Read Online CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness by Mike Allen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mike Allen
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will return tomorrow.”
She rose from her crouch, feeling the flex and contraction of her wiry muscles. A body, imperfect as avatars never were. Yet if the goddess sought sensation, why choose only the slender, the unblemished, the young? There was a whole world of experience, and Hathirekhmet felt only the merest sliver of it. “No,” Nefret said. “I will spend tomorrow in contemplation. When I am ready, I will leave a sign for you.”
A lizard skull, placed at the foot of the path leading up to her shelter. Nefret had demanded solitude before. Sekhaf bowed. “As you wish.”
The others began climbing down the rocks, talking more loudly as they went. Sekhaf stayed, hesitating, until they were well away, and he and Nefret stood alone atop the flint-littered plateau. “You have my thanks as well,” he said. Startled, she found herself wondering how long ago the others had come—how long it had been since they were just two, the philosopher and the young woman who was once a goddess. “I came to you hoping to understand something I could never experience for myself. I know now the impossibility of that—but you have given me something far greater. You may not be holy, as Khapep was. But you, Nefret, have wisdom no priest or scripture could ever grant. The world beyond this place will benefit from that wisdom for ages to come.”
She blinked eyes dried by sun and wind. That men had come to debate these questions, she knew; she had never thought beyond that. What did the priests think of this woman in the desert, who spoke so familiarly of Hathirekhmet? Did they revere her, as the villagers did? Fear her? Dismiss her as a simple madwoman?
Nefret might have thought herself mad, were it not for Sekhaf. He saw wisdom in her words. But if it was there, they had created it together, questions and answers dancing around and ever nearer to the truth.
He bowed and left her, climbing down the rocks after his companions, and not until he was gone did she whisper “thank you” in reply.
* * *
She greeted the dawn from the pinnacle of her rocks, as she had for countless days.
The soft breeze of morning blew over her skin, bringing warmth to banish the night’s bitter chill. Soon it would be heat, punishing and fierce, growing through the day, until at last the sun retreated, and night claimed the desert once more.
Nefret understood that cycle as well as she did her own body. She knew Hathirekhmet’s shifting arc through the sky, and the way the wind answered it; she knew the textures of limestone and flint and the restless dance of the sand.
She knew the seventeen perfections had nothing to do with any of it.
Oh, the priests did not deceive. Those were the sign of Hathirekmet’s choice—but the priests mistook the sign for the cause. That certainty had grown in Nefret’s heart through all the long debates with the philosophers. The goddess did not occupy a body because it had skin of a particular shade, or a voice of a particular timbre.
If that was not what drew her to a body, then it followed that the loss of those perfections was not why she left.
Something else drove the goddess from her avatars.
This was the question upon which Nefret fixed her mind. She put aside all other thoughts—lizards and scorpions, Sekhaf and the philosophers, Merentari and the man who would have bought her. Nothing but Hathirekhmet. She sat under the eye of the sun, not moving, letting the wind scour her dry. She had drunk no water since the previous dawn, and would drink none until the sun set tonight. She did not seek death—not as she once thought she did—but she seared all the river’s gift from herself, the better to know Hathirekhmet. To know the answer to this one question: why the goddess had left.
The sun beat more strongly upon her with every passing moment. She felt the sweat dry upon her skin, until no more came; she heard the pounding of her own heart, marking the incremental movement of the sun.
And she
She rose from her crouch, feeling the flex and contraction of her wiry muscles. A body, imperfect as avatars never were. Yet if the goddess sought sensation, why choose only the slender, the unblemished, the young? There was a whole world of experience, and Hathirekhmet felt only the merest sliver of it. “No,” Nefret said. “I will spend tomorrow in contemplation. When I am ready, I will leave a sign for you.”
A lizard skull, placed at the foot of the path leading up to her shelter. Nefret had demanded solitude before. Sekhaf bowed. “As you wish.”
The others began climbing down the rocks, talking more loudly as they went. Sekhaf stayed, hesitating, until they were well away, and he and Nefret stood alone atop the flint-littered plateau. “You have my thanks as well,” he said. Startled, she found herself wondering how long ago the others had come—how long it had been since they were just two, the philosopher and the young woman who was once a goddess. “I came to you hoping to understand something I could never experience for myself. I know now the impossibility of that—but you have given me something far greater. You may not be holy, as Khapep was. But you, Nefret, have wisdom no priest or scripture could ever grant. The world beyond this place will benefit from that wisdom for ages to come.”
She blinked eyes dried by sun and wind. That men had come to debate these questions, she knew; she had never thought beyond that. What did the priests think of this woman in the desert, who spoke so familiarly of Hathirekhmet? Did they revere her, as the villagers did? Fear her? Dismiss her as a simple madwoman?
Nefret might have thought herself mad, were it not for Sekhaf. He saw wisdom in her words. But if it was there, they had created it together, questions and answers dancing around and ever nearer to the truth.
He bowed and left her, climbing down the rocks after his companions, and not until he was gone did she whisper “thank you” in reply.
* * *
She greeted the dawn from the pinnacle of her rocks, as she had for countless days.
The soft breeze of morning blew over her skin, bringing warmth to banish the night’s bitter chill. Soon it would be heat, punishing and fierce, growing through the day, until at last the sun retreated, and night claimed the desert once more.
Nefret understood that cycle as well as she did her own body. She knew Hathirekhmet’s shifting arc through the sky, and the way the wind answered it; she knew the textures of limestone and flint and the restless dance of the sand.
She knew the seventeen perfections had nothing to do with any of it.
Oh, the priests did not deceive. Those were the sign of Hathirekmet’s choice—but the priests mistook the sign for the cause. That certainty had grown in Nefret’s heart through all the long debates with the philosophers. The goddess did not occupy a body because it had skin of a particular shade, or a voice of a particular timbre.
If that was not what drew her to a body, then it followed that the loss of those perfections was not why she left.
Something else drove the goddess from her avatars.
This was the question upon which Nefret fixed her mind. She put aside all other thoughts—lizards and scorpions, Sekhaf and the philosophers, Merentari and the man who would have bought her. Nothing but Hathirekhmet. She sat under the eye of the sun, not moving, letting the wind scour her dry. She had drunk no water since the previous dawn, and would drink none until the sun set tonight. She did not seek death—not as she once thought she did—but she seared all the river’s gift from herself, the better to know Hathirekhmet. To know the answer to this one question: why the goddess had left.
The sun beat more strongly upon her with every passing moment. She felt the sweat dry upon her skin, until no more came; she heard the pounding of her own heart, marking the incremental movement of the sun.
And she
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