“Who are you?” I whispered. His lashes fluttered and green eyes rimmed with golden brown opened and looked straight into my soul. “The way you look at me…It’s like you…you know me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I mean…I mean all of me.”
“Not…everything.”
“But you can read me…somehow.”
Amon nodded. “This is our connection, Lily.”
“You are not what I think you are, are you?”
“I am more. And perhaps less.”
I sighed. This was downright confusing. “All right. Then why don’t we start over and try this the old-fashioned way.” I stuck out my hand and he took it. “My name is Lilliana and yours is Amon. So, Amon, where are you from?”
Amon gave me a quizzical look and then nodded. “I am from Egypt.”
“You were born there?”
“Yes. Many years ago.”
“How did you get here?”
Amon sat at my feet in the grass. “I am unsure, exactly. But my sarcophagus was in the House of Muses, so I would suppose that I was brought here. For what purpose, though, I do not know.”
“Your sarcophagus?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. Do you own the sarcophagus? Are you a curator of some kind? Where does your power come from?”
Amon laughed. “I will do my best to answer your questions in the hope that by doing so you will begin to trust me.” He held up his hands and then ticked off his answers on his fingers. “I do not understand ‘curator.’ My power is a gift from the sun god Amun-Ra and his son Horus. And that sarcophagus is one of many I have slept in over the centuries.”
I stared slack-jawed at him for several seconds and then murmured, not quite believing I was saying the words, “Are you trying to tell me that you’re a…a mummy?”
“A mummy.” His lips formed the word as if tasting it. Slowly, he answered, “Each millennium, when I pass through your world, my body is encased in the wrappings of Anubis. Is this what you mean?”
I sat back against the bench, hard. “Mummification means a dead body gets wrapped from head to toe and is placed in a sarcophagus that usually gets hidden in a pyramid or a temple,” I explained.
“Then yes. I am a mummy.”
When I was able to speak, I remarked, “You don’t look dead.”
“I am not dead,” he declared, then added, “at the moment.”
I suddenly remembered entering the Egyptian exhibit and finding the sarcophagus empty. “Do you swear you are telling the truth?”
“I swear on the heart of my beloved mother as to the veracity of my words.”
When Amon had asked me before if I believed him, I’d told him truthfully that I did. There was absolutely nothing insincere about him. I could tell that he believed what he was saying, but that didn’t mean that what he was saying was one hundred percent true.
To find out, I channeled the hard-nosed police interviewers I’d seen on television. Leaning forward and narrowing my eyes, I began peppering Amon with questions. “What were your parents’ names?”
“King Heru and Queen Omorose.”
“What was your favorite childhood toy?”
“A wooden carving of a horse.”
“What is your favorite food?”
“Honey and dates from my country and the sweet round discs filled with fruit from yours.”
“Uh-huh.” So he liked Danishes. “Favorite music?”
“The sistrum, the harp, and the lute.”
“If you’re an Egyptian mummy, where are your wrappings?”
“My body does not need the wrappings now. I have risen, as I do once every one thousand years.”
Blinking after absorbing that statement, I continued. “But I didn’t see any strewn about the exhibit. What happened to them?”
“When it is time for me to rise, I waken and use my power to disintegrate the wrappings. Otherwise it would be difficult for me to move about.”
I grunted. “Right. I guess that would be difficult,” I mumbled. Cocking my head, I continued. “How is it that you understand English?”
“A spell.” When I just blinked, he explained, “I did not understand your language at first. Do you remember when you gestured to me in the House of Muses?”