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She smiled, the first real one I’d seen since the moment I learned that she was alive. Mamá pulled out a long silk kerchief from her pocket and handed it to me. It was soft to the touch, embroidered in a delicate floral pattern.
“You and your flowers,” I mused. “Do you ever miss your garden?”
“I’ve spent the last decade living half my life in Egypt,” she said. “After so much desert, of course I miss the green. I miss a lot of things whenever I leave Argentina. Té de maté, empanadas. The way I could smell the ocean from the balcony of my bedroom.” She lifted her eyes, identical to my own. Eyes that changed color, eyes that wouldn’t settle. “You.”
My body flooded with warmth. I hadn’t known how much I’d wanted to hear her words. How they would feed me.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
“The magic is old; whoever cast the original spell must have been very powerful. This will shrink anything it can fully cover—”
“Like your brother’s spectacles.”
She shrugged, the hint of a mischievous smirk curling her mouth. “It’s possible. I’ve only tried to use it on very special occasions.”
“I bet,” I said. “While teasing your brother?”
“He makes it so easy,” she said, smiling. Slowly, the warmth bled from her face, and I knew she was remembering what he’d done to us. The life he stole from our family.
I cleared my throat, wanting to distract her from her thoughts. “So you would like for me to…”
“Shrink as many artifacts as you can while you’re working,” she said, her voice serious and grim, “without anyone knowing.”
My mouth went dry.
“At night, you’ll give them to me for safekeeping.”
“Tío Ricardo will notice if anything goes missing,” I protested.
“Keep your voice down,” she said, with a nervous look up the bank. “Be strategic with what you take. Look for redundancies, every tomb has them. Repeats of jewelry, statues, trinket boxes. I sincerely doubt my brother will have memorized every item. We won’t be able to keep everything safe, but if you work fast, I think we can keep plenty from his greedy hands.”
Mamá leaned forward and placed her palms on my shoulders. “Now listen to me, Inez, this is very important.” She waited for me to nod. “You must shrink any papyrus you find, any scrolls, rolls of parchment, first.”
I frowned. “Why? Surely my uncle would go after the jewelry first? They’d fetch a higher price?”
My mother shook her head. “Not this particular sheet.”
“Whatsheet?” I asked. “If you tell me what it looks like, perhaps I can search for it specifically.”
Mamá considered, but then shook her head reluctantly. “No, it might look more suspicious if it looked like you were on the hunt for the sheet itself.”
Another question bubbled to the surface. We were still surrounded by the Nile, far enough away from Aswan to be an issue. “But even if I succeed, we are still stuck on this island.”
“No, I have a friend who’s coming to assist me. He said he’d be here sometime before Navidad. He’ll help us load everything onto his dahabeeyah. From there, we sail to Cairo.”
My mind reeled. “But what about Tío Ricardo’s criminal associates? I’m assuming he will have told them of the discovery.”
She nodded, her expression turning thoughtful. “They’re predominately in Thebes, so if we make it to Cairo before they can come to Philae, we should be safe. It will be harder for them to snatch the artifacts from the Egyptian Museum, and from under Monsieur Maspero’s watchful eye.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I spent a lot of time spying on my brother and going through his correspondence.” She wrapped her scarf tighter around her hair. “I’ll come to you, Inez. Please don’t try to find me. It’s too risky—for both of us.”
“Will this work?”
She inhaled deeply and then let out a long, calming exhale. “It has to. Your father would have wanted us to help, in any way that we could. I imagine he’s pleased we’re working together for something he had loved so much.”
The task before me wouldn’t be easy, but it helped knowing that I was working against the man who had taken my father from me.
