Gleeman's Tales Page 12

  “Without those ladies, many of the delicious foods we eat could not grow. Even chocolate relies on pollinators like bees.”

  She buried her face into her grandfather’s waist and muttered something inaudible. Louis emerged with a dingy white first aid kit. He slid it on the kitchen table, picking up his book to resume his reading.

  “Don’t you have any t-a-c-t?” the grandfather whispered. “Besides, weren’t you supposed to be watching her?”

  “I was watching her,” Louis whined.

  “I won’t have any of my grandkids scared of my bees. Katey, have I ever told you how bees came to be?” The grandfather chuckled at his pun. “It just so happens that Lou knows this story, don’t you, Lou?”

  The teen frowned, looked up slowly from his book, then smiled. “Our story takes us back to ancient Egypt.” He watched his grandfather’s expression change to one of bemusement.

  “I’m a little rusty on that myself,” the grandfather said, but I think we can make it work.”

  “I’ll take the lead on it, Grampa,” Louis said, inviting his sister to sit at the table. She hopped up, her pained finger already forgotten. “This story is about a girl, about your age, maybe a little older. Her name is Mandisa.”

  “Man-Deza?”

  “Yes, little monkey. She was alive thousands of years ago. Her parents farmed. She had a few brothers but no sisters.

  “What happened to her?”

  “Well, her story begins after she has died.”

  Their grandfather shared a stern look with his grandson.

  ◆◆◆

  Mandisa sat up, waking from a sleep she hadn’t remembered taking. The sound of pursuing feet that woke her, faded into a dull memory. Her hands instinctively felt for the flowers she was picking.

  “Oh, like me,” Katherine interjected.

  “Yes, Monkey. Let your brother tell his story,” their grandfather said.

  Shaking the nightmare from her mind, Mandisa considered her surroundings. She slept on a chair made of polished wood and tanned leather. Brass epaulets tacked to the edge of the leather made the chair look like a throne Mandisa only heard of in tall tales. After standing, she stooped and dusted sand off the seat, wincing as her fingers ran over a crease outlining how she sat.

  Looking around, Mandisa realized she was alone. The chamber held no other focal features save a reception desk to one side, a small table bearing leaflets, and a television monitor flickering through a dozen preset messages.

  “They didn’t have TV’s in ancient Egypt. Grampa, tell Lou he’s being silly.” Katherine’s sharp comment echoed through the room, though her grandfather was quick to work around Louis’s logical error.

  “Maybe it was a magic tablet that changed hieroglyphs every few minutes.”

  Mandisa paid the voices no heed. She approached the desk, seeing a placard underneath the television—

  “Tablet,” Louis amended.

  The placard read: “Death’s Waiting Room.” Disoriented, Mandisa spun around. When her gaze returned to the front, her eyes fell on a ticket-taker that rivaled any grocery store’s deli-department.

  “There weren’t any grocery stores in ancient Egypt. Grampa, can’t you tell the story?”

  “Hey, whose story is this?” Despite the bickering voices that flooded the chamber, Mandisa appeared not to hear them, let alone notice how the sound caused the furniture to shake as though experiencing a minor earthquake.

  Mandisa glanced at the tablet. A messaged glowed steady: ‘please take one.’ Regardless of how hard she pulled, the ticket never stopped; the number, ever-increasing. She stooped but could not bite through the strange papyrus, finding it metallic, like gold, and thin. To protect her tender palms from its biting edges, Mandisa wound the paper around her hands and tugged. It became so taut that she had to brace her feet on the lip of the desk.

  With one last burst of effort, she pulled, and the ticket snapped off. With no anchor to the ground, she flew back and crashed onto the table, spilling a mess of pamphlets and informational brochures. Paperwork fluttered down, covering her face and body. Mandisa burst from her papery tomb and gave the machine an evil eye that would have made her grandmother cackle. A nub for the next ticket jutted out. When her finger grasped the paper, a jolt of electricity shot up her arm.

  The message on the tablet above changed to display a common Egyptian idiom. “A rough translation of such would read: ‘Don’t cut your body in two in order to be buried in two tombs.’”

  The sound of Katherine’s squealing laughter filled the room, shaking the walls and animating the mass of paper on the ground. It stopped suddenly when an alarm sounded.

  Mandisa covered her ears at the sharp foreign noise. The tablet changed to one that rivaled an airport’s departure and arrival board.

  “Though I suppose to Mandisa, it would’ve appeared like a boat departure-and-arrival board.”

  Neon glyphs reading, “Now serving:” flashed to life and pulsed with faux excitement. Numbers flickered across the board. Mandisa removed her papery gloves. She was surprised to find her palms free of any cuts or scarring, but the bloody paper and distinct ache below her fingers made it clear she did not imagine the wounds.

  Mandisa waded through the mess of her ticket that, in some places, piled higher than her hips. She searched for the beginning, or end, to her number.

  After a minute of the board continuously flickering through every number, it cemented in place. The first number to freeze was a zero.

  A thousand numbers after that zero were also zeros. Mandisa glanced with horror at her ticket. As far as she could read, there were no zeros anywhere in her number. At last, a bell rang, announcing the end of the number. The last digit, a two, was the only number on the entire board that was not a zero.

  Mandisa collapsed into her ticket, willing it to suffocate, strangle, drown, or even papercut her into a second death. After nearly a minute, the board came to life again, but only one digit moved. Mandisa propped herself up on an elbow to watch the board. A slot after the ‘two’ tile flickered, the letter ‘A’ appeared. Mandisa sunk back into her cocoon, this time noting the writing on a pamphlet that she knocked over.

  “Did you prepare for the afterlife?” it read. “The worst time to start shopping for mummification-insurance is when you’re stranded miles from civilization and just shared an intimate moment with a cobra.” The pamphlet divulged statistics of those with prior insurance in conjunction with those who proceeded into the afterlife. It also offered a heart-lightening plan which, at the cost of a small fortune, ensured that even the most-wicked heart was not immediately doomed to be devoured. In the fine print, Mandisa read that actual results varied and to check with a priest to ensure good-behavior supplemented insurance.

  She tossed the pamphlet aside and settled back in for a nap. When she woke, another alarm was tearing through the serenity of the room. Mandisa found herself groggy. Her once supple skin sagged and wrinkled. The hair which once contrasted black against the sun now was shaded the timid grey of age. Though she looked ancient, Mandisa still felt young. She sprang up, alert; the change became evident the moment Mandisa looked at the board. Somehow it displayed a number thousands of digits deep without a single zero across the entire number. She flipped through her own mass of a ticket but found no similarities. Eventually, Mandisa gave up, ignoring the alarm as it persisted in its tirade against the quiet chamber.

  “Hello?”

  The girl looked up at the sound of someone speaking.

  A dog, sitting before the edge of the ticket mess wagged its tail as she stood up. The hound’s short, wiry hair was the same color as the Nile’s riverbed. It wore a thick leather collar adorned with hieroglyphs. A piece of paper, creased and folded under the collar, sat secure against its fur.

  “A little scrawny for a warrior, but then again, you did die. Anyway, that’s your number, isn’t it?” the dog gestured with its snout back to the sign indicating the number. “Lord Anubis doesn
’t have all eternity to wait for you.”

  Mandisa gaped, realizing that the dog spoke to her.

  “I can’t believe a dog came and was talking with Mandisa. A dog!”

  While the dog appeared to twitch an ear at Katherine’s comment, neither it, nor Mandisa acknowledged Katherine and her grandfather’s idle prattle.

  The dog led her out of the waiting area and down a hallway. Lining the walls were stock-images of dogs hanging in cheap frames, painted to resemble teak. Half of a Walmart Rollback sticker remained forever emblazoned on the front of one frame; someone with sharp claws had tried to remove the sticker, but only succeeded in scoring the glass.

  “Stout warrior,” the dog recited, speaking as though from a script as it led her further down the hallway. “You perished in battle. One which pitted you against insurmountable odds, but a battle nonetheless.”

  “I wasn’t in battle,” Mandisa said. “I’m just a kid.”

  The dog halted. “Can you grab the note card under my collar and read what it says. There should be some information listed.”

  Mandisa pulled the paper from its place and unfolded it. Scanning quickly, she saw information for who she assumed was another recently deceased person. “Nefer-kheperu-Al-Rashid, warrior—perished against insurmountable odds. Hey! Here’s my name.” Mandisa squinted, pulling the parchment to her face. Though the lettering shimmered like smoke and stained her fingers like wet ink, she read the small messy script aloud.

  “Usi, my faithful hound. Osiris needs me to pick up a girl named Mandisa. He would do it himself, but he’s busy getting a prosthesis fitted. So, charcoal her in before Nefer-kheperu-Al-Rashid. I’m getting the scales inspected, so I might be late. Make sure she is prepped for me. Anubis.”

  Mandisa lowered the paper to the dog’s eyes, which widened in shock.

  “Well fatten me up and call Sobek for dinner. I guess you’re right.” The dog seemed to look at her for the first time. It muttered something under its muzzle about humans all looking alike. Despite the hushed comments, the dog offered no further conversation as it led her into another room, this one markedly smaller than the waiting area. The furniture within was plain.

  The heavy scent of blood mixed with lemon assailed Mandisa’s nose. The dog grabbed a small tablet and swiped through a few menus. It nuzzled her arm, gesturing that she should take the tablet. “Verify that the information is correct.”

  Mandisa skimmed her personal information. Her name, age, birthday, and social security hieroglyph were all accurate; the only piece that raised her eyebrow was the line labeled: ‘Patron God.’ Ra was listed, which surprised Mandisa since she had never had any contact with any of the gods, let alone the Sun god.

  “You stand before Anubis. Lord of these hallowed halls. Embalmer of all that once lived.” The dog stepped on a switch, and a false wall collapsed, opening the room up to about twice its size. No other figure appeared. The dog ran through the antechamber, sniffing at the walls, on the ground, and in the air. “I’m sure he’s just a tad late. You know how these things go. We get double and triple booked. There’s a shortage of Gods of the Dead, and a surplus of, well, the dead. Especially with those Greeks poking their spears in our delta.”

  Mandisa eyed a few motivational posters with stock acrostic phrases like ‘Balance,’ and ‘Happiness.’

  “Oh gods, I’m so sorry I’m late,” a jackal-headed god rushed into the antechamber, ignoring the dog he stepped over. He appeared to struggle under the weight of scales that tottered in his arm. The instrument of measure looked straight from any classroom and it even bore an insignia for Ma’at High School.

  “You’re making that up. Gods didn’t go to school,” Katherine said.

  “No? How else would Anubis know how to work the scales unless he took ‘Supernatural-Physics-for-Major-Deities-101.’ Not to mention Thoth’s ‘Intro to Hieroglyphs in Translation: Book of the Dead and other World Literature;’ and ‘Pyramid Drafting, Design, and Architecture.’”

  “And what does all of this have to do with bees?” Katherine whined. “Grampa!”

  “You’ll find out soon. Hush.”

  Anubis appeared to pause and listen to the narrating voices booming through the room but offered no remarks in response.

  “You know how these insurance company auditors are,” Anubis said, regaining composure, though still distracted as he set up his scale. The jackal-headed god pulled his sweat-stained t-shirt down, smoothing out wrinkles and revealing the writing on the back. ‘The average heart weighs 11 ounces. Sobek can eat ten-thousand pounds a day when he’s hungry. Don’t be another Sobek Statistic. Do good!’

  “You don’t adjust the counterweight in a millennium,” Anubis complained, “and suddenly they’re jumping down your muzzle and questioning every heart you’ve judged since before the kingdoms split.” He fidgeted in the shirt, frustrated at the wrinkles, then yanked it over his head, exposing slick fur and defined musculature.

  “Okay Usi,” the god said. “Go ahead and send in the next soul. I’ll work on my introduction in the meantime.”

  Usi, the dog raised a paw to interject, but Anubis remained hunched over his instrument, seemingly tweaking its knobs.

  “I am Anubis,” he said, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper. The god held up his hand before his face as though he was reading a note written on his palm. “Lord of these hallowed halls and embalmer of all who die (as long as they have after-life insurance). It is I, Anubis, who judges your heart’s weight against that of the lightest of Ra’s feathers and determines whether you will feed the belly of every monster or travel on to the land of the dead.”

  “Pardon me, Lord Anubis. Boss,” Usi whimpered, his muzzle covering his paws close to the ground.

  “Hmm?” Anubis remained with his back to the pair.

  “The soul is here, sir.”

  “What? That’s not possible.” Anubis spun on his heels, eyeing Mandisa. “My log said 3:30.” He tapped on the heavy face of a sundial strapped to his wrist.

  “Yes, and it’s 3:35, plus or minus a few minutes. You really need to upgrade to a modern hourglass.”

  “Set said that it would keep accurate time even in the darkest depths of the land of the dead. I want a refund,” Anubis whined, tore the sundial from his wrist, and lobbed it behind him.

  Mandisa watched as it plopped with a metallic twang onto the left plate of the scale. The plate fell to the ground, suddenly heavier than air. Mandisa swallowed a lump.

  Anubis seemed not to notice how his actions had impacted the scale. “So, warrior Nefer-kheperu-Al-Rashid. Did you get that, or do you need me to repeat?”

  Mandisa wanted to mention the sundial weighing the scales, but Usi spoke first.

  “Actually, sir.” The dog motioned to the tablet sitting on the table. Anubis glanced for a minute, his eyebrows furrowed.

  “That’s embarrassing. One of the other gods must’ve written you in without my knowing.” Usi seemed primed to inform his master that it was he, who had written Mandisa in; he decided against it, assuming that in his haste to have the scales calibrated, the embalmer of the dead forgot his schedule change. “But, as they say, death must go on.” Without waiting for another word, Anubis flexed his hand. Needle sharp claws emerged from his fingertips. The god pounced on Mandisa and tore into her chest.

  Despite hearing her ribs split apart, and seeing the blood spill down her cotton robes, Mandisa felt no pain.

  The sound of coughing filled the chamber. “Louis! Your sister. Katey, Anubis has god-magic and with the snap of his fingers, he removed the heart without causing Mandisa any pain.”

  Louis’s sigh filled the chamber.

  Even when the jackal-headed god removed her still-beating heart, Mandisa felt little more than a slight discomfort at the sight. Anubis tossed the heart onto the same plate already weighed down by the sundial.

  “No! It’s going to be too heavy!” Katherine’s voice called out.

  Ignoring the voices, Anu
bis produced a feather from a nearby cabinet. It looked like tiny tinsel in his large claws and glowed as if it had harnessed a star’s light. He placed it with the utmost care onto the opposing scale.

  Mandisa held her breath. Surprisingly, the feather’s plate fell, though not nearly at a rate to match the heart and dial. She made to call out to the God of the Dead and inform him of the added weight on his scale, but abandoned courage left her lips limp and her muscles liquefied.

  “You actively worked with your siblings to harass your mother.” With the god’s judgment, the heart scale slapped back into the ground without as heavy a force. The feather on the other scale seemed to dance as the air rushed through its frills. “But you loved her wholly and would pick the fairest flowers to brighten her day.” The scales evened out some. “You bothered your older brother in his room when he wanted to be alone. No excuse for that.”

  “You’re making that up! That isn’t in the story.”

  Atop the scale, Mandisa’s heart dropped.

  “More than once, you stole from a fruit vendor, though I see that you did share with local beggars.” Anubis continued rattling off each infraction and deed. For her part, Mandisa watched in horror as her heart rose and fell like the billows to an anvil’s fire. The heart scale remained predominantly heavier than the feathered scale, despite however many honorable deeds Anubis recounted.

  Mandisa thought she heard the distant jaws of Sobek snapping, as if in anticipation. The rush of blood in her ears could easily have been the roaring currents of the Nile as it invited her below its depths.

  “My judgment is made! Mandisa, it seems that you shall feed the ilk of Apophis for all of eternity. Now if you’ll step forward, I can—”

  A falcon’s sharp cry interrupted the God of the Dead.

  A singular column of golden light fell to illuminate the scale on which Mandisa’s heart sat, still beating. “This is a place where Ra’s light rarely shines,” Anubis said. “It seems that he has taken an inkling in your case, young Mandisa.” After a minute, the light receded some, and with it, so disappeared her heart from the scale. Anubis gaped when he realized that his sundial was also on that scale, now drenched in blood. The god picked up a letter, as gold as Ra’s beam, and handed it to Mandisa.