Magdalena, Part Two

I got to spend like, six hours at Jack's.
I did tell Jack the short, kid-friendly version about why I looked like the hell I'd been through, about how Gunnar and I were wandering the wastes of Duat. I told the story without swearing at all. I think Gunnar would be dismayed. And glad I wasn't teaching our sons how to swear like sailors.
When the story was over, I was kinda done talking. I just wanted to play with my sons. I chased them, they chased me, and then they showed me how to spin around in circles like a helicopter until I fell over.
It started as a lesson of, "Mommy, Mommy, watch! This is how Uncle Jack showed us how to punch things."
And then Alex told me about how yesterday he fed Waffles a worm. But I had to promise not to tell Uncle Jack, because Uncle Jack says that Waffles isn't supposed to eat worms.

We were on the 97th "Mommy, look what I can do!" when I had to go.
"I love you, babies, Daddy needs me," I kissed them both quickly and nodded at Jack before I let myself be pulled to wherever Gunnar was.

I was in midstep, like somehow actually running would get me faster to... wherever it was. I was in the corner of a room, and I had a hand reached out for Gunnar, and I saw a guy who looked very much like a mummy with his hand wrist deep in my husband's face. It was nowhere I'd been before, which didn't really narrow it down. It was a large chamber, like a clay burial chamber. Gunnar was there, and the guy with his hand in Gunnar's face, and a woman who didn't even deign to acknowledge my arrival which was totally okay with me.
The room was torchlit and even though it was large there wasn't really room for me to be running around, and it looked like I might be interrupting something really fucking important. So I put my hands behind my back, stood very still and tried to be very quiet.
I mean, Gunnar didn't look hurt.
He didn't look scared.
Yeah, his heart was beating a little fast, but that was probably because some guy - who it turns out was the Lord Osiris - had a hand in Gunnar's brain.

I slowly withdrew my outstretched hand and placed it firmly over my mouth, and put my other hand on top of that, because the last thing I needed was to be the one who ruined a god's concentration and fucked this up.
Osiris took his hand out of Gunnar's face, pulling something bright and silvery out of Gunnar's head which he then shoved into the body on an altar. The body had been wrapped up like a mummy, except that the chest and abdominal cavities were laid open.
Gunnar blinked a few times before he saw me, then we ended up standing next to one another in the halls of the palace of Osiris, watching a god bring the dead back to life.

Osiris called out for Marie's ghost and suddenly she was there in the room, was floating over her body asking where she was and what was happening and hey what was that below her. Then Osiris shoved her into her body, which promptly began screaming about being shot in the fucking face.
Isis made her sleep and Osiris began rooting around in canopic jars, putting all of the pieces to Humpty Dumpty back together. Isis is a backseat practitioner, it seems. She was staring over his shoulder telling him to sew the spleen here, and make sure the liver went there, and to connect those two things, and to attach the soul... I don't know where.
I mean, I could see the soul, and I could see the body and I still had no clue what the fuck was going on and yeah it was fascinating from both a metaphysical and biological point of view, I still found it a little hard to really care what was happening more than the fact that it was happening.

Osiris and Isis told Gunnar to return to his room, that they would need time to prepare Marie for questioning and that, at some point, Gunnar was going to have to explain what had happened in the market. I made a face like I, too, would very much like to know what had happened in the market. He probably noticed.

The door to the chamber was unsealed, and we were let out.

And then it was done. We had done it, Gunnar and I. We have swum the depths of Guinnee, trudged the snows of Niflheim, drank from the Well of Mnemosyne, walked the wastes of Duat, and now we are done. Now we can rest.
We have seen the dead raised back to life, and whatever else any asshole has to say about us, that's impressive.

"Blisters on my feet, a wooden rosary
I felt them in my pocket as I ran
A bullet in the night
A Federales' light
San Francisco, do you understand?

Tell him that I made the journey
And tell him that my heart is true
I’d like his blessing of forgiveness before the angels send it through

And I will know that I am clean now
And I will dance and the band will play
In the old out to cantina
Cause we’ll runneth over the ancient clay..."
Brandon Flowers, Magdalena