Author's note: If you're still reading after that last chapter, welcome, and all my love! We are living in a very strange world right now, but I promise, it gets better. And if this little story can take your mind off things for a bit, then I'll have done my job right and it's an honour.

This chapter's title comes from a song written by the great Cole Porter, one of my very favourite authors/composers. As to who or what is the eponymous "ace", you'll have to read till the end of the chapter to decide ;o)

Disclaimer: Stephen Sommers owns and developed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns; the characters, places, some situations are his creation. Some things and characters I did make up, but every character here is fictitious, and has nothing to do with any person, living, dead, or in-between. Who knows.


FAIRY TALES AND HOKUM

Chapter 21: Ace in the Hole

Tom Ferguson was exhausted, bruised, and in pain, but he was alive. He was still coming to grips with that fact. Frankly, he found it astonishing.

He had barely been aware of Jon screaming on the other side of the wall while the pygmy mummies attacked again. In the utter confusion he had somehow managed to not get hit by blow darts, only get grazed by a knife, and then fall down the same hole O'Connell had disappeared into earlier. Sometimes his luck got so bad it could pass for good fortune.

He landed hard and lost consciousness on impact. When he woke up and took inventory of his injuries, he found a red streak on his side – not deep, thankfully – courtesy of the pygmy mummies, rivulets of blood on his hands from where he had tried to slow down his fall, and an extensive set of bruises on his left side. At least he had not broken anything.

The tablet he had been holding was still whole, too, and fortunately it hadn't fallen on him. Considering the weight, he half-expected it to be made of stone.

The respect Tom had for the written word plus the natural curiosity that had led him into his chosen profession made him tuck the tablet into his rucksack. The circumstances made him promptly forget about it.

He started making his way down even before his brain decided on what to do. What did he have? No weapon and a whole lot of bruises, his mind helpfully answered. Where does that leave you, you fool?

Jon and O'Connell were still out there, and they would do anything to stop Hamilton. Maybe he could find them again down there and help them.

Tom realised his feet were leading him to the chamber Hamilton had released Anubis' Army from, and he followed them, ignoring the voice at the back of his brain calling him a twonk for not going the other way.

He wasn't far from the chamber when he heard the crash and felt the strange, numbing darkness go through him like an accelerated bout of the flu. He only ran harder when he heard the gunshots and felt the floor start to shake.

Jon and O'Connell were nowhere in sight when he sprinted into the chamber. The only people there were Robertson, Collins, and Bennett, the first two trying to lift a big gong off the floor with Bennett pulling on something underneath with all his might.

Tom wasn't very tall, but he was taller than Bennett, and heftier. He limped his way across the floor, dodging falling debris, and went to help him.

They all stared at him, goggle-eyed.

"Ferguson!?" said Robertson.

"You're alive!" Collins sputtered. Tom rolled his eyes.

"Not thanks to you idiots. Where's everybody? And who's under the gong?"

"The boss," said Bennett with difficulty, muscles straining. "Your mates shot at the chains holding it to the wall and made it fall on him. Baine took his hit squad and tore off after them."

Tom couldn't help a shudder before he rallied himself. Jon had been quite fleet of foot in their dissolute youth, and O'Connell obviously was no slouch either. They would be all right.

They had to be.

"Yeah, well, I'm not cryin' over the bastard," he said, evenly enough. "And you should thank them when you get out, because I'm pretty sure knockin' out Hamilton saved the whole bloody world."

The three agents shot him doubtful looks, but didn't object. Maybe they had come to their senses and accepted they had made a right cock-up of things. And maybe, Tom thought with an inner snigger, somewhere, pigs sprouted wings and flew.

When they finally pulled him out from under the gong, it became obvious that Hamilton was a little bit worse than 'knocked out'. His right arm stuck out at an unnatural angle, and the small pool of blood where his head lay didn't bode well for his future. However, when Tom reached for his neck to check his pulse, he turned out to be alive.

A larger tremor almost sent the four men joining the fifth on the ground. Robertson, Bennett, and Collins looked at each other.

"This place really is falling apart, isn't it?" Bennett ventured. Robertson and Collins nodded fervently.

"And we should get the hell out, huh?"

"Probably," said Tom, still bent over Hamilton. "Hey, can you—"

Hurried footsteps interrupted him. Tom looked up to see the three agents running like hell towards the exit.

He sent a half-pleading, half-exasperated look heavenwards. Then he looked back down at his erstwhile boss.

There was nothing he wanted to do more than crash and sleep for days. But he would have to be alive for that – and be able to look at himself in the mirror afterwards.

With a pained cry, Tom hefted Hamilton's body on his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and made for the exit on somewhat trembling legs.

"If you ever wonder who saved your sorry arse," he snarled between clenched teeth, knowing Hamilton was beyond hearing anything but too tired and furious to care, "I'll be sure to let you know it was me. And then, you'll… then you'll ask, 'Why on earth did that idiot bother saving a man who ordered him and his friends dead the second he… he didn't need them?' And I'll look at you in your cell – b—because you'll be in prison, obviously – and I'll say… I'll say…"

He stopped, swallowed a mixture of spit and grit, and continued with a grunt, "I'll say there was no way in hell I would let you get away with it. You… dragged your subordinates into the desert to play with a supernatural army. You set that army on the world without knowing or caring about who they would slaughter. You put Gabriel fucking Baine in charge. You forced me to double-cross the best bloke I ever… ever drank Scotch with. You… You kidnapped my wife, you unbelievable bastard! You're going to live, and you're going to jail."

Halfway up Tom had to stop muttering, needing the breath to put one foot in front of the other and just keep going, despite Hamilton's dead weight, despite the crumbling pyramid, despite the dust and the tremors. Spite fuelled his muscles, aided by a righteous fury like he had hardly felt before and all the pent-up worry about Liz, Jon, and the end of the world he had accumulated for over a week.

Still, when he finally caught sight of blinding light at the end of the last flight of stairs, tears sprang out of his eyes.

How he made those final few yards, still bent under Hamilton's weight, he would never know. He barely even noticed the threatening-looking desert warriors in black holding him at gunpoint before his knees gave out and he collapsed on the sand, dropping his boss's body near him.

In a haze, delirious with exhaustion, he vaguely felt a rumble from underneath the pyramid. It seemed to travel all the way from the centre of the earth to the surface. When it hit, the big blocks of stone that formed the top of the pyramid started to shake; the diamond Hamilton himself had placed between the scorpion statue's pincers last evening – a century ago – trembled and fell into the collapsing stones, which broke apart, until there was nothing left but rocks and sand.

The Pyramid of Ahm Shere had disappeared.

Tom's eyes rolled in his head. Everything went black.

When he emerged, he was lying on a carpet in a vast tent, surrounded by wounded agents. Someone had cleaned and patched up the wound in his side and the scratches on his hands – most likely one of the men and women with black clothes and facial tattoos who walked about between them, taking care of injuries with distant efficiency. They had left him his rucksack, although it had been stripped of anything remotely weapon-like. Only his notebooks and his pencil bag remained, half stuck to the tablet still mostly covered in black gunk.

He only realised he was a prisoner when they sent him away into another tent, where he found Robertson, Bennett, McLean, and a few others.

"Don't tell we're all that's left," he gasped. Hamilton would have a lot to answer for.

Robertson shook his head.

"There must be other tents. Collins survived, too, and he didn't need the infirmary."

"Oh. Good." Tom looked around. "Anyone heard about Carnahan and O'Connell? Do you know if they got out?"

He was met with mostly disdain mingled with disgust. "They almost killed the boss and brought down the pyramid on top of us, and you ask about them first?" Hinckley said, his lip curling. "You bloody traitor."

"Oh, for Christ's sake…" Tom made to rub his face, looked at his bandaged hands, and changed his mind. "The pyramid was going to collapse anyway, all right?" he exclaimed. "Just before sunrise, when the new moon set. They just stopped Anubis' Army from taking over the world because Hamilton –"

"Hang on," interrupted McLean, squinting at him. "How did you know the pyramid would collapse?"

"Because I did my job!" shouted Tom. "I questioned people! I crossed sources! I investigated! Hamilton based his entire operation on fairy tales and hokum, and he didn't even bother to check if he had the right version of the bloody legend to begin with!"

"But…" Bennett's voice was hesitant. "But he's the boss. Surely he knows better, doesn't he?"

Tom stared at him, floored. Then at the other agents, various shades of uncertainty between them.

"Sod this," he finally articulated. "I'm out."

He went to the tent entrance, and carefully – very carefully – drew the flap and looked at the stern-faced young man guarding the tent with a machine gun.

"Excuse me?" he said in Arabic. The man turned and glared at him, but Tom didn't falter. "I… Are there any news about Jonathan Carnahan and Rick O'Connell? Your allies. Did they make it out of the pyramid? I just want to know if they're all right."

The Medjai fixed him with a beady stare.

"Why?" he eventually asked.

"Because we're friends, believe it or not. And I don't think they even know I'm still alive."

The man stared at him suspiciously. "What's your name?"

"Tom Ferguson."

"I'll see what I can do. You'd better not be lying to save your skin."

Tom thanked him, went back inside, and waited.

And waited.

None of his colleagues talked to him – not that they talked much to each other, either. After a silence that seemed to last hours, someone parted the canvas and entered the tent. Tom scrambled to his feet, clutching the straps of his rucksack despite the bandages. He recognised the man. The first and last time he had seen him had been in the flickering light of campfires and burning tents, standing very tall with a scimitar in hand, staring at Charles Hamilton with fury blazing in his eyes.

In the light of day, Ardeth Bay appeared less tall, more tired, more human. His face was drawn, but his eyes were sharp as he zeroed in on Tom when the guard pointed at him.

"You are Tom Ferguson?" he asked in English with a lilting accent.

Tom gulped in spite of himself. Jon had said the man was intimidating. "Er, yes."

"You are Tom Ferguson?"

The emphasis puzzled Tom. "Yes, I am – why?"

Ardeth Bay still stared at him, unblinking. "Witnesses say you carried Charles Hamilton's body out of the pyramid seconds before it collapsed. Did you?"

"I'll say," Tom said fervently. "That man needs to get dragged in front of a court. He sorta has to be alive for that. How are Jon and O'Connell?" he added, emboldened by the fact that nobody seemed to want to point a gun or a sword at him. "Did they get out all right?"

The dark eyes flickered, the strong jaw clenched slightly. "Come with me."

Tom followed him outside, ignoring the questions and protests of the agents behind him. Surprisingly, he was left alone, no gun at his back, hands and legs free of restraints. He walked behind Ardeth Bay silently, gazing around him and accelerating just a little sometimes to catch up with the man's long strides.

The camp was huge. There was no end in sight to the well-ordered rows of tents. People, camels, and horses passed him by, carrying water, supplies, and what looked like dead bodies wrapped in white cloth. Nobody paid him any attention, but his escort – his captor – was often saluted.

They stopped in front of a smaller tent. After a few words with whoever was inside, Ardeth Bay stepped back, and Rick O'Connell stepped out.

He looked Tom over from head to toe with a dull kind of surprise and said, "…Huh."

Something Tom hadn't realised had been tense relaxed somewhere in his ribcage. He gave a small smile. "Hullo, O'Connell. Good to see you. Where's Jon?"

To his surprise, O'Connell's face fell. An eerie sense of wrongness started to creep its way into Tom's heart. He did his best to ignore it.

"He's, uh… He's in there," O'Connell finally said, and as Tom made to go inside he grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. "But there's something I gotta tell you first."

Tom looked at the hand on his arm, then at the man's face. The impression came back in full force.

And then he understood. O'Connell didn't even need to say it out loud. It was spelled out in his eyes and carved out on the lines of his face.

"No," Tom said in a small voice, halfway between incredulity and flat out denial. "No. He can't. He can't be. That's not…"

His voice died when Evelyn O'Connell came out of the tent, looking cold and drained of energy. Everything, from her red eyes to her posture, shoulders slumped and arms folded across herself, said what hadn't been said aloud. Her usually sharp, bright gaze was muted as it slid over him as though he wasn't fully there.

Ardeth Bay and O'Connell shared a meaningful look before the Medjai Commander slipped away like a shadow, to come back later.

Tom barely noticed. His head was swimming, full of a cold white fog. He stumbled, suddenly dizzy, and almost fell to the ground when a small blond-headed missile crashed into him, yelling inarticulately. In-between insults, curses, and just plain howls of pain, he heard "—traitor, and why did you get out alive and not—" and his brain seemed to stop functioning.

The boy's face was scrunched up, pinched, looking nothing like the round-faced mischievous child Tom had seen at the bazaar with Jon, what felt like ages ago. His fists were balled up and he looked ready to do some damage – or at least try to – when O'Connell grabbed him by the middle and gathered him in his arms. He talked in Alex's ear for a little while before the boy wriggled free and ran off. With a sigh, his father went after him.

Tom, still rooted to the spot, breathing too little and too fast, met Evelyn's eyes. They appeared to soften ever so slightly.

"I'm sorry about Alex," she said, her voice low and a little hoarse. "We didn't have time to tell him what happened during the trip and in the pyramid."

There were a million things Tom wanted to ask or say, but he could barely get air in and out of his lungs. Words just couldn't get out. They seemed to run into one another, bunch up in his throat, and block everything.

Evelyn ran a hand across her face, then another. The stiffness and the exhaustion remained.

"I'm going to find them. If you… You can say goodbye. If you want to."

Tom nodded. That seemed to be the extent of what he was currently capable of.

She lay a gentle hand on his arm as she passed. The sensation jolted some life back into him.

It was quiet inside the tent. The light from outside was dimmed and tinged with blue by the fabric. The shade and the silence did him good; his breathing still hitched, but at least he could mostly fill his lungs again.

There was a vague form on the ground, covered by a blanket. That had to be Jon. Tom itched to raise a corner, to make sure – but at the same time he was intimately aware that wild horses couldn't drag him close enough to that blanket, let alone the body underneath.

Alex hadn't been wrong, had he? Tom still had no idea what had happened since they had got separated or what had killed Jon, but… If he hadn't bumped into Jon a couple of weeks ago… If he had seen Hamilton for the lunatic he was earlier… If he hadn't been such a coward in the first place and said, 'No, I'm not doing this'…

If.

Tom dropped his rucksack. It hit the ground with a loud thud. Then he sank down, drew up his knees, and let his face fall into his hands.

Nothing mattered for a long time.


Alex's mouth was dry when he woke up, his nose was stuffy, and his head hurt a little bit. It felt a lot like it had the last time he had caught a cold that had forced him – for real – to miss class for a few days. For a second he wondered where he was, where his mum was, and – because this had been his main preoccupation over the past week – whether his dad and his uncle were safe…

And then it hit him.

Uncle Jon.

Who was dead.

Not knocked out, not taken, not elsewhere, just dead.

And he hadn't even said goodbye.

Alex's breath caught in his throat.

He thought of blue eyes twinkling at him over ice cream bought on a street corner; conspiratorial whispers across the dinner table; a comforting arm around his shoulders while Dad yelled at Ardeth about Mum, Imhotep, and the Scorpion King; long conversations about school, myths and legends, King Kong and Captain Blood

His uncle had always been there, and then, just like that, he wasn't.

It takes a lot more than a knock on the head to get rid of me, Uncle Jon had said, waving away his concern, and Alex had believed him at the time. Well, he hadn't exactly been lying, had he?

"Do you want some tea, ḥabībī?" asked a soft voice. Alex rubbed his cheeks, his skin stiff with salt from dried tears, and shuffled closer.

"Yes, please," he said dully, sitting with his legs crossed and his back straight out of habit. Imeni was always nice to him, and her ghorayeba were to die for. She had made sa'idi tea; he watched her deftly pour the strong dark tea into a small glass from a height. As usual, not a single drop fell around the glass.

To his surprise, Alex realised he was hungry, and picked up a ghorayeba. Soon only a few crumbs remained.

He hoped the tea and butter biscuits would help dissolve the thick ball of misery that had settled into his chest, like it usually did.

It didn't.

"Where's my mum and dad?" he asked, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms.

Imeni blew gently on her own tea. "Ardeth set up a tent for them not far from here. Maira can take you there, if you want to."

"Yeah, that'd be nice. Thanks."

They had the rest of their tea and biscuits in silence. Afterwards, Alex thanked Imeni, still feeling subdued, like he was too tired to raise his voice.

Maira was waiting for him outside the tent, watching him intently, her big dark eyes very bright. Her mum had done her hair in her family's style, and the many thin braids danced around her face as she moved.

They walked silently for a little while, Alex scuffing at the sand now and then. Then he asked, not looking up, "Do you think dead people really go to Heaven?"

Maira, as usual, considered the question seriously before she answered in Arabic, slowly enough for him to understand, "Maybe not all the dead. If you've done something really, really bad, I don't think you can go there."

"Bad, like… killed people?"

Maira's reply was unusually hesitant, even quizzical. "Maybe?"

Uncle Jon had killed people. Mum and Dad had killed people. Maira's mum and dad had killed people. Somehow, though, Alex couldn't – refused to – imagine a heaven that denied them entry.

Maybe it was a bad thing to think or say, but a heaven that didn't want Uncle Jon in it couldn't be very interesting anyway.

"I hope my Uncle Tamer is in paradise," she said, her voice low – so low Alex almost didn't get all the words. Something unexpected pierced the heavy blanket of grief that seemed to dull everything, and it took him a moment to recognise it as sympathy.

"Your uncle's dead?"

"He fell to the Warriors of Anubis two years ago. My mother cried for a whole day. Sabni was a baby, but I remember." She tugged at one of her braids and toyed with the pearl at the end. "He had a big laugh, and he told the best stories."

Alex nodded and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

"I'm sorry."

"And I'm sorry about your Uncle Jon." Maira stopped, gave him a very serious look – Alex was suddenly struck by how much she looked like her father – and said, in English this time, "People die. If they die not, people are not born. We cry and we remember. We tell stories, and they live."

Alex looked down again.

"I don't want stories," he mumbled. "I want him back."

Then he looked up, and his heart skipped a beat.

There, standing in front of a tent, talking to his dad, was a stout, broad-faced man. He was scruffy and dishevelled, and looked a far cry from the friendly, smiling man from Alex's memories, but he recognised him instantly.

Alex launched himself at Ferguson, enraged, wanting nothing more than to punch him into the sand. How dare the double-crossing git be still alive, his mind screamed. How dare he just stand there and not even make a show of defending himself. How dare

Dad picked him up and held him close while he flailed around, and through the mist in his head Alex caught bits of sentences.

The guy had helped. Saved their lives, even, in the pyramid. He was actually a good guy, and had only just heard about Uncle Jon.

Alex didn't care. He slipped from his father's embrace and took off at a run. His mum and dad found him kicking a wooden crate. His foot was starting to hurt.

They sat on the crate, took him in their arms, and they talked. And talked.

It took a while before the clawing, snarling thing in Alex's chest that made him want to keep kicking the crate till his foot fell off calmed down.

When the three of them fell silent, Alex remained snuggled against his dad a while, until someone's stomach – either Rick's or Evelyn's – rumbled. The sound was absurd enough to force a smile out of him.

It turned out that, while Alex had had tea and biscuits with Imeni, neither of his parents had eaten anything since sundown the day before. Since Alex was absolutely not hungry, he insisted on staying in the tent while they went out for food, swearing he would stay where they knew he was, and behave.

"I want to say goodbye to Uncle Jon," he managed to say around the lump in his throat. Dad gently ran a big hand through his hair and Mum kissed his forehead, and they let him go.

In the tent, somewhat to Alex's relief, Uncle Jon didn't look like Uncle Jon – or rather, he looked like Uncle Jon on the mornings he spent at the house, snug in his bed with a blanket pulled up over his head. It was always fun to go wake him up then, no matter how grumpy he got.

Alex's foot caught in something, dragging him back to the present. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be the strap of a big rucksack. Its owner was huddled up a few feet away, knees drawn up, his head in his hands.

When Alex had seen Tom Ferguson, he'd been more or less the same height as Uncle Jon, and larger, but now he looked small, and tired, and utterly miserable.

Alex, feeling quite small, tired, and miserable himself, finally let go of the last remnants of his anger and grudgingly allowed himself to feel a little sorry for the bloke.

"Um," he began, making Ferguson jump. "I'm, er. I'm sorry about earlier."

There seemed to be a lot of 'sorry' to go around today, he thought.

Ferguson looked up and stared at him bleakly. His face was pinched and his eyes red and puffy, but he wasn't crying, or had stopped some time ago. Alex found it a relief, and a second later wondered if it was a mean thing to think.

"Mum and Dad told me about…" He swallowed. "About the whole thing. Not the whole whole thing, obviously, there's always stuff they don't tell me because I'm a kid and I shouldn't… You know."

Ferguson nodded vaguely, still silent. Alex wished he would say something, anything; but he also knew from experience that sometimes, for whatever reason – when you were ill, or shocked, or just too sad – words just… stopped.

His gaze dropped and fell on the rucksack lying on the ground. The top wasn't fastened and something stuck out, something big and dark in the shape of a rough rectangle.

"What's that?" Alex asked, natural curiosity – always bubbling near the surface – rising again despite everything. Ferguson gave a small shrug. Alex interpreted it as permission to get a closer look.

Whatever it was, it was heavy, and it was filthy. It appeared to be some sort of tablet wrapped in a kind of dark, sticky crust; when Alex picked at the goo some of it crumbled under his fingers like caked mud. Some of it had already been scraped away on one side, exposing hieroglyphs. Alex conscientiously finished the job, gingerly and patiently, like his parents had taught him, and when he was done cleaning the tablet he stared at the engraved words and tried to make sense of them.

Followers… of the Ruler of… the West…

His heart seemed to stop and start again, only much, much faster. He knew those words. He had seen those words. In fact, he had not even needed to translate them at the time, because, thanks to the Bracelet of Anubis, one glance at the hieroglyphs had spelled it out in his head as though it was written in English.

Followers of the Ruler of the West who are stretched out on your side, lying on your biers, may your flesh rise up, may your bones be put together…

Alex's head started to spin, the familiar words dancing in front of his eyes like bright spots when he got up too quickly. It couldn't be possible. It was too fantastic…

He grabbed the tablet with both hands and shook the rucksack from it. The weight was just as he remembered. The eight-pronged star-shaped lock was barely visible on the cover; the two fasteners shaped like serpents' heads he had seen Imhotep open with a wave of his hand were bent to the sides, twisted, mangled. Alex reached with a trembling hand, and, holding his breath, sank his fingers into the thick muck on the edge.

He found the edge of a page, and turned it.

The Book of the Dead lay open in his arms.

"Bloody hell," Alex breathed.

This got Ferguson's attention. He looked up at Alex, frowning.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice a little croaky.

Alex jumped to his feet and turned to him, still open-mouthed and his eyes open so wide it almost hurt.

"Where…? How…?" No, wait, that wasn't important. "Do you know what this is!?"

Ferguson blinked. "Not really," he said. "I thought it had somethin' to do with the Scorpion King when I picked it up. Then we got attacked, and…" He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers, and finished, "I just kind of forgot about it. Why?"

"Because it's the Book of the Dead!" Alex squeaked. "The actual Book of the Dead! Do you have any idea what it can do?"

Ferguson shook his head mutely. Alex stood there, the book in his hands, positively vibrating with excitement.

"It means we can get Uncle Jon back!"

Ferguson's jaw dropped open.

"…No," he said, but Alex noticed his head went up and down instead of side to side. "No, wait – that's not – how –"

"I don't know how, that's the magic part, but it works. It works. I brought back my mum with it when Anck-su-namun killed her."

Ferguson was still staring at the book, brown eyes bugging out. "Your mother… but… Didn't your mother wake up Imhotep with that book?"

Alex refrained the urge to roll his eyes. Grownups were so slow sometimes.

"Yes," he said as patiently as he could, "but that was another spell. And she found it at random – she wasn't looking for anything in particular. I know where the correct spell is, I've used it before. I can bring Uncle Jon back!"

He tottered closer to Ferguson, plopped down next to him, and slammed the book on the carpet. Ferguson started at the thump. Alex ignored him and turned the pages, following hieroglyphs with his finger to decipher them until –

There.

He had found it.

And this time, he ruddy well remembered that darn Ahmenophus stork symbol.

The cold anguish nestled in his chest since the morning had turned into a ball of fire that almost took his breath away. It could work. It should work. It had to work.

Ferguson inched closer, staring down at the book.

"But what if… What if it's too late?" he asked quietly. "What if… I mean, what if he comes back wrong? Or doesn't come back at all? What if you call somethin' else?"

The question froze Alex in his tracks and made him feel as though someone had dipped a bucket of ice over him. Maybe Ferguson was right. Maybe it was too late. When he had brought back his mum, only an hour or two had passed since her death. How much time had it been since sunrise?

The ice in Alex's heart turned to steel. He had the book. Uncle Jon was right there. He just couldn't at least try.

He took a long, deep breath, and began to read.

O you who keep the gates because of Osiris, I know you and I know your names…

The Ancient Egyptian words came out slowly, carefully, a little more strongly than they had two years ago. Alex was slightly more certain of his pronunciation this time and he had nothing to distract him – no evil lady trying to deprive him of yet more family members, no weird half-scorpion creature rising from the dead and beating up his dad a few chambers farther. There was only his uncle's body, somewhere under that blanket. The only other living being was a man who had been an enemy and wasn't yet a friend, but who mourned like Alex had mourned, and stared at him with eyes as big as saucers and a tiny, wobbling hope.

Alex read on, plodding through the now familiar words.

Enter the mysterious vault to breathe life into the Weary of Heart, he who sleeps on his left side. Awake the sleeper, so Amun is pleased!

Alex practically crowed the last "Efday shokran Ahmenophus" and his eyes jumped from the book to the body, his heart hammering in his chest. Beside him, he heard Ferguson's breath catch.

Tiny pinpricks of light rose from the sand around them, as though picked up by a wind Alex couldn't feel. Gradually they clustered together in a bright, swirling mass above them, gathering speed, soaking the inside of the tent in warm, amber-coloured light. The blob of light grew thinner and longer and slowly descended before gently settling down through the blanket on the body underneath.

Alex and Ferguson gulped and looked at each other.

Every single one of Ferguson's "what ifs" was suddenly running through Alex's mind, bolstered with others and crowding his brain. What if he had read wrong? What if he had mispronounced a symbol? What if –

The blanket trembled, then fell as something that looked very much like a mummy sat up abruptly with a muffled scream.

Ferguson gave a startled yelp.

And despite everything – or perhaps because of everything, and because he was still a tired, sad, and scared ten year old boy – Alex couldn't help it.

He screamed, too.


Notes/translations:

ḥabībī (حَبِيبِي): "sweetie"

ghorayeba: Egyptian sweet biscuit / butter cookie, similar to shortbread, often topped with roasted almonds.

Sa'idi (literally "from Upper Egypt") tea is a strong black tea popular in Upper (southern) Egypt, that has to have much more sugar not to taste bitter. Contrast with kushari tea (which is also the name of a pasta, rice, and lentil dish), a light black tea, lightly sweetened, popular in Lower Egypt, and what Abbas was drinking with Tom in chapter 10.

Followers of the Ruler of the West who are stretched out on their side, lying on their biers, may your flesh rise up, may your bones be put together is not from the Book of the Dead, but from the Book of Gates, an Ancient Egyptian funerary text describing the passage of a soul through the Underworld (with a different goddess at each Gate). I cheated :P 95% of the texts quoted here come from the Tutankhamun exhibition I was lucky enough to see in Paris last summer. I took lots of photos and notes, knowing they would probably come in handy ;o)

O you who keep the gates because of Osiris, I know you and I know your names is from the Book of the Dead, spell 144.

Enter the mysterious vault to breathe life into the Weary of Heart, he who sleeps on his left side. Awake the sleeper, so Amun is pleased: Okay, this is a hodgepodge of excerpts from the Book of the Dead (the real-world one) and enough tweaking and piecing together to give any student of Egyptology reading this a heart attack. "The sleeper awakes, Osiris-Khentamentiu awakes here with his ka, he who sleeps on his left side, the sleeper!" is from spell 517 (the aforementioned "sleeper" who "sleeps on his left side" – a symbol for death – being the deceased); "I cause Ra to enter Osiris, I cause Osiris to enter Ra. I cause him to enter the mysterious vault, so as to breathe life into the Weary of Heart, the sheltered ba who is in the West" is from spell 182. And the Amun thing? Well, "Amenophis" was the Greek version of the Ancient Egyptian name "Amenhotep", which means "Amun is pleased". My own interpretation of the "ahmenophus" that concludes both Jonathan's inscription in TM and the spell that wakes up Evy in TMR. Told you, heart attacks :D