Wardens of Eternity

by Courtney Allison Moulton

  I stood still, taking long, deep breaths and counting backward to quell the sparks at my fingertips. They dissipated after a few moments and I forced myself up the stairs to my room. Each step was harder and more exhausting to take than the last. When I reached the top, it was by sheer will that I made it to my door. I found my key in my secret purse and entered.

  The room I rented was just that—a room. The toilet was down the hall and the building across the street had a women’s bath house. I was lucky to have my own stove and sink. A small cot sat against the far wall beneath the window, so I could admire the stars as I tried to sleep. The window was quite large and arched; the curtain only covered the bottom half of the glass for my privacy. There had been a few nights this past winter when I’d pulled down that curtain to use as an extra blanket on my bed.

  I set the bagged loaf of bread on the stove and tore off a hunk to devour. The first bite was always the worst; when it hit the bottom of your empty stomach, it did things to your body. You cramped, felt sick, and your throat was so tight and dry you thought you might choke. Then the hunger erupted, filling you past your limit like an overflowing sink, and you remembered exactly how long it had been since you last ate. I tried to eat small amounts often rather than big meals sparingly, if only to avoid this discomfort. But hunger was a blinding force and you believed with all your heart you won’t care how heavy the food feels in your stomach. But you do. Very quickly you do.

  I wrapped the bag tightly back around the bread; I’d need this to last a week. Stale bread I didn’t mind, but I hated to waste the moldy bits.

  The rickety clock on the wall clacked on the hour and started to chime. Nine in the evening. Horror stuck me like a bullet. I scrambled out into the hallway, my shoes sliding, just in time to watch Nonna Tessio disappear into the toilet, newspaper in hand. My eyes squeezed closed in defeat; I knew well the old woman liked to take her privy time after supper. I’d missed my chance for hours. No fool in New York would use the toilet after Nonna Tessio.

  Dragging my feet, I returned to my room. I hoped I could hold it. Hunger, on top of everything that happened tonight, had distracted me. After collecting my needle and thread from the nightstand drawer, I pulled out the scrap of fabric from my pocket. It was only a few inches wide and long, which meant I’d add a few more inches to my quilt. I stitched it to the end of my chaotic patchwork job, hoping the quilt would be long enough to cover my toes come winter.

  I unpinned my hat from my hair, changed into my bedclothes, and folded my skirt and blouse for tomorrow since they could go a few more days before washing. The bed frame creaked in the quiet as I climbed in. On the nightstand, the lamp’s bare bulb flickered more like a candle flame due to the frayed wire. Soon it would die altogether.

  I lay my head against my lumpy pillow and gazed at the stars out my window. They were faint with the carnival glow of the city lights fighting their shine, but they were still there. I was faint and fighting, but I was still here as well.

  And lonely. So lonely.

  On cold nights I longed for more than just a friend, but boys didn’t like my coiled, curly hair, and they’d told me so. They liked girls with shiny, smooth hair they could run their fingers through. My hair wasn’t pretty to them. I wasn’t pretty enough to bring home to their mothers.

  I wasn’t pretty enough at the orphanage when I was little, either, not that any good folks ever came to adopt any of us anyway. But adults fawned over the other children, and every compliment to their straight, fair hair and creamy white skin felt like one of a thousand cuts to me. I didn’t know how many cuts it would take to bleed me out.

  Nobody had ever told me I was ugly. Yet, the way they had never told me I was beautiful or precious or desirable made me feel like I was none of those things. The way people pointed out that my hair wasn’t straight like the other children’s made me want to look like them. The way they always told me what I wasn’t made me feel not good enough.

  In my heart, I knew how unfair my own feelings about my appearance were to me. Punishing myself because I was different wouldn’t change what I looked like. It had taken me a long, long time to understand how people had always treated me—and to find peace with how I looked. This journey brewed an obsession in me to learn who I was and where I came from.

  In America, people saw skin color before gender or economic status. People noticed my brown skin and that’s where they stopped looking. Nobody cared about who I was on the inside. After the Great War, so many people around the world lost everything and everyone. Like my parents must have, they sought new lives and fresh starts here, in a country whose people had always been defined as white or black. Americans didn’t know what to do with the lot of us lost somewhere in the middle. Eventually, they lumped us all together as not white. Not like them. Not belonging. Not to be trusted.

  Sometimes when I thought of my parents, I grew angry at them and myself. Perhaps my abilities had made them abandon me. Perhaps they’d been afraid of me. Perhaps I’d hurt them too.

  Whoever I was, I was special. And wherever I came from, I was meant for something more than this meager life. New York wasn’t home. I didn’t know where my parents were from, or where I had been born. I had no identity and place I belonged. I wasn’t from anywhere.

  I turned off the lamp, ignoring the snap and crackle of electricity, and I wrestled my thoughts to grasp sleep.

  I left the factory the next day with an aching body and raw fingertips from the machinery. I’d scrubbed off the blood, but my cuts continued to sting. The thought of going home and eating a few bites of bread made me miserable. There were still a few coins in my secret pocket and I wanted to feel a full belly. A good dinner and a visit with Jean would be the perfect way to end my day.

  I wandered in the direction of Bryant Park, unable to shake the hot, persistent feeling of eyes on my back. The paranoia of being watched was intrusive and unnerving. A face through the crowd drew my attention, a young woman who was nearly my mirror reflection. I halted, causing someone to bump into me, but I ignored their grumbled curse.

  The woman vanished behind a taller person, and my heart quickened with alarm. I had to get a better look at her, to prove to myself she hadn’t been a vision. Never had I seen anyone who looked so much like me and a wildness stirred within me. I pushed through the crowd, hoping to catch sight of her again—and I did.

  Her skin was golden brown like mine and her long tangle of curls was nearly as dark and threaded with streaks the color of desert rock. Her clothing was military style with heavy black boots, black narrow men’s combat pants, and a matching long jacket fastened by several belts over her torso. She looked positively scandalous for a woman. She moved quickly and caught up to a similarly dressed young man with windswept shoulder-length hair. I tried to maneuver myself closer to them to better see their faces.

  I lost my visual again and I scrambled for signs of them. Nothing. My shoulders sagged, and all the air and excitement rushed from me, replaced by cold disappointment.

  From a food vendor at the park’s perimeter, I purchased two apples and a boiled sausage. I carried my feast to the New York Public Library and chose a partially hidden spot on the stone steps to eat. I didn’t need anyone swiping my apples or a cop telling me to park it someplace else.

  When I finished, I took a few sweeping strides to one of the magnificent marble lions of the library. They stood sentry on the steps of the north and south entrances. Though I’m not sure what compelled me, each time I visited, I touched a paw. Sometimes, when I was in a rush, my fingers barely brushed the cold stone. Other days, when times were harder than usual, I’d clasp both my small hands around the lion’s great paw as tightly as my strength allowed. There was something about the power depicted in their muscular bodies, their serene, resolute gazes, and their heads raised high, that gave me courage. They’d been the guardians of the world’s knowledge and literature for longer than I’d been alive, and I imagined they’d still be here long after I’d g
one. I learned their names years ago, but I gave them names of my own. That somehow made them feel like they were mine. They were like the gods of old who became servants to whomever learned their secret names. If I told anyone else what I named them, the lions’ strength would be lost to me.

  The golden glow of the library’s marble interior warmed me to my bones. Even on a busy evening, with every last footstep, breath, and voice of patrons echoing off the high ceiling, this was the most elegant place in my world. Some nights, as I lay in bed, I closed my eyes and pictured myself standing in this beautiful hall rather than my dingy room at the boarding house.

  I didn’t have a lot of time before closing, so I hurried. The woman, Jean, who’d taught me how to read at the orphanage, had only volunteered there. She was a librarian’s aid a few times a week and I got to visit her sometimes.

  Jean was often stationed in the reference room, returning books to their spots on shelves and assisting visitors. I found her at the top of a rolling ladder with a stack of volumes balanced in the bend of her arm as she shelved them.

  “Good evening,” I called to her.

  She looked down and around for me and smiled when she spotted me. “Well, hello, Ziva! I missed you last night.”

  My blood warmed. She was one of the few who called me by my real name, even after others had corrected her in that pointlessly cruel way of theirs. “You did? Does that mean my book finally came back?”

  She nodded and shimmied down the ladder surprisingly deft with all those books in one hand. She placed them on the bottom shelf, rose, and beckoned to me.

  “I saved it for you, so it wouldn’t disappear again,” she said with an edge to her fun Metropolitan accent. “There’s been a lot of interest in the subject since that bigwig archaeologist came to town.”

  She led me into a back room, which served as office space for several other aids working this department. The air was stale and musty, likely from all the stacks of old books and lack of open windows, and the desks were covered with piles of documents and writing utensils. A pot of coffee and a few yellowed, well-used porcelain cups sat on an unremarkable buffet table against the wall.

  Jean snatched a thick volume from her desk and presented it to me. Joy made me wiggle a little dance as I accepted it. I read the title, devouring every word. The Many Faces of Ancient and Contemporary Egypt, by Zaman Useramen, Curator of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.

  “You’re the best!” I told her, my smile wide and toothy.

  “I sure hope you find the answers you’re looking for in there,” she said.

  I took a seat at the unoccupied desk beside Jean’s to thumb through the book and quickly glance at the photographs. “This could be it. I really believe I’m close to finding out where I came from. Look at these people. Their skin—it looks just like mine. Their hair—their eyes. My hair is very curly, and my skin tone is a little different—ashier. There! See?” I stopped abruptly and pushed my finger against a portrait of an Algerian Amazigh woman draped in folds of colorful fabric and glinting jewelry.

  “I see a resemblance,” Jean observed, though she sounded a little sad.

  When I looked at her, I momentarily became too aware of her very white skin and honey-blond hair. We were both women, but we were so different. She had always been good to me, but she wasn’t like me. She could never know how I felt, however much she kindly tried to. I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my thoughts on track. “I’m so sure my family is from Egypt or Algeria—maybe Tunisia. Do you suppose they came here to escape the French colonizers?”

  “Whoever you are, don’t forget you’re Ziva first,” she said, her voice firm yet gentle. “You are your own unique, clever, beautiful woman crafted from your own experiences and circumstances.”

  Her kindness couldn’t drive away my feeling of how this hole in me may never be filled. No matter how much I researched or hypothesized or imagined, I’d never really know. Anyone who had never seen themselves in someone else could not understand that loneliness, or the potential thrill of finally seeing another person who looked like them.

  “Have you ever noticed how much the library lions look like sphinxes?” I asked, hoping to redirect the conversation. “Save for their faces, of course. I wish they had sphinx faces.” Thinking of them reminded me of the strange feline shadow I had seen last night. If I had magical power, then who was to say sphinxes didn’t actually exist somewhere or at some time?

  “You know, I heard in passing there are real sphinxes guarding a tomb in Woodlawn Cemetery,” Jean said. “Stone sphinxes, but real ones.”

  “No way!” I exclaimed, and instantly images of the mythological creatures came to my mind. I’d seen many different variations of them in the books I’d devoured, along with lots of other kinds of beasts. “What kind are they? True sphinxes? Hieracosphinx? Kriosphinx?”

  “We ought to hunt them down sometime and find out. What do you say?”

  “You bet!” I flipped the page to the table of contents and decided I ought to begin with the preface and read cover to cover—to be sure I didn’t miss any information.

  “Why don’t you take that home with you tonight?” Jean asked.

  “I will, thanks!”

  She walked me to the reception desk and opened a heavy binder filled with what looked like thousands of pages. This late in the evening, no one else waited here for their books to be checked out, so the process was quick and easy.

  Before I left, I turned and asked, “Has a position opened up yet?” My body felt tight, bracing for disappointment.

  Jean’s mouth bunched up in the corner and she exhaled. “Well, one of the girls told me yesterday she’s moving back to Ohio. The big city isn’t working out for her. I will keep you updated.”

  “Please do,” I told her, feeling a different kind of hunger. That could be a life-changer for me. Working for the city was a pretty good deal if you could find a job. I’d have much rather worked here, surrounding by books and art, than at the factory. Patience helped me stay sane and holding onto the dream of spending every day in this wonderful place helped me get through the week. If you didn’t have any dreams, then you had nothing to work for.

  I should’ve been watching the traffic better, but I couldn’t stop exploring the book in my hands. The drawings, photos, and evocative narration about the ancient world consumed me. In my head, I could clearly imagine silk awnings draped over breezy open windows. And I could almost taste the warm, lush river air blooming with the sultry scents of anise, marjoram, cinnamon, and roasting nuts blended with the heady fragrances of red poppies, chamomile, and freshly cut pomegranates.

  The furious honk of a horn in my face made me hop with fright and leap back onto the sidewalk. My heart pounding, I grounded myself back to the real world. Dumpy pigeons squatted on the sidewalks and dodged splashes of brown-tinged water as taxis and town cars rolled through puddles. Above, airships floated through the skyscrapers, belching inky black diesel smoke. The city was crafted from cold, gray concrete, dark glass, and trees planted within cages, but I dreamed of the unfamiliar, fragrant, wild glory and moon-white limestone of a palace far away. The images struck me like a falling star, bright and beautiful and unexpected and were gone as quickly as they came.

  When I got to my room and caught the scent of bread, my stomach started to eat itself inside out, even though I’d had my apples and sausage earlier. After neatly folding my clothes to wear again for work tomorrow, I slipped on my plain cotton nightgown, washed my face, and settled into bed. I turned out the lamp, but sleep was a slippery beast tonight.

  The idea I could change my life by using my magic pecked at me. This sagging cot didn’t have to be my bed. I could have one made of feathers rather than lumps, and there could be butter for my toast. I could improve my circumstances if I used my abilities. Why would I have them if I weren’t meant to use them?

  Finally sleeping, I drifted in and out of dreams, none of them able to keep hold of me. A rustling noise yanked me ba
ck into full awareness. I held my breath, sure I had another mouse in the darkness of my room. My heart fluttering with panic, I reached for the lamp and the bulb flared to life, temporarily blinding me. When my eyes adjusted, I glimpsed a shape so huge it seemed to swallow my room whole.

  A long ram’s face rose high to scent the air and its massive, heavy spiraled horns gave the impression of a devil. The venomous yellow eyes, alight like electricity, belonged to a creature with an almost feline body the size of a small horse. The lamp’s glow shone on the slick reddish-black coat, illuminating faint leopard spots splattered across its ribs. I’d seen this creature last night, after my encounter with the thief.

  The beast looked at me. Those eyes locked with mine.

  I gasped, sucking in too much air too fast to cry out, and I tore the lamp from its tether to the wall and smashed it against the side of the monster’s head with an explosion of glass and heat.

  The beast snarled, staggering, and backpedaled into the shadows. I jumped to my feet, grabbed the shades, and yanked them down. The city lights flooded my room, revealing the giant, coiled horns on top of its head and the full length of its body. Powerful muscle clenched beneath its panther coat, talons, built to tear a man in two, spread and dug into the floor.

  All my research, everything I’d read from history and mythology, the pictures I’d spent hours scouring—I knew this beast. A kriosphinx in the flesh.

  “Lucky, lucky, lucky,” it growled, its voice deep as a chasm. “A lucky night for me.”

  My power singed my fingertips. “Stay back,” I warned. “If you leave, I won’t hurt you.”

  The curve of its smile dragged a chill up my spine. Those narrowed yellow eyes watched my hands. “I wasn’t sure it was you at first when I watched you last night. But I’m certain now. The queen’s scion is a fledgling Medjai. How quaint.”