Hieroglyphics

by Karen Walker

My mallet meets my chisel and makes an F, a glyph of a horned viper.

It’s bold, crisp. Fine work.

But—Gods!—there’s no F in Ramesses, the great name I’m carving on the temple wall.

I gasp. Tremble. I hurl the tools and fling a pouch of smoothing sand from my belt.

How has this happened? What am I to do?

There’s an F in fedet—the sweat dripping from my brow and my elbows—and another in etaf, father.

Mine was sharp, his face like a wedge. If he were here, his voice would cut deep. Careless son! he’d shout. Oh, the shame—your error on the Pharaoh's monument forever!

Some thought Mother weak wood compared to Father’s stone. Her head looked pegged on her thin, worn body. But she was relentless, pounding that I held our family’s fortune in my skilled hands. You are destined for more than herding goats.

There’s a beautiful F in the name of Nefer, my wife. She’s the sand rubbing the glyphs free of edges, whispering at night: Let me smooth your troubles. The chisel called her as common as dust, as shifty as a dune. Told me she was unimportant to my craft. The mallet feared she was a viper.

Sand pours from the pouch at my feet. I scoop a handful, praise it, and fill the F. The mallet and chisel desert me, hiding in the reeds nearby. I seize them and begin anew, carving an R—a glyph of Ra shining above me—for King Ramesses.

About the author

Karen Walker writes flash fiction in a basement in Ontario, Canada. Her work has appeared in Reflex Fiction, Retreat West, Sunspot Lit, Defenestration, Funny Pearls, Unstamatic, The Disappointed Housewife, City.River.Tree., Bandit Fiction, and Sledgehammer. Long long ago, she studied Egyptology.

About the illustration

The illustration is a cartouche of Ramses II, photograph by Patrice Sarzi, via Adobe Stock.

The image "Egyptian hieroglyphs in Istanbul", a derivative work by Ian Scott, is superimposed on top of the cartouche of Ramses II. JMCC1, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons