Daughter of the Falcon God by Mark Gajewski

Author:Mark Gajewski [Gajewski, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2018-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

***

Aya gently shook Ahaneith’s shoulder. “It’s nearly dawn,” she whispered. “Wake your aunt and sisters.”

Aya heard Pageti and Betrest and Takhat stir on their pallets as she felt for her loincloth and fastened it around her waist. Quietly, so as not to disturb Kakhent, she slipped from the darkened hut.

Now that the harvest was finished and the festival four days in the past, everyone in Aya’s camp had resumed their regular daily routines. The men and older boys stalked the savannah communally or waited in ambush at the permanent stations established in the wadis, hunting large game animals. A handful of younger boys assisted Iuput in watching over the herds, protecting them from predators day and night, milking the cattle each morning, occasionally blooding them, moving them from pasture to pasture. Women and girls traveled to various resource patches on the savannah and lakeshore to obtain food – tubers of bulrush and clubgrass, seeds of dented dock and prickly douch, fruit of dom palm and sycamore fig, sedges, various plants. The very youngest boys roamed the marsh, setting snares for waterfowl and hares and other small game.

As for Meru’s band, most of them were still engaged in harvesting their fields, though Meru and his sons spent their days hunting alongside Kakhent’s sons and did not participate in agricultural drudgery. That was left to the women. Qen oversaw that work. Iuput had made a number of sickles for Qen; he’d been extremely grateful for the tools.

A warm breeze caressed Aya’s face as she emerged from her hut. Stars still blazed directly overhead, though the slightest hint of rose was coloring the eastern horizon. Waves ran up onto the shore, slowly, rhythmically, though the water was indistinct in the darkness. The palm fronds on the peninsula were barely stirring. From the far distance came a low rumbling roar, no doubt a hippo settling into plant–choked shallows after a night ashore feeding on grasses. Aya assumed a hunter from one or both bands would see to him later in the day. Ahaneith pushed past Aya, followed by Pageti and Betrest and Takhat. All five of them knew their morning roles and they set to work wordlessly. Aya carried a few barely–glowing coals from the banked campfire to the pile of dried sheep dung Betrest was arranging under and around a small clay oven a dozen feet or so in front of the hut. Takhat was criss–crossing tamarisk branches on the cookfire to bring it to flame. Ahaneith was striding towards the lake to fill the large earthenware jar that was balanced on her shoulder. Pageti was rummaging among various baskets and jars for vegetables and fruits for the morning meal. As Aya finished coaxing her fire to life Pageti brought to her in turn an earthenware mixing bowl and emmer she’d ground to flour the day before and a few spices and a bit of the bread mixture saved from yesterday.

“May I mix it, Mother?” Betrest asked.

“Certainly.”

Aya dumped the spices and flour and starter into the bowl and Betrest began to blend the contents together with her fingers.

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