The Redemption of Buikhu (short story)

[Kahotep]

I wrote this short story a couple of months ago. I was originally going to publish it, but since I couldn't find an appropriate magazine, I decided to share it with this community instead. The whole story has been finished, but since it's over 6,800 words long, I'm going to break it up so that each post has no more than two scenes in it.

***

Egypt, 4000 BC

Although bright morning sunlight poured through the entrance of Buikhu’s mud hut, he still lay asleep on his cowhide mat. The reason why was that the boy, who had seen twelve rainy seasons since his birth, had exhausted himself dancing and chanting his clan’s songs along with the other boys in his age set the previous night. That night, according to the tradition of his people, was to be his last as a child.

“Buikhu! Wake up!” his father Kemnebi whispered in a scolding tone while pushing the boy’s body back and forth. “The morning of your test has come!”

After being rocked for enough times, Buikhu finally opened his dark eyes and yawned. “Can you let me sleep for one more moment, father?”

“No! We are already almost late. Get up now!” Kemnebi yanked his son’s arm up until the child was on his feet and then led him out of the hut into the daylight.

Buikhu was of medium height for a boy of his age. Like most of his people, he had a lean figure, with long limbs and dark mahogany brown skin. The black braided sidelock he had worn for most of his life, a symbol of childhood, had been shaved off, leaving his scalp completely bare. Unlike his father, who donned a loincloth cut from tanned gazelle hide, he wore no clothing at all.

Kemnebi led his son across the village of Nekhen until they reached its central dirt plaza, where all the other boys in Buikhu’s age set stood in a straight row. Also present was Mhotep, the village’s wab sekhmet or healer, a middle-aged man with a shaven scalp and a leopard’s skin draped around his torso. Buikhu spotted in the wab’s right hand a flint knife, the sight of which sped up his heartbeat. He remembered exactly what the knife would be used for this morning.

After Buikhu joined the line of boys, Mhotep began, “Today marks a major turning point in your lives, young ones. Today your boyhoods shall all be cut away and you will become men. Now promise me that you will not scream or flinch during your cutting. Show me that you are ready for manhood! Now, let us begin with this boy who had just joined us.”

The wab was facing Buikhu when he said that. The boy’s heartbeat accelerated even more and his back chilled. His test was less than moments away! He looked around as if searching for an escape route, but his conscience told him to stay put lest he shame himself. He had no choice but to undergo the cutting.

“What is your name?” Mhotep asked the boy.

“B-buikhu, of the Mesha clan,” the child said after a quick hesitation.

“And what is the name of your father?”

“Kemnebi.”

“And what was the name of his father?” On this the wab grabbed a hold of Buikhu’s penis and lowered his knife towards it. The mere feeling of Mhotep’s hand on his organ made Buikhu tremble.

“Uh…my father’s father was Senbi.”

“Good. And who was Senbi’s father?” Now Mhotep was rapidly rubbing his blade’s edge against the boy’s foreskin. After enough sawing motion, Buikhu was struck by the sharpest, most intense pain he had ever felt in his life. He knew that he had been told to be silent, but the pain was so maddening…

“DJER!” he shrieked so shrilly that it almost sounded like it would have come from a girl’s mouth.

There was silence. Blood dripped from where Buikhu’s foreskin had been. Looking around, he noticed that everyone else was staring at him. The other boys were grinning, as if ready to burst out in laughter, but the wab was frowning with disapproval. So was his father, except his glare was even sharper and heart-piercing.

“That will be enough,” Mhotep said. “Now on to the next boy.”

And so the wab proceeded to circumcise the rest of Buikhu’s age set, with each of the boys reciting the names of his ancestors during the procedure. A couple of other boys screamed just like Buikhu had, but most did not. That made him feel even worse. Had all the boys reacted to their cutting the way he did, he would have thought himself normal, but instead their stoicism contrasted sharply with his lack thereof.

Once every boy had been cut, Buikhu turned to face his father. “Father, I am---”

“You screamed like a girl,” Kemnebi said. “You have shamed our family with your cowardice. Now you will never be considered a man.”

Until then, the boy had thought the circumcision he had just undergone had been the most intense pain he had ever suffered. Now even that paled in comparison to what he felt right now inside.

***

After a few days’ passing, the summer rains arrived. They swelled the Nile River until it submerged the papyrus-lined floodplain which Nekhen bordered, and they changed the grass of the savanna beyond from golden yellow to green. This signaled the people of Nekhen to leave their village and the floodplain farms they tended during the winter for the plains to the west, bringing with them the herds of long-horned cattle that were their main economic assets.

Buikhu was used to these seasonal migrations between the savanna and the village, but he had once looked forward to this summer more than most. He had anticipated that, as a newly initiated man, he would no longer just watch and milk his family’s herd of four cattle while his father went out hunting with the other men. Instead his father would bring him along and teach him how to hunt. Alas, that was possibly never to happen. Having declared his son a coward, Kemnebi refused to entrust the boy with any weapon or let him leave their summer camp of thatched hovels, so Buikhu was stuck with his usual responsibilities.

In previous summers, Buikhu didn’t mind his duties so much, as he understood their importance. But now, as he watched his cattle drink from the waterhole near which his people had set up camp, he fumed with resentment.

“Why aren’t you hunting with the other men, Buikhu?” he heard a boy two years his junior ask. Buikhu recognized the child as the son of Khenti, the nsu---rainmaker king---of Nekhen, but that did not make him feel the slightest bit deferent.

“You ought to know why, Sokkwi,” Buikhu grumbled.

“You’re afraid to tell me, aren’t you? Coward!”

At first Buikhu silently told himself to not mind that taunt, but then he felt something soft splat onto his back. Jerking his head around, he saw that Sokkwi’s throwing arm was coated with cow dung. A little flame of anger flickered inside the older boy’s head, but listening to his conscience, he did not show a reaction.

“So you’re just going to stand there and let me throw dung at you? Coward!” Sokkwi said. He continued to pelt Buikhu until the pile ran out, but still his attacks were ignored. Then, with a wicked grin on his face, he picked up a small rock and chucked it in the same direction.

Buikhu yelled in pain when the stone smashed into his spine, and then his flame of anger blossomed into a full-blown wildfire. Grabbing a large stick, he spun around and lunged after the puny brat.

“You’ll have your skull smashed in when I’m done with you!” he roared, brandishing the stick.

“Bet you can’t catch me!” Sokkwi replied as he dashed away.
Buikhu left his herd behind as he raced after his tormentor across the savanna. His rage continued to burn and was intensified by frustration, for Sokkwi proved to be incredibly swift for a ten-year-old. He was definitely going to carry out his threat if he ever caught up with the evil little demon.

The two boys had run quite far from their waterhole when a yellow shape flashed out of the bushes with a roar. Freezing in terror, Buikhu saw that it was a leopard! Immediately he reversed direction and sprinted away with his heart beating frantically. Then he heard the shrill scream of a child followed by choking sounds. He looked back and saw that the big cat had Sokkwi by his blood-soaked neck.

For all the violence that he had wanted to inflict upon the younger boy moments earlier, Buikhu did not feel the least bit delighted that Sokkwi had just been killed. Instead he was horrified beyond belief and also burdened with guilt. How on earth was he going to explain to the nsu that his son had been driven into the wilderness and killed? And how would the whole of Nekhen react to the loss of their future rainmaker?

As if these thoughts weren’t enough to make the boy miserable, he was to find something to add to his woes once he ran back to the waterhole. There, he discovered that all four of his family’s cattle were nowhere to be seen. Apparently they had run away in his absence.

Buikhu muttered to himself, “Great! My day has now been ruined even more than it was before!”

Actually, he knew that what was ruined was not merely one day, but possibly the rest of his life. Although people in his culture ate beef only during certain religious ceremonies, to them cattle were the living incarnations of wealth that could be traded like money. To lose an entire herd meant instant poverty for anyone from Buikhu’s race.
Buikhu had gotten the nsu’s son killed and lost his family’s whole wealth. His guilt was now even more painful than his father’s calling him a coward.

[A Nerd]

Very good! Will you provide more? I would love to read more! I would love to see what becomes of the lad you write about! :)

[Kahotep]

Thanks!

***
The sun was sinking behind the acacia trees of the western savanna when the men of Nekhen returned to the camp from hunting, bringing with them some hartebeest carcasses. Buikhu, who stood by the campfire, had a knot in this throat and trembled with dread, but he knew what he had to tell everyone.

“Is something bothering you, my son?” Kemnebi asked Buikhu when he saw the fearful expression on the boy’s face.

“Two really terrible things happened today,” Buikhu finally admitted. “Sokkwi has been killed by a leopard and our cattle have run away.”

Everyone in the camp gasped.

“My son is dead?” the nsu, a towering middle-aged man who donned a tall white crown, exclaimed with shock. “How did the leopard catch him?”

“Well…I…got angry with Sokkwi and chased him into the wilds. The cattle abandoned us while we were gone.”
The faces of both the nsu and Buikhu’s father were hideously distorted by anger.

“You little fool!” the nsu roared like a lion. “You got my beloved son killed and you have denied the next generation their nsu!”

“And you left our herd leave us!” Kemnebi added. “Because you could not control your temper, our family is now poorer than sand!”

“But Sokkwi was pelting dung and rocks at me!”

“My son would never do that!” the nsu said. “But even if he were, you did not have to chase him. You could have reported him to one of the women. Instead your wrathfulness has doomed not only your family but all of Nekhen! What do you have to say for yourself?”

Tears cascaded from Buikhu’s eyes down his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause such grief.”

“Sorry is not good enough, boy. I cannot let someone as destructive as you live among us. I have no choice but to have you…exiled!”

No…the nsu could not have just said that...this all had to be some horrible nightmare…but it wasn’t. Buikhu looked at his father, hoping that he would defend his son. Yet not even the slightest hint of mercy appeared on Kemnebi’s face.

“I concur with his decision,” he said. “You are no longer my son…coward.”

That tore the boy’s already injured heart into tiny, bloody shreds. After staring at his father with both incredulity and overpowering sadness, he disappeared from the camp into the black depths of the wilderness.

***

Only the pale light of a waning moon, reflected on grass blades and acacia leaves, allowed Buikhu to see anything. Although it was balmy and humid that night, the exiled child felt cold with fear. Nighttime was when the savanna’s many predators were most active, he knew, and they could conceivably be hiding anywhere in the pervasive shadows. His awareness of how dangerous this time was grew even more when he suddenly heard the eerie whooping cries of spotted hyenas.

His heart pounding furiously, the boy jerked his head side to side in search of something he could use as a weapon lest the hyenas find and attack him. He finally found a long stick with a sharp point and held it as if it were a spear. He clutched it tightly and mentally prayed to Heru, Nekhen’s patron deity, that the hyenas would never find him. Then he heard more whooping, this time along with the bleat of some dying antelope, and then the ripping of flesh and the crunching of bones. The hyenas had made a kill! Buikhu was relieved that he was not on the menu tonight, but at the same time his neck hairs prickled when he listened to the meat-eaters’ feasting.

People often likened the hyenas’ whooping to human laughter, and after listening to it for a while, the youth could understand why. It did sound vaguely like cruel cackling. In fact, it painfully reminded Buikhu of the jeering about his cowardice that he had suffered from Sokkwi and the other Nekhen boys since his circumcision. No, not more memories of how his people had rejected him!

Buikhu scrammed away until he could no longer hear the hyenas and then burst into tears again. He would not survive more than a few days out here, he was certain, and he would spend the rest of those days haunted by what he had left behind. He cried himself to sleep.

[A Nerd]

[Kahotep]

The boy was pleasantly surprised to wake up alive to a rosy-hued dawn. How he had managed to avoid being eaten by some nocturnal carnivore, he didn’t know. Perhaps Heru had taken pity on him and somehow protected him.

But there was little time to wonder about his miraculous survival, for Buikhu’s thoughts turned to food. His stomach felt hollow inside and grumbled. The child scanned the surrounding savanna, hoping to chance upon fruit or dead animals he could scavenge. Eventually he spied a shrub which had bright red berries hanging from its branches. To see those berries made his mouth melt. Nothing could be better to eat in the wilderness than sweet, juicy berries.

Wait---what if these berries turned out to be poisonous? Upon considering that possibility, Buikhu realized how little prepared he actually was for living alone in the wilderness. He had no idea how to tell which fruits were safe and which were not! If only his mother had taught him that knowledge…

Then again, he was probably going to die out here anyway. Maybe it would be better to get his death over with than suffer more misery. Buikhu decided to pluck the berries off the bush and stuff them into his mouth. He had to admit that they tasted every bit as delicious as he had hoped earlier, certainly more delicious then something he would expect to be lethally poisonous. Still, he waited a few moments in anticipation of his death. That never came.

He sighed in relief and continued to consume more berries. He had just changed his mind about whether or not he wanted death; life just had too many pleasures, however small, to be worth losing.

A branch snapped. Grass rustled. Again Buikhu felt cold inside and his heart rate sped up. Something was lurking out there.

Then there was silence. The boy surveyed his vicinity and saw nothing. Apparently he was just hearing things. Shrugging, he resumed his breakfast.

When he finally felt like he had eaten enough, the child turned around to face, to his shock, the tawny-furred face of a lion. Its golden eyes bored into his, sending him vibrating with horror. Then the large feline opened its jaws, releasing a putrid stench of rotten meat and exposing a pair of five-inch fangs. It was ready to eat him.

Buikhu fled screaming through the grass. However, the lion’s muscular legs pushed it closer and closer to its quarry until it was almost a leap away. The boy realized in a short time that he had no hope of outrunning the beast, so he twirled around, picked up a long staff-like stick, and swatted it at the lion. With one swipe of its paws, the cat broke Buikhu’s weapon into half. The predator had done that with so much force that the youth recoiled with a groan.

So the stick method wasn’t going to work---what choice did the boy have now? None that he could think of, for terror completely scrambled his thought processes. Only by lucky dodges was he able to avoid the lion’s wrath. Even then, he was tiring and his muscles were getting sore…

The lion opened its mouth again, but a roar did not come out. Instead there was a piercing warlike cry that sounded almost human. Wait, it was human!

Three dark figures ran from some nearby bushes towards the lion. Although they moved with enough speed to be blurs, Buikhu could tell that they were men armed with spears. These warriors placed themselves between him and the lion and thrust their weapons back and forth at the latter. Initially the lion stepped backward to avoid the spearheads, but then it jumped and pounced onto the middle man, pinning him down. The cat’s antagonist used his spear’s shaft to block its fangs from his neck while its claws slashed across his chest, spilling scarlet fluid.

Another of the men helped his friend by penetrating the lion’s back with his spear. That killed the feline at last. Buikhu stared in disbelief at the trio who had just saved his life.

“Thanks,” he said after a moment of speechlessness.
“Wait, your accent---you are of Nekhen!” one of the men responded, aiming his spear’s point at the boy and wearing a wary expression on his face.

Buikhu recognized the man’s accent too; it was the accent of the people from Abedju, a village that lay to the north of Nekhen. His gratitude faded into apprehension, for he recalled that Abedju and Nekhen were chronic enemies that always fought each other and rustled each other’s cattle.

“We should have left you to be eaten,” the Abedjuan continued, “Instead we will have to kill you ourselves!”

“Restrain yourself, Merti!” his wounded companion groaned after he scrambled back up, “This youth looks no older than one who had just been circumcised. He is harmless.”

“But if we spare him, he could report our presence to the rest of the Nekhenians.”

“Actually, I have been exiled,” Buikhu interjected, “My people want nothing more to do with me.”

“Is that so?” the third Abedjuan asked. “Then we have nothing to fear from you. I am Wakare, and these are my hunting partners Merti and Imenjui. Since you clearly cannot survive all by yourself here, would you like us to take you back to our camp?”

The boy did not say anything for a while. Wakare was right that he was poorly suited to a solitary life on the savanna, but he couldn’t help but mistrust the people who were his own people’s enemies. By joining their ranks, he would betray Nekhen.

But then, was Nekhen really worth his loyalty? They were the ones who declared him a coward and exiled him. People who had torn his insides apart as savagely as they had might as well have been his real enemies.

“Yes,” he said at last.

***

Buikhu clung closely to the Abedjuan hunters as they traveled northward across the grassland. Wakare and Merti carried the lion carcass on their shoulders while Buikhu and the injured Imenjui followed. Although he was glad to be in human company once more, the Nekhenian boy began to wonder whether the people of Abedju would really be more accepting of him than his own village. Didn’t they undergo circumcisions to test their manhood too?

“Wakare, there is something I must admit,” he said. “When I had my cutting before this rain, I screamed like a girl. I was called a coward by the other people of Nekhen for that. Do Abedjuans consider boys who scream to be cowards too?”

“It does reflect poorly on you for a while,” Wakare answered. “But that should not mean you are doomed to a life of shame. You always have the chance to redeem yourself and prove your true worth.”

“Will the Abedjuans give me that chance?”

“I’ll see to it that they will. Rest assured that you will not suffer the name of a coward with us.”

The morning faded to noon and then to dusk. Buikhu was led into a small, shallow valley where the little thatched structures of the Abedjuan camp stood. When he entered the camp, he was greeted by curious stares and gossiping from the locals. To be at the center of so much attention made him shudder with nervousness.

“Who is this strange boy you have brought here?” a white-crowned man who was without doubt the nsu of Abedju asked suspiciously.

“He is from Nekhen, but he has been exiled,” Wakare replied. “We rescued him from this lion.”
“Why was he exiled?”

Buikhu narrated his story to the nsu, whose facial expression then melted from wary to sympathetic.

“I am very sorry to hear that,” the nsu said. “If you speak the truth, you seem to have been very unlucky yesterday. Please accept the people of Abedju’s hospitality.”

“Thank you, O Beloved of the Gods,” the boy said back. “But I must ask one more thing: will I have to watch and milk the cattle like boys do, or can I participate in the activities of men?”

“We will give you the chance to redeem your name and prove yourself a man. But know that if you do not, you will receive the same treatment from us that you received at the hands of your people. Understand?”

The former Nekhenian nodded with a smile. His spirits flew higher than they had since last night. No longer would he be the coward of Nekhen, he was certain of that. He would create a whole new name for himself and earn the respect he had always wanted. When he went to sleep that night, he dreamed of the new life he would begin the next morning.

[A Nerd]

I am enjoying it! It's getting more engrosing as well! :)