Chapter 1 The Caregiver
Chapter one
The Caregiver
MERYT
“You made these?”
“Hardly much of a feat. They’re just leather scraps from the armorer, twisted around each other so they won’t break.” Nakht said it as though the act was meaningless, downplaying as always just how tender and thoughtful he was.
We had a rare night to ourselves, free from rehearsing new dances or performing for Pharaoh.
We had elected to stroll through one of the palace’s elaborate gardens.
Not all were open to us, as some were for Pharaoh and his chosen alone, or specific to rituals, but this one was our favorite anyway, a perfect oasis just outside the palace’s main grounds.
There were date palms bearing fruit, bright blooming blue and white lotus flowers, and a pond where we could walk along its banks and breathe in peacefully as we watched the stars.
This garden was especially my favorite, but even more so this night, for after my first glance up and contented sigh at the full moon, I had looked back at my love to find him holding the matching rings.
“It is a feat,” I told him. “You still thought to make them and followed through. Tell me, what do they symbolize?”
“They’re us. See? Ruddy brown and ashen black, forever entwined.
” Nakht took my hand, the left, and slid the ring sized for me onto my finger.
“When people wed, they exchange symbols of their love, their promise to each other. I thought it fitting to mimic the rings that chain us”—he indicated the gold bands we wore from Pharaoh—“but as something simpler, humbler, since as slaves, we might not be as valued as gold, but we are stronger when we are together than alone.”
Tears welled in my eyes at what he meant.
Slaves could marry. A slave who married a free person could be freed themselves, and two slaves were rarely barred from the bond just because they served another.
But it was still rare to call it marriage when we could produce no children and had nothing but our lives and bodies to share.
If we displeased our masters, we could still be separated, and those who would have us, while they might know of and accept our union, would treat us no differently than other slaves.
We would still live to serve them, to serve Pharaoh.
This was no joining of houses, only of hearts.
But it was all I needed.
“Together,” I repeated, voice cracking as I took the other ring from him so I could slip it onto his finger in kind. “Always.” I kissed Nakht fiercely, and he chuckled against my lips.
“That’s a yes then?” he sputtered.
“Yes!” I nearly shouted before kissing him again.
Oh how I kissed him, as deep and devoted as the beat of my heart.
“Dawn and dusk,” I said softer, nuzzling his cheek.
“Dawn and dusk,” Nakht echoed, cuddling me back. “Not so different in the end but better because each exists.”
“Poet,” I teased him.
“I did write a poem for the occasion.”
“You did?”
“Yes, but I don’t think you’ve earned hearing it yet.” Nakht turned, hand clasped in mine to tug me after him.
“Nakht!” I chastised with a choked laugh.
“Come along.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, and in the moonlight with twinkling stars above, he looked as beautiful as ever.
I clutched his hand, my right in his left, and fingered his leather ring, enjoying the texture, while also lifting my left to gaze upon mine. They were perfect, and I would have no other. Ever.
A tingling at the back of my neck alerted me to eyes watching us. I clutched Nakht’s hand tighter as we continued through the garden. Not wanting to worry him, I hesitantly peeked behind us—and nearly collapsed where I stood. Because back by the start of the pond…
Was Nakht.
Then the night flashed white as blinding as the dawn.
NAKHT
Bound though we may be,
let us bind our hearts to each other
with winding cords
like the coil of our bodies,
skin against skin.
For though life and flesh fade,
Our love will stretch beyond death,
beyond all that might separate us,
even if the skies tremble
and the gods take you too soon.
We persist.
We love.
We are.
I gasped as my own words echoed back to me, as if carried on a distant wind. That was the poem I had spoken to Meryt the night we sealed our marriage with the rings I made.
Where did he go? I saw him. I saw him! Being led away from me through Pharaoh’s garden.
By me? It was like living in a memory, but now the world was black again.
I struggled to see through the darkness. My eyes were open, but it was as dark here as when I stood before the gods. Part of me wondered if I was dreaming. If so, let me wake to find that it was all a dream and Meryt was alive beside me.
I did not foresee such waking, for at last some torchlight brightened the room, and I realized I was no longer standing but reclined upon a stone table. Was I back in the funerary chamber, but then why was I on the slab and not Meryt?
Panic seized me, especially when I realized I could not move. I was naked, and thin strips of linen like those used for wrapping the dead bound me to the table. As if my own morality were taunting me, my most precious belongings were arranged around me on small pedestals.
It was a relief at least to see that they were not canopic jars already housing my organs.
Near my left foot was my lotus drinking cup, made from elegantly glazed blue-green ceramic, gifted to me by Meryt's mother when I’d completed my dancer’s training.
Near my right foot was the belt I had worn when Meryt and I first performed for Pharaoh—and had done so well at it that we’d warmed his bed that night.
Closer to my left hand was the ivory comb thought to have belonged to my mother, since it was among the few things given along with me when I was offered to Pharaoh as a babe.
The comb was part of why I grew my hair long, thinking perhaps my mother wore hers that way and used the comb to keep the unplaited portions smooth.
Finally, near my right hand was my scroll of poems, impressively thick now with various long sheets of papyrus pasted onto each other over the years.
Well, it was ostraca really, not papyrus, for even with our status in Pharaoh’s palace, papyrus was still expensive enough that it was rarely used for anything outside of official or religious texts.
Some of the poems written on it were my favorites from known poets.
Others were my own, including many I had written for Meryt.
Farther away from me, the dim lighting from torches on the walls illuminated what very much looked like a funerary chamber. Carvings in the stone walls depicted the path through the afterlife that all started from death…
With Anubis.
As red eyes pierced through the darkness near my feet, panic flooded me again. I strained against my linen wrappings, for I remembered everything: Meryt’s death, my attempt to speed along my own, and the shadows of the gods offering me a chance, a set of trials to win my lover back.
But what trial was this? And if I failed, would Anubis mummify and entomb me where I lay?
As the shadow moved around the table, I could make out more of his features, jackal-like as expected with snout and long, upright ears.
He wore the usual headdress that framed his silhouette like the hood of a cloak, and something glittered on his forehead between his piercing red eyes that I couldn’t yet distinguish.
“Drink,” the deep voice I had heard before spoke, resonant as all of them had been and growly enough to make me fear the canine teeth within his maw.
A black-skinned hand, pure obsidian black—though was it even skin or covered in sleek fur like a jackal too?
—reached into the light holding my own lotus cup.
I hadn’t noticed him pluck it from its pedestal.
The fingers that wrapped around its base were long with nails sharp as claws, but it was still a mostly human hand, bearing rings and a wrist cuff in gold with Anubis’s own visage adorning it.
“Drink,” he said again, bringing the cup nearer to me, since I remained frozen and mute. “It will calm you.”
“Wh-what is it?” I asked, fighting to speak through my tremors.
“Chamomile. Prepared hot to relax you.”
“Why?”
“Because you are anxious and have no reason to be.”
“Do I not? I am naked, bound, and at your mercy.” And still unable to see him clearly as more than a silhouette, save his hand and part of the arm it attached to. “Is this some part of my first trial, whether I accept and ingest poison by trusting too easily?”
A low rumble answered, somewhere between a growl and a laugh. “These trials are not meant to trick you, mortal. There will be no subterfuge or underhandedness. We will all speak plainly about what we offer to tempt you. Gullibility is not what we are weighing.”
I supposed that made sense.
I nodded, but as Anubis drew closer and I could almost make out the truth of his jackal head in full view, I trembled beyond my ability to keep still. It seemed I did need that drink.
Anubis paused, however, before revealing himself. “The drink will help, but I will also ask what you need, young Nakht. Do you require a more human form to feel safe in my presence?”
He took that last step forward, and what had appeared as a jackal head was a helmet topping his headdress over a very human, although still ebony-colored face, darker than any I had seen in life.
I could only make out the bottom half, a human nose and mouth with eyes hidden behind the helmet, which bore red jackal eyes as carnelian stones.
But this form was the real mask, wasn’t it?
“I am afraid, my lord, but no one should have to be what they are not for another’s sake. Not even a god.”
Anubis tilted his head, the human lips curving into a smile. “You have never changed yourself for another?”
“Striven to better myself, perhaps from something that was pointed out by another, certainly. But changed the heart or truth of me? Never. And I would never ask that of someone else either.”