Hathor's Mirror

ONE | SCORPION CELL

I blame my best friend for this. I would not be in this boiling hot prison cell, parched for a drink of water, keeping one eye on a black scorpion the size of my hand guarding its corner of piled rubble, and the other on the guard eyeing me through the door's metal grill like I'm eyeing the scorpion.

It's her fault I'm somewhere I should never be. She's still safe in London, probably freaking out, but still I got the worse end of things...I'm...well I think I'm in ancient Egypt. (And can I just say from what I have seen so far, it's not nearly as good as in the movies). But then, I haven't seen much.

Actually, all I have seen is this cell. Admittedly, not many movies take place in an ancient Egyptian prison cell, and I can totally see why. Apart from a few crude hieroglyphs graffitied on the rough sandstone walls, and a deep channel that leads to a hole in the (thankfully) opposite corner to the scorpion kingdom, there's not much to look at.

Not that I want to take my eye off the scorpion anyhow. It's just sitting there, watching me, watching it. Honestly, I'm really hating my life right now. I thought things were bad before but leave it to me to dare the universe to make it worse. This is worse. So much worse.

In one day, I, Nerys Whitaker, lost my cushy column at History Lives! to a free version of AI the 76-year-old editor discovered could produce endless (crappy) articles for free, because you know, the economy, and profits, and we're so sorry blah blah blah. When I called my partner to cry on their shoulder, they interrupted me to tell me they had fallen in love with an investment banker and were going to move in with them. Then, when I got home prepared to drown my sorrows in a bottle of wine, I found a notice taped to my door stating in stiff legalese that I had two months to move out of my flat because even Grade II listed buildings can be sold to property developers to remodel into ultra-luxurious hotels for the stinking rich.

That was yesterday.

Then there is today which makes yesterday's misfortunes feel about as eventful as popping out to the local convenience store for milk. I admit when I ripped away the legal notice taped to my door (and took a good chunk of white Grade II listed paint with it) I did happen to mutter if this was the best the universe could do to ruin everything I had worked for. I did not expect it to answer with: Of course not, how about this?

It started innocently enough. I woke up with a stinking hangover, a mouth as dry as wool, and a knock at my door. It was the knock that began the chain of events that led to me giving the side-eye to a very much alive scorpion that in my world has been dust for three thousand years.

It just moved. I shudder and tell myself it's just working out the kinks in its legs from standing still for so long, and not that it's contemplating closing the short distance between us to stab me to death because I'm a mortal threat to its pile of rubble.

"Nice scorpion," I say. "I like your...house?"

It ignores me. Probably because it doesn't understand English. Weirdly it feels better to talk, so I continue, even though I am parched. "Just don't get too attached to your place because developers can come along and take it all away with a piece of paper. And then you have to find somewhere new to live in a city where there's nowhere nice to live anymore for the rent you pay, so you'll have to move to Harlow or some other godforsaken place far away from everything you love." Tears gather in my eyes as I think about my lovely flat in leafy Holland Park, my happy place where I wrote my weekly column, imagining myself being to history what Carrie Bradshaw was to Sex in the City. I even had fans. Okay, mostly older people who didn't know how to use the Internet who sent actual letters to the magazine's office to forward to me, but people loved me and the past I brought back to life.

And now, in a twist of universal irony, I am the past. The tears trickle to my lips. I lick at them greedily and try to think about more sad things to keep the tears coming.

I'm doing a good job of working up more sadness when there's a commotion at the door of my cell. The burly guard disappears from his position by the grill and is replaced by another face. A far nicer one peers into the gloom. He has a lean face, and black kohl lined around his eyes in the style of Horus. I perk up. It might be a lawyer. From my column research, I had learned a little about Ancient Egyptian society. Compared to their contemporaries, they took the Laws of Ma'at seriously, women were even able to divorce their husbands and own land. I glance at the scorpion, whose attention has moved from me to the developments at the door.

"Be careful," I call out as the thick wooden door is unlocked and creaks open. "There's a scorpion in here." The last thing I need is for my lawyer to die of a scorpion sting. A man stands at the door, his head shaven. He's dressed just like an actor in the movies completed with a stiff white kilt and gold-embossed leather belt. His chest is bare and hard with lean muscle. On his hip, a pair of sheathed daggers, each with a golden hilt set with colored gems. On his muscled arms, golden bands gleam in the torchlight. His gaze moves from me to the scorpion. Without taking his eyes from it, he lifts his hand in a cautious gesture for me to come to him. I note the heavy rings on his fingers.

I move to him, acutely aware there's no outrunning a scorpion. I'll live or die depending on its mood. I'm hoping our earlier bonding session will have given it reason to let me live. My rescuer doesn't look at me, his eyes are locked on the scorpion. We fall into a strange dance of him nodding and me taking a step and waiting. Another terse nod, another soft step. By degrees, I escape the sting of death in a world millennia distant from my own.

I ease past him into the corridor. The door closes with a dull thud. The burly guard has fallen to the dusty ground, doubled over in a prostrate bow, his face to the floor, as though despite the scorpion's proximity this was the perfect time to do a little yoga in the child's pose. I blink, thinking of the wealth of gold and rings my rescuer is wearing. I turn and face the hard expression of a man glaring at me through his black lined eyes. A face that is distinctly not friendly, or remotely lawyer-ish. A face that looks like it wants me dead and only rescued me from a scorpion so he could have the pleasure of killing me, himself.

He gestures at me to follow him and strides ahead. I take one last look at my scorpion cell and the trembling guard and follow my rescuer through a maze of corridors, past dozens of locked doors into the blinding white light of a sun about three thousand years younger than mine.

I know I'm gaping, but I can't help it. We've all had those 'If you could go back in time, where you would go?' conversations. I never picked Ancient Egypt, or anything even before the 1960s. It was just too far. For the most part, anything before that was pretty terrible for women in general. So, I stayed safe with things I wanted to experience up close and personal like Woodstock, the Beatles' first concert on American soil at Washington Coliseum, and the Moon landing. I would love to hear those famous words in real time over a crackly radio: 'One small step for man...'

But this? Nope. No way. First of all, there's the language barrier. No one in our world even knows what Ancient Egyptian sounds like, because it's a language of images. Like emojis. I put a pin in that thought because I have found something new to gape at.

Ahead, the white walls of a city spread out like the wings of an albatross. Behind it, a city of stupendous beauty fans away, its low skyline punctuated by gold-sheathed obelisks glinting in the morning light. Further away, temple pylons snap with red, blue, and green diagonal flags in the warming air. Everywhere my eyes roam I see symmetry and visual harmony from the palm-lined plazas and statues of pharaohs to the villas with their colorful awnings in deep blue, green, and red which shelter verdant rooftop gardens. Without thinking, I reach into my pocket to pull out my phone to post a photo on Instagram.