CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
❝Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.❞
J.R.R. Tolkien
✦✧✦
Ahkmenrah grips Luna's hand tightly. She's warm, soft, real. It's grounding him. The joy of seeing his parents again and the fear of what will happen if they can't get the tablet back before dawn are coinciding to make his adrenaline levels insanely out of whack. His hands are shaky and he feels like vomiting.
Dexter brought Jed and Octavius back just a few moments ago, and Octavius peers at something in the distance, then waves. "Larry!"
Larry and Teddy jog back to join the group--now consisting of Luna, Ahkmenrah, Sacagawea, Attila, Nicky, Merenkahre, Shepseheret, the monkey, and the miniatures--out of breath and very much without the tablet. "Hey," Larry says, panting. "You guys, how you doing?"
"Still in one piece, Gigantor!" Jed calls.
Larry bends down and hands Octavius his tiny cloak. "Octavius, this belongs to you."
"Thank you!" Octavius nods gratefully.
"I don't understand," says Teddy, and Ahkmenrah notices both his arms now are stiff and waxen. His heart jumps uncomfortably. "Why is Lancelot staying strong while we get weaker?"
"It's his first night," replies Merenkahre, before Larry can. "Newborns are stronger, but it matters not. Unless we succeed, he too will be dead come the dawn."
"We can't let him leave the building," Larry says. Luna squeezes Ahkmenrah's hand back.
"Sir--" Larry looks at Merenkahre-- "can you go back to Egypt in case he comes through there?"
Merenkahre glances at Ahkmenrah, then nods. "Of course."
Shepseheret gives Ahkmenrah's wrist a gentle squeeze, before following his father back down the hall. Ahkmenrah wonders briefly if this truly is the last time he'll ever see them again.
"Nicky, take Attila. Check the loading dock." Larry points to Teddy. "Teddy, you and Ahk go to the south wing. Check the side doors. Sac, take these guys--" He gestures to Jed and Octavius-- "down to medieval England. He might go back through there. Luna and I've got the main entrance."
Ahkmenrah's stomach churns at the thought of being separated from Luna. The dawn is quickly approaching and if he is to die, he wants the last thing he sees to be her face.
"Larry..." Judging by her expression, Luna's thinking the same thing. She bites her lip, clearly holding back everything she wants to say.
"Lu, we don't have time," Larry says quietly.
"Go." Ahkmenrah hates to say it, but he understands. Luna has to be able to make objective decisions right now, and he's the last person she needs to be with.
Luna swears under her breath, then pulls him in for a quick goodbye kiss. Before Ahkmenrah can think of anything else to say, he turns and runs after Teddy, toward the south wing.
But it appears that Lancelot's already left the museum, because after only a few minutes, Sacagawea comes running to find them, gasping that the security guard's taken Larry and Luna and locked them away with Laaa.
Ahkmenrah and Teddy volunteer to keep watch out the front entrance--mostly because the tablet's doing a thing again, and Ahkmenrah doesn't want Luna to see him stumbling, so he sits on the steps until he's steady on his feet again--while Attila, Nicky, and Dexter go to their rescue.
After several minutes, Ahkmenrah begins to worry, his heart beating fast in his throat, and he stands up, pacing. "Where are they?"
"Ahk!"
He whips his head around and a wave of relief washes over him. Luna's running down the steps and then she's there beside him, holding a flashlight much like Larry's. He sighs. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Luna shakes her head, but she looks different. Exhausted. Maybe the power that she's absorbing is too much for her. It's just one more thing to add to the long list of everything Ahkmenrah's worrying about right now.
"Attila and your boy secured the lady guard in her booth," says Teddy to Larry, as he makes his way down the steps after Luna. "I don't know how long it'll hold her, though."
"Alright, we gotta find Lancelot," Larry says, jumping the last few steps to the ground. "But somebody has to make sure she doesn't get out."
Laaa growls, raising his hand nonchalantly. Larry frowns, but then nods. "Yeah. Laaa. Okay. All right, you know what you have to do?"
Laaa nods, puts his hands out in front of him, and barks, "Stay!"
"That's right," Larry replies. "Make sure she stays in there."
"Stay!"
"Good! Go!" Larry points in the direction of the guard's shack, and Laaa runs off into the night, hands outstretched in front of him, all the while muttering, "Dada say 'stay'," over and over to himself.
"Lawrence!" Teddy's voice is panicky. Luna grips Ahkmenrah's arm painfully tightly. "I can't move my arms. We're becoming less useful by the minute."
As he says this, pain shoots through Ahkmenrah's body, like a burning seizure. He stumbles, and Luna catches him, struggling to hold him up. He tries to stand, but everything burns, throbs, everything is pain. It's as if his skin is peeling itself away from his body and his muscle from the bone. Vaguely, he sees, through cloudy eyes, Larry trying to help Attila up.
And then, as quickly as it came, the episode passes. Ahkmenrah stands up, breathing hard. Luna's face is white, full of worry. "Ahk, are you okay?"
"Fine." It's a lie, one she knows, but it's better to lie than to admit he's dying. Again.
"Uh, Attila, something's up with your eye," Larry says, grimacing.
"What is it?" Attila asks in Hunnish, frowning.
"I don't know. It's just...kind of going a little off."
Ahkmenrah leans around to see and sucks a breath in. It is indeed very bad. Attila's left eye is pointing inward, unmoving, at his nose.
"Oh my god! Oh my god!" Attila's freaking out, and that's most likely not good.
"You gotta relax, okay?" Larry grips Attila's massive shoulders, attempting vainly to steady him. "Calm down!"
Attila screams almost unintelligibly in Hunnish, jumping up and down like a child in pain.
"Attila! Hey!" Larry slaps Attila in the face, and Attila shuts up. Ahkmenrah raises his eyebrows. Larry's got more guts than he does. "Attila doesn't hyperventilate."
"I don't hyperventilate," Attila repeats slowly.
"You pillage!"
"Pillage!" Attila nods.
"You plunder!" Larry shakes him by the shoulders fiercely.
"Plunder!"
"You don't freak out," Larry says, letting go slowly. "Okay?"
Attila takes a deep breath in, closes his eyes, the left of which is still very much pointing the wrong way, and nods. "Okay."
"Dad, there's like eight million people in this city," Nicky says worriedly.
"8.4 million, actually," Luna corrects him quietly, still holding on to Ahkmenrah's arm, and Ahkmenrah can't help but smile. She can't be too bad off if she can still pull out facts like that. It's a glimmer of hope in the darkness that looms ahead of them.
Nicky glares at Luna, then continues. "He could be literally anywhere by now."
"Well, we'll find him," Larry replies unwaveringly, arms crossed over his chest. He glances unhelpfully at Luna and Ahkmenrah. "We have to."
✦✧✦
As they sit in the back of the large red bus (I LOVE BIG RED BUS, reader), shoulder to shoulder, while children and their parents stare, Ahkmenrah contemplates death. He's died before, and yet somehow, it still frightens him. When his brother was stabbing him, over and over, he didn't really have anything to live for. He was king, yes, but he was also single, hadn't seen his parents for several days, and his brother hated him. If all one has to live for is power, then one isn't truly living.
Ahkmenrah hates to say it, but he remembers wanting to die then. Wanting to be free of the chains of mortality, of the privilege he never asked for. Death was relief, a comforting blanket he accepted warmly.
But then his father hadn't told him the true nature of the tablet. So when he awoke for the first time on the eve of his death, wrapped in bandages and trapped inside a dark sarcophagus, you can understand the terror and confusion he must have felt. Those nights cultivated a deep and extremely rational fear of small spaces inside him.
For years and years, Ahkmenrah was alone each night, lying there, unable to move, covered in spices and linen. And then his mother joined him. He could hear her voice, muffled by her own sarcophagus, but communicating was worthless: through the bandages and the metal sarcophagus, words were mere murmurs of sound and never intelligible.
His father joined them not long after that, and they spent thousands of years that way, waking, but never able to speak or walk or touch anything. This is when Ahkmenrah endeavored to keep thinking. He thought about everything. The prophecy his father had mentioned once, his life, his brother... He forgave his brother after the first thousand years or so, once he'd stopped being bitter, and had figured out most difficult math equations by the next thousand.
So surely, after living a half-life, awake only by the light of the moon, Ahkmenrah should welcome death once more. Shouldn't he?
But as he looks around at the faces he's come to know and to cherish as friends, and at Luna, the woman he loves so desperately, he realizes that he no longer wishes for death. How ironic that on the eve of his imminent--and this time, permanent--death, he finds he finally wants to live. He has something to live for now.
Luna tugs at his hand. "Ahk, come on! We're here!"
Ahkmenrah blinks. Looks around at them. He can't ask one of them to die for him just so that he can selfishly live. He must die tonight.
He squeezes her hand back and follows her out of the bus and into the massive theater.
Lancelot's on stage, clutching the tablet under one arm and brandishing his very real sword at two actors in medieval clothing, a man and a woman, and everyone in the theater is screaming and running out the doors. Ahkmenrah's shunted around uncomfortably by the terrified patrons, and he keeps a tight hold on Luna's hand, pulling her close so they aren't separated.
"Lancelot!" Larry shouts. "Lancelot!"
Lancelot glances at the crowd, spotting them, and then sheathes his sword, grabs a torch from its holder, and runs offstage. Without hesitating, Larry sprints after him, and Ahkmenrah follows, pulling Luna with him.
They run up the stairs, several winding flights up, and then there's a door, swinging open, that leads onto the roof. It's very cold now, and snowing. Ahkmenrah's reminded forcefully of the first time he met Luna, shivering out in the snow, riding Rexy to save the tablet from the old night guards. He's loved snow ever since. How fitting that it should be snowing the night he must die.
Lancelot's standing at the edge of the roof, staring out at London. Larry shouts, "Hey! Give me the tablet!" which Ahkmenrah thinks is kind of obvious and very unhelpful.
Lancelot whips around and brandishes the torch at them. "Stay back! Stay back!"
Larry skids to a stop in front of him, leaning back so the fire doesn't touch him.
"Stand back!" Oh, dear. Ahkmenrah's only just noticed that the fire from the torch has sort of melted Lancelot's nose. He's forgotten that not everyone's an undead thousand-year-old corpse.
Larry's staring, too, and Lancelot frowns. "What?"
"Just...uh, your, uh, nose, it's--"
"What?" Lancelot tilts his head confusedly. "What about my nose?"
"Your nose, it's--it's dripping," Larry replies very awkwardly.
"What?"
"It's melting. From the fire."
Lancelot looks down at the burning torch in his hand and then screams, dropping the torch in the snow, and touching his nose gently with one finger. Then he recovers, rather quickly, and unsheathes his sword, pointing it at Larry. "How bad is it?"
"It's...not great," Larry replies honestly.
"But I'm Lancelot!" Lancelot protests pitifully.
"Lancelot isn't real," Luna speaks up, and everyone immediately hushes. She has a strange gravity to her, one that has come in handy many times. It's part of what makes her so perfect. "It's a legend. Probably based on real people, but created by someone to make a story heroic. It's a myth. And so is Guinevere and Camelot...and the Holy Grail."
Lancelot's lip actually trembles as he stares up at her. "I... don't understand."
"Lancelot, the tablet is very real, but it's not the Grail," Luna continues gently. "The quest for the Grail is just another story, but this tablet has real power. Power to take and give life. And if you don't let us have it before dawn, its power will go away forever. And you'll die."
"And if I give it to you, then what? Back to the museum?" Lancelot's angry, and understandably so. His whole life, his memories, they're lies. "Stand there as little children ogle and point?"
"And learn," Teddy interjects, walking slowly down the stairs to join Larry, Sacagawea and Dexter right behind him. "And get inspired to do great things. There are far less noble fates, my friend."
"Not for me, there aren't!" Lancelot hisses. "If there is no Camelot, there is no Guinevere...and no Lancelot, then I'm nothing. I'm just a sad lump of misshapen wax. Stop looking at my nose!"
"I wasn't looking at it." Larry looks down at his feet, avoiding the nose at all costs.
"You were," Lancelot argues. "I saw you."
"Guys! We're running out of time!" Luna shouts, and Lancelot, incredibly, shuts up. "Please. Give me the tablet." Her voice breaks and Ahkmenrah bites the inside of his cheek. "I have to do what's right."
"Darling..." Ahkmenrah pulls her to face him, taking both her hands in his. "Let me go. I can't ask someone else to die for me."
"You're not asking, I am!" Luna's eyes are full of tears, reflecting the few stars above them. She's always had beautiful starry eyes, but here, now, she's the most beautiful Ahkmenrah's ever seen her. "I can't let you die!"
"And I can't let you make that choice." Ahkmenrah moves his hands up to cup her face, to hold her like this one more time. "You have to let me go."
"I can't," Luna sobs, and Ahkmenrah drops his forehead to hers, closing his eyes, holding her close to him. Gods, she's so perfect. How twisted is fate to take this away the moment it's most precious to him.
The tablet glows green again, corroding once more, and Ahkmenrah grabs onto the railing next to him, all speech torn from him as the pain blisters his skin, rotting and decaying and ripping his body apart. Luna wraps her arms around him, keeping him from falling, whispering words he can't hear. His ears ring, his chest burns, his head throbs as he stands there, and finally, he's able to whisper, "Larry."
Larry looks up at him in shock and then Ahkmenrah's vision clouds. He's blind. He can't see a thing.
"We've run out of time," he gasps, and Luna sobs desperately beside him.
✦✧✦
q: where are you from?
a: 'murica.