The light pulled away, leaving painful flashes in Caleb’s vision. He couldn’t make anything out. He heard a scraping of the small wheel within its granite setting. Rubbing his eyes, he took another step back and completely lost his bearings. “Nina?” He started to call to her, but a heavy clang drowned out his voice. Fuzzy shapes appeared out of the glare. He looked up and saw two giants looming over him. One appeared compassionate and sad; the other’s bird-like expression had darkened into something like rage.
Caleb turned away from the stairs, back to the chamber, and there was his mother, to the right of Waxman, and Nina, standing directly in front of the caduceus.
Another clang, and Caleb blinked. Then, in an unfocused haze, he saw five figures gathering around the seal. The crack down the middle expanded into a dark, widening line the width of a pillar.
“We did it!” Waxman shouted.
Nina stopped and looked back, but her look of triumph melted when she saw Caleb’s face. He seemed to want to say something witty, something to make them all pause and regroup. But he couldn’t find his voice. He squinted and tried to see beyond the parting doors, but so much shifting sand and dust were drizzling down on the intruders. Then a horrible grating reverberated off the walls of the chamber. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, groaned as though the harbor was pressing down upon them-millions of gallons of water compressing their little chamber all at once.
“Nina!”
She turned to him, reaching out — just as a torrential wave of blackness erupted from the gap in the door, exploding into the room.
Caleb had a glimpse of five figures consumed and swept backward like ants in a flood. Helen and Waxman, just off to the side, out of the rushing water’s path, turned and ran toward the safety of the stairs.
The flood took Nina head-on, lifting her in the air in a watery death-grip, and then drove her into the granite floor. Another surging wave rushed in and flung her toward Caleb. He grunted as she slammed into him and they both hurtled back into the colossal leg of Thoth. Caleb struggled to hold her wrist as he gripped the statue’s staff.
Nina coughed and tried to force out a watery scream. She was nearly ripped free by the freezing water crashing over them again and again, swirling and pulling as it rose. Caleb choked on wretched-tasting seawater mixed with the dust of ages, but he could feel the statue’s contours below his feet. He pushed off its midsection and hauled himself up, only to be hit by another angry wave. With a burst of strength, he pulled Nina higher as he fought to work his way up the statue to stay ahead of the rising flood.
Finally he locked his arm between the staff and the statue’s upraised hand and could go no higher, his head hard against the cold ceiling, when the room plunged into darkness, the final flashlight beams swirling under the dark tide. He thought of his mother and the others and could only imagine the worst, their bodies tossed about, dashed against the stones, consigned to this, their final resting place hundreds of feet beneath the surface.
His lips were almost pressed against the ceiling-the last inch of air left. He took another gasp and then his head was completely below water. In seconds his lungs began to scream, his heart thundered and he almost gave in to panic.
Then suddenly, it was as if someone had pulled the stopper out of a giant bathtub. The water started receding with a huge sucking sound, a swirling in the darkness. Caleb could breathe again. The water descended quickly, very quickly, and soon he could make out the dimmed, submerged flashlights before they disappeared altogether, flowing out through the tunnel. Sucked out, Caleb thought, with sudden dread, along with his mother, Waxman and the others.
“Caleb!” Nina gurgled, coughing up pints of water. Her wrist started to slip through his weakening grasp, now high above the chamber floor and without the buoyancy of the water to support her weight. Her voice was weak when she said, “Don’t-don’t let me go!”
“Hang on!” The blackness around them seeped into his skull, blanketing his consciousness. He heard a buzzing, and he was back there-in the jungles of Belize, in that tomb, holding onto his sister.
His grip on Nina slipped another inch and she screamed. Her feet dangled in mid-air, kicking absently. She clutched wildly at his body, and in her frenzy grabbed his arm, tearing it from its grip on the statue. But in sheer reflex, he shook her off to free his hand and regain his broken hold. The following scream was an echo of Phoebe’s familiar cry from years ago. Then there came a wet thud and a sickening snap that resounded over and over, drowning out the grating of the closing door.
“Nina!”
He fought the cold and fatigue and struggled to stay conscious. He made his way down the statue, sliding, scrambling, then dropping the final few feet. He landed knee-deep in the swirling water and reached down to feel around for anything but the stone floor. The currents pulled at his legs, and if it had been any higher, he might have been swept toward the pit. But he was able to stand firm.
“Nina!” His hands fumbled about. He dropped to his knees, splashing, reaching in the darkness. The water was down to only five or six inches, but rushing quickly and powerfully toward the drain. “Nina!” He crawled, rolled, swung his arms wide in a frenetic effort to find her.
Lights appeared-two of them-streaming down from high up the stairs, falling on Caleb, and then flicking around the room, scoping out every niche, every square foot of the water-cleansed chamber.
“Find Nina!” he screamed, as the streaming floods exiting through the gap in the floor and the great door sealed shut again, the caduceus once again whole. “Where is she?”
“Caleb.” His mother’s footsteps, splashing in the last few inches of draining water.
“Nina!”
“Caleb…” Helen knelt next to him, placed her hands gently on his shoulders. Her touch calmed him, even as he realized there was nothing left to do.
He whimpered, and rested his forehead against the cold, wet floor.
He never remembered much about the next few minutes. He didn’t know if he had blacked out or just stumbled about in a daze. There were only vague recollections of a kind-eyed, bird-faced goddess blinking at him in the darkness and shifting ever so slightly, the noise of her motions keeping him conscious.
His mother helped him up while Waxman continued searching for Nina. Then someone was helping him, carrying him up the stairs, stumbling every few steps. Except in his delirium he wasn’t under the sea in Alexandria, he was in Belize, climbing the broken stairs, carrying his sister’s broken, unconscious body, and praying that Phoebe-if she was still alive-wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t wake to the agony. Wouldn’t come back to a world where she might never walk again.
They dragged Caleb out to freedom and, taking deep gulps of the cool Mediterranean air flowing through Qaitbey’s vacant stone hallways, he slipped away from his mother’s arms and rolled over to gaze at the dome high above, at that one lone dove, still circling, singing out its cry of loneliness.
17
The next few days were lost in alternating surges of pain and guilt, sleepless fits and frantic attempts to see his mother. Every time Caleb slipped back into consciousness, prodded by a succession of stern doctors and narrow-faced nurses, he saw Waxman speaking with Egyptian authorities, reporters, and other men in dark suits.
Finally, he had some time alone with his mother. Red-eyed and sullen, she spoke without making eye contact, and only once, briefly, she set her hand on Caleb’s. Her other arm was in a cast and she had green and blue bruises all over her face. Caleb learned soon enough that his mother, Waxman and Victor were the only ones to make it out alive, the only ones luckily carried toward the stairs, where they managed to climb out ahead of the rising water. The others’ bodies, mangled and deformed, with shattered skulls and broken bones, were found later that night after a six-hour rescue mission by the Egyptian Coast Guard.
But Nina… Nina’s body hadn’t been found yet. Caleb couldn’t think about her, not now. All he could think about were the others, and he kept dreaming that it was up to him to tell their families how they had died, and for what.
He was alive. His mother was alive. On one level he was relieved that she had survived. On another, he
