The desert was singing and dancing for her. She sat resting in the shadow of the desert oak her father had planted when she was born thirty-two years ago, and watched it shimmer and writhe in the heat. Tall grass surrounded a glassine expanse for hundreds of yards before her. The grass moving to the breezes that swept the river, the river moving to the whim of the tides and the gods, the desert itself swaying in the distance to the rising, twisting thermals born inside it. For a while she joined in the dance herself, letting her mind drift like the lily pads guarding the river banks at Pharaoh’s reach. Her worries dwindled in her reveries but the time was - as always - short and she had plenty to worry after. This weekend would mark both a wedding and a birthday for her.
Two days from now, her father - High Council to the God-King - would give her away to her people’s gift from the Sun Gods themselves, would make her a gift to his best friend and Ruler Ramses. The great God-King would accept the gift, and the Prince would marry her, vouchsafing the safety and peace of the kingdom, and her own family, for many years to come. Her father’s plans with his friend, the great Pharaoh - many years in the making - would finally come to bear, and with them, peace and calm.
Peace and calm for everybody, that is, but she. Isabella Atues, princess to the Sun and maiden-queen to be knew no peace. Even sitting here melting into the languid scenery of a perfect summer’s day, her peace of mind felt desperate, forced, and temporary. Her problems and decisions kept redoubling and expanding in her head, stalling her enjoyment and turning all her thoughts black. Each imagined solution bringing with it a host of resultant entanglements, until she was literally paralyzed by worry. Before long the desert, long able to sooth even her darkest moods, disappeared around her, leaving only doubt, confusion, and fear. The desert and the dance: presents for some other, less tortured, soul.
She rose from her hideout near the Oak and started back toward the golden palace, toward her life and her torment. It was getting near noontime, and she knew Mysse would need her for most of the rest of the day. The crusty old crone was cutting her wedding gowns and that would be no short process. She turned about halfway back, stealing one more glance her magnificent green island. From this far up the bank she could see deep into the horizon. She imagined a sea out there somewhere, and a boat. A ship. One that would take her wherever she wanted. One that could help remove her from the desert and her family once and for all. Then she stole another glance, this way back towards the palace and beyond that, the great, half-finished pyramid that would become the crowning glory of the Sun-Kings long after the kingdom and the world had moved on.
It will reach to heaven…
Her father had told her when construction had started fourteen years ago. His face beamed and glowed when he spoke of his plans.
All the way to heaven so that the Sun Kings can come and go from there as they please, learning the secrets of the Sun, and the secrets of life and death themselves.
It was a lot to lay on a child of nine years old. When he spoke, though, his words seamed so sure and his resolve so iron, she’d never questioned the why of it. It was only later, when she could look upon the slave drivers directing the architect’s vision, hear the lash meeting flesh violently, and see the slaves bleeding and dying and burning in the sun that she’d realized what a folly the immense tomb really was. Whatever and whoever the Sun God may be, she felt sure he’d be appalled at the tortures of the labor and the disregard for lives he’d created. She felt sure that God hated her father.
And I as well old man…I as well.
She thought, and spat on the sandy ground, the ghost of a grimace steeling across her face. In its place she set a placid smile and rushed off to the rest of her day, putting the disgusted visage - and the thoughts and possibilities that went along with it - away for a while.
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