To Be Shown the Way (a Mummy 1999 fanfiction)

Despair

Looking back on it in later years, Rick would never be able to remember exactly what happened that night. He had flashes—a goat, a belly dancer, the burning of his throat from shot after shot of whatever alcohol was available, the flash of gold and the glitter of gemstones, and all of it accompanied by a headache-inducing mix of cymbals and drums and loud voices chanting.

It was almost a relief to wake up alone, his cheek pillowed in fetid mud. Until he was prodded to his feet brusquely by two guards, hauled in front of a fat, smelly little man whose grasp of the English language left something to be desired, and informed that because of his terrible crimes, he was scheduled to be hanged.

What those terrible crimes were the warden was cagey about. As far as Rick could tell, he didn't actually know. So Rick made a few educated guesses: He had messed with the wrong woman. The faint remembered scent of perfume suggested as much. And her outraged father or husband had ordered his execution so no one would ever know she was no longer pure.

Except that he didn't usually go that far when drunk. Mindful of the possibility of disease and of all the unwanted progeny already running around the streets of Egypt, Rick had always been fairly careful when it came to women and intimacy. Still, all it took was the suggestion of impropriety to spoil some women for any kind of decent marriage, and Rick had overshot suggested impropriety more than once in his life.

So, a woman then. Or maybe he had stolen the wrong piece of gold, or someone with money and power just didn't like his face. He could have insulted someone. Or hit them. The bruises on his knuckles suggested he might have.

At the end of the day, did it really matter? One more wastrel cleaned off the streets of Cairo, that's all he was. He couldn't find it in himself to argue with the warden too much, which was good, because clearly the man didn't care anyway.

Rick allowed himself to be dragged back to his cell, putting up enough of a fight to satisfy the guards that they were in control of the wild animal, and started pacing, thinking, trying to figure out how to get himself free before he got hanged.

Hanged. Of all the ways to die. It couldn't have been a nice simple bullet at some point? God knew he had done enough daring missions in the French Foreign Legion to get himself shot many times over. But he never had, and they had promoted him for his bravery.

Well, where were they now? Not here in this stinking cell, that was for sure. Only Rick was here, and he was too hung over and too generally dispirited to try very hard.

*****

In the silence of the library, Evelyn was up on a ladder reshelving books. She talked to them as she did—given how much time she spent in the library, the books were her closest companions. It was a satisfaction to see them line up in their orderly rows on the shelves.

Or it was until she came on Tuthmosis, in entirely the wrong place. She glared at him like he was a naughty schoolboy. "What are you doing here?"

She looked around for the shelf he belonged on, finding it on the next bookcase over. She could climb down, move the ladder, climb up again, and put him back ... or she could just lean over, which would be so much quicker.

So she did. But the space was farther than she had gauged, and before she knew it, she found herself balancing on the ladder in between the two bookcases, not entirely sure how she was going to get down without falling over.

And then she did fall over, and landed against the bookcase. Which fell over in its turn and landed against the next one, and so on, until they had all fallen, leaning against each other in a circle around the room, books fallen everywhere.

"Oops," she said softly, hoping no one had heard the commotion.

But no such luck. The next thing she heard was the voice of the curator, spluttering in indignation as he stared at the mess of his once-tidy library. He froze when he set eyes on her. "Look at this! Sons of the pharaohs! Give me frogs! Flies! Locusts! Anything but you. Compared to you, the other plagues were a joy!"

She was rather clumsy, and had a dreadful tendency to get into things that she shouldn't, Evelyn had to admit that much. But comparing her unfavorably to the plagues felt a bit unfair. However, this was no time to protest. "I'm so terribly sorry," she said instead. She hated to see the books like this herself. "It was an accident."

"When Ramses destroyed Syria, that was an accident. You are a catastrophe! Look at my library! Why do I put up with you?"

In Evelyn's opinion, that was going a bit far. She had valuable skills, and those should not go unrecognized. "Well, you put up with me because I can read and write ancient Egyptian, and I can decipher hieroglyphics and Heuratic, and, well, I am the only person within a thousand miles who knows how to properly code and catalogue this library, that's why." Let him come up with a response to that, Evelyn thought with satisfaction.

The curator frowned at her, and promptly found one that cut straight to the bone. "I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons, that's why. Allah rest their souls." He waved a finger in her face. "I don't care how you do it, I don't care how long it takes. Straighten up this misheveh!"

He left her there alone in the midst of the disaster. Evelyn looked around her in despair, not even sure where to start, but was distracted by a noise from the next room. She might as well go investigate, she thought, before she started on the clean-up process.