by D. S. Murphy
“Thank you,” I said, my eyelids blinking heavily.
“You’ve had a long journey,” Isis said. “We have much to talk about. But can I recommend a change of scenery? This place... it was never meant for entertaining guests.”
“Don’t you want to get back to your sleep?”
“I’ve slept long enough,” she said. She swept past us, through the golden statues, towards the large lake in the back.
From a shelf against the cave, she pulled out a small replica ship. She set it down into the water, giving it a little push, then whispered words that rippled across the surface. It seemed like several people were speaking at once; the sounds filled the cave completely. Then the ship started getting bigger. I couldn’t tell if it was just my eyes at first, but by the time it was as large as a car, I heard Jessie whisper, “Are you seeing this?”
We had to step back, as the long bow of the boat cut between us, nearly touching the sides of the cave. It was at least thirty feet long, and probably just as tall, with thick yellow canvas sails and dark wood.
“Your reputation is well deserved,” Puriel said, with a polite bow.
“I like this one,” Isis said, pinching his cheeks. “Although I’ve always gotten along well with torches.”
“Where are we even going?” Sitri asked. I knew he was thinking about the deadline Able set us. I didn’t know exactly how much time we had left, but I knew it was less than a day.
Isis didn’t answer, but we climbed on the boat after her. I was wondering how we’d even get it out of the ground, but decided to wait and see. Isis raised her hands towards the rocky ceiling, then yanked them back as if she was pulling on invisible strings. The rocks crumbled towards us. I ducked, and I saw Puriel cringe, but the boulders fell harmlessly to the side. Once the hole in the ceiling was large enough to accommodate the ship, Isis breathed more incantations, and the trickling spring became a rushing geyser. The water level rose, and the ship began to ascend. At the top, I practically expected the whole ship to float into the clouds. Instead, the water overflowed down the hill, tearing open the graves of the buried, and the boat rode the flash flood down the new river until it gushed, surrounded by skeletons, into the Mediterranean Sea.
***
I watched the deep blue waters rush below the ancient wooden hull. A pair of dolphins followed our progress, leaping joyfully in our wake. Jessie watched them with interest, but I could tell Puriel was nervous as we went deeper into the open sea. We kept the Egyptian coastline in view on our right, but we were too far out to see individual details. He sat with one arm around the central mast, under the long wide sail, staring at his feet and looking sick. Sitri, meanwhile, stood on the very front, just behind the long curved nose of the bow, leaning into the wind as if he could speed up our progress.
“We are in a bit of a hurry,” I said, after about twenty minutes into the journey. “Is there any chance you could just tell me the spell to untangle the knots?” Isis and I were sitting on a wide bench towards the front of the boat. My arm was still uncomfortable. The pain had faded thanks to Isis’s poultice, but the dry itchiness was driving me crazy. I wanted to scratch it, but the dark iron glove was so embedded in my skin I was afraid to make it any worse. At least we didn’t have to row. The long wooden oars were stored neatly in racks and the wind in the sails kept us at a brisk pace.
“Magic isn’t what humans think it is,” Isis said, gazing out over the water. “It’s not just abracadabra. It’s more like Newton’s third law: for every action, an opposite and equal reaction. An exchange of force. If you truly understand the law of physics, you’ll understand – you can alter, or affect the change, you can bend the laws of physics, but you can’t break them.”
“How do you know Newton?” Jessie asked. “Wasn’t he in like the 1600s?”
“I wake up once every century, just to see what’s changed, and I try to stay informed, especially in regards to scientific discoveries. I like to think magic is just good science, that people are too primitive to understand. I can’t travel unfortunately; I’m on a kind of house arrest, if you will. Egypt is my home, but also my prison.”
“About the spell though?” I pressed. “Can you remember how to do it?”
“You think I can remember one spell, out of the millions?” Isis asked coldly.
“You are supposed to be cleverer than a million gods,” Jessie said. “So they say.”
Isis frowned and pulled her gray shawl closer around her shoulders.
“You have heard many things about me. Let me tell you the truth. I was with Zeus for almost a century. He taught me everything he could. I hungered for knowledge, and I was thirsty. He powered my experiments, which he thought were cute, and gave me access to energies few mortals encounter. He said he loved me; that he’d leave Hera and be with me forever. We had a life together. But then she showed up, and he turned me into a beast of labor. He gave me away willingly, to his wife, rather than admit his lie. And I was mute, helpless. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t perform magic... I could barely even think. I was a fraction of myself, in a prison of bones and flesh, and I stayed that way for many years, until Hera had cooled down enough for Zeus to free me. I escaped the watchful eyes of Hera’s guard Argos, but remained a brute animal. Hera tortured me with pain, forcing me to keep moving, wild and restless. Finally, in Egypt, they made their peace and allowed me to return to my human form. I never saw either of them again.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“That is just the beginning of my story,” Isis continued. “I was heartbroken, and weak. Without Zeus’s energy, I felt an emptiness that tore me from the inside out; a hole I tried to fill with knowledge. And I was angry. I wanted humans to be free of the gods, free to control their own lives. I knew we had to become powerful, and I wanted to share my knowledge and my inventions, but without Zeus’s participation, I didn’t have enough energy to make my gadgets and spells work.”
“But my quest for knowledge brought me allies – other creatures and humans, also destroyed by the capricious gods. The torches, especially, were of tremendous help. They needed a function, a purpose, and I filled it for them. My hopes and dreams became theirs. We created a living, functional society, devoted to learning. We gathered knowledge and shared it freely, to liberate humanity from thoughtless worship of cruel deities. But knowledge, we learned, is dangerous. And it never comes without a price.”
“The torches slept little, but the darkness of night frustrated our ambitions, and candles were weak and unreliable. Even during the daytime, it was difficult to learn and study, or penetrate the mysteries of creation, without a constant source of illumination. So we created batteries and electric lamps.”
“Wait, we’re still talking about ancient Egypt, right?” Jessie asked. “Didn’t Benjamin Franklin discover electricity?”
“We had it first,” Isis said with a smile. At first I thought her eyes were hazel, like Puriel’s used to be, but now they seemed gray or light blue, and contrasted with her dark skin. “We built a structure, to focus the electricity in the atmosphere and the ground, and channeled it into clay batteries, lined with copper and iron. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s still the largest structure on earth, I believe.”
“The pyramids,” Sitri said.
“It became a running joke,” Isis said. “It collected static electricity, drawing from the ground, and during storms it would get hit with lighting. It became a myth, that started a cult. We stole fire from the gods and used it to better humanity. We killed our god, locked him in a box and cut him into pieces; we recovered only the penis, and stroked the life out of it. We taught them agriculture, we built cities, we tamed the Nile – for a time, we even conquered death. But I didn’t realize how difficult it would be for the torches. Being around that much raw energy. What it was like for them, their hunger for knowledge, their desire for power, surpassed even my own. Some started feeding, lured to the dark arts, and became monsters. They hunted each other, ate each o
ther. They became a cancer, sucking the magic out of the kingdom I’d built. We had no choice but to contain them.”
I saw Puriel flinch, and I knew what he was thinking. Isis had locked that leech into the sarcophagus, when he was still at his most powerful.
“So we moved. We took our batteries, our magic, and we left. We created a new city, a shining beacon, where all would be welcome, devoted to the betterment of mankind.”
“Alexandria,” Jessie said. Her eyes were on the shore, and I realized she was commenting on the landscape, not just the story. She pointed, and I could see the fort in the distance. Soon we’d be in the harbor.
“We were here before the Greeks,” Isis said sharply. “But yes, we helped them grow their empire, as with the Romans that followed. Their trade brought manuscripts from all over the world, which we kept as the toll for entering our harbors. My scribes copied them by hand and kept the originals. Soon we had the largest library in the world. In exchange, they became my spies; opening temples in my name around the empire.”
“When people refer to me as clever, it’s not because I had memorized every detail in the tens of thousands of scrolls we collected. It’s because I had access to them. But then the library was destroyed, and all knowledge lost.”
I took in a sharp breath, but she saw the question in my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” she said, leaning in close to whisper. “I made a backup and stored all my magic in a safe place. If we can retrieve it, we will find your spell.”
17
The boat drew attention as soon as we pulled up to the dock. It wasn’t every day a perfectly preserved, ancient Egyptian vessel sailed into the harbor.
“I guess we probably should have mentioned this,” I said, putting on my sunglasses and arranging my hijab to hide my face, “but we’re trying to keep a low profile. We ran into one of your entombed mummies and things didn’t go well.”
“I knew it was a mistake to let them live,” Isis said sadly, “but they were holding so much energy. A lot of it would have been lost if they died.”
“Wait, you were using the leeches as batteries?” Jessie asked.
“They served a purpose. Most of the torches agreed, they would have wanted it that way if they were in their right minds. I wrapped them up and bound them so they’d last longer. Of course there were rumors, of the eternal undead, and the pharaohs started doing it to themselves hoping to be resurrected. There was a whole mess last century when the French and British started raiding our tombs looking for gold, and some of the leeches were still clinging to life. I was quite impressed actually, they were only meant to last a few centuries.”
Jessie’s mouth dropped open, and I flicked my hand to discourage her from saying something rude. Her face mirrored my own horror though; Isis was talking about burying people alive with the clinical distance of a psychopath, as if they were a successful experiment she was rather proud of.
Isis walked through the streets like the queen she was, stopping to notice changes or point out differences in the city since she’d last seen it. She was particularly impressed by the cars and the color televisions. More than once she helped herself to products on display, and Sitri had to hastily thrust some cash at the shopkeeper and pull her away before we caused a scene. Finally we came to a large gate in a ritzy area to the side of the city. A guard at the gate made a phone call, then opened the gate for us. A wide driveway led towards a beautiful estate, with cultured gardens and a three-floor white mansion.
“This is your house?” Jessie asked, her eyes widening to take it all in.
“I rent it out to a watcher, and only keep the top floor for myself. There are six bedrooms, you can sleep here tonight.”
We were met halfway down the driveway by a man with dark skin, a blue blazer and white pants. He tugged his red bowtie and his well-clipped mustache before throwing his arms wide. Isis kissed him on the cheeks, and he snapped his fingers at a couple of bellhops who were hovering nearby.
“I’m sorry we’re so ill-prepared, Madame, we didn’t expect you for at least another decade. You really should have told us you were coming, we would have picked you up.”
“I enjoyed the walk,” she said, handing him her bag.
“We’ve kept your apartment clean as usual, of course, but we usually do a monthly dusting, shine and polish – may I suggest tea in the garden while we straighten up and prepare for your guests?”
“I suppose that will do,” Isis said, dragging her eyes over me in particular. “But I simply must get out of these clothes, honestly I’m embarrassed to even be seen in them. Please draw baths in the guest rooms and find a suitable range of clothing for my friends. Also, I’m feeling peckish, so some sandwiches and the liver pastries I like, you know the ones.”
We were escorted through the house, the first floor of which was filled with Egyptian antiques and art deco paintings, but also had a light modern feel. We passed through a large dining area and lounge with giant windows and white curtains, and out over a little bridge that crossed a small stream towards a gazebo. I tried not to take offense as the servants laid down a blanket to protect the pristinely white cushions on the garden furniture from our soiled clothing.
The dress I’d bought this morning was ragged and torn, and covered in a layer of dirt. My arm was red and covered in medicinal paste, and I was pretty sure I had a large red cut on my forehead where Hera struck me. Puriel and Sitri looked fairly better, but it had been a long day for all of us. Isis joined us moments later, with a pair of large white sunglasses and a navy blue, fringed flapper dress with stylized gold trim designs. She couldn’t have had time to shower, but her chocolate skin seemed to glow.
Minutes later, servants carried out an impressive tray of tea, with stacked silver trays full of cookies, sandwiches, pastries and more. There was also a platter of fresh fruit, beautiful cut and arranged, along with a pot of coffee and tea. Jessie and I went straight for the coffee, and I grabbed a handful of cookies.
Isis asked for some kind of cocktail with fresh ginger and lime, and when she saw Jessie’s eyes following her glass, she ordered another for each of us.
“So, where was I?” she asked, holding the stem of her glass loosely. “Alexandria. It was a beacon of hope, literally. We used the magic we’d stored. The pyramids were still functional, but they attracted the leeches. So we moved far away, to the coast, and built a lighthouse on an island, calling all freethinkers. Plus the pyramids by this time were old tech, and I wanted to build something new. The gods left us alone, because Egypt was still a backwater... until it wasn’t. With Alexander, it became part of the empire.”
“Then, Rome. Gods were renamed, fluid for a few centuries, but as our influence grew, the gods were losing their identities. Their grip on power came through mystery and intimidation. We were lifting the veil, and it made them uncomfortable. There was already a shift towards inclusion, towards synthesis. One truth, one reality, one god – so Zeus claimed monotheism as his own, and started to get rid of all competition. Zeus’s zealous new converts destroyed the library, then the lighthouse. The pyramids fell into disrepair, the temples were plundered and abandoned, out of fear or malice, until all knowledge was lost.”
“So, the spell?” I pressed. We didn’t have time for a history lesson.
“I remember that spell clearly,” Isis said. “I discovered it, and taught it to Zeus. This was much earlier, of course, when we were still together. I could see where things were heading; all this knowledge, these thousands of scrolls – all the knowledge in the known world, gathered in the same city. I knew Zeus wouldn’t be able to turn a blind eye forever. And I also knew, paper, parchment, it was too fragile, too volatile. So I took all the knowledge and etched it onto a single location, and hid it somewhere Zeus could never find it.”
“The emerald tablet?” I asked, leaning forward. “Do you still have it?”
“Unfortunately no. Last I heard, Cleopatra had it. She was wearing it the night she died, on a gold
en necklace. But you may be able to find it.”
I looked at Sitri, a spark of enthusiasm in my eyes. At least it was a step forward. Isis snapped her fingers, and Ramses appeared a moment later. He whispered something into her ear, and her eyes lit up. She laughed and clapped her hands.
“I’ve had Ramses keep an eye out for it,” she said. “It seems, although nobody has claimed to find Cleopatra’s tomb, the necklace turned up in a British collection, which is now on loan to the Alexandria Museum of Ancient History.”
“It’s here?” Jessie asked.
“It would seem so. It’s quite fortunate, the humans have no idea of its true value. They only see gems and gold.”
“So it that all?” I asked. “Retrieve the tablet, find the spell?
“Well, no,” Isis said, stirring her drink. “You’ll also need the device we built to decipher the tablet. To the ordinary eye, the tablet is unreadable. There’s too much information, it’s too dense. The tablet can only be accessed with a tremendous power source, and a highly focused lens.” Isis said, “The emerald tablet holds the mysteries of the universe, all the knowledge of mankind, but it can’t be accessed without the Eye of Horus.”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“It’s a kind of lens, made from a rare crystal. I’d started making them earlier; we put them at the top of the pyramids, encased in a gold, in order to focus and store electricity. Later I realized, they can be used to read and write information, if kept at a fixed distance.”
“Like a computer,” Jessie said.
“A what?” Isis asked.
“The world has changed a lot since your last walk,” Sitri grinned.
“How much could it have possibly changed?”
Sitri pulled out his phone and turned it on.
“In the last few decades, mankind has built machines with unbelievable power; and we’ve been storing information, freely accessibly, open-sourced. Anyone can publish, anyone can access.”