PROLOGUEPrague, Bohemia, Late October 1880
Night Skirt
Chill wind scattered blown leaves along the lamp-lit cobbled street outside Karel Nezval’s diamond-paned front parlor window. An occasional clawed leaf raked the window glass with a faintly chitinous sound, disturbing Nezval’s sensitive ears. He paused to rub the shell-curled surface of his left ear as he read his archaeologist friend’s latest letter, which had arrived simultaneously with a small wooden box carefully wrapped in oiled paper and thin but incredibly strong twine, said box also sent by his boyhood friend.
Shifting his slightly protruding, yet deeply hooded brown eyes away from the fine feathery tracery of Josef’s penned words, the glass manufacturer (and armchair Egyptologist, a holdover from his student days in Berlin)
