Spell Bound (A Fairy Retelling #3)

by Dorian Tsukioka

  EIGHTEEN

  Nehi watches as Aniya disappears into the darkness. The stillness of the burial chamber is deafening. He walks over to the wall and places his hand on the cool stone where he watched his friend walk away. It is solid rock.

  “Now what?” he asks the baby, but the boy has fallen asleep.

  Nehi reaches for the torch, but pauses. He knows he should go, should leave Aniya in peace. Tomorrow the embalming will begin. He shouldn’t disturb her body, but still…

  He walks over to the table and lifts up the burial shroud. Her cheeks are still flushed. He rubs his thumb gently over one. Her skin is still soft and warm. How can this be? She looks alive, as if she’s merely sleeping, but her body does not move. Her chest doesn’t rise. She’s not breathing. Nehi places his ear against her chest. No sound. Her heart is still. There is no life in her.

  And yet…

  Her lips remain red.

  Although he knows it is impossible, she still seems alive.

  Nehi leans down and presses his lips gently against hers, two slaves who found magic in each other.

  Please. There still has to be some magic left. But when he pulls away, there is no sudden breath. Her eyes do not open.

  He rises up and sees a glimmer of white between her teeth. The stolen kiss shifted her lips and her jaw is open just slightly.

  Nehi looks closer and sees a hint of red behind the white as well. Saying a quick prayer of forgiveness for burdening the body of the dead, he pulls Aniya’s jaw open even further and sees a sliver of apple sitting on her tongue.

  Nehi’s stomach wrenches with guilt and regret. Shame floods him as he relives his part in causing her death. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t stop himself. He would never stop feeling guilty for what he did to her.

  Gently, he takes the poisoned apple from her mouth and throws it to the floor, crushing it under his sandal. He would never forget his part in causing her death. He grabs the torch from the wall and begins to walk toward the tunnel when he hears a voice call out to him.

  “Nehi?”

  He turns around. Aniya’s body is still lying on the table, but her hands have moved. Her fingers are resting on her lips.

  “Nehi?” she says again.

  “Yes,” he says, drawing near to the girl who should be dead. “It’s me.”

  Her fingers raise to touch his face as if testing if it’s real. When her flesh meets his, she gives a cry. Tears stream from her eyes and she places her hands on her sleeping son. Nehi helps her sit up and stares at her. “You were….you were....”

  “Dead,” she finishes. “I remember. I was in the Duat, sinking into the black Nile, ready to join the lost souls of the dead. The next thing I knew, I was here.”

  Nehi drops the torch to the floor and pulls Aniya to him with his free hand.

  “I can feel you,” she says, holding him close to her. “I can feel you.”

  “Here,” he says, pulling back for a moment. “Hold your son.”

  Aniya’s hands seem unsure at first, but at the first touch of her son’s skin against hers, she pulls him into a tight embrace. The babe breathes deep and snuggles his head against her chest.

  “Thank you,” she whispers to Nehi, to the gods. “Thank you.” Tears stream down her face and laughter catches with relief in her throat.

  “Forgive me, my queen,” Nehi asks as he puts a hand to her cheek.

  Aniya looks him in the eye. She finally understands the pain he’s been put through. She needs for him to understand her as well. “Nehi, truly all that you have done has been forgiven.”

  “Not just for what I’ve done...but for what I’m about to do.”

  Nehi tilts her chin up and brings his lips down to meet hers. Her soft, warm lips move against his, filling him with love, mercy and understanding. When they finally part, Aniya brings his face to her lips and kisses away the tears streaking sandy paths on his cheeks, rivers of confession and absolution.

  They bask there awhile in the comfort of each other’s embrace until Nehi retrieves the torch from the floor, puts an arm around Aniya’s shoulders, and together they leave the pyramid and all the dead behind.

  Glossary

  Ammit, the Devourer - Egyptian deity with the head of a crocodile, the torso of a wild cat, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus. After death, a human’s heart would be weighed on the scales of Ma’at. If the heart was untrue, Ammit would devour the soul and it would enter into the second death

  Amun-Ra - the Egyptian sun god; each day he travels through the Duat on his ship bringing dawn, the midday sun and dusk to the living world; at night, he must battle the great snake, Apophis

  Ankh - Egyptian word meaning “life”

  Anubis - Egyptian god of the dead

  Apophis - Egyptian god of evil and destruction; each night Apophis attacks Amun-Ra as he travels through the Duat; destroying Amun-Ra would throw the world into chaos

  Aten the One God - a deity worshipped by the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his first wife, Nefertiti; the people of Egypt were forced to worship Aten and stop worshipping the ancient gods

  Duat - land of the dead that souls must pass through on their way to judgment and their final afterlife

  Isis - Egyptian goddess, married to Osiris

  Ka - the essence of a person’s soul

  Khopesh - curved sword similar to a sickle

  Kiya - Pharaoh Akhenaten’s second wife

  Lapis lazuli - precious bright blue stone used by Egyptian aristocrats

  Ma’at - Egyptian word for peace and order

  Aniya - sold to Rahotep to pay her father’s debts

  Nefertiti - the first and Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten

  Nehi - priest’s apprentice and friend to Aniya

  Osiris - Egyptian god of the underworld

  Rahotep - high priest of Egypt and Vizier of the Pharaoh

  Set - Egyptian god of chaos; brother to Osiris

  Shabti - funerary dolls used in the afterlife as servants

  Waset - capital city of ancient Egypt; modern-day Thebes

  Author’s Notes

  The initial inspiration for this fairy tale retelling came from the fairy tales of Rumplestiltskin and Snow White, as you may have already guessed. In particular, I was interested in what happened to Snow White after she ate the apple and lay dead - but not dead - in her glass coffin. Was she asleep? Was she dreaming? Was she actually doing battle in some sort of spiritual dimension?

  I decided it should be the latter.

  Snow White needed to kick some butt while she was busy being dead. So where to send her? This brought to mind cultures that have a strong sense of an underworld or a purgatory between life and death, and I settled on ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death, especially pharaohs - surely there could be a good story here.

  I wanted to connect my story with a real-life Egyptian figure, but to tell the truth, I didn’t know many other than Cleopatra and King Tut. I did some research on both of them and found that King Tut’s family was incredibly interesting, if not a little dysfunctional.

  King Tut’s dad, Akhenaten, decreed that there was only one god - Aten. His first wife, Nefertiti, joined him in outlawing the worship of other gods. What did they get for their trouble? Well, the were reviled and hated by Egyptians so much that almost every statue of the couple was torn down and their names were stricken from the records. Holy cow! I couldn’t wait to add this to my story. It all actually happened. Years later, King Tutankhamun (King Tut) reinstated the worship of the old gods.

  There’s not a lot of information about who King Tut’s mom was. It’s believed she was probably not Nefertiti or Kiya, Akhenaten’s first and second wives. I decided that my heroine needed to be King Tut’s mom - but how to get her into the palace? Hmmm....maybe this could be a sort of rags to riches story? Maybe she was sold as a slave… What other fairy tales have a young woman sold as a slave - why Rumpelstiltskin of c
ourse!

  I wanted to turn this fairy tale on its head as well. This time, I wanted the poor girl, who is given away by her own father (another dysfunctional family drama to play with) to actually be able to turn straw (or in this case cattails and river weeds) into gold. And poor Rumpelstiltskin would be the actual slave. Thus, the story was born and a mashup of two completely different fairy tales was able to take place in the heart of ancient Egypt.

  I hope you enjoyed the story of Aniya, and may your heart weigh true on the scales of Ma’at when you find yourself traveling through the Duat.

  Thank you again for taking the time to read Spell Bound! If you enjoyed this story and would like to stay informed of upcoming releases (and get my books at a BIG discount) make sure to join my mailing list. You’ll get access to my book, Ai of the Mountain, free for signing up!

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