The Lost Sisterhood

by Anne Fortier

  “What about those who were not taken as slaves? There must have been other survivors. Who put the eyewitness account on the wall?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, irritated with him for challenging me in front of everyone, “there is a lacuna in the text—”

  “What’s a lacuna?”

  I glared at him. Nick’s sniffy manner told me he bloody well knew what a lacuna was. A lacuna was a gap. Something missing. Such as him telling me he was working for the Aqrab Foundation. Or apologizing for his rudeness. Or giving me back my phone.

  “It’s a hole in the wall”—I flung out my arms—”this big. But yes”—I nodded obligingly—”there were survivors. A handful, no more. And the inscription claims they went in search of their stolen friends.”

  Nick stepped forward, his eyes reflecting the dance of the flames. “Where did they go?”

  I hesitated. I had thought he meant merely to tease me with his persistent questioning; now I understood it had nothing to do with me. “I don’t know,” I said. “That part is missing.”

  The disappointment in his face was tangible. Without another word he turned and walked away, and I was left to wonder—once again—about the motivations of the Aqrab Foundation and their objective in hiring me.

  When Mr. Ludwig had approached me back in Oxford the week before, he and the foundation had had no way of knowing I would be able to make sense of the inscription. They might have paid me thousands of dollars and transported me through several climate zones for nothing. And on top of that, by choosing me, they had, in theory, alerted the entire Oxford community to the excavation.

  My confusion only grew when I returned to my trailer compartment later that night to find my cellphone lying on top of the bed with a note saying, “Call away.”

  Not surprisingly, my voice mail was jammed with unheard messages. My poor parents were increasingly perplexed at my absence, Rebecca was at a loss to understand why I hadn’t called her back, and James was—perhaps not unreasonably—beginning to fear I had been abducted by a desert sheikh, and that he would be dispensing fish-food confetti for the rest of the academic year. “By the way, your students have been talking,” he went on, more gravely. “The old hellcat knows you’ve eloped. You should call her.”

  The old hellcat was my mentor Katherine Kent, with whom James and I had had dinner the night before my departure. I had hoped to keep my voyage secret from her, since she would most certainly call me a fool for abandoning my Oxford duties in the fray of Michaelmas term, even if it was only for a week.

  After a quick glance at the hour, I called her right away. As suspected, she was not in her office, and I left a quick message, saying, “Sorry to dash off like that, but really, I’m onto something spectacular here. Definitely worth it. A whole new writing system—unbelievable stuff. I’m fairly sure I’ve figured out how to decipher it; can’t wait to show you.”

  That aside, my mind circled back to James’s comment about the desert sheikh. Was it possible he knew I was in North Africa? Or was he just playing on the fact that the Aqrab Foundation was headquartered in Dubai? Clearly, to James, historian that he was, the fact that I had been practically abducted by a gang of restitution fanatics made the situation particularly precarious; if indeed the armies of Mr. al-Aqrab were laying siege to British museums, then I had, in a manner of speaking, ended up behind enemy lines.

  SATURDAY WAS MY LAST day working in the temple. I had more or less finished with the inscription, and after spending the morning polishing the English transcript, I returned to the inner sanctum in the afternoon to take a few more detailed photos of the walls and, I suppose, say goodbye to the place.

  I told neither Craig nor Nick I was going back to the temple after lunch. For all they knew I was hard at work packing my suitcase and, as Craig had put it, braiding my Rapunzel hair before my return to the ivory tower.

  After riding back and forth so many times, I knew the temple was not actually that far away from the camp—no more than a brisk half-hour walk across sand dunes. And since we were scheduled to leave for Djerba in just a few hours, I quite relished the idea of the solitary exercise.

  The guards at the tent did seem to find it slightly odd that I returned to the excavation site on foot all by myself. But they were not paid to ask questions, and lowered me readily through the tube.

  Soon, the rest of the world became irrelevant. I was back in the temple, far away from the bustle of life and once more alone with my thoughts. Dank, dusty, and dark, it was certainly not the most comfortable of places, physically or mentally, but the wonder of the walls in the inner sanctum soon distracted me from the fact that I was underground, with only a dangling rope connecting me to the world above.

  I had come to know the women on these walls, and being down here, breathing the air they had breathed, we could somehow bond outside of time. Whatever the events of the past, whatever had yet to come, this quiet place was our shared refuge, and I could not help but feel a pang of regret that I would have to leave it so soon. Nick had sworn to get me back to Oxford by Monday morning, and considering how keen he was to be rid of me, I knew he’d deliver on his promise.

  Soon, I thought to myself, wandering around the inner sanctum in silence, the temple would be bustling with archaeologists, and the media would be clamoring to get access to the sensational discovery. Meanwhile, I would be back at Oxford, doing my damnedest to write a scholarly article about the inscription without giving away the secret of how I had been able to translate these mysterious symbols into English.

  Breaking out my camera, I took a few more close-ups of the wall paintings as well as the inscription. In my hurry to decipher the writing, I had spent shamefully little time examining the colorful images, which so clearly predated the text. Most were sacrificial scenes, and one particular tableau seemed to suggest those sacrificed had not always been animals. Here was the picture that had made me think of the Medusa myth: The High Priestess, wearing a headpiece made of writhing snakes, was reaching out for a woman in a white dress, seemingly stabbing her with a large knife. Whatever the ritual going on, and whatever the fate of the victim, I mused, it was perhaps no wonder this snaky-haired lady had gone down in myth as a monster.

  Holding up the lantern, I looked more closely at the figure of the High Priestess. The plaster was chipped, but apart from her frightful headpiece I was almost certain she was wearing the same jackal-headed bracelet I had espied on the arm of the skeleton in the sarcophagus … not to mention the one I had on my own arm, hidden under my sweater sleeve.

  But the skeleton, the priestess, and I were not the only women in the room with a bronze jackal in common. Walking around the entire sanctum with my flashlight trained to the walls, I counted at least eight other figures who wore similar bracelets. They were all robed in white, and although their hair was tucked into small, pointy caps, their bosoms and wide hips suggested they were female.

  As I had done so many times before, I found myself wondering to what extent these white-clad women were related to the Amazon legend. Fiery warrior deeds aside, maybe I was looking at a more intimate, perhaps even secret, element of their lives, namely the rituals and beliefs that had bound them together in the first place, as a holy sisterhood. But then, if it was really so, why hadn’t they defended themselves against the invaders? Could I possibly be looking at the final hours of a dying Amazon civilization?

  Or its beginning?

  I still remembered Granny showing me her own bracelet and telling me that the jackal was immortal. Apparently, despite its stillness, the brazen canine was alive and extremely picky about its human hosts. “You can’t inherit it,” she had explained. “You must earn it. Only then will the jackal choose you.”

  At the time I had taken it personally, thinking she was referring to me in particular, and had been somewhat miffed at the suggestion that I was not worthy of her jewelry. Well, fine, I had thought to myself, child that I was. Who wants to be chosen by a jackal anyway?

  B
ut, in fact, it appeared that this was precisely what had happened: Granny’s bracelet had chosen me as its host. Whenever I tried, I was unable to wrest it from my arm; neither soap nor oil would do the trick. Obviously, it had been the first thing on my mind after seeing the skeleton in the coffin; I knew I had to make sure Nick did not spot my bracelet and wonder about the connection. Even in the flurry of everything else that was going on, I kept trying to take it off … only, I couldn’t.

  It seemed to be one of those eerie, irreversible things: Once the bracelet was on, it stayed on. Or perhaps the heat of the desert had made my tissue swell. Then again, down here in the temple I was always cold, but that didn’t seem to make the slightest difference. I had put on the bracelet on a whim, and now I was stuck with it.

  Had the same thing happened to Granny?

  If she had been part of an archaeological team in her forgotten youth, working to decipher this unknown language, it was not unthinkable she had imbibed some of the rituals of the ancient culture she had helped to uncover. Perhaps she had donned a newly excavated bracelet in jest, only to find that she, too, could never take it off again. Or perhaps she had not wanted to.

  Walking over to the sarcophagus, I put the lantern on the floor and tried once again to manipulate the stone lid. But, of course, I couldn’t. Not even Nick had been able to move it on his own.

  All those solitary hours spent in this room over the past few days … so close to the skeleton, but physically unable to confirm whether the bracelet on its arm was exactly identical to my own. And now I was going home….

  A strange, faint scratching noise interrupted my speculations. Standing still for a moment, I tried to make out the origin of the sound, but couldn’t.

  One by one, all the little hairs on my arms stood up with dread. Ever since my first visit to the temple six days ago, I had been afraid the whole thing would come crashing down on top of me. But the sound I heard now was not one of mud brick caving in, I decided. It was more of an organic noise, as if someone, somewhere, was dragging a heavy sack across the floor.

  As I stood, listening intently, I almost convinced myself I heard voices, too. Not the deep, decisive voices of Craig or Nick, but a faint, ghostly murmur that coiled around me until I could barely breathe.

  Too frightened to stay where I was, trapped in the inner sanctum, I crept out into the main temple, just a few tentative steps. I had never been comfortable in that enormous room, with all its umbrage and echoes, and had always kept a wide berth of the square black hole in the floor, which—according to Craig—led down a narrow stone staircase into the unknown.

  Pointing my flashlight this way and that, I tried to determine whether I was truly alone. But all I saw were endless rows of columns and shadows, playing hide-and-seek with my beam.

  I called out anxiously at the darkness beyond. No response.

  From the first time I entered it, the titanic temple building had filled me with dread. And whenever I had returned to work on the inscription, I had always hastened into the relative comfort of the inner sanctum. It was as if the people who had once lived and died here had left contorted, demonic imprints in the air all around—images waiting to spring out at me as soon as I let down my guard. No number of visits had lessened my discomfort with this cold, Cimmerian void that held so many secrets. And now, as I slowly walked through the large gallery with my collar up, chasing elusive sounds, I was so chilled with terror I had to clench my teeth to stop them from chattering.

  In my agitation I went farther than I had ever gone before, far beyond the rope exit and down the entire nave of the temple. Craig had told me there was a large double door at the other end, presumably the original main entrance, but I had never actually seen it.

  For all his big gestures, Craig had not done the door justice. It was so enormous you could have passed through it riding a camel, and it dwarfed everything around me—not least my presumed knowledge of ages past. What manner of world had once existed outside this door? Had it been inhabited by people like me, or by a stronger, more capable, race? I had no idea.

  As I stood there, once again shocked by the engineering capabilities of this lost civilization, it occurred to me there was something odd about the door. It was not the fact that it had so obviously been broken and repaired, but that it was locked in place with an enormous beam.

  Barred from the inside.

  Whoever had done this, thousands of years ago, had clearly made the choice to remain inside the temple to protect its secrets. Had it been some grand suicidal gesture, I wondered, for the good of the bracelet sisterhood? Or was there another way out of the temple that I didn’t know about?

  Craig had told me the underground was a labyrinth of caves, and that he had not been able to persuade his men to follow any one of them to its end. Even the drill site roughnecks had been spooked by the place, and I was left to wonder what exactly they had found down there.

  Was that where the sounds were coming from? The temple basement?

  Once again, I listened intently.

  And then I heard footsteps. Right behind me.

  Swirling around with a shriek, I raised my flashlight, ready to smash it down on the intruder’s head.

  “It’s me!” barked Nick, his hand clamped around my wrist. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard something—” I began, my voice shaking.

  “Come!” He took the flashlight and started toward the rope exit, pulling me along. “Time to go.”

  My fear morphed into irritation. “I need my jacket.”

  Running through the darkness, all I had to guide me was the faint shine of the lantern I had left behind in the inner sanctum. Behind me, I could hear Nick yelling at me to stop, his tone increasingly uncivil. But Granny’s notebook was in my jacket pocket, and I needed that book more than his good opinion.

  When I finally reached the inner sanctum, everything was exactly as I had left it. Except …

  “Diana!” Nick was right behind me. “We don’t have time—”

  “It’s so strange.” I picked up my jacket and made sure the notebook was still there while my eyes scanned the room. “Something happened here—”

  “Come on!” Nick tried to take the jacket from me. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” I suddenly felt all my nerves snapping to attention. “Look!” I pointed at the sarcophagus. “It’s open! Someone opened it!”

  Nick didn’t even look. He simply took me by the arm and pulled me along, his forehead furrowed with worry.

  As we ran from the inner sanctum, I heard a frightful sound that took my brain a few breathless seconds to process. It was of a muted explosion, not far away, and of mud brick collapsing.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Women are nothing alone; no Ares is in them.

  —AESCHYLUS, The Suppliant Maidens

  AS SOON AS WE REACHED THE BOTTOM OF THE CHUTE, NICK GRABBED the dangling rope and showed me the carabiner attached to it—the carabiner I already knew well from my many previous trips up and down. “In a moment,” he said, “you are going to hook this to your harness. I will be up there”—he pointed to illustrate—”and I will pull you up. Do you understand?”

  I felt another prickly invasion of panic. “Why can’t the guards—?”

  “There are no guards.” Nick pulled off his baggy shirt and glanced upward with apprehension. “Now give me a minute.”

  Only when he wiped his palms on his trousers did I realize he was going to crawl up the rope, leaving me behind. “Wait!” I exclaimed, my fear mounting. “What’s going on? Why are the guards not there?”

  He took me by the shoulders and gave me a little shake. “You’ll be fine. I promise. Just keep breathing.”

  His words were followed by a distant rumble, and I could see in his eyes that he, too, was unnerved by the sound. Without another attempt at calming me, Nick started up the rope. There were no knots to give him purchase; all he had was the strength of his hands and arms and what little foothold he
could create by twisting the rope with his feet.

  I had never felt as abandoned as I did when he eventually disappeared into the steel tube. Hooking the carabiner onto my harness with trembling fingers, I looked around in the darkness, feeling very keenly that danger was closing in on me from all sides. For every time I took a breath as instructed, it seemed to me there was another sudden rush of rubble falling somewhere beneath me or on the other side of the wall … it was impossible to tell which.

  Equally unnerving was the faint but growing rumble that made the floor vibrate beneath my feet. In my growing panic, I could almost imagine that a prehistoric monster had been stirred to anger somewhere in the caverns beneath this colossal building, and that this fearsome beast was now making its way toward me, one lumbering footstep at a time.

  When I finally felt a firm pull on the rope attached to my harness, hoisting me abruptly into the air a foot or so, I cried out with relief. Evidently, Nick had reached the surface and was now doing his utmost to pull me to safety.

  Just as I was dangling in midair, there was another explosion, this time closer. Instinctively, I covered my face while my entire body was blasted by pinpricks of flying sand.

  When I dared open my eyes again, all I saw was dust and darkness. Breathing through my bundled-up jacket, I tried to make out the faint shine of the lantern we had left behind in the inner sanctum, but it was gone. Nor could I see the assuring dot of daylight at the far end of the tube above me.

  Desperate to speed up my escape from the collapsing temple, I grabbed the rope and tried to pull myself up, but of course I couldn’t. All I accomplished was to make Nick drop me a whole hard-won foot, and I heard him yelling at me through the pipe.

  For what it was worth, the sound of his voice had a calming effect, and I did my best to stop squirming. Moments later I was safely above ground, and Nick was unhooking my harness, his eyes tight with worry.

  “Are we—” I began, but whatever I had intended to say was cut short by the sound of yet another underground explosion.