The Night the Nile Rose

Pesejet stripped off the clothes still stained with Menna's phlegm and washed, desperate to escape the unclean feeling that clung to her. No matter how many times she poured clean water over her skin, she could not quiet the heart that trembled uneasily beneath it.

In Egypt, where a girl was expected to marry at fifteen, she had held out until eighteen on the excuse that she meant to become a priestess. Failing to be accepted as a full member of the guild had changed everything.

"Pesejet! Pesejet!"

Someone was calling her name again. I'm sick of this, she muttered, and without even putting on her sandals she slipped quietly out the window on the far side of the house, then through the little side gate opposite the village's main entrance—the one few people knew. The place she reached at a run was the Nile itself.

"Khnum of the Nile, am I so lacking that even Meretseger would refuse me?"

As if the god himself meant to answer the question she had flung out like a complaint, rain began to patter from the sky—a rare thing in Egypt. Was this his reply, that she was lacking enough to be refused? Or had he seen through her—seen that what she wanted, more than faith, was to wander the length of Egypt unmarried—and grown angry? Tears spilled over.

In the village, where it seemed every passerby was staring at her, Pesejet could not even weep as she pleased. Only after she had made certain she was alone did she let the sorrow fall in heavy drops. She cried for a long while, and by the time she had steadied somewhat, the sky seemed to have calmed as well. The rain thinned little by little.

Pat. Pat. Pat. Soon the sound came at a steady interval, and she found she could simply listen to it. Moonlight lay across the Nile, and the thin threads of rain striking that shining surface were more bewitching than the playing of a sistrum, the sacred rattle said to drive off the demons of the night. Perhaps that was why she drew one step closer to the water, then another, and looked down into the glittering surface.

Will you only come to your senses once a crocodile has eaten you, or a hippopotamus has torn you to shreds on those sharp teeth? Night belongs to damp creatures and monsters. How long are you going to wander around like a madwoman, begging them to swallow you?

She could almost hear Kian's scolding. Kian, son of Alida—the wet nurse who had raised both Pesejet and Nenefer—had grown up beside her until he was as good as an older brother, and he possessed one fatal flaw: he nagged without mercy. If he learned she had gone out on the Night of Hathor, the lecture would never end. The thought that she had better get home before he caught her was just turning her back toward the village when it happened.

A wave swollen as if it had drunk the Red Sea and the Mediterranean dry came down on her with force enough to shatter a body. A roar, then a crash. Bolts of light tore the black sky and stabbed into the earth in blinding flashes, and on their heels a violent, wind-driven rain swept in.

She thrashed her arms and legs, fighting to break free of the current, but no skill at swimming was enough to master a Nile in a rage. The river bound her arms so she could not move them, seized her ankles, and dragged until her body grew heavy.

Another roar. With a tremendous noise a wave rose higher than the colonnade of a temple and came on in triumph. When it crashed down and burst apart in every direction, Pesejet was flung helplessly with it and carried off somewhere downstream.

You'll be thinking of me while you die from swimming at night, won't you? Don't regret it then—fix that habit of yours!

To think she would remember Kian's nagging even as she died. Again and again the waves slammed her down and swept her along, and before she could choose whether to swallow or not, river water poured down her throat in great gulps and filled her. As the water filled her body, life seemed to drain slowly out of it. So this is how I end, she thought, resigning herself as she began to sink—and then a hard hand flashed up, caught her, and lifted her clear.

Cool night air touched the body that had risen lightly toward the sky, and then she was laid on flat ground. But she was stifling. Her mind knew she had to breathe; her body had forgotten how.

A large hand pressed gently at her jaw and opened a gap between lips that had been clamped shut. Then came a sensation she had never known—warm, soft, and moist, dizzying and sweet, as if she had drunk wine. Soft, burning lips met Pesejet's own, gone blue with lost warmth, and through the parted mouth a warm breath passed into her.

That breath traveled over a tongue gone rigid, down a throat frozen by the cold river, and spread slowly into the chest that had forgotten how to breathe and the limbs that had lost the strength to move. As if it carried the spark of life, the breath ran out through the blood of her whole body and filled again the place from which life had slipped away.

Each time the man's large hands kneaded her cold, stiffened arms and legs, desperate to call the living warmth back, her body seemed to become an instrument. She felt as though she had turned into one of the rods of Hathor's sistrum, drawing a note of life from the way he played her—a hazy, drifting sensation—and then the numbness in her fingertips and toes was gone.

On the border between consciousness and oblivion, Pesejet forced her eyes open, and a man came into view. First she saw long black hair hanging down; then, in turn, eyes heavy with presence, a straight nose, a firm jaw, and a frame so solid it hardly seemed to belong to an ordinary man. He was nothing like the men of her village. He looked as though he had stepped out of one of the wondrous tales Nurse Alida used to tell.

Even that brief look seemed to have been too much. The life still lingering in her drained away again, and her arms and legs went slack. The organs of breath, as if they had forgotten their work once more, stopped.

She had lived in a village of craftsmen who built tombs and had always believed she was prepared for death. Faced with it, she was so afraid she thought the fear itself would kill her. Please, save me. I don't want to go to the eternal world yet. Pleading inwardly with all her heart, Pesejet gathered what strength remained and reached toward the man.

The moment her hand barely caught his strong arm, his lips met hers again. A hot pulse of life—a fierce vitality that made her feel she was alive—passed from mouth to mouth, heated her chest, and burst out of her in a violent cough.

"What a relief."

Water must have gotten into her ears as well. His low voice reached her only faintly, but it was pleasant to hear. Her joy at breathing on her own lasted only a moment. Her temperature must have plunged, for a pain came over her worse than cold, as if a knife were stabbing her everywhere at once. Her throat, raked raw by the river, was too spent to make a sound, yet if she stayed like this she would collapse from the chill and become a crocodile's meal.

"I'm so cold……"

When she forced her eyes open with the last of her strength, that must have been the moment Hathor's mischief began. A soft breeze came up. The leaves of the fig trees and the palms around them rustled and danced, carrying a faint scent of flowers to her nose, waking the senses of her body and stirring young flesh.

In the space of a blink her dress was gone. She was startled, but her lips were taken at once, and she could not get a word out. The man drew her lower lip lightly into his mouth. His tongue parted lips that trembled faintly, searched thoroughly within, and then wound smoothly around her own. The hot tongue caught the one that tried to hide and sucked at it, wet and lingering. The breath that escaped her, the saliva that passed between them, was sweet.

Her mind went hazy. At a thrill she had never felt before, she tipped her head back without meaning to and answered the kiss. His long fingers cupped her breast gently from beneath. The soft curve was caught in his hand and yielded, misshapen at his will.

"You're cold."

A languid voice, and the man's fresh scent, stronger for being wet. Her reason failed her so completely that she thought she would not mind whatever became of her. She was only dizzy.

"I'm burning. I feel as if I'll burst."

He whispered it and lowered his lips to the breast that had spilled between his fingers. At the unfamiliar touch Pesejet's body shivered. Shame made her try to cover her chest, but he was faster. He caught her wrists, drew them down and away, and took her breast into his mouth as a nursing child might.

She had thought the joining of man and woman was a matter of kissing, of stroking one another, and then of fitting the essential parts together. She had never imagined this. Flustered, Pesejet clutched at his hair. But the man went on tasting her breast as if he felt nothing even when she pulled, wholly absorbed. His tongue explored both breasts as it pleased.

They grew wet with saliva. A tingling sensation spread over her skin and through her whole body until she could no longer feel shame, nor think of covering herself. Pressure came between her legs. Something swollen hard at his center pressed into her again and again, warning her to prepare for what would follow.

Shame made her want to turn away, but he laid his weight over her and covered her body with his own. Hot breath from his mouth dampened her neck. She was already flushed with heat. The chill had left her long ago.

"I'm not cold anymore."

If it had only been because she said she was cold—if it had only been for those words—she wished he would stop here. But he did not listen. He stroked the inside of her thigh, then set his hand against the sex she had smoothed and groomed for her oath of service.

When his fingers invaded the wet flesh between, Pesejet started and trembled.

"I see. You're hot."

Whispering in a rough voice, he parted that wet inner flesh with his fingers once more. She twisted in shame, but he did not stop. A finger entered her. At first it came in shallowly, then slowly, deeply. From the flesh that closed tight around it came a wet sound. She writhed with embarrassment, but he spread her thighs.

Over the body his irresistible grip had opened wide, his heavy, solid weight came down, pressing her breasts in a slow, warm crush. He seized her hips and drew her to him. Something large and blunt met the tender flesh that had never known a man. She had taken in only the tip, and already the sheer bulk of it strained her. She was far too narrow to receive him.