Sunrise on the Mediterranean by Suzanne Frank Read Free Book Online Page A

temple, this Abu Simbel, and moved it up.”
    “Where? How?” He’d seen Abu Simbel, the monstrosity of it. How could it be moved, ever, save by the hand of
le bon Dieu
himself?
    “Much funding came Frum-A-roundthwerld,” RaEm said. “I saw it on TV.”
    It took a moment for her words to sink in. Did she even have a concept of the world being round? Did she know all the peoples
     who inhabited the planet? She spoke as though the phrases were memorized. How lost she must have been in Chloe’s fast-paced
     world of eating raw fish. “What exactly did you see?” Cheftu asked. She didn’t know what she was talking about, but the concept
     was fascinating. Moving the temple of Abu Simbel?
    “They took Rameses’ temple apart and rebuilt it on the cliff overlooking the lake they’d made from the Nile.” She sucked one
     finger dry. “To have been in Rameses’ time, to be loved and honored in the shape of that temple! Imagine the jewelry his wife
     had; the slaves, the power.”
    He should have known her fervor stemmed from customary greed. However, he wouldn’t let her smallness bother him; RaEm was
     but a temporary companion.
    Chloe would keep her vow. Cheftu needed to keep alert for the green-eyed women who strayed across his path. “More sushi?”
     He offered RaEm the head.
    “Nay,” she said, recoiling. “You feed me offal?”
    Cheftu sighed as he tossed the remnants in the water. RaEm spoke after a moment, her tone meditative. “Though I think there
     is more to sushi than just seaweed and raw fish. An avocado.”
    “What is that?”
    “I don’t know, something you eat. I told you: I don’t know things, or facts outside language. I just know how she felt about
     them. Avocado must be an emotional memory.”
    “Chloe was emotional over avocado?”
    “I want to be a consort, worshiped and adored by a powerful man,” RaEm said, changing the subject back to herself. “I want
     to be remembered throughout history. Do you know how those moderns worship us? The Amazing Ancients, they say. They are in
     wonder over how we built the pyramids, over why we mummified our dead. They live narrow, dark lives yet think we are fascinated
     with death.” She shivered. “It is eerie how much they do not know, how unreal we are to them.”
    “Did you think it was easier for you to understand them?” She fell silent, giving Cheftu a moment to marvel that he was having
     a reasonable conversation with this woman. Of course, there was nothing to gain right now, nothing to barter for or with.
     Only because she didn’t know about the stones. He shuddered to think of RaEm with that kind of power.
    “Egypt is ruled by a tribe called Arabs, who have a celibate, childless god. I cannot find my roots in their eyes. They are
     merchants and artisans, with no trace of Amun-Ra in their souls.”
    Cheftu opened his mouth to agree with her, to relay his wonder when he’d arrived from nineteenth-century France and into the
     people and culture he’d devoted his life to studying.
    “If I had had the power, I would have wiped them all away,” she said. “Start all over again. Even with neon and electricity,
     they were nothing special.”
    He was stunned. “They are a people,” he said. “An entire nation.”
    “They are groundskeepers,” she said. “They know nothing of real Egypt. Worshiping just one god, a god they can’t even see,
     how could they?”
    She didn’t know what she was talking about, Cheftu reasoned. She couldn’t.
    “Phaemon, when he first woke, thought he was in the afterworld, so he fought the demons.”
    Cheftu felt the blood leave his face. “But—”
    “But he wasn’t,” RaEm said. “Of course, he killed half a dozen of them, gutting them as one would do to a demon, before he
     realized it.” He felt her shrug. “Phaemon was distraught, but they were nothing but peasants.”
    “How can you be so removed?” Cheftu whispered, horrified.
    He felt RaEm’s gaze on his face. “Power