by Kelli Kimble
The sheriff scowled.
“All I know is that I just heard her admit that she nearly killed my boy,” Mr. Damien said. “And you’ll do what’s necessary to make sure she pays for that.”
“She was defending herself,” Mother said. “As far as I’m concerned, a boy who tries to take advantage of a young lady against her express wishes deserves whatever punishment the young lady is capable of handing out.”
Mr. Damien’s mouth dropped open. Mrs. Damien whimpered.
Mother stood and put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go, Iris. We’ll be going to the hospital now.”
“Are you going to let her just leave, sheriff?” Mr. Damien asked.
Mother didn’t wait to hear the answer. The sheriff looked shocked as she pulled me through the doorway. I don’t think he ever met a Southern woman with a purpose before.
Chapter 10
“You did what?” Daddy’s face flushed beet red. “I told you I didn’t want that animal pawing at her!”
“Clark, be reasonable. We have to produce evidence to support what happened. The sheriff said that the boy blamed Iris, said she attacked him unprovoked. And he talked about us needing to hire a lawyer. He’d only say that if he thought she was guilty.”
We were eating dinner. Rather, Mother and Daddy were eating dinner. I was pushing food around my plate.
Mother slammed down her fork. “She could go to jail, Clark. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not. I just don’t trust the sheriff, is all. He doesn’t have an impartial view of the situation.”
“I agree. That’s why, after he refused to document her bruises, I took her to the hospital in Shelby. They were forced to bring in a state police officer to investigate since I crossed the county line. Surely he’ll do a better job than Sheriff Stone.”
He sat still for a long moment. “I don’t know what to say,” he finally said. “I apologize. To both of you.” He looked at Mother. For the first time in a long time, his eyes were soft and warm when he looked at her. “You’re right. The state police should be impartial.”
There was a knock at the front door.
Mother made to move, but Daddy wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood. “I’ll get it.”
“Anu, hello. Come in,” Daddy said from the front door.
“Thank you. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“No, of course not. Have you eaten? Betty makes a wonderful ham steak.”
“I couldn’t impose.”
Mother went to the kitchen and came back with a place setting. “I’m setting a place for you, Mr. Anu,” she called. “There’s plenty. Please, come and join us.”
Mr. Anu came into the dining room, along with Daddy.
“Mrs. Hond. Iris. Good to see you both,” he said. He sat and Mother fussed over him, filling his plate. “It looks and smells delicious, Mrs. Hond.”
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Daddy asked. He was reaching for a second helping now.
“I wanted to let you know that a state policeman contacted me about Iris’s case. A trooper named Seaver. He seemed to have a very good handle on the situation.”
“Yes, that’s who we spoke with at the hospital. They took pictures of the bruises on her arms.”
Mr. Anu raised his eyebrows. “You have bruises?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wonder why the sheriff seemed so bent on pursuing you as the attacker, then.”
“It’s because he’s a snake,” Daddy said. “A mean one.”
“I’d agree that he doesn’t seem like a fair man of law,” Mr. Anu said. He looked at me. “How was school today?”
“I didn’t go.”
“Will you go tomorrow?”
Mother and Daddy exchanged a look.
“Yes, I’ll go,” I said. I didn’t want to leave it up to them. I couldn’t fall behind in my schoolwork if I wanted to have acceptable grades for college.
“Good for you,” Mr. Anu said. “Your daughter is one determined young lady. And speaking of determination. I wonder if I could beg your help at the farm after school tomorrow? I need assistance with a few things.”
“It’s all right with me if you don’t mind picking her up from school,” Daddy said.
Mr. Anu shifted his steady gaze to me.
“Of course,” said Mr. Anu.
* * *
“Am I an Egyptian princess?” I demanded as soon as Mr. Anu’s truck was on the road.
The windows were down, and I didn’t want others to overhear. They already thought I was just this side of a murderer. I didn’t want to add ‘crazy as a loon’ to the pile.
Mr. Anu laughed. “Who told you such a thing?”
“You did,” I said. I thrust the scrap of paper at him, though he was concentrating on driving. “The school librarian told me this oval with the line at the bottom signifies royalty. Am I? Royalty?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “How clever of her to notice. I’m afraid to report that you’ll never rule Egypt, there’s no longer a royal family. But in your role as an Anubian, yes. You might consider yourself royalty. It is you and your spouse who will set into motion the circumstances that bring me back into a useful state.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Anubians and humans will worship me again. I shall resume my role as a god.”
I looked out the window. We were outside of town already, and fast approaching the farm.
“Aren’t you already a god?”
“Yes, but if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, has it fallen?”
I crossed my arms. “You’re not making any sense.”
“It means that I’m a god already. That is true. I cannot stop. But when people worship me again, and I lead the deceased to the afterlife, then I will have a purpose. I will both be a god and being a god. Understand?”
I crossed my arms and hunched down in my seat. He was always going on about his purpose. What about mine?
Mr. Anu patted my shoulder. “You do not need to be royalty to be special, Iris. You are chosen. Not Miss Cucciolo. Not your parents. Not this Gary boy, or any of his football friends. You. You were chosen, at the beginning of time, for this role. That makes you special.”
I watched the landscape sliding past the window. “You make it seem like I don’t have a choice.”
“Mmm.”
He turned into the driveway, and I watched a plume of dust kick up behind the truck in the side view mirror. “I had a hard time at school today,” I said.
“I am sorry to hear that. Would you like to talk about it?”
“No. I just want to go back to normal. I thought I was miserable there before. That was nothing compared to now.”
He parked the truck. He didn’t move to get out, and we listened to the ticks of the cooling engine. “Miss Hond,” he finally said. “Do you play chess?”
“No.”
“You are about to learn. Come inside, and we shall have refreshments and a game. That will cheer you up.”
“I don’t need cheering, Mr. Anu.” I choked back the tears that were threatening. “I need a friend. And a lawyer. The sheriff said I should have one.”
“Ah. Does your family have a solicitor, then? I would be happy to recommend my own if they don’t.”
“I doubt it. They don’t have the money for one.”
There was a long pause. “Did you know that chess is a game of strategy? It is both an art and a science. And it is a wonderful way to make a friend.”
I wanted to tell him to shove his stupid chess game up his nose, but he was trying to be nice. So far today, only my parents had shown me a kind moment.
“Come. I went to the market before I picked you up. I have milk and cookies.”
I smiled. “Are they chocolate chip?”
“And peanut butter.”
Inside, he went to get the chess set from somewhere in the depths of the house. He returned with a nondescript cardboard box. As I
put away his groceries, he got out the pieces and described them to me: their names, roles, and the type of movements they could make on the board. The pieces were made of stone, and the features were worn smooth with use. The board was made of matching stone, rimmed in a wooden frame to keep the checkerboard pattern tight.
Once I was finished, I sat with him and picked one up. “This is the queen?”
“Yes.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“And dangerous.”
I replaced the queen, and he moved a pawn. “This shall be my opening move. It’s your job to anticipate what I will do next. And not just on my next turn. But the turn after that, and after that. In playing the game, it is important to think about the end as well as the beginning; the middle, too.”
I picked a piece and moved it. I couldn’t yet see what he meant. The rules of which piece could do what tangled my vision of what he might do next.
He nodded, though. “Solid choice.” He studied the board and moved another pawn.
I was drawn in. I forgot about school and Gary and the sheriff. I wasn’t worried about how I would pay for college or whether I could even get admitted to college now that the teachers at school all thought I was the devil. There was only the next move and whether I could anticipate what Mr. Anu would do.
He beat me in a dozen moves. I suspect he was taking it easy on me.
“You’ve picked it up fast,” he said. “Shall we play again?”
“Okay.”
He moved the pieces back to their starting positions. “You feel like telling me about school now? Surely, at least one good thing came of your day.”
I thought back to my conversation with Miss Cucciolo when she’d translated the hieroglyphs. “Miss Cucciolo helped me translate the hieroglyphs you gave me earlier this week. But she also said something strange about Gary. She hinted that he picked me because I’m isolated.”
“She sounds perceptive. I would agree with her assessment.” He made his first move. “And incidentally, I suspect she is Anubian as well.”
“How would you know?”
“I can sense Anubians. There are a few others nearby, too. Possibly relations of hers.” He gave me a half-smile, the kind that revealed the pointy canine tooth on that side of his mouth. “Besides, her last name reveals her for what she is.”
“It does?”
“I believe it means ‘young dog’ in Italian.”
I made my move. “How many languages do you know?”
“I've lost count.”
I studied his face as he inspected the board. He didn’t have wrinkles or blemishes, his skin was a perfectly even shade of bronze, and the darkness of his hair and eyes could rival a raven’s feather. “How old are you?”
“Gods aren’t of an age.” He moved a piece and clucked his tongue. “Checkmate.”
“What? Already?”
“You need to see three-dimensionally, Iris. Not just on the two dimensions of the board. There are the x and y-axis, the physical movement of the piece, you see?” He moved a pawn forward and back, then side to side. “But there is more. A third dimension. There is time. You must always be thinking in all three dimensions when you play chess.”
I crossed my arms and sat back in my chair. “I’m beginning to feel like the game is a metaphor for some other lesson you want me to learn.”
“Perhaps.” He went to the icebox and withdrew a bottle of milk. “I think it’s time for that refreshment.” He poured us each a glass and put cookies on a plate.
I gratefully accepted since I hadn’t eaten lunch. Miss Cucciolo never let food in. It was almost like she could smell it. I sat up straighter.
“Miss Cucciolo can smell food.”
“Yes, I imagine she can.” He watched me over the rim of his glass. “And she can hear even whispers from across the library. Both beneficial things for a librarian.”
“Is that why she’s kind to me? She knows I’m like her?”
“It may be. You are drawn to her, as well. Are you not? Did you spend time in the library at school when you lived in Georgia?”
“No.” An image of Mrs. Damascus yelling at a student so loud and long that the poor girl had run from the library crying came to mind. “The librarian there was mean.”
“And do you generally find yourself visiting libraries?”
“No. But the closest library besides the one at school is in Shelby.”
He nodded. “Then I’d say you are probably drawn to each other. Just as you are to me.”
I didn’t want to say so because it seemed inappropriate, but I felt much more compelled to spend time with Mr. Anu than I did with Miss Cucciolo.
“That’s because I’m a god,” he said, breaking into my thoughts. “She’s only a distant cousin.” He took a bite from a peanut butter cookie. “Mm. These are delightful. I wish I’d known of peanut butter earlier.”
I started. “You . . . you can read my mind?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “You are just terrible at hiding your thoughts. Shall we play again?”
He set up the board and we played again. I strained to think ahead, to imagine the three-dimensions. But it eluded me. He made his final move, winning the game.
I frowned. I had the overwhelming sense that I was never going to beat him. His nonverbal answer earlier in the truck pricked at me.
“Do I have a choice? About all of this?” I asked.
“All of what?”
Mr. Anu’s placid expression didn’t change. It annoyed me, but some other emotion was lurking in my gut. My heart started beating faster. I couldn’t comprehend what my unconscious already perceived. “About helping you.”
He tipped his head. “Are you asking me about fate?”
“If that will get an answer, then yes, I’m asking about fate.”
He went to the window and looked out. “In my lifetime, I have seen many things.” He turned back to me. “The sacred text has never deviated from what was to be.”
“So, this is my fate?”
“Miss Hond. Permit me to tell you a story. Do you like stories?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. His eyes were fixed out the window and he didn’t appear to see what was out there. Rather, he was looking inward. “There once was born a princess. She was a beautiful child, and well-loved. But it was foretold that she would one day prick her finger on a spindle and die.”
I interrupted. “You mean Sleeping Beauty?”
His reverie broke and he met my eyes. “You’re familiar with the tale.”
“Of course. I saw the cartoon, just like everyone else.”
“The tale is much older than a cartoon, Iris. It is long of this earth, and I was there when it happened, and again when it was first told as a story.”
“You were?”
“Oh, yes. I had a first-hand view. The child was indeed beautiful. And she did indeed die an early death, from a terrible infection she acquired by pricking her finger on a spindle. She was just your age. Such a shame.”
“What were you doing there?”
He shrugged. “It was during a time when I sought to walk among men. I was the royal doctor.”
“But you’re a god. Why couldn’t you save her?”
“It was not to be.”
“Then I have no choice.”
“Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. The princess died because she encountered an object that she did not understand and wished to inspect out of curiosity. Would she have died if all but one of the spindles had been destroyed? Who is to say.” He splayed his hands out before him in a gesture of hopelessness.
“What does the book say?”
He shook his head and looked back out the window. “The book doesn’t deign to tell me everything, Iris. The princess’s death was not recorded there.”
“What about something that was in the book?”
“All right. Let me tell you another story. A little girl is walking in the forest. She encounters a wolf who can speak. She
does not realize the danger, and she converses with the wolf. The wolf asks, where are you going? And she tells him that she is going through the woods to visit her grandmother.”
“That’s Little Red Riding Hood,” I said.
“Yes. Many cultures have a version of this story. Have you never wondered why?”
The feeling in me finally broke free, lodging in my brain and uncurling tendrils into my spine and down my limbs. It was fear. Bald, raw, fear. It pinned me to the chair, and I found that I couldn’t move. My heart skipped faster, and my breath quickened. “Is — is my death recorded there?”
“Easy, Miss Hond.” He came over and placed his hand over mine. I would have moved away if I could; I didn’t want him to influence me. But my hand was frozen in place. I watched as his hand covered mine. The fear softened and ebbed away.
“You didn’t answer the question,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on his hand.
“I think,” he said softly and calmly, “that you know the answer.”
Chapter 11
“Our first order of business is to get the sheriff to drop his investigation of your daughter,” Mr. Finch said.
Mr. Finch was Mr. Anu’s lawyer. He had thick glasses, which distorted his eyeballs when he looked directly at someone. He was small in stature, both thin and short. Wisps of salt-and-pepper hair were combed over the top of his head to conceal his baldness. He was also incredibly pale. He had tobacco stains on his front teeth, and the sort of wrinkles around his mouth that suggested a lifelong smoking habit.
He did not appear to be Anubian, which surprised me.
The five of us were sitting around our dining room table with a spread of official-looking documents and folders in front of us.
“How do we do that?” mother asked.
“Well, the state police have launched their own investigation, and they’ve turned up a previous incident involving Gary. This establishes a pattern, and, paired with the bruises that you documented for them, it paints a damning picture . . . only Sheriff Stone hasn’t informed Mr. Damien’s parents of this development. He feels the state is encroaching on his case, and they’re locked in a power struggle.
