Daughter of the Falcon God Read online

  Daughter of the Falcon God

  A Tale of the Predynastic Egypt

  Mark L. Gajewski

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  This book is a work of fiction. Its contents are wholly imagined.

  All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

  Copyright @2016 by Mark L. Gajewski.

  Table of Contents

  5453 BC: The Northwest Savannah

  5453 BC: Ta–she – Peret (Seed)

  5453 BC: The River

  5453 BC: Ta–she – Shemu (Harvest)

  5440 BC: The River – Peret (Seed)

  5440 BC: Ta–she – Shemu (Harvest)

  5439 BC: Ta–she – Akhet (Flood)

  5439 BC: Ta–she – Peret (Seed)

  5439 BC: Ta–she – Shemu (Harvest)

  5453 BC: The Northwest Savannah

  A great ball of fire flashed across the field of stars, unbelievably fast and low, traveling from west to east, so brilliant night became day. A heartbeat later came total darkness and a dreadful earsplitting boom. The very air seemed to explode and the earth to shake. Aya, utterly terrified, curled into a tight ball on the hard ground beside her dying campfire and covered her head with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut and screamed. Her ears were ringing, her heart pounding. Why are the gods doing this? she asked herself over and over. Are they ending the world? Then insects, momentarily silenced, began humming again. Night birds started chittering. The warm breeze rustled the long dry grass that surrounded her. Warily, Aya opened her eyes. The world looked as it always had. Shakily, she raised herself to her hands and knees. She’d seen fireballs a few times in her life, assumed they were mighty signs, messages from the gods. But never had she felt one strike the earth, nor pass so near to her. She stood up, still trembling, let her eyes acclimate once again to the darkness. She turned to the south. A towering column of black smoke roiled skyward a great many miles distant, in a part of the country she’d never visited, its underside glowing orange and yellow, like a giant dull torch. The savannah must be on fire.

  Aya knew she wouldn’t sleep this night. She bent, blew the glowing embers of her tiny campfire to life, piled on dried grass, then a few precious acacia branches. Before long a cheerful blaze danced, counterpoint to the fear that gripped her. No doubt one or more of the gods were displeased with her people, to have sent such a message. She had no idea which one. Perhaps that displeasure was also why her grandfather, Bek, had taken ill six months ago and so far had not improved. That was actually the reason she was here, alone on the savannah, a day and a half’s walk south of her band’s camping place, seeking specific herbs that grew in a particular patch, ones that might cure him. She’d arrived late in the afternoon and had already harvested a pouch full, intending to set out for home at first light, her mission accomplished. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Aya wondered if anyone in her camp had actually seen the fireball, or merely heard it. No doubt they’d all been roused from a deep sleep inside their huts by the boom and the shaking of the earth, except, of course, for the boys watching over the band’s cattle and sheep and goats. She hoped the animals hadn’t stampeded. As for her, she’d been wide awake when the fire streaked across the sky. It was her habit, whenever she was away from camp seeking herbs or gleaning foodstuffs, to spend half the night gazing up at the stars. She’d learned to recognize thirty–six separate sets, each appearing above the horizon for ten days before disappearing and being replaced by the next. They were so mysterious, those distant lights, yet at the same time so orderly. She turned her attention to a special group, the ones that were always visible above the horizon every day of the year. That’s where the spirits of her people went to dwell after they died, according to the elders. She wondered which light belonged to her mother, Menhet, and which to her mother’s father, Iuput, and which to her great–grandmother, Sitre. They were the three people who had mattered most to her.

  Sitre had been the band’s healer. From as early as she could toddle after, Aya had followed her everywhere, learning how plants grew, learning which herbs cured which ailments, learning to make broths and pastes, learning to tend to the myriad of injuries that occurred to children playing and women cooking and men hunting. Aya had assisted Sitre at the births of her own sister and four nephews, performed all the spells and rituals that attended that miraculous act to keep mother and child safe. Aya had so often demonstrated a healing touch that Sitre had proclaimed she was favored by the many gods that looked over the people as they traveled the savannah, chasing after herds of oryx and gazelle and aurochs and a host of other creatures. Aya had been the band’s sole healer ever since Sitre’s death four years ago, even though, just now turned twelve, she was barely a woman. Never had there been a healer so young.

  That Aya had been born at all was because of Sitre. The year before Aya’s birth, Didia’s band – he’d been Aya’s great–grandfather – had stumbled on a small camp in the vastness of the savannah. Most of its three dozen people were already dead of some disease, and nearly all the rest passed on within a few days. Sitre had been able to save only the band’s patriarch, Iuput, his daughter, Menhet, and her three–year old daughter, Tabiry. Menhet had subsequently joined with Hannu, one of Didia’s grandsons, and Aya had been born to them a year later.

  The chance encounter of the two bands had changed the lives of everyone in Didia’s. For in a small field next to the doomed camp grew emmer and barley, planted by Iuput’s people months earlier, ready to be harvested, and grazing nearby were a few cattle and goats and sheep. Didia’s people had been, up to that time, hunters and gatherers, wandering the savannah year–round, following herds of animals wherever they led, eating whatever foodstuffs they could find along the way. But Iuput, once he recovered, taught Didia about farming and herding and, convinced of the advantages of that lifestyle, Didia’s band had taken over the fields and herds of Iuput’s deceased people. Didia’s band still resided in the same general area of the savannah where Iuput’s band had dwelt for seven months each year, from the time they sowed their grain until they harvested it. The remaining five months they wandered the savannah, chasing after herds of animals as they always had.

  Aya, as the first child born of the merged bands – her brother Iuput, aged ten, and her sister Takhat, just turned three, were the only others – was heir to two sets of oral traditions, that of her father’s hunters and gatherers, and her mother’s farmers and herders. Her ancestors on the two sides had lived vastly different lives. One set had arrived on the savannah from the north and east, the other from the west and south. Their traditions were unalike, their gods unknown to each other. For as long as she could remember Aya had listened eagerly to the stories told by her grandparents around their campfires at night, committed them to memory so she could pass them on to her own children someday. She was the only person in her band who knew every one of the tales that were important to each branch of the band, and so felt called to be their keeper so that they might never be forgotten. She considered herself to be the conduit to pass on her two people’s ancient knowledge. But far too often Aya felt torn, as the differing and contradictory traditions and beliefs of the two sides tugged her one way or the other. She wondered this night whether it was her mother’s or father’s gods who had sent the fireball, or, more frighteningly, one unknown to either.

  Aya watched the column of smoke for hours. At first it rose c
ontinuously higher, then, caught by the brisk wind aloft, began to curve until it was parallel to the earth and fanned out and streamed due east, still brightly lit. Eventually it dissipated, and when the rose of dawn began to color the sky it was nothing more than a vague smudge. By that time, after debating with herself all night, Aya had decided to travel to and investigate the landing site of the fireball. If the gods had indeed sent a message to her people, she reasoned, someone ought to go see what it was. So she ate a hurried breakfast, put out her fire, slung the pouch with its precious herbs and another with water over her shoulder. Just as she was about to set out she caught sight of a falcon circling over her head, climbing high, diving, climbing again, over and over, tracing lazy spirals, almost as if it was trying to get her attention. It’s sudden appearance could hardly be a coincidence, Aya thought. For all she knew it too might be a sign. So she followed it south.

  The savannah near at hand was mostly flat or slightly rolling, covered with sparse dried grass, some waist high, some blown halfway over by the wind that swept unchecked from the west. There were a few widely separated groves of leafless trees in every direction, but virtually no animals – only a few birds lent life to the scene. Aya walked for hours, crunching the dried grass beneath her bare feet, avoiding as best she could wide cracks in the hardened earth. The sun climbed high and beat down, hot on her bare shoulders and back and chest. Though she was sweating she drank sparingly of her water, not knowing when she’d stumble on a small pool or stream to refill her pouch. Always she kept the falcon in sight; it continued to lead her farther south, matching its flight to her speed. Then, without any warning, Aya reached the lip of a cliff, its rough sandstone face plunging a hundred feet or more straight down to a gigantic bowl–like depression that stretched south and east and west as far as she could see. The depression was so vast its distant features were indistinct, shrouded in a blue haze. Aya had never encountered such a breathtaking scene.

  Countless long low ridges rolled like waves across flat and undulating plains, all running east to west, the valleys between them dotted with rounded hillocks and groves of trees, all mantled with sere brown grasses. Beyond the last ridge was the most amazing sight of all – a silver slash brightly reflecting the sun, at least fifty miles wide, so massive its far southern shore was lost against the horizon. Aya had heard about a great lake in the old tales handed down around the campfire at night – Ta–she was its name, the primeval waters from which the world had been created. What occupied so much of the great depression could hardly be anything else. On the savannah Aya’s people camped beside a small waterhole that was refilled every year by the summer rains, hardly more than a few hundred feet across at most and shrinking to less than half that size during the driest part of the year. Aya calculated it would take a person many days to circle distant Ta–she on foot.

  A faint wisp of smoke was rising from between two of the ridges many miles to the south, no doubt the last vestige of the burning grass where the object had struck. The falcon was still circling over Aya’s head, riding the drafts towards the smoke, swooping back to where she was standing. There was no question in her mind that she should continue to follow the bird, despite the formidable barrier that blocked her way. So she walked west along the plateau for perhaps a quarter of a mile until she found a place where she could descend. There a faint trail zigzagged down the cliff face, clearly made by animals, steep and narrow and covered with loose sand and pebbles. Aya half–walked and half–slid down it, grasping at vegetation growing from cracks and indentations to slow herself, occasionally stepping from outcrop to outcrop. Near the bottom of the cliff the angle became more gentle, for the slope there consisted mostly of sand and sandstone chips washed from the cliff above by the summer rains. It was a good thing, too, for Aya lost her balance and slid the last twenty feet to the savannah, scraping elbows and forearms and the back of her thighs.

  Aya picked herself up gingerly, brushed off as much of the dirt as she could, stood. A long low hill blocked her view of the southern horizon. She could see nothing beyond it. She scanned the sky, spotted the falcon, followed it.

  What had appeared to be featureless savannah from the top of the cliff proved to be anything but as Aya continued on. The ground she traversed was hard and cracked, just like the savannah where her people were camped and that she’d spent the morning crossing. The summer rains should have started falling a month ago, but so far they’d been meager where her band ranged and they obviously had been here as well. Aya hoped storms would start soon; if not, this would be the fourth consecutive year of drought. Her people’s very lives might be in jeopardy, for they wouldn’t be able to grow emmer and there wouldn’t be grass enough for their animals to graze. Despite its desiccated state, Aya could tell that, given rain, the savannah in this vast depression would be bountiful. Though what remained of its plants were currently dried out and withered stalks and stems and roots, she saw that in a good year there would be great quantities of wild grains, seeds, rhizomes, tubers, melons, entire sections carpeted with flowers that promised beehives and sweet honey, and groves of trees bearing fruit. But none of those patches of resources would yield any useful quantity of foodstuffs this year, just like the savannah atop the plateau. Sadly, lack of resources was becoming a too–frequent occurrence for her people. The herds they chased across the savannah had been diminishing in size the past few years; the emmer they’d planted had failed. Her people made regular offerings to the earth god and fertility goddess and cattle god, trying to change their fortunes, but none of their prayers had so far been answered. Aya hadn’t had to see the looks that passed between Bek, Didia’s son and his successor as her band’s patriarch, and his three brothers when she’d reported to them a week ago the paucity of foodstuffs remaining near their camp, to know how dire her band’s situation had become.

  One of Aya’s abilities – she’d inherited it from her great–grandmother Sitre – was to be able to fix in her mind a map of where all the foodstuffs within a two days’ walk of her camp were located, then calculate when they’d be ready to harvest and how long they’d last before they were exhausted. Because of that, ever since Sitre’s death, the task of assigning Aya’s mother and sister and female cousins to the patches of fruits and seeds and wild grains and vegetables that were to be gleaned on a particular day had fallen to her. Whenever the band moved to a new location during the five months the band wandered the savannah, Aya was responsible for exploring the nearby countryside and locating all the resource patches that could be exploited.

  Each patch fell into one of three categories. The first were those located within a reasonable distance of camp, ones the women could walk to, harvest, and return from in less than a day. The second required a longer walk and overnight stay, and thus required semi–permanent storage and sleeping facilities when they were utilized. The third were those that were so rich in resources, or with resources so bulky, that what was harvested could not be hauled to camp the same day they were obtained, and so had to be stored for a period and transported back to camp over time. Of course, anyone could locate patches. What set Aya apart was her ability to manage the usage of the patches. Every patch had a particular value, based on how many resources could be obtained from it, how much time it took to travel there from camp, how much effort it took to carry the foodstuffs back to camp, and how rapidly it would be exhausted. Clearly, the initial harvest of a patch offered the most reward for the work done, but the reward diminished over time as the amount of resources remaining in the patch declined. Knowing when to move from one patch to another that offered a better rate of return was important, as well as knowing the best route to take to harvest multiple patches in a single trip and so reduce overall travel time. Because Aya’s band had less than a dozen women and girls old enough to roam the savannah, ensuring they spent their time as productively as possible was extremely important.

  Just as Bek had entrusted the management of foodstuffs to Aya, he’d entrusted his young
est brother Kakhent, his finest tracker and bowman, with overseeing the band’s hunters. Going after larger animals that yielded much meat in a group was more productive than individuals chasing smaller prey across the savannah, and so Kakhent organized regular hunts utilizing a series of established ambush sites. Many times Aya coordinated her efforts with Kakhent’s, for women often accompanied the hunters when they camped for a day or two at a waiting station some distance from camp to assist in butchering the animals once slain and then transporting their meat. And, at a very early age, Aya had learned to perform the dances done by the women the night before the hunt that assured the gods would bless the hunters’ efforts.

  The falcon continued to drift south, relentlessly, but never seeming to increase the distance between itself and Aya. She had accepted hours ago that the bird was somehow tied to her fate this day. Walking was easy for her on the flats and on the undulating plains which sloped slightly but perceptibly in the direction of the lake, but she had to climb and descend numerous terrace–like ridges as well and that slowed her down. Most rose gently, but some had steep sides. The vast majority were marked with exposed limestone outcrops, some hundreds of feet long, that she had to detour around. She noted signs of surface runoff on the ridges, saw shallow channels that drained in the direction of the lowlands. Often shrubs and lotus trees lined those channels on the plains, proof that rains had come often to that land in the past. She moved around hillocks and depressions and low mounds as much as possible, occasionally rested in the shade of a lotus tree. Beneath one she found a nest where ostriches had hatched, the shells broken into hundreds of pieces. She put all she could gather into her pouch; shaped and strung on a thin string of twisted cattle hair they’d make a fine necklace.