An Apostle’s Tale 2.4 – A Short Walk

Bib-useka rose and turned toward the village, motioning his son to follow.

Neither spoke as they made their way along back along the temple’s tumbled avenue. Skirting around the south side of Bibleb-Akhet, they joined the wide, rutted track that served as the eastern highway a short distance outside of town. Almost immediately they encountered a man Djamose knew well, a jovial fellow the village children called Weepy because his left eye was forever shedding tears. His real name was Bib-ret-ka, and he was returning from the Land of Sobek leading a donkey saddled with two enormous baskets practically overflowing with half-dried mud. The cruelly burdened beast plodded and panted in the most pitiful way.

“Hi, Ret-ka,” said Bib-useka with a wave. “Is that poor donkey going to make it?”

“He’d better,” Ret-ka grinned, “or he’ll be supper tonight. That’s good mud, and it cost me a fortune.”

“It looks kind of wet. No time to dry it out?”

“I asked Ptahbesu if I could spread it out in his empty stock pen and come back for it tomorrow,” said Ret-ka, absently wiping a tear from his cheek. “He said if I dropped a single grain of it on his side of Wadjet’s Teeth he’d sell the whole lot to his son-in-law and I could fertilize my plot with sand. What a bastard.”

“One of these days somebody will come up with a curse he can’t shake,” said Bib-useka. “He wears so many charms he sounds like a rattle when he walks.”

“All in Bibleb’s time. So, where are you two off to today?”

“Believe it or not, Hawat-ha,” said Bib-useka. “I think it’s time I shook Ptahneferset’s rattle about that canal job we did during the Feast of Bastet.”

“Set’s flaming butt,” said Ret-ka, rolling his eyes. “You’re better off trying to get paid by my donkey.”

“And, of course, Djamose here is five years old now and it’s about time he paid a visit to our neighbors.”

To Djamose’s surprise, Ret-ka breathed a deep, sad sigh and shook his head.

“Wow, that takes me back. Worst day of my life. There’s no coming back from that trip, eh?”

He leaned down and fixed Djamose with his weepy eye.

“Don’t you worry, Djamose. The Lucky of Sobek are just that – lucky. You’re as good as any man there. Don’t ever believe any different.”

Djamose just nodded. Worry about what? He knew without having seen it that Ta y-Sobek was an earthly paradise of beauty and wonder and plenty. What could he possibly have to fear in such a place?

“Anyway, good luck to you both,” said Ret-ka, tugging the donkey’s halter. The animal complained loudly, but started plodding forward again. “And don’t forget – the supple reed outlasts the flood.’”

“Unhappy is the river free of water,” Bib-useka nodded sagely, clasping his hands in front of his face. “And Bibleb’s strength be upon your donkey.”

They started walking again, toward Ibhi Wadjet. Breaking against Wadjet’s stubby teeth, the yellow rays of Khepera’s morning light cast shadows on the ground that reached out to them like Set’s black fingers. Djamose was in a hurry. His father was taking his sweet time. He wasn’t looking forward to the morning’s errands.

“Tell me again where we’re going,” Djamose begged, skipping a few yards ahead. His young imagination burned like altar fire, his simple mind constructing, destroying and rebuilding a succession of indistinct wonders that must certainly lay at the end of the path to Ta’ sy-Sobek.

“We’re going to the town of Hawat-ha,” sighed Bib-useka. He’d been about Djamose’s age when he’d taken that journey with his own father, and although time had providentially erased the event’s specific details, he supposed he’d been just as giddy. He sighed again. It seemed a cruel thing to do to the boy, but it couldn’t be helped. Better I should be with him, thought Bib-useka, than he should find out how things are on his own.

“What do they eat?” Djamose supposed the residents of Hawat-ha ate nothing but beef and pork and cheese and grapes, all of it drowning in honey.

“They eat bread, like we do. And peas and lentils, and dates.”

It was a diet wholly out of tune with Djamose’s luxurious mental menu, and while he didn’t for a moment suspect his father would like about it, he had no trouble disbelieving every word. As the path began its gentle rise to the crest of Ibhi Wadjet, the boy had the distinct sensation of floating upward as if on a breath of wind.

“Tell me again what we’re going to do.”

“We’re going to see the man that I’ve been working for. His name is Geb-shu-ef, and he owes us a lot of money. If he pays us, we can buy something to take home. Would you like that?”

Djamose did like that, so much that for a moment he couldn’t speak for the hot excitement jammed up in the back of his throat.

“Like what?” he finally rasped.

He really had no idea. Djamose was familiar with commerce only in the most abstract and theoretical terms, having never laid eyes on a product that was available for sale. His imagination failed him, and he almost shouted with frustration.

“We’ll see,” said Bibuseka, most unsatisfactorily.

His brain finally catching up with his ears, Djamose’s heart suddenly turned cold.

“Why do you say ‘if he pays us’? Why wouldn’t he pay us? You said he owes us a lot of money. Doesn’t he have to pay us?”

“Geb-shu-ef is an important man, and he’s careful with his money.”

“But you’re an important man, too. You’re the priest of Bibleb!”

“I’m not important to Geb-shu-ef, and he’s not afraid of Bibleb.”

That someone – anyone – would not fear to displease Bibleb was an idea entirely new to Djamose, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“At the temple you said we were entering the land of our enemies.”

“I did say that.”

“But we’re going to Ta’ sy-Sobek.”

“That’s where we’re going.”

Djamose’s thoughts skipped to a night a few months before when he’d wandered too far in search of fish-grass and got caught alone in the Red Land after Osiris had retired to his sepulchral throne. The Great Bull Khonsu had been falling low to the horizon, bearing the weight of a nearly full moon upon his back. The desert about Djamose was to him as familiar as the huts and alleys of Bibleb-Akhet, yet in that pale, oblique illumination he didn’t recognize any part of it. He knew very well where he was, but couldn’t reconcile what he knew with the testimony of his eyes. He felt something like that now.

“Are the People of Sobek our enemies?”

For a long moment Bib-useka didn’t answer.

“No, they’re not our enemies. But they’re not our friends.”

It seemed quite impossible.

“But we’re all Egyptians! How can Egyptians not be friends with other Egyptians?”

Again, his father walked in silence for a time before speaking slowly, carefully.

“We all live in Egypt, Djamose. Who is Egyptian sometimes depends on who you ask.”

That answer made no sense to the boy, who was in any case losing his appetite for the topic. His journey to Hawat-ha, long anticipated and launched with the highest of expectations, was beginning to seem like a questionable venture, and talk of enemies and men who cared nothing for Bibleb was taking a toll on his optimistic nature.

They continued in silence, giving Djamose a better opportunity to focus his attention on Wadjet’s rapidly approaching teeth. From a distance they’d appeared to him as jagged, formidable, menacing. From a perspective of perhaps 100 yards they assumed a very different aspect. They were tired-looking fragments of crumbling rock slowly collapsing back into the desert. It was obvious to Djamose that the spirits of those moldering hulks had fled them long ago, and it seemed to him careless of Wadjet to have allowed something so closely associated with Her illustrious self to have fallen to such an abased state.

The smell of water was stronger here, and of growing things, and of the smoke of dung fires. As he came near enough to put a hand on the powdery surface of the monolith to the left of the path he became aware that the deep westerly shadows concealed a strange tapestry of carved figures. In some ancient time a dozen lines had been cut into the weathered rock, dancing figures that held no meaning for him. In a somewhat less ancient time the panel had been defaced with what Djamose took for a crude representation of a human foot and leg, and which had been carved to a depth of more than an inch, obliterated a large portion of the mysterious text.

“What does it say?” Djamose asked.

“I don’t know,” said Bib-useka. “It’s very old.”

In fact, nobody in Bibleb-Akhet could decipher those puzzling runes, the talent of literacy having passed out of that village many generations before.

“What’s the leg for?”

“The leg is a symbol of Bibleb. It marks the beginning of Bibleb’s domain.”

Not coincidentally, in the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians, it was also the most basic symbol representing the sound at the beginning of the names Bibleb, Bes and Bastet.

“So we put it there to let people know when they’re entering the Land of Bibleb?”

“Um, kind of the other way around.”

“We didn’t put it there?”

“The People of Sobek put it there.”

“So they’d know when they entered Bibleb’s land?”

“So we will know when we’re leaving it.”

Djamose wasn’t sure he saw the difference, but the way his father said left no doubt that there was one. Bib-useka moved to the stone abutting the trail on the south, and stopped in front of a cracked and dusty mud shrine that stood to his waist. A small clay pot sat in its offering niche. It was about the size of a duck’s egg and stopped with a plug of palm wood. He picked it up and placed it in his sack.

“Good old Ret-ka. He, at least, remembers his duty to Bibleb. It’s disgraceful how many come and go without making a consideration.”

They were still west of the stones. Djamose could see the broad gap between Wadjet’s Teeth, and see the light pouring through the very short passage between them. He could step through any time he wanted, but, faced with the actuality, felt suddenly rather comfortable where he was. His father walked over and stood directly in front of him, placing a tender hand on his shoulder and staring directly into his eyes.

“None of us get to choose our place, Djamose.”

The boy just stared at him, expecting more.

“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, dad.”

Bib-useka softly turned his son to face east, and then, with a vigorous shove that almost knocked the boy off of his feet, thrust him through Wadjet’s ragged teeth and straight into the yawning mouth of Sobek.