Well in Time (22 page)

Calypso began to relax. Knot by knot, her muscles released the terror. She rode the wail of wind and hammer of rain like a boat with reefed sails. Somehow, she would survive—or, if she did not,
Santa Muerte
would offer her kind sanctuary.

§

She could not return to sleep. The twin terrors of encountering the phantom of Death, and the terrible lacuna where knowledge of Javier’s and Hill’s fates should be, kept her staring at the ceiling, where firelight and lightning alternately lapped and bolted. She fingered the locket beneath her sweater, angry that it had failed her. She was tempted to take it off and stow it in her backpack, but some nagging inconsistency kept her from it.

Could the dream be a gift from the locket? If so, what was its message? Her brain was too seared from the experience to puzzle it out. She returned instead to the story of the locket itself. How Blanche de Muret had undergone imprisonment, just as Calypso was enduring it now, in not unpleasant circumstances that yet held menace of pain and death. She realized that her captor Lone-R, and Caspar, King of Nubia, had become entwined in her mind so that, against better judgment, she trusted the man.

She lay entangled in these maddening allusions like a swimmer trapped in a kelp bed. Long streamers of thought wrapped around her, tugging, impeding progress. She remembered a friend’s description of his terror, fighting the grasping kelp while scuba diving off the California coast. He’d said the only way to release himself was to stop fighting. To relax. To glide through the long, waving sea forest without resistance.

Calypso willed herself to stop thinking and rethinking her situation. To simply float with the current of her thoughts, which was wafting her always backward, to the story of the locket. The storm was passing over, moving on. She watched the lightning illuminate the far cliffs, transforming them into a blank white screen where memory could be projected, the story replayed.

Allia kept me in her private apartment for a week and tended me as lovingly as a mother. Gradually and gently, she told me the circumstances of Godfrey’s enslavement and death. These details, at least, gave my heart some peace.

He had been purchased by a noble family of great spiritual elevation, who had treated him kindly during his brief passage through their household. Sadly, his little heart must have been broken, for he soon contracted a fever and was gone before a month had passed. During that time he was treated as one of their own children would be, with a doctor’s attention and delicate victuals, in a clean and sun-filled room. This simple account gave my grieving heart some small solace.

At times, during the week I spent with her, Allia would speak to me of the mysterious community into which I had quite literally fallen and of their history and beliefs. At other times, she simply held me against her bosom while I wept, or exhausted from weeping, collapsed against her strength like a sack of barley grain leaning against a wall.

At those times, I could feel a strange, wild energy exuding from her. At first, this force alarmed me, but I soon realized that in its presence I was revivified and healed, and I came to crave these times of closeness with her. Truly, I began to understand all that King Caspar had told me regarding Allia’s curative powers.

When I asked her about this, however, Allia was evasive. She would smooth my brow with a gentle stroke, smile into my eyes, and change the subject. Perhaps she felt it inappropriate to speak of the gifts granted her by God.

During the hours that Allia left me alone to rest, I was kept amused by the community of workers surrounding me. Painted onto the plaster with which the cave walls had been coated, they yet seemed to breathe and jostle by the light of the oil lamps. Their colors were rich and their postures vital and realized with great charm, so that they seemed painted but yesterday. Allia informed me, however, that they were of great antiquity.

“These are works from very long ago,” she told me. “The ancient leaders of our people, the pharaohs, knew that their lives would continue on the other side of the passage we call death. So they had their tombs outfitted with all the necessities of everyday life—tools, food, weapons, furniture. Even servants in miniature, going about their daily chores. And these scenes were painted to keep memory of the world of men fresh.”

“Are we in a tomb then?” I asked in alarm, for this was a morbid notion and sent me into a panic. Quite suddenly, the great weight of earth pendant above us seemed ineluctably beginning to descend.

“Yes,” Allia said. “This was one of the many chambers of the tomb of one of the earliest pharaohs. You needn’t look so worried, though. It will not be yours. I can see quite clearly that your end will not come in Egypt but in your home country, and many, many years hence.”

“I do not understand, at all, why you and the others are doing this!” I cried with pique. For suddenly the entire adventure seemed too arduous and mysterious. As a sign of its own healing, one might suppose, my mind demanded answers.

“Then, perhaps today is the day for me to explain to you what this community you have fallen into is all about,” Allia said with a twinkle, not the least put off by my outburst. “You have recovered from your injuries and your shock sufficiently to grasp what I am about to tell you, I think.

“But you must understand that this is all a great secret. Nothing can be conveyed to you without your absolute promise, sealed in your honor and that of your family, to keep everything I tell you secret for now. Later, when you return to your own country, it will be imposed upon you to tell some of it and this you can do without compromising our safety. We will discuss those matters later. For now, I need your promise to hold what I tell you in profoundest confidence.”

Of course, I made a solemn and sacred vow to her, to keep her confidence. In part, I confess, I was motivated by an urgent need to know more about my circumstances. But even more, I was deeply desirous of the safety of these good people who had nurtured me after my escape from the house of Ali Abu’l-Hasan. Nothing could induce me to endanger any one of them, I assured Allia from my heart.

“Very well then,” she said, after I had sworn my oath. “I will tell you now about this community and why we are so secretive. Have a bit of this food before we begin. And a little tea.” She handed me a cup fashioned with wondrous delicacy. “I want you to be strong and alert, for what I am about to tell you is long and complex. I want my student awake for her history lesson!”

I smiled at her teasing and broke a large piece of bread for myself. For, in truth, more than my appetite for information was stimulated. After weeks of wan energy, I felt myself rebounding, hungering, and restless for action. I chewed my food with exaggeration and returned her humor, saying around a wad of bread and cheese in my cheek, “I vow to you to stuff myself, if you will only begin!”

Allia smiled, arranged her skirt about her legs in an artful way, and commenced.

§

As you know, Allia began, this community lives underground in a cave. What you do not know is why we choose so odd and difficult an existence or even how we effect this lifestyle. How we get food. How we do not fall ill without exposure to fresh air and sunshine. All this and more I will convey to you today.

To begin, you should know that the religion of Egypt is quite different from your Christian one. I am speaking here of the ancient beliefs of which you probably know very little, if anything at all. In some ways, they are so foreign to your beliefs as to seem heretical. Yet in another way, they may be quite comprehensible to you, since the progenitor god of the Egyptians, like your Christ, is a dying and resurrected god. For, like your Jesus, the god Osiris was unfairly murdered but then brought back to life.

Osiris, it is said, fell in love with his sister, Isis, while they were still in the womb of their mother. So they, who were brother and sister, god and goddess, became husband and wife, king and queen. It was they who taught the early people of Egypt the arts of civilization and raised them from brutish cannibals into a people sustained by agriculture and crowned by music, poetry and evolved religious practices.

Two siblings were born with them: Nepthys, their sister, and Set, their brother, who was the Lord of Evil. Set married Nepthys, for a god could only be wed to a goddess, never a mortal. But his hatred of both Isis and Osiris was great, and he plotted how he might kill Osiris and take over the land of Egypt for himself.

§

With seventy-two conspirators, Set hatched a plan. He had a beautiful box made of cedar from Lebanon and ebony from the land of Punt, for in Egypt there are no woods hard enough for this purpose, but only the soft wood of the palm tree. The box was inlaid with precious stones and gold and was a work of wonder.

Next, Set and his evil friends prepared a great feast, to which they invited Osiris. So the great god-king came, to sit eating and drinking and jesting, surrounded all the while by a viper’s den of enemies. After everyone was well fed and loosened by drink, Set’s henchmen brought the amazing box into the feasting hall. Every eye was dazzled by it, including that of Osiris.

Now, Set made what seemed to be a host’s generous and playful offer: whoever could fit perfectly into the box would have it for his own. Of course, his cronies knew that the box was a perfect fit for Osiris alone, but they played along. One after another, they climbed into the box, to be found too short or too long or too wide or too skinny.

Finally, Osiris took his turn and found that the box fit him perfectly, whereupon he cried in triumph, “The box fits me! It is mine!” At which Set leapt forward with the quick suppleness of a beast and snarled, “The box is yours indeed, my brother—for all eternity!” And with that he slammed the top, and his helpers brought molten lead, with which they sealed the lid tight. And then the whole mob of them carried the box to the banks of the Nile and threw it into the river!

And so the brothers parted: Set, in triumph, to establish his rule over his brother’s kingdom, and Osiris, to die in the box, and be carried down the river to the sea. I can see that you are distressed, Blanche, by this story. And a terrible story it is, indeed. But it is not yet finished, and in the end you shall see that, just as with your beloved Savior, Osiris will live again. For the great wisdom of this tale is yet to be revealed.

So far, as you already have witnessed in your short life, we have a story of the triumph of evil over good. But the story never ends there, Blanche. Never. And the necessary containment of death, whether in a sepulcher or in a box, or at the hands of madmen who commit the bodies of their victims to torture, as with your parents, is only a predecessor to the great and triumphant flowering of life.

§

Now, as you can imagine, when Isis heard what had befallen her love, she was undone with grief and rage. Leaving her court without a single attendant, she ran to the riverbank, hoping for sight of the golden box bobbing on the waters. But she was too late. The current of the river had already carried the box northward toward the sea.

Isis was undaunted. Following the bank of the river, she too traveled northward, asking each and every soul she passed along the way whether they had seen the box upon the waters. Each would answer that, indeed, they had seen this wondrous sight and it had passed them by, moving with the waters toward the sea. The children, especially, who played upon the banks of the river were eager to give an account, and later, to honor their helpfulness, Isis blessed all children that they should always speak words of truth and wisdom.

Many days Isis traveled down river in pursuit of her love. Her hair grew wild, her skin was burned by the sun, her clothing was in rags, but still she persisted. Nothing could deter her from finding Osiris, for nothing in this world, Blanche, is stronger than the bond and power of love.

Finally, Isis came to the sea. She stood upon the beach, her hair all tangled and flying in the wind, and surveyed the vast expanse of water before her. Truly, her heart must have been about to break with hopelessness. But we must remember that Isis was no mortal woman but a goddess, and that means she had powers of which we mere humans know nothing.

Let us call the power she used, there upon the bitter sands of her search, the powers of intuition or insight or revelation. Call it what we will, there was a voice inside her that said hope must not be lost and that turned her to her right, toward the east.

Again for many days, she journeyed along the coast, again collecting accounts from children, fishermen and other simple folk who plied the waves or lived close to the waters, of a passing marvel—a golden box that traveled eastward, as if propelled by the gods themselves. And so she traveled on, sun-blistered and ragged.

§

Now, while Isis traveled thus, footsore and weary, Osiris in his box was making progress like a ship under sail. At last, his coffin—for that is what the glorious box had become—came to the coast of Phoenicia, near the capital city of Byblos, and there the waves cast it ashore, to land in the branches of a tamarisk tree.

This tree, stimulated by the energy of the god within the box, grew prodigiously and soon was of such girth that it encompassed the box completely. So poor Osiris was doubly encapsulated: first in the box, and then within the tree, so that it seemed he would never be found.

This all must sound fantastic to you, but you must remember that these are the doings of magic, the power that the gods use to effect their will and desire. And while there are those among us here in this cave this very day who are adept at such powers of visualization and thought-made-form, no one in the present time can match the magic wrought by those first beings.

Even your own Savior has said,
ye are as gods,
and it is so, dear Blanche, but we are weak and corrupt, compared with those mighty ones from the beginning of things when this story was made. And we must realize that Osiris allowed all this to transpire in order to demonstrate a most important universal principle: containment precedes regeneration. Remember this, child, should you ever find yourself again in captivity, for Osiris suffered, that you might know this.

§

Now, it soon happened that news of this marvel, a tamarisk tree of unusual size and wonderful fragrance, traveled to the city of Byblos, and into the hearing of King Malcander and his queen, Astarte. Together they journeyed to the seashore to see this wonder for themselves. So impressed were they by this marvelous tree that they ordered it cut down on the spot, to be carried back to the palace. There, it was erected as a pillar in the throne room, a thing of beauty and mystery.

Finally, after many months of hard travel, Isis arrived at the shores of Phoenicia. There, the children excitedly told her of a wondrous tree that had suddenly grown by the shore, of so great a wonder that it had been visited by the king and queen. Hearing the fate of the tamarisk, Isis grew hopeful, for she suspected that only the presence of a god could work such a miracle upon a simple entity of nature.

Some say it was as she rested on the stump of that great tree and some that it was later, when she refreshed herself at a well in the city of Byblos, but at some point soon after her arrival, Isis encountered the young women who were in attendance upon Queen Astarte. Whether they came to the sea to bathe or to the well to draw water is of little importance. Isis, even in her state of dishevelment and bereavement, was a goddess still and the maidens of the court were drawn to her. It is what transpired from this fortuitous meeting that interests us today.

For this is one of the great truths of life, dear child—when you have traveled long and honestly upon a given road, be it a real road of dust, hunger and sweat, or a way involving much artistry and effort or one of great moral restraint and wisdom—the gods and goddesses, in their infinite mercy, will send helpers at the very moment when your own will and energy are depleted and all seems lost. So it was, as you have heard, with our dear Caspar of Nubia when, after long and terrible suffering, he was close to despair. And so it was with you, when you chose death over terrible defilement and fate flung you into our waiting arms. And so it was with Isis, who had traveled with such noble intention upon the hardest of roads, for now the gods decreed that she should have her reward.