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To my esteemed colleagues:    I have been asked to provide an accounting for the 'failure' of my most recent expedition.  The location which I thought confidently to be the site of a critically important find has proffered little evidence of past habitation.  Accordingly, my benefactors at Cambridge have become uncertain.  However I can no more ensure a wealth of artifacts than I can say with certainty what the weather will be when this message is received.      I fully understand that you are put in an unenviable dilemma regarding my funding.  It is not my intention to appropriate monies that might be better spent; however, if you feel compelled by necessity to end the current excavations such as they are, I would request a much smaller disbursement be made so that I would be able to continue excavation on a smaller scale.  I ask only for--    "Ma'am?  One of the boys thinks he may have found something."    The words halted her train of thought.  She laid down her pen.    The Australian stood under the tent flap.  The sun peeked around his squared-off body.  It glared at the white canvas walls.  Elizabeth squinted.  She looked up at him.  He always put on his best Oxford for her.  She didn't care how he spoke, but a small kindness was a valuable thing in the desert.    "Tell them to wait.  I'll be there in just a minute."    She bound her hair back into a ponytail.  She stuck her feet back into her boots.  On her way out of the tent, she picked up her hat.    The sun blazed down around her.  The light reflected off the sand and rock and made her narrow her eyes.  Her face was growing used to her squint.  Elizabeth followed the bobbing red hair of the Australian across the maze of a dig site.    A young Egyptian man still clung to his pickaxe.  He was beaming brightly.  His shoulders shook with the congratulatory patting of the other workers behind him.  His handiwork, an apple-sized hole into some deeper darkness behind the rock, stood nearby.    "Can I have pickaxe?" Elizabeth asked in her best Arabic.    The young man nodded.  She took the offered tool.    "Make sure he gets whatever the reward is by now," she told the Australian.    Elizabeth held the dusty shaft tightly.  She wanted to do this herself.  One swing, a clash against the stone, and her shoulders ached.  Another swing jarred her wrists and elbows.  She was aware that some of the other Egyptologists had come to watch along with the cluster of workers.  But to Elizabeth, it was her and the stone.  The stone would give her what she came for.  She wasn't going to be the one to give in.    The hole widened.  She frowned, almost glared.  I've spent two years here, she thought.  Two years of sweating and getting tanned and having creases burned into my face by the sun and sand and wind.      The hole was as big as her head.  A whole year she'd spent using every ounce of goodwill toward her back in England, all simply to keep her dig running.      Give me something amazing, she demanded.  I've earned it.    Sweat spread across her chest and her back.  Her hands were red and sore. Elizabeth breathed heavily.  She could taste the flinty flavor of dry rock dust on her tongue.    While she took a moment to rest, the Australian returned.  He had a lit lantern in his hand.  Elizabeth looked up at him expectantly.  He looked down at her gently.    "What are you waiting for?" Elizabeth asked.    "You should get the first look, ma'am," he said.    "Willam," she began to say, then changed her mind.  "Thank you."    She would have kissed him.  She most certainly was going to.  It would be after hours, in her tent, with the rest of that bottle of wine between them.  But with everyone watching, they had appearances to maintain.    The hole was big enough now that she could fit her head and an arm through. Her arm went first, holding the lantern out into the darkness, and her head followed.  She could see steps trailing down beyond the light of the lantern.  Along the walls were reliefs, painted in worn but still-present paint.  Images of gods and kings and offerings stood out sharply in the lantern's light.  Every fold of the royal kilt was carved with care.  Each face had its own character.  The musculature was real enough that they could have been real men frozen in stone.  They spoke of a time of richness and plenty.     Elizabeth barely moved.  Her mouth was dry again.  She would have to start writing a new letter.  She pulled herself back out of the hole.  The Australian took the lantern.  He peered into the hole himself.  She heard him swear softly.    "Listen!  Clear stone, make door.  Very careful," Elizabeth told the workers.  She gestured widely along the face of the stone that sealed the corridor.  She wanted to rest.  She wanted to be ready when it was wide enough for them to enter.        Elizabeth had tempered her hopes.  As intact as their find was, it could have been robbed in antiquity.  She told herself the same each step down the stairs.  Don't be disappointed; the reliefs alone could fill ten dissertations.      But when they reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt like she was a young girl again, confronted for the first time with the ancient mystique of Egypt.  Gold shone like captured sunlight.  Polished ebony reflected the riches of old kings.  Red granite stood watch in the guise of primal gods.  It was a dream she'd held onto since she was a young girl, and now it was real.    The other Egyptologists with her were hardly on her mind.  She was hardly on their minds.  Each of them had their own dream coming to life before them.  They spread out on

their own, following the winding trails through the grand storeroom.  They were each of them silent, in a state of personal reverence.    Elizabeth carefully drew a papyrus scroll from the ebony shelf where it sat.  She unrolled it on a gold-painted lectern and scanned the writing slowly.  Each word she took and deciphered in her head.  Her blue eyes watered.  A few tears trickled onto her cheeks.  She turned aside, so her tears would fall to the ground instead.  She brushed her cheeks with her sleeve.  She smiled to herself.  She turned her sharp green, slit-pupiled eyes back to the papyrus.    The dense mysticism was hard to work through.  She leaned closer to the papyrus.  A tenseness built across her back.  It collected between her shoulders and ran down to her hips.  She balled her hands into fists.  She lifted herself onto her tiptoes and leaned against the lectern.  A soft chorus of cracks met her ears.  She sighed warmly and relaxed her feet.  Her back no longer hurt; it had become loose and limber.    But now it her feet broke her concentration.  Her boots rubbed against the sides of her toes and chafed along the tops.  She stepped on the heel of her opposite boot, pulled one foot free, and did the same with the other boot.  Through her socks, the forms of her feet were misshapen.  Her toes were thick and tall.  Her feet tapered quite a bit down to her heels.  Long nails, their sharp points peeking through the fabric, stretched the front of her socks.  The distended, ill-fitting socks joined her boots, discarded beside her.  She stood barefoot.  The pads beneath her toes pressed against the cool stone floor.    She felt connected to the past as never before.  She had always been peering inward and gazing backward.  The past was long gone and dead.  It sat still for her to study.  But now the past lived and moved beneath her fingers and within her thoughts.      Elizabeth felt warmed as if by the sun's light.  Not the desert sun; this warmth was of the sun shaded by palms along the riverside.  It was soothing and relaxing.   She closed her eyes briefly.  The warmth swelled against her chest and played along her muscles. True, her skin had been darkened by the sun during her time in Egypt.  But now the underlying tone was changing.  She was no longer fair-skinned and tanned.  There was more olive in her complexion; a gentle sandy hue.    Her hair fell from her ponytail.  Her bangs now draped to her eyebrows, close-cut, with the rest of her hair hanging over her shoulders.  Like dye dripping down her locks, light brown hair became dusky silken black.    The warmth was growing.  Normally it was quite cool inside and under ground.  Perhaps it was the excitement.  Her sharp fingernails went to the buttons on her shirt.  She grabbed the short sleeves and tugged the shirt off of her shoulders.  She slid her shorts down to the ground and

kicked them aside. Her chest rose and fell with a breath of relief.    Elizabeth breezed through the hieroglyphs on the papyrus.  They made sense.  They flowed together in poetic language.  She spoke the words to herself breathlessly.  Her rough, flattened tongue brushed against her large canines.  A tingle of excitement climbed up her spine and brought with it a trail of fur.      The new coat swept across her in waves of warmth.  She was wrapped in a blanket of her own copper-colored fur.  It curled around her torso.  It spread out along her limbs.  Her chest and neck and face were left bare but for the fur that crept down above her brow and rolled along her nose.    There were enough papyri in the treasury to fill a lifetime with literary analysis.  Elizabeth's eyes darted across the scroll.  Her mind was devouring it as if all these years it had been starved for knowledge.  The fur reached her hands and feet.  Her nails formed into full claws.  Pads dotted her fingers and toes and palms and the undersides of her feet.  Her heels kicked up.  They stayed in the air.  Her legs were jointed like the rear legs of an animal.  She was losing her balance.  Her hands pawed at the lectern.  Her less nimble, bulkier fingers were more like a lion's claws than the fingers of a human.    There was no way for Elizabeth to be kept oblivious any more.  She was drooping off the lectern.  Her center of gravity moved forward, pulling her hands, no, her paws to the ground.    "How," was all she managed to say.    A growl escaped her mouth.  The rippling snarl made her own heart skip briefly.  Her claws dug into the sandstone.  It all came naturally to her.  Her back arched.  She could feel the pressure.  Her muscles were being pulled and pushed.  New bones formed.  Cartilage and ligaments followed.  Her eyes fluttered.    New vast depths of her mind were illuminated.  Middle Egyptian rolled off of her tongue.  Demotic scrawled across the insides of her thoughts.  Her new limbs spread.  They stretched their new muscles.  A thousand pinpricks flooded across her new flesh.  Feathers, matching the color of her fur, flooded across her wings.  Her breasts swayed freely as she moved her body. Her bra had broken at some point.  It was hardly important any more.    Elizabeth turned from side to side.  Her paws brushed at the floor.  She moved naturally, yet walking on all fours still felt awkward.  She needed to see what she looked like.  Had she gone crazy?  It was a serious possibility.  She made her way for a golden mirror.  Her tail swayed.  Her panties had been lost, too.  They didn't feel important either now.    In the mirror she saw the thick black makeup across her eyes.  She sat down, freeing her front paws.  She reached up and felt the contours of the fur on her face, down to her dark, flat and damp nose.  Gold and turquoise beads

hung along her locks of hair.  A striped headdress had found its way onto her head; blue and gold laid across her shoulder in Pharaonic fashion.  A pair of feline ears poked from her hair in front of the headdress.  She spread her full, dark brown lips.  Sharp fangs hung in a dangerous smile.  Beneath her face, a pair of proud breasts stood, heavy enough to sag gently.  She brought her padded fingers to one of the broad nipples.  She began to purr.    As she saw it, there were two possibilities.  She had gone insane from the heat and exertion and excitement, or she really was an intelligent ancient sphinx reborn here and now.  If it was the former, there seemed to be no point to fighting her insanity; the madness had taken her already.  If it was the latter, she might as well enjoy herself.  What sort of treatment could there be for becoming a sphinx?  In both situations, the only option was acceptance.    Elizabeth began to walk.  Her steps sang a hymn to the Eye of Re.  Her heart beat the sed-festival drums.  Even her breath whispered of Ptah.  She drank in the heady knowledge.  It all lived inside of her.  She couldn't resist a wide grin.  There would be many papers to write.  But first to break the news.  She had to find the others.    "William, look," Elizabeth said.    The Australian had heard footsteps.  He wasn't surprised to hear someone's voice.  He turned around.  He froze.    "Isn't it brilliant?"    The sphinx's arms were spread wide.  Her feline eyes glinted from behind the traditional black makeup.  Her fangs were bared in a smile.  Her brows held a sinister arch.  The Australian's cheeks went pale.  He took a step back.  He stared.  His face showed awe and fear.    "Will, I look great, right?"  Her voice turned gently dangerous on the last word.    The Middle Egyptian rolled off the sphinx's tongue.  He hadn't the presence of mind to translate.  She had set her front paws down again.  She was stalking toward him.  He took three more steps back.  His expression grew more frightened.  Anger brushed across her brow.  Why wasn't he happy?    "Don't you like it?"    Her wings spread.  A loud flap echoed across the corbel vaulted ceiling.  Her paws fell onto his shoulders.  The strength of a lioness's body brought him crashing to the floor.  He cried out.  His calloused hands pushed against her bare skin.    "Don't you like me any more?" Elizabeth demanded.    Her flat nose wrinkled.  Her lips had pulled into a snarl.  She crushed her chest against his.  She knocked her hips against his groin.  There was no lust.  It was cruel and vicious.  She could tell he was afraid.  She was taunting him.    The sphinx was screaming Egyptian into his face.  She was snarling.  Her claws were sinking into his shoulders.  He had to do something.    The noise numbed the sides

of her head.  Her spine convulsed.  She clapped her paws to her ears.  Her hair and headdress whipped violently.  The Australian pulled himself away.  His gun was still in his hand.  He ran and he shouted for the others.  Elizabeth roared.  Her mind boiled over in acute hatred.  Curses sprung to her lips.  She bellowed the curses at the fleeing human.  How could he reject her?    Deep rumbles rippled through the chamber.  The corridor was caving in.  The other Egyptologists took fast notice.  They followed the Australian's voice.  He was leading them out.  She would trap him.  The others she didn't care about.  She would make him regret running from her.  Every muscle in her body strained.  She touched deep power.  Rubble rained down on the stairs.  The roar of the stones echoed her own cries.

     Neferure reclined on a low couch, with her latest papyrus spread out in front of her.  A few days had passed now.  Yet she had only scratched the surface of the scrolls preserved here.  She needed to know as much as she could.  The knowledge she'd gained was vast, but there was much more to learn.    She had taken the new name as she felt barely like an Elizabeth any more.  She was a part of the ancient Egypt she had admired so much.  Neferure graciously accepted the role Re had given her.  The treasure here was hers to guard.  The archaeologists would be back soon.  They had all made it out despite her best efforts.  She could hear the pickaxes against the rubble.  They would clear the way to the treasury once again.    They would find a sphinx waiting for them.  She'd need to work on some good riddles.