❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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☾ ☽
"BABA. ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"
His son's simple inquiry very nearly did not catch his ears.
Jamil had, for some time now, been lost in his own mind, something which was not like him at all. He was raised to always be on alert, for a threat could be just around the corner. But he appeared to have forgotten that today, in the home of his daughter, in the presence of his son and his youngest grandchildren (despite the fact that the girls had gone upstairs together, whispering to one another, maybe twenty or so minutes ago). It was safe here, and so he let his mind wander.
When Talib spoke, Jamil was thinking about how few very things truly surprised him. From a young age, he knew to expect the unexpected, to use an oft quoted phrase. Expect that at any moment some unwitting expedition or treasure hunters could locate Hamunaptra, expect to fight to the death to keep the creature hidden in the darkest depths of the desert. He had not even been surprised when Mara's own unwitting expedition was responsible for the awakening of the creature; he had feared it, yes, from the moment he learned she and her friends had found a map to the City of the Dead, but it had not surprised him.
What did surprise him was that this sort of thing kept happening to his family. It began with Mara, Jonathan, Evelyn, and Rick at Hamunaptra, with the Book of the Dead and the key that opened more than he knew. Then it was Talib in Riyadh, the crown of a Ptolemaic dynasty queen erased from history with a name still no one knew. Then five years after that, Evelyn and Rick found the Bracelet of Anubis, Alex put it on his wrist the very same night Imhotep was woken again, and they embarked on a journey all the way to the Oasis of Ahm-Shere to rescue him. Then there was peace. For thirteen calm, happy years, there had been nothing from the ancient world to worry about.
Then the tomb was found. And now it was Sarah, with a golden ankh amulet and a red jasper stone that held the soul of an ancient pharaoh inside of it. A soul that escaped when she held the ankh in her hands, a soul that now haunted her every waking moment. What made this worse this time was that he knew he could have stopped it. He knew that if he had just told Mara that the Medjai was present at Saqqara, even if Nefertiri's tomb had not been the one under their protection, this would never have happened. She never would have let her children anywhere near the artifacts if she had known.
Are you all right?
"Is anyone?" Jamil said in return.
Talib nodded, a slight incline of his head that he barely noticed. "Fair enough. But I meant earlier, with Mara—the way she reacted. It, uh...wasn't nice to witness."
"She had every right to react the way she did. I should have told her about the Saqqara Medjai before."
"You should have. She was right, you do keep doing this," Talib said, gesturing widely to him. Jamil bowed his head, averting his gaze. He could not argue that. "I know you only keep these things from her—from both of us—to protect us, but at some point, Baba, you have to realize that it's not protecting us anymore. It's just hurting us. Her more than me."
