Another Pan

by Daniel Nayeri

  Neferat looked at the boy, now one of her own charges, and saw at once his enduring goodness and potential. She had heard the stories about her cursed family. She knew that a great pharaoh from Elan’s line could redeem them all, wash away all the injustice and allow her ancestors to rest in peace. She realized that she did not wish for redemption to come through him, if at all. He won’t be clever enough to rule, she thought. Goodness isn’t enough to merit the throne of Egypt. Then she thought of the so-called curse on her four ancestors and thought, How dare anyone say that we need redemption. These thoughts ran through Neferat’s wicked mind when the pharaoh’s son was brought to her, the most skilled of the nursemaids, to raise and nurture.

  “Ex-CUSE me? But this is the girls’ room?” said a squeaky-voiced girl with big eyes and a blond bob. She was only applying lipstick, but apparently this was a sacred ritual.

  “Relax,” said Peter. “I won’t tell anyone your lips aren’t naturally fire-engine red.”

  “Get out!” the girl shouted, hands on hips, right above her low-riding uniform skirt.

  Peter laughed to himself, then pushed open one of the stalls and said, “No, but really, you should leave. This could get messy.”

  It was during this time in her life that Neferat’s ill will and ruthless intentions filled up her body and spilled out into the world. As the pharaoh’s son, Seti, grew older, his nursemaid writhed with fury over the splendor bestowed upon him — and the growing innocence and sweetness with which the boy responded. She watched the nobles of the land shower him with gifts and praise. She observed as fortune-tellers and soothsayers predicted that he would bring great prosperity to their land — and warned that a great shadow hung over his head. All the while, she groomed her own favorite, whispering ideas in her ear, planting thoughts of treachery in her mind, raising her to believe that she, an ambitious commoner, could be a god-queen, ruling over all of Egypt.

  She built into the girl’s heart a sense of entitlement and greed. Those who knew her said that Neferat was evil, bewitched by bad spirits, greedy and malicious — that she was possessed by a spirit much older than her body, coming after the cursed family once more. They said that she taught the girl her wicked ways and that she used her devil eye to bore deep into her soul and corrupt her to the core.

  This is the story of Seti, the true pharaoh, who might have brought the cursed family such greatness that its effect would have been felt across even the previous generations. It would be triumph and justice enough to redeem all their bitterness — a reawakening of crushed souls. What would have come of having a great and benevolent pharaoh rise up from the cursed family? Would Elan the builder have let his bitterness go if he had fathered a line of kings? Would Garosh the monster have forgotten his lost love? Would Harere have stopped mourning? Would Praxis’s soul have moved on? Perhaps . . . but none of them ever had a chance, for Seti, the hope of all Egypt, was cut down and replaced by a most powerful queen.

  Peter stood outside two palaces at the very center of the labyrinth. He chose the smaller of the two: the one belonging to the wife of the pharaoh and her children. A person who’d had his kingdom stolen away wouldn’t belong in the big one, he thought. He’d belong in the home of his childhood . . . the women’s chambers, where the story begins.

  Later in Seti’s life, when his father, the pharaoh, died and he took the throne, the people remembered the prophecies and expected great things. But Seti, acting as a playboy king, unconcerned with anything beyond his own amusement, disappointed them all. He was not wise enough or cunning enough to stand up to his advisers. He was distracted, not as clever as a god-king should be. Besides all that, he rarely said more than a few words. He spent his days in amusement, forgetting his position and responsibilities. He was weak and malleable, and soon he became nothing more than a vessel for his advisers.

  The treasury was plundered by the pharaoh’s greedy ministers, each of whom guided the pharaoh’s hand as he approved their many requests. Seti himself did nothing but feast, laugh, and play, shirking his responsibilities to the people.

  His seal was placed on a great many decrees in which he had no part.

  He passed a great many laws of which he had no knowledge.

  Soon, Seti’s mother discovered the abuses and excessive privileges of her son’s so-called helpers. She tried to step in and rule the nation in his place, claiming that since she was a member of the royal family, she could wield the pharaoh’s seal on his behalf. Seti openly agreed to this plan, for he loved his mother and took her counsel above any other. He was happy to be free from the responsibilities of government.

  Only a day later, Seti’s mother was murdered in the night. Seti, too simple to suspect his own ministers or nursemaid, mourned for many days. That is when Neferat placed her favorite in the sight of the pharaoh. Having been his nursemaid since his birth, Neferat was loved and trusted by Seti. He did not question Neferat’s motives when she told him to allow the girl to take his mother’s place in his heart.

  When Neferat engineered a union, the ministers did nothing to keep her favorite from becoming queen. Egypt was shocked by the strange marriage. People talked of Neferat’s influence over the couple. Soon, rumors of the supernatural began to surround the new queen. Neferat had taught her special ways — of thinking, of behaving, and of keeping her people loyal. The queen did not shy away from Neferat’s experiments in the mystical world.

  One night, the queen was spotted in a private moment by her personal guards, who whispered rumors to their own families. When the queen’s servants and handmaids left her chambers, satisfied that she had retired for the day, she made her way to her hidden pyramid, a secret hiding place that her mother had built. Here, she knelt like a common pauper and dug her hidden treasures out of the ground, dozens of vials of colorful liquid. Here, in this dark, damp pyramid, in a hole dug in the dirt, she mixed together a bubbling, writhing bath the color of blood. She lowered herself into this pit without ceremony, forgetting that she was royalty, that she was wallowing in dirt and excrement like a street urchin. This dark world required no fanfare. And so she closed her eyes, determined to bear the pain of the bath, a solution whose cleansing sting she craved daily now. A potion that blinded and mesmerized her people, bound them to her like opium, and made them forget their most fervent objections.

  At the same time, Neferat walked the streets of Egypt, whispering in every ear, stirring up restlessness among the masses. She instilled in the people a hatred for Seti and hopes of a new kingdom. And so, before long, Neferat had an army of supporters. We know not their reasons for hating Seti. Perhaps they disagreed with his policies. Perhaps he had grown too arrogant. Or, most likely, they thought him stupid and ineffective. But soon, their love of Seti’s new wife grew in proportion to their hatred for Seti. They imagined themselves prospering under her rule.

  A great battle was waged, a battle unrecorded in the history of men, for in this battle, women’s tricks played no small part. Some say it was a long and bloody battle between the armies of the pharaoh and the new queen, a takeover that should have made the history books. Others say it was quiet and that Seti was cut down with little fanfare, because he was sickly, nearly mute, and lacking wisdom.

  For reasons lost in the fog of time, Seti’s dethroning was not hard-won. The king himself put up little fight, dying quickly at the hands of his ruthless new wife. With Neferat’s help and the support of the people, the new queen brought Seti down forever, naming herself pharaoh. History never recorded the coup, for the queen ruled under the king’s name. Except the queen was not the equal of the king. She did not have his potential for greatness. She did not have Seti’s good heart.

  “Why isn’t it here?” Peter spat. He had ransacked the women’s living quarters, going through each of the ragged rooms one by one, tearing apart the ancient curtains and the porous, tattered wall tapestries. He had found mummies in each one, and yet none of them was Seti. He had desecrated half a dozen kings in half an hour, pulli
ng apart sarcophagi twice as big as himself. Once, he had been so sure he had found it that he’d let out an involuntary cheer. It was a mummy propped up on a makeshift throne. Next to it reclined the bust of a nameless queen with a bitter expression. The golden face on the mummy’s sarcophagus was hulking and imposing like a king. This had to be the one: Seti next to a bust of the traitorous queen who had stolen his throne. But in the end, Peter had been wrong. There was no magic in those withered bones.

  “Where are you hiding?” he said as he ran down another set of crumbling steps. He was distracted but he remained agile. Anyone else would have fallen into the enormous cavern that had grown beneath his feet, extending down from the ground floor into the unknown below. To Peter, it was like an invitation. A challenge from his nemesis. The Dark Lady herself was calling for Peter to come, to take a step into the abyss, and to dare claim the final prize.

  On the day of Seti’s fall, the young pharaoh surveyed her kingdom — its fertile soil, its mountains of riches, the endless Nile. She was only a girl, yet she had managed to become a god-queen, feared and loved at the same time. She had supreme power, complete control. Yet barely a day passed when someone, some traitorous soul, wasn’t put to death for questioning her reign.

  The despot queen ruled for many decades. She was a famous pharaoh, known by Seti’s name, her path to power opened for her through Neferat’s trickery. She was cruel and menacing, ruling Egypt with a fiery rage that swallowed up the nation and made them a fearful people. Her first act as queen was to kill all the king’s ministers. She spent money zealously and brought the kingdom to the edge of financial ruin and war. By the end of her reign, the Nile was red with the blood of her victims.

  She was a pharaoh that never should have been, an injustice, though unknown, that burned in the hearts of all of Egypt.

  In the dark, hidden places of the cities, a rumor began to form . . . that the true king, the one that should have been, would have been good and kind. Fortune-tellers and sorcerers of the age said that they read it in the very air, in the sand, and in the sky. They claimed that if events had unfolded the way they should have, Egypt’s fortunes would be very different. They recounted tales of Neferat, words she had spoken that seemed so innocent at the time. Ripples, she had said. That is what I like. That is what I look for. Had she known all along the evil that lay dormant in her protégée’s soul? Stories of sorcery and witchcraft resurfaced, and soon people knew where to place the blame. It was the nursemaid, they whispered. She carried the dark spirit of the god of death. But by then, Neferat was long gone. With the taste of power on her lips, she was off to conquer other kings, to manipulate other great leaders with her bewitching devil eye.

  And so, Egypt nursed a bitterness in its heart.

  As for this legendary line, they came to the very brink of greatness, a greatness that would have freed them all. Yet, instead of having Seti’s redeeming goodness, their line ended without fanfare, their stories falling into legend. Seti died childless. Neferat, the last descendant of Hurkhan, disappeared, leaving no children behind.

  Though his rule hardly ever materialized, Seti’s body was mummified and entombed in the Valley of the Kings, as is customary for pharaohs. He received no ceremony, no riches to take to the afterlife, and few knew of the manner or precise day of his death.

  Peter climbed down into the abyss. He could feel the presence around him. He knew how close he was to having everything he’d ever wanted. He smelled the air. She was definitely close — he knew his old nanny’s smell. The space around him was growing narrower, and Peter knew that it was leading him to the tip of the upside-down pyramid, the very lowest point in the underworld. That would be where he would face his nemesis.

  He took a moment to think about that prospect. Facing her. For all Peter’s bragging, he had never actually seen her — not since the days of his own Nanny Neferat. Since then, he had seen shadows and heard whispers. He had felt dread the likes of which he might never experience again. But he had never seen the Dark Lady inside the labyrinth. Did she really have the jackal head that Egyptians attributed to the death god? Not likely. Egyptian mythology was full of animal-headed things. Maybe it was just symbolism.

  Peter had long ago considered that perhaps the foe he would meet in the end would not be a seven-foot-tall jackal monster from conventional Egypt books. The other four mummies had all been protected by people from their own stories. As Peter climbed deeper and deeper into the putrid hole, his mind couldn’t let go of the idea that maybe he was on his way not to the death god’s lair but to Neferat’s sinister playhouse.

  The bitterness of so many wrongs — injustices to himself, his family, and his country — devoured Seti’s soul. And so he died with his life trapped in his bones. The goddess of death took the mummy of the true king and with it the most powerful bonedust of all — the one that would complete the others, opening the way to immortality. She shielded it with her greatest weapons, fearing that someday death might be conquered. The Dark Lady hid the mummy in a place where no one could reach it, a legendary labyrinth of the gates, guarded by powerful deities that no human could overcome.

  And so Seti was gone, his kingdom lost, taking with it Egypt’s chance at a good and just king. So many lives that might have been happy. So many needless deaths. A family that might have been redeemed. He can never fully die. His wasted life is forever trapped as grains of immortality in his bones.

  Simon popped his head into Darling’s office. “Anyone in here?” he said casually. When no one answered, he darted toward the dehydrator to check on the book, thinking that the sooner it was dry, the sooner he could take it to Albany, where no annoying children would get in his way. He brought his face close to the surface of the dehydrator and peered through. Wait a minute, he thought, noting the slightly darker cover, the thickness of the pages, the smudge in the right corner that hadn’t been there before. . . .

  Wendy glanced at the clock. Class was almost over, and Simon still hadn’t made an appearance. She tapped her feet under her desk, trying to keep calm.

  “There you have it, class,” said the professor. “The bones of the fifth mummy are special because they carry in them the collective power of multitudes of bitter souls. What happened to Seti had a ripple effect, so that this is the story of the injustice of the entire family and also all of Egypt, who lost out on a good pharaoh and got an evil one in return. Next time, we’ll talk more about bonedust and the various failed expeditions to find it.” Wendy could see that he was trying not to look his children in the eye, probably because all three of them were thinking of Peter, their father’s childhood friend — now fired and lurking somewhere inside Marlowe — and of that toe he had carried in his pocket for all these decades.

  As soon as Professor Darling dismissed the class, Wendy got up and ran to the door, slamming into it as she sprinted out into the hall. John wasn’t far behind. The rest of the class was still packing up binders and chatting about the weekend. The jarring sound of Wendy’s exit made everyone look up. “Whoa, there, little Darlin’s,” shouted Marla after them. Everyone sneered at the joke, since that was the only reaction that seemed available.

  As students from every classroom began pouring into the hall, Wendy and John ran full speed, dodging left and right, barely missing a kid carrying a geography project, as they headed toward their father’s office. A teacher shouted, “No running!” but the two were turning into another hall before she even finished saying so.

  With Peter and Simon both missing, the search for bonedust had suddenly turned into a race. A race to get to the Book of Gates as fast a possible, a race to find Peter, and a race to jump into the labyrinth and find the fifth mummy before Simon, who never did show up to Professor Darling’s class. Maybe he’d already made it inside, Wendy thought. Maybe they could get the fourth bone back.

  They pushed past the door and ran into the darkened office. As they marched toward the dehydrator, Wendy said, “Did you text Peter?”

 
“Yeah,” said John, panting, “with a top-priority code attached, and our twenty.”

  “Does he know where we are?”

  “That’s what our twenty means,” said John.

  “And that’s what you sent him?” said Wendy, pacing around the room as though her mind refused to let her body rest.

  “I just said that,” said John. “With a priority signal. Will you just relax?”

  Wendy kept rambling. “We should decide where to take the book, so we save some time when he gets here.”

  “OK, let’s decide,” said John. There was no use trying to slow her down.

  “What do we know so far?” said Wendy.

  “Well, there’s this magic labyrinth underneath our school. . . .”

  “Shut up,” said Wendy, still pacing. “The legend was about a king. Where would a king fit in with Marlowe? Maybe it’s a rank thing. What are we the best at? Volleyball? Did we win that last year? How did our Latin team do at state? Good? Probably not.”

  “You realize you’re talking to yourself, right?” said John.

  “Yeah, I realize that,” said Wendy. “Where is he? He’s usually everywhere. Ugh. Where would the prom king hang out? Or, wait, what about the teachers’ lounge? It has to —”

  Suddenly, Wendy’s out-of-control talking came to an abrupt stop. She was frozen in place, staring at the dehydrator.

  “What is it?” said John.

  “It’s . . . it’s gone,” said Wendy.

  The book was right there, in the dehydrator. But then Wendy reached in and yanked the book out of the machine.

  “What are you doing?” said John.

  “It’s fake, John. It’s fake. The book’s a fake.”