Two Horizons

by Hank Lawson

Chapter (numberless)

  DAY AND NIGHT

  On the day and night of Khufu’s internment, Mehi trudged to the Nile at dawn. Gusts of wind bristled his nerves. Behind thin gray clouds, the sun splattered the horizon like a spit stain. Weak shadows littered the ground. On the four previous days between the year just ended and the year to follow, he had spied on his brother, following him wherever Sebek traveled. Yet, Mehi hadn’t confirmed his suspicions other than to see his brother frequent the worst drinking dens in the worst neighborhoods.

  Why am I the responsible son?

  Mehi must follow his brother a final time today—the day and night of Khufu’s entombment. Upon a royal barque, Khufu’s mummy would stream from Annu to Giza where the princes would bear him into the valley temple. There, unseen by all but royalty and priest, the princes, wearing Anpu jackal masks, ritually would cleanse him before carrying him up the covered causeway and into the mortuary temple to enact the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. Finally, the princes would nestle him in the pyramid forever.

  If Sebek is plotting against the God-king’s mummy, how will I stop him?

  Mehi’s feet crunched dry earth before oozing through mud and wading into the low water. When the river’s depth allowed, some thirty feet out, he submerged himself, if barely. Underneath, he floated weightless and will-less as he had with An-khi as children. His drifting in the Nile caressed him as gently as her loving hands. One by one, each muscle relaxed.

  Warm and peaceful, Mehi sought tears. He called on a flood of tears for his mother, Pabes, Wabt, his lost days, lost schooling, lost An-khi. He loitered in the water’s glimmer as long as he dared, but the tears did not come. Perhaps they would soon.

  He dragged himself from the river and headed to his father’s house to say good morning—would it be good-bye?

  Horemheb stood in the front room, taut and stooped. “What is it, son?”

  His father had never before worried about what was troubling him. Mehi wished for his neglect this morning. “Nothing, Father.”

  “Is it Sebek?” Horemheb grunted, dragging his body to the doorway, looking for his eldest. “Is your brother visiting this morning?”

  Mehi’s muscles began to seize in spasms. The mere expectation of Sebek—the son who plotted against Egypt—excited his father.

  “He brought you home,” Horemheb said, still looking out down the alley. Mehi’s throat swelled. Pain pounded in his temples. He’d borne this repeated lie for four days. “I really am a lucky man. It’s a blessing to get one great son and I got t—”

  At his father’s back, Mehi blurted, “Sebek doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about me.”

  As he turned to Mehi, Horemheb cringed.

  Leg muscles flexing and hands shaking into fists, Mehi closed on his father. “Do you want to know how great Sebek is?”

  Horemheb’s eyebrows quivered.

  Inches from him, Mehi pointed out the door. “You want to know what your hero son plans to do today?”

  Horemheb stammered. “A great hunter like him fetched home my son.”

  “Great hunter?” Pain gored Mehi. “He’s a criminal. A tem, teshrut criminal. Just like you.”

  Horemheb teared.

  Mehi’s lips trembled; his gut retched. Why had he said this to his father? He cursed himself and bolted from Horemheb and the house.

  Again in the pale morning, Mehi couldn’t draw decent breath. His gut knotted.

  He carried himself to Sebek and An-khi’s estate and, an hour past dawn, burrowed like an owl into his rock hideout in view of the front entrance. He concealed himself from Sebek but not from his words to his father. He couldn’t take them back. And he could not yet weep. His brother inside An-khi’s estate—inside An-khi?—kept him waiting with horrid thoughts, the sun spiking. During Mehi’s previous four-day sentry, his brother had not left the estate earlier than mid-morning, but the funeral flotilla would arrive in Giza at noon. Can Sebek be irresponsible even in this? What was he doing in there? Mehi didn’t want to dwell on that.

  Did I dream the plot against the King?

  Mehi stood. He paced. Two steps to the right. Three steps to the left. He stared at the entrance as if that could make Sebek appear. Finally, he snuck inside the estate walls—he’d earlier learned that An-khi had dismissed the guards after Paser died—past the fig trees and sycamores to the forecourt under the palm tree. He sidled to the front doorway. At that moment, An-khi strode out of the house. “Oh—Mehi.”

  He reeled back from her. “Usheb na. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Her white gown and headband highlighted the white of her eyes and lips’ outline. Lovely.

  “I’m on my way to the pyramid. Come with me.”

  “Isn’t Sebek with you?” Mehi leaned around her, trying to catch sight of his brother inside the dark house.

  “No, he left hours before dawn. He’s—”

  “What? No, no, he has to be here.” Mehi searched the darkness of An-khi’s eyes then the darkness of her doorway.

  An-khi shook her head, her expression quizzical.

  Failing the simple task of trailing Sebek, Mehi must now find him. “I’ve got to go, An-khi.” He turned and began running. Realizing he’d left her rudely, he called, “Usheb na,” glimpsing the white An-khi as a white wave, white cloud, white moon. Sebek had caused him to miss the chance of walking with her.

  Mehi dashed to the village road, upsetting villagers pacing leisurely toward Giza, and onto the shoreline road. His heart frenzied that he was too late. Why had Sebek left so early?

  Realizing he’d be in Giza long before Khufu’s mummy came ashore, Mehi calmed a little. When he was still miles from Giza, he saw the pyramid’s southern face dominate the landscape much as God Ra, now inflamed as if to make up for His slumbering start, dominated the sky. The pyramid seemed to thrust itself at him like the talons of a pouncing falcon. He tried to single out his team’s stones, but the pyramid blended all its pieces so that it was as unblemished as the flesh of a newborn. After his absence, Mehi felt that he was rediscovering the pyramid, like he had wakened to remember he was in love.

  Mehi imagined the pyramid in its completed form, upper courses and golden capstone in place. In his mind, its white, polished limestone blazed with the full glory of Ra. Its weight—commanding as death—fused it to the ground as if it always had and always would. Khufu’s place of sunrise and sunset. The body of time.

  Sebek dares to disturb this beauty?

  Mehi ran with fear. Hard fear. His heart smarted as hard as a year ago when he ran from the tomb-robbing pit. Sunshine flashed over his head between the sycamores. His feet throbbed. But no matter how fast Mehi hurried, only slowly the pyramid’s east face revolved into his view.

  When Mehi finally arrived on the Giza plateau an hour before noon, the pyramid consumed land and sky. He panted, trying to collect his breath. As he crossed the pyramid’s southeast corner, its edge, sharp as a blade, aimed right at him. It might have split him in two. His legs wobbled.

  Thousands of people packed the site. On the south and north sections divided by a granite avenue cleared for the funeral procession, they clustered against hemp barricades that spanned fifty yards along the river.

  The crowd murmured with occasional laughter or delighted squeals while craning their necks north down the river although Khufu wasn’t scheduled to arrive for an hour or more. Mehi didn’t belong with these good Egyptians; his family was criminal. He squeezed through the south section, searching among the innocent for the man plotting sacrilege. When he reached the barrier, he looked over the two hundred foot wide avenue at the people in the north section.

  Am I too late to stop Sebek?

  The sun whipped the top of his head and cheeks.

  Mehi peered at the valley temple, its limestone architecture a hundred and fifty foot wide and fifty feet high.

  Is Sebek inside? Could he have gotten inside already?

  Later, after grievous lost time when Mehi could only push through the
glut of people—denser by the minute—or stare futilely at the north section or pound his fits on his thighs, Mehi spied white An-khi. He hid from her. He couldn’t afford her distracting him.

  Swiveling his head side to side, seeking some way to locate Sebek, Mehi knew that nobody could help him. Who’d believe him with any words he had? He tried to console himself that the guards had already repelled Sebek from accessing the temple.

  Mehi was looking south when the crowd spied the lead cortege ship coming from the north. As one, they cheered prayers to the Good God.

  On the ship posed sixty or more of the King’s Friends.

  About to shift his eyes to the second barque, he spotted Sebek. On the first ship. Mehi felt his heart constrict.

  That’s how Sebek will do it. From inside the funeral procession itself. He’ll march right in with the face of a friend and steal Khufu.

  Sebek had outsmarted Mehi again. Two fangs of a cobra bite seemed to puncture Mehi’s heart. His mind reeled, his body shivered. To track Sebek’s movements onboard, Mehi swerved in and out of the crowd as the barque made for shore.

  What should I do? What can I do?

  To divine some answer, Mehi forced his eyes off his brother. In a moment, they wandered across Djedi. The magician too was onboard. Mehi had his own friend there. “Djedi! Djedi!”

  From this distance, Mehi’s loudest shout dissolved in the din of the thousands’ screaming their names so the Osiris King would remember them. Intent on both his friend and his brother, Mehi elbowed forward into the crowd. Obscenities flurried at him. To be as close as possible to Khufu, hundreds of people had so rammed up together against the barricades that their arms and legs intertwined, trussed with one another. Mehi had to dig his hands around shoulders and throw them back like unearthing boulders. Many of the displaced rapped their fists on his head. Head aching, he kept digging forward and reached the front line.

  Sebek couldn’t steal Khufu’s mummy in this crowd, could he? He’d need to be hidden. The only way to do that would be from inside the valley temple. He’d have to trespass into it past all these eyes.

  The Friends’ ship docked at the quay. Khufu’s mummy followed on a ship laded with blue lotus garlands and the royal family. A third barque—that would sail the Osiris God to the stars—was anchored behind. Blocked from getting to Djedi, Mehi shook the hemp ropes so hard a guard rapped his hands with a spear. Blood seeped out.

  The Friends disembarked. Goddess Isis, crowned by a red solar disk, walked arm in arm with her sister Goddess Nephthys who was crowned by a yellow moon disk. Blue ladies wept behind. Foreign dignitaries, one a queen, and a group with Djedi and Sebek followed. Amethyst gowns adorned the Queen and princesses. Lastly, white oxen conducted the Osiris King by golden ropes.

  The crowd now yelled, “Khufu, Khufu, Khufu.”

  During the mourners’ hour-long march up to the valley temple, Mehi tried to keep up, battling his way alongside through the audience. He continually lost sight of his brother and Djedi. Mehi’s nerves fired quick and hot. He must attract Djedi’s attention. Somehow. His only chance would be after the funeral march. But, by then, Sebek may have already intruded into the temple.

  Mehi remembered the nightmarish words he thought he’d overheard in the Hituptah temple. Something about a distraction. A distraction using a “puppet.” That must be how Sebek would get into the temple.

  In the valley temple’s court, an expanse of granite, the royal family and the King’s Friends terminated their parade. They arranged themselves in semicircles facing the temple. The citizens muted in anticipation.

  Mehi regained sight of Sebek—the Gods willed it—standing at the foot of the temple’s three granite steps. He couldn’t find Djedi.

  “Khufu, Khufu, Khufu.”

  Three princes escorted Khufu’s coffin up the steps to the temple’s landing and situated him beneath the façade’s hieroglyphs: “Khufu, beloved of Ra, beloved of Osiris.” Mehi couldn’t hear anyone in the audience take a breath. An attendant aiding him, God-king Hordedef disembarked from his palanquin. He proceeded in his elegant pace toward the temple steps.

  “Ptah and only Ptah created the world and me.”

  A young man streaked toward Khufu’s coffin waving a chisel with its orange copper blazing in the sun. The same thing as at the Heb-Sed twelve months ago. Past the guards, the man sped. “Ptah created the world and me.” Mehi knew this was High-priest Siptah’s puppet he himself would have been him. Mehi was in thrall. Detached and immobile as in a dream.

  Egyptians shrieked. They threw out their hands. Yet no one but the young man moved. He raved a few bare feet from the coffin, aiming his weapon. It gleamed. “Ptah and only—”

  Three spears pierced him. Guards unwedged their weapons from his chest. He fell like scythed wheat.

  The crowd roared. They stormed over the barricades. In unthinking blasphemy, scores swarmed onto the court and the cortege, cursing, weeping, safeguarding Khufu, not hearing the guards’ barked warnings to clear the avenue. Thirty guards cordoned off the royal family. The princes spirited Khufu into the temple.

  Guards lugged away the dead attacker. Egyptians spat on him. Mehi stared at the lifeless body, fascinated that its lunge at the Osiris King had been no more under the young man’s power than it was now.

  Mehi had lost Sebek.

  As swiftly as the spectators had swarmed the court, they began dancing and singing, beginning the festival of the two God-kings. Mehi flurried everywhere, bashing into dancers, but couldn’t locate his criminal brother. He yelled for Djedi until his voice broke. Minute by precious minute elapsed before he and the magician caught one another’s eyes. Mehi raced to his friend.

  “Let him through, let him through,” Djedi yelled.

  To stop his momentum when he reached Djedi, Mehi caught and swung the magician around by his arm. “Come on, Sebek’s here,” he croaked. “You have to help me catch him.”

  “Slow down, Mehi.”

  “Sebek must be in the temple.”

  Djedi rubbed his forehead. “Mehi, all of us are … distraught.”

  “No, no, listen to me. He got in to steal the King’s body. I know. He’s in there.”

  The magician gazed toward the temple. “You saw him enter the temple?”

  Mehi grimaced. Explanation would waste precious seconds. “Sebek disappeared at the exact moment that man attacked the God-king. That was the same thing I heard at the Ptah Temple.”

  “You heard what?! Who was plotting?”

  “High-priest Siptah and my brother. They were planning it just the way it happened. Come on.” Mehi pulled the magician’s arm toward the valley temple.

  “What’s your brother got to do with this?” Djedi said, not moving.

  “You’ve got to get in,” begged Mehi, pumping Djedi’s arm. The magician’s resistance stung him like bees. “How can you just stand there?”

  “Mehi, this is a terrible day. I’m not thinking well. Only royalty and priests may enter the temple. I couldn’t even get a message to them. Are you sure what did you heard—“

  “But you’re a King’s Friend.”

  “That won’t admit me.” The magician scratched his jaw through his beard. “Only the purified ... a priest or a prince ...” Djedi’s arm whisked up. “The proclamation. Khufu’s proclamation.”

  “What?”

  Djedi turned and rushed Mehi through the revelers toward the shoreline. “My donkey’s here. Race to my home. Ask Nubcha for it.”

  Mehi hung back, not understanding.

  “Khufu’s proclamation,” Djedi said, “that enrolled you in Khufu’s school. It declares you’re a prince.”

  Mehi shook his head. He remembered his failure at school.

  “With it, no man can refuse you from a temple. It’s Khufu’s affirmation.”

  “No, not me, Djedi.”

  “It can be only you.”

  Mehi tried to ignore the sense in his chest of racing. He expected that part of his exci
tement in finding Djedi was to hand off to him responsibility for stopping Sebek. As a meager commoner, Mehi could without reservation “want” to do anything, but as a prince h could not use lack of power as excuse. He must compel want into motion. “It will take too much time.”

  “The Opening of the Mouth ritual won’t take place until nightfall. That’s hours away. You have time.”

  Djedi and Mehi came to the magician’s donkey. Mehi found himself on its back, reins in his hands. His stomach churned.

  “Go, Mehi. I’ll stay here. Go!” Djedi swatted the donkey’s rump and it jolted forward. The reins stropped Mehi’s hands. “You there,” the magician said to a merry group dancing in front of the donkey, “make way for the son of the Osiris King.”

  Three women hopped away, barely in time.

  Sour fluids sputtered up Mehi’s throat. Through the jubilant crowd, he zigzagged a route out of the pyramid complex, passing more celebrations on the road south. “One side.” In his starts and stops, chills crossed his flesh. Mehi doubted Djedi’s idea. A drunken man grasped the reins gurgling, “Let’s go for a ride.” Mehi prodded him to the ground. He and the donkey escaped the Giza plateau.

  The donkey’s clomps against the ground beat out a count of time passing. The chance to save his family might already have passed. Mehi bore down on the donkey.

  When the animal clopped into the magician’s courtyard, Mehi darted inside, “Nubcha!” and, in an instant, bounded back onto the donkey, papyrus proclamation in hand. His stomach’s bitter gnarling hollowed him like loneliness. What he tried to do isolated him from everyone. Especially from himself, the Mehi he’d known. He was the only one who could do this. There was no one to turn to.

  He drove the donkey hard. The roads had nearly emptied, but twilight descended into deep violet. The donkey stumbled. It bellowed. Mehi drove on. His heart hurried him.

  By the light of the moon, a few days shy of full, the pyramid’s face shimmered in a gold triangle against the indigo sky. Mehi realized that he was allowing the donkey to dawdle. Probably due to fear. He cracked the reins. Mehi goaded himself past his rigid fear and the donkey past its fatigue. He tightened his fist around the papyrus. He rushed like white water.

  At the complex, Mehi yanked up the donkey’s head. It whined. Festival ended, workmen were dismantling Khufu’s celestial barque to bury alongside the pyramid. Six-foot torches stuck in the ground lit their work.

  “You’ve got it,” the magician said as Mehi, panting, dismounted. “They’re in the mortuary temple by now. You still have time.”

  The two crossed the court toward the valley temple. Mehi’s knees trembled. His toes dragged on the ground. Djedi hustled his friend onto the temple’s steps, an arm around Mehi’s waist. It pressed his own sweat back on him.

  “Halt!” ordered four of the ten guards on the landing.

  “Pfft, halt your descendants,” the magician said. “This is a son of the Osiris King, here to accompany his father’s journey.”

  The guards eyed Mehi’s common clothes, then laughed.

  Djedi said, “Show them.”

  Mehi offered up the proclamation, hiding his face behind it.

  The guards laughed louder. “A piece of paper?” Smirking, one of them grabbed it. He read the official seal and the words. His scowl wilted like wet straw. In turn, all ten guards read the proclamation and all ten dropped jaws. Djedi took back the scroll and, giving it to Mehi, nudged him up the landing.

  “Hey, magician, that paper doesn’t make you a prince.”

  “I can’t go with you any farther.”

  Mehi, unsure, alone, spread his boyhood grin.

  “Go, Mehi. You are royalty.”

  I am really doing this.

  He longed to be at home, in bed, quiet and calm. He faced the temple. Holding out the scroll before his chest like a shield, he poked between the pillars. His toes tested each step as if he were entering a landscape of clouds. Soft light shone ahead. The temple floor of alabaster, cool to his feet, laid out a hundred feet before him. Several young priests, wiping up water or moving ritual objects, gaped at the stranger. He jiggled the paper. “It says I’m the King’s son.” The priests looked at each other. None moved to interfere. Mehi took that as encouragement. There was no Khufu or prince here, just the bier at the temple’s heart where the God-king’s mummy had received its ritual cleansing.

  Sebek must already be in the mortuary temple. Is he committing his sin there now?

  Alarm roused Mehi. He skimmed past the bier and through a doorway in the temple’s opposite wall. Between two mammoth columns, he cut into the covered causeway.

  Palm upon his wild heartbeat, Mehi stalled. He stood in the fifteen-foot wide causeway. Luminous moonlight through horizontal slits in the ceiling formed concentric rectangles as far as Mehi could see, before it angled to the right. The causeway led like a tunnel to the mortuary temple at the base of the pyramid a quarter-mile away. There, at this minute, God-king Khufu received the magic Opening of the Mouth ritual that prepared him to breathe and speak in the Afterlife, like the clearing of a newborn’s mouth. The causeway itself recreated the birth canal.

  Not allowing his fright to build any stronger, Mehi eased into the light and shadow corridor. After thirty yards, he began to trot. His feet clapped echoes off the limestone. He ran faster, moonlight flickering through the slotted ceiling over him. On the corridor’s walls, vivid blue, red and gold scenes streamed by—the pictorial history of Khufu’s reign. Was Khufu’s adoption of Mehi told there? As if he were running downhill, his body surged. He felt that he was casting off the weight of loneliness with every footfall.

  The causeway slanted right. As far as Mehi had progressed, in front of him an orange light glowed from the mortuary temple. He heard Hordedef’s voice reverberate softly along the causeway limestone. He slowed to a walk.

  Nearing the temple opening, Mehi flattened himself along the wall and clamped his hand over his mouth to muffle his panting, amplified by the limestone. God-king Hordedef’s words now boomed across the temple granite. Mehi dared not look into the chamber. No. He couldn’t. Judging by what he heard, the ritual seemed to proceed without trouble. Maybe Mehi wouldn’t need to do something. Perhaps his brother hadn’t passed the valley temple’s guards after all. Mehi sighed relief, and for a dreadful moment he thought it had been loud enough to reveal his presence.

  But no one responded.

  Hordedef was reciting a poem about Khufu’s “subtle body.” Mehi heard in Hordedef’s voice a tuneful pride. “O Khufu, you are alive.” The rich tones of his friend the God-king and the cool stone on his spine soothed Mehi. He not only witnessed this ritual but also breathed it in tingling his lungs and belly. How remarkable for a commoner to inhale the breaths of princes, God-king and Osiris God-king.

  Moments later, sounds of shuffling issued from the temple. Mehi guessed the princes were at that moment ushering Khufu out toward the pyramid.

  Imagine, God-king Khufu this moment is voyaging to his eternity.

  The footsteps subsided.

  Mehi was about to slide back out the causeway the way he’d come, but when it quieted inside the temple, he sneaked a look in; he couldn’t help himself. As his head passed the threshold, he saw at the temple’s center a tall figure in a floor-length robe and jackal mask—round eyes and pointed snout of Anubis—pivot toward him.

  Is that Sebek?

  The tall person unmasked. Mehi’s heart thumped. But Hordedef was behind the mask. “Mehi. My Gods. How did you find your way in here?”

  Limply, Mehi offered up the proclamation.

  “My, my,” Hordedef said with huge smile and hiked eyebrows, “yes, prince, do come in.”

  Priests in costumes similar to Hordedef’s removed their masks and gaped at Mehi as the valley priests had. In their gaze, he padded onto the black basalt floor that spread across the temple’s hundred and seventy-foot width and hundred-foot length. Supporting a God-king’s re-awakening, the black crystal
opened up a vista as vast as night. Mehi imagined Hordedef and himself as stars floating within it. In the walls’ twenty-four niches—one for each hour of the day—twelve-foot tall gold statues of Khufu had awakened beneath engravings of Khufu and God Ra in a barque sailing the hours as if to eternity.

  Hordedef met forearms with Mehi. “Brother Mehi. Welcome.”

  “Senbeb, prince, I mean, your Majesty.”

  Hordedef grinned. “Mehi, whatever brings you here?”

  In hushed tones, Mehi relayed his belief that he’d overheard his brother plotting conspiracy with High-priest Siptah, and Sebek’s disappearance during the attack on Osiris Khufu’s mummy. That attack seemed to prove the conspiracy, although Sebek had failed to penetrate the secret temples and complete the plot.

  Astonished but without hesitation, Hordedef instructed one of the priests to retrieve a palanquin. He would head to the Hituptah Temple while his scouts hunted for Mehi’s brother. “My leg disallows me in the pyramid, but rooting out these conspirators helps me release my father into eternity. “There’s not occasion at present to thank you properly but,” the God-king said with a wink, “enjoy yourself here as long as you wish.”

  “Here? No, no.”

  “I may disregard that I am God-king, but I prompt you that you are a prince. You belong here. As well as in the royal school.”

  Mehi bowed, partly to hide his blushing. “Gratitude, my God-king.”

  The priest and five more returned with the palanquin. They assisted the God-king, his limp evident, onto the chair. He said, “Mehi, we will require your oath on these lawbreakers. At the proper time, I will dispatch someone for you.”

  Mehi nodded. “Of course, my God-king. Could you please let Djedi know I’ll be there shortly? He’s waiting for me nearby the valley temple.”

  “I will. Senbeb.” The priests carried Hordedef into and down the causeway.

  Mehi shook his head. He had just sent Hordedef after his brother. Sebek’s probably fled Egypt. Would the Per-O officials track him down. Would he take An-khi? Would she go with him? Mehi reversed himself in mid-thought. That doesn’t change things. I’ve done it.

  The four priests remaining in the mortuary temple transferred offerings of black wine, black beer, onions, garlic, bread, lettuce, dates, melon, and vases of oil to the northwest corner near the doorway that opened onto the pyramid. Mehi wiggled his toes on the basalt as he inspected the gold statues and hieroglyphs, thanking Khufu and Hordedef for his ability to read them.

  On the temple’s west side, behind three rows of columns, Mehi approached a sanctuary, forty feet wide and twelve feet deep. Khufu had lain here while his sons performed the Opening of the Mouth to prime his first breath of Afterlife. The ritual’s sacred words yet pulsated like heat off the granite. Shutting his eyes, Mehi welcomed the presence of divinity.

  A moan. A moan seemed to issue in several directions at once. Mehi shivered. The Osiris King’s specter? The priests didn’t seem to have heard it. The moan sounded again. Pained and human—from somewhere behind the partition wall to Mehi’s left. Is it Sebek?

  Mehi edged to the partition. Three feet ahead, the recess veered left. He couldn’t see past its corner. A third moan. He tiptoed to the left corner. He peeped around. On the basalt, naked but for his loincloth, a man sprawled. The musty smell of blood gushed at Mehi. It was not Sebek. “Quick” he called to the priests. “A prince is wounded.” Mehi was kneeling to the body when the priests raced up. Several gasped. “It’s Prince Heru.”

  Mehi patted along Heru’s back. His fingertips dipped into a sticky liquid. “Stabbed.” He sickened. This poor man. And Sebek on the loose, completing his plot. Mehi got to his feet, trying to clear his mind. He told the priests that the Royal Magician was nearby the valley temple. Using a robe as a carrier, three priests slung the prince over the basalt and away into the causeway.

  “How could this occur?” said the fourth priest.

  Mehi’s heart pounded against his chest. He stared out the rear of the temple toward the pyramid. “He’s in the pyramid. With the princes.”

  “Who is? The one responsible?”

  “He has Heru’s mask and robe.”

  “I’ll relay word to the God-king.”

  “He’s too distant now.” Mehi’s mind worked. “Give me your mask.”

  “You mean to enter the pyramid? You were with the God-king, but that doesn’t sanction your ...”

  Mehi exchanged the proclamation for the Anubis mask. The priest’s mouth formed an oval as he read the papyrus and submitted to Mehi’s disrobing him. Mehi donned the robe and, mask in hand, began to sprint out. He remembered the proclamation, reclaimed it, stuffed it into his robes, and then ran through the temple’s rear doorway. He ran as fast as he ever had to outpace fear.

  On the limestone pavement, Mehi scampered to his right between the pyramid’s east face and the twelve-foot high wall that surrounded the pyramid. After three hundred feet, at the pyramid’s northeast corner, he spun left up the north face ramp under brilliant stars. He once towed stone up this dirt and timber. It had also supported Khufu. And Sebek.

  When fifty feet above the ground and midway across the north face, Mehi reached the pyramid entrance. He fingered the stone gable above it. He needed its solidity to help understand where he was and what he was doing. He took a breath before putting on the Anubis mask. Its eyeholes narrowed his view so that he had to move his head to scan down upon the Giza plateau and the Nile. He recited in his mind a prayer to allow him to exile his timid self as far away from him as the distance between Gods and men. Sweating and wavering on the face of the great pyramid at an hour he didn’t know, Mehi bowed into the four-foot high entry.

  The passage behind the entrance proved just as low and just three and a half feet wide. He stooped. Over his head, the pyramid lorded its mountainous weight. Pressure stuffed his ears.

  Eyes adjusting to the dark, Mehi saw a wavering of a dim light down the passage. How far away it was, he couldn’t tell. Supporting himself with a hand on either wall in the steep decline, he chased after the princes—and his brother. The stones’ coldness stung his palms. They were not the flames they had been in the sun. How odd that he trailed after Sebek tonight as he had when they were children. Tonight, at least, they had Egypt’s Osiris God in common.

  Four hunched figures restraining the coffin against the passage slope came into view, the lamp one was carrying flickered their silhouettes onto the walls and ceiling. Immediately, Mehi compared the four men. Which one didn’t fit? They rasped breaths and scratched Khufu’s coffin on the stone, each sound was muffled and isolated. Mehi had only a moment before the four in their jackal masks revolved toward him in the tiny corridor. “Hordedef,” one whispered, “so you decided to join us after all.”

  Another said, “Can you travel in here?”

  Mehi reminded himself to act as if he were their God-king. He touched his forefinger to his jackal lips. The four faced forward again and resumed their descent. Adopting Hordedef’s limp, Mehi pushed the coffin from the rear. As a laborer outside the pyramid, he had hauled stones and dreamt he transported Khufu; this moment inside it, he hauled Khufu and imagined the pyramid transported him from his former life. Behind the Anubis mask, Mehi grinned.

  He resumed examining in the shadows the others’ animal snouts and ears. Which was Sebek? His evil wasn’t obvious. The dimness, robes and masks equalized the four. Each might be a prince. Shouldn’t Sebek’s sinful character scream out?

  Mehi rejected the idea of unmasking them. That brash tactic would expose only Mehi, not Sebek. He could uncover no more than one face before they’d stop him, discover who he was and probably throw him out the pyramid down the fifty feet to the ground. Besides, Sebek still carried the knife that had wounded Heru. Mehi decided to maintain his brother’s ignorance of his presence until he could be sure which of the four was Sebek.

  He’d keep studying all of them.

  As the cortege waded deeper into the pyrami
d, Mehi felt he was not only nearing its deeper secrets but also nearing Khufu’s divinity. This intimacy he could compare only to his approach to An-khi, coming nearer her thoughts, her sex, her love. Here, masked as God Anubis, each man walked the path of royalty and Gods, receiving this realm through a God’s eyes. Even Sebek must appreciate this discovery, more strange than any of his strange lands.

  The procession paused at a gap in the ceiling. Mehi knew it. Though it was formed when he was an infant, pyramid workers had submitted to his constant questions about the pyramid’s inner workings. The gap opened onto an ascending passage that led to the pyramid’s core as well as Khufu’s burial chamber.

  Two princes—one a villain?—climbed into the passage. They rotated about and braced themselves. The two men below squatted and then tilted the front of the coffin onto their shoulders, rose up and glided it to the upper level. Their cooperation ... was it possible they all were brothers? How could any of them be a criminal? Seizing Mehi’s arms, the pair above elevated him to the passage with them as if granting him their status. Straightening himself, he bumped his mask against the stone ceiling, almost knocking it off before his hand shot up to secure it just in time.

  The princes linked themselves with a golden rope around their waists and turned forward. Now traveling upward, they began to pant, the coffin creaked. Mehi’s body bent with the effort. His muscles cramped. It was all he could do to keep pace.

  Flickered by the lamp flame, images of the mask, coffin and stone flashed as if facets of an orange gem.

  Heart knocking, Mehi sensed, all at once, open space unfurling around him as if he had bobbed up from under water to a full sky above. Gulping air, the pallbearers straightened up. For the first time inside the pyramid, Mehi could stand. Cut free in this expanse, the brothers lost contact with one another merely by turning their backs. Footfall and word succumbed to the stone void. Mehi’s senses lulled. He wandered in a silence only stone could compose. Pushing up on his toes, he inspected ahead of them a huge inclining corridor, a gallery. Its walls, tapering inward, soared so high that the lamp’s light didn’t reveal where they joined. The gallery pointed up toward the God-king’s final sanctuary, his sunrise and sunset, his endless horizon. Eternity, close now, lay ahead.

  Where the gallery began, crossbeams contained three red and black granite blocks. Mehi supposed that the princes, following the entombment, would cut the blocks loose to plug the ascending passage against possible tomb-robbers.

  The other princes assisted Mehi and then hoisted Khufu’s coffin over the blocks. The princes positioned the coffin in the three-and-a-half foot wide center of the gallery. From ledges at either side, they towed the coffin between them. Mehi found notches in the ledge to secure his foothold. Weary, his limp seemed natural to him now.

  Scaling high enough that Mehi grew dizzy, he felt himself lose contact with everything except the stone directly under his feet. Abiding with his brothers in this aerie, he lost all gauge of time. It didn’t matter here. No night divided from day. Neither sun nor moon existed. No season. No weather. No changing, no aging. Like the Inundation, the present overflowed its shores onto the past and future. The three mingled in a single eternal time.

  When finally at the gallery’s summit, they mounted a rectangular stone, eight feet deep. Onto it, the princes guided the coffin. Three princes opened the coffin and gathered the Osiris King’s mummy into their arms. Mehi counted Khufu’s faint but steady heartbeats. He sensed little else. His senses seemed to have rolled away like ripples in a pool to a serenity.

  Beyond the summit stone, the men crammed into a crawlspace not four feet square. They slid three steps forward before they crouched into an antechamber under four granite slabs, each suspended by a double rope. When the princes exited the tomb chamber, they could cut these ropes to preserve their father and God-king behind granite.

  Poised alongside the pyramid’s heart, its subtle body, Mehi shuddered. Then, in exacting rhythm, he shuddered twice more. By the regular rhythm, he realized that he was feeling his own heartbeat. A strong, regular pulse. Had Mehi ever before fully appreciated its punch, its rhythm? Its constancy beat in his ribs and pelvis and ears as if they too pulsed. Down even to his feet where he felt them solidly connect him to the floor. Was this the majesty that princes understood?

  Last in the group, Mehi scooted beneath the suspended slabs. He forgot to limp.

  As though throwing open shutters at noon, the lamp’s light lit up a chamber of granite, polished and golden-red as honey, twenty feet high, twenty feet deep and forty feet across. Here grace buoyed the holiest of homes. The provisions were all of gold: a miniature pyramid, throne, flails, crooks, armlets, pectoral plates, razors, organ jars inlayed with yellow jasper, amulets studded with garnet and carnelian, vases lined in red quartz, and countless gold lotus flowers throughout. Mehi sensed himself in a realm as celestial as heaven. Did their steps set off thunder, did their movement start up winds, were their eyes the sun and moon?

  At the west wall, the sons situated the God-king in front of the red granite sarcophagus. Shoulder to shoulder, the princes roughed their palms across the profound stone. Mehi’s hands tingled. His blood surged in his skin. The hair on his arms erected. He filled with exotic air, expanding him beyond where he stood. He expected he could reach out his hand and stroke all of Egypt.

  Mehi and his brothers drew back the sarcophagus lid, abrasions chiming in the chamber. Bending, they reached down, slipped their hands under Khufu’s mummy and raised him. Mehi, touching the linen that, in turn, blessed his hands, helped in resting the Osiris King in his sarcophagus. The five sons paused to regard their father within the linen, gold-mask and jewels, within the sarcophagus, within the pyramid. Khufu rested inside ever more subtle bodies.

  The princes fell in together against the east wall behind the sarcophagus. Mehi assumed his station at one end. A prince recited, “Our father, we, on the east, intuit your ba blowing through us. This is our Osiris father’s first sensation.”

  Another announced, “You existed as a red fish in Inundation water before awaking, awaking you strode to the Nile at dawn, dawn deluged you like birth, and birth created you as a red fish in Inundation water.”

  As red fish, Mehi breathed as did every prince.

  “Awake, Father. Speak the first word with the first breath.”

  A divine wine intoxicated Mehi. His heartbeat seemed to radiate in all directions. Words spilled from his mouth as if by their own will. “Your body cycles and cycles beyond death. In family and peace, arise Father. Awaken in the holy realm.”

  Only the holy.

  The chamber went black.

  Sebek!

  Someone shrieked in pain. The prince next to Mehi grunted and rammed into him. They both fell, hitting the stone.

  “Stay!” Sebek’s voice. On the other side of the sarcophagus. Mehi heard what sounded like Sebek lifting Khufu’s mummy from it.

  “Thief.”

  “I’ll stick my knife in each of you tem princes.”

  “He has Father.”

  Mehi ripped off his mask. He wriggled from under the prince and around the sarcophagus.

  “Don’t let him at the ropes.” Judging by their voices, the princes seemed to be on the floor.

  “Stay. I’ll knife you.”

  Tem Sebek.

  Mehi crawled through the gold provisions toward the chamber’s opening. The mummy’s linen scraped his cheek; Sebek was dragging Khufu ahead of him. Mehi heard the princes struggling behind.

  “The antechamber.”

  Mehi scrambled after the sound of scuffing on the stone. It led him to the antechamber. He made out Sebek in the crawlspace beyond about to light the lamp on the floor, the mummy clinched under his right arm. Scurrying silently on his hands and feet, Mehi looped behind his brother and around to the gallery’s summit stone, his feet grazing the empty coffin. Sebek had relit the lamp and, knife in his left hand, he was sawing at one of the double ropes leading to the f
our stones atop the antechamber. The first rope tore. Sebek started on the second. When that tore, the block would fall, trapping the princes.

  Mehi heard them as he got to his feet. “The ropes.”

  “Hurry.”

  Mehi snatched at the mummy, nearly freeing it, as Sebek twisted around to him. In that moment, brother and brother came eye to eye. Sebek didn’t blink; his brother was no threat to him. Sebek re-adjusted the mummy, braced himself and re-set the knife to the rope.

  A prince pressed into the opening; the stone began to quiver above his head. “Where—”

  Mehi bent down and yanked directly backward at the mummy with all his might. It leapt free and launched the brothers in opposite directions, Sebek recoiling into the prince and past the slabs, his hands flying up and foot kicking the lamp. Blackness again.

  Shredding and—twang.

  The block crashed down. Crack! Air gusted into Mehi’s eyes. Flinching back, he knocked the coffin down the gallery, before realizing he was out of the falling block’s way.

  Mehi sat in utter black. His one sensation was his heartbeat. Then, he heard shouting from the other side of the block. “He has a knife.” “Surround him.” A moan.

  Sebek was behind the downed block, in the sanctuary, and threatening the princes with his knife. He hollered through the fallen stone, “Little brother, I’ll get him back. You know I will.”

  Despite the granite between them, Mehi searched the blackness as if Sebek could reach out at him.

  “I’m coming for you.”

  Mehi fumbled about for the mummy. Tipping up one end of it, he was surprised at its light weight. Then he remembered his dream of the God-king in the white pavilion losing his water—and most of his weight.

  “I’ll take him back just like I took the woman from you.”

  In not speaking An-khi’s name, Sebek had wasted the chance to touch its sound to his lips.

  “Little brother, who can you trust out there? I didn’t plan this alone.”

  If it saved the princes, Mehi would have Sebek attack him. But he must safeguard Khufu. He must get away.

  In the dark on the summit stone, breathing ragged, Mehi tried to retrace in his mind their path through the pyramid as he had tried to remember his lost month in the desert. One hand on Khufu’s wrapped feet, Mehi groped with the other hand for the gallery’s ledge. Toeing the footholds, he started descending.

  “I’m coming for you.”

  Mehi had to lose that voice. He toed the floor’s notches. How long was the gallery? Though not heavy, the mummy’s size fought his control of it. He dragged it. After a few paces, Mehi panicked that his next step would be a fall into the opening at the head of the ascending passage. He felt for the three granite blocks at the gallery’s base. How much time was passing?

  Then, Mehi tripped—over the coffin. His shoulder slammed onto the floor and he skidded down the gallery. Though his shoulder, back and knees burnt on the stone, he held the mummy fast. He couldn’t waste time again looking for the mummy. And it kept him from being alone in this huge darkness. Slowing enough to bend his knees and starting to stand up, he smacked his hip into a corner of the blocks and he and Khufu flipped over and beyond them. Mehi’s back smacked and slid on the stone floor.

  Pain and darkness. Were his feet in front of or behind him? In the next instant, Mehi and Khufu were barreling into the ascending passage. Spinning now, Mehi feared he’d continue on into the descending passages. Wedging his feet against the floor and jamming Khufu against the wall, they dragged to a halt, his skin burning.

  Mehi shook out the stars in his head.

  Is Sebek coming?

  Mehi regretted the instant he wasted listening for his brother. He steadied himself, one limb at a time, then recovered the mummy.

  In blackness, feet, arms and hips smarting and wet—surely blood running on his skin—Mehi groped for the descending passage. He found it just three feet away. Into it, he dropped himself with Khufu. He began hiking the incline. His heart pummeled his ribs. Mehi’s limp arms continually slithered off the mummy’s resin and linen. But he kept moving.

  On his hands and knees, head butting the mummy forward, Mehi verged on the pyramid entrance. Escape. Inhaling fresh air, he peeked around the stone entrance. To the east, thin dawn was already mixing into the blue-black night.

  Nak!

  His stomach roiled. He tasted vomit. How could he, carrying Khufu, evade discovery in daylight? Not pausing, thinking he must re-bury Khufu somewhere before Sebek’s lackeys or Sebek himself caught him, Mehi collected the mummy. Arms wrapped around it, he launched himself from the pyramid, turning to run as he could down the ramp, the unwieldy God-king bouncing in every direction.

  When he and Khufu had hurtled off the ramp and reached level ground below the pyramid’s surrounding wall, he looked up, around, and forward along the east face. He saw no one. Then, his eyes attuning to the night, he realized it was still deep night. When in the pyramid’s blackness, he had apparently misjudged the brightness outside.

  Standing at the pyramid’s northeast corner, his arms and hip throbbed, his knees buckled, and his breath rasped. Sweat flowed over Mehi. It dampened the mummy’s linen. To his speeding mind, the mummy also sweated, dreading that its immortality was entrusted to this commoner. “Here’s your first morning in eternity, wanting eternal rest, and I’ve got you flailing like a top. You’ll rest soon, I promise.”

  The sudden melody of a swallow echoed around the pyramid beguiling Mehi. If dawn could sing, this would be its song. Perhaps the swallow was Khufu’s ba singing its confidence in Mehi to safeguard his adoptive father.

  Mehi may have escaped the pyramid but escaping the whole site ...?

  Where can I go, attached to the God-king’s mummy? I can’t risk going through the temples.

  As Sebek had warned, his accomplices might lurk anywhere and everywhere.

  The sun and the star Septit hadn’t yet exhumed themselves from the Underworld. Their red and white crowns would soon parade a ghostly halo onto the complex, heralding Perit Septit, New Year’s Day, and Mehi’s birthday. He grinned, joking that he must invite Sebek and his family over to the hut to celebrate. If Mehi had little chance to save Khufu, he also had no choice but to try. His brother caused this trouble and his father had hacked at a noble’s tomb; Mehi must do something. “This is why you shouldn’t rush into things—you find yourself carrying the God-king’s mummy and hiding from all humanity.”

  To help calm his heartbeat, he laid the King on the pavement and knelt down. Mehi asked his companion, “What would you do?”

  Immediately, Mehi had his answer. Khufu would use what made him unique. He would use himself. “What have I got? My knowledge of pyramids ...” ... the surrounding wall ... on the south side. I can break out of the complex there. Except that the priests will be crawling all over here by daybreak. That has to be soon. “Don’t worry about that now,” he told himself.

  Mehi hoisted Khufu’s mummy—smelling for the first time the acrid resin in the linen—and slinked up to the mortuary temple, halfway across the pyramid’s east face. Then, should anyone be inside, he raced past its doorway. He saw and heard nothing and no one.

  He continued on to the wall’s southwest corner. “Well, there it is, Father. What next?”

  Mehi leaned Khufu upright against the wall. Rubbing his chin, he studied the wall’s twelve-foot height. How to get both of them over it? Mulling it over, he walked slowly in a circle. A solution bubbled up.

  God-king Hordedef’s brother pinched a flap of the mummy’s wrapping and stripped off fifteen feet, dried resin crackling. He bound the end around his left wrist. Bracing Khufu on the wall, he placed his foot on the mummy where its knee must have been. Placing his hands on the mummy’s shoulders and then stepping up on the mummy’s hip, Mehi stretched up but was inches short from the top of the wall. So, he jumped—Khufu immediately sliding away though still dangling from the linen strip—and snagged his right hand on the wall
. He then hooked his elbow and other hand onto the top.

  Heartbeat loud enough to hear, Mehi recalled the game he and his brother played of leaping one after the other through their hut’s window. Sebek always won the right to go second and jump knees-first onto his brother. Mehi turned back toward the pyramid ramp. No Sebek. Had Mehi won this time?

  Slackening the linen leash, Mehi readied to boost a leg atop the wall. But when he looked up, a face, a human face, inches from Mehi’s eye, peered back at him.

  “Aak!” Mehi choked on his yelp. He pitched backward, falling onto Khufu. Both rolled across the limestone. Sebek’s caught me. It’s done. Mehi had lost his last possibility to redeem his family. He’d be its third criminal.

  “Mehi? Where’d you go?”

  Mehi could just make out the magician’s whiskers atop the wall. “Djedi?”

  “Yes. Grab this rope.” A rope flopped over the wall.

  Rising, Mehi shook confusion from his head and twitches from his limbs. “Tu.” The rope elevated him with Khufu to the top of the wall.

  Djedi on his donkey signaled for Mehi to hurry. Mehi lowered Khufu and himself to the ground. The magician’s eyes enlarged when he saw the mummy. He didn’t break off his stare as he gestured to the second donkey alongside. A brown blanket trussed over a bulk on the donkey’s right flank concealed a cargo of some kind, probably food offerings. Djedi handed him a similar blanket. “Bind it—him—on the left.”

  Mehi cradled Khufu in both arms to the donkey.

  “Make it look like the other side so no one will suspect ... you’ve got a King under there.”

  Too tired to reply, Mehi secured Khufu’s mummy onto the donkey and mounted the animal, drawing his legs upon the two payloads.

  He and the magician headed their donkeys south. A quarter-mile passed before either man spoke. Djedi said, “I fixed up Heru and a runner has gone to notify Hordedef.”

  Mehi nodded.

  “The priests told me about you going into the pyramid. I brought one of the priest’s donkeys expecting you’d need it. Of course, I didn’t expect you’d be dancing with his mummy.”

  Mehi faced his friend. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Djedi’s smile broke like dawn. “You seem different than before you entered the temple.”

  “I’m spent.”

  “I’m sure, but in the priestly robe you wear and with your companion there, a little nobility is showing in your face.”

  Mehi chuckled. He’d forgotten he still wore the Anubis robe. “My mother always wanted me to be a priest. Of course, I’m stealing a King’s mummy—not to mention this donkey—like the criminal my brother always wanted me to be.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What hour is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  “What?”

  “Precisely midnight.”

  “That isn’t possible. Isn’t it almost dawn?” Shaking his head, not able to sort that out, Mehi said, “Well, that gives me some time.” He scanned the desert. “I’ll take him out there. It’s the only place he’ll be safe.”

  Djedi nodded. He reached over and patted Mehi’s knee. “Why don’t you bury him beside your mother?”

  This rocked Mehi back. “I’m not sure where she is.”

  “Your father knows. Have him go with you. It would be good for you and him.”

  “Which father do you mean?”

  Djedi smiled. “What happened in there? Why did the princes have you relocate him?”

  Mehi whipped around toward the pyramid. “Djedi! The princes.” He clutched his forehead. “Sebek’s in there with them—with a knife.”

  “But, but ...,” Djedi reined his donkey, “you escaped.”

  “The princes were trapped with Sebek. You have to save them.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They’re in the burial chamber behind a stone block.”

  “The blocks dropped? Before the princes got out?”

  “At least one dropped. Sebek cut the rope, but he fell back inside with the princes when I took the mummy from him.”

  “I’ll see whether Hordedef has returned. He can consecrate stonecutters. Or priests will have to chisel.” Djedi hitched about his donkey. “Discourage people from prying into your cargo.”

  “I needed your help. Thank you.”

  “Help is what magicians conjure.”

  Djedi touched the mummy. “Live well. I’m proud to have been your friend.”

  Mehi noticed Djedi’s thinned hair and hunched back. When had his friend aged? If still energetic, the magician’s movements had stiffened as Horemheb’s had. Neither would be with Mehi long.

  Galloping toward the pyramid, Djedi waved. “I’ll mind the princes.”

  Turning forward, Mehi wondered again how it could be merely midnight. The pyramid must have muddled his sense of time. With a sting of fear, Mehi felt hot currents ripple through his arms, then throughout his body. Feeling that this indicated he was lunging back into the present, into normalcy, he marked in his muscles the grasp of eternity—where past, present and future merged and he sloughed borders—so ingrained in him when inside the pyramid.

  Blessed with more time than he’d counted on, Mehi nudged the donkey onto a trail along the desert, the longer but lesser-traveled route home. After the long, bizarre day, he mused about his enjoying an easy meander home, gathering Horemheb into the hills, and visiting his mother. The bridges he’d crossed since rousing this morning ...

  The moon trailed a lazy arc. The stars settled into their ancient places. Peace settled in Mehi. He didn’t remove his princely robe.

  The night still a silky black, Mehi led the donkey into Mer. He wended down the alleyways, empty of villagers. Dismounting at his family’s serene home, he looked about him, then, untying and hugging Khufu to him, walked inside.

  Though hours past midnight, Horemheb was still awake. He paced the front room. How small his father seemed. Horemheb saw his son. His eyes flicked away. Mehi remembered his horrible words to his father that morning. They re-ignited so that his heart seemed to catch fire. The family’s disgrace belonged to Horemheb and Sebek, but his father’s pain belonged to Mehi. “I’m sorry, Father. For what I said.”

  Horemheb’s head shot up. “You mean it?”

  “I should never have said them.”

  “You forgive me, like your mother,” Horemheb said as he hobbled over to embrace his son.

  In his father’s arms, Mehi replied, “Do you forgive me?”

  Horemheb snorted. “What the hatestt have you done to me?”

  Mehi grinned at his father’s anger in this situation.

  When they let loose their embrace, Horemheb noticed Mehi’s bundle, propped alongside his son like a shadow. His eyes bulged. He whistled a low tone.

  “Father, we need to go on a little journey.”

  “We’re taking that?”

  “Yes.”

  A voice behind Mehi said, “No, you won’t have to. I’m taking it.”

  Mehi whirled around toward the doorway and his dark brother’s silhouette. Sweating, huffing, Sebek tromped into the room. Mehi stepped back, grasping the mummy behind him.

  Sebek charged.

  Horemheb doddered over to stand between his sons. “No, Sebek.” Horemheb’s attempt to defend Mehi, feeble as it was, stopped both brothers. Then the elder brother gripped his father’s shoulders, steered Horemheb to a wall and pressed him down onto his haunches. “Little father, this will be over in a minute.” Sebek turned back to his brother. “Now, little Mehi. It’s been difficult tailing you here. I’ll have it now.”

  Mehi slid Khufu’s mummy between him and his brother. “Did you injure the princes?”

  “The robe and mask served me.” Sebek crept toward his brother. “My concern is that mummy. I’ll care for it better than you.”

  “You’ll destroy it.”

  Just one stride away and squinting down his nose at his brother, Sebek said, “It’s just a more ca
rgo.”

  Mehi’s aimed his eyes grimly at Sebek. “To you that’s all it is.”

  Sebek pounced. He hooked his arms around the mummy and, with it, wrenched Mehi side to side. Mehi shut his eyes and hung on. Sebek snaked one arm from the mummy and rapped his brother’s ear. Mehi yowled but held on. When they were children, Sebek often frustrated his younger brother with some ploy so that Mehi would lose self-control. Mehi must not permit that today. Sebek bent down and bit Mehi’s wrist. Though the bite drew blood, the pain was so slight that it seemed outside of Mehi. He knew he could bear the wound like a banner of his defiance and maintain his single purpose of affixing the God-king to his breast.

  Sebek’s breaths began to sputter.

  “Boys.” Horemheb tottered up behind his first son. Sebek kicked back the heel of his foot into his father’s stomach. Horemheb grunted, breath blasted out, and collapsed to the floor. With the kick, Mehi felt his own breath escape.

  Sebek withdrew his arms from the mummy, stood back and appeared to calculate before speaking again. “For the mummy, I’ll trade you the woman.”

  Is that all Sebek thought of An-khi, Khufu or Egypt? “I know who your partner is. I know your plan.”

  Sebek flung out both his hands around his brother’s neck.

  “Sebek!” The men turned to An-khi. White and divine.

  “Ah, the little woman,” Sebek said, dropping his grip from his brother’s throat. “Dear, your old friend, the perfect, obedient Mehi, stole a valuable artifact and I’m persuading him to restore it to his better brother.”

  An-khi’s face darkened. “Is that ...?” She turned to her husband, “You stole this?”

  “No, wife. Mehi took it. I am—as the King’s dragoman—procuring it for its rightful home.”

  Mehi said, “That’s a lie.”

  “Ask him, An-khi. Ask my perfect, little brother whether he stole the King’s mummy right out of the pyramid. Go on.”

  Mehi couldn’t deny that he had stolen it. Confusing the facts was another of his brother’s ploys to frustrate him. Mehi’s face grew hot.

  An-khi’s lovely gaze descended on Mehi. “Is this true?”

  His palms moistened. His heart raced. An-khi would side with her husband if Mehi’s words weren’t exact in explaining how he came to have the mummy. His tongue seemed to thicken. Finally, all he could do was muster all his contempt into his voice and say, “It is not true.”

  “You’re pitiful,” Sebek said. “Mehi, my wife considers you a weakling.”

  An-khi blushed through a frown.

  “See that,” Sebek said, pointing toward An-khi’s face.

  Tense heat flashed up Mehi’s spine. His brother’s frustration of him was working.

  “She’s right. You are a fool. You with a child’s mind and imbecile’s grin believe Egypt is some grand, beautiful structure like your exalted pyramid. You have no idea what the real world is. Being a puppet, you hold on to your package like it’s something important. Your brother is telling you that this is a world of pigs. That package is mine.” Sebek again stabbed for the mummy.

  An-khi cried, “Sebek.”

  The mummy loosened in Mehi’s grip. It was slipping away. Arms clenched, he wrestled for command of Khufu and himself. He had walked with princes. He would not dishonor them. He breathed deep. Mehi imagined himself as a red fish in blue water.

  Sebek hauled his arms from the mummy and stuck his nose an inch from Mehi’s nose. “You never learn. You never became a man. Instead, you’ve always followed me like slime. I hated that. Every day I had to care for a puny child.”

  Mehi’s heart shuddered at this lie. Sebek had never cared for anyone. Certainly never his brother. As the elder brother, Sebek had always been so large to Mehi. Even mythical. That too had been a lie. In Mehi’s eyes, his brother shrank to the image of an ordinary, even pitiable, man.

  “Witness me,” said Sebek, flinging out his arms as if around a huge globe. “I am life. What I’m living. You are too dull to learn it. Live in your dreamy pig hole.”

  Sebek’s only possessions were his crimes. He must succeed as a criminal or be nothing. He connected to nothing else. Not to nation, family or An-khi. He could not feel their support or offer his to them.

  Mehi now had the words to speak to An-khi. “At High-priest Siptah’s bidding, Sebek desecrated the valley and mortuary temples. He stabbed Prince Heru. Inside the pyramid, he stabbed at least one other prince before he desecrated the mummy, stealing it from the royal sarcophagus itself. I, legally recognized as Khufu’s son, rescued the Osiris King by taking it from Sebek.”

  “Sebek,” An-khi said, turning to her husband, “officials from the Per-O came to the estate looking for you.”

  Mehi perceived the briefest concern on his brother’s face before Sebek spread a smile. “They no doubt mean to commend me for uprooting this traitor.” He crooked An-khi in his arm and lit up his eyes. “See what I rule,” he said to Mehi. “I say my lover is content. What can you say?”

  Mehi fired his fist against his brother’s jaw. It broke Sebek’s hold on An-khi. Mehi landed three more punches before Sebek could put up his hands to defend himself.

  “Boys, boys.”

  Mehi heard An-khi cry out someone’s name he couldn’t make out. He struck three blows to every one of his brother’s that he disregarded. In his brother’s eyes he recognized bewilderment and then fear. He’d never seen either there before.

  Mehi’s ensuing blows struck with less rage than rhythm. After one barrage, Sebek crumpled to his knees. He slumped and fainted. Mehi swung behind his brother, tore off the strip of the mummy’s linen, that he’d used as its leash, and tied his brother’s hands.

  Catching his breath, Mehi stood over his crumpled brother. Sebek seemed smaller than Mehi had ever been. With his fists, Mehi had shrunk Sebek like his father’s fists had enlarged Sebek in rage. Could Sebek ever find his own size?

  An-khi’s eyes questioned him.

  He told her, “I need to do something.”

  An-khi looked over her bound husband to the mummy. “I understand.”

  Mehi went to Horemheb who was scowling at Sebek on the floor. “Father, we’re going to see Mother.” Horemheb’s scowl gave way to a wet-eyed grin. Mehi leaned his father on his arm and escorted him outside. Back in the front room, Mehi huddled with An-khi over his brother.

  She said, “The Per-O officials intend to arrest Sebek, don’t they?”

  “Yes, An-khi.”

  “I’m sorry for everything.”

  “It’s done.”

  An-khi wet her lips. “He was my husband.”

  He was her husband? “I know.”

  “I thought Gods blessed love with magic.” An-khi angled her eyes to the ceiling. “I deceived myself.”

  Mehi too had deceived himself. He’d lived with the lie that An-khi had injured him. He’d done that to himself. But since he’d wielded that punishment; he’d end it.

  Mehi maintained his gaze upon An-khi. Her face freshened and her eyes lit their wells. They appeared to glow. He shaped his expression to utter his trust in her. He could not yet express it with words; she was married.

  Still, he imagined An-khi saying, “My breasts are wet with your kisses.” Was she fantasizing what he’d say? Something powerful? He cast off that notion. His words needn’t be perfect. He said, “Let’s you and I go to the river tomorrow for Perit Septit.”

  “And to celebrate your birthday.” With a pause and then a slow smile, An-khi recited, “I enter the water and brave the waves.”

  Mehi grinned. “The crocodile seems like a mouse to me.”

  An-khi’s dimple formed.

  Mehi wished to trace his fingers there.

  On the donkey, one father sitting behind him and the other father lying alongside him, Mehi snapped the reins and started them into the desert hills. Arms around his son’s waist, Horemheb said, “We’re going to visit Mother?”

  “Yes, and you are going to show the way.”
>
  “Mother, the family’s together. I got us together.”

  Into the red-gray desert, Mehi began to hear subdued strains of its song. He also listened to melodies of his heartbeat and breath. Khety’s son balanced the two songs. He had once wandered lost here. Now, it wouldn’t overwhelm him. He ruled his realm.

  Horemheb’s directions brought them straight to Khety’s burial site. Mehi recognized it. Nothing had altered but for the heavier massing of sand.

  “Hello Khety. My sweet. It’s your Horem.”

  Thirty memories of Mehi’s mother flurried in him—amulets, pomegranates, smiles, vomit, soap, dinners.

  “Bena-ka’s right over there.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you know you got a sister out here?”

  Mehi’s brows rose. “I didn’t know her name.”

  “Named her myself. Bena-ka’s it, all right.”

  “It’s a good name.” Mehi thought that maybe if he’d known Bena-ka and lived with her for just a time, maybe his loneliness for An-khi wouldn’t have been so extreme.

  “Bena-ka’s dying made it a lot more hard between your mother and me, I can tell you.”

  Son and father traded a few family stories before Mehi helped him down and untied Khufu from the donkey. Horemheb came beside his son, his face tense.

  Mehi asked, “Are you bothered by what we’re doing?”

  “I trust you.”

  Mehi slung an arm around his father’s shoulders and tugged him to his chest.

  The two then carried Khufu to Khety. On their knees, they began to hollow out a grave. After a few minutes, Horemheb began to nod to sleep. Mehi placed him on the donkey and then finished the grave. He faced Khufu toward the east so the Osiris King could watch over Egypt. Tossing handfuls of sand that rustled against the mummy’s linen, he swept the last of it with his forearm onto the grave. Slapping sand from his hands and robe, Mehi rose.

  Khufu would rest forever next to his mother and sister. A family member.

  Mehi cast his view beyond the hills to the desert plain. Unfolding ceaselessly, its grains of sand scraped against one another in wave after receding wave. He resided outside it. Free. The desert’s destruction sang to him but droned beneath his own song. When compared to eternity, how anyone—An-khi, Horemheb, Sebek—had hurt him crumbled into sand. In the red-gray emptiness where he had once wandered alone and desolate, Mehi forgave them all.

  He walked to his sleeping father, brushed sand off Horemheb’s cheek, turned the donkey around, and mounted it. Horemheb leaned onto his son’s back.

  Son and sleeping father sauntered into Mer at dawn. Orange sunrise uncurled above the horizon. The sun and the star Septit just then sprouted above the horizon. Today, one year ago, he began to lose his father. Mehi had gotten him back. He began to wonder over An-khi. Whether the two shared a future, the future would tell—but he loved her again. He’d gotten that back.

  Mehi piloted the donkey through their village, a few neighbors emerging sleepily in the alleys. He pulled up at their home, his hip and legs cramping. Sleep would be lovely. Lamp in one hand, he eased his father over Khufu’s food offerings. With a smile, Mehi considered how they’d help their Perit Septit party.

  Mehi carried his father inside. Horemheb snuggled in his son’s arms.

  In the front room, no evidence of the fight with his brother remained. An-khi must have seen to that. He placed Horemheb on his mattress in the back room.

  Picking up his mother’s mattress, Mehi stepped outside and climbed the ladder to the roof. Scanning over the village huts, red desert and green Nile, he mused over the years that expanded before him. No matter how many or how few years he might enjoy, they presented to him his forever. His eternity. He would forge toward their constant horizon as either gulf or river. The fertility he’d create and leave behind was as unknowable as the fertility of the next Inundation. But, determinedly, he would forgive himself for all he has done and not done. He at least expected to till growing days he might say, “I am content.”

  Tomorrow would inaugurate the reign of God-king Hordedef, his brother and friend.

  Mehi lingered, standing on the roof casting his view between the sun and the moon, a few days shy of full. Sharing their orange glow, he drank water ladled from a vase. It felt it flow throughout his throat and chest. With an agreeable fatigue, he placed himself on the mattress.

  Hands on his belly, Mehi filled his eyes with dawn until they closed. Body warm, waiting to awaken, he drifted into sleep. He dreamt of the coming Inundation.

  EPILOGUE:

  IMMORTALITY

  Khufu’s cult that nourished his ka with food offerings lasted a thousand years. His “Sacred Book” was read for more than two thousand years. His two sons who followed him to the throne honored his reign by reflecting in their King’s names his image as the Sun-God Ra. Hordedef became Dedefra and Shaf, Shafra. Shafra’s son, Menkau, succeeded him as Menkaura and constructed the third pyramid on the Giza plateau.

  God-king Dedefra ruled for eight years. In that time, he completed Khufu’s pyramid and sustained Khufu’s ban on the Ptah Temple. Most significantly, he codified his own philosophical writings by which Egypt’s people revered him as a sage for the next twenty-five hundred years. He built his beautiful if small pyramid five miles north of Giza so as not to tread on his father’s resting place.

  God-king Shafra commanded that a Giza plateau outcropping, remaining from the quarry of his father’s pyramid, bear his likeness with the body of a lion. As a concession to the Hituptah priests, Shafra destroyed any evidence that Annu had been Egypt’s capital, returned the capital to Hituptah and re-opened the Ptah Temple. He also built his pyramid next to his father’s. Yet, he could not bring himself to construct it as large. His pyramid was ten feet shorter—set on ground twenty feet higher.

  ###

  Glossary

  About the Author

  This is the author’s debut novel. He is working on his second novel. Entitled Echoes, it begins:

  When Jesus returned, Audrey Silver discovered that her father hadn’t passed away four years earlier but had been merely hiding in their Manhattan apartment. Her father’s temporary death, not to mention the loss of mankind and every morsel of her Madagascar chocolates, began on a chilly November morning with the squeak of her refrigerator door downstairs. She startled awake. Under her Star Trek sheets, Audrey’s Israeli Navy training strained to shift her into a striking position from her resisting fetal position, so warm and sheltering like the sanctuary of a cave. Maybe she’d dreamt the sound. Besides, dealing with an intruder before chocolate or coffee was a bad idea.

  The author can be contacted at hankalawson@gmail.com

  Dedication

  To my parents

  Audrey Merle Lawson and Henry Dzierzawski

  Acknowledgements

  To Prof. Richard Bankowsky; freelance editors including Sarah Cypher; Fran and Cary Spiker who read the book when it was unreadable, yet offered invaluable feedback; Pamela Trokanski who sat side by side with me for many weeks as I recited the novel and who, with patience, humor and intelligence, gave me perhaps the best feedback of all; and Annette Zumba, my biggest fan, whose insight and ideas as well as words found a place in the landscape of this book, I offer my gratitude.