Samara Spade and the Curse of the Menatari Falcon

By Susan Lyttek

I steadied myself against the dash as the car leaned into the cliff. “You really need to go so fast?”

The rusty green Yugo that Aba had rented shifted down. “Sam, I told you to stay home.” He plunged the accelerator into the floor. “But you say that you’re family now and must come with. Family does not complain.”

I grumbled. “I can’t stay home. We’re in your home country. Do you want me to stay locked up in a hotel room?”

He swerved into a drive. “Very nice hotel room.”

I conceded, “Yes. But still a room.”

Truthfully, I still wasn’t fully awake in spite of my husband’s bizarre behavior. It all seemed surreal. We had just sat down to a room service breakfast at the Plaza, the only decent hotel in this country, when the phone rang.

Aba had picked it up. “Bon giuorno?”

He’d told me that meant good morning or hello, but beyond that, his side of the conversation became a flurry of increasingly irritated words. One of these days, I was going to have to have someone teach me his language.

“I’m going out, Sam.” His clipped tone meant something was seriously wrong.

“Not without me, you don’t.”

“No. This is family matter. You stay put. Enjoy the day.”

I put my hand on his arm, showing off my ring. “I am family, love. I’m going with you. We solve problems together.”

He grumbled, but stopped arguing. Next thing I knew, we were driving an old Yugo he’d nicknamed Boris through the Adriatic countryside at jaw-rattling speeds. Finally, he turned off the main road.

If I had thought that would have slowed him down, I was wrong. Aba must’ve been doing eighty kilometers per hour up that driveway. He spun into a parking space in front of a traditional Mediterranean villa and left the motor running. “Stay put. No time to meet people.”

He ran up to the front door, which opened before he got there. A man who resembled Aba but with graying temples thrust a burlap sack at my hubby. Before I knew it, that bag landed in my hands.

“What is this?”

“The Menatari curse.”

I untied the bag and let the burlap fall to the sides of an exquisitely carved raven about a foot high and made of black glass. “It’s beautiful. A curse?” Surely, he was overreacting.

The laugh that crackled out of his mouth made me doubt his sanity. “Oh, that obsidian creature is most definitely a curse, love. Unfortunately, when you got kidnapped, the bird took that as a cue to act up.”

He zipped through the narrow roads like he knew exactly where he was going. I didn’t, and I wanted answers. “You’re driving like a madman because of this bird statue?”

He wove the beater around a tractor that looked like a holdover from the 1920s with its huge narrow wheels, then he gunned it around a herd of sheep starting to cross the road.

“Absolutely. Hundreds of years ago, Isa Menatari, my many-great-grandfather, was a trader with an eye for the uniquely valuable; he made the family well off for generations. But his greed…”

“Yes?”

“His greed for the rare led him to steal the obsidian Menatari Falcon and give us its curse.”

I didn’t like his ominous tone, and I was still as confused as ever. “I don’t get it.”

The barely existent path wound downhill, and after a sharp turn, the clear blue of the sea filled the horizon.

“We’re here.” He pulled off the road and snapped the parking brake in place. “We will give this bird a new home and hope we’re back in ours before it descends again.”

“Descends?” Not only did that sound creepy, but it sounded impossible. I looked at the black statue in my lap. “How on earth does a glass bird descend?”

He shrugged. “It does. The Egyptian priests who guarded it swore it embodied Ra, their ancient god. As Isa fled, one of them shouted after him, ‘Nest him on high when trouble follows, else bring him forth.’”

The words ran up my spine like cold fingers. I swear the weight in my lap intensified, and I imagined I saw a light within it. Creepy. “What does this thing do?”

Aba sighed. “As soon as something bad happens to a Menatari, it appears in one of our homes. I almost thought I’d see it in the hotel. Then crazy accidents and dangerous—ah, what English word—coincidences start happening.” He stepped out of the car and darted around to act like a gentleman. Taking the strings of the burlap sack, he pulled the horror from my lap with one hand and offered the other to me. “Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to cross the ocean. But since I’m here now, and I brought the trouble, it’s up to me.”

“Us,” I insisted.

“You can guard,” Aba countered. “But I’m climbing alone. It’s what a Menatari does.” He kissed me hard enough to stun me for a moment, then ran toward the cliff.

Stubborn man.

I’d have followed him right away, but my brain was whirling. What had those Egyptians said? Else bring him forth? What if I really had seen something inside the statue?

Just like that, my memories of geology and chemistry coalesced. I would break this curse once and for all. Literally.

I ran for the rock that my beloved climbed.

“Aba!” I shouted, grabbing handholds and hoisting myself up a few feet.

When he glanced down, I executed a perfect side fall, landing uncomfortably on the rocks, but keeping my body perfectly still.

“Sam!”

To my right, I heard glass shatter. As I hoped, Aba had lost hold of the statue.

I opened my eyes as a black mist erupted from the remains.

“What was that?” asked Aba.

“I think… Ra?”

Aba lifted me to my feet, and we held each other as the mist flew south, towards Egypt, until it disappeared.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan A. J. Lyttek, author of four novels, (fifth out June 2019) award-winning writer, blogger, wife and mother to two homeschool graduates currently escapes her employment search by writing random stories. You can find out more about her and her books at her website.

---

More Stories | Author Website | Facebook | Twitter