by Marc Graham
His gruff voice faltered.
I glanced up to discover a sheen in his eyes. My throat tightened as Yanuf pressed on. I wished I could cry, that tears might cleanse my heart of grief, of guilt. Of anger.
“Bathe your children in warmth,” Yanuf prayed. “Press us to your radiant bosom so that, when we cross over the mountains and pass beyond the sea, your glory may sustain us through the long sleeping, ’til we awaken with you in the new dawn.”
The words squeezed my heart, but my eyes remained as dry as the bleak desertscape.
The first curve of the sun edged above the horizon. At the sight of the radiant goddess, fury welled in my breast. I glared at Shams who, with her heavenly companions, had taken away my mother and father and sister, as though their lives meant nothing. As though the gods had greater need of them than I.
I did not speak.
I refused to give voice to sadness, so held my tongue as I had since Mother had gone to the West. I simply stared into the rising disk in a test of will. Shams might blind me, might take my sight as she’d taken all else, but I refused to turn away or lower my eyes.
Where sorrow had been impotent, the brilliant light at last brought tears to my eyes. They blurred my sight even as they intensified the sun’s wrath. Still I fixed my gaze, pitting my will against that of the goddess.
As though sensing my resolve, Shams at last relented. Her heat fell away from my face, and her burning glory began to fade.
With this small victory, I allowed my eyes to close, though the sun’s image still shone behind my eyelids. I blinked several times until the rest of the world slowly came into view at the edges of my vision. When at last I could focus, it was to see Yanuf standing before me, his hand outstretched.
“Come, Shara,” he said, calling me by the title of a princess of Saba. “We have far yet to go.”
Twilight again cloaked the land when Yanuf clucked his tongue and brought our small caravan to a halt. Lulled by the hot, still air and the rocking of my donkey’s gait, I’d dozed fitfully through the day, but now came fully awake.
Shams had disappeared behind the mountains, but the rocky walls still radiated her warmth in contrast with the coolness that drifted off the eastern sands. The desert stretched toward the horizon in red and orange and purple dunes, littered with mounds of heaped stone and drifting sand.
The Place of the Dead.
A chill raced down my spine as I took in countless tombs filled with the bones of my father and his people, dating back untold generations. The tombs that would soon hold the bones and the flesh of my mother.
I slid off the donkey’s back and patted its neck as I studied Yanuf. The guardian surveyed the field of tombs, combing his fingers through his beard and mumbling to himself as he looked from one featureless mound to another.
“Ah,” he said at length, “that’s the one.”
He took the donkey’s lead, and the animal followed Yanuf down the slope toward one of the tombs. I fell in alongside.“It’s not much.” He gestured toward the scattered tombs. “I don’t even know if it’s the way of her people, but she’ll be with your father. I reckon that’ll do.”
His words struck a sour note with me. It hadn’t occurred to me that the gods of Saba might gather their dead differently than the gods of Uwene. Mother had reigned as Mukarrib of all Saba, but when she’d sung it had been with the words and tunes of Uwene. When she’d prayed she called upon Ubasti, not Shams.
My heart trembled with the sudden thought that she might be lost among the sands of her adopted land, unable to return to the mountains and forests and rivers of the Song Land. For the first time since Mother died, I started to speak, to voice my fears. Before the words formed, Yanuf stopped the donkeys near one of the tombs.
“Come, my lady.” His voice was soft as he lifted Mother from the donkey’s back. “Your husband’s bed awaits.” He brought his lips close to her shrouded head to whisper something, then laid her before the tomb.
“I’ll clear her place,” he said, then climbed though a waist-high opening in the dry-stone wall of the tomb.
I rubbed my arms to smooth the bumps that sprang up on being left alone among the burial mounds. The breeze off the desert carried with it the songs of the dead. Their soft moans made me shiver. I hugged myself tighter against the chill and moved closer to the snorting donkeys.
A rattle punctuated the death-song. It took a moment for me to realize it came from my father’s tomb. I stepped toward the opening, then reeled back as Yanuf suddenly appeared.
“There’s a flask of oil and a flint in the pack, Shara,” he said. “Would you fetch them for me?”
I nodded, my cheeks warm from being so easily startled. I found the items and passed them up to Yanuf.
A few moments later he reappeared, handed me the flask, then reached down and awkwardly lifted my mother through the tomb’s mouth. After a short time he squeezed through the opening and rejoined me in the living world.
“I need you to light the lamp for her,” Yanuf said with a nod toward his empty sleeve.
I glanced toward the tomb’s mouth, black against a darkening landscape.
“Take your time,” he added. “Tell her whatever you need. Athtar willing, we’ll not be back this way for some years, so make your peace. I’ll set up camp there.” He gestured toward the higher ground at the foot of the mountains. “Follow the fire’s light when you’re through.”
Yanuf turned and shambled through the sand with the donkeys, his shoulders a stooped silhouette against the waxing night.
The desert wind blew stronger, picking at the hem and sleeves of my robe. The dead raised their voices in weird harmony, and I scrambled through the opening into the solitary blackness of the tomb. I groped about until I found Yanuf’s flint, then felt for the wick and struck a spark.
Mother’s body appeared in the brief flash of light, long and slender beneath the linen. Her shrouded form stretched toward the far side of the tomb. I struck again. Another spark. A second glimpse of my mother. Had she moved?
The wick drew in the fire-seed and gave birth to a warm yellow flame. The lamp rinsed darkness from the stone walls, and created an oasis of life, a place for me to rest amid this desert of death. A desert whose occupants dwelt all about me.
From every side of the tomb, skulls gazed at me and my mother, the newcomer to this place of long sleeping. To one side of the low stone slab where Mother lay, a heap of remains sat apart from the others. Bits of cloth and flesh and hair clung to bones not yet yellowed with age or blackened by smoke. I made an obeisance to what had once been my father, and tried to fit the memory of his face around the gleaming skull.
Failing this, I took a deep breath of stale air then set about my final duty to my mother. Beginning at her feet, where the ends of the shroud came together, I untied the linen bindings and rolled back the upper cloth.
Mother’s dark skin, damp with the unguent of oil and resin, glistened in the lamplight. Eyelids slightly parted and lips pursed, she looked as she had when taking in the sun on the roof of our tower house.
With trembling fingers I stroked Mother’s cheek. Instead of soft, warm flesh I found the skin cold, hardened by the myrrh resin. A shell lay before me, as lovely and bereft of life as those brought from the desert by pilgrims, shells the elders claimed had once contained magnificent sea creatures.
My mother was gone. Perhaps she was with Ubasti, or in Shams’s bright garden. Maybe she had altogether ceased to be, an echo that rang within the Wadi Dhanah for a time, then faded, never to return.
I shook away such gloomy musings and stood up straight. I was the shara, daughter of the Mukarribs of all Saba, and of untold generations before them. War had taken my father. Floodwaters had taken my mother and my sister. Peace had taken my very freedom. Only duty was left to me, and in that moment I embraced duty as tightly as ever I’d clung to my mother.
Following instructions given me by the old women of Maryaba, I placed my mother’s left hand m
odestly over the base of her belly. I folded her right arm to place a hand over her left breast. All the while, I silently recited the sacred words.
Athtar, Father of Life, who from the earth’s womb fashioned our bones and clothed them with flesh, whose breath enlivens the soul. Now draw back that breath and, with it, receive to your bosom your daughter Ayana, Shara of Uwene, Mukarrib of all Saba.
As I mouthed the final words, the lamp sputtered. I took a backward step to brace myself against a gust of wind that rushed from the tomb. The faltering light illumined Mother’s face amid dancing shadows, her lips parted and quirked in the slightest of grins.
I looked from my mother to the tomb’s black opening through which Athtar had drawn his breath, then back to Mother’s husk.
“Goodbye, Umma.” The words scratched my dry throat and tumbled from my lips. As they bounced off the stone walls, I heard in them the echo of my mother’s song.
With the lamp still burning to keep vigil, I climbed out of the tomb and followed the glow of Yanuf’s fire back to the realm of the living.
12
Yetzer
Fire raged in Yetzer’s chest. Blackness nipped at the edges of his vision. He managed to reach the bottom of the well only to find the light emanating from a side tunnel that stretched away from the main shaft.
He clawed at the smooth walls of the tunnel barely wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. The tight confines made forward progress nearly impossible, but he kept his focus on the circle of light that shone before him. To turn back would mean failure and a slow, shameful death in the well. Assuming his breath would sustain him to the water’s surface.
With his palms and heels he forced himself an ant’s pace closer to the light. The light that shrank as his vision narrowed. The light that was now interspersed with shooting stars that streaked before Yetzer’s sight.
The tunnel filled with the sound of escaping bubbles. Yetzer clamped his lips together, fighting the impulse of his lungs to expel spent air in exchange for fresh. He redoubled his efforts but managed only two more lurches forward before his lungs again rebelled. More bubbles fled, rushing along the tunnel’s roof toward the light, as though unwilling to remain trapped with Yetzer in death. He fought the urge to inhale. His lungs demanded it, burned with the craving for life.
The ache in Yetzer’s chest increased. It seemed as though Ammut, devourer of the dead, closed her crocodile jaws about him. Unwilling yet to be dragged to the underworld, Yetzer edged forward once more, again, and yet again. His lungs contracted a third time and the pearls of life danced away into the light. Yetzer felt his lips part, inviting the water to end his suffering. He closed his eye and the inner darkness blazed with streams of light and with the haloed figures of what must be custodians of the dead, come to escort him to the West.
As Yetzer gave his lungs leave to drink, his fingers brushed the tunnel wall. Rather than featureless stone, they reported a sharp corner. Yetzer’s eye snapped open. He fought to hold back the fatal breath as his hands groped about the edge. With his last measure of strength, he pulled himself through the tunnel’s opening.
Free of the stone cocoon, he took only a moment to right himself within this second pool. The light glowed strongly above him, and he pushed off the bottom, following his last bubbles upward until he burst through the surface. The sound of his hungry gasps resounded off the stone walls. His lungs drew breath after ravenous breath, devouring the air as a starving man might gorge himself on bread. When he’d given them their fill and his breathing slowed, Yetzer examined his surroundings.
The pool sat in a low-ceilinged chamber of rough-hewn stone. Candles of purest wax burned brightly from sconces, illuminating lifelike statues of animal-headed gods set in niches along the walls. Stone-carved steps led from the pool to a broad landing where a brazier sent trails of perfumed smoke toward a small hole in the ceiling. Yetzer swam to the stairway and dragged himself from the water. He crawled naked from the pool, his kilt and loincloth somehow lost.
Come to the tomb where lies the beloved of Amun.
Come to the place where the body lies without its ka.
The sound of men’s voices echoed through the chamber. Their harmony resonated within Yetzer’s breast and raised gooseflesh on his arms.
In the midst of the garden, in the rock-cut tomb
We seek him who was too soon taken from our midst.
The first singer emerged from a cleft in the rock. Yetzer tried to cover himself as best he could when he recognized Imtef, one of his priest-tutors. The man’s nasally voice never failed to grate in Yetzer’s ears as he delivered endless lectures on the goddess of justice and right-doing. But within this sacred space, his voice rose in harmony with those of his brother priests to celebrate Yetzer’s return from death. Imtef’s lessons stirred in Yetzer’s heart and gave life to Mayat, the personification of balance.
Behind Imtef came eight more priests, including Huy, the hierophant and high priest of Amun. A leopard pelt hung loosely from his bony frame, but his voice rang clear and bright.
Why is his tomb disturbed, his sarcophagus laid open?
The winding cloths lie tangled, still damp with myrrh and olibanum.
The priests formed a semi-circle about the brazier, Huy in the middle.
Speak, O Djehuti, giver of words. Where is our brother gone?
Speak, Khnum and Khonsu. Speak, Mihos of Per-Bast.
You gods who stand beside the open tomb, say what has become of him we seek.
At the invocation of the gods’ names, the hierophant gestured toward the statues in their niches. Yetzer’s heart beat faster as, one by one, the statues came to life and stepped forward.
Djehuti, the ibis-headed god of writing and wisdom, gazed with black eyes past his long, curved beak. Ram-headed Khnum, potter of men’s bodies, stood regal and stoic beside Khonsu, keeper of the night hours, whose youthful features bore the green pallor of death. Last came Mihos, lion-headed god of war, whose amber eyes glared hungrily at Yetzer.
Say the gods, the guardians of all man’s ways,
He is not here. The one you seek has left this place.
Like Father Osaure, he has overcome the body’s death.
How lovely to see, how pleasing to behold is the resurrected one.
The priests concluded their song, hands lifted in praise to Amun, the infinite All. The gods stood regal and unmoving. All eyes rested on Yetzer in silent expectation. He remembered the guard’s instructions and slowly stood.
Yetzer hesitated to expose himself to the priests, let alone the gods, but the requisite gestures gave him little choice. He raised his left hand in pantomime of the Hermit’s lantern. His right he stretched forward, as if holding a walking staff. He slid his left foot forward then spoke the password.
“Hreri.”
Gods and priests alike matched Yetzer’s stance and spoke the word in reply.
The hierophant stepped forward and the others lowered their arms. Huy gestured for Yetzer to do the same. “Yetzer abi-Huram,” the high priest intoned, “you have passed the tests of the postulant. You have crossed the threshold of the initiates, and you have withstood the trial of the Well of Souls.”
Huy reached under the altar and withdrew a bundle. He stepped toward Yetzer and unfolded an apron made of lambskin.
“In water and blood were you born into the world of flesh. So have you been cleansed and reborn of water into the world of light. Your first birth came through the desire of your father and the labor of your mother. This rebirth is the result of your own desire for knowledge and the labors of your body and will.”
The hierophant tied the apron around Yetzer’s waist.
“You stand self-created within the shrine of Amun, who founded his own existence out of chaos.” Huy stepped back to his place behind the altar. “The path of creation, of reintegration with the All, is fraught with danger, to your body and to your ka. You have tasted this danger. Your fortitude and endurance have preserved you where m
any have failed. Few survive the Well of Souls. Fewer still pass the challenges that lie before you.”
“Quit now,” one of the priests hissed. Ptah-Hor was a fat man who instructed the postulants in the nature and order of the stars. Yetzer wondered how the rotund priest had ever passed through the narrow tunnel beneath the well. “Be a slave,” the man continued, “but live.”
“He has no business here to begin with.” Merisutah, a rat-faced priest who taught numbers, glared at Yetzer and pointed to his own left eye. “Only those whole in body may attain the priesthood.”
The other priests joined in the debate. Some urged Yetzer to spare himself further danger. Others argued against his right even to have joined the postulants, let alone the initiates. Huy and the gods stood silent and expressionless throughout. When the priests had finished their litany and Yetzer felt himself wilting under their judgments, the hierophant spoke.
“You have heard the concerns of the brethren,” he said. “How do you respond?”
Yetzer chased after thoughts that darted like rabbits.
“I am only a poor widow’s son,” he said as he snared a line of reasoning. “What little I had and the much I might have gained, I gave up to enter these halls in search of light. You yourself summoned me here,” he told Huy, “you who stand before the All. If the high priest of Amun deems me worthy, I stand under his judgment.”
Yetzer fixed his gaze on Merisutah. “I have but one eye, it is true,” he said, “but the eye is merely a window through which to view the world. It is the heart that sees, and study and meditation perfect that vision. In truth,” he added, “does not the great god Haru have but one eye? Yet none contests his right to stand among the gods and the holy ones.”
Merisutah grunted.
“As to the dangers that lie in wait,” Yetzer continued, “to quit now is to become a slave. I have sacrificed much—have nearly sacrificed all—to stand before you, to pursue that light which illumines the heart. I will continue that pursuit, whether the journey be completed in this life or carry me into the next. In that light is freedom, and I would rather die in the finding of it than live a slave for its abandonment.”