Isis Read Free Page A

and was given a standing ovation when Isis brought him back to life after Set had strewn pieces of him all along the Nile. The children who played the crocodiles were adorable, and they wagged their cornhusk tails to much hilarity.
     
    My mother’s performance dazzled me. She had a stage presence like none of the other ladies of that group. I imagine now that she would have been a great actress if she had not met my father, for she seemed more alive on stage than she ever did beyond it. I saw her as more than merely my mother when she made her first appearance and gave a speech about King Ra refusing to allow her to have children. Wrapped in a winding sheet made to resemble a tunic, her heavy breasts nearly visible through the thin cloth, she looked as if she were a heroine stepped out of a Delacroix, an alternate “Liberty Leading Her People.”
     
    My mother became the essence of summer for me, for that was when she was with us the most. We planted wisteria for me along the walkway and terraces, and more lavender for Harvey to use in his bath. He in turn helped Old Marsh and his son as they planted rows of new flowers and brought old bulbs back to life late in the season. Harvey would be covered in mud and dirt, and he’d wave to me as he followed the others into the Thunderbox Room, the water closet and sink area where the workmen washed up.
     

    Harvey told me later that he preferred their company to Spence’s and “the other snobs’ at school.” The kitchen girl adored him and made him special treats and gifts of soaps and candles. I was nearly jealous of her as she tried to enchant Harvey and steal him from us. I asked him about her once, and he grinned as if he understood my fears. “Oh, she’s a nice girl, and works hard, but there’s a boy in the village who has been in love with her since they both were children. She’ll marry him and move above his shop someday, I think. But she is sweet, isn’t she?”
     
    He always ended up with me, and we gardened and walked, and I taught him to paint landscapes out by the cliff’s edge. We planted our favorite flowers along the outer edge of the stone-hedged gardens, and more wisteria, and a funny little local flower called Sea-Star-Cross for Lewis, who, on his infrequent trips back from university for a few summer days, enjoyed the blue-white color of it. “And for Spence,” Harvey might joke as he dug a trowel into the earth for planting, spattering up some dirt at me, “A bit of dirt!”
     
    Harvey and I began planting mint and that small herb called “sirus-hen,” with its fragrant and tangy odor, and we had a glorious summer or two. Mother cleaned out the dead brush of the garden and threw it over the cliff’s edge as if to banish it from our land. We all worked together with Old Marsh and Percy to bring back the sunken gardens along the low hillside until, finally, when the blossoms came and the sun overwhelmed the sky, I found reason enough to love the house and grounds.
     

3
     
    Somewhere during those summers, I could block my grandfather’s stern and irrational lectures of God and the devil so that even on the stormiest days (for we had more of these than sunny ones) I explored Belerion Hall and the cliffside as if it were my own private doorway into wonderland itself.
     
    Old Marsh had been trimming the overgrowth around the garden and saw my brother and me wandering toward the Tombs. He came out and sat with us for a bit, lighting his yellowed pipe, and told us about their legends. “Many bones are there. I seen ’em. In a pile, in stone coffins, some, but mostly just out in piles. Not a good place to play for a child like you, and you, Master Harvey, ought to know better.”
     
    “Are you chastising me, sir?” Harvey said, a mischievous grin upon his face.
     
    “I would not do such a thing, sir, but these places are old and rotted. Your grandmother meant to seal it up before . . . well, before she passed. But here it