The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  He looked like she’d slapped him. He curled the bottle into his chest like a baby. “What’re you talking about, girl? It’s all I have, most days. And I don’t have many of those left, that I know. But for the ones that I do, I don’t want to remember what was taken from me back home, how I lost my Mary. I don’t want to remember what I did to get sent here, how I threw my life into the rubbish bin. I just want to forget. And sleep.”

  She exhaled and straightened. You couldn’t help someone if they didn’t want to be helped. He knew that she’d understand that.

  When she embraced him, he felt so fragile in her arms, so small and bony. The magic seemed to have listened to him, and remained inert and quiet. He patted her back, and there was nothing but sadness behind it.

  “Thank you. For everything, Viv.”

  She turned away before emotion got the better of her, and headed for William. Behind her, Viv let out a choking sob.

  “Don’t go to the mountains. I beg you. You’ll be a pile of bones by week’s end.”

  When she turned back around, Mary’s ghost haunted Viv’s eyes. Poor Mary, whose story she never knew. And poor, dear Viv, left behind.

  Anyone could’ve found her lying in the bush that day—a soldier, an unfriendly emancipist, a violent criminal—but it had been Viv. He’d merely glanced at her odd clothes, shrugged at her unfamiliar speech, and accepted what little information she offered about herself as a good trade for fair company.

  If she were in her own time, she would’ve tried to keep in touch, to have checked in on him once in a while. Maybe sent some covert help when she couldn’t be there herself. But she was here, and she was now, and there was nothing left to do but leave. This kind of regret and sense of loss felt brand new to her, and was almost too much to bear.

  “I’ll take care of myself.” And then, to smooth the deep worry lines between his bushy eyebrows, she took a chance and told him, “I’m not going to the mountains. I’m going to Sydney.”

  The grin he gave her was rum-stained and relieved. “Anyone who asks, I’ll tell them you went west, not east.”

  “Thank you. I’d do the same for you.”

  “I know you would.”

  #

  Sera brought no skirts or dresses, not even a hairpin, as they fled the old man’s farm much later that night. William might’ve found it odd for a woman to leave such things behind, except that in the brief time he’d known her, he assumed she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t have worn those things in the first place. He might’ve found it even more odd if she had.

  They hiked silently, Jem between them and a carpet of stars above, making William feel far too distant from the woman who walked so near.

  “There.” He squinted into the darkness, to where the moon made a clump of white tree trunks glow soothingly. “That’s the stand of trees I saw earlier today. It’s thick enough and far enough away from any homesteads. We can sleep there tonight then head to the river tomorrow and follow it east.”

  The close bunch of trees, with their strange, shedding bark, created a pocket braced from the wind that was starting to kick up. The space inside was filled with the lovely sweet smell that blessed this whole wretched colony. It might have been the most beautiful thing about this land.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Sera sling her floppy bag to the ground and stretch her back. Perhaps not the most beautiful.

  From the bag she retrieved a water skin she’d taken from Viv’s and some sticks of dried meat that looked almost as bad as the rations he’d been given on board the John Barry. His stomach, however, wouldn’t let him refuse the food or water, and when he took what Sera offered their eyes met briefly. She looked away first.

  Wordlessly, Jem snatched a hunk of meat from her hand and went to lean against a tree, managing to gnaw and sulk at the same time. The way Jem eyed her made William wonder, but Jem had always been a bit possessive and jealous when it came to William’s attention. Truly, they were two traits only maturity would smooth out.

  A million questions about Sera and her piece of jewelry and healing magic pressed against William’s tongue. He could see similar questions about himself in her eyes. And yet neither of them could say a word while Jem was around.

  William found his own tree and sank to the ground to chew on his meal. He could smell the old blood and sweat coating his body. He could still taste impending death in his mouth, and remember how life had come racing back in. Life, given back to him by the woman lowering herself to the ground not five feet away.

  He gritted his teeth and searched the sky for Sirius, that tiny little speck of calm in the cyclone of his world. Three months of agony at sea, the answers were finally sitting right in front of him, and he couldn’t say a thing. Or could he?

  He rolled his head on the tree to look over at her. She was, to his pleasure, already watching him, and he dared to think her frustrations mirrored his own. She chewed on her lip, her eyes shifting from side to side. She was sitting provocatively, almost scandalously, with her knees pulled up and opened wide, her fingers fiddling with a lump of grass between her ankles. She seemed oblivious to her position. Or perhaps she just didn’t care.

  A fascinating creature, she was.

  She said, “Would you boys like to hear a story?”

  Jem frowned in a way that suggested he was too old for such a thing, and turned his body slightly away.

  “A story?” William repositioned himself against his tree.

  “Yes.” She looked at him directly, and then he understood. This story wasn’t for Jem.

  The moonlight paid attention only to her. Her eyes flashed like twinkling stars.

  She gestured for the water skin and William passed it to her. She sipped it delicately, her gaze on him, and he gave her a small, covert nod. Go on. Tell me.

  “It begins many thousands of years ago,” she said in her odd voice. “In Egypt.”

  Jem slid a hat onto his head and stretched out his long legs. “Egypt? You were in Egypt once, weren’t you, Will?”

  William answered Jem but couldn’t look away from Sera. “I was.”

  “The ancient Egyptians used to worship many gods and goddesses. Tens and tens of them, maybe even hundreds.” She spoke slowly, her gaze turned inward as though her recollection of the story hurt in some way. “This culture and religion lasted for a really long time, so the gods and goddesses, like the people, evolved over the centuries. Some of the deities were forgotten over time, others became more popular. Isis was one of those who grew and grew in popularity. She had followers long after Christianity arrived in Egypt.”

  Isis. As in the Isis knot.

  “There were hundreds of temples there,” William interjected. “So many sanctuaries and tombs and shrines dedicated to so many gods. I remember that the explorers couldn’t keep them straight.”

  Sera nodded. “Mmm-hmm. The myths say that Isis was queen of Egypt, and Osiris was king. They were brother and sister, but also married.” Jem made a sound of disgust, but she didn’t acknowledge him. “I think they were the children of the goddess who created the world—her name escapes me right now. Anyway, they had another brother, Seth, who was jealous of Osiris and wanted the king’s throne for himself. Seth was chaos. Literally. He was god of violence and rage and disorder, and was reviled and feared by most, but worshipped by some.”

  William gnawed on more dried meat. “Interesting. Like the devil.”

  “I suppose.” She shifted, stretching one leg out straight and propping up the other. “There are several versions of what happened between Seth and Isis and Osiris, and I’m sure I’m getting parts of it wrong, but basically Seth killed Osiris. Isis found her husband’s body though, and used magic to get pregnant by him, even though he was dead. And since Osiris could never return to the land of the living, he became the god of the afterlife. Meanwhile, Isis gave birth to Osiris’s son, who she named Horus. Horus soon became the new king, but that also meant he was the new focus for Seth’s jealous
attacks.”

  Jem’s croaking voice floated out from beneath his lowered hat. “Did Seth ever kill Horus?”

  She gave the lad the tiniest of smiles. “Well, they fought and fought. If I remember correctly there was a trial and a great underwater battle, among countless other wars between the two. Seth kept attacking and kept getting defeated. Horus managed to remain king.”

  “And Isis?” William looked pointedly at her arm, which she’d kept consistently covered by an ill-fitting man’s shirt he could only assume had once been Viv’s. “She still ruled as well?”

  Her fingers rubbed lightly over the shirt, and she nodded. “Because she stood guard over her son against Seth for ages and ages, she was worshipped for protection, especially over children.” She inhaled deeply. “And because she was able to revive her dead husband, even if only for a little while, her magic was known to heal.”

  He couldn’t breathe. The sensation was akin to when he’d almost died, the life and air slowly leaking out of him.

  The healing magic of Isis. Which Sera Oliver now possessed.

  “That the end of the story?” Jem huffed, and flopped to the ground on his back. “Not a very good one, is it?”

  “Jem…” William warned.

  “Sorry,” Jem muttered to Sera, his voice already halfway to sleep.

  Neither William nor Sera spoke for a long, long while. They sat in silence, each throwing questioning glances over at Jem, waiting for him to fall asleep. William was desperate for more—more of her voice, more of her story, more of everything. When soft snores started to leak out of Jem’s slack mouth, she asked William a silent question with her expression: What now?

  He answered by slowly crawling over to her.

  The sudden urge to slide his body between her legs and press her against the tree nearly blinded him. He paused, gathering himself, focusing on the story she’d just told, and not on the distracting desire to which the Spectre wanted him to surrender.

  Clenching his jaw, he changed course and stretched out on his side beside her. He patted the ground near her thigh, beckoning her to lie down. She considered it only for a moment, then scooted down and flipped over onto her stomach. Only one foot of scratchy grass separated them. One foot and one giant secret.

  “How did you know that story?” he whispered, glancing over to check that Jem was still asleep.

  She shrugged. “It came back to me with everything else. After I…healed you.”

  “Before that, I meant. Where did you hear it first?”

  A shadow passed over her face. “Malik Elsayed told me. Remember I mentioned him before?”

  “The man who had the cuff. The man who sent you into the cave.”

  “He told me all about Isis on the way there. That story and many more.”

  Resting on her elbows like that forced her sleeve up, exposing a narrow stripe of the cuff. Daringly, he hooked a finger under the fabric and pulled it back to reveal the gold in its entirety.

  To his surprise and delight, she didn’t pull her arm away. With the pad of one finger, he lightly traced the looped Isis knot on the top of the cuff.

  Was he imagining it, or did it emit a faint hum? Or was that a voice, reaching out and trying to link itself with the Spectre? It muddled him and he needed his wits now. He couldn’t afford confusion between what the Spectre wanted and what he needed. He removed his hand.

  “This is only one of the symbols of Isis,” she whispered. “It’s used a lot as a symbol for fertility. Since Isis became pregnant under what could only be described as impossible circumstances, she was also worshipped as a fertility goddess.”

  “A woman of many talents.”

  Her finger made a lazy pattern over the design. In his mind, he was touching her just like that, dragging his hands and mouth slowly and lightly all over her. Drawing designs on her with his hands and tongue.

  She tilted her head and looked at him questioningly, her dark beauty like a gunshot to the heart, and he was left wondering if the fantasy was a vision fed from the Spectre, or if it had been cultivated from his own desires.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Okay. It means ‘fine.’ Or ‘all right.’”

  “Then, yes. I’m O.K.” He dragged out each letter and it teased a smile on her lips. Just that little taste was enough to make him want to see the full thing.

  “Tell me more about Isis,” he said, to deter his mind from other thoughts.

  “Let’s see. Well, she has other symbols, too. All the gods seemed to have their own private collections. There’s the headdress with horns and the sun-like disc, what you saw on the underside of the cuff.”

  “And the man with the animal head is Seth.”

  “Yes.” She threw a worried glance at Jem, who snorted then snored even louder. “As far as other symbols for Isis, there’s also a throne, and some sort of bird called a kite. Oh, and the star called Sirius.”

  He sucked in a breath, his whole body going still.

  “What? You know it?”

  “Of course.” His eyes drifted to the sky. To Orion the hunter and the dog at his heels who claimed Sirius as its eye. “I lived on the sea from age fifteen to one-and-twenty. The stars…I have a great love for them. Especially Sirius.”

  “Really? I heard it’s also called the Dogstar.”

  “It is.” Sirius. She’d mentioned Sirius, of all things. “It’s what I was looking at the night I was given the vision of your face. I found Sirius and suddenly there you were. I thought that maybe once I found you, the Spectre would finally leave me alone.”

  So why was it still haunting him? Why did it make William crave touching Sera? Why did it make him want more from this woman than words and stories? If this truly was his final vision, why was the Spectre still present inside him?

  With a finger he scratched an Isis knot in the dirt. “I didn’t know that story, about Isis and Seth and…”

  “Osiris.”

  “Osiris, yes.”

  His gaze drifted over her smooth skin and clear brown eyes. “You can heal.”

  A disturbance fractured the peace that had settled in her expression. “I suppose I can. I went into that cave wearing the cuff. I saw the same bodies you did. I touched one of the skeletons, the one Samuel Oliver had taken the cuff from. I remember a darkness, and a surge of something that was like being stabbed to death and brought back to life in a single second. It was so short I didn’t believe it had happened, that it was just dehydration or something. So I stumbled back out, more than a little scared. And when I came out of the cave…”

  Her whisper died. Her lovely face turned ashen.

  “You could heal,” he finished.

  She nodded, but he sensed there was more. Much more.

  “So it wasn’t just the gold that gave you the power,” he said. “It was the cuff and the cave and that particular skeleton grouped together, since the other pile of bones did something entirely different to me.”

  “I guess so.” Her eyes looked so distant. “Who were they, do you think?”

  “That man didn’t tell you anything about them or what was inside the cave before you went in?”

  Now her eyes squeezed shut with clear pain. “No. He didn’t. That part is still a big hole inside me. It’s like I know everything but that. Maybe Malik didn’t know who they were. Or maybe he just didn’t want to tell me.”

  William leaned closer. So close their shoulders touched. A little quake passed through him, and he willed the Spectre to stay quiet, not that it would do any good. Sera’s proximity constantly taunted it, demanding he let go of his control and press his mouth to hers.

  “What happened after you came out of the cave?” he asked, to distract himself. “You said before that you didn’t remember anything after you saw the skeletons, but now you do?”

  Her eyes flipped open and they swam with terror and uncertainty. “Yes. I do.”

  Just then Jem let out a
massive snort that jolted him awake. Sera startled and flipped over, her chest heaving as if they’d just made the dash from the church all over again. He remembered the way her body had pressed against his in the woodshed, the feel of her panic.

  Jem shoved back his hat and his beady eyes opened, fixing on them.

  William asked, “Did we wake you?” while inside thinking, What have you heard?

  Jem just snuffled and closed his eyes again, indicating that he hadn’t heard a bloody thing, but it was enough to spook Sera into silence. She gave William a small shake of her head and crawled away from him. He knew what the distance meant.

  What she wanted to tell him wouldn’t come. Not here. Not now. Not when they were not alone.

  CHAPTER 13

  The stink of the blankets surrounding Elizabeth told her she was still living, and that she was living in hell. She didn’t know which hurt more: the throbbing of the bruises covering her body, or the lost chance to be reunited with Moore.

  She curled herself into a ball on Thomas’s sagging bed—it wasn’t her bed, and it never would be—and refused to let the tears surface. Tears were for weaklings and simpletons.

  The constable in Parramatta, when they couldn’t find the man she’d accidentally shot, had released her into Thomas’s custody. He’d taken her back to the house in silence, but she knew what monster was waiting to break free. He didn’t even say anything as he’d beaten her, and then she’d gone unconscious.

  Now the lone window next to the bed was dark, and brilliant stars speckled the blackness. Through the crack of her eyelids and the open bedroom door, she saw the low-burning fire in the main room.

  Thomas sat on a chair at the foot of the bed, elbows on his knees. He rolled Moore’s ring between his hands. “Would you like to tell me what that was all about now?”

  She groaned and placed a cool hand over her stinging cheek.

  “The scene in town this morning,” he added, as if she needed a reminder. She could barely see his face for the shadows.

  “You have my ring,” she croaked. Her throat hurt. She vaguely recalled being choked. “You didn’t give it to me when I asked.”