House of Eclipses by Casey L. Bond
1
Father’s fiery temper was as brutal and constant as the never-setting sun, as was his seething hatred of me, his third born child and the daughter of the only woman to reduce his heart to a cinder.
His dark eyes shone with wrath as he stood fuming in front of me. I wondered if he saw more than just my mother’s features when he looked upon my face. Did he see her defiance as well?
I was through watching even the priests fearfully hold him in high esteem. A murderer.
Rage exploded over him.
His face mottled, his lips trembling as he struck me.
The loud crack startled the gentle priests as the back of his hand met my lips. Their chants fell silent for a few heartbeats until their fear urged them to begin again. They raised their voices in unison, singing a particularly pleasant hymn to Sol. Urging her to turn her eye and her great, burning power upon us for a time. As stinging pain burst over my mouth and nose, I wondered what Sol truly thought of her Aten, if she might be ashamed of his actions, or if she relished my humiliation as much as he.
Tears flooded my eyes, but I cradled them tightly and refused to let them fall, begging Sol to turn them to vapor before they could spill as Father waited to see which was stronger: the pain he’d inflicted, or my will.
My will would always win our battles, and one day – one day – I vowed to win the war raging between us.
Fighting the urge to pinch my lips together to assess the damage, I kept perfectly still. Unwavering, like Sol herself. And like the goddess, I burned too.
Shoulders back, my spine straight as an arrow, I faced him. Even as the taste of blood filled my mouth, as a rivulet slowly slid down my chin and dripped onto the hot stone between my bare feet. I never blinked. Never looked away. Never shrank.
“You are so much like her,” he hissed. “And if I have my way, you will share her fate.”
He raised his hand again as if to strike me a second time. This time I braced myself mentally and physically, turning every muscle in my body, even those in my face, to stone. Like the great statue of Sol rising next to us, her great arms stretched toward the orb of light that warmed us and gave life to our people, powerful enough to cast only the smallest of shadows at her base.
Everything in me screamed to fight back, to finally defend myself, but I knew if I struck the Aten, if I so much as blocked his assault, not even Sol’s priests could save me. Their chants would flow over me as my body lay on the altar of incineration next to Joba.
Joba – Father’s eighth wife – lay on her back on a slab of glistening marble. Dead like the seven who came before her. Like my mother.
She lay in my periphery, just over Father’s shoulder. I had studied her enough in the hours since her departure from this life to know exactly how she looked.
The priests’ song was lovely and serene as they continued in their duty, trying their best to ignore, or possibly diffuse, what was transpiring between the Aten and his daughter, their seven voices raising Joba’s spirit from its home within her bones as the afternoon sun blistered her once-beautiful skin.
I wondered if she had despised looking in the mirror, for it was her beauty that caught his eye. I wondered if her soul hovered above us all, reveling in the fact that her lovely face was being destroyed.
In death, Joba looked more at peace than I’d ever seen her in life. Long, dark lashes fanned her cheeks. Her silken ebony hair shone on the pillow tucked beneath her head. One of the priests had delicately folded her hands over her stomach.
She was barely older than I am now when she was plucked from the beginning of what promised to be a beautiful life and forced into one she hated. At the time, she was betrothed to a man she loved and who loved her in return. My father was invited to attend the betrothal ceremony. He took one look at the bride-to-be and decided she was a jewel he needed to place in his treasury. He accused her intended of treason and had him put to death, right among the feast and flowers splayed to honor the happy, new wedded couple, before stealing her away as his own.
When her womb lay barren after a year and she had not produced the male heir for whom he had always longed, he found her dead in his bed – just as he had the seven wives before her. Not even the priests dared question the Aten about the marks emblazoned on her throat.
Each of Joba’s thin fingers held an intricate golden ring and layers of gilded necklaces were heaped on her unmoving chest. The cuff Father had commissioned for each of his wives was still clamped around her bicep, marking her as his even in death.
But she wasn’t his anymore, was she?
Death offered Joba a chance to get away from him, and though she lay burning, she seemed to revel in the distance between them now, a distance even the powerful Aten could not traverse.
Did I imagine the teasing smirk on her lips?
Through my blood, could he see that I wore one to match?
Droplets gathered and built, then fell from my chin.
Splash. Splash-splash. And then the sizzles of steam came as Sol took the water in my lifeblood as her own.
Father’s dark eyes narrowed before he slowly lowered his hand, as if he was still considering the second strike or something far worse. Sol’s rays glistened off his shaved head. A second later, he turned his back to me, walked to Joba, and hovered over her. He raised his hands high into the air before calling on Sol. The air vibrated with a ripple of arid, brutal heat. He brought her closer and concentrated the sweltering rays onto Joba’s body. Her blistered skin began to bubble and boil. Char marks appeared on her clavicles, on the sharp angles of her cheek bones and jaw, just before the first elegant flames appeared.
They slowly danced over her. As the priests’ cadence changed and the men rocked back and forth on their knees, all seven crying out to the goddess, the flames followed the harried, feverish rhythm and soon an inferno roared over Joba, consuming her just as Father had. She became brittle, quickly shrinking to nothing more than a nondescript heap of ash and chips of bone.
Sol accepted only the good parts of a person – their heart if it was clean, their soul if it was still made of light, their flesh and the organs that gave the body life if they were undiseased. Only that which she found unacceptable remained for us to scatter over the sand from which she formed us.
I wondered if her flames would accept any part of Father’s body when he lay dead beneath her, or if we would bury him whole – all of him lacking. All of him foul.
I wondered the same of myself.
Father did not stay to watch the priests scoop and sweep Joba’s remains into the sleek golden urn. He would not be the one to spread her ashes in the dunes. His dark eyes met mine as he started toward us, his three daughters.
Zarina, his first born, held her head high and always kept quiet in his presence. Father believed Sol would choose her as her heir. But if she was part of Sol at all, I couldn’t feel a hint of warmth from her. She was tall and lithe and beautiful enough, but Zarina was made of pure ice and was as frigid as she was aloof.
Father nodded his approval as he passed her. He then focused on Citali, who stood between Zarina and I, missing the curt bow Zarina thoughtlessly pressed.
Citali hated me almost as much as I hated her. One year my elder, she believed my mother was the reason the Aten had killed hers. Citali was a fool, always blaming the women, never our father, for the constant death in our lives.
Citali was not statuesque like Zarina. She stood almost a head shorter than me and was very thin. Her delicate features shrouded her harsh, greedy heart from most people, but I knew her best. Her eyes often screamed, even when her lips remained sealed. They were the a dark brown with hints of shadowy gray and sharp as shards of glass. They cut to me, a smile playing on her uninjured, perfectly bowed lips.
Father nodded to her and she bowed deeply, lowering herself beyond what custom required. Citali always went beyond. From instances like these when she tried desperately to capture Father’s attention, to her countless attempts to kill Zarina and me.
Always beyond…
Father paused in front of me. My gaze fell on his broad, beaded collar necklace, blue and green and gold. He tipped my chin up, snapping my jaw against my tongue. My eyes darted to his. “Since you interrupted Joba’s departure, you will be tasked with carrying her back to the sand,” he said, waiting to see if I would react.
Again, my will was stronger than his.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he took me in, his thin upper lip curling in disgust. He walked away, two of his eldest priests struggling to keep up with his anger-fueled stride. The muscles in his shoulders and back flared with every step and the hot wind blew his pleated white kilt sideways as if to push him off the temple’s flat top the way I fantasized doing.
The men disappeared when they descended the great staircase that trickled down to the stone street that led to the House of the Sun – a palace that had once been my home, a safe place where I was loved and wanted, but now was little more than a prison.
Zarina quietly trailed away, her head up and shoulders back. She followed Father’s footsteps but wisely kept her distance from him. Citali watched the remaining priests finish the task of sweeping what was left of Joba into the large, golden jar. Then one capped the jar with a lid and hefted the monstrosity as Sol’s rays reflected off its perfect, polished surface.
“Enjoy your time in the dunes, sister,” Citali taunted. “You’ll join the sand soon enough.”
I glared. “And what about you? When Zarina is chosen by Sol, what do you think will become of you, Citali? He’ll have no use for you then.”
She brushed her long, dark hair off her shoulder and crossed her arms. “Father has no reason to kill me. I never provoke him.”
“No, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps he’ll sell you to the highest bidder instead.”
She narrowed her shadowy eyes. I was right and she knew it. Father did not love his daughters. Father loved nothing but himself and the power that being the Aten afforded him.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he killed all three of us just to keep Sol from choosing one to secede him as Aten. I believed the only thing that had kept him from doing just that was that deep inside, he feared the goddess’s wrath.
Citali left me and followed Zarina, their pristine gowns rapping in the fierce wind as they made their way down the temple steps, across the paved stones and into the House. The head of Father’s guard lingered at the bottom. He fell into step with Citali with the intention of seeing my sisters home. He knew better than to wait for me to join them.
Father made it seem like the only reason I would carry Joba was because I had earned the punishment today, but there was never any question which of his daughters would be given the task of carrying Joba back to the sand. At seven, I carried my mother’s jar into the dunes, and I’d carried every jar since hers. That of his fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh wives, all dead.
All murdered by his hands.
None able – or perhaps, willing – to produce for him an heir.
Father thought giving me such a macabre chore was a punishment, but I considered it a great privilege and honor to bear the ash and bone of the women who hated him. For they were my kindred.