Free CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness by Mike Allen

remembered.
    The presence she had gradually lost. The blazing glory of Hathirekhmet, pitiless as stone, but not cruel; cruelty implied a desire for suffering in others. Hathirekhmet did not desire. She simply was . And to pour a fragment of herself into an avatar was to be as she otherwise could not be, to feel and see a world otherwise distant to her.
    The luxury was the doing of the priests, because they thought the goddess wished it. They honored the one they believed Hathirekhmet’s gift to them, thinking it the respectful thing to do.
    They did not understand. And Nefret had not, either.
    She remembered that blazing presence, annihilating all other thought. As a child it had been easy: she lived in the moment, thinking neither of past nor future. She was Hathirekhmet. But as she grew, she changed; thoughts entered her head and did not leave. Dislike of one temple maiden, amusement at an elderly priest. Curiosity about a story from the scriptures. Ideas and feelings, which had to be pushed aside to make room for Hathirekhmet. It grew harder and harder, and the goddess came more rarely.

    Because she could not be both Hathirekhmet and herself.
    Understanding swirled through the reeling dizziness of her head. The goddess chose children because they were unformed, empty—vessels she could fill. Life was the imperfection, the cracks through which the world entered, changing little girls into young women. And day by day, year by year, the avatars pushed the goddess out to make room for themselves.
    Which meant she could reverse it. The sun’s hammer beat upon her, seeking entrance. All she had to do was step aside, and let the goddess in.
    Let go of Nefret, and become Hathirekhmet again.
    Then the goddess could experience something new: a grown body, twisted hard by the desert; a life austere instead of luxurious. Her skin pulsed, a fragile barrier between humanity and divinity. It was easy. Simple. The kind of pure answer Sekhaf sought.
    Sekhaf.
    She held in the palm of her hand all the things that barred Hathirekhmet from her. All the other thoughts, all the desires and annoyances and knowledge, all the things he called her wisdom. All the things that brought the philosophers to her desert refuge, that fueled their debates in the long heat of day.
    Everything that made her who she was.
    She could regain what she had lost—by losing what she had gained.
    Once, she would have found it no choice at all. Nefret had nothing; Hathirekhmet, everything. But in her seeking, she had found another life. One of lizards and scorpions, a muddy spring and a hard bed, and questions always to be answered. It was not the life she had known in the temple, but it was hers.
    Hers. Not Hathirekhmet’s.
    I was once a goddess. Now I am myself. And myself I shall remain.

    Nefret curled her hands around herself, filled her mind with thoughts of life—and bid Hathirekhmet farewell.
    * * *
    She awoke to stone, rough under her cheek and hand.
    Nefret opened eyes that felt dry as dust. She knew without thinking that it was sunset, heat slipping quickly from the air, familiar shadows consuming the world around her.
    One shadow was out of place.
    She spoke, and the word went little further than her lips. “Sekhaf.”
    He heard her anyway, or perhaps just saw her move. The philosopher rose from hiding and came to her side, shame-faced. “I should not have disturbed you,” he said. “But I watched from below, and saw you collapse. And I thought—”
    For once he did not share his thought. He did not have to. Nefret reached out, and he gave her the skin bag at his side. She drank greedily, tasting the leather, letting water spill over her cheeks and chin.
    When at last she stopped, he asked quietly, “Did you find your answer?”
    The one she had sought, and more besides. Hathirekhmet bore her no grudge for her choice; a grudge implied desire, and Hathirekhmet desired nothing. Not as a human might.
    Not as Nefret desired the life she had chosen to