.”
I kept my tone neutral. “What about their punishment?”
“Life is only half-life without pain. They would learn more about themselves by working through it together.” He cast too wide with his arm, and I showed him how to keep his aim small, the seeds concentrated. “After their first transgression, however, the pattern was set in motion. Their children fell prey to it. Adam and Chava had two sons who both tried to serve El Shaddai. One offered Him the firstfruits of his labor, the other sacrificed the best of his flock.”
So El Shaddai delighted in offerings as much as the Egyptian gods. That gave me an idea of how I could thank Him for His kindnesses, but still, disappointment took root next to my anxiety. Wary of another similarity between Him and the gods, I asked, “Did He have a preference?”
“The shepherd’s offering. He would not accept the firstfruits. Before you ask, no,” he sighed, “I don’t know why. But this son, Kain, took offense to the snub. As revenge, he killed the favored brother. With his success, more evil was introduced to the world.”
We filled the poppy plots faster, and Zafnat-Panea made better work of it than I did. My arms ached with the phantom swing of my knife, and I felt the tug of the Nile on my legs. I took lengthy pauses between the rows to catch my breath and calm the irritation taking up residence in my belly. Chamomile seeds stuck to my sweating hands. I had to shake them off to give them to Zafnat-Panea.
“Generations passed, each more wicked than the last, until El Shaddai realized His great mistake in creating humanity and resolved to correct it. To blot out the race that had strayed so far from His trust, He planned a flood.”
I nodded, saying nothing. Exhaustion throbbed in every muscle. Besides, this I expected. Any god required respect. If bees were remiss in their duties to the queen, the entire colony fell into disarray. I listened for the great apology humanity made, the piled offerings, the smoking sacrifices, like the sacred bulls and ibises required of Pharaoh during the harvest festival.
“El Shaddai selected one man, Noach, as the most righteous, and instructed him to preserve what little goodness was left in mankind by building a ship to survive the flood. When the ship was complete, Noach ushered his family and mating pairs of animals inside, and El Shaddai destroyed the rest of the world with rain. Once everything—”
“Wait.”
Zafnat-Panea stopped mid-throw, waiting for the torrent of questions. He tossed his handful and put his hands on his hips, impatient. “Yes?”
“Where,” I asked, “did the rest of the people go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Once they made amends,” I prompted him. “The flood was the sign of His displeasure. At least someone must have taken warning. What did El Shaddai do when they appeased Him? Where did they go?”
Zafnat-Panea shook his head and went back to tossing chamomile seeds. “They didn’t. They all perished in the flood. When it was finished, Noach and his family—”
“No,” I said. “That can’t be. He never gave them a chance to—” I remembered my famine exercise with Baba, the test for a god worth following. What mistake could we make so huge that it would cause a famine, or a flood, or any suffering on a scale like that? Perhaps I could understand Baba’s rebuttal and Zafnat-Panea’s explanation, hesitant as I was about a punisher-god, that wickedness had to be course-corrected. But there was no course for humanity to correct if everyone was dead except a waterlogged family afloat on a sea of corpses.
The discomfort, the disappointment, the climbing sun, they were all transforming into a sickening smoke-black curl that wound around my insides and pressed the back of my tongue, too hot behind my eye sockets. “When the Egyptian gods are unhappy, there’s a chance to make it right. There are options. Prayers, sacrifices, lamentations. You’re telling me El Shaddai never gave them the opportunity to turn back?”
“They weren’t worth saving.”
“You don’t believe that,” I challenged. “I know you don’t. You told me you bear the responsibility for all three million lives in Egypt. You made no qualifications about who wasn’t worth saving. Are you telling me you’re a kinder judge than El Shaddai?”
His eyes narrowed. “Watch your tongue.”
“Then tell me there was a revision! Why create a world and fill it with good things, very good things, then wipe it out? Was there nothing He could use?” This anger flared worse than anything I had ever felt, a thousand times worse than Namrut killing my garden, a hundred times worse than discovering the truth about Ra. “Tell me it didn’t happen, that El Shaddai told you differently later, that there’s a better explanation. I need there to be—” The fury lodged in my throat. I blinked, dizzy and afraid of it.
He held out a hand, cautious as a cornered hunter. “Osnat, you must remain calm. You’re overtired, you should sit. I can call someone to finish the garden for us—”
“I don’t care about the damned garden!” A spray of daisy seeds spread across the chamomile plot as I untied my apron and threw it to the ground. I felt like I was watching myself from afar, shocked by my outburst. Baba’s eyebrows would have flown off his forehead. “What did He tell you about the flood?”
Zafnat-Panea swallowed hard. “I don’t remember.”
My laugh was unkind. “At least the Egyptian gods give us a fighting chance.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in the gods.”
“Why should I believe in El Shaddai instead?” I asked. “What’s stopping Him from sending another flood one day?”
“He gave his promise He wouldn’t,” he said through gritted teeth.
“But how can I trust Him? He’s a proven liar!” Every bit of hope I had collected was coming undone with this story, the pieces of El Shaddai I had come to like. My gratitude for my rescue was rewritten with fear and revulsion. This could not be the god that the bees had been trying to bring me to. If El Shaddai was the sole sovereign of the universe, I had expected Him to act differently than the gods of my childhood, so driven by ambition, cruelty, and indifference. I needed Him to be better than that. No queen bee would flood her hive for spite. It would leave her alone and helpless.
Zafnat-Panea brushed his hands clean of the seeds. “You insisted on learning about El Shaddai, but nothing you learn suits you. The first lesson was too childish, the second too intense. Tell me, Osnat, am I a bad teacher, or are you just a bad student?”
A horrifying thought flickered through me. Maybe I would have been better off not knowing.
“A waste of my time,” he muttered before I could answer, leaving the courtyard. My anger shifted targets, an arrow I no longer aimed at the sky but across the garden at him.
“Two afternoons in a month,” I called out, “hardly qualifies as a waste of time.” I should have known better than to follow him; I could see well enough that he was tightly wound, threatening to snap, but like a fool, I went after him.
“Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to be less generous in the future,” he said, picking up his discarded jewels. He clapped the cuffs back on his wrists. “I meant to tell you, Pharaoh is sending me north to buy land for the crown. I don’t know when I’ll return.”
“Suits me.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Next time you dream, you can tell El Shaddai thank you for singling me out, but I no longer want to be chosen by Him. ”
As I spoke, I could not gauge if I was serious. I had been willing to die for El Shaddai, had given up so much for the opportunity to know Him. Was one story enough to obliterate that desire, or was I hoping—inexplicably, grotesquely—to get a rise out of Zafnat-Panea?
“That won’t be possible.”
“Make it possible. I don’t want to learn about Him anymore. Whatever destiny He has for me, tell Him to find someone else.”
He opened his mouth for a retort, but it died in his throat. His fists clenched and he took several measured breaths before he ground out, “You’re not the only one who would have preferred to go unchosen, Osnat. Remember that.”
He marched toward the door, but I was desperate to make him stay, to answer for his terrifying master. Just before he crossed into the next room, I shouted, “What happened between you and Lady Zuleika?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to stuff them back in. I would have preferred to choke on them. They struck him like an actual blow. He seized up where he was, and I wanted to bolt, to hide from him, to escape the palace and its ugly Nile and the summons of a god who had fallen so short of my expectations. He turned and came back in three long strides, stopping mere inches from my face.
“Nothing,” he spat. “Nothing happened. Do you think Pharaoh would have exalted me to my current station if I had been a monster like that? A man who forces himself on noblewomen?”
“I don’t know.” It came out a shudder, a tiny peep. It was not a woman’s world. Rapists and brutes, possessed of the right charm, had worked their way into the royal inner circle before.
“How long will I be expected to carry the burden of that woman’s guilt?” he asked, more to himself than me, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I never hurt her. Never. My own sister…” He closed his eyes. “You have your answer. Be satisfied.” And he turned on his heel and left me.
Tears came then, heavy as any flood, and bogged me down until I was alone in his presence chamber, on my knees, rocking myself back and forth. I cried so hard I thought it would never end, which made me think of El Shaddai’s flood and that voyage of horror, how Noach’s family must have heard the pounding of fists at the ship’s door that subsided into silence. Even if El Shaddai gave His word that it would never happen again, and that word could be trusted, it would have been no great prize to be awarded what remained of a planet that stank of death.
El Shaddai frightened me now.
I picked myself off the floor at some point and neglected to go to supper. I convinced myself that I could return to gardening later, that collecting the reeds took first priority, and had a convenient excuse to be absent on the day of Zafnat-Panea’s departure.
Ayelet was left in charge of his household with a pile of paperwork to translate. The serving girls who had not traveled with Zafnat-Panea’s retinue had free reign of his suite while he was gone, but they spent most days sleeping in or sleeping with paramours. We had his presence chamber to ourselves.
I cleaned the mess I left in the chamomile plot and completed the daisies, and Peret started with promise, nursing the seedlings to life. Surrounded by their little green heads, I tempered my relief with strategy. The bees were already sniffing out their interest, increasing the number of visiting parties each day, but until my hives were done, there would be nowhere to house them. They would not come without a queen, and I was forbidden to ask for help from the palace apiary. I doubted I could sing a queen out at this distance.
“You could try smiling,” remarked Ayelet. “I’m afraid that scowl is going to take up permanent residence.”
I huffed into the hive I was working on. “No one asked you to look.”
“Still testy, are we?” She set down her reed pen and joined me in the garden, and I made no protest, thankful for the assistance. “The flood was a tough story for me, too.” I stopped and stared at her, wondering if we had been overhead. She grinned at me and tapped my forehead. “The tribe of Esav believes in El Shaddai, too, silly girl. We’re not the favored branch of the family tree, but we share the same tales.”
“How did you—”
“No one else knows,” she reassured me, nimbly starting the frame for the next hive. “Zafnat-Panea asked for my help before he left. He thought maybe I could soothe you.” My doubt was plain on my face, so I hid it in my weaving. “I never quite reconciled myself to it,” she said. “My father was adamant that the flood was necessary for life to begin better. But I didn’t see why He had to wipe life out to do that. ”
“Neither do I,” I admitted. My basis for comparison was the Egyptian gods, but Zafnat-Panea was right. I had no belief in them, so I had no desire to base my understanding of El Shaddai on them. “I wanted Him to be like a queen bee. She gives birth to the world around her, keeps her hive alive, and all the bees care for her in return. I believe in Him because I—I feel Him. In the world, I feel Him. But I don’t know how I can love a god so cruel, so human.”
“Zafnat-Panea told you we were fashioned in His image, yes?” she asked. “Maybe He’s not so human. Maybe we’re more godlike than we think.” I wrinkled my nose at that, unable to fathom it, and she giggled. “And if we have the worst of Him in us, then we also have the best.”
I thought about the days of creation when El Shaddai had made a home for humanity, filling it with things that were good or very good. Looking into my hollow hive, imagining it full of bees, I wondered if El Shaddai and I had more in common than I thought. For the first time in days, some solace, tinged with shame, washed over me. I took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
She squeezed back and dropped her reeds into her lap with a long sigh, looking at the courtyard wall where three dozen hives baked in the afternoon sun. “I don’t doubt your skill, but I’m starting to think it’ll take a miracle to win this bet. Where will we even get all the bees?”
Inspiration struck. “Are all dispatches in your hand accepted as Zafnat-Panea’s orders?”
“Why?”
“I know someone who can help us.”
Ayelet was skeptical. “You’re not supposed to solicit help from any of the Memphis beekeepers.”
“Then I won’t send for a Memphis beekeeper.”
She caught on with a wicked smile, running back to Zafnat-Panea’s desk to unroll a fresh scroll. “Ayelet,” I asked, trying to sound casual, “was Zafnat-Panea ever imprisoned?”
“Long before I got here. He was released last year.”
Nine years. With a sudden fierceness, I wished he would return. “Did Lady Zuleika arrange for his release?”
Ayelet looked down at me, her flower-petal eyes full of sadness. “No. She was the one who had him arrested.”
Chapter 12
Summary:
Last time: an awkward encounter
This time: cheating
TW/CW: implied SA, not talked about in detail
Chapter Text
The flood was over, and Peret shrank the Nile back from its ugly, swollen brown to an inoffensive yellow that carried, on some evenings, a fragrant breeze that tried to coax me into revisiting the river for a swim. But that was time I could not afford to lose. I had survived my unpleasant days collecting reeds, and now the garden bloomed in streaks of riotous scarlet and shimmering white, in need of constant watering, combing for weeds, and protection from pests. A hive wall began to take shape, begging for inhabitants.
The long and quiet hours I spent weaving were the perfect breeding ground for curiosity. My mind went chasing Eden and sat under that forbidden tree, wondering if Zafnat-Panea had been right, if the fruit was a test designed to allow Adam and Chava the first chance to make their own choices. If El Shaddai’s first lessons in humanity were murder and evil, it stood to reason that those would be the tools He had to deal with humanity. It did not excuse the flood. But Zafnat-Panea’s words came back to me. Was El Shaddai a bad student, or were we bad teachers?
The hours were long, but the season was short. Before I knew it, a third of my time at the palace was up. The hives were complete and empty, the garden flourished, and bees visited with the same dependable frequency I was used to back home. I grew to love the Memphis bees and their speedy, no-nonsense approach, different from the dreamy, well-fed bees of On. They made my garden a miracle, the flowers so ripe that petals fell right off the stalk.
With nothing else to do but wait, I pilfered a ladder and climbed the courtyard wall, scanning the Nile for the southbound ship that brought him to me. The morning arrived when a sail emblazoned with a Bennu, the sacred bird of On, was clear on the horizon, and it took every bit of patience I had not to spoil the plan and run to the dock to receive him.
Ayelet met him when his boat disembarked. Great pains had to be taken to ensure he was not connected with me in any way. While Ayelet escorted him to Zafnat-Panea’s wing, I waited and worried. How much news of my crime had reached home? Would he even speak to me when he saw me again?
I made sure we were alone in Zafnat-Panea’s presence chamber, stiffening at the sound of Ayelet’s voice drawing near. “You came highly recommended,” she told him. “It pleases His Grace to equip the palace with the best possible staff. I’m sure he regrets being absent for your arrival, but I hope you won’t be too disappointed with who came to greet you in his stead.”
And there he was, casting his eyes around the room, the furniture, and the elaborate breakfast Ayelet procured for us. I stepped into view and braced myself for whatever came next. He blinked when he saw me, unbelieving, and looked back and forth between Ayelet and me, trying to confirm that he was not the only one who saw this apparition. Then the crown jewel of his smile, that beloved gap, peeked through his lips, and I was inundated with relief so acute I started to cry.
“Little sister!” he hooted in surprise, and he ran to embrace me. I pressed my face into his shoulder and breathed in deeply. Under the dust of the road, his cloak smelled of jasmine, of home. “I thought you were dead!”
“Not yet,” I said. “Not if you help me. That’s why I brought you here.”
Kanebti stroked my cheek and wiped a stray tear away. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“I’ll have your lodgings prepared,” said Ayelet, giving us privacy. I did not miss his appreciative glance at the shimmy in her hips as she left us.
“Should’ve known you were alive,” he laughed, filling a plate with dates and honey-drizzled bread. “If you’d died, your father wouldn’t have bothered to come back.”
“Is he safe? They haven’t thrown him out into the streets?”
“They wouldn’t have dared. They dismissed him, of course, but with as little fanfare as possible. He has contacts, people who owe him favors, so he has a roof over his head and food on his table. But…” Kanebti thought through his words as he chewed. “He misses you. We both do.”
It was a debt I could never repay, the anguish I had caused them both, the love they still harbored for me despite my betrayal.
“I could kill the old man for not telling me you were alive,” he joked, giving me a sticky kiss on the cheek. “I wasn’t allowed to mourn a heretic. I had no one to talk to about losing you.”
“I hope this promotion will make up for it,” I replied.
“Oh, Amma’s thrilled. Palace bees are much more impressive,” he said. “She hopes I can find courtly husbands for my sisters.”
“Better to get you married first,” I said. “Who’s got your job now? And mine?”
Kanebti stuck out his tongue. “When you were arrested, they gave the position to Namrut. You can guess how much fun it was to work with him. Shui already went home for the year, so I think an apprentice will take over for me. I’m at Zafnat-Panea’s disposal now.” He peered into the courtyard at my empty hive wall and garden teeming with bees. “Or maybe I’m at yours. Seems I have you to thank for my change in fortunes.” When he turned back to me, I spied a trace of fear. “What exactly happened to you, little sister?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” I promised, “and I’ve no right to ask you, but I need a favor.”
Of course, Kanebti agreed without hesitation. It was more than I deserved, but I hoped, between the pay increase, the prestige of palace employment, and the way he stuttered when Ayelet entered the room, that I had adequately made it up to him. We could not be caught crossing paths once the plan was set in motion, so we had just an afternoon’s worth of reunion to share stories from home. His lodgings were on the other side of court, with the Memphis beekeepers.
I spent lonely afternoons in the courtyard, weeding, waiting, and whispering into the wind to draw in the bees. They visited in such large numbers that some days, they hung suspended over the plots like fog, and it was no task for the faint-hearted to wade through the cloud of them to water the plants. The time was coming soon. Bees could not work so hard and fail to overfill their hives.
Ayelet, our liaison, brought me news of his success. The beekeepers grew to love his competence, his humor, and his tales from the north. Best of all, they suspected nothing. Within the week, she gave me Kanebti’s report.
The palace, I discovered, went to sleep much later than the temple. Parties lasted for hours, spurred on by a continual supply of wine and tireless musicians, and when drunken courtiers dragged themselves to bed, servants stayed up late scrubbing wine stains out of the floor and sweeping up scraps from uneaten banquets. I stayed awake on my chosen night, restless but unable to move lest it wake up another girl in the tight matrix of our sleeping quarters, waiting for the sounds of cleaning to end.
When I felt safe, I rose and tiptoed around their sleeping forms. It reminded me of the night of my crime, that breathless terror and concentration I felt before entering the Djeser-Djeseru. The difference this time was that I was already marked for death. There was only one way to fill my hives with enough time to spare for honey harvesting. I could not risk hunting through Memphis for wild swarms; I would never find enough to fill one hundred hives.
Pharaoh forbade my soliciting the beekeepers for help, so he could never find out about Kanebti. He had also forbidden my use of palace apiary supplies, which I technically was not using tonight. Every hive and tool would go untouched. If El Shaddai wanted me to live to help Egypt through this famine, then He had to prevent me from being caught.
I crept through the dark halls to Zafnat-Panea’s courtyard, so single-minded that I walked straight through his presence chamber where two oil lamps burned on his desk and into the courtyard to grab a hollow hive.
“A little late for gardening, isn’t it?”
I squeaked and dropped my hive, which cracked when it hit the ground. Zafnat-Panea was seated at his desk, bent over Ayelet’s stack of translated scrolls with his fingers threaded through his hair. He did not even glance up at me. I let out a shaky breath, thankful I had not screamed, and picked up the broken hive. “I didn’t know you’d returned.”
“It’s not my fault you’re unobservant.” He slumped over his papyri. “Whatever you’re doing, don’t let me keep you.”
I leaned the broken hive against the wall, resolving to fix it in the morning, and slung another over my shoulder, prepared to do as he said. But I had no more vitriol left in me, only regret for how I had spoken to him when we were last here. As I passed before his desk, I paused. “I owe you an apology, Zafnat-Panea.” His head did not rise at the sound of his name, but I continued. “When we last spoke, I was unkind. It wasn’t my place to ask you…that question.” Even now, I wished I had said nothing, for the memory of his pain stung fresh and sharp. “It hurt you. I’m truly sorry.”
He let out a long, aggrieved sigh. “I suppose I wasn’t much kinder,” he conceded. “I’m sorry, too.”
I nodded, satisfied, and made my way toward the door. I almost missed when he whispered, “It’s been a long time. I forgot how to… I can fake it most of the time, with Pharaoh, with the council. I’m good at improvising. But you…” He shook his head. “You don’t talk to me the way other people do.”
I had found him exhausted, late at night, vulnerable. It was not right to extort these truths from him, and I did not want him revealing secrets he did not want to share. “Would it make you feel better if I stopped?”
“Talking to me?” Zafnat-Panea considered this. “No, I don’t want that.”
I set the hive down. “Then let’s make it easier. Let’s be friends.” I offered him my hand to make an oath. “We don’t have to be teacher and student, master and servant. We have a lot in common. We could be good for each other.” Both of us without mothers, both condemned, both chosen by El Shaddai. How many people in the empire could claim those similarities?
Still, as he stared back at me, I was not sure if I had made a grave misstep. This was a man who wore Pharaoh’s signet ring. What interest would he have in me?
“Why not?” he agreed, taking my hand firmly in his. “I’m short on friends at the moment.”
I bit my lip to hide my relief. “Pharaoh’s right hand is short on friends?”
“Not on sycophants,” he said as he released me. “Not on detractors, either. On friends, yes. And as your friend, do I get to inquire as to the nature of your trespass in my room late at night?”
“In a word,” I said, lifting the hive back up on my shoulder, “cheating.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Anything we’ll both regret in the morning?”
“Not if we don’t get caught.” I peeked into the empty hallway behind us. “Want to come with me?”
Zafnat-Panea hesitated, mindful of the work piled on his desk. I was about to reassure him that he could decline the invitation when he stood up and blew out the oil lamps. “Where to?”
I was grateful for his company as we left his suite and walked through the labyrinthine palace. Still unsure of my way and not wanting to delay the task at hand by getting lost, having Zafnat-Panea at my side was the very thing that could save me if I was discovered in the apiary. I was even more grateful for the cover of darkness, because it concealed how I snuck little glances at him when torchlight cast his features into relief. “What were you doing up so late?” I asked.
“Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to dream.”
“Has He been…making things difficult for you, recently?”
He smirked. “I thought you no longer cared what He was up to.”
“I’ve had some time to think,” I said, “and some help. Thank you for that, by the way.” He frowned, confused, until I clarified, “Ayelet told me you asked her to give me her perspective. It worked. Though I still have questions.”
“Does that mean you want to continue our lessons?” He did not seem enthused. Those little scrolls had piled up in his absence, and I was sure his mission north was no vacation. Relentlessly occupied, with so little inclination to rest and so much ambition to prove himself, Zafnat-Panea could not be blamed for wanting to avoid another responsibility.
Though the answer was yes, pity transformed my words. “If you want to. If you have time.”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?” The words were gruff, but as I opened my mouth to tell him he did not need to appease me, I was shocked to see him wink at me. “I wish I could get some answers for your questions,” he said, “but I don’t dream from Him as often as people think. It’s more pictures, feelings, not words. I can never ask Him anything, and I never hear anything back.”
We passed by guards, and I went rigid as I shuffled by, fearful they would see the hive on my shoulder. But they must not have known what it was, or they recognized who accompanied me. No one stopped us.
“Just one question, then. Is the famine His latest punishment?”
“No,” he told me, and some of the tension inside me eased. “He wants to help. Which is where you and I come in. El Shaddai got in the habit of choosing people for tasks here on earth. My great-grandfather, Avraham, was the first He favored. You might have liked him. He put about as much stock in his foreign gods as you do. His father was a devotee of the Chaldean gods. El Shaddai must have gotten to Avraham early to set him apart. He instructed him to travel west, across the vast desert, to a land he had never seen, where He promised to make a great nation of him and bless his name. They struck a deal—a covenant.”
“What did El Shaddai receive in return? Besides Avraham’s faith?”
Zafnat-Panea coughed, embarrassed. “I’d rather not say.” When faced with my quizzical expression, he avoided my gaze and said, “It’s something to do with…male anatomy.”
“Oh.” I had heard about the Canaanite custom, but never associated it with anything religious. Again, I was thankful for the cover of darkness, but I hid my face behind the hive all the same.
“He was a distrustful man, my great-grandfather. Every promise El Shaddai made, he doubted.”
“What sort of promises did He make?”
“Protection, land, heirs who would share in El Shaddai’s favor. All of which Avraham was wary to accept. He didn’t think El Shaddai would keep him fed once he pitched his tent in Canaan during the last great famine in our lands, so he came here to Egypt with his wife.” At the mention of his great-grandmother, Zafnat-Panea became somber and distant. “He didn’t trust that El Shaddai would keep him safe in Egypt, either. His wife, Sarah, was a woman of exquisite beauty. Afraid that some Egyptian would slit his throat to take her as a wife, he claimed she was merely his sister. Sarah was trundled off to the palace to serve in Pharaoh’s harem while Avraham escaped with his life.”
“In this palace?” My steps felt like interruptions in this family’s past, walking down the halls where his great-grandmother had walked, listening for the echoes of her screams. Had poor Sarah seen these exact same walls?
“It seems to run in the family,” he commented, affecting nonchalance. “Being sold to the highest bidder to keep Egyptian beds warm.”
I stumbled on the path, not wanting to believe my ears, as the final mystery of Zafnat-Panea was solved. Years ago, in a market not too far from here, my father maneuvered advancement out of charioteer gossip about Zuleika’s disgrace. It took me until now to realize how Zafnat-Panea fit in, why I had seen him that morning as they dragged him to his doom. Did the captain discover his wife with the slave, or did his wife find him with the boy instead? I pictured him as I remembered him, a teenager with slim shoulders, wrapping a sheet around his waist as his master and mistress screamed over a scandal that sent him to prison. I could not walk on. “Zafnat-Panea.”
He knew I knew. I was certain. Though he stopped, he did not look at me. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not,” I insisted as I set down the hive. There was so much I wanted to ask, to say, but I was overwhelmed by compassion and venomous hatred at the mere thought of Zuleika and her faceless husband, at the old Pharaoh for whatever horrors he visited upon Sarah. And there was longing, intense longing to reach out and smooth his brow, to make the memory of nine years in the dungeon and whatever came before vanish.
“It’s fine,” he repeated, taking the hive from me. “Ancient history.”
I did not believe him for a moment. But what could I say that would be of any comfort to him, if he wanted to forget? He adjusted his grip on the hive and hoisted it over his shoulder. “El Shaddai took Sarah’s side both times. Avraham let a foreign king carry her off twice on his travels just to save his own skin. Each time, El Shaddai afflicted whole royal households to protect Sarah until Avraham was forced to collect her.”
But why didn’t He protect you? I asked in my head, wondering if El Shaddai could hear.
“El Shaddai didn’t break faith with Avraham, but I think Avraham wanted something a bit more substantial. He was far more interested in the promise of an heir and inheritance. Sarah had not borne him any children. They say by then, she was too old.”
“Or maybe she wouldn’t let him touch her,” I suggested, “after he abandoned her twice.”
Zafnat-Panea managed to smile. “I like your theory better. Avraham didn’t believe El Shaddai would provide him with one, so he sired one on a slave girl, Hagar. Sarah fell pregnant anyway. Both mothers broke each other’s hearts over their sons and the rivalry they had been born into, and Avraham did not intervene. He sent the slave girl and her firstborn into the desert to their deaths once he had his legitimate son.” He saw how my nose wrinkled in disgust at Avraham’s cruel indifference and said, “El Shaddai took their part, too. He rescued mother and child and secured their futures. Maybe He had learned something.”
It assuaged me to know that El Shaddai had not forgotten Sarah or Hagar even when Avraham had. There was no sign of any guards at the apiary, but we stayed silent and took slow, measured steps through the door, careful to keep the hive from banging on the lintel. Once we were through, I helped him lower the hive from his shoulder to his hip and gestured him closer. “Come on.”
The moonlight blanched the hive walls, and they emitted a low, sleepy hum. I found the log Kanebti had earmarked for me, with a little feather stuck in the woven grille of the hive entrance. It was sweet, his token for me, but in the future I would tell him to count the logs and give me a number. We could not risk being found out. I plucked out the feather and handed it over to Zafnat-Panea. “A souvenir.”
He took the feather and slid it behind his ear. “Does it suit me?”
Here in the dark, I did not trust myself to speak without telling him the truth: he looked carelessly perfect. Instead, I removed the lid from his hive. “It’ll tickle when the bees start flying in,” I warned him. “Don’t move.”
As loud as I dared, I pressed my lips together to make the trumpeting sound of a queen in her cell. Kanebti assured me the hive was honeybound and a new queen was due to hatch any moment, but even to save my life, I could not bring myself to endanger a colony by taking its queen away unless I was sure she would be replaced.
Zafnat-Panea’s brow furrowed at the funny noise, but I held a finger to my lips and then trumpeted again. I need not have worried. A little queen piped back at me, and her attendants awoke and buzzed around her, a promise that she would hatch soon.
It had been months since I had sung for a queen, and though I had done it before all the beekeepers and apprentices in On, even for Baba, I suddenly felt shy to sing in front of Zafnat-Panea. I had to close my eyes, and the song began low, inaudible. At first, I was too conscious of him. I could not produce the reassuring melody to persuade a queen bee to leave her colony. I held out my hand, and when I felt little feet and antennae, the song came a little clearer, with a keen, almost tragic edge to it. It would never have worked on the bees back home, but here, the bees seemed to sense my distress, how much I needed them to come with me.
I heard Zafnat-Panea gasp next to me. They had begun to fly out, wreathing my head, enticed by the song. I opened my eyes and saw the old queen and her parade emerge from the hive, sniffing around the edges of the new one. Zafnat-Panea kept the log steady as they found their way, chuckling at how the mud and reeds vibrated under his fingers. We watched half the hive fly inside and settle in their new home, leaving a healthy contingent in the old one, and the work was complete, and my song stuttered to a stop even as I felt more melody build up behind my teeth, lyrics I was too frightened to utter. I placed the lid back on the hive.
His eyes were silver in the moonlight. The feather was lost somewhere in his curls, and his lips curved into a soft, astounded smile. “Osnat…”
“One down, ninety-nine more to go,” I tried to joke, but he was still solemn, almost reverent.
“I thought I knew. I saw you in my dream, I’ve seen you in the garden with the bees, but that…” He stood up and hiked the hive over his shoulder. “That was a thing apart.”
A flush of warmth spread through my collarbones. “Well, it’s not exactly stitching bees into stars, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed with a gentle laugh, and we left the apiary with our first stolen swarm. “I still wonder what that means. El Shaddai uses stars in His promises a great deal. I think it’s something He knows we understand, a sense of infinity. He promised Avraham that his descendants would outnumber the stars one day.”
“Maybe that’ll be my reward,” I offered. “If I save Egypt, El Shaddai will give me plenty of children, just like He promised Avraham.”
Zafnat-Panea switched the hive to his other shoulder so his face was not obscured. I pretended not to notice how he studied me. “Is that what you want?”
“I hadn’t thought much about it.” That much was true. Before the Djeser-Djeseru, my focus had been winning the position on the temple beekeeping staff. A lifetime by the riverside with my hives and a permanent home with Baba would have satisfied me.
“A woman of a marriageable age like you, and you haven’t thought about it?”
“Marriage is for girls who want a stable home or financial security. I had both back home. It never came up.”
“What do you want?” he asked. I scoffed at the question, and he added, “I’m serious. Say El Shaddai was in a generous mood, willing to give you anything you wanted in exchange for believing in Him. What would you ask of Him?”
I thought of Avraham and El Shaddai’s promises of greatness. I could not fathom being offered such a weighty inheritance, and it did not seem to me that Avraham was deserving of it. How could a man like that––too selfish to protect his wife from the appetites of foreign kings, so indifferent to the suffering of his family––merit everlasting generations? If El Shaddai made His promise in the hope that Avraham would teach Him patience and curb His impulses, then Avraham was not worthy of that promise.
“I would ask Him to let me live to see next year,” I answered, “and to help me save Egypt, if I can. To keep the bees healthy and strong. To see my father again.” I kept my eyes fixed on the tile floor under our feet so I would not reveal the one thing on the list that I refrained from saying. “Right now, those wishes seem impossible enough. What about you? What do you want?”
I knew what I would ask for, if I was Zafnat-Panea. I would want power, not for greed’s sake, but enough to ensure I would never again find myself imprisoned or forced into bed against my will. Enough power so not a single person in Egypt died from famine, perhaps enough power to take vengeance on the woman who had sent me to prison.
But Zafnat-Panea’s face was blank. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
The simplicity of his words, as though they were a foregone conclusion, stole the warmth from my blood. He tried for another tight smile, but I could not return it. I would rather have wept. “And if it did,” he said, “then I would waste energy wanting the wrong things. Not like you.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.” It sounded more encouraging than I felt, like I believed he was capable of asking for better when really, I wanted to ask for worse.
We made it back to his suite without being discovered. I wanted to celebrate it for the victory it was, but with the empty hive wall in view, my mind drifted toward the next few dozen trips I would have to make to sing out more queens. With El Shaddai’s intervention and the industrious work of bees, we would be able to split the swarms here in the courtyard within a few months, but the base population would have to be stolen on nights like this. I could be caught on any one of them.
Zafnat-Panea slid the hive into the slot I directed, and I knew it was time to go, but I hated to leave him. He had shared so much with me tonight, perhaps without meaning to, and it seemed wrong to abandon him to the wounds he had reopened. We both stood, shoulder to shoulder but not quite touching, and watched our single full hive like parents waiting for a baby to take its first steps.
“I remember you,” I said, so low I was not even sure he could hear me. “I was a child when I first came to the palace. You were arrested that morning, I think. The guards carried you right by me. You looked at me. I––” I had wanted to ask him if he thought El Shaddai had fated our paths to cross then, so he would recognize the woman to save ten years later, so I would know the eyes of the man who would lead me to Him. But when I looked at him, my questions died on my tongue. I wanted to offer comfort instead. “I didn’t forget you.”
There was a sharp intake of air, a moment of recognition, but then nothing more.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I promised. “Just—if I can help—”
“I don’t—” We both tripped over our words, then paused. He reached up into his hair, tugging on the strands in the back. “Thank you.” The feather in his hair fell to his feet, and he leaned down to pick it up, offering it to me.
“Keep it,” I told him. “I don’t have hair like yours to decorate.”
“No,” he said, tucking it back behind his ear again, and then he looked at me a second too long. “But I don’t think you need it.”
The battle raging in me provided sufficient propulsion to speed me through the presence chamber and halls until I was back on my pallet-bed with my blanket wrapped tight under my chin, my entire body thrumming. I tried to think about El Shaddai and commit the lesson to memory. I was not sold on trusting Him yet, not after the flood, but I appreciated how He championed the causes of the women and child Avraham had caused such pain. I tried to figure Him out in a way I could accept Him, a young god at the beginning of His new world, wracked with guilt over the destruction of His old one.
But I could not think about Him for long. My pulse raced with warring desires that kept me up all night, tossing and turning on my pallet-bed until Ayelet grumbled at me and slung an arm over my shoulders to keep me still. I would not give my desire a name, not when the target it sought had endured more than his fair share. What he deserved, what El Shaddai had failed to give him, was protection from people who would use him. I would not become one of those people.
Chapter 13
Summary:
Last time: cheating
This time: going for a swim
Chapter Text
“It was a test of obedience. He passed.”
“It was a test of morality. He failed.” Content as a cat, I lay with my limbs splayed out on the dirt, one hand wound around a cluster of chamomiles and the other brushing daisy stems. I cracked open one eye to see how Zafnat-Panea fared and suppressed a smile at the bees zooming from emerald to emerald on his breastplate. “You should change.”
“Pharaoh will be here within the hour to discuss trade delegations,” he said by way of explanation. He no longer shuddered when they landed on him, using the reed pen to sweep them off his lap before they could smudge the ink on his scroll. “Avraham was prepared to do as El Shaddai asked. Test of obedience.”
“El Shaddai asked him to sacrifice his own child. No sane god would demand that. He wanted to know if Avraham had learned his lesson from Sodom, from Ishmael, if he was prepared to take a stand for once. Test of morality.”
“I think you’re biased against him.”
“I don’t hear you offering an ardent defense for him.” I heard Zafnat-Panea chuckle over the hum of bees, and we both went quiet, turning our faces toward the sun, lovely and mild, typical for Peret. This time last year, I was strapping the hives onto wagons and driving them back to the shore to be unloaded by apprentices, or mashing up chrysanthemum paste with Kanebti. My job now was lodestar, putting my ability to the test by drawing every bee within city limits to the courtyard. All I had to do, between weeding and watering, was sit and hope that my stolen bees were making surplus honey and that the bees I had yet to steal were multiplying enough to swarm.
Ayelet strode through our little Eden and plopped down between us, picking up some scrolls Zafnat-Panea had finished. She fanned herself with them. “Don’t let me interrupt your little philosophical debate. Looks tiring.”
“Don’t be fooled by the calm before the storm,” I told her. “Come Shemu, you and I will be up to our elbows with harvest work. You’ll find honey in places you didn’t know you had.”
“As though I don’t have enough to do already,” she complained, “between managing His Grace’s household and smuggling your secret messages.”
“Clearly I don’t pay you enough,” said Zafnat-Panea, sticking the pen behind his ear. A drop of ink fell from the tip of his pen and drew a rivulet down his throat that disappeared beneath his breastplate.
Ayelet took the scrolls and rolled them up, plucking the pen from behind his ear and tucking the bundle under her arm to carry it into the shade of his room. “I’d settle for a decent dowry,” she tossed over her shoulder with a flounce of her short wig.
Zafnat-Panea shook his head at me in mock admonishment. “I blame you for this.”
I closed my eyes and smiled, settling back into the dirt with my hands behind my head. “Don’t know what you mean. Speaking of which, any news from Kanebti?”
I heard a rustle of paper as she deposited the scrolls in a drawer. “Sixteen and forty-five.”
“How am I supposed to carry two hives in one night?”
“If you don’t, it’ll swarm by morning, and you lose the extra bees,” she warned me as she joined us again.
I groaned and sat up, foreseeing a long night spent juggling hives and a morning of bruised hips. The hive wall was almost half full now, with some on the precipice of their own swarms, but I was not yet able to pass up any available bees the apiary could offer me at night. I looked over my shoulder at the hives and wondered what Pharaoh would think when he visited this afternoon. My bees would drone over his trade negotiations.
Dark circles under Zafnat-Panea’s eyes were growing pronounced. I refused to ask him for help tonight. I would be up late regardless of the number of hives I had to carry back and forth, and I could afford to relax during daylight hours. He needed sleep. “I’ll manage,” I said, “but I should sneak in a nap before I go.”
“Not yet,” pleaded Ayelet, taking me by the hand and dragging me up. “The pool’s free this afternoon, and Kanebti promised to teach me to swim. If you don’t come with us, who’ll keep me from taking liberties?”
“I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that, shall I?” Zafnat-Panea straightened up and shook clods of dirt out of his sandals. “About the pool, or the…liberties.”
Ayelet giggled at his discomfiture, emboldened by the familiarity these months had bought her. For a full year, the vizier and his scribe had exchanged the barest pleasantries in either language and kept their conversation confined to work, but my friendship had accelerated theirs. She made a comment now in Canaanite that I did not understand, and Zafnat-Panea flushed and pointed to the door.
“Go before I tell Pharaoh to hire new guards for his pool.”
She scurried out, trailing laughter, and I brushed off my knees and stretched. I did not want to be anywhere near this room when Pharaoh arrived; I had done my utmost to avoid crossing him for half a year, and the dream of cool water and time with Kanebti beckoned.
Zafnat-Panea clapped his hands to summon kitchen boys who set a table full of roasted fish and fresh leeks and peas. The line of ink had dried on his neck. “Don’t spend too long swimming,” he advised. “You need to rest before tonight. We don’t want another cracked hive.”
I licked the pad of my thumb and held it out. “May I?” I never touched him now without asking, not even the slightest bit of contact, and apologized whenever our hands or shoulders touched on our night trips to the apiary. It might have been unnecessary, as his frequent eye rolls informed me, but he never asked me to stop.
He lifted his head. “Go ahead.”
I swiped my thumb against the length of his neck to rub out the ink. When he was presentable, I stepped back and headed for the door. “I still think Avraham failed the test.”
“Watch out for crocodiles.”
Pharaoh was too old and too busy to make use of his private pool, a clean offshoot of the Nile that streamed over polished marble, and it was an open secret in the palace that if you beat one of his personal guards at senet, he would keep watch for you while you enjoyed it. Kanebti’s success won not just pool access, but time we could spend together without being caught by the beekeepers, if I did not mind sharing him.
Ayelet flung herself into his arms when we met at the entrance to the royal suite, peppering his bald head with kisses while I found myself preoccupied with inspecting dirt under my fingernails. The guard at the door, disgruntled over his senet loss, cleared his throat. “You have an hour. If you hear my whistle, swim toward the river. If you steal anything, I’ll turn you in.”
The kisses ceased, and Kanebti secured Ayelet at his side with one arm and linked the other through mine. We scurried through Pharaoh’s quarters without sparing a glance at the riches within, in a hurry to scope out the pool. Kanebti swept under Ayelet’s legs once we got close and lifted her up, throwing her flailing body in before she had the chance to scream. But scream she did when she surfaced, her wig bobbing like a lifeless rat in the water while Kanebti and I doubled over laughing.
“Do that again,” she seethed as she picked up the wig and threw it at Kanebti, “and I’ll widen that gap between your teeth.”
“The best way to learn to swim is to conquer your fear, my love,” he said, all smoothness, and he slipped off his kilt and went down the marble steps veined with gold. “Though those wet clothes’ll weigh you down. Let me help you remove them, for safety’s sake…”
She splashed at him as he cornered her against the wall, pressing conciliatory kisses to her cheek. “Fiend,” she pouted as she wound her arms around his neck. “Osnat, didn’t you have any gentlemanly beekeeper friends we could have hired instead?”
I pulled my dress over my head and tiptoed into the water, flinching at the cold. “Yes,” I lied, “but they were already married.” Relishing its fresh smell and color as it rippled over my skin, I made a few tentative strokes and swam toward them. “Two hives, Kanebti?”
“It’s your gift, not mine,” he said. Gingerly this time, he held his arms out so Ayelet could slide into them, carrying her toward the center of the pool so she could lie on her back and practice floating. “The beekeepers are confounded. Not a single swarm all year. Might have to invent a beetle infestation to explain it.”
Ayelet let out a sound like a purr and waved her wrists around in the water. I hung back near the steps and watched, thinking of Zafnat-Panea, wondering how this afternoon might have gone if there had been no visit from Pharaoh, if he could have come with us. Teaching him to swim here would be much safer than the riverbank where we collected reeds. I imagined his curls floating, dark and lovely, like a crown around his head. “They don’t suspect Zafnat-Panea and me?”
“That you’re stealing swarms? Not yet.” Kanebti paused. His next sentence was more bubbles than words. “That you’re lovers? Afraid so.”
Dread dropped into my belly like a stone, but I kept my face relaxed. I would not stoop to his teasing. I had not breathed a word of how I felt to either of them, even if Kanebti knew how to read my face better than I liked. I started to swim laps from corner to corner, mindful of the current that kept the water moving through the pool and out into a tributary. “One look at the two of us together would tell anyone that isn’t true,” I said. “As long as no one knows we’re carrying hives, it doesn’t matter.”
“About that,” replied Kanebti, sounding guilty. “I might have…started a rumor that the hives people have seen you with are…part of a Canaanite fertility ritual.”
I whipped around in the water, waiting for him to take it back, but he held his hands up. “It was Ayelet’s idea!”
She cackled and screeched as I swam in slow, deliberate strokes toward her. “He needed an excuse so the beekeepers didn’t catch on to what you two have been carrying all these nights! It was perfect––nobody would dare ask Zafnat-Panea, and you never show your face in court! It doesn’t affect either of you!”
Humiliation, vivid red and suffocating, gripped me like a seizure. I sank beneath the water, wishing I could dissolve. When I came up for air, I told her in as menacing a voice as I could muster, “I’m not going to drown you in front of Kanebti. But later tonight, I’m going to take a pillow and smother you to death. Then I’ll marry Kanebti and your ka will have to watch us grow old together from beyond the grave.”
They shouted apologies and stifled their laughter as I walked out of the pool. I threw my dress back on, dripping water on Pharaoh’s expensive rugs as I left the royal suite and headed back to Zafnat-Panea’s, where I hoped my room would be empty so I could sleep.
I fumed the entire way, sulking over the loss of a golden afternoon. I did not want to blame Kanebti or Ayelet, whose efforts toward my survival merited the odd joke or two at my expense. But a rumor like that contributed to the prejudice of Zafnat-Panea’s enemies, who already hated that a Canaanite had such influence over Pharaoh. Making him out to be some perverted foreigner with strange sexual appetites would chip away at his support base. I worried what would happen if the gossip reached his ears. He deserved a break from rumors about his love affairs.
To think that I, of all people, would be Zafnat-Panea’s lover! El Shaddai Himself must have been bending the rules of logic in the palace to keep people from making the connection. If the courtiers had bothered to do a little digging, the nature of the hives we carried would have been obvious. Of course, if they had bothered, I would be imprisoned or rotting on a spike by now, so I had to count my blessings. Better to be thought of as Zafnat-Panea’s concubine than a bee thief.
El Shaddai—who, I was discovering, had a wicked sense of humor—decided to test my determination that night. I lurched through the palace halls with two empty hives that scratched the undersides of my arms and snagged on my skirt. Irritation over the rumor stalled my summoning song, which came out harsh and discordant after wasted minutes of trying for a tune that would usher the reluctant queens into new hives. I carried one on my shoulder and one on my hip, and both buzzed with animosity as I struggled to hold them. I kept my pace to a waddle. My face burned when I walked by late-night passersby, who must have thought me insane for trying whatever ritual Kanebti had contrived by myself. Relief came only when I was beneath the lintel of Zafnat-Panea’s wing and away from their scrutiny.
I did not want to interrupt his sleep. I left one hive out in the hall so I could be swifter and quieter, but when I passed through his room, his bed, with clean sheets and free of reeds, was empty. Hoping that wherever he slept, his rest went undisturbed, I abandoned any attempt at keeping silent and grunted as I heaved one hive into place and went to fetch the other.
I thought of El Shaddai on nights like this when the moon was full and high and when, despite my progress, I seemed so far from my goal. I needed to believe that the central god was still in control, that He bided his time and ordered things according to a plan I could not fathom and Zafnat-Panea had glimpses of. Otherwise, I would not win. Whether I accepted Him as my own was another matter. El Shaddai and I had been keeping what you might call a flirtatious distance. I could not love Him yet and did not dare to trust Him, but through my continued lessons I signaled belief.
Something stirred behind me. I turned over my shoulder and froze on the spot when I saw him, scarcely believing my own eyes. On the stones he had insisted I leave untouched in the garden, Zafnat-Panea was fast asleep.
I stared up into the sky with a fury that, I prayed, reached heaven. Not funny.
Each step was deafening, the crunch of dirt underfoot louder than a war horn. I leaped more than walked out of the garden. But just as I came close, a broken reed on the ground snapped under my foot, and Zafnat-Panea woke with a startled intake of breath, and our eyes met.
Kanebti’s old fear that the sight of Ra in the Djeser-Djeseru would obliterate me was laughable now. The sight of Zafnat-Panea, sleep-tousled with shadows pooling in his collarbones and in the folds of the blanket on his thighs, was more than enough to smite me. A god carved from moonlight-blue sapphire, more deserving of worship than any temple statue. My entire body screamed for me to get on my knees at once and make obeisance.
I backed away right as he leaned forward, blinking up at me, and before he could say a word, I ran. I did not stop until I was back in my quarters with the sheet thrown over my head, heart pounding and tears threatening to overflow.
Someone roused. “Who’s up?”
I said nothing, shuddering as my heartbeat hammered in my skull, in my trembling arms, between my legs, and willed my traitorous blood to slow down as the girl went back to bed. I did not sleep, terrified of what I would dream. I decided to feign illness the next morning, or maybe the next six months, and did not remove the sheet from my head when all the girls rose and donned their dresses.
“Time to wake up,” Ayelet said, nudging me with her foot, but I did not acknowledge her. She muttered under her breath, thinking I was angry over yesterday’s teasing, and left me alone. Everyone left, and though my stomach growled, I ignored it. No breakfast, no leaving this room, no uncovering myself. Possibly I would starve to death from sheer embarrassment.
Ayelet returned in the afternoon, after a few hours during which I lapsed in and out of sleep. “He wants to see you.”
I cringed under the blanket. “Tell him I died.”
“Osnat, no one cares about Kanebti’s silly rumor!” she said, exasperated. Yanking the sheet away, she pulled me up and shoved a clean dress on me. “Least of all Zafnat-Panea. If it keeps you alive, you should be grateful.”
Funny that walking to his chamber felt just like my walk to my execution. “I’m really not feeling well,” I protested, holding onto the lifeline of her arm. “Maybe it’s the plague. Probably unwise to expose Zafnat-Panea—I mean—” I held back a hysterical giggle at the operative word, but she shoved me into the room and left us.
Zafnat-Panea was armored once again, arrayed in cloth of silver and bedecked with carnelian on his breastplate, cuffs, and wig—courtly and remote. Nothing about his expression seemed to give away what had passed between us last night. I ventured to hope he had forgotten it. “You’re not feeling well?”
“I—” My eyes darted over to the hive wall, to the stones where I had found him, and my hands started to wring. “Yes. I mean, no.”
“Long night?” he asked. “Two hives in one trip, I mean. I’m sure they were a handful.”
Was he joking? I could not detect any mirth in him. “Yes.”
“If you’re not up to a lesson today—”
“I’m fine,” I said, a little too loud, “but let’s stay in here. All your bright colors will attract bees.” And to sit anywhere near those stones today would destroy my concentration.
He frowned. “I’m not needed in the council until later, I could take these off—”
“No!” I winced at the desperation in my voice and tried to bring it back down to an appropriate volume. The calm smile I strived for came out toothy, but I kept it plastered on my face. “I could use some shade, anyway.” I took a seat on the couch and wrapped myself around a cushion, and he sat down across from me, pouring a goblet of wine to the brim and pushing it across the table to me.
I downed it in three gulps. “We were discussing Avraham’s test.”
“Disagreeing, more like. But enough about Avraham. After El Shaddai permitted Yitzchak to live and accepted a ram in his stead, Avraham’s part in the story was over. Poor Sarah died of shock when she heard what he’d attempted, and Avraham was an old man, barely able to leave his tent. It was time for Yitzchak to take up his part of the family’s covenant with El Shaddai.”
Talking about El Shaddai recentered me. I poured another glass for myself.
“I was sent to live with Yitzchak when I was a child, at the terebinth grove of Mamre. He was more ghost than man. His servants told me he had been that way all his life, since he was a boy: blind, flighty, given to nervous spasms. In his mind, he never left Mount Moriah.”
I thought of a little Canaanite boy, with something of Zafnat-Panea in his face, perhaps a bit of Ayelet, too, blinded by the flash of a blade his father had suspended over him that he could not escape, bound hand and foot to an altar. “I take it he wasn’t too enthusiastic at the prospect of partnership with the god who demanded his life.”
“Oh, there was never closeness between them. Yitzchak accepted El Shaddai’s blessing but took nothing more, and He understood. But El Shaddai promised him protection. So He chose a bride for him.”
I perked up a bit, intrigued that El Shaddai would choose a woman. Someone like me had entered the story. “El Shaddai’s in the matchmaking business?”
“Perhaps He thought Yitzchak was owed,” said Zafnat-Panea. “Avraham sent his slave to fetch a wife for Yitzchak, and El Shaddai directed him to Rivka, my grandmother, an imperious woman. She was chief in all but name at Mamre and had no patience for me, but she doted on Yitzchak. To be in the same tent with them was to feel completely at home.”
My anxiety receded as his words brought back pleasant memories of our home in Memphis, of Baba and Amma in the garden, trading morsels at breakfast, walking through the market hands clasped. “It was like that with my parents, too. Baba looked at Amma like the world was born with her,” I confessed as I drank. “Which is saying something, since he’s a high priest, so he has strong opinions about how the world was born. Did El Shaddai ever arrange a match for you?”
“He knows better.” Zafnat-Panea helped himself to a glass, and we raised our cups to each other. “Yitzchak needed direction. Rivka could offer him that, and she wasn’t afraid of El Shaddai, so she became His confidante. When she fell pregnant with twins, they discussed the destinies of her sons together as equals. Nations would issue from both boys—her favorite, my father Yaakov, and Yitzchak’s favorite, Esav.”
“Ayelet’s kinsman,” I said. “She told me Esav wasn’t the favored branch of the family. Did he do something wrong?”
“Not to my memory, besides marrying some girls Rivka hated. El Shaddai trusted Rivka to choose which son would carry the next generation of the covenant. It was the one thing she and Yitzchak didn’t agree on.” He laughed and shook his head. “I heard it said that Yitzchak preferred Esav because he was all the things Yitzchak never grew up to be: strong, manly, a hunter. And Rivka loved Yaakov because he was all the things she didn’t have time to be while acting as chief: introverted, mild, skilled at the domestic arts. But I remember how much Rivka loved her work. She didn’t miss weaving and cooking for a minute. And I would never describe my father as mild.”
“She chose your father to inherit the covenant?”
“To steal it, in truth.” The way his eyes crinkled as he spoke betrayed pride in his father. “Though I doubt you can call it stealing when Esav gave up his claim on clan leadership for a bowl of soup. Not the brightest star in the sky, my uncle. Still, Yitzchak was firm on this issue alone. Esav would be the next chief and El Shaddai’s chosen one. Rivka wouldn’t hear of it, so she disguised my father as Esav while his brother went hunting. Yitzchak couldn’t see to tell the difference, so he bestowed his blessing on Yaakov.”
I frowned and took another steadying sip, but with no food in my belly, the wine made my head spin. Zafnat-Panea noticed and leaned back, crossing his arms. “Go on, say it. You’re disappointed. Again.” Shaking his head, he laughed to himself, “I don’t know why we persist in these lessons when each one makes you like El Shaddai less and less.”
“It just seems wrong to trick an old man like that,” I argued. “If El Shaddai trusted Rivka to choose, why the subterfuge? One god playing us like senet sticks isn’t too different from a group of gods doing the same, and I don’t know that I care to be chosen by a god of riddling visions, tests, and lies.”
“There we agree,” he said, “but chosen we were. Would you step back from your vocation now?”
“At least He sends you dreams,” I shot back. “He’s never deigned to visit one on me. Maybe I would understand Him better if He did.”
“You are the last person I would wish His dreams on,” he said. “You couldn’t handle them. I hardly manage as it is.”
“Is that why you sleep outside?” The words ran away from my tongue, set loose by the wine, and I clapped my hands to my mouth, too late to hold them back. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You don’t have to—please, please forget I said anything.”
I expected him to be hurt, mortified, defensive. The last thing I expected was for him to grin from ear to ear and lift his cup in victory. “So that wasn’t a dream. I thought not.”
“You remember?!” I buried my face in my arms on the table. “But you—you didn’t say anything—”
“I wasn’t sure if it actually happened until you brought it up,” he said. “It was late, as I recall. I forgot you’d be out late with both hives. I certainly didn’t intend that you should find me!”
“So this has happened before.” I peeked through the cage of my fingers. “You…you sleep outside often?”
“Every night. Since I was freed, at least.” He sighed and leaned on the table, so close that we were almost nose to nose. “I…tried the bed, those first few nights, but…there’s no window in the dungeon, no sky, just cold walls and stone floors and…” He shivered and swallowed hard. “I can’t sleep if I feel enclosed like that. Still can’t sleep well most nights, if I’m honest, because of the dreams. At least if I’m outside, when I wake up, the sky reminds me I’m not back underground.”
Without thinking, I held up my hand, fingers outstretched, and he took it. Our fingers interlaced, and I swore, “I won’t tell anyone.”
“That’s why I told you.”
I should have let go. It was the friendly thing to do, and I tried to justify it to myself as such. I was offering support, fulfilling the promise of the night we made an oath to be friends. But there was no justification for how whole I felt with his hand in mine, like Baba and Amma in the market, like Yitzchak and Rivka beneath their tent, and there was no remedy, either. I was too far gone. I did not loosen my grip.
Neither did he.
We turned our heads and watched bees make their rounds through the plots. He spoke first. “I thought it might have been a dream—not an El Shaddai dream, just a regular one. You looked so frightened!”
“Well, it was…” I struggled to find a word that would not give me away. “Shocking. Your wardrobe maids have never caught you?”
“I’m an early riser by nature. I wait in bed for them to come in to dress me. No one knows but you,” he said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I could not bear to look at him, afraid of what I would see there, or what he might see in me. Something had broken in me overnight. My resolve had not wavered; I would ask nothing of him. But my ability to hide was obliterated. It had never been strong to begin with. Instead, I looked at our hands, sand-brown and umber, and said, “I was thinking of poor Yitzchak. You said he adored Rivka. It must have killed him to learn she’d betrayed his trust.”
“He forgave her eventually,” he said. “Maybe it took a few years, but all was mended when I came to live with them in Mamre. They fell back in love with each other in time.”
“I wouldn’t do something like that.” My voice was soft but adamant, a touch more solemn than the conversation dictated. I needed him to understand, whatever he thought of me, of this, of us. “Never. If I loved someone like that, if El Shaddai matched us together, I could be trusted.”
I had to let go. There was work to be done, weeding to do in the garden, bees to attract, oil traps to set. I needed to check the new hives to see how they were adjusting to their new home. Zafnat-Panea had a council meeting later. My stomach growled. With a sigh, I tried to pull away, but he caught my hand tight, brushing the hills and valleys of my knuckles with his thumb.
“Then I count myself fortunate,” he said, “that you were born in my time, not in Yitzchak’s.”
Chapter 14
Summary:
Last time: going for a swim
This time: (im)patience
Chapter Text
Part Three: Wrestlers
The final weeks of Peret made me feel like the well-beloved mistress of a rich courtier, prompted to pick a love token from the wares of the palace jeweler while she lounged by his side, trailing her fingers over gold filigree. There were, of course, two key differences between such a woman and me. First, it was the palace potter Zafnat-Panea sent for, and my fingers flicked through pages of jar designs Master Ounnefer would have drooled over rather than jewelry. Second, even as Zafnat-Panea sat next to me, my hand tucked into the crook of his elbow or his hand on the small of my back as we debated the benefits of narrow- versus wide-brimmed jars, we had not touched.
No one believed it. Kanebti’s rumor had saved my life and done its damage. When I went to the potter’s workshop to load my new jars onto carts and wheel them back to the suite, I endured knowing chuckles from kitchen maids and laundry girls, even the occasional lewd suggestion from a seasoned courtesan I crossed paths with. Once, I ran into Zuleika. One look told me she had heard the rumor too. We shuffled around each other without a word.
“There are still a few empty hives left,” Kanebti said, finding me on his way out from an afternoon tryst. “Maybe you two can get creative and make good on the gossip. If there isn’t a Canaanite fertility ritual yet, I bet you could invent one.”
“How can you think such things of us,” I asked, heaving my jars from the cart into orderly rows on the floor, “and plan on asking him for permission to marry Ayelet with a straight face?”
“Just trying to help, little sister. Seems like you could use a little release.”
Those remaining empty hives were the bane of my existence. El Shaddai, as it turned out, did not just have a sense of humor. He was downright persistent. No matter how quiet I was when I returned from stealing swarms, no matter how slowly I walked or how much distance I kept between those rocks and my footsteps, Zafnat-Panea always woke up. Sometimes it was a nightmare, something that shook him awake with mute thrashing that broke my heart to watch. Sometimes he was already awake when I arrived, propped up on his elbows, watching me as I ignored him and deposited the new hive. Each time, though I dreaded and relished it in equal measure, his eyes would catch mine as I walked past him and never failed to pin me in place. We sized each other up from afar, measuring without comment the rise and fall of our chests with increasing urgency, and I wondered if he could see the feverish patterns I had traced on my skin the night before.
Always, I departed before a word could be spoken. I sent myself to bed like a punishment and fell asleep trying to soothe my racing pulse with my fingertips, distracting myself with stories of El Shaddai. But thoughts of his god always led back to him, or to Rivka. For months, I thought I knew why I was chosen. Now I was not so sure. El Shaddai had chosen a bride for His favored one before. Had He done so again?
Shemu provided a reprieve from this exquisite torture. The hives were filled, my nighttime thefts were over, and what Zafnat-Panea did before dawn became a mystery. I had my suspicions, which grew into full-fledged concerns when I noticed that though he spent most days at the hive wall with me, the workload on his desk never seemed to get any larger, and the dark circles under his eyes grew deeper and his temper shorter.
Dozens of clay jars littered every room that led to Zafnat-Panea’s presence chamber. With four months left until Pharaoh’s judgment, I needed haste, but it took twice as long, avoiding the jars, to walk from my quarters to his chamber. I thought the delay had caused me to miss a happy announcement when I entered the chamber to find Zafnat-Panea shaking hands with Kanebti as Ayelet looked on from her spot next to the desk. I broke into a grin. “Finally worked up the courage, have you?” I asked.
Kanebti’s mouth pressed into a tight line. He made a stiff bow to Zafnat-Panea and left without acknowledging me. Ayelet set aside her pens and helped Zafnat-Panea unfasten his breastplate while he took off his headdress and rings. “No,” Zafnat-Panea said, “he hasn’t.”
“But then—” My gaze flitted back and forth between Ayelet and Kanebti, fearing the worst. “He hasn’t—?”
“His Grace is sending him on an errand,” Ayelet informed me, marching past me to grab an empty jar from the other room, her sandals slapping a warning that I should not bother her.
I lifted an inquiring hand before Zafnat-Panea, who nodded and let me uncuff his bracelets. The pile of scrolls I spotted on his desk at suppertime was gone, dispatched or filed away overnight. “Are she and Kanebti—?”
“They’re fine,” he assured me. “She’s just unhappy with me.”
Ayelet stomped back into the room with such force that I feared she would break the jar as she trooped into the garden and slammed it down next to the hive wall. “What kind of errand?” I asked.
Zafnat-Panea managed a blithe smile. “Better you don’t know. Now, I believe we’ve reached my father’s story…”
It was nothing like the years I spent on the shore. The garden was in utter disrepair, strewn with boiled cloths and shards of half-buried clay from mishandled jars. We navigated around cauldrons on cold coals with grass in our hands that burned too fast, singed our hands, and blew sparks into our eyes as we lifted the lids off and smoked the bees. Honey harvesting had never been more miserable. But Zafnat-Panea tried engaging Ayelet in the storytelling of their shared kinsmen, pausing to cough on the streams of smoke. “How did Esav take the loss of his blessing, Ayelet?”
“They say Esav spent every morning outside Yitzchak’s tent, sharpening his spear and waiting to hear his father’s last breath so he could kill Yaakov,” said Ayelet, sounding like she would have liked her own sharp spear right about then. “But the old man went on living for a few decades after that. Esav had to make his peace and marry to please his parents. My father was born of his third wife, an Ishmaelite girl. But Yaakov was gone long before the wedding.”
I peeled the lids off, thrust my arm inside the hives, and felt for capped hives. “He fled?”
“Rivka insisted,” Zafnat-Panea told me. “She knew Esav wanted vengeance, so she sent Yaakov to live with her brother in Haran. He ran with nothing but his birthright and blessing to protect him on the journey, but it didn’t matter. El Shaddai had already accepted Rivka’s choice and Yitzchak’s conferral of the blessing. He sent Yaakov a vision of a ladder teeming with angels, guaranteeing Him the same promises He’d made to Yitzchak and Avraham: protection, land, and descendants. Yaakov took the deal far better than Yitzchak and swore fealty. The partnership was sealed.”
I winced at each sting it cost to procure a chunk of stuck honeycomb, inspected it, and threw it into a wheelbarrow. All three of us were prone to more stings in a day than I suffered in a year in On, even forgoing oils and cosmetics.
Most colonies were too young, making foundations for their brood combs and enough honey to sustain the hive. To check them at all felt cruel, but we checked anyway to little avail. Though the bees had never before consumed so much pollen, swarmed so quickly, or produced more honey, it was still too soon. Our harvest turned out a half-wheelbarrow’s worth. Each honeycomb that came out perfect, capped on both sides and oozing gold, felt inadequate against the unknown tally of the apiary.
Ayelet handed over her jar to toss the combs into and sequestered herself in a far corner of the courtyard to water and weed daisies in grumpy silence. I was tempted to ask what Zafnat-Panea had done to offend her, but he shook his head. “Leave it be,” he advised.
We scraped the caps off the combs and dropped them into the jar to separate in the sun, then headed back inside. In the hall, we grabbed two jars that had finished separating and carried them out, careful not to spill a drop. “You’ll like my father,” he grunted as he lugged his. “He’s a fighter. Clever, uncompromising, willing to haggle El Shaddai. But El Shaddai had learned, perhaps, not to ask for loyalty before providing His end of the bargain, like He had with Avraham. As soon as El Shaddai ensured Yaakov’s safe arrival in Haran, He set about making him the father of many sons.”
“Which is where you come in,” I concluded, setting my jar down.
“Not for a while.” Zafnat-Panea placed his jar next to mine and crouched down on the ashy ground, stoking a fire beneath the cauldron while I grabbed a cloth. “The first woman my father met in Haran was my mother, Rachel.”
Despite my disappointment with the yield so far and with how joyless this enterprise was, the mention of his mother cheered me. We had reached the part of the story where I could learn where Zafnat-Panea had come from, how he had grown into the man I knew. I stood by him while he fed the fire, waiting for the water to boil. “Tell me about her,” I said. “Do you look anything like her?”
He laughed and wiped soot from his hands. “She used to call me her little twin. ‘You will be so beautiful,’ she told me.” His face darkened, and he kicked a twig into the flames. “She made it sound like bad news.”
I could not bear to see him discouraged. Reaching into the full jar, I plucked a piece of honeycomb the size of my fingertip and held it out to him. “Taste this.”
Zafnat-Panea hesitated. “We can’t waste any.”
“Who’s the honey expert, you or me?” I joked. “Harvests are supposed to be fun. I won’t let you be deprived of the best part.”
Nothing prepared me, not even the second I had to take in how his expression went from tentative to mischievous, for when he leaned forward and took my finger into his mouth, sucking the honeycomb off while looking me right in the eye. My heart thundered in my chest, and I forgot all the stings and all my fears as I felt his tongue slide down my knuckle until his mouth came free with a slick pop. He grinned to see me so stunned. “Delicious. Ayelet, do you want a taste?”
“Not if I have to eat it the way you do,” she called out over her shoulder.
My finger hovered in the air where he left it. I could not move anything below my shoulder and was half-convinced I never would again as he continued, unruffled. “My father fell in love with my mother the moment he met her. Love made him stupid, full of swagger. Rachel was a shepherd girl, and he tried to impress her by rolling the stone off the well to water her sheep all by himself. She told me he looked like a buffoon. When that failed to dazzle her, he kissed her. She liked that even less.” He began to scoop separated combs from the top of the jar and put them in the straining cloth. “They both knew, of course. Once they saw each other, there was never anyone else. But Rachel didn’t make it easy. It was her suggestion to her father, Lavan, that Yaakov be made to work seven years to obtain her hand in marriage, lacking a bride-price.”
“Seven years?” It seemed a steep price, even for a beautiful woman. But glancing at Zafnat-Panea out of the corner of my eye, my hand still tingling where his mouth had touched it, I knew I could be convinced to pay a similar one. “No other woman caught his eye that entire time?”
He grimaced. “Yes and no. Yaakov never argued the terms. Seven years gave him enough time to prove to Rachel that what they felt when they first met was real. They both had a talent for animal husbandry, so they spent days in the fields together, swapping tricks, sharing stories, sneaking kisses. But there were…other women.”
Ayelet scoffed, understanding a joke I did not yet comprehend. I wrapped the combs and tied them up at the top, holding them over the jar, and Zafnat-Panea twisted the cloth taut until excess honey began to drip through. “Gossip has always surrounded my father and his four wives—”
“Four wives?!”
“—but Yaakov married at my mother’s behest.” When I cast a doubtful look over the cloth, he held up a sticky hand. “On my honor! It was her idea. Her older sister, my aunt Leah, was born with feeble eyes. She could not go out in the sun, or they would burn. Her father had wanted to drown her as a child; she was a burdensome mouth to feed, and he hoped for sons that never came. The local men would never accept her as a wife if she could not fetch water or tend animals. Her entire life was spent in tents. Rachel feared what would become of Leah once she married and left Haran.”
He squeezed the cloth until it had no more honey to give. The empty combs were submerged in the simmering water, and we started work on the next jar. “They had two handmaidens that had been with the family since Rachel and Leah were children: my aunts, Zilpah and Bilhah. When Rachel and Yaakov were betrothed, Bilhah was the dowry. She would have traveled with them and left Zilpah behind. Rachel hated to separate them. She—” He went quiet. “She knew what they meant to each other.”
I laughed at his reticence. “Silly Canaanite farm boy. Don’t you know that such romances are common in Egypt?”
“Not as common in Haran,” he said. “Lavan didn’t know. Bilhah was Rachel’s and Zilpah was his, as far as he was concerned. The girls devised a ruse. When seven years were up, Yaakov wed Leah, veiled and disguised as Rachel.”
“How could that possibly have worked?” I asked, tying the knot on the next cloth. “Yaakov waited to wed Rachel for seven years. Their father had known them all their lives. Someone must have figured it out.”
“Zilpah kept the wedding feast supplied with wine,” he countered. “Bilhah guided Leah’s steps from the bridal tent to Yaakov’s. Rachel taught her everything she needed to say to pass until morning.” As he strained this round of honeycomb, he reflected on the memory. “My father told me, in private, that he knew. But he trusted her enough to know she had a reason. He threw a tantrum, according to plan, and was able to obtain Leah and Zilpah as brides. The family was complete, safe. Then they got to work on making sons.”
Zafnat-Panea grew cold and gruff as he continued, squeezing the cloth as though he could throttle it. “Leah’s whole world before her marriage had been life inside the tents. But she proved adept at bearing sons. They became her world instead. In short order, she gave Yaakov four: Reuven, Shimon, Levi, and Yehuda. Zilpah and Bilhah were loath to do their duty by Yaakov, but they wanted to secure their futures as part of Yaakov’s family, not Lavan’s. They gave him Dan, Naftali, Gad, and Asher.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “How did you keep everyone’s names straight?”
But Zafnat-Panea was too caught up to answer me. The last honey drops made it into the jar, and then he threw the cloth into the cauldron, sending a spray of boiling water into the air. “For all the work that Rachel had done to keep her family together, she could not contribute to it. Yaakov didn’t mind. He had tenderness for Leah for giving him so many sons, he never mistreated the handmaidens, but it was Rachel he prized, Rachel he worshipped. It killed her not to give him children. Leah gave him three more—Yissachar, Zevulun, and my only sister, Dinah—before Rachel conceived. And then—”
“I think that’s enough for today,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with some authority. His eyes were bloodshot, and a vein in his neck twitched. “It’ll take enough time for me to commit the names to memory, anyway.”
“Trust me,” he said, sounding more hostile than I had ever heard him before, “they’re not worth remembering.”
I chalked it up to lack of sleep. Shemu was more than honey harvest season; reports from all over the empire reached his desk every day, wheat yields from every corner of Egypt that had to be divided and stored safely for the next five years. We carried the jars inside to the opposite wall, where our meager store of honey awaited Pharaoh’s judgment. “You haven’t been sleeping,” I said, softer now. “Take the rest of the day off and I’ll finish boiling down the wax. Or at least spend the day doing your job, so you can go to bed at a reasonable hour.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said wearily.
“Fine,” I said. If he was determined to be stubborn, I could follow suit. “Tell me what errand you sent Kanebti on.”
Sliding down the wall, he rested his head against his knees. “I told you it was better that you didn’t know.”
“Ayelet knows,” I said, my hands on my hips. “Kanebti knows, you know, and somehow I don’t.”
Zafnat-Panea looked up at me and replied, “I asked Kanebti to give me reports of the apiary’s honey harvest.”
At once, I regretted asking. I covered my hands with my ears. “Never mind, I don’t want to know—”
"The palace bees didn’t stop visiting the garden just because you filled the hive wall. They’re compelled by your gift, overproducing honey in the apiary, too. It’s the best harvest the beekeepers have seen in years.” Zafnat-Panea hung his head, his eyes glassy and hopeless. “If we don’t put a stop to it, you’ll lose. Kanebti and I agreed that cannot happen. He promised me he would see to it.”
I remembered what Kanebti had hinted at in the pool. Might have to invent a beetle infestation to explain it. Imagining a plague let loose on the apiary, locusts and mites destroying the hives from the inside out, I shivered at the thought of all the innocent bees dying on my account. “You have to stop him.”
“Osnat,” he groaned, “I know how you feel about them, but they’re just bugs—”
“It’s not just about the bees!” I snapped. Though the thought of killing hundreds of thousands of bees was untenable, Zafnat-Panea had failed to see the greater risks. “If Kanebti’s discovered poisoning the hives, he’ll be dismissed and disgraced. Worse yet, if Pharaoh finds out he did so on your orders, he could be arrested for helping me.” Suddenly, Ayelet’s anger made sense to me. She knew the danger Kanebti had just accepted on my behalf.
Without another word, I turned and ran back to the courtyard. “Ayelet!” I shouted to her. “Go to Kanebti now and tell him the plan’s off!”
“If Ayelet wants to keep her position and her favor,” Zafnat-Panea called out, running behind me, “she will do no such thing.”
He was seething next to me, close to shaking with it, and I had no doubt he would make good on that threat. But Ayelet looked at me. Her love for Kanebti—a love I shared—was a more powerful motivator by far. “Go,” I implored her, and she took off.
Zafnat-Panea made no move to stop her, fuming as he surrendered. “You’re willing to throw your life away for some insects—”
“If it were just bees you’ve endangered, I’d have no choice but to accept it.” My response came sure and calm, though the shadow of the spike loomed larger than it had in months. The future I had spent so much energy ignoring barreled toward me. I never stood a chance at outrunning it. “Zafnat-Panea, think. Infestations don’t happen overnight, and Pharaoh’s beekeepers are Egypt’s best. Whatever you told Kanebti to do—beetles, mites, mold—they would’ve spotted signs of it months ago. They’ll know it was sabotage and trace it back to us. Who else would have a reason to spoil their honey?” I held my ground as he paced, frantic and despairing, through the garden. “It’s more than bees you’re risking. Kanebti will be caught, arrested, carted off to serve a labor sentence far from Ayelet and his family. We might never see him again.”
“Kanebti knew the risks when he agreed to help you.”
“Ayelet didn’t,” I pointed out. “Will you break her heart over this?” The cool glare he shot at me over his shoulder told me he was all too willing. “If you won’t think of them, think of yourself. If Pharaoh learns how you’ve tried to undermine my competition, he won’t trust you anymore. Where will that leave you?”
“He stands to lose more than I do if he sends me away,” he said.
“But what will Egypt lose if he dismisses you?” I asked. “You told me there’s no one in the empire who can do what you do, that you consider yourself responsible for all three million lives. You have to think of them, not me.”
Across the courtyard, I could hear the cauldron bubbling and the bees hard at work. Zafnat-Panea stopped and panted as though his pacing had winded him, or perhaps the truth had done that for him. “Maybe you need to focus on your work and leave me to mine,” I said. “It’ll make for an easier transition if…when…”
Zafnat-Panea walked back to me and said, “That won’t happen.”
“I can do this alone,” I insisted. “Pharaoh will notice if you start to slip. Just for a few weeks—”
“I meant there is no ‘if,’ no ‘when.’ You,” he said, his hands coming down on my shoulders and gripping them tight, “will not lose. I will help you do it.”
His palms were so warm against my skin, just the slightest bit sticky where traces of honey remained. I shut my eyes tight and reduced my voice to a whisper. “Please. You’ll make yourself ill staying up like this.”
“I’d rather lose my health for a few more months than lose you for—” My eyes flew open when his forehead pressed against mine. We were sharing the same air.
My skin was alive under his hands, begging for his touch, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and crush him to me, this infuriating, glorious man whom El Shaddai had set on my path. I kept myself from closing the gap between us by saying, “I won’t blame you if I die. No one could have done more to help me.”
“Osnat—”
“You have the rest of Egypt to worry about. You don’t need to worry about me.”
He shook his head against mine, and when he whispered, “Foolish girl,” it was the most intimate of endearments. His lips were so close, and I felt them ghost over mine like the brush of a butterfly’s wing when Ayelet came running back into the courtyard.
“I found him!” she said, breathless with victory. “I stopped him before—oh!”
We staggered apart, like drowning men coming up for air, and Ayelet froze. “I—I’m sorry, I—”
“No,” I croaked, “I’m sorry.” Zafnat-Panea’s back was turned, his hands covering his mouth, and he made no explanation for what she had stumbled upon. Within a few seconds of silence, I found my courage and spoke up. “Ayelet, you’ve done so much for me and I haven’t offered so much as a thank you. I owe you and Kanebti a debt I can never repay, but if I live to see next year, I will try to find a way.”
“Not ‘if’—” he ground out.
“Hush,” I said simply. “It’s in El Shaddai’s hands now. I won’t spend these last few weeks that are guaranteed to me making misery out of my gift, and I won’t put anyone else in danger for the crime that landed me here.” The cauldron boiled away, but there was nothing left to harvest or separate. I would not let the day go to waste. “We’ll try for another harvest tomorrow. Take the rest of the day off.”
Ayelet fidgeted, belatedly uneasy over her disobedience against Zafnat-Panea. “I think he’s the one who decides that.”
I tried for my best pout, surprised at how fast it worked. Zafnat-Panea waved his hand. “Fine, fine. Granted.”
Ayelet backed out of our midst slowly, waiting for him to change his mind or perhaps waiting to see if we would embrace again, and I sighed once she was out of sight. Pointing to the pillows on his couch, I instructed him, “Bring me one.”
I trudged over to the cauldron and pushed the cloths around with a wooden paddle, finding a spot far enough from the flames that I could sit comfortably and stir. When he brought the pillow, I placed it in my lap and patted it. “I’ll wake you if anyone comes,” I promised, “but you’re going to get some sleep. If I have to wrestle you down myself, I will.”
Until a moment ago, I would never have suggested such close proximity. Confidence had taken root, planted firmly next to desire. I could not understand how, could scarcely believe it possible, but I knew I was no longer alone in my yearning. He made no objection and sprawled out in my lap, his face tipped toward the sun, his curls splayed on the embroidery. I hesitated, then slid my fingers into them so I wore them like rings.
He sighed and leaned into my touch. “Wrestle me, you say?” he asked. “That I’d like to see.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
That he felt safe enough to lie here with me was a gift that burned bright in me, incinerating months of doubts. “Yaakov wrestled with El Shaddai once,” he told me.
“Your father wrestled the one and only god?”
“And won.” Already Zafnat-Panea was fading fast. “It can be done, you know. You can fight Him, stop Him, even beat Him. I think He respected Yaakov all the more for it. He blessed him with a new name as a reward.” He nestled against my belly as his breathing slowed. “You would’ve gotten along with my parents.”
I pushed the paddle with my left hand and massaged comforting circles into his scalp with my right. “I’d certainly have questions for your father.”
“My mother always did,” he said. “Very no-nonsense, the pair of you.”
“Fanciful when it came to names, though,” I joked. “‘Zafnat-Panea.’ I can’t imagine what she was thinking.”
His words slurred as he gave in to sleep. “’S not my real name, Osnat.”
I sat there, dumbfounded and a little ashamed, as his breath went shallow and hot against the fabric of my dress, because it had taken me two seasons to realize Zafnat-Panea was not born with an Egyptian name. Another name existed, selected by a mother who had surely whispered it to the night sky in the hopes that El Shaddai would take the name and make it real, giving her the son she longed for.
I did not try to cajole it out of him, though half-asleep, he might have given it to me. The name was safe in his head. It did not matter if the apiary was producing enough honey to rival the Nile or that in a few short months, my efforts might come to naught and leave me lifeless on the end of a spike. This afternoon, Zafnat-Panea rested on my lap with my fingers threaded through his hair, trusting that I would keep him safe, and that meant more to me than any fear of the future.
Though I was nowhere close to giving up, whether I lived beyond the next four months was ultimately up to El Shaddai. I wondered what would happen between this god and me if He secured my victory. Would I have any choice but to accept Him, love Him, put complete faith in His plan?
If Yaakov fought El Shaddai and won, then it could be done. It felt like I had done my fair share of wrestling with El Shaddai in my mind, demanding answers for His past, begging to know what He wanted from me. I had spent too long trying to discover Him to think I stood a chance of abandoning Him once these lessons were finished and my fate sealed. An altercation loomed in my future. What new name might I take from it?
Chapter 15
Summary:
Last time: (im)patience
This time: release
Notes:
CW: Explicit sexual content, anxiety attack
TW: discussions of SA, unconsensual sex, and suicidal thoughts--nothing graphic
Chapter Text
I was a mindless creature, a jackal baying at the moon. My skin was still alive where he had touched me, obliterating all reason and replacing it with need so acute it was almost pain. I had submitted to the idea that I would love him in silence, ignored all evidence to the contrary, and now I found myself contending with the chance that somehow, Zafnat-Panea wanted me, too.
The girls had grown accustomed to my restlessness after dark, and Ayelet spent most nights in Kanebti’s quarters, allowing me twice the space to toss and turn, burying what I felt by night so it never interfered with my days. Tonight, however, I was still. Tonight, I knew the pretense was finished. Through the window, the sky was lapis-blue with faint pinpricks of stars, clearer than usual for Memphis. My last coherent thought was that after years of being commanded, Zafnat-Panea might not know how to ask.
I picked up my blanket as I left the room, throwing it over my shoulders like I had the first time he summoned me. I could fool myself into thinking, perhaps, that this was just a walk. The jars that overwhelmed the halls were deterrent enough. In their tight formations which would have cascaded into ruin with one misplaced step, they kept me from acting rashly and sprinting into his room. But the lack of speed served to encourage me, strengthening my determination, and I slipped through them, an aching ghost.
He was awake when I stepped through the door. No tremors from lingering nightmares or messages from our shared god, just him, his blanket draped over his legs, fixing me with a green-silver stare. My blanket dragged behind me like a queen’s garment until my feet reached the edge where tile met stone, and then I let it drop. It pooled around my ankles, and I was bare before him, every crease, curve, scar, and fold, all on offer, all his, if he wanted it.
Zafnat-Panea took a single, shuddering breath as his eyes mapped out my body. He held out his hand. “Osnat,” he groaned, “please.”
I fell to my knees. He cradled my face in his hands, pulling me close, drawing me into the space between his legs, but still we did not kiss, still I kept my arms at my sides, scrambling for purchase on the stones so I did not pitch forward. “I want to touch you,” I whispered,“but I don’t want to hurt you.”
His muscles were taut as a bowstring, but he laughed on an unsteady exhale. “I think it might hurt more if you don’t,” he said, and then his lips were on mine, fever-hot and unrelenting. I carded through his curls, marveling at how he moaned into my mouth when I grabbed two fistfuls and tipped myself into his lap. Warm hands spread across the expanse of my back, pulling me into his chest, and I could feel every hard line of him, his sternum against my breasts, the fluttering muscles of his abdomen as I wrapped my legs around his waist. He deepened the kiss, gripping me so tight I was sure I would bruise, and the slow burn of desire in my belly was chased out by a flash burn across my skin that his lips left in their wake, latching hungrily to the pulse point under my jaw.
I had always been quiet—though this year I had asked more questions and sought more answers than I had in a lifetime—but now I could not help the cries spilling forth as he laved small, open-mouthed kisses on my neck, draping them across my collarbone like a necklace. Zafnat-Panea’s hands skimmed up and down my sides while I clung to his shoulders, babbling nonsense with my head tilted back to give him better access. He traced the undersides of my breasts in a maddening circuit that had me arching against him, pushing my body into his.
I gasped, dragging him back up to my mouth by the roots of his hair. I was spinning out, unraveling, unaware of anything that deserved more attention than stealing filthy kisses from his needy mouth, relishing each little grunt or cry I earned. He throbbed under me, and I rolled against him once, enthralled by the sensation that went right to my sex. My hips ground on his through the blanket.
Zafnat-Panea held his breath and screwed his eyes shut. I stopped as though scalded and withdrew, sliding off his lap, but his arms encircled me, holding me fast. “Wait,” he said through gritted teeth, tucking his head under my chin. I had gone too far; guilt was a sharp reminder of everything I had gleaned of his past and forgotten in a stupid frenzy the second we kissed.
I kept my touch soothing, drawing featherlight patterns on his neck, and took the opportunity to worship him up close. I placed little kisses along his hairline, on the bridge of his nose, the circles under his eyes, his cheekbones and chin, reveling in every piece of him. He relaxed under this tender onslaught.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Lifting his head to meet my gaze, I asked him, “What do you need?”
Zafnat-Panea hesitated. “Maybe…if you let me take the lead, we could…” His hands rested on my waist, and he swiveled us around so we rolled off the stones and into the garden. Poppies, soft and fragrant, burst under my shoulders as he laid me out on the ground. The blanket was left behind on the stones, and he was naked between my legs. “That way, if I need to stop—”
“Yes,” I said, and we found our courage again. A day would come when I could lay him out and explore every sublime inch of his body, but it was not today. Still, I catalogued each detail while he moved above me, from the delicious tendons that stuck out in his neck when he gasped to the narrow hips that bucked into mine. For now, to be here, between Zafnat-Panea and the garden we had planted together, was my greatest victory. I gave myself over to him, shivering when his teeth scraped against the shell of my ear or the swell of my breast, keening when his fingers brushed against my sex. Magnificent pressure was building in my core with every swipe of his thumb between my legs.
I felt him leaving me again, struggling against a memory of some long ago bed he had shared against his will, and before I could lose him, I reached up and held his face in my hands. “Look at me.”
Mortification flooded him as he anchored himself to the present, but I would have none of it. I stroked his cheek, murmuring, “Do you want to stop?” He locked his eyes on mine, and I prayed that he saw how much I loved him, how I would go on loving him if this was as far as we ever got, how none of it mattered as long as he knew I was his.
Zafnat-Panea shook his head, his hair tickling my nose, and we kissed carefully, alert for shadows of the past. Any pain I might have felt at the first breach was erased by the plaintive sigh that escaped him as he entered me, surrounding me, his heart pounding through his chest into mine. My palms flew out and hit the ground, my fists grasping at the earth. There was nothing but his heat, intense and piercing. He pulled my legs around his hips and thrust deeper, our foreheads pressed together, breathing into each other. I teetered on the precipice of discomfort and pleasure, the stretch of him tempered by bewitching friction as he slid out of me and then claimed me, again and again, until I was sure I was tumbling into rapture.
He reached out to where my hands tangled in the poppies and brought them back to his body, and I was free to touch him, raking my nails over the planes of his chest and feeling how the muscles there tightened under my touch. I held onto him until my fingers went numb. The rhythm between us was building beyond what we could maintain, but we sped after it.
My head fell back, baring my neck to him, and I let out a wail so loud it could have woken the entire empire when he kissed me hard where my blood raced under my skin. “Zafnat-Panea—”
“Yosef,” he growled, and I shattered, whispering his name into the night air over and over, until it seemed like the only name I knew. It might have been the only name in the world. He captured my lips with his own, swallowing his name and my release, and his hips snapped into me once more, then twice, and then he collapsed between my legs.
Too boneless to move, our bodies slippery with sweat and entwined so close that I had no idea where I ended and he began, I scanned what I could see of his face, obscured by his tousled hair, to see if he was still with me and not trapped in his harrowing past. Our labored breathing subsided, and I feared the worst when I felt him shaking in my arms. But he lifted his head up to grin at me, and I realized he was shaking with triumphant laughter, the kind I could not help but join until we were laughing so hard that an earthquake could have ripped through the courtyard and we never would have noticed.
The serving girls’ quarters had another free bunk after that night. I never went back.
Any court whispers that Pharaoh’s right hand was slacking on the job dissipated in the weeks that followed. Zafnat-Panea was never sharper. Not a single hekat of surplus grain was squandered; it disappeared into majestic granaries of his own design, emblazoned with Pharaoh’s name. Wells were dug, produce and meat dried and hidden away in desert storerooms, and fleets of fishermen trained to take advantage of our last remaining resource when our fields dried up. Guards were commissioned to protect Egypt’s supply from thieves alongside a small army of cats, who protected the storerooms from greedy mice.
The sudden surge in the vizier’s vigor could be partly explained by my refusal to let him anywhere near the hive wall. Zafnat-Panea’s focus, from sunup to sundown, was on his work, though he promised a sizable dowry to any handmaiden who assisted me in his stead. Suddenly, I was the queen of my own colony, teaching girls how to grab honeycomb without getting stung, how to strain it to get every last drop and boil down the beeswax to make perfume cones and candles. Meetings in the vizier’s chambers had to be canceled, postponed, or relocated as the suite turned into a strange conglomerate of storeroom, clinic, and perfumier.
We were never at a loss for work. The bees fell in love that season. Galvanized by my joy, they produced a miracle. The hive wall taps dripped overnight into jars that overflowed by morning. Hives split faster than we could predict, and the swarms started hives in the corners of the courtyard until the walls were pockmarked with little hexagons. Pulling combs and pouring jars left me covered in a thin sheen of honey by twilight.
“I thought you were supposed to be a professional,” he remarked one night, licking a broad stripe of honey from the juncture between my throat and shoulder. “How can you be so messy?”
Harvests had never been more fun.
When the sun went down, his scrolls were stashed in his desk, his guards were warned not to let in any visitors, and then he was Yosef, my Yosef.
“The name was sort of a joke,” he revealed to me. “It sounds like the word for ‘add.’ Rachel was hoping I would be an older brother one day.” He paused from trailing kisses between my breasts. “Speaking of which, I’m not interested in any little ‘additions’ at present. We need to be more careful.”
My pout made him burst out laughing. “Creative,” he amended. “We need to be more creative.”
So we embarked on an exploratory venture of the myriad ways we could bring each other to fulfillment without falling pregnant. On the same night I discovered the gorgeous whimpers I could elicit from him if I used my mouth on him, I learned how Yaakov had taken all his wives and children to separate from Lavan, traveling back to the land of his father. He told me more about Yaakov’s battle with El Shaddai on an athletic evening I spent pinned against the courtyard wall. I had particular trouble paying attention to the finer points of Esav’s forgiving welcome to his brother when the family entered the land of Edom, because Yosef had laid out every blanket he had on the tile floor so he would not get cold as he took up residence between my thighs.
Ayelet got a kick out of making obscene suggestions in Canaanite during their workdays, especially when he was entertaining members of Pharaoh’s council, and she kept me supplied with acacia leaves for nights when we felt a little less creative and more straightforward in our desire.
We did without the table and arranged most of our suppers on the floor while he told me about his brothers, brothers who were already men by the time he had been brought into the world and delivered into the arms of tearful parents who praised his birth as nothing short of divine intervention. Some siblings he favored with details he could tell with half a smile: Yehuda beating back a she-lion from their flock, Yissachar’s donkey-laugh, Dan’s thoughtful judgments. But he kept his distance from sharing too much. I knew a reckoning was coming.
“Everything went wrong after we left Haran,” he confided in me. “Catastrophe after catastrophe, all at once. First it was my poor sister, Dinah. She was just fifteen when we traveled through Shechem, and some young lord plucked her from the city streets and forced her into his bed.”
That explained his disgust when I asked him about Zuleika. He had made mention of a sister. I burrowed closer to his chest, and he clutched me tight as though he could protect me from the tale. “He thought she would consider herself lucky that he wanted her for a wife. His father would not give her back to us, thinking we were holding out for a higher bride-price. My brother Levi thought he could scare them off by demanding circumcision as the price to wed her, but they even agreed to that. Yaakov was a rich traveler at that point, and they were hoping the dowry would be worth it.”
“What became of her?”
“My father had no choice but to agree to the terms. It destroyed Leah. She still could not leave the tent without going blind, but the day the match was made, I thought she might have risked it anyway to fetch her. I overheard Levi telling the oldest brothers what he had seen—Dinah was a hollow girl. They condemned their honor, the honor of our entire family, when they decided their sister should not be wed to her rapist. At night, they slaughtered every man in Shechem just to retrieve her.” I felt his rueful smile against my forehead. “I was only fourteen then, so I hadn’t been invited along. Maybe it was wrong of me, but the morning they brought her back, I’d never been prouder of my brothers. I should have taken heed of how easy it was for them to spill blood. It might have saved me a great deal of trouble.”
The murder of the Shechemites was a political disaster. The local tribes called for retribution, and El Shaddai’s protection alone enabled Yaakov and his family to escape unscathed. Dinah was restored to them, but Rachel was lost along the way.
Yosef struggled to form complete thoughts when it came to the death of his mother. I remembered that feeling all too well. I drew him into the shelter of my arms and stroked his hair. “I was outside the tent,” he said. “Blood seeped out into the sand. Imagine that—enough blood to soak every blanket and rag in the birthing tent, and there was still more left over. My father never recovered. He begged El Shaddai to kill him at her funeral. We had to bury her on the side of the road.”
“Baba was never the same after Amma died, either,” I said. “He tried, for my sake. But he filled that part of him, the part she used to occupy, with the gods. The temple became his new wife.”
“It was more than grief,” he contradicted me. “People thought he’d gone soft in the head. There was talk of a mutiny in our tribe. Reuven was old enough to be chief. He listened to some bad advice and tried to exert dominance by taking Bilhah to bed, to prove he was the new leader and could have his pick of Yaakov’s women. Yaakov woke to his senses then. That’s why my father sent me to Mamre, to Yitzchak and Rivka. He wanted me out of the way while he cleaned up the messes he and my brothers had made.”
Our lovemaking slowed down the closer he came to revealing what brought him to Egypt and the horrors he encountered here. In some ways, I came to dread those nights. His stare became more and more remote as he wandered through memories he had buried, secrets he never thought he would share but now could not resist unburdening himself from.
“I don’t remember a time without my dreams,” he admitted. “Every time my father told me a story about El Shaddai, I would have one. It was only in Mamre that I started to understand them. At first I thought I was going mad, far from home, grieving my mother. But El Shaddai needed a new chosen one once Yaakov gave up. He tried to go easy on me at first, scaling the dreams and their symbols back, like a teacher going over letters. We developed a method for communicating. And then I returned home, almost a man, brimming with confidence as El Shaddai’s favored one, eager to tell everyone what I’d been dreaming. And I looked just like her. It was the end of everything good.”
“They couldn’t have hated you because you looked like Rachel,” I reassured him. “No one could be that cruel.”
“No,” he agreed. “But Yaakov loved me more because I did. I was the last echo of her on earth. Binyamin was still a baby, too small to look like anyone, and there I was, swanning around the camp with her face on. My father had the brilliant idea to gift me with a coat made with the fabric of her wedding dress. I don’t know what possessed him to do it. I hated that coat. I never found out what my brothers did with it.”
“You gave them your coat?”
“They tore it from my back,” he hissed, “like animals. My four oldest brothers had struggled for months to keep the peace in our tents while my father abandoned himself to sorrow. They thought his birthright would pass to one of them. But then I came home. I was Yaakov’s favorite son, the son of his beloved, wearing that damned coat and never shutting up about my dreams, dreams of stars and sheaves of wheat bowing to me, crowing like a fool. My brothers knew they would be passed over.”
I placed a finger on his lips. “You were seventeen. They were men fully grown. If they were to cast the blame on anyone, it should’ve been Yaakov.”
“They had learned not to cross him after what happened with Reuven. Easier to get rid of me and clear the way for a new successor.” He went quiet. “I wish they’d just killed me. I wish that all the time.”
“Don’t say that.” No matter how hard I tried, I could not make my body the place where he healed. But I listened all the same.
“It’s a curious thing,” he said bitterly, “to know how much you cost. They sold me to a Midianite caravan for twenty pieces of silver. The Midianites sold me at a slave auction just outside the palace for three stallions. Potiphar paid handsomely for virgins back then.”
Here was the place where his story intersected with mine. We did not touch at all those nights except for our hands, clasped tight over the blanket. “He wasn’t cruel,” he hedged, “but I didn’t have a choice, and he never hesitated to tell me that he could send me to work in the copper mines or mud pits if I disappointed him. I figured my best chance was to be useful to him some other way. I proved adept at managing his estates. In a year, he tired of me and bought a new slave for his bed.”
“What of Zuleika?” I asked. “Did she protect you, or did she force you, too?”
With me, he used the pet name I had only heard him say once, on the morning of my execution. “I think Zu would have stopped him if she could have. She hated him for all the affairs he paraded in front of her nose. Hated me, too, at first. But then we were both forgotten lovers of his. We tried not to…” I was surprised to hear a lump forming in his throat, thick with emotion. “It’s hard not to fall in love with Zuleika.”
I remembered my few short days in her rooms, her graceful body under rippling silk and her lovely frown. “I know what you mean.”
“I said no the first few times. But I was lonely, so lonely I waited to die of it, and she was beautiful, so beautiful. I stopped denying myself the comfort she offered.” He felt me tense beside him and rubbed the ridge of my thumb. “Don’t be envious. I don’t think of her when I’m with you. I’ll never think of her that way again.”
I thought of both of them, tangled up in each other just as we had been for so many nights now, and could not begrudge him a single minute spent in Zuleika’s embrace. “Ayelet told me she was the one who ordered your arrest.”
Yosef’s sigh rattled in his chest. “Potiphar found us. A lord can be forgiven his affairs, but a lady…it casts doubt on the paternity of her heirs. He threatened to ruin her. She stood to lose everything if she defended me.”
Even now, he spoke with resigned acceptance, as though it was the natural order of things for noblewomen to accuse slaves of rape to keep their jeweled halls and peacocks.
Yosef turned on his side to look at me, his fingers tightening around mine. “When you saw me again, how did you recognize me? You were only a child.”
I squeezed back, thinking with more tenderness than ever before of the slave boy in that hallway with eyes I could never forget, whose scream became my scream. “We were suffering in different ways that morning,” I said simply, “but in that moment: your pain was mine. I could never forget you after that.”
He leaned forward and kissed me. “I’m happy you never spent a night behind bars. I can be grateful to Zuleika for that, at least. It was the lone demand I made when I was released.”
Revelation dawned on me, a piece of the story I did not know I was missing. “You’re the one she rescues prisoners for.”
“It’s her penance,” he explained. “When I was released, she begged to see me. I refused. I could have refused forever. Pharaoh would have exiled her; all I had to do was ask. But I had my new position and a chance to start over. I agreed to see her once and made her promise me: anyone like me, anyone who would…who’d be at risk in the dungeon, she keeps them safe. I never intended to see her again, but then I dreamed of you. I figured a girl prisoner wouldn’t have escaped her notice, so you must have been in her chambers, and I ran there to find you.”
That he had raced back into her presence for my sake before he even knew me or loved me was more than I could bear. I started to cry. “Nine years, Yosef. I would’ve given up.”
“I wanted to. Tried to.” He was in a daze, attempting to create distance between the memory and the present. “I expect I have El Shaddai to thank for keeping me alive. I don’t know how I wasn’t killed, torn apart. I made myself useful to the warden, Men-nu. He’d had a son who died of fever that year, so he was looking for someone to care for. I learned Egyptian from him by day.” He trembled violently when he added, “But he always locked me back in the cell at night. The other prisoners weren’t too happy about the hours I spent on the other side of the door.”
My free hand came up, hovering near his face, wanting so badly to comfort him but afraid to touch him during a story like this. “Was there anyone who loved you? Made you feel safe?”
He reached up and took this hand in his, too, brushing the back of his wrist against my cheek to stem the flow of tears. “There was a butler. He had hair the color of straw. He spent some time in the dungeon for some failed coup. I interpreted a dream for him.” Yosef smiled fondly. “We kept each other company. I see him from time to time at court. Sometime after he was released, he told Pharaoh about my dreams.”
“That’s what got you out of prison,” I realized. “The dream you interpreted for Pharaoh.”
“And here I am,” Yosef concluded, “and here you are. Now your lessons are complete.”
But it was not, not truly. Everything was at loose ends and in broken pieces, a shamble of freedom. The Canaanite boy who had loved his mother so dearly, who had worn a ridiculous coat without argument to please his bereaved father, had been dashed to pieces by his brothers’ envy and the whims of Egyptian courtiers and prisoners alike. Zafnat-Panea, for all the power and wealth he commanded and influence he wielded with Pharaoh, was not truly free. He was indentured to Egypt. “How am I the only one crying?” I asked, swiping at my eyes.
“I don’t cry,” he answered, shrugging when I leveled a dubious look at him. “I haven’t since my arrest. I doubt I will ever again. But don’t worry,” he said, tucking me into his side and closing his eyes. “You cry enough for both of us.”
I stared at him in the darkness as he fell asleep, shadows flickering across his face while clouds drifted over the moon. “It’s not fair,” I said, unsure if he could hear. “We could still run, if you want. Forget the bees, forget the famine, forget the dreams. You could be free. I’d come with you.”
Just before he sank into sleep, he said, “That’s not what chosen ones do.”
As the night passed, I remembered what Ayelet had told me. Perhaps we carried the worst of El Shaddai within us, but also the best. El Shaddai, at His most magnificent, had created a good world—a very good world—from nothing.
But Yosef had outmatched even Him. He created good out of pain. Every indignity life had dealt him, he accepted and transformed. Who could have blamed him if he had exiled Zuleika and Potiphar upon his ascension? But instead he had given Zuleika a chance to redeem herself. The dreams that had cost him a childhood were now employed to save Egypt and counsel its pharaoh.
Yosef did not enjoy his dreams. He did not enjoy life at the palace. He took both in stride, his own happiness forfeit to ensure that my life was saved, that Kanebti’s life, and Ayelet’s, and Baba’s, and all three million lives in Egypt, would be saved. I watched him sleep, overcome with awe.
That’s not what chosen ones do. I could not remember a single character from Yosef’s stories who made the sacrifices he had. Maybe he was determined to turn things around and do better than his predecessors. A new generation of prophets and dreamers was emerging, learning from the mistakes of the past, shaping the future in conference with the divine and aiming for good. Now I had joined their number.
I struggled to figure out the reason why El Shaddai brought me here. If Baba were here and believed as I did, he would have repeated some version of his speech from when we arrived in On. Little bee, he would have said, this god has given you a gift. The time has come to employ it for His service, to save His people.
Another voice in my head dampened these hopes. There would never be closeness between them, Yosef had told me, but El Shaddai promised Yitzchak protection. So He chose a bride for him. Perhaps He thought Yitzchak was owed. After over a decade of witnessing Yosef’s pain, perhaps El Shaddai thought to make it right by selecting a wife for him. The woman would have to be divinely approved, like Rivka, or she would not be worthy to marry into Yosef’s illustrious family of god-wrestlers and dream-interpreters.
This fear eclipsed the rest—that after all I had done to save Egypt and learn about this strange desert god, I had been brought to Memphis only to be a consolation prize.
Chapter Text
They came by the dozens to our wing. Pharaoh Mernefer-ra, with all his magnificent folds of silk and skin, led the procession on a litter carried by four bearers, followed by the Memphis beekeepers, all wearing confident grins. Only Kanebti’s smile was for me. The priests from my execution, arms crossed over their leopard sashes, held back a crowd of intrigued courtiers who swapped secrets in the rear. I had never seen so many noblemen in one place, had not known that I had been such a topic of discussion among them: Zafnat-Panea’s lover, the plain prisoner who walked around wigless, the heretic who shamed her high priest father, the sorceress who enchanted bees through dark arts.
I fidgeted on the threshold, shifting weight from foot to foot. Yosef reached down between us and took my hand as Pharaoh got closer. When I stiffened, he said, “It’s fine, Osnat, I want him to see. He should know what he stands to lose if he threatens to hurt you.”
“What will you do?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth. “Stand between the spike and me?” If I lost after a year of our best efforts and Pharaoh was true to his word in declaring my life forfeit, the famine would still come, and Pharaoh would still need Yosef’s guidance. I would not countenance him spurning Pharaoh, or Egypt, for my sake. And I would not allow his blood to paint a spike.
“If it comes down to it,” he promised, lifting my hand to his lips and kissing it in full view of everyone, and I melted into his touch. Of all the courtiers, he shone the brightest, arrayed entirely in gold and scarlet that made his eyes all the more vivid, and he was mine. Zuleika was nowhere to be seen, but I spotted her handmaiden, Buia, who undoubtedly was there to report back to her on my success—or my doom.
Nausea rolled through me, souring my confidence, and my hand slipped from his as I ducked behind the threshold where Ayelet waited with an open basin. I vomited, and Ayelet held a cloth to my face to wipe my mouth before I could even catch my breath. “Go,” she said, shoving me out the door while she carried the basin away.
“Again?” Yosef whispered as Pharaoh neared. “Should I send for a healer?”
“Just nervous,” I whispered back.
Pharaoh signaled to the bearers to stop at the door, and we sank into bows when the litter touched the ground and Pharaoh’s sandaled foot stepped out. Yosef rose and offered his arm. “Son of Ra, you honor us with your visit.”
“I have been looking forward to this,” came Pharaoh’s reply, and he accepted Yosef’s arm. “The day I get the immense pleasure of proving you wrong.”
“Careful not to speak too soon, old man,” said Yosef in that old familiar undertone, winking at me.
Shorter than me and leaning heavily against Yosef, Pharaoh peered up at me through drooping eyelids with regal coolness. “Osnat, daughter of Potiphera,” he said, “the term of our deal is over, and I have come to see if you made good on your promise to me.” He lifted his free arm to point an imperious finger at my chest, the scar from the stake's scratch faintly visible above the neckline of my dress. “You know what awaits you if I am disappointed. Zafnat-Panea swore to me he would carry out the sentence himself if you are found wanting.”
Yosef tried to make light of the warning. “She won’t disappoint you, Your Majesty.”
“She will answer for herself,” Pharaoh declared. The court fell silent. His fingers flattened, offering themselves for a kiss of fealty. “Show me if Zafnat-Panea’s dream was true.”
I took his ringed hand in my shaking one and kissed the ruby on his forefinger, my lips pressed tight so I did not retch all over his robes. I could not fake Yosef’s easy confidence, but I was not alone. Kanebti watched me from the ranks of the beekeepers, Ayelet awaited us in the suite, and Yosef was here, a breath away. I could not feel Him here, but I told myself that El Shaddai would not miss this, that He was keeping a vigil over this vital hour. He and I were connected and would see this venture through, no matter how bitter the end.
“Mighty Pharaoh,” I said, my voice trembling but clear, “I bid you welcome.” To the priests, I added, “Let the gods judge between us,” and as a final, cheeky aside, I said to the beekeepers, “Mind your step when you come in. There isn’t much room.”
I heard Yosef chuckle behind me, the sound dancing across the back of my neck, as Pharaoh signaled the beekeepers and priests forward.
Handmaidens were stationed throughout the chambers, their arms full of bounty I had instructed them to offer Pharaoh. Ayelet was first, warm and encouraging as she sidled up behind me and presented Pharaoh with a plate full of glistening honey cakes. Pharaoh raised an eyebrow as he took one and nodded to Ayelet, who passed the plate back to the beekeepers. “You strategized,” he accused me, a bit of humor lighting up behind his cloudy eyes.
“I remembered you have a fondness for sweets,” I admitted. It was the one recipe Baba ever got right, and it served me well today. The beekeepers struggled to hide their contentment with the cakes while they counted each jar. Some removed lids to ensure they were filled with honey and not sand or water. Each lifted lid, each head shaking in astonishment, gave me reason to hope.
The next room, cleared of furniture, featured shelves and stacks of beeswax. “Perfume cones scented with jasmine, lotus, lily, and rose,” I identified as handmaidens swooped in with trays, passing the cones under Pharaoh’s nose. The courtiers helped themselves as they sauntered in behind my judges, sniffing cones with open delight and swiping them for later use. The next round of girls came in with baskets of beeswax candles and bottles. “I ordered all the leftover beeswax into bottles for palace cosmeticians. Whatever goes unused can be sold in the Memphis market for a tidy profit.”
“Comprehensive,” said Pharaoh, betraying nothing. Over his shoulder, he asked, “How many?”
A young, harried beekeeper checked the tally on his scrap of papyrus, chewing on his reed pen. “She’s up to fifty-two jars, Your Majesty. But I haven’t counted the perfume cones yet—”
“We have her beat, Your Majesty,” supplied his self-assured peer, sneering at me. “At least as many perfume cones in our storerooms, and sixty-seven jars of honey from our harvest.”
The gasps and whispers of the court, coupled with cheers from the beekeepers and fervent prayers from the priests who would finally see a heretic brought to justice, concealed my deep sigh of relief. I waited for the chatter to abate and then asked, “Shall I show you to the next room, then?”
Yosef muffled his laughter behind his hand as the room was thrown into another uproar. Pharaoh’s eyes narrowed. He allowed Yosef to steer him from the perfume room to the next hall, where more handmaidens rushed to give Pharaoh the best of our harvest, which glowed amber in glass bowls.
“Try some,” I urged him, hoping the flavor would entice him to concede my victory. Pharaoh took a bowl and sipped from it, but he remained quiet. The court erupted into groans of pleasure at the taste, passing around bowls and licking their fingers. Beekeepers scrambled to count the jars in the hall, commiserating among themselves, and when I peeked over my shoulder, all I could see was Kanebti’s toothy smile, unnoticed amidst the chaos of his cohort.
“In this wing, I thought we could set aside half for our healers,” I told him, “and that corner is reserved for your priests. If they’re anything like my father, they’re picky about the honey they use in offerings.”
“How many?” Pharaoh repeated.
A humiliated beekeeper confessed I had reached eighty-six.
“Oh,” I said, “then there isn’t any point in showing the third room, is there?”
Applause struck me like a thunderclap, cheers from courtiers I had never met who trickled through the barrier of priests to offer congratulations and introduce themselves, stumbling over jars on their way. I dove behind Yosef on instinct, overwhelmed by the swell, certain I would be sick again, this time with relief. But everyone stopped when Pharaoh held up his hand.
“Have I woken up in an upside-down world,” he boomed, a crocodilian rumble, “that my own courtiers pass judgment on a trial over which I have not yet decided the outcome?”
Everyone withdrew in a cacophony of ‘a thousand apologies, Your Majesty,’ and Pharaoh wagged his head. “Call forth my litter and have the bearers ready within five minutes. Master Hap-mu, see to it that the honey jars are in the apiary storerooms by sunset.”
The beekeeper who had been so certain of his victory now seemed a little green. “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but…if the girl speaks true, and there is another room, there might not be enough—that is, I don’t think—”
“We don’t have the space,” Kanebti supplied.
Pharaoh harrumphed and turned to Yosef. “It seems we will need to commission more famine storage. I want the designs for honey storerooms in my chambers by nightfall. We’ll meet tomorrow to discuss where to build them.”
“Consider it done,” he answered.
I tried not to fume. In front of all these witnesses, I had proven myself true to my word, truer than I had ever thought possible. I had sworn to Pharaoh that I would give him more honey than his storerooms had ever seen, and my honey surpassed palace confines. Would he take all my hard work and shuttle it to desert stores without my approval? What was to become of me?
“Son of Ra,” wheedled a priest, “there is the matter of the girl’s sacrilege! To allow her crime to go unpunished for a full year has tempted fate, and to delay any longer—”
“You have my leave to go,” said Pharaoh.
The crowd dispersed in small waves, ears open to hear Pharaoh’s verdict. Beekeepers peeked into the final room to get the complete tally, grumbling at the unenviable task of lugging the jar—one hundred and twelve in total—across the palace.
“Zafnat-Panea, take us to your presence chamber and see to it we are left undisturbed.” Pharaoh jabbed a finger at me. “I will speak with you alone.”
I gulped and nodded. Yosef led him, shuffle by shuffle, through the cramped hall and into his room while I ran ahead and grabbed the most regal chair I could find and brought it closer to the door so he did not have to cross the broad expanse of the chamber to reach it. When he saw it, he shook his head and pointed to the courtyard. “Out there.”
I set up the chair a stone’s throw from the hive wall, where the pleasant, drowsy buzz of overworked bees kept us safe from any eavesdroppers. He settled Pharaoh into the chair and stood facing away from us, on the lookout for spies. Pharaoh tapped him on the hand and said, “You, too, Zafnat-Panea.”
His mouth opened, but he could not gainsay his sovereign, though one desperate look to me told me he was loath to leave me alone. Seeing this, Pharaoh rasped out a laugh. “Relax, boy. I’m hardly likely to execute her myself. Go ensure my litter is on its way and start your designs. I will call you when I need you.”
I nodded to him. “Go.”
Even with my blessing, Yosef walked backwards, hesitant. His arm was raised where Pharaoh could not see it, an invisible embrace, a tether to me that I felt tug in my chest the farther he walked from us. When he disappeared into the shade, I stifled a cry.
It felt wrong that I should stand before him, the man who had been my lord and master since birth, but he never asked me to kneel. Alone, settled comfortably on his chair, he reminded me of my father. He stared at my hive wall for a long time, studying the logs, the garden, and the puckered yellow honeycomb of our rogue swarms clustered in corners and between bricks.
“This is your work,” he said.
“Not mine alone, Your Majesty. I had friends—a steward, a—” I cut myself off and looked down at my feet before I could blurt out a word about Kanebti. “Many of the servant girls here lent a hand. I taught them everything I could. And Yose—Zafnat-Panea.”
Pharaoh stroked the false beard attached to his chin. “Yes. It seems these things always come back to Zafnat-Panea somehow.”
“He’s a good and faithful servant to Your Majesty,” I hurried to say in his defense. “If I don’t find favor in your sight today, then at least spare him. He did everything you asked of him.”
“There is nothing to spare him from,” he reassured me. “I could no sooner dispense of my vizier than I could chop off my leg.” I released a breath I did not know I was holding as he continued. “It seems a wonder that you accomplished this, even with the aid of your friends. I have been here often throughout the year and watched your hives and garden grow strong. Never did I spot a beekeeper of my own sneaking around.”
“You had forbidden it, Your Majesty,” I reminded him.
“Neither did I see you. You managed to be absent when I met with Zafnat-Panea.”
The tips of my ears burned with embarrassment, but with each passing remark, I associated Pharaoh more closely with my father: old, arthritic, imperious, but there was a heart somewhere beneath that prickly ribcage, if I could find it. “In truth,” I confessed, “I hid every time you came to see him. I was afraid of you.”
Pharaoh barked out a laugh. “When I was a boy,” he said, “my father taught me about Ra, father of the gods, father to all pharaohs. He told me the first time Ra shed tears upon the earth, bees were born. If I looked close enough, I could see the rays of sunlight painted on their bodies, a reminder of their creator.”
Thinking of Master Khet-ef, I leaned over to pluck a bee from a hive lid and showed it to Pharaoh so we could marvel at the glistening gold streaks on its thorax. “I received that lesson myself, once.”
The bee flew away, and Pharaoh sighed. “No one but a high priest, not even I, can enter the Djeser-Djeseru. You insulted my divine father. If you had been anyone other than who you are, Ra would have visited calamity on Egypt for what you did. But this…” He lifted his hands, gesturing to the hives. “I cannot doubt that you have his favor. Do not tell me why you were in his shrine that morning. I will be content believing that Ra summoned you there and gave you the power to do what you have done this year. You are blessed by the gods, Osnat, daughter of Potiphera—both the gods of Egypt and the god of Zafnat-Panea. For no one can deny that Zafnat-Panea’s dream was right. Your gift will save Egypt.” He indicated the dirt in front of him. “On your knees.”
I knelt before Pharaoh as he put his hand on my head. “I, Pharaoh Mernefer-ra, Lord of the Two Lands, High Priest in Every Temple, Son of Ra, absolve you of your sacrilege. More to the point,” he said, “I exalt you. You will be my head beekeeper in Memphis.”
I peeked up at him, astonished, and saw a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. “You should have heard the mayhem when I promoted Zafnat-Panea. My courtiers hate it when I honor the rabble. When you’re as old as I am, there is no better entertainment.” Pharaoh adjusted in his seat and called out, “Zafnat-Panea!”
Yosef came running back and bowed deeply before Pharaoh, who told him, “Your dream spoke true, and she has won the wager. She will live. I have spoken.”
Yosef’s smile was beatific, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss it, drink it in, wrap my arms around him and never let him go. Pharaoh could not fail to notice. “It seems I don’t need to order her to stay in Memphis, as we agreed last year. When is the happy occasion?”
Yosef had the grace to look sheepish. “I haven’t asked her yet, old man.”
“I would not wait too long,” Pharaoh advised. “You have the other half of your dream to consider.” When we both looked blankly at him, he guffawed. “Come now! The girl sent the bees into the heavens to become stars. I will admit, the meaning stumped me, too, until I heard the rumors swirling around you two. It does not take a desert god to interpret that dream. You yourself, Zafnat-Panea, told me your forefather dreamed of descendants as numerous as the stars.”
His words sliced through me, arrows of fate pinning me where I stood. “Your dream confirms your destinies. This girl will help you save Egypt, boy, and bear you many sons.” Pharaoh winked at us both. “Rumor has it, you’ve already gotten started.” He whistled, and his litter-bearers sped into the courtyard with the sedan chair on their backs. Yosef helped him into it with words of praise for his wisdom in sparing my life. I heard them as though very far away.
Pharaoh’s interpretation should not have come as a surprise. I should have thought of it a long time ago. Yosef had told me about Avraham’s stars the night we stole our first swarm. All the clues had been there for months. The dream was laid bare. I knew my role. I had been selected by El Shaddai to provide for Egypt in her time of need, and then to give His chosen one children, a new generation of chosen ones.
The time had come to decide if I accepted El Shaddai and His plan as mine.
Once Pharaoh and his litter were out of sight and we were alone, Yosef turned around and caught me up in his arms, spinning me around the courtyard as he crowed with triumph. He set me back down and his lips were on mine, fervent and fearless, until he felt how I did not respond under his touch and broke the kiss.
“What is it?” he asked, searching my face with worry etched into his brow, but I had no time to answer him before Ayelet and Kanebti snuck up behind us, smothering us in hugs and kisses.
Kanebti swung me over his shoulder and trooped around in victory circles. “Eight months and they never suspected us for a moment, little sister! I call that a miracle!”
“I call that exhausting,” Ayelet corrected him, pulling me out of his grip and planting my feet back on the ground. “Promise me we’ll never attempt that again. Let’s just be grateful we escaped with our lives.”
“Speaking of which,” said Kanebti, “it’s about time I make an honest woman out of you, now that I know I won’t be impaled any time soon.”
Their laughter echoed from somewhere warped and muted, and I swayed between them, worried I would vomit again. I dropped into the dirt and pressed my forehead to my knees in an unsuccessful attempt to steady myself. I heard them join me on the ground, felt them pat my back and feel my forehead.
“Leave her be,” Yosef commanded them. “Kanebti, go make sure he’s ready. We’ll be there in a moment.”
Their shadows crossed over me as they backed away and left, giving me space to breathe. I cracked one eye open and saw Yosef seat himself an arm’s length away from me, watching with concern, and the sight of him blasted the little air I had gathered right out of my chest.
What right on earth did I have to be afraid? To be plucked from obscurity by El Shaddai and given a magical gift capable of saving the lives of everyone I loved—this was no small thing. No woman in Egypt had been granted a greater legacy, not even a queen. And to be chosen to be the wife of a man so beautiful, so deserving, was the highest of compliments. It meant that El Shaddai thought I was worthy of joining a sacred family.
“I did the same thing,” he told me softly. “After I interpreted Pharaoh’s first dream, after he conferred my new name on me, I walked out of the throne room and ran for the nearest closet and locked myself inside for an hour. I couldn’t breathe right.”
I scrambled forward blindly until I was in his lap and buried my face in his neck. “I’m s-sorry—”
“There’s no need,” he said. “We’ll stay here as long as you want. Then I have a surprise for you.”
I pulled back. “What did you say to Pharaoh about…something you were going to ask me?”
He paused, his lips pursed. “Surprise first?”
“How can you have a surprise for me if you didn’t know I would live to see it?”
“Osnat,” he said, lifting me to my feet, “of course you were going to live to see it.”
I did not have the strength to argue with him. I spent enough arguing with myself, pushing back the doubts that encroached within. “Then it can wait. I’m not sure this can.”
Yosef heard how my voice went brittle with anxiety. It seemed to confirm something for him as he took a step away from me and I did not follow. “You won Pharaoh’s wager. Though he asks you to remain in Memphis to help us with the famine efforts, you are a free woman. If you wanted, I could try to convince him to let you go home.”
“Home?” Had I been mistaken about what he wanted to offer me? Yosef had to know that On was not home for me anymore.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty if that’s what you ask of me. For you, I will grant it. I—” He swallowed hard, and I wondered in horror if he was going to cry. He swore to me he never cried, not for over fourteen years. But when he lifted his head, I saw his eyes were dry. “I think—or at least I hope—that you came to me of your own free will, when Shemu started. But if there were things you said in the dark, things you said to keep yourself safe, alive—I would understand better than most.”
It was all too easy to forget what I wanted when I looked at him and saw how the nightmare of Potiphar and prison haunted what should have been his most golden assurances. That he should have any reason to doubt why I had given myself to him was unconscionable, and I wanted to be here for every year it would take to erase those doubts. I wanted to be the reason he slept, sated and loved, through each dream El Shaddai ever sent him again.
I regained the space between us and spread my hands on either side of his face as I vowed to him, “I could never lie to you about the way you make me feel, not if my life depended on it. If you believe in nothing else, believe in me.”
My hands fell from his face to his shoulders, then to his chest, just as his rose to take mine and hold them clasped, like we were making another oath. “Do you remember our deal?” he asked. “Once I agreed to teach you about El Shaddai?”
I nodded. “You said I owed you extra for the lessons.”
“I think, after all this time, I’ve hit upon something I’d be willing to accept as payment.” He kept his voice low and quiet, his gaze fixed on the ground as he spoke. “No one can match you for kindness, for patience or love. You’re the kind of woman who cries when you hurt a bee, the kind who asks before you touch. You’re the only woman on earth I could ever marry,” he concluded, “because I know—I know, Osnat—you could never hurt me as deeply as others have.”
Tears sprang into my eyes. “I think I’m about to.”
Yosef sagged, but something in his face told me he expected this.
“That’s what you want for your lessons?” I asked. “My hand in marriage?”
“I would never force you to marry me. All I want is your honest answer.” He looked so pained; the upward jab of a knife would have caused him less anguish than when I walked away from him. “You’re El Shaddai’s choice. You’re mine. I just want to know if I’m yours.”
Seeing him was too overwhelming when every muscle in my body ached for me to say yes. Seeing the courtyard was equally difficult, for there were the stones where we made love, the hives we had stolen and built together, the colonies and flower plots we had nurtured, the miracle we had accomplished with El Shaddai’s help. I closed my eyes and thought of everything we could achieve for Egypt together. I could be the very making of this man. Was that why I had been chosen?
“I will give you my answer,” I told him, “but there’s something I have to do first.”
I walked past him and sat down on the tiled edge of the courtyard, stretching out my legs onto the garden stones. He joined me there, close but not touching. We breathed in solemn silence for a few minutes, mitigating our private pains.
“It’s about Him, isn’t it?” he asked finally. When I did not deny it, he shook his head in disgust. “He does a pretty thorough job of ruining my life every chance He gets.”
“I have to know the truth,” I said. “I have to know why He chose me. I know the answer might be obvious. Maybe my gift, your dream, it was all so I would be here to help you save Egypt. Maybe it was so we could meet, so I could be your wife and give you children. But I have to know, and if He won’t tell me here, then maybe I have to find Him and ask myself.”
“You want to go back to the mountain,” he said. “Let me come with you.”
“That’s not how it’s meant to be.”
“Who says how it’s meant to be?” he challenged, kneeling before me in the dirt. “Marry me, Osnat. Tonight. Don’t go alone, don’t madden me with worry for months over what’s become of you. I’ll have horses hitched to my chariot by morning. You’ll go to Mafkat like a queen with a herd of a hundred sheep, a thousand casks of oil and wine. It’ll be the greatest sacrifice El Shaddai has ever received.”
“El Shaddai wouldn’t want you to waste Egypt’s supplies on Him,” I pointed out, “nor could you be away from Memphis for so long. Pharaoh would forbid it.”
“For you,” he said, his gaze bright and defiant, “I would go anyway. If you would have me.”
My half-formed plans of a private pilgrimage, time alone to consider my choice and place in this chosen family, fell apart at the sight of him kneeling in front of me on the stones where we had loved each other.
“Please,” he said brokenly, “say you’ll have me.”
Rather than answer him, I tilted his head up and leaned down until our lips brushed. I kissed him gently, the way I hoped to kiss him for a lifetime, snaking my fingers underneath his headdress until I could feel the sweeping curls at his temples. He moaned softly into my mouth, stoking heat deep in my belly, and I forgot what I wanted more.
“Kanebti and Ayelet go first,” I reminded him. “It’s only fair. They’ve been waiting longer—”
The joy of my surrender caught up with us both. Yosef seized me in his arms and lifted me up. I felt the confident crook of his smile as his lips came down hard on mine. “Whatever you want.”
“But within the week—” My warnings came out as gasping cries as Yosef’s kisses cascaded down my neck.
“Just say it,” he whispered into the hollow of my throat.
I willed the moment to last, committing the details to memory: the flutter of his eyelashes against my collarbone, the heavy scent of jasmine, the triumphant buzz of bees. Memories of my childhood in On remained strong and sweet in my mind, but over the course of a year, these palace walls had become home. “I’ll marry you,” I told him, “and we’ll go to Mafkat together. As soon as you can arrange it.”
“Then you’re ready for your surprise,” he said, setting me back down and tugging me inside. “Do you remember what you wished for the first night we were in the apiary?”
I shook my head, feeling dizzy and sick again, and he reminded me, “You asked for El Shaddai to let you live, to let you save Egypt, and to keep your bees healthy. I flatter myself that I might have been an unmentioned wish on that list…”
I giggled. “You were.”
“There was one more,” he said, leading out of the presence chamber and through the honey-lined corridors. “Since El Shaddai had His hands full with those wishes, I thought I could give you this last one. I meant to give it before our betrothal, but as a certain bride is very stubborn, you’ll have to consider it an engagement gift.” We stopped before a bedroom I had never paid any attention to, a guest room reserved for visitors of note. Inside, Kanebti waited on the bed, chatting with an old, bald man wrapped in a traveler’s cloak—a man with my brown barn-owl eyes and round cheeks.
“Baba!”
I was running before I could think, not knowing how he would react when I threw myself at his feet and wrapped my arms around his legs, kissing the hem of his cloak.
“Baba, I’m so sorry!” I wept into the floor. “I’m sorry I dishonored you, I’m sorry I disobeyed you, I betrayed you, I broke your trust, I acted like the most faithless of children!” I kissed his cloak, his sandals, even the dust from his feet. “I know I have no right to ask you, but I beg you to forgive me.”
His hands, bent with arthritis and wrinkled in this past year, came down on my shoulders, and I expected him to seize me by the neck to choke me, beat me, tell me in no uncertain terms how he cursed the day I was born. But Baba pulled me close, shaking with sobs. Over and over, he muttered, “My child, my child…” I did not see when Kanebti and Yosef left.
“They told me you were in Memphis last year!” I exclaimed. “I tried to reach you, but they wouldn’t let me!”
“I pounded on the palace doors every day,” he confessed. “I bribed every servant I could find. Pharaoh forbade me from seeing you, but I could not leave the city, not until I knew you were safe.”
I traced every new line on his forehead and took note of every shaved whisker that grew in gray. He had grown so much older, but he looked at me with love that had not decayed one single day. “I thought you’d never want to see me again. After everything I cost you—the priesthood, the temple, our home—”
“You are forgiven everything,” he assured me, peppering my fingers with kisses. “I should have known what you were planning. I think I knew for a while. If I did not sense the desperation in your questions, it was because I knew I could never answer them to your satisfaction.”
“But I insulted Ra!” My voice cracked on the name of his beloved god. “How can you forgive me that?”
“Because,” he said simply, “the gods have many priests. I have only one daughter.”
A fresh round of tears poured between us as sunlight traveled across the room, migrating from tile to tile. “Enough,” he said. “His Grace explained that you have been claimed by the god of his ancestors. As long as you pay your respects to the god of your husband, I have no quarrel with the match and freely give him my blessing. His Grace has sworn to me that we will have a comfortable home here, always.”
The watery grin I attempted in reply was contorted by another round of gagging. I bolted from Baba’s embrace into the hall, heaving all over the floor. I blinked, bleary-eyed and puzzled, at all the sick on the floor. Apparently my body had not registered my salvation yet and still awaited the spike.
When Baba followed me out, I held up a hand. “Wait here, I’ll clean it. I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to keep anything down in days.”
Baba leaned down and stroked my clammy forehead. “Your amma was dreadfully sick at first, too. I did wonder when you were going to tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“My days in this world grow short, little bee,” he said in mock disapproval. “How long did you plan to wait to tell me I will soon be a grandfather?”
Chapter 17
Summary:
Last time: a wager judged
This time: an arrival
Notes:
TW/CW: unwanted pregnancy, labor and delivery, blood
Chapter Text
Like most weddings in Egypt, the marriage of Kanebti and Ayelet was conducted with little fanfare. The bride’s only adornment was her smile as Yosef handed over a dowry fit for a princess—one chest of jewelry, one of silks, one of linens—to the astonished groom. “Incentive,” Yosef explained, sealing the contract with his signet ring, “for you to stick around in Memphis so I don’t need to find a new steward.” But in a rare fond gesture, he kissed Ayelet on the cheek as he stood as her kinsman and gave her in marriage.
“Small chance of that happening,” I joked, “when the palace’s head beekeeper requires his services.”
Kanebti laughed. “It’s not me leaving you should worry about. When Amma and my sisters hear about this, they’ll be sailing upriver for palace lodgings. You won’t be able to get rid of us.”
“We’ll discuss that together, beloved,” said Ayelet, “before we come to any final decisions.” They packed Ayelet’s scant belongings from the serving girls’ quarters into the dowry chests and lugged them, delirious with joy, from Yosef’s suite to Kanebti’s room in the beekeeper apartments.
I envied them the simplicity of the wedding. But Pharaoh’s right hand and the daughter of the former high priest of On could not be joined in matrimony without pageantry. Though Yosef dismissed any attempt Baba made at a dowry cobbled from the remains of his savings and politely declined his invocation of Hathor’s blessing, he could not refuse Pharaoh’s offer to hold a wedding feast. Hordes of courtiers accepted the invitation and every servant jockeyed for the chance to serve wine at the banquet, eager to spend an evening inspecting the elusive woman who had enticed the bachelor vizier to wed.
It was the one day in my life I ever wore a wig—a sumptuous thing woven with emerald beads. Of course, even dressed in silk and smeared with gold dust, I was a shadow compared to my husband as we knelt before Pharaoh, who conferred his blessing on the match from his throne. I spent the meal in mute terror, taking the barest morsels and sips of beer, flashing a bloodless smile at ladies who approached to invite me, their newest noble peer, to dine with them in the weeks to come. Men offered compliments to the vizier for his choice of bride, but I saw how they shook their heads as they took their seats. I had not succeeded in making many friends among the servants, and it seemed I would have equal luck in befriending the gentry. I longed for my first day of work at the apiary.
Though I objected, Zuleika and Potiphar had been issued an invitation to the banquet. I had been grateful when they declined, but still I listened for some stir that indicated Zuleika had changed her mind and deigned to make an appearance. I was not alone; plenty of courtiers eyed the door over their goblets of wine, wondering how Zaftnat-Panea’s mousy new wife would react if Zuleika showed her face here. But she kept her distance.
Yosef’s hands never left my skin, rubbing comforting circles into the top of my spine, raising my knuckles to his lips, ghosting his fingers on the inside of my thigh through the filmy silk of my dress. When I closed my eyes, waiting for the feast to be over, he leaned over and promised, “By next week, we’ll be on the eastern road.”
He had not yet noticed how I held my belly before me like a glass basin, giving a wide berth to sharp corners. I could not blame him. I did my best to take no notice, either. “At this rate, I’ll hitch the horses to your chariot myself.”
“Just you, me, and fifty choice rams,” he agreed, nuzzling into the column of my neck. “I’ll bid Pharaoh good night in an hour and then take you home, wife. I can’t bear to share you with these vipers much longer.”
The wig ended up in some heap on his floor. Yosef threw it across the room as soon as we were alone and dragged me to his bed, the first night his sheets were ever rumpled from something other than river reeds. His body was the source of the only marriage rite I cared about, sprawled out beneath me, slick with sweat and corded with muscle. Sitting astride him, I could marvel at how far we had come. He trusted me enough to let me initiate and take the lead, my swift pace above him drawing exquisite, ragged groans of my name from his mouth. He slept in my arms, dreamless and safe, in the bed he could not bring himself to spend the night in for two years. It was proof, I told myself, that this was all according to plan, that we belonged together.
I did nothing to stop his preparations for our trip to Mafkat in the days that followed. True to his word, he made quick work of the arrangements, organizing a small caravan of chariots, a retinue of bodyguards, and enough provisions to sustain us in the wilderness. I gave opinions on what to pack and what offerings to bring, with a different excuse each time I jolted from his side at all hours of the day to vomit—the heady scent of our garden, an accidental bite of rotten fig, a sail down the Nile on choppy waters.
I waited for Baba to be wrong. I had assumed the stress of the wager delayed my courses. Since our affair began, I had been faithful in using the acacia leaves Ayelet gave me. I half-believed my own excuses, as though devoting my thoughts to the upcoming journey could invalidate the truth. Under Yosef’s direction, I chose the best of the unblemished flock to bring to Mafkat and personally tested the wine and oil, imagining how I would pour them out on the stones in the center of the mountain, a testament to my choice of El Shaddai. But the taste was sour in my mouth and made me sick. Every night, once Yosef dozed off, my hands drifted, feeling the swelling in my breasts, the gathering flesh on my hips, the almost-imperceptible bump.
Some pregnancies seemed to end as soon as they began in Egypt. I clung to that hope. Yosef and I would try again in a few years, when I had faced El Shaddai and learned why I was chosen, when Yosef’s nightmares were vanquished. But I knew it was a fool’s hope. This was the reason I had been brought to Memphis. El Shaddai would not allow His newest heir to be miscarried. The boy inside me—and I was certain it was a boy, for boys were the covenant-bearers—would be strong. My constant sickness seemed to prove his stubbornness in staying alive, and I did not have the heart to ask Ayelet for help in seeking a way to be rid of him, not if he was developing a pair of river-green eyes like his father with each passing moment.
Neither did I consider traveling in spite of the pregnancy, not once I acknowledged that the baby had staked a claim inside my body. The onslaught of fatigue would make it impossible to stand in a chariot daily under a relentless sun, and the thought of a litter was worse—hours of bumping along on pebbly sand, dehydrated from endless vomiting, slowing everyone down. I would arrive at the foot of the mountain halfway through my pregnancy. How would I even begin to climb it?
The night before our departure, I slipped out of Yosef’s slumbering embrace and sat in the courtyard, cramming my fingers in my mouth to stifle sobs. I could not make the journey to Mafkat like this.
A more chilling thought chased the first away. Maybe El Shaddai never wanted me to come at all. It sank through me, a cold stone that settled firmly in my womb. I was no Rivka. What need had I to travel and contend with Him? If I was chosen to mother Yosef’s sons, I was already fulfilling my role perfectly.
When dawn broke, I slithered back into bed and hid my face in Yosef’s shoulder. His waking yawn vibrated against my forehead as he tugged me closer under the sheets. “Get comfortable,” he rumbled, “because for the next few weeks, it’s nothing but tents for us.”
A tear slipped from my face to his chest. He sat up and I lay leaden on our pillows and refused to meet his gaze. “I can’t go,” I said in a small voice. “You have to cancel the trip.”
Yosef flopped back down on the bed, groggy and unconcerned. “Your father will be well looked after while we’re gone.”
Days ago, I would have acquiesced and followed him within the hour to our chariot, praying to survive the trip and calculating my odds of hiding my condition on the road. But a dull acceptance had washed over me. The words hung in the air, waiting for me to utter them, but they were poison on my tongue. Instead, I took his hand and placed it on the swell under my belly button. I felt his realization in his fingers: relaxed, then suddenly tense, tracing the curve of my flesh, and finally withdrawing.
Yosef sat up again and buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t want to believe it.” In that moment, I knew he had been counting the days since my last course and the number of times I was sick each day just as I had. We had preferred to stay silent over our conclusions. “I thought…”
“Me, too.”
He uncovered his face and looked at me, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. “We could still—”
“No,” I said. “You’ve seen me. I can barely keep down water. How long do you think I’d last in the desert?”
“But I thought we were careful,” he said, and I shrugged in reply. These measures were never guarantees. We had taken our chances.
I wondered if there had been a better way to tell him, one that would not have resulted in the ashen horror I saw plain on his face. But there was no way to deliver the news in a fashion he would have welcomed. This was Yosef, who had suffered as a result of Yaakov’s blatant preference. This was Yosef, who had watched the blood from his mother’s childbed seep over his toes.
“I’m so sorry,” I choked out.
Putting his hands on my shoulders and bringing our faces close so I could see the earnestness it must have cost him dearly to muster, he said, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“But you said you didn’t want children!”
He faltered before he could deny it. “They make me afraid, more than anything else,” he confessed. “My mother—” He cringed at the memory of Rachel’s screams and did not bother to finish the sentence. “My father had all those years to practice fairness, but when I came along, he couldn’t help himself from choosing a favorite, no matter how imprudent. I’m afraid I’ll make the same mistake.”
I wanted to reassure him that he would succeed where Yaakov had failed, but I was my parents’ only child. Such encouragement would be hollow from me. “I don’t want another generation of Yaakovs and Esavs, of Yehudas and Reuvens and Yosefs. But I don’t know how…”
“It doesn’t matter.” Yosef rose and began to dress himself, expelling his nervous energy into his clothes as he threw on his tunic and fastened his breastplate. I heard him slip into his courtier’s tone, honeyed and compromising. “It’s your child, so I won’t fail to love it. We might get lucky. It might be a girl.”
My brow furrowed in surprise. It had not occurred to me that Yosef feared sons in particular. Though I did not doubt that I carried a boy, the prospect distracted me with its sweetness: a beauty like her father, fluid as a fish, whom I could teach the art of beekeeping. “You want a daughter?”
“A score of them,” he said. “All sweet and sensible like their mother, so there won’t be any fights over favorites and birthrights and blessings. It’ll be all right, Osnat, I’ll see to it. We’ll postpone the trip until after the birth.”
That’s less than a year from now! I swung my legs over the side of the bed, exultant at this prospect, and had to steady myself and clamp my hand over my mouth at the sudden movement to keep from being sick. Though it was by no means my first choice, I could wait a year. The mountain was not going anywhere. These months would pass as quickly as the ones in which I had fallen in love with Yosef.
Logic wormed its way in and spoiled the fantasy. I could not abandon a newborn. Regardless of the highly qualified nurses who would line up for the chance to care for Zafnat-Panea’s firstborn, leaving my baby to run off to the wilderness was cruel and foolhardy, especially when any number of disasters could befall us on the trip and leave him orphaned. He would need me, and I would need time to recover from the birth. It would be more than a year before the chance to travel would be feasible.
Yosef read my consideration on my face as he tied the belt at his waist, shooing away the wardrobe maids before they entered so they would not hear us. “What is it?”
How could I tell him I was disappointed? “It’s just a lot to absorb.”
He leaned over on the bed and kissed me warmly on the forehead. “It will be all right,” he promised, his tone kinder, less matter-of-fact. “You’ll have the best midwives in the kingdom. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
As he pulled away and slipped on his sandals, I shrank into the bed. My concerns had been spiritual. The possibility that something could happen to me had never crossed my mind until now.
“It’ll be an easy childbirth,” he said, more command than hope, “and we’ll have a little girl. Perhaps we’ll call her Rachel.”
The caravan was unpacked, our supplies redistributed into the palace pantries. Within days, any evidence of our planned departure was gone. I grieved over every piece of clothing unpacked from our trunks. Then I forbid myself from displaying regret. My heart had already broken over my lost chance, but I would not break Yosef’s heart with guilt for the next year. And it was not in my nature to wallow; I preferred to work.
Time was on my side in one way. I had won the bet, so when Shemu ended its amber season and the flood rushed in, I did not have to risk my neck collecting river reeds. As head beekeeper, I could return to the schedule I had grown up in, when Akhet brought easy months of inventory and hive caretaking. I started work right away, delighted to learn that I would hear no argument over my promotion, not even from the former head beekeeper Master Hap-mu. The Memphis beekeepers had borne witness to my magic and were more reverent than begrudging over my rise to prominence. Even if they had not believed me truly capable, they would never have breathed a word against Pharaoh’s direct order, especially when their new overseer was the wife of the second-greatest man in Egypt.
They showed me by daylight the apiary I had visited so often by night, how the hives never needed moving since they were kept safe from the river, the storerooms packed to the brim with my jars awaiting transport to desert storehouses, the polished knives for scraping capped honeycomb and the silver taps for harvesting. They applauded my ability to sing queens out and reach into a hive without smoke, eager to put my tricks to use.
I tried to make the most of my gift, the way I hoped El Shaddai intended. My hive wall had saved my life, and now it would save others. Hap-mu, Kanebti, and I drew up plans for the division of my hives, which would be strapped onto wagons and sent to the major cities of the empire, each with an apprentice dispatched to teach the locals how to care for the bees. Even if the hives did not survive the famine, the cities could put away extra honey for the remaining five years of plenty. I took pride in the hope that some little girls would be pupils while their brothers tended family farms and businesses.
When I invited the staff to the suite for a lavish supper to celebrate Peret, we discussed old scars and ominous shapes of past swarms over beer, and while everyone complimented the splendor of my home as a matter of form, their excitement was genuine over my famous hive wall and the honeycombed courtyard. I sat at the head of the table with a hand pressed to my growing belly. Inside, the baby had just begun to twirl, a feeling like a fat bumblebee bumping from wall to wall in my womb. I could almost pretend this was all I wanted.
If they noticed how Kanebti and I got along at once, as though we had been friends for life, they said nothing. Kanebti and I traded spouses each day; we worked in tandem to double our honey yield in the coming year while Ayelet managed Yosef’s household. When we passed each other in the hall on our way back to our husbands, Ayelet would grin at me and tap a finger on my bump, a few weeks’ bigger than hers. “Speedy little horse!” she called me. “Beating me to the cradle!”
But she went home to a husband overjoyed at his firstborn’s pending arrival. I returned to a husband who performed for me. Yosef played the part to perfection. He planted a patch of mint so I had a fresh supply of leaves to chew through the worst bouts of nausea. Dates and honey cakes were ordered to my side at all hours to anticipate my cravings, and if I winced over backaches or swelling feet, he would massage them without prompting or complaint. At night, with an obligatory hand on the rise of my abdomen, he made the same grand speeches all first-time fathers make.
“We’ll wed her to a prince,” he promised me. “I’ll find a rich husband who’ll offer a palace for her.”
I never contradicted him over the gender. “You’d send her so far away?”
“Only after she’s finished her education. I want her tutored in at least three languages.”
“And beekeeping.”
He nodded and kissed me on the forehead. “A family tradition.”
The words played as false, stilted, unconvincing. Every second his palm was on my belly, I could feel his secret wishes as though he could transmit them to the baby. Please be a girl. Please come easily and without any fuss. When he fell asleep, I stayed awake as my son tumbled inside me. I tried to untangle the mess of my resentment. This boy had cost me more than Mafkat. The first year of marriage should have been our happiest. Instead we spent it reading from an unnatural script, both of us terrified we would have to use it the rest of our lives, never uttering another true thought again. I tried to make space for love in my heart, but longing for El Shaddai’s acknowledgment never gave up its seat, and fear crowded it out. The only days I could come close to looking forward to his birth were the ones I spent with Baba.
A nursery had been prepared, complete with a royal cradle on loan from Pharaoh, but Baba equipped a corner of his room for the future tasks of grandfatherhood. He took real joy in organizing baskets of linens and cloth toys. “You had one much like this,” he told me, passing me a stuffed cat as I stretched out and relaxed on his wool-padded chair. “You called it Kiya. I never knew where you picked up the name.”
I turned the cat over in my hands, my toes digging into the softest of rugs, and brushed against happiness. Perhaps this child would be worth it by virtue of seeing Baba hold him, the grandson he never thought he would have. If this was how I made it up to Baba for robbing him of his priesthood, I would give him a dozen grandchildren to settle the score.
We had that in common, my son and me—we had both kept our parents from their gods. Baba had forgiven me, and my act had been deliberate. But my child had never meant to keep me from my dreams. I could not hate him. I hated myself for not making peace with my life. El Shaddai had given me a husband, a child, a means to save Egypt. Why could I not be content?
Appalled at my audacity to believe I was entitled to anything better or offered something more than the skill and the body I had given over to El Shaddai’s plan, I kept silent. I watched in wonder as a birthing pavilion was constructed in the courtyard, a beautiful bower of papyrus stalks and flowering vines. Birth, with all its mess, had been forbidden from the boundary of ritual purity encircling the temple, so I had never seen one before. When I waddled around it, bees floated over to form a guard over my belly, and I dared to believe this would be easy.
Ayelet’s glee over her child had put me off at first. But by Peret’s end, we depended on each other, both of us round as rising suns and growing more nervous over each twitch below the waist. “Now I’m glad you’re going first,” she joked. “You’ll set a good example.”
I nursed a secret wish that some emergency would arise that would take Yosef far away. But Pharaoh was indulgent with his favorite, and when my water broke, Pharaoh released him from all duties. I never lacked a companion; Yosef stood sentinel at my right side while Ayelet, Baba, and Kanebti traded places on my left. The midwives encouraged walks to spur the baby’s descent. We made circuits around the apiary, cheered on by the beekeepers who hoped for a little apprentice to join their ranks. Baba praised my calm, Kanebti tried to make me laugh, and Ayelet, close to her own labor, huffed alongside me in joyless fellowship.
But Yosef and I stayed quiet. Somehow, though we were not even parents yet, we both shared the feeling that we had already failed.
The first day of griping pains stretched into the first night, then a second. I was sure he would have preferred a dream from El Shaddai to what kept him awake: my fitful crying as each pang, concentrated like a malicious river current, disrupted my sleep. “What can I do?” he begged, teeth gritted like mine as I bore down through another bout of pressure.
I would have asked for a chamomile draught to put us both to bed, but the midwives had forbidden it. Chamomile was bad for babies. “A bath of cold water,” I said, and he sent a servant sprinting to implore the closest courtier with a tub to let us use it. He sat on the pool’s edge, his legs dangling in the water and his hand firm in mine, as I let the chill erase some of the pain.
The currents, unpredictable at first, came faster. By sunrise I was under the birthing pavilion, and Ayelet was the one face I knew in a crowd of unfamiliar midwives. We watched in joint horror as they set up squat idols of bearded Bes and hippopotamus-faced Taweret and pulled out amulets and ivory wands to invoke their blessings.
“None of that!” I panted. “Get them out of here!”
Ayelet explained, “She worships the god of her husband. These idols would displease Him.”
Unwilling to argue with Zafnat-Panea’s wife, the midwives exchanged looks among themselves as they packed up the idols and objects, leaving the essentials: a mattress, a birthing stool, and birthing bricks. I groaned, I shivered, I shuffled from bed to stool to bricks, trying to find a position that could relieve the pain, even for a moment. For as long as I could, I swallowed down each cry. Men were not allowed in the birthing pavilion, but Yosef had been clever in commissioning its construction in our garden. He was just inside, sitting with Baba, and if I could spare him these hours of torment, I would.
The midwives, robbed of their spiritual methods, opted for natural ones. Boiling water was placed under the stool in the hopes that the steam would ease the delivery. A mixture of salt, wheat, and river rushes was rubbed into the rock-hard skin of my stomach. Bees paid court to me, specks of comfort in a sea of suffering, but there was no rest, no peace, as night fell and the baby had made no progress.
They attempted to ease my fears. “First labors,” they said, “are always longer than mothers would like.” But they pressed on my abdomen, examined between my legs with a lamp, and did their best to hide their anxious expressions.
As I floated on the pain, which had become more wave than current, I saw the lamps on Yosef’s desk from afar and knew he was awake with me. Even as Ayelet nodded off with the other midwives, he and I kept a vigil together. For the first time in my pregnancy, when it was too late, I wanted him near.
But I forgot him, forgot my mission to keep quiet, forgot even my own name, when dawn came and brought my son with it. My screams, louder than Yosef’s on the day we met, echoed across the garden, waking and rousing every bee in every hive. They flew to the ceiling of the pavilion while the midwives whispered about the strange omen, and I kept my eyes fixed on them as I took my place on the birthing stool, my nails cutting little moons into Ayelet’s hand. The midwives cooed, but it seemed I could do nothing but give birth to blood, gushing fire-hot and obscene down my thighs.
A midwife behind me cursed in surprise and began to mutter a spell, “Isis, place yourself in front of her, and Heqet, hasten the birth, let the child rush forth—”
“Be quiet!” I hissed, not wanting to incur El Shaddai’s wrath at this stage. But when I blinked up at the pavilion’s ceiling, it had disappeared. Though dimly I knew it was morning, I saw the night sky, and each bee that attended me froze where it flew as though stitched with gold thread. I screamed in agony and understanding, and with the next push, my son came free.
I could hardly hear Ayelet’s giddy relief or the midwives who pulled my son out and cut the cord, not even his first cries. The night sky still hung suspended over me with each bee turned into a glimmering star, the last part of Yosef’s dream, Pharaoh’s prophecy confirmed. I had played my part as vessel for the next generation of El Shaddai’s chosen family.
And He did not need me anymore.
I dropped so suddenly from the birthing stool that it broke beneath me, the shards coated in blood that spread underneath me like a lethal tide. Everyone descended on me.
“Pack her womb with linen! We have to stop the bleeding!” a midwife argued.
Another disagreed. “She hasn’t delivered the afterbirth yet. Do you want it to fester inside her?” In the melee, someone handed my baby to Ayelet, who watched me convulse under the hands of the midwives. I saw only a shadow of his hair, the jerky movement of his arm, and I shouted hoarsely for his father.
Blood ran thin, searing hot, and improbable. How could there be any left to lose, after all I had spent in labor? I heard the grim portent in the midwives’ voices as Yosef ran across the courtyard to me, breaking all protocol, unflinching as he pulled my ruined body into his arms. The night sky with its stars, my generations, disappeared from view. All I saw was him, and when he looked at me, I saw Rachel’s death—now my death—reflected in his eyes.
“Ask Him—” I tried to form a command. Yosef was El Shaddai’s chosen one. If he made sacrifices, if he begged on his knees, El Shaddai could be convinced to spare my life. But the blood was stealing away my words, my air. “Ask Him—”
I abandoned the attempt. I was slipping away too fast. Perhaps I could be grateful that El Shaddai had permitted me a quick death now, rather than Rachel’s tortured hours.
Yosef looked down at the blood that painted his tunic. “No,” he said, as though he could stem the flow. “No.”
From somewhere in the back of my throat, I scraped together enough breath to supply him with confirmation. “No.”
Then I choked, I seized—I plunged into the abyss.
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