Author's notes: …it's done. Finished. My monster Mummy fic, the one I started in 2003, started publishing in 2004, and left dormant since 2008 – I finally completed it o.O Weirdly (or not), this is the chapter which gave me the most trouble, if you don't count chapters 16 and 17 (which took me 2 and 16 years to write, respectively). It was hard to say goodbye to this story and these characters, even though I knew I literally just had to get an idea for another story :-/
There's a few songs with the title "Departure", including a 54 seconds poem by the Moody Blues, an R.E.M. song, a piano number (which I've heard performed by Lang Lang), and – if you twist the title a bit – a lovely melancholic Diana Krall song. It's the title I picked 17 years ago, to rhyme with the first chapter ("Overture") – seemed fitting. But if you want music that fits the atmosphere, then I suggest you look for "Goodbyes", on the Doctor Who Series 4 Specials soundtrack. Much of chapters 17 to 24 was written to Murray Gold playing in the background.
Finally, tons and tons of love to Cat, who was there first; to Laurie, who was there after; to Emily, who's been there for a dozen years now; to François, who's been there the entire time; and to whoever is reading, has read, or will read this story. I really hope you enjoyed it.
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 24: Departure
London, September 1937
A little off Paddington Station, almost in Marylebone, was a small pub called the Stars and Crown, its red brick façade almost exactly similar to the others along the street. It was an unassuming little affair Jonathan liked to patronise every now and then, and not just because it happened to be situated not too far from his flat.
It was a balmy mid-September late afternoon and one of the double doors was wide open on the quiet street. Jonathan and Tom were seated by one of the stained-glass windows, drinking – G&T and a ginger beer, respectively – and talking. Jonathan, remembering the promise he'd made after blowing up Hamilton's lorry, had bought the rounds.
But for small details like the mostly healed-over scratches on Tom's hands, the old scar in Jonathan's left palm, and all the subtler little ways the past two decades had changed them, they might as well have been twenty-year-old students again.
Well, apart from the subject of their conversation.
"I got off easy, if you ask me."
"Nonsense. You were the only one who tried to fix this bloody disaster. It's only fair that you didn't… You know."
"…Pay for my mistakes?"
"That is not what I meant and you know it."
Tom gulped a mouthful of ginger beer, still looking glum.
"I suppose – I know – I should be grateful I didn't end up like Hamilton, at least."
Jonathan winced.
Charles Hamilton had made it back to England in a slightly better state than he had made it out of the pyramid, but that wasn't saying much. From what they had heard, he was lucid for about an hour a day, and that was it – and not very coherent at that. Which made the fact that he allegedly hung himself in his cell a week before his highly sensitive trial very suspicious indeed. The man didn't appear capable of putting on his trousers on his own, let alone do anything as complex as a slipknot.
The Lord Chancellor's Department had issued a statement half-heartedly lamenting Hamilton's demise, the newspapers had stayed surprisingly quiet about it, and Evy had fumed for an entire fortnight. And that had been it. Hamilton had taken the gentleman's way out. Case closed.
At least Gabriel Baine had been tried, convicted, and sent behind bars for a lengthy period of time. Jonathan didn't particularly care where he was, as long as he could be elsewhere.
Baine had stated a few times that there hadn't been anything personal about shooting and ordering his men to shoot Jonathan, Rick, and Tom. Jonathan had silently begged to differ. Baine's shouts of "Kill them" followed by the sudden excruciating pain in his back, not to mention the confusion and terror as he fought not to die and lost, had felt pretty damn personal.
Tom stared into his glass for a while, then looked up with a brighter expression.
"But enough about this fiasco. How's your family? I seem to remember your sister's birthday was coming up, you were lookin' for a present when we bumped into each other at that bazaar. Did you find one, in the end?"
Jonathan perked up. "I did, actually. Got her a signet ring. She seemed to like it."
Now that memory he would treasure as long as he lived.
An inventory of his pockets had revealed a hodgepodge of small trinkets which he was still trying to trace. The little medallion with the amethyst cameo must be early Regency, stolen by the pygmy mummies from some unfortunate Napoleon soldier's corpse; the lapis earring was probably from the Ramesside period (a few Rameses had sent their armies to find or reclaim Ahm Shere, Jonathan had found); the couple of gold and silver rings bearing the Roman SPQR were a little incongruous but easy to chalk up to Julius Caesar's expedition. There were also some 4th Century Persian coins, proving Alexander the Great's men had also reached Ahm Shere – the Oasis, anyway – and a number of little amulets from various Egyptian expeditions, mostly heart scarabs made of red and green jasper, copper, quartz, bronze, or gold. He hadn't determined the nature of the green gemstone yet, saving it for last.
Jonathan had been so excited by his find that he hadn't gambled a single object. Tracing their origins took time, but he had not even told Evy about it yet. Instead he had not only called on every scrap of expertise he had concerning treasure, but also on every book he could lay his hands on. Evy would have been very surprised – not to mention highly suspicious – if she learned how much time he had been spending at the British Library lately.
He had always enjoyed a good riddle. For some reason this one looked promising enough to justify doing some actual work for. Besides, having the artefacts authenticated meant he would be able to get a much better price selling them.
The only thing he had parted with was the (probable) Napoleon coin, the soft gold nibbled almost beyond recognition by the pygmy mummies' teeth. Another look at it the morning after his resurrection had given him an idea.
Before they left the Medjai camp, Jonathan had obtained from Ardeth a sketch of Nefertiri's personal cartouche and the address of a talented goldsmith in Cairo; once back in the city, he had wandered down to Kerdasa, the coin and the folded paper safe in the inside pocket of his (whole and clean) jacket.
Just before he reached the little shop, however, he heard a yelp and a startled cry, and was knocked off his feet by something large and hairy. His vision was filled by long camel's lashes and lips drawn back on long yellow teeth in what Jonathan might have taken as a smile if he hadn't known better.
Why did every single camel have to have such foul breath, he wondered.
"ʾAhlan, Djem," muttered Jonathan with a sigh that was half annoyance, and half amused resignation.
And was astonished when the camel immediately disappeared from view, replaced with a familiar face. Satiah's big brown eyes went wide when she saw him.
"Oh, it's you, bāša. Hello," she said with a smile.
Jonathan got up and dusted himself off, irritation quickly fading away. The jacket could survive a little dirt; besides, Satiah's smile as she hung on to Djem's bit had lost some of its previous shyness. Considering how fearful she had been the last time – and who could fault her for that, really – it almost made getting knocked over by a foul-smelling bag of hair and wind worth it.
"Good morning, Miss Satiah," he said in Arabic, picking up his hat from the ground so he could salute her with a flourish. Her hand flew to her mouth to hide a giggle. "It's a stroke of luck finding you, really. I wanted to thank you for your help the other day, and for, er…"
He reached his limits of the language, and finished in English, "I mean, thank you for returning my wallet to my sister. That was very kind of you."
"You're welcome," Satiah said in Arabic, her cheekbones a little pink. "I'm glad you and your friends got away from those men."
Jonathan's smile slipped a notch or two, but he rallied quickly enough.
"Yes," he said just a little wryly, "we did, at that. In the end."
He cleared his throat. "Well, I've just reached my destination," he added, pointing to a door above which hung a sign saying something about gold in painted Arabic script, "so I'm going to wish you a—"
"You're going to see Cousin Ashar?" Satiah interrupted, her eyes shining. Immediately afterwards she clamped both hands on her mouth and cringed. "I'm sorry."
"That's all right. Small world, eh?"
She gave a small smile and led the way into the shop, stopping only to tie Djem to a post.
Ashar – the goldsmith Ardeth had recommended – was a tall, wiry man with a long face, his hair going grey at the temples. He welcomed Satiah warmly and sent her to the backroom to get what she came for. Before she closed the door, she gave Jonathan a little friendly wave, which he returned with a smile. Ashar gave him an odd but not hostile look, eyebrows raised.
Jonathan placed his order, left the coin, and was about to leave, when Ashar called him back, frowning slightly.
"You're one of the O'Connells, aren't you."
Jonathan's mouth opened and closed as though of its own accord.
"You could say that, yes," he said eventually. "Why?"
"Because word of the second raising of Anubis' Army made it to Cairo recently."
This time Jonathan's mouth dropped open and remained like that for a handful of seconds. Ashar gave something that was almost a smile.
"Not all of us wear the ritual tattoos, you know."
"I do know," Jonathan articulated with only the slightest difficulty. Dr Hakim was a Medjai, and his face was devoid of any tattoo as well. Dr Bey had been the same, now that he thought of it. His gaze went to the door that led to the backroom. "Satiah, too…?"
"Yes. But her mother's family has lived in Cairo for fifty years. The girl has never seen the desert. She will get good schooling and find a trade, inshallah. The time for living legends is coming to an end." Ashar looked at the cartouche Ardeth had drawn for reference. "I know what this says. Who the name belonged to. Your commission is either a hollow trinket or a great gift."
Jonathan drew himself up and said, as dignified as he could, "I'm rather hoping for the latter."
His own signet ring had been gambled and lost in some card game or another, years ago. His parents would have been so disappointed had they still been alive. The least he could do was make sure his sister had a ring of her own, one that paid tribute to the woman she was and the woman she had been, three millennia ago.
Evy's reaction when she opened his present proved him right, and even surprised him.
She stared into the box long enough for Jonathan's brain to go into overdrive. Her silence made him panic ever so slightly. Then she looked up at him, her eyes very bright, lower lip trembling.
Jonathan barely suppressed the need to shuffle like a schoolboy and buried his hands into his pockets, hoping his face didn't give too much away.
"I know I wasn't… there – or, you know – then," he said, almost sheepishly. "But I thought… Well. I hoped you'd like it. The cartouche must be right, I got it from Ardeth, and the goldsmith was a bloody good artist, as it turned out, but—"
Evy cut him off by launching herself at him and flinging her arms around his neck, throwing him off balance. As usual, Jonathan stumbled, but managed to catch her in the end.
"It's perfect," she whispered into his neck. "Thank you, Jon."
If his smile was a little wobbly, his eyes a little moist, nobody seemed to notice. Rick and Alex had picked up the little box; Rick's face lit up in strange recognition, while Alex deciphered the cartouche slowly and grinned.
"Nice one, Uncle Jon. That's a pretty good present."
"Yes, about that," said Jonathan irrepressibly while Evy broke away and wiped her eyes, "I hope you realise that this is the last birthday present you'll ever get from me, old mum. Since – judging by your reaction – nothing I could give to you could ever top this, I have decided to simply refrain from trying."
Evy had slapped his arm and called him an idiot with a big smile, then hugged him again. And he had hugged her back, just because he was alive and able to.
The ring hadn't left her finger since.
"Jon?"
Jonathan was abruptly pulled back to the present, the Stars and Crown, and Tom's curious smile across the table.
"Hm?"
"You were a thousand miles away."
"Sorry about that. What about you and Lizzie? Dorset been treating you well, I hope?"
Tom shook his head with a smile.
"It has, sort of, but we're moving to Oxford. Did Liz tell you she'd been replaced while she was gone?"
Jonathan nodded. Lizzie disappearing for two weeks had not gone unnoticed in her little town, but since the police didn't have the beginning of a clue and nobody was able to reach Tom, they had moved on to other things and her boss at the telephone exchange had hired someone else. There had been a subtle but definite irony in Lizzie's letter as she described her and Tom's return and the scrutiny they'd had to stand up to in order to prove her husband hadn't killed her and stashed her body away – or vice versa – before his former Chamber of Horus hierarchy stepped in to explain things.
"Well, they needed an operator at the exchange on Pembroke Street. And you know the interview I had this morning at Whitehall? I won't be too far, as it turns out." Tom took a deep breath, then said with one of the goofiest smiles Jonathan had ever seen on his face, "I'll be workin' from the Bodleian."
This could only mean one thing. Jonathan grinned.
"The British Antique Research Department accepted your application, didn't they? Congratulations, old chap. That's fantastic."
He downed a mouthful of his G&T and laid an elbow on the table, his chin in his hand.
"Haven't been to Oxford in almost fifteen years," he said thoughtfully. "Not since Evy finished her degree. I wonder if the city's changed."
"It's Oxford," said Tom quietly, looking like his mind was straying down the same path Jonathan's thoughts were. "I can't imagine it'll ever change that much."
Jonathan smiled quickly into his palm. Then he raised his glass.
"To the two of you, then. And to publicans hopefully not holding grudges, otherwise we're still banned from half the pubs in Oxfordshire."
This was a big exaggeration, and they both knew it. Tom snorted and raised his own glass, now almost empty. "To the three of us, and testing that theory sometime. And let's not wait two decades this time," he added with a twinkle in his eyes.
The two glasses clinked.
For just a second, the decades fell away, and Jonathan was twenty years younger.
Lizzie was already waiting for them on the platform by the time they finished their drinks and walked back to Paddington. She carried a shopping bag that looked entirely too small compared to what should be expected of a woman who'd just spent a few hours in the old metropolis. Tom raised an eyebrow.
"Didn't you say you planned to go to Harrods while we were in London?"
"I also said I only needed a new suit and the latest Agatha Christie novel," she said, light teasing in her tone. "The next one will be out sometime in November, I think. Have you heard what the title will be? Death on the Nile, of all things."
Jonathan gave a mock shudder. "I might just give this one a miss, then."
The train's whistle pierced the air, cutting the rest of the conversation short. Tom picked up his wife's bag and Lizzie turned to Jonathan with a smile.
"Goodbye, Jonathan," she said softly.
The use of his first name had always been a signal that the game was paused and the masks were off, as clear as a referee blowing halftime. Jonathan answered in kind, his throat just a little tight.
"Goodbye, Elizabeth."
They hadn't even actually said 'goodbye' last time. They had just stood there, she leaning out the train window in her brand-new nurse's uniform, he and Tommy on the platform amidst the soot, the steam, and the throng of people, until the train departed. The memory was an old hurt that still twinged sometimes, like his left shoulder when the weather was bad.
He cleared his throat and smiled.
"See you on the next Christie novel, then?"
What Lizzie did next might have shocked twenty-year-old Jonathan, who thought he knew her well, and as such very much surprised his current self, who had a little too much experience of the world to truly get shocked anymore. She took his hands in hers, flying in the face of propriety and what had been her rules of conduct in public, and kissed him on the cheek near the corner of his mouth with an aching sweetness. The old Lizzie, so shy and unsure of her self-worth that she was terrified of what people may think, would have been appalled.
It had taken a while for Jonathan to truly grasp how much the years had changed Tommy and start thinking of him as 'Tom' to account for that change. Through this apparently simple gesture – simple only to someone who didn't know Elizabeth Ferguson, née McAllister – Lizzie became 'Liz' in an instant.
"I can't bear to think you died," she said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. "When I think… Without that – that book…"
She took a deep breath. Tom caught Jonathan's eye and gave a small nod. Of course he had told her. Knowing Liz, she'd take the secret to her grave anyway.
"Take care of yourself, Jonathan, please. The world would be so dreadfully dull without you in it," she added with a tentative smile, to which he replied with a smile of his own, one that hopefully looked steadier.
"Likewise."
Her hands tightened around his. Just for a second or two, he softly ran his thumb on the back of her hand, an echo of the old intimacy that used to bind them; then their gazes fell away, their hands separated, and the moment was over.
Tom held out his hand with a smile, and Jonathan's mind was whisked back to that sunny afternoon in Cairo, almost two months ago, and a chance encounter that had reshuffled the cards in a major way. Tom's handshake was slower this time, steadier, warmer.
"Bye, Jon."
"Cheers, Tom," said Jonathan, determined but failing to swallow the lump in his throat. "Have a pint at the Oxford Arms for me."
Tom nodded, and added his left hand to the handshake, not saying anything. He didn't need to. As usual – almost – everything he meant to say was on his face and in his eyes for the world to see.
The train let out a burst of steam. Tom hastily let go and made for the train door, stopping only to help Liz aboard. Jonathan looked wistfully at the train for a minute and was about to turn around and go home when he heard his name being called over the din of the locomotive and the running gears chugging into motion.
Tom and Liz were leaning out of a window, wearing identical wide smiles. Liz was waving, her other arm wrapped tightly around her husband. The light in her eyes and her curly hair whipping around her face made her look like the girl from Jonathan's memories.
"Send my love to Evelyn!" she called. "And say hello to your brother-in-law for me! You're all welcome anytime for tea!"
"I'll make sure they know!" shouted Jonathan as the train gathered speed.
The blatant disregard of platform etiquette made several passers-by turn and stare at him with a touch of glower. Jonathan ignored them and kept his eyes on the departing train. Tom's and Liz's beaming smiles remained in his head a long time after they had gone back inside the carriage.
He would see them again. This time he was determined not to leave the possibility of a reunion to chance and the vagaries of life. They had been through too much – both twenty years and two months ago – to just go their separate ways.
Besides, Jonathan mused as he left Paddington behind to wade through the bustling streets, he still had some research to do before he set out to sell the objects he had found at Ahm Shere. The Bodleian Library was as good as the British Library; he didn't risk meeting Evy there and being subjected to her prodding curiosity, which he wasn't ready to face yet. At least not before he unravelled the mystery of the little gemstone. It looked like an emerald and felt vaguely familiar, as though he had seen it somewhere or heard a story about it.
This required some investigation, if only to be prudent.
After all, he was particularly well placed to know that you can only go so far on fairy tales and hokum alone.
THE END
Translations/Notes:
Don't look for the Stars and Crown in Paddington, or the Oxford Arms in Oxford. Unlike the Turf Tavern they're entirely fictional.
Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile was indeed published on 1st November 1937. I couldn't resist, I mean, come on ;o)
ʾahlan (أَهْلًا): informal "hello", "hi".
bāša (باشا): "sir", "mister" in Egyptian Arabic.
inshallah: ʾin šāʾa llāhu, (إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ ) – literally "if God has willed it", "God willing".
The Bodleian Library is the main research library in Oxford and one of the oldest in Europe.
If you're wondering, yes, that little gemstone might be the basis for a sequel of sorts, but I haven't really started to plot it. Considering my track record for these things you might see that story sometime in the next decade and a half :P
Writing and publishing Fairy Tales and Hokum has been such an adventure. Much as I miss the old crowd of 2003-2006, I'm so glad these characters somehow – FINALLY – sneaked back into my head and my heart again with their quirks, their (updated) backstories, and their voices and allowed me to finish this story the way I wanted to. Like I've said before, whenever you started reading this, I hope you had a good time now that you've reached the end. If you've read and left a signed comment – if you've read and left an anonymous comment – if you've read and left no comment at all – know that I wrote this for you and I hope some of it made you smile.
Take care of yourselves, love you all, and see you on the next fic? :o)