Faye returned his gaze. “I’m not sure, my dear. I do know, however, that people who feel a sense of purpose invariably find it when the time is right. Don’t worry. Your mission will make itself known one day. Perhaps sooner than you expect.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek and stood up to leave. “I’m going to speak to your parents now and ask them to allow you a one- week furlough. You may stay here for seven days but after that…” she trailed off.
Zachary hung his head in submission. “I know, I know.”
“Tomorrow you will help me in the yard. My vegetable garden needs weeding.”
“You’re not gonna make me work, are you?”
Faye raised an eyebrow. “Were you under the impression that you wouldn’t have to earn your keep? And in order to maintain your productivity, there will be no email, text messages, cell phones, video games, or other electronic gizmos to distract you from your chores.”
“I get it.” The boy laughed. “By the end of the week, you’ll make me wish I was back home.”
“You see right through me.” The old woman chuckled. “Goodnight, dear boy. Get some rest. You’re going to need it.” She flipped off the light switch and closed the door.
Chapter 26 – Wedlocked
Hannah uncoiled the braid wrapped around the crown of her head. She untwisted the rope of hair and ran her fingers through the curls, shaking them loose. It felt good to ease the tension in her scalp. She brushed her tresses slowly and methodically in front of the bathroom mirror, dawdling over the task. She wanted to postpone the inevitable as long as possible, trying not to think about what was waiting for her in the next room.
Today she had been married for the second time in as many months. The diviner’s thirtieth wife. A large gaggle of sister-wives had clustered around to welcome her into their family. Many were old enough to be her grandmother. No one seemed to think it was odd that a man in his seventies had just wed a girl of fourteen. Not unlike the comments made after her other wedding, everybody told her how happy she must be. No one mentioned the whereabouts of her first husband or what he might be thinking about the annulment of his marriage to her. She was supposed to be happy. Everybody said so.
“Hannah?” a male voice called to her through the closed door. “Are you almost ready?” The diviner didn’t sound commanding the way he usually did. His tone was almost cajoling.
“I… uh… I’ll be out soon,” she stammered. She peered at her reflection in the mirror to see if she looked any older than she had done on her first wedding night, but nothing had changed. The same slightly dazed and troubled face looked back at her.
“It’s getting late, my dear,” the voice hinted.
She gave her reflection one more anxious glance before opening the door and switching off the bathroom light. Hannah didn’t meet her new husband’s eyes as she scurried to the bed and slipped noiselessly under the covers.
He rolled onto his side, leaning on his elbow for support. She could feel his eyes on her.
She steeled herself and looked back at him with a blank expression. It gave her a start to realize he wasn’t wearing a nightshirt. Loose skin hung slack over the muscles on his arms. The hair on his chest was white, and his arms were covered in liver spots. She guessed he was already naked below the waist and mentally cringed at the thought.
He regarded her for several more seconds with a doting expression. “You’re very comely.” He reached out to stroke her hair.
She lay still and said nothing.
He continued. “The Lord has great plans for you, Hannah. He commanded me to build up my celestial kingdom through you. As my progeny increases, so shall my heavenly estates increase. You will be the jewel in my crown and give me more children than any of your sister-wives. Do you know what that means?”
The girl shook her head slightly.
“As my fortune rises, so shall yours. You will be elevated to the rank of principal wife. Then you will have authority over all your sister-wives. I’m sure you’ll like that.” He beamed a sickening smile at her.
She noticed for the first time how yellow his teeth were and tried not to shudder at the sight of him.
“It is quite rare for a girl so young to attain so much,” he said. “You will be the model for all consecrated brides. A shining example of what they too might achieve if they are dutiful and please their husbands well.”
She knew he expected some sign of gratitude, but she simply couldn’t bear the thought of thanking him. He had torn her family apart and separated her from everyone she loved. It didn’t seem to occur to him that she might not want to help him reach a higher rank in heaven. It also didn’t seem to occur to him that she might want something for herself that had absolutely nothing to do with him. She smothered the rage beginning to churn in her stomach, turning her face to the opposite wall. “Please put out the light,” she whispered in a small voice.
“Very well.” He nodded and did as she asked, too caught up in his own grand scheme to notice her lack of enthusiasm.
The room went thankfully black. No moonlight slanted through the single window in her bed chamber to illuminate that grinning, skull-like face.
“I trust you’ll have no reason to complain about this wedding night,” he said as he bent over to kiss her.
She didn’t answer. As awkward as her first wedding night had been, she now wished Daniel were here instead of his father. Even though the room was pitch dark, she shut her eyes. She wished she could shut her nose to the leathery smell of his skin and shut her ears to the sound of his heavy breathing.
Her own breathing grew shallow and sharp. She couldn’t seem to draw enough air into her lungs.
He began fumbling with her nightgown.
Panic-stricken, she knew there was nowhere to run. The sense of entrapment made her dizzy with fear. He began to whisper things, but the words were drowned by a roaring in her ears that sounded like the ocean. She didn’t register anything he did to her after that because a funny thing happened to her mind. It flew to the ceiling and perched on top of the wardrobe in the corner, just like a bird. She became the bird, looking down on the room and the bed from a distance. Her mind perched and waited. The body experienced a brief stab of pain, but the bird took no notice. It perched and waited.
The other body wriggled and shuddered. It made a gasping sound, then rolled away and was still. The bird perched and waited. After a few more minutes, the other body fell asleep. Then the bird fluttered down and returned to its home.
Hannah lay on her back in a rigid posture, her arms pressed flat against her sides. She tried to take up as little space as possible on the bed. Abraham had turned away from her. He snored deeply like a man who had just gorged himself on a big dinner and needed to sleep it off.
She stared at the corner of the ceiling where the bird had been and thought about all the future nights that would follow this one. They would stretch into years, maybe decades, and this would be her life from now on. Hannah knew she was Abraham’s favorite meal. He would glut his appetite until he was sick or until he developed a taste for a different kind of dish. That didn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. She had a nightmarish vision of the diviner continuing to feed off of her for the rest of her life until there was nothing left to consume but bare bone.
The image horrified her. She felt like running down the silent corridor and screaming at the top of her lungs for help, but she checked the impulse. Nobody would want to assist her, and they wouldn’t like it if she made trouble. Her mind flitted back to the compound where she had been raised. There was an older woman there who fell into fits. Some said she was possessed. The elders sent her away to a place where she was given medicine to make her quiet. She never came back. There were other wives too who became discontented, but they weren’t sent away. They were given medicine at the compound. Whenever Hannah talked to one of these women, she always got the feeling that some part of them had left anyway. Maybe they had turned into bird
s too.
Her eyes welled up with tears of despair. She was sure they would freeze as they streamed down the sides of her face, so she made no move to brush them away. Her arms remained pressed against her sides. Hannah imagined she was lying in her coffin instead of a bed. It must be a coffin because she felt a deathlike numbness creeping over her limbs. She expected that in time the numbness would spread to her heart and extinguish the spark there. She could still feel it flickering now, but she wondered how long before the light would go out completely.
Could hell be any worse than this? She remembered Annabeth’s terrified warning that she mustn’t think such things. A new notion struck her. Could the Fallen Lands be any worse than this? She almost gasped at the boldness of the question and what it implied. If she tried to run, she would be entirely alone in the world. But wasn’t she alone already? If she tried to run, she would surely be damned. Didn’t she feel damned already? The numbness crept upward toward her heart urging her to choose the kind of hell that suited her best. She would have to decide soon before there was nothing of herself left to save.
Chapter 27 – Quartz Calendar Watch
“This is ridiculous,” Cassie muttered, hopping on one leg as she tried to jam her other foot into a boot. It was still dark. More than an hour before dawn. She knew she was the last one up. Racing down the stairs, she caught up with the rest of the Arkana team, minus Stefan, in the courtyard. They were preparing to make the journey back to the calendar stones.
The pythia did a double-take when she looked at Erik and Fred. “Did you guys call each other up to decide what to wear today?”
The two men were both wearing blue jeans, yellow shirts, and white jogging shoes. Even though Fred was several inches taller than Erik, they were both blond. The effect was disconcerting.
Fred laughed self-consciously, but Erik chose to ignore the remark. The security coordinator addressed Griffin instead. “Now are you gonna tell us what this is about?”
“All will be revealed in time,” the scrivener replied evenly as he climbed into the back of the Jeep.
For the past twenty-four hours, the Brit had been in constant communication with his staff at the Central Catalog. Most of what his teammates could glean from his telephone conversations consisted of gibberish. Numbers and dates flew back and forth in some sort of coded language. Whenever the trio asked for an explanation, their questions were met by a brusque, “No time now. I’ll tell you later.”
With nothing better to do, Fred, Cassie, and Erik loitered around the hotel grounds until it was time to bid Stefan farewell. The trove keeper packed his artifact and departed almost as abruptly as he had arrived. During this interval, Griffin emerged from his teleconference only long enough to tell the team they would be driving back to the calendar stones before dawn.
Now that they were actually in motion, Cassie felt as if she was riding a roller coaster inside a tunnel. Her queasiness after reading the dagger hadn’t entirely subsided and bouncing along in the Jeep brought it rushing back. She fought off repeated attacks of dizziness and nausea as the vehicle trundled over rutted dirt trails in utter darkness. The headlights barely illuminated the road directly ahead of them much less the surrounding landscape. It was a good thing Fred knew where they were going. With no way to gauge their progress, Cassie lost track of time though they must have been traveling through the forest for over an hour. Just when her stomach was about to erupt in earnest, the vehicle came to a halt. Cassie breathed a shaky sigh of relief. They’d made it.
The pythia slid out of the truck and waited for the world to stop spinning. By the time it did, the others were already climbing the trail that led back to the megaliths. She scurried to catch up with the three flashlights bobbing ahead of her.
The team paused briefly at the top of the rise above the tree line. Now that they were out of the pines, Cassie could see a huge swath of stars twinkling overhead. A sliver of moon hung low in the sky, but its light was too weak to afford much help. Off to their right lay the plateau where the giant stones waited. Griffin trained his lantern on the megaliths and descended. The others followed in silence until he came to an abrupt stop in the center of the stone ring.
“Now what?” Cassie asked, bringing up the rear.
“Now we wait for the sun,” the scrivener replied.
Orienting himself toward the mountain peaks that ran off in a straight line to the east, Griffin chose a grassy patch of earth and sat down. The others followed his lead. They set their lit flashlights down on the ground, so they could see each other’s faces.
Cassie was relieved to be positioned anywhere that wasn’t moving. Her stomach relaxed. “OK, Mr. Wizard. Let’s hear it.” She looked at Griffin reproachfully. “You’ve kept us waiting long enough.”
He chuckled. “I’m sorry to have been so cryptic, but the calculations took a devil of a long time to sort out. They required my full concentration.”
“Why are we here and why now?” Erik asked. His tone of voice suggested he was about to throttle Griffin unless the Brit provided an immediate explanation.
“Let me begin at the beginning,” the scrivener replied.
“I hate it when he says that,” Cassie confided to Fred. In a louder voice, she asked, “What’s the matter? You never heard the expression ‘cut to the chase’?”
“I have indeed heard it, but in this context, it would make no sense. If I were to cut to the chase, you wouldn’t understand what we were chasing.”
“Have it your way.” The pythia sighed.
“Right then.” Griffin forged ahead. “Do you remember that interesting clue you provided to me after reading Stefan’s artifact?”
“You mean the star amulet?” she asked uncertainly. “It was in the shape of a pentacle.”
“Ah yes, the ubiquitous pentacle.” Griffin nodded sagely. “A bit overused in our current time, I’m afraid. I could go on about its symbolic associations ad nauseum.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” Cassie countered. “I’m still a little queasy.”
“Sorry. It’s not the historic symbolism of the pentacle that’s important anyway. Your vision dates back to events that occurred in the sixth millennium BCE. Far earlier than the meaning which came to be associated with that shape in more recent times. Its earliest purpose was to represent a star.”
“No surprise there!”
“But not just any star,” Griffin cautioned. “The brightest star in the heavens. One which has been an object of veneration to peoples all around the world. I’m referring, of course, to Sirius in the constellation of Canis Major. Its name comes from the Greek word seirios which means ‘the scorcher.’”
“Sirius is the dog star, right?” Erik asked.
“It’s a binary star system actually which appears as one bright white light to the naked eye but, yes, it is often called the dog star. To this day, we refer to the dog days of summer without understanding the phrase’s connection to Sirius. In the northern hemisphere, the star is most prominent during the hottest months. It’s quite interesting how persistent the canine association has been. You know, of course, that the ancient Greeks and Romans referred to it as a dog. But so did the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Akkadians. As far away as China, it was referred to as a wolf. American Indian tribes viewed it variously as a dog or a coyote. The Eskimos called it ‘Moon Dog.’ Such global consistency in the symbolism of the star suggests that it became an object of reverence at the very dawn of human consciousness. Most probably the first people to migrate out of Africa carried the myth of the dog star with them.
However, Sirius represented much more than a heavenly hound to the ancients. In some cultures, the star was associated with a specific deity. Consequently, it figured prominently in religious practices. The temple of Isis at Philae and the temple of Hathor at Dendera were both oriented toward the heliacal rising of the star.”
“Back up for a minute,” Erik instructed. “What do you mean by heliacal ris
ing?”
“Based on the rotation of the earth and the season of the year, stars appear and disappear from the night sky. There inevitably comes a day when a star which has not been visible for some time reappears on the horizon just before sunrise. When a star’s re-emergence coincides with sunrise that is called its heliacal rising. Heliacal, of course, comes from the Greek word helios which means ‘sun.’”
“OK, great but why is this star rising such a big deal?” Cassie glanced at the sky. Billions of stars glinted back at her, some brighter than others. Who could tell what was what up there?
“In the case of Sirius, its first appearance at sunrise coincided with the flooding of the Nile which meant everything to the ancient Egyptians. Their crops, and hence their very lives, depended on the annual inundation of the river valley. The date also roughly coincided with the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The Egyptians based their entire calendar system on its reappearance. Sirius held such great significance for them because they believed the essence of Isis dwelt in the star. It came to be called ‘the soul of the lady.’”
“The soul of the lady,” Cassie repeated. “Now where have I heard that line before?”
“I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble.” Erik’s voice was testy. “It’s great that they called it the soul of the lady, but we’re on the trail of Minoan artifacts, not Egyptian ones.”
Griffin gave a slight smile. “The Egyptians were not the only civilization to mark the importance of Sirius. They just happen to have left us the best documentary evidence of its worship. Other cultures also believed that the essence of a divinity resided in the star. The Sumerians explicitly associated Sirius with their principal goddess Inanna. The Minoans revered it as the home of their potnia—their great lady. In fact, all the temples on Crete are oriented toward the heliacal rise of Sirius because that marks the first day of the Minoan calendar as well.”
The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set Page 43
