"Sir, the sun. It will ruin your eyes."
She was aware of people's eyes watching her, and knew that some of them had to know who she was. The blanket of duty to the clan was a thin one, as the person she was talking to was a man and not a woman, but this foreigner would bring in more new blood than any Egyptian would. Would if there were unmarried women, or if the men would allow them another mate. Would if there were any children....
The dark-haired man looked up, startled, from his study of a piece of pottery. Asian, she thought, seeing his eye and face shape. No one would accept someone like him, even if she could somehow convince them. Even if she had been talking to him for that reason.
He smiled, and startled her into a smile of her own. There had been no smiles underground for years.
"Thank you," he said, voice tinted with an accent that reinforced her initial assessment of his nationality. "I just got so caught up in this that I forgot." He extended a hand. "Bakura. I'm with the Japanese research team out in the Valley of Kings."
A tomb robber.... But what was he holding? Without thinking, she reached out to take the shard from his hand, then almost dropped it, seeing the hieroglyphs that covered it.
"You know them?" he asked eagerly, seeing her face go ashen. "I thought I knew enough hieroglyphs, but I can't make these out at all."
"It's-- it's a special form," she answered softly, eyes darting around, trying to pick out her husband's spies. "It isn't remembered."
"Except by you?" the man-- barely more than a boy, she corrected herself-- asked with a grin. She found herself responding to it again.
"Not here, sir. We must get you out of the sun before you get heat stroke." She turned, holding the shard so tightly she could almost feel it cut her hand open.
She led him to a dark, cool room. Flipping the switch - an action she could never get used to - bathed the storage room in an artificial light that was brighter, but somehow colder than the light of a flame.
"What do you know?" the man asked eagerly again, leaning across the table she sat at.
"They are a secret of my... family," she said, pausing only briefly on the word. "We are the keepers of secrets. This is among them. It is forbidden to teach it to outsiders."
The man's face fell, and again it occurred to her just how young he really must be. "Can't you tell me anything? This came from our dig site and...." He rubbed the back of his neck, laughing in embarrassment. She smiled in return, the unfamiliar sound lightening her heart. "I had hoped I could make a name for myself by finding something that no one else knew. Silly, I know. It's my first dig and I have plenty of time, but I really hoped that I would...."
Her fingers traced the forms of the glyphs. "This one stands for the soul," she said softly. "What our ancestors called 'kaa.'"
He looked elated as he reached out and took her hands with an enthusiasm and forwardness quite unlike the other Asian men who sometimes roamed the desert town with archaeological digs. He really must be quite young, she thought once more, the sound of her own laugh startling her.
For almost an hour they sat in the store room as she explained the glyphs on the shard, telling him less than she found she wanted to, but more - so much more - than she should. He learned quickly and wrote her words in a small notebook using glyphs as mysterious to her as hieroglyphs were to him. He saw her blink at them and laughed again, then pointed to one near the top of the page.
"This one means soul," he said with a grin. "The heart and spirit, everything that makes up the truth of something."
He impulsively kissed her cheek as he left, thanking her over and over and asking if she would meet him again.
None openly questioned her movements, especially with the population so low. Eyes cast down, knowing full well what would happen if any discovered her, she agreed. His wild whoop brought her gaze back up in startlement before she laughed again.
He really was so young. It occurred to her once more when they met half a week later. This time he brought several pieces and had them already laid out on the table when she arrived. There were papers near each piece with careful copies of each glyph. Several also bore notes in his own language. He traced them with his fingers, looking at them with an almost childish attention and intensity.
"The ankh is life and death, the cycle of the soul," she said by way of greeting. He looked up, smiling widely at her and ushering her into the room. "The one next to it--" She stopped, fearful, suddenly, of giving away the secrets her people had hoarded as treasures the past three thousand years. But who would know one she and her generation were gone? "That one is the symbol of the god on earth: the pharaoh."
He was so eager to learn everything. Sometimes she thought that every word she spoke went into his little book. And sometimes she thought that nothing she said was being remembered as he simply sat and stared at her as she spoke, at her fingers as she traced a glyph, at her eyes beneath her hood.
"Take it off," he begged out of the blue one day, two weeks later.
She looked at him, startled once again by this strange man, this strange man caught between boyhood and maturity.
"Your hood," he explained, cheeks flushing red. "I want to see your hair. I want to see your face clearly. Don't you ever take it off?"
Fingers trembling, because she really hadn't done so in ages, she lowered her hood. She gazed back at him, trying to match his brazen stare and knowing that she didn't. After a moment, she raised it again, hiding herself in its darkness as her people hid in the darkness of the earth. "This one," she said, eyes lowering to another shard although she could feel his eyes still on her, "is eternity."
As he found more and more shards with the ancient language, they began to piece them together as more than just individual bits. The edges on some matched, and they put these fragments together. He carefully drew what they looked like together, matching chips in the pottery and places where glyphs met. And then he asked her what they meant. He copied them, fingers awkward on the unfamiliar symbols.
"You do it," he laughed, pushing the pen into her hand.
Her fingers closed around it. "Do what?"
"Write something. Write your name. I still don't know it."
Feeling somehow as if she were baring her soul in the act of writing a name - but names had power, so maybe she was - she wrote her name in the little book.
He turned the book away from her. "The first one stands for the soul," he said, voice husky suddenly as he traced the characters she had written. She closed her eyes, not wanting so see sure she wanted to see something so oddly intimate as his fingers caressing what was part of her. As it was, she could still hear his voice as he explained the meaning of the pieces of her name, stumbling slightly as he put them together to pronounce it.
And then there was a presence in front of her. She opened her eyes, wary, ready to run, and his eyes seared into her. And then the eyes were closed, and his lips touched hers. It was so tender, so unsure, with a clumsiness that told her it was his first. Her own eyes dropping closed, she returned the kiss for a long moment, and then pulled away.
He was so confused by her sudden rejection. She could see it in the pleading look he gave her, but all she could do was draw back like a wild animal and flee.
It was more than a week before she dared go to the abandoned storeroom she had claimed as her own. To her surprise, he was there. There were more shards and papers than ever on the table. Missing pieces had been filled in on some of his sketches, and she could see his attempts at translations crumpled on the floor.
He looked up at the fierce light that entered when she opened the door. "You came back," he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "I thought you wouldn't! I thought because of what I did...." He dropped his head, looking young. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," she said, closing the door as she came in. "I... cannot." And she knew she could not, even though she could almost feel the strength of his body and had only to close her eyes to feel his lips again, now that she was so close to him. "I cannot," she repeated, voice softer. "What have you found?" she asked, attempting to make her voice normal.
His enthusiasm returned. He reached out and drew her forward, pointing out everything he had done in her absence. The head of the team was interested in what he had been spending so much time on, he explained, and wanted to see his research. He was so eager, so hopeful, that she could do nothing but smile at him. None of these men would recognize her name, and the secrets needed to be passed to someone.
He had her look over everything. He reacted like a puppy when she praised his translations. He had learned so much in so little time. She reached out and touched his cheek, then blushed and pulled away. "It is good," she said instead.
"Tomorrow," he requested, taking her hand in his own. "Come back tomorrow, and I'll tell you what happens."
She nodded, glad of the excuse to leave so quickly. She waited for the next day impatiently, seeming surprised when it finally came so soon. She approached the storeroom cautiously, on the lookout for anyone following her.
He was there already, beaming - practically glowing with pride. The head of the dig had liked what he had found. He hadn't questioned him too much about his source, but had recognized the significance of the younger man's find. He threw his arms around her, swung her around in a circle and kissed her again.
He was so passionate, and his intensity, his joy....
There on the table, the work they had labored at so long pushed unceremoniously to the floor, the door locked and the windows barred, they celebrated his success.
They continued on after this as before, except that they sat closer together at the table, and sometimes his hand found hers. They didn't touch in that way again, although his smiles when he looked at her were different, and as soon as she entered their sanctuary, he would smooth her hood back from her face. She felt young when she was with him.
For two more months they continued to see each other. Two months where she felt that she bloomed each time she was with him, felt as though time itself were paused to let them be together.
Then she realized something, and this realization that changed her forever. She realized that it had been two months. Two full months. And most of a year since her husband had touched her, angered by her inability to conceive thus far.
She went once more to the storeroom. Closing the door behind her, she pressed her back against it, resolutely keeping her eyes down away from his as she told him that she couldn't see him anymore. She begged him to take all of his things with him as soon as possible, knowing that someone would come looking but unsure when. He started toward her, protesting, but she fled from him once more, and he knew Egyptian culture too well to call after her.
Within a few weeks she heard that the dig was over and the archaeologists gone. She breathed more easily as she went about her errands outside, hiding herself from her people, especially her husband, as long as she could. They wore loose clothes, and for that she felt blessed. And meanwhile, in secret - always, she had secrets - she made preparations.
It was, by her calculations, almost seven months before someone noticed. She looked up from cooking to see her husband standing there. There was anger and betrayal in his eyes, and she knew that she had been found out.
"It will die," he said flatly.
"No," she answered, startling him with her contradiction. "We need children. This will be the first child of this generation; the first child in almost twenty years. We need an heir."
"This child, even if it's a boy, will never be my heir. It will die."
"My husband, can you deny how few of us there are? There are no children! Who will carry on the secrets once we are gone? This child could be yours." She looked at him, hands clasped in supplication.
He wavered, knowing, as she did, that inbreeding and illness had decimated their people. "This child is nothing of mine, and will be nothing of yours."
"No," she said again, putting an arm around her belly. "This child is mine, and nothing will take it from me."
"It will be a foundling. Not truly one of us. It isn't one of us. A servant at best. Breeding stock. New blood for other children."
"If there are any," she said softly.
"There will be," he said darkly. "We know you can conceive now. Once this filth is gone from within you, you will bear a son for me." He turned. "I will only let one of such dirtied blood live as an outsider among us," he said, leaving.
She was left alone after that, her duties quietly picked up by others. She was grateful, and took the time to meditate and prepare herself for what would come. Getting all the baby things set up and deciding on names.
Were the child of her husband, it would be named for a god or a goddess. But for this one she couldn't presume such a thing. Therefore, it was her choice and hers alone, and she spent hours in the dark underground that imprisoned her thinking only of that one thing.
When her time came, her virtual exile was lifted. What women remained joined her, helping her give birth and hoping that this was a sign that they would soon give birth themselves. For hours she was aware of nothing but the tremendous pain as her body tried to rid itself of this most welcome intruder.
Finally it was over. As the other women disappeared, returning to their own husbands and their own duties, she looked at her child. A boy. His features had a ghost of his father about them, eyes delicately slanted, hair fine and black. She touched his tiny, perfectly formed fingers and toes, then held him close.
"Rishid," she whispered. "Your name is Rishid."
He began crying and she put him to her breast to nurse.
"A boy?"
She looked up. "Yes, my husband. He could be our heir...."
"I told you my decision. He will only live here as an outsider." He looked at the pair of them, then sneered and left.
Eyes full of tears, she looked at her son and rehearsed the lie she would have to tell him even as he nursed at her breast. "I found you, coming home from the village. Someone abandoned you at the well and I brought you home with me to raise as my own...."