THE LUCK CHARM

      MOTHER WENT OUT before dawn on washday to get a good place on the river, but she was not too much hurried to remind me that I must look after the house.
      "Those good-for-nothing neighbors have their eyes on my luck charm," she declared as she tore pieces off the hard dark loaf which served us for breakfast. "A lot of thieves they are, and let me tell you there is not a household in town with a charm as handsome as mine.”
      I promised faithfully to look after the luck charm.
      "Right here in the house," insisted Mother. "No playing up and down the street."
      "No, Mother."
      Old Muti from next door began to bang so hard on the partition that little pieces of dry mud broke off it and cascaded to the floor.
      "Just coming!" yelled Mother hastily, shouldering her bundle. "You keep your hands off that loaf while I am out. I know just how much food there is left." With this parting shot from the threshold, she marched firmly away.
       Father and I groped for our bread in the dark, since lamp oil was precious. We sat cross-legged, chewing slowly, while the faint gray light in the doorway grew gradually stronger. Father gave me a sip of his beer, as he always did when we were alone, but he was saving his breath for heaving on the long ropes hour after hour, and he did not speak. As soon as we could see the outlines of the doors across the street, he shuffled away, dragging his feet, as workmen do to save lifting. I finished my breakfast alone.
      The housework did not take long. I stirred up the rushes which served us for beds, made a few scratch marks on the dirt floor with a broom of twigs, and considered things tidy. I inspected the grain bin thoughtfully and studied the mud seal that fastened it. A handful of grain was something to chew on and very likely would not be missed, but I should get a terrible beating if Mother found the seal had been disturbed.
      The seal on the grain bin was hopeless. I gave it up and sauntered to the doorway in order to glance into the street. I was supposed to sweep the alley too, I remembered. Mother had been brought up in a proper house with a yard of its own and a sycamore tree to sit under. She never could get used to the melon rinds and fish heads which other people tossed out, and which usually drifted up toward our door because we lived at the end of the street, jammed right up against the wall. I picked up a couple of rotten onions and lobbed them experimentally down the road, aiming for the fifth doorway, where I knew they only had girls who were too small to interfere. Unfortunately, they landed by Sety's, and he must have known it was our washday, because he came tearing out to return the onions much faster than they had come. One squashed full on my forehead as I dodged back into the doorway, thankful I had not started my cleaning up with anything hard.
      After that it was no use trying to clear the roadway. Sety was at least two years older than I and almost big enough to go to work with his father, which I heartily wished he would do. "I'll teach you to throw your garbage down here," he was yelling. "I'll have half the fish heads in town in front of your door, and I dare you to move them." He knew perfectly well that Mother would whip me if she had to wade through a mess to get in.
      There didn't seem much use in being good any longer when things had once started to go wrong. Our gang was already out in the street, and if it had not been for Sety, I should have joined them. All the children in town had a new game which we had been playing furiously for three or four days. You marked out the ground in squares with your toe and put down a piece of broken pot. Then you hopped on one foot from each square to the next one, kicking the potsherd as you went. It was a good game because we laid bets on it, and there was a chance of winning a rope, or a colored stone, or a bit of real copper wire. The night before, Father had brought me a treasure worth a really good wager -- a broken bit of tile thrown out by the builders from Pharaoh's new palace, and painted with the picture of a duck's head as clear as could be.
      I decided to go up to the roof, taking my duck's head for company, and see from there what our gang was doing. Later, if the coast was clear, I could go down and join in the game. On second thought, I went over to the earthen chest in which our best things were kept and got out the luck charm. Someone might come in while I was on the roof, and perhaps it would be safer with me.
Mother's luck charm was a flat, wide collar sewn with tiny blue beads close together, from which a broad strip hung down the back, handsomely embroidered with holy signs in bright red. It had been handed down in Mother's family for a great many generations, and had always gone to the most beautiful child of the house. Mother, who had been one of eleven, had always expected great things from it someday, especially as it had brought her no good luck whatsoever.
      Being a little boy still, I never wore clothes, except for a short kilt on feast days; so, having nowhere else to carry the luck charm, I put it on around my neck, hanging the red signs down between my shoulders where they would watch out for devils like eyes in the back of my head. When I was grown the charm would be mine, though, to be sure, there was not much glory in that for an only child.
      By lying flat on my stomach with my head over the edge of the roof, I had a good view of the game going on in the street. Taia, standing on one leg in the second square, was wobbling a little as she looked at the potsherd, which lay just across the line of the third. This was a most difficult shot, as I very well knew, since Taia must now hop into the third square and kick into the fourth without landing with her foot on the line. Taia had her hand clutched round a bright reddish stone and was nearly in tears at the thought of losing it.
      "Come on!" said several impatient people round the circle.
      Taia bent forward to hop, but changed her mind and straightened up, wobbling more violently than before.
      "Oh, give up, Taia! " yelled Pepy, stretching out his hand impetuously. Taia immediately put her foot down and burst out howling.
      "It isn't fair! You pushed me," she whined.
      "I did not," screamed Pepy indignantly. "Hand over the stone.”
      "He did not," I shouted, wriggling half off the roof to drop a centipede on Taia's neck. Pepy had always been a good friend of mine.
      Taia gave a shriek and hurled her precious bit of stone at me with all her strength. Being only a girl, she missed completely, and in another minute Pepy had her by the hair and they were rolling over and over in the roadway. I paid her back with a bowlful of dirty water, but a good many other people got wet from that too, so that pretty soon all sorts of sticks and trash began to fly.

      I judged it wise to make for cover, and took refuge in the space between our pavilion and the wall. The pavilion was a home-made wicker erection with three sides and a roof and faced in the direction of the prevailing wind. It was hotter than an oven on days like this when the air was still, but on stifling evenings when the heat rose up from the stinking alleyway, we could usually rely on catching a breath of cool, clean air up here. Beside it and partly shading it rose the wall, twice my height even here on the roof, stretching its unbroken length from end to end of our town. On the other side, I knew, lay the houses of overseers and stewards, and all the important men whom Pharaoh had put in charge of erecting his city, for which Father was hauling up stone from the barges on the Nile.
      I took out my duck's head tile and used the sharp edge to scratch a crude sketch in the dried-mud wall of Taia screaming with a centipede draped over her neck. Presently a big piece of mud flaked off and spoiled the picture. The fact was, the town and the wall had been hastily put up to shelter the workmen. Both would be allowed to fall back into rubbish as soon as Pharaoh had completed the city he was building as a rival to Thebes. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as though there were a race between the permanent city that was rising and the temporary one that was trying to fall down. I found I could make quite a hole in the dried mud wall with my duck's head. If I could get a handhold of some sort, I might be able to look over the wall.
      I began to work on a new hole a little higher up. It might be possible to climb up, since the wall was slightly tapered. The danger was that the mud would crumble further under my weight and let me down. It was hard work chipping with the broken tile held high above my head. Two or three times I had to lie down in the shade to cool off, but I kept at it, having nothing better to do with my time. I had started by scratching very carefully, but after a little while I got wilder, until finally I lifted back my arm and thumped at the wall with all my might.
      Crack! An edge of my precious tile broke off and sang past my ear. I found to my dismay that my duck had no beak any more. I lost my temper, threw down the tile, and strolled across to the edge of the roof.
Below me the fighting seemed to be over, but the quarrel had passed into the stage of high-pitched yells of abuse. Sety was still hovering around, and I wished I had not stirred things up, or he might have lounged off to visit his favorite girl, who did not live on our street.
      I went disconsolately back to the wall and picked at it sulkily, but almost immediately I laid my hand on it, I realized a whole brick had come loose. In another minute I had it out and my hand in the hole. Inside I felt the rough edge of a stone.
      I started to caper for joy. Of course the bricks would be only a casing, inside which would be rubble and stones. It should be easy enough to get my hand around something solid while I put my foot in the lower hole and worked on another brick. I picked up the broken tile and started right away.
I had to make four more large holes before I got hold of the top of the wall, and over and over again I was forced to lie down in the shade, and even to fetch up some water to wash off the dust and the sweat. It was stifling up on the roof as the sun got higher, but perhaps that was just as well, since I had the place to myself. My breath was coming in gasps and my heart and head pounding as I finally got one hand up, then the other, and took a quick look over the wall.
      Nothing was to be seen but some bushes and a pool. There was a house, but at a distance and half concealed by trees. With a fierce scramble I hoisted myself up and faced in to the street, the blood running down my scraped knees.
      Below me the victorious party had gone back to their game. "Hey!" I called cautiously, lobbing a tiny stone to attract their attention. "Hey! Look at me!"
      Pepy swung round immediately, and his eyes positively bulged. His jaw dropped as he put his hand up over his mouth. "Ooh!" he said. "How do you dare? If you're seen, they will kill you."
      "Ooh!" chorused the rest of the admiring crowd.
      I had never made such a sensation in my life, and the triumph of it went to my head. "Dare?" I retorted loftily. "You just look at me!"
      I got to my feet, rather slowly because I seemed to be very high up and it was narrow at the top of the wall. I began to dance and throw out my arms to show how well I could balance, Jumping higher and higher as I saw how much my audience was impressed.
      "Hey!" remarked a small voice distinctly from the other side of the wall.
      My heart gave a terrible flop, and I tried to turn round in the middle of a leap to see who was below. Naturally I came down off balance. I staggered, clutched at the coping, lost my grip, and vanished from sight over the wall.

      Mother's luck charm must have been very powerful to bring me down on the top of a thick pile of rubbish that the gardeners had left. Every bit of breath was shaken from my body, but I did not even twist my arm or bruise myself worse than I had often done by falling down the stairs.

      "Hey! " said the small voice again from behind me as I was trying to sort myself out. "Why did you jump off the wall that way?"

      I blinked and looked wildly around me. I found myself lying in a small patch of ground backing up against the wall and surrounded on the other three sides by masses of shrubs covered with pinkish and purplish flowers. In a gap between two of these stood a little girl so strange and beautiful that I began making hasty signs in the air to protect myself in case she might be a demon.
      She was even smaller than I, but her skin was infinitely finer and smoother. The nails of her feet and hands had been lightly reddened, while someone had painted her lips and used a delicate shadow around her large dark eyes. The one long lock on her shaven head was not shaggy like mine, but brushed and beautifully shining. She had no clothes, but she was actually wearing rings and bracelets as grown-up women do. About her neck there hung a collar so wide that it covered her shoulders completely and hung down over her breast, flashing in glittering rows of red, gold, blue, and green. The edge of it was a border of blue lotus flowers, and below it hung the sign of Aton, Pharaoh's new god, in the shape of a great gold disc surrounded by rays, each ending in a hand stretched out in blessing.
      "W-what are you here for?" I stammered stupidly, meaning of course was she a demon of good luck or bad, but she did not take it that way. 
      "I was just listening to those children on the other side of the wall," she explained simply. "They were using all sorts of words I never heard before in my whole life." She mentioned a few.
      "Good gracious! You mustn't say those," I interrupted hastily. "Whatever would your mother say?"
      "I expect Mother would laugh," she said thoughtfully. "But then Nurse would be very angry indeed."
      "Even my mother wouldn't let me say that," I remarked. "What do you want to listen to those bad children for?"
      She sighed. "I wish I could play in the street without having grownups around."
      I took a look at her immaculate hands and clear unbruised skin, and I shook my head slowly from side to side. "You wouldn't like it,” I argued. "It's all melon rinds and stinking fish heads. You wouldn't like it at all.”
     "I never saw a real fish head," she persisted, "except alive of course. Does it smell any worse than these bushes? They make me sneeze."
      "You wouldn't like it," I repeated doggedly, at a loss to explain how we lived. "Anyway you can't possibly climb over the wall."
      "I know. We might play something here of course."
      I considered this doubtfully, while I wondered how I was ever going to get home. A garden like this would certainly have a wall all around, and I dared not risk getting caught. "What can you play?" I temporized, feeling for the moment safer by the gardener's rubbish heap than anywhere else in the grounds.
      "Well, there's this," said the little girl, diving into the bushes behind her and coming up with something in her arms. I went over to look. It was the figure of a child carved out of wood and beautifully painted, having a wig of real hair and a tiny dress with a red girdle. Its arms and legs were actually jointed so that it could sit down or stand up.
      "I never saw anything like it except in a temple," I said with awe, putting out a finger to feel its soft, dark hair.
      "Even the temple figures cannot sit down. What else will it do? Is it a god?"
      "It won't do anything else," she answered, "but we could play that we were its mother and father and that under this bush was our house."
      "I don't think that would be much fun," I said, uneasily conscious that her and my ideas of a house would not really agree. "I'll tell you what we'll do." Swiftly I drew a row of squares in the dust with my toe and looked around for a small piece of baked mud from the wall. "I'll show you just the same game that they're playing out in the street."
      The little girl jumped up and down for joy, and I allowed her a few practice shots before I settled down to explain how the thing should be done. As I had suspected, she had never hopped on one leg in her life, let alone kicked a potsherd. It was hardly even worth winning from her.
      "Let's play properly now," she said after a bit, "and lay bets like the others. If you win, you take my collar, and if I do, I must have yours."
      I put my hand hastily up to the luck charm. "You can't take that. It's Mother’s,” I said.
      "Of course I can have it," she retorted, stamping her foot. "After all, what else can you bet with?”
      Well, that was true enough when I came to think of it, and in any case I did not suppose it possible that I should be beaten by a wretched girl who had never hopped before. All the same I took my time over my turn and went through all eight squares without a single fault before I turned the little piece of brick over to her.
      She got into the second square by great good luck, and into the third by cheating a little, which I pretended I did not notice because she had her tongue out and was working so terribly hard. When she put her foot down for the second time, I thought I had better protest.
      "You're out," I said. "You had both feet on the ground."
      She turned on me angrily as though I ought not to have spoken. "All right," she said, "but I ought to have had an other chance because I'm practising. Still, you can give me your collar now."
      "But you didn't win," I cried indignantly. "I beat you easily."
      "I won all the same," she asserted. "I always win because I am Pharaoh's daughter."

      I made a sign to protect us and stood trembling. "Don't say such things," I implored her. "Pharaoh is a god, and nobody jokes about him. How dare you tell such lies in any case? Pharaoh doesn't live here."
      "He wouldn't live in a nasty little place like this with that fat woman.” she said furiously, tears gathering in her eyes.
      "All right, then, if you were his daughter, you certainly would not be here."
      She struggled for speech for a moment, swallowing rapidly and clutching the gold sign on her breast. "My father has a holy sickness," she began at last. "A god enters into him sometimes, and when this happens he cries out and falls to the ground, struggling terribly. At last when the god has mastery over him, he lies still and sees strange visions, but when he awakes from these, he is very ill."
      "Everybody knows that about Pharaoh," I remarked in skeptical tones.
      "Well then, today as we came to see the new temple my father is building, we drove by chance down the street which runs past this miserable house. Suddenly my father gave a great cry and rolled out of his chariot. My mother jumped down with a shriek, calling to our attendants, who took him up and carried him immediately inside. No one waited for me, but I went in too and saw a fat woman, smelling like these bushes only worse, who was running around screaming out orders to her servants. I did not like her at all, and nobody noticed me, so that I went out into the garden by myself. They may find me if they can."
      "They will be looking for you everywhere," I said in a terrible fright, knowing that it would be as much as my life was worth to be found with her here.
      "Let them," she said sulkily. "What do I care?" She turned away from me and began twisting a flower off the bushes. "The holy sickness frightens me," she said after a pause, and I saw her shoulders heave in a sob.
      I came up and stood behind her in silence, not quite daring to touch her. She began to sob harder, but still not very loud. "Here, take my luck charm," I said desperately, dangling it up and down in front of her face. "It is very powerful for bringing good luck in our family, and who knows what it may do for you? See the red signs to hang down your back against devils! I expect you will feel better if you will only put it on."
      She looked at the luck charm for a minute and then turned around and flung her arms about my neck. I did not venture to hold her, but stood stiff like a post, though I liked the feel of her soft cheek against my shoulder and the scent of her dark hair. "If I take your mother's luck charm," she said at last, "you must have mine." With that she lifted off the heavy collar and flung it over my head.
      There was a yell from behind as someone crashed through the bushes to grab me before I could slide out of the little girl's arms and duck away. I kicked out as best I could and bit savagely at his hand, but the fellow began cuffing me until I was dizzy, and then twisted up my arm till I screamed. He laughed at that and hit me again while he forced me through the bushes into the open space beyond.
      "A street boy, mistress," he called, "with his hands on the princess. I got to him just in time."
      A great fat woman came lumbering up the slope from the pond, her wig fallen a little sideways, and her big arms working like oars as she tried to run. Her servant held me fast for her, while she beat me about the head until my face was covered with blood from the marks of her heavy rings. "How dare you," she panted, "raise a hand to the princess. Take that! And that! It's nothing to what you'll get later. And that!"
      "Let him alone," yelled the princess in a passion, beating at the fat woman with a branch she had torn off one of the flowering bushes. The fat woman stopped hitting me for a moment to protest.
      "Why, Princess Merytaton," she exclaimed, "the boy has stolen your collar, and perhaps might have taken your life. Young villain!" She struck me again.
      "He SAVED my life!" screamed the princess frantically, “and you'll be sorry for having dangerous things in your garden."
      "What was in my garden?" asked the fat woman in puzzled tones, turning away from me to stare in astonishment at the angry little girl.
      Princess Merytaton looked around a little wildly for inspiration, and her eye fell on the tiny pond overgrown with water lilies. "A crocodile," she asserted loudly.
      "A crocodile?"
      The Princess Merytaton nodded and looked the fat woman straight in the eye. "A great big crocodile came up out of there," she said solemnly, pointing at the inoffensive little pond which even a large frog would have been ashamed of. "He was going to eat me, too, but this boy frightened him away.
      "But – “
      "You think I am telling a story, don't you?” demanded Merytaton. "Well, I can tell much better stories than that when I want to, and my mother believes them. There was a slave we had once who teased my puppy. I told my mother a story about him and made them have him killed. I expect they will kill you too if you don't do what I say."
      The fat woman crumpled completely. "Princess Merytaton," she said imploringly, "if you wish me to take this boy in and tell the wife of divine Pharaoh that he saved your life from a crocodile in my frog pond, I will certainly do it. Nevertheless, I imagine that Pharaoh's wife may suppose some god has driven me mad.”
      "Of course we won't take him in," declared the princess, shaking her head with great emphasis. "We are going to put him back over the wall, so there!"
      "But the wall is far too high."
      "There is always a place in a wall where the slaves sneak out at night," asserted the princess. "They don't like me to know, but I find out, and I don't tell as long as they do what I say. Make this fellow show us."
      The servant let go of my arms and hesitated, turning uncertainly from one to the other. "I think -- I -- I have heard -- a rumor," he stammered, rolling his eyes in an agony of fright.
      There was a shady tree by the wall in the corner, not very tall, but well grown and climbable. Above it, the slave boy asserted, I should find handholds knocked in the wall.
      "Goodbye, boy," said Merytaton as I laid my hand on the tree trunk. "I wish I could kill all these grownups and come and play with you in the street." She flung her arms about my neck once more and pressed her warm lips against my cheek. I endured it, trembling slightly, for the blood of the gods which ran in her veins is a terrible thing. With his mere nod, Pharaoh can send hundreds to death if it pleases him, and Merytaton, who was younger than I, was already familiar with these things. I went up that tree, when she released me, much faster than any tree was ever ascended before.
      "Stop!" shouted the fat woman behind me. "Come back! Throw down the princess's collar. Stop, thief!"
      "I gave it him," I heard Merytaton answer, "and I want him to keep it. I expect that I shall tell my mother you stole it, and I wonder how you will like that."
      For my part, I was clinging to the wall like a fly at that moment. When I reached the top and turned round, Merytaton was already running back to the house with the fat woman panting behind and calling out to her. The hoarse voice grew fainter and fainter with distance and breathlessness. I saw the red signs of our luck charm flapping on Merytaton's back as she ran. She disappeared behind a tree, and I turned and slid over the wall.
      It was dark when I got home, but Mother had actually lit a lamp to wait for my coming. I could see that for some reason or other she had been in tears. “You wicked boy, where is my luck charm?” she screamed, darting immediately for the corner in which she kept a useful stick. She reached across and grabbed me by the forelock, but as she did so, her eye fell on the collar, glittering even in the pale rays of our smoky lamp. She made a hoarse choking sound in her throat, let go my hair, and put her hand up to her mouth. For the first and only time I saw my mother speechless, though as a general rule she was a woman who did not lack for words. It was my father, usually so silent, who asked me, "In the name of Aton, boy, where did you find that thing?"
      My mother simply sat on the cornbin and stared at me, nor when I had told my story did she for once have any ideas. It was my father who decreed that we should take our few goods in our hands and steal down to the water. He arranged our passage in a trading vessel that was going up the water to Thebes. The captain, like all Thebans, was a worshiper of Amon who hated the new god of Pharaoh and the city being built. For this reason he asked no questions about why we fled from it. Once we were hidden in the vast city of Thebes, we felt more safe from Pharaoh's eyes. Father took a few pieces of the collar and bought us a house with a yard and a sycamore tree to sit under. He also bought slaves skilled in making clay figures such as rich men put in their tombs to be their servants in the land of the dead. From the earnings of these, he prospered moderately, so that my mother had women slaves to do her washing and grind her corn. She still went to market, however, where one day she purchased a quantity of bright blue beads, red yarn, and gold thread.
      "What this family needs is a luck charm," she said in her positive way. "We will take it to the temple when I have made it, and we will buy a big offering for Amon in return for his blessing."
      This we did, and pieces of the princess's collar still lie buried under our floor, for our good fortune continued. When I die, my children may divide them as they will. The luck charm will go to the third of my sons, who is strongest and handsomest of all.