Sunrise on the Mediterranean Page 5

  He felt RaEm’s gaze on his face. “Power is what matters. They had none, so they were of no consequence. They carried no talismans, they knew no magic, they were nothing except fodder.”

  The stones against his waist, his talismans, heated through his skin. Their warmth combated the chill this woman was giving him. An icy bite greater than the winter wind. “They were human beings.”

  “Haii! They were as pebbles.”

  Suddenly Cheftu was grateful he was here with RaEm and Chloe was safely gone. RaEm was a demon. He would stay awake, guard against her. He hoped someone, preferably ugly and aged, though competent, was guarding Chloe in this Egypt that RaEm would gladly destroy. Be safe, beloved.

  CHAPTER 2

  MY INTERNAL LEXICON woke me up with the definition for teraphim. Images of statuettes—Lladros, Precious Moments, Hummels, and anything from the Franklin Mint— flashed in a slide show before my eyes.

  B’seder, so they were the dustables, the collectibles, of this day and age. No, the lexicon said, they were more. They were little personal gods, good-luck charms, and the wealth of the household, all wrapped into one easily transportable object.

  The Pelesti teraphim that had been burned by the highlanders were not only the little gods the soldiers had brought to the battlefield for good fortune, but also the enormous totem statues the priests took into battle. These images were positioned on a hill overlooking the field of engagement to serve as encouragement for the soldiers. At the end of the day, or battle, the statues were loaded on their palanquins and carted back to the temple.

  What a way to wake up, bashed over the head with an encyclopedia.

  You ask, I tell. You wanted to know, it scribbled on the blackboard in my brain.

  Yep, I did. But did you have to tell me so early? I rolled over for a few hours’ more sleep.

  The rest of the day had passed uneventfully in perfect safety. Uneventful because people kept showing up; in perfect safety because there were priests everywhere, carrying swords. I’d checked them all out, but not a one was Cheftu. Unless, of course, he had stepped into someone else’s body this time. But no one even had amber eyes.

  The Egyptians believed our eyes were the windows to our souls. Perhaps that was why I always had my own eyes? To not have them would be not to be myself? On this theory, Cheftu would be here, possibly in another body but definitely with his bronzy brown eyes.

  Additionally, I was learning that escape wasn’t going to be easy. Each time I thought I was alone, another person would come in, seeking my wisdom and words, leaving me little gifts. I’ve played the part of oracle before, so I just played it again.

  The overriding concern was when Dagon would get over being mad at them. Would I intercede? The answer was always yes, though I had no idea to what I was agreeing. It didn’t matter, since I was leaving during naptime.

  My, or rather RaEm’s, cheap rayon clothing had dried stiff with salt water. My skin felt like scales, and my hair was grimy. I wanted a bath before my escape. The little handmaiden brought me a bath, then washed my hair. She seemed mystified that I had legs. So I spun some elaborate story about needing salt water in order to regain my fishtail. It seemed to comfort her, but now I really had to leave. I didn’t want her to throw me back, just as a test.

  She massaged my back and neck while I thought.

  I’d come through water, just as the lintel had predicted. Terrified that I’d misunderstood some part of it and wouldn’t be able to get back to Cheftu, I had memorized the passage during my few hours in modern times:

  A portal for those of the twenty-third power, those who serve in the priesthood of the Unknown. For those, the power exists on earth, mentored by the heavens and directed through the waves. The waters will guide, they will purify, they will offer salvation. From the twenty-third decan to the twenty-third decan this doorway remains.

  So was the actual portal beneath the sea in some way? Was that the only way in and out of this time period? Just how many of us were floating around in the ether of chronology, displaced?

  Chronologically challenged, I amended, coining the phrase. I was drifting to sleep under the mastery of Tamera’s strong hands, enveloped in the perfume of singed coriander.

  “Sea-Mistress, are you ready to dress?” I woke with a jolt and looked over my shoulder. Immediately I noticed that the day was almost gone. Shit! I was here for one more evening? Could I leave tonight? “If the Sea-Mistress would care to dress as we do, we could clothe her?” the girl said. The garments I’d had, a blue miniskirt, silver velvet V-neck shirt, and sandals, were cleaned and ready for me to wear. However, those clothes were small and good only for a discotheque. My necklace, sadly, had faded.

  “Sea-Mistress, haDerkato, what would you like to wear?”

  I sat up, covering myself with the linen sheet. My mind was sluggish, my heart still pounding from waking so abruptly. “To what?” I asked.

  “The evening’s feast, haDerkato.”

  Hadn’t they had one last night? One thing about ancient people, they never let a workday get in the way of a feast. “I’m attending?”

  “Ken, haDerkato. First there is a small ritual at sea, then the feast will be at the palace.” Her honey eyes were bright.

  “You dress me,” I said. This was wonderful! I would get out of the temple with them and mingle in with the masses before I made my getaway to Egypt. Or perhaps I would run into Cheftu here, in Ashqelon. Maybe he wasn’t serving in the temple, which was why we hadn’t found each other yet.

  “Dress me like you,” I said, smiling. She plucked at her dress. It was a simple, fitted sheath in a dark green. A sash of gold, rust, and green stripes encircled her waist, delineating the curve to her hips. An armband of bronze emblazoned with swirls matched her necklace and drop earrings. Around her head she wore a headband, whose tassels brushed her shoulders. She was barefoot, tiny feet with shell pink nails. She was lovely and elegant.

  And a Philistine?

  If I were in Ashqelon, if these were the Philistines, then I knew only a few things about them. They had lived in five cities—Ashqelon being one of them, Gaza another—and they were supposed to be pretty. Delilah, the woman who had nagged Samson to death, had wooed him first with her beauty. Looking at Tamera, I considered for the first time that maybe the story hadn’t been a fable.

  “Ach, ken,” she said. I recognized “Ah yes,” but as the words entered my ears, the lexicon changed them from the language she spoke, using visuals. I saw a Barbie, then a Ken doll. The Barbie exploded, but Ken remained, shaking his head up and down. Ken, I surmised hesitantly, was actually “yes”? The Ken doll smiled. The ach was a guttural I’d heard throughout my life in Arabic. What language did the Philistines speak?

  “When is your birthday?” I asked. “I was born under the sign of the crab,” she said.

  I didn’t know the zodiac that well, but I was surprised it was in usage already. “And what year were you born?”

  “Year?” she repeated.

  “How old are you?”

  “Old? How old?”

  I rephrased again, striving for clarity. “What year is it now?”

  “The year of the red sea,” she answered eagerly.

  Red sea. That was right, I’d seen how the waters looked like blood. Red tide, I thought. Wasn’t that a band or a football team? Wasn’t it a natural phenomenon, due to some plant or animal in the water? “Is the sea often red?”

  “Only when we have angered Dagon,” she said. “Then the sea is bloody, the crops fail, and we die.” She looked perfectly cheerful discussing the annihilation of her people. “Now you must dress.”

  She raced away while I peeled myself off the massage table. I looked out the narrow window. This tiny room was adjacent to the main temple. We were high on a point overlooking the rest of the town, the port, and the sea. Crenellated walls embraced the city, the two wings extending into the water, so the harbor, filled with ships, seemed to be in the very arms of Ashqelon.

>   They were strange-looking vessels, with narrow-faced creatures on either end. Was that the kind of ship I’d arrived in? I didn’t know. They had the same square sails, though, huge sails to carry hundreds of men across the waters and oars to speed the journey.

  The city itself reminded me of Greece, with two- and three-storied homes, plain rectangular windows, and attached porches. I saw trees in courtyards, flat roofs, and straight streets. Straight anything was an anomaly in the Middle East I had known. I heard a noise behind me and turned, expecting Tamera.

  It wasn’t Tamera. It was a soldier.

  Only total fear kept me from hiding my nakedness and cowering. If I showed fear, he might realize I was a fraud. That, I couldn’t have. He, on the other hand, blushed the color of a pomegranate. I couldn’t see his hair because he wore a headdress of feathers, in addition to a breastplate of leather and brass over an A-line kilt that came to a point between his knees.

  He was clean-shaven and wore no kohl.

  Though it sounds strange, it was the first time I’d seen a man in a dress without makeup. In Aztlan and Egypt, both men and women wore kohl, lipstick, eyeshadow, the whole nine yards. This guy looked almost naked without it.

  I reached for my sea-mistress voice again. “You enter without being bidden … mortal?”

  He didn’t know where to look, so he stared at the ground. “My orders, were, are, were to, to come get you,” he said. I guessed he was maybe sixteen. His voice had deepened, he’d gotten his height, but he still had the goofiness of a puppy that has yet to grow into his paw size.

  “El’i!” Tamera screeched from the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

  The girl knew him? But then why should that surprise me?

  “ Following orders,” he said without looking at her for more than a second.

  “She is a haDerkato! You don’t just barge in on a goddess! She could turn you into a snail!” Just a snail? Tamera didn’t have much faith in me, did she? “Now go, before she changes her mind,” Tamera said, hustling him out.

  In the doorway El’i paused. “I will await you outside, Sea-Mistress. Forgive my bad manners.” It was a hint of the man he would become: competent, serious, respectful. Before I could respond, even with a gracious Queen Elizabeth wave, Tamera shut the door in his face.

  She fussed and fumed about El’i while we clothed me. My dress was blue, with a sash of greens, blue, and silver. I wore my neon jewelry, which I’d dunked in cold water to revive it, and she’d fixed a band of silver in my hair. I looked at the sandals I’d brought with me. They were sexy, strappy, and probably cost at least a month’s salary.

  Another reason to kill RaEm. What had she been doing out there that night? According to Cammy, RaEm had gone for a walk in the middle of a very lax Ramadan party that had become her birthday party. Had she just stumbled on the portal? What had happened to Phaemon?

  I slipped on the sandals and suddenly grew three inches. Mimi had once told me that men liked the look of high heels because it appeared we couldn’t run away as quickly. As I wobbled in these shoes, I realized she might be right.

  Tamera first smoothed color on my eyelids, then decorated with color around my face, swoops and swirls on my temples and forehead, my cheeks and chin. I would have to wash my face before I tried melting into the crowd. Finally, at my request, she lined my eyes with kohl.

  After coating me in the scents of cinnamon and mint, Tamera called for El’i. In the moments she had her back to me, I grabbed my little parcel of essentials. With a nod to Dagon, I was escorted out of the temple by El’i.

  Though the building was functionally pretty, it had not been fashioned by a race of artists. It had been designed by engineers for a minimal amount of fuss.

  Painting was perfunctory; there was no gilding, no precious stones. Whitewashed mud-brick walls and stone pillars supported a roof of straw and wooden beams. Plain brass incense bowls were attended by a few people wearing fish-head masks. The temple was useful, but hardly majestic.

  I stepped into the short Mediterranean dusk and climbed into an ox-drawn cart. El’i led the team, their horns decorated with shells and bells. It was heavy, slow, giving me time to look around as we lumbered through the city. Apparently everyone was going to this ritual. People lined the sides of the streets, whispering at first, chanting—yet more Dagon verses!—then shouting that I was going to save them. Dagon was ready to forgive them! I would bring Egypt to the Pelesti! We would get the teraphim back! The crops would never fail!

  Ritual. Damn. I started getting nervous as we drove through the straight streets, drawing closer and closer to the sea. I could smell the salt, feel a sting of spray in the air. Before we hit the boulevard that ran parallel to the beach, we headed south. How could I get away? No matter what they wanted, I couldn’t do it. I knew nothing about farming. I knew less about fishing. There was no way a happy ending would come of this. I glanced behind me.

  They were grouped five deep, trailing the cart.

  I looked ahead.

  A mass of people sat on the sand, looking out at the water. Between a rocky outcrop on the shore and a huge rock in the Med was a shadowy line, lit from below by men in skiffs with lifted torches. Within the rock-formed pool, I saw shapes of creatures I associated with Egypt: crocodiles. I didn’t think crocodiles liked salt water. Was it a freshwater pool? Why were they there?

  Why was I here?

  I wiped nervous sweat from my forehead. The crowd began shouting a name: “HaDerkato! HaDerkato!” Tamera had called me haDerkato, but what did it mean? Should I have asked that earlier? Did the lexicon know?

  We were approaching a canopied chair set on a plateau above the rock. Women wearing fish cloaks swarmed the scene. The ritual by the sea; I had a feeling that I was going to be center stage. My nervousness threatened to choke me. What did this mean? Hello, lexicon?

  Time was getting short.

  The images were instant, a montage of videos, animation, and artwork from my lifetime. A girl, a handmaid of Dagon, is stolen from the sea. Then, after Dagon is notified she’s missing, she is offered back to it. In a rather final fashion.

  If she survives, she is believed to be the adored of Dagon, who will then restore the crops. The handmaid will live with the people throughout the year, to assure them of Dagon’s favor. If she does not survive, then she is devoured by the sacred fish, the crocodile, and returned to Dagon that way.

  Survive what? I asked nervously.

  A tightrope.

  That was the shadowy line I saw? A tightrope, suspended between the two rocks? How did I get out of here? Surely they didn’t expect me to cross the tightrope? A tightrope? I didn’t know ancients even had tightropes!

  We’d arrived, parking the cart inside a solid wall of people. My only hope of escape was to be airlifted out of here. El’i helped me from the cart, then up the worn stone stairwell. Help! I cried silently. Cheftu, if you are here, now is the time.

  The pause button clicked off on the lexicon. There was more? Like the opening of Star Wars, words started scrolling across the screen in my mind.

  During the red tide there is a caveat to the normal procedure.

  The so-called normal procedure being a woman falling to her death and being eaten by crocodiles?

  I had reached the pinnacle of the rock. Hundreds of people crowded the beach, torches raised, their eyes on me. From where I stood to the rock in the harbor was a straight distance of about sixty feet, approximately fifteen feet above a pit of crocodiles. What was this—I was living a video game?

  I could see a pool at ground level about twenty feet off to my left-hand side. There was no guessing at its depth, but it was big. The wind blew fiercely, whipping my hair in my face. We were listening to the nine hundredth verse about Dagon.

  Really, my choices were narrowing. I couldn’t make it sixty feet on a tightrope. So I would die as crocodile bait? I looked over at the pool again, apparently some type of sacred lake within the temple enclosure. Could I
land in it without killing myself? How would I get from here, this stupid rope, to over there? Would a jump kill me? God, what had I done to deserve this?

  The song stopped. Tamera came forward, her mouth moving, but her words were swept away by the wind. She knelt before me, then gestured to the platform. It was less than eight inches deep, about twelve wide. How many brides of Dagon had died this way?

  They were extinguishing the torches beneath me. Tamera’s hand on my shoulder scared me. “Wait, haDerkato. The story must first be told.”

  “Take your time,” I said. Surely it wasn’t my destiny to die in some lame proto–circus show? Was Cheftu here, in the crowd, watching? Was this how he would identify me? My palms were slick with sweat. Tamera climbed a few steps above me, telling the story in song. It was a lovely, lyrical siren’s tune.

  Somehow I would have to swing on the tightrope in order to get to the pool. I looked down at the water. Maybe the crocodiles were full? Not hungry? The wind was turning my sweat cold as I listened and tried to find a way out.

  When the gods of the mountains warred with the gods of the sea,

  Our families were cast out, the progenitors of you and me.

  Across haYam we fled their wrath, to settle here where it is peaceful and flat.

  Yet the god of the sea, to him we still owe both life and livelihood, war battle and soul.

  Dagon’s lusts are bottomless, he seduces those he wants. In the form of Mexos, from across haYam,he came to take a maiden to woo her, wed her from among his mother’s people, to win her hand.

  She was Derkato, the fairest of the fair. Her voice was high, like the sea at dawn, like the sea at night was her hair. Mexos-dagon sought her, through vineyard, field, and vale. At last he trapped her on this rock; her choices were few.

  Her cries to the mother-goddess were unheeded, she could walk to the rock through air or throw herself to Dagon or embrace Mexos as her lover fair.

  While he wept for her love, she fled, seeking the virgin embrace of the sea. Yet when she awoke beneath the waves, her lover was there.