Here’s where I come in. See, I think Harry really took a shine to me. But what he took a shine to even more was the chance of a better alibi. He feeds his moll the dope about Peterson-Lee then he comes fetch me. Hey look, Wallace is alive and well! Then the pair of us drift off, with Harry calling out to let Ruby know the coast’s clear. She does the deed and gets the stuff – passing it over to Harry while crying on his shoulder. We head off to find Peterson-Lee and ‘find’ the goods on her. Geez, I was such a patsy. It’s embarrassing.
Of course, Harry has already swapped the real letter for the fake – so no one can crack the cipher except themselves. The real one they work on in private until they figured it out, at which point ‘Dolores’ lures in Cuttling so they could get their expedition funded for free and gratis.
What they had planned once we all arrived in Egypt – well, we ain’t no mind readers, but wouldn’t be a wild guess that another ‘native revolt’ might have ‘coincidentally’ happened.
But here’s the thing: if it hadn’t been for Ruby going full-on cuckoo with jealousy and bringing on that murder part of their programme ahead of schedule, maybe we’d have fallen for it. Yeah, River and I can handle ourselves good, but – and this is my sister’s words, not mine – ‘it’s always best to try to avoid a potential bloodbath unless you’re really bored.’
Plus, you know what? Yeah, she tried to bump me off and all, but I’m maybe feeling a bit sorry for Mrs Durkin. Because I saw the way Harry looked at me, and he didn’t never look at her that way. She was just a walking, talking pile of dough, and I’m kinda getting the suspicion that she weren’t any too likely to get back from that expedition any more than the rest of us.
Seems like Ruby was pretty well cursed after all.
Incidentally, Cuttling looked down in the dumps for maybe three seconds when he learned that his new Girl Friday killed his old Girl Friday. His attention, which should have been squarely on the swell story I was telling, kept being directed at old Susan Peterson-Lee in her Cleopatra get-up. I’m guessing the collector was planning to add a new Egyptian objet d’art to his collection. I don’t get it – a number who was happy as a clam playing along with River earlier in the day tuning in now to the phony pharaoh? Ain’t no accounting for taste.
When they ain’t going all moony at each other, Cuttling’s and Mrs Peterson-Lee’s faces cycle between shocked, horrified, relieved and angry as I’m piecing together the story. After I finish the tale it all goes quiet, just for a moment. Then Cuttling says, ‘So this whole thing is a sham. The ruby’s gone, and we don’t have a chance of finding the tomb without the real letter.’
‘But the real letter’s here,’ says River. ‘Harry had it in his pocket. Melody found it earlier.’
Cuttling turns to me. ‘Then hand it over, damn you! That thing’s mine by rights!’
So much for ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘well done for helping us not be murdered’. But I do suddenly remember something. ‘It’s in Harry’s jacket!’
‘So go fetch it!’
‘It’s in Harry’s jacket that he was wearing when Ruby plugged him. I felt it when I … felt him.’
Cuttling’s up and out of the door almost before I’ve finished speaking. We all follow him to the cabin where Harry and Mrs Harry still lie on the floor in a puddle of the red stuff. Mrs Peterson-Lee is once more overcome by the sight so Cuttling attends to her (very closely) and gestures to me to do the deed instead.
I reach into Harry’s inside jacket pocket and attempt to pull out what’s there. All that emerges are soaked fragments.
The bullet had gone right through the pocket. The scorched remains of his correspondence are soaked in about a gallon of blood, no way we can read even a single hieroglyph.
Now Susan’s sobbing even harder. So near to finding the tomb – and yet so far. ‘Don’t cry, kitten,’ says Cuttling. ‘Heck, we’ll still go and look for it anyway. Maybe make it a honeymoon …?’
Well, Susan Peterson-Lee ain’t no Cleopatra, and Calvin Cuttling ain’t no Julius Caesar or Mark Antony. Unless they do find Cleopatra’s tomb I’m guessing they’ll never end up in the history books. But maybe they’ll get through their lives without being assassinated or otherwise driven to death, and I guess they might think that’s a win overall.
The story’s all rounded off when a steward pops in to dole out the wake-up calls prior to landing, and is all surprised to see everyone up and about already. He’s even more surprised to see all the corpses and blood. But Cuttling plutocratically starts handing out wads of folding stuff to ‘compensate the crew for their trouble’, and I got a feeling that things might get straightened out without anything as undesirable as major police investigations or arrests. Gee, what it is to have money!
We wave our farewells to Mr and Mrs Cuttling-to-be. The flying boat has to be refuelled and scrubbed down a bit before it can make a return trip. (River passed on some tips about how to get blood out of furnishings – a paste of water and salt is quite good, she says. It’s not the first time she’s had to deal with it. They don’t enquire further.)
‘So Cuttling and Susan are heading into the desert without the faintest idea where they’re going,’ River comments. I nod. ‘We found the murderers and solved the mystery.’ I nod again. ‘So why,’ River demands, sounding real unhappy, ‘have we not yet come to “The End”?’
‘What?’ I ask. Not the most erudite response, but it gets the point across.
She don’t answer, just furrows her brow and sits there, chin on hand, for a few moments. Then suddenly her face clears. ‘Oh, of course! The ruby! We haven’t recovered the ruby. That’s what we need to do. No loose ends. We find the ruby, then we can draw a line under the whole thing.’
‘Wait for someone else to drop dead, then search their pockets,’ I suggest, not entirely seriously.
She raises an eyebrow. ‘The curse?’
Of course, I still don’t believe in curses. But pretty much everyone who touched it is dead. Well, except for me. I tell River that.
To my surprise, she seems to be giving it serious consideration. ‘You never claimed or wanted to own it,’ she says. ‘Everyone else did. So you escaped.’
‘Is this like Mrs Peterson-Lee’s baloney about being its “true owner”?’ I say. ‘You mean the ruby’s real choosy about who it hangs around with?’
And a huge grin spreads across River’s face. ‘I don’t blame it,’ she says. ‘I don’t blame it at all. And I know now who has it.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
EGYPT, AD 1939
As soon as we’d identified the murderers, my head started to clear again. It felt like my job was done.
Except it wasn’t. Not by a long way. And the reason I knew that was because I was still there. Stuck in the ‘book’.
It was very strange being fictional. I had free will, yes, but there was a gnawing feeling forever in my head insisting that things were going on that I couldn’t quite see or hear or touch – but which had power over me. It was like living in a world of conspiracy theories. If someone had told me that the Earth is flat, or that the moon is an egg, or that vaccines aren’t good for you, I had the most horrible suspicion that I might have listened to them.
I very much wanted to get out of this place now. And I suddenly knew how.
‘Phil?’ I called. ‘Phil, can you come here?’
The boy joined us. Melody was looking really confused now. ‘Phil?’ she said to me. ‘Are you saying that Phil’s got the ruby? No. No way. I trust him with my life.’
‘I think that’s the point,’ I told her. ‘I think he’s got your life in his hands. All our lives in his hands.’ I hold out a hand to Phil, who’s said nothing throughout this, just watched us and listened to us with a patient, slightly superior expression on his face. ‘I didn’t write you, Phil. But you were put in this story for a reason.’
He continued to look patient, waiting for me to work it out.
‘You didn’t fit in this world. Y
ou did your best, but the mask slipped too many times, especially when you had dialogue. Then there was the way you reacted when Cuttling spoke about Cleopatra. Your shaven head and – if you’ll excuse me mentioning them – the teeth ground short by Egyptian bread.
‘Ventrian even changed the name of a boat in the book to give me a whacking great clue, in case I hadn’t solved the riddle yet. “Now Caesar’s gone” – your name means “Little Caesar”, it was talking about you, not your father. It was telling me you’d gone, but it was all a part of the “ruby con”. You’d gone from your world, and ended up here.’
I smiled. The joy of someone being alive when you’d been told they were dead! So many rumours – so many explanations of exactly what way the boy was lured to his death by Octavian, exactly what method of murder had been used. There were no witnesses, no body, no burial place, but the whole world agreed that he was dead. Yet here he was – a real person inside a book, just as I was.
I turned to Melody. ‘I’d like to introduce you to Phil – or more specifically Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar. More commonly known as Caesarion. And I’d like to say – Phil? Maybe now’s a good time to take off your hat.’
Phil smiled. ‘Hello again – “Wivver”.’ And for the first time since I’d come into this strange world he raised his hand to his head and carefully pulled off his 1930s-style newsboy cap.
And there it was. The ruby.
Oh, I don’t mean he just had a jewel sitting on top of his head. It was shining, spinning, radiant, bathing everyone in its glow – and then it was something else, something still radiant but full of every colour and was all shapes and no shape at once, and I could feel the light inside my head, it was … it was tickling my brain (and yes, I know how ludicrous that sounds, but it’s the closest I can get to the sensation).
I couldn’t really think clearly. I focused on one thing and one thing alone: this was what I’d been searching for. This is what I’d come back to the past for. It was deadly dangerous and unutterably beautiful but most importantly it was the end of my quest.
I reached out a hand. I couldn’t tell if I were touching something or not, but I closed my fist to take hold of – whatever was there. At last, I held it. The Device was mine. The Eye of Horus. Not some ridiculous jewel, but pure power.
I closed my eyes, but I could still see it. Not a light burned into my retinas, the actual thing itself was still there, still making no sense. If what I was starting to feel was even a thousandth of what Ventrian had felt when he discovered his ‘Device’, then the fact that he’d resisted it at all was superhuman.
Surely this meant we had got to the last page of Melody’s story? Surely we’d finally come to ‘The End’? Perhaps it was because there was still a ruby-like halo surrounding us but I found another image invading my head: Judy Garland clicking her ruby slippers together and saying, ‘There’s no place like home.’ The Wizard of Oz film would be released soon, back in 1939 – but was that my home? It was where my family was, but … Stormcage? Definitely not. The TARDIS? It was where I felt most at home, but more in the sense of someone returning to a comfortable place where they’d once felt happy. If I thought, ‘There’s no place like home,’ I had no idea where the ruby slippers would take me. Not for the first time, I thought: I don’t have a home. I just have places where I live.
But those words joined with the jewel and spun and sparkled in my head, and I began to spin too. Oh, I flew so high! I was part of the universe but the universe was also part of me and it was mine, to do with what I would. All the things I could do! All the things I could change! I was empress of the universe, and I would be a benevolent god.
And the universe would pay me tribute.
I reached out with my mind, and I touched another mind. I knew its feel, but I did not know its shape.
It was my home.
My home was not a place, but a person.
The other mind – her other mind? Goodness, that was new, but I guess surprises keep a marriage from getting stale – spoke inside my head. ‘Aw, River, love, not like this. This is not how it’s meant to be, you know that.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
EGYPT, 30 BCE
The Doctor’s touch, so familiar and yet unfamiliar, cooled me, calmed me. I pushed the feelings down, out from my head, out from my heart, down and down until it floated out of me, surrounding me like a miasma until it dispersed completely. Once she knew I was safe, she let my mind go. I took a deep breath, and suddenly I was grounded again, my feet on solid earth.
I opened my eyes. I was in Cleopatra’s burial chamber, my hand still on the relief of ‘Horus’ – touching Caesarion’s eye, could Ventrian have made the clue any clearer?
I looked down at my wrist. The Vortex Manipulator was still broken. I suppose I’m going to get to know Ancient Egypt really well. My hand dropped to my side. I heard a voice say, ‘Where the hell are we?’
It sounded like my voice. But I hadn’t spoken.
I turned around. Standing behind me was Melody Malone.
Melody Malone doesn’t like to show weakness. I know that, it’s how I created her. So I knew things must be pretty bad by the degree of shock that was showing on her face.
Caesarion was there too, crumpled on the floor. I hurriedly checked him – he was still breathing. The shock of the transition had knocked him out, that was all.
The cat came running up to us. I didn’t know how long she’d been here all alone; I hoped it hadn’t been long. I reached out for her – and she ignored me completely, throwing herself at Melody, weaving in and out of her ankles until Melody picked her up, then purred in great, but entirely feline, contentment. I guess they did have a special sort of bond. The cat wound herself around Melody’s neck and stayed there, as though she were Mrs Peterson-Lee’s fox-fur stole.
Melody reached out and traced her finger around a wall painting of the jackal-headed god Anubis, god of death and the afterlife, then drew back her hand and looked at it. She ran fingers down her own cheek, then through her hair, and looked at her hand again. Her fingernails were painted scarlet, and she examined each one individually. ‘Everything feels … ’ She trailed off, then after a few seconds added, ‘I don’t know the right words for it. Was that all a dream? Have I been asleep?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not exactly … ’
She was breathing heavily. ‘I can … Are these smells? I can’t believe that’s a question I’m asking. I know what a “smell” is! I can’t tell you how this is different. But it is. It’s different and it’s the same, and – colours! I’ve never seen colours like this before.’ She studied her painted nails again. ‘Red. Red is my colour. Scarlet. But this isn’t red. It’s more than red. More vivid. Deeper.’
‘How are you here, Melody?’ I whispered under my breath.
I didn’t mean her to hear, but she did. Perhaps sounds were clearer to her now, as well as colours. ‘Maybe if someone tells me where “here” is, I can try to answer that!’ she said. Her voice wasn’t loud, she was holding it back, but somehow it still felt like she shouted. She began to look around, taking in the carvings, the wall paintings, the sarcophagus with its gilded death mask. I tried to explain, but she just started to giggle. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘So, the short answer to my question is, where I actually am is Hart Island Lunatic Asylum.’
Giggle? Melody didn’t giggle. She was a tough cookie with a heart of gold, a straight shooter and heartbreaker, who beat the men at their own game.
I tried to explain further. It sounded utterly ridiculous to my ears. How would you feel if someone dragged you out of the only world you’d ever known, the only world you knew existed, and told you that you weren’t real? That you’d been created? That your every action, every thought – every breath, every tiny whim – was down to someone else?
I reached out a hand and touched her arm. ‘Hands off, sister,’ she said, and she was no longer my funny twin. At least she wasn’t giggling any more. She was hard and angry.
> She was also absolutely solid. I don’t think I’d quite believed it up to that point. A projection, a phantasm, an illusion – perhaps. A real person – as real as me – nope.
‘I suppose I’m not as good a writer as I thought I was,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood with a joke. ‘If this is the first time you’ve really experienced colours or odours or textures, I suppose I can’t have described them very well.’ But truly, how could those things be described accurately? They all relied on a shared set of references, a knowledge and experience of sensations. How do you describe red? It’s impossible. I had only been able to experience those sensations in the book world because I expected them, because I knew what ‘red’ was so, when I looked at something red, my brain knew what it was supposed to see. Melody had no frame of reference. Melody was a two-dimensional character who had suddenly become three-dimensional without ever having known there was a third dimension. She didn’t even remember being a cat.
And perhaps that’s part of being a fictional character. The author can make you do anything, feel anything, believe anything – and you won’t know it’s odd or wrong or even impossible unless the author makes you come to that realisation. I’d felt for a few brief minutes when I touched the Eye of Horus Device that I was a god. I hadn’t realised I already was a god – to Melody and the rest of my list of characters at least.
I guess Melody had just become an atheist.
My bundle of possessions was still on the floor of the chamber. I picked it up and pulled out the book.
The Ruby’s Curse: A Melody Malone Mystery.
Melody looked at it. Then looked away. It was just too big a thing for her to take in. She turned her back on me, and I didn’t know what to do.
I wondered what would happen to her when the Eye of Horus Device was destroyed. Would she just find herself back in the book, with the characters ‘River’ and ‘Phil’ having gone off somewhere – or having never been there at all? Would she remember any of this? Would it feel to her like death?
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