Labyrinth Through The Mirror of Time Chapter 23

 Chapter 23: What Do We Do Now?

Professor Simoon left his heavy briefcase under the coat rack in the hallway. He wanted to make sure he didn't bring all the seriousness of their race against time into the House of the Winds all at once. On the other side of the world, in Zamalek, Anemo let out a deep sigh and ran a hand through his hair, looking at his father with a serious face.

"Our life, Dad, is ruled by a very fragile kind of arithmetic lately," Anemo said with a bittersweet smile. "We need to catch you up on the latest news. Dr Hazem El-Amin has given us a strict ban. No sessions with the cedar rope until the eleventh of October."

"The eleventh of October?" Professor Simoon frowned, adjusting his glasses. "But that means nearly a whole week of a complete break! What on earth happened?"

"The fever, Professor," Remi-Bise spoke through Anemo, though her big blue eyes, fixed on the screen, spoke for themselves. "Our last journey into the Wall of Ether almost burned me and Samir alive. Hazem says our bodies need to anchor themselves back to the present world, otherwise we risk never waking up again."

A heavy silence fell over both sides of the FaceTime call. Mistral sat down elegantly on his front paws with his ears pricked, while Aeolus sniffed his coffee bean, as if the smell of it could sharpen his mind. Little Sirocco, however, simply could not keep quiet:

"What do you think, Miss Remi? How many sessions do you need to wake that boy up? Can't he hear the tortoise clock? Please bring us a tortoise clock too... for Mistral."

Without any warning, Mistral swiped his black paw right over the little kitten's head.

"Leave the frogs alone, squirt!"

All this time, Fleur was acting like a proper, professional translator, telling the Professor absolutely everything the furry friends were saying. Everyone agreed that Sirocco's question about the number of sessions in the Wall of Ether was exactly what was on their minds too.

Professor Simoon ran a hand through his hair, looking over his shoulder at the papers full of sketches inside the briefcase under the coat rack.

"That is a complete unknown. Each trance fixes the Mirror of Time in Shehrazad's courtyard, piece by piece. But if we do it too rarely, time will run against us. And there is something else that is bothering me... Is the winter solstice in December really your very last chance, Remi?"

Remi twitched her tail restlessly on Anemo's lap. She remembered perfectly how, during her visits to the Wall of Ether and in the vision from the Mirror, she had seen Meritbastet changing from one form to another without any effort at all, as if she were simply stepping from one room to another.

"If Queen Tiye's map says December is the deadline, then so be it," Remi sighed with a hint of anger in her voice. "But how come in the past, the ones who wore the Collar of the Two Skies could transform whenever they pleased? Without waiting for solstices, and without burning in milennial fevers? Something has changed in the mechanism of these collars, and we just don't understand it."

"Maybe their technology was... different. Maybe we are working with relics that are half-broken now," Aeolus suggested from the top of the encyclopedia, lifting a tiny paw. "Like an ancient operating system that keeps giving errors in the twenty-first century."

"Mon Dieu! You are giving me a dreadful headache! Enough with all this kitchen metaphysics!" Mistral interrupted, shaking his black fur. "There are plenty of days left until the eleventh of October. How are you filling your time over there in Zamalek? Are you just staring at the walls?"

Anemo burst out laughing, feeling the tension melt away. He looked at Remi, who was now resting her head on her paws, completely bored by all the calculations.

"We've thought about that, Mistral. Since we are banned from magic and trances, we've decided to pass the time by visiting the tourist sights, seeing as we are stuck in Egypt anyway. Tomorrow, we are going to the pyramids. We'll see history right where it happened, in the daylight, not through cedar smoke."

Fleur clapped enthusiastically in front of the screen, while Sirocco exclaimed, looking very puzzled:

"Ooh, the 'puramids'! Does that mean you are doing geometry problems on your holidays? How rubbish!"

Anemo looked longingly at his father's face in Dublin. Professor Simoon was smiling, but you could see the regret in his eyes that he had been forced to leave them alone in Cairo just as the story was getting complicated.

"I wish you were here with us, Dad!" Anemo said with real nostalgia in his voice. "The pyramids would make much more sense with your explanations as a professor."

"Oh, what's with all this nostalgia? I've already told you that I might come back."

The conversation went on for a few more minutes with Sirocco's silly blunders and Mistral's posh airs, but when the screen went blank, only the echo of their promise to face the desert was left in the Zamalek apartment. The pyramids were waiting for them the next day, and beneath their sands lay secrets. More secrets.