Nibalut Benangniya
Iya tengah tidur
Iya sampay aken niperluken
Sampay laguniya agan nimulaken
Wrapped in her threads
She sleeps
Until she is needed
Until her song begins
—“Lagu Ngendget”, a song from Pula Anak, recorded by Chen Yue circa 1975
Keith smiled at the cab driver, trying to think of how to say what he wanted, but to his dismay, he drew a blank.
The driver finally said something Keith didn’t understand. Outside the cab, the crowded Cairo street was alive with motion, color, and sound.
“Ah…” Keith said to the man. “Do you speak English?”
Before the driver could answer, Fiona leaned forward. “Men fàdlàk,” she said. “Momken tewàSSàlni Haram?”
The driver nodded. “Yes,” he answered in English. “I will go there. Seventy pounds.”
“Forty,” Fiona said. She said something in Arabic Keith didn’t catch. They went back and forth for a moment. Finally the driver nodded and started driving through the narrow street. The pedestrians largely ignored him; Keith kept flinching, afraid they were going to hit someone.
“How much did you settle on?” he asked. “I couldn’t follow that.”
“Fifty Egyptian pounds,” she said, sitting back. “It’s a fair price, I think. Especially considering this cab has air conditioning.”
“Clearly you picked up more of the language than I did in the crash course,” he muttered. “I couldn’t understand anything he said in Arabic.”
“I don’t think he’s Egyptian,” she replied. “Syrian, maybe. Different accent.”
“Still,” he said.
“Hey, I’m good with languages,” she said. “I like them. They make sense to me.”
“You know,” he said, “I tried to learn Ancient Egyptian as a kid. My aunt had a book on it. It took me years to admit I’d never get it.”
“This the same aunt who told you the scary stories?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They weren’t scary, though. They were freaking terrifying. Gave me nightmares. Stories about Duat, the Egyptian underworld, and all the monsters that waited there to tear apart the souls of the unworthy. Except in her stories, Duat was, like, directly underneath my bed, and opened up every night. I used to lie awake, convinced I could hear Apep crawling around below me.”
“Apep?”
“Huge snake-god-demon, Lord of Chaos. Tries to devour the sun every night when he goes through Duat. He sometimes causes earthquakes when he moves.”
“Sweet dreams indeed,” Fiona said. “This aunt, she wasn’t Egyptian, I take it?”
“No,” he said. “Far from it. Just a crazy old lady who was way too much into Egyptian mythology and scaring little kids.”
“And yet here we are, in Egypt. And you know all about this stuff.”
“Right. Well, I started learning about all things Egyptian as an act of self-defense. I figured the more I knew about it, the less afraid I would be of her stories. That I would see them for what they were.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes. Sort of. Intellectually. But the monsters you have under your bed never really go away. Not emotionally.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t become an archaeologist, if you were so interested.”
“Me too,” he said. “That was my dad getting into my head. And tuition. I… oh my God!”
They had finally broken out of the city, traveling southwest. The sun was rising, a great golden globe edging up from the east, illuminating the tableau that had just come into view, the great pyramid complex of Giza. For a moment he was so wonderstruck he couldn’t say anything.
“Oh, look at you!” Fiona said. “You look like a little kid. Is this what you were like as a kid?”
“It’s just so… these are the oldest wonders of the ancient world. Thousands of years old. I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of them. Documentaries. But we’re really here. They’re really there.”
“I like this side of you,” she said. “I’m glad I get to see it.”
“It’s dumb, I know,” he replied. “How many tourists come gawk at them every year? How many are here just today? And yet somehow I feel… It’s like I’m the first person to see this. That it’s just for me.” He shook his head. “Dumb, huh?”
“A little,” she said. “But it’s also very sweet.” She leaned around him for a better view. “What’s that? Is that supposed to be happening?”
He saw what she meant. A huge plume of dust had just erupted near the Menkaure pyramid. As he watched, it continued to grow. It didn’t look like a sandstorm, or a dust devil, or anything like that, though. It was too localized, with no discernable rotation.
“Maybe a show for tourists?” Fiona wondered. “The curse of the mummy, or something like that? Like in the movie, where he could control sand?”
“I don’t… I don’t think the Egyptian government would allow anything like that,” he said. “It looks more like—look, it’s a sinkhole!”
He could see it now, the vast depression forming. An empty aquifer collapsing? A gigantic tomb that had somehow gone unnoticed?
He noticed the cab had stopped. The driver was on his phone, shouting into it frantically.
The plume of dust suddenly incandesced blue. Keith saw the light was coming from below.
Then an arm came out of the hole. At first the distance and scale fooled him. The arm didn’t look that big. And it looked strange; dark, but with a yellow and black pattern that looked almost like a machine.
And then a face came up from the dust. A monstrous face. A face from his nightmares.
His heart pounded and his chest felt tight. He knew the signs of a panic attack. But this was real. That wasn’t a sinkhole. It was an entrance to Duat, the night world, the vast dark caverns the sun must negotiate after it set in the west. And this—this thing crawling out of it could only be one of the ancient gods of Egypt.
And he knew which one.
Babi, his aunt had said. The baboon-headed god, the earliest incarnation of Ra. He waits there in the dark bottomless pit of the underworld. Waits there to pull you down and eat you alive.
“Babi!” he gasped aloud. “The Bull of Baboons, god of the underworld, bloodthirsty devourer of entrails…”
“Umm, honey,” Fiona said, taking his hand. “I don’t know that much about Egyptian mythology. But… isn’t that Kong?”
“Ah…” the dust was subsiding into the sinkhole, and what had come out of it pulled itself to its feet by gripping the pyramid and stood to its full height. Now in profile, Keith saw the face wasn’t that of a baboon at all, but of a Great Ape.
“Oh,” he breathed. “Yeah. Thank God. It’s just Kong.”
Kong shook himself as if getting his bearings, and then began striding toward the Great Pyramid of Khufu. When he reached it he turned and roared. The cab shuddered as if they were in an earthquake. The Titan raised his arm, which definitely had something black and yellow attached to it. He called again, an unmistakable threat and challenge.
“I think we won’t be sightseeing today,” Keith told Fiona.
“Speak for yourself,” she said. “This is way more exciting than I thought it would be.”
Laurier jumped up and strode purposefully to the display.
“We’re reading a massive bioelectric spike outside of Cairo!” she said. “Energy like that is going to attract every Titan on the planet.”
“No,” Hampton said from behind her. “Just one.”
She looked for another moment at the signal emanating from Egypt. “I want visuals,” she said. “And someone find me Godzilla.”
That part wasn’t so hard. There were already dozens of cellphone videos online, and two stations in Cairo quickly joined them in filming Kong’s surprise appearance.
“How did he get there?” she wondered. But the answer was obvious. Aerial footage and the signature itself made it clear that a vortex had opened in Giza. Another undocumented one.
“Found him,” Laurier said. “Godzilla, I mean.”
“I knew who you meant,” Hampton said. “Yeah, there he is.”
On the friggin’ Rock of Gibraltar. Posing, shrieking at the sky. Answering Kong’s challenge. He scintillated, beautiful and terrifying.
“Try to get through to Doctor Andrews again,” she said. “Something weird is going on down there. I have a feeling we need to know what. Like, right now.”
“On it,” Laurier said.
As Hampton watched, Godzilla arched toward the water and dove headfirst from the cliff, plunging into the Alboran Sea, sending a small tidal wave crashing through the straits.
“He’s swimming towards Cairo,” Meeks said.
“Yeah,” she replied. “No kidding.”
The Iwi—most of them, anyway—were evacuating the city, taking refuge in the surrounding jungle.
The queen and Jia were deep in conversation about… something. Ilene tried to push back on her feelings of being left out; this wasn’t about her. Or it shouldn’t be.
Jia nodded at the queen, then signed to Ilene.
We have to go, she said.
Ilene’s throat closed, but she forced herself to breathe. She nodded.
The Skar King was on his way, with an army. Kong had gone up to try and lure Godzilla down.
That left Jia’s part. Waking Mothra.
The queen and her entourage led them back to the base of the temple pyramid. Jia vanished into one of the smaller ceremonial buildings with the queen, and when she came back out only moments later, she was transformed. Now dressed in a yellow mantle, the queen then painted a yellow stripe on her forehead, bisecting Jia’s headband. But it wasn’t just the new clothes that made the girl seem different. It was the way she held herself, full of confidence and purpose. She looked every inch an Iwi.
Ilene had never been so proud, nor so terrified. It felt like a turning point; from this moment on, Jia would be less her daughter with each turn of the planet, each beat of her heart.
But what she could become—it had to be worth it. If she survived.
She had to survive.
“Are you sure about this?” Trapper asked.
“No,” Ilene replied. “But she is.”
“Yeah. I guess I can see that.”
Ilene tried to smile. Tears burned at the edges of her eyes.
A hand touched her shoulder. The queen. She stared directly into Ilene’s eyes, and she did her best to hold that gaze.
What’s she saying? she asked Jia.
That we’re right where we need to be, Jia replied.
Ilene nodded at the queen. Their gazes remained locked for another few seconds. Then the other woman turned back to Jia. They conferred briefly in their silent language.
Then Jia stepped out alone and began ascending toward the lower platform of the pyramid. She paused at the top of the stairs and looked back at Ilene.
I love you, Ilene signed. So much.
Jia was still for a moment. Then she ran back down the short flight of steps and into Ilene’s arms. Ilene held her, her tears bursting forth, and finally she felt Jia hesitate. Jamming down a sob, she pulled back a little and shook her head. She didn’t speak or sign, but she knew Jia understood. Maybe she wasn’t telepathic like the queen, but she and her daughter knew each other.
You can do this.
Jia tried a little smile. She started back up the stairs. This time she didn’t look back. She continued to the base of the pyramid and started up the stairway to the top, so steep it was almost a ladder.
“So we are absolutely sure she can pull this off?” Bernie said.
“It’s why Jia was called here. Only an Iwi from Skull Island can awaken Mothra.”
“Uh-huh,” Bernie said. He sounded skeptical.
“I’ve got a dozen books on parenting,” she told him. “Not one of them mentions ancient prophecies.”
“I’m sensing some one-star reviews in your future,” Bernie said.
“So many reviews.”
Jia was climbing more quickly now, and distance had diminished her form. But where she touched the pyramid, it glowed white, so it was easy enough to track her.
Near the top, Jia’s face turned back toward her briefly.
“She’s gonna be alright,” Ilene whispered.
“Uh-huh,” Bernie agreed.
“She’s gonna be alright,” she repeated, anyway.
* * *
Jia reached the top of the pyramid. A glance down showed how dizzyingly high she was, but she didn’t fear falling. In fact, she felt light, as if she weighed little more than a feather. The last part of the climb had been the easiest. She was nearly at the boundary between up and down, where gravity changed the direction of its pull. The top of the pyramid that either rose up or hung down—depending upon your perspective—from the other side was right above her.
The queen had told her she would know what to do, but now that she was here, she wasn’t sure that was true. She knew she was supposed to awaken Mothra, but she didn’t see any Titans. Just the pyramids and the upside-down world. The queen had said that an Iwi from Skull Island would be the one to do this. Was there some clue in her childhood? But try as she might, she could remember no stories about Mothra, nor, in fact, anything that reminded her of this.
But then she remembered the moths and her aunt Oa. She remembered liking them. She remembered telling Oa that they could sing, and her aunt asking what she meant by that. Moths don’t sing, she had said.
But they do, Jia had replied.
She blinked. She had just dreamed about that a few days ago, hadn’t she? But it had been such a small dream, quickly overwhelmed by the visions that had brought her here. She had already forgotten it again. But she was thinking about it now. Why? Considering it, it didn’t even make sense. Even if a moth could sing, how could she have heard it? She couldn’t hear. And if they sang the way the Iwi talked, why couldn’t her aunt hear the song too?
And yet, she realized, she was hearing it now. Not the same song, exactly, but a very similar one. Low, then high, rising and falling—not in her ears or in her mind, but on the fine hairs of her arms and back of her neck. On her skin and gently tickling in her bones. Like the pulse of wings moving air. Something secret, hidden, but yearning to be known.
It’s not because I’m from Skull Island, she realized. No one else on Skull Island could hear this. It’s because I’m me and I am from Skull Island.
She felt easier, relaxed now. She allowed the song to fill her. She remembered the dance of the moths. She reached out into the music and placed herself within it. The tingle of the song climbed up her body and focused in her hand, and it grew stronger. She reached out, and light danced on her fingers.
In response, more light appeared, swirled from her hands and from the empty space in front of her. It formed radiant streams and rivulets and then a shape, suspended between the two pyramids, bridging the gap between them. Like strands of silk, wrapped tightly in a familiar form.
She had seen a chrysalis before, the cocoon in which a caterpillar became a moth. This was a large one. A very large one. She smiled as shape and color moved within it, as the silent melody grew to fill everything. She felt the energy pulsing within; she felt peace, like watching clouds on a moonlit night. And she felt a purpose and intent that seemed eternal.
Mothra, she thought. I’m here. It’s time.
In no particular hurry, the chrysalis began to split, and wings emerged, immense, beautiful beyond anything she had ever seen before.
* * *
Between the summits of the pyramids, Mothra’s wings unfolded in soft radiance. A low chittering noise filled the valley as the Titan awakened.
Ilene had seen stills and footage of Mothra, from Yunnan province and the Battle of Boston, but she had never seen her in person. The difference was astonishing. Godzilla was like a remorseless god, a primal force, beyond human ken. Kong was more personal, somehow. Despite his immense size, strength, and temper, you also felt he was comprehensible. More human.
Mothra was neither of these. She was even more alien than Godzilla, in a way, and far less relatable than Kong. But there was a magnificence there that transcended her mere form. This wasn’t the same Mothra as before—she couldn’t be. And yet she was, somehow. She was like life itself: always changing, always evolving, but always living. Whatever it was that made trilobites and bacteria and tigers and Godzilla all a part of the same world, the same universe—Mothra felt like that thing. And when the great Titan took wing with Ilene’s daughter on her back and headed toward the vortex Kong had leaped though, her fear for her daughter was nearly eclipsed by wonder. And by hope.
Nearly. Her hands were shaking.
“She really bloody did it,” Trapper said.
“So if she’s going up there, what are we doing down here?” Bernie asked. “Last I heard there was a giant monster squad on the way.”
The queen turned to him and motioned with her hands. She pointed at the pyramids and then formed their shape, and a circular flowing motion. Ilene didn’t understand it.
Bernie did, though. His eyes went wide.
“Gravity,” he said. ”Gravity! The pyramids and gravity. I got it!”
Ilene didn’t understand, though. “Tell me on the way,” Ilene said to Bernie, as the queen and her people started moving.
“Umm,” Trapper said. He seemed excited. “While we’re throwing random shit at the wall, permission to take the H.E.A.V and rally some reinforcements.”
“From the surface?” Ilene said. “No, there’s no time.”
He shook his head. “No. This idea is way weirder than that.”