Jagger Jones and the Mummy's Ankh

by Malayna Evans

  “I’m …” She paused. “Different. But okay, yeah. I … hey!” Her eyes darted to Smenkare. “Why isn’t Smell-kare locked in a coffin alive with those other snot-covered, dung pellets?”

  Jagger laughed, then felt guilty. His sister had sprung from the dead, miraculously. But Tatia’s little sisters were still back in Amarna, drained of all that life that filled them when he’d seen them, only a few days ago. And Mek’s life was fading.

  “Funny you ask about him.” Mut glared back at the prince. “I was just thinking we might need a do-over.”

  “We need to get to Mek.” Aria struggled to stand.

  Tatia sagged. She reached her hands down to pull Aria up.

  Jagger put his hand out. “She needs rest—”

  “No.” Aria jumped up and brushed the dust off her butt. “That last thing I need is rest. Mek needs us. Now, before it’s too late.”

  Tatia sniffled, staring at her toes.

  Jagger helped Aria balance, thrilled with the feel of her warm hand in his. She turned to him and sighed. Jagger took a deep breath, closing his eyes. His sister was safe. They had, in spite of the crazy odds, managed to stop the spell and save their own lives along with who knew how many ancestors. He pulled her in tight for a hug. They weren’t done yet, but their lives were no longer dangling by a thin thread.

  “When did Tatia show up?” she whispered. “And Mut looks like crap. I didn’t know that was a thing. Where’d she come from? What happened to Babi? Why is Smell-kare—?”

  “I thought you said no questions.” Jagger released her, smiling down at her.

  “No. I said you couldn’t ask questions.” She limped forward. “I died and came back to life. I get to do whatever I want.”

  “Uh, okay. How long is this royal princess routine going to last?”

  “Well, since we now know I really am a princess, it might last a while. You should probably get used to it.”

  Jagger chuckled. He felt guilty for the happiness that flowed through him. Tatia’s sisters were dead. And Mek was going to die soon, hopefully not before they got to her.

  Aria must have read his mind. “Now,” she said, leaning into him, her voice tired and tense. “Let’s get these soul stones things to Mek so she can have her happy Death Life. Even I’m ready for chocolate chip cookies and TV!”

  Tatia turned away, hands in tight fists at her side. Mut bit her lip, eyes scrunched in concern, as she watched the princess motion at the guards and walk into the night.

  FUR-EVER AND EVER?

  Jagger lay still, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of a sandstorm banging against the palace walls. The events of the previous day rumbled through his head, and he reveled in the fact that Aria was alive.

  No one back home would ever know what they’d done—no one would believe their crazy tale. But he and Aria would know. They’d know what she’d been through and that they’d helped save one side of their family and a few thousand ancestors they knew nothing about, not to mention their long-lost relatives, the royal family of Amarna.

  He shifted to his back, and his butt and thighs screamed in agony. Tatia had put them back on donkeys when they left the tomb, leading them past the temples and tombs of the West Bank to Malkata palace, four painful miles away. Aria had peppered him with questions until the moment they saw the massive, mud brick structure that had been the personal palace of Tatia’s grandparents, Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. It greeted them as dawn broke, and his sister fell silent.

  They were welcomed by servants who seemed genuinely happy to see Tatia and Mut. They led them to Tiye’s old quarters, a smaller palace within the massive walls that enclosed the entire complex. Some local bigwig put Smenkare and the General’s two kids in custody, while a doctor attended Babi.

  “Get up.” Aria jumped onto his bed and smacked him with a … what was that thing?

  He grabbed the roll of cloth away from her.

  “We need to go. What if Mek dies before we get back?”

  Jagger’s eyes flew open. “What time is it?”

  “Go time,” she huffed.

  “It’s still dark.” He groaned and rolled to the other side, away from his sister.

  “That’s just the stupid storm,” she whined. “It goes on and on. We’ve been here almost a day. Tatia says we’re stuck here until it passes. But what if it passes too late?”

  “A day?” Jagger shoved himself up, glancing around at the palace walls, painted in wildlife: flowers and reeds and animals and marshes were everywhere. The décor extended to the floor, which had a river painted on it—it reminded Jagger of the fish that swam across Tatia’s bedroom floor. The ceiling and windowsills were covered in vines, and flying birds adorned the upper walls. “Where are they?” He pulled a linen blanket around his shoulders.

  “Tatia checked in earlier. I can hear Mut next door, talking to Babi.”

  “How is he?” Jagger’s donkey was behind Babi’s last night, and he was sure the captain—bound to the donkey by one of Mut’s magic spells—would drop dead on the ride.

  “He’s talking back. So that’s good, right?”

  Jagger rubbed his sore thighs as he stood, and stumbled toward the bedroom door.

  Aria handed him some kind of cone-shaped bread slathered in honey. “It’s amazing. Tatia left it.” She flashed a quick grin.

  He gobbled it up and grabbed another from a platter on a small gold table. He limped barefoot down the hall, Aria at his side, following the mumble of voices. Wood beams, painted green, held the ceiling aloft. Colorful, geometric patterns covered the ceiling, and the smell of cedar filled the air.

  He paused at the first door. Three voices. He knocked, and Mut opened, waving them in with a tight grin.

  The bedroom was decorated like the other one, but it was larger and richer. Babi sat up in bed, bound with mummy wrappings like the ones that had trapped Smenkare and the General’s two kids last night, but whiter and cleaner looking. He must have been okay, because he smiled at Jagger and Aria.

  Tatia sat at the end of the bed, and Mut stood near the captain’s head. The two dog-headed guards stood on the other side of the bed. They looked even bigger here than they had in the tomb.

  “Congratulations are in order,” Babi drawled. “You saved the gemstones.” He nodded at the gold and alabaster table next to his bed where the canopic jar sat. Babi’s smile faltered—Jagger guessed he was thinking of the moment Herihor dropped those balls and they knew they’d failed the two youngest princesses.

  And then, later, Aria.

  At least that part had a happy ending.

  “Yay, good guys.” Aria clapped facetiously, then stopped, twining her fingers together. “But that party’s over. The gemstones won’t help Mek unless we get back quickly.”

  “That’s truer than you know, Aria Jones.” Tatia pursed her lips. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and she looked angry. “I’m afraid …” She dropped her head in her hands, sagging.

  “We were just talking about Mek.” Mut slipped down onto the bed, tossing a worried look at Tatia. Mut had obviously found time to bathe. She was stunning again, with a black wig studded with beads and amulets on her head and a transparent, gem-studded shift hanging to her knees. Sandal straps wound up her calves, and thick, golden bracelets circled her upper arms.

  “I need a bath,” Aria mumbled.

  Looking at her scraggly clothes and hair, Jagger smiled. There were more challenges in front of them, but his little sis was safe by his side, worrying over her personal fashion, dirty and messy, like a normal, eleven-year-old girl. “You really do. You stink.”

  Aria socked him playfully in the arm then flashed him a dimpled smile. It felt good. “Focus!”

  Tatia stood and began pacing. She was still dressed like a servant girl—a servant girl with perfect posture. Even in rags, she had the grace of a ballerina and the strength of a ninja warrior. “Travel is impossible while this storm rages. We can’t sail
the Nile in this, not today and probably not tomorrow.” She pivoted. “Who knows how long it will last? Even if we left right now, there’s no way get to Amarna in time. Maybe I shouldn’t have …” She whirled again, her feet slapping angrily against the marble floor.

  “How did you get here?” Jagger put voice to the question that had been in his head since Tatia’s sudden appearance as his neck swiveled back and forth, tracking her.

  She twirled, rubbing her arms like she was cold. “I learned my half-brother had nabbed you two from Wenher, and tossed you onto Babi’s ship. I guessed Smenkare was working with the General. I didn’t want to believe it.” She paused and leaned against a brightly colored pillar. Her voice was low and sad. “His hatred for our father is so intense it blinds him. It’s like a plague he carries in his heart. Father pays so much attention to us girls and treats the boys like they don’t matter. Of course, my sisters and I are the queen’s children. Father’s other wives are no match for Mother.”

  “Right,” Jagger mumbled. She had a point. Even the modern world had numerous images of Tatia and Mek, and their younger sisters, in museums across the globe. But the two boys, Smenkare and Tutankhamun, seemed like an afterthought. Sure Tut was famous in the modern world, but that was only because of his tomb. As magnificent as it was, scholars believe it was poor by pharaonic standards. Jagger once read an article that claimed the shift to a single, male god left a void, because Egyptians had worshipped goddesses for thousands of years. So Akhenaten tried to replace the old goddesses with his daughters. The thought reminded him again that two princesses were dead, and the rock in his gut hardened.

  “I didn’t want to leave Mek.” Tatia pushed herself away from the pillar, and paced again. “No one but me can mix the elixir, and the potion only lasts a few days. But I had to come. If I hadn’t, more people would …” She rubbed her brow. “If we don’t get home by morning, Mek will …” She looked down, blinking fast, then marched faster. “It’s impossible. What have I done?” She moaned.

  “One day?” A wave of nausea washed over him.

  “Why are we sitting here? We’ve got to go.” Aria stomped a foot. “But if it took three days to sail here …” She glanced at Jagger, biting her lip.

  Tatia wiped away a tear. “I made my choice. And my sister will pay for it.”

  “You did the right thing. If you’d have stayed, Mek would be dead already, along with the rest of your family.” Mut reached out a hand and set her fingers on Babi’s arm. “We can’t give up now.”

  “I thought you couldn’t leave the palace?” Jagger knew Mut was right—they couldn’t give up. But he had too many questions swirling around in his head to concentrate on solutions.

  “I cast the Iroo Horou and spelled my favorite handmaiden to look like me. I gave her instructions on how to give Mek the remaining elixir. Then, disguised as my own handmaiden, I walked out of the palace and jumped onto the fastest ship.”

  “You just … like, swapped places?” Aria tilted her head to the side. “Because that’s awesome. Can we do that—?”

  “Aria,” Jagger groaned. This wasn’t the time.

  Mut’s eyebrow crawled up, and she drawled, “No one in Egypt can cast the Iroo Horou like Meretaten, but how would that help?”

  “And we don’t change places, Aria Jones.” The princess paused and shook her head. “Just faces.”

  “Okay. But if you can do magic like that, why can’t you just magic up something to stop this storm?” Aria crumpled her nose. “We have to get home. By tomorrow morning! Failure is not an option. You have to believe we can do this.”

  Tatia dropped her head in her hands. “I wish I could.”

  “Wind is my natural magic,” Mut said, voice flat. “And even I can’t do anything with a storm like this. Or drive a ship fast enough to get to Amarna in one day, even if it weren’t for the storm.”

  “Did you know about Herihor when you entered the tomb?” Jagger needed to clear up some of the questions cluttering his mind so he could think straight.

  Tatia looked up, eyes flaming like they might spit fire. “I did not, Jagger Jones. I had no idea until I saw him there with the General. I believed we could trust him. He and I have been allies my entire life. I can’t understand why he did what he did. Sometimes power corrupts, and a man like him losing power he’s held for so long …” Her voice trailed off, and she stared at a tree, painted on the far wall. “Father’s efforts to rid our land of the old gods has had consequences he could never have foreseen. And now my baby sisters are gone. And Mek …”

  The death of the two girls sat heavy on the room. The threat to Mek even heavier.

  One day. Jagger felt sick. But Mut and his sister were right: they couldn’t give up now.

  “How long are Hemet and Mutef going to stay like that?” Aria interrupted the moment of silence.

  Jagger turned his head to one side, then the other. Where were Mut’s guards anyway?

  Aria stared up at the guard dogs.

  “Wait. You mean they are Hemet and Mutef?” Jagger asked. He looked at them, aghast. “But we saw them in the tomb in our own time. How could …”

  Tatia narrowed her eyes, ignoring Jagger as she stared intently at Aria. “How do you know they are Hemet and Mutef?”

  “I can feel them.” Aria shrugged.

  Tatia folded her arms. “The same way you felt Herihor and the General in the tomb,” she mused. “Feel them how?”

  “Not sure.” Aria shook her head. “One second I was, well, dead, I think. Then I woke up, and I could sense you and Mut near me, and Hemet and Mutef, and Smell-kare. And Brainy, of course. I could feel those two pustules of vomit, the General and Herihor, back in the tomb. When I looked at Hemet and Mutef, they looked like that.” Aria nodded at one of the statue dogs. “I assumed they’d be normal by now. How long will they stay that way?”

  Tatia’s eyebrows crawled up as Aria spoke.

  Mut tilted her head to the side like a curious puppy. “Perhaps the Seshep ny Netjer gifted her some of the amulet’s powers when it joined with her.”

  Tatia nodded, examining Aria. “Did you see the gemstones when you were in the tomb, Aria Jones?”

  Aria nodded. “Yeah, I saw them.”

  The princess stared into space as if she was doing calculus in her head.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Aria added. “How long are Hemet and Mutef going to be robot dog things?”

  Jagger touched the amulet. “I feel them too.”

  “Yeah.” Aria scoffed. “Way to catch up.”

  Tatia turned back to Jagger and Aria, lips tight, but she didn’t respond.

  Mut grinned sadly at the two guards, large and silent next to Babi’s bed. “They’ll stay that way so they can guard Mek, if everything goes according to the plan.”

  “Uh,” Jagger stammered. “You mean Mutef and Hemet were the guards from our time? They’d been that way for thousands of years?”

  Tears glittered on Mut’s eyelashes, but she blinked them away.

  “You turned them into giant, robot dogs … forever?” Aria hunched up.

  Mut nodded as the transformed men stood silent, watching them.

  “Forever, forever?” Aria seemed as shocked as Jagger felt.

  “For as long as they’re useful in this form,” Mut confirmed.

  “Useful?” Aria glanced at Jagger. “Did she just say useful?” She turned back to Mut. “You don’t own them. Their lives aren’t yours to just throw away.” She looked at Jagger again. “Are they?”

  He shook his head. For all he knew, these new friends of his were a bunch of slavers—he had no idea if the many people who worked to support the royal family were well-paid executives or lowly slaves.

  “Stand down.” Babi held up a hand, one side of his lips curved up good-naturedly. “Believe me, no one tells Hemet or Mutef what to do. They are their own men.”

  “I’d never have asked this of them.”
Mut reached out a hand and placed it on the black and gold guard nearest her. “I’d have stopped them if I could have. But as you say, they’re not my personal property. They’ve been my guards, my companions, and my friends for my entire adult life and most of my childhood. It was Hemet who held my hand when my side lock of youth was shaved off. It was Mutef who rubbed my back as I cried myself to sleep when my first love left me for another. I’ll miss them more than I can say. But they chose this fate. They offered themselves to Meretaten when she showed up, looking for a way to tunnel into the tomb. I honor their choice.”

  “How?” Jagger studied the guards, both repelled and fascinated. “How did you do it?”

  Tatia squinted like she was surprised by the question. “I’m a magician, Jagger Jones. A very good one. I thought I’d explained that already.”

  “Can you make anything? I mean, can you create whatever you want?” Jagger leaned forward. His brain was humming.

  Tatia took a breath, then started explaining, like a teacher talking to a class. “Egyptian magic works in various ways, but it has limits. All magicians have a natural ability.”

  “Except for Meretaten,” Mut interrupted. “She has several natural abilities.”

  “And some of us pick up new skills easily, while others can’t learn anything they aren’t naturally gifted with,” the princess continued as if Mut hadn’t spoken.

  “Also, except for Meretaten. She can learn anything. Seriously, nothing stumps her!”

  “But in general,” Tatia said, crossing her arms. “We can’t just create whatever we want from scratch. But we can transform things. We can increase the characteristics something already has, making something more of what it already is.”

  “Like I can transform a wax figure of a snake into a real snake,” Mut explained.

  “Magic of that type is short lived.” Tatia began pacing again. “Wax is a blank slate. It has no magical properties, so we can create anything from it, but it’s not strong enough to last long because it has no characteristics to enhance.” Pivot. “It’s a useful but fleeting magic, allowing us to create any reasonable form that exists in the world, but its power is limited and expires quickly.” She paused, then resumed her march. “The magic I performed on Hemet and Mutef is bigger, stronger, and, well, in this case, exceptionally long-lasting. That’s because they already are proud guardians. I simply enhanced their natural attributes. This kind of magic is much more complicated. I dare say, I’m the only magician in Egypt who could have done it.”