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Ismene, sister, mine own dear sister, knowest thou

what ill there is, of all bequeathed by our father,

that Zeus fulfills not for us twain while we live?

Nothing painful is there, nothing fraught with ruin,

no shame, no dishonor, that I have not seen in

Thy woes and mine.

- Sophocles, Antigone

Most of all, however, large numbers of persons are led to lose sight of justice by the craving for military commands, civic honors, and fame. The saying of Ennius, ‘Where kingship is concerned, no social bond or covenant is sacred,’ has a much broader application; for as to whatever is of such a nature that but few can be foremost in it, there is generally so keen a rivalry that it is exceedingly difficult to keep social duty inviolate.

I remember the first time the Lord of the Red Land came to me and whispered in my dreams with the breath of an airless desert wind pressing against the waters of the Nile. I remember the rumble of his voice in the back of his throat, reminding me that he is also the lord of thunder and of the wild desert storms. He was so unknowable, though I knew enough to recognize him for who he was — young as I was. Though even now, so many years later, I struggle to put it into words. As with many things that happen in dreams, the harder one works to pin them into place, the more they scatter. Perhaps that is why I have struggled so to make the plans I began in my haunted nights bear fruit in the Waking World.

The ancients likewise struggled to name his aspect: this mighty being who refused to come to them in a form they could understand. This warrior prince who did not take the forms of the animals they knew like the other gods, who claimed half of Egypt as his own. Priests argued amongst themselves as to whether he was a donkey or an aardvark, a fennec fox or a giraffe. Finally, a priest of Lord Ra serving in the reign of Djer is said to have ended the argument in the religious ranks with the pronouncement that since he was the Arbiter of Chaos, he assumed any and all forms to proclaim his superiority over mankind.

The priesthood was satisfied, but common folk will always try to put a name to their fears. They are the ones who invented the word they needed, free from the dictates of rulers and scribes. Thus this creature of fantasy and nightmare was branded the sha. Everything under the sun and nothing ever seen all in one. Ganymedes taught me about the chimera of Greece, the monster Bellerophon slew with the help of the flying horse Pegasus. He always said the sha was a chimera, or some other demon born out of the old gods that came before the Olympians imprisoned chaos and darkness. As if it were all that simple.

My Lord is so very old, he laughs when he hears talk of Zeus (or Jupiter for that matter), or their squabbling progeny. Family turmoil is terribly outmoded to him, though he has always been sympathetic to my concerns, for he knows the importance of vigilance in one’s own house. For in a world where brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts are all spouses and rivals, blood lives too close to hide much. We strive to be godly and in the end we are nothing but ugly grotesques of the holy ones. We insist on imitating them in the very things that cause them grief and expect to rise above consequence. Perhaps that is the only kind of immortality we are capable of.

I should perhaps begin by saying I did not want any of this. Many in turn will say I was clearly ill-equipped and out-classed by the other players on the gaming board we made of our lives. I have made so many mistakes and the damage — the damage wakes me in the darkest hours of night with sobs in my throat. I have never enjoyed games of chance and have not my sister's love of risk. Or power. I had to answer the call of my Lord or be taken at the flood. Often I have found myself with little else to cling to other than the will to see another sunrise bathe itself on the river’s edge. I was born a girl in shadows and I have struggled all my life to escape. In those longest ago days my greatest desire was to see my mother again. My nurse Baktka used to tell me that she had turned into a skylark and had flown away chasing the jeweled butterflies she wished to put in my hair. How I would have to be as swift as a kite if I wanted to catch her. I ran until my feet bled, though I was never fast enough to meet her. I had survival callouses on my soles by the time I learned that some things can never be recaptured. And yet I still find myself hoping her ka is as bold as the skylarks I hear singing in the reeds.

When my Lord speaks, I listen and he hears my voice when I answer, the voice of the invisible daughter. The youngest, the most insignificant. He came to me because I am the daughter of Egypt, I am Tjesiib Arsinoë Philoaígyptos, and I would fight for him and his people. Even if they had long turned away from him as a fratricide and usurper, a god whose name must never be spoken, and who must be exiled from the Black Land of his nephew by the power of a million burning wadjets. Even if I was only a half-native, raised to emulate a foreign conqueror and his worshipped liege-lord. My Lord came to me because he knew that even if my lips were white with fear, I would jump from the top of the lighthouse in Alexandria if it would save Egypt from its enemies.