Spell Bound (A Fairy Retelling #3) (18 page)

Anubis
- Egyptian god of the dead

Apophis
- Egyptian god of evil and destruction; each night Apophis attacks Amun-Ra as he travels through the Duat; destroying Amun-Ra would throw the world into chaos

Aten the One God
- a deity worshipped by the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his first wife, Nefertiti; the people of Egypt were forced to worship Aten and stop worshipping the ancient gods

Duat
- land of the dead that souls must pass through on their way to judgment and their final afterlife

Isis
- Egyptian goddess, married to Osiris

Ka
- the essence of a person’s soul

Khopesh
- curved sword similar to a sickle

Kiya
- Pharaoh Akhenaten’s second wife

Lapis lazuli
- precious bright blue stone used by Egyptian aristocrats

Ma’at
- Egyptian word for peace and order

Aniya
- sold to Rahotep to pay her father’s debts

Nefertiti
- the first and Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten

Nehi
- priest’s apprentice and friend to Aniya

Osiris
- Egyptian god of the underworld

Rahotep
- high priest of Egypt and Vizier of the Pharaoh

Set
- Egyptian god of chaos; brother to Osiris

Shabti
- funerary dolls used in the afterlife as servants

Waset
- capital city of ancient Egypt; modern-day Thebes

The initial inspiration for this fairy tale retelling came from the fairy tales of
Rumplestiltskin
and
Snow White
, as you may have already guessed. In particular, I was interested in what happened to Snow White after she ate the apple and lay dead - but not dead - in her glass coffin. Was she asleep? Was she dreaming? Was she actually doing battle in some sort of spiritual dimension?

I decided it should be the latter.

Snow White needed to kick some butt while she was busy being dead. So where to send her? This brought to mind cultures that have a strong sense of an underworld or a purgatory between life and death, and I settled on ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death, especially pharaohs - surely there could be a good story here.

I wanted to connect my story with a real-life Egyptian figure, but to tell the truth, I didn’t know many other than Cleopatra and King Tut. I did some research on both of them and found that King Tut’s family was incredibly interesting, if not a little dysfunctional.

King Tut’s dad, Akhenaten, decreed that there was only one god - Aten. His first wife, Nefertiti, joined him in outlawing the worship of other gods. What did they get for their trouble? Well, the were reviled and hated by Egyptians so much that almost every statue of the couple was torn down and their names were stricken from the records. Holy cow! I couldn’t wait to add this to my story. It all actually happened. Years later, King Tutankhamun (King Tut) reinstated the worship of the old gods.

There’s not a lot of information about who King Tut’s mom was. It’s believed she was probably not Nefertiti or Kiya, Akhenaten’s first and second wives. I decided that my heroine needed to be King Tut’s mom - but how to get her into the palace? Hmmm....maybe this could be a sort of rags to riches story? Maybe she was sold as a slave… What other fairy tales have a young woman sold as a slave - why
Rumpelstiltskin
of course!

I wanted to turn this fairy tale on its head as well. This time, I wanted the poor girl, who is given away by her own father (another dysfunctional family drama to play with) to actually be able to turn straw (or in this case cattails and river weeds) into gold. And poor Rumpelstiltskin would be the actual slave. Thus, the story was born and a mashup of two completely different fairy tales was able to take place in the heart of ancient Egypt.

I hope you enjoyed the story of Aniya, and may your heart weigh true on the scales of Ma’at when you find yourself traveling through the Duat.

Thank you again for taking the time to read
Spell Bound
! If you enjoyed this story and would like to stay informed of upcoming releases (and get my books at a BIG discount) make sure to join my mailing list. You’ll get access to my book,
Ai of the Mountain
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