by SUZAN STILL
“Aapep speaks wisely,” the pharaoh said. “We will do as he suggests and we will rest as we grow weary, no matter what the hour on the surface above.”
And so, they settled on the details of their plan, and would have begun immediately but for yet another misfortune in a day black with them. Surely, the stars of heaven were frowning on them that day, for no sooner had they eaten and rested and begun to stir around, eager to begin their labors, than the old woman, who had been valiant and stoic throughout the day’s ordeal, began to suffer a critical decline.
§
And now, dear Blanche, I will tell you about this mysterious old woman. For she touches your own future, strange as that may sound. The name of this old woman was Sa Tahuti and she was—and is—the high priestess of the House of Tahuti, who is known on your continent as Thoth, the God of Wisdom. She was at the time of their escape over one hundred years old and her condition was very fragile. Yet, I tell you a wonder, young Blanche: Sa Tahuti is still alive!
I see I have greatly confused you and that is as it should be. For what I am telling you now is not only a great secret but one of the great spiritual wonders of Egypt. Through great spiritual elevation, Sa Tahuti has found a way to pass her soul from one body to another without ever having to experience death. And what is more, she has been doing this for several thousand years!
Yes. It is astonishing, I know, and scarcely believable. And yet it is so. And believe it or not, Sa Tahuti is not unique. In my wanderings with my people the Romany, I have met one other in the land of India, a man named Baba Ji, who shares a similar ability and fate; and high in the Himalayan mountains, I have heard whispers of yet another. This ability is a mark of spiritual elevation at a level which is unimaginable, even to those of us who have studied the ancient ways.
Now, when Sa Tahuti transfers from one body to the next, she carries with her all the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Egypt, from the days of Isis and Osiris forward—spiritual science, astronomy, and astrology, mathematics, metallurgy, healing, magic and the history of the Egyptian people, to name only a few of her areas of understanding. She is so prescient that she knows when she is about to die and in her wisdom, already has a body chosen into which she can transfer. For you see, throughout the ages, children have been born specifically so that their bodies may become a vessel for the soul and spirit of Sa Tahuti.
Yet here was their dilemma: the child who had been designated to be Sa Tahuti’s next incarnation had been murdered when the Christians stormed the temple! And so disturbing was this to the old woman, who now faced sudden loss of her accumulated wisdom should she die, that the very thought of it brought on the physical crisis most to be feared.
So taxed was her old heart that Sa Tahuti collapsed and could not be revived for some time. The queen and her attendants worked over the old woman, for the queen was no mere figurehead but a practitioner of the deepest arts of Egyptian healing and magic. Just as Isis revived the dead Osiris, so the queen was able to revive Sa Tahuti, who teetered on the threshold of death.
Once her condition was stabilized, Sa Tahuti took counsel with Aapep. Their urgent whispers buzzed away like two angry wasps for a considerable time, and it seemed to those around them that they were arguing, a thing unheard of formerly. Finally, Aapep rose from his position beside the old woman’s reclined body and came to the pharaoh with long, grievous face.
“My Lord,” Aapep began, tears brimming in a deeply troubled countenance, “Sa Tahuti says she will not last the night in her present body. Furthermore, she is aware that the child whose body she was to inhabit next has been murdered.” At this pronouncement, a gasp of horror arose from the royal couple, for they understood the dire consequences of losing this living repository of wisdom.
“We have discussed this matter at length and have come to a decision, one which tortures our very beings to suggest.”
The pharaoh was a wise and prescient man himself, and he could sense where this conversation was heading. Instinctively, he reached out to embrace his queen and their infant son, who lay nursing sweetly in her arms. “Speak it,” he managed to spit out, as if he were ejecting sand from between his teeth.
“My Lord, Sa Tahuti is the priceless treasure of your realm. I believe you know that she must not be allowed to pass away without renewal.”
The pharaoh, his jaw clenched against a rage he knew was directed at no living person but at the gods, could only nod.
“Sa Tahuti and I have conferred. She tells me that your son, the youngest prince, is of feeble constitution.” This could not be denied. The baby was colicky, cross-tempered and always uncomfortable in his little body, no matter how tenderly his mother ministered to him.
Aapep looked down at his feet, his mouth twisted with difficult words: “Sa Tahuti, My Lord, believes that the prince will not complete the journey northward. Lack of sunshine, dampness and stale air will be too great a burden for his little soul to bear.”
At this, the queen gave a shriek and clutched the child fiercely to her breast. The look she hurled at Aapep was both anguished and enraged.
Stoically, the high priest continued on: “Sa Tahuti believes that it would be possible for her to do something that she has never before accomplished. Because the soul of the baby prince is so loosely tied to his body, she proposes to exchange bodies with him. This would mean that he would expire tonight, with her body, rather than several days hence. Sa Tahuti also believes that, given the strength of her own soul, she can heal the baby’s body and thus survive. She wishes you to know that, because of his great sacrifice, the prince will be welcomed by Osiris and the other gods into the Hall of Timelessness and will abide happily there forever.”
Aapep finished his terrible message with bowed head. Backing away, he left the pharaoh and queen to confer. It was beyond a doubt the most anguished decision of their lives. Yet, in the end, they proved themselves to be truly royal. They considered the welfare of the kingdom before their own grief and consented to this magical soul transfer.
§
All present gathered around the recumbent body of Sa Tahuti, who held the baby prince against her breast, heart to heart. As the pharaoh and the high priest enacted a solemn ritual, their chanting echoed and re-echoed through the vast reaches of the cavern, as if all generations of priests and pharaohs were present, participating in this moment of profoundest magic.
Then, Sa Tahuti added her voice to theirs, a high, tenuous, reedy wail, like wind over winter marshes. It carried such ominous potency that the women of the group began to weep and Aapep and the pharaoh could scarcely continue. Their voices rose and fell, mixing and swirling with their rebounding echoes, as if an entire contingent of the dead had arisen to aid in the soul transfer. The sound encompassed each person and seemed to enter into their very bones, so that they throbbed as if trapped inside a huge drum.
Then abruptly, Sa Tahuti’s voice ceased. Aapep and the pharaoh stopped their chanting. The echoes died away into the depths of darkness surrounding them. The instant hung, breathless and quivering as a pendant drop of rain on the end of a twig…
Suddenly, the little prince let out a yelp and began to wail in exactly the same cadence as Sa Tahuti’s chant. At the same moment, Sa Tahuti’s body gave a great spasm and with a rattling gasp, lapsed into the utter stillness of death.
The women began to wail and tear their hair. The baby kicked his feet and shrieked, until the queen rushed to pick him up and comfort him. And Aapep knelt to minister to the body of his old friend, Sa Tahuti.
Every soul present testified later that they were unsure if the soul transfer had happened at all. Their group was completely undone by all that had transpired that day, and lacking anything else to do and being absolutely physically and emotionally exhausted, they lay themselves down on their individual bedrolls and slept.
§
I will not tell you more of the journey endured by this little band, dear Blanche. Suffice it to say that they encountered many adventures and
hardships on their journey northward. Eventually, they came to this area of the great cave, which we presently inhabit. Here they stopped and set up housekeeping, and here this community has been ever since.
Contact was made with the outside world through certain trusted portals. The land above us was purchased and a great house with walled gardens was built there, using funds from the treasury. This provided a place of secret egress through which each member of the community might, on a regular basis, have access to sunshine and fresh air and all the amenities of the upper world. The attendants you have met here will rotate with those in the house above tomorrow. You will meet an entirely new group, invigorated by their time above. They will come bearing baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables and meat. And so it has been, these many centuries, Blanche my child.
Christian rule in Egypt was eventually replaced by Muslim rule. The great estates of the Muslim lords were built next to ours, including that now belonging to Ali Abu’l-Hasan. But here we have stayed, a community of true Egyptians, still worshipping as we have for thousands of years.
We are like a secret heart beating beneath the breast of the land. The pharaoh still performs his rituals…I see you are surprised. Yes, chère Blanche, a pharaoh still reigns, a direct descendent of the one who fled Philae so long ago. And Sa Tahuti, who became Sau Tahuti when she lived in the male body of the young prince, is once again restored to a feminine body.
Ah! You are surprised again! Yes, Sa Tahuti, the very one, is still with us and is now so old, after so many incarnations, that no one except she can count it. It is because of her that I have told you this long, wandering tale. For soon, you will receive an audience. We must prepare you now to meet Sa Tahuti!
9
Monastery of the Ghosts
Calypso stood gazing from the window at the light show in the canyon. The chasm lay in utter blackness until an explosion of lightning and thunder illuminated it, turning cliffs into shimmering sheets of silver and the abyss into a vast amplifier.
A similar storm agitated her mind, as it alternated between a gulf of unknowing and the radiance of timeless wisdom. Her thoughts churned with the story of the locket and the strange parallels that were beginning to manifest in her own life.
Just as she and Hill had made the cave crossing from one river canyon to the next, escaping the cartel’s attack, so the pharaoh and his entourage had resorted to a cave to save themselves. And both efforts were sustained on supplies already laid in for just such a contingency. And what of Hill’s vision while trapped in the tube? Wasn’t it a miracle as surely as Sa Tahuti’s transformation?
Even more abstractly, wasn’t it stone that had saved both groups? In the Egyptian case, the massive stone cutting off the enemy’s advance and in her own, the monolithic stone of the cliff over which she and Hill had disappeared as if they had never been. And in each case, a river was the source of life toward which they journeyed.
More importantly, she was separated as grievously from Javier as Isis was from Osiris. Would she have to lose him and find him dead in order to fulfill the pattern? The thought was too terrible. And yet, the myth of Isis showed the Goddess in both her terrible and benevolent forms, just as in tonight’s dream. Calypso had come too far in life to expect happy endings.
A blast of lightning and thunder shook the windowpanes, filling the room with a shock of blue-white light. Alarmed, her thoughts skittered and bolted onward.
Did people really reincarnate again and again? It all seemed too huge and too fantastic. And yet, she felt in her bones that all people were really Light made matter, suffering amnesia about their true origins. Were she, Javier, and Hill, and the rest of humanity, all part of an ancient lineage of which beings like the Christ and the Buddha were the shining exemplars, the realized ones because they had overcome the forgetting?
Could she dare to believe that she was conjured from the same divine fire? Was that hubris or simple knowing? And did it exalt or exhaust her to think that she had been around since the beginning of time and would be here after its end? Wasn’t that knowledge almost as heavy to bear as the locket?
She had to smile despite herself. Her weary body certainly felt tonight as if it had seen the passage of the ages.
She gripped the window bars and leaned her forehead against the cold metal. The storm was moving off down the canyon like a great battle transiting, with cannons roaring and bombs dropping. The hard white light of lightning was replaced by the glow of the fire, the crashing cannonade with the slow drip of rain on the sill outside.
Calypso pulled the chair close to the fire, threw on another log and bent her head to her hands, her elbows on her knees. It must be nearly dawn, although it would be a dark one, hidden behind clouds. Somewhere in her own life, light must be dawning, too, despite all appearances. Her body was leaden with weariness, but somewhere deep down she had connected to a bottomless aquifer of energy. Come what may, she knew herself to be unshakable.
§
A sharp knock on the door startled her from a doze, her face still supported in her hands. She jerked awake, her eyes darting to the window. It was still black behind the bars and the fire had scarcely burned down on the hearth. Who would be summoning her at this early hour? Before she could call out the question, a key turned in the lock, the heavy wooden door swung inward, and a black-robed figure glided through it.
Calypso reeled back in shock, momentarily caught in the illusion of her dream repeating itself. There was no black cowl, however, and when the figure stepped out of shadows into firelight, she saw that her visitor was Icepick.
Of all the men’s stories, his was far from the most gruesome. Yet he was one of the men for whom Calypso had felt the least compassion. It came, she realized, from his apparent lack of compunction. He had told his life’s tale as if he were reading from a book written by someone else about a fictitious character.
There was an isolated quality to the man. His face was pitted and desolate as the lunar surface, with a haunted yet somehow vacant expression, as if he had lived too long in an orbit far from human warmth. He was not young but the years had been kind to him. He moved with an uncanny grace that more resembled stealth. Yet he was a gray man—hair, flesh, aura. Instead of giving off energy like other living creatures, he seemed to suck energy in, leaving a void around him where air and vibrancy should be. He was, in a word, creepy.
Calypso rose from her chair and stood behind it, keeping it between them.
“Icepick,” she said. “To what do I owe this visit? It’s very early.”
Icepick did not answer. He flowed soundlessly around the room, keeping Calypso edging around the chair, as she turned to face him. Her eyes never left his face as she thought of his story: how he had first killed at only twelve, while working in his father’s little corner market.
A thug had come in, he’d recounted, to collect extortion money. Icepick, knowing that the amount was needed for rent, had crept up behind the man as he wrangled with his father and slipped an ice pick under the back of his skull. It was the first in a very long string of assassinations, all carried out with the original ice pick that he kept hidden in a leather case on his wrist.
Calypso looked for the telltale bulge of the case but Icepick was in constant motion, the skirt of his black cassock swinging about him like a dancer’s.
“What is it that you want?” she asked again, trying to keep a rising panic from her voice.
Having circled the room once, Icepick came to a halt in front of the window and stood sideways to it, glancing out into the featureless blackness, but keeping an eye on Calypso. They stood that way for several moments, he in a posture of readiness, she with her hands on the back of the chair, imagining how she might use it as shield and weapon.
“You’re causing a big problem for us,” he said at last. His voice was soft, almost seductive.
Calypso did not respond. The intimation that Icepick had come to remedy the situation was all too clear. She did not imagine that he was
the kind of man who would be swayed by argument.
“We never have women here.” His voice was accusing.
“It was never my intention to trouble you with my presence.” Her response sounded more nettled than she intended. If this was the situation for which the dream was attempting to prepare her, then how in the world could she manage to bless this repugnant personification of death?
“It’s a problem,” he repeated.
It suddenly occurred to Calypso that he might never have killed a woman, only men. On impulse she asked, “When you killed the thug who was shaking down your father—what did your mother say?”
He swiveled to face her with snaky suppleness.
“What did you say?”
She could see he was flustered and followed up her small advantage.
“It must have been hard for her. You were her son. She loved you. Yet you’d done this thing that was irrevocable. I’m trying to imagine how she must have felt.”
Icepick’s face had become even more bloodless. Calypso knew that they were at the crux of his visit. Either he would attack now because of her impudence, or the situation would shift in her favor.
They faced one another across the small room like two animals gauging their attack. Icepick’s eyes narrowed and he circled his nose through the air, the instinctual gesture of a hunting animal picking up a scent. Calypso’s heartbeat quickened and her muscles tensed in readiness. Her fingers dug into the top rail of the chair back like steel screws being set into the wood.
She watched him with all her instinctual being, waiting for the slight tension that would be the gathering of his muscles for attack. And when she saw it, she threw down her final ace.
“I think she must have blessed you.”
There was a misstep in the choreography of his kill. He went rigid and glared at her.
“What did you say?”
“Your mother. I think no matter what she may have said to you, that in her heart she blessed you. For rescuing your father. For saving the rent. For sending a message to the gang that was squeezing your family. I’m a woman. I know these things.”