I spend nights wondering who’s behind the wall to the tomb. I get shivery thinking about it—wouldn’t you? We’ll have to drill thru the rock face & that may take time. We’ve been working 18-hr days. Your father and I are both exhausted. I wish we could take a break, if only just for a day. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Maybe there’s some news of your own you could send me. If not, that’s OK too.
Your friend,
Angela
It was very late when Angela sent off this last email to Bella. She knew she was taking a chance, making it from her, but she was hoping Bella wouldn’t notice the stylistic similarities to the emails she’d sent as Richard. If Bella read the emails at all. There was, of course, no way to know. But, somehow, just writing and sending them made her feel better, closer to Bella and in a funny way to her younger self.
Beside and above her, Richard seemed to have fallen asleep with the light on, his open logbook lying across his chest. She listened to the familiar sound of his breath, even and comforting. Silently she rose. At the edge of his bed, she leaned over, switched off the light.
It wasn’t until she was back on the mattress, settling the blanket over herself, that Richard said, very softly, “There are venomous forces in the world.”
She lay unmoving, saying nothing, wondering where this was going. His voice was so light and low maybe he was talking in his sleep.
Then he said, “I exposed Bella to one of those venomous forces. My wife. And what did I do to protect her? Nothing. I knew I couldn’t take her away from Maggie. I absented myself from an intolerable situation.”
Tears slid down Angela’s cheeks. Her heart broke for him. She felt crushed beneath the weight of his words and recalled the silent grief in his eyes while he had been trying to text with Bella. Was this how her inarticulate father had felt? A wracking shiver went through her. At last, she understood. It was like a chain, strands of DNA twining, spinning out across generations: her father hadn’t been able to talk to her because she was a mystery to him. She was a mystery to him because he was a mystery to himself. She had told Richard that her father was a good man, but now she understood that he hadn’t known that about himself. She saw all this replicated in Richard, clear and painfully sharp in the darkness of the tent.
She wanted to get up, put her arms around him. Was he crying too? She did nothing, however, sure that she would be crossing a tacit line in their relationship. He wouldn’t want her to see him crying. Surely that was the reason he had waited until the light was off to confess. So what then? What could she do? She found herself in an internal debate. To speak or to keep quiet.
“It’s not too late to begin again with her,” she said in a quavery voice. It’s not too late to begin again with me, she would have said to her father if she could go back in time, if she had known then what she knew now. But how could she have; she hadn’t yet experienced enough of life to really know, to really see. To really act. Her education at school and at the library, vast as it had been, was inadequate in so many ways. You only learn by taking the journey, not reading about it.
Richard stirred. “Do you really think so?”
In truth, she didn’t know. Still, she said, “I do,” in her bravest voice, daring to hope that she, too, would be a part of their reconciliation, the precious thing she’d never had with her father.
In the charged silence, he remained silent and the darkness of his own private underworld closed around them both.
ELEVEN
When she was five years and three months old, Bella was afflicted with night terrors. Not so unusual for a child of her age, but yet another horror afflicting Maggie. In those days, along with her beloved pills, she was sucking down tequila and mescal like nobody’s business, having developed a taste for the fermented fruit of the blue agave plant during her honeymoon in Tulum.
Bella, frightened out of her wits by monsters she could neither name nor remember, called for her father. But Richard was in the Tuscan hills or Troy or Sinai. In any case, very far away both in distance and spirit. Maggie, too, stayed as far away from Bella as she could, wrestling with her own nightmare, which, unlike Bella’s, was all too real. And so, as always, it was left to Elin to soothe the child’s frazzled nerves in the wee small hours of the night.
This was when Elin started recounting to Bella the curious and mesmerizing lives of jinn, supernatural beings from Arabic mythology, born of fire. Elin had learned all about jinn from her mother, who claimed, rather absurdly to all but her rapt children, to be descended from a female jinn—a jinni. But Elin’s mother wasn’t kidding, and Elin took her seriously. But then Elin was a serious teenager; she had popped out of her mother’s womb with a fierce and serious stare no one but her mother could fathom in one whose tenure in the world was measured in minutes. Whatever the truth or falsity of the claim, Elin learned all about jinn at her mother’s knee, and now, at the very tender age of sixteen, she had the opportunity to pass on that knowledge to a child in need of both attention and distraction. It was clear to Elin that Bella’s night terrors were a direct consequence of an absent father and a mother addicted to her own depression. Who needed that? Certainly not a child of five years and three months. Furthermore, she reasoned with an adult’s faculties, it was up to her to keep Bella from descending the same slippery slope that Bella’s mother was swiftly sliding down.
“The thing about jinn, the really cool thing,” Elin said while she held Bella in her arms, rocking her back and forth, “is that they’re made of smoke and sand. And they can take all kinds of human shapes. I could be a jinn—but I’d be called a jinni because I’m a girl.”
“Are you?” Bella asked, her eyes wide. A moment ago they had been magnified by tears. “A jinni, I mean.”
“I could be,” Elin said, thinking of her mother, of bloodlines, and of desert shape-shifters. “If you want me to be.”
“I do!” Bella said. “Oh, I do!”
“Well, then, let me tell you more about ji—us.” She smiled, kissed the top of Bella’s damp head. “A long time ago in the Arabian Desert, a castle appeared.”
“Where did it come from?”
“No one knew,” Elin said. “And what’s more, only a few people could actually see it.”
“You mean it was invisible?”
Elin laughed. “Well, yes, in its own way it was invisible.”
“Because it was made of smoke and sand, just like the jinn?”
Any minute now, Elin thought, if I’m not careful, this girl is going to outflank me. “Close,” she said. “The jinn had spun the castle out of smoke and sand, fusing them together to make a kind of glass.”
“Is that how you make glass? Really?”
“By making sand burning hot,” Elin said. “Yes.” She had just learned this in science class.
“I bet not everyone can see a jinn,” Bella said, thinking it through.
“That is so true, ukhti sghira.” Elin often called Bella “little sister,” which Bella loved. “But you can.”
“Why is that?”
“Because though jinn have very short tempers, they are also kind and generous. Best of all, they’re loyal. And protective.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, in this desert castle the family of jinn I come from gather, riding out on their horses of smoke and light to do battle with nightmares and monsters. And you know what? They always win. Always.”
“So as long as I have you, I’ll be safe.”
Elin smiled, thinking, One day you’ll become your own jinni. She laid the girl down, pulled the bedcovers up to her chin. “Time to sleep. No more bad dreams.”
Bella snuggled into the bed. “Habibti?” Elin had taught Bella to say my beloved in Syrian Arabic.
“Yes, Ukhayyah.”
“Would you sleep with me? Please. Just for tonight.”
Without waiting for an answer, Bella held the covers up for Elin to slide in beside her. With Elin’s face next to hers, she closed her eyes. Moments late
r she was fast asleep. For a long while, Elin listened to the child’s heartbeat, slowing. It calmed her, and then she, too, tumbled into a slumber without dreams or nightmares.
Laurel’s mother, Kelli Springfield, left when Laurel was one month shy of her sixteenth birthday. It was raining that night—a prolonged heavy downpour. It was Halloween, the last weekend in October, and the rain was mixed with an early wet snow. Huge flakes, swirling past the streetlamps, tumbled toward Laurel’s third floor bedroom window, vanishing like phantoms while the rain lashed the panes.
What woke her up, a thunderclap or the front door slamming? Either way, she bolted out of bed and, as if struck by a dreadful premonition, rushed to the window, which overlooked the narrow West Village street, familiar as her own face.
Except on this night the scene below her was different. There was a black sedan idling in front of their house, smoky exhaust whipping upward almost as soon as it escaped its tailpipe. She might have thought nothing of it if she hadn’t seen her mother hurrying down the front stoop stairs, without either umbrella or hat in her haste to be gone. Laurel tore herself from the window, raced down the stairs in time to see past the curtains in the front living room. Her mother passing between the jack-o’-lanterns Laurel had carved, grinning gargoyle faces with teeth like wolves. Kelli Springfield turned sideways, slipped between the bumpers of parked cars. A figure emerged from the sedan’s driver’s-side door, flipped open an umbrella, hurried around her mother. The two came together like magnets, Laurel thought, but an amorous lovers’ embrace didn’t happen; neither did a kiss. Just the man opening the rear door for Kelli as she veritably lunged inside with the kind of frantic energy Laurel lately had gotten used to seeing in her mother. Tonight, though, it seemed far worse, a culmination, the eruption of a volcano that had been rumbling for months. It was as if Kelli could not bear to be on this street, in the West Village, New York City, one minute longer, as if even a steaming shower couldn’t scrub off the stink of her family.
Laurel caught a glimpse of the man as he furled the umbrella, slid behind the steering wheel. Her mother in the back seat, a passenger. The man was not her lover but a driver.
Then the car was gone in a cloud of exhaust and with it, Kelli Springfield, sometime wife of Eddie Springfield, runaway mother to her daughter, Laurel.
Forehead against the cool glass, Laurel recalled a time when she had been very ill. She had been four, perhaps five—at this moment of abandonment, she couldn’t recall exactly. She had had a fever. When it had spiked to 105 degrees, her mother had brought her into her bed, caressed her burning flesh with ice-dipped face cloths. Laurel could recall with absolute clarity the scrape of the icy terrycloth across her skin, drawn tight over her muscles and sinews. At one point, she had drifted off into a shallow sleep or else hallucinated.
“Mom,” she had said in a small voice.
“Yes, honey.”
“I dreamed you were dead.”
Her mother had smiled. “But I’m right here, Laurel.” Leaning over, she had pressed her lips against Laurel’s forehead. “Oh, Lord, you’re burning up.”
“But you’re not dead.”
“Laurel, honey, do I look like I’m dead?” She had shaken her head, hair bouncing on either cheek. “I’m never going to leave you. Never.”
Now that the car was gone, and her mother with it, Laurel tore herself away from gazing into the empty street as if it were a crystal ball. Racing back up the stairs, she hurled herself into her parents’ bedroom. Her father was out working. As usual.
Laurel threw herself onto the bed, buried her face in her mother’s pillow, inhaled her scent. She wished her father was home.
Laurel rose from the bed to stand in the hallway, midway between her parents’ bedroom and her own. She stood as if paralyzed between two poles. But her paralysis came from another source. She felt inside her the blade of a knife. Her mother’s leaving had pierced her to the core. Unbidden, tears flooded out of her, and, sobbing, she collapsed to her knees, rocking back and forth. Mom, where did you go; why didn’t you take me with you; why did you leave me here?
Gone. Without a warning or a goodbye—certainly with no explanation, although, with the passage of time, Laurel came to realize that no explanation would have sufficed or made her feel the loss any less deeply. A knife had been plunged into her chest, the blade dragged across her heart, scarring it forever. There was no cure for being abandoned, then, later, ever. A mother’s rejection was worse than her death. At least in death there was a body to mourn, an incomparable love lost, which later, in the fullness of time, was to be treasured. Abandonment was a darkened house, an empty room, a terrible certainty that if only she had done something different—anything—her mother would still be here, her presence felt, the song of her voice like the warmth of a summer sun. Now only winter, eternal winter.
TWELVE
“You want us to drill through this wall.” Kieros rubbed his deeply ridged forehead. His fingertips came away salty wet with sweat. He looked nervously from Cul to Culsans, both of which were now completely free. “We’ll have to take these things out of the way first.”
Richard stepped closer, ran the flat of his hand over Cul’s flank. “No drilling.”
“What?”
“The granite blocks need to be taken out by hand, one by one.”
“But . . . but that’s impossible,” Kieros spluttered. “Look! There’s no mortar, no space between the blocks at all in which to gain purchase.” He shook his head. “The only way is to drill.”
“There’s another way,” Angela said. Kieros goggled at her as if she had grown another head. She could see the unspoken words in his expression: Why are you even here? But Richard was displaying that wicked, conspiratorial grin she had come to know and love. She and Richard had discussed the idea; it had been his desire that she tell Kieros. He thought it would be more fun, and, as usual, he was right. Kieros was apoplectic.
“The other way,” Angela said, “is to drill out one block—just one. Once that’s dealt with, you’ll have the leverage you need, and the rest will be easy.”
“We used a similar technique at the Tomb of the Silver Hands in Vulci,” Richard said, “and were rewarded by a treasure trove of Etruscan royal life. And we never found anything intact like we did with these huge guardians. God alone knows what treasures we might find here.”
Kieros made a conciliatory gesture. “Okay, I take your point.” He clearly had no intention of getting in Richard’s way; his fear of him was palpable. He tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. “We’re not used to Egyptian-style architecture here. Unlike the team at Vulci we don’t have the specialized equipment to lever these blocks out without running the risk of ruining everything.” Again he swiped at his profusely sweating forehead. “I’ll have to send to Athens for the equipment. It’ll take at least two days, maybe three, depending on those dolts at the museum—the hand implements are quite expensive. Anyway, it’s for the best. You two have been working a full week with very little sleep. Take a couple of days off to recoup your strength and mental acuity.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather stay on-site,” Richard said. “There’s more work to do on the guardians—”
“Richard, I’m very well versed in your reputation for getting up in everyone’s face. You won’t be able to stay on-site without constantly pestering everyone, especially me, about the timetable. I want you and Angela rested for when we break through into the tomb itself. Doesn’t that make sense?” He seemed perfectly sincere. “Leave the procurement to me. I know the museum people; I can handle them.”
Richard seemed to understand this, even if a bit belatedly. “Okay. You’re right. Each to his own bit of expertise, eh?”
“That’s it.” Kieros, visibly relieved, became magnanimous. He waved a hand. “Fly to the mainland. Rent a boat. Relax. Take two days. As soon as the equipment arrives, I’ll summon you back.”
Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. Richard stiffened sl
ightly. “I’ll check in with you.”
“I’ll be down here most of the time, directing the drilling. I’ve got to organize the portable generator, the masks, all of that. I won’t be able to—”
“In the evenings. Late,” Richard said firmly and then almost cruelly added, “I’ll wake you up.”
He meant to say, I’ll fucking wake you up. Angela could feel it. She sensed in his subtle stiffening that Kieros did too.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Angela said.
“Really.” The hint of a smile on his face. “Go ahead. Amaze me.”
They stood close together on the deck of a sailboat Richard had rented. A Saracen moon, the points of its crescent sharp as knife tips, hung above them in the velvet sky. The seabirds were in their rookeries, heads tucked, sleeping peacefully, while the nighttime insects ate their fill. Here amid the glittering night, the dull slap of the water against the wooden hull, the pinging of rigging against mast, they were virtually alone. Now and again a storm petrel fluttered by, as if attempting to eavesdrop on their conversation. As they dipped, they rid the air of insects. Angela felt a kinship with night birds; she had tried to carve them into her jack-o’-lanterns but never seemed to completely succeed. People mistook them for bats.
“You’re reveling in the look we put on Kieros’s face, your little triumph over him.”
He laughed. “Well, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Now that they were really and truly all alone, away from the hectic anthill of the dig, away from Crete itself, removed, in a way, from everything familiar, she took a chance. “When you see Bella again, say something that complimentary to her.”
At once, his face darkened, like thunderclouds rising up from the horizon, and she was sure she had made a mistake.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else before,” he said in a strange voice, as if the words were being forced out of him through a narrowed passage. “My father was a physician—a thoracic surgeon. He was exceptionally good at his job. Renowned, I would say. But there were days . . .” Wind blew Richard’s hair into his eyes, and he brushed it roughly back over the crown of his head. “Inevitably, there were times when he couldn’t save a patient, despite every heroic effort. He shouldn’t have taken it as hard as he did, but that was my father all over. Following each of his what he called ‘failures,’ he’d lock himself away in his workroom. He had squads of toy soldiers, battalions of ’em. They were made of some metal, bare, blind, lifeless as skeletons until he painted them. ‘I hold the power of life and death over these men,’ he told me once when I asked him why he was so fascinated by toy soldiers. ‘Here, I am the ultimate power. I can control . . . here, no one ever dies. Here order is restored to the world. Here I regain my balance.’”
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