Historical Fiction by G. Edward Marks
An alarm tech is called out to investigate unexplained alarms occurring during the night in the Egyptian Gallery of the Royal Ontario Museum. Finding no fault with the system, he decides to stay the night to find the cause. During the night a mysterious woman appears claiming to be the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet. She explains she is victim of a curse cast upon her by the evil snake god, Apep, and is trapped in the mummy of a cat. She pleads with the tech to carry the mummy back to Egypt and release her from the curse.
Against his better judgment, the tech decides to steal the mummy and smuggle it back into Egypt. Little did he know the trip entailed traveling back three thousand years in time to ancient Egypt where gods and goddesses walk among their people. The evil snake god learns of their arrival and gathers his allies to stop them. In the end, our hero, who’s only adventures have been as an avatar in video games, must face the giant serpent god with nothing more than an iron dagger. Well, actually, there’s more to the story than that.
The Crow’s Gift is actually two separate tales set centuries apart. One is of a couple living in post-Victorian England, a time of formality and fashion, when motorcars first appeared on English roads. The other takes place three hundred years earlier, when men wore puffy breeches, and it took months to make a lady’s gown. One is a story of love lost and rekindled; the other of love ignited by the fires of youth. One is a tale of friendship, family, and the search for lost treasure; the other of superstition, witchcraft, and betrayal. How can these two disparate tales possibly be connected? The answer lies in the crow’s gift.
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Who was Bastet?
Bastet was possibly the most seductive and likely the most beautiful goddess of the Egyptian pantheon. Originally, she was depicted as a woman with the head of a lion and known as a goddess of war. But as time passed, she morphed into a friendlier deity and was revered as a protector of the home and family. It was likely no coincidence that this was during the same time period that cats were becoming domesticated in Egypt. Cats were considered protectors of the home and kept the houses and granaries free of mice, rats, snakes, and other pests. In time, the lion head was replaced with that of a housecat. Over the years Bastet’s popularity grew and she became more commonly known as the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility.
Bastet was not limited to the iconic form of a woman with a cat head. In Egyptian mythology she occasionally appeared as a beautiful woman who seduces men into doing things that are not in their best interest, but in turn, serves to teach them a lesson. She was also known to make occasional appearances in the form of a lion or cat to protect someone in need.
But Bastet had a larger role as well. She was the protector of the sun god Ra. Each morning the evil serpent god Apep (also known as Apophis) would lie in wait in the Underworld and attempt to prevent Ra from sailing across the sky in his sun boat. In these myths, Bastet battled the evil serpent each night and thanks to her, the Egyptian sun rose once again every day.