Pharaoh To Star

In the dark nights that followed the fall of the old kingdom, the Nile still shimmered and stretched into outer space—but not for long. 

 

The young pharaoh had grown up tracing his fingers across the star-studded sky, mapping where the Nile fed into the Mediterranean, where the water appeared to leap upwards into the night and shift into silver currents. A stream of stars that ebbed and flowed with the fabric of time. 

 

Even now, when his court splintered about him and unrest simmered in his streets, the young pharaoh only had eyes for the Nile. Hungry, desperate, curious eyes. 

 

He, like all the pharaohs before him, wanted more than anything to sail the star-waters. None before him had. 

 

While the last pharaoh commissioned warships, the young pharaoh studied astronomy. Against the whispers of the palace servants, he watched the night sky incessantly—which was why he was the first to spot the six-sailed fleet among the clouds.  

 

The ships looked dark and heavy, built for battle and storm. Six masts carried sails that eclipsed starlight entirely, as though they were made from living shadows. Unlike the Egyptian river boats, they carried no oars. No lamps were in sight. 

 

These vessels moved like a ram making his way through a herd, yet with a gracefulness of a heron landing on water. The young pharaoh held his breath, heart spasming with something he had never felt before. His father would have described it as the blood-thirst before battle, but the young pharaoh knew he felt something darker and more dangerous. Desire.  

 

Distant shouts exploded across the palace as his people discovered the threat in the sky. The young pharaoh whirred around—but his guard had not barged in to warn him. 

 

There were footfalls outside his door—that of a messenger or an assassin? Was he to perish in the chaos before an invasion, like his father and the last pharaoh? 

 

The young pharaoh turned to face the window again. His eyes landed on the unmanned fleets of warships lined the banks of the Nile—had their time finally come? His father, calculating and arrogant, had readied fleets for trade and war in the ocean of the universe, even when no Egyptian vessel had ever sailed successfully on star-waters. 

 

The young pharaoh traced a hand over the mouth of the Nile, where his familiar star patterns were eclipsed by the ominous hulls. He looked at how his fingers easily found their place within the stars—had his time finally come? 

 

The door flung open. 

 

 As expected, his guard was gone. In flooded attendants that dressed the young pharaoh where he stood, refusing to let him pace into the robing chamber. Their grips were tight, unflinching even when he snapped at their insolence. So the young pharaoh stopped struggling and studied the faces of his attendants—none were familiar to him. It dawned on him that they were spies, servants of his usurper. 

 

Then why dress him alive? 

 

A sacrifice. 

 

The young pharaoh stayed silent as he was led away. 

 

The throne room was empty. His own servants had rushed to the front steps of the palace, paying their bound master no heed, and stood huddling and whispering between the giant columns of the hypostyle hall. 

 

The young pharaoh was made to stand in the shadows of his usurper. 

 

He looked at the stars rather than at the back of the man that betrayed him. They waited together, the palace guard and an assembling army at their back. 

 

When the ships had drawn close enough for arrows to land, and the archers could make out the row of grey-faced and six-armed people that lined the deck, the young pharaoh’s usurper closed an open palm into a fist. 

 

Arrows rained toward the ships from the palace rooftop. Mid-air, they froze, then reversed their paths, heading straight for the hearts of the archers. Following the path of the reversed arrows, the ships sailed straight to the palace where the young pharaoh, his usurper, and their dying army stood.

 

In silence, the young pharaoh was pushed forward by his usurper. 

 

The young pharaoh lifted his face in the moonlight, as though meeting his gods for the first time, but he did not pray. That flutter in his chest had returned. It was as if he was made for this moment, as though only he could understand the star-people for only he saw meaning of the stars.  

 

But the young pharaoh needed to opportune. 

 

He waited for the star-people to speak. 

 

Eventually, one emerged as leader. They wore a frock like the flowing star-water, and when they opened their mouth, out came only the sound of the wind in the valley. 

 

Then the young pharaoh began to make out words. “We are on our pilgrimage,” the leader of the star-people said in a lilting tone. Their lips did not match their speech, so the young pharaoh knew that he was hearing words in translation. “Our ships have sailed for five thousand years in the dark expanse between the stars, and we will sail for five thousand years more.” 

 

The young pharaoh flinched when he felt the iron grip of his usurper pressing into his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his own servants prostrating, foreheads grinding into the sand. Behind his back, he could hear the spears falling from weak hands. He heard his own faltering breaths. 

 

The young pharaoh did not want to die. Neither at the sword of his usurper nor at the hands of the star-people. 

 

He opened his arms wide. “Give our guests a feast.”  

 

So, under the shadow of sails that stretched higher than the palace rooftop, furnaces and bonfires were lit. Servants poured scented water for the star-people and presented them with sweet-smelling blue lotuses. An entire ox was roasted. The star-people, with their stony faces and soft eyes, sampled the food with careful bites. The noblemen ate and drank heartily, but the young pharaoh had little appetite. 

 

When those that wished him dead were vanquished with drink, the young pharaoh turned to the star-people. 

 

“There used to be others who would visit us,” he guessed. Whether the star-people were surprised at his knowledge, the young pharaoh could not make out from their silence. “I study the stars,” he continued, despite an unfurling sense of dread, “I know that the Nile, this life-giving river of Egypt, is but a stream in the waters of space.” 

 

The leader of the star-people looked at him, seemed to be studying his youthful features. The young pharaoh had to stop his hand from brushing his own cheeks. 

 

“They are gone,” they said. Their voice was softer than when the young pharaoh had last heard it, more like a whispering breeze.    

 

“Where are you going?” The young pharaoh tried again. 

 

The leader of the star-people drew out a map, veins snaking across the expanse of light like veins on a back of a hand. “The great river’s end,” they said, pointing to single silver vein that stretched into a black expanse. 

 

“This is but a stop in our journey,” they said, “in ten thousand years upon our return, perhaps we will pass through your Egypt again, if there is still a kingdom at the mouth of your Nile.” 

 

The young pharaoh’s mouth thinned into a line. It was not that he was reminded of his own mortality—that he was aware—but of the mortality of Egypt, the sand and water that would take everything at the end. 

 

He did not want to be stuck here, withered and lifeless in a grand tomb, eyes hollow and bare, when the star-people returned. He wanted to live as the star-people came, unbound by time itself. He wanted to look upon his Egypt again, having outlived his dynasty and with the immortal sands falling at his feet. 

 

The young pharaoh leaned forward. “Take me,” he whispered, low and urgent, “take me while they eat and sleep. And show me the universe.”

 

“What will you give us in return?”

 

“An army to ravage the stars,” he said. 

 

Was that a lie? The young pharaoh pointed at the fleets of warships lined up against the banks, waiting to lay claim to that all that was beyond the mouth of the Nile. Only time will tell.   

 

Ten thousand years later, the Nile was no longer a glittering freeway from earth to star. The star-people did not sail on muddied waters. 

 

There were eighteen pharaohs in twenty years after the old kingdom fell, none of them particularly memorable, least of all the boy that shed his headdress and slipped away into the stars.