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Austin shook his head. “No. I don’t think it’s crazy. I mean, it makes sense. If someone were to send you a divine messenger, it would obviously be in the form of a cat.” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
I stared at him. Austin West actually believed something I said. Warmth bloomed in my chest, and I looked away.
He looked down at the cat. “Well then, Kitty Cat, we’re all ears. Lead the way.”
“You think he’s here to guide us to the Ennead?” I asked.
Kitty cat miaowed and set off across the excavation site, weaving in and out of the revealed walls.
“I guess we should follow him and find out,” Austin said. He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder.
We followed Kitty Cat across the site. I’d admit, the cat seemed pretty confident that it knew where it was going. He wove in and out of the labyrinth of walls and trenches before stopping at the edge of one. He miaowed and then jumped down into the trench.
Austin jumped down after him and turned to offer me his hand to help me down. My self-sufficient side bristled at the notion he thought I needed help, but I noticed he was distracted and realised the gesture was not due to his lack of faith in me, but an old-fashioned custom from older times. Ones we had both lived through. I bit my lip, wondering how many times I had snapped at him for things that I thought were him thinking I was useless, but had just come from a place of respect and a desire to take care of me whether I needed it or not. I took his hand and jumped down into the trench. He smiled down at me, and for a moment, I lost myself in the warmth of his touch and his lapis blue eyes.
Kitty Cat miaowed, and the moment was broken. We both looked down. The trench was on three levels, and Kitty Cat was sitting in the bottom one. Stepping down, I saw that the bottom layer was covered in engraved sandstone flags that had been laid thousands of years ago. During the excavation, the soil and sand that had covered the floor would have been painstakingly stripped away with trowels and brushes, but now a thin layer of sand once again covered the floor—the constant struggle between man and the desert. Kitty Cat began pawing at the stone he sat on, and I crouched down, wiping away the sand with my hands.
“Anything odd?”
“Well, an engraved floor is pretty odd. What would be the point? People would wear away the carvings pretty quickly when they walked over it. It is sandstone, after all.”
“Agreed. But it’s not a floor. It’s a roof.”
I looked up at him, but the shadows hid his face. “A roof?”
He shrugged. “You said it yourself, the site is buried twenty feet below modern ground level. It makes more sense for it to be a roof than a floor at this height. We’re only... what, six feet down?”
“Good point.” I brushed away the last of the sand and gasped. I looked up at Kitty Cat, his eyes glowing in the darkness. “Good kitty.”
He miaowed as if to say,well, obviously, and I grinned.
“Find something?”
“Yes. The other stones are quite elaborately engraved, but this one has only one glyph on it. A feather.”
“A feather? That’s the symbol of Ma’at.”
“Yes,” I murmured, reaching into my pocket for the feather. “The goddess of justice and balance, just like the Ennead put themselves into an enchanted sleep to protect the balance of the world.” I laid the feather gently on the symbol and sat back, waiting.
“Is something supposed to happen?” Austin asked.
“I don’t know, I just thought maybe it was a link,” I muttered, feeling daft.
“Or maybe just a sign of where to start,” Austin suggested.
“Not a magic key then.” I sighed.
“Magic can be incredibly useful,” Austin remarked, dropping his bag onto the ground and unzipping it. He pulled out something long and handed it to me. “But sometimes, crowbars can be too.” He removed a second one and began to wedge it down the side of the flagstone.
The archaeologist in me cringed at the idea of something as indelicate as a crowbar being used, but Austin was gaining some traction, and the stone shifted slightly, so I joined him, wedging the flat end down and under. The stone was incredibly heavy, and there was something about it that made me wonder if it had somehow been enchanted to be heavier than normal. Austin was the strongest man I’d ever met, and even with his supernatural strength, he seemed to be struggling to lift the stone. Together, we lifted it enough to get our fingers around the edge and pulled, tilting it up like a trapdoor. Finally, it tipped over, crashing to the ground with a sound that made me glance around the nearby buildings to see if any lights came on.
Austin shone his torch down into the hole, revealing a sandy floor ten or twelve feet below. “I guess we found the entrance then. Good work, KC.” Kitty Cat meowed and looked down into the darkness.
“Now what?” I asked. “I was kind of expecting steps or a ladder.”
West felt around inside the hole. “I think there might have been a wooden ladder once, but it’s rotted away.”
“Really? The place has been sealed for thousands of years, and the conditions are dry. There should be something left to see,” I mused, leaning over to peer in.
