“Why do you ask this?” he queried softly, lightly stroking my fingers with his thumbs. The movement sent warm pulses shooting through my veins and tickled my nerve endings in a very good way. Nervously, I withdrew my hands and shifted a bit farther away. Amon didn’t seem disappointed by my actions, just curious.
I looked around and waited until the jogger disappeared into the trees before saying, “It’s just dangerous, okay? Like when you healed yourself and then stood in front of the crowd letting people see your power. You need to be more careful. Try to blend in. Otherwise, people will see you as crazy, like I did, or assume you’re on drugs and lock you up. There are people who would try to hurt you, or at the very least cart you off to Area 51.” At his look of confusion, I said, “I’ll explain Area 51 later. I still have a billion questions to ask, but I believe you are who you say you are, as impossible as it seems.”
Amon nodded. “Good.”
“Now tell me why you need me to go with you.”
“As I said, without your inner workings supplying me with strength, I will die before my purpose is accomplished.”
“And what is your purpose?”
“To waken my brothers and complete the ceremony to align the sun, the moon, and the stars so that the Dark One, Seth, the god of chaos, may be kept at bay for another thousand years.”
“Uh-huh. Hold that thought.” I grabbed my notebook from my bag and began scribbling. “One thousand years…sun…moon…stars…and Dark One. Hmm, you’re going to have to tell me more about that guy Seth later. So are your brothers mummies, too?”
“Yes.”
“You do realize we are very far away from Thebes, right?”
“How far away exactly?”
“Let me check.” I pulled out my smartphone and thumbed through several pages. “Egypt is like…over five thousand, six hundred miles away,” I announced.
“What is a mile?” he asked as he stared with interest at my phone.
“Oh, boy. What units of measurement did you use in Egypt?” Amon captured my hand and my pulse jumped. “What are you doing?” I asked nervously.
Amon smiled. “Showing you our units of measurement.” He traced the lines on my palm and then ran the pad of his finger down my pinky. “This is called djeba, or the width of a finger. The next is shesep, the width of your palm. Meh niswt is a royal cubit, which is seven palms.” Amon placed his palm next to mine and demonstrated the widths stacked on top of each other.
Flushing, I punched the numbers on my phone. “So, it says here that one mile is three thousand five hundred and twenty cubits. That means that to get to Thebes it would be roughly…nineteen million, seven hundred twelve thousand cubits.”
He gasped. “That’s almost a thousand iteru!”
“Yes, and that’s not crossing land, either. It’s over an ocean. Have you ever seen the ocean?”
He nodded. “I have seen the great seas that are fed by the Nile.”
“Believe it or not, Amon, that great sea is actually small when you compare it with others.”
Amon looked away and said quietly, “I have not had much opportunity to explore the world.”
A melancholy expression stole over his face, and I found myself missing his warm smile. “Amon?” I touched his hand and scooted closer so he could see my phone. “Look.” I showed him a picture of Earth. “We are on this continent called North America. Egypt”—I used my fingers to turn the globe and then zoom in on Africa—“is way over here on the African continent. So you can see you are a long way from Kansas, Dorothy.”
“What is this box of magic?”
“Uh, it’s called a phone. It has apps that work kind of like a computer.”
“I do not understand.”
“I can seek answers to questions with it.”
“It is like an oracle?”
“I suppose in a way.”
“How did you acquire this gift of the gods? Did you defeat a monster in battle?”
“Not exactly. Pretty much everyone has one.”