“What is this?”
The handcuffs belong to a world unknown to her. I keep blowing on the whistle, while she puts the lantern down, grips my forearm and pulls hard, sending lightnings of pain through my wrist, and she is strong and determined, and my flesh and bones are weak and fragile. I cry out, “You can’t break it, Miriam!” That doesn’t stop her, but I see a light in the house. Yes, a light in the new wing. I turn away from the pain, blow on the whistle, gasp for air, and blow again. Shadow, come to me, sweet Shadow….
Abruptly Miriam ceases jerking at my arm, shines the lantern on me, and I hide the whistle in the shawl, hear the rasping of my breath against hers. She stares at me for a long time. She doesn’t seem aware of the distant barking, doesn’t seem aware of anything but my face. And in her face I see the anger and frustration smooth away, see a smile press deep shadows into the corners of her mouth, and I’m struck with terror. I’ve been afraid to this point, but that smile throws terror into the equation.
She touches my cheek lightly, her voice as gentle as the moonlight.
“Oh, yes, I should’ve known you’d be here. The Lord has delivered His enemy unto me. Unto me!”
She rises, stands limned in the moonlight, and she shouts to the sky, “The Lord be praised! Thou hast delivered thine enemy unto my hands!” Again and again she shouts this affirmation as if the words were charged with potent magic, as if they rise from a wellspring of arcane power within her that can change entrails into portents, water into wine, blood into absolution.
And life into death.
I’m incapable of conscious decision, and perhaps it is my body that remembers to keep blowing on the whistle. And the sound of barking seems louder. Shadow—that’s Shadow’s bark. Yes, I’m sure of it, I think I’m sure of it. Shadow, come to me, come to me….
Miriam’s exultant litany stops suddenly. She looks down at me, then with a hoarse cry, lunges, snatches the shawl away from my face.
The whistle tangles in the shawl. She rips at it, finds the chain, tries to get it over my head. But I fight her for this, for my silent hope of help. The chain cuts into my neck and palm, and I kick at her, hear her yelp of pain. I see her fist coming, turn my head to make it a glancing blow, but the next one catches me at the side of my mouth, my head thuds against the door. She fumbles at my neck, muttering, “Mine enemy is delivered unto Thy hand… mine enemy…” And she pulls the chain off, tosses it away.
And her enemy is a witless old woman with a mouth full of blood, head raddled with pain, who can’t even manage a coherent word to plead for her life. Or curse her killer.
I stare up at multiple moons, my ears ringing, yet I still hear her chanting, “Mine enemy… mine enemy…” And scraping sounds.
There’s Miriam, wavering into focus. Miriam at the corner of the vault on her knees, digging in the ground with her bare hands and—a knife. Yes, she has a knife. It flashes in the lantern light, but I can’t see what she’s digging up; it’s around the corner.
No. She’s not digging up anything. She’s digging a hole next to the foundation. She grunts, throws a rock out of her excavation, and it tumbles down the slope.
I hear a sound, insistent, continuous, and distant, and the ringing in my ears is abating. Barking. That’s what I hear. Barking dogs. I look down toward Amama, but all I can see is moonlit meadow and a swarm of stars twinkling in the black shadow clouds of trees.
Not stars. Lanterns. I can’t be sure how many. I can’t be sure my eyes aren’t still multiplying the images.
I shout, “Help!” and nothing comes out but a rasping croak, and all the while Miriam is chanting and digging. The lights haven’t reached the gate. I try again, head pounding with the effort. “Help!” The sound dies in the still, balmy air, and Miriam rises. I put up my right hand to fend off the expected attack. But she ignores me. She sweeps up the dark bundle, takes it to the corner of the vault, uncovers it, and I can see the stacked dynamite sticks, the silver bullet of a blasting cap, all wrapped in a black ribbon of fuse.
I look down toward Amarna. The lights are past the gate, but the distance between me and that constellation of lights approaches infinity.
“Miriam, don’t you see them?” I’m shouting, yet she doesn’t seem to hear me. She places the dynamite in her excavation; her hands catch the lantern light, and they’re streaked with her own blood.
“Miriam! The family—they’re coming!”
And she chants, “Mine enemy… mine enemy is delivered…”
“Miriam, they’ll know you destroyed the vault, they’ll know you murdered me!”
She laughs ecstatically. “Yes, they’ll know! Oh, Lord, I am the instrument of Thy will! And they’ll know!”
There are four lights. I’m sure of that now. They’re spread out in a bobbing line across the pasture, and the first has started up the steep slope. I can see small, dark shapes moving ahead of them, a flash of white ruff. Shadow. She is in the vanguard, barking incessantly.
And the plan worked. She has led the family to me, and they will know. They will know Miriam.
Too late.
The fuse coils in the grass like a thin, black snake. Miriam’s bloody hands are shaking as she unfurls it, then, with an oblique look at me, cuts the fuse—cuts it only a foot long. I hear shouts in the distance, my name and Miriam’s. Jerry’s voice, Jonathan’s, Stephen’s.
She opens the glass face of the lantern, thrusts the end of the fuse in, and it erupts in a sputter of sparks, then seems to die. But there’s no hope in the lack of visible flame. It is hideously alive, burning within itself, sending out spurting fingers of blue smoke and the acrid smell of smoldering tar. Miriam rises, shouts skyward, “I am the instrument of Thy will! The Lord be praised!” then begins a stumbling retreat down the slope, and she has left the lantern, left it so I can see the fuse trailing out from the corner, and I can see exactly how fast it is burning and exactly how much is left.
I wrench myself toward the dark snake that consumes itself second by second, stretch across the stone wall, straining against the handcuffs, but my free hand falls inches short of the fuse. The key. I fumble in my pocket, fingers closing on the key to the handcuffs. The barking and shouting are closer, and Miriam cries, “Go back! The Lord’s wrath will strike! Go back!”
I can’t find the lock. Angrily I jerk at the handcuffs, gasp at the pain. The lock, damn it—damn her!—find the lock. My hands are shaking, I hear my panting over the hiss of the fuse. There! Key in the lock. No, it slips against the metal, and I can’t hear the deadly hiss for the barking in my ear. Shadow leaps at me in a frenzy of joy. She has found me, as I taught her. She has found me. And knocked the key out of my trembling hand and out of sight somewhere in the thick grass.
“Shadow, get away!” Less than six inches of fuse is visible. “Shadow, go back! Get away from me!” I strike out at her, and she yelps; she can’t understand why I hit her, can’t understand that she’ll die if she stays with me.
I run my right hand through the grass by the stone plinth, vainly seeking the key. My hand closes instead on my cane, I stretch toward the fuse, beat at it with the curved head. But the spurts of smoke won’t stop. I hook the cane around the corner to dislodge the dynamite and find no purchase. Shadow is barking hysterically, and I hear Jerry’s voice near—too near. I look around, see him no more than twenty yards away, but Miriam is running toward him, she shrieks a warning, throws herself at him, and they fall together.
And the fuse has burned past the corner.