The Isis Knot (33 page)

Then he slid inside.

Yes. This
was what she was meant for. The way he moved inside her—lifting her body on the plunge and making her cry out in blissful agony on the retreat—was perfection.

Completion.

He was right. This—them together—felt larger and greater than any lost soul, any amount of magic. It was more expansive than the universe. And, like the universe, she wanted it to go on forever.

Love.
She’d seen it in his eyes and now heard it in his voice.
Love. Love.

Each thrust pushed that word inside her. Built a similar emotion within her heart. Fortified it. That word turned as tangible as the way he filled her, and there was no going back. No room left inside her for anything but…
William
.

He made the most glorious sounds against her throat. Helpless noises that told her he’d surrendered, too. As she raised her legs to wrap around his waist, changing the angle, he murmured a name and increased his pace.

Only it wasn’t Sera’s name. It was Ramsesh’s.

And it didn’t come from William’s lips.

The heavy, exotic tones of a man who’d lived thousands of years ago reverberated through Sera’s mind and body. Amonteh called out to Ramsesh, and Ramsesh answered, crying in joy at their reunion.

This time Sera didn’t fight it. She let it happen. Indeed, she welcomed it.

Around their joined bodies, the world shifted. Even with her eyes closed and William consuming every sensation, Sera could feel the change. The very atmosphere charged with something unspeakable. It fed on their triumph, their mounting pleasure.

She turned her head and opened her eyes.

The unfinished walls of the empty house in the Rocks flickered. Above, the Southern Cross faded and new patterns of stars sprouted up. The briny scent of Sydney Cove and the sour stench of the Rocks fell away. Jagged stone precipices rose high above her. The new cliffs glowed gold in the moonlight, not a patch of greenery upon them. Dust and sand tickled her nose.

William’s hands dragged through her hair in a slow, loving gesture. With a great shudder he stopped moving, though he remained buried deep inside her.

“I don’t want this to end,” he murmured into the crook of her neck.

She slid her hands up his sweat-slick back and whispered, “Do you see this? Do you see where we are?”

With a hand on the back of his skull, she gently turned his head so he could see the wonder of the flickering, changing world all around. Together they watched the last bit of the Rocks completely disappear.

They were now making love on a barren, rocky ledge that dropped off into a long, sloping valley. A silvery ribbon of water crossed in the distance and she knew immediately, instinctively that it was the Nile. It could be no place else.

Sera’s fear of the unknown tangled with Ramsesh’s elation over the familiar…but it was Ramsesh who won out, bringing Sera out of the fear and sending her straight into wonder and curiosity.

“My God.” With a gasp, William pulled out of her.

The desert landscape instantly vanished, plunging them back into 1819 New South Wales.

William looked back at Sera and she said, “Be inside me again.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and rolled over, swinging her on top of him. Creeping her hands up his chest, she took his mouth in a brief, breath-stealing kiss, then lifted her hips and rocked him back inside her, inch by precious inch.

The sharp cliffs and desert and distant river filtered back in. The more she circled her hips and the harder he drove up into her, the more real the scene became. Sand, not dirt, ground wonderful pain into her knees. A chilly, dry night air caressed them.

“It’s Egypt.” William’s voice shook. “Egypt…”

Then he dug his fingers into the tops of her thighs, drawing her eyes away from the scenery and back to his. She knew beyond a doubt that
this
was what Ramsesh and Amonteh had wanted all along for them. This joining.

As the first deep thrums of orgasm began rippling through Sera’s body, Ramsesh reached out and shared with Sera
her
pleasure.

Head falling back on her neck, Sera let her voice do what it wanted. Every star turned to flame in the sky. All her muscles stopped listening to her brain and gave themselves over to the pulsing waves that never seemed to end. William kept slapping into her and she bounced on top of him, the force of his drives giving her more and more and more.

His body suddenly went completely still. Then he released a sharp huff of breath and started to move again in short, mindless strokes. The power and ecstasy behind his low moans told her Amonteh was feeding him, too, and that William was just as lost as she.

When at last he calmed, she pulled herself off him and bent over to press tiny kisses to his jaw. His arms went tight around her back. They lay that way, saying nothing. Their heartbeats thudded together. Their breathing fell into the same pattern, even and slow.

Something wrapped around them. Dragged them under. They clung together as the world around them shifted, as voices told them stories inside their minds.

She pressed her cheek to his, closed her eyes, and listened to what Ramsesh had to say.

CHAPTER 21

Philae, Egypt, 535 A.D.

Do not run. Do not draw attention to yourself. Do not show your fear, your worry, your heartbreak.

Ramsesh left the market perched high above the bank of the Nile and weaved through the village. The high heat of midday permeated the soles of her sandals. Her skin was sticky with sweat. She told herself to be calm, to be careful. It took all her strength not to run.

She shifted the reed basket from one hip to the other. She was supposed to have traded a newly beaded shirt for vegetables, but the shirt still rested folded at the bottom of the basket. Now she would return home without fresh food for the evening meal, bearing only frightening news.

Generations ago, steps had been carved into the hard land leading up to the simple homes of the stone-cutters, of which her husband, Amonteh, was one. Away from the eyes of the village at last, she hurried up the steps. At the top she stubbed her toe and stumbled. The basket flew from her hands, dumping the shirt into the dust. The stray beads that had been rolling about the bottom of the basket skittered across the stone to circle at the feet of an old woman resting on a rock.

The woman slowly leaned down and started to pick the beads from the cracks. Pronounced wrinkles surrounded her mouth and lined her brow. Ramsesh stuffed the shirt into the basket at the same moment the woman tilted her handful of recovered beads into it. Their hands touched. Their eyes met.

Ramsesh had passed this woman many times along this corridor, but they had yet to speak. Once, not long ago, she’d seen the elder woman on the banks of the Nile gathering water. After hoisting her water skin across her back, the woman had lifted her eyes to gaze across the water at the island of Philae, to its pale, glowing temples dedicated to Isis. They stood regal and beautiful…and neglected. When she’d thought no one was looking, the woman had smiled sadly. But Ramsesh had seen.

That was when she’d known. The old woman was like her: a keeper of the old ways.

Now, as the two of them crouched on the ground, they shared unspoken emotions. The love for something forbidden. The sadness over its loss.

“Say nothing, my child,” the woman whispered, her eyes full of warning. She rose and hobbled on her way.

Ramsesh wanted to crumple to the ground and let her tears soak into the parched earth, but instead she forced strength into her unsteady legs and continued home.

She attended the Roman services, as was required of all the villagers. She spoke the words to their sole god and gazed up at the man nailed to the cross. She touched the points on her body like the helmeted and leather-clad soldiers told them they must do, but she was not one of them. She was not a believer. Their emperor might dress like the old pharaohs when he traveled the length of the Nile to appease her people, but she wasn’t fooled into thinking he sympathized with the people he’d conquered.

Her home stood second to last in a long row. Its door faced east, and in the morning Re’s golden orb exploded into life over the Nile, grazed the temples on Philae, stretched across the green fields lining the riverbanks, and crawled its way up the slopes to bless her home.

Inside, Amonteh stood over the cooking fire. He lifted a hand to the light streaming inside behind her. “Back so soon?”

She said nothing. She couldn’t.

He circled around the cooking pit, thick brows hanging low over his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

She sank to the dirt floor, her husband following. He took her face in gentle hands. He smelled of sweet smoke and it brought tears to her eyes.

“What is it?” His thumbs brushed her cheeks.

“Emperor Justinian will close the temples. After sundown tomorrow, no one will be allowed to go to Philae or Biga Islands until the temples there have been converted to places of worship for their god. Mere mention of the old gods will bring death.”

Amonteh’s hands fell limp to his lap.

“I heard the Romans speaking of it in the market. I rushed back. I have no food for this evening. I’m sorry.”

Amonteh’s eyes turned so dark, darker than she’d ever seen. “They will turn Isis’s temple into a church?”

Not even a hand over her mouth could hold back the sobs she’d been restraining all morning.

#

Ramsesh lay sleepless on the bed of woven reeds. A light breeze tickled her toes that stuck out from underneath the linen cover. A long time ago her mother had whispered to her a tale of the air god Shu. There in the dark, she thought of the wind as Shu’s reassuring, calming breath. It didn’t work. All she felt was sorrow and panic.

Amonteh’s strong arm was thrown across her stomach, and sweat pooled where skin touched skin. She lightly grazed her fingernails over his forearm. He’d always been a deep sleeper. For the past ten years, since they were twelve years of age and only just betrothed, she’d watched him sleep whenever she could.

Quietly, she slid out of her husband’s embrace. He curled into the place she’d just been. Leaving her sandals, she moved to the front of the house and opened the curtain. The avenue outside was so quiet. A cat scurried away at her appearance, its eyes shining with glassy moonlight. She inhaled the scent of the desert, the dying fire smoke, the distant river.

The truth about the gods was about to be erased.

The gods and goddesses of the past still lingered, even though no one living remembered life before the Romans came, before her people were told what to believe. For over a hundred years the native people had not been able to openly worship as they once did, for fear of punishment or death. Some, however, still traded whispered stories and prayers. These few braved entrance into the old temples under cover of curiosity, in order to worship in secret. Some had been caught. Some had not.

Now they couldn’t even do that. Perhaps the emperor had finally grown tired of finding offerings at the feet of gods and goddesses that were not his own.

The Romans’ god didn’t stir Ramsesh’s heart the way Isis did.

Ramsesh stepped out of the house and turned her face to the stars. There glowed Isis in sparkling light form—the eye of the dog sitting at the heel of her hunter-husband Osiris.

Never had the stars felt so far away. Did Isis know she was about to be abandoned? Would her star fade into the night sky if no one believed in her anymore? Would all the gods’ stars wink out once their followers died?

If she’d had children, she would’ve taught them about Isis, regardless of the emperor’s decree. In secret, she would’ve guided their chubby little hands as they drew the ancient texts and spoke the words of prayer.

She slid her fingers over her flat, empty belly. For reasons known only to the goddess, Isis had not granted her prayers for fertility. Forgiveness and understanding for this had been a difficult journey. But she still had Amonteh, despite everything, and that had to be enough.

“What are you doing out here?” Amonteh’s soft voice parted the wind.

She turned, her hands dropping to her sides. But he saw where she had been touching herself and his eyes saddened.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, to cover the horrible silence. “I wanted to see the stars.”

“Come back to bed.” He stretched out a brown hand with such grace, and she let him pull her back into their modest home.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry I never gave you a child.”

He took her in his arms and surrounded her with his scent, his warmth, the familiar feel of his skin. She pressed her face to his smooth chest and listened to the perfect rhythm of his heart. He stroked her braids from the roots to the ends dangling at her waist.

When she pulled away, all she saw was the cold, hard birthing box in the corner near the door, forever void of life. Neither of them had had the heart to dismantle it, always praying. Always hoping.

Amonteh had sacrificed everything for her, including a life of some privilege, and while he always called her foolish for thinking of her infertility too often, she knew it made him sad to be reminded of what they did not have.