Episode 39

The night visitors won’t let her rest. Even stranger tonight than the night before. Here is bird-headed Thoth, the Egyptian deity of gambling and magic, accusing her of abandoning him.

“As punishment for this act of desertion, your gambler’s luck is revoked.”

And she, in the dream, begs for mercy. “What will I do without my luck?”

Thoth responds with an ibis-shriek which she imagines to be his heartless divine laughter. “Try to survive,” he says. “Everything is coming for you. All four elements. Fire and flood, earth and wind. The betrayals of the land, the venom of the air, the unquenchable flames, and the anger of the sea. Also, by the way, the weaknesses of your pathetic human bodies. All of it is coming at you at the same time. Beware the seventh wave.”

Her dream-self finds the courage to stand up to the god. “You can’t tell me anything,” she says. “You may have been the god of wisdom once, but you’ve been dead for thousands of years.” She feels like Alice in the courtroom of the Queen of Hearts. You’re nothing but a pack of cards. No sooner has she rejected him thanThoth crumbles into dust until there’s nothing left of him. But even his dust has a parting message for her before it’s blown away by a gust of wind.

“I’m from Egypt.” His last words hang in the air. “I know a lot about plagues.”

Anna has had enough of ghosts. She opens her eyes, gets out of bed, goes into Francis’s room, slips in beside him, then climbs on top of him and insists. He reaches up for her, and things get better. The rider and the horse are one.

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The Seventh Wave, Episode 39