[b]Chapter Ten

Jokanna 1254BC - Egypt [/b]

The air was full of flies, coming at me from every conceivable direction, entering my mouth, crawling up my nose, hitting my eyes so I had to close them. I could not breathe without breathing them in. They were just a thick cloud around me. Tiny little flies, crawling, biting, itching my skin. And I couldn't run away from them, because the cloud was too big. It enveloped everything. My couch, the bread on my plate, the whole room, and outside too. I could hear people out there, my neighbours, some shouting with disgust, some screaming, and others making mumbling noises as they tried to keep the flies on the outside.

I spat out a mouthful that's crept into my mouth and stood up. At that moment, I'd wanted to crawl into a small ball to try to get away from them, but the flies seemed almost mad. It wouldn't have helped me to do that. I knew that the only place I would find some relief was in water.

I started to head for the door, and it was only when I reached it that I remembered that the pool by the Nile I'd helped make the year before was tainted, in fact it had been tainted for months by then. The Nile was once again only water, but there was still blood in the pool.

In fact, that was probably where the flies were coming from.

I'd been laughed at when I'd told my neighbours we needed to clean it out.

But that day, I had the last laugh. Sort of. I would have had the last laugh if it hadn't been for the flies.

'There must be somewhere I can go to get around from this plague,' I half muttered to myself, my lips barely moving, and my hand over my mouth. 'But where?'

I opened the door of my home to the street, and even more flies flew in toward me. I rushed outside, and starred up at the dark sky. The thing was, it was daytime, the early hours yes, but still in Egypt, the sun was usually high in the sky.

And it was that day too, except the masses of flies I'd seen in my home were even bigger outside, and they mostly blotted out the light from the sun.

But from the little that was managed to stream through the clouds of flies, I saw my neck door neightbour being sick at the side of her home, with her infant son at her feet, and covered with flies.

He was crying, rubbing his eyes and pulling at his ears.

I hurried over to him, picked him up, brushed as many of the flies as I could off his face and then bent down to comfort his mother.

She glanced up at me. 'What is happening Jokanna?' she asked. 'All these flies. It's like they are some sort of punishment. Are the gods punishing us? Is this the end of everything and we are about to be taken into the afterlife?'

She reached out for the boy, and I passed him to her.

'After everything that has happened, the Nile turning to blood, the frogs and the lice, I thought everything was getting back to normal, and now this.'

The boy in her arms started to twist and turn and opened his mouth wide to wail his complaints. Quite a few flies flew into his mouth.

'I don't know Nefer,' I said. 'I don't know if this is the end, or if it is a beginning. But I do know that we need to try to get away from these flies.'

I glanced around as I heard feet slapping on the stone pathway.

People were running through the flies.

'Where are you going?' I shouted after them.

One turned around. 'Gosham,' he said. 'We're going to Gosham.'

'Why there?'

Gosham was where the slaves live and I'd heard back then that they practised all sorts of strange things, and had weird beliefs.

But then compared to the Egyptians I lived with then, the beliefs and ideas I was raised with would have seemed strange.

'This cloud of flies covers the whole of Egypt,' someone else said. 'Except for Gosham. People are saying that their god protected them from it. Or maybe sent it to punish us for Pharoah not letting them go. I don't know. And to be quite honest, I don't care. The streets are filled with flies, but in Gosham, they are clear. So that's where I'm going.'

I turned back to Nefer. 'We should go…'

'But they're not like us,' she said.

'I looked at her son, now sucking his thumb, grime and dead flies around his lips. 'Does it matter what they are like? At least Ammon will be away from these flies.'

She looked down at the boy, took his thumb from his mouth and wiped it and his mouth with the edge of her dress. 'Fine,' she said.

We walked through the flies, and to be quite honest, as we walked, I could almost swear that they're were more and more of them. In fact, it was starting to feel a bit like wading through water when we reached the top of the hill that led down on the other side into Gosham.

And that was when I saw the massive clouds of flies all over Egypt, like dark clouds lying close to the ground. From that distance, I couldn't see anything green, I couldn't see any houses, or even the Pharoah's palace. All I could see black.

Except for in the valley below. The black clouds of flies surrounded it, but there was a gap in them where Gosham was.

Nefer started to run down the hill, and I ran after her.

We were running through the clouds of flies, the insects flying at us, and then suddenly the cloud was gone, and the few flies on us flew away.

'This is very strange,' I said, as we headed down into the centre of Gosham.

'Who cares?' Nefer replied, heading towards a market table selling fresh bread and dates.

'No,' a woman said, and ran toward us. 'You cannot eat. You come from outside Gosham do you not?'

'Yes,' I said, feeling my stomach start to churn. 'What of it?'

Thinking was she seriously going to tell us that we could not eat here? Or maybe that we should leave.

The woman smiled. 'Forgive me. I mean no harm. I simply meant that you should wash before you eat. If you come from outside of Gosham, then you have been in the plague of flies. You should wash so you don't get ill. Especially the baby.'

'Where can we wash?'

'Come with me,' she said. 'I will take you to my house. I have much water drawn from the well this morning. You will feel much better when you have washed.'

I didn't doubt it, and I dutifully followed the woman as she led the way to her home.

'My name is Miriam,' she said. 'What can I call you?'

'Miriam?' I frowned as I thought about how familiar the name was. 'Your name is Miriam?'

'Is it.'

I shook my head, thinking that it didn't really matter why her name was familiar. There must be many Miriams living in Gosham. 'Well I am pleased to meet you Miriam. My name is Jokanna, and this is Nefer and baby Ammon.'

Miriam stopped in front of a door, touched some sort of container secured to the right frame of it, and then walked into the house.

We followed.

'If you go through there,' she said, pointing at a curtained off area. 'I will bring you the water.'

Miriam shared her precious water rations with us, fed us, and allowed us to stay for the two days it took before the flies left, and yet I couldn't help but feel nervous of her. Maybe it was because I would sometimes catch her looking at me, with a quizzical expression on her face, or it could have just been because I felt that anyone that seems as nice and caring as her couldn't possibly be in reality. I didn't know then while I felt unsettled, I just knew that I did.

Miriam's life was strange to me.

And strange to Nefer too. She was gone as soon as she heard that the flies had left, hardly glancing backward to give thanks in her anxiousness to escape.

I lingered though. I could have just gone like Nefer but something about Miriam made me want to stay. She was strange to me, but she was also of a certain age, and had no children. Instead she seemed to mother everyone else. So maybe I stayed because I sensed a need in her that was nearly a match to my own. Or maybe I didn't. It might have been because I saw how hurt she looked when Nefer rushed out, and didn't want to upset her too. She'd even asked if I was going to go too, and I said that I'd like to stay for a while. That I still wanted to find out why the flies hadn't come to Gosham.

She'd said it was her God's doing, and maybe it was, but then again, I needed to find out for myself.

So I stayed.

Without any idea how I would find out the truth, I stayed.

'Miriam,' a woman knocked on the front door. 'They're back.'

I had no idea who they might be, but Miriam certainly did, because immediately she stood up, pushed her brown hair back into a bun, and rushed outside.

I followed her.

And saw a mass of people lined along both sides of the road.

Which had two men walking slowly toward us.

One man looked like every other Hebrew male, and so did the other one in his dress, but he was at least a head taller than everyone else, and more muscly, or at least he looked like he probably was when he was younger, but by then an old man, he leant on a long wooden staff.

'Who's that?' I asked Miriam, but when I turned around because she hadn't responded, I saw that she wasn't next to me.

Instead, she was hurrying toward the two men.

Who embraced her.

'That's Moses,' an old woman who was standing near to me answered my question.

I glanced at her. 'Prince Moses? I'd heard that he'd left Egypt.'

'Well,' she said. 'He came back.'

'But why isn't he in Pharaoh's court? Why is he here with…'

'With us Hebrews?'

'Yes.'

'Because he was born to us. He is a Hebrew.'

I shook my head. 'But if that was true, then how did he come to be raised as royalty?'

The thing was, I'd been in Egypt at that time for about a year, but I'd lived here when Prince Moses was a young man too, pretending to be my own mother when I came back. But I would have been somewhere else when Prince Moses was born, and I'd never heard of any stories about his childhood or heard anything that could have led me to believe that he was anything but royal.

'You look confused,' the woman said.

'I am. Very.'

'Well let me tell you a story.'

I glanced at where Miriam was standing talking to the two men.

'They'll be ages,' the woman said. 'And I promise my story won't take long.'

'Fine,' I responded. 'Tell me.'

'Well the Hebrew race has been in Egypt for a long time, for many hundreds of years, and at first, we were just a few.'

'We? You were there?'

The woman snorted. 'How old do you think I am? Of course I wasn't there.'

'Oh sorry, yes of course you weren't,' I said. 'It was just that it sounded like you were saying that you were. So there were just a few Hebrews?'

'There were, but over time, we became more numerous. And by the time I was born, we were many, and being used for the sort of work that we still do today.'

'You were slaves?'

'Yes,' she sighed. 'We were slaves. But when the Pharaoh's father saw how numerous we were, he came up with a plan. Oh, I remember those days, I was only a young girl, far too young to have children of my own, but I saw women weeping in the streets holding their dead baby boys.'

'Dead?'

'Murdered. They were murdered by the Egyptian guards. On the orders of Pharaoh. Less Hebrew boys would mean less Hebrew men who could challenge him when they were older. Who could leads a riot and free us.'

I nodded my head. I'd seen things like that happen before. 'But what has this got to do with Prince Moses?'

'Like I said, he is Hebrew. He was born Hebrew. And would have been one of those babies murdered if his mother hadn't kept him secret, and when he got too big to keep secret, hid him in the Nile's rushes in a basket.'

'She did what? A crocodile could have…'

'Our God is a great God,' she said.

And I admit that I winced at her words.

'He had a plan for Moses which didn't involve being eaten by crocodiles.'

'But still…'

'And also, his mother gave his sister a big stick to hit any crocodiles with, and told her to follow his basket wherever it went. And imagine her surprise when one day, the basket floated along the river, and stopped just where Queen Tuya, who was a princess back then, was bathing.'

'What happened? Did she call the guards?'

'No, she picked baby Moses up out of his basket and declared him a gift of the gods. She was childless back then, and thought that she would never have her own child. So she decided to adopt him.'

'So that's how he became Prince Moses?'

'It is.'

I nodded my head. 'Thank you,' I said, and then started to walk away.

'Don't you want to know what Miriam's connection to Moses is?' the woman asked.

I turned around.

'Miriam was the girl who guarded baby Moses. She was the one who saw Queen Tuya pick him up, and…'

'His sister?'

'Yes, his sister. And one of his earliest playmates too. You see when she saw Queen Tuya, she rushed up to her, and told her that she knew a woman who could wet nurse Moses. And the Queen agreed. So for his first few years, he spent with his family, with Miriam and Aaron his brother, and with his real mother and father, except at the time, he didn't know that they were his relations. It was only when he found out who he really was that he found them.'

'So now he lives here, and doesn't go to the palace?'

She laughed. 'Oh he goes to the palace all right. Have you not heard of the Prophet?'

'The one who turned his staff into a snake?' I glanced over at where Miriam is still talking to the two men. 'The Prophet is Prince Moses?'

'The same.'

I shuddered. 'It is he who has brought all these plagues on us,' I said, and then turned and walked away.

Out of Gosham.

My home was filled with dead flies, on the floor, stuck under mats. A jar of honey was coated on the outside with a sticky mess of them.

It was disgusting.

But I had never been one to shy away from hard work, so I started cleaning as soon as I got there, and by nightfall, it was clean again.

So I went to see if Nefer needed any help.

Except she wasn't at home.

And neither was my other neighbour, or any of them.

Every house in the street was empty.

'What is going on?' I muttered to myself as I walked down the street. 'Where is everyone?'

I headed toward the market, knowing that even with the sunset, it would still be open.

And finally I found someone. He was crouching next to a donkey who was lying on the ground. 'Get up you stupid beast,' he shouted at it, and tried to pull it onto its feet.

But the donkey's head just lolled to one side.

And then I saw other people standing next to other animals, also lying on the ground.

Also as dead as the donkey.

'It's another plague,' someone said. 'All the animals are dead.'

I gasped.

'Damn that Prophet,' a man spat. 'And damn all those slaves.' He shook his fist in the direction of Gosham. And then he started to cry.

'Jokanna,' Nefer banged on my front door. 'Open up, I think Ammon is ill.'

'What's wrong Nefer?' I asked as I opened the door.

'Ammon is covered in red bumps,' she said, holding out the naked baby toward me. 'And he keeps crying. Do you think he's got one of those plagues?' Her eyes are wide, and her hair, usually plaited neatly down her back, is loose, with a section standing up on the side of her head. 'Please tell me that he's not going to die.'

I took Ammon from her and walked into my home, putting him onto a couch and bending down to look at the bumps on his skin. They were red and angry and clustered together.

I touched one and Ammon let out a piercing wail.

'Don't hurt him,' Nefer said.

'I had to touch it to see if it is hard or soft,' I said, looking up at her. I noticed she had a similar bump on her arm. 'You have them too?'

'Yes, but it doesn't matter about me. Please, just tell me, is he going to die?'

I shook my head. 'I don't think so. The bumps are just boils, but on so young a child, and so many, well I can't say for definite, but I doubt he will die. But he's going to be very uncomfortable for a while.' I stood up, picked Ammon up, and gave him to Nefer. 'Sit down, I said to her. I'll be back in a few minutes.'

And then I headed into my sleeping room where I kept my healing supplies.

I was alone, and I was scared. Outside the wind howled, rattling the shutters on my windows, and threatening to pull them off. I huddled under a sheet on my couch, and wished the storm away. Praying to whoever might be listening. But it didn't end, in fact it got worse. Overhead I heard a crack of thunder and saw lightning through the crack around the shutters. It sounded so close. Something outside was banging in the wind, and I half imagined it was bricks from other houses which the wind had pulled apart and sent in my direction.

I flinched when the banging came from my door, looking up at it, hoping it wasn't about to be pulled out and ripped off its hinges.

'Hello,' someone shouted above the howl of the wind. 'Jokanna, are you in there?'

'Who on earth?' I muttered to myself as I threw off my sheet and hurried over to the door. I pulled back the bolts I'd not long before fastened and opened it.

'Jokanna, I'm glad I've found your house. Can I come in?' the woman said, throwing back the hood of her cloud to reveal herself as Miriam. 'Can I come in? It's getting a bit dangerous out here.'

And yes, it did look dangerous. As the wind blew in my face and threatened to blow me back into my home, I saw a man hurrying along the street, at least it looked like he was hurrying, but he really was going far too fast, pushed along by the wind which then picked him up, and tossed him into the wall of the house opposite mine.

I glanced at Miriam, noting though the wind was wobbling my door, though the curtain I usually pulled across the door was blowing in it, not one hair on her head was moving, and the hood that she had just pushed back was resting loosely on her back. Nor was her long dress or the drape of the cloak moving.

It was almost as if the wind was stopping as it reached her, and flowing around her, but not touching her.

'I don't know,' I said, starting to feel very nervous.

Overhead there was another clap of thunder, and a bolt of lightning burst from the sky, and hit the middle of the road, pushing up the close packed surface into an explosion of dirt.

Miriam glanced upward, looked at the sky for a moment and then looked back at me.

'Please,' she said.

Behind her, the man who had been tossed into the wall managed to stand up, and holding onto a fence that wasn't too stable itself, started to edge along the road toward his own house.

He didn't get far.

For with another crack of thunder, small white objects, the size of goose eggs, started to fall from the sky, and one hit the man so hard that he crumbled to his knees and then fell over and didn't move.

I stepped forward, wanting to rush over and help him, but Miriam put her arm out to block me. 'It is too dangerous to go outside,' she said. 'You must stay inside.'

'You are outside.'

She put out her other arm, and in a way that almost seemed like time slowed down, I watched as one of the goose egg sized things fell gently into her hand. 'This is hail,' she said, holding it in front of me. 'It is made of hard packed ice, and ice is something you know all about, isn't it Jonayla?'

I gasped, stepping back away from her. 'How do you…'

'I know what my God shows me,' she said, stepping into my home and shutting the door. 'And He knows everything.'

Overhead, I hear the hail hammering onto my roof.

'Shall we sit down?' Miriam said. 'We have much to talk about.'

I shook my head. 'I want you to go,' I said.

'I know you do precious child. I can feel that in you. But do not be afraid. For He loves you and only wants to help you.'

'Help me?'

She nodded her head.

'Your god wants to help me?'

'He does, can you not feel Him? He is very close.'

I shook my head. 'I don't feel anything but…' I gulped.

'Ah see, you do know He's here.'

'But, but…' I glanced around, trying to find something that will give me a way of making Miriam leave me alone.

One the table was a jar of ointment which I had made for baby Ammon but it had not been needed because the boils had gone a lot quicker than I thought they would. And then the thunder rumbled outside again.

'But if he wants to help me, why doesn't he want to help the Egyptians?' I said quickly. 'Why is he hurting them?'

She sighed.

'Well? What do you say about that? How can a god help one group of people and hurt another? And why would I want him to help me after what he did to baby Ammon?'

'What happened?' she asked, her words sounding panicked and upset. 'Is he all right?'

'He is now, but he was covered in boils and very uncomfortable. Nearly everyone around here had them, but not in Gosham. I heard none of you Hebrews were afflicted with them. If he is a god, then he's an evil one.'

'The child is all right, and so are the rest of the Egyptians, but what about the babies murdered by Pharaoh when I was young? They weren't all right. They didn't survive. They should be old men now, but they never got the chance to have a life.'

'How does that relate to…'

'And what about the rest of the Hebrews? Made to work long hours in the hot sun so Pharaoh can have a burial chamber?'

'But that's their job. It's what they do.'

'Says who? You? Pharaoh? Do you know the things they have to cope with? Sunburn is the least of it. They work from sun up to sun down every day, but are only allowed a mouthful of water every three hours. They are constantly thirsty, and often dizzy. But if they get ill, the overseer doesn't allow them to go home to rest, if they collapse because of the heat and the lack of water, then they are beaten. The overseer whips them, and then makes them get up and start working again. And if they don't, then they are dragged away, and beaten until they are unconscious.'

'But that's not baby Ammon's fault? Why should he suffer because…?'

'He shouldn't suffer,' she said. 'No one should suffer, but people still do. That's just life. But the life of a slave is far worse. So don't call God evil for bringing these plagues, call the one who is refusing to release us, who works Hebrews until they are dead. It is Pharaoh who is to blame. And I think deep down, you know that.' She sighed. 'What do you think your mother would have said about the way we Hebrews are treated? Would Ayla have agreed?'

'What?' I sat down on my couch and stared up at her. 'How do you know my mother's name?'

'The same way I know your real name. And you know who told me that.' She sat down next to me. 'I said we needed to talk, but not about the plagues and who is to blame. We need to talk about you.'

'What about me?'

'Well how old you are for a start? I don't know how old but God has told me that you have been alive for a very long time. Far longer than anyone else has lived. Even Methuselah only lived for one thousand years, but you have lived far longer haven't you?'

'I…' I didn't know what to say. This woman sat beside me seemed to know far too much about me and my long life. And I then I just didn't care anymore, I did what they call throwing caution to the air, and put my hands up in the air. 'All right, yes, you're right,' I said. 'I am old. Very old. You say that Methusalah lived for a thousand years, well I have lived for twenty seven times that. I am twenty seven thousand years old,' I laughed. 'And another three hundred years, ten months, three weeks and one day old.'

Miriam just stared at me.

'And not only that, but I don't even really look like this,' I said, waving my hand at my black hair, my brown eyes and tanned skin.' I blinked and let my disguise fall away from me.

And Miriam shot out of the couch and toward the door like a stone out of one of my mother's slings. 'What?'

I stood up and walked toward her.

'My hair is blonde like my mother's hair was blonde, and my eyes are blue like my father's. My skin is pale like all those of my true race. I was born in a place far away from here. A land with ice like that falling from the sky. Yes, you were right about that hail. But the ice was far more than a bit of hail. In winter it covered the land, ice and snow everywhere, so much that we couldn't go outside the cave for months and months. And even in the summer there were vast areas of ice and snow in places.' I sighed. 'But that was so long ago, and so far away.'

'You miss it?'

I nodded my head. 'More than I can say. And most of all I miss my mother.' I bit into my lip. 'I miss her so much.'

'I know you do.'

'But you don't understand.'

'I think I do.'

I shook my head. 'No, you can't. It was my…'

'Fault she died?'

I looked up at Miriam. 'How do you know that?'

'Because God told me, and like I said He is all knowing and He wants to help you.'

'How can he help me? No one can help me. I can't die. I so want to die and be with her again but I just can't die.'

'You can be with her again.'

Tears were falling from my eyes, and trickling over my cheeks by then. 'I can?'

'Yes, you can.'

'How?'

'You need to turn from the path you have taken.'

'What path?'

'You know what path. You were jealous that your mother was spending time with others and not you so you made a deal, and that deal led to her death.

'I didn't mean for her to die,' I wailed. 'I loved her. I didn't want her to die. But it was me. I was the one who did it. I was the reason she…' I shook my head, and pushed passed Miriam, heading to my sleeping room. 'Enough,' I shouted to her. 'I don't want to do this.'

'You have to Jonayla. You have to do it. You can't go on living like you are. You have to forgive yourself. And you have break the deal.'

I twisted around. 'Don't you think I have tried? That thing, he enters my dreams nearly every night, telling me to come to him, and I ignore him, and tell him to leave me alone. I say that I don't want his deal, and you know what, he just laughs at me. It doesn't matter what I say, or what I do, he…' I sobbed back a wail. 'And she's still dead and I can't see her.'

'You might have told him to go away, you might have told him you didn't want his deal, you can ignore him all you want, but it doesn't matter, what matters is that each day of your long life since your mother was stolen from you, you have led your life in a mixture of hate and desire. What does it matter that you tell him you don't want his deal when you still act within it?'

'I don't.'

'Oh yes you do. You have done bad things in the twenty seven thousand, two hundred and eighty five years, five months, two weeks and six days since your mother's death. Evil things done by day that have made the spirit that haunts your dreams laugh at you when you say you don't want that deal.'

'I…'

She put her hands on her hips.

And seeing her standing there, looking at me with an expression that went from concern for me to disgust about me curdled in my stomach. 'At least I haven't made little babies ill,' I spat. 'You have the audacity to talk about me when you worship a god like that?' I walked over to the door and opened it. 'I've heard enough. Get out.'

'Jonayla.'

'My name is not Jonayla,' I said. 'My name is Jokanna, and this is my house, and I want you to get out of it. Now.' I grabbed her arm, pulled her toward the door and pushed her out of it.

Outside, the hail was thick on the ground and still falling, but I didn't care. Even when I saw her slip a little, I didn't care.

'I'm going,' she said. 'But please Jokanna, think about what I've said.'

'I don't need to think about it.'

She sighed. Standing once again in my doorway, the hail falling around her but not on her, the wind blowing but not disturbing her hair or clothes. 'Then do one thing for me,' she said.

'What?'

'Tell Nefer to take baby Ammon and leave Egypt. I'm hoping that it won't come to it, but I think there is a possibility that things are going to get far worse. She will regret it if she doesn't leave.'

The churning in my stomach got even worse. 'Why? What's going to happen? Is your god going to kill him?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know? You tell me to tell Nefer to take baby Ammon and leave Egypt and you don't know why?'

'I don't, but I just feel that things are not going to…'

'So your god is going to target a little baby? Why him?'

She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. 'Just tell her,' she said as she walked through the storm. 'Just tell her.'

And then she was gone, and the wind was whipping in my face, and the hail was landing right outside.

I slammed the door as a massive clap of thunder sounded in the sky, followed by a bolt of lightning that landed right in front of me.

And then I ran back to my bed.

'Have you got any…?'

The market seller shook his head. 'Whatever you want, I probably don't have it. Since the plague of locust ate nearly everything, the only things left are what was already preserved and stored in jars. And there isn't much of that.' He sighed. 'Times are going to be really bad this winter.'

'If another of those plagues doesn't kill us all before we get there,' a woman standing next to him said. 'There have been eight of them now, and each one is worse than the last. But now with no food, with no livestock and some people still ill, I don't know what could be worse. Except death.'

'I don't know why Pharaoh just doesn't let those Hebrews leave if they want to,' an empty handed customer said next to me. 'All that would happen is they would wander around the desert, probably die, and then we could eat the food in Gosham. After all that is the only place that has food still.'

'Well I think it is disgusting,' the woman said. 'Pharaoh should take that food from them. They aren't even Egyptians like us. They're only slaves. They don't deserve anything.'

'I've heard…' I started to say, but then stopped when I heard someone beating a drum, or what sounded like a drum, and coming in our direction.

'What now?' the market seller said.

'They're going,' someone shouted. 'The slaves are going. The filthy Hebrew slaves are going. Pharaoh has told them to go. No more plagues.'

'Did you hear that?' the woman said, smiling and kissing and hugging the market seller. 'Everything will be all right now. We'll have food from Gosham to eat during the winter and there will be no more plagues.' She glanced at me. 'Nefer is one of your neighbours isn't she?'

'Yes. Well she was, but she left Egypt earlier this week.'

'I know, she told me she was leaving. Said that she didn't want to risk something happening to baby Ammon.' She laughed. 'But she was being too cautious and because of that… she's going to miss a party.'

'What?' the market seller said.

'We should have a party to celebrate.'

'There is hardly any food. What are we going to eat?'

'We'll find something,' she said. 'Everyone will. We can have a big party tomorrow here in the market square. At noon. We'll just pull the tables to one side. After everything that has happened, it will be good to have something fun to do.[' She scratched her chin. 'I'll go and tell everyone,' she said. 'Tell them to bring any food they can spare.'

I was tired and it was barely the early evening. The sun was still hot in the sky, and everyone around me was laughing and singing, getting drunk on excitement far more than on the wine that some had brought.

I though didn't really feel that much like celebrating. I was glad that there would hopefully be no more plagues and I was also happy that the Hebrews were about to be released, because as much as I didn't like the way it had come about, I agreed that their lives were unfair and they needed to be freed.

And that realisation showed me how unfair I had been to Miriam. What had happened so far wasn't her fault. She hadn't brought the plagues, and neither really had her brothers. Because ultimately we would be in for a hard winter, but no one had died. Their god had stopped before anyone had died.

And miraculously, right after Pharaoh had said that the Hebrews could go, the boils on those still sick had just disappeared leaving behind smooth skin and no scars.

I walked along the river bank,enjoying the feel of the warm sun on my skin. Knowing everything would be all right now.

I blinked, only I didn't blink.

Everything had gone dark for a moment as if I had shut my eyes, but then was bright again as if I had opened them.

Except I hadn't done either.

And not only that, but it happened again. For longer the next time.

I glanced up, half expecting to see a cloud blocking out the sun.

Instead, I saw something black and swirling, far thicker than a cloud, far blacker, and it was getting bigger and covering the sky.

'It's another plague,' I said to myself, as I started to run. 'Pharaoh is letting the Hebrews go, and still their rotten god is sending plagues.'

I reached my home, lit a lamp, and just managed to reach my flat roof before the sun was blotted out by the black thing.

The first night, once I got over the shock of what had happened, I wasn't too scared about the sun being blotted out. It was something I'd seen before. I just assumed that that time, it was just taking longer to come back than it usually did, and that night had come before it could. And even when I woke the next morning, having slept on the flat area of my roof, I wasn't concerned too much, I had no way of knowing that it was far later, I thought it was still nighttime, and I just wastn't tired.

I'd got up, pulled the litle lever on my lamp so the small flame became big enough to see by again. Filled it with more oil, and then set about rebuilding the cooking fire up there. Going down into my home with my lamp, I pulled a table near my food storage cupboard, and set the lamp on it so the light shone onto the food.

Not that there was much.

I put my hand into my grain basket, pulled out a handful and put it into a bowl, adding a spoonful of honey, and then picked up my last water bag, and went back upstairs to my roof area.

Mixing the grain and honey with water, I dropped some onto a flat stone over the fire and watched, by the light of my lamp, as it cooked.

'Hello,' someone shouted from a nearby roof. 'Isn't it a bit early for breakfast? The sun hasn't even risen yet. The smell of it cooking woke me up.'

'I'm sorry,' I said to the woman. 'I didn't think. I was just feeling hungry so I thought…'

'What time do you think it is? It can't be long until sunset.'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'I don't know.'

'Do you think it will come back?' she asked.

'I don't know.'

But the sun hadn't risen by the time my food was cooked, nor by the time I'd eaten and washed everything up.

I glanced up at the sky.

And that was when I heard the first cry. 'We're all going to die,' a woman wailed.

'The sun will rise soon,' someone shouted out to comfort her.

'It has already risen,' she replied. 'Over Gosham. It rose hours ago. It's nearly midday and it is as dark as night over all of Egypt except Gosham.'

That was when things really got bad.

Some left Egypt, realising quickly that everywhere else had the sun, and some went to Gosham. I thought stayed on my roof, determined that the ninth plague, and that was what it was, was not going to get the better of me.

Only a few others stayed, probably as obstinate as me, but by the beginning of the third day, I was really starting to struggle. The thing was, as much as I could cope with the darkness, I'd grown up in dark caves with only light coming from fire, but they had been warm, and Egypt was not.

I had never known a day while I was living in Egypt which started with me waking up shivering.

Until that third day.

I'd been so cold in the night that I'd left my roof, hoping that the walls of home home would protect me from the cold, but they didn't.

I longed for the fur hide I'd slept in when I was young. But only had sheets. And they were designed to be light so the sleeper could be covered but keep cool. They were not made to create warmth.

And the fire on my roof, and the one in my home, was only made for cooking food.

Not for keeping people warm in a hot country.

That morning I'd woken up shivering, I'd put my last dress over the two I already had on, kept my sheets over my shoulders, and tried to get some heat from my inside fire.

But I was still cold, so I went up to my roof, to build a bigger fire there.

And was met by ice on the top of the ramp.

And more covering my roof.

Along with a sharp wind which was very like the wind I'd grown up with.

I stared at it with shock, the cold air blowing around my body.

And it was then that I realised that pride or not, I couldn't stay there, and the chances were, I wouldn't be able to cross Egypt, through the cold, to get outside.

I had only one place where I could go.

And that was to Miriam.

'My people,' a voice said as I reached the centre of Gosham. 'My brothers Moses and Aaron have once again returned to Pharaoh to ask him to let us go after he went back on his promises yet again. Pray for them, that Pharaoh will see that he cannot ignore the will of God, pray for us, that we might no longer be slaves, and pray for the people of Egypt, onto whose heads is about to come the worse of all plagues.'

I pushed passed a man, and walked a little closer.

And saw Miriam standing on a raised platform. She put her hands up into the air. 'Pray for the children of the Egyptians most of all, pray that the terrible day will not come.'

'But will Pharaoh let us go?'

'I don't know, but I pray he will.'

All around me, I saw the Hebrews raising their hands up to the blue sky.

But not Miriam, she was climbing from the platform and heading toward me. She put her arms out to embrace me. 'You came,' she said. 'God told me that you would.'

'Sit down,' Miriam said, nodding toward a wooden bench pushed up against a table. 'Have you eaten this morning?'

'No,' I said. 'It was too cold to make anything this morning.'

'Cold? It is cold in the rest of Egypt?' She looked up at the ceiling and then nodded. 'Yes, it is to be expected. Without the sun to keep the land warm, it would only take a couple of days for everything to freeze.' She glanced at me. 'I am sorry. I know you blame God for what is happening, and also we Hebrews, but for the little that it matters, I am sorry. The Egyptians are our neighbours and our friends, we do not blame the normal people for what has been done to us. It is not fair that they suffer.'

'No it is not,' I said, shivering a little. I was still feeling cold, even though the air was warm and the sun hot, the cold seemed to have set itself into my bones.

Miriam put a blanket over my shoulders and then filled cup with something from a cooking pot hanging over a fire which she gave to me.

It was some sort of thin meaty stew, so like the sort of food my mother used to give me that it made me want to cry.

'Are you ready to talk now?' she asked, sitting down next to me.

'About what? Your god making the whole of Egypt cold?'

She sighed. 'If we must.'

I shook my head. What was the point? Miriam thought that her god was behind what had happened, and so did others, but I had come across many gods in my long life, and not one of them was real. Miriam's god couldn't be real either, so what was the point in moaning about what had happened?

'No,' I said. 'I don't believe it is your god who has done it anyway.'

'But it…'

I shook my head. 'It's all just a lot coincidences.'

'But…'

'Coincidence.'

'And what about what I know about you?' she asked. 'I knew you were very old even though you only look very young, I knew your true name, I knew your mother's name, I even knew you made a deal with a spirit which inadvertantely led to the death of your mother. Is that a coincidence too?'

I stood up and walked over to look under a cloth at the contents in a bowl standing on a side table. 'It isn't a coincidence. What you know, well its not possible that you know it, but you do. Very much like it is not possible that I was born so long ago but am still alive today. And can change my appearance so I fit in. I know strange things exist in this world, but it is just magic, magic holds me tethered to this world, and it is magic that told you those things about me.' I poked at the dough in the bowl. 'Is this bread? It doesn't look right. Have you forgotten to put yeast in it?'

'It's unleavened bread,' she said, putting the cloth back on it. 'It's for tonight's meal. But that doesn't matter for the moment, we hopefully won't be eating it anyway, what is important is you.'

I stared at her. 'Me?'

'Yes, you. What are you going to do Jokanna? Are you going to carry on in the way you live now, or are you going to except God's help? He can break the deal, and then you can lead a normal life and grow up like you should have. You can have a husband and children, and grow old. And one day you would be able to die, and then you would be with your Mama again. That's what you want isn't it? Your Mama. But you have been kept away from her. The spirit stealer who holds sway over your life has kept you away from her. And he will keep on doing that, but you will become worse and worse until you are nothing like the girl your Mama raised. Is that what you want? Woman after woman you will pursue, wanting them to be your new mother. Like you have pursued many already. But it will never work out. Not until that deal is broken. And then, until you can be with your real mother, maybe you'll find a substitute one to comfort you for a while. One who isn't going to turn away, one who isn't going to be taken from you.'

'Who?' I asked. 'You?'

'If you want, then yes, I would be like a mother to you. What do you say?'

'I don't know, I will need to think about…'

'Moses and Aaron are back,' a man shouted from the doorway. 'And they don't look happy.'

I spent that evening with Miriam, first of all watching as Aaron painted lamb's blood on her doorway, and later as I joined the three of them and their other family for their special meal. They told me that the sun had come back not long after midday, after Pharaoh had once again refused to let the Hebrews leave. That would have filled me with joy, if it wasn't for the weird feelings churning in my stomach. I knew something bad was going to happen. And when night finally covered all of Egypt, that was when the screams came. Unnatural screams as if ghosts or spirits for flying around the houses. A couple of times, the door would rattle, but then stop. This went on all night, and the next day, when the rattling door woke me up, Moses finally opened it, and was met by the man I had only seen in parades. Pharaoh.

'Go,' he said, dirty streaks down his face. 'Go and take all of the Hebrews with you. I hope you're happy now that you have destroyed me. My son Amun-her-khepeshef is dead.' And then he twisted away, putting his hands over his face, and was gone.

'Tell everyone that we leave in half an hour,' Moses said to Aaron. 'Tell them, if they are not ready by then, then either they leave their belongings behind, or we leave them. I am going to pray, and will meet you in the place we decided then.' And then he left the house.

And Aaron hurried out too.

I turned around to look at Miriam. 'Prince Amun-her-khepeshef is dead,' I said.

She nodded her head. 'And so are all of the first borns of Egypt.'

'What?'

'Last night, the screams we all heard, that was the first borns being taken.'

'But…' I looked at my hands. 'The plagues? They weren't coincidences were they?'

'I never said they were.'

'Your god killed the first borns?'

'As Pharaoh killed our first borns. And he and his son continued to kill our sons and daughters.'

I sighed. 'Look, I know that is horrible. But you can't say that you agree with what has happened?'

'I neither agree or disagree, I just trust that God is in control. And I trust Him.'

'Well I can't,' I said. 'Miriam, I had decided you were right. I was going to let your god break the deal. You were going to be my mother.' I wiped a tear from my eye.

'And now?'

'I've changed my mind. I'm sorry.'