#cygnaut

The family. That was still new to her, as these tall trees were new. In the years since she and Maharet had been separated, the branches of their family had grown and spread for over two hundred generations. Mekare had seen the great representation of it, the multitude of twisting black vines and the endless names painted on Maharet’s walls, but she did not truly comprehend what it meant. 

It had been cloudy earlier, but now the sky was clear and stars peeked out from openings in the canopy. She might find a clearing later and look at the sky. She wanted to look for the Seven Sisters, but she was unsure when they would rise or if they would even be visible at all here. She had traveled so far that the night sky was out of joint. 

She looked down at her hands where they rested on her thighs, white as stone against the dark fabric of her dress, her fingernails stained with earth. Locks of her hair hung over her shoulders, pine needles caught in the waves. Where the dappled moonlight touched it, her hair glowed red in the dark. 

In the emptiness he floated, knowing only desire and darkness, blood and death. Sometimes he surfaced to fever visions of the world, snatched images of glowing lights and strange music, people and machines. Most often he saw scenes of violence and death, glimpses of the hunt, of stalking and chasing and killing. These were sweet moments and yet he was overwhelmed by the confusion and excitement, the pounding of hearts and the taste of salt and copper. Always he turned away, turned back to the darkness and the silence of the void. 

Now, rising from the darkness, he saw trees, forest, stars. There was something familiar here, although he did not know this place. White hands, red hair, red like… like the women, the pair of them, twins, witches. Yes! The phrase bubbled up inside of him, words he knew he’d spoken before, although he did not remember when.

The silence was as a held breath and into it came a voice, familiar and strange: “You are fools to bear this, witches.”

The words didn’t surprise Mekare. She could tell they hadn’t been spoken out loud. They were only an empty echo in her head without strong feeling or will attached to them. Perhaps it was a wisp of thought overheard from the others. She could sense their minds buzzing in the distance, inside the great house of her sister. She knew that Maharet had told them the whole sordid tale just as Mekare had shared pieces of it in projected images. 

“The strong one” Maharet used to call her. Mekare, the strong one, the brave twin. Mekare who spoke truth when it might have been better to be silent. She had learned the dangers of truth when they were taken to the court of Kemet. How terrible the savage punishment dealt by the foreign Queen and her consort. But now the Queen of the Damned was dead and Mekare reigned in her place. Not that she had wanted to rule; she had only wanted revenge. 

She had no more truth to share now except for the sad tragedy of her own history. 

After they had been separated, Mekare had floated in darkness inside of the coffin for what felt like years. She had been too tired to lift her hands and break out of the stone box. Tired despite the thirst that raged in her. It was the fierce thirst of Amel transformed into flesh. She had taken some comfort in that. It was as if Amel, the braggart spirit. was still with her in some way, even if all of her good, familiar spirits were lost to her.

At the end of uncountable nights, her journey across the waters had ended. There had been a scraping sound as the coffin dragged over something and Mekare had been thrown end-over-end as the box flipped, churning and crashing in the waves. The great stone coffin had been dashed open and water rushed in. Mekare had been thrown flailing into shallow waters and found herself on an unfamiliar shore. 

She had walked for a very long time, searching for anything she recognized that might suggest a way home. But she was lost beyond finding. 

Every night she walked a bit farther. Her thirst was great as there were no people along these shores and all she had to eat were the animals of the forests. Her hunger drove her onward in search of sustenance each night until the sun drove her back down into the earth. 

Amel swam through the images, memories of nights spent as an empty walking husk in search of blood. Had he seen these before? Had he lived this? 

Beyond the shoreline there had been jungles full of strange trees and stranger creatures. She came across humans again. Inland, there were settlements all along the rivers that wound through the jungle, some humble and others vast, but the thoughts of the people felt strange to her and their emotions confusing. She had been alone for too long and the blood of Amel had been working in her, transforming her mind into an alien thing as it did her body. She took a victim if any unfortunate person crossed her path, but otherwise she avoided humans and any signs of their habitation. 

Gradually, over many, many nights, the ground became hilly and then rocky and then mountainous. As the mountains grew taller and the air thinner, her pace slowed. She spent many nights on the high peaks where she could watch the clouds drifting below and feel safe and separate from the world. 

Eventually, Mekare stopped. She made no conscious choice about it; one night instead of walking she simply stayed, and the next night, and the next. Her resting place was a lonely mountain that had deep caves winding through its heart, secret places where she found refuge if not comfort. 

By this time, Mekare had learned that she could send out words with her mind and make herself understood in that manner. But the only messages she sent were warnings to drive away anyone who came too close to her lair: waves of foreboding, fear, and awe that kept the local people at a distance. The herders who passed nearby soon learned to avoid her mountain and spread the word among the farmers who cultivated the terraced plots on the fertile hills below.

She hadn’t meant to become a myth. She had wanted to be left alone. Yet the people who lived below spoke of the peak where she dwelled in hushed tones. They thought of it as a sacred site, too holy to be walked upon, and warned their children to avoid the grassy slopes at its feet. They said that the spirit that lived there watched over the nearby people, but its protection came with a harsh toll. The spirit might come down from the hills without warning to take a sacrifice, striking among them like lightning in the dark, sudden and terrible. 

The Watchful Mountain they had called her. Mothers warned children to be quiet and respectful when they walked in the sight of the mountain least they provoked its wrath and brought down its merciless retribution. 

So the people kept their distance, and Mekare stayed. The nights blended into one another and she did not track the years that passed. 

Once, armed men came to the mountain during the day, invaders in shining armor with weapons that sent death from a distance. When Mekare awoke, she felt their presence camping on the hills like a wound in her side. That night, she fell upon them and every whispered warning about the mountain and its dangers had been proven true. The dead had been left to rot where they lay as none of the nearby villagers dared to approach even to loot the bodies.

The Queen of the Damned was what they had called her now. It had been in the heads of the others when she came to wreak her vengeance that was six thousand years in the making. It wasn’t a title that Mekare wanted. She had never sought to be the mother of the orphaned children of Amel. She wasn’t a maternal person or a mentor figure, that was Maharet. Mekare had hidden when any blood drinker strayed too closely to her refuge in the mountain. She had sent out her warnings and always they had fled from her, not wanting to risk provoking the powerful anger that simmered there.

The anger was familiar, yes, this he remembered, the burning strength of it, as sharp and sweet as the thirst for blood. 

“Tell the Queen that if she does you any harm I will hurl at her every object she has ever desired, every jewel, wine cup, looking glass, comb, or other such item that she ever so much as asked for, or imagined, or remembered, or wished for!”

The second time she heard him, the words were so clear and distinct that she jumped up in surprise. She turned in a circle, but there was no sign of anyone hiding in the trees. She continued turning, searching for the source of the voice, but in her heart she knew who had spoken. But it was impossible. Amel has the flesh. But Amel is no more.

She searched the forest, but of course there was nothing. If Amel still lived, she would not find him walking as a man or floating as a great spirit spread across the sky. If he lived, he was inside of her now.

She was so disturbed that she went inside and spent the remainder of the evening with her sister and the others who dwelled in her house. Previously, Mekare had found their presence irritating, they were so noisy and their speech so strange, but now it was a comfort to hear them even if she couldn’t understand their words.

Later, as the sun rose, Mekare lay beside Maharet on the stone slab in her underground crypt and it was just as they had lain together in times past, two children sharing a single sleeping pelt, red hair entwined, two bodies with one soul.  

He came to the surface more often now, not at random as he had before, but with a purpose, seeking for red hair and green eyes, that familiar face, she who he had loved and defended. 

Mekare liked to wander the deep tunnels that sank down into the earth beneath her sister’s house.

There were many winding passageways to explore, corridors lined with comfortable rooms like animal burrows tucked into the earth. The furnishings were simple in these underground rooms, wooden tables low to the ground and thick rugs and cushions piled on the ground. The walls were decorated with murals, sometimes familiar designs like those painted on the tents of their tribe, and other times strange patterns that Mekare had never seen before. 

Tonight, she turned a corner and thought for a moment that she saw her sister at the end of a long hall. Mekare took a step toward her and then realized her mistake. It was a tall mirror in a heavy wooden frame, a mirror so highly polished and faultless that it was like looking through a doorway rather than at a reflection. 

Mekare walked towards it, fascinated by her own appearance, how like and yet unlike Maharet she looked. Like her sister, Mekare’s skin had the same unnatural sheen as the inside of an oyster shell and her hair had the same fiery red as the last moments of sunset, but Mekare’s eyes were different. 

Her sister wore the stolen eyes of her victims, dull with pain and slowly dying, but Mekare still had the eyes they had been born with, green eyes that shimmered like the iridescent feathers of a bird. As she walked toward the mirror, she saw flecks of gold and veins of amber in the green field of her eyes. Circling the dark hollow of her pupils was a ring of copper. 

Had her eyes always been so beautiful? Or had the Blood made them so? She could no longer remember. The only reflection of herself that Mekare had ever known was her own sister until they were abducted to Kemet. Akasha and Enkil had mirrors of polished bronze in their great palace, but none were as perfect or as large as this one.

Green eyes, red hair. Her eyes, her hair. So familiar, so comforting to look into them.  Green as–green like—like his own eyes. Red like his own hair. As they had made him, a creature of fear and awe.

“It is I!” the voice crowed, so loud Mekare clapped her hands over her ears, but it was not a physical voice and it could not be silenced. It was the blood inside her crying out as a boastful spirit had once called out in the dark. 

“I, Amel the Great! Amel the Powerful! Many have sought my favor but few received it. Only my most beloved, my favorites, my witches.”

Mekare wanted to ask if he remembered her, but she could not. She could only stare at her own wide eyes as a film of red covered them and tears began to run down her cheeks. 

“Do not cry, witch!” The voice wavered as if it felt her distress. “Amel the Invincible will avenge you! Amel, the most powerful of all spirits knows what is in your heart and fulfills your desires! Already I have bedeviled the Queen’s servant, the one who desecrated you. I have harassed him with strong winds and thrown objects! Many times has he wept and begged for relief from Amel the Terrible, the one who pierces! Even the King and Queen themselves came to demand my silence, but Amel the Great obeys no living authority. So terrible was my vengeance and so pathetic their whimpering cries. Witch, why do you weep? Are you not grateful for my protection?

“Mekare, beloved among witches, didn’t I obey you as you bid me to? Didn’t I wait for the moment as you asked? You said—you promised, all men will know of my power! When the time is right, when—” 

She wept for it was true. He had obeyed her and only done what she had asked in her heart. 

“Why do you weep, woman?” His words became scattered and trailed in confusion as his voice grew weaker. It was as if he was already losing coherence and fading back into the blood. “I will help you, Amel the–Amel who–I am the one who… I, Amel… do you see them? The towers…. there, on the horizon? How tall they are, but—why are they burning…?”