Year One
Journal of Bennu, Who Runs
I followed the river north and composed in my head messages to my family. Do not worry, they began, I will return soon. These would be lies, but they would not be the first I told. My mother and sisters already disliked my fervent devotion to gods they did not recognize or respect. They worshipped as everyone else did, and thought me foolish for bowing low to the river, to the bee, to the very palms that sheltered our house.
If they knew that no more than a shared vision of Meryt and Chryseis’s had sent me on this task, they would lock me up and lose the key.
Still. Composing the messages made me feel better, because if I was allowed to write such things or even see my family again, then it meant I had survived. How far would I have to go? How would I know when I arrived? The book and satchel grew heavier as I stumbled along the banks of the river. The ground sloped up and down, sometimes cluttered with reeds and shifting stones, sometimes open to the sun, and occasionally cooled by the shade of date palms. Would the guide I had been promised meet me at the next village, or the next? My belly demanded food and my thirst had become such that I tasted blood on the cracked edges of my lips.
As night fell on that first long day, I stopped in a small gathering of homes near a flooded bend. It was a farming community, and with the day’s work over, the villagers had returned to their homes to relax and drink honeyed beer.
I swatted at the mosquitoes swarming my arms and prowled the homes quietly, hopeful for a sign. The land grew hillier as I traveled away from the water. A woman sang to her child, the haunting melody drifting out through an open window. My feet felt raw, my body on the verge of collapse. And then, cause to hope! I noted the red-and-white paint flecking off the bottom of a brick house. It was just a modest place, not much more than a squat hut, but a snake had been painted to the left of the door, and though it was old and faded with age, I knew what it meant.
Sanctuary.
“Hello?” I called, and tapped lightly on the wooden door. “A friend is at the door. I kneel in the river to pray. I wash the feet of jackals. I do not go to the temple, I do not speak the names.”
It was dark inside, and I wondered if nobody waited within. Then a light and a single eye appeared at the crack in the door. A gruff male voice said: “Are you lost, child?”
Smiling, I hitched the pack higher on my shoulder and replied, “My feet are on the path.”
The door opened, as I’d hoped it would, and I slumped gratefully inside. The man who greeted me was old and hunchbacked, and he leaned heavily on a cane that was little more than a branch. A few leaves still clung to the top. He limped across the straw floor to a table surrounded by three stools. He had farmer’s hands, strong and scarred, and though his furnishings were meager, the smell emanating from his small brick oven was excellent. Of course a man who worshipped all of nature’s beauty, as we did, would have a special touch when it came to farming the land. I had no doubt his crops grew better and hardier than all the rest.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, setting down the satchel with a sigh.
“Don’t thank me yet, boy,” he replied. “Meti is my name, but my daughter will soon be back. She will not want you here.”
I hesitated near the door, my stomach giving a loud rumble as I did so.
“Ha. We can fix that,” the man, Meti, said. Then he waved his hand toward the oven. “Take a bowl. Help yourself. We have more than enough to eat.”
“Mother and Father always provide,” I murmured, rushing to the oven. It was rude to look so desperate, but I had no shame in my weariness.
“They do. Lean times come for others,” Meti said. “Not for us.”
I filled my bowl and began to eat the fish stew. It was redolent with onion and garlic, and I washed it all down with gulps of thick, sweet beer. It was not food fit for the pharaoh, but it was more than enough for a tired traveler.
As I finished my second bite, the door banged open and a homely young woman walked in. She had Meti’s same narrow eyes and skinny frame. Her black hair was braided tightly back from her forehead, and she frowned at me and then at my satchel.
“No, Father!” she said at once, dropping the basket of onions she had been carrying. “No more of this! These visitors only bring trouble.”
“I told you so.” Meti cackled from the table. “Bring me a cup of beer; I am thirsty, too.”
The daughter stomped up to me and poked a finger in my face. “Finish that food and drink that cup, then you must go.”
“Hush, Niyek, hush. Let him stay the night.”
“No!” She whirled on her father, bringing him a cup of beer and slamming it on the table. “You are too old for these ridiculous people and . . . and their make-believe!”
He pointed to the overflowing basket of onions, each bigger and more well-formed than the last. “Is that make-believe, child? When the drought did not touch our crops, was that ridiculous, too?”
Niyek scoffed and threw her hands into the air. “That is because I prayed and made offerings day and night to Tefnut, not because of your cult.”
The old man did not raise his voice; he simply sipped his beer and shrugged knobbly shoulders. “The other villagers prayed to her. What good did it bring them?”
There was shouting outside. Doors opened and shut, and I could hear growing confusion as villagers emerged from their houses. Niyek ran to the small window at the door and peered out, her hand held out behind her as if to keep us silent.
“More strangers,” she said with a grunt. “More trouble.”
The beer in my stomach soured and I dropped the bowl and cup on the table near Meti and then joined the girl at the window. She shoved me aside angrily and pointed at the satchel.
“Take your things and go before you bring more problems to this house,” she hissed.
The old man stood unsteadily with his cane and hobbled over to us. There were screams then, and a sound like the shaking of leaves after a sudden wind. It was the whip and whoosh before a storm. Someone outside was in anguish, wailing as if in mourning.
“Out the back, then,” the man told me, taking me by the arm and guiding me toward a curtain near the brick oven. “There have been raiders lately; they know our granary is full.”
“Maybe I was followed,” I whispered.
“Why would you be followed?” Niyek scrambled away from the window, chasing after us. “Do you see, Father? Now you have brought a criminal into this house!”
“Be quiet, girl.”
Meti ripped the curtain aside and pushed me out into the cooling night. I smelled smoke and heard the distant crackle of flames. The village was burning.
“Get out of here,” he said, silhouetted against the light in the house. “Put your feet on the path. Mother and Father will guide you.”
Then he was gone, muttering to his daughter as they debated what to do. I crouched down behind the house, moving the curtain aside just as their door exploded in a blinding flash. Two hulking figures entered. They had the shape of men but were unnaturally tall and emanated such a bright light it was difficult even to glance at them, men with yellow hair and bodies that glowed like embers. Great white wings spread behind them as they wrestled Niyek and her father to the ground.
“Where is the writer?” Their voices were so loud, so piercing, they made my own head throb.
The writer? Great Snake, did they know about the book? Did they mean me? To think that I had brought this evil down on innocents. . . . They wanted me. I huddled behind the curtain and prayed, wondering if I had the strength to run after a long day of travel and only a bit of food. My feet were covered in new blisters and my shoulder ached from the burden of the book. Niyek shrieked, and when I looked again, one of the glowing creatures was kissing her. . . . No, not kissing her . . . Some kind of light stretched between his open mouth and hers, stealing the sound from her screams.
“She is not confessing. They do not know anything,” the other creature said. He looked disgusted.
“They must!” The man holding Niyek gave her a shake and the light poured from his mouth to hers brighter, brighter. . . . Meti cried for mercy for her, for them both, and then wept as Niyek went limp. The skin around her lips bubbled and burst, and the flesh on her face grew shiny before it melted like wax.
A third figure burst through the door then, alight with that same unnatural brilliance.
I clutched my stomach and let go of the curtain, lurching toward the spiky bushes behind the house. Niyek’s exposed skull lingered in my mind, a curse now, a curse I had brought down on myself for seeking their help.
“Did you hear that?”
The men inside must have noticed my rustling in the bushes. I shouldered the pack and dragged bleeding feet across the ground, running as fast as I could. They would find me. They would find the book, and I, too, would be nothing but a puddle of melted flesh, a fate I dreaded but perhaps deserved.
My punishment the next morning was to spend hours mucking out the horse stalls. Mrs. Haylam sent me out to the barn first thing in the morning without a crust of bread or a sip of tea. She must have known it would take longer to clean up after the horses if I was weak with hunger.
It was a mild sentence, due in no small part, I was sure, to Mary. Leave it to her to beg for understanding on my behalf. I had not argued when Mrs. Haylam handed down the verdict in the kitchen, since even I had no idea if I deserved to be punished for the previous night’s terror. There had been warnings about leaving the house at night, and though I had found Mary, I had also immediately failed to protect her. I couldn’t help but wonder if part of my current misery had come about because of Finch’s heroism.
My day was to get no better, and in fact, mucking the stables might be considered the high point. After I finished, I was expected to wait on Amelia Canny while she chose trimmings and bunting for the wedding, a task I would not wish on my cruelest enemy. I had no interest in her or her betrothed—each hour I spent away from the cellar was another hour wasted. While I dealt with horse dung, the clock ran down on my time to translate the journal.
Two hours after I had begun, the task was finished, and I wiped off my soiled boots and let my rucked-up skirts down. I needed a bath, badly, and something to eat. Cleaner now, the stables smelled strongly of horse and hay, with the sweeter note of grass and clover. The day was a gloomy one, the late-spring sun retreating behind a heavy swell of clouds. Still, that did not make it much cooler, and I felt damp all over with sweat.
At the very least I could justify a bath before meeting with Amelia—she would only complain about her serving girl reeking of horse.
I heard a soft tread on the boards above me, as if someone had just climbed into the hayloft. That had been my haunt for most of the autumn as I adjusted to my job at Coldthistle House, but I had no idea that others were also using it as a hideaway. Quietly, I circled around the horse stalls to the hay-strewn floor of the barn, finding the ladder to the loft was lowered. Someone was indeed above, and it sounded like he was crying.
There was no voice of warning this time, at least, but still, I had learned my lesson about bolting after the sound of sobs. It was broad daylight, however, and Bartholomew dozed outside. I could hear his grumbly snores, and satisfied myself by swearing he would wake and alert if any massive wolf creatures came dashing into the yard.
I put one foot on the hayloft ladder and waited. “Hello up there? Are you well?”
“It’s only me.”
Chijioke called back, a note of pain in his voice. I climbed up slowly, giving him the chance to shoo me off. But I reached the top and hoisted myself into the loft without him saying another word, and I found him pacing the low-ceilinged attic, a sheen of tears still sparkling on his cheeks.
“I could use the company,” he said with a sigh. He stopped near one of the low triangular windows and leaned against the beams. “I’ve no idea what I did wrong, Louisa. Or if . . . Sod it, why must this all be so confoundedly complicated?”
“What is?” I asked gently.
He touched his forehead to the broad beam above the window and his shoulders heaved, but he did not cry. “Mary . . . I know not what I did to vex her.”
“I only saw her last night in the woods,” I said. “What happened? God, I can understand if she’s cross with me after all I did, but you had nothing to do with it!”
Chijioke shook his head and ran a hand over his black hair, resting his knuckles against his nape. “This morning after breakfast I went to see her. I gave her the fish carving, aye? And she . . . Oh, Louisa, she said she didn’t want it, and that she was too tired to see me just then.”
Now he sounded on the verge of more tears, and I rushed over to him, putting just my fingertips on his arm. He leaned ever forward, as if curling up into a ball, wiping at his face as silent tears coursed down his cheeks.
“I had no idea you two were so close,” I said. “I suppose I don’t know a lot of things. But perhaps you should simply believe her, mm? If she is too tired, then . . . Well, she died. One can hardly blame her for wanting a rest. I’m sure she will come around when more time has passed.”
He shook his head fervently, pushing away from the window and turning to face me. His brows furrowed and he stared at the space over my left shoulder, as if too shy to meet my eyes. “No. . . . No. I looked in her eyes as she said it, as she gave me back the gift. There was nothing there. Nothing. Like . . . like she couldn’t even see me.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, feeling pressure build in my chest. This was my fault. They had been finding some kind of joy in each other, and then I had come along and selfishly stolen it away by agreeing to a bargain I did not fully understand. Now she was back, but quite obviously changed. “Do you want me to speak with her? Let me help, please; if there is anything I can do, I’ll do it.”
Chijioke took in a great, spluttering breath and then let it out, at last nodding his head and looking away toward the window. “If you did speak to her, don’t tell her I asked you to. It would help to know . . . If it’s all past hope, then I’d like to know.”
“I’m certain it isn’t,” I told him, and he walked with me back toward the ladder. His tears had slowed. “You did not see the beast that attacked us, Chijioke, I’m hardly in my right mind after it, and it was intent on hurting Mary. She must be in shock.”
“Aye,” he said, helping me down the ladder. “I had thought to comfort her.”
“We all face fear so differently, she may be trying to spare you. You lost her once, and almost lost her again last night.”
“Indeed, lass, I heard you fired a gun at the mad creature that came after ye. Very brave.”
“Hardly brave, just desperate,” I replied with a shrug. “It was Finch who frightened the fell thing away.”
Chijioke gave a snort of derision at that and followed me nimbly down the ladder. Together we walked toward the open barn doors, where the cloud-dampened sunlight poured in. Poppy’s hound was waiting for us, snuffling in the hay curiously with his big brown ears flopped over his eyes. He looked up at us and sat, giving a quiet boof.
“Mrs. Haylam must be looking for us,” I sighed. “I’m to meet with Amelia, but not before a bath.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he teased. “If you wait a moment, I can distract Haylam so you can slip by. I’ll make up some— What the devil?”
Chijioke trailed off, taking one step out of the barn and into the yard. I had heard the footsteps and panting, too—little Poppy ran across the yard toward us, braids bouncing, hands still dusted with flour from the kitchens. She nearly collided with the dog as she skidded to a stop, looking between us with huge eyes.
“Slow down there,” Chijioke said, patting her back. “What’s all this haste about?”
“You both must . . . You both must come now.” She gulped for air, then flung her hand back toward the house. “Amelia is dead,” she whispered. “Dead.”
“An accident?” Chijioke asked. “How?”
“No accident; it must be murder.” Poppy shook her head. “You must both come inside and quick.”