Flash Fiction: The Doorway of the Moon
This story is part of "Where the Stars Used to Sing".
When I woke, the moon no longer peered in through my bedroom window. Only the five stars of the Mother Constellation still watched over me, singing the strange lullabies of the Ashjanamha while the day dawned and the song faded.
As the song faded and the world outside grew lighter, my stomach sank. Today I would perform the Ashjarlaerna; the task for which I’d been born. As the Neijanutu – the Star Daughter – I will open our late king’s tomb to the gateway of eternity. He will step through and I? I will remain behind. A soul trapped in stardust.
Pulling aside the silver-couched curtain in the doorway, grandmother stepped into the room. Over one arm was draped a dark blue, indigo-dyed dress decorated with silver and white patterns. She wore a similar dress, though less lavishly decorated. It felt wrong, somehow, that she – who had led not one, but three kings through the Ashjalaerna rite and opened the Arishjarokka for them – would now step aside and let the honour fall to me.
Her walking stick clicked-clicked on the stone floor and her smile, through it reached her eyes, was sad.
“Come, let’s get you ready,” she said. “We don’t have much time before the feast starts and the earlier you get there, the longer your nerves will have to settle – trust me when I tell you this.”
I nodded, but couldn’t quite believe her.
All too soon we stepped from the chariot and made our way along the flower-strewn road to the seats of honour. Music, chanting, and incense filled the air, mingling with the scent of wood fires and the meat for the funerary feast being roasted. All too soon grandmother and I walked to the open doorway of the offering hall.
As I turned to her, my heartbeat churning in my ears, I saw tears running down her face as she cried in silence. Taking a ragged breath, she grabbed my shoulders and spoke into my ear so that the priests accompanying us would not hear.
“If the expanse calls to you, follow its road. Don’t be like me – don’t step back. There is only one chance, you see. Take it.”
She laid her tear-streaked cheek against mine for a moment before kissing me goodbye, nodding as I stepped inside the darkened part of the offering hall that formed the first part of the lavish tomb complex.
I refused to look at the stone door as it scraped closed and sealed me inside. Now, with only the light of a single oil lamp to light my way, the weight of the utter darkness and silence tried to overwhelm my senses.
The offering hall stretching into the darkness before me reeked of incense, cooked meat, and spiced drink – the remnants of the funeral feast. I picked up the oil lamp, its flame wavering for a moment as I carried it through the hall.
Soon the smell of the feast was replaced by that of the earthen tunnel that sloped downwards to the main tomb. I held the lamp closer to the wall to see how far away I was from the burial chamber. Red clay covered the walls, undecorated save for the imprints of the palms and fingertips of the workers who built the tomb and smoothed the clay onto the walls.
In this tunnel between the carven tomb with the king’s Neijashru and the complex of feasting rooms and sacrificial chambers, I walked the line between life and death. Ghostly fingers traced their way along my spine in the darkness and I shivered at the imagined touch, unable to hear anything except my blood churning in my ears.
I held the lamp closer to the wall again and saw that, here, the clay had been smoothed by expert hands and the best artwork in the realm adorned the walls. The horses pulling the chariot of the moon – the Ariashjarogh – were painted on the clay in ochre and soot-black lines. The silver highlights that represented the light of the moon glimmered in the feint light while the horses came alive in the flickering light to gallop along the red wall towards the king’s tomb and, for a moment, I thought I could hear the hooves beat a galloping rhythm on the hard clay.
I walked on, my feet heavier with each step, my throat dry and mouth parched, until I finally reached the silver Night’s Doors that led into the Neijashru. The doors were open, gaping into the deeper darkness of the burial chamber beyond. As I hesitantly shifted my weight from one foot to the other, the engraved layer of silver that covered the cedar wood reflected the lamplight into a dazzling display on the dark walls and ceiling.
Swallowing hard, I glanced behind me as if I would see a way out or perhaps my grandmother following a few steps behind before forcing my heavy feet to step past the silver doors into the chamber’s ultimate darkness where the dead king lay sleeping.
My eyes slowly grew accustomed to the new darkness; its depths scarcely lifted by the light from my lamp. Leaden steps brought me to the pedestal at the centre of the chamber. Here the king lay on a gold-bedecked, white marble slab. I started at how alive he seemed, even though I could smell the sickly scent of embalming resins and spices tinged with decay.
In death he clutched his sword upon his breast, its pommel a stylised silver dragon on blue enamel. His hands and forearms were covered in the deep defensive wounds that he had been dealt in the moments before his death, the cuts lined with silver during the embalming process. In the faint light it looked as though the old king was glowing with the very light of Ariashja from within.
“May the One have mercy on our souls,” I whispered, and wondered if the king’s soul could hear me where it lay trapped within the embalmed body.
I turned my back on him then and walked nine paces to the chamber wall. My hands shook as I set down the lamp by the wall and took the paints from my bag. I swallowed past the dryness of my mouth, glad that I’d been barred from drinking any of the wine at the funeral feast. In the stifling darkness I would need all my wits about me to paint the Edaneijas into being.
I murmured a quick prayer, hoping that it would reach beyond the tomb, and dipped my brush into the lapis lazuli blue paint. I started writing on the wall.
I painted the holy name of the One as high as I could reach and asked him to hearken to me. With the dead king as my only companion in the near-darkness, I wrote the words of the Ashjalaerna upon the smooth clay of the only blank wall in the tomb.
The lamp’s light dimmed and flickered as I neared the end on the Ashjalaerna’s incantation and, as I painted the words “ashja indara” upon the red clay with the last of the blue pigment, the lamp’s wick spluttered, and the flame died.
I dropped the paintbrush, barely hearing it clatter to the ground as the sounds of my blood and heartbeat surged in my ears. In the pitch black darkness of the tomb, I stretched out my hand and pressed it against the wall’s cold clay before pulling away and letting it hang by my side.
I held my breath in the darkness. And waited. And waited. Smoke from the lamp still hung in the air and stung my eyes and nose. I tasted the salt of my tears as I mumbled the words I’d written again and again, reciting them faster and faster until I simply mumbled ashja, ashja, ashja, my head bowed in shame, as if that one word alone could force light into the tomb.
Tomorrow, I realised, they would open the tomb and find me here by the wall. Dead. My soul stuck forever in this lightless place. Indara. Until time ends.
I wept freely as anger rose within me and I struck the wall with the side of my first, the paint wet and cold against my skin.
Silver light spread outwards from my clenched fist and kindled the blue letters on the wall. As the final word lit up with the silver fire, the wall cracked and a great wind swept through the room, slamming the tomb’s doors shut. The noise drowned out my scream as I pressed my hands against my throbbing ears and shut my eyes. Light pierced my closed lids for moments of eternity before fading.
When I dared to open my eyes, I no longer stood in front of the burial chamber’s wall and the painted Edaneijas, but in front of the Ariashjarokka; the Doorway of the Moon.
Beyond the doorway countless stars swirled among colourful clouds, glimmering in the vast, dark expanse. I stared into the depths of the heavens while the stars sang the Ashjanamha. The sweet, lilting notes calmed my senses and racing heart until the horror and fear that clenched my muscles so painfully, fell away. Listening to their song, I felt my heart lifting, felt my soul lighten, until it felt as if my feet no longer touched the ground.
The notes of the Ashjanamha rose and became louder as the stars blazed brighter, calling out with their music from another world. The king walked past me, his arms shining silver in the starlight, his gaze fixed on the mother constellation’s five stars.
The music became louder still as the king walked out into the starry darkness of the heavens. He faded from my sight as I watched, until I was left alone in the doorway again. Still I stared at the stars, enthralled by their song and light.
But the song started to fade and the stars no longer blazed as brightly among the clouds. Fear gripped my heart and I felt the ground beneath my feet again. My grandmother’s words drummed in my ears, louder than my hammering heart.
I took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway, my feet resting on the open sky surrounding me. Singing the sweet words of the Ashjanamha, the stars welcomed me.
