Another Pan (42 page)

Let him come,
whispered the Dark Lady, her branded eye flashing in rage.
Let him come and take it from me
.

The diminutive nurse stood in front of the pyramid. She would have looked harmless if the ghost of Layla wasn’t on her knees before her, pleading for her to return the canopic jar.

The fourth bonedust had been lost, but not to the boy; to the foolish fortune hunter, the one the darkness had overlooked. With her nurse’s eye, she had assessed Simon Grin as nothing more than a nuisance. A pawn to manipulate John away from Peter. A distraction and an obstacle for the children. The Dark Lady hated to be wrong. She despised the frailties of humanity. It was like being blind and deaf and dumb; being ordinary was the worst of all curses. But soon Peter would have to return for the fifth and final bone. Soon he would have to descend to the farthest depths of the pyramid, to death’s own chamber.

The branded eye flashed again. The nurse coughed. The ghost of Layla howled with pain. The desert wind stole the breath from her mouth.

Peter screamed and sat bolt upright. After pacing Marlowe all night, waiting for the Egyptian night to begin, he had dozed off in a small room somewhere on the first floor. He couldn’t help it; he had been so tired these past few days. He opened the door of the room a crack and peered outside. The school was so different now, since the exhibit had been here. It seemed so much older, dirtier, more oppressive to the senses. Everything seemed to move in a slow, eerie way. And yet nobody seemed to notice. The change had been so gradual.

He wiped his brow. He couldn’t stop panting. It didn’t feel like a dream this time. It felt like something was calling to him, inviting him to come closer.

Come and take it from me,
the voice told Peter.

He could feel her breath on his face. He could feel her claws around his throat. He felt her cold fingers grabbing his chin the way she used to do when she lived in his parents’ house and governed his every move. When she would punish his bad behavior by threatening him with the hook. Those noiseless steps. That hunched back. Those moth-eaten clothes. Each time he heard the voice, he felt a pain in his chest, as if his body was desperate to be away from her and yet was begging him not to go.

But he was so close now. And unless he finished this, he would never sleep soundly again. Unless he went back into the labyrinth, the night would never end.

Professor Darling called a specialist to inspect the exhibit items for damage. Perhaps it was excess moisture. Perhaps it was the recent atmospheric problems at Marlowe, all the leaks and infestations. It seemed that overnight a statue labeled
Neferat
had become eroded beyond recognition. And the nurse’s office, too, had been blanketed in a mysterious layer of mold in just one night.

Professor Darling didn’t hear the sixth-period bell ring. It was late afternoon, and he looked haggard with worry. He was pacing behind his desk, flipping through papers, once in a while stopping to scratch his chin or adjust his tie. He wasn’t sure what was wrong. Nothing had actually gone wrong since the governor’s gala two days before. The
Book of Gates
was drying in the dehydrator. The children had been remarkably well behaved and had even stayed away from Peter. And best of all, neither of them had pushed him to dredge up painful old memories from his LB days. They had left a sensitive situation alone, exactly as they had done when their mother left.

Despite all this, Professor Darling paced in front of his classroom, trying to figure out what this nagging feeling at the pit of his stomach could be. Simon was nowhere to be found, but that could be expected. It had been quite obvious that Simon was trying to win a spot as the governor’s personal curator. When the book was finally sent to Albany, Simon would probably go, too, chasing better opportunities with more important people.

“Professor Darling,” said Marla, now sitting in the front seat.

“Yes,” said the professor absentmindedly.

“Are you gonna start class or what?”

“Ah, yes, of course. Thank you, Marla.” He rifled through his notes and papers, scattering them across his desk until he came across the item he was looking for — his favorite English translation of the
Book of Gates
. It was his personal copy, printed about fifty years ago and bought secondhand when he was still a university student. It was full of his notes from over the years. He began to leaf through it, reading his musings on the mysteries of the fifth legend.

When Professor Darling didn’t begin the lecture right away, Wendy sat up, threw a worried glance at John, and asked tentatively, “Are you OK, Dad?” Her voice was overly concerned, a trait she had developed toward her father when her mother left.

Wendy tried to find Peter’s shadow, some sign of him listening at the window, but he wasn’t there. Even though he was usually out of sight, huddled under the window frame so that they never really saw him, Wendy was sure that he wasn’t there this time. She hadn’t been able to find him since they had lost the fourth bone to Simon.

“Hmm . . . yes,” mumbled the professor, pulling himself together. “I was just thinking about the fifth legend. It’s very different from the others, in my opinion.” He held up his book, with its yellowed pages and scratched leather cover. “It’s so vague. There’s so much that’s hidden from us. Of course, all of them were passed down by word of mouth, but this one . . . this legend is the one that was thought to carry the biggest curse, and so people rarely repeated it. Most of it has been lost, and it’s the one most shrouded in mystery . . . the one with the highest stakes.”

“So who was the mummy?” asked Marla. “What was it that he lost?”

“Everything,” said the professor as he cracked open the book. “An entire kingdom.”

“Isn’t that what Marcus Praxis lost?” asked John.

“In a way . . .” said the professor, turning the tissue-thin pages. “In fact, you could say that what Praxis lost was more important. Being erased from history is a loss far more profound than power or riches.” He stopped and looked into the mesmerized faces of his students. Their newfound enthusiasm always brought a smile to the professor’s lips. He lowered his voice dramatically, “Still, the fifth legend trumps them all. Because in this case, the injustice carried ripples.”

“What does
that
mean?” asked Marla.

“In this final legend, we are introduced to a fascinating new character — a woman, unique because of her position as a mere servant. It is
very
unusual for a servant to be named and described to such an extent in a legend dating back thousands of years, especially one that is already so vague. This woman, this
nursemaid,
has fascinated scholars for years.”

The students were sitting up now. Handhelds were put away. Portable games retreated into pockets.

“The nursemaid, a peasant woman called Neferat, is important to our story because she is said to have been one of the earliest political manipulators in history. Before Svengali, before Rasputin, Wolsey, or Lady Marlborough, she saw power in the hands of those she served, and she grabbed it for herself. Still, she escaped notice until later, when people began to whisper about something they had heard. Words said casually that, years later, seemed very sinister indeed.” Professor Darling stopped to read the words from his notes. He licked his lips and read slowly.
“‘Ripples,’
she said.
‘That is what I like. That is what I look for.’”
He looked up again and continued with a grin, knowing what he would say next would capture their attention. “So the legend was passed along, spreading the idea that the nurse was otherworldly — a servant of the underworld.”

Wendy considered the name Neferat. It sounded familiar. And all this stuff about ripples . . . had she heard it somewhere before? Lately, a lot of details seemed to escape her memory.

Then her father added, “We have a statue of the girl Neferat . . . it is very eroded, but . . . some people think she carried the soul of the Dark Lady from the stories.” Wendy remembered seeing the statue. It was the one with the missing alabaster eye.

“I don’t get it,” said Marla. “What are these ripples that make it such a big deal?”

“Ahh,” said the professor. “I was just getting to that. You see, it wasn’t just one person who was wronged in this final story. It was the entire kingdom. According to oldest lore, the king who lost his throne would have been great. But the one who overthrew him was the worst kind of evil. And so, as is always the case with despots, there was bloodshed. There was injustice enough that the whole of Egypt festered with it — and it was all carried in the bones of this one wronged king whose soul suffered for all the torment caused by his own youthful foolishness. . . . How’s that for a satisfying capstone?”