Daughter of the Falcon God Read online

  At noon Aya crested a low steep ridge. The sun was straight overhead and she cast hardly any shadow. She wiped her brow with a forearm; she was sweating copiously in the heat. Her hair was plastered to her bare shoulders and back and she lifted it away from her neck for a moment with both hands to cool off. As she did her eyes swept the withered savannah between the ridge upon which she stood and another perhaps a mile away. Her attention was drawn to a swath of blackened grass on the plain. It had to be where the fireball had crashed. The falcon was circling directly above it now. Her goal in sight, Aya hurriedly dashed down the slope to investigate.

  Even before Aya reached the fringe of the blackened area the smell of smoke assailed her nostrils. After several hundred crunchy steps on what had once been waist–high grass she stumbled onto a crater as wide across as she was tall. Whatever had fallen from the sky had struck here with such force that it had mounded dirt three feet high atop the crater’s eastern rim. Dirt radiated outward from that mound, fanlike, a considerable distance to the east, covering the charred grass. Aya spotted an object half–buried in the far crater wall. She carefully descended to the crater’s bottom, dropped to her knees beside the object and began digging it free with her fingers. In a moment she pried out an irregularly shaped flattened rock half the size of her hand, as thick as her finger, gray, most of the surface rough but parts shiny, almost as if it had partially melted during its fiery journey. It was far heavier than any rock of that size that Aya had ever held. She turned the talisman over and over in her hands, rubbed the dirt off with her fingers. It was shaped like a falcon soaring with outstretched wings. Aya gazed upward, saw the falcon still circling, knew with certainty that the talisman had been sent to earth by a god heretofore unknown by her people, the falcon god, and that he himself had led her to it.

  Aya scrambled out of the crater. Thank you, she whispered in awe, gazing upwards. But, even though she now knew that the falcon god had sent the message, she still had no idea what the message was. Curiously, the falcon began circling towards the south again. Aya tucked the talisman into her pouch and followed without hesitation.

  In a mile and a half she reached the foot of a very high ridge and climbed to its top. All at once the vast silver lake seemed to fill her sight from east to west, reaching so far to the south that it was lost in a blue haze. She couldn’t see the northern shore at all though it was the section closest to her. She realized she was actually standing atop a vast plateau, not a ridge, perhaps a mile wide, stair–stepping downward in a number of terraces from her vantage point all the way to the lake. The northern lakeshore was hidden from her view by the last terrace. Aya carefully made her way down slope after slope until she reached the southernmost portion of the plateau, a long low ridge sprawling a little less than a hundred yards from the lakeshore. Aya was astounded. Unlike the withered brown savannah she’d just crossed, the shores of the lake were fringed with green and thickly covered with a layer of fresh soil; in some places the soil extended a mile or more north of the water’s edge. She saw patches of young green reeds and sedges lining the shore, saw birds flitting there, heard their whistles and songs.

  Aya’s ridge was perhaps one hundred fifty yards long. Limestone slabs were heaped at its western end; beyond them was a large depression, its bottom covered by white clay, sparsely dotted with lotus trees. Many exposed pale limestone outcrops marked the southern slope of her ridge from its midpoint to its western end. The eastern half of the ridge was wider, its crest partly covered with white clay. Between the southern foot of the ridge and the lake lay a flat plain entirely covered with rich black soil, in places dotted with shallow pools of water shining in the sun. Aya saw the tips of grasses and wild grains poking through the mud. In her mind she pictured waving fields of emmer growing there, a bustling camp overlooking them from atop her ridge. Past the eastern edge of the ridge was another flat plain suitable for planting, then a large oval basin, edged north and east with gently–rising terrace–like ridges and a few conical buttes, all with meandering traces of surface water runoff and exposed limestone and clay outcrops. The terraces stair–stepped, almost like ancient shorelines that the lake had lapped in different eras. Shrubs and lotus trees circled the outer edges of the basin.

  A peninsula shaped like a bent arm extended from the plain directly south of Aya’s ridge into the body of the lake, the bicep thrusting due south, the forearm and hand and fingers pointing west. The peninsula was covered its entire length by a grove of dom palms. There was an inlet between the northern edge of the peninsula and the lakeshore, its surface dotted with flocks of ducks and other waterfowl. The inlet was lined with sedges and reeds.

  Aya gazed east once more. Beyond the basin, on the far side of its eastern ridge, was another, larger, filled with water, edged with ridges on its west and north and east, the south end opening onto a flat plain that stretched half a mile farther to the lake. There were two similar basins in the next five miles, the water in each reflecting the sun and edged with green growing plants, their surfaces alive with waterfowl. Aya had never seen such a bountiful land.

  She wanted to see the lake up close. Aya descended the ridge. The thick rich soil that covered the plain between ridge and lake was still moist and she sank in it up to her ankles. In low places closest to the shore there were still small pools of water; far fewer dotted the plain’s northern edge. Aya concluded that the lake had risen and deposited soil on the lowlands and water in the basins and was now receding. The soil squished between her toes and was pleasantly cool on her bare feet. Aya bent, picked up a handful, rubbed it between her fingers. It was so superior to the soil on the savannah where her people tried to coax their grain to grow that she could hardly believe it. Emmer would thrive here with far less effort than it did there. She knew that for a certainty, for her grandfather Iuput had taught her everything he knew about farming, and she had planted and weeded and harvested and collected seed at his side right up until his death two years ago. She wouldn’t have dared say it out loud in front of any of her band’s elders, but she knew far more about growing emmer than any of them did. Mostly, that was because none of them had taken the time to truly learn.

  Aya strode to the water’s edge. Not only was the surface of the inlet covered with ducks, but varieties of birds she’d never seen flitted about its nascent reed patches and among the palm trees, filling the air with song. She saw hundreds of tracks pressed into the mud along the lakeshore where entire herds of animals had come to drink, among them gazelle and oryx. She saw a flash of silver and heard a splash; the lake was alive with fish as well.

  Aya knelt beside the lake and filled her cupped hands with water and took a long drink, then another. She’d never tasted water so wonderful. She was hot from her walk, and sweating. She stood, removed her herb pouch and water pouch from her shoulder, shed her loincloth, waded waist deep into the lake, then dove. The water was shockingly cool as it flowed over her body. She stayed under as long as she could then rose to the surface, spluttering. She stood, chest deep, water tinkling from her long brown hair into the water. She scrubbed herself clean, then floated on her back, eyes closed, face lifted towards the sun, hair fanned out. It was, she thought, the most pleasant experience of her life. She’d stumbled on a paradise. She opened her eyes, saw the falcon circling again. She corrected herself. She hadn’t stumbled. She’d been led. All at once she understood the message of the falcon god. He wanted her people to have a new, better home. “Thank you!” she cried with all her might.

  After a time Aya waded back to shore. She washed out her loincloth, set it on a flat rock to dry in the sun, lay beside it to dry off herself, considered her next move. Clearly, the falcon god wanted her people to migrate from the savannah to the lake. Somehow, Aya had to convince her grandfather and patriarch, Bek, that doing so was a good idea. She knew that wouldn’t be easy. She was, after all, just a twelve year–old girl, hardly someone whose advice would be taken seriously. There was the talisman, she supposed, to le
nd her some credibility. Perhaps it was best if she explored the country more fully, learned all she could about Ta–she and the surrounding land and its resources. The more comprehensive her report, the more likely the band’s elders would pay attention to her. She had already started creating a resource map in her head, based on the patches she’d encountered so far this day. Exploring would enable her to identify more, as well as answer some of the questions that were nagging at her. Chief among them was how the lake had overflowed its banks and so recently covered the adjoining plains with rich soil when there hadn’t been any substantial rain in this region for more than four years. How had the lake become so full of water, and where had the soil deposited by the water come from? Was this deposit a one–time occurrence, or did it happen with regularity?

  Aya dressed, ate a hurried meal, took up her pouches, set out eastward along the edge of the lake where walking was easiest. She saw tracks of hartebeest and ostrich and crocodile and hippopotami in the mud where they’d come to drink, saw large catfish moving lazily not far from shore, even saw a few turtles, some swimming with heads held out of the water, some sunning on the banks. She soon reached an extensive marsh that occupied the plain at the southern end of the closest basin. The marsh was choked with reeds and sedges, edged with shrubs and small trees, connected to the lake by a shallow stream six or seven feet wide. Aya spotted fish just beneath its surface, some so large they couldn’t possibly traverse the stream and return to the lake. Aya surmised that they’d swum into the marsh when the lake’s level was higher and they were smaller and were now trapped there. They’d be easy pickings; had she wanted to, Aya could have caught a few with her bare hands, for the water in the marsh was not even knee–deep. Aya recognized that the marsh would be an excellent place for her people to cut sedges and reeds for baskets and pallets, to harvest rhizomes and seeds, to trap waterfowl and hunt small game, to collect fallen branches to feed cookfires.

  Aya splashed across the stream and continued east. Beyond the basin, and dividing it from the next one to the east, was a large wadi. It appeared to be gently sloping towards the lake from the very cliffs to the northwest that Aya had descended earlier in the day. No doubt it collected rainwater from that section of the savannah and funneled it into Ta–she. The wadi was bone dry just now, due to the lack of rain, its bed covered with fine–grained sand and fragments of flint and quartz and small pebbles and a few large cobbles. The wadi was only slightly lower than the surrounding savannah, its banks limestone, that on the east more eroded than the west, no doubt due to the prevailing wind. In places Aya saw dense growths of lotus trees; that suggested there must be sources of underground water nearby. A piece of wood a few inches long caught Aya’s eye and she picked it up. It was as hard as stone. She’d never seen anything like it. She slipped it into her pouch.

  East of the wadi was a second basin, just as large as the first, the water similarly lined with plants, but surrounded on three sides by terrace–like escarpments, each ten feet or so high, each set back a bit from the one below it, so that they rose like stair steps. The surfaces of the escarpments were littered with flint and limestone pebbles and their fragments. At the foot of one particularly steep escarpment was a jumble of limestone slabs and blocks that had fallen from its edge. Now Aya was certain that the escarpments each represented the lake’s shoreline at a different time in the past. Well north of the basin Aya noted several ridges of hard clay.

  Between the second basin and the easternmost Aya encountered another wadi, very similar to the first, but this one running northeast towards the cliffs. She squinted; she thought she saw a wide gap in the sandstone plateau in the direction the wadi was headed. Perhaps that was a place to more easily descend from the savannah into this lake country. A large number of animal tracks in the dry wadi bed gave credence to that idea. Aya decided she’d return home up the wadi to see if she was correct.

  Aya walked the rest of that day, stopping to explore anything that caught her interest. Everywhere, the fringes of the lake were green and alive with wildlife; the area beginning a half mile to a mile north of the green strip was sere and dry. Wild grasses bordered the entire shoreline, and would in a month or so be abundant and tall and lush. Many trees in the numerous groves would bear fruit then, and bees swarming amidst colorful wildflowers promised much sweet honey. Aya knew that the reeds in patches along the lake’s margins would be suitable for building huts, and would teem with small game. She saw or recognized from their tracks long horned cattle, ibex, rhinoceros, ostriches, elephants, oryx, addax, ibex, gazelle, barbary sheep, hyenas, giraffes, and even leopard and lion. Vultures soared high overhead, along with hawks and the falcon. Aya was careful to avoid snakes and scorpions as she proceeded, though the grass was short enough that she didn’t have to worry too much. By sunset she was an hour beyond where the lakeshore curved sharply to the south. That evening she broiled over a blazing fire a fish she’d caught by hand, and drank her fill of the sweet lake water.

  That night, as Aya slept with the talisman clutched in her fist, she was visited by a dream. She recognized the lakeshore she’d traversed during the day, except that instead of its empty, wild state, its plains were now lushly covered with extensive fields of emmer and barley waving in the wind, its ridges topped with numerous huts and columns of smoke spiraling into the sky, its vast grasslands dotted with herds of cattle and sheep and goats. She saw hundreds of people – men, women, children – going about their daily affairs, laughing, singing, smiling. Every bit of her dream spoke of stability and prosperity for her people and many others. Then Aya saw herself well out on the lake, seated on a magnificent vessel made of reeds – long, elegant, both ends arcing high over her head, shaped like papyrus flowers. She was nursing a newborn baby boy, with four smiling girls gathered at her feet. A man’s hand was resting lightly on her shoulder and she lay one of hers atop his. She’d never felt such peace and contentment and happiness. Then Aya was awakened by the trilling of a single bird. She opened her eyes, remembered where she was, stretched languidly. An instant later the sun leapt into the sky, disgorged from the mouth of the goddess who had swallowed it the night before, spilling golden light all across the land. Aya sat up. She’d never had such a vivid dream. She replayed it in its entirety. Every dream she’d ever had had faded away almost immediately, lost, beyond recall, quickly forgotten. This one she remembered in every glorious detail. In wonder, Aya opened her hand, caressed the talisman with her fingers. She did not doubt for an instant that the falcon god had sent the dream to her. She had no doubt he’d just revealed to her not only her people’s future, but her own. She’d just seen the family she’d someday have.

  Two hours of hiking brought Aya to a huge fan–shaped delta at the mouth of a narrow winding river channel lined with high rocky walls and she knew she’d discovered the source of the lake’s water. The water was high and flowing powerfully northward, but she could tell from the debris on the canyon walls east and west of the channel that the water level had recently been much higher. The channel entered the lake through a gap in a long ridge; one section of the ridge stretched due north from the gap and the other curved southwest. The delta at the channel’s outlet was lush with reeds, all of them almost entirely underwater just now. Aya spotted hundreds of crocodiles sunning themselves on the lakeshore on both sides of the delta, and she quickly scrambled up the slope of the ridge to avoid the closest. She recalled from the old tales that the crocodile god watched over Ta–she.

  Once on the crest of the ridge Aya took a moment to enjoy the view. The lake was a vast silver expanse completely surrounded by wide emerald fields, ringed at a distance by plateaus upthrust from seemingly limitless savannahs marked by scattered groves of trees and herds of animals. Ducks and other waterfowl filled the air with wild cries. One flock landed as Aya watched, circling low, churning the water white as they touched down. Their cries competed with the low roars of hippopotami rising from vast partially–submerged gently–sloping sandbanks, a
ll choked with aquatic plants, somewhere to the west.

  Aya saw a great scattering of cobbles atop the ridge a dozen yards away, suitable to make scrapers and pounding stones and other tools from. She’d never seen such an extensive patch and put a few of the finest in her pouch. She noticed a game trail heading east across the ridge and decided to see where it led. The ridge flattened and elongated into a kind of plateau almost immediately; the trail wound back and forth across its top for several miles. All at once the plateau abruptly ended and Aya found herself overlooking a mile–wide valley with a similar plateau rising on its far side. A great river sliced through the valley’s heart, twenty times wider and much more powerful than the channel she’d seen earlier. The river was lined with flat plains on both sides; those portions at the base of the plateaus were underwater; the riverbanks themselves were dry and topped with lines of palm trees. From that Aya understood that the valley was highest along the riverbanks and tilted towards their lowest sections at the base of the plateaus. Where the plains were not obscured by water Aya noted the same rich soil she’d seen at the lake. She deduced that this river was the source of both the water and fresh soil that blessed the lake country. Somewhere to the south the channel she’d seen emptying into the delta had to be connected to the river and so filled the lake. Thus, plentiful water in a time of drought.

  Even from so far away, Aya could sense the river’s power as it flowed relentlessly and swiftly north. She concluded two things – first, if anyone lived in the river valley they’d have to flee when the river rose or be swept to their deaths, and two, life in the lake country and the adjacent valley were not dependent on the summer rains at all. They were dependent on the river. And based on the markings she could see on the faces of the eastern and western plateaus, and on the walls of the channel that emptied into the lake, the river rose every year.