Year One
Journal of Bennu, Who Runs
Before, none of the books existed and none were required. I think I was a happy boy before the books, but afterward nothing was the same.
Meryt and Chryseis summoned me to the usual meeting spot, and I knew this was an unusual time. Our prayer hour was midnight, but the little spiny mouse had sneaked under the crack in my door, a note tied to a collar of beads about his neck, at just past dawn.
They needed me. It was time.
We met at the birthplace of the book. It had emerged from the water, slick but otherwise undamaged, and sat there like a stone baking in the sun. It had appeared the day the moon overtook the sun, in the last days of Akhet, while the river was swollen and overflowing. We had no word for what it was at first, its pages not papyrus but something smoother, the language inside a mystery to us all. Meryt said, let us call it “Spells” or “Book,” and we three agreed. If one of the gods had sent it, then surely it was filled with spells for us to one day learn.
My feet knew the path to the place by the water, and I slipped on silent, bare feet across the night-cooled sand to the grassier banks. A striped snake slithered along beside me, and then another, but I paid them no attention. Though a chill hung in the air before Apep could banish it, I felt hot with fear, and sweat dripped down my arms to my fingers.
Date palms sheltered the meeting place, fronds draped in front of a low stone hut no taller than a man. The snakes followed as I stepped into muddier terrain, the wet earth sucking at my feet as I dodged into the hut. The two women waited for me on their knees, their heads bowed over the book. It always looked shiny and slick, despite having been pulled from the river weeks ago. When we touched it, it felt like warm calfskin.
The women were in meditation, and had been almost constantly since the book arrived.
I waited, impatient, eyes always on the strange thing between them, its cover glittering, embossed with what looked like eight ovals. Perhaps they were eyes.
Suddenly, both of the women before me began to shake. The tremors were terrible, contorting their bodies in every direction, as if their bones had vanished, as if they were not humans of flesh and blood at all but empty sleeves of skin. A thick violet foam exploded from between their lips, running down their chins and staining their clean white garments. Meryt swayed back and forth, arms flailing, her face bending so low that her forehead brushed the book. It was cursed, I thought. An accursed thing brought forth from the river to trick us.
I rushed to Meryt, taking her dark brown shoulders in my hands and squeezing.
“Come back to me!” I shouted, shaking her, but the spell that gripped her made her too strong, and I flew back against the wall, dazed.
As quickly as the tremors had begun, they ceased. Chryseis opened her eyes first, blinking as if she had just had a long, deep nap. She wiped at the foam on her chin and then studied it, turning her hand this way and that, though it did not seem to trouble her.
“You frightened me,” I said, climbing back to my feet.
It was amazing. She looked herself again, a healthy glow on her cheeks. Her golden-brown hair was twisted into braids around her face, and in that moment she appeared almost like a goddess.
“Did you see her?” Chryseis spoke to Meryt, who was now also awake and no longer shaking.
“Yes,” she whispered back, eyes big with wonder. “She was beautiful.”
“So beautiful,” Chryseis agreed. “Impossible to describe . . .”
“But what did you see?” I begged. “Are you both well?”
“There is no time,” Meryt told me, rising from her knees. She took me by the hand to the corner, where her personal satchel had been laid flat near a brazier. With purple foam still on her chin, she took the bag and emptied it, then returned to the middle of the room, taking up the strange book and shoving it into the satchel.
“What are you doing?” I asked her. “We should not move it!”
“It is not safe here,” Meryt said, and she sounded sure. Chryseis joined us, helping her close the satchel and lift it over my head. The book was amazingly heavy, and I sank under its unnatural weight.
“It must be taken far away,” Chryseis added. “The voice says you must go, Bennu, you must take the book north and you must not be seen. There can be no delay; she must be reunited with her husband.”
“Who? Who told you these things?” I felt tears coming to my eyes. This was so fast, and so unfair! Why must I leave my family? Why had I been chosen for this, and by whom?
“She appeared to us, a beautiful lady all in purple,” Chryseis explained, turning me toward the door. “As soon as she came, I felt whole. Perfect. As if everything around me was made of pure love.”
“The snake, the bird, the spider, the cat, the dog,” Meryt said, “she is mother to them all.”
“I wish I could have seen her,” I replied in awe, hesitating to leave the hut. My shoulder already ached from the cruel weight of the book. “I, too, have always protected the creatures here and worshipped those who made them. Why did she only come to you?”
Meryt guided me toward the dark outside the hut, pressing firmly on my back. “Yours is the most important task of all, Bennu. There are other forces that would see our order destroyed, demons in black and winged things. You must take her north, now, before she can be found.”
“But how will I know the way?” I asked, feet touching the cold sand. “I have only once been farther than Tanis and seen the sails billowing on the sea, but never once boarded one.”
“You will have help,” Chryseis said. Her eyes glittered with urgency. “When the moon is full again you will have help. Our lady is sending you a guide, under the full and milky light; she promised it would be so.”
“Go!” Meryt cried hoarsely, pushing me again. In the darkness, the purple stain on her chin looked like blood.
“Go!” Chryseis chimed in.
They chanted it at me as I left the hut, limping with the heavy book dragging from my shoulder. I yelped and nearly tumbled into the river, shock and fear making a tangle of my feet. Outside the shack, snakes and spiders had gathered in such quantity that I could hardly find a safe place to step. My stomach churned. It was a crescent of wriggling black tails and legs. None of them moved or made to bite, enthralled or ensorcelled into submission. And as I dodged to the patch of reeds far from the hut, they each of them slithered and skittered and turned, watching me go.