Flowers of Evil by N.L. Holmes

Author:N.L. Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WayBack Press
Published: 2023-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Neferet, her face to the wind, breathed deeply of the summer air. Here on the River, it was as moist and full of rich, living smells as the desert air was arid and lifeless. She understood why Papa so loved to pole through the marshes on his little reed raft. At the moment, she and Mut-tuy were perched on the spray-dampened seat of a hired boat, heading downriver to the flower farm of the Hidden One.

“Why are we going back here?” Mut-tuy’s bony frame swayed to the rhythm of the boatman’s paddle.

“I want to talk to that rabbit farmer again. He seemed pretty open. Perhaps he’d tell us more about his dispute with the florist and the priests. Maybe he’s seen those two hemu-netjer.”

They slid in among the towering papyrus and cattails. The morning’s fierce white sun grew shimmering green through the fronds, while reflections of the water flashed over the slender forest of stalks. Around the hull of their craft, the stream curled and gurgled as they bumped against the bank. The boatman tugged his painter through the ring of stone, and the two young women scrambled up the bank by way of the steep steps.

“Wait for us,” Neferet called back down.

They set off along the path toward the farmhouse. Around them, the peaceful flowers sunned themselves, untouched by the enmities of men. Neferet snuffed deeply. It even smelled beautiful—delicate and heady. The men and women who gathered the blooms were spread out through the colorful fields, tiny dots of red, white, and black. Somewhere out there was the pompous foreman.

“Why did we come here, then? The rabbit man is farther north.” Mut-tuy didn’t miss much.

Neferet was annoyed at the question because, in fact, she had directed the boatman to the wrong point of disembarkation by accident—by force of habit, having reached him the first time after a visit to the flower farm. “I want to look around while nobody is here.”

They pushed open the low gate into the farmyard. A dismal sight met Neferet’s eyes. The carcasses of twenty or thirty rabbits lay piled in the corner, in the shade of the waist-high wall. Already, a cloud of flies hummed around them.

“Yahyah! Somebody’s been hunting,” murmured Mut-tuy, suppressing a gag.

But Neferet’s reaction was more explosive. “This is disgusting! They’ve wantonly slaughtered Surer’s poor little animals. And if they leave them out in the sun, they’re not even going to be able to eat them.” Her face burning with indignation, she crouched next to the pile and poked about. “Look. They’ve been clubbed. They must have been penned up somewhere—no self-respecting rabbit would have let a person come that close unless it couldn’t get away.”

A chilly male voice said, “What are you doing here?”

Neferet jumped to her feet and whirled.

Imi-seba, the foreman, stood in the gateway, his long nose lifted, his eyes suspicious. In his hand, a whip twitched as if it couldn’t wait to taste the young women’s flesh.

“We came to talk to you, but I had forgotten you’d be out in the fields.

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