Another Pan

by Daniel Nayeri

  Peter dreamed of himself . . . without the bonedust, with his patchy white hair and sagging arms, with his papery skin and bushy eyebrows. He saw himself as he could be, as he would be, if he were to fail. And then, he saw them — the guardians. He touched the scars from the two he had faced. During the day, these scars were his trophies. But at night, they frightened him. How could he overcome three more?

  Peter breathed hard. He tried to steady himself. Something’s gone wrong. It was a strange feeling, like a twin might have when the other dies. Had the bonedust fallen into other hands? Give up, the dark seemed to say, give up and avoid tumbling into eternal night.

  “Shhh, Peter, someone will see us here,” said Wendy, brushing Peter’s hand away from her cheek and looking around to make sure none of Connor’s friends was nearby. What am I doing? she thought. Over the past few days, she just couldn’t think about Connor anymore. Everything had changed for Wendy since Peter saved John’s life. And this morning, during her free hour, something compelled her to go up to the attic, to stop outside the closed door of the nurse’s office, to linger for just a moment . . . long enough to hear voices — staff members gossiping about a scandal. It took only a few seconds of listening before she realized they were talking about her own parents.

  “It’s right that she left,” she heard a familiar voice, a deep reverberating voice, say to her nursing office colleague. “Because it’s only human instinct to chase after personal happiness. Deep passion is more important than commitment . . . less dull.”

  “Yes,” said a second voice, “but leaving your family like that . . . it has consequences.”

  “Maybe,” said the first, familiar voice, “but ripples are what make life interesting.”

  And so, for a moment, Wendy had felt validated. Maybe this voice was right, and her mother (as much of an abandoning wench as she was) had chased the right instinct. In that instant, standing behind a closed door, Wendy thought she was close to fulfilling her own greatest longing. Maybe Peter was it for her. She wasn’t sure. . . . Lately, she just felt confused every time she set foot into the school.

  “What’s the matter? Scared of being seen with me?” Peter was wearing that all-knowing smirk again. Having been banished from Wendy’s face, his hand made a subtle turn around her neck and traveled toward her ponytail. He curled the strawberry-blond coil around his index finger and leaned a little closer. Wendy shivered and looked away.

  She remembered the last thing she’d heard outside the nurse’s office, before she walked away. “Have you seen the new RAs?” said the nurse. “What a cute couple.” She had been thinking about that last comment all day . . . obsessing over it . . . becoming increasingly paranoid, so that she cared about nothing other than finding out if it was true.

  Now Wendy and Peter stood alone on the Marlowe grounds, right outside Professor Darling’s empty classroom. In a few minutes, the class would fill with students (including Wendy and John) who had been waiting for days to hear the eccentric professor tell the third legend. Wendy forced herself to focus on the present.

  “You can hear everything if you stand out here,” she told Peter. “I’ll make sure the window’s open. But don’t you know the legends already?”

  “Maybe I do,” said Peter, brushing the end of Wendy’s ponytail against her neck. He tilted his head with interest, as if the rising hairs at the nape of Wendy’s neck were a very interesting phenomenon. “Maybe I just like stories.”

  “So why not go in?” said Wendy. “You work here.”

  Peter leaned in closer. “Nah,” he said, “not sure your dad would like me crashing.”

  “Something’s going on with John,” said Wendy, desperate to say something, anything, to prove that she could talk casually. “He’s been acting weird.”

  “He’s not stupid enough to try to go in the labyrinth alone, is he?” Peter asked.

  “No,” Wendy mumbled. Then she looked around and switched to a whisper. “When are we going back to find the second mummy for the bonedust? The one you stashed . . .”

  “As soon as you find a desert wasteland in this country club you call a school, let me know,” said Peter bitterly. He pulled his hand from her hair. The grin left his face.

  Wendy cringed. She wished she could just learn to shut up, like the older girls who seemed to know exactly what to say, and not to say, to make scenes like this last long past the tardy bell. She searched for another subject. Actually, the question she really wanted to ask Peter didn’t have anything to do with deserts or bonedust. She wanted to know what was going on with them. Was he ever going to ask her out? Or try to kiss her again? Or get rid of Tina? Were he and Tina really a couple, like the nurse said? None of this was clear. Peter spent just as much time pressed up against walls with Tina as ever. And with Tina, he didn’t play these cutesy ponytail games. Then again, it wasn’t against Marlowe rules for him to be dating Tina. When Peter started mindlessly playing with the button on Wendy’s jacket collar, her every instinct screamed for clarification. But she knew enough about boys not to bring it up. Besides, wasn’t this newfound sense of expectation and excitement a good thing? When Connor played with her hair or touched her hand, she felt almost nothing. So she turned back to the problem of bonedust. “OK,” she breathed out. “So let’s try something. How about the recycling room? That’s a wasteland, technically.”

  “You can’t be that half-assed about it, Wendy,” said Peter in an exasperated tone. Wendy winced again, but he didn’t notice. “You can’t just go in a bunch of places and hope for the best. Every time you go in there, you could die. When you’re in, she knows. She may not attack, but she’s watching. Every time you open a gate, you give her another chance to pour more evil into the overworld. That’s the only reason she doesn’t kill you the second you’re inside. Who knows? She could be waiting till I’ve reached the last of the bonedust to strike me dead. It’s been pretty good for her so far; I’ve opened the door for her to kill plenty of . . .” Peter trailed off. Wendy felt flushed with a mix of exhilaration and fear. She stepped away from him. Peter changed tack. “And don’t even think about searching from the inside. The maze is ridiculously elaborate.”

  “So we figure it out,” offered Wendy tentatively.

  “Right,” said Peter, stabbing Wendy with his impatient tone. “It’s just that easy deciphering an evil maze. There are so many places you could wander into, so many dangers, that chances are if you try to cross it from the inside, you’ll get so lost that you’ll never see one spot twice.” He dropped his head, and Wendy could see the dark curls looping on the top of his head. She wanted to touch them, but then he looked up again. “I didn’t want to leave it,” he said, his eyes filling with regret. “I knew how hard it would be to find it again. But I had no choice.”

  “How’d you carry around a whole mummy, anyway?” asked Wendy.

  “Well,” said Peter as he played with the crest on his RA shirt, “it wasn’t exactly a whole mummy. The kid was so excited, I may have embellished a little.”

  Wendy laughed. “How much was left?”

  “A forearm,” said Peter, tapping a spot between his wrist and elbow.

  Peter leaned back against the brick exterior of Marlowe and sighed. “We just have to figure out the right spots in the overworld. We have to use clues from the legends to figure out what sort of place each bone could be and then find the right place in Marlowe — sort of like matching pictures with negatives. That way, we spend as little time in the underworld as possible.” His voice sounded once again determined, but he glanced at Wendy with weary eyes. “Oh yeah, and after going through all that, we get the pleasure of dealing with the guardians. . . .”

  “OK, shut up now,” said Simon, waving the tips of his fingers toward the classroom as if he were shooing them away. When the pre-class chatter didn’t stop at his first bidding, he shouted, “I said: Shut up!”

  The class went silent. Simon dismissively flipped through Professor Darling’s lesson plan noteboo
k. “All right, you little criminals, what’s on the agenda for today?”

  “You’re supposed to tell us the third legend,” Marla said from the back of the room. A sleepy boy sitting to her right, a dark-haired, sloe-eyed European with a half-tucked-in shirt and long wisps of dramatically straight hair cutting across his face snickered and tapped the guy in front. Marla blanched. “Whatever,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

  Simon brought his hands to his temple in an exaggerated move to show his irritation. “I did not spend six full months at Oxford to teach little kids bedtime stories.”

  “Simon,” said Wendy, eyeing the lower left corner of the open window, where she knew Peter was hiding, “either tell the story you’re supposed to tell or let us out early. We’re not sticking around to do busywork just because you’re a crap sub.”

  “First of all,” said Simon, “when we’re in class, it’s Mr. Grin. Second of all, I didn’t get my master’s degree to sub your little remedial story time.”

  “And yet, here we are,” said Wendy under her breath.

  “Second of all,” said Simon, “the only reason I’m here is because Darling is moving the exhibit today, and I’m not the sort for manual labor.”

  Simon looked at Wendy sidelong. Then he glanced at John, who was sitting in the front row, staring admiringly at him. He gave John an indulgent smile, a long, lipless smile like that of a crocodile. “Before we begin, some plaudits are in order. Now that our dear old Professor Darling is moving the exhibit to Barrie Auditorium for all to see, we should give a big round of thanks to those responsible for putting it together.”

  John sat up in his seat, though Wendy was, as always, suspicious.

  “John Darling,” said Simon, extending his hand benevolently toward John, “under my supervision, of course, was instrumental in restoring the artifacts to an exhibition-worthy state. Good job, John. Keep up the hard work.”

  John nodded happily. He caught Wendy’s disapproving glare and his face went sour.

  Simon turned his sneering gaze back to Wendy. He watched her, as if daring her to read his thoughts. Was he gloating over his petty little revenge? He looked downright gleeful, as if he had caught her elbow deep in the biggest canopic cookie jar in ancient Egypt. Did he suspect something? There was no way of knowing, because by now Wendy was convinced that whatever he found on her, Simon would never tell her dad. He had his own little agenda. He wanted to know what they were up to — what juicy, career-boosting secrets they had discovered. At least he was too much of a witless peon to ever figure out about the book. She looked away, toward the window where Peter was hiding. Simon followed her gaze, refusing to let her escape his silent challenge. “There are a lot of very interesting pieces in that exhibit. Don’t you think, Wendy?”

  Wendy crossed her arms across her chest. OK, maybe he wasn’t completely brainless. “I wouldn’t know,” she said, “since apparently I didn’t work on it.”

  “Not very hard, anyway.” Simon turned a few more pages in Professor Darling’s notebook. He pulled out a stack of notebook paper, stapled together and crinkled with use. Simon shrugged. He sat back in his seat and held the paper in front of him. “I guess if Darling’s busy setting up my exhibit, I could humor him and read his little story.”

  “What’s the big injustice in this one?” said Marla, trying to act cool. “What’s the thing the guy loses?”

  Simon sighed loudly. “This story is about a girl,” he said, locking eyes with Wendy, “and about knowing your place.” He reached into his pocket and took out a long, gray, dusty thing. An ancient piece of bone shattered at both ends. He scratched his head with it and gave John another conspiratorial smile. None of the other kids paid any attention. It was just an old stick to them. But Wendy felt sick to her stomach. She could practically feel Peter’s rage as he crouched outside. “A girl should know her place,” said Simon. “Because if she doesn’t, someone she trusts might just betray her.”

  THE THIRD LEGEND

  An identity is a precious thing. If a person is robbed of her place in this world, of her one chance to shape the world in her own unique way, if her fingerprints are obliterated as though she never touched the earth, a bitterness builds inside.

  So goes the story of one family with a curse on its line, of Elan’s dark legacy, full of the cruelest injustices. The house that cannot die. Their stolen lives linger on, still flowing in their bones. Life has been mummified inside them, forming an ever-living bonedust — a new kind of immortality.

  Harere was born two hundred years after Garosh. Descended from another of Jobey’s sons, she was raised the beloved daughter of an Egyptian merchant. Throughout her village, Harere was known for being the most gentle, the most faithful, and during her youth she had many offers of marriage. Her father turned down each suitor, none of whom was worthy of his younger daughter. But Harere had a lover named Seth.

  Harere’s older sister, Nailah, on the other hand, was given to her first suitor, a brutal rival merchant whose only thoughts were of swelling his coffers and fathering many sons.

  Soon, the family became aware that Nailah was barren. Many months passed without a pregnancy, and she was universally considered a failure in the village community. After that, Nailah’s nights grew dark and she was often seen at the family table with her face completely covered, the blue skin around her eyes the only sign of her husband’s cruel hand. Harere, who had a good and noble heart, suffered along with her sister. She went to her late one night when Nailah’s husband was away, and she offered to help, whatever the cost to herself.

  The sisters concocted a plan. Harere would take Nailah’s place for two years, time enough to bear two healthy children. The two women were similar in size and shape. They had the same dark hair, the same sun-browned skin. Harere would cover her face at first, claiming modesty. Nailah’s husband would never notice.

  The sisters put this plan into motion immediately, giving Harere only enough time to say farewell to her lover. One winter morning, draped in her sister’s rich clothes, she kissed Seth good-bye and promised to return and to marry him after two years, if he would only wait. She did not tell him of her secret errand but bade him to trust her and be patient.

  Nailah’s husband never questioned Harere’s identity, and she became pregnant right away. The family celebrated Nailah’s good fortune and was none the wiser, since both sisters covered their faces in public.

  Halfway through Harere’s first pregnancy, their father grew suspicious of Nailah in her role as Harere. She was much less patient, her manner much more reserved, than the Harere he knew. Nailah grew alarmed as her father began to suspect her identity. So, as a precaution, the two sisters decided that the false Harere should run away. She should hide in the next village until the two years were over and the sisters could switch back to their rightful places. Then Harere, who would surely be presumed dead, could marry her lover, Seth. Nailah would return to her own house and raise Harere’s children as her own.

  And so Nailah packed her bags and set off in the night, taking Harere’s precious identity with her. For the remainder of the two years, she lived alone and free, working as a midwife, a nurse, even a cook, in the houses of the neighboring villagers. Now independent, she was happy for the first time since her marriage. Back in the merchant’s house, Harere waited. She bore a son and soon became pregnant again.

  While Harere, bloated and pining, sat counting the days until the end of her torment, her lover, Seth, grew anxious. He began to loiter around her father’s house, listening, trying to find out where Harere had gone. All he found out was that she had run away.

  One day, as he was asking about Harere in the market, a woman overheard him. “I know someone named Harere,” she said. “She’s a midwife in the next village.”

  When he arrived in the next village, Seth found a veiled Nailah in Harere’s clothing. Thinking he had found his love, he begged her to end her self-imposed exile.

  From behind her veil, Nailah watc
hed her sister’s lover beg at her feet. She was torn by jealousy, and then by hope, and then by desperate desire. And so Nailah let him believe that she was Harere. She promised to love him if he would only understand that she wished to remain veiled for a time, to mourn her separation from her family. Seth agreed.

  In the same way that Harere had convinced the merchant that she was her older sister, Nailah convinced Seth that she was Harere. Seth believed that he had found Harere, and, being lonely and eager for marriage, he gave himself to Nailah, heart and soul. They were married publicly in the village square.

  When the two years were over and Nailah did not come back, Harere began to worry. Had something happened to her sister? Nailah, too, now blissfully joined with Seth, began to fret. She wanted children. She was still unable to have her own. But weren’t the children in the merchant’s house rightly hers? Was she not the mistress of that house and therefore the children’s rightful mother? She knew that Harere had two sons. She longed to have them for herself.

  For three years, Nailah brooded.

  For three years, Harere waited, dejected and alone, except for her sons, whom she loved.

  One night, unable to wait any longer, Nailah crept back into her home village. She stole into her sister’s house under cover of night and took the children from their beds. She told Seth that she had come upon the children abandoned by the roadside.

  In the morning, when Harere discovered her loss, she fell to the floor in fits of tears. Unable to account for the loss of the children, she became raving mad. Soon, everyone in the village believed that she had murdered her own children. The villagers drove her away, all the way to the edge of the Nile. There, while they stood watching, their accusing eyes pushing her forward, Harere decided that she had no reason to live. Her children were gone. Her identity was lost under the mask of Nailah. She threw herself in the Nile and drowned with a bitter heart.