❝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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☾ ☽
"THAT'S A STATUE OF ANUBIS," said Evy as they worked in the presence of it. The statue of the jackal-headed god of the underworld had persisted through millennia and still stood tall, towering over them. There was nothing that could match the intimidation of it. "Its legs go deep underground. According to Bembridge scholars, that's where we'll find a secret compartment containing the golden Book of Amun-Ra."
The Americans and their diggers were on the other side of Hamunaptra. Evy's pursuit of the Book of Amun-Ra had led them to where they were now in search of a way to get underground to the legs of the statue. The search had paid off, for they had located a crevice that would lead them underneath the city.
O'Connell was tying rope securely around a pillar near the crevice so they could get down there safely. Hassan was essentially doing nothing but avoiding the smack of the rope as O'Connell worked. Jonathan had looked around the ruins for a while before joining the rest of them in what they were doing. Mara had found a pair of ancient mirrors coated in sand in the remains of the city, right here near where they were working, and upon realizing what they could have been used for so long ago, she and Evy had launched into yet another excited conversation in which neither of them actually finished a sentence before assigning each other a mirror to clean and position according to the sunrays.
Mara glanced the direction of the blinding sun before frowning. It wasn't reflecting. With one of the fabric scraps she'd gotten from the trading post she adjusted her position in front of the mirror to clean more sand off of it. In doing so, she had let go of the mirror and it started to fall back. It really didn't matter if it had fallen; she hadn't found the correct positioning yet and it was too heavy to have broken from a fall of a few inches into sand.
Still, Jonathan had grabbed it before it hit the sand, pulling it back up, and Evy, apparently missing its near fall, called over, "Jonathan, you're meant to catch the sun with that."
Mara laughed quietly to herself as she ran the fabric over the mirror. It wouldn't be a perfect polish, but it would reflect and that's what they needed. She caught Jonathan's exasperated expression as he knelt beside her, helping her adjust the mirror, and he said, "I'd started to think I'd never hear a complete sentence from you or my sister ever again."
"Very funny, dear," she replied in jest.
As Mara stood to check that it was reflecting well, she saw O'Connell handing something to Evy, vaguely hearing he'd gotten it off the Americans, and after he'd walked away, she watched Evy open it. From where she stood, she could see that it was archaeological tools. It was a very sweet gesture from him and Mara smiled to herself, wondering if their guide's feelings toward the woman had shifted toward the romantic in the short time they'd known each other.
