Reflections in the Nile

by J. Suzanne Frank

  Cheftu took her clenched fist. “Do you believe in the sun?”

  “Amun-Ra?”

  He chuckled. “How Egyptian you have become, ma chérie. Non. The power of the sun. The rays, what they do.”

  “Of course. I can see the results.”

  “Haii! But if you did not… ?”

  “It would not change things.” They stood in silence for a moment. “I hate it when you do that,” Chloe said tightly. “What were you a professor of, at age sixteen?”

  “Of nothing specific, I taught about everything. Mostly languages.”

  “Were you as arrogantly correct then as now?”

  “One cannot argue with truth. It alone gives freedom to dream and know. Though, aye, I was an arrogant brat!” He pulled her close. “I love you. I know you will let his work be done through you.” He kissed her shoulder.

  “Is that not emotional blackmail?” Chloe asked dryly.

  He turned her face to his. He was perfectly serious. “Non: It is because I know the beauty of your soul. It is because I believe the best of you. It is because I know your God.”

  She turned in to his body, her voice choked with tears. “Then take me to bed, Cheftu.”

  “Do you have the seeds?”

  She opened the pouch and sniffed. “Enough for ice cream five times a day from now till Christmas.”

  “Une provocation, ma chère?”

  She kissed him, leaving him reaching for her as she walked to their pallet at the prow. “Aye. A challenge I trust you are up to?”

  Cheftu grinned wryly and swung her into his arms. “Shall I let you judge that contest?”

  At Noph, the boat docked parallel to the other seven boats docked beside it. Chloe and Cheftu picked up their basket-woven trunks and followed through and over the many boats, a jumble of voices around them. They stepped onto the dock and turned immediately to the market.

  A cacophony of sounds surrounded them: peddlers and vendors. As they walked through the marketplace, Chloe tripped on a package. She bent down and picked it up as she saw an old woman reaching for it—obviously the owner. Chloe extended it. When the crone raised her black eyes, Chloe felt an icy finger trace her spine. “This is yours, old mother?” The woman shook her head violently, denying it. “Please, is this yours?” Her bright gaze held Chloe's, and she heard in her head, Take it, it is the future.

  “Chloe, come on,” Cheftu said, tugging on her arm.

  A sense of déjà vu flooded through Chloe as she turned to follow Cheftu, the air around them filled with the old woman's laughter.

  They walked to the shabbier part of town, the mud-brick town homes leaning against each other like weary old people. The whitewash was chipped, and the shouts of children in the streets reached their ears. Despite its economic and social destruction, life in Egypt continued. Chloe saw a wooden hanging of a scorpion, and Cheftu pushed open the door. They stepped into a small courtyard. A lime tree at one time had shaded the courtyard; now it stood, bare branched, waving slightly in the breeze.

  A middle-aged woman came forward, wiping floured hands on her striped shenti. She looked sharply at them, then laughed out through toothless gums. “My Lord Cheftu!” she cried, and hugged his neck. Chloe looked from the frumpy woman to Cheftu in surprise.

  “Mara!” he greeted her. “Life, health, prosperity! This is my wife, Chloe.”

  The woman crossed her breast, one hand fiddling with her amulet against khefts. “Your servant, my lady,” she wheezed. Mara looked back to Cheftu. “I see my lord and lady need a room.” She bustled around to the staircase. “Just follow me.”

  They creaked up the stairs into a surprisingly bright room with a wide, curtained couch and a low table and stools. The window opened onto a small balcony from which they could see the Sacred Lake of the temple. Chloe heard the chink of gold, and then Cheftu was behind her, his arms tight around her waist.

  “Former girlfriend?” she asked, basking in the sunshine streaming across the whitewashed buildings.

  “The old girl is a goddess of a cook and silent as the grave. She was with us on the expedition to Punt. When she opened this boardinghouse, Commander Ameni and I would come visit her, just for her lentil stew.” He stood silent.

  “What?”

  “I was wondering if I would ever recall an incident or a memory not peopled with those who died in the plagues.” His grip tightened around Chloe.

  “You are crushing me,” Chloe gasped out, and he loosened his hold. “I do not want to play this role, Cheftu… I do not want to go back.” She turned in his arms and raised his face with her hand, touching the lines of cheek and jaw, nose and brow … memorizing it. His eyes were purest gold in the sunshine, and Chloe knew he was hiding his pain so she would not have to bear it. “What is today?” she said fearfully.

  “The twentieth,” he said. “We have three days, two nights.”

  “So we have today?”

  “Until dinnertime,” he said with an attempted smile. “Mara's cooking is not to be missed.”

  To Chloe, there was not enough time. She had loved Cheftu a hundred times, yet there were not enough hours left to absorb him into her flesh, to feel the satiny length of his skin and his power, to hear his throaty words against her skin. Not enough time.

  Cheftu sensed her withdrawal and couldn't fault her for it, though he longed to tear into her and force her to share all with him. The resiliency he so admired and the strength of her that made him weak with longing were pulling her away, preparing her to return. She didn't want to go, but she knew she must—he loved her all the more for it. A memory fluttered at the edge of his consciousness. What if she was not returned to her time? What if she traveled somewhere else?

  “Chloe,” he said, “in your own time, you are red haired, correct?”

  “Aye.”

  “Remember that dream you had? The dream when you thought you saw your sister and I thought I saw other features, hazily?”

  “Aye,” she said, moving away. “I was rolled out on a gurney, dead, I guess.”

  Cheftu didn't know exactly what a gurney was, but he could tell from her total motionless silence that the same idea had come to her. “If that was not a dream, but rather a glimpse of the future …”

  “RaEm could be dead.”

  She turned to him, and Cheftu saw fear in her eyes. “I cannot go back like this! I will never fit in, never be able to explain.” She looked out the window again. “I could step into someone else's body! Then what will I have? What will I be? How will I prove what I know?” She turned anguished eyes to him. “I will be so alone without you….”

  Cheftu put his hands on her arms. “If it is possible, I will follow you.”

  “Follow?”

  “Aye. We have the same birthday. We got here the same way, even if from different times. I am going to study this while we are apart, see if there is more than this doorway, and if I can, I will follow you to your time.”

  “What about the sacrifice? What about that?”

  Cheftu shrugged. “If I cannot follow, then apparently that will be the sacrifice. I can only try; if God does not allow it, I have no choice, do I?”

  She ran her hands over his hard body. “Will we recognize each other, even in the same time? There are billions of people in my time. Billions… with a ‘b.’ Besides, how do I know you will not become a woman?”

  Cheftu threw back his head and laughed. “A woman? You are afraid I could be a female?”

  She furrowed her brow, hands on her hips. “It is not any crazier than the rest of this trip! Why not?”

  “I have a male soul, beloved!” He kissed her hungrily. “I will always be a man, you a woman. This is the only way it can be. Now, enough of this foolish talk.” He drew her to him, molding her warm body to his as he caressed the bones, muscle, and sinew he loved so well. How could he still want her when they had been together so many times? Almost to the extent of Chloe's “Baskin-Robbins” store… yet there was always more.

>   Cheftu left the boardinghouse, the scent of Chloe still on his skin. Mara had fed him the Perfuming, and he walked into the bright sunshine. Heading toward the docks, he knew he would not buy passage to the Great Green as he had told Chloe, but he should stay gone a convincingly long time. He wandered across the main residential square, then walked up the Street of Goldsmiths.

  The bracelet he'd given her as a wedding present was sadly worn, the silver soft and bending, the beads breaking. He would buy something for her. Though she had not brought any jewelry through with her, Cheftu prayed God that he would let her take back this small memento. He stepped into the courtyard of one Menfe, his heart breaking but his mind intent.

  THE PLAINLY DRESSED BOY sloughed along after Cheftu. Even though the great lord was dressed in tradesmen's clothes, generations of command and power made him easy to identify. That was all he was supposed to do until the twenty-third of Phamenoth. Two more days, and the lord would be delivered to Thutmosis. The boy would have completed his first duty as Pharaoh's elite bodyguard.

  CHLOE BIT INTO THE FLAKY PASTRY as she moved her marker. She caressed the top of Cheftu's foot. “Your move, beloved.”

  He rolled the throwing sticks, then counted up the points half-heartedly.

  “Cheftu?”

  He raised his gaze from the board.

  “What if we had managed to stay here, together? What would it have been like?”

  He tossed throwing sticks, the clatter of them falling the only noise. “You enjoy slow torture, haii, beloved?”

  She caressed the top of his foot with hers. “Nay… I just… well, was curious.”

  He smiled weakly. “Always curious Chloe.” He ran a tongue over his dry lips. “We could have lived anywhere. My medical skills are very useful.” He fingered the scar on his leg. “So are yours.” He met her gaze. “Thank you for caring for me in the desert, beloved.”

  She looked away. “If we had stayed in Egypt?”

  “If we had not offended Pharaoh, living forever? We would have dined at atmu, fowled with the court, and sent our children to the House of Life for education.”

  “Boys and girls?”

  “Absolument.” He moved his piece. “You could have done anything. Manage, sell, paint.”

  “Even my artwork style?”

  “Nay. Egypt is a rigid world, you know this. However, I have seen your traditional work, and you are without parallel.” He watched dull red rise in her cheeks. “You could have painted our tomb … painting us eternally peaceful and joined….” His voice trailed off.

  Dear God—only one more day. He looked at Chloe, wrapped in a linen sheet, since they had hardly left the couch in the past twenty-four decans. His body was exhausted, pushed to the limits of endurance. He was trying desperately to store the experience of her to relive for a lifetime, if he managed to live. He moved his pointed blue marker. There was so much he wanted to say, such useless words to describe the unending pain he felt. Oddly enough, he felt no anger, just hurt—hurt so intense, he was tempted to wound himself physically just to counteract it. Yet there was a peace, a peace he couldn't explain.

  Chloe rolled. Cheftu narrowed his eyes, trying to envision her with red hair and pale skin. His imagination failed him. He didn't care what she looked like, and that was the irony. He wanted her so much, so badly, needed her so, that the physical aspects of love were secondary to learning her soul and mind.

  She lifted her foot to his kilt, caressing his abdomen and lower. She kicked aside the game board and crawled on him, a sleek cat. “Fraise?”

  “Holy Osiris … !”

  She was relentless, and all thought left Cheftu as feeling submerged him completely. He turned on his side, her muscular legs tempting him, and with a wicked laugh proceeded to teach Chloe about losing control.

  When Cheftu awoke he saw the sun, and his heart fell. The twenty-third. In twenty-four decans, where would she be? His heart contracted at the thought. Gently he turned over, dislodging Chloe, and the cool air touched his body. He realized how cold he was without her. She was deeply asleep and made no protest as he drew her to his chest, pushing her hah off her face as he murmured silly love words he could never say to her face and made promises to her sleeping form he couldn't keep once she was awake.

  Then, holding her close to him, he wept. Silently the tears streamed from the corners of his eyes; his head pounded with despairing prayers. He breathed, open-mouthed, trying not to wake her, unwilling for this day to begin. She was not his. Despite his attempts to bind her and brand her, in the end she was free. It had been a blessing to know her and love her. Le Dieu c'est bon. He ground his teeth. A blessing; what a pathetic understatement. His body tensed with repressed emotions, and he pulled away from Chloe, tucking the blanket around her, afraid to awaken her. Standing at the window, he took gasping breaths. She must not see this. He had to be strong—for her, to make it easier.

  When she was safely gone, he could wail like an infant.

  When she was safely gone.

  Cheftu was seated at the small table, writing. He looked up as she yawned. “Sleep well, beloved?” he asked with a soft smile. He poured a cup of milk and brought over the tray of pastries.

  Chloe kissed him and accepted the Perfuming. “Aye,” she said. “I had hoped to awaken earlier.”

  “You needed your rest.” He kissed her, swallowing the words that said wherever she awoke tomorrow she would need to be at her best. “How do you Feel?”

  “Saddle sore” she said with a wicked grin, “but I'll be fine.” Because I'll be in the twentieth century, home of antibiotics, shots, and hospitals, she thought. Will all of this be a dream then? She looked into Cheftu's eyes: golden. Never had she seen such eyes.

  Cheftu dropped his gaze. “I bought you a gift,” he said, stepping back to the table.

  “I did not get you anything,” she said. “I…”

  He laid a finger on her lips. “I wanted to get you this. I want to say these words to you.” He fumbled with the string around the small packages finally tearing it away. A ring lay inside, a perfect round of silver and gold, twisted together. He reached forward with a trembling hand and held it up to the light. In the center of each joining was a stone chip, the exact color of Cheftu's eyes.

  “Aii!” Chloe cried out when she saw the sun streaming through the stones. “Assst, Cheftu!” Tears fell down her cheeks, and she looked up to his eyes, reddened and filled.

  His voice was harsh with tears. “As unbreakable as is this circle, so is my love for you, Chloe. As pure as the metal, so do I love you. Like the silver and gold, our lives are woven together, forever binding us, even though we now take separate paths.” He raised her hand and placed the ring on her middle finger, the finger most closely associated with the heart. He kissed it and held his mouth there, exhaling loudly as he fought for control.

  “Cheftu!” she murmured through her tears, through her kisses. “Oh, God, how can I leave you? Come with me, please, come with me. Do not make me be without you—” Her voice broke, and they held each other, tears and passion mingling… me hours drifting away.

  Mara knocked on the door. “Those patients you mentioned are here, Cheftu,” she said in a low voice.

  They were up immediately, dressing frantically. Chloe tied her sheath with shaking fingers as Cheftu slipped into his kilt and went to the window. “I cannot see the soldiers, but I hear them. Thank God for Mara's loyalty,” he said. Chloe tied her bag around her waist and took his hand, the ring he gave her pressing into their joined flesh.

  With a swing and some deft steps they landed on the street, hiding in the darkness. Cheftu took her hand and they ran through the night streets of Noph, dodging the rekkit and racing through alleyways to avoid the soldiers.

  Here we go again, Chloe thought as they pounded up the deserted street to the Temple-of-the-Ka-of-Ptah, home of the twenty-third doorway. Peace filled her. She was doing the right thing. It didn't feel good—actually it hurt damnably—but she knew i
t was right. Focus on facts, not feelings, she told herself.

  The temple was empty, the superstitious cowering at home on this day, considered the unluckiest in the ancient Egyptian calendar. No wonder there had been no more births on this day—the women born were destined to serve the goddess and die. Chloe shivered. A year ago it had all been different. She'd been alone, looking forward to new things in life, and almost an agnostic. Now she stood with the man who was her soul, praying to a God she'd met, while soldiers swarmed through the city searching for them.

  They huddled in the shadows, Cheftu with one hand on his short sword, a torch in the other. Chloe held the hieroglyphic note in her hand, the last legacy from Imhotep.

  They must find the twenty-third doorway. She looked at the map, as she had done a hundred times or more, searching through the passageways for something that would clue them into the twenty-third doorway. “Any luck?” Cheftu breathed over his shoulder.

  “Nay. I suggest we go to the room where I first saw the clues. Maybe there is more of a description there.”

  “The sacred pools, haii?”

  “Aye.”

  He released his sword and doused the torch as they wove back and forth through the columned courtyard, listening for others. None. Cheftu led her down a short corridor, and they stepped into the cross-passageway. Clinging to the shadows, they crept down, freezing when they heard the cry of a cat. They stood, not breathing, waiting for the footsteps they feared. Nothing. Creeping, they stepped into the cavernous blackness that was the Chamber of Sacred Cleansing.

  It was pitch dark; Chloe couldn't see the white of her dress, never mind the ceiling. She heard the scrape of tinder and then the torch flared, accentuating the strong lines of Cheftu's face. He looked at her, and she wondered if he could hear the pulse pounding in her throat. He walked around the mud pool and stood beneath part of the ceiling. He held the torch high, but the room was still shadowed.

  Chloe's hands shook. “Can you read it?”