Sunrise on the Mediterranean (3 page)

I noticed, despite myself, that I was in the back of a two-person, chariot-style cart. I couldn’t tell how many horses it
had, I couldn’t see them. All the elements were here, though. Men in dresses, sandals, gods, and horse-drawn chariots.

I was back in ancient times.

Cheftu had to be here. He had to be. I just needed to keep my eyes—

The vehicle stopped so suddenly that I was pitched out, into the dirt. I felt the abrasion on my face, my shoulder. I wanted
to cry; I’d been here less than twenty-four hours and already I was bruised. Not to mention tired, hungry, and confused.

Another man threw me over his shoulder—my stomach was getting sore from this treatment—and carried me from the cart into a
building. Suddenly the flooring was different, as was the lighting, the smell, and the sound. He tossed me down, cracking
my head against the floor so loudly that I heard the echo.

The sounds around me slowly unfolded into decipherable words. I heard a woman’s voice. “You’re supposed to set her down gently!”
she shouted at him. “She isn’t a catch!”

“I
was
being gentle,” he said defensively.

“I hope you didn’t kill her, then we’ll be in worse trouble than we are now!”

He mumbled something, but I couldn’t discern the words beyond the aching of my head. She told him to get out, he was a lug
and an oaf. Cool hands touched me. “Sea-Mistress, he shall be punished. He is a sailor; sea urchins have been his parents!
Please do not hold him against us.”

A pillow was slipped beneath my head—which hurt. My hair was brushed from my eyes—which also hurt. My bonds were cut, and
as the blood flowed back into my limbs, they hurt, too. My face and shoulder were cleaned off and a salve put on them—which
hurt. I felt tears squeeze from beneath my lashes.

Silence fell, blessed peace. When the throbbing in my body had settled down, I cautiously opened one eye.

Holy Isis, here we go again!

All I had wanted to do was find Cheftu, to be with him. Instead I was in a temple, not like any I’d seen before, but identifiable
by the smell, the layout, and … the twenty-foot-tall statue of a merman with food, gold, and jewels strewn at his, uh, tail.

This was not Egyptian artwork. Not Aztlantu. Neither Greek nor Roman. Pillars rose up on all sides of me, providing the studs
for a wall that went up only seven or so feet. Incense clouded the air, filled it with the cloying odor of … coriander? Burned
coriander? The acrid smell took me back to my childhood in Morocco. Definitely coriander.

The colors were the tints of the sea and sky, blues and greens that blended like watercolors from one into another. A braid
pattern wrapped around the columns and edged the ceiling. The floor was a mosaic of shells and colored sand. The room was
pretty, very gentle and soothing.

Where was this temple? My head still throbbed, but the nausea had passed. I was lying on my back, on the top part of a set
of stairs. To my left was the idol.

He was carved from one piece of marble. It had been broken at least three times around his waist and each arm. Stone must
be very expensive, I thought as I looked at him. Why else would they use such a blatantly flawed piece? He was kind of clunky
and block shaped, recognizable as a merman but nothing that would set the art world on fire.

Marks had been pressed into the base of the statue. An ancient language. Then, before my eyes, the duck foot– looking wedges
re-formed into letters that I understood.
Dagon, Lord of Thunder, King of the Sea, Ruler of the Cornfield, Father of Ba’al, Beloved of Derkato.

Dagon was the merman?

How did this relate to reuniting with Cheftu? Why else would I be here, in my own skin, unless my prayer had been answered?
I’d been looking for him. Instead of finding him, though, I’d been fished out of the Mediterranean and left in a temple. Maybe
Cheftu was a fisherman; or a priest?

However, that would be odd. Cheftu had always been an Egyptian. Always arriving from Egypt. Then again, I’d always been someone
else, and now I was myself. In my experiences—of which I’d had two, vivid, life-changing ones, when I went back in time, when
I stepped into history—I had stepped into another person, her body, her voice, her life; I would put on some ancient woman’s
skin like a cloak.

I felt dazed, because suddenly everything was new— even the rules seemed different. But I’d time-traveled again, despite these
differences. I noticed the red hair falling over my white-skinned shoulder; I was cloakless.
Hello?
I asked my echoing cranium.
Anybody in there? Yoo-hoo?

Would Cheftu look the same? He always had before. Now it would be up to me to identify him, for he’d never seen me in my own
twentieth-century “cloak.”

“Sea-Mistress
Derkato
, would you care for refreshing?” Glancing up, I saw a young girl, her head bowed, her robe covered in fabric scales. “Water,”
I said, suspicious of anything else. I didn’t think they would try to poison me, but I wasn’t positive about that.

She looked up at me, then ducked her head and backed away. Unlike the citizens of both other cultures I’d lived in, where
black hair and dark eyes were the norm, this girl was honey colored. Though she was on the tall side, she was slightly built.
Long, straight gilded brown hair that matched her eyes hung in elaborate braids to her waist. She gleamed like well-polished
wood.

“Please,” I called after her. While I thought “Please,” what came from my mouth was
b’vakasha.
Was that “please” in this language? I lay back down on the mosaic floor, staring up at the ceiling. Flat roof with clerestory
windows; it was good to be in a place with an architecture I knew.

I was in the Mediterranean. In a temple of Dagon. As a mermaid/goddess who was going to die. When I raised a hand to tuck
my hair behind my ear, I saw the neon on my arm. I glowed.

Neon. The priestess RaEmhetepet, who had had my body for the past two years, had been on her way to a Ramadan/Christmas party
in 1996, dressed with her customary bad taste, which I was now wearing, when she had wandered by the portal and gotten sucked
back. Or something like that, I guessed. In modern times RaEm had become obsessed with neon and electricity and things that
glittered, which is why I now glowed like some B-film alien.

“Sea-Mistress, your water.” The girl slunk forward, placed a seashell precariously on the floor, and backed away, watching
expectantly. Was I supposed to lap up the water? Raise the shell to my lips and drink it all?

This was an etiquette question. I could use an “other” right now.

In each of my previous time-travel experiences, I’d moved into someone else’s body in that time period, complete with her
knowledge of the culture, the language, and some memories. The liaison between the actual owner’s mind and my own, I’d called
the “other.” Now, I was otherless.

I was on my own. What did that mean?

When in doubt fake it, Chloe.

I lifted the seashell to drink it.

Instead I spewed it. Salt water? “Fresh water,” I clarified, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Sea-Mistress, forgive me!” the girl wailed, falling to her knees and beating her chest. “Find mercy! Please don’t curse us!
I thought you had to have salt water! Please, take your fury out on me, but spare the people!”

Her eyelashes were about two feet long and curly. She still had babyish innocence in her face, but her body was almost a woman’s.
“Who are you?” I asked.

“Tamera is how the goddess named me.”

“Which goddess?” Was there more than one? “The great goddess, Sea-Mistress Ashterty.” She looked up. “
B’vakasha
, do not curse us.” She looked as though she might start beating her chest again.

Curse her? Over water? “I, I won’t,” I said. She crawled to me on her belly, kissing the mosaic floor by my feet. They could
bind and gag me, but now they were worried about my cursing them over water? Where was the logic in that? “Find me fresh water,”
I said. “Then tell me of your people, the ones you seek to save.” It sounded imperious enough without being rude.

Mumbling thanks, she backed away from me and ran from the room.

Tamera returned in seconds, this time with a clay bowl. It was wide, shallow, and decorated with stylized birds, squares,
circles, and fish, reminiscent of Aegean designs. The water was cold, refreshing. I sipped it and wondered if they had an
equivalent of aspirin. My head was killing me.

“HaDerkato
is to be honored, so what does she require of me?” Tamera asked, her head bowed once more.

“The men who, uh, I let catch me, where were they sailing?”

She looked at me, frowning slightly. “It is the day of the Find,
haDerkato.
They set sail from Gaza. Throughout the way they prayed for a worthy consort for Dagon. A
Derkato
for him to love. They were sailing to us here in Ashqelon, since the festival takes place here.” Tamera smiled a little.
“Dagon must be pleased because
haYam
gave us you!”

Words were flying at me as I strove for comprehension. “Did you find anyone else out there?” I asked. Maybe Cheftu had arrived
the same way. Then her other words penetrated my mind. “Did you say Gaza? Ashqelon?”

“Ken, haDerkato.”

Gaza—as in Gaza Strip? Ashqelon—that was a famous Philistine site in Israel! My mother had worked in Ashqelon, long ago and
far away.

“Sea-Mistress,
haYam
gave only you to us.” Tamera frowned slightly.

The pieces were falling into place in my brain, knowledge firing at me: Was I in Israel? Were these Philistines? Cheftu hadn’t
been netted? “And this temple here is … where?”

“We are in Ashqelon, Sea-Mistress.”

“Why were these men finding someone for Dagon?” I asked, sipping my water, hoping that the last sea-mistress they netted had
been as inquisitive. As the object of this ritual, should I already know why?

Again she frowned. “It is the tradition, Sea-Mistress.” Tamera looked down at her hands in her lap, twisting at the “scales”
of cloth on her skirt. “Dagon has been very angry with us.”

Hence the term
propitiation
, I reasoned. “Why do you say that?”

“The seas are as blood, Sea-Mistress. We think it is because in our last battle with the highlanders they took our
teraphim
and burned them.” She looked back up at me. “Without the proper sacrifice, we fear Dagon will not bless the corn harvest.”

Sacrifice. The word made the hair on the back of my neck stiffen. “How, exactly, does, uh, Dagon accept his sacrifice?”

Tamera smiled. “Sea-Mistress, it is not your worry! You are our beloved lady!” She rose up, beaming. “Would you care for food?
Drink? Would you like to spend time with Dagon, alone?”

I thought of the marble statue looming above us. What did they expect would happen if Dagon and I spent time alone? “That
isn’t necessary,” I said. “Tell me, when is the corn harvest?”

Tamera frowned again; her face had two expressions. Frown or smile. “The harvest is not for months, Sea-Mistress. But we must
select the seeds, and for that we need the counsel of Dagon, Progenitor of the Field.”

A few more questions later I realized that good seed meant good corn. If Dagon’s wisdom didn’t prevail, they could plant bad
corn, then starve all year. “At least you have fish,” I said, feeling the merman’s stony stare on me.

Tamera’s honey brown eyes grew round; she was appalled. “Sea-Mistress, how can we eat sacred food? We would rather die! The
creatures of the deep are for you, Dagon, the gods and goddesses! We are only mortals, we would not dare.”

“You dared to take me from the sea,” I pointed out.

She fell to her knees; this kid was going to have seriously bruised kneecaps. “You are a gift from the sea. Only you will
be able to intercede with Dagon.”

Did they bind and gag all the gifts from the sea? How could I intercede if I were sacrificed? Did they realize how illogical
their religion was? “Is Dagon, uh, difficult?” I asked, wondering what else I could learn about him. The man was a merman,
so a lot of the expected problems between man and woman were pretty much null and void.

Change from happy face to frowning face. “He and his son Ba’al have battled often this winter,” she said. “They destroy us
in their pathway.”

Bah All? Dagon’s son? I pressed a hand to my head, trying to understand through my blinding headache. “How is that?”

She sighed, a little exasperated with my lack of divine knowledge. “Ba’al throws his bolts of lightning, catching the fields
of Dagon afire.” Stripping religion out of her language, I gathered there had been massive electrical storms, sea storms,
and widespread crop failure. The people were compounding the problem by not eating fish.

“The sea churns,” she continued, “crushing our boats, leaving us open for destruction by the Kemti, the Kefti, and the Tsidoni.”

My heart thudded. Kemt was Egyptian for Egypt. I’d learned that on my first time-travel voyage. However, I’d not known the
Egyptians to be destructive.

Another thought hit me, almost as hard as my head had hit the mosaic floor: If I was close to Gaza—and Ashqelon, in modern
times, was—then Egypt was to my south. Cheftu had always been an Egyptian. Did this mean I needed to head south? Could I find
him there? Of course, this was all based on the theory that Cheftu actually was in this time period.

But I’d arrived here and I spoke the language, so it seemed to follow reasonably. Please God.

I also knew that Kefti was the Egyptian/Aztlantu word for people from Caphtor. Crete. They were across the Mediterranean from
where the Philistines were, archaeologically speaking. If the Kefti still inhabited Crete, then had I gone forward or backward
in time? When I’d left the last time period, the one in which I was an oracle, their culture was pretty much going to hell
in a handbasket, complete with fire and brimstone.

The name Tsidoni, however, left me blank. She’d named south, west. If we were on the Mediterranean, close to modern-day Gaza,
where were the Tsidoni from?