Renenutet

The Grain Behind the Door

The woman had almost filled her fist when Renenutet lifted her head from the grain.

A few kernels fell between the woman’s fingers. The rest she held so tightly that the goddess could see their shapes beneath the skin.

“Put it back,” said the keeper from the doorway.

The woman did not look at him. A child lay against her hip, his cheek pressed to her bare shoulder. He was too old to be carried all day, but his legs hung without moving.

Renenutet spread her hood.

The woman opened her hand.

Grain pattered onto grain. One kernel caught in the crease of her palm. She picked it out with her other hand and set it down deliberately, as if the goddess might otherwise accuse her of keeping it.

“There.” Her voice shook. “All of it.”

The keeper let out his breath. He had been holding a wooden mallet behind his back. Now he laid it beside the threshold, where neither woman could mistake it for an offering.

Renenutet uncoiled. Where the cobra had rested, a woman stood among the baskets, the loose end of her linen robe lying across the grain.

“You called for me last night,” she said to the keeper.

“I called every night.”

He pointed to the empty bins along the wall. The plaster inside them was scored white where people had scraped for the last kernels. Only the great basket beneath her remained full.

“This is seed. If she eats it, what shall we put into the earth?”

The child stirred. His mother shifted him higher, and he made a small searching movement against her breast.

“And if he dies,” she said, “what shall I put into the earth?”

Renenutet looked down at the grain she had guarded. Each kernel was whole. No mouse had entered while she lay upon it; no beetle had passed beneath her coils. In her keeping there should have been bread enough for a future season.

She bent and pressed her hand deep into the basket.

The upper grain was cool and dry. Lower down it clung to her fingers.

She brought up a dark handful.

The keeper stepped forward, then stopped. A sour smell rose between them.

“How long?” Renenutet asked.

He stared at her hand.

“The floor was damp yesterday. I thought it would dry.”

From beyond the granary came the sound of men shouting. A different sound followed: a long, heavy crumbling, too deep to be a dropped jar.

The woman turned toward the door.

Water slid over the threshold and touched her heel.

The Keeper’s Seal

The canal bank had given way upstream. By the time Renenutet reached the door, brown water was running down the lane, carrying straw, a sandal, the broken lid of a chest. People climbed the steps of the opposite house with their bedding on their heads.

“The high threshing ground,” the keeper said. “We could take it there.”

He put both arms around the great basket and heaved. It did not move. He tried again, his cheek pressed against the wicker. Water darkened the hem of his kilt.

“Small baskets,” Renenutet said.

“There are none.”

The woman pointed to a narrow door at the back of the room.

“Sacks.”

The keeper’s hand went to the seal hanging from its fastening.

“Those belong to the king.”

“So does this grain, when the tax is taken,” she said. “Let them belong to him together.”

He shook his head. “They counted the sacks. They set the seal in front of me.”

The water reached the foot of the basket. Renenutet felt it through her soles: cold moving beneath a warm skin of mud. She had kept her vigil above a floor that was failing. The dry kernels under her body had told her nothing about what lay below.

“Bring the mallet,” she said.

The keeper did not move.

“They will ask whose hand broke it.”

“Yours,” said the woman.

For the first time he looked directly at her.

“My daughter is on that threshing ground. My two sons are with her. Do you think I am saving seed for strangers?”

The woman’s anger faltered. The child against her had begun to cry, but without strength enough to take a full breath between the sounds.

Renenutet lifted the loose end of her robe out of the water. Fine linen, woven close. Cloth fit to lie against a king, cloth under which a body could be kept safe.

She caught its edge between her hands and pulled.

The tearing was louder than she expected.

The keeper flinched. Renenutet spread the long strip across his arms.

“Hold it.”

She scooped dry grain into the middle. The cloth sagged. He gathered its corners before she told him, testing the weight, then drew them into a knot.

The woman put out her free hand for it.

“Too much with the boy,” he said.

He lifted half the grain back into Renenutet’s cupped hands and tied a smaller bundle. The woman hooked it over her shoulder beside the child.

At the doorway, she hesitated.

“I shall come back.”

“Leave him above the water first,” Renenutet said.

The keeper watched her cross the lane. Then he picked up the mallet.

His first blow glanced from the fastening. His second split the wood beneath it. He set the broken seal on a dry shelf, where it could be found, and pulled out the sacks.

Together they filled them from the top of the basket. The keeper shouted for hands. Two men came down from the opposite steps; behind them came a girl with a shallow bread tray. They carried what they could, wading toward the rising path.

The water climbed from Renenutet’s ankles to her calves.

At the bottom of the great basket, sound grain and spoiled grain lay mixed. She could feel the living kernels, hard and whole, among those that yielded beneath her fingers. She separated them by handfuls while the keeper held a sack open.

Then a crack ran across the floor.

The basket lurched against him.

He fell backward into the water. His head struck the doorpost, and the open sack dropped from his hands.

Within the Hood

Renenutet caught the sack before it sank.

The keeper struggled onto one elbow. Blood ran from a small cut above his eye, and he blinked at it as if he could not understand why the room had gone red.

“Out,” she said.

“There is still—”

“Out.”

He found the doorpost and pulled himself upright.

Behind Renenutet, the great basket tipped farther. Its bottom had broken through the softened floor. The rim wedged across the narrow passage to the door, leaving too little space for a person carrying the last sack.

She pushed it. The wicker groaned, but the buried base held fast. Water poured through the new hole, turning the remaining grain into a pale, revolving cloud.

In a moment it would reach the open sack.

Renenutet drew herself down into her serpent body. Her coils slipped through the gap beneath the rim; her raised neck caught the sack against the doorpost, clear of the water. She pressed the rest of her length against the wicker and lifted. The trapped base tore free of the floor. She held the basket tilted against the wall, opening the passage beside it.

Now there was a way out.

But she had no hand to carry what she held.

The woman came through the doorway without the child.

She saw the spread hood and stopped so abruptly that the water struck the backs of her knees.

Renenutet could smell milk on her skin, sour river mud, the fear rising as she recognized the same creature that had driven her from the grain. The woman looked from the sack to the cobra’s mouth.

“Is it for taking?”

Renenutet lowered her hood a little.

The basket shifted. She tightened her coils around its rim. A broken reed drove beneath a scale, and the sack began to slide along her neck.

The woman stepped nearer.

“Do not strike.”

She reached between the goddess’s head and the post. Her fingers touched the sack, missed its folded edge, then found it. To lift it she had to bring her face close enough that her breath stirred against the cobra’s hood.

Renenutet held still.

The woman pulled. The sack scraped the wood and came free into her arms.

For a heartbeat she stood with all that grain against her body. No keeper barred her way. No hand could close upon her wrist.

Then she turned toward the men waiting outside.

“Help me. It will spill.”

They caught the loose corners together.

Renenutet released the basket. It rolled into the water, striking the wall hard enough to shake dust from the roof. She slipped beneath it and followed the moving feet through the door.

On the threshing ground, the rescued sacks lay in a row. The keeper was counting them, touching each one with a wet finger. Beside him, his daughter held a rag to his bleeding forehead.

The mother knelt by her child.

He had stopped crying.

Renenutet rose into woman’s form and went to him. When she touched his cheek, his mouth turned toward her finger. There was still that small seeking movement. She looked back at the keeper.

He had reached the final sack.

Slowly, he untied it.

“A handful,” he said.

The mother held out her palm, then drew it back. The memory of falling kernels seemed to remain in her fingers.

He took her hand and filled it himself.

His daughter fetched a grinding stone. Someone brought a pot, someone else an ember sheltered in a broken bowl. While the grain softened over the little fire, Renenutet spread her remaining linen in the sun. The people laid their seed upon it in a thin layer to dry.

They could not stay upon the threshing ground forever. By evening they would have to go to houses beyond the flooded lane, carrying what they could save.

The keeper knelt at the far end of the linen. He waited while she brushed the last kernels into a sack, then took the edge she held out to him.

Renenutet started a tear. He helped her pull. Others knelt to gather the dry grain into the pieces.

Near the fire, the child swallowed a little warm food. He turned his face away from the next spoonful, then opened his mouth for it.

His mother waited, holding the spoon steady.

When she finally rose to leave, a small white bundle of seed hung from her wrist. She tucked it beside her son, high against her breast, and carried them both down the path.