Once again, they aren't mine.
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Chapter SevenA few days later we stood- or rather sat on camels- about twenty yards from what Evy said was the initial entrance to the temples at Karnack. I didn't really think there was an "entrance" since you could get in from numerous places, but I didn't argue with her. I'd learned that what Evelyn said about Egypt was probably true so it was best to just leave it as is.
She had been having strange mood swings the last couple of days- angry and tired one minute, all smiles the next. I took it that the sleeping on the ground, eating from a can or bag, and the lack of sanitation were starting to take effect, as they were on Jonathan and myself. I desperately wanted a shower and my poor face was rather beat up from having to shave without a mirror. Evy could stand to clean up a little too, but eh, I wasn't one to dwell on such things. Especially since I'd been with guys- and women for that matter- who smelled and looked ten times as worse, and that was on a daily basis! Compared to them, Evy was a bed of roses.
Speaking of my darling wife, as we sat staring at Karnack, she, in a typical Evelyn way, was going off about something related to the complex. I had chosen to stop listening when she got to the part about what temples were dedicated to what gods. I couldn't even remember which gods were which, how was I suppose to remember what they looked like, what temple was theirs, and why it was theirs? Besides, I didn't much care. I wanted to get this over with and get back to Cairo so we could get to London. Enough of this sand, and heat, and crazy Egyptian stuff.
"Rick?"
My head jerked to my left, where Evy sat giving me a knowing look. Busted. She could tell I hadn't been listing. I grinned debonairly at her, which at least drew a tired-looking, cute grin to her face.
"I would suppose that where we should start would be over there," she continued, turning her attention back to Karnack and pointing off in the distance. "At the Hypostyle Hall. That's where most of the carvings and relief's from the nineteenth dynasty are."
"Isn't that the part with all the pillars and what not?" Jonathan spoke up from the other side of Evelyn, his hands flailing about.
Evy snorted a laugh. "Of course," she responded, as if it should be blatantly obvious to those of us who didn't eat, breath, sleep, and drink, Egypt. She shot Jonathan an annoyed look and in return he rolled his eyes visibly at her. Evy's mouth dropped oven and she turned back to me, protesting about how juvenile he was being and "couldn't I do something?"
"So ah, what now?" I asked, doing my best to ignore her dramatics and the squabble with her brother. Eh, bad move. Evy shot me an exasperated glance and then, kicking her camel in the rear, took off in a mad dash.
Jonathan came up beside me and paused in Evy's vacated spot. "Wouldn't think to much of it Rick; being here is hard for her."
That one caught me off guard. "Whaddya mean, 'hard'," I asked, putting quotations around the word with my fingers.
"You don't know?"
Shaking my head, I kicked the camel in the same manner my wife had and, in a more sluggish pace, starting going after her. Jonathan was right behind me and when he finally caught up, asked the question again, adding a "really" before "don't".
"No!" I said, annoyed. I would much rather talk to Evy about this, thank you very much.
But Jonathan started talking again. "Karnack was the first place our father took Evy when we first came to Egypt; her first real field experience. She was eight then, and having begged Father to take her out for years, he finally brought her down here and they spent days going through every single temple."
Oh.
"After they died, she came down here for a couple of days and just sat in one of those little temple rooms. Poor old mum; the reality of it really hit hard. When I finally tracked her down, she was crying and in general, was a big mess. I practically had to drag her away. But now, Karnack has bittersweet memories. And I'm not surprised to hear she hasn't said a word to you."
Ouch. That one kind of hurt. I wish she'd said something to me, especially since now I kind of had an idea of where the bitch-act might be coming from. Poor thing.
"How'd they die?" I found myself asking as we continued after Evy. She had, by now, slowed down a bit and we were catching up to her.
"The war," Jonathan answered, his voice surprisingly calm and even, as if he talked about this every day. "Evy was away at school when it happened. Mum and Father were walking home from someplace when there was a grenade attack."
I felt my stomach tighten. From what Evy had told me about her parents, they were the tough, explorer type, much like herself. To go out by a grenade attack was rather…disappointing, for lack of a better word or far-reaching vocabulary. It made me think of my own parents. It was a hall I would rather not go down, but my mind settled on it anyway.
Daniel and Mary O'Connell's story was not as noble; there had been a fire, they didn't get out. Simple as that. I had been only six at the time, so I had been sent to live with my bitchy aunt in New York until one day when she too croaked, upon which I was sent to another uncle, in Cairo, and when he got shot, I got stuck in an orphanage. That arrangement didn't last long; I had enough by the time I was seventeen and managed to escape. End of story. Well, not really, but you know.
I was silent as we finally caught up with Evelyn, and for once, Jonathan didn't make some worthless comment. Even my wife was quiet as we rode into Karnack. Finding a spot in the something-a-rather temple, I made the other two help set up camp and made sure we were situated before I let them do their own thing. We had gotten better at setting up camp in record time- two tents in a matter of ten minutes, rest of our stuff in nice little piles quicker then that- and with no time we were making plans for the rest of the day. To Jonathan, this meant grabbing a bottle of whisky and heading off in the opposite direction of Evy. I choose to follow the latter.
"Hon?"
Pausing, as if finally noticing that I was following her, she turned and gave me a tiny smile. Over her shoulder she held a sling bag stuffed to the brim with books (and hopefully various tools), and for once her tiny high heals had been replaced with tough boots that stuck out under her skirt. The best part was this huge, black, oversized, floppy hat she wore on her head. It made her look so tiny, but cute at the same time. As I approached, I noticed a little smudge of dirt under her right eye and when I got to her, I tenderly wiped it off.
"Having fun yet?" she asked, still grinning.
I chuckled. Hell ya. This was just loads of fun. "Sure," I answered. "You're here, ain't ya?"
"Aren't you," Evy corrected, giving me that cute little annoyed look and then turning away from me. Slugging that big bag up and re-positioning it on her shoulder, she started off again, heading toward this big wall ahead of us, the hat flopping up and down.
I rolled my eyes behind her back. 'Aren't you', sure, sure, sure. Okay. Whatever. Personally, I didn't care. We were in the middle of the desert, who was going to bother to make sure I spoke correctly? Only Evy.
Shaking my head and heaving a loud sigh, I continued after her. She made no point to slow down, her mind way to focused on finding some wall she kept going on about. Again, I was choosing not to listen, but this time she didn't stop me when she noticed I wasn't paying attention. She just sighed and kept on talking. Sometimes I wondered if she talked just to hear her own voice. I mean, she was always saying something, unless she was pissed, or asleep. But even in her slumber, my little Evy would start mumbling incoherent things. So that didn't really count. When she gave you the silent treatment, you knew something as up.
"Ah…here we are!"
My mind focused on the present as I scanned the area quickly, checking for any possible problems, of any sort. No sarcophagi, no walking dead guys, no books (other then Evy's) and not another soul in site. All that was around was a big wall with a bunch of ruins scattered around it. It almost looked like it had been a room at one point, but three thousand years can do a lot.
Sun shinning on her hat, Evy triumphantly sat down the huge bag and placed her hands on her hips, grinning like a kid who's just found a stash of Christmas presents.
"This is just marvelous!" she exclaimed.
"Ah, yeah, marvelous honey," I echoed, running my hands nervously through my hair for the thousandth time this trip. Sign of weakness, I really had to stop doing it.
Her smile quickly faded and she shook her head, rolling her eyes at me. "You know, Rick-"
"So lets get to work, shall we?" I asked, interrupting her before she could reprehend me, or worse, start talking about Egyptian stuff again. I stalked over to the bag, and rummaged through it as she stood looking over my shoulder. When, after a few minutes, I found only two little brushes, a pick, and about a dozen books, I straightened up and looked at her.
We just started at each other for a moment before she finally said, "Would you like to know what we're looking for?"
Ouch. Her voice was cold; she was angry. I nodded meekly in response to her question. I really didn't want to piss her off even more. I could easily picture the entire conversation in my head: she would yell, I would yell, we would both lose our heads and the next thing I knew I would be shivering in the cold instead of sleeping next to her.
Evy didn't smile at me as she reached down and picked up one of the books. After dusting bits of the sand off of the cover, she opened it up to a book-marked page and shoved it in front of my face.
"This cartouche," she explained, her voice low, "is Tuya's." She tapped it a few times with her index finger, as if drilling it into my brain with each touch. "It should be anywhere anything to do with the myth is. And if not," she flipped to another page, "this is Seti's. Keep an eye out for his as well."
Again, I nodded. No way in hell was I going to memorize what the little name thingies looked like, so when Evelyn shoved the book into my hands, I thankfully took it. She took a deep breath and then nodded toward the wall.
"Lets get to it."
And so, for several painstakingly long hours my wife and I carefully brushed sand off of a wall, looking only for clues. Nothing seemed to come up though, no matter how cautiously we searched. There was only, according to Evy, a bunch of battle stories and a couple of prayers to the gods. I began to get bored about halfway through, slacked off, and then got yelled at for not doing it correctly. Then we had to go back through half of it because Evy needed to check. This pissed me off and then she began to get frustrated and I began to get frustrated until we both had had enough. When she threw her little brush on the ground, I knew we were done for the day. Or at least for a little while.
Groaning, I flopped down on the sand and lay back, folding my arms behind my head and using them for an uncomfortable pillow. Evelyn stood over me for a moment, illumined by the bright afternoon sun, and didn't say anything.
"Sorry to be such a prissier," she finally mumbled, her hands going defiantly toward her hips.
I shrugged as best I could with my arms and hands as they were and shook my head. "Get down here."
With a soft smile, she sank down to the sand and curled up next to me, resting her chin on my chest and staring up at me. "You're not angry with me, are you?" she asked, nipping at me shirt with her dirty hands.
Damn it. She knew that by asking me like that I wouldn't say I was mad because she knew I would look like a jerk if I did. So I didn't say anything.
"I just, I want to find it so bad," she continued, elaborating on my point that she liked to talk just to hear herself. "I feel like its mine or something of the sort. And I like things done a certain way and it just makes me out of sorts when they aren't. I'm not sure why. But this legend Rick, it's calling to me. I really think its true. I want to be the one to proves it."
I sighed and brought my arms out from behind my head, resting it on the sand. Reaching up, I tucked some of her stray hair behind her one ear, which made her smile a little. My other hand instinctively went to her back, gently rubbing it in tiny circles. "I want you to be the one to find it and prove it too," I finally responded. And I did. I wanted her to be the one because I knew it would make her happy. And I wanted her to be happy. Even if that meant I had to do something I really didn't want to. But then again, hadn't that always been the case?
She smiled happily at me and rested her cheek on my chest. "You know I love you Rick."
I chuckled nervously. She wanted me to say it back, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to. But I couldn't. It just wasn't all that natural for me, expressing what I felt like that. It was like there was too much pressure; she was waiting for me to say it. I could, sometimes, when it was spontaneous, or, for example, writing it down was no problem. But saying it out loud, when she was expecting me to, was hard. Instead, I sat up a little and gave her a long kiss atop her head, squeezing her body closer to mine with my arms.
She sighed and I saw her eyes start to drift shut. Naptime didn't sound like a bad idea, especially since there was no one and nothing stopping us. My eyes instinctively inched lower and lower, my body beginning to relax. I was about ready to drift off when suddenly there was a shadow above me, blocking the warm sun.
"Ah, people…"
When I opened my eyes, Jonathan stood over us, peering down anxiously. He held a bottle in his right hand and was fluttering the left in the air nervously. Evelyn's head rose from my chest and she rolled over to look up at her brother.
"Something the matter, Jonathan?" she asked.
"I think- I think you'd better come see this," was all he said.
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Aren't I just evil??? Anyway, review!