"It isn't right for a baby to be in darkness: it may go blind; it must be taken into the sunshine," the midwives decided.
But as soon as they took it out into the light of day it screamed and struggled as in a fit; they had to take it back into the dark. It was born an enemy of Aton the Sun.
"Is it night outside?" Maki asked in one of her lucid intervals.
"No, it is day," the king answered.
"The day of life is short, the night of death is long," she said, with a quiet smile, looking into his eyes, as it were into his very heart. "Shiha says 'darkness was before light; sunshine is a veil over darkness.' Shall the dead see the sun? What do you think, Enra?"
He was about to answer, but she began to wander again.
"A hen, a white hen with a red wig on like Ty's.... It is running after me.... Oh, it has stuck its teeth into me!"
The king remembered that the white hen was the mate of the cock with which he and the princesses had played once. Old Asa wept bitterly: she thought the hen with teeth was a bad omen.
"Do explain, Shiha," Maki wandered, "King Uaenra is wiser than all the sons of men: how is it he does not know death? He lives and sings to the sun as though there were no death and all were well... What will he sing when he does know death?"
Sometimes the king fancied it was not mere delirium: it was as though she knew that he was there without seeing him and spoke for his benefit, passed dreadful judgment upon him, laughed at him with a terrible laugh.