Free House of Illusions by Pauline Gedge Page A

I had abandoned any opportunity to learn the truth. The adventure, as far as I was concerned, was over.
    Ra sank below the horizon. The lamps in the house behind me were lit. What had been shade above me became shadow all around me. It was not until the aroma of frying fish brought me to my feet that I remembered the appointment I had made with Takhuru. She would be furious. For once I did not care.
    IT WAS JUST AFTER my disturbing meeting with the General that the dreams began. At first I ignored them, thinking that they had to do with the tongue lashing I received from Takhuru when I visited her to apologize for forgetting our visit to the woodworker. I had lost my temper with her, grabbed her wrist and shouted, and she had responded by slapping my face, kicking me in the ankle, and stalking away. Once I would have run after her, but this time I too turned on my heel and left her ridiculously crowded garden. After all, I had tendered an apology for nothing more than a lapse of memory, but she had behaved as though I had neglected to appear at the signing of our marriage contract and had accused me of caring for no one but myself. Now it was her turn to grovel. Of course she did no such thing. Takhuru’s blood was noble, her character proud and selfish.
    A week went by. The month of Thoth merged into the month of Paophi, hot and endless. The river was close to its highest level for that year. A letter arrived from my mother stating that she was planning to remain on our estate in the Fayum for another month. I dictated a sequence of watches for my men at the General’s house, then took my gear into the barracks and spent the week on the training ground sweating out my irritation with Takhuru. We did not go out onto the desert. I returned home having been grazed with a spear across my shoulder blade. The accidental wound was not serious and soon closed, but as it healed it itched and I could not reach it in order to scratch.
    Akhebset and I got noisily drunk and woke one dawn in the bottom of someone’s skiff with a whore between us. There was still no word from my betrothed and none from the General. I had imagined that he would let me know what he had done with the box, but I walked his halls and watched his door without seeing or hearing from him. I was in a peculiar state of mind, restless and agitated. My sleep became fitful, and then I started to dream.
    I was lying on my back outside, staring up into a clear blue sky. The feeling was one of utter contentment and for a long time I remained motionless, full of a wholly satisfying and unreflective comfort. But presently I sensed movement and the sky was blocked out by a huge shape coming steadily closer. I was not afraid, merely diverted. As it came into focus I recognized it as a hand, the hennaed palm curled around the stem of a pink lotus bloom. Then it slipped out of focus again and I felt the flower tickle my nose. Vainly I tried to grasp it, flailing arms that were suddenly clumsy and unresponsive, and I woke with my arms above my head, the scab on my shoulder throbbing and my sheets wet with sweat. My room was dark, the house full of night silence. I sat up trembling, consumed by a terrible fear that was completely at variance with the pleasant details of the dream, and had to force myself to reach for the cup of water on the table beside my couch. My fingers were like sticks, barely obeying me. I drank and gradually became calm. Saying a prayer to Wepwawet, I settled to sleep, and the remainder of the night was uneventful.
    It took me several hours the next morning to shake off the effects of the dream and by evening I had almost forgotten it, but that night it came again, identical in every way, and again I woke to darkness and fear. The third night it was repeated, and I began to sleep with fresh oil in my lamp so that I would see the friendly sanity of my own four walls when I opened my eyes with my heart skipping and my limbs weak.
    On the seventh night the