The Queen Of All Strange Things

9

My lessons weren’t actually boring after all. I got a review of Greek Mythology and their crazy tales. Athena was actually pleased with what I knew. I really wanted to ask her about how it felt like to be born from Zeus’ head, but I doubt she would like that. Then we started with Egyptian Mythology. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a field I knew pretty much about.
‘Horus,’ I repeated. ‘Ok. So he’s the war nut... Isis; Queen of magic... Sobek; the crocodile god… Aphosis; mass chaos… Bast; cat godess… Ra; run god… Toth; your Egyptian version….’
‘He is not my Egyptian version,’ said Athena.
‘Whatever knowledge… guy….’
And so on. Ending with jackal headed god of funerals; Anubis. At least he looked good in his pictures (even with the head of a jackal).
It was two when I finished my Egyptian lesson and I felt like I dropped five books onto my brain. Didn’t I mention that gods were related in the most absurd way? Well, mostly they are. Finally, Athena got up from the desk after reviewing about the wars Horus and Seth got into and about how Ra would drive the sun all over and about now Nut and Geb had a secret love affair that ended badly.
‘We’re done for today.’
‘Can I_’
‘But you are not done,’ said Athena.
‘Ah. Come-on!’
At that moment Enof came in.
‘Oh good! I see you you’re finished.’
‘Now what is it?’ I moaned.
‘I’m here to teach you how to shift,’ said Enof.
I banged by head onto a book.
‘I think I’m ready to be blasted by Zeus,’ I said.
Well, at least I got to visit Cairo for a change. Enof dressed in his non-ancient-Egyptian civilian suit. We both stepped into the visible world and appeared in a market place.
‘This way,’ said Enof.
Cairo was crowded with a lot of travelers and Egyptian relics. Foreigners snapped pictures of almost everything they laid their eyes on as we swept the crowd. There were Muslims with their headdresses and hijabs, a few African like folk, businessmen and vendors in stalls and drivers in cars that honked at the crowd to move on.
Enof led me to a museum yard. It was not too crowded but it was hot.
‘Ok,’ said Enof. ‘We can stop here for a while.’
I was panting by then. The heat was unbearable.
‘Do you know what the specialty of a Seer is?’
‘They see a lot of hallucinations,’ I said.
‘Good point. But what is the real specialty? Being a Seer is no small matter.’
‘They get to be in the Council,’ I said according to what have heard so far.
‘Something not political…’
‘They travel between both worlds.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And how is that?’
I shrugged.
‘Because they have control over the Wall. It’s the barrier that separated the invisible and visible world. It’s everywhere in between the intersection of reality and imagination.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Because we are part of both words, we can shape both reality and fantasy. If you can pass through the wall that is everywhere, you can go anywhere.’
Now that caught me by surprise.
‘You mean like a wormhole, I can teleport?’
‘But only when transcending from one world to the other...’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, it is something like teleporting,’ he finally said. ‘Now then, let’s go inside the museum. You truly cannot shift here not with everyone watching.’
‘Yay,’ I said monotonously. ‘Field trip!’
The guards were not at all pleased to have new arrivals.
‘Good day,’ said Enof to the guards.
One guard responded with a grunt. I just grinned and as also responded with a grunt.
Once we were inside, Enof and I stared at the crowded museum. ‘Em… too crowded.’
Then we went out again and took a taxi.
‘To the pyramids,’ said Enof.
‘Okay,’ replied the driver in groovy tome. ‘Let’s drive.’
It took us one hour to reach the pyramids.  Our friendly driver dropped just before the sand dunes began.
‘Have a nice day, bruther,’ said the driver with a wave.
Enof waved back with a forced smile.
And there we were, standing in front of the Pyramids of Giza. Luckily the heat had died down and there weren’t many tourists.
Enof handed me a cell phone.
‘What is this for?’
‘Just in case you got lost,’ he said. ‘These pyramids are relics. So we might not get lost at all.’
We walked towards the pyramids and stopped at the base. It’s not every day that you get to see the pyramids of Giza. The yellow bricks were huge and I wonder how ancient Egyptians ever carried them up to the top. I have seen in documentaries about how they used slides and stuff, but even then these bricks looked very heavy.
Enof stared at the peak of the pyramids with pride. Then he turned to me.
‘I need you to familiarize yourself with the surroundings.’
I looked around. ‘I can remember this place.’
‘Absorb every detail, you have to feel this place like it was home …’ said Enof.
We stayed in the place for about five minutes. Then we left and walked to a lonely spot on the desert I was more enchanted by the desert but the steaming sand that found refuge inside my shoes sort of reduced the effect.  Enof ordered me to go to Sightless and try to appear at the bottom of the pyramid.
‘Well, it’s worth a try,’ I told myself and I just walked pass the wall and appeared on top of a sand dune. Sightless was far off and the Pyramids were far off. I think I sort of imagined the pyramids from a far point of view. To make things worse, no one was nearby. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the pyramids again while passing through the wall. When I opened my eyes, I felt like the biggest failure on Earth.
I was nowhere even near Sightless.
My shoes were buried under sand. I was in the middle of the dessert somewhere far off where something like a Mongolian death worm was doing the breast stroke in the sand about two miles away. I quickly fished out my cell phone and ran through the list. Enof was there and I phoned him.
‘Amethyst! Where are you?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘In the middle of the desert... There is a big worm nearby.’
‘Try to shift back to sightless.’
‘I will appear on the moon!’
‘Concentrate hard. Don’t let anything distract you.’
I sighed and put the phone back in my trouser pocket.
The last time I just imagined the picture of the place.  Enof said about feeling the place. I tried to remember the heat inside my room, the rustling curtains, and the smell of fresh jasmines and the feeling of the comfortable bed. I didn’t close my eyes this time, the wall appeared in front and I stepped through. But my mind was running around. What if I appear in my old room at home? Was the smell really of jasmines? When I stepped to the other side, I was in a market place where there were jasmine smelling incense burning nearby. I phoned Enof again.
‘I’m sort of lost again.’
Once he finally managed to find me in the mess of humans and monsters. Then we walked back to the palace.
‘Your mind is terribly untamed,’ said Enof.
I pursed my lips. ‘I’m just a beginner.’
‘Beginners are five years old and even they can shift long distances.’
Oh, well. I always knew I was hopeless. But I usually didn’t like to accept that. 
With a scowl, I shifted to the visible side and appeared somewhere in a garden of some house. I wasn’t even concerned whether it was some family garden or even the garden of the British Embassy, I tried to imagine my room again. I pictured every detail I could in my mind, the positions of the furniture, the colors of the walls (I gave up on smell), the pattern of the marble tiles and the prints on the ceiling and the warm breeze that flew in regularly and the light that shimmered inside. Everything I could remember, I added it to this three dimensional mental picture. This time, I walked into my room in the Palace.
TRIIING!!!!!
I jumped. I dug out the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Goodness child! Where did you shift to this time?’
‘My room…’
Enof cut the line.
I got a good scolding from Athena and Enof for that.
‘Don’t you even do something like that ever again!’ said Enof. ‘Do you know now many people want you and the prince dead?’
Me? Dead?
I think my face might have turned dead pale since both Athena and Enof gave each other an alarmed look.
It took me a while to hold myself together.
‘That’s nothing compared to being threatened to be blasted off to space,’ I said.
‘My father does never mean what he says. There is nothing to fear. The Palace is safe,’ said Athena as she looked out of the balcony, ‘But the city isn’t. Yes, there are a lot of people who wants you dead. You have to be very vigilant. You don’t know the countless times Prince Andrew faced near death situations.’
No wonder that kid carried Samurai swords and stacked ninja weapons in his room. Would I have to carry some sort of a weapon around too? That would be cool.
‘What about the deal?’
Athena blinked. ‘What deal?’
‘The first books f the Mystical trilogy.’
‘May I recommend some historical fiction,’ said Enof.
‘I’m living in pure fantasy, might as well read some of that,’ I said. ‘A deal is a deal, Athena. I will take my weakness to use.’
Athena sighed. ‘I will send it over.’
‘I’m done for the day right?’
‘Yes, you are done for the day.’
I flopped on my bed. ‘I’m going to die in this rate.’
I took a short nap after that. When I woke up, Mystica was waiting on my table. I first, hugged it, trailed my fingers over the cover, inhaled its pages, read the back description, and then started to read it. 
A book is something to be savored.
Even reading the first words of the first chapter has to be done ceremoniously and slowly. Once that was over, my reading speed went to a gallop as I god submerges in Karl Rightson’s world.
I must have read it for hours and I didn’t even feel time flow, which was until an army of dragons yelled in unison.
‘WHO CLEANED MY ROOM?’
It took me a while for me to realize that it was actually Andrew. The tremor of his voice almost shook the whole palace. I was angry too. How dare he interrupt my reading! But then, why should I care?
‘NYMPHS!’
Ooops.
Maybe I should care.
I didn’t even leave a book mark, but memorized the page number ninety three and rushed out of my room. I have to admit, I might have seen horror murder stories, but seeing a twelve year old in a fit of murder was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen from a human being. The nymphs who were gathered stood rather far away hiding behind the pillars. He turned to me when I came out of my room; the look he gave made me want to slam the door shut behind me and retreat.
‘Who told any of you to clean my room?’
The nymphs gave me looks that only screamed, ‘SAVE US!’
‘Uh, I sort of did.’
Andrew stared at me for a while. ‘Why?’
‘Well, your room is, you know… How can you even live in that thing? It’s a total mess!’
‘That doesn’t give you the right to barge in and clean it!’
‘Look, someone someday has to clean it.’
‘I tidy it up all the time.’
‘Yeah right, like once a century! It smelled so bad that I thought there was something dead inside!’
‘Why on Earth should you care?’
Andrew stomped into his room and was about to slam the door shut, but before he did he stopped, ‘Just because you found a place in this world doesn’t mean you have control over it, and remember that.’
That hit me hard. I gritted my teeth. ‘Well then, just because you were raised to be an overly spoilt brat doesn’t mean you can live like that forever, Andrew. Remember that as well.’
We both slammed our doors in unison. That kid really has some issues. I went back to read my book but I found it hard to concentrate. I sighed and turned on the TV and to my annoyance a picture of me and Athena heading to the library flashed on the news. I didn’t hear what the elvs had to say. The scene shifted to something like a parliament in which Zeus was yelling at someone on top from a podium at the bottom center. It was like a kindergarten as most parliaments are. There was also a knight who was sharpening his sword in the middle of the bustle. I didn’t wait to hear what they had to say. News and politics least interested me so I switched the TV off and went back to my book.