Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  Aidan felt himself drop back into his body, his two conflicting sides melding into one shared form, and he reopened his eyes. The dark blankness had left them, and everything that was Aidan Carnegie shone in them once more.

  He felt exhausted. It had been a long time since he’d exerted so much of his energy. He staggered backward and put out his hand to catch the wall before he could fall. The boxes vanished and his audience stood where they were. He was vaguely aware they were staring at him - and they looked afraid.

  Only one thing could have drawn their attention from him in that moment, and that was Itzy’s return to the room. She tumbled back into visibility, a startled look on her face.

  Aidan was seized by renewed energy. He flew across the room to her, but halted just before he reached her, startled by the presence of those same black lines sparking through the air. He blinked and they went away. He wondered if anyone else had seen them.

  Then he took that final step forward and put his hands to Itzy’s face, touching it all over, checking she was real. The second their skin connected, a sense of peace fell over him, like night settling over an endless field.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she asked.

  Aidan smiled for the first time all day. How had he ever thought he could keep away from her? How had he imagined even for one moment that he might be able to keep his feelings for her under control? Everything about her pulled him apart.

  He caught her hand in both of his own. Their eyes locked, speaking volumes to each other without saying the words, and he knew - he just knew - there was no way he would ever be able to slow things down between them.

  ‘How can ye ask me that?’ he laughed. ‘Are you alright?’

  Itzy smiled shyly, brushing her hair behind her ear, and said, ‘I am now.’

  The room spun around him. It felt like Oz and Seth were a mile away from them - like he and Itzy had been lifted out of the room and now hovered together in a mist. His need for her was dizzying.

  The truth was that Aidan hadn’t been afraid of the museum coming to life, or the sword flying at them. But he was afraid of whatever it was Itzy was doing to him, without her even being aware of it.

  All he wanted was to kiss her. It didn’t matter that they had an audience, or that he got the distinct impression that at least one of them wouldn’t want to see that kind of museum display. He had to have her.

  He was struck with the unsettling realisation that the only other time he’d ever felt that sort of compulsion had been the night he’d stolen his father’s car. The night the voice had spoken to him, telling him all he sought lay south.

  London, it had finally told him.

  And here she was - everything he’d been searching for, whether he’d realised it or not. He wondered if maybe the Wisdom was love.

  Their attention was drawn by the sound of the room pulling itself together again. Now it was Seth’s turn to be in the spotlight. He waved his hands as if conducting an orchestra, sweeping along the lines that branched across the ceiling, and now the walls. The cracks glued themselves back together before vanishing altogether. When the building was finally healed, it sighed as if alive and thankful for Seth’s magical salve. The glass cases were reinstated and, after a while, the exhibit looked more or less like it had before they arrived.

  Then Seth turned to Oz and said, ‘You’re living up to your name today, mate. You look like death.’

  Oz rolled his eyes. ‘Osiris wasn’t Death. He was the king of the underworld. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Seth placed his hands on his friend’s cheeks. His eyes closed and the air grew still. When Seth finally stepped away from Oz, all traces of the deadly trees had vanished.

  ‘Thanks,’ Oz said in his typically understated way. ‘Just one problem. How do we replace all those priceless artefacts?’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ said Seth. ‘Well, I can replicate them to the best of my memory, but they won’t exactly be the same.’

  Itzy cleared her throat and offered, ‘I could maybe -’

  ‘No!’ the other three cried at once, before exchanging a look and grinning at each other.

  ‘Cheers,’ Seth now said. Aidan turned in surprise, realising he was talking to him. ‘For saving us,’ Seth clarified. He angled his head in the direction of the silver puddle, which he now ‘erased’ with a swipe of his hand.

  Aidan shrugged. He’d never been very good with these sorts of scenes and he wasn’t sure what to say. It was one of the many things that gave people the wrong impression of him.

  ‘And you,’ he returned. ‘Ya saved Itzy.’

  Seth shrugged, too. Obviously he was just as bad at this.

  ‘Where’d ye go, anyway?’ Aidan asked Itzy.

  The question seemed to overwhelm her, but she managed to say, ‘I’m not sure. It was strange. It was like I was standing in a sort of vestibule. All around me were doorways and they all led to different places. And through one of them, I could see everything that was happening here. Just like looking through the doorway Seth made to get us into the museum.’ She gestured in his direction, and the others turned their attention on him.

  Seth’s brow rose in alarm. ‘I…I didn’t mean to send you anywhere like that,’ he stammered. ‘I was picturing your room. Um…your wardrobe, actually, because of something that struck me earlier….’ He shifted in discomfort. ‘I probably just wasn’t thinking straight and made a mistake.’

  Aidan couldn’t help noticing how unconvinced Seth sounded by his own explanation. Now more than ever, he wanted - no, needed - to know if the others had seen those strange black lines. He opened his mouth to speak -

  but he was stopped by the sound of an ageless voice.

  ‘Children!’ it said with disgust. ‘I was woken by children!’

  They all turned in the direction of the voice -

  in the direction of the mummy, which had now cast aside the lid of its sarcophagus and sat up.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was rotted and black, its bandages ragged and torn. It couldn’t move its arms, for being bound. But its lips moved behind the once-white strips around its mouth. A putrid smell filled the room.

  ‘Oz,’ Itzy whispered to her brother, though her eyes never left the mummy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he choked out. ‘I didn’t even think I could do it. I mean, I’ve raised animals before, but that’s different, you know? They never -’

  Talked. This was off the scale. It was like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe Story. Oz had no idea what to do with this extension of his powers. They could all see that.

  Itzy couldn’t help noticing the way Aidan’s head snapped in the mummy’s direction. He had been all hers, until that voice had spoken. Now Aidan stared at the mummy as if entranced by it. He drifted close to the case, close enough for her to feel his breath beside her as his chest heaved in and out with exhilaration. He looked like he was sleep-walking. She touched his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘The Ancients,’ he breathed. ‘We can actually speak to one of the Ancients.’ It was hard to tell whether he was excited or terrified.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ Seth reminded them all, his face betraying the nerves that lay beneath.

  ‘Aye,’ Aidan acknowledged in a shocked whisper. ‘We’re probably all in tremendous trouble. But still….’ Again, there was fear in his voice. But equally, he reminded Itzy of when he’d first spoken to her of his love of driving.

  ‘You’re smarter than you look,’ the mummy addressed him. Aidan blinked in surprise, and the mummy continued. ‘He speaks truth: you’re all in great trouble.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Seth said, some of his old cool returning to him as he wiped his hand over his head and healed the bleeding wound. ‘I need to understand this. How exactly are we all speaking the same language here? Shouldn’t you speak ancient Egyptian?’

  Even behind the bandages, the mum
my managed to glare at him like it was contemplating burning him in the desert sun. Then it ran its blind gaze over each one of them, studying them.

  ‘So you are what became of us,’ the mummy finally pronounced.

  ‘The Descendants,’ Aidan breathed.

  The mummy grunted. It was incredible how much expression it had, without having any face. ‘No wonder our fathers abandoned us,’ it decided, ‘if you were the future.’

  It looked particularly closely at Itzy. She didn’t like the way it examined her like she was a cadaver lying on a pathology table, waiting for her own autopsy.

  ‘The Wisdom,’ said Aidan, his voice urgent. ‘Ya must know where it is.’

  The mummy’s head jerked in his direction. ‘The Wisdom!’ It laughed raucously. ‘You think you have a right to the Wisdom?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Aidan admitted, ‘but I want it, all the same.’

  The mummy seemed to regard him. ‘At least you’re honest,’ it finally decided. ‘But then….’ It looked more closely at him. ‘I suppose you can’t help but want it, can you?’

  Aidan blinked in response, trying to puzzle out the meaning.

  ‘It’s on Earth,’ Itzy blurted, choosing to ignore the mummy’s cryptic words. ‘Isn’t it?’

  The mummy returned its faceless stare to her, but she held her own in front of it. ‘Clever,’ it noted. ‘Yes. It’s on Earth.’

  Aidan’s eyes flew to her in surprise.

  She focused on the dead thing before them. ‘Someone holds it. A child,’ she quoted her father’s words. ‘But he doesn’t know he has it.’

  ‘Itzy,’ she heard her brother’s warning voice.

  The mummy seemed amused by her. ‘You sound like you think you know who this child is,’ it said.

  She swallowed. This was it. This was the moment when they would learn the truth. Aidan held the Wisdom all along. He had to. Who else could it be?

  Oz took in the text on the placard at the base of the mummy’s case and said, ‘You’re a priest, right? Hornedjitef, is it?’

  The mummy snorted, but all it said was, ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘So you must know a lot about this,’ Oz remarked. ‘Isn’t the Wisdom something to do with God?’

  Again, the mummy made a noise. ‘Something to do with God,’ it mocked him. ‘Your understanding of the Wisdom is about as accurate as your pronunciation of my name.’

  Oz wore his bemusement on his face.

  ‘When my people return,’ the mummy addressed the four of them, ‘you’ll all regret your curiosity. They didn’t leave the Wisdom; they lost it. And when they discover its whereabouts, they will do anything – anything - to reclaim it. Once they have the kind of power the possessor of the Wisdom wields, they will be able to accomplish all they ever dreamed of.

  ‘They will destroy your kind - the disposable half-breeds they always despised. They will flush out the humans -’ it spat out the word like bad-tasting medicine ‘- and purify the bloodlines. They will rule the Earth just as they once did - and there will be nothing you can do to stop it.’

  Then it turned its horrible eyeless gaze on Aidan, its bandaged body leaning toward him as if to impart a terrible secret. ‘And you,’ it said, ‘will bring them here.’

  Aidan’s usually composed face was overcome with fear, the like of which Itzy had only seen once before, the night she’d made him kiss her. But that had been a different sort of fear. This was the fear of a child.

  A child holds it, she thought.

  ‘I won’t,’ Aidan whispered to the mummy.

  ‘You already have,’ the mummy hissed in response. Then it laughed and said the words Itzy had dreamed so many times:

  ‘They’re coming for you! They’re coming for you all!’

  All at once, it dropped to the floor of its sarcophagus, all traces of life extinguished.

  Aidan, Seth and Itzy turned to Oz, who shrugged. ‘I didn’t like it,’ he explained.

  Aidan turned on him sharply. ‘D’ye realise what we had there? We could’ve asked it about the afterlife. It held all the answers to every question we’ve ever asked.’

  ‘It was an arse,’ Oz said simply.

  Aidan doubled backward, visibly deflated, and looked at the lifeless mummy.

  After a lengthy silence, Seth said, ‘No really. How could we understand what it was saying to us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Oz answered him wearily. ‘Maybe it’s because of me. I raised him so I controlled him, and that means he’s taken a Rosetta Stone course in English.’

  Seth rolled his eyes at this, and then looked away, his stare locking on Itzy. A moment passed between them, in which Itzy had the mad wish that she could love him. He was special in so many ways, and all she wanted was for him to be happy.

  Seth pulled his gaze away from her and turned back to Oz, who was now busying himself with cleaning out his nails, by the doorway. ‘Come on, then,’ Seth said. ‘Let’s be going.’

  Oz glanced at his sister, clearly relieved to be escaping the tension that was quickly filling the room. ‘You alright if we leave?’ he asked.

  Aidan answered for her. ‘She’ll be grand,’ he said. ‘I’ll have her ring ye when she gets in.’ It was a relief to hear some of the old colour return to his voice.

  Oz pointed at Aidan and said, ‘You’d better.’

  Then he nudged Seth and the two of them left, their footsteps echoing through the museum.