Author Games: The River of Night

Task Three Entries: Of the Earth

Ife Lerato

I was a mother once, but my child never had a name...

Ife Lerato hates ships. She despises water. She loathes a storm even more. As the wind swirls around them, people run in every which way, in a panic. Some cry. Others vow they would never have engaged in this journey had they known this was in their cards. This, she reasons, is silly of them – they never should have expected the Underworld to be a place of leisure. Her face, in the glimpses she can catch from the eerily still waters, has a greenish tint to it, and she feels a pressure in her throat. She presses her hands together and prays once again. Though this is the kingdom of Osiris, it seems as though the gods can't hear her here.

Ife Lerato hates it here – but, if she were to be asked again, she would never say no to Isis.

You are doing well, my child. I am proud of you.

Thank you, my lady. She pauses. Where have you been? It feels as though I can't even feel your presence in this place.

There is a force which makes it very tiring to contact you. Only a few sentences a day... at best. Beware of false friends.

What do you mean? Which friends?

But there is no answer to her question. Instead, the wind grows harder and faster, whipping at her face and ripping at the sails. She has faced the elements before, but there is a quality to this wind which screams of the unnatural. This is not the work of Shu, but of something much, much crueler. Something she can only picture as a serpent of thousands of feet in width, and tens of thousands in length – one long enough to wrap itself around all of Egypt, if it were to have such a whim.

There was a serpent once, as cruel as cruel

Could be.

She shakes the thought from her mind just as a crash of lightning slams into the boat. A loud, deafening crack! tears through the air as the ship splits in half. The two halves begin to float away from each other, but this doesn't last long; soon, both are sinking and swirling towards the centre of the river, dragged by an invisible whirlpool. Seconds later, they are spat out again and are thrown onto the coast of the island's banks.

She looks around as the others fought back to their feet. There were only fifteen of them now – six less than when they had begun the expedition. At the rate their numbers were dwindling, Ife couldn't help but wonder how long it would be before they had all failed. How long it would be until she failed.

Her back aches as if on cue, reminding her of her age. In her youth, she might have been more fit for such an adventure; now, it is all she can do to follow the others along. In fact, that of itself is an achievement.

Faith, my dear girl, is what separates the strong from the weak. If you channel your faith into your actions, you will always be able to move forward.

They are words her father had spoken to her when she was barely older than Atem, but this is not the first time they have brought her comfort in her later years. There had been, of course, the time she had lost her husband; the time she had had to send away her child; the time her father had died at the respectable age of fifty.

It doesn't hit her that she is only three years younger than he had been at his death.

By the time she has reached her feet, the others have gathered in a cluster next to the river. The storm clouds have all vanished, and the sky looks as it would any other night. If not for the fact that this night has already lasted days, Ife could almost imagine that nothing was different from any other day.