Sunrise on the Mediterranean (5 page)

Based on what I knew from inhabiting her body for a year, RaEm wasn’t inquisitive enough or intelligent enough to be interested
in anything outside herself, even something as inactive as watching TV. Then again, all I had were her nonemotional memories.
Maybe she just needed to be in a different century to appreciate living? Cammy said she’d also been “well-known” in Cairo.
By a lot of men.

My father must have wanted to kill her. I knew I certainly did—in two years she’d done an impressive amount of damage to my
relationships with my parents, my sister, my advertising clients, and the U.S. government. Apparently RaEm had obliterated
a lifetime of my good behavior in two years of her being herself in my body. I eyed my body nervously. I hoped she hadn’t
caught anything… .

More priests came in, jarring my thoughts back to the present. They’d found the next verses to the Dagon song. I wondered
how long I, as a supernatural girlfriend of Dagon and divine bargaining chip, was supposed to suffer through this chanting.
There wasn’t even much of a melody, just antiphonal recitation of the many, many, many traits of this particular merman-god.

Dusk came and with it the women of the city. They gifted me with little things, from a circlet of flowers or a perfectly whole
shell to more elaborate gifts like a carved box that was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand or a twist of gold that
formed a ring for my toe. Each woman had a different concern, a request for insight or wisdom, though most of them were domestic
and more than a few were related to sexual matters.

Sex.

I ground my teeth, trying desperately not to let my thoughts go down that pathway. No Cheftu… . Though we’d been married for
two years now, we had yet to live anything resembling a normal life. At this point I’d settle for just being in the same chronology
and the same city.

After they left, I stared up at the stars. My fear, when I’d woken up in modern times, was that I had been cast from Cheftu’s
life. Then, my annoyingly positive side had suggested Cheftu would show up in modern Egypt. On that premise I’d raced off
to the hotel telephone and called my father to try to mend the multitudes of bridges that RaEm had burned, so that if Cheftu
arrived in modern times, we would be able to get him a passport, Social Security number, all the necessary paraphernalia.

But Cheftu hadn’t gotten there before me, or I would have seen him or his tracks in the sand, and he didn’t appear after me,
because I had not left the site for more than ten minutes. That was when I’d made my phone calls and lain on Cammy’s bed.
Wow, how good a mattress felt.

When I’d realized that Cheftu hadn’t turned up and probably wasn’t going to, I’d concluded the only way for us to be together
was for me to go find him. Here. Wherever, in the grand scheme of things, here really was. Israel? Palestine? Jordan? Philistine
land?

Canaan
, my internal lexicon corrected.

Cheftu, are you here? I wondered, ignoring the lexicon. Do you sleep close to me and I don’t even know it? I touched my hair,
still matted but red. I was in my own skin. Be safe, beloved, I thought as my eyes closed. I’m coming for you, so wherever
you are, be safe.

S
HE WASN’T SAFE
with him, Cheftu thought. Never had he been so persuaded that homicide was a valid consideration. If she complained once
more, if she whined even one more time, he would take great delight in silencing her forever. With his bare hands.

What had he done to deserve being trapped with this witch? Which god had he offended? What circle of hell was he condemned
to?

“Are you listening, Cheftu?”

RaEmhetepet. Dear gods, how did he end up confined on a plot of land not big enough to be called an island with RaEm? He glanced
at the sky, gray and hazy, and wondered if this was his punishment for some heinous sin he didn’t recall committing.

I’m sorry, he said to the clouds. I beg for mercy. They’d been here for a day. For a full day RaEm had complained. First about
her burned body, then about the weather, then about him, then about how dirty she was, then about how hungry she was, then
that she was cold, then starving to death. Her thoughts came full circle, and she’d started complaining about him again. Next
she began describing meals she had eaten. Cheftu had decided to do something at that point.

Now he tugged at the line dangling in the water, hoping that RaEm’s ear bauble would pass as bait.
Please
, le bon Dieu,
let there be fish.
Already his mouth was watering at the thought of food.

It had been days since he’d had a real meal. Days since he’d not been fleeing destruction and death. The time portal had opened
while he was holding Chloe’s hands, promising her fidelity. Her fingers had slipped from his handhold as she had vanished
from his sight.

Then light had encapsulated him, pulling him upward through fire and water, wind, and the very earth on which he awoke. The
lintel that was the indicator for where a time portal was, the lintel that had cast its shadow across their bodies then, was
broken now. It was a statement to the passage of time. Although for him it had seemed a moment, he knew he’d flown through
centuries—forward or backward, he wasn’t certain.

A shout, then a gurgle from the sea, had startled him. Scrambling to his knees, he thought he’d seen Chloe. But the creature
who emerged had been RaEm, his former betrothed, a woman so vile and unfeeling that by her own testimony she’d tried to kill
her lover. While he was yet within her. Cheftu’s skin crawled at the thought.

RaEm’s stay in Chloe’s modern times did not seem to have improved her.

“Can’t you at least catch a fish?” she asked in her flat interpretation of Chloe’s American accent. He hated her voice as
much as he loved Chloe’s. Nor could he ascertain why she would speak English to him—even he and Chloe spoke in ancient tongues
when they were together.

For hours he had dangled the line in the water, waiting, hardly breathing. His arm ached, and RaEm’s snide comments were no
assistance. While she had slept, he’d rested his arm, sore, hungry, and discouraged. He now massaged his muscles for a few
moments, then dunked the line again.

“You might as well be masturbating for all the good you are doing me,” she said from behind him. The demon was awake.

If his belly weren’t also empty, Cheftu would have thrown in the line. He’d formed it painstakingly by stripping thread after
thread from the edge of RaEm’s skirt, then tying them together. That had been a battle, too, just to get her to let him have
a strip of the cloth.

He turned to see her, her hair burned and standing on end, her eyes brown. Crocodile brown. Cheftu looked back at the water.
He assumed they were still in the Aegean. That’s where he and Chloe had been standing when the portal beneath this lintel
had opened. When they were now, neither he nor RaEm could guess. Why was also a mystery. Where was Chloe? RaEm said they had
“passed” each other on the way here. Was Chloe now in her home time and world?

Cheftu would swallow, except his throat was painfully dry. His skin was nearly blue from the wind. He was wearing only a sash,
and though it did little in the way of protection for his body, it safely held the two oracular stones he’d taken from the
ruined civilization of Aztlan. All told, he was likely to catch his death of pneumonia—though was that still possible?

The fish line tugged, focusing Cheftu’s thoughts on getting the fish, even as his stomach rumbled at the thought of eating
it. RaEm assisted in her own way, alternately complimenting and insulting him.

“How are you going to cut it? How are we going to cook it?” RaEm asked. “It’s not even dead yet! What kind of fisherman are
you? Are we supposed to eat it raw?”

He was hungry enough to bite through the scales but knew he had to cut it open. After a moment he found a sharp enough rock
to hack through the slippery skin. His stomach cramped as he wondered if Chloe had eaten, if she was warm. Where she was.

They’d vowed to be together again, somehow, some way.
Remember your vow, beloved.

“Are you going to cut it or just stare at it?” RaEm inquired. Cheftu sawed through the fish, filleting it clumsily while his
mouth watered in anticipation. “So we’re having sushi?” she said, sitting on the rock. Night engulfed them suddenly and, with
it, more wind, cooler temperatures.

“What is sushi?”

“Raw fish.”

“Uncooked?”

“Wrapped in seaweed and served in little bundles with saki.”

Cheftu peered through the darkness at RaEm. “I’d always thought Chloe came from a titled, landed family.” He shook his head.
“It must be awful being poor in her time.”

RaEm snorted again. Cheftu didn’t remember this being one of her habits, and it certainly wasn’t Chloe’s. “The poor? Nay,
only the wealthy can afford sushi. They eat it in dark bars and discuss business so they can write it off.”

Cheftu handed her a slab of slippery, raw meat. “Regard this as sushi, this rock as your ‘dark bar,’ and tell me what ‘write
off’ means.” He cut a slab of fish for himself and bit into it. Maybe he could get her to talk about Chloe’s world instead
of complaining.

His stomach protested the temperature of the fish, his tongue rebelled at the taste, but at least it was food. The nutrition
would help to keep him warm. Cheftu was growing concerned about freezing off his privates. RaEm chewed silently. “Does it
taste like sushi?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “All I have are the woman’s emotional memories, only her impressions of America. She left me
ignorant in her body, so I didn’t dare leave Egypt.”

“There is no sushi in Egypt?”

She laughed. “Nay. Except for the neon signs and the cars, Egypt is almost the same as during Pharaoh’s time. Feluccas still
ply the Nile, children still beg in the streets.” He heard her awe in the darkness. “But the power there!”

Cheftu shivered, then hacked another slab of fish. “Whose power?”

“The electricity!”

“Eee-lek-trih-city? Who is the Eee-lek-trih- of the city?” RaEm stared at him, the whites of her eyes visible through the
darkness. “You are an idiot.” Her tone was flat, dismissive.

Cheftu stifled his rage. How dare the ignorant, loud-mouthed little witch ridicule him? “Then please,” he said, coldly, “educate
me.”

“They have harnessed the power of the lightning to use in their cities. It can be as bright as day in the middle of the night.”

For the first time in Cheftu’s recollection, RaEm sounded excited, enthusiastic. Her ennui was replaced with a childlike wonder.

It was appealing, though he knew it was only one small side in a multifaceted woman whose other traits he loathed. “How do
they harness eee-lek-trih-city? You say it is lightning?” He took another slab of fish. Fishy liquid dripped down his arms,
sticky and cooling rapidly. At least his stomach was filling up. Now they needed to find a source for fresh water.

Also, a way to get off this island. “The Benjamin Franklin unlocked the key to lightning on a kite.”

“A kite? The birds that fly over the delta?”

She sounded a little defensive. “Of course! You ignorant fool, what else could it be?”

“How did he do that?”

“Well,” she said in a confidential tone, “he tied the kite to a string, with the key.”

“A bird, a string, and a key?”

“To unlock the door to lightning,” she said. “Honestly, you must pay attention.”

Cheftu glowered. “The kite flew into the heavens, unlocked the door, and then the Benjamin Franklin was able to capture it
and use it at his will. He colored the lightning, and he boxed it. Even the hieroglyphs of these people are formed of lightning.”
He heard her scraping for more fish. “But,” she said, swallowing loudly, “he makes it last.”

Snippets of conversation from his nineteenth-century childhood, before his fateful trip to Egypt with his brother, Jean-Jacques,
were falling into place. These were mentions of people he’d known only through recent history. Franklin and the American Revolution
had been inspiration for France’s own revolution. How did the esteemed and eccentric statesmen figure in with lightning? And
a key to unlock it? Cheftu’s mind was switching madly from English to French to ancient Egyptian, trying to understand. Perhaps
RaEm’s trip through time had addled her wits. “It lasts?” he asked, completely bewildered.

“It doesn’t flash on and off, but it is a steady light. He must be very powerful to have captured lightning. I wonder what
he looked like, what kind of lover he was… .”

Cheftu rolled his eyes—definitely the same RaEm. Franklin was deceased before Cheftu was even born. Her words still made no
sense. Apparently she didn’t realize that Cheftu was also a time traveler. How else would he recognize the word
city
in English? How else would he understand her English?

“What magic he had.” She sighed. “So powerful.” Cheftu was fairly certain science was the cause, but to RaEm magic was the
only explanation. “Apparently his magic did not die with him?”