Another Pan

by Daniel Nayeri

  Wendy was impressed. As Peter ran across the room dismissing half the sarcophagi, spewing facts about ancient Egyptian burial rites and death rituals, she thought about how much work he had put into this. And now that it was time to make the final discovery, it was natural that he would trust himself with the task. He had only tried to keep her from harm. She believed that with her whole heart.

  “So that still leaves us with . . . a lot,” said Peter, waving an arm across the thick space around them. Wendy and John, too, began running their hands along the inscriptions on the coffins, trying to figure out which could be the right one.

  “Is there any kind of clue in the legend about what the mummy might look like?” Wendy asked. “The others all had clues.”

  “This last one is really vague,” said Peter. “They were all passed down through word of mouth, and this one didn’t get told much, since people thought it was cursed. But my guess is it has something to do with Neferat, the nursemaid.” His eyes searched her face for signs of understanding. “Do you remember her?” Wendy nodded. “She’s the key to all this. . . . Besides that, the big difference in this legend is that it’s more than one person’s injustice.” He rubbed his hands together and added with a smirk, “Should make for some real good bonedust.”

  Peter went back to examining the contents of this mass tomb. Wendy walked past the many coffins lining the walls of the cave. Some of them were bright and shiny, glinting beautifully by the glow of Peter’s lighter. Others were covered with dirt and scratchings. John was doing the same thing, scanning the sarcophagi for any sign or clue. Wendy eyed the fading flame from Peter’s lighter. She stood motionless under what felt like hundreds of pounds of heavy air, trying to figure out where to start, trying to read the pictures on the sarcophagi, and thinking about how the ancient stories depicted here would help find the last bonedust. She couldn’t help but think that it didn’t matter anyway, though. As soon as they were outside, Simon would take it all away from them.

  “Help me move these, Wendy,” shouted Peter. “We don’t have much time.”

  “How are we supposed to move giant coffins?” Wendy asked.

  Peter scanned the room, whipping this way and that, holding his lighter up against each coffin and down to the floor. “There,” he said, pointing to a slab of rock beneath their feet.

  Wendy noticed that most of the floor was a circular grid of carved stones covered in a thick layer of dust. Peter began wiping away the dirt with his hands to reveal the hieroglyphics etched into each one. Each cartouche tile was the shape of dog tags and roughly the size of a loaf of bread. “See this?” Peter said. “It’s an exact map of this room. Every cartouche corresponds to one of these coffins. Count if you want.”

  John started to count, but it took Wendy only a moment to realize that Peter was right. Peter put his palm against one of the tiles and began to move it. The coffins (and the matching tiles) weren’t tightly packed, so there was a foot or two of empty space between every coffin and each of its neighbors. As Peter moved each tile, the matching coffin moved, too, so that they might be able to rearrange them and create a path to the wall. It was almost like an ancient Egyptian version of John’s 14-15 puzzles from when he was a kid — those rickety wooden squares with sixteen spaces and fifteen tiles that you move around until the numbers are aligned or the image unwarped. John pulled out a piece of paper from his gym bag and started to scribble strategies. The goal was to allow Peter to get a good look at each sarcophagus, deciphering the markings to find the right one, while making their way toward the wall of the cave.

  They maneuvered one layer of coffins after another, moving them this way and that, up, down, and back again, burrowing deeper and deeper into the recesses created by their work. The coffins scraped across the floor, crunching and creaking like stubborn geriatrics determined not to move. Peter worked faster than all of them, working the tiles until the groaning sound returned, accompanied by the strong stench of rotting flesh. Wendy shivered, thinking that this must be the worst part of the labyrinth, this stinking place in the deepest part of the pyramid below Marlowe — it felt like the tip of the upside-down pyramid, a point far below the earth. If there were any place for the Dark Lady to live, this would be it, this shadowy place full of death, this place that felt like being buried alive. She thought about the goddess, how the Egyptian legends showed death as a jackal-headed man but the five legends called it the Dark Lady. She thought of the hooded figure that had shredded John’s arm with her hook, and she wondered what would greet them once they reached the fifth mummy.

  “Keep going!” Peter said as they zigzagged through the boxes, peering closely at each one and slowly approaching the wall of the cave.

  Wendy was trembling, but she kept at it — until finally, something caught her eye.

  “What’s this?” she said, motioning the others to join her.

  She had just wedged herself between the last two rows and was pushing against a dusty coffin that stood in the last row, hoping to uncover the wall. But where she should have found the earthen side of the cave, she found a hard wooden surface. She knocked on it. It was hollow. When she ran her hand across it, she noticed that there was a hole, big enough to fit her hand, like a primitive doorknob. “I think it’s a door,” said Wendy.

  “Look there,” said Peter. Above the door was a large inscription, like a sign. Peter translated. “Throne Room.”

  “That must be it,” said John. “The pharaoh must be in the throne room!”

  Peter put his hand in the opening and started to pull. Wendy and John waited. But then, before he had a chance to pull on the knob, Peter’s face went white and he let out a gasp.

  He was pulling now, but not on the door. From where Wendy stood, holding the fading lighter, it looked like Peter was trying to free his hand.

  “What’s happening?” Wendy said in a frightened whisper.

  Peter continued to pull, his breath growing quicker and louder. “Something’s . . . got my hand . . .” he croaked.

  John and Wendy rushed toward him and started to pull him back. Something on the other side jerked, and the door flew open, freeing Peter in the process. Immediately, the door flew shut again. But it was too late. All three of them had seen it.

  It was a shadow, female-shaped and hooded, just like the one that had hurt John. Two lines of blood snaked Peter’s hand, like rivers on a map. Fueled by waves of rushing adrenaline, Peter lunged at one of the floor tiles, moving a sarcophagus to block the door.

  “I knew it,” he said, turning in a circle to look all around the circular cave wall. “It’s a puzzle. If we pick the wrong door, we could be killed.”

  “What do the others say?” Wendy asked, pointing to three other inscriptions like the first one. They were spaced evenly around the cave, each perched above a door hidden by stacks of coffins.

  “That one says Battlefield,” said Peter, rubbing his hand. “And those two are Inner Chamber and Nursery.”

  “It has to be the inner chamber,” said John. “That’s where a king does most of his work, right? We must be in the antechamber now.”

  “You sure about that, little guy?” said Peter. “The kingdom was stolen on a battlefield.”

  Wendy didn’t say anything. She looked over the coffins at the walls of the cave a few feet away and saw for the first time that there were dusty etchings all around them, not just on the coffins but on the cave itself. She examined them closely. There were kings, men, armies, battles. One of the pictures caught her eye: a nursemaid with a vicious face, surrounded by little children and babies. Something about the nursemaid’s hungry face seemed familiar to Wendy — but then again, faces in old sketches all looked alike.

  “You know what’s weird?” said John as he began to map out the fewest steps to the inner chamber door. “This whole injustice depends on the pharaoh being inherently good, right? But what kind of a good pharaoh is so selfish that he lets his whole country go to hell while he parties? I mean, I’ve met
a lot of partiers at Marlowe, and none of those guys would ever make a good president. Look at the boarding students — sure, they’re cool, but you wouldn’t want them thinking up fiscal policy.”

  Peter laughed at John’s nerdiness. Then he turned thoughtful and said, “It’s fun to be young. You can’t blame the guy for having a good time. Besides, legends are full of holes and exaggerations.”

  “I’m young and I wouldn’t let anyone screw me like that,” said John.

  Peter chuckled. “If we get out of here alive, maybe I’ll take you out for some real fun, and you can see how easy it can be to forget everything else.”

  It must have been something in John’s comment. Maybe she had already started to put the pieces together, or maybe it was the fact that John brought up that point right as she was looking at another picture of the nursemaid, this time with her hand extended over a crib, her back bent in a sinister bow, and her broken left eye glinting despite the centuries of dust, but suddenly Wendy had an idea. She darted to the coffins blocking the nursery and began wedging herself through the layers, pushing herself into the crevices with renewed vigor, mumbling excitedly as she crept toward the door. She didn’t even bother with a cartouche this time. She just squeezed her skinny frame in.

  “What are you doing?” asked John.

  “Look at the walls,” said Wendy. “The story is written there.”

  “How about you just explain?” said John, looking up from his notes about tile positions.

  “The epic battle between Seti and his queen was a total sham!” said Wendy. “Just look!”

  John walked toward the etchings in the cave walls. There it was, the whole story. The nursemaid with her roomful of children, the new king crowned, the epic battle.

  “Hey,” said John, surveying the battle scene, “are these girls? And what are they holding there? It’s not swords.”

  No, it didn’t look like swords at all. In fact, it looked as though the entire army consisted of women, fighting an epic battle with nothing in their hands except masks pinned to the ends of long, pointy sticks. From afar, it might look like warriors with spears, but up close, that wasn’t the picture at all.

  John remembered the battle scene from the story.

  Later in Seti’s life . . . 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 true wisdom. . . .

  Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place. “No way!” shouted John. “Seti was replaced as a baby! The story never says how many years passed until Seti was crowned and his throne was stolen from him. I bet there wasn’t a battle at all. He was crowned as a baby, and then the wife killed him and ruled in his name.”

  “Sickly, nearly mute, and lacking true wisdom,” said Peter, shaking his head and looking around at the now obvious sketches on the wall, “just like a baby.”

  “It’s funny,” said Wendy, “because if you read that story thinking you’re reading about a teenager, your mind automatically fills the blanks with partying and corruption and stuff, but you could just as easily read it about a two-year-old, and everything would still make sense.” She tried to remember Seti from the story. She had only just come from class, and it was easy to recall.

  . . . 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 . . . Seti himself did nothing but feast, laugh, and play.

  She laughed at how her own mind had tricked her. “You know what?” said Wendy, looking at the scene in which Neferat presides over the marriage of her favorite pupil to Seti, who, like all children in Egyptian carvings, is depicted as a tiny adult, about half the height of his wife, but with the expression and posture of a king. “That’s why the story says that the wife took the place of Seti’s mother in his heart. And that’s why Egypt was shocked at the marriage. I’ll bet she was already a teenager.”

  “Nice work,” said Peter. He and John began moving away the coffins in front of the nursery, using their feet to move tiles, and creating more room for Wendy. Peter tried to hide his amazement, but Wendy saw the look on his face.

  When they had uncovered the nursery door, Peter didn’t waste a moment grabbing for the knob hole. He wasn’t scared of what might be behind the door. In fact, he seemed as confident as ever. He put his hand into the hole and pulled. The door didn’t budge. He reached in farther for a tighter grip and pulled again. The door remained shut.

  Without a word, Peter marched toward an old, decrepit coffin, pulled a plank right out of the side, and rammed it into the nursery door. He didn’t even bother warning them to move, and John had to drop to the ground to avoid the oncoming blow.

  The door burst open easily, but as soon as it did, an angry scream filled the cave.

  Peter pushed the door wider and ran inside.

  The nursery was as stifling as a sauna and lined with even more sarcophagi. It was smaller than the antechamber, but not as cramped, since the coffins in this room were far fewer in number.

  Now that they knew to look for a small coffin, it seemed that finding Seti’s mummy would be easier. But it soon became clear that the choices had narrowed too much. Everywhere they looked, the sarcophagi were big, adult-size, and adorned with likenesses of the people inside.

  Wendy noticed that all around the hiding place, the rock walls were covered with sketches of the same person, over and over again. It was Neferat in many forms. First she was short, a young girl with her parents. Then she was a nursemaid surrounded by many sons. Then she was watching over many children, an evil look on her face, just like the etching in the outer room of the cave. But then, in the latter pictures she saw that Neferat’s face grew longer. Her features hardened. Her image changed into someone, or something, unrecognizable. As Wendy scanned the drawings, she realized the answer to the final mystery. Why was Neferat such a big part of the story? The sketches showed her changing so gradually; it was like she was a spirit, sliding easily from one body to the next. In fact, she was drawn like a spirit, vague and incomplete at times, never standing on the same plane as the figures around her.

  “Hurry, Peter,” said Wendy. “I can hear someone coming.”

  The darkness was moving closer.

  The air grew more and more crushing.

  Outside the wall, a shadow was filling the cave with its deathly fumes.

  Peter grabbed the plank and began working on a coffin at random. He was losing his cool — that eternal confidence slipping away momentarily — and for that instant, he could do nothing more than dig haphazardly. Peter’s makeshift crowbar sank into the side of a gold-encrusted sarcophagus and cracked just as the dark figure poured into the nursery beside them.

  “Peter,” whispered the voice. It was gravelly and muted, harsh and soft, all at the same time. It sent a shiver through their bodies and made Wendy and John freeze in place.

  Wendy tried not to scream.

  Peter didn’t answer. His hand twitched as he reached for his satchel.

  The figure was walking toward them now, a dark, hunched form, shrouded in tattered cloths and completely encircled by some sort of insects.

  Wendy thought she heard the icy voice speak again.

  John gulped and squeaked something about getting out of there.

  Wendy looked at the Dark Lady’s strange face, then at the drawings on the wall, especially the latter ones when Neferat had begun to change, to transform into something else, something monstrous. T
he figure approaching them now was so much like the latter pictures of Neferat, which also depicted her covered with insects, a queen with a twisted face ruling over moths and flies. The latter sketches showed her with the pursed lips of a governess, the hunched back of a cripple, the wicked expression and careful steps of a thief. This figure now standing before them had the same look of malice and ill will all over her face. And she had something else in common with the pictures of Neferat. Despite her fear, Wendy squinted to see the face emerging from under the moth-eaten hood. Something strange caught her attention — a flash of its deep blue left eye, broken into four pieces.

  “That’s not the same . . .” Wendy began, and trailed off, remembering the lithe, diminutive, and almost elegant hooded figure that had attacked John. That figure, too, had the broken eye, but wasn’t nearly as decrepit as this hunchbacked old woman.

  “It’s her, though,” said Peter, staring an old nemesis, his own surrogate mother, in the face. “This is the way she really looks. I’d know her anywhere.”

  Standing here before the death god, Wendy could feel the connection between this ancient woman, Neferat, and the Dark Lady, who was said to be the immortal goddess of death — the goddess who had appeared even in the first legend, hundreds or thousands of years before Neferat, the nursemaid. Because, after all, wasn’t Neferat just a body and the Dark Lady just a spirit? In her father’s books, Wendy had come across this word before — Neferat: hatred. She now knew why the walls of this inner sanctum, the home of the most powerful bonedust, the tip of the pyramid, should be filled with pictures of this woman. Wendy knew that Neferat wasn’t simply a woman who had lived thousands of years before. She was much more than that. She had something inside her that was different from all the rest. Neferat. Hate. That is one of many names for the darkness in the world. Beelzebub, Legion, and the god of death. Whatever form it takes, whatever cultural icon it inhabits — a horned man, a beautiful woman, a jackal-headed god — it is all the same. The same evil. The same age-old darkness by many names. And here they were, having just opened the door to its home. The sinister spirit that had a grip on Marlowe and refused to let go. The Dark Lady. She wasn’t just one person, but a dark trinity that included so many forms. Young and beautiful, old and ugly, plain and sickly.