Living in Threes (4 page)

“Seriously?” said Cat. “They’re giving you
Egypt
for your birthday?”

When Cat gets excited she gets squeaky. She was up in bat territory now.

Between that and the arctic air conditioning and the solar-flare lighting, the Ice Creamery was a migraine waiting to happen. I’d had a psycho break and ordered a Bama Slammer, which was a double banana split with blackberries, pecans, peaches, three different sauces, and enough ice cream to feed a third-world country.

I already had brain freeze from eating the first few spoonfuls too fast. I picked at the rest while Cat gnawed on her Choco-Cone. In between bites she kept squeaking. “
Egypt
! King Tut! Pyramids! Barging down the Nile!”

“Terrorists,” I said, two solid octaves down from her. “Sandstorms. Mummies.”

“Mummies are fascinating,” Rick said. He wasn’t really paying attention: he had his tablet and the game of Mighty World of Gruesome Gory War he was playing with his friend-if-you-know-what-I-mean, Greg from space camp at the Cape. Between that and his Authentic New York City Egg Cream, he was as happy as he could get when he wasn’t on a horse.

“Mummies are gruesome,” Cat said. “Mummies are wonderful. Will you be digging up any?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not going.”

“That’s crazy,” Cat said. “Of course you’re going. It’s the trip of a lifetime. You have to go.”

“My mom’s lifetime,” I said, “and I
don’t
have to. I want to stay here.” My Bama Slammer had started to melt into a pool of purple and orange and off-white. I stirred it together into purple-tinged mud. It was about the color of Cat’s hair.

“They have horses in Egypt,” Rick pointed out. He turned his tablet so I could see.

There was a lot of sand. A Pyramid. And a rider in a helmet on a delicate little horse.

Giza Adventure Tours,
the caption said.
See the Pyramids the Old-Fashioned Way.

I pushed the tablet back at Rick. “That’s up near Cairo,” I said. “I’d be stuck a thousand miles away, digging around in old tombs.”

“There must be horses there, too,” he said. “Or camels. I always wanted to ride a camel.”

“I did once,” Cat said. “When Dad was stationed in Saudi. It’s like the most back-breaking Warmblood trot you ever sat. I almost got whiplash.”

“Lovely,” I said.

Cat popped the last of the Choco-Cone into her mouth and crunched it into submission. She’d flipped out of squee mode into frowny-serious. “All I got for my sixteenth was a fourth-hand minivan. You get a whole country.”

“I’d rather have the minivan,” I said.

She threw her scrunched-up napkin at me. It caught me dead between the eyes.

I threw it back—three feet off target. “Why didn’t
you
go to Egypt? You were right there.”

“Dad got sent to Afghanistan. The rest of us came over here.”

I knew that. I was being a jerk, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “You and Mom can go. I’ll stay here.”

“I wish.” Cat pushed herself away from the noisy little table.

She was pissed off at me. I didn’t blame her, but I wasn’t going to apologize, either. She was my friend. She was supposed to be on my side.

Rick wasn’t any help. He was winning his stupid game with his stupid friend. That was all he cared about.

We didn’t say much in the car on the way home. When Cat dropped me off, she kept on giving me the silent treatment. Rick’s half-absent voice floated out the back window of the minivan. “See you at the barn.”

“I’ll be there early,” I said.

“Crack of dawn,” said Rick as Cat gunned the minivan down the street.

Mom was in bed when I got in. Good. I didn’t have to talk to her.

I should go to bed, too: when I’d said I’d be at the barn early, I hadn’t been kidding. Six a.m. for feeding and stalls. Then ride. Then, vet emergencies willing, Bonnie’s preg check.

I was too restless and pissy and sugar-shocky to sleep. My laptop was open; when I woke it up, the story I’d been poking at was still there.

I halfway expected it to mutate into another science-fiction dream, but I wasn’t likely to have one of those again. I was a little sorry. I would have liked to know what had happened to Meru’s mom, and why the old city was being cordoned off, and...

Maybe I’d write my way through the rest of it. But not tonight.

I went to put my laptop on the bedside table, and found something in the way. A book.

It used to live on the coffee table in our old house, when I was little and Dad was still more often there than not. It was my favorite book in the whole world.

I cussed out Mom for thinking she could get me that way. When I reached for the book, meaning to throw it in the general direction of the closet, I found myself pulling it into my lap instead.

It fell open to the chapter on the Valley of the Kings. I used to imagine myself standing on that red sand, looking across the desert to the blue, blue sky. The green country—the Black Land, the old Egyptians called it, because the soil was so rich and dark—was behind me. I could feel the harsh dry heat and smell the sharp dry smell that hadn’t changed in five thousand years.

A wave of sleep hit me so hard I almost fell over. I left the book where it was and dropped into bed.

I understood something then, just on the edge of sleep, but when I woke up, I couldn’t remember. All I took with me was the memory of the sand and the sun, and a voice saying words in a language I couldn’t understand.

Except that, somehow, I could
. It’s all one
, the voice said.

I had no idea what it meant. And I didn’t care. I just knew it was right.

Chapter 4

A hawk hung on the pinnacle of heaven. From the temple far below, it looked like a bird of metal suspended in the sky.

The sun’s heat was fierce, but Meritre shivered. The choir was so much smaller than it had been a year ago: so many lost, so many voices silenced. Of those whom the plague had left, too many were thin and pale, and their singing barely rippled the air above the courtyard.

They would be strong again. New voices would join the chorus. Pharaoh had promised, swearing that the promise came from the great god Amon himself.

Today, there were only twelve singers, and somehow they had to sing as if there were three times that many. The plague was gone at last. In just nine days there would be a royal rite of celebration, and the choir would sing the responses.

The mistress of the chorus struck the stone paving with her rod. “Again,” she said. “Clearer, louder, stronger. The king will be here, and the king’s daughter. Give them a hymn worthy of the god himself.”

Meritre filled her heart and head and throat with the song and poured it out with all the strength she had. Eleven voices joined with hers, swelling until they filled the great court with its brilliantly painted columns and its ranks of statues both royal and divine. Even the blue vault of heaven and the hawk of Horus hovering in it seemed to pause, struck motionless by the sound.

One voice faltered, lost its power and swiftly died. It was the one of them all that Meritre knew best, the purest and until now the strongest.

She turned in time to see her mother fall. The singers on either side leaped to catch her, but Meritre was there first. Her knees were bruised from the pavement; her mother was a dead weight in her arms.

Aweret still breathed, though shallowly. Her skin was damp and unnaturally cold.

The plague came with a cough and a burning fever. These chills must be something else, something less deadly—from the heat, maybe. It was terribly hot in the courtyard, and they had been rehearsing since the early morning. It was a miracle that no one else had fainted.

One of the temple servants brought a cup full of barley water. Meritre held it to her mother’s lips. Aweret drank a sip or two, then turned her head away.

The mistress of the chorus was a sharp and irritable woman, but her heart was kind. She insisted on sending Aweret home in a chair like one of the priests. Aweret was weak enough not to object—and that frightened Meritre all over again.

She held herself together well enough to make her way home, though she hardly remembered the streets between. Those were much less crowded than they used to be, and the markets were almost empty.

The servants from the temple helped her carry Aweret up to the roof where there was a fan and a shade and as much coolness as anyone could find in this season. No one else was in the house. Father and the boys were in the king’s workshop, carving statues as they did every day except festival days.

Meritre dampened the shade in the jar of water that she always kept filled, and hung it up to catch the wind. It cooled the air where Aweret lay. She sighed, and Meritre thought she looked a little less pale.

The cat who had chosen to live in this house came gliding out of air as cats could do. It sprang up onto the cot and curled in the curve of Aweret’s hip.

Aweret was well guarded now. Meritre wanted to stay beside her, too, but there was too much to do: bread to bake, beer to brew, dinner to get ready for the others when they came home in the evening. She stooped to kiss Aweret’s forehead and smooth her hair.

Aweret’s eyes were open, and they were clear. Meritre never meant to burst into tears.

Aweret caught Meritre’s hand before she could spin away, and said, “I’m well. I’m not sick or dying.”

“Then what?” Meritre tried, but she could not keep the anger out of her voice. “You scared half my souls out of me.”

“I am sorry,” Aweret said. “I wasn’t sure, you see, and I didn’t want to tell anyone, even your father, for fear it wouldn’t be true. But while we were singing, while the rays of the god were bathing my face, I knew. I’m afraid it overwhelmed me.”

“You
are
sick,” Meritre said, “or the sun has driven you insane.”

“Oh, no,” Aweret said, laughing. “Here. It’s here.” She laid Meritre’s hand on her middle, where it was always gently rounded, but maybe, now, just a little more.

Meritre stared. Aweret nodded. Her eyes were full of joy. “It’s an omen,” she said. “The terrible times truly are gone. This child brings blessing to us all.”

“Gods willing,” Meritre said.

She was glad—really, she was. But more than that, she was terrified.

The plague had been kind to her family. It had only killed the baby, little Iry; it had left the rest of them alone.

Babies were so fragile. Any smallest thing could sweep them away. That had been true of every human life in the plague, but a new one, so young it had just begun to wake to the world, was most vulnerable of all.

Meritre did not know if she dared to love another sister or brother as she had loved Iry. A part of her had gone away when her sister died, and still had not come back.

She set another kiss on her mother’s belly where her hand had been. A thought was growing in her, but she needed time to let it take root. “You rest,” she said. “The others will be home soon. I won’t tell them. Unless...?”

Aweret laid a finger on Meritre’s lips. “It will be our secret for a while.”

“Not too long,” Meritre said.

“Oh, no,” said Aweret. “Even a man will notice eventually—and your father has a sharper eye than most.”

“That’s the sculptor in him,” Meritre said. She claimed back her hand and made herself stand up straight. “Now I really have to go, or dinner will be late, and they’ll all ask too many questions.”