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man’s kilt of snowy white linen of the sixth grade that had come all the way from the flax weavers’ market in holy Thebes. The linen was so fine that it clung to my admiring fingers as I handled it. “You may wear it to school,” father told him with, I thought, a tinge of sadness. “Beautiful things should be used, not laid away for special occasions. But learn to clean it properly, Pa-ari, and it will last a long time.” Pa-ari embraced our father, then stood back awkwardly.
    “I am sorry that I love words more than the soil,” he said, and I saw that his fists were clenched behind his back. Father shrugged.
    “There is no need to be,” he replied gently. “Blood will out, my son, or so they say. Your grandmother was a word-woman, and wrote and told stories. If the Good God calls me to war again I will bring back a slave to work the land.”
    “Who did she tell the stories to?” I broke in, enthralled with this unexpected revelation, but I might as well have saved my breath. Father smiled that slow, enigmatic smile of his and ruffled my hair.
    “Why, to the members of her family of course,” he said, “but do not imagine that we need to hear any stories, my Thu. Midwifery and healing are more useful skills for a woman than the ability to entertain.”
    I did not agree but dared not say so. I took Pa-ari’s kilt and held it to my face, marvelling at the tightness of its warp and woof. “It is worthy of a prince’s body,” I whispered, and my father heard me.
    “It is indeed,” he agreed, pleased, “but know, Thu, that there are five grades above this and the linen worn in the King’s house is so light that one can see the outline of limbs through it.” My mother sniffed loudly, my father laughed and kissed her, and Pa-ari snatched his prize and retired to wrap it on.
    Later, when we had swum and eaten and then wandered out behind the village to watch Ra set over the desert, he unrolled his first lesson on papyrus from its thick linen covering and spread it out on the sand for me. “It is a prayer to Wepwawet,” he told me proudly. “I think I have done it very neatly. The scribe’s pen is much easier to use than the thicker paint brushes. My teacher has promised me that soon I may be allowed to sit at his feet outside the classroom and take dictation for him. He will pay me! Think of that!”
    “Oh, Pa-ari!” I exclaimed, running my fingers over the smooth, dry surface of the paper. “How wonderful!” The letters, graceful and symmetrical, were as black as night but the light of the westering sun that flooded the surrounding desert was dyeing the papyrus the colour of blood. I rolled up his work carefully and handed it back. “You will be a great scribe,” I told him, “honest and clever. Wepwawet will have a jewel of a servant in you.”
    He grinned back at me and then lifted his face to the hot evening breeze that had sprung up. “I might be able to get you some papyrus of your own,” he said. “Once I begin to work for my teacher I will be supplied with enough to carry out my duties, and if I write very small there will be an occasional sheet left over. If not, I can perhaps buy you some. Or you can buy your own.” He lifted a handful of sand and dribbled it over his bare shins. “Doesn’t Mother sometimes share her payments with you, now that you have become so proficient at your job?”
    His question was completely innocent, yet all at once the old familiar feeling of despair rose up in me with such speed that I began to tremble, and with it came a sudden sensuous awareness of everything around me. The splendour of Ra’s glorious colour, red-orange against the churned hillocks of the endless sand; the unscented, dry wind that teased my hair away from my face and blew tiny grains from Pa-ari’s idle fingers to cling to my crumpled sheath; the sound of my brother’s quiet breathing and the rise and fall of his chest—all these things combined with a panic that made me want to