She took out an electronic notepad and drew each of the seven Egyptian symbols. Zara saved the images so she could copy and paste them at her discretion. Zara tried a dozen or so combinations trying to see if any triggered some sort of higher order, gut instinct of hers.
Nothing was standing out to her. She shook her head, chiding herself for giving it so many attempts. The chance of randomly selecting the correct series of images was astronomical. She closed the application, and opened another. This one was an English to ancient Egyptian translator.
Time to take a new approach…
She began entering significant dates into the English to Ancient Egyptian translator. She tried Nostradamus’s birthday, using the European style of writing dates — 14/12/15. It converted to 141215, which was represented in Ancient Egyptian by the image of one astonished man, followed by, four tadpoles, one pointing finger, two lotus flowers, one coiled rope and five heel bones. The beginning and ending numbers didn’t match. She tried the day he died — 2/7/15, but had the same problem. She tried the date of the supposed expedition. Still nothing.
Zara stopped and stared at the ancient Egyptian numbers. A few minutes passed before she got another lead. The ancient Egyptians wrote numbers from right to left — meaning the number she was looking for began with ten and ended in eight, not the other way around.
Zara retried the original numbers and found they were all off somehow. She added another twenty odd numbers to the list, which might have coincided with the quatrain, but all failed to match the requirement of beginning with ten and ending with eight. Last, Zara tried one number she was certain had nothing to do with Nostradamus.
She smiled as she typed the numbers into the English to Ancient Egyptian calculator. It was stupid trying, but she decided she must anyway — if only to appease her late father. She then pressed enter and the calculator displayed an image she’d seen many times before.
No, that can’t be possible.
It was an image she’d seen a thousand times before. She opened the top buttons of her shirt. Slowly and tentatively, as though frightened by what she might discover, and removed a medallion from where it hung between her small breasts. She stared at it for a moment. A family history, so incredible, and so fanciful that she was certain it was all a lie.
On one side the bronze medallion depicted an island that no longer existed — or at least didn’t on any navigational map, satellite images, or maritime journal she’d ever seen. While on the other side, were a series of pictographs depicting ancient Egyptian numerals.
They included one pointing finger, followed by two coiled ropes, seven heel bones, and eight staff. Zara had often stared at it without ever really seeing what it meant. Converted to English, the pictograph represented the numbers 10.2.78.
Her own date of birth.
Chapter Five
The sound of Zara banging startled Adebowale into a sudden state of consciousness. His chest felt tight, and his heart pounded. It was an uncomfortable sensation that was becoming increasingly familiar to him. He felt like he’d just run a sprint for his life. Sweat beads littered his skin, but he felt cold inside.
He’d had another vision.
It was a mixture between a nightmare and a wonderful dream. He wasn’t quite asleep, but nowhere near awake. Like a micro sleep, lasting no more than a few seconds, the dream felt like it had spanned hours of not-yet-lived memories in his mind. The visions were bombarding him with a much greater frequency these days. It was as though they were telling him the time was near. His future memories had become more frequent, vivid and intense — and no less painful than the first time he’d experienced them.
Adebowale had seen his death for as long as he could remember. It was one of the first memories of his life and it took him until he was five before he was able to make any sense of it. He didn’t complain about it. After all, he was to have a good life. Not necessarily a long life, but longer than some. Besides, his life would have meaning and purpose beyond that which most men could imagine.
He could have tried to avoid his death, as so many try to do. Adebowale, if he really wanted to avoid it, could simply choose not to return to his homeland. The land that was taken from his father nearly thirty years ago when he was just three years old. He certainly didn’t have any desire to return. And much less desire to be killed in response, but that’s what he was going to do, and that was how he was going to die.
There was no point trying to change it. He knew the future was set firmly in the books of time, and he could no more change it than he could the past. Adebowale wondered if he could truly be so cruel as to play the part he had been given in this abhorrent prophecy. He looked at his men celebrating in the distance. They were weak, barely more than prisoners in their own kingdom, forced to work for a foreigner, but they looked happy, and he was about to watch that happiness be taken away.
Adebowale stood guard at her tent. He looked up at the clear sky. The stars glowed bright, unhindered by any cloud. That much didn’t match up with his vision, but he was certain tonight was the night. He looked at the men who’d followed him. He considered if his part in the prophecy was really true. The thought frightened him, as much as he longed for it.
He grinned viciously. Yes. If the rest of the prophecy came to fruition, he would commit to play his part — as the betrayer.
Chapter Six
Zara tried to consider any possible explanation for the coincidence. The chance it was entirely random was mathematically so astronomical as to make it impossible. There were two likely explanations she figured.
10.2.78 wasn’t her real date of birth. Her father had simply registered her as that so she would one day work out the image in the medallion and believe the prophecy. Or the medallion was a fake. Something her father had contrived to make her believe in the prophecy. There was a third possibility, but it was so unlikely she refused to even entertain the thought: the prophecy was true, and Nostradamus could indeed see the future.
She stared at the number again trying to see a reason her own date of birth didn’t fit the equation. Zara wrote down her full date of birth on the top of her work desk. Next to it she copied the exact number found on the bronze medallion.
10.2.1978
10.2.78
She stared again. Tapping the back of her pencil on the wooden desk next to the two numbers, frustrated, as though the answer was staring right back at her and she was just being too stupid to see it.
The numbers one and nine were missing. Zara nearly ignored the relevance of the two missing numbers. After all, it wasn’t unusual to leave out the 19 part of 1978. Everyone knows you’re either born in the 1900s or 2000s. That is, everyone except Nostradamus. He wouldn’t have been so careless to leave out two numbers which were ultimately required to make up the correct date of birth.
So she was wrong. Her birthday didn’t match the image on the medallion and neither did it equate to the number found in the quatrain Nostradamus had left her. If Nostradamus had meant her date of birth, he would have expressly accounted for it in the quatrain.