Hathor's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Hathor stood at the edge of the storm and counted the souls she could not reach. Fifty, maybe more, drifted in the dark stretch of the Duat beyond the sand. She was the Lady of the West. Her work was to meet the dead and walk them home to the people who loved them. She had figs, bread, and good beer for them. But she could not take a single step forward. Set's desert had swallowed the path. Red sand roared in a wall taller than any temple. When Hathor pushed one hand into it, the wind tore at her fingers like teeth. Her turquoise cape whipped and thinned. She pulled back before the storm could scatter her into nothing. On the far side, the lost souls turned in slow circles. They did not know which way led out. She would not leave them. But she could not cross alone. Horus landed beside her, wings folding hard against his back. His eyes went to the storm, then to her. "You cannot pass that," he said. "No one can. Not by force." "They are trapped," Hathor said. "They have no one." "Then don't fight the sand." He said nothing more. He never did once the point was made. Hathor looked again. She had tried to push through, and the storm pushed back. Force was Set's ground, not hers. She was joy and music and welcome. So she stopped fighting. She sat down at the storm's edge. She opened her basket. She poured the good beer into a bowl and set it on the sand. Then she began to sing. The song was the one she gave every soul at the gate. It promised comfort. It promised a warm table and faces they had missed. Her voice slipped into the wind and did not break. The storm could scatter her body, but it could not scatter a welcome. One soul turned toward the sound. Then another. The lost dead drifted to the sand wall from the far side. They pressed against it, drawn by the song like children to a lit doorway. Horus watched, silent. Then he spread his wings and beat them once, hard. The gust cut a narrow gap in the storm. Not a road. A doorway. It would not hold long. Hathor stood and sang louder. One by one, the souls stepped through the gap toward her voice. She caught each hand as it came. She gave each one a fig and a sip from the bowl. The storm howled but could not follow the song back through the gap. When the last soul crossed, the gap closed with a crack of sand. Hathor stood among fifty freed dead, her basket empty, her cape torn but whole. Then a small voice spoke at her hip. A soul, a young woman, gripped her sleeve. "You reunite us with those we left," she said. "But my mother is not here. She is still in the storm."