House of Life, Part 1
by BluRider
PART 1
Standing stiffly, slender limbs sheathed in perspiration, almost a hundred little girls crowded together in the sweltering hall. And they were all stark naked.
They stood at attention in neat rows among the pillars; their large, expressive eyes locked nervously upon a single, loincloth-clad man. Nafrit’s turn came up and she approached him, her copper-streaked hair gleaming in the shafts of desert sun. As with the other little girls, her light and creamy, rosewood-coloured skin was bare from head to toe, save for the one adornment: a bronze bracelet of Ouroboros, a snake eating its tail. She unconsciously ran her other hand across the solid weight of the jewellery, swallowing hard as she hesitated: a nervous little girl, about to become a woman. The pause did not last long. When the man beckoned, she immediately obeyed. He started speaking, leading her, as she came to his side - but Nafrit cut him off.
An innocent child barely seven years of age, he never would have expected her to understand what he wanted her to do… but she had waited her whole life for this moment, and did not need his guidance. The nude little girl stood before him, her head barely reaching to his chest, looking him confidently in the eyes. Without a word, she fell immediately to her knees in worshipful surrender, licking her lips in preparation before reaching out her practiced, eager little hands…
She wrapped them around the thick shaft of the inscribed clay ewer on the dais, spoke a long and perfect prayer to Isis, the Goddess of children, and took a deep, ritual draught of the honeyed elixir within.
It was rich and sweet and made her very dizzy, but she could feel the High Priest’s eyes still on her, wide with shock. She wobbled back to her feet, trying to force herself not to betray her unsteadiness as she perfectly executed the ritual obeisances in order, one by one, and turned around to totter back into the crowd. Today she would fasten the girdle. Become a free adult, and lay aside the weaknesses of children. She could handle adult drinks. That was the easy part. Her mouth went dry, palms sweating as she forced herself to take step after steady step and rejoin the other exposed children. It wasn’t the drink, of course, that made her heart pound and compelled her to escape, or bite her lip. More priests were moving through the hall like silent specters, wearing Ibis-head masks. Each girl in here must be feeling the same thing, Nafrit was sure. It wasn’t even the ceremony or the prayer, which the High Priest would help them through where needed, as he was doing now for other girls - his eyes still sometimes wandering to her. Nor was it, needless to say, being in front of a legion of priests with no clothes on. The girls had lived their whole lives naked, more or less. Who would give clothing to a child?
It wasn’t any of that. It was inspection. As the priests fanned out into the crowd to start, Nafrit began to falter and tried hard to swallow the lump in her throat. She did her best to look both cool and unconcerned, the way a strong, free adult should… but she was still a small, subservient child at heart. She couldn’t quite get past that. Her sweat ran in rivulets; goosebumps appearing on her body, plain for all too see. As her nervousness increased, so did her dizziness. All of her parents’ wealth could only get her this one chance. Her mother had once said the Pharaoh was God, and all his subjects either camels, crocodiles or snakes. She was not strong and dull like a camel, or treacherous and powerful like a crocodile. She had to be a snake. Eyes wide and gasping shallowly, she fought to hold on to her calm. Snakes were cold-blooded, silent, clever. Be a snake. After about a minute her flat chest had stilled its heaving, settling slowly into even breaths. A snake was “Amduat”: life, death, creation and destruction. Strong or weak, big or small, only one thing could best any opponent that it got its teeth into. A snake. She stilled her heart. A shadow fell across her, and she dared look up.
An old priest faced her. His leathery form bristled with rough white hairs, ribs starkly outlined like a slave’s. His mask hooked down toward her face: the birdlike gaze of Thoth, God of wisdom, science and writing. She saw papyrus in his hand. He must have noted down her practiced ease and knowledge of the ritual. He must. Mustn’t he? She hadn’t stumbled once, Nafrit was sure. Even the warmth that now spread through her limbs from the ritual drink had not affected her performance. She gave him a piercing, challenging gaze, to show that she was able and prepared to be his equal: a free, educated woman. He narrowed his old, bushy eyes, and bared his yellow teeth. Now would come the questions, fiendishly difficult for a young girl her age, but drilled into her head from birth. They would decide if she was fit to be a priestess, serve the Gods, and more than that: receive an education. The spindly ibis leaned down over the small child, consulting his papyrus scroll. She was an asp, her every muscle coiled to strike, her mind afire with the lore of Thoth.
And then he grabbed her naked chest.
It took her a moment even to process what was happening. Nafrit squeaked in sheer confusion, squirming in his leathery old hands. Atop the dais, the High Priest began a droning sermon, reading from a long and dusty scroll. Before him, little girls stood evenly in rows, their skinny forms unmoving. Some of them were being groped by their inspectors, melting dizzily into the masked men’s hands. Nafrit’s world spun as she began to do the same, her tender little body rising to his roaming touch, quivering with unfamiliar needs. She shut her eyes tightly, staggering back, and tried to push the man away. She squealed as he clamped hard onto her arm and pulled her to him, before forcing open her mouth to check her teeth as if she were a camel at the market. Nafrit felt helpless, as she had so often in her life, her little body powerless to fight the wiry old man… but she was not a camel. She sinuously slid out of his grasp instead of trying to fight it, and then fell back from him, still on her guard. Instead of being grabbed again as she had feared, she slapped into the naked body of the girl behind her. The masked old priest just scratched something onto his rolled papyrus as he walked away.
She froze, and the little girl behind her had to push her gently back in line. What did that mean? He’d asked no questions, offered her no riddles… he had done nothing except grope her with his filthy hands.
The bottom fell out of her stomach. A cold chill swept up her spine.
When she looked up at the High Priest, still on the dais, he coldly met her eyes with silent scorn.
She wasn’t going to be free, or get an education.
Somehow, she had failed.
****************************************************
She couldn’t breathe. She wished the Nile would overflow and wash her far away. The bosun of a slave ship started thumping on her heart, pounding harder and harder, faster and faster, as the naked little girl pictured herself tied to an oar. Never to study, learn or write. Never to reach her full potential. And she didn’t even understand how she had failed.
They came among the little girls now, taking some of them away. Rich, haughty girls, indifferent to their failure: their parents would not miss the goods that they had traded, unlike hers. They looked back at the priests disdainfully, expressing with their eyes how glad they were that this ordeal was over. Nafrit’s vision blurred. Still, she could see: it was the same dark look the priests were giving her. She would be taken soon.
There came a choking sensation in her throat. Was it because she’d interrupted the High Priest when she performed the ritual herself? Her eyes were streaming. Had she made the ibis-headed man look foolish when she fought him? Her nose began to run. Was it because her teeth weren’t good enough? She couldn’t fight it any longer. Little Nafrit broke out into sobs. She simply didn’t know.
She withdrew into herself, her body settling to the ground, hugging her legs. She heard the high priest speaking, but wasn’t conscious of the words, too much absorbed in her own pain. She wondered if she’d feel it when they dragged her out. She felt so numb. She pushed it all away. The words, the priests, the girls, the pressure in her chest. She just wanted to sleep.
She felt it when he tried to lift her. The old man had seized her once again, and heaved her up. She recognised his hands. Hanging bonelessly, unwilling to help in any way, the sobbing little girl proved just heavy enough to give him pause. The old man straightened up his back, and tried to settle on a comfortable way to hold her, as she cried and tried to lose herself in the words of the High Priest. The stories of her childhood, imbued with a feeling of safety and her parents’ love, withdrew her conscious mind into a peaceful place within herself.
“And so the Lord of Magic, God of Wisdom, Thoth did speak the sacred Words,” her mouth repeated after the High Priest in a soft whisper, “creating the heavens and the Earth according to the will of Amun-Ra. These words, he wrote into his sacred scrolls, which we preserve with care within the House of Life. And as the mighty Thoth submits to Amun-Ra, so too his servants are Anointed in His name.”
Nafrit hung heavy in the old man’s calloused grip, her body resisting him out of sheer stubbornness, her senses dulled by conflicting emotions. She felt a cold, smooth hand upon her face. Something greasy was smeared across her cheek, and the sharp scent of oil and flowers struck her nostrils. Her eyes fluttered open, wet with tears, to see the High Priest had his hand upon her face. Around her only a few dozen girls were left, the others having already been taken away. The remaining girls stood bare and unresisting, as the priests spread the same honey-brown unguent all over their young bodies.
Nafrit’s eyes widened, meeting the High Priest’s. He was looking at her oddly. The older priest holding her in his arms said something dismissive and began to pull away, but Nafrit squirmed like a serpent, throwing out his spine. As the masked man backed up and let her go in sudden pain, she threw herself at the High Priest. She thrust her arms and face and chest into his hands, until she’d smeared herself all over with the unguent and practically climbed into his grip. The words would not come, so she just stared into his eyes and willed him with her gaze to take her, please! He staggered at her sudden rush, but then he put her gently down and started to anoint her body evenly with oil… and as his hands ran smoothly over her young flesh, Nafrit pressed hotly into him in sheer relief and desperation.
The dizzy little girl lost track of time and felt as if she had begun to fall asleep, as she was oiled and touched and - best of all - accepted. Limp and yielding, she let the High Priest cradle her in his arms and place her gently down upon a woven reed mat. A tiny amulet of Thoth, the High Priest’s own, was dangled right above her eyes. He swung the ibis-headed little figure back, and forth. Back and forth. She watched it going back and forth, relaxing even deeper. He picked up a little jar marked “pouquer” in hieroglyphics. From within, still dangling the amulet in his other hand, he drew a graceful horsehair brush. Its pungent smell reminded Nafrit of the herbs her parents hung outside to dry, and the brush tickled as he brought it down to draw designs across her face. He lowered his other hand to hold her motionless, and her eyes shut as they followed the small amulet down to her chest. The man began to speak again, but his words were like an unfamiliar, muted tickling in her hears. Confused, she simply lay there on the mat and totally relaxed, a beautiful pattern of dark, graceful lines taking shape down her own face, neck and collarbone, her tiny nipples now erect under his steady hand.
He was reading from a scroll, she dimly realised, stirring slightly. Not the one he’d been holding earlier, but one that almost seemed to glow as she reopened tear- and sleep-blurred eyes to look at it. It was gold, azure and white, emblazoned with the ibis-seal of Thoth, and as he spoke the words the little girl began to moan, stirring upon the mat. She was seized once more by the nervous impulse she’d suppressed during inspection. She felt as though she wanted to escape, to run, or bite down hard upon her lip to wake herself. Her mind withdrew back into her warm, peaceful place, shying away from such thoughts. She let his words flow over her, instructing her, suffusing her, content to set her consciousness aside. After a while, she realised that she could understand the words again. “Anointed servant of the Gods,” he was saying. “You will be scribe and priestess of the mighty Thoth.”
She let out a long, pent-up breath, and it relaxed parts of her that she hadn’t even realised were hurting. She was light-headed with a feeling of release. She felt herself get jostled once again as someone tussled briefly with her unresisting body. The coarse caress of linen ran across her legs, and something fastened at her waist with a click.
The High Priest had accepted her. That much she knew as she lay helplessly upon the mat, looking upward with glazed eyes at the towering priests, almost unconscious.
“Arise!” came a man’s voice, and she barely felt it as her body rose up from the ground. She stood in front of a bronze mirror, one of the few she’d ever seen, and saw herself reflected in its polished sheen. She was no longer naked, but adorned with beautiful and sacred patterns all across one side of her upper body. Her eyes stood out sharply, both darkened with that strange brown substance. She wore a colourful, painted girdle over a lavishly decorated kilt, one of the most beautiful garments she had ever seen. The girdle’s buckle matched her bracelet perfectly, the rough serpent image of Oroborous seeming almost to be trading gazes with its ornate head of Thoth. As her consciousness resurfaced, Nafrit felt nothing but elation and triumph. She had made it! This was no longer a child looking out at her, but a priestess and a free woman of Egypt. She was looking at the happy culmination of her lifelong dream.
So, why did the girl in the mirror look so terribly afraid?
>>PART 2>>