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CASSIE ADJUSTED HER chair to face Faye directly.
The old woman took a few minutes to gather her thoughts. “As you already know, your sister was in the antique business. Aside from her store, Sybil was part of an organization that collects rare objects. Objects that have a particular significance to our group.”
Cassie pounced on the word. “Group? Does your group have a name?”
“Yes,” Faye said gently but offered nothing further on that point. She continued. “We are involved in a large-scale recovery project. Its scope is immense. It reaches back far before recorded history and spans cultures across the entire globe.”
“No wonder Sybil wasn’t around much,” muttered Cassie. “Sounds as if you kept her pretty busy.”
“Not just her, dear,” Faye took a sip of lemonade. “There are hundreds of people all over the world involved in this effort.”
“What could be that big?”
“Nothing less than the true story of the human race,” Faye replied cryptically. She stood up. “I think we need something to go with this lemonade. Don’t you?”
Without waiting for a reply, she trundled into the house and emerged a few minutes later carrying a plate of oatmeal cookies. “Help yourself, dear.” She set the plate on the table.
Cassie reached over to take one.
Picking up right where they’d left off, the girl asked, “What exactly do you mean by the true story of the human race?”
Faye laughed. “That’s a big question to answer.” She settled back in her chair and began to speak. “What if I told you that much of what you’ve been taught about the past is a lie?”
Cassie looked at her noncommittally.
“Have you ever taken an ancient history class?”
Cassie nodded.
“When do your history books say that civilization began?”
The girl considered the question. “I think it was Sumeria or Babylon. Where Iraq is now. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers were what they called the cradle of civilization. Sometime around 3000 BCE.”
The old woman chuckled. “Yes, that is the prevailing theory. I’m sure they told you about the rise of the Egyptians, Sumerians, and later the Greeks and Romans. Great military conquests, empire building. All of it a straight march from barbarism to civilization.”
“I suppose.” Cassie poured more lemonade for the two of them.
“What if I told you that great civilizations thrived before that time? As much as four thousand years before that time. What if I told you that some of those civilizations were sophisticated enough to have written language, running water, and sewer systems and that warfare didn’t exist.”
Cassie stopped sipping her lemonade. She felt intrigued. “Really? Is this one of those ancient astronaut theories?”
Faye laughed. “Not at all, child. There were major civilizations scattered all over the world. We are in the process of proving that. In India, the Aegean, Africa. Everywhere really. Lost cities that you’ve never heard of and a way of life that you probably never dreamed existed.”
“Then why isn’t all that recorded in history books?” Cassie challenged.
“Because history is the conquerors’ version of what happened. The defeated are written out of the story entirely.”
Cassie impatiently shrugged her hair away from her face. “One country invades another country, and the winner gets to tell future generations how great they were. It’s always been that way.”
“Actually, it hasn’t,” Faye corrected gently. “Until about six thousand years ago, the human race didn’t behave that way at all.”
“That’s kind of hard to swallow.” Cassie appeared unconvinced.
“It’s hard to swallow because recorded history wants us to believe that it’s always been this way. That violence toward our own species is ingrained in our very being. Dog eat dog. Nature red in tooth and claw.”
“So, your group has a theory that we used to be a kinder, gentler species than we are now.” The girl’s voice held a slightly mocking tone.
“Much more than a theory. We’re building quite a compelling body of evidence to prove it.”
“If that’s true, something must have radically changed us. What?” Cassie sounded more intrigued than doubtful now.
“A number of factors: climate shift, agriculture, domesticated animals, settled communities, and global warming that makes our current dilemma look small by comparison. The combination of all these things was what you might call a perfect storm. It turned some of us into killers.”
The girl raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Why only some of us?”
“Because others were lucky enough to settle in hospitable environments. Fertile farmland, a mild climate, and plentiful resources. And these fortunate people continued to worship the deity that all humans had worshipped from the very beginning of time. A benevolent mother goddess who readily supplied all the needs of her children.”
Faye’s face darkened. “But some were not so lucky. Hemmed in by mountains and trapped by floods during the last climate change. They suffered through prolonged droughts and famine. Their landscape became harsh and barren, and it yielded them nothing. They grew angry and turned their backs on the goddess. If she would not supply them, they would take what they needed from others by force and pray to a like-minded god. A thundering sky god with an appetite for gore.
“These outcasts became something the world had never seen before. Instead of killing animals for food, they slaughtered each other for possessions and dominance. Obsessed with warfare, they made raiding and pillaging a way of life. Raiding progressed to invading. As time went by, these invaders spread like a virus across the face of the earth, rewriting the story of every land they subjugated. The original nature deities of the vanquished were replaced with their own violent sky gods. Even the peaceful lands they attacked became warlike in self-defense. The cosmos was thrown out of balance when women were no longer honored. Aggression replaced cooperation as the supreme survival skill. And now we live in a world that has forgotten the time when humankind wasn’t drowning in its own blood.”
Despite the horror she was describing, Faye’s voice remained matter-of-fact.
Cassie was silent, her expression grave.
Faye continued. “Our collective memory has been erased. I, your sister, and the rest of our group are trying to get it back. To remember our true nature.”
“Remember, how?”
“We are digging up the buried past of the world. Site by site. Bone by bone. Artifact by artifact. We are putting the puzzle back together. We practice an alternative kind of archaeology—the kind that defies the fabrications of history. Which reminds me...” Faye stood up and walked over to a corner of the pergola. She picked up a shallow metal bowl that had been sitting on the ground.
Faye pulled her chair closer to Cassie. “Your sister was very good at authenticating our finds. I wonder if you would give it a try.”
She held the bowl toward Cassie.
The girl made no move to take it. “I’m not a trained archaeologist.”
Faye smiled. “I’m not asking for anything specific. Just hold it in your hands and tell me what you observe.” She nudged the bowl closer.
Cassie reached out with both hands. The second she touched the rim something very strange happened.
She felt dizzy as if she were falling down a deep, black well. Eventually, she landed. She found herself in a cavern. An underground vaulted chamber of some sort. There was a woman perched on a high stool.
No, that was wrong. Cassie had become the woman perched on a high stool. At least that’s where her consciousness was. She felt that she had somehow merged with this person.
She was dressed in a long white linen robe. In her left hand, she held a branch with leaves on it. In her right, she held a bowl. The same kind Faye had given her. Only now it contained a clear liquid. She was looking into it as if it were a crystal ball. In front of her stool, on the floor of the cavern, there was a crack in the ground. Strange-smelling vapors were drifting upward from that spot. The scent made Cassie feel light-headed.
There was also a man wrapped in a toga who was standing in the chamber in front of her. A large man with heavy muscles. He had a stern, almost cruel, expression on his face. He seemed to be hanging on every word she said. Cassie didn’t know how she could understand the language much less speak it, but she felt herself telling the man he was about to win a decisive victory over his enemies.
The next thing Cassie knew she was back in the garden, sitting in a wrought-iron chair. Faye had lifted the bowl out of her hands.
“I think that’s quite sufficient for one day.” The old woman smiled. “Tell me what you saw.”
Cassie was startled, disoriented. “What the freak was that!” she demanded.
“Just tell me what you saw,” Faye prompted gently.
“It was bizarre. I fell into another place. Another time. I felt like I’d actually become someone else. I was a woman sitting in a cave telling the future to some king who wanted to win a major battle.” Cassie’s heart was hammering. She looked at her glass suspiciously. “You must have put something in my lemonade!”
“I did no such thing, my dear, and I think you know that. You’ve had unusual experiences like this before, haven’t you.” Faye sounded as if she was stating a fact, not asking a question.
Cassie shook her head violently. “No, never. Or... maybe... but only once. Only the night Sybil died. I dreamed it before it happened. Every detail. It was like I was right there. The man in the cowboy hat was there too. The one who stole the stone ruler. He wanted Sybil to tell him where the key was.”
“You say he was looking for a key of some sort?” Faye sounded surprised.
“Yeah, a stupid key. And my sister is dead because of it. I watched it happen.”
“Sometimes the gift first appears when there has been an emotional trauma. Your sister had her first experience right after your parents died.”
“After... after my... What!” Cassie felt as if Faye had just punched her in the stomach.
The old woman reached across the table to touch the girl’s arm. “Forgive me, my dear. It’s a lot to take in at one time, but I had to be certain.”
Cassie recoiled. “Be certain of what?”
“That you were meant to take your sister’s place. It is your destiny to be our new pythia.”
Jumping out of her chair, Cassie cried, “Destiny? I don’t have a destiny! This is insane! I don’t care what Sybil did for you, or why, but leave me out of it!” She backed away from Faye. “I have to go. Now!”
She ran from the garden and out of the house.
***
OFF IN THE DISTANCE, Faye could hear her tires squeal as Cassie pulled out of the driveway and raced away.
The old woman smiled to herself. “We have found our new pythia,” she murmured.