me, but either way I’m making the choice to live. I don’t want my heart to be eaten.
“I’ve got to save the world, and I need to find the creature that lives out here somewhere who will share her heart so I can become a sphinx and get the job done. If that is you, then fine, let’s get the show on the road. If it’s not, then I’d very much like to be left alone so that I can go and find the huntress.”
The lioness sat on her haunches, her tail flicking back and forth. Then, all at once, she leapt.
Lifting my head, I whispered, “I’m sorry,” hoping the wind would carry the sentiment to Amon. I knew that my hopes and dreams for the future no longer mattered. I was unworthy. It was time to accept my fate. I opened my arms and embraced my death.
When the large cat hit my body, I felt like a bowling pin knocked over by a speeding ball. It wasn’t the kind of gentle tap, either, where the bowler was unsure if the ball would even make it all the way to the end of the lane. I didn’t wobble back and forth, undecided over whether I’d tip or not. She was heavy, and the blow meant that I was the type of pin that smashed into anything and everything in my wake.
I ended up on my back, her bone-crushing weight on top of me making me struggle just to inhale. Overhead, the afternoon sky had darkened and I heard the heavy boom of thunder. My arms were wrapped around the lioness, and I clutched the tawny fur of her heaving sides in a death lock, praying for it all to be over quickly.
Her sharp claws pierced the skin directly over my heart, and I felt her moist breath on my cheek. As she shifted, draping her body across my own, her left paw settled at the top of my shoulder, and I somehow managed to take in a tiny pull of oxygen. The lioness settled her head next to mine, tucking it into the gap between my shoulder and neck, and though I waited for the sharp bite that would rip open my jugular, it didn’t come.
She burrowed closer. So close it felt as if I were caught in quicksand once again, but this time with a creature three times my size dragging me down. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t dying. Why she wasn’t eating me. I knew cats tended to suffocate their prey by crushing the windpipe, and even though I could barely inhale or exhale, she didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
Minutes passed, and I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Tentatively, I brushed my fingertips over her fur, but there was no response. The weight didn’t seem as bad as it had been just moments before. I was finally able to catch my breath and groaned at the pain I felt in my torso. Her head lolled and I twisted mine to peer up at her, but her golden eyes were glazed over with a sheen of unseeing moisture.
It wasn’t long before I was able to begin twisting out from beneath her, but before I thrust her limp body aside, I heard an irritated voice in my head. Remain still until the transformation is complete.
I stopped moving and wondered where the voice had come from. Was it Isis? Some other Egyptian goddess I’d yet to meet? What kind of transformation was going on, exactly? I tried to pry the paw away from my chest but couldn’t. The claws were sunk into me so deeply, I marveled at how fortunate I was that she hadn’t ripped my heart from my chest. Giving up, I lay there quietly until something happened, something even stranger than the body of the lioness dissolving before my eyes.
My heightened senses alerted me to a stranger I couldn’t see. I wasn’t alone. The more the lioness disappeared, the more tangible and real the ghostly presence became.
The voice that had spoken to me wasn’t Isis. I was sure of it now. What was even more alarming was that the being I sensed was with me. Not next to me, and not on another plane of existence, like when Amon was with me in my dreams, but actually with me, in my mind. I could feel her like I could feel the shoes on my feet or the hair brushing the back of my neck.