Perhaps I'm simply overtired, but this really did seem like a good idea at the time. Maybe I just really like his hair, but Ardeth Bay. . . hrm, how do any of us know what his bloody last name is? Anyway, review and tell me how terrible it is, I'm rather looking forward to the flames, really. Give me something to be indignant over, please.
I don't own these characters, of course. Naturally.
I would like very much to pretend that I never knew anything about Anck-su-Ramon, or her lover. And toward that end, I've made great strides. After about a month of domestic bliss, toward the end of which I was beginning to go stir-crazy, I sent the Bainbridge scholars a very gracious letter accepting their offer to let me run the British Museum. And here I am, with all I ever dreamed of and more than I ever hoped to have, and I just can't be happy with it.
It came too easily. Too ruddy easily.
The bits with the death and destruction were trying, yes, but they had their own exhilaration. I simply wouldn't be my mother's daughter if I didn't relish a good shoot-out occasionally, not to mention sharing her particular, perverse love of rough men, rough places, and rough times. There were a few low points, when I thought I might have inadvertantly caused the next apocalypse, and when I thought I had lost Alex. Dying, of course, while not as bad as some seem to think, did put a certain hitch in my plans. That sort of thing is to be expected, however, when one goes mucking about a land heavy with the weight of its dead. And, moreover, I am used to it. Not a single month passed during my childhood that someone didn't come close to death, that someone didn't try to abduct one of us, that I wasn't dragged out to someplace positively primitive and sandy. Jonathan dealt with it his way, I imagine, losing himself in debauchery. And I dealt with it in mine– losing myself in books.
But other than that, it really has come too easily. How many women are thrust into a compromising and thrilling circumstance with a real-life, dashing adventurer? Rick has his rough points, certainly, but he is endearingly sincere and he was so shy, in his way, when we met. A man well used to killing and wenching, but far from used to tenderness, and it showed. And I would never have given him a second glance if it weren't for our necessary proximity during the first Imhotep disaster. And almost as soon as we decided we wanted a child, I was pregnant, we never had to deal with any sort of heartbreak there. Most astonishingly, my brother is still alive and hale. I love the idiot dearly, but I never expected Jonathan to make it to thirty, much less the ripe old age of thirty-eight.
I read in one of those American fictions that when people do what they're meant to do– when they give in to destiny and carry it out– they are rewarded with almost unspeakable happiness. And despite my reservations about such notions as fate, here I am. Living bloody proof. Or, as it happens, reincarnated and often rather tidy proof, but the point remains.
There was once a girl who used to run in these hallways, a girl who believed in nothing she could not see, and nothing she could not touch. I would not trade my husband or my son for the entire world, but sometimes I think I would give all the wealth I possess to be that little girl again.
You see, the dreams of my past life did not stop when Imhotep was put back in his grave. I remember the lonely life of the sacred pharoh's daughter, remember the long fights with Anck-su-Ramon with weapons and words. And I remember, though it makes my heart ache to acknowledge it, that in all truth she tried to be my friend. And I spurned her. I was just waiting for the day that I would have proof of her infidelities with Imhotep, so I could take it before my father. So I could see her shunned, so I could have him all to myself again. Because really, my father was all I had, in that life.
The dreams, however, are not the real problem. I can deal with dreams, they are only the unordered redemption of a chaotic mind. But when I am wide awake, faces from my dreams appear over the features of the people I love. And I know that I knew them before. My brother, my old school friends, some of the people I know from the museum, even that Madjai, Ardeth.
Every time a person dies, those around them regret the things left unsaid. Apologies pride would not allow them to make. Acknowledgements of how much some small actions meant. Admissions of affection. And I have all of those things swimming in my mind, all the unsaid things. And it aches.
I want to tell them, but they would not understand. I want to hold them and weep for joy at seeing them again, when I never expected I would. I want to say all of the unsaid things, and know that matters have been settled between us. But I can't, because they would think me insane.
I know what lies after death, and I know what came in the time before birth. And I know, now, why we forget those things as we travel from life to life. It's too much. Far too much.
And I'm beginning to see things. Souls. I'm beginning to see the souls of those around me. They're almost tangible. And I'm afraid, horribly afraid, that maybe I won't be able to hold on to my mind. That maybe it will be too much for me, and I will lose everthing I have to the ravages of lunacy.
The problem with having nearly unspeakable happiness is that you have a terrible lot to lose.