The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) (15 page)
Read The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) Online
Authors: E. Catherine Tobler
His face came apart like smoke unraveling from the tip of a cigar. At first, he had a presence and he reveled in the new form, nearly smiling as it was exactly what he wanted. To be unmade, to come at last apart. To not slumber and wake by turns—to not even sleep. To be the nothing he was, not even air and whispers.
But then everything changed. Eleanor could sense the approach of the beast, and if it was Ammit, the monster that crouched near Anubis’s scales, she could not say. She never saw the thing, only sensed the finality of its presence; the dreaded weight of feet, the unending howls of a hungry belly.
Maybe it was only oblivion sinking invisible teeth and claws into every bit of Pettigrew that remained. The horror in Pettigrew’s eyes was all encompassing—the knowledge of all he had given up. The loss of all he had loved about this world, but then too the realization that he had lost these things centuries ago—before there was a queen, before there was an Egypt. Before there was an anything.
Eleanor hit the ground hard and Pettigrew’s satisfaction washed over her, as thick as the honey that still pulled her down. He
loved
the very horror that consumed him; he resisted the nothing, even as he drew it closer. A ragged laugh escaped what remained of his mouth; his fists tightened once more in her hair—and then nothing.
Nothing
.
Eleanor collapsed into the honey, staring at Cleo far above. Beyond Cleo, the fracturing house framed a hole in the sky, in the world.
“We—” Have to go, she meant to say. Have to get out. But Eleanor’s throat was raw—and she was human, human and could hardly move from the honey that held her.
But move she did, looking at the cages that held Mallory and Auberon and the others. All men, all bound, and all up to their waists in honey. It was not hard to summon the rage, or the strength of the jackal. Eleanor pulled on this well of strength and strode to Mallory’s cell. She slammed her shoulder into the glass that kept him prisoner, and the house around them shifted again. The glass cell buckled, honey cascading from the cell.
“Little bee,” she whispered, and reached for Mallory’s head, to haul it upright by a sticky handful of hair. “Mallory!” His eyes were shut tight, breathing shallow, and he made no reply. “
Virgil
.” She gave him a shake and his eyes fluttered open, before rolling back into his head. “Oh, Virgil.”
She pressed her mouth to his, his lips strangely cold and clammy against her own. He tasted sickly sweet, not like honey but of opium. She wished for Anubis, for Mallory to wake and pull himself free from opium and rack alike, but neither of these things happened. A ragged sound escaped her and she pushed the fear aside, told it to wait its turn, and pulled again on the strength of the jackal. The jackal was no longer a separate thing, however; she knew its strength in her arms, there without summoning. She pulled on the chains that bound Mallory into place, their honey-sticky bodies rocking together as the house shuddered and sank around them.
When the wood housing split apart, Eleanor didn’t waste time wondering if it was the movement of the house, or if she had managed to break it herself. She pulled the chains free and gave Mallory another shake, another kiss, and when he did not wake, she bit him. Bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood—and a scream. He came to, smothering his scream as he kissed her in return, as sense and sensibility slowly returned.
“You …smell like angry…honey,” he whispered, clasping her sticky body against his own.
“I do,” Eleanor agreed with a sob, “but this house is sinking, Virgil—
sinking
, and we have to get these others out.”
Eleanor had no intention of waking the others with kisses or bites, but the other men appeared less influenced by the drugs—or less drugged as a whole. She and Mallory pulled the others free of their honey cages, Auberon among them. They ran upward on unsteady, sticky feet following the spiral staircase as the world swallowed the house.
There were too many feet, too many scared bodies, and Eleanor felt her attention pulled in every direction. Squirrels. She forced herself to focus, watching Auberon lift Cleo into his arms when her smaller stride could not keep her with them. He kept hold of her as he ascended the stairs two at a time. Eleanor lost count of the broken halls and scattered rocks she had overstepped by the time they all emerged into the—
It was no longer day, night had swallowed the day once more. High in the sky, the moon stood eclipsed, only a shard of silver against the black night sky. Eleanor stared, seeing not the eye of Anubis, but that of distant Cleopatra. A queen smiling in far-reaching approval, even as she went mad beneath the streets of modern-day Alexandria.
Eleanor flopped to the first stretch of unbroken ground that she came to, unable to go further. She was vaguely aware of Mallory scooping her up around her waist and carrying her to the shelter of the fallen sphinxes as the house continued to sink.
“It can’t all go,” Eleanor whispered, thinking of everything Pettigrew might have kept within those walls. The mummies alone… And Cleopatra’s lotus.
All those flowers, kept all these years…
But it could all go, and did, without a trace of ever having been, just as Pettigrew himself had. Eleanor could only watch as the world swallowed it whole. As it had Cleopatra’s palace. As it would every other thing, given enough time.
Mallory’s sticky honey mouth against her cheek drew her attention from the house, from the eclipsed moon, from the thought of the years Pettigrew had lived and how he had lived. For now, there was only this—air and whispers—as there had only ever been.
In her cabin aboard
The
Jackal
, Eleanor poured tea for Cleo from the fresh pot. It was Earl Grey, its bergamot scent filling the whole of the small space Eleanor had been allotted. She did not require much room, but rather hoped Mallory’s similarly-sized cabin didn’t give him troubles, after being encased in Pettigrew’s glass cage.
“Is the honey gone then?” Cleo asked. Before her on the table, stationery and a pen waited, but had not yet been used. “Ruined?”
“Mistral recovered the three amphorae from the catacombs,” Eleanor said, “but what Pettigrew possessed is lost…as is all he else he had.” This idea was difficult to accept, even if Eleanor understood it to be true. There had been nothing to excavate, the house and its contents pulled so deeply into the world, it had all likely been crushed to dust. The way Pettigrew had been?
“The sight of the queen…in the catacombs, having become nothing of what she hoped…” Cleo set her teacup back into its saucer and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her mechanical arms around her legs. “I cannot fathom that kind of future.”
“Of course you can’t,” Eleanor said. She topped off her own tea, but did not lift the cup. She studied her friend, who looked no different than she ever had on the outside, even given this experience. “You would never become as she was.”
“No? Eleanor… How frighteningly easy you say such a thing, but she was queen. A
queen
, and look how far she fell.”
Eleanor let the silence stand. They had returned to the catacombs to ferret out the queen as they might a rat. She was terrified, so terrified, small and shrieking, begging them not to touch her, but touch her they had. They had seen her into the custody of Mistral itself, for wasn’t she an artifact of the past? She who had known Egypt whole and thriving, she who had loved it so well. The idea of the queen behind Mistral hospital walls didn’t sit well with Eleanor; how could anyone prescribe a recovery for her?
“I mean,” Eleanor said, “I have seen your work, your dedication. I have seen the way you…set yourself apart from things you fear would distract you from this path. You would absolutely not end up raving in an abandoned catacomb. More likely,” and here Eleanor did pick up her tea, snuggling herself into the corner of the sofa opposite Cleo, “we would find you atop some massive structure—you love to climb—and probably, to Mallory’s horror, it would be the Eiffel Tower—”
Cleo nudged Eleanor with a bare foot, but the smile upon her face encouraged Eleanor. Eleanor could not imagine such a lifespan, but knew that Cleo had done little else over these past two years.
“And Auberon?” Eleanor pressed.
“Oh, no,” Cleo said, shaking her head. “I would much rather discuss the jackal and how you appear to have one inside you—it comes when you call it? It…ties you to Anubis? If full moons make you hairy—how will anyone tolerate it? In any case, surely an easier topic of conversation than Mister Auberon.”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “Easier for you, maybe,” she said, but did feel more at ease with the animal side of her, more so than she had in weeks. “And the hair isn’t an issue?” She extended an arm, as if to be certain it hadn’t puffed full of fur. “Unless you’re telling me I’ve developed a dapper mustache…” She stroked fingers over her bare upper lip.
Cleo said nothing, her gaze dropping to her hands. There was no delicate way to approach the things she wanted to say, so Eleanor leapt in, much as the jackal would have.
“I suppose our friendship is to cease now,” Eleanor said. She set her teacup on the table, noting but choosing to ignore the way Cleo’s head came sharply up at this statement. She rose from the sofa to fuss with a pillow and then one more pillow, placing them just so in the petite chair opposite the sofa. “It’s entirely too difficult a thing to maintain, me a jackal and all. It’s utterly impossible, really. I regret that I shall have to ask for the inkwell back. The lady and her eggplant.”
“Have you now gone mad?” Cleo asked. She slid to the edge of the sofa and dropped her bare feet to the floor.
“Are you saying you won’t relinquish the inkwell?” Eleanor asked. She tried to infuse her voice with as much gravity as she could. “The
outrage
.”
“Outrage! Who asks for a gift to be returned without good cause?” Cleo came to her feet now, her intricate metal hands curling into fists.
“If you don’t mean to relinquish the inkwell, you intend to continue to maintain our correspondence, after we have spent time admiring the collection of Egyptian artifacts in the Louvre as we mean to?”
“Eleanor— I am uncertain as to why our friendship would ever cease.” Cleo’s face creased with a frown. “If you…” She exhaled and dropped back to the sofa, as if all the air had gone from her. “All right. The point is plain. You made it well. I’ve no intention of breaking with you, simply because you’re also a jackal.”
“Mmm.” Eleanor folded the blanket together again, intentionally restless. “And what of the matter of
your
immortality? How can you bear to watch me wither and die? Goodness, I wonder how gray the jackal will become. And how can I bear that you will
never
turn gray and wrinkled? Oh no—this is entirely imposs—”
“
You
are what is entirely impossible,” Cleo interrupted. “You cannot imagine how it is to picture such a life—which I did, the moment Doctor Fairbrass told me what he had done. What it might mean. And to know that it does mean such a thing, that I am destined to… Live that way…”
Still holding the blanket, Eleanor rejoined Cleo upon the sofa, slowly unfolding the blanket over their laps.
“I could not bear to lose him to time so I never allowed myself to know him well enough,” Cleo whispered. “Work was refuge—long days spent in the archive, even longer evenings wondering about the Lady…much as you did…”
“You think this changes your circumstances,” Eleanor said just as softly, “but I think it doesn’t. None of us know how much time we have with those we love. Ends come to all things. You simply chose to end a thing before it began, thinking it less painful. Tell me, has it been?”
Cleo curled her hands into the blanket as Eleanor spread it across her knees. “No.”
“You have two choices. You can keep him at arm’s distance and still watch his life pass away before your own. Or you can step into those arms and enjoy what time you both do have. So you have more time than he does. You decide how you spend it. You decide
where
you spend it. But I do not see you in a catacomb, raving in the dark. I see you in the light, studying all there is to see. If you would not keep me at arm’s length…why would you deny yourself anything else?”
Cleo bowed her head into the blanket and Eleanor stroked a hand over Cleo’s hair as the tears at last came. It was a long cry, but Eleanor said not a word, knowing that sometimes a person had to empty themselves entirely before they could fill themselves back up. She stayed with Cleo until Cleo drifted to sleep, then covered her on the sofa and left her be.
Eleanor pulled her coat on, tucking the small box of iron rings into the pocket as she emerged into the airship corridor. Beyond the hum of the engines, nothing stirred. She paused to listen outside Mallory’s door, but there was only the even breath that came with sleep. She pressed on, through the empty sitting room, to the deck ringing this level of the ship. At the rail, she wrapped her hands around the metal and looked down on the world below. Once, she might have sought strength in the rail’s solidity, but was surprised to discover she felt quite strong on her own. Above the quiet night world, Eleanor found herself comfortable in her own skin.
“Anubis, I have need of you.”
At first glance, the deck remained empty, but she became aware of his presence gradually; close enough to touch, his hands folded before him. She wondered if it would ever be not-startling to see Anubis; he stood perfectly black, as if a pool of ink had been shaped into a man who bore the head of a jackal. She wondered if she could drag her fingers through him and reshape him but she did not move from the rail.
“Daughter.” Dark Anubis was a hole against the night sky, a place without stars. Only his eyes gleamed, framed in gold. He looked recently painted, wet, sticky if touched.
Eleanor was startled that he spoke, that his voice did not simply arise in her mind. She had much she wanted to say, to ask, but began with what troubled her most. The press of the ring box in her pocket encouraged her.
“You must know the queen is here, that she will not know what to make of this modern age.” At Anubis’ second nod, Eleanor continued. “I ask that you take her somewhere else. A safer place where she will not be…broken open.” Some things, Eleanor had decided, should stay buried and whole, even if forever unseen. She could not imagine the queen being found by anyone else, studied the way one might any artifact from the ancient world. And Mistral would study her, Eleanor had no doubt.
“This shall be done,” Anubis said.
Eleanor touched the box in her pocket, but did not offer him the rings; returning them to Cleopatra might only deepen the melancholy of the years, the queen not yet able to look upon them with fondness.
“Daughter,” Anubis said, “I am proud of you.” He reached forward to touch her under the chin with two careful fingers.
Eleanor allowed him to lift her chin, to study her eyes as she studied his. She no longer felt small under his black scrutiny, but strong and capable. She no longer felt like running away, but only running
toward
. Toward whatever came.
“You wear your rings,” she whispered. She supposed it was a question and when Anubis chuckled, she knew he understood. He lowered his hand and nodded his proud head. His teeth were bright despite the night skies, like stars glimpsed before the clouds come.
“They are not yet committed to the desert, daughter,” he said. His attention never wavered from her, as if he had no concerns about flying through the night sky on an airship. “Your mother and her own are well. Thriving.”
It was the answer to all the unasked questions. Even as Eleanor took comfort in it, she knew it couldn’t be wholly true; if Anubis was here, they had already reclaimed his rings, which meant that her grandmother had fled Hatshepsut’s failing reign, into the desert where she had died. It was a circle, much as the rings, unbroken and constant.
“As are you,” Anubis said.
Eleanor smiled. “Yes.” She could not say it was otherwise; would not, given how far she had come. There was no question she had further yet to go, but here and now, she felt the steps she had taken, on her own and with Mallory alike. Much as Pettigrew, she had taken a leap. “And Pettigrew?”
“He is the dust so longed for.”
Eleanor did not ask if Pettigrew had truly lived so long and encompassed so many lives. Anubis stood before her as evidence of everything she would have once presumed impossible. This carried with it a strange comfort; if other questions came, answers would be found, if one had the courage to face what fell from the stars, what might be dug from the desert sands. She knew now that she possessed such things, and wanted to tell Anubis this; wanted him to know how far she had come, but his smile in the night told her he already knew.
Anubis began to fade when Eleanor felt the familiar warm of Mallory’s unsteady hand along her waist. Eleanor thought she heard Anubis whisper a hello to Mallory even as the dark god stepped backward to pass through the ship’s rail. He did not leap so much as he faded directly into the night sky. The space that had once been void of stars pricked to life with them once more and Eleanor turned into Mallory’s hold. Though she had heard him sleeping but a while ago, he still wore his rumpled suit, hues of charcoal and black.
“How are you?” Eleanor asked.
Mallory’s free hand slid warmly to the back of Eleanor’s neck as he pressed a kiss against the top of her head. Even now he smelled like distant opium, a recollection of their first meeting for Eleanor, when he still stole into the night to smoke the hours away.
“Sick,” he allowed, “but every day will bring distance from that. From the memory of the opium. The laudanum was like walking through a door I believed wholly locked. I still had the key, I still knew all the rooms beyond, and I did not hate it.” He turned his cheek against her head, fingers still trembling. “I would have stayed there but for you.”
“I would not have left you there.”
As with Anubis, there seemed no need to say much else, but Eleanor took the small box of rings from her pocket and pressed it into Mallory’s hand. His eyes narrowed.
“Eleanor.”
She pressed a finger across his lips, startled as ever by the warmth of him. She thought of their argument before Mallory’s capture, of all the things they had tried to say in the desert and still hadn’t quite voiced. Trust was as difficult to learn as changing forms. Placing yourself in the hands of another, trusting they would not hurt you when you exposed every part of yourself to them.
Mallory drew her hand from his mouth, but kept hold of it, pondering the ring box between them. “I trust you, Eleanor, and through you, him. I don’t need to keep these rings from you. I don’t need to keep
anything
from you.” He pushed the box back into her own coat pocket.
Eleanor’s arms came more fully around him, her ear pressed against his chest. She listened to the thrum of his heart and her own, and could not wait until they could run together, through all of Paris, with Egypt ever on the horizon. When she lifted her head, her mouth was insistent against Mallory’s own, taking the lead where she once would have been content to follow. This drew a pleased growl from Mallory and he gently caged her against the ship’s rail with his arms, giving her hands the opportunity to roam.
They roamed into his already-rumpled tie, to pull it loose. She unbuttoned his shirt collar, fingers seeking the constant warmth of him. She curled a leg around him, keeping him close though did not appear remotely inclined to budge an inch, unless it was an inch toward her. The night air slid through Eleanor’s hair, warm but cooling, reminding her that Paris was close. Paris and too many things that would need sorting when they were once again on the ground. The whole of a city to show her healing friend, unless Auberon had a mind to.
