Another Pan (29 page)

“And it’s protected by this puzzle, where you can’t figure out which stall is the right one!” John interrupted Peter’s speech to show he’d figured it out, too.

“Well, that and some kind of guardian,” added Peter. John thought he was just adding it to get the last word.

“Whatever,” said John. He started to walk down a row of stands, fingering the dried fruit carelessly. “It’s probably one of these old lady statues. Let’s just find the old bag that looks the most like Nailah, or Harere . . . or whichever. Ancient puzzles are so level one.”

“Thanks, Indiana,” said Wendy. “We don’t know what they looked like. We need a clue.”

“And we need to keep an eye out for the guardian,” said Peter.

John turned and walked backward. “What’re you, scared?”

John was sneering at Peter, daring him to come along. But Peter only shook his head and smirked.
Stupid smirk,
thought John.
“What?”
said John.

“Nothing,” said Peter. “You’re just so obvious.”

“You mean, you’re scared,” John shot back.

“No,” said Peter, “I mean, you’re being that kid in the movie.”

“The one who isn’t scared,” said John, trying to get under Peter’s skin.

“The one who’s making a fool of himself,” said Peter. “You’re walking through this market like it’s that rich-kid nursery you call a high school. You’ve already gotten shredded for trying to act cool, but you still think you’re invincible because you get too much ‘positive reinforcement’ from all the adults in your life who’re all too afraid to tell you that you’re acting like a spoiled idiot, just in case you try to shoot up the school.”

John was taken aback. He stammered, “Well, well, you’re nothing but a — a —”

“Shut up,” interrupted Peter. “Don’t say anything. Just come back, before you hurt yourself or get us killed.”

Wendy didn’t say anything to defend him, and John thought he saw Peter’s hand brush hers. He glared at his sister and mumbled, “You’re totally doggin’ Connor.”

Wendy blanched and Peter said, “Scratch that. I’m gonna hurt you myself.”

Just as John was about to respond, a tremor shook the dirt beneath their feet. A distant rumbling began to increase, as if something was coming toward them from behind the spot where John stood frozen. Peter and Wendy looked wide-eyed at John, who was shaking visibly, and at the ground rising up beneath him.

Over John’s shoulder, a mound of earth barreled toward them down the aisle between the food stands. It moved like a shark in the water, tilting the stands on either side with the wake it left behind. “John,” Wendy shouted, “run!”

John didn’t dare to look, but Wendy’s voice got him moving. He ran to one side, hoping the mound would follow the course it was already on. Peter and Wendy ran parallel to John, two stalls down. John wasn’t very fast, but it didn’t matter. Just as the mound was about to overtake him, it veered and circled around in another direction, tearing up the dirt and sending it high into the air. As it moved away, the sand near its front end broke, and John saw a slippery brown head break through, for just an instant, before it retreated back into the ground. It had no eyes, just a big, round opening where its face should be, jam-packed with a circular set of gigantic teeth. The rest of its body was just a long tube, covered with moist brown rings marking each segment.

The trio sprinted for another few blocks of the marketplace before stopping to catch their breath, an effort made far more difficult by the gelatinous, unhealthy air of the underworld. Every breath was like sucking pudding through a straw.

“Now
that,
” said Peter, “is a proper guardian.”

“You didn’t say it’d be a giant sandworm,” said John between breaths.

“You didn’t ask,” said Peter. “Also, I didn’t know.”

“Well, what do we do now?” asked Wendy. “We need Harere’s bones, and the thing doesn’t seem to care that it’s wrecking stalls. How do we know it hasn’t already destroyed the right one?”

“Because this is the tomb. And that thing is Nailah, Harere’s sister. She’s been turned into the guardian,” said Peter.

John suddenly remembered. In the story, Nailah had been called a
worm,
not a snake, as he had thought. “Gross,” he muttered.

“No matter what she looks like,” said Peter, “her whole purpose is to protect Harere’s bones. It’s her punishment, just like the Bedouin I fought to get Garosh.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said John. “I think I got it . . .”

“What?”
Wendy said impatiently. “Will you please be specific?”

“All right. I’m just catching my breath. Geez,” said John. He took a big breath and began: “We know the worm isn’t following the grid, since it went under a few of the stalls and uprooted them, right? And we know it’s protecting Harere’s bones.”

They nodded.

“I figure, it’s going in a circle
around
Harere.” John pointed to the horizon, where the worm was taking another turn and uprooting a patch of earth parallel to them. For lack of a proper sky, the rising sand made the entire scene look like one giant dirt wall. It was grim — dirt below, dirt above, and over their heads, the gray stone ceiling of the pyramid. But it
did
look like a circle. “So, basically, all we have to do is look at the area the worm is circling, and we can assume that if we calculate the center of that circle, we’ll more or less have the location of Harere’s stall. We could use the standard geometric equations for the derivation of the center, but I would enter a few variables to account for the elliptical nature of the perimeter, caused by the worm’s inertia, which will narrow the results slightly but, I think, significantly.”

Both Peter and Wendy blinked a few times.

“Wow,” conceded Wendy. “That was really specific.”

“Sweet, let’s do it,” said Peter.

“You’re welcome,” muttered John.

Peter and Wendy had to do some reconnaissance, running around the perimeter of the market and counting the number of stalls on each side. Though the market looked and felt stifling, running around it showed that it wasn’t much longer than the dining hall, which was, incidentally, as massive and grandiose as any dining hall in New York. John made the calculations using a stick to draw in the dirt. After some time, he got up and patted the dirt from his knees. He drew an
X
on a rudimentary map he’d sketched in the dirt and said, “It’s somewhere around there.”

“That’s the best we can do?” said Peter.

“We could wander aimlessly till the sandworm eats us,” retorted John.

“Let’s just go,” said Wendy, surveying the long run toward the middle.

The three of them paused, made sure that their shoelaces were tight, gave one another a last look, and started running toward the center of the invisible circle the worm was protecting. The mounds of loose dirt the worm had made when it chased them had already receded back into flat earth. They threaded in between the stalls, zigzagging the grid in as straight a line as they could. When they crossed what John had assumed was the perimeter, they picked up the pace.

“That way!” John shouted, squinting to see the trajectory of the worm.

It wasn’t long before a chunk of earth shot up behind Wendy and gave chase. Wendy screamed and sprinted. The mound wormed along, just under the surface of the earth, crashing through the stalls and making them explode with clusters of dried fruit and clouds of spice. Wendy bought some time by making a quick right. The worm was too big to make quick turns.

“It should be somewhere around here,” yelled John. “Hurry!”

Peter took hold of one of the old crones by the hood of her burlap robe. He yanked back. The figure crumbled. Decayed old bones . . . either that or this thing was carved out of rotting clay. “They’re all the same,” said Peter, grunting in frustration. He was growing visibly angry. He went from stall to stall, pulling the old crones down from their perches. Wendy couldn’t tell if it was adrenaline from running from the worm or if he was becoming furious for not finding the bones he so desperately wanted.

Just then, John yelled, “Wait!”

Peter stopped in the middle of ripping down another body.

“Look at that one,” said John, pointing to one of the figures now lying on the ground. Instead of the withered old clay, it seemed to be carved out of smooth pine. It was hunched over in the same position, but the face was young.

“That has to be it,” said Wendy. “Harere died
young
.”

All three of them jumped onto the stall, digging into the sacks of figs, pistachios, and dried thyme. “It has to be here,” said John.

As they rummaged through the piles of goods, they heard the rumbling of the sandworm coming closer. It would reach them soon, and then —

They didn’t know
what
would happen when the worm reached them. Wendy thought of those enormous teeth, all packed together in that disgusting circular mouth. A wild-eyed Peter upturned entire barrels at a time. John kept looking over his shoulder, trying to locate the rumbling. Then Wendy cried out. John and Peter saw her pulling a skeletal hand from under a pile of rice. In an instant, Wendy was mesmerized. It was withered, its long, thin fingers shriveled to nothing. But it wasn’t ugly. Its fingers were curled delicately toward the center, the thumb and middle finger reaching for each other in an elegant pose. Wendy imagined what this gray, ashen hand must have looked like eons ago. Long fingers under soft, creamy skin. Short, glossy fingernails much like her own.

Peter jumped over a few barrels to where Wendy stood. Together, they began digging the entire skeleton out of its rice grave, working outward from the hand, up toward the wrist, and then revealing an entire arm. The rumble was deafening as they uncovered the skull and the neck. But as they continued, the rumbling came to a sudden stop. Silence. A whirring of wind. A flapping of tent coverings.

“What’s happening?” whispered Wendy.

Peter shrugged.

Behind them, a young voice was whispering. They turned, all three at once. But the only thing there was the discarded figure of the stall keeper. She was sitting at her perch, hunched over, hood over her face.

“Wait,” said Wendy. “Wasn’t she lying on the floor a minute ago?”

Wendy brushed the rice off her hands and stepped closer. In the still silence, the figure moved. There was another whisper. The young stall keeper was calling to something.

Slowly, it lifted its head. Its hood fell back and Wendy saw the beautiful face of Harere, no longer carved in wood, but in the flesh, reeling with anger over the desecration of her mortal body. Her almond-shaped Egyptian eyes were narrowed with rage. Her red lips barely moving as she continued the chant summoning her monstrous sister. She bored into Wendy with her eyes. She grew louder, speaking words that sounded like ancient Egyptian. Wendy looked back at the mummy. Peter was still digging. The stall keeper grew so loud that her voice echoed in their ears and shook the ground at their feet.

“Look,” said John. Fear struck the three of them as they saw a fence of jagged teeth rising out of the sand, encircling their entire stand. At the outer edge of the stall, sand was beginning to pour into a growing chasm. The worm’s mouth surrounded them. The stall keeper sat silently once more.

“It’s below us,” said Peter. “It’s going to eat the whole stand to protect the mummy.”

John scrambled to his feet and jumped beyond the worm’s mouth. “Come on!” he shouted to Wendy.

Wendy looked at John, outside the worm’s mouth, then at Peter, who refused to stop digging. She implored him to come with her.

“Go,” said Peter. “I’ll be right there.”

Wendy hesitated, then turned and ran. When she reached the wall of teeth, it had already risen to her waist. She climbed and almost cut her hand on the tip of a tooth. Then, with John’s help, she fell to the other side.

Peter frantically dug through the rice, pulling every few seconds to loosen the mummy. The worm continued to swallow the sand. An inner row of teeth started to chew, while the outer row of teeth pulsed to help shake and direct everything downward. The outer-lying barrels dipped and then fell into the abyss of the worm’s belly.

“Leave it, Peter!” screamed Wendy.

But Peter didn’t seem to care. He would get eaten before he left the bonedust. Finally, the mummy came loose from the rice. Peter didn’t stop to celebrate. He lifted the skeleton and ran to the edge of the worm’s mouth. The teeth were too high, even for Peter to jump. He tried, but failed, cutting his hand open on the edge.

“Get a barrel to stand on,” said John, looking on from the other side.

“No, it’s too late,” said Wendy. “Stand on the mummy.”

Peter looked almost angry at that suggestion. Then he rethought the idea. Quickly, as the last of the stand began to waver and plunge, Peter situated the mummy into a sitting position. While holding on to one of its hands, Peter placed a foot on the mummy’s shoulder and scrambled up and over the worm’s teeth. As soon as he landed on the other side, Peter turned and began pulling the mummy over by the hand. Just as it seemed that Peter would be able to pull the skeleton over, the worm chomped its jaw.