One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever… One knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries.
~ from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
“I can walk!”
There is no need to drag me backward through the palace halls.
We swing an arc in the throne room, near to the double doors, and I am marched into the hall beyond.
I take no notice of the halls we pass through. They are dark and silent, most of the torches extinguished at this hour. What difference does it make where they take me?
Confine her.
A prison? Am I to be sentenced? I suspect it will be release or execution, with no hope for anything between.
My lack of concern for the location of my confinement flees when the two guards force me down a series of stone steps into near-total darkness.
Not down there.
“Where? Where are you taking me?” I struggle backward, pulling upward like a plant seeking sunlight.
A rough jerk downward and my feet slip under me.
I fall, hard, tailbone jarring against the stone. Pain slices like a serrated knife up my spine.
“Get up, woman.”
“I—I cannot—”
But they lift me to my feet, drag me downward.
The tunnel is lit by the sparks of agony firing behind my eyes.
We come to an alcove, most of it hidden by a partial wall as high as my shoulders. Shadows dance on the ceiling above.
And then I am being lifted, between the two guards, up and up the side of the wall.
No, no! My lower back screams in fear, a scream that boils up and explodes out of my chest. “No!”
But I am above their heads, scraping across the top of the wall, sliding toward the abyss. Falling.
I land with a bone-crushing thwack on a stone floor.
Whimper. Curl into the pain. Lie still.
Breathe, Kelsey.
Breathe through the pain. Ride the crest of it. Refuse to be dragged under.
Shadows on the roof above me still. Shapes on a cave wall.
Real? Only shadows? Shadows of something real? Or is there nothing left that is real?
The guards are gone, long gone, and I lay like a coiled snail, knees drawn to my chest.
The light grows brighter—a wavering, shaky oval, dark shadow above, almond-shape of white eyes above it.
“You are hurt.”
The eyes, the face, bend to me.
An elderly man, circular terracotta oil lamp in his palm, kind eyes.
I say nothing.
He touches my head, a light stroke of my hair.
The gentle touch dissolves my restraint. What begins as a moan emerges as a sob, the pain in my soul far deeper than the pain in my body.
His ssshhh is protective, fatherly. “Come, let us get you up.”
I shake my head. “I fell. My—my tailbone—”
“Yes, but we can’t let you grow stiff, my girl, or you will never want to move again. Come, sit, yes, that’s right. That’s good. Now we will stand. Walk a little.”
He is right.
The spasm loosens slightly. I am moving.
We pace the floor in short trips, the entire length of the cell no longer than twenty feet.
“Better?” He squints across the lamplight, studying my face.
I try to smile. Nod my head.
“You must try to move a little every hour you are awake. It is the only way.”
He leads me to the wall, helps me lower myself. Slow, painful, a last drop to the floor that brings fresh tears.
“Now.” He slides to the floor beside me. “Tell me your name.”
“Kels—Kepri. My name is Kepri.”
“Ah, the new Storyteller. Tell me, how does the royal wife fare? Still seeking oblivion through Bahadur’s care?” He leans on the final word, sarcasm tainting it.
“She is dead.” I drop my chin to my chest.
He sighs. Remains blessedly silent.
Later, I do not know how long, perhaps I have slept, I whisper out the words that are too entangled in my mind to process.
“I thought… I thought the most difficult thing would be rejection of me. That the work I might create, the story—it might reflect poorly on me, cause others to shun me. Or mock me. Or simply ignore me. I was willing. Willing to take that risk for the beauty of the story and to honor my own creativity.”
He is nodding, a slow movement of his angular chin, his shoulder touching mine.
“But this—this is so much more than any slap in my own face. This is… failure.”
“You believed you could heal her.”
I study his profile. “How can you know this?”
He smiles, not at me, but a sad smile into the darkness. “Because I am her musician.” He inhales. “Was her musician.”
I find his hand and clasp it. “What is your instrument?”
“The harp, to soothe a disquiet soul. And my voice. To remind her of beauty and goodness.”
“Yes. That is what I tried to do as well.”
“We both have failed, then.”
We let the silence play out before us.
In a faraway life, a Gardener spoke to me of risk. But this risk is far greater than I imagined.
And I see it now. Even after the artist overcomes reticence to share the work, conquers fear that the work has no value, no great quality, and is able to bring it, to show it, to give it, even then there is danger that the work itself will go astray. That the song will not soothe, the story will not heal, the painting will not speak. To have created, and to have that creative thing fail, is a different sort of pain. Like the pain inflicted on one’s child rather than one’s own body. Outside, and yet… more grievous.
“Will they execute us both?” I finally ask when I can think no longer on the failure.
He does not answer at once.
“Perhaps.”
How can I explain to them? When they come for me, I must tell one last story. Must convince them that I am Renpet, taken by Ekisi-betta, to be raised in a far-off place where time advances differently and a child ages and returns a grown woman. But what possible proof could I offer to corroborate such a claim?
An avocado allergy? I nearly laugh into the darkness.
But what choice do I have? It is one last story that might save my life.
They do come for me, hours later. Perhaps it is morning. Impossible to tell in this place. My new friend, Ihy, has kept me walking at intervals, and my tailbone is bruised but functional.
A three-legged stool is tossed over the wall, its legs lashed to a cracked seat that looks unable to hold my weight.
“Don’t get any ideas, old man.” The warning is issued by an unseen voice on the other side of the wall.
He needn’t have bothered. Ihy hasn’t even risen to his feet.
I step onto the stool, test it, then raise my upper body above the wall.
One last look at Ihy, a nod of gratitude.
His wan smile in the tiny lamplight is small comfort.
And then the guards haul me over the wall, catching me before I hit the floor, to my great relief.
In the upper halls, the morning light is pale and early, as though the sun has not fully risen.
Menkaure has apparently not considered long before making a decision about my fate.
I am returned to the throne room, tossed to the floor in front of the pharaoh’s dais.
In front of my father.
He does not look as though he has slept. He rises slowly, towers over me.
I stay on my knees.
“Kepri of Punt, Storyteller to Rekhetre, Blessed of Re, whose ka has retreated to the west, you have been found guilty of treason.”
Treason? This sounds very bad.
“Because of your warped and dangerous stories, the royal wife has given up all hope of living and has taken her own life. For this, there is but one recourse, to restore ma’at in the Two Lands.”
Ma’at. The ancient Egyptian understanding of truth and justice, a balance that must always be held. A balance I have violated with my failure.
“You will be executed at sunrise, your body thrown into the waters without burial.”
To be unburied, with no hope of afterlife, is the more serious part of the sentence to the Egyptians, I know. But execution? This cannot be happening.
And sunrise? It cannot be more than a few minutes away.
“Divine King, if I may be permitted to tell one final story first—”
“Your storytelling is over.” He flicks a hand in the direction of the guards and turns away to his throne.
They descend on me like hungry vultures.
“Wait!” I try to twist from their grasp. “Wait—you don’t understand! She was my mother—Rekhetre—and you are my father!”
Menkaure spins back on me, his teeth bared. “Silence! I will hear no fanciful stories!”
“I know how it sounds—she was younger than I—but you must let me explain—”
But I am halfway through the throne room doors, then all the way out and the doors close. I have failed again.
My strength forsakes me for an instant, my body limp between the guards. But then I’m back on my feet. Scrambling and twisting.
To no avail.
Back through the halls once again. Across a courtyard.
I glance at the flat white of the sky, paling toward sunrise. Fear lodges first like a solid stone in my gut, then runs like molten lava heating my veins.
Another hall, then outside the palace walls to the garden that seems a million days ago.
It’s unfair, all of it. Such a worthless, futile cheat. As though I’ve run a marathon under a blistering sun and then seen the finish line evaporate moments before I reach it.
That ridiculous Garden and its promises of finding my true identity. I see the faces of Eliot and Agatha Christie, of Baum and even of the Gardener, making promises they will not keep. Delivering false assurance that truth can be found.
But I allowed it, God knows, I allowed it. I let them bully me through the Garden, across the footbridge, to this terrifying moment when all of it will be taken.
My chest burns at my own cowardice. Too weak to know myself, too fearful to refuse.
Too desperate to belong.
I am dragged through the half-wall to the outer road beyond, with the pyramids staring down at me and the Nile and the desert to the east glowing brighter with a pinkish dawn, too fast, too fast.
Then the sun itself rockets over the horizon, launches across the desert, ignites the gold-tipped pyramid.
And I am tossed to my knees before a bloody stone block.
A sandaled foot crashes against my back, thrusts me forward. My chin slams the stone. My eyes a fraction from the blood of the last execution.
The guard’s intake of breath.
My own to match, inhaling shock and courage.
The whirr of a blade through air.
And then, darkness.