Read Online The Eye of Horus by Carol Thurston - Free Book Online

recite it for him.
    “At first a voice cried out against the darkness, and the voice grew loud enough to stir black waters.
    “It was Temu rising up, his head the thousand-petaled lotus. He uttered the word and one petal drifted from him, taking form on the water.
    “He was the will to live. Out of nothing he created himself, the light. The hand that parted the waters, uplifted the sun and stirred the air.
    “He was the first, the beginning. Then all else followed, like petals drifting into the pool.
    “And I can tell you that story.”

I wake in the dark to the stirring of birds, a murmur in the trees, a flutter of wings. It is the morning of my birth, the first of many. Lions roar in the temple and the earth trembles. But it is only tomorrow keeping watch over today.
    —Normandi Ellis,
Awakening Osiris
4
    Year Five in the Reign of Tutankhamen
(1356 B.C. )
DAY 12, SECOND MONTH OF HARVEST
    The priest’s servant came for me again, but while Aten sailed high in the sky. This time we went around the priest’s main residence, to a smaller house connected to it by a covered walkway, where he led me to a large room guarded by life-size statues of the ram-headed god—Amen in his ancient form. The sleeping couch in the center of the room was shaped like a kitten with its tail arrested in midswing while its head turned to watch over the little girl on its back.
    “How long since you first noticed something was amiss?” I asked the girl’s nurse-mother, who I recognized at once for she had changed little in the nearly four years since I saw her last, except for the deep shadows beneath her eyes.
    ‘Three days. First she fussed about a piece lost from one of her games, or when Tuli did not come the instant she called, which is not her way.”
    “She also would not eat,” Pagosh put in, “and stopped talking. That is not her way, either.” I could feel the heat from the girl’s body even before I put my fingers to her neck, so it did not surprise me that her heart spoke too fast.
    “She felt too warm to my hand,” Merit continued, “but who does not when Re takes so long to cross the sky?”
    “Are any of the other children sick?”
    “There are no other children in the house of Ramose. Only this one”—Merit’s voice faltered as tears flooded her eyes—“small girl.”
    “Bring a lamp so I can see into her mouth. And you—Pagosh—see that a brazier is lit, but outside. Then uncover the windows and have someone bring a fan, since there is no breeze for the wind-catcher on the roof to capture.”
    Holding the lamp in one hand, I squeezed the girl’s cheeks, and saw that her throat was swollen and inflamed. But it was the white spots on the back wall of flesh that concerned me most. “Let her lie on the ropes and continue bathing her with water,” I instructed Merit, “while I prepare a draught for her throat. Wet her face, neck, and chest, even her legs, then turn her over and do the same again.”
    Pagosh brought a servant girl with an ostrich-feather fan, then led me to the terrace where he had lit the brazier. I handed him a bronze ewer containing dried sage and bark of willow, instructed him to fill it with clean water, and set it over the flame. “Your lord cannot spare another serving-woman to help her nurse-mother care for his daughter, even when she is sick?” I inquired.
    “Merit does not trust anyone else with Aset. Only me, so say what you need.”
    I scooped two spoons of pulverized soil from an old cattle pen into my mortar, along with a few pieces of rotten bread. “A pitcher of beer will do for now.”
    “Later,
sunu,
after you tend to the girl.”
    The stiff-necked lout thought I meant to drink the beer myself! “You really expect me to believe that Merit trusts the girl with you?”
    He gave me a hard look, yet he spoke in a softened voice. “Merit is not only my wife and the mother of my son, may his
ka
live in eternity, but the beloved of my heart. She knows I would protect Aset