They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

The mummy was rotted and black, its bandages ragged and torn. It couldn’t move its arms, for being bound. But its lips moved behind the once-white strips around its mouth. A putrid smell filled the room.

‘Oz,’ Itzy whispered to her brother, though her eyes never left the mummy.

‘I didn’t even think I could do it,’ he choked out. ‘I mean, I’ve raised animals before, but that’s different, you know? They never –’

Talked. This was off the scale. It was like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe Story. It was obvious Oz had no idea what to do with this extension of his powers.

Itzy glanced at Aidan. He had been all hers, until that voice had spoken. Now he stared at the mummy as if entranced. He drifted close to the case. He looked like he was sleep-walking. She touched his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

‘You did it, Oz,’ he breathed. ‘We can actually speak to one of the Ancients.’ It was hard to tell whether he was excited or terrified.

‘This is a mistake,’ Seth decided. He wiped his hand over his head and healed a bleeding wound.

‘Aye,’ Aidan acknowledged in a shocked whisper. ‘We’re probably all in tremendous trouble. But still….’ Again, there was fear in his voice. But equally, Itzy was reminded of when he’d first spoken to her of his love of driving.

‘You’re smarter than you look,’ the mummy addressed him. Then, to the others: ‘He speaks truth. You’re all in great trouble.’

‘Sorry,’ said Seth. Some of his old cool had returned. ‘I need to understand this. How are we all speaking the same language here? Shouldn’t you speak ancient Egyptian?’

Even behind the bandages, the mummy managed to glare at him like it was contemplating burning him in the desert sun.

It ran its blind gaze over each one of them, studying them. ‘So you are what became of us,’ the mummy finally pronounced.

‘Your descendants,’ said Melody, awestruck.

The mummy grunted. It was incredible how much expression it had, without a face. ‘No wonder our fathers abandoned us, if you were the future.’

It looked particularly closely at Itzy. She didn’t like how it examined her like she was a cadaver lying on a pathology table, waiting for her own autopsy.

‘The Wisdom,’ said Aidan, his voice urgent. ‘Ya must know where it is.’

The mummy’s head jerked in his direction. ‘The Wisdom!’ It laughed raucously. ‘You think you have a right to the Wisdom?’

‘I don’t,’ Aidan admitted, ‘but I want it, all the same.’

The mummy seemed to regard him. ‘At least you’re honest,’ it finally decided. ‘But then….’ It looked more closely at him. ‘I suppose you can’t help but want it, can you?’

Aidan blinked in response, trying to puzzle out the meaning.

Itzy ignored the mummy’s cryptic words. ‘It’s on Earth,’ she blurted, relieved to have this out in the open, at last.

The mummy returned its faceless stare to her, but she held her own in front of it. ‘Clever,’ it noted. ‘Yes. It’s on Earth.’

Aidan’s eyes flew to her in surprise.

She focused on the dead thing before them. ‘Someone holds it. A child,’ she quoted her father’s words. ‘But he doesn’t know he has it.’

‘Itzy,’ she heard her brother’s warning voice.

The mummy seemed amused. ‘You sound like you think you know who this child is.’

She swallowed. This was it. This was the moment they would learn the truth.

Oz took in the text on the placard at the base of the mummy’s case and said, ‘You’re a priest, right? Hornedjitef, is it?’

The mummy snorted. ‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘So you must know a lot about this,’ Oz remarked. ‘Isn’t the Wisdom something to do with God?’

Again, the mummy made a noise. ‘Something to do with God,’ it mocked him. ‘Your understanding of the Wisdom is about as accurate as your pronunciation of my name.

‘When my people return,’ the mummy addressed the four of them, ‘you’ll regret your curiosity. They didn’t leave the Wisdom; they lost it. And when they discover its whereabouts, they will do anything – anything – to reclaim it. Once they have the kind of power the possessor of the Wisdom wields, they will be able to accomplish all they ever dreamed of.

‘They will destroy your kind – you disposable half-breeds we always despised. They will flush out the humans –’ it spat out the word like bad-tasting medicine ‘– and purify the bloodlines. They will rule the Earth as they once did – and there is nothing you can do to stop it.’

It turned its eyeless gaze on Aidan. Its bandaged body leaned toward him as if to impart a terrible secret. ‘And you,’ it said, ‘will bring them here.’

Aidan’s usually composed face was overcome with fear, the like of which Itzy had only seen once before: the night she’d made him kiss her. But that had been a different sort of fear. This was the fear of a child.

A child holds it, she thought.

‘I won’t,’ Aidan whispered to the mummy.

‘You already have,’ the mummy hissed in response. Then it laughed and said the words Itzy had dreamed so many times:

‘They’re coming for you! They’re coming for you all!’

It suddenly dropped to the floor of its sarcophagus, all traces of life extinguished.

Aidan, Seth and Itzy turned to Oz, who shrugged. ‘I didn’t like it,’ he explained.

Aidan turned on him sharply. ‘D’ye realise what we had there? We could’ve asked it about the afterlife. It held all the answers to every question we’ve ever had!’

‘It was an arse,’ Oz said simply.

Aidan shook his head in disbelief. He doubled backward and looked at the lifeless mummy.

After a lengthy silence, Seth said, ‘No, really. How could we understand what it was saying to us?’

‘I don’t know,’ Oz answered him wearily. ‘Maybe it’s because of me. I raised him, so I controlled him, and that means he took a Rosetta Stone course in English.’

Seth rolled his eyes and looked away. He locked his stare on Itzy. A moment passed between them, in which Itzy was reminded of what had happened the night before. She dragged her gaze away, feeling uncomfortable.

‘We’d better go, before we attract attention,’ Verdi suggested.

Melody looked hopefully at Aidan, who stood very close to Itzy, apart from the others. Somehow, they had divided into two groups – and not the groups they had arrived in.

Oz looked at his sister. ‘You coming with us?’

She glanced at Aidan, a question in her eyes. He seemed to understand, because he nodded. ‘I think I’ll go back with Aidan,’ she told her brother.

Oz was silent a moment. Then he exhaled and said, ‘Alright. Ring me when you get in. Melody – Verdi – you can come with us, if you like.’

Verdi followed him without a word, looking a little like a miniature Oz, with all that black hair. Melody lingered a moment, her eyes on Aidan, and then turned away.

‘Come on, Seth,’ Oz said, nudging his friend.

Seth took a deep breath and reluctantly followed Oz out of the room. Once, he turned back to look at Itzy, and she looked away. A heartbeat later, he was gone.

* * *

Aidan and Itzy listened to the others’ footsteps echo through the museum. When the building fell silent, Itzy said, ‘Melody does know you broke up, right?’

Aidan laughed. ‘Aye. In a way, it was her suggestion.’

Itzy blinked in surprise. ‘But she still has feelings for you. It’s obvious.’

He sighed. ‘I didn’t say she suggested it lightly.’

There was something Itzy needed to know, and he seemed to read it in her eyes.

‘I still love her,’ he said. ‘Just not like that. She’s my friend. When I first learned what I was and what I could do…she and Verdi were the only people I knew who could relate. They helped me feel less alone, like. For that, they will always matter to me – even if we have nothing else in common.’

She swallowed. ‘And me?’

He gave her a tender look. ‘Yer different. I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for ye.’

They shared a moment of silence while she ingested the meaning of his words. Then he asked, ‘And Seth?’

Itzy smiled and shook her head. ‘I suppose, in a way, I hardly know him. I only met him shortly before I met you. But he’s important to me, the same way Melody is important to you. He and Oz…they told me the truth of what I am – of what my father was. Seth taught me to control my power....’ She glanced around the museum, remembering the chaos she’d brought on them, and said, ‘Well, to a degree. Believe it or not, tonight could have been a lot worse.’

Aidan’s eyes sparkled with silent laughter. ‘He feels something for you, though,’ he noted.

She nodded, miserable over it. ‘I’ve already told him I don’t feel it back.’

He exhaled, as if with relief. Now that they’d cleared the air, he asked, ‘Was the mummy right, when it said ye knew who held the Wisdom?’

Itzy dipped her head. ‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘you have it.’

She could not have predicted the look of horror that now filled Aidan’s steel eyes. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Because my father wrote about you, in a journal. He said the Wisdom was already here on Earth, and we were all in trouble because you’d attracted the attention of the Ancients and they’d come back to find it – without caring happened to the child who held it.’

Aidan listened to her with rapture. Then he shook his head in denial. ‘I don’t hold the Wisdom. I’d know if I did…wouldn’t I?’

‘My father said the keeper of the Wisdom didn’t know he had it.’

‘Perhaps he meant yer brother,’ Aidan insisted. ‘Or Seth.’

Itzy stepped forward. ‘I don’t think he did.’

Aidan stepped forward, too. They were almost touching. And almost, she realised, just wasn’t good enough anymore.

She reached for him at the same time he reached for her, and they folded each other into an embrace. His face burrowed into her hair. His breath blew across her bare shoulder, sending shivers down her spine.

He dropped a light kiss on the bottom of her neck, aliens and ancient quests forgotten. ‘I’m not used to feeling like this,’ he whispered against her. ‘Ya have me acting like I’m gone in the head. I don’t get out of control. I’ve worked very hard not to get out of control. But ye do something to me.’

Heat rushed through her at these words. He put his hands on her face and pulled her to him for a kiss. It was long and lingering and left them both breathless when it finished.

He took her hand, to go, but she stepped away. ‘We can’t just leave the museum like this. Think about the papers tomorrow – and what if they find evidence that it was us?’

‘Itzy.’ He sighed. ‘After what just happened –’

‘Hey, you told me I can choose to do good. Remember?’

He opened his mouth to reply, and then laughed. He shook his head. ‘Yer right. Alright. Fix this, then.’ He waved his hand at the room. ‘I trust ye.’

Itzy let out a breath of relief, and smiled. ‘Thank you. That means more than you realise.’

She closed her eyes and willed the words to come together. It was becoming easier to form the sentences in her mind. Her body felt hot with her own strength.

When she opened her eyes, the room had changed. The transformation was immaculate, as if nothing had happened.

Aidan bobbed his head in approval. A broad smile crossed his face. ‘Cracker,’ he told her.

They headed downstairs, where the light had faded. When they reached the exit, Aidan turned a scheming smile on her. ‘Would ye be interested in seeing my way of walking through walls?’

Itzy’s eyes lit up with mischief. ‘Go on. Impress me.’

He turned his attention to the heavy doors that stood between them and the outside world. Then he closed his eyes. It was beautiful to watch him. He shimmered all over, and power radiated from him in waves, settling warmly over her skin.

There was a sound like something imploding. The doors wobbled like jelly, like the feeling in Itzy’s own stomach as she beheld what he had done.

He turned to her. ‘C’mon, then,’ he said, and he took her hand.

‘We’re going through that?’ she squeaked in amazement.

Aidan laughed. ‘Just trust me.’

She put out her free hand and brushed the surface of the doors. It was unstable and bent at her touch, but it left her fingers dry. She pushed her whole arm through the strange substance, and then withdrew it again, twisting it from angle to angle and examining it. Deciding it was safe, she stepped into it, and Aidan stepped in with her.

There was a moment when everything turned the brown of the doors and she couldn’t see Aidan, though she felt his hand clutching hers, erasing any sense of claustrophobia before it could sink in too deeply.

Then they pushed their way through the doors and found themselves outside. Aidan ran his hands over the doors and they solidified.

Itzy slid her arm through his and leaned against him. ‘You’re magnificent, you know,’ she said. She pretended to swoon.

Aidan twirled around so they were holding each other again. He pushed her messy hair out of her face and grinned. ‘If that’s the reaction I get, maybe I should show off more often.’

She sighed heavily. ‘Do you think we’ll be okay? You said we were all in danger.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘You may believe I hold the Wisdom, but I still feel mithered by it all. I don’t have any useful answers for ye.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘But one thing’s certain: whatever happens, I won’t be letting anyone hurt ye.’

She smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss him again.