It was as she had feared: the sour air had begun to drive them both mad. It had started with her bizarre idea for an archery contest. They should have been chiselling, not shooting arrows! Then Intef had put forth some absurd theory that Aya was the heir to the double crown. Aya, in her weakened mental state, had been unable to contradict him.
Then, as she dozed on her bed mat that night, Aya found herself inside what she thought was another one of her memories.
Slowly she realised that it was not a memory at all, however. It was as if she were beholding some version of the future...
She was standing on a cliff looking out over a vast desert hardpan, searching for signs of movement below. Hours before, there had been a great battle. Hundreds had perished, but the losers had not yet come to collect their fallen.
Everywhere there was death. The air hummed with the buzz of flies. Somewhere in the distance, a pack of jackals had already gone to work.
Aya spotted movement near the middle of the plain: a man in a long white kilt and leather breast guard. He was lying on the ground, his hands and wrists tied, as if someone had taken him captive and then changed his mind and left him to die.
Though he was far away, Aya could see the tattoo on the back of his neck: a triangle inside a circle. He was no mere man—he was the heir to the double crown—Tausret’s son. She started down the steep cliff.
She did not get far before she stumbled. The rocks were unstable, the path steep and treacherous. She had to go slowly, lest she fall to her own death. She kept her eyes on her footfalls, not daring to look up.
Finally, she arrived at a large flat rock about halfway down the cliff and paused atop it. She caught sight of a moving chariot on the plain below. It was borne by a single white horse and a man in a white hooded robe. She recognised his long beard and corpulent figure even from the distance. It was Chancellor Bay.
He was careening across the flat plain at great speed. He lifted his whip high in the air and cracked it above his horse. He was heading towards the heir.
Aya had to get to the young man before Bay did, for she knew the chancellor would kill him if he could. But Bay’s chariot was moving faster than her unstable legs could take her and she knew she would not reach him in time.
In that instant Bay’s white hood flew off his face. He looked up at the cliffs and in the strange space of the vision Aya could hear his words. ‘What are you doing, Little Cow?’
‘I am stopping you,’ she whispered.
She found the centre of her heart and let the arrow fly. Snap went the first string from the horse’s harness. It coiled in the air like a snake. The chariot veered to the side while she loaded another arrow and let it fly.
Snap went the second string of the harness. The horse ran free, leaving the chariot teetering across the plain, raising a great cloud of dust. Bay tumbled to the ground just twenty paces from where the heir lay writhing.
Aya watched in horror as Bay calmly returned to standing. Incredibly, it appeared he was not harmed. It was then Aya noticed his leopard skin pelt and adornments of the priesthood.
The man was no longer Chancellor Bay at all, but the High Priest. He drew a sword from the sheath around his waist and walked calmly towards the young man.
‘Do not touch him!’ she shouted.
She launched another arrow and pierced one side of the priest’s voluminous robe, pinning it to the ground. She followed it with another arrow that pierced the other side.
The priest stopped in his tracks, pinned. He looked to his sides, puzzled by the two arrows that kept him in place. He tried to move forward, but he was stuck. He looked up at Aya and hissed.
Then he disappeared—replaced by a long white snake with shiny white scales. Apep. The beast wriggled out from beneath the High Priest’s robe and slithered towards the heir. Aya had one arrow left. She cleared her mind and took her aim.
The arrow landed right in the middle of the snake’s head, skewering it to the ground. Aya yelped for joy. She had done it. The heir to the Horus throne was safe! For once in her life, Aya had done Pharaoh proud. She had done her duty.
She made her way down the cliff and rushed to the young man’s side. He was still lying on his stomach, his face buried in the dirt.
‘I slew your enemies,’ she said. ‘I have come to release you from your bonds.’
She gently rolled him to his side, then on to his back. He blinked up at her and the sky seemed to be reflected in the colour of his eyes: a deep, uncanny blue.
And then she realised that she was not looking into a man’s face, but a woman’s. It was her own face. She was looking at herself.
Aya awoke and stared into the darkness. What had she just seen? The tomb was hot, she could barely breathe. Where was Intef? She had to tell him about her vision.
‘Intef?’ Arriving at the foot of his bed mat, she crouched down and reached for him, but discovered only a slack bed sheet.
The false chamber was eerily quiet. She crossed to the ramp and climbed up it. ‘Intef, are you here?’
There was no response. A feeling of dread spread over her. She felt along the ceiling to the lip of the tunnel, crouched down and reached out once again. ‘Intef?’
She felt the hardness of the tip of the chisel beneath her fingers. She pulled the instrument towards her, but it would not come free. She moved her fingers down the cold metal, arriving at the shaft and feeling Intef’s own fingers wrapped around it. They were as cold as the metal itself.
‘Intef!’ she shrieked.
No. This could not be happening. She moved her hands over Intef’s body, pressing and probing and praying he would respond. Nothing. She held her hand over his mouth, trying to determine if he still made breath. She could feel a small movement of air coming from his nose. Blessed Isis!
‘Intef, wake up!’ she shouted. She pushed against his limp body and was rewarded with a low moan.
Aya’s heart raced. He was alive! But what was wrong? Had he fallen and hit his head? She needed to get him out of this cramped, dusty space. ‘Come, Intef,’ she said. She tugged at his arm. No response.
She was going to have to move him, but how? She retrieved his bed sheet and rolled him on to it, then tugged it with all her might down the pile dirt. Finger by finger, hand by hand, she pulled him down the ramp until he was lying atop the tiles of the false chamber.
She needed to see if he was injured. She needed light! She crossed to the sitting area and felt for where Intef kept the striking stones. She fumbled desperately among the objects, finally seizing upon the stones.
This was going to be difficult. She had never made fire herself. She had always allowed Intef to do it. She groped about for the bit of rope he always used to set the flame. There it was, thank the gods, and also the lamp.
Now she had everything she needed to make light except the actual ability to do it. She tried to picture Intef striking the stones. He always seemed very focused on the task, as if he were willing the sparks to appear.
She made a preliminary strike. Nothing.
‘Great Amun-Ra, deliver me strength,’ she implored. She struck the stones together as hard as she could, but still no sparks flew. She tried again, then again. She lifted the striking stone as high as she could, then smashed it down upon her own thumb.
‘Ow!’ she howled. She could feel the blood oozing out of the wound. She thrust her thumb into her mouth and sucked, trying to stop the bleeding.
She needed to calm herself, but she could not seem to catch her breath. Her efforts had made her dizzy. She stood and braced herself against a pillar. Each time she inhaled, she felt a slight stinging in her lungs.
‘The air inside this tomb will not last for ever,’ she remembered Intef saying. ‘Soon it will turn sour. It will draw demons from the Underworld...’
‘And we shall perish among them,’ Aya whispered.
The knowledge of her fate hit her all at once and she froze. The air had turned sour. It was full of demons. Curse the gods—she and Intef had run out of time.
‘No!’ Aya raged. This was her fault. If only she had allowed Intef to begin his tunnel in the high vaulted ceiling of the false chamber, he would have arrived at the surface by now. She had been too worried about despoiling the beautiful ceiling and now he was lying beneath it as a result.
And soon she would be, too.
She buried her face in her hands. Not now—not after all these days, not after everything that had happened. She did not want to die, but her dizziness was getting worse. Soon she would be like Intef. Alive, but sleeping. Feeling nothing. Eventually, even that nothing would slip away.
A quick, merciful death.
She no longer accepted Osiris’s will. ‘Where are you, Pharaoh?’ she sobbed. ‘Is this not your house of eternity? Are you not a god yourself? Help me!’
Aya felt her way along the walls towards the doorway. She would visit the main chamber. She would visit her beloved Pharaoh. It was the only thing she could think of to do. There she could speak her pleas directly to Pharaoh’s ka, for Pharaoh was the only one who could help her now.
She arrived at the doorway and turned into the corridor. If she were being truthful, it was not the main chamber where she felt closest to Tausret, it was just here in the hallway at the junction of the two unfinished chambers, where the crack in the ceiling was most pronounced.
She had felt Pharaoh’s breath here once, she could have sworn it. ‘Tausret? Powerful One? Mistress?’ She paused and breathed in.
Her heart leapt. There it was again. A small movement of air, as if Tausret’s spirit hovered close.
‘Is that you?’ Aya stood as still as she could. Slowly, her dizziness abated. ‘Forgive me, Beloved Tausret.’
The air seemed to speak in Pharaoh’s voice. ‘There is nothing to forgive.’
‘I do not wish to die.’
‘Then live, Aya. Live!’
Aya took one last breath, then crossed the false chamber and rushed back up the ramp. Finding Intef’s tools where he had left them, she climbed up the footrests inside the tunnel. She braced herself atop the final footrest and began to tap.
Not too hard, not too soft. Tap, tap, tap.
She breathed and tapped, breathed and tapped, trying to stay calm, just as Intef had advised, until once again her world was spinning. She made her way down the footrests and went to visit Pharaoh.
‘Powerful One, give me strength,’ she begged, standing in the corridor and breathing deeply. Slowly, her dizziness diminished and she crossed the chamber, stopping to place her hand over Intef’s nostrils. A small, warm wind flowed out of them. Aya tipped her head to the painted stars. ‘Please, keep him alive!’
Tap, tap, tap. She worked for as long as she could, but soon became dizzy again. She returned to speak with Pharaoh, breathed and gathered her strength, then crossed back to the ramp and resumed her chiselling.
She did not know how many times she repeated this dance. Ten? Twenty? She had no sense of time. Were hours passing, or days? She did not know if the surface was near or far. All she knew was that she had to keep going.
Tap, tap, tap.
Her limbs started to fail her. The trip from the tunnel to the corridor began to feel like the journey of a hundred leagues. Once when she began to grow dizzy, she fell from the footrests. Another time, when she moved to descend the ramp, she collapsed upon the dirt. She breathed in the dust and found that she could not even cough.
She returned to her post. She needed to speak to Pharaoh, but she could no longer remember why. She imagined herself dashing down the ramp and making her way to the corridor. She pictured herself praying to Pharaoh and breathing in her strength. She saw herself bend to Intef and check his breath. There it was still—a tiny thread of breath. All was well. In her vision, she returned to her post. And there she was, working away. Tap, tap, tap.
The world was spinning now and her lids had become too heavy to keep open. She closed her eyes and delivered one last blow to the chisel. And in that tiny sliver of time, she beheld the beginning of her own end.
It was light. A tiny shaft of it—pouring down from above. The darkness was no longer complete.
She had finally passed into the Underworld. There was no other explanation for the sudden, blinding brightness. It was what the Underworld was, after all. Ra’s nighttime sanctuary. The land of the midnight sun.
She inhaled the air—another of the Underworld’s luxuries. She drank it like beer, letting it fill up her lungs. It was nearly the end. Soon she would begin her journey to the Hall of Judgement where Anubis would weigh her heart and find it too heavy by far. He would wait for Thoth, the god of scribes, to record the results and then Osiris would bow his head in disappointment and the Devourer of Souls would come for her.
She opened her eyes, expecting to take her first glimpse of that beautiful afterlife that she would travel through, but that would never be her home. Instead she saw a shaft of light shining down from above. She inhaled and discovered the air to have become sweeter. It was pouring in with the light, filling her with energy.
She lifted her chisel and landed another series of blows. Another small chunk of the ceiling fell away, allowing more light. More air. More strength.
She began chiselling in earnest, her heart full of suspicion. Surely this was some trick of death. At any moment, the ceiling above her would disappear and she would lift her head to behold a verdant land of swollen rivers and fertile fields and eternal souls: the land of the Underworld.
The ceiling was disappearing before her blows. Its stony chunks were falling like an avalanche. Her head had stopped throbbing and the world had ceased to spin. The opening was now big enough to fit through. She took another long, fortifying breath, then lifted her head above the surface.
There was no river in sight. She seemed to be in a small valley between hills, but there was not a single green plant growing upon their sloping grounds, nor any eternal soul anywhere.
There was noise, however—the soft twitter of invisible birds. Looking closer, she caught sight of them flitting among the boulders all around her, twittering and chattering and whistling their cheerful songs.
If life had a sound, this was surely it: birdsong. A cacophony of soft notes filling the air.
Chirp, chirp. Twitter, twitter. Caw, caw.
The music was so glorious that she paused to listen and did not immediately notice the sky.
The sky! There it was all around her—a miracle! It was pink. No—yellow. No, it was orange with a tinge of white. It was changing, growing more beautiful by the moment. It was...dawn.
If life had an aura, it was this: the quality of dawn. The sun god’s arms were reaching out from beneath the horizon. His light was fragile, but each minute growing stronger, larger.
She felt her spirit growing larger, too. The birds were no longer chirping, they were cheering. Somehow she had done it. Like the sun god himself, she had come forth at dawn. She had made it to the surface. She had fulfilled her promise to Tausret—had refused to die and had been reborn.
She breathed in the fragrant morning air and her eyes filled with tears. They landed on her lips and she tasted them—salt, dust—the taste of life.
Intef.
She rushed to the false chamber and found the place where Intef lay. She splayed her hand before his nostrils and said a small prayer, willing him to be alive.
And if he was not? Her stomach took a plunge. If he was not alive, then the tomb would remain intact...but it would not matter. A gauzy curtain of grief would cloud her vision. She would search for the heir, but be unable to find him or protect him. She would be lost for ever.
The gods would not dare take him from her. They had given him to her as a gift, after all. He was the answer to her prayers. He was the man who had severed her bonds and rescued her from oblivion.
He had shown her how to laugh, how to trust and how to begin to forgive herself. He had steadied her aim and taught her how to slay her demons. He had shown her what it meant to feel the lightness of desire inside her heart.
He had called her beautiful and made her believe it.
He had made his mark on her spirit, had chiselled his name into her hardened heart. Even if their paths were meant to diverge, she did not wish to live in the world without knowing he was in it.
And yet there was no more breath in him. She crouched low and bent her ear to his mouth. Closing her other ear with her hand, she lay completely still and concentrated hard.
There it was! The tiniest of exhales, like the flap of a butterfly’s wing. Thank the gods! He was still alive.
Her strength had returned with the fresh air, but would his? The new air was flowing into the chamber. It just needed to be encouraged. She pulled the sheath off of her back and began to fan him with it.
She had always tried to maintain her modesty around Intef. Now she was standing above him in nothing more than her loincloth! But it did not matter. Nothing mattered but to bring him back to life.
She crouched close to his mouth and listened for his breaths once again. They were coming more quickly now—she was sure of it. She fanned her tunic over him several more times, then dashed back up into the tunnel.
She needed to let in as much air as she could. She hacked away at the ceiling, and soon the opening was as large as the tunnel itself.
She rushed back and crouched at Intef’s side, fanning the air as she went. The light from above cascaded down the ramp and on to Intef’s naked chest.
But it was not moving.
If only she could open his mouth, perhaps she could return his breath to him. What she needed was an adze—that axe-like instrument that priests used to prepare mummies for the afterlife. She felt certain that if she had an adze, she could say the sacred spell and touch the instrument to his lips and he would be restored.
She did not have an adze, so her own humble chisel would have to do. She touched it to his mouth and began the spell: ‘May his mouth be opened. May his mouth be unclosed by Shu with this iron knife... I am the goddess Sekhet and I sit upon my place in the great wind of heaven.’
She paused to see if the spell was working, but there was no movement at all. What cruel trick of the gods was this? That she would live and he would die? It could not be; she would not let it be. ‘Hail, you who tows along the boat of Ra,’ she called up to the ceiling, continuing the spell. ‘The stays of your sails and of your rudder are taut in the wind as you sail up the Pool of Fire. Behold you gather together the charm from every place where it is...’
She stood and waved her sheath over him, fanning so furiously that she seemed to whip the air into a storm. ‘Drink,’ she urged him. ‘Drink the air.’
She bent and placed her lips on his and breathed into him. She watched his chest fill with air, then released his lips and saw him exhale. She repeated the motion, filling him with her breath. Over and over she breathed into him, until she felt as if she had given all of her breath away.
Then—a miracle. He coughed and gulped the air. Her heart leapt as she perceived a slight tremble in his lips. No, it was more than a tremble—his lips were moving, twisting into a mischievous grin. ‘Good morning,’ he said. He opened his eyes and grinned.
‘Intef!’ She collapsed to the floor beside him in a fit of sobs. ‘You returned to me.’
‘Well, of course I did,’ he said, as if he had just returned from a stroll. He sat up and smiled down at her. ‘I seem to have indulged in a particularly deep sleep.’
‘The demons invaded your lungs,’ Aya explained. ‘You were barely breathing.’
His expression sobered. ‘I felt them there. And I felt it when you expelled them.’
She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes. ‘You are crying.’
‘Dust in my eyes,’ he said, ‘though I am rather happy to see you.’
‘I was so afraid I had lost you.’
‘You saved me,’ he said. ‘Do you know what that means?’
‘That we must make an offering to Osiris?’ she asked.
He bowed his head. ‘That I must serve and protect you for ever.’