Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “From mountains, yes?”

  “Yes, my home, Georgetown, Colorado, sits in the Rocky Mountains.”

  He smiled. “Dr. Sophia tells us you are coming. Someday I wish to go see buffalo in Colorado. They are majestic animals, yes?”

  I smiled back. “Yes, they are. We have a park close to us with buffalo and elk, as well as other animals.”

  “You wish to see a little of site tonight?” he asked in a friendly voice.

  Turning around, I looked at the tent. I was supposed to be standing guard, making sure neither of us was murdered in our sleep, not out wandering around the site. “Thank you, but I should probably go back and get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”

  “Please? Let me to show one thing? Just found today. Right there,” he pointed to the next excavation unit about ten paces in the distance.

  “Okay. Thank you,” I said, not wanting to offend the first person I’d met at Pelusium.

  He led the way to the dark rectangle rimmed with moonlight. When he pulled his flashlight from his belt and shone the beam down into the pit, my muscles contracted all at once.

  “She is magnificent, yes?”

  “Oh, y-yeah.”

  I stared at the huge, partly uncovered stone statue hulking in the bottom: massive clawed feet, long jutting face, jaws gaping to show sharp rows of teeth arranged in a monstrous crocodile grin: the demon, Ammut.

  “See? Look also there.” He aimed the beam at the northern part of the excavation.

  My gaze traced the long red brick wall which extended the length of the unit. At the far end, shadows coalesced into one gigantic arm and the fingers of a human hand. Faint barking echoed, maybe from camp dogs, or maybe from packs of feral dogs that roamed the land of the dead. Wind buffeted the soldier’s sleeves. Cold wind. Odd for this time of year. I crossed my arms for warmth.

  The solider thrust out his hand in a traditional American greeting. “I am Corporal Bektash. Please to call me Tashir. I work as guard for Dr. Corbelle.”

  I gave his hand a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Tashir. Please call me Hal.”

  Looking back at the face of the demon, I thought I saw Ammut’s stone eyes slowly turn to meet my gaze. It had to be a trick of the moonlight, but my heart froze in my chest. Her carved pupils glittered.

  She knew me.

  I could feel it.

  She’d been waiting for me to get here.

  A terrible premonition swelled to certainty inside me. In the not too distant future, maybe even tonight, I would be locked in the battle of my life with an ancient demon over the condemned soul of the woman I loved, and I had no idea how to fight a demon.

  “Much more to see. Come?”

  “No, thanks, Tashir,” I said and hooked my thumb over my shoulder to indicate my tent. “I’m going back now and try to sleep.”

  “Yes. See you at morning, Hal.”

  He waved as I walked away with my skin crawling, hurrying toward our tent. Through the open flap, I could see Roberto sprawled on his stomach sound asleep.

  Crouching down just inside the tent, I fought to keep from shivering. An icy terror had started to pulse through my veins. What was that cloying taste in the back of my mouth? The metallic tang of old blood, dried for millennia, just mixed with my saliva? Something . . .

  Roberto seemed to sense my dread. He roused and sleepily said, “I saw you out there with that guy. What were you doing?”

  “Staring into the deepest darkest pit of hell. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

  He yawned the word, “Okay,” flopped to his side, and went back to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dim sounds penetrated my sleep, metal clanging, quiet voices, the rattling of boxes of artifacts being moved. I didn’t want to wake up. Roberto had taken over watch at two am, and I was pretty sure I’d only been asleep for a few hours. But the smell of campfires and coffee drifted on the air. Rolling to my back, I opened my eyes and blinked up at the canvas roof over my head. Wind buffeted the tent. When I looked for Roberto, I found him sitting cross-legged just outside the door, his body darkly silhouetted against the lavender gleam of dawn.

  I pulled my hiking boots from the corner of the tent, where I’d stashed them last night, and slipped them on. I’d slept in my jeans and blue T-shirt, but I figured they’d be good for another day or two.

  Roberto looked in at me. Brown hair blew around his face. He was wearing a tan long-sleeved shirt, but when the wind gusted, I could see the pistol tucked into the back of his pants. “Go back to sleep, Hal. People are just starting to get up out here. You could get another hour or two of shut-eye.”

  “No, I’m up.” Reaching for my green long-sleeved shirt, I put it on and crawled out of the tent to sit on the sand beside Roberto.

  The cool morning breeze buffeted the tents that stretched for a good two hundred yards to my left. A few people stood talking near the largest tent in the middle of the camp. Obviously, that was the cook tent. I could see big coffeepots on grates over open fires. A few more people were already at work beneath the ramadas, shifting boxes around. But my gaze clung to the ruins.

  Naturally, I’d read everything I could find on Pelusium, including the works of Herodotus and Strabo and even a rare Greek papyrus from Egypt, but the reality was stunning. Standing walls or fragments of walls crisscrossed the vista, littered with massive chunks of broken columns. The impressive D-shaped amphitheater seemed to be the heart of the archaeological site, but the most impressive ruins were of the late-sixth-century Roman fortress, which I’d researched before I’d left. With seven-foot-thick walls and thirty-six towers, the fortress dominated the site. I’d studied both ancient and modern maps online, but this . . . This was amazing. As the sky continued to brighten, and I could see more of Pelusium, a profound sense of wonder filled me.

  Roberto said, “I thought Egyptians built in gigantic blocks of stone, like the pyramids.”

  “My God, you were listening in class.”

  “Don’t get excited. I got that from you and Cleo.” He looked out at the theater. “This place looks like it’s made of bricks.”

  “The ruins are mostly red bricks and mud bricks.” I lifted a hand and pointed to the green strip to the north. “You see that?”

  “The reeds? It’s a marsh, right?”

  I drew up my knees and propped my arms on them. “Now it is, but twenty-five hundred years ago, it was a branch of the Nile River.” I turned around to the south and drew a line with my hand. “All that green out there is the other branch. The two branches embraced Pelusium like two arms.” I extended my arms to show him.

  “Yeah?” He pointed to the northern marsh. “So, when you look out there with your historian’s brain, what do you see? I’ve been trying to imagine what this fallen-down wreck looked like in its prime.”

  I smiled. In my mind’s eye, I could see everything perfectly. “There are big barges moving along the Nile, filled with pots—amphorae—of honey, wine, and oil. Some are moored and offloading supplies. This is a bustling port city with quays and customs offices. It’s also an industrial city. There are salt vats for distilling salt for sale, very fine workshops for textiles and glass, pottery kilns, and jewelry and statuary artists plying their wares along the docks. On the outskirts of the city, farmers grow flax and grains for breads. Cattle and other livestock graze in the distance. Everyone is busy working or worshipping. There are temples to a variety of gods and goddesses here. Isis is the local favorite.”

  “And what’s that?” he pointed to the fortress. “It looks burned in places.”

  “That’s the Roman fortress, built in the late 500s. It was burned, probably during the Persian Invasion of AD 619.”

  “The guys with the cat shields?”

  “That was in 525 BC. Persians burned this fortress over a thousand years later.”

 
A gust of wind peppered us with sand. When it was over, Roberto pushed tangled brown hair away from his blue eyes. His face shone with a dusting of silt. “So. I’m starving. Why don’t you show me the deepest darkest pit of hell, then we’ll go look for a cup of coffee and some flapjacks?”

  I took an uneasy breath, said, “Sure,” and rose to my feet.

  As we walked out toward the excavation unit, the sun cleared the eastern horizon, and the ground glittered wildly. Far out over the distant ocean, dark clouds were gathering, and I wondered if it might rain later on in the day.

  Roberto kicked at some artifacts, which made me cringe. “What’s this green stuff?”

  “Slag from glassmaking, I think. There was probably a glass workshop here. I didn’t see this last night in the dark.”

  We passed the closest excavation unit with the potsherds sticking out of the walls, and continued on. As my feet took me closer, my heart started to race, and sweat beaded my hooked nose.

  When we stopped at the edge of the pit, Roberto waved a hand at the excavation and said, “Hey, look at the big dog.”

  “That’s not a dog. That’s Ammut.”

  “Oh, holy shit!” He leaped backward. “The demon? That’s what she looks like? A mutant collie?”

  “Actually, if you look closer, you’ll see that her long muzzle is a crocodile snout, and she has the paws of a lion. Her hippopotamus hindquarters are still buried.”

  Roberto edged closer to peer down at Ammut. “Hal, I hate to tell you, but this doesn’t look anything like the turquoise-skinned creature you described—”

  “Yeah, Moriarity said I may have seen Set, the brother of Isis.”

  Roberto bared his teeth at the demon. “Look at all those needle teeth! Reminds me of Stef Brown.” His gaze slid to the gigantic arm and hand at the opposite end of the unit. “Who does the arm belong to? Dog catcher?”

  “Don’t know. They have to excavate more of it.”

  With the dawn, I could see things I could not last night. A small pool of water had gathered around the fingertips of the hand, and the arm wore a spiral serpent bracelet. They were common in ancient Egypt, but it reminded me . . .

  Behind us, I heard Moriarity call, “You’re up early, boys.”

  Turning, I saw him step from his tent and pull his fedora down against the breeze. As he rolled the sleeves of his white shirt down and buttoned them, his glasses flashed with sunlight.

  “Wanted to see the site,” I called back.

  Moriarity walked to the edge of the excavation unit and looked down to see what we were staring at. His brows plunged down over his nose. “She’s new, and well preserved,” he noted. “If you were to conjecture, Dr. Stevens, what would you guess this might represent?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. I hated it when teachers pinned me in class. My mind always went utterly blank. But I said, “Well, all I have is the front of Ammut and an arm with a humanlike hand, but I wonder if these statues might recreate ‘The Judgment’ scene. Which would mean the Devourer is sitting at the base of the Scales of Justice and the arm belongs to a statue of Osiris. Maybe.”

  Moriarity nodded admiringly. “That is exactly what I wonder. Good work. Obviously, we won’t be able to answer that question for a few days.”

  Roberto asked, “Why is there water down there?”

  “You’re walking on top of ruins right now. They are everywhere just below the ground, but the deeper we sink our excavation units the closer we get to the water table. It’s very close to the surface here.”

  He looked around the huge excavation, studying the people who were up and about, then he said, “Come on, let’s get a cup of coffee, and I’ll show you the other main attractions.”

  “Thanks.”

  As we walked, the ground became wetter until mud stuck to my boots. Roberto’s head kept whipping around, trying to take everything in, just as I was. The whole site seemed to be enveloped by salt-crusted mud and wetlands, the legacy of the two extinct branches of the Nile that had once embraced the city.

  “Is it always this wet?” I asked.

  He laughed softly. “Though it looks like we might get a shower later this afternoon, this is the dry season. If we’re lucky, we can work from March through October, because when the winter rains start, it’s impossible.”

  Roberto kicked a chunk of green glass, and Moriarity shouted, “Stop that! You do not EVER kick at artifacts, Robert!”

  “Well, what was that?”

  “A fragment of a molded glass bowl that dates to the around 200 BC. Now, listen up. You do not collect artifacts, or move them, unless you are under the direct supervision of one of my crew chiefs. You may pick them up, look at them, and put them down in exactly the same place. That’s all. Understand?”

  We both nodded.

  When we arrived at the big cook tent, which stretched about twenty by thirty feet, my stomach started growling from the rich scents. I noticed there was a dinner bell suspended from a post, which I assumed notified the archaeologists when food was ready. Ten long tables, each surrounded by wooden benches, stood on the eastern side of the tent. This early in the morning they rested in full sun, but by afternoon, they would be shaded.

  “Dr. James!” the gray-haired man stirring one of the big pots situated on the grates over the fire called, smiling broadly. He had a mouthful of broken yellow teeth. “It’s good to see you.”

  Moriarity walked around the fire and embraced the cook like an old friend. “And you, Shihab. You look well, my friend.”

  “Yes, very well. Where is Dr. Sophia?”

  “I let her sleep. She’ll be here soon. What do we have for breakfast this morning?”

  Shihab lifted the wooden spoon from the big pot. It was covered with a sticky brown substance. “I heard you would be here today, so I made your favorite cereal of teff and flax.”

  “Is it ready?”

  “Yes, please.” He gestured to the bowls and spoons nested on the table just inside the tent.

  “Follow me, boys.”

  Moriarity led the way into the tent and stopped to point. “Do you see that black box on the shelf over there? That’s a satellite phone to be used only in case of emergency. Got it?”

  “Sure.”

  Moriarity picked up a bowl and spoon. “Grab a cup, too. And if you want tea, it’s in the big box on that shelf.” He pointed to the opposite side of the tent.

  The canvas walls were lined with wire shelves filled with cardboard boxes, and bags, fresh vegetables, and pomegranates, along with a healthy supply of bottled water stacked in the very rear.

  When we walked back outside and held out our bowls, Shihab filled them with gelatinous brown goo.

  Roberto smelled it and wrinkled his nose before he took a bite. Around a mouthful, he said, “Hey, Egyptian Malt-O-Meal. Tastes like mud. So it has honey in it to disguise the flavor, right?”

  “Milk and honey,” Moriarity said. “But it is most certainly not Malt-O-Meal. Teff is an ancient grain that originated around 6,000 years ago. The tiny seeds were so revered by ancient Egyptians they were placed with pharaohs in the pyramids as their last meal for traveling to the land of the dead.”

  I took my first bite and smiled as the rich earthy flavor filled my mouth. “This is really good.”

  “Glad you like it. Let’s find a seat and come back for coffee.”

  We followed him to the tables, set our bowls down, and took our cups back to the fire.

  “The usual?” Shihab asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Moriarity replied, “and you can give the boys the same as me.”

  Roberto said, “I may not want it. What is it?”

  “It’s my favorite blend of Egyptian coffee. You’ll like it. I think.”

  As the Arab lifted the big coffeepot and began to pour Moriarity’s cup full, I smelled spices, but I cou
ldn’t identify them. Once we had steaming cups, Moriarity led us back to the table, and we slid onto the bench opposite him, facing the tent.

  I sipped my cup, and said, “This is delicious coffee. What are the spices?”

  “Cardamom, anise, and red pepper.” Moriarity took a healthy sip, smiled at the flavor, and said, “What do you think, Robert?”

  “Nasty. Give me Starbucks any day.” He set his cup aside, made a face, and dug into his cereal.

  More of the crew began to emerge from the tents, yawning, stretching their arms over their heads. As I ate, I noticed that an attractive blonde woman, tall and athletic, was coming our way. She wore her hair in a braid that fell down the back of her long-sleeved ivory shirt. I guessed her age as mid-thirties. She had one of those authoritative strides that told me she was in charge of something. After grabbing a cup of coffee, she walked toward us.

  Roberto leaned close to whisper, “Dear God, please let her sit by me.”

  Instead, she slid onto the bench beside Moriarity, which made him grimace and shove his bowl away. “LaSalle. How are you?”

  As she sipped her coffee, her arm muscles bulged through her shirt. “Are you going to make me sue you, Jim?” she said in a deep gravelly voice.

  “I had complications in Colorado. I’m sure Sophia told you about my niece’s death.”

  “I’m not talking about you getting here two weeks late. Where’s the excavation report from the 2010 field season? How many years do I have to wait before I have the information necessary to publish my article in Antiquity?”

  Moriarity ignored the question, and instead said, “Boys, this is Dr. LaSalle Corbelle from the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. LaSalle, let me introduce you to my newest crewmembers.” He held a hand to me. “This is Hal Stevens, and the boy with drool at the corners of his mouth is Robert Dally.”

  Roberto wiped his mouth on his arm, and said, “Hi.”

  I nodded to her. “Hello. I didn’t realize different countries worked here at the same time.”

  Dr. Corbelle gave Moriarity one last disgusted look, then turned to face me. “Currently, five countries are excavating here. Canada, the US, Switzerland, Poland, and, of course, Egypt. We all use the same tent camp to minimize the impacts to the site, but our excavations are in different areas. How do you like Egypt so far? Have either of you been here before?”