Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  “You dared to take me from the sea,” I pointed out.

  She fell to her knees; this kid was going to have seriously bruised kneecaps. “You are a gift from the sea. Only you will be able to intercede with Dagon.”

  Did they bind and gag all the gifts from the sea? How could I intercede if I were sacrificed? Did they realize how illogical their religion was? “Is Dagon, uh, difficult?” I asked, wondering what else I could learn about him. The man was a merman, so a lot of the expected problems between man and woman were pretty much null and void.

  Change from happy face to frowning face. “He and his son Ba’al have battled often this winter,” she said. “They destroy us in their pathway.”

  Bah All? Dagon’s son? I pressed a hand to my head, trying to understand through my blinding headache. “How is that?”

  She sighed, a little exasperated with my lack of divine knowledge. “Ba’al throws his bolts of lightning, catching the fields of Dagon afire.” Stripping religion out of her language, I gathered there had been massive electrical storms, sea storms, and widespread crop failure. The people were compounding the problem by not eating fish.

  “The sea churns,” she continued, “crushing our boats, leaving us open for destruction by the Kemti, the Kefti, and the Tsidoni.”

  My heart thudded. Kemt was Egyptian for Egypt. I’d learned that on my first time-travel voyage. However, I’d not known the Egyptians to be destructive.

  Another thought hit me, almost as hard as my head had hit the mosaic floor: If I was close to Gaza—and Ashqelon, in modern times, was—then Egypt was to my south. Cheftu had always been an Egyptian. Did this mean I needed to head south? Could I find him there? Of course, this was all based on the theory that Cheftu actually was in this time period.

  But I’d arrived here and I spoke the language, so it seemed to follow reasonably. Please God.

  I also knew that Kefti was the Egyptian/Aztlantu word for people from Caphtor. Crete. They were across the Mediterranean from where the Philistines were, archaeologically speaking. If the Kefti still inhabited Crete, then had I gone forward or backward in time? When I’d left the last time period, the one in which I was an oracle, their culture was pretty much going to hell in a handbasket, complete with fire and brimstone.

  The name Tsidoni, however, left me blank. She’d named south, west. If we were on the Mediterranean, close to modern-day Gaza, where were the Tsidoni from?

  “The highlanders desecrated Ba’al, offended Dagon.” Tamera glanced toward the merman. “He punishes us for it. We were not strong enough against them. We trusted their words, like fools.”

  “Highlanders?” I repeated. Just the term threw my whole theory out the door. Highlanders? Men in kilts with bagpipes? On the Mediterranean? The pieces just were not fitting together. Was my understanding of history, of the spread of cultures, that skewed? I mean, I knew I’d grown up with a better understanding of Lawrence of Arabia than, say, George III, but was I that ignorant? I rubbed my face; I’d trade the lot of them for Excedrin right now.

  Tamera’s look was bleak. “For decades we have fought with them. Now spring approaches, and with it the season for renewing war battles.”

  This was all terribly sad, but what did it have to do with me? Ashqelon was a place I’d never seen, even in modern times. Whether it was ancient Palestine or Israel made no difference to me. My purpose here was to find my husband and … what? That was the part of the equation Cheftu and I had never actually discussed. What did life hold for us, together? That answer could wait. I had to get out of here. War and propitiation were good reasons to hit the road.

  “Sea-Mistress, do you see now why it is essential you are here? Why it is such a blessing that we found you? You can intervene for us.”

  “How can I,” I said, wondering if I was supposed to be mortal or goddess, wondering how many goddesses they found per year, wondering what unlucky swimmer had been netted last time, “intervene with a god?”

  “You are the favored of his sea maidens, a goddess, are you not? For you he gives the wealth of the sea, such treasures as I’ve never seen. You must be his most beloved concubine.”

  I looked down at my still glowing neon bracelet, then noticed I was still wearing the necklace, lengths and lengths of it wrapped around my throat. It passed through the spectrum of green to blue to purple to pink to orange. The glow had faded a little, but it was still flashy.

  That was confusing. I had been pulled from the sea to ask Dagon to give these people a break; in fact, I was a gift to him, yet I already knew him? “A-am I a hostage?” I stuttered. Her expression froze as we heard a shout from the front of the temple.

  “I want to see her!” the person repeated. “I insist!” The voice brooked no disagreement. It was followed by a body, a large woman bearing down on me like a steamship on a wooden raft. Tamera—the wimp—fled, leaving me to face this apparition alone.

  What an apparition.

  She was almost as wide as she was tall, with black hair elaborately woven and curled, piercing eyes set like Kalamata olives in a pan of saffron-tinted dough, from which only a beak of a nose and a bump of a chin stood out. She gleamed with gold, smelled like a vegetable garden, and wore the absolute worst shade of cinnamon that I’d ever seen.

  But she had presence.

  I raised my chin; I’d seen powerful women in action. I was Dagon’s main squeeze. I was a goddess. I could do this. I was a hostage?

  “What do you mean by—” the woman began. “On your knees, mortal,” I intoned in my best deep sea-mistress voice. She glared at me, then lumbered to her knees. Slaves came running in behind her, fluffing pillows for each kneecap, holding her by her wrists as she lowered herself. It was a production—but she was obeying me.

  What was that phrase about power? Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’d been a goddess for less than two minutes, and already I was abusing my authority.

  “Sea-Mistress,” she said, though her tone was only slightly more respectful. I gestured for her to continue. “Highlanders approach us from the east, yet Dagon is silent, Ba’al removed from our sorrows! We have begged mercy for the destruction of the teraphim! What does it take to get you to act?”

  “And who,” I said imperiously, “are you?”

  She bristled. “Takala-dagon, the queen of the Pelesti, the royal dowager.”

  Oh. I smiled weakly. “How many more of my sons do I have to lose before your mother’s heart hears my prayers?”

  An interpreter would be handy. What in the world was a ter-ah-feem? Why was the queen asking me questions? “Which son rules now?” I asked. “Being royal is hard on your family?”

  “My sons have died defending us because Ba’al and Dagon won’t!” she stormed.

  “And”—I need some help here, I protested to the universe—“the highlanders are attacking from the east?” East of the Med—modern-day Jordan?

  My brain suddenly became a classroom: the lights went down and an overhead projected clicked on. A picture of the city, whitewashed, mostly square and built around a dock, suddenly became 3-D as the point of view rose into the air, giving me an eagle’s, or maybe an astronaut’s, view of the coastline.

  Wedge-shaped letters melted into names. Egypt to the south; Gaza, Ashdod, Ashqelon, Yaffo, and Qiselee on the coastline. Farther north, a small island off the shore named Tsor and another city named Tsidon.

  “Yamir-dagon is a fine ruler,” she said, “but I would like to see him be a father before he dies! What is Dagon doing? What does he want? Why does he ignore us?”

  My brain was in overdrive, trying to assimilate the split-second map images. I was stumbling for recognition when two names appeared on the map, putting it all into perspective.

  They also made me break into a cold sweat.

  The Jordan River. The Dead Sea.

  Holy, holy, holy shit! I was in Israel! Or was it Palestine yet? Were these people the Philistines? The city’s names hadn’t changed ever, so I co
uld be in any time. Any ancient time.

  Oh God, where is Cheftu? I don’t want to know more, I just want to get him and get out of here.

  “Have you never lost sons?” the portly woman before me asked. I stared at her, spinning mentally: did the when and where matter? I shook my head. Takala-dagon dropped her hands and bowed her head, her whole attitude suddenly hopeless.

  Immediately I felt guilty. She was a human being, for all her pomposity. She’d lost sons. She mistakenly thought I could do some good. How was she to know that I was a barely twenty-six-year-old English American time traveler, whose sole mission was to find my husband and get on with my life? I was not a sea-mistress who could intervene with the gods. “I cannot imagine your pain,” I said, trying to soften how I’d blown her off.

  She raised her head. Her deep-set olive eyes were heavily made up, tear filled. “The highlanders approach again,” she said. “How many missives have we written to Egypt, begging for Pharaoh to speak for us, I do not know. The king, my son, is adamant that we will fight them again. We must regain face for the destruction of our teraphim.” She sighed, expanding her already voluminous chest. The chains on her skin danced at the movement, catching in the trickles of winter sunlight cast down from the clerestory windows.

  My ears had perked up at the word Egypt. Was this the way to get to Cheftu? “Perhaps Pharaoh will send an envoy?” I asked.

  “For years we have petitioned. Egypt cares nothing for what transpires outside her borders.”

  Having lived as an Egyptian, I knew this was true. “Can we replace the teraphim? That way no one would need to return to battle. Perhaps negotiate something with them?” Since I was here, I might as well make suggestions.

  She shook her head. “There is little possibility of negotiation. Their mountain god feasts on blood. The highlanders take no prisoners; they take no living booty. For them war is herim. Death to all and everything; it is hal.”

  Hair-ream? Hall?

  Across a chalkboard in my brain, the word was spelled;

  h-a-l. However, it was spelled first in wedge letters, then in chicken scratchings I couldn’t identify before it became English. What was hal?

  As though a page of a dictionary were being copied, words were quickly written on the chalkboard: Hal = The utter giving over of something to God through destruction in a holy war, which is herim. Those who survive the herim are hal.

  “Those” … the word sank slowly into my brain. Even people?

  Hal = people & possessions.

  Yikes!

  The silence stretched out. Takala’s beady eyes bored into me. People and possessions? I looked at her again, “What do you want me to do? What can I do?” I clarified.

  “Intervene,” she said. “With, uh, Dagon?”

  Her glance was the type one reserves for misbehaving children and blithering idiots. One got the impression that in her perspective, few people escaped both those categories. “Lo, intervene with the highlander’s ruler, when he arrives.”

  Intervene? Like Mata Hari would or like Winston Churchill?

  “He is said to be arrogant, though brilliant,” Takala said. “He has an eye for women in general.” She looked me over from head to toe. “A good thing you don’t have a tail,” she murmured. “It is rumored that his hair is the same color as yours, so perhaps he will be drawn to you as to a sister.”

  Sister, in the Egyptian sense of the word, which was a lover? Or sister because we had the same hair color? My head was starting to pound again. “You just want me to meet with him?”

  She waved her hands, gesturing for her slaves to haul her upright. Takala planted her fists on either side of her broad hips. “You seem to me no more than a mortal,” she said. “But if you are a goddess, or a sea-mistress, then use your wiles on this Dadua of the Highlanders. If not, there will be no one to worship you or your fishtailed lover, either, because the Pelesti will have been wiped from the land!” She turned and stomped off. Slaves in her wake left gifts for me, clothing, vials of perfume, sandals, a small set of scrolls, and fruit.

  Not bad for someone who arrived in a net.

  Tamera scurried in, carrying trays of steaming corn products. Corn cakes, corn patties, corn on the cob, corn salad with vinegar, creamed corn, corn with yogurt, corn with cucumber.

  They had shellfish nearby, and all they ate was corn? Could a goddess change a culture’s eating habits? I was ravenous, so I ate corn. More corn. The wine was good; the beer tasted predictably like corn.

  While I ate, priests came and sang to me: verses 342–768 of the Dagon song. “Dagon of the mighty thews; Dagon, Rapist of the Rivers; Dagon, beloved of Ursinnahal; Dagon, spewer of salt …” Dagon this and Dagon that.

  Apparently he was a real “catch” in this mythology. Ugh, life is bad when you are wincing at your own awful puns. I waved away the corn meal, the beer, got refills on wine, and proceeded to plan my escape.

  I’d go to Egypt. My lower pyramid of needs had just been met: food, shelter, clothes. Then how would I get out of here? Was I a hostage or a guest? Either way, my time was limited. The words of the sailor haunted me: Pity about her dying.

  I’d go to Egypt. Though my husband’s whereabouts were a mystery, it had been only one day. I’d rest tonight, gather more supplies tomorrow, then head out at night. We’d find each other. We always had in the past.

  Of course, I’d always been someone else in the past. Never nameless, never in my own skin. Never before like now.

  As the afternoon floated by, silence settled on the temple. The priests took a siesta, the singers went to write more verses about Dagon, the sun drifted in on motes above me. While I rested in preparation for my journey out of here, I revisited the journey that had gotten me in here.

  Just twenty-four hours ago I had been lying with my sister, Cammy, on her bed in the Hurghada Hilton. I’d realized pretty quickly that she would never really believe that I had time-traveled or traded bodies with RaEmhetepet, that sadistic ancient Egyptian priestess.

  Could I blame Cammy for her skepticism? Would I have believed her if she had come to me with the same story? Even with the questions I raised, which seemed to me to be facts that couldn’t be interpreted any other way, she had alternative explanations.

  According to Cammy, I had been kidnapped two years ago. Doctors said that the trauma of the experience had changed my eye color, from (my) green to (RaEm’s) brown. Then “I” had refused to leave Egypt and had moved in with an Egyptian playboy no one had ever heard of: Phaemon.

  Except I, as in me, had heard of Phaemon before. That had been the name of RaEm’s lover in ancient Egypt. A lover who had gone missing and was presumed murdered, a man born on the twenty-third of Phamenoth, just like RaEm, Cheftu, and me. A person chosen by destiny—or what-ever—to time-travel. Had he traveled, trading with someone else’s body? If so, who? If not, then why had the rest of us played a two-year cosmic game of musical bodies and he hadn’t?

  Sometimes I had the feeling I was seeing only half of the big picture. The feeling grew every time I woke up in another world. My glance fell on the merman. A very different world.

  After we had traded bodies, it had taken months before “I”—that is, RaEm—was recovered enough to speak, and then she spoke only gibberish. One night in July of 1995, she’d crept out of her hospital room. The next day she’d been found almost dead at the Karnak Temple in Luxor.

  Better than that, she’d been found by a bunch of tourists, which resulted in lurid headlines in Egypt. AMBASSADOR’S DAUGHTER ATTEMPTS SUICIDE OVER MIDDLE EAST PEACE, DRUG OVERDOSE FOR PRIVILEGED AMERICAN, SPOILED U.S. SLUT DISGRACES FAMILY … the slant of the story really depended on the politics at origin.

  The second year, RaEm had settled down. She’d divided her time, or rather my time, among various functions in Cairo with boyfriend Phaemon and watching television. RaEm had become a TV junkie. She watched the tube incessantly, a habit from her time in the hospital. She would watch anything from Greek soap operas to
dubbed Discovery Channel programs. Anything at all, until the wee hours of the morning. She never turned off Sky TV, Cammy said.

  Based on what I knew from inhabiting her body for a year, RaEm wasn’t inquisitive enough or intelligent enough to be interested in anything outside herself, even something as inactive as watching TV. Then again, all I had were her nonemotional memories. Maybe she just needed to be in a different century to appreciate living? Cammy said she’d also been “well-known” in Cairo. By a lot of men.

  My father must have wanted to kill her. I knew I certainly did—in two years she’d done an impressive amount of damage to my relationships with my parents, my sister, my advertising clients, and the U.S. government. Apparently RaEm had obliterated a lifetime of my good behavior in two years of her being herself in my body. I eyed my body nervously. I hoped she hadn’t caught anything… .

  More priests came in, jarring my thoughts back to the present. They’d found the next verses to the Dagon song. I wondered how long I, as a supernatural girlfriend of Dagon and divine bargaining chip, was supposed to suffer through this chanting. There wasn’t even much of a melody, just antiphonal recitation of the many, many, many traits of this particular merman-god.

  Dusk came and with it the women of the city. They gifted me with little things, from a circlet of flowers or a perfectly whole shell to more elaborate gifts like a carved box that was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand or a twist of gold that formed a ring for my toe. Each woman had a different concern, a request for insight or wisdom, though most of them were domestic and more than a few were related to sexual matters.

  Sex.

  I ground my teeth, trying desperately not to let my thoughts go down that pathway. No Cheftu… . Though we’d been married for two years now, we had yet to live anything resembling a normal life. At this point I’d settle for just being in the same chronology and the same city.

  After they left, I stared up at the stars. My fear, when I’d woken up in modern times, was that I had been cast from Cheftu’s life. Then, my annoyingly positive side had suggested Cheftu would show up in modern Egypt. On that premise I’d raced off to the hotel telephone and called my father to try to mend the multitudes of bridges that RaEm had burned, so that if Cheftu arrived in modern times, we would be able to get him a passport, Social Security number, all the necessary paraphernalia.