Sting of the Scorpion Read Online Free PDF Page B

fireplace with a fire smouldering in it. A piece of dark material, similar to the nomads’ tents, hung from a rock overhang. It was held in place by stones. The woman must have slept behind this rough curtain. There were cooking pots and baskets. Tethered nearby were three goats.
    “It looks like she’s lived here for a long time,” said Ramose.
    The woman made them sit down. There was a cooking pot on the fire. Something was simmering inside it—something that smelled like meat cooking. Such delicious smells had seemed unimaginable half an hour ago. The woman made bread from flour. She gave them each a gourd bowl and filled them to the brim with the goat stew. They ate ravenously.
    “It tastes wonderful,” said Hapu, gratefully.
    While they were eating, the old woman made sweet cakes with honey and dates. They ate them, still hot, with fresh goats’ milk. It was a feast.
    “I think this is all a mirage,” said Ramose, swallowing another cake. “Like the heat haze pools we saw out in the desert.”
    “Yes, but we couldn’t get near them,” said Hapu, draining his bowl of milk. “This isn’t moving away.”
    An angry miaow came from Karoya’s basket. Karoya leapt up to open it.
    “I forgot about Mery!” she said, letting the cat out. “Poor Mery, you’re hungry too, aren’t you?”
    Mery wailed miserably. The old woman jumped at the sound. Karoya put down her bowl of milk and let the cat drink. Mery purred. The old woman was puzzled by the sound. She cocked her ear to listen more closely.
    “It’s a cat,” Karoya replied. “It’s my pet.”
    The old woman had heard of cats, but thought they were imaginary beasts like griffins and camels. Ramose smiled to himself, remembering the camel. Karoya guided the woman’s hand so that it stroked Mery’s fur. The old woman’s grim little mouth broke into a smile.
    “Warm,” she said. “Soft.”
    Now that the friends had eaten their fill and were warmed by the fire, they began to relax. The old woman, speaking slowly in a half-forgotten language, told them her story.
    They discovered that her name was Jenu. When she was a young girl, her father had been the chief of a nomad tribe, just like the one they had travelled with.
    “One day we went to Kharga, an oasis so big it takes a week to walk from one end to the other,” she told them. “Egyptians were there, building their temples. They took away all the young people for slaves.” Jenu shook her head sorrowfully. “I lived for many years as a slave in the house of an Egyptian.”
    When her eyesight started to fail, her master didn’t want to feed a blind slave. She was taken to the edge of the desert and left there; told to return to her tribe. Of course, she had no idea where her people would be. She wandered for many days and was close to death when a tribe of nomads came across her. It had been a bad year in the desert and the nomads had lost many of their goats. They could not take on another mouth to feed. Instead, they brought her to the oasis, gave her some food and left her there when they moved on. If the gods will it, you will survive, they had said.
    “And the gods did will it,” said the old woman. “May they be praised forever.”
    After the food ran out, Jenu had lived on dates and frogs. Then other nomads came to the oasis and each tribe gave her a little of what they had.
    “I give them something in return,” said Jenu.
    “What?” asked Ramose. “What do you have to give?”
    She told them how, as her vision of the world had disappeared, she had discovered an inner vision was growing in its place.
    “The gods, in their wisdom, have made me an oracle,” she said. “I can read people’s futures.”
    Stories of the Oracle of the Oasis had spread among the nomads. Now, whenever they visited the oasis, they asked Jenu to look into their future.
    Ramose and his friends sat wide-eyed listening to Jenu’s story, forgetting their exhaustion.
    “Can you see everyone’s future?”