My father’s grunts woke me up in the middle of the night. I knew if I got up to see what was happening to my mother that he would turn to me next, so I remained still on my pallet and buried my head on the headrest, ignoring as best I could the sounds from the next bed. I had a few more hours of sleep before the coxwaine woke us all up, signaling what would be the most important day of my life so far.
Once the morning came, I avoided my father by changing in the corner of the hut, drawing my shift close around me. He still had the hungry look in his eyes, and my mother spent more time than usual making beer outside in the courtyard.
I left my home for 16 years without a backward glance. My mother was busy applying kohl to mask the bruises and my father was leering at my younger sister. I didn’t give a thought to Betrest; she was going to have to learn to survive my father’s advances as I had. The gods knew that my mother wouldn’t help her at all.
My name is Khama’at, and I am going to work for the queen.
The palace, when I get there, is bustling and full of important-looking men striding everywhere, with nary a glance for me. No, I take that back. One of them does look at me for too long, so I bend my head and walk on, looking for someone who might know where I’m to go. I’m to look for a woman named Khione, the former head maid, so she can train me for a few days before she goes back home. It’s rumored that the reason she held onto the position for so long was because she and the queen were involved, were together, but I doubt that’s the case. The queen is far too comitted to her husband, the pharaoh, the body of Horus on Earth. No one who was blessed enough to perform service to Him would dare defile her body with another, neither male nor female. The queen’s body is a temple in and of itself, a vessel for the next reincarnation of Horus, Blessed Be.
I saw whom I thought to be Khione near a pillar in the inner courtyard and walked quickly towards her. I bowed respectfully, my hands in front of me. “Greetings, Elder. Are you Khione?” I kept my head down and awaited her response. “Yes, young one. You may speak freely now, as I know you to be Khama’at. Come with me; the princess will show you to the queen’s chambers. She wanted to meet you first.”
I followed Khione, sneaking admiring glances at her completely shaven head, a sign of both maturity and, here, importance to the queen. The men paid no regard to her or to me, but once we passed into the inner courtyard, the women’s sanctum, attentions shifted to us. Khione because she was revered, me because I was replacing her.
“Are you ready to meet the eldest princess, Khama’at?” I nodded.
I had no idea I was about to be reunited with someone I’d been searching for for a very long time.
She stood behind a reed mat door. Her wig was removed for she was in her private chamber. Her eyes were big with kohl outline. Her skin shimmered underneath a thin linen shift.
“Princess Amsi, this is--”
“Oh, I know who she is,” Amsi said with a keen glint in her eyes. “She may come in. You may leave us now, Khione; I shall manage her training. Thank you for your assistance these past years. You may see Atwe for your final allotment.”
The reeds swished shut; I looked at Amsi, she looked at me. It was she who finally spoke, her face cautiously joyful, like the bald sun daring to peek its face out from behind clouds. “I know you,” she had said. “And I you,” I replied.
She came towards me then, her hands out to grasp mine. They were cool, as opposed to everything else in the room. “I feel as though I had been sad for so very, very long, and now I am happy again. Your face is mine, your breath is ours.”
She embraced me then, her lips firm and confident, not sloppy like my intoxicated father’s had been. We fell together, slipping into memories.
Later on, as I watched Princess Amsi die for our sins, I remembered her as she was in that moment. They came for me next, the queen’s maid who’d seduced the traitorous princess, but even as the blackness overcame me and I fell into that ageless slumber, I held onto Amsi’s face. I would see her again, I felt sure. For hadn’t I found her this time?