I'm Not Who You Think I Am

by Felicitas Ivey

  I shrugged. “Well…. You don’t have to worry about that now.”

  He was quiet for a second, and I thought I had gone too far. “There is truth in what you say.” He smiled. “And I do want to get to know you better.”

  “Where were you digging?” I asked.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t see that report,” he said. “The dig was reexamining the area around Peribsen’s mastaba, seeing if we could find more evidence of Second Dynasty pharaohs. As I told you before, most of the issues with the earlier dynasties are the later ones building on the same sites and destroying evidence of the earlier one.”

  “Did you?”

  He shook his head, slow and sad. “We barely got out of there with our lives. A creature was there, one who was angry and powerful enough to cause trouble when disturbed. The Shawmut has enough power to cover up the whole thing by calling the encounter a ‘terrorist incident.’” He paused, frowning. “Now that I think of it, I might be the only one left alive from that.”

  I winced.

  “No, not because of that,” he assured me. “I had been considered to be one of the rising stars of the community. Most of the others probably have died of old age and not anything sinister.”

  “Has anyone gone back to the area?” I asked, taking another piece of naan to nibble on.

  Uncle Yushua shook his head. “The area was starting to be a dead end for digging, and then the Shawmut made sure of it. The community will reexamine the finds from the area when new scholarship wants or needs to be done. Your friend Kyle’s dissertation is in the same area.”

  “And the Shawmut has the bulk of all the pretty things,” I said. “Where?”

  “There are several underground storage chambers,” he said, smiling at my description of archeological artifacts. “The foundations for the building were dug deep. It’s the only solid ground in the area really, which is why the site was chosen. The great views are just a bonus.”

  “Why’s that the only place?” I asked, thinking of all the buildings there.

  Uncle Yushua smiled wryly. “Because it was a grazing area and a dump at one time. Actually for almost a century.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Archeologists, from what little I knew, liked dumps because you found out a lot about a culture from their garbage. While tombs were flashy, it only showed the upper part of society. The MFA put its big archeology establishment on a dump.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” he said. “And New World archeology is considered anthropology for some reason.”

  “Weird,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “How did you know the casket was gone?”

  “I decided to have an impromptu inventory check of a couple of the storage areas. I discovered it missing then. The logs showed a few other odds and ends missing, but I’ve managed to track them down.”

  “When was the last time someone looked at it?” I asked. “I know, you’ve probably asked all these questions already.”

  Uncle Yushua started cleaning up the dishes, with a thoughtful frown. I thought he was dodging my question before he spoke.

  “With what you’ve learned today and told me, what I know I’m beginning to suspect isn’t what the truth is or maybe the whole story,” he said, dumping the plates in the sink. I started packing up the rest of the food to be put away. “The system has been computerized in the last few years.”

  He laughed at the look on my face. “I know, this is the twenty-first century. The Shawmut clings to its tradition as long as it can. Pulling us into the modern era was one of the excuses I used to hire Rat several years ago.”

  “So what happened to all the paper records?”

  “Tossed.” He shrugged. “Papers, even for the hoarders, do get tossed out eventually.”

  “So you can’t check to see if the information we’re dealing with is accurate?” I demanded. “What…. What if something worse had been lost?”

  He nodded sadly. “I just now realized it. The casket could have been gone for decades and not the few days I think it was.”

  I sighed. This was going to be a lot harder than I’d thought it would be. “What’s so important about the casket, anyway?”

  Uncle Yushua pursed his lips. “It’s hard to explain. The casket has an aura. Almost anyone can tell it’s special. There are stories about it, and most of them contradict each other. The main ones are the casket is like Pandora’s box. To open it would be to let all the evils out in the world. And as far as I know, no one’s even attempted to open it.”

  I shivered. “That does sound like an item you need to keep track of.”

  He nodded. “There wouldn’t even be hope left in the box. While a handful of the legends think opening the casket would benefit mankind, none of them encourage opening it.”

  “Wow, that sounds really bad.” An item I would have buried again and not hidden in a supersecret society.

  “But show me what you have and why you’re having an issue with your research,” he asked.

  We went to the dining room table, where we cleaned off a space for me. From some of the layers we moved, it seemed the table was a perpetual research area for several ongoing projects.

  “The reports I’m beginning to think are okay, even if the information seems to be cherry-picked at times. It isn’t anything I can put into words, and I may be wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be a failed dig among them.”

  “Harper might not have given you all the reports,” Uncle Yushua commented.

  “And that’s why I’m not jumping up and down screaming ‘Eureka,’” I said. “But I figured out the filing system a little. I’m going to ask for a couple more files and books tomorrow, because I want to cross-reference my findings.”

  “I’ve had scholars who’ve visited for years and never figured out the system,” he praised. “You’ve got an intelligent mind, while it isn’t as scientific as your parents want it to be.”

  I blushed and hurried on with my explanation. “What’s bothering me is that I don’t think some of the books are right.” Uncle Yushua opened his mouth to protest, but I quickly continued. “Not that they are wrong, but… I don’t know… are missing some of the key pieces of the walls. And with the way the reports are bound, it had to have been done right at the beginning.”

  “Not really.” He frowned. “They were rebound later, when the photography improved. I think that might have happened in the seventies or eighties.”

  “What happened to the original photos?” I asked. “Were they tossed?”

  “Probably buried in the archives,” Uncle Yushua said. “And I doubt we could find them without going through the entire building, if this person is clever about covering their tracks.”

  “How many books and stuff are there? How many storage areas?”

  He smiled at me. “I would guess there are about fifty thousand books and reports. If someone was clever, he or she could do the damage you mentioned. But—”

  “But they would need time,” I finished. “A lot of it.”

  “More than one person’s lifetime.” He nodded.

  I waved my arm over my research. “This tells me someone put that time and effort into it. I’m thinking that it’s a bunch of organized people, working from the inside over the decades to achieve their goal. And we don’t know what it is or who they are.”

  “We don’t vet as closely as a normal organization, so that could happen. Most of us have stumbled into the supernatural. Also, until recently, the place was run more like a club. One that contained mostly Harvard and other Ivy League types, whose families knew each other or of each other. Integration wasn’t really encouraged. But why?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, because it has something to do with the Shadow Pharaoh.”

  “That is a myth,” Uncle Yushua protested.

  “That’s all I have,” I cried. “A myth and a jerk living in my head, whenever I close my eyes.”

  Uncle Yushua crumbled when I said that.

  “It’s n
ot your fault!” I assured him. “It happened, like the inundation or the dry time. The gods are meddling and there is nothing we can do!”

  “Mykayla!” he said. “You’re not making sense. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  I took a deep breath. “I wasn’t speaking English, was I?”

  “You weren’t. In the beginning you were, but….”

  “There is nothing you could have done,” I repeated. “I think I need to go to bed.”

  “Do you?”

  His voice was soft and sad.

  “Of course I do,” I said lightly. “That’s when I can give the jerk a piece of my mind.”

  Uncle Yushua smiled like I wanted him to. And we pretended everything was all right as we got ready for bed.

  Chapter Nine

  I DREAMED again that night. I wanted to blame it on the nonargument I’d had with Mother or how upset Uncle Yushua had been, instead of what it was, a summoning by Sutekhgen. I was simmering as soon as I realized where I was.

  I was standing in front of a large square granite building, which I’d learned from this afternoon’s reading was called a mastaba. It was a structure pharaohs had been buried in before they all went nuts for pyramids as burial places for a couple of dynasties. This didn’t look like where I had been the night before. It was familiar, like returning to summer camp after you’ve been away for a couple of years.

  I heard something running up behind me and got a glimpse of Fido before he bowled me over to greet me, like he was just an overgrown puppy. He did make me feel better for some reason, even though I was not a dog person—mainly because they did things like this. And the shedding. The walking thing for going potty in all kinds of weather was also something I didn’t want to deal with, but the unconditional love might be worth it. I wasn’t going to be able to get a pet for years, so this was something I could think about in the future.

  “Come!” Sutekhgen ordered, trying to get Fido off me. It might have worked better if he wasn’t laughing.

  I pushed at Fido, wondering who I’d annoyed in a past life to have them make this crap happen now. Shoving at Fido got him to back off a little, and I was able to sit up. I started rubbing his ears in apology for the ramming and his whole body wiggled in glee. Fearsome Beast he was not right now. Was he my friend for life, because I had fed him once? Or was Fido just a big bundle of love with bad press, like a rottweiler?

  “Beloved, are you all right?” Sutekhgen asked, still laughing. It took me a second to realize he wasn’t talking to Fido but me.

  I shoved Fido some more to get some room to stand up. After I did, I walked over to poke Sutekhgen in the chest. “Boundaries. Do you not understand the word?”

  He sobered up immediately, looking a little guilty. “I fear not in the manner you mean.”

  “I get pushing me through that mystical-door thing to get me out of here,” I started, trying not to scream at him irrationally. “But you stepped way over the line when you jammed a language in my brain. That’s assault.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. All it did was let me rant louder and longer, my voice rising in spite of my resolution to be calm. “I want to kick your ass for it so badly. Stop calling me beloved. I don’t know you, so how can I love you as a person? Insisting on this past-life-lovers thing isn’t helping me like you either.”

  I’d toned down what I felt into something he could understand. I felt I had been violated, but I didn’t know if he understood the concept, culturally. Or even knew he’d done anything wrong, because of fate or need or whatever he wanted to use to justify the act.

  “There was no time…,” he started, looking devastated.

  “Words!” I snapped. I breathed in and out for a second, trying to breathe out my anger. It really didn’t work, but it did calm me down this time. “Use them! ‘I’m sorry’ aren’t the right ones. ‘Please may I stick something into your brain?’ would have been better. Those words might have gotten you a lot further with me, rather than the kiss and push thing you did.”

  “I didn’t know if you would consent….”

  Sutekhgen was trying to dig out of the hole he’d made, but confusion, not apology, was what I heard. I switched back to annoyed faster than I could even think of the word in any language.

  “Consent is also a word you need to work on, then,” I raged. “Consent! Boundaries! Know them! Love them!”

  My voice had been getting shriller and Fido started whimpering. I stopped yelling and resumed petting him so he wouldn’t be frightened. “I’m not mad at you,” I soothed. “Someone else was being a jerk.”

  He started wiggling again because I was paying attention to him. And when did the feelings of a monstrous dog matter?

  “I was in the wrong,” Sutekhgen said, kneeling. “I humbly beg your forgiveness.”

  “Can you tell me why?” I asked softly, not knowing if I could accept his apology yet. “Why did you do that?” I wasn’t even going to ask how he had managed to insert a lifetime of Egyptian in my brain through a single quick but icky kiss. Icky only because he hadn’t asked. Not bad if one was interested in kissing, from the novels I’d read.

  “You needed to know,” he started, then sighed. “I was wrong. I was hoping you would remember.”

  “This isn’t a romance novel,” I shot back. “I don’t know what is happening, but me magically falling in love with you isn’t. Nothing personal, but you’re not my cup of tea.”

  “What is tea? Is it like beer?” Sutekhgen asked, standing up.

  “It’s a figure of speech,” I said. “Oh crap! I’ve been cursing you out in Egyptian using American idioms. It’s a marvel my brain hasn’t melted from it.”

  That wasn’t good. I thought I had been speaking English. I shivered, wanting to cry, because I had no control over my brain and that was frightening. Then I looked down and saw what I was wearing. It was another dress, but this time it was some sort of halter-top type, and the thin straps had slipped from covering what little they were supposed to. I blushed and readjusted them so they were covering my nipples at least.

  Sutekhgen had smiled when I said that but sobered when he saw how upset I was. “You should know what your enemies are saying.”

  I just looked at him, wondering if I needed to think of him as an enemy, instead of as a pushy jerk. He reminded me of Ezra a little—a man who did what he thought was right for you, instead of asking if it was. Not a good thing, because I was annoyed with Ezra right now too.

  “What enemies?” I asked, trying to calm down. “I’m in high school. The mean-girl clique should be my only enemy.”

  “The who?” Sutekhgen asked.

  I sighed. “Crap, this is hard. Um…. Knowing the language isn’t the important thing,” I explained, trying not to match him in jerkiness. Because not understanding half of what I read this afternoon had made looking for clues almost impossible. And made me feel really stupid. “Knowing cultural references is as important. Like, how you need footnotes when reading The Frogs or Lysistrata in Greek. You know the meaning of the words, but not the jokes the writer was trying to make, which were important to the audience it was written for. You need footnotes to tell you why it’s a joke, even if you can read the play in the original language.”

  Sutekhgen nodded, after thinking about it for a second. “I do understand.”

  “Good, ’cause someone around here has to.”

  He winced when I said that. I didn’t feel bad. Sutekhgen was just another person in my life who was making decisions for me, without asking me, even if he existed only in my dreams.

  “So what line do you want to feed me now?”

  I was tired, and this was another thing in my life going wrong. I’d planned on exploring New York for most of the summer and having fun with Xiu. Buying twice my weight in books, seeing parts of the city I didn’t get to during the school year. Not dealing with a man who thought he knew better than I simply because I was supposed to have known him in a past life or some such idiocy.
>
  “Not a ‘line,’” Sutekhgen said with a sigh. “You are in danger. I need to help you.”

  “You’re learning,” I praised him, trying to lighten the mood. Taking out my grumpiness on him wasn’t nice. I wouldn’t do it to Xiu, because we called each other on that crap, so I shouldn’t do it to Sutekhgen. Why did that thought pop into my scattered brain? “If you’d said save, I would have had words with you.”

  “That doesn’t change things. There is a danger here you are ignorant of.”

  Aside from wardrobe malfunctions? I wanted to find a blanket and wrap it around me. I didn’t care if I’d get heatstroke because of it. I wore more clothing running in a heat wave, I swear. I had a good body. I knew that. I didn’t need to advertise it to the world. “Where are we? This isn’t Abydos.”

  “You are remembering?” he asked eagerly.

  I shook my head. “It just looks and feels different.”

  Sutekhgen deflated. “We are in Nubt, near the temple.”

  My brain translated Nubt into Ombos, which was what the Greeks called it. But it really didn’t exist anymore. There was a town called Tukh there. I’d learned that in my reading today. I didn’t want to tell him, though. It would just hurt him to know how much had changed in the Two Lands. This wasn’t a contest to see who was the biggest jerk.

  “What temple?” I asked.

  Sutekhgen hesitated. “It’s good not to speak of the matter aloud.”

  “If you made me telepathic, you’re going to be sorry,” I muttered.

  “Your thoughts are your own,” he assured me.

  “I just don’t know what language they’re in!” I protested. “It’s all mixed up. If my parents heard me, they’d take me to a shrink to see what was wrong.”

  “I don’t know that word,” Sutekhgen said as Fido bothered me for attention. I petted him absentmindedly.

  I took a deep breath. “A physician for the spirit,” I tried.

  That was the best I could translate the word into something he’d understand.

  “A priest?” Sutekhgen asked.

  “Not really. One who studied for years about the hurts of the mind.”