Resurrecting Ra - by Deborah

Prompts were midnight, an old book, tattoo

The woman sits in a tent at a small table in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It is late at night as she sifts through papyrus containing the lost chapter in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The tent is gloomy, lit only by a single lantern.

Maggie O’Shea is an attractive, fit woman in her early 40’s, blessed with a complexion lacking any freckles despite her Irish ancestry and the copper-colored hair curling around her shoulders. She is kept company by the stray cat who had befriended her on the dig. Maggie’s become quite attached to him in these past months, providing him meals and allowing him to curl up in her cot at the end of the day. For nearly three months, she’s fallen asleep every night with her hand stroking his soft striped gray fur. He has helped combat the loneliness.

Maggie is completely alone in the world, close only to her academic pursuits. She is an only child and her parents, both respected for their archeological work, died in a tragic tomb collapse when she was less than a year old. She has come to know her parents only through newspaper accounts and their field journals. These small insights are enough to show her that her parents were good people, loving and light-hearted. She and their journals are the only physical evidence of their existence. And the tattoo. On Maggie’s back is an Egyptian hieroglyphic-styled cat which she assumes her parents gave her in a flight of fancy during the late-sixties when she was just an infant. She never minded it as it makes her feel closer to them. In fact, she acknowledges that she only became an archeologist to be closer to them in her own way. Today she continues her parents’ work based on their journals and is about to reach a level of fame they only dreamed of. Maggie has discovered what she believes to be the missing 4th Book of the Egyptian Book of the Dead written in 240 BC. She knows they would have been proud of her. The papyrus is old and fragile, but Maggie is able to translate it. Also hidden with the texts had been a fairly large sealed vessel, contents unknown, currently sitting on the floor in the corner of Maggie’s tent and awaiting her examination.

She is elbow deep in the fragile papyrus at a small camp table. She scolds the cat on the table who insists on being in the middle of things, but is glad for his company despite the careless paw prints across the delicate papers. Pondering out loud what she’s just read, she rambles, “So, according to the translation, some woman will bring Ra back from the dead after 220 deadly floods of the Nile, if that’s what they meant by ‘vengeful’.”

She pushes her glasses down her nose, revealing a keen intelligence behind the bright green eyes she inherited from her parents. She gazes at the cat without really seeing him, tapping a pencil to her temple. “Let’s see… historians agree that the Nile averaged one killing flood about every ten years… so, Ra would be resurrected any time between the years 2000 and 2040…I think.”

The woman looks at the cat, frustrated. “My degrees are in archaeology, not math.”

She glances at her watch, runs her hand through her hair and stretches her neck to ease the tension there. “It’s just about midnight and I’ve been at this for the past 16 hours. There has to be a mistake in my translation... the cat part has got to be wrong. I don’t see how this could have anything to do with cats.” She reaches out and pets the cat. “Any ideas, you?” she asks the cat. His answer is a purr.

“Let’s try it one more time from the top.” Maggie quotes from the papyrus, “‘The male Cat is Ra himself, and he was called 'Mau' because of the speech of the god, Sa, who said concerning him: 'He is like man and cat unto that which he hath made'; therefore, did the name of Ra become 'Mau.' She, red of hair and green of eye, born into the world adorned with the symbol of Mau will decree the release of Ra after 220 vengeful inundations of the Nile. If this text be recited over him, he shall triumph over death, and he shall escape from every fire, and none of the evil things which appertain to him shall ever be round about him; and his heart shall be bound to his liberator forever.’”

As she finishes reading the translated text out loud, the vessel on the floor begins to tremble. The cat slinks over to the vessel, wrapping his sinuous body around it. The sealed stopper on the bottle loosens, falls to the floor, and thick gray smoke pours forth, enveloping the cat. The smoke rises in a column and billows furiously, stinging Maggie’s eyes. The smoke takes on shape and substance; first of a cat and then of a man. A very tall, powerful man. The smoke finally clears and the man stands before her. He appears to be a glorious Egyptian warrior. She realizes the meaning of the text and the prophecy she has just fulfilled.

Maggie’s mouth opens and closes several times, emitting no sound. Finally, she finds her voice, “Well, shit.”

“I’ve waited a very long time for you,” he tells her.

Maggie is alone no more.