Another Pan (8 page)

More than anything, Peter still hated getting older. But a close second was the dark. The night was when Peter was most alone. No Tina, no LBs, no one but Peter himself, alone with his thoughts, his fears, his deepest regrets. All those monsters that lurked after dusk. The broken eye that was fixed on him always. Night is the time when everything can go wrong. Twelve hours, twelve chances for disaster. Night is when his oldest nemesis tried to haunt him, to hurt him, to scare him away.
All nights come to an end,
Peter assured himself.

“Sorry I’m late, class. . . . Class. Quiet down, please.”

Professor Darling stumbled through the door, holding a pile of books, notes, a laptop, some rolled-up schematics, and his third cup of coffee. He unloaded the heap on his desk. Wendy and John were already nervous.

“You got lucky this time, Professor,” said Marla, from the back of the class. “Two more minutes and we were going to invoke the ten-minute rule.”

Professor Darling picked up some notes that had fallen to the floor.

“The ten-minute rule?” he said distractedly.

“Yeah, ten minutes and the students get to walk out,” said Marla.

The professor adjusted his notebooks, pushed his glasses to the top of his nose, and snapped back to the present.

“I assure you, Marla, that the Marlowe rule book does not contain any kind of clause allowing students to walk out on their own education.”

“Well,” said Marla, crossing her arms, “it should.”

A few students made some noncommittal sounds of agreement.

“That’s a great idea, Marla,” said the professor, pulling out his lesson plan. “Why don’t you prepare a five-page paper on why young adults today are not given the kind of respect and freedom as those of the ancient Nile Delta? I recommend working with me at the Egyptian exhibit, where all of you can see documents from the reign of Ramses II, who was a ruler before he was a teenager.”

“Are you kidding me?” said Marla, sitting up.

“Of course not,” said the professor. “It’s well documented. I think you’ll also find some compelling research on children of peasant families, who didn’t have to go to school at all. In fact, they were allowed to work in the fields as early as six years of age.”

“I mean about the five-page paper,” said Marla.

“Well, it’ll be six pages with the bibliography, but, yes. You can present your findings to the class on Friday.”

As Professor Darling was absentmindedly giving Marla an assignment, Wendy and John sank farther and farther in their seats. The others kids never really understood their dad. He was like the ultimate head-in-the-clouds, nose-in-the-books, good-intentions-but-terrible-attention-span kind of history nerd. And it wasn’t exactly doing wonders for them on the social front. It was even worse for John, who was accelerated into classes with his older sister. His dad may as well have spoon-fed him his lunches in the cafeteria.

Marla rolled her eyes and shut her history book with an irritated clap. John ventured a glance her way, but she caught it and glared back. He gulped. Marla was the kind of rich kid who thought she was badass just because she dressed in black clothes and played guitar — never mind that
real
street kids couldn’t afford to go Goth in cashmere.

“The items in this exhibit came from the British Museum,” said Professor Darling, clapping his hands, “and they’ve included artifacts dating from the late Coptic period all the way back to pre-Antiquity. I’m sure you all know how exciting it is to have the pieces from the world’s largest collection. I mean, we could be looking at undiscovered history here.”

Here we go,
thought Wendy. Every time Professor Darling used the phrase
undiscovered history,
it meant he was about to start waxing poetic about humankind, oral traditions, myths, and the stories we tell one another around the fireplace. He loved the phrase because it was full of mystery. Anything could be discovered and join historical fact. Any impossibility could become possible. “Every fiction,” he’d say, “is a fact that hasn’t been proven yet.”

“I’ll be needing as many volunteers as I can get to help catalog the pieces before the exhibit goes up.”

Someone in the back said, “Oooh, where do I sign up?”

Professor Darling didn’t seem to hear.

“The theme I’ve proposed for the show is the
Five Legends
. That sounds cool, doesn’t it?”

“Super cool,” said Marla, in a tone so sarcastic that even their father must have noticed.

As always, he ignored it and went on with undiminished enthusiasm. “Some of the pieces we’ve acquired are fascinating. For example, we have in our exhibit several canopic jars used in Egyptian funereal rites. And we have a very old copy of the
Book of Gates,
which, I should add,
could
be a set of original bound papyri dating back thousands of years.” The professor’s eyes sparkled and he added, “Of course, that isn’t what the museum community believes, which is why they let us borrow it. . . . You know, the original
Book of Gates
is said to have magical powers.”

The professor waved his fingers in the air, obviously trying to seem mysterious, or even interesting. He deflated in the silence that followed. “OK, well, no one has really suggested
magic,
but I’ve presented theories that mystical occurrences have surrounded this lost artifact. Personally, I believe the original book may be the key to unearthing the truth behind the five great legends . . .
myths,
as they are called by . . . most scholars. The historicity of the stories is doubted by many, but I think anything is possible.”

“Five legends?” John asked.

“Yes, yes, John,” said the professor hurriedly. “The five stories that are told in the
Book of Gates
. Remember, I showed you an English translation in our library at home?”

John flushed and dropped lower in his seat. Professor Darling was getting excited again, talking with his hands above his head and walking around. Wendy groaned. Her dad’s fairy-tale theories about Egypt had given him a reputation as a kook. No one denied that he was preeminent in the field, but maybe he just believed more than he should have.

“Well, an English translation from our house is one thing . . .” Professor Darling stopped. As soon as the professor said the words
our house,
someone in the back snickered.

Someone whispered, “We can’t all live in a free house on Marlowe’s dime.”

Someone else responded, “I wonder if our tuition pays for his storybooks.”

Professor Darling reddened but continued, pretending not to hear. “An English copy is one thing, but the long-lost original . . . well, some people say that it can do a lot more than just
recount
the five stories. It has the power to
unlock
their mysteries to the world.”

Professor Darling wiped a bead of sweat off his brow. Wendy knew that discussing his less conventional theories with a Marlowe crowd always had this effect on him. He switched to something less risky. “The five legends in the
Book of Gates
revolve around great loss. Five people — unknown to history, but tied together by a single cursed bloodline — who have suffered injustice on an eternal scale, the life of each becoming a legend in its own right.”

“What do you mean,
unknown to history
?” asked a soft-voiced girl in the back, a freshman also accelerated into the class along with John. “I mean,
you
seem to know about them.”

“Ahh,” said Professor Darling. “We know of them through
myth,
Jenny. But these stories have not made it into conventional Egyptian history, or even mainstream mythology. They are part of a much more obscure, much more
secret,
lore. A lore that is shunned by scholars and Egyptians. A lore that would tell us that even the death god was something different from what is commonly believed.”

The class was quiet for a moment. The professor went on. “As I was saying, each of the five legends tells the story of a grave injustice. In one story, the injustice may be the loss of a person’s heritage. In another, maybe great love. But in all of them, there is something that caused a great bitterness to grow and fester inside — a bitterness over a life not fully lived. The ancient Egyptians used to say that this bitterness, this desire to take back what was lost, has a life of its own. It lingers in the world of the living. And so, these five characters continued to
linger
. You see, none of this would matter if the heroes of the five legends had just had a normal death and burial. But that isn’t
exactly
what happened, now, is it?”

Some of the sleepy students perked up. The professor was pacing the floor with a far-gone look, lecturing wistfully, from memory. Even Marla was interested. “What did happen, then?” she whispered, an almost sadistic look in her black-lined eyes.

Professor Darling shot Marla a smile. “Well, they were mummified, of course! We all know that the Egyptians believed that mummification was the way to transmit a body into the afterlife. But we also know that it was only the pharaohs or the extremely wealthy who could afford to be mummified. These five characters were certainly not historic icons. But legend has it that they were each
somehow
mummified, which is an astonishing fluke in itself. It was the mummification that preserved the bitterness in their bones.”

“So, wait a minute,” said John. “You’re saying that the reason
these
five made it into the legends and not anyone else was because they had something really bad happen to them and then they were mummified?”

Professor Darling nodded. “There were
three
commonalities among the five legends that made them unique. One, the grave injustices. Two, the mummification. And three, the fact that they were all in the same family — a shared bloodline. Through the workings of fate,” the professor continued, “these five doomed souls were first born into the same cursed line and then were serendipitously and undeservedly mummified. It is said their lives were trapped in their bones, their souls unable to leave the mortal world. Not while the wrongs against them remained unavenged.”

The professor trailed off, and the children’s expectation hung in the air. The professor was staring off into nothing.

“So?” said Marla finally.

The professor blinked. “So, what?”

“So, what happened? What happened to their bodies? Did they get revenge?”

Professor Darling smiled. “Well, no one knows. Their bodies disappeared. They weren’t alive, but they couldn’t die. Some people say the god of death took them away, knowing what great magic was hidden in their bones. The force of injustice on such a massive scale . . . well, it can’t just disappear. These five mummies are believed to possess within them a substance that treasure seekers and storytellers call bonedust. It is said that the bonedust from the five mummies, when mixed together, can give everlasting life — a real-life fountain of youth, if you will — that it can overcome death and undermine the death god’s greatest power. Bonedust is her greatest enemy.”

“What do you mean,
her
?” asked Wendy.

Professor Darling’s eyes flashed blue-gray as he leaned on his daughter’s desk. “Well,
that,
my dear, is one of the most fascinating parts of the legend. According to five legends lore, the death god is not Anubis, as is believed by historians and Egyptians. It is a
woman
.” Professor Darling scurried behind his desk and grabbed a stack of notes. “You see, every legend starts and ends the same way. Each one starts by telling us what that hero’s injustice was. And it ends like this. . . .” He began to read from a yellowing page:

“You see?” the professor continued. “The legends say that the death god is a woman. They call her the
Dark Lady,
but I believe she appears in the fifth legend. . . .” He trailed off, then began again. “This is why most people believe the five legends are rubbish. Because everywhere you go in Egypt, you see statues of the jackal-headed Anubis. You don’t see a female death god. But
we
have a statue of her in our very own exhibit. I suggest you all go and look at it.”

“So is the bonedust around somewhere?” asked Jenny, the quiet-voiced ninth-grader.

“Most people would say it isn’t anywhere. They’re just myths, remember?”

“But according to this legend?” asked John.

“According to this, the bonedust is hidden in an unidentified labyrinth. And some say that the original
Book of Gates
is the key to unlocking it.”

“Tell us one of the legends,” said Marla.