Take Me Back

PROFESSOR RUNYI could not do anything when he returned with the doctors and nurses, but Clara demanded to be discharged immediately. Though the doctor checked her and advised her to rest at home, Clara asked the Professor to drive to the University of Pecs, where the body was being analyzed before the government of Hungary, and the government of Turkey would discuss where Kosem, the mummy, would be displayed.

Sitting in the shotgun seat, Clara stared beyond the car's window.

Professor Runyi could feel the dangerous tension that Dr. Clara Kosuma was currently emitting. He observed that the head researcher's cold demeanor worsened since she woke up in the hospital after losing consciousness for three hours. For him, she felt like a walking time bomb – and he did not know why he felt that.

The wrinkled doctor cleared his throat, suffocated from the tension. "Good thing I have the key, and the guards still remember me." Professor Runyi laughed awkwardly. "Why are you visiting Kosem this late at night?"

Kosem. Clara felt weird calling someone Kosem after waking up. She was Kosem, and though she was now named Clara, her emotions as Kosem were stronger. No, being Clara, she always shut her feelings but remembering her past life triggered every emotion she thought she could not feel.

"I need to learn something," she replied a satisfactory answer for the old Professor to shut him up. As the car abruptly stopped outside the facility where Kosem was held, Clara immediately went out with the Professor in tow. "Wait, Dr. Kosuma! I haven't parked yet."

Clara's strides did not slow down as she went inside the dim-lighted facility – an indication that the facility had no loitering workers.

'Good.' Clara thought.

When the specialized room where Kosem was held opened, Clara turned to the heaving professor.

"Thank you, Professor Runyi." Her first genuine smile that he had ever seen earned Clara a pair of widened eyes from the Professor as he closed and opened his mouth like a goldfish. "You can attend your daughter's party. I am just here to study anyway."

"But who will drive you back?"

"I will find a way to return, don't worry."

Professor Runyi nodded as if he was still reluctant to leave, knowing she had just been discharged from the hospital. But her genuine smile made him leave the head researcher alone inside the facility.

"You always help Zeyn and me, Muhammet Bey," whispered Clara as she stared at the retreating silhouette of the Professor – who was once named Muhammet Bey.

'Even in this lifetime, you are still helping me. At least in this lifetime, you got to see your granddaughter, which you couldn't do in the past.'

Muhammet Bey was the governor that helped her and Zeyn when the Grand Vizier chased them out of the palace. Closing the metal doors, Clara turned to her mummified body from four hundred sixty-five years ago.

Staring at her body from long ago, Clara could still feel the desires of Kosem four hundred and sixty-five years ago.

"Look how pathetic you are, Kosem. You were so weak – a coward who hid from Zeyn's shadow. You wanted to be recognized as his betrothed, but you only cried in the corner whenever they harassed you. Ha! We are really sharing the same soul. No wonder how I pathetically endured my bullies. Old habits die hard, I guess. Right, Kosem?" Clara talked to the mummified body of Kosem as if the latter could reply. Clara leaned towards Kosem, intending to touch her forehead to the body.

But the next moment she knew she was now standing in the middle of a flower field. A silhouette of an ominous-looking man stood a few meters before her.

'Where am I? Did I have a lapse again, like what happened on the site?'

"No. You are here because I am here to grant your wish that has been delayed for four hundred and sixty-five years." The black mist surrounding the shadow cleared, displaying a tall woman with gold dangling from her head to her ankles.

"Did Kosem wish for something? Are you a deity?" Her ability to take Clara from that facility made the latter thought that the unfamiliar figure before her was a deity.

The woman smiled warmly at Clara. "If you can't remember your dying wish, then all of your memories haven't returned yet. So if you remember me and your wish, call my name, and I will return to grant your wish."

Slowly, the woman in front of Clara started to turn into a golden mist. The intimate swirls of the golden haze that created silvery sparkles reminded Clara of the night when the heavy raindrops shone like falling diamonds from the sky as she lay at the back of Zeyn.

'Goddess Kayra, I wish to correct my mistakes and protect this person who has suffered ever since he decided to love me.'

On instinct, she reached out for her. "Don't go, Kayra!" The mist that Clara touched felt warm around her right hand. A minute ago, the golden mists started to scatter – but the fog returned to the tall woman at Clara's words. "You called, Kosem?"

"You are the supreme god of the universe, worshipped by the citizens of the Ottoman Empire a long time ago. You are Kayra, the one who heard my dying wish."

Her smile confirmed Clara's words. "And your wish?"

Memories of being Clara and being Kosem clashed inside Clara. Clenching her fist, she endured being an outcast in both lives. Being discriminated against as a Jew and looked down on as a slave, she felt tired of being repeatedly trampled.

'I will draw the line this time. I steeled myself as Clara and became successful in my field by shutting the pitiful emotions – something I, as Kosem, failed to do.'

Her lilac eyes stared at Kayra's golden ones. "I want to correct my mistakes and save Sultan Hazeyn Suleiman. Take me back to the time I am yet to meet Zeyn, and I will do the rest."

"Very well, my favorite soul." The goddess blew a portion of golden dust to her when the dust touched her pores. Clara felt the free-falling sensation the second time around. But unlike the first time that she felt it, Clara welcomed the feeling.