Satis

The Arrow Beneath the River

The jar came up dry.

Meret shook it, listening, then lowered it into the well again. The rope ran through her hands until the knot struck the coping. Far below, water thundered against stone.

She waited. Hauled. Turned the jar upside down.

Dust fell onto her feet.

Satis took the rope from her. Beneath the temple of Elephantine, the coming flood pressed against its hidden passage. She could feel the weight of it through the soles of her feet. Outside, the river had fallen away from the landing steps, leaving the boats tilted in the mud.

“How long?”

“Since the morning offering.” Meret showed her both palms. The rope had rubbed them raw. “I thought the jar had cracked.”

Satis lowered it once more. She felt its mouth enter the water. Felt the water turn aside.

She drew it up empty.

“Bring the four washing jars.”

Meret looked toward the shelves. “Those are for the dead.”

“Yes.”

Behind the well, Satis pressed her hand into a seam in the rock. It widened beneath her fingers. Cold air came through, smelling of wet stone and something that had lain too long in a closed room.

She bent her head beneath the lintel and went down.

The steps ended at a narrow shelf. Below it, the water stood upright.

Its dark face filled the cavern from floor to roof. Silt rolled inside it; a root turned slowly, pale as a fish belly. The whole weight of the flood should have burst through the opening at Satis’s feet. Instead, it trembled against an invisible edge.

A man lay across that opening.

His heels rested against one wall, his shoulder against the other. One hand had closed around a stone as though he had meant to throw it. An arrow passed through his chest and into the rock beneath him.

Satis knew the binding below its feathers. She had wound it herself.

Behind her, pottery clicked against pottery.

“Set them down carefully,” she said.

Meret crouched with the jars gathered against her body. She looked at the man, and one of the vessels slipped. Satis caught it before it struck the shelf.

“You know him.”

Meret nodded without taking her eyes from his face.

“He had a spear.”

Satis remembered the landing in darkness, a boat thrust sideways against the steps. Men had come out of it with blades and empty grain sacks. This one had driven a watchman against the granary door. She had loosed her arrow before he could thrust again.

She remembered her command as clearly as the release of the string.

You will go no farther.

“My father still cannot lift his arm,” Meret said.

The dead man opened his eyes.

Four Jars

He saw Satis and tried to rise. The arrow held him. His heels scraped the wall, and the water behind him bulged forward.

Meret scrambled back against the steps.

“Stay there,” Satis told her.

“I have stayed,” the man said.

His voice came from the wound as well as his mouth. Satis heard the same words a moment apart.

She knelt beside him and reached for the arrow. He struck at her wrist with his free hand.

“You put it there.”

“I know.”

“Then leave it.”

His fingers were cold. She loosened them from her wrist, one at a time, and took the first jar.

She poured over his feet. The water washed away the mud, gathered beneath his knees, and stopped. A dry line formed across his body at the arrow shaft. Every drop approaching it slid backward.

Satis poured from the second jar over his head. Water ran through his hair and down his neck. At the wound it divided, streaming around his ribs without touching the blood.

The man laughed. It was a small, damaged sound.

“Even now.”

Satis laid her palm against the dry place. Beneath it she felt the instant of her shot: the lifted spear, the watchman’s shoulder against the door, the narrow space through which her arrow had flown. It remained there, complete and unending. Each time the dead man tried to pass, that instant struck him again.

She withdrew her hand.

Meret had come down two steps. “Can you move him?”

“Not while the arrow holds.”

“Then break it.”

The shelf shuddered. A pebble jumped beside the empty jars and fell into the opening. Satis heard no splash.

She looked along the shaft. Its bronze head was buried under the man, beyond the reach of her fingers. The feathers lay close against his breast. There was room for a clean shot through the binding.

“Go up.”

Meret climbed. Satis stood, drew her bow, and aimed.

The man watched her.

“Again?”

She released.

The second arrow cut the first shaft in two.

For one breath, nothing moved. Then the broken length drove inward. The man arched against it, the stone beneath him cracked, and a jet of water struck the steps where Meret had been standing.

Satis dropped her bow and caught the girl’s ankle as she slid.

The third jar fell from the shelf. It burst against the rock. Its water vanished into the black opening.

Meret clawed for a handhold. Satis lifted her onto the upper step and held her there until her feet found purchase.

Below them, the dead man had stopped struggling.

The broken arrow still held him. Now its head had wedged the cracked stone more tightly across the passage. Water forced its way around the edges in thin, cutting streams.

Meret’s teeth knocked together.

“I told you to break it.”

“I chose the shot.”

Satis put the last jar into her hands.

“Keep this.”

The Farther Shore

The opening was too narrow for Satis to reach beneath the man while he lay across it. She would have to turn him. To turn him, she would have to move the arrowhead.

She went down into the spray, retrieved her bow from the water at her feet, and laid it across the shelf, within reach.

The man followed it with his eyes.

“I will not shoot you again,” she said.

“You have only had to do it once.”

Satis put her fingers beneath his shoulder. When she lifted, the cavern answered with the creak of stone. Somewhere above them, a heavy object toppled in the temple.

She had guarded this passage before there were stairs above it, before anyone had brought her flowers or called her lady of the island. She knew where the waters should go. She knew the banks they would soften, the channels they would fill. Here they were, crushing themselves against the order she had given one man.

She eased him down.

“You came to the granary with a spear.”

“With empty sacks.”

“You struck the man at the door.”

“He would not open it.”

Meret made a sound on the steps. The dead man turned his head toward her.

“He had daughters,” Satis said.

“So did the men in my boat.”

“That did not make his body yours to pierce.”

He looked away. The hand around the stone loosened, then closed again.

Satis waited. Water lashed her back. She could have told him what to say, but she had given enough commands in this narrow place.

At last he opened his hand. The stone rolled against her knee.

“No,” he said.

Meret pressed the jar against her chest.

Satis bent until her mouth was close to the broken shaft.

“The door is behind you. The spear is gone. My watch over that moment is ended.”

The man drew a breath he did not need.

For the first time, the arrow moved beneath her hand.

She rolled him toward her. Water leapt into the space beneath his shoulder, hard enough to knock her elbow against the wall. Her fingers found the bronze point protruding from the cracked stone.

She pulled.

The barb caught. There was no room to turn it, no room to bring her other hand beneath him. Above, Meret cried out as the steps shifted.

Satis tightened her grip and drove her palm farther over the point.

Bronze entered flesh. She felt the barb pass through, felt its edge come free beyond the heel of her hand. Now she could close her fingers behind it.

She drew the arrow through.

The stone tipped. Satis thrust her foot against it, holding the outlet open while the first rush of water struck her legs. The dead man rolled onto his side. His wound remained, dark and uncovered, but the air no longer repeated his voice.

“Meret.”

The girl was looking at the open wound in the man who had speared her father. She held the fourth jar so tightly that her fingertips had whitened.

“I cannot make him innocent,” Satis said. “Bring the water.”

Meret came down one step. Then another.

The man looked up at her. Without the arrow holding his chest, he seemed smaller.

“I struck him,” he said.

“I know.”

She knelt beyond his reach and tipped the jar.

Water entered the wound. It darkened the dried blood, ran across his breast, and passed beneath him into the opening.

His hand lifted toward the stream. For a moment his fingers were visible through it. Then Satis could see the stone through his fingers too.

He was gone before the jar emptied.

Satis let the wedged stone fall and caught Meret around the waist. The flood took the opening with a roar. They climbed through spray and falling grit, the girl still carrying the jar, the goddess keeping her pierced hand clear of the rock.

At the top, daylight lay across the well. Satis set the broken arrowhead on the coping and went back as far as the upper shelf for her bow.

From outside came a shout. Another answered it down by the landing. The tilted boats were lifting off the mud.

Meret set the washing jar on its shelf. Three spaces stood empty beside it.

“I will bring new ones,” she said.

She took the household pitcher and went to the well. This time, when she hauled it up, water spilled over the rim and soaked the front of her dress.

She laughed once, in surprise. Then she lifted it carefully.

“My father will want to see the boats.”

Satis watched her go through the doorway. The girl did not look back toward the steps.

On the coping lay the bent arrowhead. Satis picked it up and put it beside her bow. She tore a strip from the clean linen kept for the washing jars and began to bind her hand, leaving her fingers free.