Free The Forgotten: Aten's Last Queen by J. Lynn Else Page B

Those memories we shared with laughter being our song seemed as if they belonged to someone else. We were not those children anymore. We had aged. Our innocence had been shredded. Our melodies had faded into the night’s unforgiving darkness.
    We had a great collection of throw sticks made especially for us when our hunting trips were beginning. Some were engraved so beautifully that I did not want to smear bird organs and blood all over them or risk losing them to a poorly timed throw over the river, so I kept them in my bedchamber as decorations. Often I would now find myself tracing all the carving marks with my fingers, so fine and so precise were the lines.
    This had become a season of politicking. I had to make sure General Horemheb did not claim the throne. I did not trust him or my grandfather, Ay. And Ay was the immediate danger. Horemheb was still traveling back with my husband’s body. I had no doubt that his stake on me would be just as strong; the military would be behind him. Ay had the priests though. I could not fathom what would happen when Horemheb returned. In my dreams, I was standing alone on a crumbling pedestal. Each of the men would push on the sides, teetering me back and forth between them. Each of them held a blade in their hands ready to strike if I got too close. I would wake up with a sickness cramping up my belly.
    Was my Tutankhamun’s death merely an ill break of his leg? I thought there was more to the story. His chariots were strong and carefully tested before each march against the Hittites. But initial reports that had come back stated that his chariot’s wheel broke. How? How could it suddenly break and toss him heartlessly into a slow, creeping, and deathly infection?
    I could only wonder. I could never say.
    We had so looked forward to our children throwing with us, my grand pharaoh teaching them precision with a bow and myself with the throw stick. Our child was to arrive at the start of our favorite season, but she came too soon and without enough breath in her tiny body. My family seemed cursed with stillborn babies.
    So full of remorse was my husband that he left to fight against the only people he could.
    And it killed him…

Chapter Three
    Behold the Aten
    1338 B.C.
    I woke up screaming, but this did little to scare away my dream.
    The slaves quickly went to get a nurse. My mother arrived first. She walked into the room and sat next to me on my bed. I was shocked when my eyes beheld her face for I could not figure out why she was still awake. Her eyes looked as though they were not colored with sleep. The surprise quickly wore away, and I reached around my mother to hold her tight, feeling her flesh and blood to remind myself that I was back in my home. I laid my head on the top of her belly swollen with child.
    “My darling, why were you screaming?” she asked, her voice smooth like the finest-woven flax.
    “I saw a woman in my dreams. I have never seen her before.”
    “Why should this woman scare you?”
    “She was not a woman at first…” I sat back and looked up at her face, “…she changed into one. And I was afraid my ka would not escape. She held me captive!”
    Mother ran her fingers through the loose hair on the side of my head, “Please, tell me of your dream. Sometimes our God will speak to us through dreams. Sometimes telling them releases the fears. Let your fear go, my sweet girl.”
    It was not often I had these moments anymore with my mother. When I was younger, she and Father spent what time they could with us. There had been much laughter between us. It is what inspired my father to suggest such intimate carvings to our stonemasons. But as we grew, the laughter had seemed to evaporate from my parents’ lips. Their faces became lined, and their closeness seemed to drift away like clouds breaking in the sky, the arms of Aten pushing them apart.
    I took in a deep breath as I remembered. It was so clear, and I told my mother everything.
    I had been