I took a deep breath in an attempt to center myself and felt something shift between the two of us. It was as if the tugging sensation was reversed and warm sunlight trickled slowly into me. It calmed and relaxed me in such a way that my confusion and anger became less important. I still remembered that I was mad, but it seemed distant, buried, like I had to reach deep within myself and work to pull it to the surface.
“Who are you?” I whispered. His lashes fluttered and green eyes rimmed with golden brown opened and looked straight into my soul. “The way you look at me…It’s like you…you know me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I mean…I mean all of me.”
“Not…everything.”
“But you can read me…somehow.”
Amon nodded. “This is our connection, Lily.”
“You are not what I think you are, are you?”
“I am more. And perhaps less.”
I sighed. This was downright confusing. “All right. Then why don’t we start over and try this the old-fashioned way.” I stuck out my hand and he took it. “My name is Lilliana and yours is Amon. So, Amon, where are you from?”
Amon gave me a quizzical look and then nodded. “I am from Egypt.”
“You were born there?”
“Yes. Many years ago.”
“How did you get here?”
Amon sat at my feet in the grass. “I am unsure, exactly. But my sarcophagus was in the House of Muses, so I would suppose that I was brought here. For what purpose, though, I do not know.”
“Your sarcophagus?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. Do you own the sarcophagus? Are you a curator of some kind? Where does your power come from?”
Amon laughed. “I will do my best to answer your questions in the hope that by doing so you will begin to trust me.” He held up his hands and then ticked off his answers on his fingers. “I do not understand ‘curator.’ My power is a gift from the sun god Amun-Ra and his son Horus. And that sarcophagus is one of many I have slept in over the centuries.”
I stared slack-jawed at him for several seconds and then murmured, not quite believing I was saying the words, “Are you trying to tell me that you’re a…a mummy?”
“A mummy.” His lips formed the word as if tasting it. Slowly, he answered, “Each millennium, when I pass through your world, my body is encased in the wrappings of Anubis. Is this what you mean?”
I sat back against the bench, hard. “Mummification means a dead body gets wrapped from head to toe and is placed in a sarcophagus that usually gets hidden in a pyramid or a temple,” I explained.
“Then yes. I am a mummy.”
When I was able to speak, I remarked, “You don’t look dead.”
“I am not dead,” he declared, then added, “at the moment.”
I suddenly remembered entering the Egyptian exhibit and finding the sarcophagus empty. “Do you swear you are telling the truth?”
“I swear on the heart of my beloved mother as to the veracity of my words.”
When Amon had asked me before if I believed him, I’d told him truthfully that I did. There was absolutely nothing insincere about him. I could tell that he believed what he was saying, but that didn’t mean that what he was saying was one hundred percent true.
To find out, I channeled the hard-nosed police interviewers I’d seen on television. Leaning forward and narrowing my eyes, I began peppering Amon with questions. “What were your parents’ names?”
“King Heru and Queen Omorose.”
“What was your favorite childhood toy?”
“A wooden carving of a horse.”
“What is your favorite food?”
“Honey and dates from my country and the sweet round discs filled with fruit from yours.”
“Uh-huh.” So he liked Danishes. “Favorite music?”
“The sistrum, the harp, and the lute.”
“If you’re an Egyptian mummy, where are your wrappings?”
“My body does not need the wrappings now. I have risen, as I do once every one thousand years.”
Blinking after absorbing that statement, I continued. “But I didn’t see any strewn about the exhibit. What happened to them?”
“When it is time for me to rise, I waken and use my power to disintegrate the wrappings. Otherwise it would be difficult for me to move about.”
I grunted. “Right. I guess that would be difficult,” I mumbled. Cocking my head, I continued. “How is it that you understand English?”
“A spell.” When I just blinked, he explained, “I did not understand your language at first. Do you remember when you gestured to me in the House of Muses?”
I nodded.
“I invoked a spell from the Book of the Dead to be able to communicate my thoughts to you. This is how we understand one another.”
“Then you can understand anyone, from any country?”
“If I need to, yes.”
“Why did you choose me?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds but looked at me. Then he plucked a blade of grass and twirled it between his fingers. “You were there,” he answered simply.
Sitting back on the bench, I folded my hands in my lap and studied his face. With each answer he gave, my incredulity grew. It wasn’t possible. “Can you show me something?” I gestured with one hand. “You know…something magical?”
“Transporting you to the park and controlling your actions is not proof enough of my power?”
“Well, I’ve been operating under the assumption that you were hypnotizing me somehow, so I need to see something else to be convinced.”
“What would convince you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The ten plagues of Egypt, raising an undead army, resurrecting your long-lost love, something like that.”
Amon frowned. “Why would I do any of those things?”
Shrugging, I answered, “That’s what mummies do in the movies.”
“What is a movie?”
“It’s like a play. A drama.”
“I see. I do not wish to bring a plague to your city. To raise an army of the undead, I would need to channel a great deal of power, which I do not have at this time, and I have never found a woman to love.”
“Really? So there’s no mummy girlfriend out there?”
He cocked his head. “My brothers await me, but there is no one else. No other friends that are females.”
“Hmm. Interesting.” I mentally shelved that piece of information. “Okay, so then do something else, something different.”
After a moment of thought, he said, “I need to conserve my power, so I will do something small.”
“Okay.”
Shifting forward, I watched Amon with hawk eyes as he raised his hands and cupped them together. Nothing was happening. He closed his eyes in concentration and then slowly pulled his hands apart. Light filled the space between them and I felt the sting of little particles brushing against my face as tiny grains of sand flew toward his fingers.
I watched in fascination as the sand swirled and the outline of a sphinx began to take form. A jogger crested the hill and I jumped off the bench, catching Amon’s hands in mine. The light disappeared and the sand fell around us in a gritty shower.
“I believe you,” I whispered. I suddenly became very aware of how close our faces were, the attraction between us tangible and warm. My breath caught and I blushed as my gaze drifted from his eyes to his lips. He didn’t back away or move at all, but I felt a shift, as if the air between us had suddenly become very warm.
Any slight movement and we could be kissing. With a twinge of alarm, I realized that I wanted to experience his lips pressed against mine, and I wondered if it was something I truly desired for myself or if he was making me want it.
I couldn’t understand how I could go from absolute hatred—well, as close as I got to it, anyway—to trusting a guy who was an ancient mummy, complete with powers, to wanting to make out with said ancien
t mummy in just a matter of minutes. Boy, I was…Out. Of. My. Mind.
Backing away a few inches, I felt a breeze cool my stinging cheeks.
Clearing my throat, I squeezed his hands and said, “Amon, whatever powers you have, you can’t show them to anyone but me and your brothers. Promise me.”
“Why do you ask this?” he queried softly, lightly stroking my fingers with his thumbs. The movement sent warm pulses shooting through my veins and tickled my nerve endings in a very good way. Nervously, I withdrew my hands and shifted a bit farther away. Amon didn’t seem disappointed by my actions, just curious.
I looked around and waited until the jogger disappeared into the trees before saying, “It’s just dangerous, okay? Like when you healed yourself and then stood in front of the crowd letting people see your power. You need to be more careful. Try to blend in. Otherwise, people will see you as crazy, like I did, or assume you’re on drugs and lock you up. There are people who would try to hurt you, or at the very least cart you off to Area 51.” At his look of confusion, I said, “I’ll explain Area 51 later. I still have a billion questions to ask, but I believe you are who you say you are, as impossible as it seems.”
Amon nodded. “Good.”
“Now tell me why you need me to go with you.”
“As I said, without your inner workings supplying me with strength, I will die before my purpose is accomplished.”
“And what is your purpose?”
“To waken my brothers and complete the ceremony to align the sun, the moon, and the stars so that the Dark One, Seth, the god of chaos, may be kept at bay for another thousand years.”
“Uh-huh. Hold that thought.” I grabbed my notebook from my bag and began scribbling. “One thousand years…sun…moon…stars…and Dark One. Hmm, you’re going to have to tell me more about that guy Seth later. So are your brothers mummies, too?”
“Yes.”
“You do realize we are very far away from Thebes, right?”
“How far away exactly?”
“Let me check.” I pulled out my smartphone and thumbed through several pages. “Egypt is like…over five thousand, six hundred miles away,” I announced.
“What is a mile?” he asked as he stared with interest at my phone.
“Oh, boy. What units of measurement did you use in Egypt?” Amon captured my hand and my pulse jumped. “What are you doing?” I asked nervously.
Amon smiled. “Showing you our units of measurement.” He traced the lines on my palm and then ran the pad of his finger down my pinky. “This is called djeba, or the width of a finger. The next is shesep, the width of your palm. Meh niswt is a royal cubit, which is seven palms.” Amon placed his palm next to mine and demonstrated the widths stacked on top of each other.
Flushing, I punched the numbers on my phone. “So, it says here that one mile is three thousand five hundred and twenty cubits. That means that to get to Thebes it would be roughly…nineteen million, seven hundred twelve thousand cubits.”
He gasped. “That’s almost a thousand iteru!”
“Yes, and that’s not crossing land, either. It’s over an ocean. Have you ever seen the ocean?”
He nodded. “I have seen the great seas that are fed by the Nile.”
“Believe it or not, Amon, that great sea is actually small when you compare it with others.”
Amon looked away and said quietly, “I have not had much opportunity to explore the world.”
A melancholy expression stole over his face, and I found myself missing his warm smile. “Amon?” I touched his hand and scooted closer so he could see my phone. “Look.” I showed him a picture of Earth. “We are on this continent called North America. Egypt”—I used my fingers to turn the globe and then zoom in on Africa—“is way over here on the African continent. So you can see you are a long way from Kansas, Dorothy.”
“What is this box of magic?”
“Uh, it’s called a phone. It has apps that work kind of like a computer.”
“I do not understand.”
“I can seek answers to questions with it.”
“It is like an oracle?”
“I suppose in a way.”
“How did you acquire this gift of the gods? Did you defeat a monster in battle?”
“Not exactly. Pretty much everyone has one.”
“May I look?” I handed him my phone and he scrolled his finger across the world map, watching in fascination as the perspective changed. “We are truly on the other side of the world?” he asked.
“That’s right. And don’t forget, we are assuming that your brothers are still in Egypt. Actually, they could be anywhere—China, France, the U.K.—Egyptian exhibits are very popular.”
Amon ran his hand over his bald head as he said thoughtfully, “This is why my power could not take us to them.” His eyes met mine. “I cannot use my power to cross over great waters. The desert sand becomes too heavy when it meets the water. It would sink us into the bottomless ocean.”
I swallowed. “Well, technically the ocean isn’t bottomless, but I get the picture.”
Playing with the phone, he began pressing various buttons and exploring different apps. I was shocked at how quickly he was picking up modern technology.
“There are too many oceans, you are right,” he declared. “But if we could get to Egypt, I could ask Anubis for aid.”
“Can’t you ask him for aid from here?”
“No. The ritual to call upon him must be performed in a certain place.”
“Right.” The idea that this perplexing, fascinating man from another time was leaving was a relief, but at the same time, I’d be very sorry to see him go. How often does a girl get to go out with an Egyptian prince?
Amon was looking at me expectantly. Biting my lip, I suddenly realized what he wanted. The date isn’t over yet. “Um…look, Amon, I’m not packed for an extended vacation, and I can’t just go gallivanting across the globe. My parents wouldn’t approve, and I have school next week. Spring break is over on Monday, you know.
“Why don’t you just hypnotize some guy at the airport who is going to Egypt and you can borrow his ‘inner workings’ until you get there. Then, presto changeo, you sandblast your way to your brothers, raise them from the dead, finish your ceremony, and dust your hands of it all, so to speak.”
“What is an airport?” he asked.
“An airport is a place that has lots of white chariots that can fly in the sky, even over great waters.”
Amon rose immediately. “Yes. We will take a flying chariot to Egypt.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I cautioned as he pulled me to my feet. “What happened to connecting with some other person who’s already going?”
He lifted my bag and secured the strap across his chest before taking both my hands in his. “I can connect to only one person, Lily.” I’m sure he saw the alarm on my face, because he quickly added, “Do not worry. Once the ceremony is complete, our need to be connected will be gone and you may return home to your family and your school. At that time I will have my full power and I will be able to manipulate time and send you back to your home so that you will arrive just a moment after we left. No one will miss you. Your family will never even know you were gone.”
As he started pulling me along the path, I grew more anxious. “But what if your special location to do the Anubis ritual thing isn’t there anymore? I mean, there’s been a lot of archaeological digging in the last one thousand years, you know. Uh, that means they’ve been excavating tombs,” I added in case he misunderstood. “The whole thing is a long shot.” I tried to wriggle my hand out of his grip and continued, “I mean, the remains of your brothers could be anywhere. And speaking of that, why do you have to raise them? Why can’t they raise themselves, like you do? And another thing—”
“Lily.” Amon stopped and turned, placing his hands on my shoulders. Warmth seeped directly into my bones, my muscles relaxing so completely that every question I had melted away. I wondered if
he was doing that on purpose again, or if it was just a natural part of being around him. “I promise you that I will answer all of your questions,” he said. “But I must complete the ceremony before the full moon has risen directly above the ancient temples of Giza. Those monuments still stand, do they not?”
“You mean the pyramids? Yes, but—”
“Then we need to get there as soon as possible.”
“But with the full-moon restriction that gives us only a month at best.”
“I fear our time is much more limited,” Amon said after glancing briefly at the sky. “By my calculations we have approximately one week.” He took hold of my hand again and guided me expertly out of the park.
The honking of horns grew louder and we were soon surrounded by people. If I was going to escape it would have to be now. The thing was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Yes, my emotions were erratic. Yes, Amon was using me like an energy bar. Yes, he was an Egyptian mummy come to life. But I couldn’t deny that I’d never felt more…alive in all of my seventeen years than I had in the past twenty-four hours.
Amon stopped in front of the horse- drawn carriages, smiled widely, and raised his eyebrows.
“Sorry, Spartacus, they only travel around inside the park,” I explained.
He sighed. “It is probably for the best anyway. Those horses look fat and lazy. It is likely they do not have the stamina for the speed I wish.”
“Hey!” an eavesdropping coachman protested. Ignoring the carriage driver, Amon spotted a cab and stepped boldly in front of it, holding his hands up in a commanding gesture, despite the fact that the off-duty light was on. “Stop, golden chariot!” he shouted.
Amon headed around to the driver’s side and spoke with him for a moment, ignoring the honking and rude gestures coming from the other drivers. Then he indicated I should come forward.
The driver shot out of the taxi and opened the door for me. “Please make yourself comfortable, miss. I’ll have you two to the airport in record time.” Amon handed my bag to the driver.
I hesitated by the open door. Lifting my eyes, I found Amon holding out his hand as he watched me and I wondered if he was using his power to read my mind.
“Will you come with me, Lily?”
Reawakened Page 8
