“Amon?” I whispered in a tremulous voice. “I’m sorry.”
With my death, his time on Earth would be short, but there might still be enough time for him to bond with someone else. I was imagining my happy reunion with Amon as disembodied spirits and wondering whether the Egyptian version of the afterlife overlapped with the Anglo-Saxon version of heaven, when I hit something. The impact knocked whatever little bits of sand I’d breathed in right out of my lungs with the force of a gunshot blast. Coughing violently, I tried to figure out why I wasn’t dead. The gritty object that broke my fall was now wrapped around me, smothering me. Then it spoke.
“Cease your wriggling, Lily. You are safe.”
Stilling, I stretched out my hands and touched a sand-covered chest. “Asten?” I whispered.
Two gleaming golden-bronze orbs twinkled in the darkness. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“No. Not at all. I was expecting to die, actually,” I choked out.
Asten grunted. “Not today, it seems. Are you injured?”
“Injured?” I echoed, as if not understanding the word.
“Can you stand?” he clarified slowly.
I blinked. “Oh. Yes. I think so.”
“Good.” Asten set me on my feet. “Now that you are here, you can help me with Hassan.”
“Dr. Hassan is here?” I gasped.
“He is. His body is heavier than yours, so he emerged more quickly than you did.”
Asten moved away and I stumbled after him, stretching my arms out in front of me.
“Ah, I forget you cannot see in dark places.” Asten lit his body and surrounded us in a soft white bubble of light. Other than the hard-packed dirt floor under our feet and a few small pebbles, there was nothing else.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“I do not know.”
We came upon the crumpled form of Dr. Hassan and I knelt at his side, pressing my fingers against his neck. His chest rose and fell under my other hand. “His pulse is strong,” I said. “It doesn’t look like anything’s broken.”
“His limbs should be intact. I caught him, as I did you.”
Looking up at Asten over my shoulder, I asked, “Weren’t you hurt by the fall?”
“I am not bound to the earth in the same way as you. The power of the starlit ibis grants me the ability to control the speed at which I rise and fall.”
“Hold on. Are you saying you can fly?”
“Yes. You have seen this.”
“No. Not as a bird. I mean, can you fly as a man?”
In answer, Asten raised his arms slightly away from his sides and his body lifted into the air. Motionless, he hovered several feet off the ground and then slowly lowered.
Shaking my head in wonder, I turned back to Dr. Hassan. “So if you caught him, then what’s wrong?”
“I do not know. Perhaps he is simply unconscious.”
I slapped the doctor’s face lightly. “Osahar? Can you hear me? Wake up!” I shook his shoulder, but he remained unconscious. “Can you carry him?” I asked as I picked up his beloved fedora and shoved it into my bag.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“As long as is necessary.”
“Okay, good. Let’s try to find a way out of here, then.”
Asten crouched down and scooped up Dr. Hassan, throwing him over one shoulder like a suit coat. “I will follow you, Lily. Where would you like to go?”
“I guess…we should try to go that way.” I pointed ahead.
We wandered for what felt like hours, though I had no real sense of time. The only excitement was finding my backpack. Asten turned his nose up at the bruised banana I offered to share, so I shrugged and gagged down the mealy fruit, happy to find anything to fill my empty belly. As we walked, I scratched and rubbed at the itchy grime coating my body and attempted to wring it from my hair.
I began to despair. Every pebble we came across looked the same, and when I made a little pile of them to resemble an arrow pointing in the direction we went, it had completely disappeared when we doubled back not a few moments later.
Dr. Hassan finally stirred. He moaned, and Asten set him down. I trickled some bottled water into his mouth and wiped away as much of the crusted sand from his face as possible.
“What? What happened?” he asked. “Where are we?”
“We don’t know.” I wet a strip of fabric Asten had torn from his already too-short skirt and bathed Dr. Hassan’s face. “We fell through the quicksand into this place. There’s nothing here but us.”
I pulled Dr. Hassan’s once white, now filthy and crumpled fedora from my bag, brushed away some sand stuck to its brim, and handed it to him. He gave me a kind smile and took the hat.
“Ah, this was given to me in honor of my first real archaeological find—an exceedingly rare stone carving of Bast.” The band on the fedora broke as he tried to reshape the hat. “Well, perhaps it is time to set the past behind me and focus on the future.”
“I’m sorry, Osahar,” I said.
“Think nothing of it. We were lucky to escape with our lives.”
“Yes, but we haven’t exactly found a way out.”
“Lily is correct. There does not appear to be an end to this dungeon,” Asten said. “But it might be possible for you to be able to see something I cannot. Would you agree, Hassan?”
A meaningful glance passed between the two men, but I couldn’t figure out what they might have meant, and honestly, I was too tired to care. Dr. Hassan struggled to his feet with Asten’s help.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said cryptically.
Slowly turning in a circle as he perused the darkness, Dr. Hassan muttered absently to himself. After a few moments, I had begun wondering if he’d hit his head on a rock and was having a mental lapse, when he turned to us and said, “I am afraid we are trapped in an oubliette.”
“An ooblewhat?”
“An oubliette—a dungeon with no exit other than the way through which one entered. It is a French term meaning ‘a place of forgetting.’ ”
“Do you mean it’s a place people throw you so you are forgotten, or it’s a place so dark and empty you go crazy and forget who you are?”
“A bit of both, I would imagine.”
“So if there is only one entrance and we came through quicksand, then the only way out—”
“Would be back through it.”
“Is that possible?” I turned to Asten.
“I can fly us up to the sand, but it was infused with magic and even I cannot pass through the barrier.”
“So we’re trapped.”
“For the moment,” Dr. Hassan said quietly.
“Are you saying you know a way out?”
“Just because there is no perceivable alternate exit does not mean another exit does not exist. I believe there may indeed be a way to escape.”
“Then let’s go!” I’m sure excitement was visible on my face even in the dim light. I’d been trapped in way too many claustrophobic places on my adventures with Amon and didn’t relish the idea of being stuck in an oubliette any longer than I had to be. The only thing that kept me from panicking and hyperventilating was worrying about Amon.
I grabbed Dr. Hassan’s arm and pulled him forward a few steps before he stopped me. He patted my hand and said, “It might be best to free Ahmose before we leave.”
“F-free Ahmose?” I stammered.
“My brother is here?” Asten demanded.
“He is. Or, I should clarify, his sarcophagus is here.”
“But where?” I asked. “We didn’t see it. How do you know this?”
Dr. Hassan hemmed and hawed before saying, “It is not far. Come.”
We followed him for a few moments and then he seemed to disappear into thin air. I froze. “Dr. Hassan?” I called out nervously.
“I am here, Lily.”
“Where?”
“Here. Take my hand. It might help.”
He was suddenl
y before me again and held out his hand. After two strides he stepped up onto nothing, turned around, and smiled. “Just trust me.”
Asten gripped my other hand and we slowly clambered after the doctor. The place we entered was different from the one we’d left. We were still surrounded by darkness, but large boulders now littered the ground. The oubliette played tricks with my mind, and the shadows at the edge of Asten’s light lent sinister shapes to the rocks surrounding us. I often turned abruptly thinking the boulders were actually giant skulls that cackled at us as they ground their pebbly teeth.
Dr. Hassan walked right up to his bag. “Ah, there it is.”
As he dusted it off, I asked, “Where are we? How did we get in here?”
“We are still in the oubliette, but this is a different section. The two of you were trapped in an optical illusion.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Are you familiar with the impossible staircase?”
“Yes, I studied it at school in art class. Wait, are you saying we were trapped in one?”
“Something like it. If we had stayed there, we would have wandered in circles forever.”
“Do they have a lot of those in ancient Egypt?” I asked. “Is that how you knew about it?”
“Not exactly.” Dr. Hassan seemed uncomfortable. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “There it is. I can sense the warmth of Ahmose’s body. He is right over there.”
“But what about his canopic jars?”
Dr. Hassan smiled. “If they did not open the lids, then all should be well.”
“But—”
“Stand aside.” Asten gently nudged me away from Dr. Hassan before I could finish my question. He lifted his arms, and the top of the sarcophagus rose in the air.
Like us, the casket was filthy, coated with grit and mud. Still, little spots of polished wood shone through. After the lid crashed to the floor and Asten confirmed that the body inside was indeed that of his beloved brother, he began chanting.
Dr. Hassan knelt at the foot of the coffin, took out a half-empty bottle of water and a crumbled pack of crackers from his bag, and placed them on a flat rock. He gave me a sheepish grin. “I know it’s not necessary, but I am a man of tradition.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it,” I whispered, and offered him a small smile.
We sat quietly and watched Asten as he wove his spell. Now that I knew what to expect, the idea of bringing a mummy back from the dead didn’t frighten me as much as it had the first time. Asten murmured,
The moon cannot wax or wane. The moon is deathly cold.
As are you, my brother.
Ahmose—the embodiment of the moon.
It is time for rebirth. For renewal. For remaking.
Without you, the moon is eclipsed. The rays of the sun have no mirror.
The celestial realm needs your glittering glory.
Come, Brother. Take up your ax and your cudgel.
Join me in our shared fate once again.
The time is at hand to fulfill our purpose.
My enemies will be your enemies.
My allies will be your allies.
Together we will bring order to chaos
And strengthen the ties that bind the universe.
When I live, you live, for I share my life with you.
When I breathe, you breathe, for I share my breath with you.
I am Asten, the guardian of the stars.
Asten paused briefly and turned to look at me and Dr. Hassan.
With the Eye of Horus we seek you out.
You wander in darkness, bereft and lost,
But we will light the path before you.
I expected Asten’s eyes to light a path similar to the way Amon’s had, but instead a fog with little crackles of electricity surrounded us. It snapped and buzzed like a fluorescent bulb on the fritz, the light burning brightly one moment, then going dark the next. Dr. Hassan groaned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, turning to him. He waved me off, but his hands shook as he lowered his head into them and began rocking back and forth. “Asten?” I cried. “Something’s not right.”
“I must concentrate, Lily. Hassan will be fine.”
Your body is dust, chaff before the wind,
But the wind obeys me, and the dust listens.
I beckon you forth from the land of the dead.
Come, Ahmose! Heed my summons.
Return to the form of the man you once were.
I call upon the four winds to lend me power
And through them I give you the breath of life….
Once again the sounds of heavy breathing surrounded us. Dr. Hassan lifted his head. “You must open the canopic jars, Lily,” he said. “There is one hidden in each corner of the casket. Find the small button located at the bottom of each corner and push it. That will open the padded box and reveal the jar within. Hurry!”
The first wind hit me right in the face. Standing up, I pushed forward against it and peered inside the sarcophagus, getting an up-close-and-personal view of Ahmose’s scattered remains. Like Asten, bits of tattered wrappings appeared to be stuck to the dried husks of his limbs, but unlike Asten, Ahmose’s body was much more decayed and damaged.
The second wind came, smacking me hard against the sarcophagus. The body inside did not rest in the repose that had surely been intended for it. Broken bones lay strewn everywhere, a likely result of the coffin’s fall through the quicksand. The sarcophagus had seen better days. Thick mud and debris coated both the inside as well as the outside.
I prayed that the jars had not broken. It would be a miracle if they hadn’t, and we sorely needed one. It was hard enough for me to have Amon bound to my organs. That level of intimacy was too much to share with one Egyptian demigod, let alone two.
Swallowing, I felt the push from the third wind. It was like standing in a hurricane. I clung to the coffin to maintain my balance, my hair whipping across my face and neck and leaving little stinging bites.
Expecting the bones to rise up at any moment, I hurried about my task and quickly found the button. I pressed it and a panel popped out. Hidden behind it in a thickly padded cubby was the first jar. Thankfully, it was whole and made of stone, which made me optimistic about the possibility of finding the others intact. “It has the pharaoh’s face on it! Does it matter which one I open first?” I shouted.
“Just get them open. Quickly!” Dr. Hassan yelled, then gritted his teeth in pain and squeezed his shaking hands into fists. Something was definitely wrong, and I knew it must be more than just the pressure of the wind. He looked like he was having a seizure, but when I headed toward him, he shook his head vehemently.
Being a little less careful with the jar than I probably should have, I wrenched off its lid and didn’t even stop to watch the white light that emerged from it before seeking the next jar.
The second corner was blocked by the bound feet of the mummy, whose legs were no longer attached to its hips. My fingers trembled as I nudged one exposed foot aside, found the button, and pulled the canopic jar out. The white light that rose joined the first, both of them circling in the air right above me.
Finding the third jar was difficult. It wasn’t tucked away in its proper corner. I searched the hidden space, stretching my hand as far as I could reach, but found nothing. Desperately, I looked up and noticed something gray beneath the bandages covering the mummy’s torso.
Swallowing, I steeled myself and peeled back some of the bandages. The jar lay nestled in the empty space where part of the mummy’s rib cage used to be.
The fourth canopic jar was the most difficult to obtain. A pile of bones filled the final corner of the sarcophagus, the skull sitting prominently in the middle of them.
My hands shook as I thrust them into the clumps of mud, clothing, and bone lining the coffin. Repositioning the mess, I moved the pieces as respectfully and as quickly as I could, saving the skull for last.
Ahmose’s empty eye sockets seemed to be star
ing at me as I worked. Lifting his skull and placing it next to his femur with a quick apology, I found the last button and yanked out the final jar. My hands were slick with mud and whatever fossilized bits of Ahmose remained, so it took several tries, but finally I wrenched off the lid, and the white light inside rose and began circling overhead.
After wiping my hands on the rim of the sarcophagus and wishing, not for the first time, that I had a suitcase full of wet wipes, I rejoined Dr. Hassan and nodded to Asten.
Slowly, as if battling a tremendous force, small fragments of Ahmose’s body, including the tiniest bones, rose from the grit inside the coffin and churned in a circular path. They were soon followed by larger bones. Most of the pieces were bare and easily shook off whatever bandages remained. It looked like his entire body was caught in a blender.
Crane—give flight to his spirit
And ease his passage.
The electricity-filled fog swelled in size, becoming gray and stormy. Tiny lightning strikes flashed through the cloud until there was a violent storm and the cloud burst, leaving behind only a pinprick of white light. The light moved, wandering aimlessly in the dark spaces that Asten’s light could not reach. “No, Brother. You must return to me,” Asten cried out.
The embodiment of the stars lifted his hands and beckoned the light. Dr. Hassan trembled nearby, and I nudged my body closer to his to offer support, but he didn’t seem to be aware of my presence. After a few moments, a concerned Asten breathed a sigh of relief as the tiny seed of light finally returned, growing until it took on the shape of a silver bird.
It looked more like Asten’s starlit ibis than Amon’s golden falcon. The creature made of silver light began to circle Asten. “Come, Brother. It is time.”
With a trumpeting cry, the bird soared toward the sarcophagus, where the four lights from the jars merged with it. It was quickly encompassed by the whirlwind and exploded in a burst of silvery light that was absorbed into the skull’s eye sockets.