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...”I’m beginning to think,” Ahkmenrah says one evening, as he pulls himself up on Larry’s hand, wrappings falling away from his tanned collarbones, “that you find some innate pleasure in helping me from my sarcophagus each evening, Larry Daley.”
Lawrence’s steady hands find his hip and forearm when Ahk guides himself over the edge of the sarcophagus, bandaged feet making but a gentle thud against the marbled floor. “Me?” Larry asks, incredulous. “Never.”
Dutifully he turns his back and relinquishes his hold as the pharaoh begins the process of removing his wraps, seeking out his deshret and usekh, his shendyt draped across the floor of the sarcophagus as arranged months prior. Despite the decency given, Larry cannot leave words unspoken, and with closed eyes he throws a non-look over his shoulder and begins to pointlessly ramble.
“I mean,” he says, the echoey emptiness of the tomb filling with the jingle of gold and jewels, the usekh settling across Ahk’s shoulders like an extension of his own immortal flesh. “It’s just fun, isn’t it? Like being a kid again. Sleeping Beauty and all that.”
“Sleeping what?” Ahkmenrah asks, sounding as baffled as he ever has. He tugs on the shendyt and cape across his shoulders, superficial in the way he presents himself to a man not beholden of such expectations— bad habits, one might say. One might also say, necessity.
“You know, Sleeping Beauty,” Larry says. His eyes open and he turns in place when Ahk’s fingers land on his shoulders, flying back just as fast as though burned after their purpose. “Like the fairytale?”
The steel heels of Larry’s black shoes click as he follows Ahk, barefoot, down the hall of the tomb— past the Anubis, nobley guarding with their sceptres— and out into the museum. “I’m not sure I’ve heard of that one,” Ahkmenrah ponders, deshret catching in the light as they pass from the shade of the black Tomb to the warmth of the NHM’s Corridors of Wonder. “Do entertain me.”
“Oh!” Larry fumbles, toying with the keys on his belt, altogether seeming much as though he hadn’t expected curiosity from the pharaoh Teddy so affectionately nicknamed Nosy Noddy. Wherever Noddy came from, not even Ahk’s incessant demands could weasel out. “It’s— uh, well, it’s not that interesting a story, really, i— it’s a… ah.”
Glancing at the guard in his peripheral, Ahkmenrah did little to disguise the amusement on his face. “What,” he laughed, “is your fairytale such an embarrassment? It cannot be so.”
Larry’s eyes busy themselves on the trailing patterns of the cape, the trail of the shendyt, the patterns of the floorboard: anything, it seems, but the face of the King.
“It’s just a stupid kid’s story, I guess,” he shrugs. “Princess falls asleep for a hundred or so years, prince wakes her up, yada yada, no real moral other than misogyny.”
Ahk, nevertheless, seems enthralled already. “A princess?” He asks, breathless. “And this— this princess of yours, did she too rest in a tomb?”
“Uhm, kind— kind of?” Larry scratches his neck. “Not a tomb, exactly, but a bedroom. In a tower. On a castle, guarded by a big dragon.”
“Like the Anubis?”
“Like the Anubis,” the guard agrees. “And...like Rex, I ‘spose.” His fingers worry together in tangles in front of him for a moment before he shoves the twitching appendages into his trouser pockets.
A sparkle fills Ahk’s eyes, the hints of further questions and further curiosity— a sparkle that settles dread and something else, something unnameable, in Larry’s chest. “Why did the princess sleep so long? Did death reach her…?”
“Not...not quite.” Larry seems awkward, made all the worse by the slight diminishment in Ahk’s spark as his familiarity with the tale began to waver. Panicked, Larry says, “but I guess, in a way, she was? There was this— like— evil, witch, fairy, person? Who cursed the princess at birth to fall into an eternal slumber if she ever pricked herself on a spindle, or something like that. The king burned all the spindles in the kingdom but, this is a fairytale, so he...forgot one, I guess, and she pricked her finger and fell asleep. Took a couple hundred years for someone to rescue her.”
When it seems no more will come from Larry, Ahk finally speaks his thoughts. “To wake, this prince broke her curse, yes?”
“Yup.”
A pondering look crosses his face. “How?”
“How...what?” Larry asks, shying under the scrutinizing glare that Ahk sends. Like it’s obvious.
Which frankly, it is. “How did the prince break the curse?”
“Oh,” Larry says, then, “oh.” He coughs, a flush spreading up his neck. “That’s not really important to the whole allegory. Just, uh...you’re the princess, I’m the prince, and the curse were the clasps of your entombment, I guess.”
A finely plucked brow arches towards the deshret. “How peculiarly defensive of you. I was not aware the Guardian of Brooklyn also guards the secrets of fairies. Or, perhaps…?”
“It’s just—“ he begins, biting his tongue to stop whatever threatens to spill. Open, closed, open, closed, Larry’s mouth blubbers like a fish, a thousand thoughts forming, flaming, dying on the tip of his tongue. “It’s not important how that prince broke the curse, because it’s not how I would do it.”
Ahkmenrah clicks his tongue. They find themselves in the diorama room, void but for the angered Mayans, still viciously stabbing away at the plexiglass as though it will give beneath their grams of weight, the Romans and the Westerns off doing God-Knows-What, God-Knows-Where.
“What would Larry Daley never do?” He says, to himself, while Larry drags an exasperated hand through his hair. “A duel of dance with the dragon? I doubt you could win such.”
He has the sense to look offended as Ahk continues. “No. Dancing duels were not often fought in the times of your European fairytales,” he says, “but would slaying such a witch break the curse, were it laid by said witch?”
Larry opens his mouth, but again, is too slow. “That neither!” Ahkmenrah decides, of his own fruition. “You equate the dragon as a guard, to the Anubis, but slaying the Anubis does not unlock the secrets of my sarcophagus.”
“I think you’re thinking too much into this.”
“And I think, Larry Daley,” Ahkmenrah announces, hands brazenly on his hips in defiance, “that you think too little. There is an end to this tale which, for some bizarre reason unbeknownst to myself, you neglect to include.” With all the pompous of a spoilt young King he turns, cape and shendyt flying around after him in the resistance of the air, and he begins his well-rehearsed strop strut down the hall. “If you shan’t tell me, I shall simply find out by my own means!” He calls without looking back.
Larry remains alone, gobsmacked, thoroughly dusted, by the benches, accompanied only by the soft pang pang pang of miniscule Mayan spears against glass.
:::
It doesn’t take long before Ahkmenrah finds his most viable source of information.
“Nicholas,” he beckons— the preteen lifting his head from the kiosk computer as he approaches, a smile already spreading across his cheeks. From the night the boy and his father first freed Ahk, the pair took to one another like a moth to a flame.
With disastrous consequences.
“Hi, Ahk,” Nicky greets. “Where’s dad?”
At that, Ahkmenrah sighs dramatically and drapes himself across the curved desk, his deshret clunking against the surface. “Floundering like a fish in the dry season in the diorama room, being as helpfully unhelpful as ever.”
This complaint coaxes Nicholas’ full attention away from the computer screen. He clicks off whatever tab he had open and turns to the pharaoh, already crossing one leg over the other and stapling his fingers together like some therapist-investigator. A four-foot-ten, eleven year old therapist-investigator for a four-thousand year old drama queen.
“What’s wrong?” The boy asks.
Ahk rests his chin on his knuckles, eyes rolling as he sighs. “Your father speaks riddles,” he complains. “Tell me, young Nicholas, what know you of fairytales?”
“Any in particular?”
“Mm.” Ahkmenrah racks his brain for the name. “It escapes me. The one with...the princess, in the tower.”
“Rapunzel?” Nick assumes, and he types something into the computer’s search bar. “What do you want to know?”
“How does the prince break the curse?”
Nicholas hums. “Well, if we’re thinking modern version, he cuts the princess’ magic hair, which kills the witch, who used it to make herself immortal. Originally… he doesn’t. He falls from the tower into brambles which gouge out his eyeballs and leave him blind, and the princess is never rescued.”
Bleakly, Ahk blinks.
“Well, that’s…” he stalls, “horrifically morbid of you.”
Nick just shrugs as though such a tale is commonplace for children. “I doubt Lawrence would compare himself to something so… horrid.” Ahk continues pondering, drumming the fingers of his other hand against the desk in a timed rhythm. “You say, the prince cuts the princess’ hair?”
“Yup. His last gallant act before he dies, actually. I don’t think there’s a single happy version of Rapunzel.”
Ahk frowns. “Well that’s just peculiar. How on Earth would cutting a princess’ hair wake her up?”
It’s at this that Nick first falters, twitching his fingers against the computer keyboard. “Wake her up?” He asks— then, as realisation settles in, his eyes grow wide and he laughs. “Oh, you mean Sleeping Beauty!”
Ahkemnrah’s eyes too grow wide and bright, sparkling, as he grins, “yes! That’s the one Larry spoke of! Oh, you are a wondrous young boy, Nicholas Daley.”
“Now that makes way more sense,” he whispers. A happy beam stretches on Nick’s face as he turns away from the computer: clearly, the boy’s knowledge on the conclusion to this tale is greater than that of the girl with magical hair and brambles. “I’ll tell you,” he offers, but there’s an undertone to his words that has Ahk’s eyes narrowing.
“I sense a however, Nick.”
Nick snorts. “However,” he mocks, “I want to know why you want to know first.”
Indignantly Ahkmenrah turns his gaze to the frighteningly high ceiling and debates telling Nicholas the implications.
“I made comment on your father’s willing eagerness to aid me from my confines each evening,” he decides. “He, defensive, attempted to play it off as living out a fairytale— of that sleeping princess, yet he negated to tell me how her curse of rest was broken. Apparently it is unseemly for me to even know such. Tell me, Nicholas, how goes it?”
Nick can’t contain the snicker that sneaks out.
“True love’s kiss, Ahk.”
Silence— then Ahkmenrah bleaches, blurts, laughs and frowns, reanimated face living out a hundred and one different expressions.
“What the heavens does that mean?”
Nick shrugs again. “Like, the prince and the princess were destined to fall in love: so kissing her broke the curse or something. I don’t know.”
More silence ensues, before Ahk barks out a disbelieving laugh.
“How ridiculous!” He exclaims, to Nick’s astonishment. “That is neither extreme nor domestic enough for it to warrant hesitance from the Guardian of Brooklyn. ‘True Love’s Kiss’… what a farce!” Ahkmenrah jabs an accusatory finger at the boy as he stands straight, icy glare penetrating his soul. “You jest, Nick Daley. I shall find someone else, someone more mature and educated, to aid me in this venture, than a child! Good day.”
And off he storms.
Nick watches him go in amusement and confusion, sharing a glance and shrug with Rex, who’d sauntered his rackety bones over.
“Mummies,” he sighs, “can’t live with them.”
:::
He finds the miniatures in the Africa enclosure, hollering from a head-high branch as the capuchins play a strange game with a ball of twine. The lions swipe at the strays on each overpass, stunted limbs just missing. When Ahk enters the room, however, the lions all divert their attention from the monkeys’ game and saunter over, wrapping their sleek furred body around the pharaoh’s legs and shendyt.
“Them there fuckers tried to eat me the other day,” Jedediah bellows from the branch, hat tipping on his little head as he swings it down to glare at the lions. “How come you’ve got ‘em wrapped around your jangly little bangles?”
For the briefest moment Ahkmenrah forgoes his frustrations to splay his fingers out, the matriarch of the pride rubbing her smooth muzzle against his palms. He smiles up at the miniatures.
“A cat is a cat, my tiny friend, no matter her size.” The lioness purrs. “Respect garners respect, and royalty respects royalty.”
“That’s some mumbo jumbo you got there, fella,” Jedediah says, just as Octavius interrupts, “beautifully spoken, my liege.” The miniatures butt heads, Octavius’ helmet doing more damage than the flimsy leather of Jed’s hat, and it leaves the cowboy wincing and rubbing at his sore scalp.
“What brings you to this neck of the jungle anyway, compadre?” Jed inquires, little jean-clad legs and brown leather boots swinging back and forth over the edge of the branch. The lions begin to meander back to the centre of the room. “Ain’t you and Gigantor usually on your rounds this early?”
Another exasperated sigh leaves the pharaoh’s lips— a sigh that immediately gets the miniatures more invested, shifting in their seats to better focus on whatever grand tale Ahkmenrah is about to weave before their eyes and ears. Gigantor Drama, as Jedediah calls it, is a most vigorous form of entertainment, second only to their favourite videos of cats and focused light.
“I feel at a standstill with Lawrence,” Ahk drawls, not once considering that perhaps he has dramatized this entire scenario so grandly within his own mind that he’s making a pyramid out of a sand castle. “He neglects to tell me information regarding the nature of our relationship, and I believe even Nicholas has been swayed by his meandering!”
“Woah there cowboy,” Jed sooths. “You wanna run that by us in English?”
“Or Latin.”
“French?”
“Mm, yes, or— Hun! We’ve picked up quite a lot.”
To collect himself, Ahkmen breathes deeply: his eyelids flutter shut, long lashes pressed to cheeks, and he brings his hands down to points by his sides in such a manner that would make the Evans Family proud.
His eyes open slowly.
“The Guardian of Brooklyn speaks in tongues,” Ahk says. “He tells me a grand story, equates himself to a prince and me, the princess, from which my slumber he does rescue, yet with baited breath negates me the privilege of how his fabled prince should wake my princess. It is as though he guards the story’s end like a dark secret— like I am too frail to know the truth. And Nick!” He gasps. “Young Nick lies to me also: weaves webs of magic hair and dying men, of bramble bushes and the blind, of immortality and the kiss of life, of true love— a hoax, poppy, attempts to dismay me. Is it not absurd?”
The miniatures stare, silently, for several moments.
“I think I’d have preferred French.”
“Sounds to me like you got yourself a problem, ‘yer majesty,” Jed supplies unhelpfully. “Now my daddy never told me no fairytales and this numbskull never heard nothing past the writing of the damned Bible, so we ain’t much help.”
“But I must say,” Octavius says, “that perhaps Larry keeps this from you not for means of secrecy, but for lack of importance?”
Ahkmenrah looks up from behind his fingers, pressed to his brow, a confused frown on his face. “What do you mean, General?”
“What I mean to say is that— maybe Larry’s intentions with this story is not to state how or why certain things have happened the way they are, but simply to understand that they happened. Does that make sense?”
The golden fingers drag down the flesh of the pharaoh’s face, tugging on his bottom lip just so as he debates. “I…” he begins, hands falling uselessly by his sides, where a stray lion cub jumps up to lick his fingertips. “I suppose it does.” Abject horror flashes across his young features, and his eyes shake visibly as they turn back to the dandy figures. “Have I been too harsh on him?”
“I think you got carried away, muchacho,” Jedediah nods. “Grew up with everything handed on a silver— gold?— platter, gonna come as a shock the first few times someone doesn’t do what you want. Just gotta remember, they ain’t tryna hurt you. They’re just people.”
“You are small in stature but large in mind, my tiny friends,” Ahkmenrah says: he holds out a hand, and both miniatures take a finger individually, shaking it in solidarity. When he pulls back, he continues, “I see now why you both lead your kingdoms. The combined force of your diplomacy and heart could stand to rival that of Egypt. Thank you.”
This time when he turns tail to leave, Ahkmen clicks his tongue— the lion cub scampers by his feet, ever eager to keep the young pharaoh company. From their perch on the branch, Jedediah and Octavius watch him jangle away down the hall.
“Why did you lie, Jedediah?” Octavius asks after some time.
“Why’d you play along, partner?”
Octavius hums, removing his helmet and running a hand through the thick red bristles. “Sometimes a white lie is necessary, if it comes with a moral.”
“Ain’t that just right.”
:::
Surprisingly enough, Lawrence Daley of Brooklyn has free mobility.
When Ahk arrives in the diorama room, hoping to apologise for his indiscretion, Larry is absent— in his place, Teddy sits on the central bench. Texas is elsewhere(which Ahk thinks is for the best. He believes it unlikely the horse would enjoy present company).
When he hears the scattering of lion claws against linoleum flooring, Teddy smiles warmly up at the approaching duo. “Ahkmenrah,” he greets.
“Mr. President,” Ahk bows his head— the cub watching him curiously before attempting to imitate, successfully headbutting Teddy’s calf. It pulls a small laugh from the world leaders. Politely taking a seat besides Teddy, Ahk invites the cub to sprawl across the fabric of his shendyt that bunches about his lap.
“You seem troubled, my boy,” Teddy notices immediately; it seems he has a sixth sense for these sort of things. “What’s on your mind?”
Ahkmenrah’s eyes follow his fingers as they stroke over the silky fur on the cub’s back, teeth worrying at his bottom lip.
“I fear I’ve been unfair to Larry.”
“Lawrence? How so?”
Ahk shrugs, quiet, disheartened. “He attempted to tell me a story earlier this evening; to relate himself and I to a tale he knew as a child. Rather than appreciate the meaning behind what he spoke, I grew frustrated, angry that he would not tell me the full story.” His fingers stall on the cub. “It is childish.”
“We all deserve to be a little childish sometimes, your highness. You most of all.”
He knows it’s true: shows it in how he hangs his head, traces the patterns of the wood with his gaze. Ahkmenrah knows— he is the oldest thing in this museum, the only animated humanoid exhibit with a claim to true life, and yet to so many appears young. The boy, eternally a young adult, eternally twenty-one, taken from life and frozen in death for four thousand years. Suffocating alone in his tomb in this museum for twice as long as he lived on Earth.
No time to be a child as the boy pharaoh.
“Is it unfair of me, even now, to wish to know the true tale?” He asks after some deliberation. Ahkmenrah keeps his voice low, as though the walls themselves are to eavesdrop.
Teddy huffs out a slight breath as he smiles. “No, of course not. What story did Lawrence tell you? Perhaps I might know it as well.”
With pursed lips Ahk shifts in his seat, lifting the cub to cradle her to his chest. He is reminded of quite the strength in his old bones when an image of Larry failing to carry the smallest cub flashes in his mind.
“He was vague,” Ahk says. “He spoke of a sleeping princess and a dragon, of a curse and a prince who lifted it. Do you know it?”
Teddy, with the warmth of a dozen suns, crinkles his eyes in a gentle grin. “Sleeping Beauty,” he guesses, assured by the spark of recognition behind the pharaoh’s eyes. Instinctively, Ahkmen leans back into the bench, crosses a leg over the other knee and rocks the cub in his arms. “Of course, a classic. Let’s see, how does it go…?
“A long time ago, a young princess was born to a loving King and Queen. She was spoilt silly, loved by her court and kingdom, adored and treasured, by all but one— a once equally adored fairy who had fallen to darkness when the King did not shower her, too, with such affection.
“Jealous, this dark fairy cursed the young princess: that she should die upon her 16th birthday, by pricking her finger upon the needle of a spindle. The King was horrified to learn of this curse and demanded it be revoked: but magic worked in ways he could not comprehend, and there was simply no reversing what had already been commanded.
“Instead, the King and Queen sought aid in the mystics— three fairies, good fairies, who vowed their lives to the kingdom, spent years of their time and effort in an attempt to even alter the curse, whilst the King ordered all spindles in the kingdom be burned. In the end, the fairies succeeded in altering the terms of the curse: should a spindle have passed their tallies, and the princess should prick her finger upon it, then she would not die— but would be trapped in an eternal slumber, lost to the world but not into death, neither living nor dead, until someone might find a way to break the curse and wake her.
“Come the day after her 16th birthday, the princess, miraculously, was still with them: no spindle had been found, no fingers pricked, no eternal sleep entered, and the whole kingdom rejoiced at their victory over the dark fairy.
“Enraged, the fairy took the form of a courtier and approached the clueless princess. The fairy convinced the princess that a gift from a faraway kingdom had arrived a day late, and that she must come upstairs to see it. Entranced and naive, the princess followed— to the tallest tower of their castle, where in the very highest room awaited the fairy’s own gift.
“It was something the princess had never seen before. Amongst the hay and straw sat a strange contraption: a large wheel, beside a stool, on one end of which stood a slender point that glinted in the midday sun. She thought it beautiful, and with coaxing from the fairy, reached to touch it.
“The princess’ finger landed daintily on the spike: with a hiss she drew back, a bead of blood blossoming on the pad of her finger. She thought it strange, how something so beautifully foreign could bring harm— but that was the very last thing she thought, for the spindle’s needle had pricked her finger, and within a moment she had fallen deeply asleep— so deep, it seemed, that she might even have been dead.”
A gasp comes from the pharaoh, the cub sensing his apprehension and whimpering in a similar fashion. While he spoke, Teddy had begun to gesture theatrically: now, he looks down at the monarch and his cat in the corner of his eye, a grand grin on his lips.
“Shall I go on?”
“Please,” Ahk says.
“When the princess was discovered later that afternoon, the King’s cry was so loud it shook the foundations of the island upon which their kingdom was built. Though she still breathed, the Kingdom held memorials a plenty in honour of the princess, who was laid to rest beneath the sheets of her childhood bedroom.
“With such misery and despair festering in the kingdom, the curse had plentiful darkness to latch itself upon— before long, not just the princess succumbed to the eternal sleep, but the entire kingdom. People fell in the streets, babies rocked to sleep in their cribs yet never awoke with tears in eyes, birds nestled into trees from which they would never take flight.
“For hundreds of years the islanders slept, lorded over by the dark fairy: she danced with their lifeless bodies, posed them in grand ceremonies, constructed jungles of vicious, vile plants to defend her haven of darkness from outside intervention. She existed alone for centuries, while the world beyond moved on, learning to forget the island and its tragic fate.”
Ahkmenrah makes a noise in the back of his throat, like he has something to say, and Teddy pauses his story again.
“I...don’t understand.” The lioness cub purrs again as he begins to scratch beneath her chin. “What is the evil fairy’s goal?”
Teddy smiles. “Would you like me to explain before we go on?” He asks, and when Ahk nods pleadingly, says, “well. The fairy felt wronged by the King, you see. She had known the King much longer, been close to him, viewed him as a father of sorts— and when this beautiful young princess was born, she felt whatever love the King held for her was taken by the baby. The fairy, in killing the princess, aimed to regain both the love of the King and the Kingdom.
“What she hadn’t anticipated was that the love of the kingdom would die with the princess. As a result of her own misguidance, the fairy now had to entertain herself with the fantasy of a loving people, that truly was nothing but a husk of what it had once been.”
The shiver that runs down Ahk’s back is purely result of the cold temperatures of January and his foregone chest plate. “So...this fairy, in hopes of taking back the love and respect that she believed to rightfully be hers, destroyed any and all love whatsoever? That’s…”
“Sad,” Teddy supplies. “Yes, terribly so, my boy. This is what happens when someone becomes misguided in the pursuit of self-worth.”
His teeth continue to worry at his lips, and now he begins to bounce his knee anxiously under the guise of gently rockingthe lioness to sleep. “And if the fairy shut off the kingdom, and the world forgot, how was the curse broken?”
His engagement seems to please Teddy immensely, who slaps his knee and stands up, beginning a lap of the circular diorama room. Ahkmenrah follows his every step, subconsciously patting the lioness’s fluffy tummy as she snores softly.
“Nothing is ever truly forgotten, young king,” Teddy exclaims, a gloved hand gesturing to the room around them. “For every story ever told, there is a person who has it catalogued in their mind, a footnote on the fiftieth page of a book, in a box in some poor soul’s attic: lost, but not forgotten. For the mainland beyond the island, there were still children’s tales regarding the cursed islanders, of the fairy that lived there, of the lost princess.
“One young man found these stories enthralling— he lost himself in learning the history of the island, comparing notes and stories to find commonalities and differences, to weasel out the fact from the fiction, until it became clear in his mind that a princess did, in fact, rest on that island.
“Elders called him crazy. Classmates looked down upon him. They thought him mad, to have delusions of such a child. But that young man didn’t give up on his venture, and soon found himself fit to scour the island in search of the princess.
“Alone in a boat with nothing but his courage and his father’s trusty sword, the man rowed across the Great River to the island’s port. In his journey from the coast to inland, the young man fought many a foe— from great vines that threatened to suffocate him, to man-sized snapdragons, to swallowing bogs and swamps, until at last he reached the portcullis of the castle.
“Believing he had conquered the fairy’s defences, the man foolishly stepped beneath the arch.
“The portcullis fell shut behind him, trapping him within the castle walls, and from behind the great towers crawled a dragon— seven times the size of the greatest camel you’ll have ever seen in your reign. This dragon was a deep, midnight black, boasting wings the size of buildings and green eyes that burned with fire. Each claw stood taller than the young man himself.”
Ahk’s hand stalls on the sleeping lioness, head turned as far as it will go over his shoulder to look at Teddy. Stood before the lights of the locked of Mayan diorama, a dozen tiny spears striking the glass behind his shoulders, he seems deathly intimidating for a man who often exudes an air of pleasantry and peace.
“No man could defeat such a beast.”
Teddy grins.
“You underestimate the strength of will, my boy,” he says.
Ahk’s eyebrows raise. “And so the man won?”
“Indeed he did!” Teddy chirps loudly, nearly startling the lioness awake, for which he has the decency to appear a bit sheepish. The former president strides confidently back to the bench, rounds it, and takes his seat beside Ahkmen again, offering a gentle scratch to the lioness’ head in apology. She purrs contentedly and remains asleep. “It took him long, and many times it seemed as though he might fail, but the remnants of the good fairy’s magic endowed themselves upon his blade, and it found the strength to cut through the dragon’s flesh and pierce its heart.
\“When the dragon was felled, it began to glow, so bright that the man had to shield his eyes— and when the light faded, and he looked again, in place of the once giant reptile lay the dark fairy.”
“Was…” Ahk hesitates. “Was she dead?”
“Yes,” Teddy says, “for she was the dragon. And when the young man pierced the dragon’s heart, so too did he pierce the heart of the dark fairy.”
This point seems to interest Ahkmenrah immensely, for he tilts his head, looks to the wall and bites his lip, internally debating.
“And… did her death break the curse? As she had, of course, been the one to cast it.”
Teddy lifts a brow. “That’s what the man thought, too: he saw the corpse of dark fairy and believed at once, from the way vines began to recede from the walls of the castle, and the thick clouds overhead began to part, that the fairy’s magic was faltering after hundreds of years. He took to the main tower, ascended the stairs in leaps and bounds until he broke the threshold of the princess’ bedroom.
“The room had not been entered for many a century: fresh sunlight illuminated moth-bitten curtains and webbed stone corners. Most of all, his eye caught the beautiful young woman asleep in the bed in the centre of the room.
“The man crossed to her side, taking her hand in his own, and begging her to arise. He spoke to her, told that the fairy was dead, that her magic was gone, that the curse had been lifted. And yet it seemed no matter how he pleaded, the princess would not stir. No sound at all raised in the kingdom— from her bedroom window, the man could still see countless bodies littering the cobbled streets of the island.”
“It...didn’t work?” Ahk asks, genuine dismay in his eyes as he looks down at the sleeping lion. He pulls her slightly closer. “Why?”
With a watchful eye Teddy hums to himself, his hand shifting to pat the pharaoh’s knee in reassurance. “All problems look like nails if your only tool is a hammer, my boy.”
Ahk’s thoughtful as he says, “I’m not sure I understand. Please, explain?”
“Not all problems can be solved with violence— but when it seems one nail, one problem, can be righted with the heavy hand of a hammer, you’re more inclined to swing wildly at the next in much the same manner.”
The pharaoh’s eyes brighten. “Like the fairy?”
“Precisely.” Teddy beamed. “I wish everyone I spoke to was such an eager listener. I believe I would have lost the generals long ago.”
Ahkmenrah smiles sheepishly as he begins to play with one of the cub’s paws, pressing gently against the black paw pad and beans. Her claws come out and rescind again, then the toes curl around the stub of his finger, and she lets out a happy little noise that has the both of them smiling again.
“Then...how did the man break the curse?” Ahk asks when he glances up. As he begins to watch Teddy properly, he sees a litany of previously absent emotions flash across his animated flesh, like he can’t quite decide what to say.
“Well…” Teddy begins, already sounding dangerously like Larry, “I suppose the exact actions he took aren’t the true moral here. What’s important to recognise is that though the fairy was bested by violence, the freedom of these people from their imprisonment could only be accomplished through an act of love, not hate.”
Ahkmenrah hums, but is displeased with this answer: a softer, more coherent version of Larry’s original. Which, he thinks, is unfair of him to say, given that he doesn’t need the truth to understand the message.
But all men, said Teddy, have a right to be a little selfish.
A little childish.
“What harm is there in my knowing the actual actions?” Ahk asks, trying his best not to sound impatient. Teddy still grimaces slightly. “You have spared me no other detail, why now?”
“I suppose, I just— Lawrence wouldn’t— there’s a fickle… ah,” Teddy sighs, closing his eyes. “I suppose there is no harm. But, given what you’ve told me, I believe there may be room for… miscommunication here. I want you to understand that despite Lawrence’s comparisons of the both of you to this tale, he likely neglected to tell you this specific item to avoid… confusion.”
The pharaoh laughs. “If your goal was to dismay my interest, Mr. President, you have failed rather spectacularly.” He stables one hand beneath his chin. “Now I am simply dying to know what could possibly cause such chaos.”
Teddy smiles slightly, though his eyebrows twitch as if he still hesitates. Subconsciously his hand trails to the locks of hair that tip the swishing tail of the cub, threading them between his fingers.
“To wake the princess, the man…”
Ahkmenrah raises his brow expectantly.
“The man kisses the prince.” Teddy says. “Cess. Princess. Apologies.”
Ahk falls silent for a moment, realisation passing over him in waves, filling his bones: it brings more life to his reanimated flesh than he’d ever imagined possible, and he feels for the briefest of seconds as though maybe this is what he once felt like— what it felt like to really be alive.
“Oh,” he says, then softer, “oh.”
Teddy panics. “Now, Ahkmenrah, please remember what I said: nothing Lawrence said necessarily—“
“I believe I have a child to apologise to,” Ahkmenrah interrupts, and he gets quickly to his feet. The shifting wakes the cub, who purrs in his arms then stretches, rolls over so that he may put her down, and then the pharaoh is bowing again at the ex-president. “Thank you for your help, Teddy. You have a beautiful way of crafting stories. Thank you!”
The lioness prances along by his side as he hurries off down the hall, matching the pharaoh’s pace even as his strides turn to a jog, and then a run. He scours the halls for Larry, yet with every corner he turns, the night guard is nowhere to be found: each exhibit he asks shrugs or grunts, as though none have even heard of the man’s existence.
It’s utterly useless.
Ahkmenrah knows the sun’s coming up soon—he can feel it in his chest, and he frets, worried that he might miss his opportunity. Dread has settled in, just so, when the lioness cub preens, catching a scent in the air.
She paws at his shendyt, coaxing the pharaoh’s gaze. “What?” He asks, breathless. “Show me, Mshms, what is it?”
The cub roars, as best a little roar as she can get—it comes out squeaky and adorable, but Ahkmen knows well how it might once have grown, were she alive. He does not treat her like any less a huntress for the stature of her state, and crouches by the cub’s side.
“After you,” he smiles, and with a final huff the lioness cub roars again and pounds off. Gathering his shendyt and cape, Ahk follows after, full trust in her wet little nose.
The cub takes him down a flight of stairs, to the first floor, when she seems to lose her scent—for the shortest time, yet it is enough to momentarily dismay the young pharaoh. She eagerly regains it a second later, though, and leads the king across the carpeted floor to the balcony overlooking the foyer.
Every item of regalia he posses jingles with gold bangles and jewels as Ahk throws himself against the balcony’s railing, bright eyes searching below for the source of Mshms’ yipping. There’s Nicholas, still on the computer, Rex rolling on his back in the open space between the kiosk and his stones, Attila animatedly describing something to his companion, with their back turned to the balcony, there’s—
“Guardian of Brooklyn!” Ahkmenrah calls out suddenly, startling all below him in the foyer. Most pointedly, Attila’s companion turns, hands on hips, to peer up at the balcony. When recognition passes over his eyes, Ahk slips from the balcony and hurries the final few paces to the top of the staircase. The irony is not lost on him as he lifts his shendyt away from his fast feet, much like a princess might gather her skirt as she descends. “I told you I’d find the truth, Larry Daley.”
“Ahk?” Larry questions, a puzzled look still on his face even as the pharaoh leaps the final few steps to him. They stand so close it feels as though the only thing in his vision is Larry’s eyes.
“I want to know your truth now, Guardian of Brooklyn,” the pharaoh says, softly, so that it falls only on Larry’s ears. “Did you mean what you said?”
Larry frowns, his voice equally as quiet when he asks, “what?”
“You told me that you wouldn’t wake me in the same manner as the prince.” Ahkmenrah levels him with a gaze that he hopes conveys a sense of importance. What it really shows is desperation, confusion, and a litany of other flashing thoughts. “Tell me, Larry, did you mean it?”
He hears when Larry’s breath catches in his throat.
Sees when Larry’s eyes widen.
Feels when his heart quickens.
“I…” the night guard trails. “I’m not—“
A little selfish.
A little childish.
Ahkmenrah’s shendyt falls from his grip when he lifts both golden brown hands at once to grasp the night guard’s face between them. It’s his turn now to catch Larry’s breath, and he presses their lips together with all the delicacy of a swan and the fever of a stampede. There’s panic in the air right away when Larry freezes, eyes wide, and it infects Ahk like a sickness, pulling himself back as though Larry burned his lips.
His hands, however, remained splayed across his cheeks, jaw, and neck— as though separate to his body entirely.
Still unresponsive, Larry stares straight through Ahkmen, looking much like he’s just seen a ghost. It settles that familiar dread in the pit of his exhumed, vacant, phantom stomach.
“La...Larry,” he stumbles out, attempting to peel his fingers away one by one, feeling as though they’ve glued themselves to his skin, “I’m—I’m so sorry. It was never my intention to—I feel as though, perhaps, I… oh, Ra, I— “
Ahkmenrah cuts off his own ramblings as the night guard catches his escaping right hand, finally free of its bonds. Now grasped in his own, rough and calloused and weathered by the chill of New York, Larry guides Ahk’s palm to his lips and presses a single, gentle kiss to its flesh. He lingers there, for what seems to Ahkmen an age, the both of them forgetting swiftly all present company.
“The suns coming up,” Larry whispers against the skin of his hand. “Let me walk you to your tomb.”
:::
Most of the walk is taken in silence, with Mshms between them, until they deposit her back in the African exhibit. Jed and Octavius have already made their leave, likely by way of capuchin, to the diorama room, and none of the animals follow them on the retreat.
It is just Larry, and just Ahk, in a cold corridor, when they speak.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t— “
“I really don’t know what— “
Voices overlapping, both men freeze at the same time. Their paces stop, their voices halt, and the silence stretches for a grand total of three seconds before the laughter begins.
“Oh, my,” Ahkmenrah breathes out between chuckles, “I feel I’ve thoroughly stripped my own worth of this crown this evening, Lord Daley.”
Larry’s also suffocating, but he gathers enough breath to glare and point accusingly at the pharaoh. “H-hey,” he says, “we agreed to cut the Lord Daley boloney out months ago, remember?”
Ahk waves him off. He props himself against the wall of the hall with a clink of gold to plaster, head tipped back to track the intricate patterns of the ceiling. Larry soon joins him, synchronised as they both slide to the ground, knees bent, backs pressed to the skirting board.
All that fills the air is their heavy breathing. It breeds complexity, allows the awkward uncertainty of Ahkmenrah’s confusion to fester, until his thoughts begin to stew so violently in his head that he feels he must spew them one way or another.
“I am sorry, Larry,” he says, his head nodding in the direction of the night guard, though his eyes refuse to look at him. “I… vastly misinterpreted our earlier predicament. I worry I’ve made you rather—uncomfortable, if you will.”
Festering. Breeding. Silence.
“Ahk?”
Ahkmenrah hums.
“Ahk, can you—look, look at me.”
He turns his head.
“With your eyes, Ahkmenrah.”
And he does.
Bright, wide, gleaming with a sheen of tears, he drags his gaze from the tress of his shendyt to Larry’s face.
Larry’s face, which is incredibly, painfully close.
Larry’s face, which is getting closer.
Larry’s face, which disappears.
Ahkmenrah’s eyes fall shut once more as the night guard takes it upon himself to press their lips together. He’s gentle, hesitant, as though in his bones carries the same fears and worries of Ahkmen’s, almost pulling back—but Ahk’s fingers trail back to his jaw, press against the pressure point of his neck and draws him impossibly close.
There’s heat, and passion, and a little bit of good fairy magic.
Ahk thinks the prince had the right idea.