* * *
Someone was knocking on the door. A thin structure made of branches and woven reeds, it shook and rattled with each hit. Ashayt, awake again on her cot, knew that the sound would carry throughout the meager, three-room house of mud bricks. She heard her foster parents murmuring, wondering who it might be that would come calling. Her foster father, Bes, would be the one to open the door.
“Greetings and welcome to this, my most humble home,” Bes said to the visitor, as was custom. Ashayt knew there would be polite bowing to accompany these words.
“May your home and fields be blessed by the Gods with many long days of prosperity,” came the reply, and Ashayt found herself sitting bolt upright in her bed, a newfound energy coursing through her body. There could be no mistaking that voice; Amun Sa, her love and lover, the very reason for which she woke each morning, was standing at the entrance to her home.
“You have my thanks, stranger,” her foster father replied, and Ashayt could hear in his tone a wariness that suggested he had noticed the quality of Amun Sa’s trappings and understood that this man who had come to their home was of some greater class than had any business on the outskirts of the city. “Of what service can I be to you?”
“My name is Amun Sa,” her lover said, “and I would be stranger to you no longer. I am third-cousin by marriage to King Pepi, Lord of all the Earth, Descendant of Ptah the Maker, may he rule forever.”
Bes was clearly at a loss for words. He stammered for a moment before finally regaining his wits and saying, “My Lord, you bless our home with our presence.”
“Truly, it is I who am blessed to be here,” Amun Sa replied. “For today I have been given a great and wonderful piece of news, and it is because of this that I have come to stand at your doorstep. I have come to speak with you, sir, and to beg you if I must. I have come to ask permission to court your daughter.”
Ashayt was unable to keep herself from making some small, strained noise of joyous disbelief. If the words that Amun Sa was saying were true – and he would not have been there if they weren’t – then he had been granted permission by King Pepi to divorce. The thing they had both hoped and prayed for had happened.
Despite her weakness, despite her thirst, despite the fever that seemed to be raging through her body, Ashayt leapt from her bed and began to dress. She could hear her foster father stammering, again, and her foster mother making a sort of disbelieving noise.
“Are you sure you have the right home, my Lord?” Nephthys asked. “Our daughter is … she is not our true daughter, though we have loved her as such for many years. She comes from the south, from—”
“From the desert, yes. I know.” Amun Sa laughed. “I assure you, I have the right home. Her name is Ashayt, and she has lived with you as your daughter these past dozen years. She is dark skinned, with lovely, swirling tattoos that cover her body from head to toe, and she is the most beautiful and wonderful creature that the Gods have ever put on this earth, and I love her with every fiber of my being, and I cannot stand for one second more to be apart from her.”
“My love!” Ashayt cried, bursting now through the fabric that hung between her bedroom and the common area and racing toward him, seeing his face light up and his arms open wide. “Amun Sa, my beautiful Amun Sa!”
And then he was holding her, and she had wrapped her arms around him, and he was pressing his lips to the top of her head, and she put her face against his chest, and she was weeping, weeping with joy and love and the simple disbelief of all that was happening to her now, at last, after so many years of being alone.
She heard her foster mother say, “I told you she had someone,” in an amused tone.
“Please, sir, may I court your daughter?” Amun Sa asked again, still holding her close to him, and she heard Bes give an incredulous laugh.
“I’m not sure we have a choice,” the man said.
Ashayt had managed to get some amount of control over herself and turned now to face her foster parents. “I will have no other. I love him. I love him, and I will never love another as much as I love him, not should I live a thousand years or more.”
“Ashayt,” Nephthys said, a joyous expression on her face, “My lovely Ashayt, my tiny little mau … you don’t need to justify yourself to us. You are a grown woman, and you have earned the love of a fine man who can give you a life that we could never provide. How could we say no? How could we stand here and look at the love on both of your faces and tell you that we do not approve? All we have ever wished, from the moment we took you into our home, is that you would find happiness. Does this man make you happy?”
“More so than I have ever been in my life,” Ashayt told them.
“Then, by all means, marry him,” Bes said, and he laughed. “Marry him now, before he comes to his senses and realizes that a cousin of the King has no business with the daughter of a struggling farmer. In fact, good sir, could we not convince you to do this tonight?”
Amun Sa laughed as well, and he shook his head. “I would be happy to do it, happy to pledge the rest of my life, this very night, to the daughter of a struggling farmer, but I cannot. Not yet. My King has approved my divorce from the woman I was forced to marry, but it is not yet finished in the eyes of the Gods. In five days’ time I will be free, and I say to you now that I will marry your daughter on the sixth day. I will do it gladly, and I will welcome her and all those who love her into my family.”
Ashayt turned again and pressed herself against him, taking in the scent of him, the feeling of his strong arms wrapped still around her body. It seemed impossible, this thing he suggested, like a wisp of dream, borne upon the summer breeze, that must inevitably fall to earth. How could it be that she had come to have everything she had ever wanted? How could it possibly be?
“My love,” she said to him, and felt again the urge to weep with joy. “My love. My love.”
It seemed to her as if she could never say these words enough.