Read Between the Lines (PG)
Summary: When Sha'uri discovers forbidden drawings beneath the tunnels of Nagada, she must decide whether or not they carry any meaning. Written for gate_women, for the prompt: The first time, pre-movie, that Sha'uri found the catacombs with the forbidden hieroglyphs. Pre-series. 2,540 words. Rated PG.
This serves as a companion piece/prequel to another Sha'uri fic, Line in the Sand.
Author's notes: If certain parts of the story seem vaguely familiar, they are an expansion of a double drabble written last month.
My thanks to Random, who did extra beta duty and was her usual stellar self.
Read Between the Lines
Lips pressed tightly together, fingers aching from her tight grip on the unlit torch, Sha'uri cautiously retraced the path she had so carelessly trod once before. She would not flee in terror this time! She was grown now, two summers older than the child she had been, and she felt sure she could now learn more of the mystery she had abandoned in her fear.
She thought back yet again on the memories of her younger self. Wearied of her mother's interest in her newly born brother above all else, Sha'uri had gone in search of adventure -- something that befit her status as Kasuf's Little Princess, daughter of Nagada. Even if Skaara's birth meant that she would not take her father's place as leader of their people in the fullness of time, she could still prove her courage and worth!
So she had stolen a lighting stick from the fire pit and a precious piece of wood from her mother's stores. Pleased with her daring, even if slightly flushed from guilt at neglecting her regular tasks, Sha'uri crept into the catacombs below the city to explore the long-forgotten tunnels where it seemed no one ever trod.
She wandered with no sense of purpose, clambering over fallen blocks of stone and under cracked ceilings. Idly, she wondered why the tunnels stretched so deeply beneath the earth. Ra must have created these paths for some purpose she could not understand.
Her torch had burned low when she squeezed her small body through an opening nearly blocked by rubble. Her heart beat faster at the thought that she now stepped where none had walked since time out of memory. What wonders might she find here, trapped beneath the familiar floors of Nagada?
Then the light of the torch flared in the draft from the opening. She screamed aloud as the Eye of Ra leapt into sudden focus, staring unblinking at her from the wall. The torch dropped from nerveless fingers and fell to the floor, plunging her into absolute blackness.
Ra knew. Ra saw! Ra would punish her for disobeying!
Automatically, she dropped to her knees, head bent and hands folded as she had been taught as a small child. Gasping, almost sobbing the words, she breathed a prayer to Ra, Bringer of Light and Kindler of Fire, to spare her the punishment of darkness.
Her voice grew small and thin in the oppressive weight of the dark. She had never feared to go into the mines and offer water to the workers in the deep tunnels, but now the stone overhead seemed to smother her, pressing down until she cowered nearly prostrate on the floor.
"Kindler of Fire," she whimpered again, one last prayer before slowly, fearfully feeling along the floor of the tunnel for the dropped torch. She shut her eyes against the terror of the dark as her fingers groped across dust and pebbles and harsh, gritty stone. The moments crawled over her like scurrying beetles, and her heart thudded frantically in her breast.
There! Her fingers closed over the torch. Swallowing hard, she blinked against the tears of relief leaking from her eyes. She gripped the torch tightly in her fist and carefully felt at her belt for the lighting stick. The torch would do her no good if she could not set it alight again.
At first, she scraped the lighting stick against the wall too vigorously, her motions almost frantic in her desperate need to drive the darkness away. Then she stopped to take a long, deep breath, ignoring the drifting dust that tried to choke her in her fear. She scratched at the wall again, this time using slow and steady movements. Finally, a flare of sparks from the lighting stick nearly blinded her after so long in the dark. Her sigh of relief seemed more a gasping sob, but she continued to raise sparks until the torch caught and light leapt back into the chamber.
The Eye of Ra stared down at her, implacable and unwinking, boring into her soul. She kept her eyes fixed upon it as she took a single step backwards, then another. When Ra did not cast her into darkness again, she turned and fled, climbing over the rubble and nearly dropping the torch again in her desperate haste. There were other marks along the walls, but she paid them no mind -- only escape mattered, and the great blessing of light.
Long days passed before she dared even think back upon the terror in the tunnels. Sha'uri was surprised to realize how much she had actually seen of the other strange markings that lay beneath their blanket of darkness. She had been so focused on the Eye, but now she remembered other things she had seen, dark against the paler gray of stone: lines and curves, shapes that teased her as strangely familiar. She thought of great birds and lines that rippled like the wind-carved sands, of pyramids and the Eye that looked upon it all, never closing.
She fingered the crude doll she had fashioned for Skaara's amusement, realizing that some of the rough marks she had seen might well be the shape of people. When Skaara grasped the doll with pudgy fingers and gurgled his triumph, she did not pretend to snatch it back in their usual game. Instead, she sat down to consider the matter further.
The doll held a shape, much like the pictures on those dark walls, but its only purpose was to be a plaything for her little brother. Seshwi liked to press lines into soft clay before it hardened into bowls. They were pretty, but they spoke no tale, any more than the shimmering lines of thread that Ma'uty wove into her mother's dresses. Perhaps the drawings of dolls and pyramids, of snakes and grass, were also idle scratches with no meaning.
Yet patterns could speak at times. Kasuf tracked the movements of the nomadic tribes with great care and could foresee when brigands might attack Nagada. Sarde studied the winds and skies and knew when to warn Kasuf that the sandstorms were coming. Areet cast bones upon the ground and used them to read a person's ka and sense the shadows that might haunt his spirit.
The Eye had been there on the wall, too -- watching, watching, always watching. Nothing carried more meaning than the Eye of Ra. And if that symbol was true, what of the others? Did Ra's unwinking Eye, watching those other patterns on the wall, mean that he approved of them? Perhaps he had even put them there himself.
Sha'uri closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head. Marks must not have meaning. To draw even a single line in the sand with intent was forbidden. Scribe was a word of scorn, an epithet in the mouth of foul-spoken fools who drank too deeply of the old men's firewater. Kasuf had carefully explained, when a younger Sha'uri had asked in all innocence, that scribe was a person who soiled hide or stone with marks that were meant to speak to others, thus giving voice to that which had none of its own.
It was forbidden!
Forbidden -- yet still existing. She could not understand this, but she also could not simply forget what she had seen. Perhaps, if she went back, she could find an answer.
Sobered by her fear, Sha'rui did not hasten to decide. The moons moved in their stately dance in the night sky, and the seasons slowly turned. Finally, two summers after that first experience, she resolved to return to that frightening place. Her spirit walked restlessly in her dreams, haunted by marks that writhed and rippled on the walls. She had to know. She would go back with caution and study the patterns to determine what truth they might or might not hold.
Now, as Sha'uri walked quietly away from the well-trod tunnels toward the mystery that awaited her, her fingers caressed the rough wood of her unlit torch. Remembering those moments of terror in the dark, she forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly. She was nine summers now, no longer a child. Ra had chosen to stay silent all these seasons. Surely he would not wait so long to punish her if her intent was wrong.
When light faded into deeper gloom and she could no longer see clearly, Sha'uri dragged the lighting stick across the wall and lit the torch from its sparks. She had wondered if it would prove difficult to retrace her younger steps, but found she still recalled the winding twists and turns. As a child of seven summers, she had wandered far in circles with no real destination. She was surprised to find now that only two marks on the torch brought her to the partially-blocked doorway to the hidden tunnel.
She had grown, these last summers. It was more difficult to clamber over the tumbled rocks than she remembered. Another summer, perhaps two, and she would no longer be able to enter without removing the fallen stones. For a long moment, she wondered if it might be wiser to await that time when the choice was taken from her hands. Then she firmed her resolve, lifted her chin, and crawled forward.
Once inside, she lifted the torch high, suppressing the flinch as the Eye surveyed her, wide and unwinking. She deliberately moved the torch away from that spot, her heartbeat still steady. But her practiced calm fled as she took her first proper look at the wonder of the walls.
These were not just patterns. She could not understand what she saw, but Ra's Eye stared down upon pictures -- not random scratches, but drawings put there by a long-forgotten hand. She knew not if it was Ra's own hand or another's, but someone had done this to the walls.
If Ra himself had done this, it could not be wrong. And if someone had committed this crime, why did Ra permit it to stand beneath his symbol?
She did not dare touch these forbidden drawings, but her fingertips hovered over the image of Ra with his great gold face and his two faithful servants, dog and jackal, standing guard at his side. Warm hues of reddish brown and amber clearly showed loyal slaves offering tribute, laboring in the mines, all for the greater glory of Ra. This standing circle was surely the chappa'ai, that great circle she had espied when she had crept as a child, against all warnings, into Ra's pyramid to explore the wonders within.
Her heart was hammering now, and the hand that wiped the cold sweat from her brow trembled. Could this be the evil scribing? The tale writ plainly on the walls was the very pattern of their lives, repeated here in shapes and lines. How could the glories of Ra, shown so clearly, possibly be wrong?
But here... Sha'uri leaned closer, blinking against the smoke of her torch. One drawing showed Ra's great ship descending over the pyramid, as she herself had witnessed; but how could humans ride the godly light? Slaves ascended a great ramp to enter the chappa'ai. How could this be, when its power and might was Ra's alone? And what was this strange creature, so large and oddly shaped, who rose above the pyramid?
One drawing confused her utterly. It showed Ra's jackal guard, but he was not standing proud as he always did, his staff of flame that harnessed the sun's power ready to strike down those who dared to disobey. Instead, the great creature lay sprawled upon the backs of many slaves, clearly at their mercy.
No. That was not possible!
Yet the picture, forbidden forbidden, had been drawn.
Sha'uri slowly rubbed her sweaty fingers against the torch, seeking comfort in its honest roughness as she considered this blasphemy. She knew it could not be. Why had Ra not flared hot in the sky to melt this sacrilege? The sinner who had dared break Ra's greatest law to scribe such lies must have died in an agony of flame. But why were the forbidden drawings allowed to remain, telling their falsehoods beneath the ever-seeing Eye?
She reminded herself that she was still Sha'uri, Little Princess, not yet fully grown. Perhaps she would come to understand this in the fullness of time.
A stray memory sparked. Her lips parted in wonder as she stared again at the impossible drawing of human slaves rising to the glory of Ra's chappa'ai. The comforting nonsense words of her mother's ancient lullaby suddenly came to her mind:
I will hold you, little one
soul in my embrace
if we pass through water
I will cradle you safe
if the thread falls away
I will weave you closer
if we ride past the stars
I will carry you home
She hummed the familiar tune under her breath. Pass through water -- the phrase had always made her laugh when she heard it, for where in Nagada was there water enough for such a thing? But Kasuf once spoke of the chappa'ai to her, unaware that she herself had touched its cold, bluish stone. He had said that legends told it could shimmer like standing water.
Sha'uri softly chanted the old words and wondered if the lullaby, which she knew her mother's mother had also sung, might carry more meaning than anyone remembered. Other snatches came to mind, too: prayers that spoke not Ra's name, but carried a yearning for something more; words overheard but not quite understood. An undercurrent of bitterness that did not fit with those who calmly embraced the pattern of their lives as slaves.
There was something here, Sha'uri knew. Something that all Nagadans, perhaps even all of Abydos, felt but could not express. But there was danger in this something -- even here, the great fire weapons drawn on the walls spoke of danger. Ra's power was clearly beyond all that might be. How could she, a child of nine summers, standing here beneath the stare of the Eye, dare to even voice the faintest doubt of Ra's might?
She could not. Not now; perhaps not ever. But just as the girl of nine summers could walk here where her smaller self had fled in terror, Sha'uri wondered if her older self might somehow learn more. Perhaps she might return to this place. And then... and then she would see what came next.
Backing away slowly, Sha'uri watched the curves and lines fade back into the dark. She would think long and hard on what to do and what it all might mean, but for now, it was a relief to set the puzzle aside. Let it stay hidden until its purpose might be better understood. The tumbled rock would keep this secret safe from anyone larger than a child, until the day might come when others sought to find these lost pictures scrawled upon the walls.
As she turned to go, the torchlight cast flickering shadows on the vague shape of Ra's pyramid. Ra himself hovered above it in his aspect of the sun. She gave the drawing a long, slow look.
She would remember, even if all Abydos had long since forgotten.
This serves as a companion piece/prequel to another Sha'uri fic, Line in the Sand.
Author's notes: If certain parts of the story seem vaguely familiar, they are an expansion of a double drabble written last month.
My thanks to Random, who did extra beta duty and was her usual stellar self.
Read Between the Lines
Lips pressed tightly together, fingers aching from her tight grip on the unlit torch, Sha'uri cautiously retraced the path she had so carelessly trod once before. She would not flee in terror this time! She was grown now, two summers older than the child she had been, and she felt sure she could now learn more of the mystery she had abandoned in her fear.
She thought back yet again on the memories of her younger self. Wearied of her mother's interest in her newly born brother above all else, Sha'uri had gone in search of adventure -- something that befit her status as Kasuf's Little Princess, daughter of Nagada. Even if Skaara's birth meant that she would not take her father's place as leader of their people in the fullness of time, she could still prove her courage and worth!
So she had stolen a lighting stick from the fire pit and a precious piece of wood from her mother's stores. Pleased with her daring, even if slightly flushed from guilt at neglecting her regular tasks, Sha'uri crept into the catacombs below the city to explore the long-forgotten tunnels where it seemed no one ever trod.
She wandered with no sense of purpose, clambering over fallen blocks of stone and under cracked ceilings. Idly, she wondered why the tunnels stretched so deeply beneath the earth. Ra must have created these paths for some purpose she could not understand.
Her torch had burned low when she squeezed her small body through an opening nearly blocked by rubble. Her heart beat faster at the thought that she now stepped where none had walked since time out of memory. What wonders might she find here, trapped beneath the familiar floors of Nagada?
Then the light of the torch flared in the draft from the opening. She screamed aloud as the Eye of Ra leapt into sudden focus, staring unblinking at her from the wall. The torch dropped from nerveless fingers and fell to the floor, plunging her into absolute blackness.
Ra knew. Ra saw! Ra would punish her for disobeying!
Automatically, she dropped to her knees, head bent and hands folded as she had been taught as a small child. Gasping, almost sobbing the words, she breathed a prayer to Ra, Bringer of Light and Kindler of Fire, to spare her the punishment of darkness.
Her voice grew small and thin in the oppressive weight of the dark. She had never feared to go into the mines and offer water to the workers in the deep tunnels, but now the stone overhead seemed to smother her, pressing down until she cowered nearly prostrate on the floor.
"Kindler of Fire," she whimpered again, one last prayer before slowly, fearfully feeling along the floor of the tunnel for the dropped torch. She shut her eyes against the terror of the dark as her fingers groped across dust and pebbles and harsh, gritty stone. The moments crawled over her like scurrying beetles, and her heart thudded frantically in her breast.
There! Her fingers closed over the torch. Swallowing hard, she blinked against the tears of relief leaking from her eyes. She gripped the torch tightly in her fist and carefully felt at her belt for the lighting stick. The torch would do her no good if she could not set it alight again.
At first, she scraped the lighting stick against the wall too vigorously, her motions almost frantic in her desperate need to drive the darkness away. Then she stopped to take a long, deep breath, ignoring the drifting dust that tried to choke her in her fear. She scratched at the wall again, this time using slow and steady movements. Finally, a flare of sparks from the lighting stick nearly blinded her after so long in the dark. Her sigh of relief seemed more a gasping sob, but she continued to raise sparks until the torch caught and light leapt back into the chamber.
The Eye of Ra stared down at her, implacable and unwinking, boring into her soul. She kept her eyes fixed upon it as she took a single step backwards, then another. When Ra did not cast her into darkness again, she turned and fled, climbing over the rubble and nearly dropping the torch again in her desperate haste. There were other marks along the walls, but she paid them no mind -- only escape mattered, and the great blessing of light.
Long days passed before she dared even think back upon the terror in the tunnels. Sha'uri was surprised to realize how much she had actually seen of the other strange markings that lay beneath their blanket of darkness. She had been so focused on the Eye, but now she remembered other things she had seen, dark against the paler gray of stone: lines and curves, shapes that teased her as strangely familiar. She thought of great birds and lines that rippled like the wind-carved sands, of pyramids and the Eye that looked upon it all, never closing.
She fingered the crude doll she had fashioned for Skaara's amusement, realizing that some of the rough marks she had seen might well be the shape of people. When Skaara grasped the doll with pudgy fingers and gurgled his triumph, she did not pretend to snatch it back in their usual game. Instead, she sat down to consider the matter further.
The doll held a shape, much like the pictures on those dark walls, but its only purpose was to be a plaything for her little brother. Seshwi liked to press lines into soft clay before it hardened into bowls. They were pretty, but they spoke no tale, any more than the shimmering lines of thread that Ma'uty wove into her mother's dresses. Perhaps the drawings of dolls and pyramids, of snakes and grass, were also idle scratches with no meaning.
Yet patterns could speak at times. Kasuf tracked the movements of the nomadic tribes with great care and could foresee when brigands might attack Nagada. Sarde studied the winds and skies and knew when to warn Kasuf that the sandstorms were coming. Areet cast bones upon the ground and used them to read a person's ka and sense the shadows that might haunt his spirit.
The Eye had been there on the wall, too -- watching, watching, always watching. Nothing carried more meaning than the Eye of Ra. And if that symbol was true, what of the others? Did Ra's unwinking Eye, watching those other patterns on the wall, mean that he approved of them? Perhaps he had even put them there himself.
Sha'uri closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head. Marks must not have meaning. To draw even a single line in the sand with intent was forbidden. Scribe was a word of scorn, an epithet in the mouth of foul-spoken fools who drank too deeply of the old men's firewater. Kasuf had carefully explained, when a younger Sha'uri had asked in all innocence, that scribe was a person who soiled hide or stone with marks that were meant to speak to others, thus giving voice to that which had none of its own.
It was forbidden!
Forbidden -- yet still existing. She could not understand this, but she also could not simply forget what she had seen. Perhaps, if she went back, she could find an answer.
Sobered by her fear, Sha'rui did not hasten to decide. The moons moved in their stately dance in the night sky, and the seasons slowly turned. Finally, two summers after that first experience, she resolved to return to that frightening place. Her spirit walked restlessly in her dreams, haunted by marks that writhed and rippled on the walls. She had to know. She would go back with caution and study the patterns to determine what truth they might or might not hold.
Now, as Sha'uri walked quietly away from the well-trod tunnels toward the mystery that awaited her, her fingers caressed the rough wood of her unlit torch. Remembering those moments of terror in the dark, she forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly. She was nine summers now, no longer a child. Ra had chosen to stay silent all these seasons. Surely he would not wait so long to punish her if her intent was wrong.
When light faded into deeper gloom and she could no longer see clearly, Sha'uri dragged the lighting stick across the wall and lit the torch from its sparks. She had wondered if it would prove difficult to retrace her younger steps, but found she still recalled the winding twists and turns. As a child of seven summers, she had wandered far in circles with no real destination. She was surprised to find now that only two marks on the torch brought her to the partially-blocked doorway to the hidden tunnel.
She had grown, these last summers. It was more difficult to clamber over the tumbled rocks than she remembered. Another summer, perhaps two, and she would no longer be able to enter without removing the fallen stones. For a long moment, she wondered if it might be wiser to await that time when the choice was taken from her hands. Then she firmed her resolve, lifted her chin, and crawled forward.
Once inside, she lifted the torch high, suppressing the flinch as the Eye surveyed her, wide and unwinking. She deliberately moved the torch away from that spot, her heartbeat still steady. But her practiced calm fled as she took her first proper look at the wonder of the walls.
These were not just patterns. She could not understand what she saw, but Ra's Eye stared down upon pictures -- not random scratches, but drawings put there by a long-forgotten hand. She knew not if it was Ra's own hand or another's, but someone had done this to the walls.
If Ra himself had done this, it could not be wrong. And if someone had committed this crime, why did Ra permit it to stand beneath his symbol?
She did not dare touch these forbidden drawings, but her fingertips hovered over the image of Ra with his great gold face and his two faithful servants, dog and jackal, standing guard at his side. Warm hues of reddish brown and amber clearly showed loyal slaves offering tribute, laboring in the mines, all for the greater glory of Ra. This standing circle was surely the chappa'ai, that great circle she had espied when she had crept as a child, against all warnings, into Ra's pyramid to explore the wonders within.
Her heart was hammering now, and the hand that wiped the cold sweat from her brow trembled. Could this be the evil scribing? The tale writ plainly on the walls was the very pattern of their lives, repeated here in shapes and lines. How could the glories of Ra, shown so clearly, possibly be wrong?
But here... Sha'uri leaned closer, blinking against the smoke of her torch. One drawing showed Ra's great ship descending over the pyramid, as she herself had witnessed; but how could humans ride the godly light? Slaves ascended a great ramp to enter the chappa'ai. How could this be, when its power and might was Ra's alone? And what was this strange creature, so large and oddly shaped, who rose above the pyramid?
One drawing confused her utterly. It showed Ra's jackal guard, but he was not standing proud as he always did, his staff of flame that harnessed the sun's power ready to strike down those who dared to disobey. Instead, the great creature lay sprawled upon the backs of many slaves, clearly at their mercy.
No. That was not possible!
Yet the picture, forbidden forbidden, had been drawn.
Sha'uri slowly rubbed her sweaty fingers against the torch, seeking comfort in its honest roughness as she considered this blasphemy. She knew it could not be. Why had Ra not flared hot in the sky to melt this sacrilege? The sinner who had dared break Ra's greatest law to scribe such lies must have died in an agony of flame. But why were the forbidden drawings allowed to remain, telling their falsehoods beneath the ever-seeing Eye?
She reminded herself that she was still Sha'uri, Little Princess, not yet fully grown. Perhaps she would come to understand this in the fullness of time.
A stray memory sparked. Her lips parted in wonder as she stared again at the impossible drawing of human slaves rising to the glory of Ra's chappa'ai. The comforting nonsense words of her mother's ancient lullaby suddenly came to her mind:
I will hold you, little one
soul in my embrace
if we pass through water
I will cradle you safe
if the thread falls away
I will weave you closer
if we ride past the stars
I will carry you home
She hummed the familiar tune under her breath. Pass through water -- the phrase had always made her laugh when she heard it, for where in Nagada was there water enough for such a thing? But Kasuf once spoke of the chappa'ai to her, unaware that she herself had touched its cold, bluish stone. He had said that legends told it could shimmer like standing water.
Sha'uri softly chanted the old words and wondered if the lullaby, which she knew her mother's mother had also sung, might carry more meaning than anyone remembered. Other snatches came to mind, too: prayers that spoke not Ra's name, but carried a yearning for something more; words overheard but not quite understood. An undercurrent of bitterness that did not fit with those who calmly embraced the pattern of their lives as slaves.
There was something here, Sha'uri knew. Something that all Nagadans, perhaps even all of Abydos, felt but could not express. But there was danger in this something -- even here, the great fire weapons drawn on the walls spoke of danger. Ra's power was clearly beyond all that might be. How could she, a child of nine summers, standing here beneath the stare of the Eye, dare to even voice the faintest doubt of Ra's might?
She could not. Not now; perhaps not ever. But just as the girl of nine summers could walk here where her smaller self had fled in terror, Sha'uri wondered if her older self might somehow learn more. Perhaps she might return to this place. And then... and then she would see what came next.
Backing away slowly, Sha'uri watched the curves and lines fade back into the dark. She would think long and hard on what to do and what it all might mean, but for now, it was a relief to set the puzzle aside. Let it stay hidden until its purpose might be better understood. The tumbled rock would keep this secret safe from anyone larger than a child, until the day might come when others sought to find these lost pictures scrawled upon the walls.
As she turned to go, the torchlight cast flickering shadows on the vague shape of Ra's pyramid. Ra himself hovered above it in his aspect of the sun. She gave the drawing a long, slow look.
She would remember, even if all Abydos had long since forgotten.