Hathor's Mirror

THREE | EMPIRE OF LONDON

Maybe it's my experience with movies, but I expected to meet the pharaoh in a pillared throne room packed with well-dressed nobles and advisors being cooled by slaves wafting elaborate ostrich-feather fans. I am disappointed.

Instead, I am led past the great gold-covered doors of an empty throne room to a nondescript office lined with cedarwood cupboards packed to the gills with scrolls. In the center of the room, a desk and a chair stand on a lion skin (head included, so tacky). Considering the furnishings are gilded with gold, I assume I'm in the pharaoh's royal office. I don't have to wait long to find out if I'm right.

A door in the opposite wall opens. I wait, strangely calm, ready to meet my first real-life pharaoh. Two guards enter. They bow to Menkheperre, then move to stand on either side of the desk. While we wait for the big event, they eye me with unique mix of hostile distrust and frank curiosity. I eye them back with all the attitude a person from the future is entitled, giving them a piquant taste of uncut 21st century entitlement and privilege. I'm weirdly satisfied to see them look away first. After all, they are wearing extremely sharp-looking curved swords on their hips, and I only have H&M underwear on mine.

Movement at the door pulls my attention from the guards. Beside me, I glimpse Menkheperre folding himself into a deep bow. I stay as I am. I'm not bowing to people who have already been dead for thousands of years and are dusty museum relics in my world. Besides, I have never even heard of any pharaoh called Maatkare. Probably some lesser-known nobody.

They walk in. Not a man. A woman wearing the royal uraeus crown of Egypt.

I stare at her, incredulous. She glares at me with eyes as cold as the ice she's never known.

"Holy shit," I breathe. "You're Hatshepsut."

Menkheperre clears his throat. A warning. I ignore it.

I hold her look, loaded with daring, and maybe a hint of kamikaze, counting on having survived the scorpion cell making her think I'm not someone she wants to meddle with.

"Do you have any idea how incredibly awesome you are in my world?" I ask. "You are an absolute legend."

A hint of a smile fleets over her lips as she takes her seat. She's not young, probably in her late forties, but she's a handsome woman and wears the years well. Apart from that minor reaction, I sense I am invisible to her.

"Chief of the Royal Guard," she says, folding her gold-encrusted fingers together on top of the desk. "What have you learned?"

Menkheperre stands from his bow, though he keeps his eyes fixed on the top of the desk. "Great Pharaoh, Blessed of Amun, I have learned very little from the one who was found unconscious in the apartment of the Lady of Upper and Lower Egypt this morning except that she has the power to take one's soul while they are still living."

A hiss of indrawn breaths. The guard nearest to me sidles closer to the desk. The pharaoh eyes me, her jaw hard. "Where is my daughter?" she asks.

"Your daughter?" I ask. "How would I know? The last thing I remember was being in my world and finding an ancient bronze mirror in the British Museum Archives. I looked into it and the next thing I knew I was in your scorpion cell. Thanks for that, by the way. Great start to my time here in ancient Egypt."

Hatshepsut blinks. "Ancient Egypt?"

"She often speaks in this odd manner," Menkheperre answers before I can, as if suggesting I were a picnic short of a sandwich. "However, I have seen the power of her soul-stealer. It is unlike anything I could imagine. Something with such power could only be from the gods."

"Have you stolen my daughter's soul?" Hatshepsut asks, continuing to look at Menkheperre.

"Of course not," I say. "I never even met her. I only know your Chief Guard and the guard at the prison, and now you and your guards of course. You look amazing by the way. The statues definitely don't do you justice."