THE UNWANTED LANDS: VALLEY OF BONES

When my footsteps were heard in the streets of Thebes, people would bolt their doors, and mothers would hide their children. My name is Menenmut. But to them, I was just "The Madman." My old linen clothes were stained with mud, and my stomach had been empty for days, but my mind was as vast as a god’s library.

The Nile had been receding for fifty years. The earth screamed from thirst. While everyone offered sacrifices to Ra, I was on the riverbank, measuring the humidity of the wind. When the old Pharaoh died, hopes had dried up along with the river. Yet, when the new Pharaoh ascended the throne, he promised a great reward: "Whoever brings life back to the Nile shall receive their weight in gold!"I went to the palace with heavy rolls of linen on my back and my thousand-patched robes on my body. The guards laughed, but I stood tall in the presence of the Pharaoh. "I will extract water from the air," I said. I set up my apparatus, placing the linens in the heart of the wind. When water began to drip from the cloths at dawn, the people whispered in awe. But the High Priest thundered: "This man is a thief! He is stealing the moisture from the eyes of great Ra!"The success of a genius fell victim to the fear of a priest. They bound my hands. Along with my invention—those linen rolls—I was exiled to the Valley of Bones. As they untied my hands at the edge of the desert, the guards spat in my face. "Let’s see when your bones join the others," they mocked.I walked deep into the scorching sands. The first things I saw were the giant, bleached bones of wild beasts. This was a graveyard abandoned by nature. But I was a genius. I reached the shadow of a massive rock and set down my linens. I gathered the giant vertebrae and joined them together like pipes. I turned the skull of an extinct creature into a water basin. I stretched the linens over a scaffold I had fashioned from rib bones. The world had left me to die, but I would extract life from the bones of death.