You Have to Stop This: Pseudonymous Bosch

Egypt, 1212 BC

An ibis stood, silent and still, on the shore of the Nile.

Below him, birds dived into the river's murky shallows, vainly stabbing at frogs and fish. Occasionally, one or two rose victorious out of the water, dangling their dripping prey from their beaks. The other birds squawked in jealousy. But the ibis- the sacred ibis, as the Egyptian variety of the species is known- seemed unaware of the commotion around him.

With his snow-white body, ink-black head, and long curved beak, he looked proud, elegant, inscrutable.

He took no notice of the villagers washing their linens on the rocks. Nor of the fishermen passing by in their reed boats. When children threw rocks at the other birds, they flapped their wings in fright; the ibis kept his wings closed around his body like a shell. Only the brief appearance of a crocodile crawling through the papyrus plants caused the ibis's feathers to ruffle; and even then, his stick-like legs never moved.

For hours, the ibis stared unwaveringly at the horizon. It was as if he were waiting for a signal- a red flag,  say, or a puff of smoke- but the sun set, the moon rose, the stars twinkled, and still he did not stir.

Then, well after more cautious birds had retired to their nests, the ibis, suddenly and without warning, spread his wings and jumped into the air. He flew swiftly and purposefully across the Nile, his slender neck stretched forward onto the night, his wide, white wings illuminated from behind by the brilliant light of the Saharan moon.

Elsewhere in the desert, on the steep stone steps of a temple to the gid Thoth,  an innocent man was being executed on the order of the pharaoh.

There was no way the ibis could have heard the condemned man's cries,  let alone have read the fateful secret the man had inscribed only a moment before on a piece of papyrus. And yet it almost seemed the ibis was heeding his call.