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When my siblings ascended the throne of Egypt, I was as ordinary as one would expect the youngest princess born into a family that had ruled a foreign land by blood and in blood to be. Oh, we Ptolemies were deep-swimming Titans whose sins were as infamous as those found in any Greek legend. We seemed destined to prove warty old Plato correct that those who attended to stories of the Olympians would only sow moral decay in their children. Yet there was that brief sliver of time where the crimes of the past lay far behind us gathering dust and our own fangs were clean. I was eleven years old and so was the Pharaoh of Egypt, and my deepest worry was that I had a secret.
It was a secret I carried close to my heart, for as long as I had possessed memory. It was a secret I dared not tell Baktka or even Mudjet, who ostensibly was my maid but in the sheltered upbringing of a royal had been my oldest companion. Ganymedes would have scolded me for being fanciful, though I was in deadly earnest.
The truth was that in every dream I could remember, all my life, there was one constant. In all my dreams there dwelt a creature, one so unlike anything I had seen in life I believed I had cobbled him together from my imagination. He was a dog-like animal, as black as a starless night, and when he moved he walked on long legs that tapered to small, neat paws. His forked tail always stood perfectly straight like a pike, as did his sharply pointed ears. He stared at me in the chaos of my sleeping mind with almond-shaped emerald eyes. The creature never interfered, only endlessly watched. As if it were waiting for some unknown thing.
I was still very young when I first understood who my creature was. Ganymedes had brought some Egyptian scrolls from the Great Library to show Ptolemy and me, even if Pothinus, my brother's tutor, thought it was local rubbish. My teacher unrolled the long sheets of papyrus and let us pore over the pictures inked with bright dyes that smelled of the artists’ quarter.
"It is not rubbish, Brother Pothinus," Ganymedes said mildly. "Any ruler of this House that wishes to hold the love of the people must understand something of their gods."
"A thousand score monsters, most of whom are dead even in this land," Pothinus scoffed. "My lord here need only pay some trifling service to Amun, Horus, and that witch Isis, and he will be fine.”
The eunuchs continued their debate as Ptolemy and I examined the scrolls with the deep concentration of children absorbed in rapt contemplations beyond the mundane reach of adults.
My brother and I were born in the same year, several months apart, to our respective mothers. We were twins born in different wombs, joined by an invisible chain that bound us to the other even as our differences of status and temperament ensured we would never cleave to one another without friction. When Ptolemy was born, he was the longed-for first son of a line that had carefully distilled its blood against itself to keep alive a connection to a heroic past. I was born the burdensome daughter of a second wife, taken to bargain for the loyalty of men whose own lineage my father despised.
Ptolemy was born during Shemu, the dry time of the Egyptian year, and his arid personality, thirsty for warmth, seemed to reflect that, while my birth during Akhet, the flood season, seemed to rule my nature. After all, I found it so easy to drown in my own thoughts. Here in this moment though, we managed to simply be curious children.
The Egyptian gods were strange, with their animal heads and rigid poses, and yet, there was something in them that made them feel more accessible to me than the Greek deities who populated my lessons. Their heads were those of animals, but they were the animals I saw every day along the Nile. Crocodiles, hippopotamuses, jackals, ibises, falcons — these were more familiar to me than the sea beasts of Poseidon or the bears that frolicked with Artemis. It was looking among this celestial menagerie that I saw my dream creature and my heart skipped a beat.
"Teacher, what beast is this?" I asked, hoping my finger did not tremble as I indicated the animal on the page in front of me.
Ganymedes took up the scroll and frowned. "This creature is not spoken of, nedjet. It is the sha, the animal of Set, the god of the desert."
"A god reviled even among the Egyptians for slaying his own brother," Pothinus added. "And Brother Ganymedes, please refrain from using such terms of familiarity with your charge, especially Egyptian ones. She is a Greek princess of a noble dynasty and needs to remember to act like it."
"A brother-slaying god?” remarked a breezy voice behind us, whose clear ring was immediately recognizable to everyone in Alexandria. “That practically makes him the patron deity of the House of Ptolemy, does it not?"
We all turned to see our sister Cleopatra emerge from under a billowy silk awning, accompanied by Damianus, her tutor, and Theodotus, our collective tutor of rhetoric. She was nearly as young as us, the little Queen of Egypt at our father's side, yet she was our older sister and starting to grow womanly in appearance. This pleased our subjects, who relied on the female co-rulers to connect them to the earth fed by the Nile that in turn nourished Egypt. Her chestnut colored hair glinted gold in the sunlight, wrapped up in the white band of a Hellene ruler with pearl pins peeking out through the strands. Her unpredictable hazel eyes chose to appear light brown that day. Her lilting golden voice and pleasant expression as usual hid whatever she might be actually thinking.
Our tutors bowed deferentially as she glided over to us, her eyes shifting thoughtfully as her light fingers fondled the scroll. "Oh, Set is like Hades,” she said meditatively. “You need him around, yet no one wants to invite him to dinner or speak his name too loudly.” She passed her finger over the sha as if casting a spell, before lifting her head abruptly and resuming her lighter tone. “Though I would not worry about him too much, either. He might have killed Osiris and maimed Horus, but they won out in the end. Those are the gods our subjects hold in their hearts."
Everyone else chuckled and fell into easy chatter amongst themselves, though I felt divided from their company, still wracked by fear that my dreams were haunted by the most dreaded of all Egyptian gods. The one whose form was spectacular rather than earthly and whose name was never invoked except in terror.
Despite these misgivings, I could not banish the watchful sha from my dreams any more than I could find a way to fit pleasingly among my fractured family. My world revolved on in this way until the night following my brother and sister's crowning, a night filled with great rejoicing and feasting that I spent sneaking out of to play games with Ptah and Mudjet in empty, echoing rooms. A night where I would eventually slip into a sleep that would change my life forever.
––––––––
I am walking through an abandoned palace I do not recognize. The columns are tumbledown and the entire structure is slowly being reclaimed by the desert. I pad across sandstone steps that lead to nowhere and stare at art I know to be Egyptian, and yet is so different from that with which I am familiar. The figures are not slender human reeds, nor are their faces geometric perfection. They have sloping features and fleshy mouths, the men have potbellies and wide hips. Compared to the willowy figures that fill the temples of Alexandria, these people are practically grotesque. And yet I cannot help but notice how happy they appear. They play with their children, they embrace one another, they lift their strange faces to the rays of the sun. I find myself wondering what it would be like to be a part of this loving, misshapen family when I see the sha sitting opposite me at the far expanse of the foundation.
In my dreams since I had put a name to my creature, I had attempted to communicate with it in any way I could think of. I had spoken to it only to be met by staring silence. I had chased it only to have it dart out of reach. So as I step towards it once more, I expect it to skitter away from me again, with the same unnerving hint of laughter in its green eyes. This time as I move closer, it remains stock still, its forked tail twitching back and forth. I am only inches away from its smooth, shining face and as I reach out to touch its nose, the sha transforms.
In its place stands a man. A tall man with the same glossy skin of obsidian black, the same laughing green eyes. His whole frame, spare and muscular at same time, is crossed at points with golden scars that trail this way and that, speaking of battle. On his head he wears a hood with the form of the sha's head. Underneath the hood, his clever face grins at me.
"Hai, Arsinoë,” he says to me in a luring voice full of the dark suggestion of thunder.
The change is so unexpected, I falter briefly. How should I proceed?
"Hai, Lord Set," I at last respond.
His grin deepens, his white teeth sharp. "Do not be afraid, sweet one. I have been summoned by the gods of the Black Land to be your protector. You have been beloved in my eyes since the day you were born."
"Why me, my Lord? I am a Greek princess encroaching upon the lands of the Egyptian gods."
"You are being raised as a Greek princess, nedjet, but you have your mother's blood in you as well and that is the blood of our cherished people. As she prepared to enter the Duat, your mother prayed to us to keep you safe. The prayers of a queen of Egypt are always heard."
"Perhaps not always answered, though."
Lord Set laughs, a deep sound that flares like fire in a cauldron. "Indeed nimble one, that is true. All we may do is attempt to influence events in the Waking World, nothing is set in stone."
"Why do you speak to me now, my Lord?"
"Because no one knows better than the Lord of Storms when one is coming, nedjet. We need you to be strong, for great tests are ahead of you. The time is coming when the people will look to you, and if you are not Egypt's champion in that moment, all will be undone."
I tremble at the weight of the dark god's words. What calamity lies before us that the gods should come to me, and send the Prince of Destruction as my guide? I repress a shudder of foreboding born of the deepest part of my ka. "Your words frighten me, my Lord,” I reply slowly, “but if I do not fight for Egypt, I know not what I have in my life worth fighting for."
He leans down and places a black hand against my cheek. I find myself surprised at his palm’s smoothness and warmth. "You entered this life with the courage of a goddess in your ka, my beloved. I have come simply to reveal it to heaven and earth."
And then I wake up.
––––––––
I sat up in bed, the desert air cold as it blew through my room and rifled amongst the mosquito nets that looked more like prison bars than cotton gauze.
Mudjet slept on deeply, so I rose and tiptoed down the hall to my nurse’s room. Baktka was old and she had been sick for many months now, our father permitting her to spend her final days being cared for in the opulent palace as a reward for her service. In spite of this honor, I was only allowed to see her occasionally, for he had at the end of his own life begun to perceive he had let too many native elements seep into our sphere through my mother. I must be kept more closely amongst those he considered our own kind, the transplanted Macedonians and Greeks, to correct any Eastern faults in my blood. Though if my dreams were any indication, it was already far too late for that.
Mudjet had been my great victory in this struggle. They had once tried to send her away too, yet in the only time I could remember, I stood up to my father and demanded to keep her. Faced with a hysterical child, my father acquiesced. Perhaps because he had more pressing concerns than a third daughter's tantrum.
I needed Mudjet in my life because she was the only person I knew besides Ptah who was like me, part Egyptian and part Greek. Her father had been a Macedonian diplomat who kept a second family in Alexandria and she was one of the products of that arrangement. Eventually he died back home, and her mother, a drifting woman with no support and too many mouths to feed, had begged a place for her youngest daughter at court. My mother heard her plea and perhaps saw her own infant daughter in the half-breed toddler, another rare artifact that proved despite their protestations, the Greek elite had not fully sequestered themselves from their supposedly barbarian subjects.
So for the first years of my life, I lived in the company of my Egyptian mother, her Egyptian nurse who became my nurse, and the sunny companionship of the half-Egyptian Mudjet. I can recall only snatches of that time, though what I have are happy memories. We were mostly left to ourselves as my mother's marriage was nothing but a failing political arrangement which required blessedly little time in my father's presence on her part, even after we had returned to Egypt and the death of my stepmother meant he had no other living spouse. Later, I could search this time and see that my mother was already ill with the seeds of her death, though she never showed that face to us children. With us, she was as eternal as the desert sand.
I entered Baktka's room quietly, in case she was sleeping, but I had never been able to outfox her sharp ears.
"Is that you, nedjet?" she whispered, raising her head from its position facing the wall next to her bed.
"Yes, Baktka,” I answered guiltily. “I am sorry if I woke you."
"For you, my star, I am always awake. Why are you up at this late hour? Do the young Pharaohs know you are here?"
"No, I came on my own. I had a dream."
My nurse shifted herself to face me, her eyes beetle-bright in the low light and the canyons of wrinkles on her face lifting up until her chapped lips peeled into a smile riddled with worn teeth. "Well then, we must be very quiet while you tell me of this dream."
I stole to her bedside and curled myself next to her on the floor, as I had done a thousand times before. I told her of my encounter with Lord Set and about the sha, and she listened seriously until I was finished.
"Nedjet,” she sighed gently, running her hand over the tousled mess of my curls as she always did. “I told your lady mother when you were born that the gods would bless you as the first Egyptian princess born in over five hundred years. That sustained her through her last illness when she wept for your future alone in this cruel family. Now I too can now pass into the Duat knowing the gods heard the sound of her tears."
"You believe this was real and not a dream, then?"
She smiled wearily. "The line between the Waking World and the Dream World is blurrier than your tutors would have you believe, my jewel. If the gods believe that your best help for what is to come is Lord Set, events will be dire, but they have sent you their greatest warrior."
"I do not understand,” I said, frowning. “Why Lord Set? They hate him, he is a murderer. The people abandon his altars and dare not speak of him."
Baktka shook her head. "You are thinking like a Greek. He is not Hades, a lord of gloom. What task does Lord Set accomplish every night for the love of the gods and men?"
I thought back to my nurse's stories. "He fights the snake demon Apep to keep it from killing the sun on its journey beneath the horizon."
"Exactly. He is a deceptive god, yet none of us can survive without him. The wise learn to embrace his duality. He and the gods have placed a heavy burden on your slight shoulders, though I know you will be equal to it."
"I do not want things to change," I protested, hating the petulant tone of my voice even as I meant what I said.
Baktka patted my arm affectionately. "It is the way of all things, nedjet. Even the pyramids are shaped by the wind, not even stone can last. So too will you be shaped by the winds of the future. Listen to your ka and see that your choices are pleasing to it. Then you need not fear what outcomes may result."
"You will stay and help me?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
She sighed again, more audibly this time. "You know that my days in this world are ending, imi-ib. Soon I will join the Happy Dead. This is a path you must walk alone. The gods have decreed it."
She motioned to a small cask on the table beside her. I reached over and lifted the lid. Inside lay a thin ivory bangle inlaid with gold, ebony, and lapis lazuli in a lotus pattern. I picked up the bracelet and the gold shimmered in the dim light of the lamps. "This was your mother's, dearest. Do you remember it?"
I nodded mutely. I had never seen my mother without it, even as the wife of the Pharaoh.
"It was her mother's. And her mother's mother's mother's. It is an heirloom of the women of your bloodline. We were saving it to give you on your wedding day, though now it seems that neither of us will see that shining hour. I said to you that you must walk this path alone, child. But you will not be forgotten by those of us who love you. Walk with a firm step and know we will sing of you in the Field of Reeds."
I slipped the bracelet on my wrist and leaned down to embrace my nurse. I felt her arms loosen as she began to slip back into sleep. I padded back out of the room and as I crossed the threshold into the hallway, I leapt half out of my skin as a figure loomed from the corner of my eye.
"Sorry, my lady. I did not mean to frighten you," said Mudjet clutching a robe over her shift with one hand and a lamp in the other.
My Mudjet was the same age as my sister, though my dear companion had always been taller and thinner than Cleopatra. Her tanned skin and black hair gave her a more classical Egyptian appearance than myself, but her sparkling violet eyes betrayed her dead Greek father as much as my own gray ones did.
"It is all right. I thought you were still asleep."
"I awoke and you were not there. I thought you might be with Baktka."
Presently I recalled that my nurse was not the only person I knew with sharp ears. "Did you hear of what we were speaking?"
Mudjet and I might omit details to one another if forced, but we never lied to one another. "I did, my lady."
"I am sorry I kept these dreams from you. I was afraid I was going a little mad in some corner of my mind. The stain of insanity is not unknown to this House and I did not want you to worry."
"I understand. Dreams are difficult to fathom even for the adept. If I had these dreams, I would have been unsure, too."
I placed a hand on the one that held her robe. "Am I mad?"
She smiled. "I think not, my lady. I think you have been blessed by these dreams." Her smile faded. "Besides, it does not take the omnipotence of the holy gods to sense there may be troubling times ahead."