Butterflies fluttered in Eliana’s stomach as the wheels of the plane jounced down onto the tarmac, rocking unevenly. She reached for the arms of her chair and inadvertently grabbed the sleeve of the Sikh man sitting beside her. Though she knew it would be awkward, the clenched muscles of her hand refused to release. The engines roared in reverse, pressing her body to her seat and the breath from her lungs as the plane slowed to a stop. Her neighbor tilted his turbaned head down to stare at Eliana’s hand, and a bushy white eyebrow tilted up to wrinkle his brown forehead.
“S-sorry,” Eliana stammered, forcing herself to remove her hand from the sleeve of his shirt, a loose cotton tunic often worn by middle eastern men living in desert climates. The fabric of his was dark blue, with gold thread in a design that bent and turned elegantly, unnoticeably in on itself. Looking at the complex pattern caused her heart to race faster. She couldn’t make heads or tails of where it started or stopped. Nearby, someone sneezed, causing her to flinch as if a firecracker had been set off by her ear.
“It’s quite all right, dear,” the man said with a British accent. He was old enough to be her grandfather, and his warm smile and pleasant reaction calmed her somewhat. “That was far from the best landing I’ve ever experienced.”
“I’m just a little jumpy, is all.” Eliana swallowed against the dryness of her throat. Several seconds passed before she realized the man was talking to her again, and she had to force herself to focus in order to make out each of his words.
“—so I understand how you feel. My daughter doesn’t like flying, either.”
“I’m usually fine. I just…” She shook her head. “It’s been a rough couple months.” Eliana turned her face away. She hadn’t been able to talk about her experiences on Kakul with anyone except her husband, let alone with a stranger she had been sat next to on a plane. She suddenly missed Amon, and ached for home even though she had chosen to take this trip and had been gone less than a day. Her mother had said repeatedly, as if trying to convince herself, that she thought Eliana was doing quite well considering what she’d been through—her stranding and subsequent near-death experiences in Kakul.
But her mother’s insistence didn’t prevent her from jumping at loud noises, or waking up screaming in the middle of the night, covered in a cold sweat and shivering. She wondered what madness had possessed her to travel to Egypt on her own in this condition. Perhaps she’d thought that returning to the patterns of her old life as an archaeologist would calm her.
Apparently, it wasn’t working.
She turned back to man. “Sorry, again.”
The grandfatherly Sikh’s face wrinkled into a polite smile. He waved off the comment like it was an insubstantial insect buzzing in front of his face and bent down to collect his carry-on luggage from beneath the seat in front of him.
Eliana did what her psychologist had trained her to do when she felt a panic attack coming on, and focused on her breathing—six seconds in, pause, six seconds out, in sets of five. It was a coping mechanism designed to calm the mind and quiet anxiety without drawing undue social attention in public settings. And, surprisingly, it worked. After a couple minutes of counting her breaths, the tremors in her inhalations subsided and she began to get herself back under control. By then, the plane had taxied to the gate and the people in front of her had begun to clear off. She finally had room to stand, and she did so gratefully, stretching her legs after the long flight. Eliana grabbed her camping backpack from an overhead compartment, stood, and exited with the crowd.
This was meant to be a short trip, and the weather in Cairo was hot and dry, so she had packed light. Eliana didn’t know exactly where Lakshmi was, only that her former college roommate and archaeologist colleague was working on obtaining some kind of permit in Cairo. Lakshmi was rumored to be searching for the undiscovered tomb of a Pharaoh in the area. Eliana’s work had brought her to Cairo many times. She already knew that her olive skin made her stand out as a foreigner in most Middle Eastern countries. Eliana hoped the trip wouldn’t take long, but if it did, she didn’t want to be lugging a big suitcase around the desert, or look any more obviously like a tourist than she absolutely had to.
Her mind reached out desperately to latch onto some good news: The sudden and shocking return to Earth had come with several offers of funding from famous artifact collectors and museums. She’d emailed Lakshmi many times, explaining how she had decided to leverage her newfound fame as a survivor of the world’s first Translocator accident to revive her archaeological research organization, and that she wanted Lakshmi to join her. Unfortunately, Lakshmi never answered. This didn’t exactly surprise her; even in college, Lakshmi was notorious for leaving her phone behind, for failing to check her email even when their professors sent important notices for class. She had eventually concluded that if she wanted Lakshmi to work with her again, she would have to fly to Cairo and recruit the elusive archaeologist in person.
Occupied by her thoughts, Eliana managed to keep her cool out of the plane and along the gangway, but when it dumped her into the airport proper, the vast space, packed to the gills with people and bodiless noise, crashed down upon her like a tidal wave. She tried the counting trick again, but with all the noise overwhelming her, she couldn’t keep the numbers straight. She began to hyperventilate as cold sweat broke out along her overheated body.
Barely seeing where she was going, Eliana stumbled into the nearest bathroom, cut the long line of waiting women, and managed to snag a stall right as a large elderly woman in too-tight jeans tottered out. She shut herself into the stall, ignoring the groans and angry objections of the other women in line. With her vision darkening at the edges and a sharp pain stabbing the backs of her eyes, Eliana sat on the toilet with her pants on. She pulled her knees into her chest and rocked back and forth as the panic paralyzed her.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, it passed. When it did, Eliana took a deep breath and made her way out of the airport as quickly as possible, keeping her eyes on her feet until she was through customs and outside. She paid an exorbitant rate for the cab to the hotel, but it was worth not having to take the bus.
After checking in and taking her time cleaning up, Eliana had the concierge call a new cab for her—one with more reasonable rates. She directed the driver to the crowded suburb of Mataria, where Lakshmi was rumored to be located.
The taxi was soon stuck in traffic in the dust-choked air. An ululating tune played on the radio, polluted by honking horns and the noise of city commotion that bled through the cab’s windows. In the distance, through a wavy haze of heat, the famous pyramids of Giza loomed on the horizon.
Despite the congestion, they soon made it to an excavation site, a courtyard in the middle of a neighborhood. This wasn’t an unusual sight; modern Cairo was built on top of ancient Cairo, and many of the tombs that had been unearthed in recent years had been located in densely populated urban areas. Eliana tipped the cab driver and asked him to wait for her while she sought out the foreman of the project.
“Eh?” a short, balding man shouted over the rattling of a jackhammer.
Eliana cupped both hands around her mouth and should back. “Lakshmi Suvarna! Do you know where she is?”
“Suvarna… hmm… Oh. Indian girl?”
Eliana managed not to roll her eyes. “Yes, that’s right.”
He nodded, then grabbed a scrap of paper from a table of blueprints, wrote some illegible marks that she assumed were directions, and shooed her away. Bemused, Eliana took the address and left the dig site, heading back to the taxi.
The cab driver seemed to recognize the address. Eliana’s chest once again tightened with a feeling of intense anxiety as the man began to drive even farther out from the city. She focused on her breathing exercises as they left Mataria behind and journeyed to the outskirts.
Just when she was beginning to wonder if the driver had gotten lost, he pulled the cab over to the dusty roadside and pointed to a small hillock in the distance, set between two walled neighborhoods.
A long-legged woman with thick dark hair was silhouetted against the setting orange sun—Lakshmi. She wiped sweat from her brow and cocked her hip to one side. Standing in front of her was an extremely agitated and large man, shouting and jabbing a finger in her face. Lakshmi, for her part, gave the man a universal sign of contempt—her middle finger—and shook a piece of paper at him.
The man swatted at it, but Lakshmi danced back and held it out of his reach. The man balled his fists at his side, then turned and stalked away. He grabbed the hand of a young girl of eleven or twelve years old, and dragged her with him, down the hill, past where Eliana was just getting out of the cab.
She paid the driver the rest of his fare, and he left. Eliana waved to Lakshmi. When she spotted her, Lakshmi gasped and came loping down the hill with long strides, wrapping Eliana in a sweaty embrace and nearly toppling her over with her enthusiasm. She held Eliana back at arms’ length, and for the first time since she had left on this journey Eliana felt a cooling relief flood her body. She began to shake as some of the tension she’d been unconsciously holding in her neck and shoulders released. What would have happened had she not found her? She laughed nervously at how much that thought scared her.
“El! What in the world are you doing here?”
Eliana huffed out an exasperated breath. “Looking for you, you nut. Why don’t you ever check your email?”
Lakshmi threw her head back and gave a full-throated laugh. “You know I’m terrible about that. Especially when I’m working on a project.”
Her anger fell like sand through her fingers.
“In fact, I do.” Eliana quirked her mouth into a wry smile. “What was that all about?” She gestured in the direction the angry man and the little girl had gone.
Lakshmi rolled her eyes. She pulled a clear, reusable bottle from her belt and took a long swig of water before answering. “Some commandeering fundamentalist asshole who thinks a woman’s place is in the kitchen and not at the dig site.”
“The little girl?”
Lakshmi nodded. “He’s pissed off that she keeps sneaking out every chance she gets to watch me work. The last three nights, he’s had to come out and drag her home like that. Tonight he started heaping the blame on me, demanding that I leave. It doesn’t matter that I have a permit from the Ministry of Antiquities to dig here, he thinks I’m a corrupting influence on his daughter. Not that I even try to talk to her anymore. I asked her what her name was the first time I saw her here, but she clammed right up, wouldn’t say a word. I don’t think she speaks English. But every night she comes back and watches me from the road.”
Eliana shook her head. “Poor girl. She’s probably never seen a strong, independent woman in her life.”
Lakshmi shook her head. “Well, what can I do about it?”
“Nothing you can do, really. She’s his daughter.”
Lakshmi nodded. A beat passed. Lakshmi finished off the rest of the water in her bottle, then regarded Eliana oddly.
“You didn’t come all the way to Cairo to talk to me about that little girl.”
“Clearly.”
“So why are you here?”
Eliana couldn’t contain the smirk that crept onto her face. “If you’d ever checked your email, you’d know that I want to put the team back together.”
“Don’t tug at my heartstrings, El.”
“Since I got back I’ve received several offers of funding from angel investors. Couldn’t get money if I begged for it in the past, but now everyone wants to invest in the woman who got lost in the Translocator.”
Lakshmi snorted. “Lucky you. How are you holding up, by the way?”
Eliana forced a smile. “I’m good. Does that mean you’ll join me?”
Lakshmi turned to gaze at the hillock, in which Eliana now noticed there was a trench three feet wide. “I don’t know, El. I had to beg and plead to get this permit. I can’t give up on it so soon.”
“Did it come with funding?”
Lakshmi snorted. A few strands of dark hair fell down to frame her face, and she reached up and tucked them back into the messy bun. “Are you kidding me? The only reason they agreed to give me the permit is because they’re short staffed and I said I’d only ask for payment if I found something valuable.”
“How can you afford to live without that income?”
“I worked for a year doing restorations before they gave me the permit. Managed to save up a few grand.” She shrugged. “At least this way I get to do the work I want to do.”
“Now that I can understand.” Eliana had never been happy in any field outside of archaeology. Even the year working for Amon’s company had been unfulfilling in the end, despite getting to see her husband more often. “If I help you find what you’re looking for, will you consider coming to work for me again?”
Lakshmi’s lips quirked up at the sides. “Don’t you have a return flight to catch?”
“I’ll postpone it.”
“What about the funding offers?”
“I need you. The investors can wait. Will you consider it?”
Her smile spread into a grin. “Yes, of course I will.”
Eliana nodded. “Good. Now, there’s an hour or so of daylight left, wouldn’t you say? Show me what you’ve got.”
