Excerpt from Desdemona’s Children

Scribe of the Great Priest of the Black Land of the Nile.  His family comes from a long line of prominent priest-scribes.

I am Chantress of Amen-Ra.  Also from a significant family.  We are both devoted worshippers of Isis and thus words are divine for us.  Their power more significant than instruments of war or trade, more beautiful than a lover’s face.

He is called upon in times of turmoil, crisis and death to invoke spells.  Transformation Spells for the deceased to enter the hereafter freely.  They are lyrical intonations: Spell for Going Forth Freely By Day, Spell for Breathing Air and Having Power Over the Water, Spell for Giving the Heart, Spell for Opening the Mouth.  This last one gives the the spell receiver his memory and his name.  He is respected for his potent words and the power of what he says.

I, being his constant companion and love, also witnessed the madness of these spells.  Spells coming over him that lasted for hours.  Some good and some bad.  In a good trance, he described other lands.  Fantastic lands from other places and times.  Lands not yet existing but in the dreams of Isis.  While in a bad spell he could see only revenge.  A consumption by one emotion.  A fury of words.  His demons, he called it.  He was always in remorse over these words.  That I had witnessed them through him.  Sometimes he looked at me during these spells and called me by another name.  A demon name.  Yes, he saw me as the demon torturing him.  During the Time of Confusion.  He saw farms and plantations flooded with blood.  He saw generations of shackled men and children’s bodies twisted with work.  He would look at me and not recognize me as Chantress of Amen-Ra, worshiper of Isis and the woman he adored.

The instruments that killed me would never be found, there would be no trails fo struggle.  Words can cut a person’s heart more efficiently than even a strong man’s hands.  One night I heard him calling me another name, speaking wildly as if he stood in front of a mob.  They were laughing at him, taunting him, pushing him to form a new spell.  One to eliminate me.  These voices were so filled with rage and history and hatred that they sought out the Great Scibe.

Only he could purge their tortured souls. Only his words, his spells could conjure my death.  Only his breath could annihilate mine.  Joined but not together, to be released but not free, through the hereafter we would travel.

M. Kruszewska©2001