Read The Twice Born for Free Online

thing,” Ishat pointed out complacently. “The gods will reward me.” At any other time such a statement would have earned her a reprimand from whichever adult heard it, together with a vicious pinch from Huy, but today no one disagreed.
    Huy nodded. “You can have the last bak seed pod,” he offered, and Ishat took it with all the lofty entitlement of a queen.
    The gift-giving that followed was something of an anticlimax and Ishat knew it, watching smugly as one after another of Huy’s family produced the proofs of their homage. Hapu had made his son a sennet game, painting the squares on the board himself, gilding the cones and making the spools look as though they had been fashioned out of ebony. “This is an absorbing and magical game,” he told Huy, “and you are old enough to learn how to play it. There’s a drawer under the board itself where you can keep the pieces, together with the sticks that are tossed to determine each move. They resemble fingers. That was your mother’s idea.”
    Huy thanked them dutifully. Indeed, his eye was caught by the vivid colours his father had painstakingly used, but all the time he was opening and closing the drawer experimentally and rolling the cones around on his palm he was aware of the scarab resting in the grass by his knee.
    His aunt and uncle gave him an ivory monkey with a thin copper wire protruding from the top of its head. When it was pulled, the monkey clapped its paws together with a clinking sound over its smooth, rotund belly. Ishat exclaimed at it in awe, but Huy, although he expressed his gratitude, found it a little frightening. He did not think that he wanted it sitting beside his cot in the darkness, and the stuff from which it was carved felt cold as he held it. “Ivory comes from the land of Kush, far to the south,” Heruben offered. “It is taken from an enormous animal called an elephant.”
    “Is it the bones?” Huy wanted to know. The idea was both distasteful and exciting.
    “In a way,” Ker answered for his wife. “Ivory grows out of the animal’s head, to either side of its mouth. It has a long, long nose that reaches to the ground.”
    Huy tried to imagine such a thing, and shuddered at the grotesque picture his mind had conjured. For politeness he tugged on the wire a few times and the monkey tinkled its response.
    Itu sensed his distaste. “It is one of Thoth’s baboons, clapping to help the sun to rise,” she said. Huy set it down. Beside the scarab’s iridescence it looked sickly and dull.
    Ker presented him with a small cedar box. On its lid, delicately inlaid in silver, was an image of the god of eternity, Heh, kneeling and holding in each hand the notched palm ribs that denoted millions of years. The subtle aroma of the wood filled Huy’s nostrils so that he put his face closer to it. His uncle’s ringed forefinger interposed. “See, just above the god’s head, the hieroglyphs strung between the palm ribs? That is your name, Huy. I and your aunt wish you many years of health and prosperity. If you lift the lid, you will see several small compartments. They are for the things you most want to keep safe and perhaps draw out in times to come to remind yourself of a person or an event in your past. As yet you have very little past,” he finished gently, “but when you are an old man like me, such objects will be precious to you.”
    “Thank you, Uncle Ker,” Huy said fervently. “The first thing I will put in it will be my golden scarab. Hapzefa will give me a piece of linen to rest it on.” Ishat squirmed approvingly. The other adults laughed with indulgence. Huy stared down at the three symbols that meant his name and decided to get out his paintbox in the morning and practise writing them on the door of his room. Then I will already be ahead of the other boys at school , he thought happily, and my teacher will be pleased with me .
    His aunt was yawning and his mother had sunk onto her elbow. Hapzefa hovered just out