It is said that on the day of my birth, the heavens wept.
Thunder screamed through the air as labor pains tore through my mother's womb, and the sky cracked open as my head emerged between her legs.
The astrologer my father called to their home, once I was securely swaddled in linen and pressed against my mother's breast, could not decide if this was a good omen or a bad one.
Then, childbed fever crept between my mother's sheets and set her skin aflame.
In days long past, when the gods crashed from the stars and into our sands, the blood-magic they put into our veins would have been enough to save her. But the magic that courses through the blood and sand of Egypt is weak, now. Even the magic of the pharaohs, who married brother to sister to preserve the bloodline that ties them to the stars, is a faint echo of what once was.
None could spare my mother her journey to the afterlife.
None, except, perhaps, for me.
But I did not know my powers then.
YOU ARE READING
The Bone-Setter's Daughter
FantasíaBlood-magic was once as much a part of Egypt as the sands or the Nile, but no longer. Magic is weak, now, an echo of what it once was. The pharaohs have married brother to sister to preserve their abilities, but all it has done is corrupted them, an...
