Artemon turned his face to the sky, narrowing his eyes against the wind and rain. “Metrodora predicted the storm would reach this far south. She knew there would be strong winds and rain.”
“What else did she tell you?” said Menkhep. “Will there be an expedition?” His eyes lit up.
“We’ll see about that tomorrow,” said Artemon. “For now, take shelter. Get a good night’s rest-if you can sleep amid this din.”
As if to make his point, a blinding flash of lightning ripped across the sky, followed shortly by a crack of thunder that shook the ground.
Menkhep hurried off. For a brief instant, Artemon’s eyes met mine, then he retreated into his hut.
Suddenly, above the sound of the rising storm, I heard again the animal’s roar that had startled me when I first arrived. Or did I only imagine that sound amid so many noises? I thought I had already seen or at least been warned of all the dangerous creatures that resided in the Delta, but none that I knew of could produce such a blood-chilling sound.
“Did you hear that, Djet?”
“Hear what?”
“That roar. Some sort of animal-”
“It’s only the storm. Come on! Hurry!” Djet took my hand and pulled me to our hut.
Fumbling in the darkness of the little room, we found our beds. I sat to take off my shoes. I pulled off my tunic, but left on my loincloth. I lay back, pulled the thin coverlet over me, and listened to the storm outside. Nearby, in his own bed, Djet began to snore softly; the boy could sleep anywhere. I remained wide awake, staring into the darkness, sensing the shivering and shaking of the hut as it was buffeted by the wind, seeing glimmers of lightning through tiny openings in the thatch, clutching the coverlet as thunder pounded the earth like a mallet. Though he mumbled in his sleep, nothing seemed to wake Djet.
Time passed. Minutes, hours-I had no way of knowing. The storm showed no sign of relenting.
At last I threw off the coverlet and rose from the bed. I put on my shoes, but not my tunic. I walked to the doorway and stepped outside.
Rain fell steadily, but it was lukewarm, not cold. I looked about and saw no sign that anyone else was awake. The huts were all shut up and dark. If the Cuckoo’s Nest had sentries, surely even these had taken shelter. Except for the foliage that danced all around me, I was the only living thing that stirred.
What of the roar I had heard earlier? What sort of wild animal was lurking in the woods? Was it awake and watchful, ready to stalk and slay any man who dared to venture out? Or had that creature, too, taken shelter from the storm? Or did such a creature even exist? Djet thought I had merely imagined the sound of its roar, and perhaps he was right.
I took a deep breath, left the safety of the hut, and set out into the wild, wet darkness.
On the way back from the visit to Ismene, I had paid close attention to the twists and turns of the path. Even so, it was hard to find my way. A few times I took a wrong turn and found myself at the water’s edge, or facing an impassible wall of vegetation. At last I came to the little clearing and saw the joined huts before me. Every part of me was soaked with rain. The loincloth around my hips was heavy and sodden.
I studied Ismene’s doorway for a moment. I saw no glimmer of light or any other sign that she might be awake. Then I walked around the structure, to the entrance at the opposite side. That doorway, too, was dark.
The storm raged as wildly as ever, yet I heard nothing but the beating of my own heart and I saw nothing but the curtain that covered the doorway. After so many days of alarm, confusion, despair, searching, and hope-always hope-that curtain was the only thing still separating me from Bethesda.
I pulled it to one side and stepped into the hut.
The room was dark, but just before the curtain fell, lightning flickered behind me. I saw the room for only an instant-just long enough to glimpse a stark, dreamlike image of Bethesda sitting upright in her bed, facing me. She was awake, with wide-open eyes, no longer wearing the many-colored garment in which she had received Artemon, but a simple sleeping tunic.
What did she see? The figure of a man in silhouette, soaked with rain, wearing nothing but a loincloth. No wonder she gasped.
The flicker of lightning passed. The room became a hole of darkness. I stepped toward her.
“Stay back!” she said. Her words were echoed by a peal of thunder.
I tried to speak, but couldn’t find my voice. The image of her on the bed remained imprinted on my eyes, unchanging as I moved forward in the darkness. My knees struck the bed. I groped the air. My fingertips touched warm flesh. I blindly reached out, captured her, and pulled her toward me.
Fists pounded my chest. “No, Artemon!” she whispered.
I opened my mouth, but something thick and heavy seemed to be lodged in my throat. I couldn’t speak. Nor could I let go of her, no matter how she twisted and turned in my arms. The more she struggled, the more desperately I held her.
My lips found hers. I covered her mouth with a kiss. She resisted, but I held her fast. The taste of her mouth, so longed for and sweetly familiar, sent a quiver of delight through me. In the same moment, I felt a stab of pain and tasted blood from my broken lip.
My limbs acted of their own volition. I hardly knew how we came to be horizontal on the bed, her tunic torn, my wet loincloth cast aside. At every point she resisted me, and at every point I overcame her, until I found myself holding her down and poised on the verge of entering her.
It was then that my senses came to me-slowly, as if I emerged from a stupor. I remained as I was, motionless above her, gasping for breath. In that same moment, somehow-by taste, smell, touch, the sound of my breathing? — she realized who I was.
“No!” she whispered. “This can’t be real. This is a dream.”
“Not a dream,” I said, finally able to speak.
Bethesda drew a sharp breath. Her hands, gripping my arms to hold me back, relaxed for a moment, then gripped me harder than before.
“Didn’t Ismene tell you I was here?”
“Who is Ismene?”
I almost laughed. In a world where everyone seemed to have two names, no wonder there was so much confusion!
“Never mind,” I said. Then I did laugh-a laugh of sheer joy as Bethesda suddenly took advantage of the lapse in my concentration and broke free, only to reverse our positions. Suddenly I was on my back and she was on top of me.
In the next instant, ecstasy swallowed me and held me in its grip, so firmly and completely that I thought it would never let me go.
We took a long, tumultuous ride into the vortex. At the end, who cried out the loudest, Bethesda or I? Outside, the wind continued to howl and the thunder to crash. Otherwise, Artemon and the others would have heard us all the way to the lagoon.
XXII
“Where have you been?” said Djet when I returned to our hut. The storm had relented a bit, but the world was still dark. “You’ve been gone half the night.”
“Never mind.” I fell onto my bed, utterly exhausted. I fell asleep at once.
“Wake up!” said Djet.
It seemed to me that only a moment had passed, but now bright sunlight entered around the curtained doorway.
“Wake up,” Djet repeated, poking me in various places with his forefinger in a most irritating way. “Menkhep says you have to come at once.”
My head was so muddled with sleep, for a moment I wondered if the events of the night before had been only a dream.
I sat up. No, it had not been a dream. No dream could have been so strange, so perfect-so dreamlike.