His gaze dropped to my mouth, and my breath caught. I was in a dark, dusty tomb, spiderwebs in my hair, sand in my boots, with sunburned, sweaty skin, but none of these things affected me more than the drop-dead gorgeous sun god who was currently hovering over me.
I wasn’t sure if what I felt was real or if it was a side effect of our connection, but I knew without a doubt that he wanted to kiss me. And Egyptian heaven help me, I wanted him to. But despite the fact that I was vividly imagining the press of his lips against mine, and the likelihood that he knew that I wanted to kiss him, he closed his eyes, murmured some soft words in his native language, and shifted, moving quickly off and away from me.
For some reason Amon was keeping me at a distance. I wasn’t one of those girls who lacked self-confidence, but his behavior was disconcerting enough to make me second-guess my girlish charms. Maybe there was more to our connection than he was sharing.
I was determined not to allow any more self-doubt to color my emotional response, but Amon’s repeated rejection left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.
As he turned his back to me and began studying the markings on the walls, I sighed, grabbed my bag, and murmured, “I was wrong. I think my ego was bruised in the fall.”
Amon gave me a sidelong glance and frowned, turning back to the hieroglyphs without responding and effectively shutting me out. Sighing again, I chose a passage as far as the light from his body would allow. Finding more carvings, I called out to him, “I think I found something.”
“What does it look like?” Amon replied. “Describe what you see.”
Squinting in the light, I studied the form and answered, “The first part is the sun, moon, and stars, like you talked about. Then there’s a guy with a weird-shaped head. I’ve never seen an animal that looked like that before. It may be a horse? Anyway, the guy looks like he’s pushing a rock. Hold on. There are little symbols on the rock.”
Tracing my finger over the carved grooves wasn’t enough to help me make them out. Leaning closer, I gently blew on the stone and a light powdery dust rose in the air, leaving the symbols beneath more clear. “Wait a minute,” I mumbled to myself as I backtracked a few paces. Sure enough, the large block I’d recently passed had the exact same carvings that the horse-faced god was pushing. Just to be sure, I dusted it off with my hand, took out a pen from my bag, and copied the markings onto my hand.
From around the corner, Amon asked, “What did you find, Lily?” his voice echoing in the large space.
“Just practice some patience for a few seconds and I’ll tell you!” I hollered over my shoulder as I checked the symbols on my hand against the god’s stone box. It was a match.
Pleased with my discovery, I headed back to the large stone and began pushing, wedging my boots into the grooves of the floor for leverage. As I struggled with the stubborn stone, I began describing what I’d found to Amon.
“It’s in the shape of a stone roughly the size of your chest, and it’s sticking out from the wall. The god on the picture is pushing, so I figure that’s the thing to do.”
“Yes, but what are the symbols you see?” Amon called from around the corner.
Gasping, I tried pushing the heavy stone to the right and then to the left, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Turning around, I braced my back against it and pushed with my legs. As I panted, I explained, “There are four pictures. Top left is a full moon with horizontal lines through it. Bottom left is a rectangle. Top right is a sun half over the horizon, and bottom right”—I grunted and laughed in relief as I felt the stone shift slightly—“is a pair of walking legs.”
“Walking legs?”
“You know, like a stick figure with two feet pointing in one direction.”