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    The Thirty Cubit Crocodile: The Memphis Cycle
    The Thirty Cubit Crocodile: The Memphis Cycle
    The Thirty Cubit Crocodile: The Memphis Cycle
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    The Thirty Cubit Crocodile: The Memphis Cycle

    By D M Wilder

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    About this ebook

    It is the time of Egypt's Middle Kingdom..  Egypt is powerful under the rule of warrior kings.  It is a time of exploration, the bright period of classical Egypt.

    Kheti, once a proud officer of chariotry under the great Pharaoh Senusret III, has returned home, not to glory but to pain and poverty.   Kheti is now a fisherman trying to eke out a living on the Nile.  Despairing and exhausted, he falls asleep in his little papyrus skiff, only to awaken when his vessel is swamped by the waves spawned by the splashdown of an immense crocodile that seems to have fallen from the sky.

    Kheti, terrified, tries to paddle for home, but the crocodile follows him and is soon living on his family's homestead and bringing in fish every day.

    Kheti's family prospers from their new member.  But the quality and number of fish is attracting attention, and there is something not quite ordinary about the huge beast.  What sort of being is he?  And why is the night sky growing increasingly dark?

    Step into the world of The Thirty Cubit Crocodile and savor the wonder and the mystery.

     

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiana Wilder
    Release dateMar 5, 2021
    ISBN9798201420147
    The Thirty Cubit Crocodile: The Memphis Cycle
    Author

    D M Wilder

    Diana Wilder was born in Philadelphia and grew up all around the United States courtesy of the United States Navy. Perhaps because of the Irish in her, she liked to weave stories for her own enjoyment about the people she met and the places she saw during her travels. She graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in ancient and medieval history and experience in journalism.   Her love of storytelling developed into a love of writing. She wrote her first novella, based on Kamehameha’s Hawaii, in middle school. She started writing novels in graduate school and has produced four novels set in New Kingdom Egypt: The City of Refuge, Mourningtide, Pharaoh’s Son and A Killing Among the Dead, all part of The Memphis Cycle.  Another volume, set after Mourningtide and prior to Pharaoh’s Son, will be published under the name Kadesh.    The heartbreak and gallantry of the American Civil war has always caught her imagination, and she served as a Docent in the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia for some years. The Safeguard arose from her research into the Georgia theater of the war.   You can read sample chapters of all these books, published and projected, can be read on her website, www.dianawilderauthor.com.

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      Book preview

      The Thirty Cubit Crocodile - D M Wilder

      PROLOGUE

      Gather at my feet and listen, O Best Beloved, and I will tell you a tale of the moon and the stars, of the black earth and the red desert, of fish in the river and rivers in the sky, all in the sweet land that is Egypt. 

      Father Nile journeys north to the Great Green Ocean, passing through the hills and mountains of Nubia, crashing through the cataracts and whirling past the fortresses of Uronarti, of Buhen, of Kumneh and Semna. 

      Fish swim within his path, birds nest beside him, the crocodile hunt within his bounds and the hippopotami roar in the night.  And man travels upon the breast of the Nile, bound north for the wide Green Ocean, or south toward the cataracts and the place of Father Nile's birth.

      Seasons turn and turn to the rhythm of the great blue river, the life-giving waters rise and fall, covering the land in the time of inundation, and receding to show the gift of Father Nile, the life-giving silt sifted from his passage, spread over the fields, bringing fertility.

      It has been thus from the dawn of time to the present day, and shall be to the end of time, unchanging.

      ...and yet, O Best Beloved, there was a time, long ago, when the order of things changed.  Draw near to me and I will tell you the tale of a man, a boat and the sky...

      CHAPTER ONE

      Kheti dragged his forearm across his face and frowned at the sweat that ran along the line of the scar trailing to his elbow.  He had brought water to drink, but hardly enough, and it was dangerous to go into the river to drink right where he was.

      He supposed it was fitting that his night's haul of fish, flopping in the bottom of his boat, should be mostly eel and tilapia, and small ones at that.  Never mind, he thought to himself, they eat well small or otherwise.  But the larger ones were more likely to be snapped up in the market, making it unnecessary for him to head home with stinking fish in his cart.

      And that was another thing.  He had been working hard and sweated, it seemed, torrents of water, and the catch was hardly worth it.  If he could have brought in that one larger Nile Perch, it might have made the night worth it, but the fish had been large and cunning, twisting this way and that, faster than his weakened muscles could match.  The line had torn through his hands and the fish escaped.

      He reminded himself that there were other fish, and he had all the night to catch them. He would head for home and perhaps receive a scolding from his wife.  It wouldn’t be the first time, though the gods knew he gave her enough to scold him about, with his daydreaming, his tendency to toy with small pieces of wood or straw, making things...toys, pretty things...

      One must live, he thought.  But must life be dreary?

      His smile faded.  It did not have to be dreary, but in fact it often was.  The fish that escaped, the way his wife smiled and spoke him fair and did not mention the want they felt so often.  And he, loved and welcomed but nevertheless unable even to land a medium sized fish that would enable him to feed his family.

      He raised his face to the stars and brushed at the unaccustomed tears on his cheeks.  I try, he said, half to himself.  And what I can do is too little to keep those I love safe and fed.  I was a man once, but now I wonder if I can even say that.  If I had the strength, I could make them happy, be the father I should be and the husband to the wife that I delight in.  The unaccustomed grief washed over him and left him unutterably weary.  Oh, ye gods, he sighed. If I have been a man of honor, if I have pleased you even a little...  Help me.

      He brushed at his eyes and drew a deep breath.  The eastern horizon seemed to shimmer, and he could feel the night's cold decreasing.  The Path of Stars glittered above him in the deep sky that paled toward the eastern horizon, growing stronger and brighter toward the west.  They seemed to ripple. 

      Does the wind move them? he wondered. 

      He straightened, pushed an eel to one side with his foot and raised his face to the stars.  Such a splendid night it had been, with cool winds blowing across him, wheeling his thoughts up and away from fishing.

      Another day, he thought. Perhaps there will be a change at last.

      It was time to turn back.  His village lay downriver from him.  While the Nile's gentle current was a wonderful pathway to the north, going against it in a small boat powered by a medium-sized man who was half the way to being a cripple, was a difficult thing to do at the end of a hard night of fishing.  He always went south and rode the current north.

      Next season, he thought, I will have enough wealth to purchase fabric for a sail, and then things will be easier.

      He looked up at the swath of stars above him.  Magnificent! he thought, stretching. 

      Time to go home.  But best gut the fish first.

      A line of fire was widening just at the horizon, sending the blackness of the night sky fading into palest blue.  The western stars blazed -

      A powerful flash of light burst upon him, throwing the world into stark shadow and highlight.  He threw his forearm across his eyes and then lowered it as darkness crashed down.

      The world tilted beneath under him under a wind that flattened his hair across his face and shoved him, stumbling, to the deck, covering his head with his arms and curled into a ball as the gale grew in strength, whistling, roaring, blowing down upon him, as though all the winds had turned against the earth.

      The skies split with a roar.  He felt a block of the night sky breaking from the firmament, splintering, tumbling– The ground shook, the Nile danced in its banks like a great, liquid snake, splashing upward in huge gouts of water, crashing up over the bank...  The world blackened around him, his bones seemed to freeze - and the sweet scent of lotus seemed to fill his being as he raised his eyes.

      A wall of water crashed over him surged back and crashed again as the wind rose higher, so thin and high and fine-drawn, raising to a roar that faded into silence.

      He remembered the moments before the fighting, holding his breath, wondering awaited him, whether death or pain or oblivion-

      His knife skittered across the deck before him - he snatched at it - three months' hard work gone if he lost it! – and caught it as the sky broke apart above him, sending him spinning into blackness...

      SILENCE.

      He struggled to his hands and knees.

      His catch of fish was swimming in the small pond that had formed in the body of the boat.  One eel curled around his ankle.  He yelled and jerked his foot away.

      The dawn light strengthened in the east.  The river was smooth again, only the soaked bank, far up beyond the levels of the inundation, showed the cataclysm that had struck.  His heart was pounding enough to split his breast.  He sank back against the deck of his boat, trembling too violently to raise his arms. 

      What had happened? He stepped out of the boat on shaking legs, tipped it to pour off the water that sloshed in the bilge- Had he been dreaming?

      That was it.  He had been dreaming.  And such a dream! He laughed - Ptah save him, it sounded so thin and forced!  - and shambled into the bottom of the boat.  He scooped up the fish and dumped them into their

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