High Stakes Trial

by Mindy Klasky

  “For now? Get some sleep.” I started to protest, but Chris overrode me. “You’ll need to be at your most alert. Go upstairs. I’m going to pick up a few things.”

  There was no reason to protest. Not when I was already fighting not to yawn. If anyone could organize an assault on a government building, Chris could.

  I headed upstairs and changed into one of the sleep shirts I kept in the bottom drawer of Chris’s dresser. I slipped into my side of the bed, curling up with my head on my pillow. I managed to keep myself from reaching behind me, stretching to feel the absent warmth of Chris’s body.

  When I slept, I dreamed of Sekhmet and lions and a cave. But every time I looked at my wrist, it was bare.

  23

  Eight hours later, I stood behind a family of four, waiting my turn to pass through a metal detector to gain access to the National Museum of Natural History. It took a conscious effort not to scratch my temple, where a fine woven mesh anchored a stringy-haired black wig that made my entire scalp sweat. I had to remind myself not to scratch my prosthetic nose either. Instead, I tried to content myself by pushing my heavy-framed black eyeglasses higher on the bridge of that rather impressive nose. At the same time, I ground my false teeth together, trying to adjust to the new bite that shoved my lower jaw forward enough to ache.

  I felt as if a spotlight was focused on my forehead, directing every security guard in the museum to pay special attention to my intentionally slouched shoulders. I tried to mimic Chris who stood behind me, chomping on a wad of pink bubble gum, utterly nonchalant as he flipped through screen after screen on his phone.

  When we finally cleared the checkpoint, I shuffled into the museum’s central atrium. A massive elephant stood above me, head lifted toward a gigantic dome. The hall of mammals stood to my left. Dinosaurs roamed to my right. I waited for Chris to take the lead, and we headed toward a wide stone staircase on the far side of the chamber.

  Tourists were heading upstairs, most of them chattering about the Hope Diamond and other bejeweled treasures. Chris, though, shuffled down the steps, taking his time as we made our way to the basement.

  The hallways beneath the main floor were utilitarian. Banged up white walls channeled us toward a first aid station, lost and found, and the maintenance department.

  If I hadn’t been watching Chris with the eagle eyes of… well… the eagle displayed in the Birds of the World exhibit on the first floor, I would have missed his hand gliding into the front right pocket of his ragged jeans. I followed suit, reaching for my own plastic identity card.

  I slipped the blue-and-gold lanyard around my neck, casually making sure my stark-eyed photograph faced my chest. A couple of hours earlier, Chris had fashioned the cards in the privacy of his home office. The multi-rayed sun matched the real ID he’d commandeered from Shannon Masterson, the housemate of a boyfriend of a sister of the sphinx who taught second grade in the Den.

  Shannon worked as an entomologist in the live butterfly exhibit on the second floor. I could only imagine the story Chris had concocted to, um, borrow her credentials. Or maybe he hadn’t lied to her face. Maybe he’d simply ordered his sphinx to somehow dose Shannon’s Saturday brunch Bloody Mary.

  I didn’t want to know the details. I’d been sleeping, of course, living out my strangely time-shifted life. All I knew was that my ID card had still been warm when Chris pressed it into my palm. My fake name was printed in a font that resembled the one on Shannon’s card. The holographic shimmer of the real ID was only simulated with colored printing on my jury-rigged duplicate.

  With any luck, no one would get close enough to detect the difference.

  Chris slouched with affected disinterest, but nothing could change the watchful dart of his eyes as we passed multiple doorways. He was counting in his head, keeping track of the order, measuring the path he’d mapped earlier that day.

  One right turn, into another dingy corridor. A left. Another right.

  We stood in a locker room. Small metal cabinets lined the walls, pressed metal slats looking like disapproving mouths. Chris and I didn’t have anything to lock away, though. We hurried past the lockers to the large supply closet at the far end of the hall.

  We’d timed our arrival well. The daytime shift of janitors was still out working. The night shift hadn’t arrived yet. Afternoon breaks were finished.

  Chris wasted no time donning a bright blue service apron. He passed one to me, and I slipped it over my head, almost catching the collar on my wig. I quickly pocketed the shop rags he passed me, along with a spray bottle of sanitizer.

  I’d read somewhere that anyone could get past any door, if they only held a clipboard and looked official. Well, no one questioned a janitor with an over-size yellow trashcan on wheels.

  Not even when the janitor in question took the wrong hallway and ended up at a dead end in front of the museum’s lost and found office. Chris muttered as we backtracked through the corridors.

  He shouldn’t have gotten lost. He’d explored this entire floor earlier in the day, pretending to be an unlucky tourist tracking down his lost cell phone, hoping against hope that a good Samaritan had turned in the device.

  But the hallways were tangled—and nondescript—enough that Chris lost his way a second time. We ended up at an elevator bank that only went to the museum’s first and second floor. Ultimately, we were forced to work the basement like a labyrinth, consistently taking left turns in the tangle of hallways until we found the service elevators that went all the way up to four.

  In the privacy of that elevator, I longed to review our strategy. But I knew that privacy was merely an illusion. The elevators were equipped with security cameras, unblinking eyes that recorded my every breath for posterity. I pretended to find a hangnail fascinating, worrying at my cuticles until the heavy doors opened onto the fourth floor.

  The museum’s public space presented one view to visitors—broad granite and glass hallways filled with the treasure of a nation. The maintenance areas in the basement presented another view—utilitarian anonymity for day-to-day functioning of the institution.

  The fourth floor displayed yet another side of the museum. The hall was filled with rank after rank of compact shelving. Each ceiling-high unit was labeled with an arcane combination of letters and numbers, the labels centered above the heavy ship’s wheel that let users maneuver shelves along well-worn metal tracks.

  My order-seeking mind immediately grappled for meaning in the coded letters and numbers. I needed more information, though. I had to know what items were filed on the shelves behind the neat labels. Casting a quick glance up and down the hall to make sure Chris and I were alone, I darted into an opening in the stacks.

  Fumbling in a pocket of my work apron, I found a pair of blue nitrile gloves. Slipping them on to conceal my fingerprints, I studied the boxes on the shelves. Each was equipped with a handle, like a shallow dresser drawer. A label above each handle held an alphanumeric code, close kin to the one on the shelving unit.

  Conscious of Chris waiting in the main corridor, I eased open a drawer. And I barely caught a strangled gasp of surprise against the back of my throat.

  The drawer was filled with stag beetles, each insect the length of my palm. They had arched legs and wicked antlers, and their cupped wings looked like iridescent shells in the dim light.

  They weren’t moving. I knew they weren’t alive. But my wig started itching with renewed vigor, and I could feel sweat pool between my fake nose and my trembling upper lip.

  All right, then. EN on the labels must mean Entomology. I shoved the drawer closed and grabbed hold of my yellow trashcan, moving quickly enough that Chris had to lengthen his stride to match mine.

  EN was Entomology. HE was Herbarium—countless folders of dried plants, each with a legend showing who had collected the item, and where, and when.

  The herbarium stretched on for what seemed like acres. When we finally reached a fork in the corridors, Chris suggested that he go to the left and I
go to the right. We’d been lucky so far, not running into anyone else. We hoped that the real janitorial staff didn’t serve the fourth floor on Saturdays, but we had no way of knowing for sure.

  We agreed to text each other, whoever found the ancient Egyptian relics first.

  After the herbarium, I discovered an assortment of blown eggs, each nestled in fine cotton wool. There were hundreds of wolf skulls, every one accompanied by a map that indicated where the specimen had been collected. I found hundreds of trilobite fossils, each deceptively heavy in its cushioned box.

  The range of artifacts was stunning. The number of examples within each category was mind-numbing. My order-craving self longed to study each record, to determine the similarities and differences between the items.

  But I wasn’t roaming the museum as a continuing education student. I was searching for one specific item. And I didn’t have a lot longer. Chris’s entire plan hinged on our leaving the museum with the general population of visitors, by 5:30 at the latest.

  Just as I was giving up faith, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced down to see a cryptic notation from Chris: N27.

  I was about to text back a question, when I realized he was giving me coordinates. Leaving my camouflaging trashcan behind for speed, I hurried to the twenty-seventh rank of shelves on the north side of the building.

  Sure enough, Chris’s yellow can sat in the corridor. I found him halfway down a row of shelves. AN said the labels. Anthropology?

  “Did you find it?” I asked, my voice breathier than my quick trot across the floor could justify.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I think I’m close. Everything in this row is made of glass.”

  I joined him, pulling out drawers at random. There were blown glass baubles, the type of thing that would hang on a chandelier. Murano, said the card inside the box. Date: 1748 CE.

  Chris moved down the aisle, selecting another gliding drawer, this one nearly a foot deep. He was rewarded with a jute-wrapped bottle, a container that could have been the model for countless bottles of Chianti. Firenze, said the card. Date: c. 1432 CE. We were heading in the right direction.

  I took three long steps, bending down to open yet another drawer. This one housed three tiny vials, each one nearly opaque with opalescence. Roma, proclaimed the card. Date: c. 300 BCE.

  Another stride back into history. A drawer at waist level, chosen at random. A bright blue ibis, the size of my palm. Luxor, said the card. Date: c. 1100 BCE.

  Chris opened the next drawer, the one below. I felt him catch his breath at the same time I did. A miniature mummified cat gleamed back at us, each turn of linen bandage picked out in fine blue-green glass. Heliopolis. C. 2500 BCE.

  I barely waited for him to slide the drawer home before I leaped for the next one. A charm in the shape of Horus, the falcon-headed god. The next was Anubis, the jackal.

  My fingers trembled in front of the lowest drawer. I could sense this was our goal. It contained the treasure we’d risked so much to find. The roof of my mouth buzzed, and my fingertips tingled, as if I were already in communion with Mother Sekhmet.

  I offered up a silent prayer as my fingers wrapped around the handle. I glanced at Chris and read the eager anticipation on his face, crystal clear despite his own wig and fake teeth.

  Holding my breath, I slid the drawer open.

  It was empty.

  24

  “No!” Chris moaned, as we both stared at the white cotton batting.

  But my body knew more than my mind. My fingers understood that the amulet couldn’t be missing. The treasure couldn’t be gone.

  I opened the drawer above the empty one, double-checking one more time. Jackal-headed Anubis laughed at me.

  I opened the drawer below to find an open-mouthed hippo.

  My fingers burned. I couldn’t be wrong. I grabbed the handle to the left of the empty drawer and yanked hard. A spray of iridescent fragments glinted from their cushioned bed, some long-shattered vessel.

  The drawer on the right. In my vision, it glowed with the red of sunset. The red of blood. I caught my breath as I reached toward it. The drawer glided on silent casters.

  The amulet glowed from its pure-white bed, ancient blue glass seeming to shine from within.

  Sekhmet stood on the left. Her figure was carved with soft curves, the lines of her linen gown creased with a darker blue. Her head was shaped like a lioness, the ears brought out in indigo-rimmed relief. Her eyeteeth glinted above her mysteriously smiling lips.

  The other figure was broken off at the neck. It was a man; that much was apparent from his short linen garment, from the solid legs that held him erect. But whether his head was shaped like a mortal man, or a desert creature, or some mythical, chimeric beast, I couldn’t begin to guess.

  I stripped off my nitrile glove, baring the fingers of my right hand. As I reached for the amulet, Chris’s grip closed on my shoulder. But he must have felt something—my determination, or the wild electricity jangling through my body from the amulet itself. He dropped his hand and let me touch the charm.

  As I had imagined, the faience glass was cool against my palm. As soon as my fingers wrapped around the object, though, it began to warm.

  The taste of lemons sprayed across the back of my throat. The fingers of my left hand automatically moved to touch my hematite bracelet, to bolster my bond with Mother Sekhmet through my insignia.

  But my bracelet was still in the custody of the Eastern Empire court. My finger ached, too, where my coral ring was missing. I clutched the amulet tighter.

  I expected to feel Sekhmet’s touch, her dynamic presence stealing over my brain. I didn’t know if she would come to me in human form, or in her lion shape, or somewhere in between. I wasn’t sure if I’d find her at home with her cubs, or striding through bloody battle. But wherever she appeared, however she was formed, she was my mother and I longed to greet her.

  But Sekhmet didn’t come to me.

  Instead, I slipped through shadows. The hot desert sun was behind me. My body was chilled, as if I’d slipped behind a massive granite wall to escape a punishing summer heat.

  I blinked hard, but my eyes couldn’t parse the darkness. A tiny part of my mind warned that I should be frightened. Anything could come out of the shadows. Anything could rise from the abyss.

  I wasn’t afraid, though. I was still. Calm. I was cradled in a moment of quiet, a minute-hour-day-life outside the chaos of the everyday world.

  Standing in the darkness, isolated from anything I’d ever known before, I could not feel my arms. My hands were floating…somewhere, separate and apart from me, from sensation. My legs were numb.

  But my feet were still anchored, steady against solid stone. And as I swayed gently in the darkness, something brushed my ankles.

  My eyes were still useless in this foreign space, but I somehow sensed a Presence. Not with my eyes, not with my ears, not with my tongue or nose or fingers.

  I knew the Presence in a way I’d never known anything else before. My heartbeat matched it. Slow and sinuous, my body melded to the thing that wrapped around my legs. It pulsed around me, in me, through me. It became me.

  Or I became it.

  Or I had always been it.

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t say. I didn’t have the words. But I was the serpent that twined around my human body, and it was me.

  Come, it said, or it thought, or it vibrated the cells in my body to make me understand. I understood its longing, its hunger, its desire. It wanted my company. It wanted to share its whole existence with me.

  I started to follow. I tasted a new world with the whorls of my fingerprints. I heard a symphony of new colors. I smelled a cascade of images, all the world that could be mine, all the power I could possess.

  There was a wildness in the serpent, a glory and a wholeness and a separateness I’d never imagined before. I could transform. I could be more than a woman, more than a sphinx, more than whatever imperial form I’d struggled to compreh
end.

  All I had to do was leave behind the world I knew.

  All I had to do was tumble into the maelstrom, the chaos, the swirling destruction that could never be placed into order.

  All I had to do was leave myself behind forever.

  I wanted to go. I was terrified to go. I refused to go—not now, not without bidding farewell to everyone I knew, to Chris and to James and to Allison, too.

  As I hesitated, a light grew in the distance. I could see it with my eyes, the way I’d seen a million lights before. It glowed red as sunset. Red as blood.

  It grew closer, warmer, somehow more solid. And the part of me that wasn’t me, the part of me that was the serpent recognized the life force of the other.

  Now there was a distance. I wasn’t part of the serpent any longer. I could feel it, with my flesh and with that strange other sense, the sense of knowing beyond my five normal senses. I knew it, but I was separate from it.

  I felt it greet the other. I felt it take the light. Take the light and give the darkness and merge and split and join together again.

  The light was Mother Sekhmet. I knew that now. I’d always known it.

  And the serpent was Sheut. Sheut was primal and unknowing and unknowable. Sheut came from a time before words, a time before humanity, a time lost forever.

  But Sekhmet’s carmine glow spread over me. And Sheut’s shadows flowed beneath me. And I was known. I was safe. I was loved.

  25

  Cold.

  Absolute, unfathomable cold.

  I shuddered, a massive trembling that quaked from the crown of my head to the curl of my toes. My teeth started to chatter so hard I thought my jaw would break.

  I opened my eyes. When had I closed my eyes? I licked my lips. When had my throat gone dry? I tried to stand, to straighten my legs, to throw my shoulders back from their fetal curve.