Another Pan (17 page)

“We talked last time about how the legends are on the subject of great injustices. Last time, it was the character Elan, who was robbed of . . . Who can tell me what he was robbed of?”

Marla ventured a hand into the air. “His heritage?” She made sure to roll her eyes while she said it so her friends would know she wasn’t actually interested.

“Not the word I’d use for the loss of one’s children, but basically, yes,” said the professor. “And after the crimes against him, we all remember that his daughter . . .”

Marla was more confident this time. “The daughter mummified his body.”

“Exactly,” said Professor Darling. “Each of the five legends features someone getting mummified in some way or another. This is very important, not only because they were given the chance to enter the afterlife like pharaohs, but also because their bones were preserved, each carrying a glimmer of lives unlived — preserving the famed ‘bonedust.’”

Marla jumped in. “The five of them together make a person immortal, right?”

“None of this is historically accurate,” interjected Simon.

“But you’re right, Marla,” said the professor. “The legends say so.”

“The
myths,
” repeated Simon.

“So what’s the second one? What’s the great injustice?” asked Marla.

“Well . . .” said Professor Darling, sitting down and letting the pause build their anticipation, “the second one is love. . . .”

Love is a precious thing. If a man is robbed of his life’s passion, of his chance to walk in the most excellent way of life, if his love is ripped away, a bitterness builds inside
.

So goes the story of one family with a curse on their 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
.

After Elan’s heritage was no more, his daughter, Jobey, lived as Akhara’s unwilling wife. She bore many sons and daughters, all unaware of their Jewish blood. Akhara taught them to be cunning and cruel. They ruled over their Jewish servants, unaware that they were subjecting their own people to pain and death. They grew up in Akhara’s image
.

All except for Garosh, the lonely son, the last born. Too young to know his brothers and sisters, he was never subject to the torture of their wicked childhood games. And so his heart was never clouded by their meanness. As the boy grew, he fell more and more out of favor with Akhara, who had become a decrepit monster. Garosh insisted on rebuilding the slave quarters and scolded the harsher taskmasters
.

One day, as Garosh glided up the Nile on his boat, he saw a vision. At first, he thought it could be a mirage. He had caught only a glimpse before the figure passed behind an outgrowth of papyrus plants. She was wearing white Bedouin robes, and she bent like the sacred ibis to wash her black hair
.

Garosh leaped into the languid waters and stood in the deep. The water reached his neck. She looked on from the shore as he approached like a supplicant. When they stood in the marsh, Garosh spoke to his pleasing hallucination. She told him that her name was Kala
.

Garosh rejoiced in his fate, knowing he could never again be alone. He begged Kala to give him her hand in marriage. She laughed. He pleaded. Garosh swore his love upon the names of the gods. He cried and coaxed, until finally, Kala realized the depth of his love
.

The two lovers vowed their lives to each other. But his family would never accept a Bedouin maiden, and so Garosh forsook his father’s boat. Together, they walked into the desert, hoping Kala could convince her father to accept Garosh as her bridegroom
.

As the lovers approached Kala’s home, Kala’s brothers rode out to meet their sister. The Bedouin warriors saw the wealthy stranger touching her and were filled with rage. They said to one another, “Brothers, let us be rid of this foreigner, here to take our sister.”

The brothers embraced Garosh as a brother, but in their hearts, they plotted evil
.

The youngest warrior said, “Come, Sister, I will take you to our mother, who will prepare you for a wedding. And we will welcome your bridegroom to our tribe.”

Kala bid Garosh a happy farewell. But as she rode over the horizon, the rest of the brothers took Garosh by the arm, saying, “Every Bedouin boy must pass three trials to become a warrior and worthy of marriage. To be Bedouin, you must learn to shackle our horses, to dig a well, and to raise a tent. These are the three tasks we require.”

Eager to prove his worthiness, Garosh accepted the tests. The brothers took him to far reaches of the oasis and dismounted their horses. They presented Garosh with sharp iron shackles. “Tie these horses to the palm tree.”

A simple test. Garosh took the shackles and began to tie each of the mighty horses. But just when he leaned on a horse to clasp the metal hooks, the brothers sent out a mighty blast from their battle horns. The startled horses galloped away, and the shackle hooked into Garosh’s belly, ripping out his innermost parts. Garosh stumbled but did not fall. The brothers were startled to see him alive, his organs strewn in the desert by their horses. But his heart had remained. His love for Kala still beat in his chest
.

They took the wounded man to a vast desert salt flat. “You must now dig a well,” they said. They offered no tools, but Garosh did not mind. His thoughts focused only on Kala. He fell to his knees and began to dig with his hands. The salty wind cut at his face and poured into his open belly. As he scooped the sands, the salt crystals pushed into his skin, drying up his internal fluids. Soon, Garosh was nothing but bones and jerked flesh
.

When Garosh climbed from the well he had dug, the wicked brothers were afraid. Garosh had become a preserved monster. His skin was leather. His hair withered in the sun. His chest was frail and thin. But the brothers could all still hear the young and happy heart of Garosh, thumping against his bare bones
.

“Well done, brother,” they shouted. “One very simple test remains.” The evil brothers helped Garosh to a clearing where he would raise a dwelling for Kala. With his body destroyed, Garosh struggled with the parchments and stakes. He weakly pounded the corner spikes and limped under the tent to place the center beam
.

This was the moment the brothers had waited for. They pounced on the drape, beating Garosh. But he did not die. He did not need his body
.

They pulled up the four stakes and wrapped the tent around him. But he did not need air
.

The brothers had tricked Garosh. In his eagerness to prove his worth, he had mummified himself. But the mummy did not die. The wicked brothers were astonished. Some ran away, fearing his revenge. Others listened and heard the beating of his lovelorn heart
.

The mummy Garosh stumbled toward the oasis, moaning in a broken language for his beloved. As he approached, he heard the joyous music and laughter of a wedding feast. When he broke into the clearing, the music stopped. Children shrieked at the sight of the monster. There at the center sat Kala, dressed in matrimonial robes. When Kala recognized Garosh, both their hearts tore and the love that had kept the mummy alive finally gave way to despair. Kala cried out, but her brothers held her back. Garosh lurched from the clearing into the desert night
.

No one knows the fate of the mummy. The Bedouin say he roams the desert still, crying for his lost love. But those who know the dark history of this ill-fated family, those who have studied it, know that this cannot be. The goddess of death took the young lover’s mummy and the bonedust with it. She shielded it with her greatest weapons, fearing that someday death might be conquered. The Dark Lady hid the mummy in a place where no one could reach it, a legendary labyrinth of the gates, guarded by powerful deities that no human could overcome
.

And so, Garosh was gone, his love lost. But he can never fully die. His wasted life is forever trapped as grains of immortality in his bones
.

At the end of the second legend, Professor Darling took off his glasses and spoke the last lines from memory. This was a loss he knew well.

Wendy glanced toward the window and caught Peter staring at her. What they shared at that moment Wendy thought she would never lose.

Later, John and Wendy meandered through Marlowe’s empty halls at a lazy pace. No one else was here now, and the lights were turned down, so the school was washed in shadow.
So depressing,
Wendy thought. Despite the opulence — the colorful art on the walls, the state-of-the-art lockers, a discarded Hermès scarf — Marlowe was dismal at this hour. You could barely imagine that only two hours before, these halls had been teeming with uniformed, overly energetic kids crawling all over one another, jockeying to win this position, or grub that grade, or finagle this recommendation. Now the only noise came from the crinkling of candy wrappers underfoot, the clicking of Wendy’s heels, and the rubbery squeak of John’s shoes as he purposely slid across the linoleum to annoy her.

But then Wendy heard something else. A low moan — or no, maybe it was the wind. There it was again — now an excruciating moan, like someone sick or in a lot of pain. It was coming from somewhere upstairs. She stopped, took hold of John’s arm, and pulled him back. This time, he heard it, too. It was a crackling sound louder than a breath but softer than a whisper, like the unconscious murmur of a person lost in ugly dreams.

“What was that?” said John, looking up in the direction of the sound. What could possibly be up on the top floor? Only the attic and the nurse’s temporary office, which was housed up there at the insistence of the new nurse.

“Just the wind,” said Wendy. They continued to walk, but then they both heard something that couldn’t be mistaken for wind or pipes or the hum of a lethargic old teacher alone after hours. It was a flutter — the swift whoosh of a million tiny wings rushing away. They both froze. Wendy wanted to shout out,
Is someone there?
but then she remembered that this was what stupid people in horror movies did right before running into a dead end, or deep into a deserted forest, or up the stairs to the soundproof, windowless attic.

“Let’s get out of here,” said John. They began walking faster than before, not running and not daring to look back. He stopped in front of the big Marlowe double doors. There was something blocking the exit. A stick of some kind, a long, twisted wooden rod was jammed through the brass handles, holding the doors shut. “What is this?”