A Call for Dialogue

I have worked out how the novel will end. As I’ve written some themes have emerged which I did not except. This was always a novel about political turmoil, but it has certainly been influenced by the political outcomes of this week. Other themes are just part of the normal process of sitting down to craft a story. I did not plan on exactly how Thutmose would relate to his siblings or how Ahtinanum would be brought into the plot to make Thutmose pharaoh. I also did not expect my priestess to be the one who was cynical about religion. Perhaps it is cliché and maybe I am bringing impacted a bit by The Last Days of Pompeii. Whatever the case, I’ve written it so she is now. There’s no time to go backwards in NaNoWriMo.

Eloy, my friend and the head honcho over at Third Eye Games, has taken up the November challenge for the first time this year. He’s writing a screen play. He mentioned the other day that a screen play is so much more about dialogue then other writing. That has been in my mind, and I have noticed I don’t put a lot of dialogue into my NaNoWriMos. I like description of places, actions and feelings but I rarely make my characters interact. I guess that’s a blind spot for me an introvert, or it’s just weakness as writer I need to work on. Anyway, I wrote some dialogue I’m pretty happy with today. Here you go.

Thutmose sat on the low wall of the courtyard where he had just completed his vigorous morning routine. He had run the length of the yard several times, lifted the stones, pushed his body up from the ground by his arms and several other exercises he had learned. He had worked himself until he could not work any more and now he sat on the wall exhausted. He relished this quiet moment. As he sat in the morning sun feeling the sweat on his back dry and skin of his face begin to finally cool he had no thoughts. He had outrun everything. He was not thinking about the clouds he had left behind nor was he thinking about the monumental project which lay before him. He was thinking about nothing for a few silent, quiet moments.

Then the world he could never outrun for long caught up to him and he heard the rustle of fabric and the hiss of a sandal on sand. He did not look up. Let this fragment of the world outside his resting mind speak first. In the darkness behind his closed eyelids Thutmose could not miss the sounds of someone sitting beside him. An older person who eased down onto the wall with a grunt of old age exertion. The one to intrude on his space did not speak. Thutmose could almost feel the shape and face of the person in his mind’s eye, but identity of the figure still escaped him. Still they both waited.

“Thutmose, my son...” It was Shamenkmet. “Tell me what troubles you.”

“Do you not know?” Thutmose’s voice was almost a whisper.

“I know many troubling things,” the wise old man admitted. “You must be the one to speak it.”

“My father...”

“You haven’t seen your father in years. Your relationship never had gave you life. His imminent death does not trouble you now.”

“I do not know if I will be able to uncover the body of the sphinx.”

“Closer. You are worried about your project. Speak the truth of it.”

Thutmose sat up straight and looked into the face of his teacher, healer and guide. The man’s face was serene, as always. His thin lips curved into a subtle smile and his eyes flashed and danced like fish rising to the surface of the pond of his face. His clean-shaven head was covered by a hood made of part of the long wrap of cloth he wore as his only outer garment. He had pulled his feet up under himself. He looked almost like a chunk of rock broken in a odd way and laying at an odd angle such as one could find below cliff faces in the southern desert. Old and darkened by the desert patina in places and bright white along the newly broken edges. Shamenkmet’s fish eyes kept roiling in his patina face and kept begging Thutmose for an answer. He knew he could not keep a secret from this man.

Thutmose leaned closer to this teacher and he felt small and helpless like a child caught filtching honey from the family supply. “I did not speak with honesty upon the matter of Khepri’s statue.”

“You lied?” There was no value judgement in the words. It was simply an observation.

“I lied.”

Shamenkmet nodded with satisfaction. He snaked a thin arm tipped with long fingers out of his wrappings and gripped Thutmose’s bowed head. He pulled the younger man forward forcefully and Thutmose let his head be dragged. Shamenkmet held their foreheads together and looked awkwardly up and forward into Thutmose’s eyes. “Remember, my son, commitment to truth is the highest ideal.” His voice hissed, “The highest!” Thutmose winced and the disgust in his master’s voice. Shamenkmet returned to a whisper. “Maat will weigh your heart someday. Do not weigh it down.” He released the younger man from his grip and caressed the the side of his student’s face as his hand slid away.

Thutmose felt emotion pull at him like carrion birds picked at a corpse. He had been slain with simple words. He pushed the image from his mind. Part of him knew it would not change what his teacher had said but he mumbled, “I acted on an opportunity to serve Khepri.”

“You choose the easy path.”

“I did. How else could I have achieved my commission so quickly?”

“Legacies are not built quickly of inferior products. Do you want to erect a house of dry reeds or a temple of stone?”

Thutmose could not answer. Each of Shamenkmet’s statements came quickly like a series of blows in a melee. He knew where to strike and he delivered crushing damage. Thutmose again saw himself as a corpse being feasted upon by vultures. This time he rested with the image for a moment. His sick father, the false hope he had given him, the chance arrival at the same time as his two brothers. It has seemed like a perfect conjunction of events. If he was Khepri, the light of the morning sun, as he felt and as Amenemhat had said, he should have acted more carefully and more precisely. The dawn came at the perfect time, but its influence was soft and gentle. It was full of promise but not yet full of power. He had done wrong and acted against the request of the god who had spoken to him.

Thutmose looked back into Shamenkmet’s face and he was there, as serene as ever watching his pupil work out the impacts of his actions for himself. Thutmose reached out and said, “Father, please forgive...”

Shamenkmet cut him off with an upraised hand. “Do not ask my forgiveness. You are yet a pupil. You are to err and I am to correct you. You must ask forgiveness of those you have offended. Pharaoh and the god who asked you for protection.”

Thutmose nodded. Then questions came to him. “How do you know I saw a god in a dream? How did you know I lied?”

“I attend upon The Living Image of Horus from time to time. I was there when you spoke with your father and I could read on your face your lie.” Thutmose said nothing, he looked across the court yard. For a moment he did not see the white limestone walls and the palace the and flag stones of the court. He saw again the desert. The desolate landscape. His teacher’s voice reached him through the emptiness like a voice on the wind. “Even if you had not retold the dream yourself, I saw it in your face when you first entered the room. You have seen a god. That vision is part of you now. It has changed you.”

Right now my word count is 19,129 words.
By now I should have 18,337 words.