---
James tucked the ancient manuscript back
onto the shelf and headed out for lunch. He paused outside his office
to loosen his tie and wipe a smudge from his silver-rimmed glasses
when a window on the building across the road exploded. Something -
no, somebody - crashed through the glass and plummeted onto a
car. Everyone in sight stopped and stared in horror. Instinctively,
James sprinted across the street. The car's alarm blared and whooped.
Shards of glass crunched under James' feet. In the middle of the
destruction, a boy lay on the crumpled roof of the car. James reached
towards the body. The boy rolled over and blinked a few times,
meeting James' gaze with big, brown, puppy-dog eyes. A crowd started
to gather, murmuring and chattering.
“Does
anybody know him?”
“He
came right out of that window.”
“Somebody
call the police.”
“I'm
calling an ambulance!”
“Are
you okay?” James asked.
“I think so.” The
boy sat up. James grabbed him and eased him back down. “Don't
move. If you've broken something, you'll just make it worse. An
ambulance should be here soon.”
“I'm
fine!” The boy brushed James' hands
away and slid off the car. He dusted himself down and ran his hands
through the short, frizzy curls of hair on his head. While the boy
wiped away the debris, James checked him over. No cuts, no bruises,
nothing missing. The boy looked fine – hell,
he looked better than fine.
“What's
your name?” James asked.
“Tem.”
The boy reached back up on the car,
retrieved a backpack from the rubble and gave it the same quick
clean.
“What
happened to you?”
“I
had to- Oh no.” Tem stared past
James, wide eyed and pale. “They're
coming. You've got to get me out of here, mister!”
“What?
No, we have to wait for the ambulance.” James
turned, following Tem's gaze through the crowd. Two very large and
less than patient looking men barged their way to the front.
“That
was very naughty, Tem.” One of them
said, flashing his jagged teeth. The men were twins, dark skinned
like Tem but without the boyish innocence.
“Do
you know him?” James asked. He felt
Tem huddling behind his legs. The big man who had spoken stepped up
toe-to-toe and chest-to-chest with James, glaring down at him and
nearly poking James in the eye with his long, pointed nose.
“That's
none of your business.” He said.
The other one started around James. James side-stepped and cut him
off.
“Look,
it might not be my business but he's just fallen out a window. He
needs to go to the hospital.”
“No,
you look-” The man grabbed James by
the collar. James gave the man his toughest, bravest look and prayed
they wouldn't hit him too hard, too many times. Before the man could
finish his sentence, Tem ducked between them and kicked the man in
the shin.
The
man hollered and hopped up and down, rubbing his bruised leg. James
took the opening and shoved him into his brother. Both stumbled and
flailed about off balance. Tem grabbed James and pulled. They bolted
through the crowd, away from the twins. James heard them shouting and
then their voices disappeared into the droning white noise of the
city and the pounding, thumping of his heart. Had he really just done
that? Just one of those thugs could eat him alive. He didn't even
know Tem. What was he thinking?
He
heard the shouting again. He looked back over his shoulder. The twins
were coming and coming fast, running in strides twice as long as
James' legs could manage.
“Bring
it back, Tem!” One of them shouted.
James put his head down and powered forward. Tem yanked his arm,
pulling him over the road. A taxi screeched to a halt. Another car
swerved around them, swiping James with its mirror. Tem stopped.
James tripped. Tem pulled him back. A bus whooshed past his nose.
James started to contemplate his brush with death, then he heard the
shouting again. Another car screeched behind him. Tem ran and James
ran with him.
They
hit the pavement and weaved through the crowd. Tem ducked and dodged
his way forward. James crashed through, knocking shoulders with one
pedestrian after the another. Every time he looked over his shoulder,
the Twins had gained more ground.
“Down
here!” Tem jumped out in front of
James and grabbed him, dragging him down a flight of steps, into the
subway, straight for the ticket gates. A sudden gust of wind whipped
through the subway. A woman at the gates lost her ticket. She chased
after it, leaving the gate clear.
“Tem,
wait, we don't have a ticket!”
“Keep
running.” A train pulled into the
subway. Tem let James go and slid under the barrier. James charged
straight into it, flipping arse-over-head and landing on the ground.
Tem grabbed him and pulled him up. The train doors opened. Tem and
James pushed through the crowd onto the train.
Safe
on board, James turned back towards the gates. His eyes met the
furious faces of the twins as they reached the bottom of the stairs
and kept coming. They leapt clean over the barriers and sprinted
towards the train.
“They
just don't give up.” Tem sighed and
took James by the hand. James kept staring in disbelief until Tem
pulled him onwards. They moved towards the front of the carriage,
keeping one eye on their pursuers. The train doors closed. The twins
slipped through by a hair. Tem stopped and squatted low. The train
started moving. James stumbled over Tem. He steadied himself on
another passenger and looked down at the boy.
“What
are you doing?”
“Get
down!” Tem tugged on his arm.
“There
they are!” One of the twins
shouted. James looked up and locked eyes with the twins. They started
towards him. Tem stood up and said:
“When
I say jump, jump.”
“What?”
James asked.
“Ready...”
Tem peered through the crowd at the twins
lumbering towards them, pushing aside anybody in their way.
“Nowhere
to go now, Tem. It's time to go-”
“Jump!”
Tem jumped. James jumped. They floated in
the air. The twins, the train and all its passengers rushed through
James, in one side and out the other. James watched the last train
carriage zip past him as if he was a ghost and then vanish into the
subway tunnels. Then, when everything was quiet, he and Tem dropped
back to the ground.
Numb,
confused and terrified, James stood in the middle of the tracks
stuttering.
“What-
How- But-”
“Don't
stand on the tracks like that, another train will run you over!”
Tem called from a nearby door. James nodded
at the boy and walked mechanically over the tracks, following Tem
into a well-lit maintenance tunnel.
“What
just happened?” James finally got
out as Tem closed the door.
“It
was just a little magic to get us out of there.”
“Magic?”
James stared at his hands and prodded his
body. He was solid again or at least he thought he was. He pinched
himself. It hurt. He did it again to be sure.
“Yeah.
Magic.”
“No.
No no no.” James slumped against
the wall. “That's not possible. A
train just went through
me.”
“It
went through me too.”
“That's
not any better!”
“Why
do you mortals always get so loud whenever you see a bit of magic?”
Tem shrugged and dropped his backpack by the
door.
“Mortals?
What are you talking about? Who are you?” James
slid down the wall until he was sitting. He wiped the sweat from his
brow and tried to think things through. None of it made any sense and
Tem definitely wasn't helping.
“I'm
Tem. I said that already!”
“Well,
can you please tell me something else? What's going on?”
“All
right all right. Yeesh, you'd think Sobek just crawled up your butt
or something.” Tem rolled his eyes
and sat down opposite James.
“Sobek?
Like the crocodile?”
Tem
slapped his forehead. “Of course
like the crocodile.”
“What
does that have to do with the guys chasing us?”
“Nothing.
They work for my dad. They're mean but not nearly as mean as my dad
can get. Today my dad was in a really bad mood so I had to get away.”
“Mean,
huh?” James softened. Sure, this
was all weird but weird or not Tem was still just a kid who needed
help.
“Yeah.
Whenever my dad is in a mean mood I go visit my uncle. I usually have
to sneak away but today I got busted and I had to run like mad to get
away. That's why I jumped out the window.”
“Your
uncle, huh? Where does he live?”
“He
lives down town. It's not far by train. If we can just get to another
station, I'm sure we can get to my uncle's apartment.”
“All
right.” James mulled it over. He
felt pretty sure he didn't want anything to do with stray wizard kids
or their angry fathers, but he couldn't just leave Tem to wander
around. James checked his watch. He'd already lost nearly half an
hour of his lunch break; he had to get back to the office. He still
had a hundred pages of Hebrew to translate, and he couldn't do that
if he took Tem to his uncle's place, and he definitely couldn't do
that if the twins were beating his face into a pulp.
But
if he let Tem, a kid no older than nine, go wandering around the city
alone, then he deserved to be beaten into a pulp.
“We'd
better go see your Uncle, then.” James
said.
“Really?
Thanks, mister!”
“That's
alright.” James pushed himself up.
He picked up Tem's bag and slung it over his shoulder. “And
call me James.” He offered his hand
to Tem. Tem slapped him five and started walking.
“Let's
go. This corridor should lead to another station somewhere”
James
shrugged and followed. The corridor led them past storage cupboards
and maintenance offices and eventually out into another subway
station. As they stepped out of the tunnels, a train pulled in and
opened its doors. Commuters flooded the platform and swarmed towards
the exits. Tem walked straight into the crowd, disappearing in a sea
of legs and brief-cases.
“Hold
on, Tem.” James called after him.
He pulled the door to the tunnels closed and chased after the boy.
James waded through the concourse, offering excuse
mes and sorrys
as he shuffled through the cluster of people. “Tem!”
He called. “Tem,
where did you go?” James spun on
the spot until he had orientated himself towards the train and forced
his way towards it. As he battled against the tide of people, the
doors closed. James watched the train roll away from him.
Somebody
tapped his shoulder. James spun around and looked right into the
chest of tall, dark and mean twin number 1. He looked up at the
brute, trembling and forced a sheepish smile. He felt hands grasp his
shoulders from behind. The last of the crowd marched up the stairs,
leaving James alone with the twins.
“Let's
talk.” The thug behind him said.
James opened his mouth to answer. The other twin hit him square in
the jaw. The lights went out.
The
water that woke James was cold. He shook his hair out of his eyes and
spat the streams of water from his mouth. He shivered from head to
foot. James shook his whole body and became aware that he was tied
up. The chair rocked side to side, then came to rest again. Looking
up, James saw a single light in the ceiling above him, the twins in
front of him and four concrete walls around him, blank except for a
single door.
“Where
am I?” James asked.
“This
is the boss's new house.” One of
the twins said.
“This
is a house?”
“It's
not done, yet. We didn't want to mess up the carpet at his other
place.”
“Yeah.
Do we look inconsiderate to you?” The
other twin asked.
James
thought about it, then said: “No.
You're right. That was a stupid thing to ask. My bad.”
“Right.”
The first twin went on. “Now,
where's the book?”
“The
book?”
“The
book the kid stole.”
“The
book the kid stole?” James searched
his brain for an answer. He couldn't remember ever seeing a book. “I
don't know.”
The
first twin punched him. James yelped in pain. His chair rocked. The
twins grabbed him before he went over.
“Wrong
answer. Where's the book?”
“I
had his bag. Check the bag.” James
looked around for the bag. They hit him again. James gritted his
teeth and waited for the chair to stop rocking. Then he waited for
the world to stop rocking.
“We
already looked in the bag. You think we wouldn't look in the bag?
What are we stupid?”
“That's
not-”
The
first twin struck him again, this time driving his fist into James'
gut.
“Ow!
You didn't even let me finish.”
“The
book, pal. Where's the book?”
James
didn't answer. He tried to come up with something – anything
– they might believe but his
mind just kept screaming you're
about to die oh god they're going to kill you and bury you in a
shallow grave.
The
twins swapped a look and then hit him one more time. The blow sent
the chair over. James' head hit the floor with an agonising crack. He
screamed again and struggled against his bonds. The ropes held him
tight in place.
“We're
going to go get some things
that might help you remember. Wait here.” One
of the twins said. James couldn't tell which one. He heard the door
open and then slam shut.
“Damn
it! Oh, that hurts. Son of a-” James
tried to focus and put his mind to escape but he couldn't get through
the pain. The twins mentioned tools. What did they mean? He didn't
want to know. Whatever they meant, it would be bad news. Their fists
were the size of grapefruits, wasn't that enough? James tried to
remember a book but he kept coming back to the pain.
“Psst.”
James looked up. “James.”
He followed the sound to an open air duct in
the ceiling. “James!” He
could have sworn it was closed before.
“Tem?”
James asked. “Tem,
help me.”
“You
won't fit through here. But I've got something that will help you.”
“What?”
“A
book.”
“Tem,
if it's the book they want, then just give it to them.”
“Nuh-uh.
It's mine. But you can borrow it. Use it to get out.”
“Tem,
I don't-” Tem dropped a thick,
leather book through air duct. It slammed down beside James and fell
open to a marked page. James craned his neck up to see the text.
Little pictures in black ink adorned the pages. James recognised the
hieroglyphics immediately.
“Just
read it aloud. I'll be waiting for you outside.”
“Tem,
these are Egyptian hieroglyphics. Nobody knows how to speak ancient
Egyptian!”
No
answer came.
“Tem?”
Only silence followed. James shuffled
himself closer to the book and ran his eyes over the text. He thought
back to his university days and his Egyptology lessons. One at a
time, James put meaning to the symbols in front of him. The script at
the top of the page read The Sun
Breaks Free of The Horizon and
followed with a short chant, calling on the powers of gods for divine
intervention of some kind. But Tem had told him to speak it aloud and
nobody in the world could speak Ancient Egyptian. Perhaps he could do
the next best thing, though. James knew Coptic about as well as he
knew Ancient Egyptian but he could speak Coptic and Egyptian was
Egyptian, after all.
James
read aloud from the book. As he chanted, he felt a shimmer in the air
as though the room brimmed with static electricity. He felt a sudden
flash of hot air down his back, around his wrists and ankles and then
he felt the ropes disintegrate. He rolled out of the chair and
scrambled to his knees. It worked! No wonder the twins wanted the
book. They'd be back any second for it, too. James crept over to the
door and pressed his ear against it. He heard voices on the other
side, growing louder. He rushed back to the book and flipped through
the pages. He translated as fast as he could but the the author had
written everything with impenetrable symbolism.
The
doorknob turned. James stopped on a random page: The Phoenix
Carries Thought. It had to do. James chanted the spell. The final
word came out, followed by a brief shot of fire. The flame grew,
spreading wings and taking shape. The fire crashed against the door,
shattering it and blasting the twins off their feet.
“What
was that?” Asked one twin.
“He's
got the Book of Thoth!” The other
twin answered. “Let's get out of
here!”
“Run!”
“Oh
no you don't.” James flipped over
the page. Beckon to the Judge. It
sounded good enough. James chanted.
A
blinding white light flooded the room.
“Behold,
I am The Timeless. I am The Thrice Great Pacifier of The Gods. I am
Thoth, self-begotten and author of all knowledge. I am judge, scribe,
sorcerer and creator.” The light
faded and in the middle of the room stood a tall figure, pale as the
moon. His body resembled a man, slender and strong but the white
feathered head of an Ibis sat on his shoulders. Trembling and frozen
in place, the twins traded frightened glances. James stared at the
figure, slack jawed and struck with awe.
“Come
forth, Tem.” Thoth commanded. Tem
slid out of the air duct and dropped down in front of Thoth.
“Hello.”
Tem smiled but Thoth scowled. The room
seemed to darken, as though even the light feared his anger. “You
stole my book, Tem.”
“I
just wanted to-”
“My
magic is not for the trifling entertainment of half-mortals, Tem.”
Tem
bowed his head. “I'm sorry.”
“It
is only by fortune that the mortal called me here. Do you know what
would happen if my magic fell into the wrong hands?”
Tem
didn't answer.
“Return
home. I am sure your father will want words with you.”
“Okay.”
Tem sulked out the door and down the hall.
Thoth turned to the twins.
“Return
to Duat. Tell your master of this.” He
said. The twins nodded and promptly vanished in a flash of black
smoke. Finally, Thoth turned to James.
“I
think this is yours.” He said.
“Yes.”
Thoth replied. The book vanished from James'
hands.
“Can,
uh, can you tell me-”
“Yes,
James. I now know all and I will tell. Tem is the child of Anubis and
a mortal lover. He has a fascination with magic and so he stole my
spell book and brought it to your world to study. When he found out
what his son had done, Anubis sent his servants to retrieve the book
from Tem.”
“Oh.”
James said, lacking any better response to
the impossible story.
“But
it does not matter. These things are not for you to know. I will
erase today's events from your mind and send you home. But I leave
you a gift, an apology for the trouble we've caused you.”
All said, the god disappeared, leaving James
staring dumbfounded into the magnificent white light.
James
woke up, stumbled out of bed and into his kitchen. He felt unusually
alert, as though he'd slept a whole day. The red light flashed on his
answering machine. He clicked play and turned his attention to
breakfast.
“Hi
James. I got your message.” His
boss' voice from the machine caught his attention. “That's
fine. Go home and get some rest. I hope you feel better tomorrow. If
not, just let me know. Oh yeah, I went to check how far you'd got on
the Hebrew job. I can't believe you finished it already! This is
great work, too. Next time something like this comes in, you're
heading up the project. Anyway, seeya.”
James
scratched his head, tried to remember, then shrugged it off.
Yesterday was a blur but he wasn't about to argue with a good thing.
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