Strange and Ever After

by Dennard, Susan

  This time we were the ones in charge. As long as we screwed our courage to the sticking place, we could not fail.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  To reach Saqqara, we followed the Nile six miles south, then moved east past cornfields and date groves. We must have drifted over a thousand palm trees, our shadow covering their latticework of shade before we finally reached a barren realm of yellow rocks and sand.

  And it was a world of pyramids. One after another they rose up, with edges so old as to be curved now. The dunes around them were littered with shards and bricks—as if the entire necropolis had been smashed with a hammer and the pieces left to scatter in the wind.

  Joseph, Daniel, and I stayed silent as we floated beneath the late-morning sun, the shifting of levers and the creaking steering wheel the only sounds as we focused on the ruins below and the pyramids passing by.

  Joseph broke the quiet first. “That mound at the very northwestern corner—beside the column.”

  We all squinted into the distance. On the far edge of the ruins was a mound rising up from a dune that I never would have thought man-made if not for the eroded column thrusting up beside it.

  Except it wasn’t a column. As we approached, I realized it was an obelisk, like the one at Heliopolis, and it burned like a candle flame beneath the sun. And the mound behind it was a pyramid, weathered almost to dust.

  Joseph took the wheel, while Daniel went to the cargo hold to prepare us for mooring. Several minutes later, the ladder clacked down, and Daniel began anchoring us on a series of stones on the north side of the pyramid. The stones almost seemed to extend in a straight line, as if they’d once been a street, but now all they led to was a great, sloping dune.

  I checked my falcon. It had been flying for hours now, yet it still diligently followed Marcus. If we were lucky, the necromancer would go all the way to the Valley of the Kings, wait some time, and then head north. We needed all the time we could get. . . .

  But it was best never to rely on luck.

  While Joseph slept, I sat with Jie in her cabin and fought to keep my eyes open. She looked so peaceful, and the remains of Oliver’s magic gave her face an unearthly glow.

  Eventually Daniel relieved me, and I staggered to my bunk to enjoy a dreamless sleep of my own. When I awoke it was sunset, and after feasting on apples and hard bread, I wandered into the cargo hold. The hatch was open, and a rope swung through it. Daniel had set up a simple pulley system to lower his crates of equipment onto the orange earth below. He was tying off knots around several small boxes when I came in.

  He smiled at me. “Where’s your falcon?”

  “South. Always south.”

  “Then good. Always good.” He moved to the hatch and shouted, “These are the last ones, Joseph!” Then he shoved the crates through the hatch, the pulley’s wheel squeaked, and the box lowered from sight.

  “What are you doing?” I moved to the open hatch and waved down to Joseph. His hands full, he only nodded back.

  “All these dunes around here will work in our favor.” Daniel wiped at sweat on his brow. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll lay out copper wires—rig up something like our Dead alarm in Philadelphia. But these lines will trigger pulse bombs instead of a telegraph.”

  My breath caught. “And then when a mummy crosses, the spiritual energy will detonate a bomb. How very clever, Daniel.”

  He grinned, flushing.

  “So what can I do?” a soft voice asked.

  My head whipped to the door—to where Jie stood, her hands in her pockets.

  She looked . . . different. There was a bright challenge in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in days.

  “You’re awake!” I cried, stumbling toward here. “How do you feel? You look all healed, but—” I hesitated. “Sorry. You’re probably tired and don’t want—”

  “Oh, shut pan.” She punched me lightly in the shoulder. “I feel great, yeah? Never—” Her next words were lost in the bear hug Daniel flung around her shoulders.

  “I thought I’d killed you, Jie. I’m so sorry.”

  She made an uncomfortable grunt and pulled free. “Where’s Joseph?”

  “Here,” he answered, rising up through the hatch. He gave her a small smile and moved slowly toward her. “I am . . . glad you are well. Immensely glad. Have you had a fresh incision to resist the compulsion spell?” He winced as he asked, and when she shook her head no, his wince only deepened.

  “I know how to use the scarificator,” Daniel said gruffly, moving toward Allison’s cabin.

  Jie’s face fell at the prospect of more bloodletting, but she didn’t argue when Daniel returned. And as he had her sit on one of the equipment crates in the cargo hold, she explained what had happened while we were inside the Great Pyramid.

  “You had been gone awhile,” Jie began. “I was getting nervous, so once it was time for another cut, I started calling for Allison. I was by the Sphinx, yeah? And she was still in the airship.

  “When she didn’t come to my call, I climbed the ladder. That was when I realized she wasn’t on the airship at all. I saw her from the pilothouse, trekking around the dark side of the pyramid toward another balloon. . . .” Jie’s voice faded as Daniel pressed the scarificator to the inside of her arm, and click!

  The blades popped out, and when the device pulled back, three narrow slices welled with blood on Jie’s arm.

  Daniel pressed a suctioning cup over the cuts and offered Jie an apple. She resumed her story, pausing every few moments to munch. “I took Daniel’s spyglass and saw . . . Marcus in the balloon. I saw Marcus and realized you were all in danger. So I ran—as fast as I could up the pyramid and to you. But . . . I wasn’t fast enough, I guess.”

  “Or you were just in time,” drawled a new voice.

  I started—we all did, snapping our heads to the door, to where Oliver lounged against the frame, intently focused on his shirt cuffs.

  “Perhaps we would all be dead if you had not cleared a path,” he added, glancing at Jie—and then quickly back down.

  “Oliver.” Jie smiled—a strangely happy crinkle around her eyes.

  He sauntered into the hold, an unmistakable pink flush on his cheeks as his eyes dragged to mine. “There are a lot of mummies to be found, Eleanor, so if you are finished dillydallying here, I think we ought to get started. An army of Dead won’t raise itself.” He stalked to the exit hatch, and Jie skipped off her crate after him. Then they both shinnied down the ladder.

  I glanced at Joseph, who merely nodded his approval. Though there was a confused furrow on his brow.

  And Daniel’s face was drawn. There was no doubt we all wondered the same thing: what had Oliver done to Jie? He had healed her body . . . but was there something more? While she and Oliver had reached a tentative alliance before, this was entirely different.

  “Here. Take these,” Daniel said to me, though his gaze stayed on the hatch as he offered me a jar of glowworms. “It’ll be dark soon,” he added. “So be careful . . . and keep an eye on Jie.”

  “Of course,” I murmured. Then, with Milton’s book and the glowworms, I set off after Oliver and Jie in the sand.

  “Oliver said we’re gonna raise old mummies to make an army.” She squinted into the darker east. “Where will we look first?”

  “You, uh . . . don’t mind if I raise the Dead?” I asked.

  “Not if it will stop Marcus.” She cracked her knuckles on her jaw. “Besides, Oliver won’t let anything go wrong, will you?” She punched him fondly in the bicep.

  He gave an uncomfortable grunt and looked at his toes. “Let’s start our search over there.” He waved east, toward the rest of the ruins. Far in the distance, palm trees and cornfields were alight with a flaming sunset, and if I looked hard enough north, I could see the Giza pyramids reaching for the sky.

  Oliver
and Jie trekked ahead of me, hopping walls and dunes with the ease of desert cats. I, of course, was boiling and coated in sticky sweat before we’d even reached the nearest, lumpy pyramid—a spot where Oliver thought there might be a catacomb of mummified birds. Yet after poking through the sand and crumbling stone for what felt like hours, we found nothing.

  By the almost-vanished sunlight and rising moon, I consulted Milton’s booklet.

  “There ought to be a temple devoted to Anubis,” I said. “If we continue east, we’ll hit a series of columns that were once his temple. Below that, we should find some tunnels.”

  “I see columns,” Jie said. She pointed ahead, to a sad set of spikes surrounded by slanted dunes. Without waiting to see if we followed, she kicked into a jog.

  Oliver moved to follow, but I snagged his sleeve. “Wait a moment.” I let Jie step out of earshot. Then I hissed, “Why is Jie acting like this?”

  His yellow eyes shuttered. “I haven’t the faintest idea to what you refer.” He tugged free and stomped ahead.

  But I simply scurried after. My boots kicked up sand and pottery, but with long enough strides, I managed to keep pace with him.

  “Did you do something when you healed her?”

  A single pulse of unease flashed through our bond—but instantly cut off. “I did what needed doing,” he mumbled. “That was the command you gave me.”

  “It was,” I admitted, “yet why is she acting so . . . affectionate? She was tolerant of your presence before. Friendly, even, but now . . . now she seems to adore you.”

  “I didn’t do anything.” Oliver glared daggers at me. “I merely . . . Well, I showed her who I was. Just as I showed you. I suppose she saw something in me that was acceptable.”

  “Will this last? Or is her interest in you simply some magic that will fade—”

  “I don’t know.” Oliver sidestepped before I could grab him and make him stay. “She decided she liked me because she wanted to. Now it’s her choice to continue liking me or not.”

  “Oh,” I murmured. “I . . . I guess . . . Thank you. For making her . . . happier.”

  He groaned, his gaze very focused on the dunes ahead, and for several moments our trek was filled with crunching footsteps and wind.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he muttered at last. “Whatever happened to Jie’s mind was entirely by accident. You seem to think I am a good person now that you have seen my soul, but you’re wrong, El. I care for no one but myself, and I care for nothing but going home.”

  I did not believe him in the slightest. Especially now that Jie had also seen his soul and deemed him worthy. Yet before I could speak, Jie shouted, “I think I found it!”

  She stood before the columns, a shovel in her hand. Oliver and I darted to her, and sure enough, only a few feet from where Jie stood (and from where she had found the rusty shovel), there was a hole in the dune.

  With a determined slant to her mouth, Jie dug up the sand while Oliver and I tried to paw our way in. . . . And eventually we managed to clear away enough of the dune to reveal a gloomy doorway—and a set of stairs descending into blackness.

  Withdrawing the glowworms, I slunk inside. Oliver crept behind me, while Jie took up the rear. The narrow stairwell only dropped thirty steps before opening into an intersection of three tunnels. The air was too warm, too dry. The darkness too complete. Within a few moments, however, my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light and the green shadows of the glowworms.

  “I am getting tired of tunnels,” Oliver said under his breath. I was inclined to agree.

  “Which way do we go?” I whispered.

  “Right,” Jie said. “There are a bunch of paintings that way, yeah?”

  Sure enough, when I swung my glowworms toward the rightmost tunnel, the light sprayed over a mural on the wall.

  My jaw went slack, and I scooted toward it.

  It was a mural of a jackal.

  “It’s him,” I breathed, turning to Oliver. “That’s the jackal I saw at the pyramids.”

  “Anubis.” Oliver spoke with weary boredom. “He is one of the gods.”

  Jie’s eyebrows drew together. “Anu-what?”

  “Anubis,” I whispered, tasting the name. A god. An Annunaki. Exhilaration shivered through me. “When you called him a messenger, Oliver, you did not say he was also a god.”

  My demon shrugged disinterestedly. “I only saw him a few times, speaking to the souls of the dead . . . or . . .” He frowned. “I think that’s what I saw him doing. I find it harder and harder to remember these days.”

  A burst of longing twined through our bond. He was forgetting the spirit realm; it frightened him. My mouth trembled shut. . . . The feeling snapped off.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly, as if nothing had happened. “We may as well start in this tunnel since we’re already here.” His glowing eyes narrowed, looking ahead. “And if I am not mistaken, there are some cloth-wrapped bundles ahead. . . .”

  My glowworms were soon illuminating hundreds of miniature mummies. They were bound in swaddling like babies, their bodies completely hidden.

  “What are they?” Jie asked, crouching beside one. It wasn’t much larger than her torso.

  “Dogs,” Oliver answered. “They were sacrificed to Anubis. Just as falcons were sacrificed to Horus or bulls to Apis. Whatever the god supposedly looked like, that was what he or she got.” He kicked at the sand on the floor. “It looks like there are even more bones beneath. This is a treasure trove for you, El.” His eyes climbed to mine. “Command me, and we can begin to raise your army and get them into position.”

  I swallowed, my gaze flicking to Jie. But just as before, she showed no opposition. In fact, she seemed genuinely curious. For half a breath relief crushed through me that I had one more ally for my magic.

  But then fear unwound. When Jie had first seen Oliver, she had gone berserk with terror and rage. Yet now her attitude toward necromancy had completely flipped, and it scared me.

  What exactly had Oliver shown her?

  I looked back at my demon. “I’ll . . . do this spell myself.”

  His jaw clenched. “Not on my account, I hope.”

  “Of course not,” I mumbled. “Let’s go outside to do this.” Without waiting for a response, I spun around and began the hike back to the entrance.

  Once we were outside, I moved away from the sandy steps and began to call in my magic. Jie leaned against her shovel, and Oliver slouched, arms over his chest. The breeze gusted through our clothes, our hair. The moonlight colored us silver.

  I inhaled, and my magic came. Balmy and smooth. I inhaled more, drawing in more power as I did.

  Until the wind picked up speed. Until I felt magic course in from around me.

  Fear rose in my throat. This wasn’t right—this was what I had done earlier at the Great Pyramid, and I couldn’t lose control like that again. I would hurt everyone, and only Oliver would be able to save me—

  Calm. Oliver sauntered toward me, his pose indifferent but his gaze fierce. You can control it. Just focus on the soul inside you.

  I tried to gulp, but my mouth felt coated in cotton. And magic continued to spiral in from the sand. The air. The ruins.

  He paused in front of me, and as my ragged breaths turned shallow, he laid his fingers on my shoulder. Focus on the magic in your fingertips, El. The magic in your toes. It’s all you need to raise these mummies. Leave the world’s power to the world. Oliver’s eyelids slowly lowered, his fingers pushing into my skin. It is just you and me. Nothing else, no other power.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the feel of his four fingers on my shoulder. His thumb on my collarbone. Steady and sure.

  The wind settled down. The magic in my chest stopped grabbing for more. I had a glowing, throbbing well of power. . . .

  “Awake,” I whispered, thinking about the dog mummies. The buried bones. “Awake.”

  It was like fireflies on a summer night. One by one, souls winked into being. I felt the
m twinkling and collecting below the sand. Ten, then twenty. Then hundreds. Awake, awake, awake.

  “Look,” Jie hissed, and cautiously I opened one eye.

  A skeleton loped up the stairs. Its snout was lined with chipped fangs, and its barrel-like rib cage had broken in many places. Yet it ran with the ease of a living dog. . . .

  And then it stopped before me.

  One after the other—some wrapped in fabric, but most nothing more than bones—the dogs ascended the stairs. And just like an army, they gathered around me in rows.

  “They’re so fragile looking, yeah?” Jie’s voice held a hint of awe; and, scooping up a handful of sand, she poured it over a skeleton waiting beside her. “It looks like they’ll break from just a little wind, but they don’t.” She glanced at me. “What will you do with them?”

  I shrugged. Sweat beaded on my brow. My magic was running dry. Yet more dogs continued to pour from the catacomb’s mouth; more dogs sucked my soul into them and awoke.

  “You should bury ’em,” Jie declared matter-of-factly. Then she pointed back toward our distant airship and pyramid. I forced myself to squint, to listen to what she said. But blood roared in my ears. So many leashes binding these Dead to me.

  “Blessed Eternity,” Oliver swore. “That’s bloody brilliant.”

  “What is?” I croaked out.

  “Have them lay down in the sand around the pyramid,” Jie said. “Then we cover ’em with sand. A surprise army.”

  It was a good idea. “Go,” I mumbled, latching my eyes on to the dunes around the pyramid. On the obelisk. “Go.”

  In a great grinding of bones, the dogs moved. As one, they jogged over the sand, bony tails hanging and torn cloths swaying.

  They shone like white gold, reflecting moonlight and moving in perfect unison. Shadows flickered beneath them, and their bone paws crunched easily through sand.

  Jie nodded, her face lined with purpose, and after setting her shovel on her shoulder, she jogged after them.

  And beside me, Oliver said, “Amazing what you can accomplish on your own two feet, El. Just . . . amazing.”