A Time to Weep (Kindle and ePub)

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Book 2 in The Time Travel Journals of Sahara Aldridge

Sometimes the only way forward is back.

Sahara Aldridge, a young Egyptologist in 1922, is chasing down the trail of her parents through the unknown corridors of time.

But when all clues point to Ancient Rome as the next place to search, Sahara retreats into the safety of her archaeological work, cataloguing treasures from the newly-discovered tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

As the discovery of the intact tomb propels the world into a frenzy of “Tut-mania,” the ever-present Jack Moretti is there to help, but what is his agenda?

And it appears Tempus Vigilia isn’t going to leave her alone. The secret society has sent others, tracking her movements and asking too many questions.

Now it seems her family is in danger.

Sahara must once again put her career on hold, to find what she has lost.

But will Ancient Rome hold the answers, or only one more reason to grieve?

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“Fast-Paced Thrilling Adventure!”

“A page-turner that is not to be missed!”

“An exceptionally well written time travel book!”

“Within the first few pages… I was hooked.”

“I struggled to put the book down at night so I could get enough sleep for the next day. It’s just THAT good!”

“Adventure with witty writing and a hint of romance. Just the way I like it.”

“This is the true definition of a page turner.”

“I absolutely loved this book!”

“Outstanding Writing”

“Wow; I loved this book and will anxiously await the second novel of the series.”

“Tracy Higley does not disappoint in this edge of your seat adventure. I can't wait to read the next book in the series!”

“I love Tracy Higley’s books and this one blew me away!”

“I was fascinated by the well-researched historical setting, the intriguing characters, and the descriptions that left me feeling like I was really in Egypt watching the story unfold.”

“Time travel at its best!”

“I couldn't put it down for very long!”

“What an incredible story line. Well woven together and exciting to read.” 

“The mystery and twists kept me on the edge! Beautifully written!” 

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***NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD!***

PLEASE READ A TIME TO SEEK BEFORE READING THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT!

Enjoy a sample from A Time To Weep

PROLOGUE

In one sense, each of us is a time traveler.

Most of us never realize ourselves to be such, since we perceive our travel as having only one direction, a one-way journey, as it were, and always forward. But we are traveling through time all the same. Every morning we awake in yesterday’s future.

Or at least, that is the way those who cannot travel backward ought to think of it, to catch a glimpse of the wonder of it all. To see this thing we call Time as a road under our feet, and we the never-failing traveler across Time, slipping along toward the future, albeit unable to break through the forest on either side, nor escape the gravity which keeps our feet trodding the path.

And yet, that is not how I see Time. Not any longer.

Oh, perhaps in those early days of traveling to the ancient past, I believed I’d merely been pulled backward along that path, to an earlier milestone on the Road of Time.

Now I know better. Now, after all these years, I know a different truth.

There is no road.

The road is an illusion, given to us at the beginning, to help us make sense of the world as we open our eyes.

But we can be weaned from our dependence on this linear falsity.

And then… And then it is as though a hawk swoops down from heaven, catches us in gentle talons, carries us away. We are lifted above the path and the bordering forest—those illusions we believed to be everything. Lifted higher, until we see the whole countryside. And then the whole country. The continent, the sea. The seven continents and seven seas. The ball of Earth, the wheeling stars and planets.

The road has disappeared, and it has taken all of Time with it.

There is only the Eternal Now, with its tranquil stillness. Its childlike trust. Its holy knowing.

I have sought, all my life since learning I could be lifted outside the Road of Time, to bring a taste of this stillness back from my travels, even as I walk the path with you. And perhaps, at times, I have even been successful.

But it was not a lesson I learned all at once. Nor a truth easily accepted.

I began with a time of seeking. Seeking with all my heart.

And at first, my feet still walked the illusory road. I needed to accept a critical truth: that what we call the past, and even history, cannot define who we are. We must leave all those mis-remembered and misinterpreted fragments behind, to find our future.

But I was yet to learn that even the future has a falseness about it. That we can spend ourselves building palaces in the air, never knowing who we truly are, nor who we could become.

The search was necessary. It is always necessary.

And so I journal the seeking.

But in any search, before truth can be grasped, there also must be a time to let go.

And while there must be a time to seek, there must also be a time to weep.

CHAPTER ONE

November 26, 1922

Valley of the Kings, Egypt

In a narrow, bleached-out desert trench, where I’d been shoved to the back of a small crowd, I bounced on my toes to see above heads and fumed at my ridiculous position.

This moment would change the course of my life. It would change the future of Egyptology, even the profession of archaeology itself.

And three Egyptian workmen blocked my view.

I jostled past the men, deeper into the trench that led to the second sealed door of Tut-ankh-amun’s tomb. I ignored the tense mutterings at my intrusion, stationed myself as near as possible, and braced sweaty palms against my trousers, the powdered ash of desert sand coating my hands.

Ahead of me, my childhood friend Lady Evelyn Herbert, in a downy blue jacket and skirt as pale as the sky, clutched her father’s pinstriped arm as though she feared ancient ghosts might escape the tomb. Behind, the desolation of the desert pressed against us all.

The crown of Lord Carnarvon’s balding head seared under the unforgiving sun, his spicy-scented pomade gleaming like hot tar. The Earl rapped his silver-tipped cane against the trench wall. “Well, old boy? Are we going to have at it, or not?”

Howard Carter glared over his shoulder at his patron. “Whatever’s beyond this door has waited three thousand years. I think it can wait a few more minutes while we do this right!” He shoved his Homburg hat backward and returned his attention to the plastered doorway and the tiny chisel.

Howard once told me, in a rare moment of vulnerability, that the chisel was a gift from his grandmother on his seventeenth birthday. I blinked away a swell of pride for my mentor, despite his coldness toward me the past few days. He’d waited decades for this moment.

Beside Howard, Arthur Callender braced a hand against the door, still covered with the ovals and lines, jackals and men, of the Necropolis Seal, as though he could push it inward. “Pecky” Callender, as he was nicknamed, the large-built Brit whose engineering prowess with Egypt’s National Railway had earned him awards and respect, had been brought in, to organize the project that hopefully lay beyond this door.

Eve’s eyes sought my own and she reached her free hand to grasp mine. “Aren’t you so excited, Sahara?”

I returned the grip and stepped out of the shadows. “So excited.”

Yes, I was thrilled. But I was also privy to knowledge that no one else in this trench could know, about what lay beyond.

Howard and Porchy dared only to believe we’d found an intact royal cache. Perhaps a stash of mummies or embalming goods.

But their fondest hope, to discover a royal tomb, was more than optimism for me. I’d stood beside this doorway only days after the ancient Egyptians sealed their young pharaoh’s body inside, piled with everything he would need in the afterlife.

The past thirty-six hours had seen a flurry of activity, as the first door Howard and I found a few weeks ago at the bottom of the sixteen steps was carefully dismantled, then a nine-meter descending passageway cleared of rubble, before this second sealed door came to light.

“Shouldn’t it be easier, Howard, darling?” Eve mopped a dainty handkerchief against her forehead and peered around Carter’s shoulder. “Since it’s been opened before?”

Being significantly taller than Eve, I could see over Howard’s shoulder to his slow progress.

Howard grunted. “Been centuries, though. Maybe millennia.” He tapped the doorway’s upper corner beneath his chisel. “See the size of this replastering? A small-built man could barely squeeze through here.”

“Yes, yes, we know.” Lord Carnarvon smoothed his mustache, a nervous habit. “Perhaps a few items have been plundered through there, but nothing large. Nothing significant. It’s all still beyond, waiting for us. If you ever manage to break through!”

I pulled a brush and pick from the pocket of my cracked-leather jerkin and tried to breach the father-daughter barrier. “Do you want help?”

Howard ignored my offer.

The short-lived warm feelings between us, surrounding the discovery of the steps and first doorway, and the arrival of the esteemed Porchy Herbert, Earl of Carnarvon, and his daughter Lady Evelyn, had given way over the past few days to annoyance at my odd disappearance into the second millennia BC, and suspicion over my friendship with the American reporter Jack Moretti.

I couldn’t blame Howard for either sentiment. I’d given him no explanation for the days I’d been missing. And try as I might to trust Jack, I had my own suspicions about him.

I replaced my tools and clenched my fists, fingernails denting my palms with small crescents. How was I to make my mark on archaeology if I weren’t allowed to be part of it?

Howard leaned away from the small hole he’d opened in the doorway. “There—that’s through, then.” He pointed to an iron testing rod leaning against the hard-packed trench wall. “Hand me the rod.”

Eve grabbed it up before I had a chance, and thrust it into Howard’s hand.

Despite my certainty about what we’d find, the breath caught in my chest and a current swept me. The hair-tingling prickle of anticipation.

Howard nudged the rod into the hole.

We all seemed to suspend breath as one.

The rod disappeared inward, inch-by-inch, until Howard’s fingertips grazed the door.

He turned and exhaled. “Empty.”

A hallowed beat of silence, and then a whoop behind us, from the three workmen.

No more rubble to clear. No false door against a wall. The space beyond the door was a chamber, waiting to be entered.

Howard yanked out the rod and chiseled the hole larger, with renewed fervor.

It felt like a decade later before he had it large enough for a decent look.

Someone behind me struck a match and a candle was passed forward.

Howard held the candle to the hole. It flickered in the escaping air and he took a step back. “Foul gases, perhaps.”

Three-thousand-year-old air. What a thought.

I forced myself to stop biting my lower lip. My tension could not speed the process. Did Tut-ankh-amun’s sarcophagus lay on the other side of this door?

The candle flame steadied, a finger of light too tiny to do much, but Howard pushed it through the opening, and peered in.

Lord Carnarvon and Eve, Callender and I, leaned forward, though we could only see the back of Howard’s head.

We waited. An eternity.

“Well?” Lord Carnarvon’s single word punched a hole in the silence. “Can you see anything?”

“Yes…” Howard’s voice, hushed into sacred awe, enveloped us. “Wonderful things.”

No celebration from the workmen at this utterance, only reverent silence.

I glanced back and found all three with their tarbushes pulled from their heads.

Moments later, Howard had the hole wider, an electric torch inserted, and Lord Carnarvon joined him at the opening to peer inside.

Eve’s fingertips brushed her lips. “What do you see, Father? We’re absolutely dying out here! Tell us something!”

“It’s… it’s nearly too much to describe.”

I rubbed a hand against my jaw, tried to force the tension from my neck.

Eve plucked at her father’s jacket. “Oh, do let us see!”

The two men stepped back and Howard handed me the torch, albeit with a grudging scowl.

Eve and I put our heads together at the hole, cheeks scratching fragmented stone, and I swept the beam of light into the chamber.

I sucked in a ragged-edged breath at the unimagined wealth piled inside. The glint of gold winked at us from every corner. Gilt-edged chariots, thrones and beds inlaid with ivory and precious stones, life-size golden statues of men and animals, alabaster jars, tools for farming and hunting and warfare. The endless jumble overwhelmed the senses.

“Enough, then.”

I released the electric torch to Howard’s waiting hand. “How will we ever accomplish it?”

Lord Carnarvon tapped his cane once more. “We’re going to need help, here, Carter. And lots of it.”

“And security.” Howard ran a hand through his thick hair. “Once the press gets ahold of this news—” At this, he flicked a distrusting glance at me. “We’re going to have everyone from government officials to foreign royalty clamoring for a tour.”

I licked dry lips, tasting dust and salt. “Or trying to pilfer something for their collections.”

Neither of the men, who sometimes participated in such collections, replied.

Howard glared up at the sun. “It’s getting late. Too late to dismantle the door. We’ll seal the hole, close Callender’s wooden grille at the bottom of the steps, and post a guard. Get started first thing tomorrow.”

But in the morning, I was relegated to a lesser role than the day before. Howard and Arthur Callender supervised the few workmen allowed beyond the wooden gate, along with the Egyptian Antiquities Inspector Ibrahim.

Lord Carnarvon, Eve, and I waited in the shade of a nearby canopy. Eve and her father lounged with drinks-in-hand.

I perched on the edge of a camp chair, shifting every few minutes in a useless effort to get comfortable, and drumming my fingers on my legs.

“Sahara, will you stop that fidgeting!”

I glared, Eve’s petulant tone grating on me. “I should be down there.”

“Well, complaining won’t make it happen.”

True enough.

A movement in the sky to my left caught my attention. A flash of blue and yellow, like sky and sun, with a trail of cloud-white behind.

Two figures ran along the hill of sand, the shorter of them with arm upraised. A man and a boy, flying a kite.

Eve shaded her eyes with a hand. “Isn’t that your… friend?” She leaned on the last word with obvious intent.

I shrugged, too aggravated to answer.

Jack ran alongside our young digsite laborer, Nadeem, who wrangled the kite expertly, his head thrown back to watch it dance and soar across the cloudless sky.

As if aware of our attention, the two slowed and dropped to the slope, facing us. Nadeem kept the kite afloat, but fell backward into the sand as though exhausted.

Jack braced his forearms across his knees and leaned his head back to catch the hot breeze.

The pair had become fast friends these past two weeks, as Jack waited for the story we both knew was about to break. In fact, he’d spent more time with Nadeem, whom he called “a good egg,” than he had with me. But that was my own fault.

I had work to do. And the revelation that I could travel through time, like my rogue parents before me, changing history for better or worse as I did, had me more than a little terrified. I didn’t ask for this ability, was fairly certain I didn’t want it, despite Jack’s appealing suggestion that some Higher Power had a cosmic purpose for my life.

Although I had to admit, the revelations of the past few weeks had lifted me from a dark place I hadn’t known I occupied. It turns out that recollections of the past, and even interpretations of our history may, or may not, reflect reality. I no longer needed to see myself as abandoned, rejected. Unworthy of love. It was time to build a new identity for myself, a new place of value.

And that new identity began here, in that trench, focusing on the work I was meant to do.

“That’s him, isn’t it, Sahara?”

Jack lifted his head and waved at us.

I’d spent the past two weeks avoiding Jack and all the distraction he represented. The additional suspicion that Jack’s aunt, Giada Moretti, was involved with my parents’ disappearance helped me keep the man at arm’s length, despite our shared experience helping the widow of Pharaoh Tut-ankh-amun three thousand years in the past.

Yes, questions about time travel plagued me, but I shoved them down, unanswered, slamming a lid on that boiling pot.

I returned Jack’s wave. “Yes, that’s Nadeem.”

“Ha!” She grinned. “You can’t fool me, Sahara Aldridge. I was talking about Jack Moretti, and you know it.”

I leaned back in the dusty chair and looked away from the kite fliers.

She eyed me closely. “Well, I will just say that he looks like good father-material to me.”

I ignored her smirking.

“Tell her, Pugs,” Eve leaned toward her father, “she shouldn’t be turning up her nose at suitors.”

Lord Carnarvon ignored his daughter’s injunction.

A hoot from the direction of the tomb entrance brought him to his feet, still leaning on his cane. The man seemed more frail this season than ever. Was he ill again?

“Ready, at last?” Carnarvon’s bony shoulders hunched toward the tomb.

Howard’s hat, then head, appeared on the stone steps. “We’re ready.”

Eve and I jumped to our feet.

Howard held up a hand, fingers splayed like a barrier. “Just you, Porchy. We can’t have everyone traipsing in there before we know what’s what.”

Lord Carnarvon took a step forward, but then reached back and grabbed Eve’s hand with a warm smile. “Evelyn’s coming, too. She’s waited her whole life for this.”

As the two joined Howard at the steps, I swallowed against the hot tightness in my throat. I had also waited my whole life. But I had no affectionate father here to advocate for me. Instead, my father was somewhere floating through history with my mother and sister.

A Revisionist, Jack had called me. Someone who could travel in time and change the past. But it was my future that would define me.

A future, it would seem, which I had no ability to affect.