Going Forth By Day

by Mary R Woldering

  I’m going to die. I can’t. I have to save them. He continued to rise like the benu of the sun, but he struggled in his rebirth. Falling back to his body, he felt the painful heaves of complete suffocation. There was no air, not even stale air. He slipped into an even deeper sleep, unable to move, unable to think, unable to rise again. Wserkaf. I’m done. I know it. He couldn’t feel his heart beating at all. Take the Children and put them with your mother’s keys. Your wife will know where they are. Naibe, my love, go to him. Go… go… so sorry, so very sorry.

  He could feel his body breathing just a little, as if he was rising to consciousness again in his last moments of life. With each suffering heave his chest made, he grew a little weaker. One last try before oblivion. Marai pushed himself up towards consciousness. He could not open his eyes or his mouth, but he still tried to move his legs. He had thought of kicking the lid off of the coffin before, but only now was he truly desperate enough to try. Another dream? I have no legs. I am spirit. There was a grinding sound… stone grating on stone. Was it moving? Heavy. Heavier than anything. Push. Grind. Push. He could not stay. The black wing of the vulture swept over him again.

  When Marai became aware again, he felt a gentle but fidgeting weight on his chest. Someone whispered in the dark. A hand delivered a soothing touch. The hand pressed upward in a tracing and massaging motion toward his neck. The points that it pressed tingled to the point of numb pain and then stopped. A voice inside his thoughts rushed.

  Ease

  His eyes twitched a little under his dry, sealed lids. Someone rubbed a greasy substance into them. If he could have screamed in pain he would have done so. His eyes felt as if they had been adorned with jagged rock where his lashes had knit shut. When he cracked his eyes open just the tiniest bit, he saw a soft, red light against a black void as if he had gone blind. Everything was blurry, but he could see the shadow of two men moving near him.

  Who? he asked himself. What was the person’s name? Someone was supposed to get me out. W? Wes? WsRkf? he noticed weight on his chest. Sitting on Me? the sojourner sensed the presence of the man he had first known as the inspector and later as Prince Wserkaf straddling his upper body as he lay in the stone box. Marai remembered more now. Asleep. Long time. Children not here. Long ago. His thoughts were broken. None of the images made sense, and his thoughts about them made even less sense. The man in the box with him attempted some sort of healing procedure. He worked on him breathlessly and feverishly. Although his whispered phrases were clear, Marai had forgotten the language the man spoke. The words sounded like lyrical gibberish. The sojourner tried to move his lips. Panic filled him, because he didn’t understand the words and knew he had known their meaning at one time. The man above him realized it.

  “Do you know my words?” he asked, “nod your head.”

  Marai tried, but couldn’t move his head for a few moments. The man repeated the words more slowly. Gradually, the sound of the language cleared and the intonation of the man’s utterance rang true. Marai was frozen. His senses were going dark. His chest remained hard, powerless, and unmoved.

  “Awake!

  Turn yourself over!

  So shout I…

  Oh, elevated one stand up!”

  Then quietly, as if he was begging him, the man urged: “Come on, Marai. Breathe!”

  “Feel the light of Holy Ra in you.

  Feel the truth of Ma-at in you.

  Around you.”

  “Breathe,” the voice trembled in a kind of terror as it spoke the utterance. Marai remembered memorizing the words in a hot, sunny plaza. Some old man or a kind of bird-demon with a long, curved bill and scrawny legs picked over nearby muck. The bird-demon was there to overwhelm, confuse, and dazzle him with huge amounts of rapid-fire, coded knowledge, but the sojourner had committed to memory each exact word and phrase he had been taught. Marai heard the squawking bird lecturing him, tablets tucked in its white wing.

  This isn’t right. There was no bird. There was something else.

  Someone grasped his stiffly folded arms from their position across his chest and bent them out straight. He knew the odd sensation of movement would have been excruciating if his arms had not been entirely numb and dead. The constant rhythmic pushes on his chest continued as more pressure was applied. Suddenly the pressure was joined by a new agony. It burned like lightning strikes at various intervals from his shoulders to his thumbs and then into his fingers.

  Places on the body. What are they called? Sesen points. He’s working them. They didn’t teach it… didn’t need to. I wasn’t supposed to wake up.

  Grease was smeared on his cracked lips and rubbed into them while the man intoned some more of the ritual words. His forefinger inserted tentatively in case Marai might startle and try to bite him. Drops of a liquid mixed with fiery liquor of some sort were squeezed out into his open mouth.

  “Marai,” the voice commanded again.

  “Raise yourself up to me.

  Take yourself to me

  Do not be far from me

  The tomb is a barrier against me”

  The priest’s voice continued to command, becoming clearer each time. Swiftly, the priest instructed another person in the chamber. “Quick. The waters…”

  Marai felt the first precious drops hitting his lips. The cold wetness burned his mouth and trickled onto his numb face. Cramping in his gut started afresh. It had hurt before, so long ago, but this time it was worse than he remembered. Poison. I was given poison to drink. I knew. I took it free-willed. It’s not gone? Will it take my life? No, this is just time, time and disuse. Warped and twisted blurs swam through his slit-eyed sight, spurred by the pain. Every conscious thought was scattered and walking around the dark red and black chamber, as if it has its own pulse and set of legs. The thoughts were locked in step behind the infernal bird as it strutted around the chamber. He wanted to reach forward to grasp its neck and wring the last tinny squawk from it, but the pain kept him in place.

  The men continued their utterance, speaking the phrases together.

  “I have cut heaven”

  The voice whispered, urging him directly: “Say it with me when you can, Marai.”

  “I have broken through the horizon.

  I have travelled the earth to his footsteps.”

  Marai heard this inspector priest Wserkaf whispering into his ear and pressing on his chest rhythmically. Whoever was assisting the priest, continued to work pressure on the intervals along his arms.

  The Horizon is split for a weeping Warrior.

  The words of the Children of Stones’ oracle-verse which had been given to him as they went dormant long ago rattled in among the priest’s words, only increasing the sojourner’s confusion.

  Is he really lying on top of me? I can’t feel him now, Marai tried to focus on everything that had begun to happen, but couldn’t decipher the myriad of sensations. He felt the rhythm of the words and knew the pattern of the pressure the men were exerting on him. He heard the inspector’s whispered, desperate chant:

  “O One, bright as the moon-god Iah;

  O One, shining as Iah;

  This Asar Ani comes forth among these your multitudes outside,

  Bringing himself back as a shining one.

  He has opened the netherworld.

  Lo, the Asar Ani comes forth by day,

  And does as he desires on earth among the living.”

  Finally, the big man’s chest began to pound once more. The pounding felt almost foreign to him, but it eased his some of the suffering he felt. Slowly, Marai began to pant a little. It was a struggle to draw any breath, let alone a deep breath.

  “Blessed Truth!” the inspector’s voice startled in astonishment. “Look, he breathes! Get him up before he strangles on his own phlegm!”

  Suddenly, Marai felt the two men prop him up and drape his upper body over the side of the stone box. They pressed and slapped his upper back, then rubbed the outer sides of his arms with rough, ointment-filled to
weling.

  “Can you speak? No, no. Nevermind. Don’t!” The man broke away from his ritual and his chanted tones. Marai remembered him as Inspector Wserkaf and knew he was supposed to ask him if he was well, but the sojourner shook his aching head.

  The man with the inspector offered more sips of the flavored watery liquor. This Wserkaf continued working the back of the sojourner’s neck, until the flood of miserable sensations caused the big man to heave and retch.

  “Good! Get rid of it. Oh, I can’t believe this! Oh blessed, blessed witness!” the inspector cried.

  Marai opened his eyes a little more, but they still felt like dried, painful slits. When light was brought near his face, it was too harsh. The pain from the light made him vomit up a few drops of fluid.

  The assistant gave him more liquid, this time with a bitter herb infused in it. This potion made his arms and legs spasm. They trembled violently for a few moments. He would have voided if he had not been entirely dry.

  Marai opened clearer eyes after long, silent moments, in which the men with him had begun to think they had failed and that he would collapse lifeless in their arms. His eyes focused on the faces. The priest he remembered as Wserkaf was the man working on him. His face was taut with worry, delight, astonishment, and awe that combined and spread over his face as an expression of horror. An assistant Marai didn’t recognize, perhaps a sesh from one of the other priesthoods, was with him in the chamber.

  “H-Ha lo…” Marai tried to say ‘How long’, but couldn’t make his lips form the words around the sounds his throat uttered.

  Wserkaf shook his head violently.

  “Don’t try to talk. Don’t think too much. Save all for standing up and walking out of here. I can put you in my chair once we’re outside.”

  “Hor…” Marai tried a name he remembered, “Hordjedtef.”

  “No! Gods, No! Don’t even think about him, or he’ll feel you. Let him believe you are vanquished,” the inspector urged and then muttered under his breath again. “Oh, by Wisdom, this can’t be happening! Drink more of this, now,” he held a small beaker up to Marai’s parched and cracked lips, letting some of the fluid soak into his bearded chin. The two men got him to lean forward, and then they pushed him up and out of the polished stone box.

  At once the big man slipped face downward on the floor. For several moments, Marai lay next to the box panting and coughing in the ashy dust at the bottom of the hewn out chamber. Slowly, he got up on his hands and knees.

  The assistant gave him more sips.

  Each time Marai took some of the liquid, his thoughts cleared a little more. He raised up and remembered there were ritualized stretches and breath-sequences to perform in the wakening phase. He couldn’t do it. Every part of his body that wasn’t numb was on fire with pain or throbbing aches. He stumbled and slid into an exhausted squat at the wall, then fell heavily to one side.

  After a few more moments of agony he tried again. He stood, swayed dizzily, and managed to move, heavily supported between the two men. Several times as the men walked him he began to fall again, but the men struggled with him until he could stand upright each time.

  No, leave me, his thoughts whispered. Somewhere in time he remembered a yellow-skinned, diseased old woman. There was a lot of sand. Other women were with her. She said the same thing: No, leave me. He remembered he wouldn’t hear of it and urged her on. These men wouldn’t leave him either, despite his misery.

  All along the way, Wserkaf whispered bits of the “Going Forth By Day” sequences, normally read or given at ritual before an initiate ever quit the secret location. This time, the inspector was saying the utterances. They were framed to insure the sojourner, not the king, would rise into the waking and walking world again.

  Faintly, Marai recognized more little verses, though they were spoken out of order and punctuated by the priest’s expressions of awe.

  “I am the lion-god who comes forth striding.

  I have shot;

  I have wounded; I have wounded.

  I am the eye of Heru;

  I have spread open the eye of Heru on this day.

  I have reached the riverbank.

  Come in peace, Asar Ani.”

  The blast of the hot night air outside of the subterranean temple was too much for the sojourner to bear. Engulfed in instant sweat, he felt the air rush out of his lungs. The big man fell like a tall tree, suddenly faint again from the temperature change. The air inside the hidden chambers had been almost chilly, even though it had been close and stale. The night air outside, by contrast, was brackish, smelly, and harder for him to breathe than bubbling mud. He felt as if he had sunk beneath slime in a bottomless pit for the moments before he lost consciousness again.

  The inspector, the sesh, and three servants who had waited outside half-dragged Marai into the dark, draped litter. He tried to rouse himself. The sojourner felt the men struggle to get him into the covered litter with his knees folded and drawn up to his chest to ease the growing pain and cramping. Marai coughed, wheezed and gasped, almost crying out. Reassuring him, Wserkaf walked with the three men and the sesh who served as bearers. He kept his hand on the sojourner’s leg so he could sense any change in his vital signs.

  Just as he had never known where Hordjedtef had sent him, Marai had no idea where he had been for so long. The journey took an even more dreadful and jostling amount of time than he remembered it took when he had been first brought there. Eventually, the group of men entered a pair of doors. These were tall, bound planks of timber that sounded similar in Marai’s scrambled thoughts to the doors in the old man’s plaza walls.

  Instantly, a voice chimed up from within the walls they had entered. “Wse! What’s going on? Is it someone, again?” A woman came up to the covered sedan chair as it was set down on the ground.

  Marai, still blind except for vague blurs, tried to stand up. The bearers moved in to support him.

  The inspector didn’t answer the woman’s question at first.

  Marai’s ears made rushing and roaring sounds through his head. He felt pain at the sound of speech, especially the tone of rising concern in the woman’s voice.

  “Is it? It’s not…Oh Blessed Goddess what have you done, Wse? Have you lost your wits? Have you cursed us all?”

  Even though Marai reeled at the sound of the woman chiding the inspector, he felt comforted by her gentle hand as it touched his face to inspect it.

  “Is that green paint? The Sed? What mockery! Oh no, no, no…” her voice edged toward tears of horror.

  “Shh. Beloved… I have to explain it to you later. “I couldn’t know until I went into the chamber to see about your dream.”

  “But… But… you lied… again… You lied to me and to our gods! Why?”

  “M… M…” Marai tried.

  The woman’s voice stopped suddenly at the sound of his effort.

  “Mother is Iat…” he gasped, trying to wake fully, but he was already exhausted, “…nourished me. I was c’nceive… night. Born at night,” he said finally and went limp.

  Wserkaf stumbled to support him and the other men hurried to him as well.

  Marai’s world spun madly again and he fell through several pairs of arms. A softness of some sort of bedding touched his sprawling form. The cane frame beneath it groaned under his weight.

  Rest.

  CHAPTER 13: THE UNEXPECTED

  Marai slowly came to his senses. Still dark, he thought. Another dream I’m in the chamber. A little bit of a breeze stirred over the top of his face. At first, he thought it was his own breath, then a lighter version of the pain returned and with it his memory of the previous evening. Morning, then, before sunrise. Still feeling very weak and ill, he remembered being jolted awake by Wserkaf. The inspector had all but danced on his chest, neck, and arms as he pressed the lotus or sesen points in the big man’s body to stimulate his breathing and restart his heart.

  The sojourner sorted through all of the broken moments of his memory in
the stone box: the chanting, the partial Sed initiation and ritual that had been strangely disjointed and false… the agony.

  He became gradually aware of his surroundings. Marai rested on a lashed cane bed in a small room. Without examining it too closely, he sensed this room was a sparely furnished one, but a little better fitted than the room he had used in Hordjedtef’s estate. He tried to lie still, enjoying his freedom and beginning to pick out his surroundings. A chest high window, netted with sheer linen to keep out flying insects and afford a small amount of privacy, was on the wall opposite the bed where he lay.

  The sojourner lay alone for several minutes, listening to some kind of activity. Even though the sun had not yet risen, the household was already bustling. Hushed voices sounded in the distance: chattering, hurrying, moving closer, and moving further. He knew the sound.

  Women are weeping? he questioned as another sound reached him. Marai struggled to his feet, lurching to the window to look through the edge of the curtain out into the open plaza. Servants darted here and there across the plaza in the gradually lightening dawn. They threw dark drapes out over various things in their path, lifting and transporting other objects to several litters that lined the outer walls.

  Straining his still blurred and painful eyes in the dimmest of morning light, he saw carved trunks and baskets. These were stacked on the litters. A draped sedan chair waited in the plaza for its rider. The bearers shuffled about solemnly. They spoke in low, reverent tones to a good-sized crowd of soldiers and peacekeepers who had apparently come to help with all of the items that had been gathered.

  Marai remembered a woman’s worried voice when he had arrived even though it seemed as if it been only a few moments ago.

  Wserkaf’s wife, Marai remembered he had imagined her once. He had seen her a little later as well when he had been on a spirit journey when he first lay entombed. This morning, he saw this same woman pacing anxiously back and forth in the open plaza beside the draped sedan chair. Her servants attended her with whispers and something that felt sad to him. Has something happened while I slept? he wondered.