Time Anomaly: A Time Travel Romance (Echo Trilogy, #2) Read online

  One piece.

  Small.

  Meaningless apart from the whole . . .

  I’d felt something similar before, several weeks ago, when my presence had activated a trigger in the At chest in Senenmut’s hidden temple and I’d been transported to a time and place Nuin had created outside of the “real” . . . of the “known.” Since I’d never experienced the sensation when I shifted spatially, I figured it had to be a part of the time-traveling process . . . which meant the Hathor statuette—the At statuette—had worked much like the At chest, transporting me through time upon contact with my skin.

  Without apparent cause or warning, the physical world re-formed around me, bringing with it everything I hadn’t missed while I’d been floating in that blissful state of unbeing. Fear. Panic. Loss.

  It seemed to take eons for my body to re-form, and when I was finally, wholly within the physical world, exhaustion flooded me. My limbs trembled under the sheer force of such overwhelming fatigue. I lurched forward, barely managing to open my eyes before my hands pressed against a grooved wall.

  In the dim light, I could see that the wall was white and was covered in brightly colored images. Those images spun and lurched like the wall was no more solid than water. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on steadying my breathing as well as blocking out the psychedelic vertigo.

  Deep breaths. The air was warm and still and tasted a little stale, though not unpleasantly so. I heard movement behind me a moment before fingertips touched my shoulder.

  My eyelids snapped open, and I spun, which only exacerbated the dizziness. But still, I was able to make out the equally awed and concerned face of the woman who’d touched me. It was strikingly familiar.

  “Dr. Isa?”

  Her eyes widened as my knees gave out and, once again, the world fell away.

  ***

  I regained consciousness slowly. When enough awareness returned that I could feel the various parts of my body, I registered that I was lying on my back on something like gravel.

  Opening my eyes, I found the same view I’d had when I passed out—the worried face of Dr. Isa. It didn’t work . . . I didn’t travel back in time . . .

  But the closer I looked at the woman’s face, the more I doubted my initial presumption. She was Dr. Isa—there was no doubt in my mind—but she wasn’t the same Dr. Isa I’d been with only moments ago. Her hair was different . . . and her makeup . . . and her dress; it was bead-net, like mine.

  I squinted up at the woman leaning over me and, rather moronically, said, “Dr. Isa?”

  She cocked her head to the side and studied me. “I do not know those words—dot tur issa,” she said in Nuin’s language. “But we have met before, you and I, though you told me then that you would not remember our time together when next we met.” She smiled, and it lit up her caramel eyes, even in the shadows. “You may call me Aset.”

  Aset. The ancient name of the goddess more commonly known as Isis, who I knew was really Marcus’s Nejerette sister. Who’d died in an attempt to rescue her brother from Set in the conflict that had inspired one of the most well-known ancient Egyptian myths, The Contendings of Horus and Seth. But apparently not yet.

  Or does that mean she never really died? If Aset is Dr. Isa . . .

  “You—you are Aset?” I hadn’t spoken in Nuin’s language in a long time, and I was definitely rusty. I had no doubt that my accent was thick to the point of being nearly incomprehensible.

  She nodded.

  “Sister of Heru?” I clarified.

  Again, she nodded and smiled. “We shared the womb, in fact.”

  I blinked several times. “You shared . . . the womb . . .” Which would mean they weren’t just brother and sister, they were twins. It made my heart bleed that much more for the loss Marcus must have felt after her death . . . or rather, her “death.”

  “But, you—how—” I snapped my mouth shut, barely stopping myself from asking her about a future she’d yet to experience. “We have met before?”

  “Yes, dear Lex, we have.”

  She knew my name. How the hell could a woman who lived—and was supposed to have died—thousands of years before me have known my name?

  Realization struck, and I narrowed my eyes. “Nuin told you about me, and this is one of his strange jokes, is it not?” To say his sense of humor—or any other human emotional response—was different was a gross understatement. I loved the guy, but he was definitely one of a kind.

  A delighted, tinkling sound erupted from Aset, echoing all around us like we were in a small, enclosed space.

  I scanned my surroundings for the first time, focusing on the ceiling, then glancing around at the walls. Though the only source of light seemed to be the doorway on the opposite side of the cramped chamber, I could see well enough to tell that the walls—likely plaster spread over mud-brick—were covered in a glorious array of hieroglyphs and sacred images, mostly of Hathor, the ancient goddess of love, sex, singing, dancing, drunkenness—what most people would agree were the best parts of life. I was in the Hathor inner sanctuary, thousands of years before I’d been in it only moments ago.

  “You told me you would say that,” Aset said. “No, my grandfather does not know of your arrival; only I do.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows and shook my head slowly. “And you knew I would be arriving because . . . ?”

  She pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Now you are simply being obstinate, I think.”

  My eyes widened. “Uh . . . no, I really do not understand.”

  Aset sighed. “You visited me a long time ago, and what you did then—” Shaking her head, she looked away. “I must not speak of it, for I cannot not risk changing what happened. It would be far too dangerous.” She took my nearest hand in both of hers. “Just know this—there is nothing I would not do for you. I owe you everything.”

  My brow furrowed. Seeing her extreme gratitude for something I’d yet to do was odd, to say the least.

  “Come,” she said, taking hold of my elbow with a surprisingly strong grip for such a tiny woman. “Let us get you on your feet. I know how uncomfortable it can be to lie on a bead-net dress.” She turned her attention to the doorway, where another woman now stood wearing a simple, white linen shift and silhouetted by bright sunlight. “Denai. Aid me in helping her rise.”

  The newcomer—Denai, it seemed—said something in what had to be Old Egyptian, assuming I’d made it to the target time period of 2180 BCE. Of course, since I didn’t actually speak Old Egyptian and could only read it, much like with Middle Egyptian, this meant I couldn’t understand her. At all.

  Shaking my head, I told her as much in Nuin’s tongue, adding, “Do you speak this language?”

  “She does,” Aset said. “Since the Hat-hur cult first came into existence many generations ago, I have made sure that every priestess who serves in this particular temple speaks the original tongue. You claimed you would not arrive until the death of our latest pharaoh, but I wanted to make sure we were prepared.” She let out a soft, chiming laugh. “Perhaps we were overprepared.”

  Once again, she’d stunned me speechless.

  “Apologies,” Denai said, kneeling to take hold of my other arm.

  Together, they helped me to my feet, though my legs were still a little unsteady. Once I was standing, Denai continued to lend me a supporting hand while Aset examined the backside of my dress.

  “You are lucky that none of your dress’s beads were crushed, considering how hard you hit the floor,” Aset said. “Perhaps they are constructed of a more durable substance than faience? Certainly they are not all turquoise . . .”

  “I—” I swallowed, then cleared my throat. “Honestly, I do not know.” I’d thought they were faience, the fired, ceramic material so many Egyptian artifacts were made of, but it was entirely possibly that they were just a lighter-colored turquoise than the other, more brightly colored stones.

  “Such a garment must have cost a fortune,” Aset said
as she reached for my arm. She led me out of the dim sanctuary and down a tan mud-brick ramp to a more spacious room.

  It was rectangular, and the white plaster walls were covered with depictions of the goddess Hathor in her various forms—as a cow, as a woman with the head of a cow, as a woman with a beautiful face and the ears of a cow, and as a gorgeous woman with cow horns crowning her head, cradling a crimson sun disk, one of the symbols of the main solar deity, Re. A vast array of small items was placed around the perimeter, where the walls met the mud-brick floor; some were tiny figurines of women, while others appeared quite phallic.

  They’re offerings to Hathor, I realized. Which made sense, considering that I’d appeared in the inner sanctuary of a Temple of Hathor. Time travel seemed to dim my wits a bit.

  I was standing in an Old Kingdom temple the likes of which hadn’t survived the millennia—mud-brick wasn’t the most durable of building materials. I was really there, not just viewing it in the At. It was pure insanity, and the archaeologist in me couldn’t help but get excited, despite the traumatic and shocking events of the past few hours.

  A woman dressed identically to Denai was standing at the bottom of the ramp. When I met her eyes and offered her a small smile, she shrieked and fell to her knees, bowing forward until her forehead was pressed to the mud-brick floor. And I was pretty sure she was shaking.

  I stopped mid-step and looked at Aset, utterly clueless as to what I’d done to elicit such a reaction.

  She gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “You are not simply Netjer-At; you are like the Great Father. We can all see it in your eyes.”

  “You can see what in my eyes?”

  “The At,” she whispered.

  My mouth went instantly dry. Nuin’s eyes had always been filled with a swirling chaos of every color, reminiscent of the At. But nothing like that had ever shone in my eyes.

  Aset leaned in closer to me. “They believe you to be their goddess, Hat-hur.”

  Hat-hur. It was one of the possible ancient pronunciations of the goddess modern people knew of as “Hathor” . . . in whose temple I was currently standing. With the way I’d simply appeared in the temple’s sanctuary, not to mention the power they could see in my eyes, how could they not have believed me to be Hathor—Hat-hur?

  I groaned. “And you did not think it important to let them know that I am not their goddess . . . ?”

  Aset smiled mysteriously. “What makes you think you are not?”

  I simply couldn’t respond. So I just stared at her. And when I considered that Hat-hur was the mythical consort of the god Heru, and that I was bonded to the Nejeret behind the myth of Heru, I started to think she might be onto something. Of course, the goddess was also recorded as being the consort of Re—essentially the sun god—in various myths, so, maybe not . . .

  Aset shrugged. “They truly could not be more pleased.”

  I felt like I was about to pass out again. “I see.”

  “Besides, it is how Nuin will be introducing you to the others.” Laughing, she shook her head. “He could hardly tell them your name is ‘Alexandra’ or ‘Lex’—nobody is named those things in this time.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but realizing that she kind of had a point, I changed tactics. Besides, I was thousands of years in the past and in about as foreign a place as there was—being considered a goddess might come in handy at the moment.

  Swallowing, I forced a smile. “You are going to bring me to Nuin?” Because I really needed to speak with him. And beyond that, I’d always felt comfort in his presence, and I was craving some comfort right about now.

  Aset nodded and shifted her hand, linking her arm with mine. “He should still be at the pyramid complex. We can go right now.”

  Denai strode toward me, bowing her head as she stopped. “We would accompany you, if it would please you,” she said to the floor.

  “I, uh . . .” I glanced at Aset, who was watching me curiously. She gave another, tinier nod, so I told Denai, “Yes, that would please me very much.”

  Denai raised her eyes to meet mine, a joyous smile spreading across her face before she bowed her head again. “Thank you, great Hat-hur. You honor us.”

  I flashed her an uncertain smile. “The more the merrier, right?”

  Denai met my eyes again, this time a quizzical light filling hers. Apparently the saying didn’t translate quite right. I sighed. I would have to be careful about that.

  5

  Farewell & Welcome

  I fell in step beside Aset as she headed for an open doorway that appeared to be the temple’s only exit. It was wider than the one from the sanctuary, but neither wide nor tall compared to modern grand entrances. The doors themselves, little more than simple wooden slabs, were propped open against the outside of the building. Aside from the vibrant reds, yellows, and blues used in the hieroglyphs and mythological depictions covering the interior walls, the temple was rather modest.

  I paused in the doorway to take in my unfamiliar surroundings. I may have been an archaeologist and possessed the ability to view the past and future—though that was a skill I’d only had for a little over half a year—but actually being in Egypt during the tail end of the 6th Dynasty, just as the glory of the Old Kingdom was dying away . . . that was mind-blowing.

  I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, especially considering the lack of Old Kingdom evidence—ruins, artifacts, human remains—that still existed in my time, but it wasn’t what I found spread out before me. It was so cheery and filled with vibrant colors and life, a walled-in oasis in the middle of a barren desert.

  The temple was surrounded by a courtyard filled with date palms, fig trees, and some other fruit tree I didn’t recognize. They lined the inside of the mud-brick walls surrounding the temple and courtyard, as well as the rectangular pool extending from the temple entrance to a set of more substantial wooden doors blocking the gateway out of the courtyard. The broad steps leading down from the temple were also constructed from mud-brick, as were the paths crisscrossing the compact courtyard.

  I followed one of the paths, heading around the right side of the pool, Aset still arm in arm with me and the priestesses trailing close behind us. Stopping at the edge, I dipped the tip of my sandaled foot into the water, watching as the surface sparkled, reflecting the afternoon light. The water was lukewarm and exceedingly clear, unlike everything else in my chaotic life. It all seemed to finally be sinking in—where I was, when I was, what had driven me here . . .

  I missed Marcus terribly, and I’d only been gone for a few hours. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing at that exact moment, thousands of years in the future. I couldn’t help but worry about him. A black hole, a sucking void, seemed to be taking shape in my chest. I ached to be near him again, body, mind, and soul.

  “I wasn’t expecting this,” I said in English. In truth, I hadn’t been expecting anything that had happened over the past seven months, and Marcus attacking me was one of the most shocking and painful surprises of all.

  “I do not understand,” Aset said. In my peripheral vision, I could see her tilting her head to the side. “What saddens you so, Lex?”

  I wiped my cheeks with one hand, swiping away tears I hadn’t realized had escaped, and offered her a weak smile. “I would try to explain, but it would sound impossible, and you would think me insane.”

  Aset turned me away from the pool, leading me further down the pathway. “You will be surprised by what I am able to believe, I think. I have seen and experienced much that is not quite . . . normal, even for our kind.” After a pause, she added, “And do not forget that I already know you, even if you do not yet know me.”

  I met her eyes. “So you know about me—that I do not truly belong here?”

  She gave my arm a little squeeze and nodded. “I know that you are not of this time. As I said, you are not a normal Netjer-At; you are like my grandfather, truly divine. Which, many would argue, means you belong wherever and whenever you wish to b
e.”

  I bit my lip. “But I am not—that . . . not divine. Not really.” I felt my eyes tense with a plea. “You know that, yes?” I needed her to understand. I needed someone to understand. I needed a friend.

  She smiled, and it lit up her beautiful, golden face with warmth and affection. “Yes, Lex, I know.”

  Squinting up at the bright afternoon sun, I sighed. “I thank you for that, Aset. It means more than you could possibly know.”

  “Ah . . . but you are wrong,” she said. “I understand quite well. We all need someone who sees us for who we really are; otherwise, we risk losing ourselves completely.”

  Again, I met her sincere gaze and smiled, knowing I would need to change the subject if I wanted to avoid a quick descent into tear-dom. I cleared my throat and flipped through my mental rolodex of Old Kingdom rulers. “Alright, so . . . the pyramid complex you mentioned—it is the pyramid complex of Pepi the Second, correct?” I asked as we stopped at the heavy, wooden gate doors. These were coated in a thin layer of plaster, possibly to make them appear stone, while those at the temple entrance had been left their natural, sun-bleached color.

  “If you mean Pepi Neferkare, then yes.”

  Two of the priestesses stepped ahead of us to open the doors, and Denai slipped through the opening as soon as it was wide enough. I watched her scan the wide, smoothly paved limestone avenue on the other side. She shouted something in Old Egyptian and snapped her fingers.

  A young boy trotted across the street, wearing a simple white tunic and with all but a long, braided sidelock shaved off his head. He listened closely as Denai spoke, held out his hand to accept something small and cylindrical from her—possibly a seal of some sort—then spun away and broke into a sprint.

  I looked at Aset, my eyebrows raised in question.

  “He goes to the canal landing to secure a boat for us.” She smiled wryly. “Shemu has been long and exceedingly hot this year . . . again. I do not think you would enjoy walking all the way to the pyramid complex.” She glanced at the sun, seeming to measure its height in the sky. “No, we shall sit and relax under the cover of a canopy while some nice, strong young men guide us up the canal to the valley temple.”