by Jasmine Walt
As I stared through the glass for several hours, Senenmut’s tablet came to life. It revealed elements of his final years that, though previously unknown, didn’t shed much light on the historical mysteries surrounding him. I learned he’d spent nearly a decade on a secret building project at Deir el-Bahri—the location of Djeser-Djeseru—under the direction of Hatchepsut, and of all the ridiculous claims, Set, the Egyptian god of the desert and chaos.
The previously undecipherable combination of a lion’s head, a half-circle, a whole circle, and two vertical, parallel lines was included near both Set’s and Senenmut’s names, and I had a sudden epiphany. It had been speculated that the combination of symbols was adverbial, meaning “god’s time” or “eternal,” as in “eternal Senenmut” or “eternal Set.” But I started playing with the part of speech, finally settling on reading them as a title—god of time. Thinking back on the other texts I’d been analyzing that contained the hieroglyphs—including papyri, tablets, and reliefs—I realized that “god of time” was a viable alternate translation to “infinite” or “eternal.” After recording my findings in a spiral notebook and giving myself a very enthusiastic mental high five, I continued translating the tablet.
Indeed, as Marcus had claimed, one set of symbols suggested that the mysterious temple or tomb was physically connected to Djeser-Djeseru. According to the scribe, there was an even more secret portion of the hidden temple, containing the power of Nun—which was really odd. Nun was generally known as the god ancient Egyptians attributed with creation, specifically the creation of mankind. The ancient people had believed him to be the primordial waters, the chaos, from which everything had begun. Never had I heard of the ancients referencing any way to access his power . . . or even wanting to do so.
The tablet closed with two equally befuddling statements before the usual “So it ends, from start to finish, as found in writing.” I translated the preceding statements as “The power and domain of Hathor is life, the power and domain of Anubis is the afterlife. Under Hathor we are created, above Anubis we are changed by the power of creation.” I retranslated the symbols three times, looking for alternate meanings, then read through the translation again and again . . . and again. Abruptly, it clicked.
“No,” I whispered. “It can’t be that simple.”
From across the room, Josh called out jovially, “She’s talking to herself—she’s really one of us now!”
“Quiet, Josh,” Dominic told his colleague. “Let her do her work and pay more attention to your own.”
“Right, because reading through undergrad field school applications requires so much—”
“Quiet, Josh,” Marcus said softly, repeating Dominic’s words, and Josh fell silent.
Smiling like a fool, I stood and hurried over to Marcus. He sat comfortably at a desk set flush against the wall opposite mine.
Without looking away from his laptop, Marcus asked, “Can I help you with something, Lex?”
“Yes.” I mimicked his infuriatingly secretive tone.
“And what exactly would that be?”
“Oh, I just need a pen and a piece of paper.”
“Really, Lex, you have plenty of paper and writing instruments at your own desk,” he chided, finally turning his attention on me. His eyes widened at my barely contained exhilaration.
I held out my hand, and he supplied me with a ballpoint pen and a blank sheet of printer paper. I promptly set it on his desk and began sketching the floor plan of Djeser-Djeseru. It was a complex temple, with multiple levels, courtyards, chapels, colonnades, and shrines. “Why would Senenmut include that weird bit near the end about Hathor and Anubis and two stages of creation? There’s no reason, it’s complete nonsense,” I said as I worked.
“I’m aware,” Marcus replied dryly.
“Which means it’s not actually nonsense . . . it’s there for a reason. Earlier, Senenmut mentions that ‘the power of Nun’ is in the secret temple. For whatever reason, he’s saying that Nun’s power—creation—is hidden away, correct?”
“Yes.”
“He’s probably just using this reference as a key to guide us toward the correct location of the hidden entrance. Obviously Nun’s power isn’t really there.”
“Obviously,” Marcus mused, his eyes lighting with interest.
“If we think about creation being locked away in the temple, then Senenmut’s statements about Hathor and Anubis become relevant.”
Marcus leaned over the sketch I was just completing, labeling Hathor’s chapel on the left side of the rough floor plan and the two Anubis chapels on the right.
“It makes no sense for there to be two Anubis chapels—we all know that. But they’re there anyway. The upper chapel fell into disrepair because of its redundancy. It was purposeless . . . or so we thought. But on Senenmut’s tablet, he tells us that ‘above Anubis we will be changed by creation.’ The part about Hathor is junk, just meant to disguise the trail, but the bit about ‘above Anubis’ tells us to look in Anubis’s upper chapel . . . upper . . . above . . .” I pointed to the upper chapel on my map. “You see, in order to be ‘changed by creation,’ or by Nun’s power, we first must find it. And, to do that, we have to enter the secret temple. So—”
“The hidden entrance should be in the upper chapel to Anubis,” Marcus said, finishing my statement. “Dear gods . . . I can’t believe I missed this.” He tore his eyes from my drawing and gazed up at me wondrously.
I squirmed under his intensity. “It’s not that big of a deal. I only figured out the general area.”
“Don’t belittle yourself, Lex. If you knew how long . . . this is unbelievable.” He glanced down at the sketch of the temple again, and then back up at me. “You . . . unbelievable,” he whispered. His expression had altered minutely to one of reverence.
Overwhelmed, I took two steps back . . . and ran into a warm, firm body. I would’ve fallen to the side if strong hands hadn’t grasped my arms, keeping me upright.
“Careful, ma fille,” Dominic cautioned, stabilizing me.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I was surprised to discover that Dominic, Josh, and Neffe were standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind me. How long have they been standing there? I wondered.
“I’m sure you all heard . . . you’re so very talented at listening when you choose. The Djeser-Djeseru entrance would appear to be in the upper Anubis chapel.” Marcus shook his head slowly. “This, my friends, is a much-needed breakthrough. Congratulations, Lex.”
As he finished, my three new colleagues huddled around me, each murmuring a different exclamation or form of praise at the discovery.
“Thank you,” I said, my neck and cheeks flaming.
Needing a break from the Lex worship, I excused myself and spent the afternoon examining various other texts and artifacts strewn about the room. Each item was fascinating in its own right, from pressed scrolls I’d believed to have been lost, to heavy manuscripts darkened with age. The afternoon passed quickly, and soon I was bidding the team goodbye and heading home . . . alone.
I strolled along familiar paths, taking the long way home. I used the solitary time to think, to process everything that had happened in that elongated, top-floor room. Beyond that, I considered everything that had happened lately, and realized the past month had unquestionably been the most eventful of my twenty-four-year life . . . with a big, fat exclamation point.
As I neared my apartment building in the falling darkness, I checked my phone—one new voice mail. I quickly accessed my mailbox and was greeted by my grandma’s age-roughened voice.
“Hi sweetheart, it’s Grandma. I’m sorry to do this on such short notice, but there’s someone who needs to meet you. We’ll be stopping by this evening between six and seven. Traffic, you know . . . Anyway, you might consider making a little dinner. I think you’ll want to make a good first impression. See you tonight, honey!”
Wait, so does Grandma have a boyfriend? Utterly confused, I picked up the pace; it was five o’cloc
k, and I had absolutely no idea what I was going to cook for dinner.
By the time I’d made it home and whipped up something presentable, if not memorable, from the ingredients my mom had left behind, I was bouncing with excitement. I’d convinced myself that Grandma Suse had been swept up into an adorable, old-person love affair and wanted me to meet her new sweetie.
My heart skipped an excited beat when I heard the knock at the door. It skipped a few more beats after I opened the door and saw the couple standing in the hallway. My elderly grandma had her arm linked with that of a very handsome, familiar man. He was taller than me by a handful of inches, wore his dusty blond hair long enough to show its loose curl, and looked to be in the prime of his life. And he was smiling. Impossible!
“Grandpa?” I asked before my vision spotted over with blackness.
13
The Beginning & The End
“Suse, my darling, do you think perhaps we should have done this another way? I’ve startled the poor girl half to death.” The deep voice was barely accented with Italian.
“Oh, hush, Alex,” my sweet grandma admonished. “I know Lex a little better than you, if you’ll recall. I’ve been around. And I am not your ‘darling.’” I’d never heard Grandma Suse sound so spiteful.
“If you’ll recall, Suse, you’re the one who told me to ‘get the hell out or risk everyone discovering the truth.’ I was fully prepared to risk it.”
Opening my eyes, I sat up on the couch and stared at the unbelievable couple sitting at my kitchen table. “Um . . . hi. If you guys could stop word-stabbing each other for a minute and explain why my thirty-year-old grandfather just walked into my apartment? It’d be peachy,” I declared with an unpleasant smile.
Grandma Suse gasped. “Alexandra Marie Larson! You wipe that look off your face right this instant!”
I grimaced and sat up straighter. “Sorry, Grandma.”
“That’s better!” She reverted back to my kindly grandma. “Now, honey, your grandpa’s going to explain some important things to you. Things he should have explained weeks ago, but he was conveniently out of town.”
“I was in Antarctica! How could I have known . . . there are zero reasons why she should have manifested. Alice never showed any signs of being a carrier and I even peeked into the future—which you know is all but forbidden—and I saw nothing of this. Not everything shows up, you know,” he said a little sulkily. “Besides, I had Heru watching over her . . . just in case. He owed me.”
Some guy named Heru had been watching over me? Remotely, I wondered if it had been the same man who had broken down my apartment door, pummeled Mike, and whisked me to the hospital. If so, I owed him . . . and was a little afraid of him.
“Well he obviously wasn’t trying hard enough,” my suddenly furious grandma spat. Her body was visibly trembling. “I assume he told you what happened . . .”
“Yes, but he said—”
“Enough!” I yelled, slapping my palm on the steamer trunk coffee table. “Will someone please explain why I feel like I’m losing my mind?”
Ignoring my outburst, Grandma Suse stood and said to her not-so-late husband, “I’m feeling a bit tired. I think I’ll just go lie down in Lex’s room while you two chat.” As she hobbled toward my bedroom, she gave me a pointed look that seemed to say “behave yourself” and “give him hell” at the same time.
“So . . . Grandpa,” I said after the bedroom door shut, thinking I’d never had a more surrealistic, awkward experience. “Sorry about the whole fainting thing.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had worse reactions. A few people even tried to stab me, and dozens have run away shrieking about ghosts.” Smiling roguishly, he added, “You should call me Alexander—or Alex. ‘Grandpa’ doesn’t really fit with my appearance. People will talk.”
“Okay . . . Alexander.” Saying his name hammered the final, rusty nail in the this-feels-so-wrong coffin.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it . . . and to me.” He patted the kitchen table in front of my grandma’s abandoned chair. “Come join me, Alexandra. We have some catching up to do.”
“I’ll say.” I was feeling a bit irked, a lot crazy, and insanely curious. If I hadn’t been experiencing all of the weird dream-visions lately, I would’ve been totally freaked out. As it was, I was moderately freaked out, but I shoved the feeling away. Answers were finally throwing themselves at me . . . I couldn’t turn them away just because I didn’t understand them. I joined my grandpa, Alexander, at the table.
He stared at me with midnight-blue eyes. “You look so much like my little Alice. I almost feel like I’m sitting here with her instead of her grown daughter. We gods of time suffer far worse from its passing than those who age and die. We have to go on.”
We gods of time? Is that from a poem? I was utterly baffled. “What?”
A crease formed between my grandpa’s eyebrows, and he grabbed my nearest hand. “My dear child, Suse always says I have a way of circumventing the truth. An occupational hazard, I suppose. Shall I just dive right in?”
I nodded, hoping his words would somehow translate into something coherent. My mind was too numb for anything cryptic to get through, and I was usually really good with cryptic.
“Very well. You and I, and the others like us, are not human . . . not exactly.”
My mouth fell open. “Not . . . human? You’re kidding, right?” He has to be kidding! Of course I’m human!
Alexander shook his head. “Many thousands of years ago, a human woman bore a son who became the most talented spiritual leader his clan ever had. He was able to guide his people away from the dangers of the desert and other clans until they settled near a fertile river. He was a very powerful seer of the past, present, and future. Some said he could alter the very fabric of time.” He shrugged, as if he was saying, “I’m not so sure about that . . .”
“Through recent developments in the understanding of evolution and genetics, we now know he was the first to be born with a unique and beneficial genetic mutation, which he then passed on to some of his descendants. In his time, power came with many . . . consequences. One being that he had many wives and consorts, which led to many children. Those children had children and so on. Over time, as the bloodlines intermixed, his mutation was passed on. He is, in essence, the father of our species.”
Alexander held up a hand, cutting off the words threatening to explode from my open mouth. “Wait—all will become clear. This man’s name was Nuin, and his people became the rulers and aristocracy of Upper Egypt, while he—the most powerful of his people—became known as the creator of mankind. You know of him as the god, Nun. Like him, many of his descendants became deified by the people of their times, such as Heru, Set, and Aset,” he said, listing the ancient names of the Egyptian gods more commonly known as Horus, Seth, and Isis to the modern world. “I’m sure you see the big picture. Nuin’s descendants became known as the Netjer-At, which means . . . ?”
I cleared my throat, unprepared to participate in the conversation. “Roughly, ‘gods of time.’” It was the exact translation I’d settled on earlier that day for the hieroglyphs that had been driving me mad for months. It could have been a coincidence, but I doubted it was.
Alexander nodded, clearly pleased. His eyes crinkled faintly at the outer corners when he smiled, making him appear endearingly kind. “Over the past millennium, with the rise of lingua franca, the name simplified into Nejerette or Nejeret, for women or men, respectively. I am Nejeret, and you, Alexandra, are Nejerette. As a whole, our people are Nejerets. Our kind, the descendants of Nuin, are able to step out of time to see its various threads. As you hone your skills, you’ll be able to view the past and the present, and maybe even the future possibilities to some degree. It’s different for each of us.”
His words were pure impossibility, but it also sort of made sense, what with the too-real dreams I’d all but accepted as real. “So you’re saying we’re time travelers?” I asked, skepticism coating my w
ords.
Alexander laughed. “Everyone asks that. But no, we don’t travel through time. We’re only able to see time, to see what has happened and some of what may be. We cannot actually interact with any time other than the present.” He paused, frowning thoughtfully. “Think of time as a vast cavern, and of our visions as the echoes of every sound that has been, is being, or might ever be made. Many Nejerets have actually started calling what we see ‘echoes.’”
“How is this real?” I whispered to one of the empty spots at the table.
Alexander squeezed my hand. “The how is irrelevant. That it is matters.”
As he spoke his final words, the world melted into a swirl of colors, writhing all around us like a psychedelic hallucination. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand until it stops. We could easily get separated, and I don’t have the talent to track you if that happens.”
“Um, okay.” When the world finally righted itself, I muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I spun around in a circle, taking in my surroundings. “What is this—ancient Rome?”
Hand in hand, Alexander and I stood off to the side of a high-ceilinged room. The walls were painted in a rich red and black, and several dining couches, each draped in lustrous fabrics, were arranged artfully around a small, wooden table.
“Not exactly,” Alexander said. “We’re in Herculaneum.” He released my hand and held both of his arms out wide. “Welcome to my childhood home.”
“No,” I breathed, stunned. I gaped at everything around me—it all looked new, not like it had been buried under volcanic ash for thousands of years, which meant it hadn’t been buried yet. Suddenly fearful, I exclaimed, “Herculaneum—but Mount Vesuvius!”
“That’s not for another seventy years, and even if Vesuvius were erupting right now, we would be safe enough. No need to worry. Remember, we’re not really here—we’re only witnessing an echo of the past.”
