"But I do play! I played last summer and will play again if I want to. I don't care if they do laugh at me. The king says children are better than grown-ups, wiser, they know more. Eternity, he says, is a child playing with, playing..."
She forgot what Eternity was playing with and flushed crimson.
"Ah, curse the thing! The wool has again made my head hot." She pulled the wig off her head and flung it away. The talc cup clinked against the wall; the lotos stem broke and the flower hung down piteously.
"Do you imagine that I have dressed up for you? Not likely! I am going to supper at the palace..."
Her head was shaven and had such a long, vegetable, marrow-like skull that Dio almost cried out with surprise. In Egypt long heads were regarded as particularly beautiful in girls. The strange custom of bandaging newborn children's heads in order to lengthen their skulls was brought to Egypt from the Kingdom of Mitanni, the midnight land by the upper Euphrates, whence Akhnaton's mother, Queen Tiy, came. All the King's daughters were long-headed. Noble ladies and, later on, men suddenly developed long skulls also: they wore special skull caps—"royal marrows"—made of the finest antelope skins.
Very likely Princess Ankhi took off her wig on purpose to boast of the shape of her head to Dio: "You may have rosy cheeks, but I have a royal marrow!"
"And is it true you are a sorceress, they say?"
"No, it isn't."
"Then what did they want to burn you for?"
Dio said nothing.