I laughed through my tears at the foolish childhood memory that I hadn’t thought about in years. That was over half my lifetime ago, but it was a nice reprieve to laugh at all, until I had to look down at the cold hand in my grasp and Meryt’s stony face unable to laugh with me.
“See, I’m being selfish, because you would be so much stronger right now. You already were. I know how deeply it wounded you when your mother died, yet you pressed on. But you had me. Ihave no one. Friends, yes, our peers, but you were family and consort to me both, closer to me than anyone. Your mother was mine too since I never knew my own. It would be torture to return to any part of that life without you. Can’t you understand that? Every motion in dance that I ever made, every noise of pleasure, every heated glance, you know it was all only for you. How could you leave me like this?”
A stir of anger made me want to pound upon his chest to force an answer, fruitless and even more selfish though it may be. But how dare he? How dare he save me and expect me to go on living without him?
Even so, my anger was short-lived compared to my sorrow, and I brought Meryt’s hand to my lips to kiss it.
“Please then, my love, forgive me for one more selfish act.”
I knelt upon the floor, bringing my head even with the table, and took out the small hidden dagger from within the folds of my loincloth. It would be an added mess for the priests and attendants to clean, but I doubted anyone would be surprised when they found me. Not even Pharaoh would be angry with me, for it was the boon he had granted me, to mourn however I chose.
I tilted my head back and raised the dagger above my throat.
“Now that, young mortal, would be a waste of a life.”
I gasped at the unexpected voice. More startling, however, was that, although I had not closed my eyes, a mere blink of them proved I was somewhere else entirely.
I scrambled to my feet, and as I tried to close my fist tighter around the dagger to protect myself, I found that it was no longer there. My hand was empty, and I stood in some black void, yet was somehow still standing, as the shadows of unseen figures surrounded me.
“Do not fear,” one of them said, different from the voice before.
“At least not yet,” said another.
They were all resonant and powerful sounding. Some of their silhouettes were difficult to decipher, but others…
One could not mistake the shape of a man with the head of a jackal.
I fell back to my knees, lowering my eyes to the blackness of the floor. “Mygods.”
“Yes, we are,” said one of them. I could faintly tell which direction each came from, but not for certain which god spoke.
They were shadows only—eight of them.
“As your gods,” the most recent voice continued, “we decree it is not yet your time to die.”
“You would deny me entrance into the afterlife?” I dared glance up.
“We would offer you an alternative.”
“A-alternative?”
“A chance,” said another, “a set of trials that if you prevail against them will mean reunion with your beloved without the loss of your life.”
I snapped fully upright, ready to leap to my feet at such an opportunity.
“You shall make the journey through the afterlife and face each of us.”
“Through the Duat?” Traversing the land of the dead, a perilous realm of night, filled with dangers that all souls must face before reaching their final rest, could be made easier if the living followed proper funerary practices and mourned dutifully, but in the end, only the soul itself, on its own merits, could reach the Field of Reeds.
To face that while alive would mean no help from the living at all.
“Not quite the Duat,” said another of the gods, “for you are not yet dead yourself. We have different trials for you.”
That was some relief, but trials from the gods, whichever ones surrounded me, would be no easy feat. The more I looked at the shadows, the more I began to recognize some of them. All were male, and I thought I counted Seth among them, which was terrifying on its own.
Was he not an enemy of the gods, a villain in most stories?
More surprising was being offered this at all. I was no one special to have been gifted such an audience.
