by Ben Stevens
‘I will… ask about,’ I said then. ‘But go, now, and leave me in peace for a while.’
With obvious reluctance, Fouad did as I instructed. I laid back down upon my blankets, my head spinning with everything I had recently seen and heard. I felt that I was fast losing my own mind. Samad had sneered at talk of ancient curses and the Dark Magic; yet he was dead, hanged with the same rope I had previously seen grasped in a mummy’s hands…
Was I going insane? How could this be? And now the jackal-faced Fouad, with all this talk of Queen Mehuit coming to him in his dreams, tormenting him as she spoke in a dead language which Fouad still somehow understood, Anubis stood just behind her – the jackal-headed one whom the ancient Egyptians had believed escorted all those who had just passed away to meet Osiris, god of the afterlife…
Even with my eyes closed, I sensed that a shape was again blocking the square-shaped entrance to my tomb. I opened my mouth to yell at Fouad to leave me alone; yet before I did so I opened my eyes, and there was stood Aui – the one person I loved and cared for in this world…
She stayed with me for most of the day. Her father was away on some business, she said, and so we were safe from discovery.
‘You seem distracted,’ she remarked after a while. ‘There is some problem, weighing on your mind…’
‘There is nothing,’ I said firmly, attempting to smile at her. ‘I just…’
‘Yes?’ she returned sweetly, giving me that smile which caused me to melt inside.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her to flee with me; to travel along the Nile and so seek a new life somewhere else in Egypt. Vague phantoms were crowding my heart, mind and soul, nameless terrors I could not fully describe yet somehow still felt…
‘Come,’ said Aui. ‘You are tired. Put your head here, my sweetheart, upon my lap, and I will sing to you…’
If there was one thing that matched the dark-haired, green-eyed beauty of Aui’s physical features, it was her bewitching voice. She sang like an angel, low and perfect. And so there, in the shade of my tomb, away from the fierce heat of the sun, I was gently lulled to sleep…
When I awoke I sensed that it was the following morning, and my head was no longer upon Aui’s lap. She’d stolen away at some point, after her voice had calmed my racing mind and sent me to sleep, so to be there in her own tomb before her domineering father returned…
As I rubbed my face and sat up, something nagged at my mind. Fouad, I quickly realized. I’d made some sort of half-promise to him, the previous morning, that I’d come and see him later on. But I had not done so; I should have thought that he would have returned to my tomb later on, to see where he was.
And yet, it seemed he had not done so.
My sense of unease again grew stronger, and I rose and left my tomb.
It was not long after dawn, but already the day was becoming hot. I passed a few people, all of them scurrying about on some business or other. There was the sharp, almost bitter smell of coffee, and frying lamb. My mouth watered and my stomach growled, but I had business of my own to attend to, before I could entertain any notion of sitting down to breakfast…
It took a good hour to get to Fouad’s tomb, following the directions he had given me the previous day. I recognized his orange-bricked tomb from his description; it was tattier than many of the other tombs, as though Fouad (he said he lived in it alone, as I did in mine) wasn’t too concerned with its upkeep. From what I knew of Fouad, this didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
And yet… I viewed the entrance, covered on the inside with an old wooden board, with a mounting feeling of fear. I walked closer to it, almost instinctively starting to sniff the air…
‘Fouad?’ I said, my voice quiet at first.
Louder, I repeated –
‘Fouad?’
There was no reply. This was a curiously deserted area of the City of the Dead; I was suddenly aware that there seemed to be no one else around. A dead stillness, there in the morning that was already so hot there was a haze in the air.
I sniffed again… For what reason? I felt myself drawn towards the covered opening to the tomb… My hands felt as heavy and dead as stone as they slowly raised and pushed aside the flimsy piece of board, half-rotted and much scratched at the bottom by wild cats…
Fouad was hanging as I had previously seen Samad hanging, above his bunched-up blankets, his swollen, blackened tongue protruding from his mouth, his eyes swollen with terror…
I did not think he’d been dead long, for there was not yet that sweetish, repellent reek of decay – and in Egypt, one of the hottest of all desert countries, a fish pulled from the Nile should be consumed within thirty minutes, and all slaughtered meat cooked or salted as soon as possible…
That old, brown, nondescript rope again… The one I had seen in Queen Mehuit’s hands, and then around Samad’s neck… Again I reached out to touch it, and never have I wished to touch anything less… And again it immediately turned to dust, and with a thump Fouad’s body fell to the floor where it lay, his bulging eyes staring straight at me…
With a yell I fled from his tomb, running as fast as I could. I stopped only when I could run no more, my breath coming in ragged gasps. Already I had put a fair distance between myself and Fouad’s tomb; yet I knew that was not enough.
First Samad had been killed, now Fouad…
Any fool could see that I was next, and that against the Dark Magic of the Old Kingdom, I was as helpless as a baby…
That night the dreams began. Swirling like poisonous smoke in my mind, containing vague, semi-formed images and shapes, dark and mysterious. But sometimes a pair of eyes appeared, beautifully made-up, slanted at the edges with dark-blue and black lines… Yet these eyes were mocking, contemptuous… They seemed to speak to me of some coming danger…
I awoke feeling more tired, more on-edge, than I had been before I’d even fallen asleep. Aui visited me, there as I sheltered from both the heat and my nerves within my tomb, and I was short-tempered even with her. I did not leave my tomb all day, not eating anything for I had absolutely no appetite.
That night the shapes became more definite. Queen Mehuit appeared before me, the owner of those beautiful eyes I had previously seen. Her head had obviously been ‘bound’ in early childhood, so that it had grown flat at the top, while it protruded out at the back rather further than is usual. Behind her stood Anubis, the jackal-headed one.
‘Tomorrow…’ hissed Mehuit, in that dead tongue I still somehow suddenly understood. She gave me a slight smile, which caused me to cry out aloud in terror. ‘Tomorrow you will follow the two others to the River of Death, and there your eternal punishment shall begin…’
I tried to say something in return – to plead for mercy – but I found that though I understood this tongue of the ancient Egyptians, still I could not speak it…
‘…You are not eating, my love, nor are you washing your body or clothes,’ Aui said gently to me, the following day. ‘What is the matter weighing on your mind, for you to be so?’
‘It is nothing,’ I returned curtly, though I knew myself – without need of a mirror – just how haunted my eyes must appear, and how haggard my expression.
‘Please tell me, for our own sakes,’ entreated Aui, her voice as always remaining low and beautifully melodious.
‘Leave with me,’ I said suddenly, taking hold of her arm. ‘Let us leave this place, and travel up along the Nile.’
She appeared surprised, and then shook her head.
‘My father would come after us, and you would be in grave danger…’ she said. ‘Anyway, I cannot leave him, not like that.’
‘I am in ‘grave danger’ anyway,’ I said harshly. ‘I have much more to fear than the threat of a mere beating.’
‘What do you mean?’
In halting words, I told her. Of the tomb robbery, and of what had followed afterwards. And now these dreams of mine – which seemed exactly the same as Fouad had described.
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sp; For the first time, Aui recoiled from me.
‘Oh, you fool,’ she breathed, bringing her hands to that mouth I so longed to kiss, yet still had not. ‘You have caused a danger a thousand times worse, than if you were to go straight to my father and tell him all about the two of us…’
‘What do I do?’ I begged, my hand still gripping Aui’s arm even as she sought to get away from me.
‘I don’t know… I don’t know…’ she murmured, and at once she snatched herself free of my grasp. ‘I will return… Maybe I will return…’
And again I was left alone in my tomb, to face what would come as I slept this coming evening. Whether I tried to remain awake, or whether I ran as far as I was able, it would make no difference.
The ancient Queen Mehuit, accompanied by the jackal-headed one, would find me, and I would be the third one to receive my eternal punishment for having looted her tomb…
‘…Take this, put it around your neck,’ she hissed, holding out the brown length of rope, one end of it fashioned in a noose. I whimpered, and again tried to plead for mercy, but those eyes just bored into my own, compelling me to do as I was told.
I could feel myself choking, the noose fastening… But suddenly there came a cry, and on the very edge of my dream I saw Aui, shaking my sleeping body… She had returned to my tomb, late at night, and now could not awaken me… I was presently stuck between two worlds, in limbo, my eternal judgment not yet fully-passed…
‘…He’s only a boy… Spare him… I love him, I love him…’ I heard Aui cry, from somewhere very, very far away. For I was in a place where time and space are of no consequence, and I at once realized just how minuscule Egypt – indeed, the whole world – is in comparison…
Those beautifully made up eyes, set there in the flattened skull, softened just slightly.
‘It is true…’ Queen Mehuit’s voice hissed. ‘You are still a boy, and there is far less badness within you than there was in the other two men. So, maybe I have had revenge enough… But still, you must be punished – and your punishment is this –
‘When you awake, you must leave Cairo. Make your way to the Red Sea, and from there get on a ship that is leaving Egypt. And never must you return. Never will you see the Nile again; never will you feel the breezes coming in from the desert late in the evening; never will you hold your girlfriend here in your arms, though you will often long to do so for the rest of your life; for wherever you go, Egyptian, you will be a stranger, fated never again to be among your own people…
‘And I give you fair warning, now, that if ever you return to Egypt, you will instantly begin the same eternal punishment as those other two men are now experiencing. And you would rather you had been boiled alive for the rest of eternity…’
So, Ennin-sensei, that is my story. You see I had no choice but to immediately make my way to the Red Sea, saying farewell to Aui, and after several years of traveling upon boats and trading, I found myself in this Japanese harbor town. I did not intend to stay here for any real length of time – but then, where else should I go? In time I learnt the language, and so I was able to do business here and earn a living.
It is true that I often do still think of Aui, and still do I miss her voice and touch so greatly… And I am and always will be a stranger, here in this country, accepted but never trusted… I have been punished enough, I think, for my youthful foolishness in helping to rob the final resting place of an ancient Egyptian queen…
But enough of my lamentations. I see that you and your servant have drained this vase of sake, Ennin-sensei, while doing me the courtesy of listening to my rather long tale.
Please, may I get you another…?
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