The House of the Rising Sun

Chapter Nineteen: Desert Flower

Chapter Nineteen: Desert Flower

Selene

I was bewildered as I saw Alexander dragged away from me. Why?! Why had this happened?! Amenemhet held me in his arms as I struggled against him. Blind rage followed me into madness towards Kerpheres and time seemed to slow down. In the distance I heard the dog barking, the dog I had bought with Alexander but never named. He barked madly as well, and I would have given anything to turn into that dog to bite Kerpheres.

“Selene! What’s going on?! Are you okay?” Amenemhet demanded.

“Let me GO!” I fought.

“Calm down first, Selene,” Amen said in a low voice. Kerpheres looked at me like Alexander’s arrest had been the most obvious thing in the world.

“WHY did you do that, Kerpheres?! Why are they taking him away?!” I shouted.

“You had strayed away from Amenemhet. He came to wait for you by your home and we find that street rat you were with earlier chasing you and then he attacked you!” Kerpheres explained like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“…What are you talking about?!” I shouted, each and every word coming out deliberately.

“He was arrested for…attacking…you,” Amenemhet said softly. I quit struggling, and Amenemhet let me go. “In the eyes of strangers—I know for a fact—you are a desert flower.

“He didn’t attack me!” I exclaimed. “I was fine.” I could tell that to them it looked like it was more than an attack.

“Not from where I was standing,” Kerpheres scoffed. I raised a fist to punch him but suddenly Amenemhet grabbed my wrist and held me back.

“My love,” Amenemhet almost growled, and he pulled me back.

“I was not attacked!” I defended Alexander.

“Well it’s too late now,” said Kerpheres coldly. I stood still suddenly, Amenemhet still holding on to my wrist tightly.

“So he is going to be punished for a crime he did not commit?” I spat venomously. The dog growled at Kerpheres, and my cheek was stinging. I remembered now, Kerpheres had hit me.

“He did, Selene. He was trying to attack you, whether you know it or not. I saw it,” Amenemhet kept saying.

“Let go of me,” I commanded and twisted my arm out of his grasp. I stood there, angry with Kerpheres and trying to hide my anger with Amenemhet. “Beloved,” I tried not to growl at Amen, “It’s been an awfully long morning. I need to be left alone. Do you think you can make this happen?”

Amen sighed. “As my love commands. Kerpheres, let’s go.”

“We did the right thing,” Kerpheres kept arguing.

“LEAVE!” I shouted, and without hesitation both men left my presence. I was seething, but then I heard the lowly whine of the dog and I looked down. We hadn’t named him. “Come with me, boy,” I said, patting my leg, speaking to him in Latin. That was the language Alexander and I had spoken to him and therefore the tongue he would use. The dog’s ears perked up and he followed me back inside my house.

When I got inside, I realized how destroyed I felt. Alexander had just gone to prison—to endure some gods-awful punishment—for a crime he didn’t commit! He hadn’t done anything except trip over me! Gods!

I slinked to my room, the dog following me the whole way (luckily Nofre-Ari was off exploring the city), and I realized how much trouble he truly was in. He went off to prison—a foreigner in an Egyptian prison, unable to communicate and claim his innocence using the tongue of the Kemet—and his master didn’t know. Mark Antony would be wondering where Alexander was, and mostly why he was where he was. I was about to get up to see if I could find Mark Antony, but…suppose Alexander didn’t want him to know? Suppose Alexander could get out on his own, somehow? I decided I’d have to visit him tonight at the prison. There were three prisons in the whole of Alexandria, but I figured he would have been taken to the closest one to here, so his trial didn’t have to be waited for. The only thing that could make this worse is if he had blasphemed. Was it blasphemy to pretend to be Egyptian and pretend to believe in Egyptian gods? The priests would find a way to accuse him of such crimes. Pretending could sometimes be the same as lying, and lying, as we all knew, was against Ma’at—against order—and going against the goddess of truth in such a big way could be considered blasphemy. Ugh those priests. They never did sit well with me.