“Amon?” I called out. “Is that you?”
“I am not causing this disturbance,” he said as I stumbled against him. The walls shifted, and before we could get our bearings, we were trapped inside a stone box. It became deathly quiet. Amon attempted to use his knife to pry open the sealed edges, but he couldn’t find a place to insert the blade. He stirred the sand around us and sent it scurrying into the corners searching for cracks. The sand just hovered in little clouds, not finding a way out.
I sat on the ground and dusted my hands off on my jeans. “So much for your Egyptians-don’t-use-booby-traps theory.”
Amon frowned. “It does not make sense. The tombs were never protected in this manner before.”
“Maybe your so-called guardians who are missing in action set up the traps to protect you and your brothers so that you wouldn’t be discovered.”
“Maybe.”
“In that case they should have set up a few more, since you were found anyway.” I sighed. “Can you sandstorm our way out?”
Shaking his head, Amon explained, “If the sand cannot find a crack in this prison, then we cannot escape it in that manner, either.”
Sitting down next to me, Amon dusted off his hands and held them up in the air, chanting different spells. When one didn’t work, he tried another, and another. It was around the third or fourth spell that I noticed the light coming from his skin was waning. It actually flickered.
“What’s wrong with your light?” I asked.
“I am not sure,” he said as he lifted a hand to study it. “Let me try something.”
A ball of flame materialized in Amon’s palm, but it soon sputtered and went out. “I do not understand why this is happening,” he said.
“Wait a minute. You can create fire with your hands?”
Amon nodded.
“You are full of surprises,” I said in awe.
I took a few deep breaths and felt a niggling pain in the bottom of my lungs. “I…think we’re running out of oxygen,” I said, the pain in my chest now becoming a dull ache. “You need it to maintain your flame, and it’s also affecting the light from your body.”
Amon took my hand and switched off his light. Darkness deeper than that of a grave surrounded us. Desperate to figure a way out, I ran my free hand over the wall closest to me. “Try to see if there is an indentation or a trigger,” I suggested to Amon. “In the mummy movies there is always a way out, we just have to find it.” Amon worked on the wall opposite mine and then we moved on to the other two. When giving the same treatment to the floor, I came across a depression in the stone. “What do you think this is?” I asked.
Making his way over to me, Amon slid his hand on top of mine until he felt the stone I’d found. “I am not sure,” he said.
It felt like a hollowed-out curve, similar to a mold for a sphere, but no matter how we pushed or beat on it, nothing happened. I sat down heavily with my back against a wall. Amon slid down next to me. “So this is it, then?” I said, more to the tomb than to Amon or myself. “We’re just going to suffocate in here? What’s next? The walls will crush us?”
Not a minute later, there was a terrible grinding noise. Amon stood to investigate.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I cried.
“The ceiling is lowering, Lily,” Amon said. “Stay as low to the floor as possible.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, my voice trembling with the conviction that whatever he tried wouldn’t be enough to save us.
“I will attempt to brace it,” he panted.
“You’ll be crushed,” I wheezed.
“I do not know what else to do.”
Little by little the ceiling dropped, and as strong as Amon was, there was no stopping its progress.