It was either a child or a small adult. Well okay, if he suspended all disbelief and just went on empirical evidence (which was patently impossible, but he was really trying to go with the flow here), any adults he might encounter would also be small, at least smaller than those in the twenty-first century.
The figure wore a shenti as well, and nothing else. The grubby scrap of cloth was wrapped around narrow hips. Child or adult, every line in the figure’s posture shouted amazement, but at least it wasn’t running away in a panic. So far, so good.
Rune shapeshifted as he landed about twenty yards away. He paused to give the other figure time to react. He was betting it was a female child. She appeared frozen in shock. Her skin was darkened from the sun into a rich nut brown. She had a light delicate bone structure, dirty feet, and a small rounded belly under a narrow rib cage.
The child’s tangled dark hair had rich auburn glints in the sun, as if she was lit with a deep, internal fire. Her hand fell to her side, and he saw that she had long, lustrous almond-shaped dark eyes that glittered with sharp intelligence.
Recognition kicked him in the teeth. Her immature features already showed the promise of a spectacular bone structure. Her mouth hung open, the childish curve of lips hinting at the sensual beauty that was to come.
Holy shit.
“Hello darling,” he whispered, staring.
She was a breathtaking impossibility. He couldn’t be looking at the child Carling had once been, but somehow he was. Was he caught in her memories? How could that be? It all felt so real, it couldn’t be an illusion. Could it?
The girl said something in a shaky, high voice, the liquid-sounding words alien and unintelligible.
For a few moments his frozen brain refused to respond. Then, like flexing an unused muscle, his mind made sense of what she had said to him. She had spoken in a long-dead language.
“Are you Atum?”
Atum, to the ancient Egyptians, was the god of creation, the being from which all other deities came. Rune shook his head and fumbled to find the words and the concepts for a reply that this version of Carling might understand.
“No,” he said, trying with all his might to project comfort and reassurance into his voice. Whether this was reality or illusion could be discovered later. At this point it didn’t matter—gods, he just hoped the child Carling didn’t bolt and run from him. “I am something different.”
The girl pointed with a shaky hand. “But I saw you come out of the water.”
Rune turned to look where she pointed. The river wound out of sight. Atum, according to the myth, rose out of a primordial watery abyss that circled the world. When Rune had changed into his Wyr form and launched into the air, from a distance it must have appeared that he had come out of the water.
He repeated, gently, “I am not a god. I am something else.”
He did not expect her to believe him. She had just seen him fly in his gryphon form. To her, how could he be anything else? The early religions were filled with such things, as the Wyr shapeshifted and began to interact with humankind. Egypt’s pantheon of gods was especially filled with human/animal forms.
He was useless at human things, but if he had to guess, he would place this Carling at under ten years of age. Was this really what she had been like as a child, or was this a projection of her mind? Was this who she thought she had once been? Simple wonder made her intelligent eyes shine. She was so delicate, the sight of her caught at the back of his throat. She was the merest infant. She had the whole of a very long, strange, and what must have been an often difficult life ahead of her. This Carling couldn’t possibly understand any of that.
Moving slowly and easily, he crouched into a squat so he didn’t tower over her. She shivered when he moved but still she did not break and run. Such a brave baby. He cleared his throat. “What’s your name, darling?”
Darling. He used the English word. He knew of no direct equivalent in the ancient Egyptian language.
In a classic childish gesture of self-consciousness, she lifted one of her narrow shoulders toward her ear as she gave him a small smile. “Khepri,” she whispered.
Rune tumbled head over heels in love. He laughed a little breathlessly, feeling like a mule had just kicked him in the chest. “Khepri,” he repeated. If he remembered right, the word meant morning sun. “It’s a beautiful name.” He pointed in the direction of the cluster of small buildings near the river’s edge. “Does your family live there?”
She nodded. Curiosity overcame her wonder, and she dared to sidle a few steps closer. “What is your name?”
His breath caught. He willed her to trust him and come closer. “I am called Rune.”
He watched her mouth form the strange word as she tried it out silently. She would have been a quick child and would have rarely needed to be told something twice. He wondered when she would have taken on the more anglicized name of Carling, and what the reasons had been behind the change.
He gestured toward the bundle of grain and the knife. “You are harvesting.”
She looked at the bundle and heaved an aggrieved sigh. “It is hard work. I would rather fish.”