Author Games: The River of Night

Task Four Entries: Of the Earth

Ife Lerato

I was a mother, once, and I birthed my purity.

Ife Lerato has studied the sacred texts with complete devotion. When the children are in bed, and she has finished her night prayer, she sits in her bed and scrolls through the hieroglyphics on the pages of papyrus. She taught herself to read at a young age, spying on various of her cousins as their scribes taught them basic letters. From there on, she weaved simple symbols into more complex ones until she was completely autonomous in her learning. She has not told anyone of this, of course – it would not due for a wet-nurse to know how to read, no matter her relation to the pharaoh. But, she decided at a young age that it was best to rebel as a child then as an adult.

Children, after all, rarely pay for their sins.

It was therefore needless to say that Ife was much more familiar with the Lake of Fire than many of the people with whom she was travelling may be. It was, after all, one of the lesser known tales that Thoth had granted the humans, and thus rarely discussed by anyone other than priests. She likes to thinks she might have been a priestess, had her life not turned out the way it had, but Isis had had another plan for her.

The barge continues its trail down the river of night, now carrying only eleven champions. Once again, the sheer harshness of it frightens her – despite her being unskilled in numbers, Ife is well within her capacity to notice that the amount of them has been depleted considerably since the day they had arrived at the tomb of Aneksi. As red begins to stain the waters beneath them, her heart sinks to her stomach. She knows that their numbers are about to fall again.

It is not until the barge begins to submerge under the waters that the panic spreads from the depths of Ife's heart to the crew of the ship. She notices tears stain Masika's cheeks, but does not know how to tell her she is too young to suffer at the hands of the river; she sees the stoicism on Lucius' face, but does not know how to tell him that even the tallest Nehet falls victim to flame; she sees the fire in Amisi's eyes, but does not know how to tell her that it is nothing compared to the inferno she will soon experience.

She knows too much. She speaks too little. It is, she has realized, the curse of a woman.

"Do you know what is happening?" whispers Amisi. Ife nods. "What is it?"

Ife merely shakes her head.

"Whatever it is, I can take it. I've survived much worse."

There is no worse than the rage of the gods. But she does not say it. Let them have hope. They will need it. She, too, will need it, but she does not dare think it.

When she was a child, the sun burnt her every day. Her face had been a permanent shade of red, and her mother had told her that if she was not warier to stay indoors, she would spend the rest of her life with that shade on her cheeks. The heat had pinched and stung her cheeks; the warmth had bitten and scorched her skin. She does not expect her pain to be much worse than this. There have been three sins she has committed in her life; once she is done paying for them, she will be free.

She can survive worse. She has survived worse.

1. That I have learned to read and write against the orders of my parents and of the law.

Her feet drop below the waters of the Lake of Fire, and the edges of her mind fade to black. She had been foolish to think that the sun, far in the sky, would not burn less than fire itself. Her breaths grow shallow. She grits her teeth. I can still do this. She is still a survivor. Though she is not perfect, she is still pure.