Two Horizons, Page 7

Chapter 7

  NOON BLIND

  At the start of the inundation season’s fourth and final month, scarlet colors of sunset caught Mehi’s Virile Team scaling one hundred feet up the pyramid’s west face. The team shone as facets of the sun. Their movements melded into those of a single organism, as did the movements of all eight hundred teams into eight hundred organisms. And, as if bequeathed with the sun’s ability to rise, the mantled creatures ascended the pyramid while the sun sank below it.

  Mehi licked his dry lips, tasting the barley beer waiting for him when the day’s work ended. But by the time the team pumped to the east, and seeing the low, slow Nile, his taste soured. If only his team could tie their ropes around the river’s source and help God-king Khufu pull out more water.

  “All stop,” came from above. Mehi’s stomach clenched. He recalled his spinning during his recent near-fall. The command indicated a repair to a ramp or a re-calculation at the top.

  The answering “Stop” of eight hundred foremen echoed against the pyramid. At the head of their team’s left and right ropes, Mehi and Kenna relayed the order behind them. The Virile Team leaned forward, braced against their stone, careful not to slacken their rope. Mehi nodded to his mudder in front, ready to slop mud before the sled’s path and, eight feet up the ramp to the poler of the team ahead, preparing to lever his wooden pole to their stone.

  “All clear” came down to them.

  Mehi gauged his team.

  Kenna’s smile revealed his missing front tooth. “There, there, Mother,” he said to Mehi, sticking out his chin and a thumb to point backward, “we can watch after ourselves. I’ll start up this thing myself.” With a shoulder, he adjusted the yellow bandana around his forehead. His dark curls writhed in the breeze. Clamping the rope with his upper arm against his ribs, he spit onto his hands and then twisted them around the rope.

  “Just hold onto your own spit, Tiny.”

  Eight hundred echoed, “Ready.”

  Mehi bore down on his rope with each of the twenty thousand men in the eight hundred teams around the pyramid. He sensed the eight hundred ropes vibrating like so many silken threads of a spider web, linking them all. Or cocooning them all; the pyramid will emerge.

  “One.” Along the pyramid, the teams pressed forward. Their ropes quivered.

  “Two.” Twenty thousand hauled up right feet, cocked the knees.

  “Go!” Twenty thousand drove feet down. Mehi’s stone rocked a little, then gave way. “Pull, you pull.” Grunts erratic at first, seconds later the team meshed. Mehi warmed in their shared rhythm like in An-khi’s smile. Her image emerged in his mind. He tried to concentrate on his task but her image rooted before him. She beamed as his mother had prior to the crime.

  Without knowing why, Mehi yanked up his head. The stone in front shuddered. Jolted. In its five feet he saw the image of a furious Hap Bull, bucking against its attackers. The two-ton stone grated its rope and tore through. Off its sled, it smashed onto the ramp, shaking Mehi.

  The mudder and poler leapt left toward the pyramid, the block skidded right. Hoping it’d veer off the ramp, Mehi didn’t warn his team. Their panic might unleash their own stone on the teams below.

  The stone, just missing Mehi, grinded toward Kenna and Pabes.

  “Free stone,” Kenna shouted, diving to the ground, one foot from the ramp’s edge.

  Pabes shuffled backward. The rope jerked in Mehi’s hands for loss of the two men. Other men cried out. He fixed his feet in place. The stone kept lurching toward his friends. Pabes cringed back from the block toward open space. Kenna wobbled, forced to one leg.

  Mehi yelled “Hold!”

  The foreman repeated the command. Mehi released his rope and jumped toward the stone. He lost sight of Kenna and Pabes behind it. It edged off the ramp. He clapped his hands on the stone as if that would halt it. He again sighted Pabes—hanging from the ramp by his fingers.

  To Mehi, Pabes lifted his eyes. They seemed to ask, Am I dead?

  Mehi wanted to know, What is it to die?

  The stone inched farther, chewing at Pabes’ hands. Its screeches in shredding the ramp drowned out Pabes’ scream. The block tipped over. It swept Pabes away. The stone dropped from sight, sounding no louder than a sigh.

  “Mehi.”

  It seemed to Mehi that all the sky called to him.

  “Mehi.”

  By one hand, Kenna clung onto a timber in the crumbling ramp. Mehi heard—far away as in a dream—the stone hit the ground.

  Mehi knelt and stretched to his friend. His knees slipped. Dirt skittered down. The ramp edge crumbled beneath him. Through the dust swirling around Kenna, Mehi saw small figures on the ground scampering in all directions. He steadied himself on his belly, then reached for Kenna’s right hand that gripped the timber. Kenna’s left arm dangled at his side, bloodied. Mehi clasped Kenna’s right wrist with both hands. Mehi yelled, “Grab my arm. Grab my arm.”

  “I’ll pull you over.”

  “You’ve got to grab my arm.”

  A three-inch chunk of ramp broke away under Mehi. His torso and head tilted over the ramp. He closed his eyes, bowing back his shoulders.

  The two friends stared at one another.

  “Don’t let me pull you over.”

  “Trust me.”

  Kenna released the timber and grasped Mehi’s forearm, kicking his feet into the ramp as if to run up its side. Grunting, sputtering, focused on his hands, Mehi hauled Kenna onto the ramp in a single motion.

  Panting, Mehi and Kenna crouched together. They then sprawled back on the ramp.

  Moments later, before Kenna stood, Mehi crawled to where the stone had bitten off the ramp. He peeked down the hundred feet of pyramid where Pabes lay beside the stone. A crowd gathered. Some gazed at Pabes, some at the stone, some up at Mehi.

  Only then did sweat in one chill shiver sweep over his body. Why hadn’t he warned Pabes sooner?

  The next dawn, An-khi’s back grated against hot sand as Mehi pressed on top of her. He had just told her about the pyramid accident and then clamped himself on her, kissing and clasping her hard. The morning so hot, his flesh against hers was painful. She tried to pull back but the sand scratched her. Closing her eyes, she imagined Mehi leaning out from the pyramid, high in the clouds, slipping, slipping, falling ...

  An-khi pulled her mouth from his. “Pyramid workers die so often. Many from our own village. Mothers hide their sons from the conscriptors.”

  The two lovers loosened their hands from each other.

  Mehi said, “It’s an honor to serve.”

  “Dying is not an honor.”

  “The royal tomb is for everyone. I’m honored on it.” He reached for her.

  Pushing herself up, An-khi drew her shoulders from his reach, inviting a cooling breeze between them. “You don’t even seem upset by your friend’s death.”

  Mehi sucked a breath. “How can you say that? I looked him in the eye.” He lowered his head. “But, while we’re making of such a colossal monument ... it happens, terribly.”

  “Yes, and all too commonplace, if you ask me.”

  Mehi’s face reddened. “You used to like pyramid work. We create the God-king’s steps to the stars. When he reaches them, we’re all rewarded by his watching over us, providing for us.”

  “Well, my father says it’s a burden.”

  “He doesn’t say that out loud.”

  An-khi hoisted her chin. “He does. He’s not afraid. He’s doesn’t have to be part of something else to feel powerful.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  On the sand, they used their arms to support themselves and not the other. “You give up too much. It frightens me. You could have been killed. You thought nothing of dangling yourself over that ramp.”

  “That was Kenna there. I didn’t even think about it.”

  Heat flushed into An-khi’s face. “That’s just it. You didn’t think about it.”

  “Is that something you can think about?�
��

  “Don’t you see how frightening that is?”

  “You’re not listening, An-khi.”

  “You sound desperate. You feel desperate.” An-khi looked around them. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  Mehi looked up at the wide sky. “Why is everything turning wrong?”

  An-khi held up her hands. “I want you to have more respect for yourself. More assertion and less sacrifice. Right now you’re so rock-heavy, you sink into yourself.”

  “Do you know what it is to love you?”

  An-khi wanted to be anywhere else at that moment. She flattened her hands on the sand as if about to leave. “How would I know what it’s like when you’re so crazy about it?” Her voice edged shriller. “You don’t have a life, a drive that moves you on your own.”

  “An-khi!” Mehi’s mouth remained open and twisted.

  She immediately wished to suck back her words. She eased her shoulders down. “That was unfair. I’m sorry.”

  The two lovers, breathing hard, looked off in opposite directions.

  “I was just scared, Mehi.”

  “Tu. All I can see are Pabes’ eyes—like I’m looking down a well. How long am I going to see those eyes?”

  An-khi had her own images—of Mehi in danger—that clung to her. “Were you holding me so hard before because it would … I don’t know, distract you from seeing his eyes.”

  “Yes, I think so.” Mehi looked out to the river with her. “I’m ashamed to say it but when he looked up I wanted some sight into dying, some answer. But his eyes question me; they never answer.”

  An-khi waited. He seemed to have more he wanted to say.

  “An-khi?”

  “Yes, my dear.”

  At “my dear,” Mehi’s eyes flickered as if for music. “I have something to tell you.”

  An-khi missed a breath. She knew what he was about to say.

  “An-khi, my family did something ... terrible.”

  “Your family did?”

  Mehi paused. An-khi clasped his hand. He studied her recessed eyes as if reading his words there. “My father was with terrible people. They robbed a tomb. But he wasn’t with them when they broke in. He cut stone for them.” Mehi drooped back, his chest heaving with deep breaths. “I had to tell you.”

  An-khi slid her hand up his forearm. She caressed his ache.

  After telling his brother he was leaving home, Sebek had strolled from his parents’ hut into the black night expecting only bright skies. He heeded the fragrance of mystery and fortune.

  On the riverbank at dawn, he waved a white cloth like a sail indicating “south” to passing ships and barges. Southbound voyage required sails on the north-flowing river. Sebek pleased himself to embark on a course counter even to the Nile. Escape from Horemheb, Mehi and Khety was his freedom from the usual, common life of drudgery.

  When his message failed to secure immediate passage, Sebek thrust himself among the dock laborers and carried bundles of cattle hides and bushels of emmer wheat onto a low-set barge. “Take me south,” he told the captain afterward. This tact succeeded with a second captain.

  Every day for two weeks from first light to last of nightfall, Sebek scrubbed the barge’s deck, repaired sails, served the crew bread and salted tilapia, as well as loaded resins, pots, fans and ointments. He kept an eye out for evidence of his increasing distance from his previous life. But just like in Mer, people on shore in loincloths and short kilts mended fishing nets, cleaned irrigation ditches and hauled water from the river. Ordinary.

  When set ashore in Anpu, Sebek’s earlier strategy for gaining passage failed with the fewer boats sailing farther south. It angered him like wasps were stinging him inside his skin. So, he walked. He didn’t need any tem boat captain. On the hundred miles to Gebtu—a town at the Bekhan Trail where he could join up with a caravan crew—Sebek never looked back or thought of home. He had only himself. He liked that.

  He reached Gebtu under an afternoon sun. In sight of farm fields near two-story mansions, a group of perhaps thirty people had gathered around a large man wearing on his head what looked like an tiny, upside-down reed basket. The man passed among the children and adults a twenty-inch long mongoose as if he were letting them sample a fabric at market, all the while spouting in a high voice how meek and loving was his “Tesh-Tesh.”

  Sebek admired the man’s sleek ease and knew he lied—he made too much of the animal’s gentleness. These people deserved what was coming.

  A dark snake appeared—too suddenly—in the crowd. It writhed and spat. “Cobra!” People leapt away shrieking. The large con man, waving an arm in the air and holding the mongoose in the other, called out, “Please do not fear. I assure you my Tesh-Tesh will subdue that snake.”

  Several men laughed. “That pet isn’t a challenge even for the geese on my estate.”

  “So, well then,” the man said, his high voice oozing what Sebek knew was feigned indignation. “I shall wager these carnelian pebbles,” he pulled something from his skirt but Sebek couldn’t tell whether he actually held any gem, “against one of your geese that my Tesh-Tesh will shake that snake senseless.”

  Sebek loved the ploy.

  The man set down the animal in front of the black-banded cobra. At the instant the mongoose’s paws hit the ground, its teeth snarled, eyes narrowed and snout pointed at the snake,. The audience murmured.

  The cobra coiled. Its hood flared. Tesh quivered, readied. The snake sprang. People gasped. Tesh slipped its head to one side. The cobra’s fangs gleamed past. It recoiled. Again, its fangs shot out faster than Sebek could follow. Tesh dodged to the other side while baring its teeth and biting the snake in mid-air. Clamping down, Tesh whipped the snake, its length flopping about. He smashed its head on the ground. Again and again.

  Tesh released the cobra’s limp form. The crowd closed around and cooed over the victor returned to its docile self. But none dared touch it now. The estate owner brought a goose and onions to the man in the tiny reed hat.

  When the con man left, Sebek followed. As Sebek expected, the conniver joined up with an accomplice, a tall, lean man Sebek had noticed a minute before the snake appeared. The two knocked forearms and laughed together, appraising the goose.

  Sebek thought up an idea. Under failing light, he followed the jolly men through the alleys to the south. He hid in doorways and behind people. One man he used as a shield called him “Pig.” From behind a low wall of stones at the south end of town, Sebek watched the pair in a hallow set a fire. Smelling the roasting goose, Sebek felt demons of hunger knife his gut.

  Waiting for the two men to sleep, Sebek considered all men’s weaknesses such as the need to eat and sleep, and how these weaknesses can be used against them.

  At dawn, the connivers’ snores rose up as the fire burnt down. Sebek stole into their camp. The sleeping mongoose was staked a few feet from the men. Stepping lightly, Sebek gripped the animal’s snout against its cry and scooped it under his other arm. Adjusting the wriggling mongoose, he yanked the stake from the ground.

  Sebek slipped away, certain never to be hungry again.

  At noon, thirty days after Sebek’s parting, silence clung to the family’s home like the dampness darkening the walls. In the back room, Mehi could ignore the tension, mostly. He knitted together yellow daisies he’d picked for An-khi during his return from a visit with Djedi and Pese’shet on his weekly day off. They’d told him that a storm had passed in the desert a few days earlier. He knew of a likely spot in a desert ravine where indeed the daisies had sprung.

  Though he and his father spoke so little, how easily he spoke with Djedi. They talked about his kissing An-khi and arguing with her about the pyramid accident, the falling volume of An-khi’s sentences no longer sounding like skipping rocks but like a shout dying across the distance.

  It amazed Mehi that he had wanted to tell An-khi about his father. He had been sure that she would leave him, would have to leave him. But she had touched him. She knew his wor
st secret and touched him. Mehi’s chest felt like it had opened to her.

  Djedi had offered, “You invoke my young days, Mehi. Each moment, each corner I came to filled me with hope of coming upon my beloved. I addressed her as ‘Goddess’ for the earth featured at least one.”

  From the courtyard, someone asked for Mehi. His mother said, “Is something wrong, Wabt?” Not answering, Wabt repeated her question. Mehi dropped the flowers and went to the doorway.

  Framed there, his friend’s wet eyes and flushed cheeks explained why Khety had asked about her health.

  “Mehi, walk with me?”

  “Of course, Wabt.” Mehi looked behind him at nothing. “Let’s go then.”

  In the noon ablaze, their walk in the alley stalled not far from the hut. Wabt stared at her feet and said nothing. Sweat beaded on her temples.

  “What have you been doing, Wabt?”

  She looked up. “What have I been doing? What have you been doing? You and that foreign-village woman.”

  “She isn’t a—”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  Mehi shrugged. “Tu.”

  Her face tightening, as with determination, Wabt squared up to Mehi. “I’m about to go to live in Har-her-nekht’s house and be his second mistress.”

  “I’m happy for you.” Mehi was not happy for her. To be a second mistress was to be a servant.

  Wabt frowned. “I want to know if there’s a chance for you and me.”

  Mehi’s insides sank. “Um, do you mean ...?”

  “Can you and me start a house?” Wabt’s eyes teared again.

  Mehi’s eyes dragged the ground for something to say that would soothe her. “I’ve enjoyed knowing you and—”

  Wabt sniggered. “All the boys enjoyed knowing me. Fat girls are good to lay with, but men don’t want us for a first mistress or even be seen with us.” Her voice grew louder with each word.

  “I always hoped the best for you.”

  “Can I live in a home built with your hope?”

  Neighbors glanced at the arguing couple. Mehi wanted to flee. Until today, Wabt had shielded from him this side of her.

  “Were you nice ’cause you pitied me?”

  “You want me to defend being nice to you?”

  “Pity is the worst.” Wabt’s voice pitched louder. Sweat seeped up on both their foreheads. “Maybe you make me feel worst.”

  Mehi wanted to be unkind to her. “I think it’s time for me to go in.”

  “Answer me.”

  He looked left then right. “It may not be what you had hoped for, and I apologize for any misunderstanding between us, but I congratulate you on your engagement. I’ll tell Kenna. He’ll enjoy it.”

  Wabt’s eyes flickered. “Yes. He’ll enjoy it. He has before.”

  Mehi gave Wabt a moment to conclude their meeting politely. She only trembled. He returned home, leaving Wabt in the alley.

  Knowing his parents must have heard the argument, Mehi quickly passed them to pace the back room. He ended on his haunches, in a corner. His stomach twisted. Wabt’s blame echoed in his ears. Why can’t I be angry with Wabt for such ugliness in front of everyone?

  Mehi decided he needed air. He rushed into the front room, edging past Horemheb standing in the doorway. His father peered at him. Once on the roof, Mehi lay down and counted clouds, shaking away Pabes’ and Wabt’s eyes. A figure rose above the roof. It blocked out the afternoon sun except for a halo, casting the figure in silhouette. It was Horemheb.

  Son waited for his father.

  Horemheb began talking, rapidly. “If you got love, don’t let anyone take it from you. ’Specially yourself.”

  Mehi watched Horemheb’s silhouette turn and descend the ladder while the sun replaced him on the roof.

  Incredible. His father spoke to him—with advice. He even told Mehi something about himself, something important about his love for his wife. Imagine Horemheb fearing to lose, lose anything ... amazing.

  When Mehi laid down his head again, his worry had lifted into the sky.

  Midday, twenty days after the Hap’s death, ample time for protests in the streets and in Khufu’s Petition Court to scald the God-king’s ears, a royal runner arrived in the Throne Hall. His voice meek but echoing off the thirty-foot high ceiling, he reported that Vizier Shaf had uncovered the new Hap.

  Khufu threw arms into the air. “Ha!” Interrupting a meeting with his brother Neferma’at to plan trading outposts, he called for his chamberlain. “Before the citizens’ anger grates my skin any harsher, open the palace for a jubilee. We’ll welcome our forager as well as hand back to the Ptah priests their own Hap. And regain ma’at for Egypt.”

  In late afternoon three days later, Theormi and ten other harem women in silken linens served pomegranates and pumpkins, gazelle and flamingo, five kinds of beer, grape, date and pomegranate wine to two hundred guests in the Hall of Pillars. Harpists, acrobats, songbirds and butterflies enchanted nobles, governors, High-priests, and the visiting Ta Neter King. Men wore the latest fashion, a gold-pleated short skirt Khufu had worn at his Hathor Adoration festival. Women wore maroon or gold gowns sufficiently tight that they could forgo shoulder straps. Throughout the warm gaiety, both gender’s sesame and myrrh pomades melted to continually perfume their flowing black wigs.

  As each guest entered the hypostyle hall, he or she bowed to Queen Meritates in her boxlike, gilded chair set beside the twelve-foot high, nine-foot wide, gold-inlaid doorway. She acknowledged each with a blink. The guest joined others on the floor’s center, painted as a grand pool in the square Hall, fifty yards in length and width. To Theormi, the two guards waving ostrich feathers over her seemed to wave away any direct warmth with citizens Her Majesty might enjoy. Nearby, Queen Mother Hetefares, rather pale in a flaxen gown, reclined upon many soft pillows. She did not budge. Princess Hentusen—head reared chin-first like her mother—wore a circular cape in a group of guests, though none appeared to be speaking. Princess Merysankh—chatting gaily with a group of five guests her age of nineteen years—grasped her pleated, translucent gown with both hands at the thighs and swayed it around her ankles.

  Having forsaken his gold and silken pavilion set against the blue wall opposite to the entrance, Khufu, punched the air and kicked up his knees in an exaggeration of the music’s rhythms. Fitting that he danced beneath the twenty-foot state of falcon-headed Ra, his face was bright as the sun. With Khufu, the magician Djedi and Lady Pese’shet laughed and danced, if with more reserve.

  Carrying pomegranate wine—Khufu’s favorite fruit because “it bites back”—Theormi padded toward five of the princes huddling behind a pillar near a corner. Only Vizier Shaf was absent. She wondered what she must do to be part of such a beautiful family, beautiful excepting Merhet.

  When Prince Merhet saw her approach, his faience goblet dropped from his hand. It crashed on the floor, wine and faience spraying across the blue tiles. A servant scurried to clean the mess while Theormi, ignoring Merhet’s staring at her, poured wine and listened.

  “The God-king appears pleased,” Heru said.

  “Why not?” Dedephor said. “Dance, wine and music. Those are his tools.”

  Merhet muttered, “Voices loud enough for anyone.”

  “He returns to the Ptah priests their own Hap,” said Khemtatef, the youngest prince.

  “Shouldn’t we offer more respect to the new Ptah High-priest?”

  “Dear, soft Heru,” Dedephor said, “Khufu’s grief for the priests blinds the sun.”

  “Siptah will take the reins like a beggar.”

  “Due to Shaf today,” Khemtatef said, “we all are beggars.”

  Theormi withdrew to the serving station. Several harem girls new to a God-king’s reception giggled to see him laughing and dancing. One leaned toward Theormi. “How is he so joyful? I’ve heard that he’s hard—I mean, pardon me—but he works dawn to midnight.”

  Smile widening, Theormi observed her God-king. “Don’t mistake his lo
ve of work for a lack of joy.”

  “His head is so large. Big as a pyramid.”

  Theormi laughed. The girl reminded Theormi of herself some months ago. Did the royal education that Khufu provided for her, including irrigation, agriculture, trade, medicine, poetry and archery—she loved the strength her shoulders and chest developed—prepare her for another, larger role? What was his intention for her?

  Gongs rumbled. The whole of the Hall hushed. A chancellor announced the special guests.

  Emerging through the doorway, four Hituptah priests swung burning incense, its smoke clouding the sixteen guards who followed presenting spears before them and pounding their feet against the blue-tiled floor in rhythm to eight others behind plucking notes in unison on their hand-held harps. Then, bare-breasted strongmen advanced conveying the palanquin of Ptah High-priest Siptah costumed as God Ptah—broad collar, wedge beard, feathered disk atop his bald head.

  Between the many guests parting way, Siptah’s procession clomped toward the God-king. When directly before Khufu, the strongmen struck the palanquin on the tiles with a loud crack. Stark silence followed. No one spoke or moved.

  His massive jaw working, the God-king squinted at Siptah.

  Siptah smiled. At his hand signal, his reciter-priest called a litany commemorating God Ptah, His Temple’s accomplishments and the Hap Bull’s sacredness. Khufu glowered at Siptah throughout.

  When the recitation concluded, Khufu said, “Give us your paltry words, priest; we give you your Hap.”

  The gong clanged again.

  Guests at the Hall entrance cleared another path. Through it, dressed in commoner’s cloths, Vizier Shaf paraded, tugging the leash tied to a young bull, marked precisely and divinely—the new Hap. After a stunned reverence, the guests gave way to applause, shouts and whistles. Harpists and singers broke into song. Nobles praised the noble animal. Many tossed garlands to it. Shaf advanced himself amid this tribute.

  As Shaf passed Siptah, the High-priest’s nostrils flared as if for a foul odor. Shaf beamed a smile at him.

  “A divine Hap Bull,” proclaimed Khufu. The two hundred guests crowded closer. Waving Theormi beside him to fill his huge goblet, Khufu then presented it. In the center of attention, Theormi maintained her nerves by focusing her eyes on the goblet—dark green faience with figures of cormorants. Khufu blessed the Hap’s “undying abundance.”

  Then, in an apparent afterthought and motioning to Theormi, the God-king declared, “A maiden should drink the first to the new Hap.”

  Too surprised to believe her ears, Theormi hesitated. Every one of the two hundred faces heeded her. Meritates erected herself in her sitting position to scowl at her from a higher vantage. Merhet crept near.

  “Drink,” Khufu encouraged.

  In both hands, Theormi lifted the goblet to her lips. In the moment the liquid hit her stomach, she knew something was wrong.

  “Well, maiden?”

  Theormi’s stomach churned, spitting up into her throat. Sweat popped onto her forehead. She started to bolt from the spot, but the guests blocked any escape. So many, so close. Khufu indicated for her to return the goblet to him. Trying to, she lost her grip of it. It smashed to the floor, wine and chards of faience flying up. She shivered. Buckling, she clutched her belly.

  “Theormi. What is—?”

  She wrenched up her head. Khufu’s brows pitched, eyes wild and black.

  “Sister!”

  Faint and clammy, Theormi grimaced, squeaked a horrid noise, and doubled over. Khufu and Merhet reached to her. She tried to speak but her jaw cramped shut. Her legs weakened like wet clay. Her head throbbed. Muscles knotted. The room spun. In her view, the guests and Khufu’s black lashes swirled around her. Theormi careened as if on a donkey running wild through a sycamore grove. Lurching, listing.

  The spinning crushed Theormi’s breath. Then all of her numbed.

  Why don’t we crash?

  Theormi wished to crash so she could stop spinning.