Author Games: The River of Night

Quarterfinals: Masika Aarahm

I met a traveller from an antique land...

Masika was in a complete moment of utter awe. Everything around her was perfectly coloured in as though it were a drawing that had not once went over the lines. Even the smell seemed as though it were perfume lingering just around her body enough to make her want to taste the air. It smelt of freshly cut barley and ripened pomegranates – just like a summers evening. But part of her knew that she did not belong here.

She shook the feeling of nostalgia from her body.

"Are you a traveller, dear?" a soft voice asked behind her.

Masika was startled and jumped around. The lady was old, her skin on the brink of turning into caramel leather and her hair growing wispily with age.

"Of sorts," Masika replied cautiously, eyeing the woman. Her eyes were bright azure – neither like a demon's eyes nor like someone fake. This person looked real as she stumbled towards her using an old wooden cane to assist her frail legs. Masika couldn't help but think of the sky every time she glanced at the lady's eyes. She thought of Nut and the loneliness of the Gods. In here, it was lonely too.

Would this lady think the same? Masika wondered, Are the Sky and the Underworld so different? Or is solitude all the same?

"Have you been here before?" the lady asked, pulling Masika from her mind. The young girl studied the woman. Her appearance would falter every now and then as though the wind was going straight through the woman's body.

Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . .

"I am afraid not," Masika said softly, "Perhaps you will show me which way to go?"

"Only the Gods can do that, or yourself," the old lady added and hobbled along the path. Masika felt a warm breeze blow over her body. The Gods and humans were once again compared in her mind. Masika was so busy staring that she missed the lady's small smile. In the distance, Masika could see tall trees reaching into the sky and glistening golden heads of wheat swaying delicately and then, just beyond the horizon, a statue. It reminded her of the ones back in Egypt, although the one that was here had fallen. She couldn't let the old lady get away without a few questions. Masika no longer wished to question or pray to Nut – she was quite capable of taking care of herself. She wanted to prove that humans could be powerful too.

"Excuse me," Masika ran a few paces to catch up to the lady, "Would you mind telling me what the statue upon the horizon is?"

Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies,

"You are a rather curious traveller," the old dame chuckled thoughtfully, "But if you must know it is of an old King, one that is no longer believed or in existence."

"So his statute has crumbled?" Masika asked.

"It would appear so,"

Masika allowed the lady to hobble ahead while she stared at the statue again. She couldn't see much as the sandstone blended into the perfectly cultivated crop but she could imagine what it would look like – much like she did when she imagined herself to be in the sky. The man had once been powerful, now his statue was crumbled on the ground and disregarded by all those who had thought of him. The chunks of sandstone carelessly lay under overgrown weeds. Masika couldn't feel anything of significance – all she could feel was abandonment.

whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

"Why did they forget him?" Masika called and ran, again, to catch up.