Chapter 5: The Ether Wall
Remi, sitting on the chest of the boy named Demir, could feel her collar pulsing. The bead, split down the middle in two different colours, was flickering on and off, as if it was about to teleport her somewhere. She swallowed hard, but she truly hoped everything would go well and that she could save the boy.
"What do I need to do now?" she asked, her voice sounding groggy, as if she were about to drift off to sleep.
The boys’ grandmother brought over a ball of rough hemp string, which smelled strongly of cedar resin and heavy frankincense. With steady, well-practised movements, she wound the thick fibre around Demir’s weak wrist, then around Remi’s white paw, and then around Samir’s wrist. She secured the final knot around her own wrist and left the rest of the ball down on the slightly rusty-looking marble floor.
"We only have one hour, we can’t risk any more than that," the woman said. "You, El-Beyda, must hold my boy’s hand and bring him back home. After an hour, I will break the connection and bring you back. This clock..." she added, pointing to the ebony dressing table where a clock sat—one that Remi hadn’t even noticed until then—"will go off in exactly one hour."
Remi fixed her eyes on the clock, which looked more like a toy in the shape of a tortoise. Her eyelids felt heavier and heavier, and a cold, milky fog seemed to swallow her up completely.
Then, someone squeezed her hand. She was in a completely different reality. She had her human body back, and Demir was standing right next to her.
"Don’t let go of my hand!" the boy said. "We’re going to save my mum."
"Your mum? Where on earth are we?"
Demir looked around and, with a bit of worry in his voice, told her:
"I’m not entirely sure. We’re here, but we’re not! Look at us! We’re like ghosts."
Remi looked at the boy and squeezed his hand... he felt real. Then she looked around. They were in a sort of shaded inner courtyard from an era that had probably ended ages ago. Next to a rectangular pool, filled with blooming blue lotuses, two girls about thirteen or fourteen years old were sitting side by side. They were identical twins, with pale skin, as if they had spent their whole lives hidden away from the sun, and their features were almost identical to Remi’s.
"That’s exactly what I looked like at fourteen," the writer whispered.
"Yes, El-Beyda, that’s what you look like too. Your eyes are exactly like theirs. I want to talk to them, to warn them, but I can’t. And neither can you! Look!"
He pulled Remi along and tried to touch an alabaster statue of the goddess Bastet with the hand that was holding hers. Their hands just sliced through the empty air where the statue stood, as if it were nothing but a projection, a hologram.
"Your grandmother said the Mirror of Time is broken. She asked me to bring you back."
"Shahrazad isn’t exactly our grandmother, you’ll see."
"But she has your eyes..."
"That’s because she’s the reincarnation of our grandmother, the Pharaoh’s mother. We’ve come back to a moment before the wedding, before Akhenaten was poisoned, but I can’t warn them..."
"Maybe we should go back, your grandmother and your brother need you," Remi tried to convince him.
"Not yet, let’s stay just a bit longer," the boy said, sitting down cross-legged right on the edge of the stone pool, next to the two girls who were quite close to his age. "At least let me get to know them better. Which one do you think is our mum?"
One of the twins looked painfully fragile. She wore a dress made of royal Amarna linen, so fine and transparent it looked like liquid cobweb, pleated into thousands of asymmetrical lines. Her short, heavy Nubian wig framed a face wet with silent tears.
The second twin stood straight beside her, like a protective shield. She rejected the palace style, wearing a traditional, simple Kalasiris dress made of a single piece of pure white linen. Her natural hair was cut into a very short, rebellious bob. And around her neck—Remi gasped for air—was the exact same Collar of the Two Skies that was keeping her trapped in a cat’s body.
"Tomorrow they will take me to the palace!" the first girl said.
"Oh, my sweet Meritmut, we will have each other forever!" whispered the second girl. "I will pray to the goddess to keep you safe," she said, fastening a collar identical to her own around Meritmut’s neck.
"Yes," Demir whispered, "she must be the mum, Meritmut, and her sister is Meritbastet, the priestess."
Right at the priestess’s feet, lounging lazily on the cool stone, was a massive cat, as black as soot. It had a sleek coat and sharp, intelligent eyes that seemed to look straight through the Ether Wall, locked onto Remi.
'That looks just like Mistral,' Remi thought, waving her hand in front of the black cat’s eyes. It actually seemed to react.
"Can you see me?" she asked.
To their absolute surprise, the cat actually answered her, looking somewhat bored and rather annoyed that these intruders were bothering to speak to him:
"Of course I can see you! Why is it so incredibly important to be seen? Who do you think you are? You sort of look like the girls’ mother, but what are you doing in this state? Don't you two have bodies?"
Remi looked at the boy in amazement, and then they both stared at the insolent black cat.
"By the Eye of Horus, I swear I don’t understand how you have the cheek to wander around like that, without any bodies!"
At that exact moment, a long, annoying ringing sound interrupted their chat with the cat and broke the whole spell, dragging Remi right back into Demir’s bedroom.
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