Sunrise on the Mediterranean (7 page)

“When is your birthday?” I asked. “I was born under the sign of the crab,” she said.

I didn’t know the zodiac that well, but I was surprised it was in usage already. “And what year were you born?”

“Year?” she repeated.

“How old are you?”

“Old? How old?”

I rephrased again, striving for clarity. “What year is it now?”

“The year of the red sea,” she answered eagerly.

Red sea. That was right, I’d seen how the waters looked like blood. Red tide, I thought. Wasn’t that a band or a football
team? Wasn’t it a natural phenomenon, due to some plant or animal in the water? “Is the sea often red?”

“Only when we have angered Dagon,” she said. “Then the sea is bloody, the crops fail, and we die.” She looked perfectly cheerful
discussing the annihilation of her people. “Now you must dress.”

She raced away while I peeled myself off the massage table. I looked out the narrow window. This tiny room was adjacent to
the main temple. We were high on a point overlooking the rest of the town, the port, and the sea. Crenellated walls embraced
the city, the two wings extending into the water, so the harbor, filled with ships, seemed to be in the very arms of Ashqelon.

They were strange-looking vessels, with narrow-faced creatures on either end. Was that the kind of ship I’d arrived in? I
didn’t know. They had the same square sails, though, huge sails to carry hundreds of men across the waters and oars to speed
the journey.

The city itself reminded me of Greece, with two- and three-storied homes, plain rectangular windows, and attached porches.
I saw trees in courtyards, flat roofs, and straight streets. Straight anything was an anomaly in the Middle East I had known.
I heard a noise behind me and turned, expecting Tamera.

It wasn’t Tamera. It was a soldier.

Only total fear kept me from hiding my nakedness and cowering. If I showed fear, he might realize I was a fraud. That, I couldn’t
have. He, on the other hand, blushed the color of a pomegranate. I couldn’t see his hair because he wore a headdress of feathers,
in addition to a breastplate of leather and brass over an A-line kilt that came to a point between his knees.

He was clean-shaven and wore no kohl.

Though it sounds strange, it was the first time I’d seen a man in a dress without makeup. In Aztlan and Egypt, both men and
women wore kohl, lipstick, eyeshadow, the whole nine yards. This guy looked almost naked without it.

I reached for my sea-mistress voice again. “You enter without being bidden … mortal?”

He didn’t know where to look, so he stared at the ground. “My orders, were, are, were to, to come get you,” he said. I guessed
he was maybe sixteen. His voice had deepened, he’d gotten his height, but he still had the goofiness of a puppy that has yet
to grow into his paw size.

“El’i!” Tamera screeched from the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

The girl knew him? But then why should that surprise me?

“
Following orders,” he said without looking at her for more than a second.

“She is a
haDerkato!
You don’t just barge in on a goddess! She could turn you into a snail!” Just a snail? Tamera didn’t have much faith in me,
did she? “Now go, before she changes her mind,” Tamera said, hustling him out.

In the doorway El’i paused. “I will await you outside, Sea-Mistress. Forgive my bad manners.” It was a hint of the man he
would become: competent, serious, respectful. Before I could respond, even with a gracious Queen Elizabeth wave, Tamera shut
the door in his face.

She fussed and fumed about El’i while we clothed me. My dress was blue, with a sash of greens, blue, and silver. I wore my
neon jewelry, which I’d dunked in cold water to revive it, and she’d fixed a band of silver in my hair. I looked at the sandals
I’d brought with me. They were sexy, strappy, and probably cost at least a month’s salary.

Another reason to kill RaEm. What had she been doing out there that night? According to Cammy, RaEm had gone for a walk in
the middle of a very lax Ramadan party that had become her birthday party. Had she just stumbled on the portal? What had happened
to Phaemon?

I slipped on the sandals and suddenly grew three inches. Mimi had once told me that men liked the look of high heels because
it appeared we couldn’t run away as quickly. As I wobbled in these shoes, I realized she might be right.

Tamera first smoothed color on my eyelids, then decorated with color around my face, swoops and swirls on my temples and forehead,
my cheeks and chin. I would have to wash my face before I tried melting into the crowd. Finally, at my request, she lined
my eyes with kohl.

After coating me in the scents of cinnamon and mint, Tamera called for El’i. In the moments she had her back to me, I grabbed
my little parcel of essentials. With a nod to Dagon, I was escorted out of the temple by El’i.

Though the building was functionally pretty, it had not been fashioned by a race of artists. It had been designed by engineers
for a minimal amount of fuss.

Painting was perfunctory; there was no gilding, no precious stones. Whitewashed mud-brick walls and stone pillars supported
a roof of straw and wooden beams. Plain brass incense bowls were attended by a few people wearing fish-head masks. The temple
was useful, but hardly majestic.

I stepped into the short Mediterranean dusk and climbed into an ox-drawn cart. El’i led the team, their horns decorated with
shells and bells. It was heavy, slow, giving me time to look around as we lumbered through the city. Apparently everyone was
going to this ritual. People lined the sides of the streets, whispering at first, chanting—yet more Dagon verses!—then shouting
that I was going to save them. Dagon was ready to forgive them! I would bring Egypt to the Pelesti! We would get the
teraphim
back! The crops would never fail!

Ritual. Damn. I started getting nervous as we drove through the straight streets, drawing closer and closer to the sea. I
could smell the salt, feel a sting of spray in the air. Before we hit the boulevard that ran parallel to the beach, we headed
south. How could I get away? No matter what they wanted, I couldn’t do it. I knew nothing about farming. I knew less about
fishing. There was no way a happy ending would come of this. I glanced behind me.

They were grouped five deep, trailing the cart.

I looked ahead.

A mass of people sat on the sand, looking out at the water. Between a rocky outcrop on the shore and a huge rock in the Med
was a shadowy line, lit from below by men in skiffs with lifted torches. Within the rock-formed pool, I saw shapes of creatures
I associated with Egypt: crocodiles. I didn’t think crocodiles liked salt water. Was it a freshwater pool? Why were they there?

Why was I here?

I wiped nervous sweat from my forehead. The crowd began shouting a name:
“HaDerkato! HaDerkato!”
Tamera had called me
haDerkato
, but what did it mean? Should I have asked that earlier? Did the lexicon know?

We were approaching a canopied chair set on a plateau above the rock. Women wearing fish cloaks swarmed the scene. The ritual
by the sea; I had a feeling that I was going to be center stage. My nervousness threatened to choke me. What did this mean?
Hello, lexicon?

Time was getting short.

The images were instant, a montage of videos, animation, and artwork from my lifetime. A girl, a handmaid of Dagon, is stolen
from the sea. Then, after Dagon is notified she’s missing, she is offered back to it. In a rather final fashion.

If she survives, she is believed to be the adored of Dagon, who will then restore the crops. The handmaid will live with the
people throughout the year, to assure them of Dagon’s favor. If she does not survive, then she is devoured by the sacred fish,
the crocodile, and returned to Dagon that way.

Survive what? I asked nervously.

A tightrope.

That was the shadowy line I saw? A tightrope, suspended between the two rocks? How did I get out of here? Surely they didn’t
expect me to cross the tightrope? A tightrope? I didn’t know ancients even had tightropes!

We’d arrived, parking the cart inside a solid wall of people. My only hope of escape was to be airlifted out of here. El’i
helped me from the cart, then up the worn stone stairwell. Help! I cried silently. Cheftu, if you are here, now is the time.

The pause button clicked off on the lexicon. There was more? Like the opening of
Star Wars
, words started scrolling across the screen in my mind.

During the red tide there is a caveat to the normal procedure.

The so-called normal procedure being a woman falling to her death and being eaten by crocodiles?

I had reached the pinnacle of the rock. Hundreds of people crowded the beach, torches raised, their eyes on me. From where
I stood to the rock in the harbor was a straight distance of about sixty feet, approximately fifteen feet above a pit of crocodiles.
What was this—I was living a video game?

I could see a pool at ground level about twenty feet off to my left-hand side. There was no guessing at its depth, but it
was big. The wind blew fiercely, whipping my hair in my face. We were listening to the nine hundredth verse about Dagon.

Really, my choices were narrowing. I couldn’t make it sixty feet on a tightrope. So I would die as crocodile bait? I looked
over at the pool again, apparently some type of sacred lake within the temple enclosure. Could I land in it without killing
myself? How would I get from here, this stupid rope, to over there? Would a jump kill me? God, what had I done to deserve
this?

The song stopped. Tamera came forward, her mouth moving, but her words were swept away by the wind. She knelt before me, then
gestured to the platform. It was less than eight inches deep, about twelve wide. How many brides of Dagon had died this way?

They were extinguishing the torches beneath me. Tamera’s hand on my shoulder scared me. “Wait,
haDerkato
. The story must first be told.”

“Take your time,” I said. Surely it wasn’t my destiny to die in some lame proto–circus show? Was Cheftu here, in the crowd,
watching? Was this how he would identify me? My palms were slick with sweat. Tamera climbed a few steps above me, telling
the story in song. It was a lovely, lyrical siren’s tune.

Somehow I would have to swing on the tightrope in order to get to the pool. I looked down at the water. Maybe the crocodiles
were full? Not hungry? The wind was turning my sweat cold as I listened and tried to find a way out.

When the gods of the mountains warred with the gods of the sea
,

Our families were cast out, the progenitors of you and me.

Across
haYam
we fled their wrath, to settle here where it is peaceful and flat.

Yet the god of the sea, to him we still owe both life and livelihood, war battle and soul.

Dagon’s lusts are bottomless, he seduces those he wants. In the form of Mexos, from across
haYam,
he came to take a maiden to woo her, wed her from among his mother’s people, to win her hand.

She was Derkato, the fairest of the fair. Her voice was high, like the sea at dawn, like the sea at night was her hair. Mexos-dagon
sought her, through vineyard, field, and vale. At last he trapped her on this rock; her choices were few.

Her cries to the mother-goddess were unheeded, she could walk to the rock through air or throw herself to Dagon or embrace
Mexos as her lover fair.

While he wept for her love, she fled, seeking the virgin embrace of the sea. Yet when she awoke beneath the waves, her lover
was there.

Dagon won the body of the fair Derkato, though her soul was already dead.

Tamera finished, the last note floating away to the stars, rising to the full moon.

This was the legend I was named after? This doomed woman? Sixty feet, could I make it? But then what would happen? Ancient
people and their farming solutions. Shit.

I had to get across. Somehow I had to get across. If I could just tie myself … tie myself! With what? Tamera was still speaking
or singing or something, as I ran quick hands over my body. There was nothing in my parcel pack. My sash was fragile fabric,
my dress useless. I slipped off my sandals because they were death traps.

What? What? I looked down at my body and saw the solution.

Neon!

The neon necklace was a chemical in a plastic casing— about four feet of it. It wouldn’t hold forever, but maybe it would
be enough to help me regain my balance if I slipped? Could they see me? Was I breaking rules?

Damn, who cared. With trembling fingers I unfastened the necklace, then dropped into a crouch, one foot on the rope—which
was about three inches wide—the other still on the platform. I had to tie my ankle so that I had enough of a stride.

This was harebrained, but dying as a crocodile crudité wasn’t an option. I had a promise to keep to Cheftu. My vow in our
last ancient time had been the same as his: I would go anywhere, any time, just to find him. I kept my promises: I was a Kingsley.

Tamera fell silent. Most of the torches were gone. She touched my shoulder. My cue?

The only problem with my theory is that the plastic didn’t tie tightly. I’d wrapped it around my ankles again and again, but
it didn’t hold a tight, satisfactory knot. So close. Tamera nudged me again. My thoughts were racing. What could I use? I
reached up: earrings. Posts and backs!

“Call my lover for me,” I instructed her. “Dagon needs to feel our, uh, desire and love for him.”

“Sea-Mistress—” she started. “Do it!” I commanded. A moment later I heard her voice above me again. It was a choral piece,
with the assembled Pelesti all singing along. I pulled the earrings out of my ears, then knelt, jamming the post through the
plastic coil after the final knot. As a backup measure—I couldn’t have enough of them—I stripped off my sash and wrapped it
around the plastic knots, reinforcing them with the fabric.