“‘My name is Naïma, and if thou wilt be the light of mine eyes and the breath of my life, I will be the dust for thy feet to tread upon,’ said the metamorphosed maiden, and, favored by the general confusion, they gained the street unobserved. Under Sofian’s roof the same day Naïma became his wife; but Timbuctu was too small for Moadh’s rage, grief and shame, and the young lovers guarded their secret so well that many weeks passed by before the city was in a furor at the news of the elopement.
“Moadh summoned his kindred to assist him in avenging the outrage; but Sofian was not to be found napping. An armed force of his kith and kin guarded his house day and night against an attack by surprise, while his girl-wife was delivered to my keeping in case of defeat. There was a siege and an assault, and, in the hand to hand struggle that ensued, Moadh met his death at the hand of Sofian, who was in turn mortally stabbed by one of the avengers. The youthful widow remained in my charge, and here thou wast born, thy mother having had nobody to return to or appeal to for protection. Sorrow, shame and remorse caused her to shun the sight of man, so that she would never venture out in daytime, lest someone recognize her and do her harm; for she was hated of all her relatives.
“She did not remain long in my keeping. In an evil hour she left her safe refuge to bask in the morning sun, only to fall an easy prey to the rapacity of marauding Bedouins who, having attacked and plundered the city, lighted on her as they passed this way. My arts could not rescue her, Omeyya, and the daughter of Moadh has changed hands many times since,—a slave or a mistress, just as it suits her master’s fancy. This happened nineteen years ago, when thou hadst become my charge, yea, and my comfort.
“In my youth I was loved by a man of the black arts, and of him I inherited the secret of Egypt’s great mystery, the land of his birth. He knew much, but not enough to escape death, the inexorable reaper, whose approach I also now feel. To-morrow I shall be no more, and this hollow shall be my sepulchre. Bury me as a son would his mother.—Under that stone thou wilt find gold to sustain thee for the length of thy days. Yet shalt thou depart hence to seek a brighter life, greater wealth, higher station, and the happiness of love,—yea, and thy mother,—in the famous city on the River of Pearls, provided thou wilt act as thou art bidden. This unlighted hole, Omeyya, hides Egypt’s great mystery, which is hereafter to be in thy trust.—Take this rod from my hand and describe in mid-air the sign of the crescent from right to left toward the eastern wall,” commanded the witch.
Omeyya did as he was bidden. In answer the silvery crescent loomed up on the bleak rock, with its horns gradually lengthening downward until it completed the shape of an oval door opening to an arched space, brilliant with dazzling light. In the heart of the vault thus revealed there stood, perched on a block of onyx, a large heron, white as snow from its crop down, the rest of the plumage sky-blue traversed by lines of hieroglyphics in relief set in jewels of every hue with a predominance of the ruby and the amethyst. The scintillant hieroglyphics were irregularly scattered over the body of the mystic bird, thicker along the wings and thickest around the breast and the gracefully elongated neck; the eyes in the beautiful head were of topaz, and the long bill of burnished gold, pointed with black diamonds. Of a deep lapis-lazuli color was the heron’s tail, spreading to the dimensions of the peacock’s and furnishing a field for star-like configurations set in sparkling pearls, emeralds, sapphires, beryls, chrysolites, carbuncles, sards, and a variety of the jasper and the ligure, while the black of his legs was likewise relieved by kabbalistic lines in rare gems.
“By the genii of Amenti, the masters who fashioned thee in the beginning to be the symbol and oracle of Osiris, O, Phœnix! I adjure thee to accept this youth in my stead as thy favorite, and to answer his call as soon as he shall decipher the emblems that move the spirits of thy mystery,” screamed the sibyl, vociferously.
Omeyya’s eyes dilated in amazement. The bird’s inanimate form gave signs of life. Ruffling his great plumes, he displayed a blaze of variegated gems, flashing like so many brilliant stars. From his feather train issued a haze of golden orange, changed into a flame of carmine, which consumed the bird and left the place to its previous dinginess.
“Mark me well, for death is upon me!—The rod in thy hand holds the key to the mystery thou art to unriddle in Fatma’s great school, during a period of strict abstinence from carnal pleasures. For thirty-seven months thou shalt drink the dew of the morning, shalt bathe at new moon in the River of Pearls, sleep within canvas-walls, so that thy nature be untainted and thou worthy of the power the revealed arcana insure for thee,” exclaimed the sibyl, never to speak again. With the last word her shrivelled frame fell lifeless to the ground.
Omeyya suspected that the rod contained something to be studied. On examining it in full light he found the upper end, looking like a carved handle, to be a closing stopple removable by a turn. From the hollow of the rod he pulled forth a rolled up papyrus. The unrolling of the document proved it to be much larger than it at first appeared, and Omeyya looked with concentrated attention at the life-like picture of the phœnix it represented, the shining hieroglyphics being startlingly reproduced. Having reverently buried his foster-mother and possessed himself of the hoard, Omeyya abandoned the gloomy abode of his boyhood, earnestly resolved to comply most scrupulously with the directions of the sibyl.
When we meet Omeyya at the Kairouin of Fez he is at the close of his probationary period, and we need not be surprised to see him one new moon’s eve on the bank of Elmahassen, rod in hand, ready to test the occult science acquired during years of assiduous application.