Page 3 of Ra
Abasi clasped his hand before him and performed a little bow to the woman he’d vowed to protect just as he’d protected her father when he was still able to explore the land and peoples Abasi called home. “I am but a tool, placed here at the right time to assist you.”
“Abasi, you are so much more. I don’t know how I’d have managed for so long without your help and your friendship. And now… this,” she said, turning slowly in a circle as she allowed herself to drop her habitual scientific regard for all she saw and allowed herself to be the little girl who fell in love with this period, this culture, this people, through her father’s work so many years ago.
“Do you think the scarab your father gave you might be the same as these?” Abasi asked.
Azi pulled her gaze from the ceiling and focused on Abasi. “I don’t think so, it’s much smaller.”
“Is it?” Abasi asked.
Azi dug her hand into the front pocket of the khaki cargo pants that had become her unofficial uniform and pulled out a small golden scarab with a simple band attached to it to form a ring. She ran her thumb over it and smiled down at it as she had a flash of the memory of her father gifting it to her.
“It looks the same to me,” Abasi said.
She nodded then walked over to the sarcophagus and knelt down beside it. “It’s similar, but not exact.”
“Yes, I see now. Yours has a green inlay on its wings and these do not.”
“Mine is a little smaller, too. Otherwise, it’s very similar.”
“Almost like you were supposed to find these,” Abasi said.
Azi laughed. Her laughter filled the tomb echoing through it and filling it with a life it hadn’t experienced in thousands of years. “I’m just honored to be able to say you shared it with me.”
“It was all you, Dr. Clement,” Abasi said.
Eight years later…
Chapter 1
Azi did her best to smile as the visitors made their way past her and up the stairs to the smaller tomb above.
“This way, ladies and gentlemen! We have much more to see on our adventure! We have yet to see the Valley of the Kings!”
“And the pyramids! Those are the real tombs I came to see. I heard they’ve found Nefertiti! Definitively!” one over-weight, over-heated, over-dressed lady puffed at her husband.
“I can’t imagine it’s as stunning as this one,” her husband answered.
“It is. This one is just a room. There’s no one in it! That stunning sarcophagus and no one in it. I don’t know why they call it a tomb. There’s not a single dead person here! That’s what makes them truly interesting is the dead!” she insisted, as they hurried to catch up to their tour guide.
Azi waited until they and the other throngs of tourists left her and her ‘Tomb of Ra’, as it had come to be known, alone. She looked longingly around, wishing she’d had the opportunity to spend time truly searching every inch of it herself. But, being the stickler for rules that she was, she’d advised the Egyptian Department of Antiquities of her find. The moment they’d realized the gravity of her find, they’d rushed in, taken over, and given her little more than an honorary position as the discoverer of the ‘Tomb of Ra’. She sighed tiredly as she walked slowly around the tomb, taking in all the beautiful decor, the sparkling gold, and what she now knew was an empty sarcophagus. It had apparently never been used. Neither had this tomb. Eitherits owner never got the chance to use it, or it was as she’d said originally — it was meant to be a temple. Either way, the smaller common tomb above had done its job and hidden her find for thousands of years, from any who might have searched for the grandeur of this one.
She heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to face the entrance, waiting to see who it was.
Abasi came into view, his usual happy, joyful self. “Dr. Clement!” he exclaimed.
“Azi. It’s Azi. When are you going to stop calling me Dr. Clement? You’ve known me since I was little.”
“When I, too, am a doctor, perhaps I will feel at ease dropping the formality of your title. Until then, you will always be Dr. Clement.” He thought about it for a few seconds then grinned at her again. “Unless a better title presents itself.”
“Well, I’m not going back to school any time soon, so I doubt there will ever be another title.”
“One never knows, Dr. Clement. I would remain open to all things, were I you.” He tapped the floor where he stood with the toe of his shoe before stepping to the right and doing the same thing. Once he reached the wall, he used the toe of his shoe to tap gently at the seam of the floor and the wall, also laying his head against the wall and tapping it gently with his fingertips.
Azi started laughing when she realized what he was doing. “There’s nothing else here.”
“There might be! We thought there was nothing else in the tomb above, but it was a decoy.”
“That is very true. But I’m sure after all the experts they brought in over the last two years, if there was something else, they’d have found it.”
