Neff
She was alone in the desert on a moonless night.
The air was still and unbroken by the breath of any other living thing. There was only the dunes, stretching into eternity like the primeval waters that covered the earth when the world was new.
A fresh set of tracks disturbed the ground up ahead. They were small and cloven, and she followed them, her feet sinking deep into the sand with each labored step.
The lamb lay in a patch of light, and because there was no moon, she knew that the light came from the creature itself. Blood flowed from a grievous wound in its side, staining its white wool crimson. Despite this, the lamb made no sound. It turned its strange horizontal eyes toward her.
“Beware.”
The lamb’s mouth did not move, yet she knew it was the lamb’s voice that spoke. It was a doleful sound, the sound of unwanted news, of nightmares come alive.
“Beware, for soon the Great River of Khetara will turn to blood.”
She took a step back and pressed her hands against her ears to block out the voice, but it continued.
“Lies will grow fruitful as wheat in the fields, and where once there was order, chaos will reign. A secret shall rise from beneath the earth, and the Red and the White Crowns will be forever broken.”
“Stop,” she said, but the voice did not quaver or cease, even as blood pooled around the lamb and spilled out in impossible torrents, soaking into the desert and spreading across the whole of the land.
“Take heed, Thonis, Great House of Amun! Beware of whatis unseen among you!” The lamb roared, and the desert became a chaotic red sea of gruesome, viscous dunes.
“Take heed, Sakesh, Great House of Ra! Beware of what burns and destroys you!”
She felt herself sinking. The lamb floated above the surface of the new sea, its gaze never wavering, its unearthly eyes focused solely on her. She screamed, thrashing in the thick waters until the copper tang of blood filled her mouth.
“Beware! Sorrow and ruin to the Children of the Two Lands!”
Nefermaat woke with a gasp.
She sat up from the reed mat where she slept and looked around her family’s humble home, bleary-eyed and panting. Morning light leaked in through the small square windows on each side, and next to her, her mother and father’s sleeping mats were vacant. She grasped at the threads of the dream, desperately trying to hold on to the words, the images, before—
“Oh, good! You’re up,” her mother said, coming up the mud-brick stairs from the ground floor below. She was carrying a jar of beer under one arm and a cloth-wrapped loaf of bread in the other. She moved briskly. “We’re about to eat. Hurry up and get ready, Neff. You know how your father hates being late to market.”
Neff rubbed her eyes. Whatever tenuous hold she’d had on her dream had vanished, leaving her with a cold, uneasy feeling that she’d forgotten something terribly important.
“I’m coming, Mamet, I’m coming,” she mumbled, and slipped into the woven papyrus sandals at the foot of her sleeping mat. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her white kalasiris dress and adjusted the straps over her shoulders. After washing her face in the basin and combing her fingers through her chin-length curly brown hair, she made her way up the stairs to the roof.
It was still early, so the sun was pleasant and not too hot. Nefftook a deep breath of fresh air and gazed around her. Mud-brick homes similar to theirs crowded around them in even lines leading south, punctuated by the great Temple of Bast standing at Bubas’s southern border. Beyond that, Neff knew, lay the lands of Low Khetara—Hurwar, Per-Abu, and Sakesh. They were names she’d heard in stories told across firelight, about a Great War that happened years before she was born. Stories of might and glory, and of King Sematawy’s legendary victory over the southern pretender. To the west was the wide blue finger of the Iteru, and due north on the banks of the river delta lay Thonis, home of the pharaoh and the capital city of the kingdom.
Everything west of the Iteru was the Red Lands. Bearded tribesmen in dark voluminous robes would sometimes venture into the village from across the river to trade with the Khetaran merchants, but they never stayed long. Her father, along with everyone else she knew, didn’t really trust them.
“I’m happy to do a trade,” Neff remembered hearing one of the vegetable merchants say, “But I’m not inviting them to stay for supper!” Neff had never actually met a desert tribesman herself. They usually came to trade for food, tools, and fabric, and weren’t often in the market for the magic scrolls her father sold.They probably don’t believe in that sort of thing, she thought. For a moment, she stared at the golden rolling desert, which seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon, the ghost of that dream still hovering at the edges of her memory.
“Stop wasting time, Neff!” her father called, waving her over with impatience. “Sit and eat!”
He was seated beneath the large woven canopy that took up one corner of the roof, already tucking into the beer and bread her mother had brought up for them from the cellar.
He was bald-headed, with a round face and prominent nose, and wore a crisp linen tunic that Neff’s mother hung on a lineevery night to keep it from wrinkling. It was tied at the waist with a fine well-stitched belt, a luxury he’d purchased months ago after a week of haggling with the leather merchant. “We’re moving up in the world, Ahura,” he’d told her mother when she balked at the price. “I must look the part. If you want people to respect you, you must command respect! That’s what I always say.”
Neff went to sit underneath the canopy, taking a chunk of bread and cup of beer for her own breakfast.
“It goes without saying that the prosperity scrolls are our most popular items,” her father said through a mouthful of food, continuing a conversation that must have started before Neff joined them. “But you’d be surprised how many love and beauty scrolls I’m selling. Can you believe it? They’re starving to death, but still they come, trading their last onion to look plump and pretty for a lover. Pah! Well, a fool’s trade is as good a trade as any, that’s what I always say…”
Neff’s mother shook her head. She was small and delicate, her hair and skin the soft brown color of a mourning dove. “It’s getting worse every day. There’s hardly anything to trade, and even less to trade for! Do you know how much I had to hand over for a few days’ worth of beans and vegetables?”
“That’s why we need to thinkbigger.Do you see? To keep up with the changing market. Imeny tells me they do a brisk business in the Thonis market selling curses.”
