Peggy
-x-
The hot Cairo sun beats down on the group I am travelling with as we ride on the bumpy, doorless, transit van to our destination about one hundred kilometers outside of the city. Sixty years ago after a sandstorm uncovered the opening of a tomb a British expedition set out in hopes of finding The Lost Queen, Nefera, not a single man came back. The site is said to be cursed and I think that is what draws me towards it, like a moth of a flame, my sisters had begged me not to go to Egypt but here I am, sand in my curls and sweat dripping down my back. My phone begins to ring in my cargo pants and I pull it out to see George Washington's face flashing across the screen,
"Hey, I'm almost to the site, just about another minute or two." George is a well known professor and archaeologist as well as a personal friend of my father, he used to sit me on his knee when I was a child and read me stories of the Egyptian gods and goddesses that inspired me to pursue a career as an Egyptologist in the first place.
"Great, there is a sand storm coming in, you should get here in plenty of time to avoid it." I glance back over my shoulder to see a wall of sand quickly approaching us. "Are you ready for this?" George asks and I have to keep myself from making a squeaking noise of excitement, trying to remain professional in the presence of my new coworkers, most of which are locals with very little knowledge of the English language, matching very nicely with my limited Arabic vocabulary.
"I can't wait to see it, is the tomb amazing?" George gives a dreamy sigh, as if he is a teenaged girl,
"It's better than the stories I used to tell you, Peggy, you're going to love it." The van stops and I glance up to see a mass of canvas tents ahead of me, I smile at the welcomed sight of my pseudo-uncle standing in front of the van, hat in one hand, cellphone in the other, a large grin on his face. I climb out of the transit and throw myself into George's arms,
"Is it beautiful? Is it everything we dreamed?" George kisses my forehead, knocking my hat back a little bit,
"It's even better," George looks up and says something in Arabic to the men I had arrived with before turning his attention back to me, "I had your trunk placed in the female tent, there will only be two of you sadly, Lily and Nancy both come down with some sort of illness and had to be sent to Cairo."
I straighten out my hat, following George as he begins to walk towards a small tent with a red ribbon hanging on the front flaps, the women's tent I assume. My trunk had been sent out on an earlier transit so that all I have with me at the moment is a sketch book, a few pencils, a flashlight, and a photograph of my sisters, Angelica and Eliza.
"This is where you will be staying while you are here but I think we should go inside the tomb while the sandstorm runs its course." I nod, mentally making a map of how to get from my tent to the tomb so that I do not get lost in the labyrinth of identical canvas tents.
George and I descend the makeshift stairs into the tomb and the temperature drops about ten degrees due to the sunlight being blocked by the mounds of sand that has been built up over the centuries. The entrance leads into a colossal room, statues of the goddess Isis line the colorful walls that are painted with what are most likely stories of the life of whoever rests in this grand tomb.
"Why don't you get familiar with the tomb," George turns me by my shoulders to face a dimly lit tunnel, "You can start there." George's voice holds a tone of smugness that throws me off slightly, why does he sound so proud of himself for sending me down a tunnel? Weird.
"Alright," I take out my flashlight and make my way to the tunnel, unable to shake a sense of familiarity as my eyes gaze upon the intricate red and gold detailing lining the hall.
"You must be Peggy," A low but keenly feminine voice comes from my left, scaring the daylights out of me,
"Eep!" My flashlight clatters to the ground and I look to see a goddess standing before me, her dark curls and cognac eyes illuminated by the flame of her kerosene lamp. My eyes land on the red and gold scarab necklace that she has clasped at the hollow of her throat by a dainty gold chain. There is an odd pulling sensation in my stomach and my entire vision changes, the tomb around me disappearing.
I stand in a grand throne room that is lit by several large, flaming torches.
"Hello?" I call out to a woman standing in the center of the room, the woman turns and I gasp-It's me. My hair is short and black, golden beads braided into it, a wig no doubt, but a royal headdress rest upon it. My eyes are lined thick with kohl and my lips are painted red-I must be the Queen.
"Ebe!" The Queen shouts, her dark eyes focused on a point beyond me, I turn to see the woman from the tomb standing at the mouth of the throne room, dressed as a goddess, and in this setting, with the Knot of Isis painted on her shoulder in blue I can not help but wonder if she truly is the divine Isis.
"Nefera," The two women embrace happily, Nefera pressing kisses to Ebe's face, leaving little red marks wherever her lips touch.
"I thought I had lost you..." The sentence fades away before it is completed, the grand throne room dimming like an old cinema film.
I blink a few times, realizing that I am once again standing in the tomb with the grinning woman-goddess?
"I'm Maria Reynolds," Maria prompts, snapping me back to reality,
"Oh, hi, sorry," A blush of embarrassment colors my cheeks, "It's nice to meet you." I pick up my flashlight but keep the beam pointed downwards, cherishing the golden glow of the flame-lamp gives Maria.
"George tells me you specialize in translating hieroglyphs?" Right. Hieroglyphs, my speciality, the reason I am in Egypt at George's invitation. Pushing away thoughts of Maria's beauty and whatever heat-induced hallucination I must have just had and nod my head.
"That would be me." Maria takes my hand and begins to pull me farther into the tunnel,
"Then I have something strange to show you." I allow myself to be pulled along, wondering what could be so strange about hieroglyphs. It's a known language with set characters. "There is something weird about these glyphs and for the life of me I can't figure out what's going on with them."
Maria and I dead end into an oddly spaced room that is about three feet by seven feet, one long wall bearing four squares of hieroglyphs.
"How peculiar..." I mumble, focusing the beam of my flashlight on the first block. The hieroglyphs are normal but their arrangement is...puzzling. "I've never seen anything like this." Maria is completely removed from my mind and replaced with thoughts of my work. I pull out my well-worn sketchbook and a pencil and begin to carefully transcribe each of the four blocks. I don't know how long I sit there, making sure that each glyph is perfectly drawn and in the right order but it seems like hours of being bent over my sketchbook, sitting in the sand that covers the stone floor.
"You're cute when you're working." I jump once again, dropping my sketchbook and pencil in my lap, Maria, I had forgotten she was still in the room. I turn my head to see Maria smiling down at me,
"Could you stop scaring me?" Maria crosses the room and sits down on the ground next to me, resting her head on my shoulder, making my heart beat faster and faster at the proximity.
"I haven't been trying, it's not my fault that you're so jumpy." I sigh, she's right. Perhaps it is from the coolness of the tomb, or the fact that somewhere in this tomb there is (Hopefully) an ancient monarch waiting to be found, maybe even due to the fact that I feel a sense of familiarity with both the tomb and with Maria. "Peggy?"
"Hmm?" Maria sits up, brushing a stray piece of hair from my braid behind my ear, her cool fingertips leaving a tingling sensation wherever they touch,
"We should go get dinner before the mess closes for tonight, you won't want to miss the entertainment." Maria stands beside me and I take a moment to close my sketchbook and tuck it away in my bag before standing up as well, brushing the sand from my pants, I look at Maria who is waiting for me and nod shyly to her.
Maria leads me out of the tunnel and when we reach the main hall I realize that everyone has already left the tomb,
"So, Maria, what is your specialty?" I ask, working my fingers through my braid to let my hair down, slipping the elastic around my wrist,
"I had hoped to focus on linguistics but I realized that I have no talent for languages," She runs a hand through her curly brown hair as we ascend the stairs out of the tomb, light guitar music reaching our ears, "So, I turned my studies in favor of art history and the interpretation of Ancient Egyptian art and found that I excel in the subject." Art. For the first time I notice the paint on her fingertips and the charcoal on her cotton pants. It fits her. "Now come on," Maria grabs my hand, sending bolts of electricity through me with a smile, "Lafayette is playing the guitar and I want to dance."