Sphinx's Princess
Authors: Esther Friesner
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #Ancient Civilizations, #Girls & Women
For Tom Hise,
one of the few real princes I know,
and for his wonderful wife, Jan,
the power behind the throne
From the time of my first memories, my dreams were filled with lions—fierce, impossibly huge monsters with fiery manes and eyes black and cold as a starless night. There were no lions of such colossal size in all of Pharaoh’s realm, not even in the wild Red Land, the desert where the waters of the holy Nile never reached. I was only a small child, barely four years old, but old enough to know that the lions haunting my dreams
could
not be real. And yet—I was still afraid.
The dreams were always the same: It was daytime and I was playing with my doll in the shade of the sycamore trees in our garden when suddenly the earth under my feet turned to sand. My doll sank out of sight as the lions clawed their way into the blazing sunlight, their mouths gaping, ready to devour me. I ran toward the house, crying for help, but no one came, and my home slipped beneath the surface of the sand before I could reach it. Then I was running,
running across the Red Land where nothing grew but stones and bones. I saw strangely shaped mountains in the distance, and though I somehow knew I would be safe if I could reach them, I never did.
No matter how fast my dream-self ran, the lions always caught me. When they did, they surrounded me in a ring, and that was when their faces underwent a frightening change: They became the faces of men. Before I could marvel at the transformation, their lips parted and I saw that though their mouths looked human, they still held the keen, bloodstained teeth of lions. Their roars shook the desert.
In every nightmare, the last thing I saw before I woke was their fanged faces. As soon as I felt the first hot touch of their breath on my cheeks, my eyes flew open and I found myself shivering and sobbing in my bed.
I can’t count how many times my terrified tears brought Father running. He was a very patient man who never once scolded me for waking him. Even if my beloved nursemaid Mery was already there, trying to calm me, he would dismiss her. Then he’d pick me up in his arms and hold me until I fell asleep again.
My nightmares grew worse. Sobs and tears became shrieks and howls that roused everyone in the household. After one particularly harrowing night, I woke up to find myself not in my own bed, or even in Mary’s comforting arms, but beside the pool of blue lotus flowers in our garden, only a stone’s throw from the very spot where the lions appeared in my dreams. I sat bolt upright and screamed.
“Nefertiti, hush, it’s all right, I’m here.” Father’s arms
were around me, strong and sheltering. He was down on one knee beside me, his face filled with sadness. “I thought that if I brought you out here to sleep, Isis would take pity on you and banish your evil dreams forever.” He gestured to the delicately painted stone image of a woman whose serene face and welcoming arms were reflected in the waters of the lotus pool.
“Isis?” I was very young and the name was new to me, even if the statue itself was already one of the eternal, unchanging parts of my childish world, like our house, our garden, the city of Akhmin beyond our walls, and the great river that flowed beside them. “Will she make the lions go away?”
“Lions?” Father echoed. “What lions?”
“The ones that come to hunt me every night,” I said. Though everyone in our house knew I suffered from nightmares, that was the first time I ever spoke about the images those nightmares contained. No one under our roof—not even Mery or Father—had ever asked me to describe the dreams that woke me up, screaming. By night, their chief concern was getting me to go back to sleep. By day, they might have been afraid to remind me of my midnight terrors.
If we pretend the evil dreams don’t exist, maybe she’ll forget about them tonight, at last!
My father settled himself cross-legged on the ground and took me into his lap. “Tell me about the lions, Nefertiti,” he asked as solemnly as if I were a grown-up, and not a child who had only lived to see four Inundations of the sacred river.
So I told him everything about the dream that haunted
me, and when I reached the part about how their faces changed, he hugged me close to his chest. “My poor little bird,” he said. “The same dream, time and time again, and I never knew. All of your unhappiness for so long, and I could have put an end to it so quickly if only—” He sighed. Then his expression changed from regret to determination. “Never mind what’s past.
Now
I can help you.”
I never doubted it for a moment. Of course he could help me! He was Father, strong, all-loving, all-powerful, the only true god in my eyes. All the rest—Amun, Osiris, Thoth, Ra, Hathor, even Min, for whom our city was named—were only names to me. (Indeed, I had
heard
Isis’s name many times before that morning in the garden, but I’d never thought to attach the sound of it in my ear to anything solid, the way hearing the word
table
or
cat
or
tree
called up a specific image in my mind.)
Now Father got to his feet, still holding me in his arms, and carried me to the statue of Isis. “Hail, Isis, lady of life, light-giver of heaven, queen of the earth, lady of the words of power!” he cried. “Have mercy on your servant, Ay, for he has been a great fool. O Isis, this is my sweet daughter, my only child, my Nefertiti, my greatest treasure. Banish her evil dreams and send them to haunt me instead as punishment for my stupidity. For this, I promise you many rich gifts. O Isis, hear my prayer!”
I was astonished to hear such words coming from my father’s mouth. How could he call himself a fool and stupid? Didn’t he know his own power? I had no time to ponder such disturbing thoughts: As soon as he ended his plea, Father bowed to the image, then turned and marched off.
His brisk pace jounced me roughly all the way to the edge of the raised bank where our property looked down on the green rushes and reeds bordering the Nile. Here Father lifted me so high that I was nearly sitting on his shoulder, then pointed upstream and asked, “Do you know what lies in that direction, my Nefertiti?”
What a question! Even if I was only four years old, I knew the answer well enough. It was part of a game that Father and I played, when he wasn’t busy with whatever grown-up business filled his days. “The gates of the Nile,” I replied. “The birthplace of the holy river. And—and—” I wanted Father to be proud of how clever I was. “—and that’s where Pharaoh lives, too!” I cried in triumph, then quickly added: “May-Amun-bless-and-protect-the-living-Horusson-of-Ra-lord-of-the … lord-of-the … um … I forgot.”
Father chuckled. “Good enough. But do you know what wonderful birthplace lies
there
?” He pointed down the shimmering river. I shook my head. “Yours, my darling.”
“I thought I was born here,” I said, my eyes darting toward our house.
“You would have been, but then, as now, I served Pharaoh, and in those days it was Pharaoh’s pleasure that I travel with him when he sailed down the river to view the great monuments and tombs of his ancestors. Ah, what wonders!” He lowered me so that I could put my arms around his neck. “There is one above all that steals your breath away, a pyramid of such size that it’s like seeing a mountain. We call it Khufu’s Horizon, because it is the place from which the soul of that Pharaoh rose to sail the heavens with the other gods. Its sides are sheathed in slabs
of the finest white limestone, and the crowning stone is covered in a mix of gold and silver. When Ra’s sunlight strikes it, it dazzles the eyes!”
“Oh! Can
I
see it, Father?” I asked, pressing my cheek to his. “Will you take me there with you? Please?”
He looked at me wistfully. “That was almost exactly what your mother said. You are very much like her, my dear, just as beautiful, just as charming. I couldn’t tell her no, though I tried. I reminded her that it was almost time for her to give birth, but she argued that it wouldn’t happen for at least thirty days. Then she reminded me that we’d be traveling with Pharaoh and his Great Royal Wife, Queen Tiye. ‘Tiye, who is your own sister!’ your mother said to me. ‘You know she’ll see to it that nothing happens to me or the child.’” He sighed.
I felt strange. This was the first time I’d heard Father speak about my mother for so long. I knew she had died very soon after I was born. That was why Mery—whose own husband and baby had also died—came to be my nursemaid. The three of us often went to Mother’s tomb to leave offerings of food and drink for her
ka
, the part of her soul that remained in this world. Apart from those solemn occasions, Father seldom spoke of her at all, and he looked so sad when leaving the offerings that I didn’t want to add to his grief by asking about her.
He looked even sadder now.
“It’s all right, Father,” I said, hugging him. “You don’t have to talk anymore. I’ll go to sleep. And I won’t have any more bad dreams, I promise!” I knew the promise was empty, that the monstrous, man-faced lions would come
back for me the next night, and the next, but all I cared about at that moment was easing his spirit. “Please don’t be unhappy.”
Father patted my head. Like all children, I had it shaved clean except for the youth-lock, a single braided strand of hair trailing down beside my right ear. The warmth of his hand was comforting.
“Are you
trying to protect
me
, dearest? Only four years old and already you’re such a brave girl. Your mother named you The-beautiful-woman-has-come, but perhaps you should have been called The-beautiful-warrior.”
I hung my head. “I’m not brave, Father,” I said. “If I were, I wouldn’t wake you up every night. I could fight my bad dreams myself. I’m sorry.”
His smile, bright even in the moonlight, lifted my heart. “Don’t you see, my sweet bird? Being brave doesn’t mean
always
having to fight alone. You have me, and Mery, and as you grow older, you’ll have friends who’ll stand up for you, too. But on the night you were born, you were given a guardian who’s stronger than all of us put together.”
“Stronger than a lion?” I asked timidly.
“Part
lion,” Father replied. “Part lion and part man—the creature we call a sphinx, just like those in your dreams—except
this
one is mightier than all of them. His face is the face of Pharaoh—not our lord, but a Pharaoh who ruled the Black Land in ancient times. So you see, he is lion, man, and god. He ascended to Ra so long ago that his divine powers are more than a match for any bad dream. And he is
your
protector, my Nefertiti.”
“He is?” I gave my father a skeptical look. I couldn’t
imagine the almighty sun-god Ra making room in his Boat of Eternity for such a monster.
“Do you doubt me?” Father smiled and chucked my chin. “Someday, my princess, I will take you sailing down the river and show you the place where you were born, the place where the pyramid tombs guard the kings and queens of our past. That’s where the Great Sphinx crouches on the sand and rock, greeting the sunrise. You were born in one of the rest houses that stand near the temple where our own Pharaoh worshipped his divine ancestor. Before you were one day old, I brought you out into the light of your first dawn, held you up before the god’s eyes, and asked him to watch over you. He heard my prayer, and now he is your special guardian. I should have asked him to help you long ago, when your nightmares first began, but I wasn’t thinking. Will you forgive me?”
I touched my forehead to his. “It’s not your fault, Father,” I said. “He’s
my
guardian. I’ll ask him myself.” Then I yawned widely, making Father laugh before he carried me back to my bed.
The following night, before I went to sleep, I made Mery take me outside to the riverbank. There I stood, gazing downstream to where my unseen guardian kept watch over the splendid tombs of ancient rulers, until I found the right words in my heart to offer up to him: “O Great Sphinx, come into my dreams and don’t let the bad sphinxes hurt me!” It wasn’t much of a prayer, but the Great Sphinx must have made allowances for a four-year-old child.
It worked: That night, when the same old dream came
back to trouble me, when the lions surged out of the sand that swallowed our house, when they chased me and caught me, when their faces became the faces of men and their fanged mouths opened to devour me, I didn’t scream. Instead, I stood my ground, stooped to pick up a rock, and threw it right at the biggest, fiercest one of all. The rock struck him squarely between the eyes and he broke into pieces like a clay jug dropped on stone. I grabbed more rocks and threw them as well, smashing sphinx after sphinx until my arms ached and I was panting like a dog at midday, but I was the only being left standing.
I did a little victory dance in the middle of that ring of shattered sphinxes until a shadow fell over me. I looked up and saw a sphinx so huge that he could have made a single mouthful of all the others. His human face was grave and severe, but somehow I knew that he wasn’t angry at me for what I’d done to the other sphinxes. I raised my right hand to my chest the way Mery taught me to do when we prayed to the gods and he … he smiled at me. It was a smile of approval as beautiful, comforting, and good as when Father smiled at me. Then a whirlwind out of the Red Land swept over the two of us, he vanished behind a curtain of swirling sand, and I awoke.