Chapter 24: Sand and Water
The next day, the morning of the sixth of October opened with a raw blue sky, so clear that the line of the desert looked as if it had been cut with a scalpel. Omar’s black-and-white taxi left behind the lilac Jacaranda trees of Zamalek and dashed towards Giza.
As they got closer, the air changed its texture. It became thick and hot, filled with fine grains of Saharan dust that dried their lips and settled like gold powder on Anemo’s clothes. Remi stood with her head peeking out of the transport bag, her blue eyes wide with wonder. Through the open window, the desert wind slapped her face—a heavy wind that carried the burning heat of sun-baked stone, but which, strangely, pulsed inside the pads of her paws like an electric current.
When the car stopped at the edge of the plateau, the noise was deafening: shouts of camel drivers, the clinking of cheap souvenirs, and hundreds of people running around looking for the perfect angle for photos. But Omar did not let them get lost in that sea of tourists. With a firm gesture, he waved for them to follow him towards the south-east, bypassing the Sphinx, along a path where the wind swept the sand off the bare rock.
Gradually, the voices of the tourists were left behind, swallowed by the vastness of the desert, leaving only the rustle of the sand carried by the breeze. They stopped in front of a hollow in the natural rock, partly buried under a shifting dune: the entrance to the ancient necropolis of Bubasteum.
"Look over there, into the darkness," Omar said, his voice turning low, almost a whisper, so as not to break the mystical silence of the place. "Most people see nothing but dead geometry here. But Professor Simoon taught me that Giza was a heart that pumped the world's energy. Here, at Bubasteum, archaeologists have uncovered thousands of sacred cat mummies. The Egyptians didn't just bury animals, Anemo; they sealed a fluid node."
Anemo picked Remi up and placed her on his shoulder, leaning against a massive block of limestone. From this high position, the white cat stared straight into the black mouth of the necropolis. The collar around her neck began to vibrate, emitting a fine hum, an ancient frequency that only she could decode.
In that very second, under the scorching October sun, the reality of the present began to shimmer like a mirage. Over the grey, weathered, and rough blocks of limestone that Anemo was touching, Remi’s mind projected the image of the place in its golden age.
The dull sand of the desert vanished, swallowed by giant slabs of black granite, polished so perfectly that they reflected a galaxy of stars even during the day. The pyramids were no longer mountains of broken steps; they were completely encased in white Tura limestone, bright as snow, reflecting the sunlight like gigantic diamonds that blinded the horizon. At their peaks, capstones made of electrum—that precious alloy of gold and silver—sent blinding rays towards the sky, connecting the earth with the stars.
The Sphinx was not a ruin mutilated by time; it was a majestic lioness, carved into living stone, painted in bright mineral colours—vibrant ochre and lapis lazuli blue. And at its feet lay no dry desert, but deep basins filled with the pure water of the Nile, guided through secret underground channels. Along the water's edge, priestesses in sheer linen dresses, their eyes heavily lined with black khol, burned cedar resin and kyphi, letting a sweet, heavy smoke float over the mirrors of water.
Remi understood everything in a single second. Omar was talking in the background about Sekhmet and Bastet, explaining to Anemo how the two goddesses were two sides of the same coin—Sekhmet, the lioness who ruled the fury and pressure of the overflowing waters, and Bastet, the cat who tamed the flow, turning chaos into gateways through the ritual basins.
"The mirrors are water," Remi said to herself, and her cat heart beat so hard it felt like it would burst out of her chest. The queen's sister, Meritbastet, knew how to use this fluid transition. The fever that had burned through her and Samir over the last few days had been no ordinary sickness, but the untamed energy of Sekhmet. Omar turned towards Anemo, smiling as he saw his fingers trembling on his phone, trying to jot down the ideas that were coming like an avalanche.
"You're a writer, Anemo, and this place ought to inspire you. The Professor told me you have a brilliant imagination. But what you see here isn't fiction. In ancient times, the lector priests wrote spells on papyri precisely to maintain the balance between the lioness and the cat, between the living water and destruction. A true writer doesn't invent; they just download onto the pages realities that others, out of pride, call fantasy."
Anemo startled, feeling the guide's words strike directly at his literary pride, but also bringing a deep fear of the truth they were living. He looked at Remi and froze.
From the dry, burning rock of the Bubasteum necropolis, where rain had not fallen for months, a drop of pure water was strangely trickling out of a crack in the stone. Remi stretched out her muzzle to gather it. A shiver of ice shot through her from the tips of her ears to her tail. From that single drop born in the heart of the desert came an impossible, mystical, and cooling scent: the smell of damp peat, rainy fern, and freshly cut grass.
The network of water pulsed beneath the sands of Giza, connecting the sacred mummies of Bastet directly to a whole network of mirrors of time.
"Be careful, my friend," Omar added, patting Anemo on the shoulder as the sun began to go down, casting long, blood-coloured shadows across the desert. "Giza does not reveal its secrets to just anyone."
Anemo held Remi close to his chest. Under the blinding light of Egypt, the Plateau had offered them more than just a history lesson; it had given them the very first true key to the winter solstice.
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