by Leena Maria
So I took a deep breath and opened the book to read how to find the gate that took me, literally, to the Other Side. The Unseen Worlds.
"We cannot give the location of the gate in writing – this book may fall into the wrong hands. It may have done so already, physically, or by word of mouth. So we need to reach you in a place where it is safer, and where we can guard you against any shadows.
"In short: you need to learn lucid dreaming and wake up in the buffer zone. We will be waiting for you there. We are already observing you and your dreams, so we shall be ready for you."
Someone was watching me dreaming? They would know all my deepest secrets in that case. I blushed out of sheer embarrassment.
"Do the following: firstly, during the daytime, look at your hand frequently. Every time you see your hand, count the fingers and say to yourself 'Is this a dream or am I awake?' Secondly, look at books and anything with writing on it, read the words, concentrate hard on the letters. And thirdly, if you see a clock – look at it quickly, twice, to check the time. Ask yourself again, 'Am I awake or is this a dream?' And teach yourself to stay very calm, almost emotionless when you are doing this.
"It may take you days, even weeks, but your mind will learn to look for these things, and it will happen that one night, when you sleep and dream, you will notice a book or some writing, a clock, or your hand, in your sleep and your mind will remember what you taught it while you were awake. Your mind will pay attention to these things.
"When this happens, do the same thing you did when you were awake. Count the fingers – you notice they are not normal. They may be stumps, you may lack a finger or have too many. You notice you cannot read text. You will see the time has changed between your glances at the clock.
"When you have taught your mind to always question if you are dreaming or are awake, it will do so in your dream too, when you see any of these signs. And this is when you wake up in your dream. If you don't get excited, you will remain there, in your dream, fully awake. If you get excited, the dream reality will fade away from around you, because your strong emotions draw you back to your waking reality.
"This is why it is important to teach yourself to remain calm. It will give us time to pass our message to you. Trust us, we are here all the time, seeing you when you dream, waiting for you to wake up in the buffer zone."
And that's it. There was no more text in the book. Frustrated, I threw my blanket aside and got out of bed. I had expected a map at least. Or some magical object that would transfer me to another realm. But lucid dreaming? Sheesh...
Still, to be on the safe side, I had to hide the book, if only so that Mom would not find it... But where? If these shadows could come and go as they pleased, surely they might lurk anywhere, and see where I hid the book. But if the book said it should be hidden, then hide it I would.
It was too thick to put behind a painting. Anyone would turn the paintings around if they were looking for hidden stuff.
If I put it in my bookshelf, it would be enough to pull all the books out of the shelf and find it.
Then I saw Nugget. He was curled up in his very hairy cat-bed under my desk. Mom never touched the bed ("Too much of a big, hairy deal - pun intended!"). There was no point in cleaning it, because Nugget shed a fair amount of hair, and the black, round pillow he slept on had turned red with time.
The pillow had lots of padding, and a zipper at the side - the idea was that you could toss the outer pillow case into a washing machine. Mom announced that all that cat hair would just choke the machine and that it would be my responsibility to clean the pillow using some other method.
Well, I had never done that, which did not seem to bother Nugget in the least. The pillow looked a mess, to be honest. Not something you would want to touch voluntarily. But Nugget loved it, and the more "Nuggety" it became, the more he adored it and the deeper his purring grew as he rolled about on it.
It was the best I could come up with, anyway. I lifted Nugget out of his bed and opened the zipper on the side of the pillow. I separated the layers of padding inside and slid the book in there, closed the zipper, and put the pillow back. Nugget had already hopped on my bed to continue his dreams.
I stopped to look at my hands, when I pressed the hairy pillow back into its basket. I counted my fingers and asked myself quietly:
"Am I awake, or is this a dream?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
11. The Story of the Wax Crocodile
The odd thing about her was that she was a beekeeper. A woman who should have been the mistress of a house, taking care of her family. She could have grown old among her loved ones, content in the certainty that one day her children would perform burial rites for her, to guarantee her soul a happy afterlife. But instead she had chosen the lonely life of a beekeeper and spent her life among her "children" as she called them. If anyone thought of it as odd, they did not say so to her face. After someone talked with her for a while they understood her deep wisdom, and chose not to mock her.
My earliest memories were of watching her tending to her bees. Mother never seemed to mind leaving me together with Mut-Bity. That was not her real name, she never revealed it to anyone. Not even us. But I called her that because I thought she was the Mother of Bees.
I sat in the shadow, under a small tree, wrapped in a big linen cloth, and paid attention to Mut-Bity's work.
"These creatures should always be revered," she said to me solemnly, staring at me under her eyebrows as if she needed to be angry with me.
"Yes, Mut-Bity," I replied as was expected of me.
"Do you know why?" she kept on looking at me with solemn eyes.
"Yes, I do," I said and pulled my toes under my wrap so the sun would not touch them. "They give us honey!"
That was an easy one, as Mut-Bity was just kneeling in front of the beehives, smoking the bees with a burning piece of dried cow dung. She did that when she wanted to check how they were doing, how much honey her children had gathered. The smoke calmed them down.
There were nine hives in all that she carried with her. They were of burnt clay, so they were much finer than many other hives I had seen elsewhere. Those were usually made of dried mud of the River. Mut-Bity's were stronger and better than most, and she took great care of them. She had put them so that there were four on the bottom row, three on the next and two at the top. The tubes tapered slightly towards the other end.
"Now that was easy," Mut-Bity repeated my thoughts, "But there is more, tell me."
I looked at the bees buzzing around her, mesmerized by their hum in the heat. They seemed to gather around her whenever she approached the hives, and I had never witnessed any of them stinging her. I was lost in the hum of the bees for a while and my thoughts wandered.
"Shuet?"
I almost jumped back to reality.
"Women can demand honey jars in their marriage contract," Mut-Bity said, "And believe me - a woman's lot is not enviable, so any sweetening to it is much recommended! That is why I preferred just the sweet part and did not get married."
We shared a companiable laugh. Her cheeks were baked dark in the sunlight and laughter created long thin lines that curved over her cheekbones. Still she did not look old. Just sun-baked. So different from the delicate skinned fine ladies of the nobility, who spent their days indoors, weaving and supervising servants. And also very different from the servants and slaves who were aged by their hard work. I never really wondered about Mut-Bity's age. She was old like all adults were and that was it.
"Tell me about beeswax," she asked me.
I looked down the field towards the River. Little boats were sailing there. I saw a burial boat with mourners on the way to Abdju. Someone who had not made the trip to the burial place of Osiris in their lifetime, probably. So the family took them now on that trip after they had been prepared for death, before burial.
I recognized one other boat - it was another beekeeper with whom we often travelled. The bee-season was almost over here, and so
on we would move downriver towards the north, to new fields that needed the bees. It was time to ask for the local peasants for donkeys to get the hives to the riverbank and into the boat.
"The priests and magicians need beeswax," I said, but not being in the mood to concentrate too much, I added, "Tell me the story of the wax crocodile!"
Mut-Bity rose and wiped her hands on her dress.
"Now why would you like to hear that story? It is scary, no?"
She snapped her fingers in front of my face, holding the fingers tight together and opening and closing them against her thumbs, as if her fingers were crocodile jaws. I giggled.
"No it is not! The bad man got punished!"
"How do you know he was a bad man? What if he loved her? What if her husband was mean to her? You never know, so do not judge!"
I looked at Mut-Bity questioningly, trying to see if she was angry with me. The sun made my eyes water. Mut-Bity smiled and wiped the tears from my cheeks, knowing they were caused not by sorrow but by the sun. She pulled my covering over my face so that she disappeared from sight and I could only see her feet. Strong feet, with surprisingly delicate ankles. And thick soles. I looked at her toe nails, wondering how she kept them so neat and clean, walking in the dust and mud barefoot like the rest of us. My own toes, peeking out again from under my covering, were very dusty and dirty. I think I had stepped on donkey dung on our way to the field.
"Very well. I shall tell you the story of the wax crocodile," I heard the smile in her voice.
She sat down next to me and pulled me closer with her strong, thin, wiry arm. I loved being held by Mut-Bity. Her touch was so soothing.
"Aba-Aner was a great magician who lived a long long time ago, during the times of the great king Nebka. Aba-Aner was a priest and knew of the hidden powers of magic. He found out his wife had a lover, a young man from the king's retinue, but did not tell her he knew how she had ordered their country house by the pool to be made ready. She then met this young man there, and they ate, drank and enjoyed each other's company - and bathed in the water.
"No, Aba-Aner did not tell her, or anyone else, that he knew. Instead he created a crocodile of beeswax, seven fingers long. He recited certain magical spells over it and gave it to his steward. He knew his wife's lover would come and bathe at the pool the next time they met. And so he did, and the steward threw the wax crocodile into the water.
"The crocodile turned into a real crocodile, seven cubits long, which attacked the youth and pulled him under water."
I held my breath. I knew the youth had done the same for he was still alive in the next part of the story.
"Aba-Aner was with the king for seven days, and after those days he was summoned before the king. He said: 'Your Majesty would like to see a prodigy which has happened in the time of your Majesty.' And so they went to the pond. Aba-Aner summoned the crocodile to bring up the youth, and the crocodile obeyed. It had to, because Aba-Aner was its creator and knew its magical name. And he then told the king what the youth had been doing with Aba-Aner's wife."
Under my cloth, I covered my eyes with my hands. This was a bit too scary, really, but it was daylight and so I could hear the rest as well.
"The king said to the crocodile: 'Take what is yours and go down.' And the crocodile once more took the youth and pulled him into the depths of the pond, and he was never seen again. The young wife of Aba-Aner was taken and burned and her ashes were scattered in the pond... "
I couldn't help but let out a little squeal.
"And so they both died and were no more," Mut-Bity said in a deep storyteller's voice. "And they had no bodies their souls could return to after that... They were doomed."
"But they could have lived on..." said a strange voice behind me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
12. Eyes of Blue at the Bookstore
Days passed and still Grandma showed no signs of leaving. I heard Mom grumbling to Dad: "Has she moved in permanently?"
It seemed to me that Grandma had suddenly changed her plans after the night of the shadow in the garden. Previously she had told us she was intending to stay only for three days. Now she told me that she was enjoying her little holiday so much she would be with us for longer. Somehow I was convinced it was because of the garden episode, even though she never mentioned it again. To be honest, she seemed to be purposely avoiding the subject.
"And you, Dana... is there something wrong with your hands?" Mom asked me one morning after having a complaint session with Dad.
"No. Why?"
"You keep looking at them all the time as if you had a rash or something."
"Oh, maybe my skin is a bit dry." I came up with an explanation quickly. "I should buy some hand cream, I think. Too much digging in the garden..."
That much was true - I had been working in the garden. I had very carefully checked the rosebush under my window the morning after the shadow. I'd found some black and grey hairs there, but when I came to pick them up to put them into a little plastic bag, they deteriorated straight away. They broke at my touch into tiny bits and dust that basically just vanished into thin air. I had never seen anything like it before.
I wanted to see if the shadow had been to any other parts of the garden, and so I tended to the flowers and bushes as the pretext whilst I was really searching for clumps of hair similar to the one under the rose bush. I found nothing. On the dusty road there were some slight imprints, but it was impossible to say what or who had caused them.
"Good. I need to go to town, you can come with me to buy your hand cream," mother decided, clearly pleased that I was finally showing an interest in skin creams and all that stuff.
"Should we ask if Grandma..."
"No, let's just go, right away," she insisted. Her voice told me in no uncertain terms that Grandma's presence was not wanted.
So we did not wait for Grandma, who was out on some errand, and had promised to be back in time for dinner.
Mom drove our old hatchback slowly to town – she had always been a nervous driver and chose to drive slowly. Sometimes too slowly. But if someone passed us by and swerved back right in front of us in protest for us blocking the road, she never said a word. Instead she just squeezed the wheel, her knuckles white, and looked straight ahead. For some reason I held my breath when Mom drove at her regular snail-pace, but I never did when Grandma's little red sports car flew along these small back roads.
The little bell of the beauty parlor's door rang cheerfully when Mom opened it. Mom loved to have any opportunity to visit here, and spent some time choosing a face cream for her and a hand cream for me.
"Hand cream for the young lady?" the lady behind the counter grabbed my hands and pulled me towards her before I could say cat. "Tut tut! You have been digging in the garden without gloves on, haven't you?"
"I do try to tell her... but she has always been a bit of a tomboy," my mother sighed and the two women shook their heads in agreement, making me feel like I had broken some unwritten female rule.
We left, with our shopping swinging in a stylish small paper bag Mom held. Mom looked happy, as she always did after the opportunity to buy some of life's little luxuries.
"I could go to the hairdresser's..." Mom pondered and looked at me, "if they have time for me, that is. Could you find something to do in the meantime?"
"Sure, of course!" I was more than happy to head to the bookstore again.
It was a bright, sunny day, and I felt as though I had nothing to fear. A week had already passed since the night I saw the shadow, and I had almost convinced myself that it had just been a homeless dog. That would have explained Nugget's reaction to it. He was not the kind of cat you see on YouTube snuggling up to a dog. He did not like dogs. Period. A video of Nugget and a dog would not be something that would get any "awwww" or "squee" comments on social media.
Sunshine made everything beautiful and my spirits lifted after the beauty parlor episode. I cheerfully greeted Mrs. Brown who was reading a ladies' magazine beh
ind her counter, and made my way slowly down the aisles, checking out what was new. Mrs. Brown was something of a marvel in her small-town bookstore – she always had the latest bestsellers, but also books from special fields as well – like Egyptology.
I found an interesting book about Amenhotep III and was leafing through its pages when a slight movement caught my eye. I turned my head to see better, and there was nothing where the movement had been. I was certain I had seen something to my right, and yet in that direction this particular isle of shelves ended at the wall – and the movement had been between me and the wall. There was no place for anyone to hide.
My heart thumped in my throat and I could feel that my palms began to sweat. The shadows... They could be anywhere they wanted or so the book had said. I glanced at my hand. One, two, three, four fingers and a thumb. All perfectly in order. Definitely not a dream.
Everything was dead still. I tried to look normal and turned back to my book, my scalp tingling with fear. There was a mirror on the wall in front of me, a few shelves away, and I glanced at it.
There. Something moved again – it was as if there was an invisible form that somehow warped everything around it into its shape, a bit like Kitty in the dream. You could barely see its outline, but it was there. And it seemed to be human. If you imagine how an invisible man would have been shown in a movie, you'll get the general idea.
I snapped the book shut and almost ran to the counter. Even though I was starting to panic something in me noted that I could still read the title and the author clearly. Not a dream!