Winner - 14-16 age group - Constance

If Only They Had Asked 

I remember the old man’s flushed face, bristly upper lip and woolen clothing he wore despite the blazing Hawara sun. I remember his sweaty hands peeling me away from Thekla, my little girl in whose arms I’d been sleeping peacefully for countless nights.   

He barely looked at me, his eyes lingering on Thekla. “So young,” he said, shaking his head. “Let’s send this off to Petrie,” before dropping me into a bag, shrouding me in darkness once again.  

But this Petrie never saw me. Instead, I heard the splashing of water and felt the rocking of a boat for what felt like weeks. Then, a day of terror: shrieking, whistling, chugging, noise all around me and acrid smoke stinging my senses. It smelt and sounded like the underworld.  

Then, I was carried to a place where the air felt cooler and footsteps echoed on stone floors and the smell of dust and varnish seeped through my seams.  

I was taken out of my bag to the face of another man with the same hairy lip but a pastier, sallow complexion. He turned me over, inspecting me with a curious glass lens.  

“Note this down,” he said to another man. “Wool, linen and human hair. 6 ¼ inches tall. Found at the recent excavation in Hawara. Typical grave good. Accession number 1888.818.” 

Typical? Could he not see the faded patch on my shoulder where Thekla’s thumb rubbed as she whispered her fears, worries and hopes into my ear? Nor the faint tear stains from nights comforting her as she listened to the violent clashes between people of different gods on the streets outside. He never thought to ask, and I was slipped back into my bag.    

After what felt like an age, I was taken out again. Harsh, humming white lights blinded me like an indoor sun. A new face looked down at me, clean-shaven with olive skin, wearing a white cotton coat.  

He plucked my hair and scraped my skirt with shiny, silver instruments, placing my fibres into a glass dish. He put me back in my bag, but before too long I saw his face again.  

“Approximately 300-401 CE, Roman Egypt,” he murmured to himself as he tapped away on a humming black rectangle.

I could’ve told him the exact date of my creation, the weeks it took Thekla’s grandmother to weave me into existence and the years my little girl’s hair grew before it was stitched into my head. I could’ve told him everything, but he never thought to ask, and back into my bag I went.  

It was another sleep before I was taken out again. I braced myself for more cold instruments and unseeing eyes, but instead, a lady's face hovered over me — curious, gentle.   

She leant over me as I lay on the table and for the first time since Thekla, someone spoke to me not over me: “Someone must have loved you very much,” she said. “What have you seen?”