I completed this 6,866-word story a couple of months ago. I was originally going to publish it, but since I couldn't find an appropriate venue, I decided to share it with this community instead. I will post no more than two scenes per part.
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.
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