Dateline: Atlantis (37 page)

Donny walks through the bedroom door and leans down to give her a kiss and a good luck wish. But he must notice something has altered, because he keeps his eyes locked on hers

“What's new, Wiggly?” he says with that teasing, half-wink.

“Oh, just about everything.”

“Not sure I like this…”

“You'll love it. Ever been to the Yucatan in June?”

#

At La Guardia Airport, Amaryllis walks next to Wright, promising him first dibs on her freelance Mexican story. He nods and struts, pacing like the guy who owns the biggest dog on the block. But as they near the security area, Wright starts to pale, his bravado washing away like so much starch in the laundry. Beads of sweat form on his nose.

“So, I suppose this is it,” he says, trying to mask airplane anxiety. “The big goodbye. Until the wedding.” He's silent for a beat before regaining his voice. “It's not easy grooming a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, you know. I hate to have you walk away.”

“Well, I have my life, too.”

Wright looks wounded at that, shifting his carry-on bag and staring at the linoleum floor.

“But your paper's reputation always will be enhanced.” She points to the prize that distends his carryon bag. “It's not like you came away empty. The
Times
will hate you for it for ages.”

“No, but I'm still on the losing end, Amy.” He smiles with caution. “I mean, Amaryllis. You found a family, a bloodline, a lover. This is about more than a job. What do I have, but another prize in an office?”

She reaches over and squeezes Wright's tense shoulder. She knows he's been dating a woman near her own age. It won't be long before he transfers those still-aching paternal feelings.

“Look around you,” she says. “If we found anything over the last year, it's that revelations lay just below the surface. Dig a little and you'll find it, too.”

He takes a furtive look at the security line, sighs, and begins to edge toward it.

“Listen, I've been meaning to ask you,” he says, pulling at his posh silk tie. He drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Did you open that pyramid door or did your…your fiancé?”

“It was me,” she says into his ear. “He flipped the door open, but I undid the lock myself.”

“Good girl,” he says, color returning to his face. “I knew you never would settle for a supporting role.”

Lynn Voedisch is a Chicago writer who had a long career as a newspaper reporter and worked for many years at a big city metropolitan daily. She also did freelance writing in print and online. She lives with her husband and pet cat, doing her writing at home now. Her son, an attorney, lives in the city. Her hobbies are tennis, tai chi, and promoting appreciation of literature.

Voedisch is the author of two other novels,
Excited Light
and
The God's Wife.

We hope you enjoyed
Dateline: Atlantis
. Lynn Voedisch is also the author of
The God's Wife
, a historical fantasy about two women sharing a single soul. Living two millennia apart – one ancient Egypt and the other modern-day Chicago – the women try to unite as the one person they were born to be. The Egyptian, Neferet, is from a time in Egypt when women were at their highest point in political and spiritual standing. Neferet has been chosen to be God's Wife of Amun or the spiritual bride of the highest God of Thebes, Egypt's capital in the Middle Kingdom. She's young, 16, and hardly ready for the veneration, political intrigue, and gossip she will have to endure:

“From the primeval nothingness, proceeded Amun,” was the chant. Fewer people waved them on this time, but she sat still, with her back erect on the unforgiving wood sedan chair, balancing the wig with expert grace. In her confusion, she hung on to what the priests had taught her over her weeks of training.

Door after door gave way to the procession until they faced a hut-sized entrance with a red door allowing passage for only one or two persons at a time. She and Nebhotep had permission
to touch it. She descended from the litter, aided by the priests, and stood, legs quivering under her linen gown, before the portal. She pounded once upon the wood, and the priests all bent forward prostrate on the floor. The way opened. She drew herself up, steadied her breath and faced the blue icon of the god Amun. He sat, life-sized, on a granite pedestal. His eyes, of the most uncanny stones, followed her every movement, even the shift of her eyes.

As instructed, she placed an armful of flowers at the god's feet. Priests, bent over and mumbling apologies to the great Amun, handed her food to lay at the icon's pedestal. Then, at the door, they covered Neferet with a great, gold-flecked robe and crowned her wig with a diadem. They sang a song of matrimony, and Nebhotep joined her hand to that of the great statue. It was as cold as the night waters. The priest read a long statement, detailing the lands and properties that the temple afforded to her, now that she was the bride of Amun. Her mind swam. All through these declarations, the heady incense threatened to knock her out. The sacred drug didi had her head swimming, because now the room was full of blue – the same color as the faience beads on her full collar necklace. She relaxed and couldn't take her eyes off the Amun effigy.

Like fleet-footed beings of the night, the priests left. Closing the door behind them, they abandoned her with this husband of rock. In the moment his jewel eyes fastened onto hers, she knew her life was no longer her own.

* * *

Meanwhile in modern-day Chicago, dancer Rebecca Kirk has been awarded the headlining role in Aïda, an opera, about Egypt, to be fashioned into a dance. Rebecca, who has always been fascinated with Egypt, finds herself learning about the ancient civilization from books, movies, the Internet and even from her own dreams. Sometimes
the Egyptian dance moves just come to her as in this scene with a famous choreographer:

“Where did you learn to do that?” Emmylou Sailor stood at the front of the class, hands on her hips, casting a look of astonishment at Rebecca.

“What?” Rebecca replied before she could think. What had she been doing? First came the dance of Aïda's imprisonment and sorrow, then the twisty, spiraling solo in which her character expressed her longing for her Nubian home. Somewhere I had a blackout.

“You did this thing with your hips.” Sailor answered, demonstrating with an odd little shimmy, “and then you spread your arms as if you were holding an instrument.” Sailor's arms flew wide open and the fingers moved as if strumming or shaking a delicate object.

Rebecca knew she must answer this famous and often imperious New York choreographer. The woman didn't like to be kept waiting. But Rebecca just stood, rooted to her spot on the floor, slack-jawed like the class moron. A few students in the back began to giggle silenced by a stinging look from Sailor. She turned to Rebecca again, every feature on her long-nosed, haughty face asking, “Well?”

“I, uh, dreamed it.” As she said the words, Rebecca knew they were true. This movement, this odd, exotic dance had been in her dreams for many nights now. Something else existed – the sensation of a presence standing behind her, driving her on.

“Dreamed it.” Sailor snapped her mouth closed and turned up the corners of her thin lips in a pretense of a smile.

“Yeah, I've been researching the Egyptians, and it must have entered my subconscious…,” Rebecca said, mumbling as she studied the floor, drawing imaginary circles on the ground with her bare feet.

Sailor clapped her hands, and Rebecca looked up to see a smug toss of Sailor's head.

“Well, I love it. It's absolutely perfect. There's no better way a woman from that time, that place, that complex mix of cultures could move. Of course. The hips, yes, very Mideastern, but the hands, open and African.” Sailor was talking to herself now, going through Rebecca's turns and tying them together with her own dance craft.

“This thing with the fingers,” Sailor said, brows inching together. “She's playing some instrument. Cymbals?”

“No, I think it's a sistrum.” Rebecca had seen a picture of the ancient percussion instrument just the other day.

“Yes, yes. Of course. “ Sailor ran out of the room, leaving Rebecca alone with the dumbfounded class. She shrugged, but no one else moved a muscle. No one dared to breathe. They just stared at her.

Sailor scurried back in seconds, holding a huge, well-thumbed book on Egyptology with a picture of King Tut's death mask on the cover. She paged through it with authority, while leaning on the mirrored wall.

“There,” she cried. She held up the page so everyone in the room could see the strange little instrument, made of metal and set with jangling discs on wires. It looked like a small harp with tiny cymbals attached.

“It is for calling the goddess,” the choreographer continued. “The Egyptians used it, but archaeologists discovered it was also found all throughout the upper regions of Africa. It was supposed to summon the goddess Hathor in particular. She was also called Hat-her in the Egyptian language.”

She whirled on Rebecca. “Yes, perfect. We'll leave it in. Okay, class, from the top.” She put down the book and cued an assistant who ran the CD player. And from the top they went, with Rebecca sweating and swirling her way through her dance of capture and lament. The class acted as a chorus, moving in silent, undulating shifts, all straining to see the captured princess, Aïda.

* * *

In
The God's Wife
the two women, Neferet and Rebecca, become closer and closer as their two worlds seem to wander together also. Are they living in parallel universes? Or, as Neferet would say, is the one part of the Egyptian soul separate from the other? Somehow the two close a chasm of thousands of years.

The God's Wife
is available from Fiction Studio Books wherever books are sold.