‘From the corner of Cy’s room the Dream Master stepped forward, and taking the ankh from Cy’s wrist, he placed it round Aten’s neck.
‘I thought you weren’t going to do that until Aten had returned to his own time,’ said Cy.
‘Indeed,’ said the Dream Master. He turned and his cloak spun out behind him.
Cy blinked. The walls of the pyramid were no longer cardboard brown, they had become fawn. Cy reached out his hand and touched the sides. It was solid.
‘Ah,’ he said. He turned. There were the statues, the furniture, the paintings, and the mummy case in the corner.
Aten looked round him. ‘We are as we were,’ he stated in a flat voice. ‘I had hoped—’
‘That we would come back at a different bit,’ Cy finished for him.
Aten nodded. ‘Just a little bit earlier so that I could avoid being captured. But,’ he sighed, ‘here we are. As before.’
‘Mmm, not quite as before,’ said Cy. ‘It said in one of my books that, as well as the official entrance, there were sometimes secret passages leading from the tombs.’
‘But if these passages are secret, how do we find them?’ Aten asked him.
‘I spoke to Grampa when I visited him at the hospital,’ said Cy, ‘and he said that we might need a magnetic compass, some chalk, and a ball of string.’
‘I do not have these things,’ said Aten.
Cy stuck his hands in his pockets, ‘But I do,’ he said. ‘Grampa also said to look carefully at the paintings with the darkest colours where there might be a hidden opening.’
The torch beam was flickering yellow when eventually Cy heard Aten shout out. Aten pointed to the lower part of the wall where he was searching. ‘Look, here! There is a gap in the wall.’
Cy shone the torch into the cavity. A long narrow passage curved away and upwards. Cy peered inside. ‘It hardly looks big enough for a person to crawl along,’ he said.
‘I do not think it was meant to take a person’s body,’ said Aten.
‘Then what?’ asked Cy.
‘The soul,’ said Aten. ‘I’ve heard it said that in the pyramids at Giza there are such passageways to enable the dead Pharaoh’s soul to travel freely.’
‘To where?’ asked Cy.
‘These passageways point to the stars,’ said Aten. ‘To Osiris, and the brightest star in the sky . . .’ Aten stopped, and gave Cy a strange look.
‘The brightest star in the sky is Sirius,’ said Cy.
‘Yes,’ said Aten. ‘Your own name. Cyrus.’
Cy opened his mouth and then closed it again.
‘You were sent to lead me to safety.’ Aten smiled at Cy.
Cy shook his head slowly. ‘If what you say is true then this passageway should lead to the outside.’ He shone the torch inside again. ‘It is very narrow. Are you absolutely sure?’
‘We are not so large,’ said Aten, ‘and I will happily follow you.’
Cy groaned. ‘I thought you might say that.’
Some time later Cy and Aten struggled out of a narrow opening behind a rocky outcrop high in the Valley of the Kings. Below them, wide and slow, moved the waters of the Nile.
‘Look!’ cried Aten. ‘Tying up by that jetty. There is a royal barge!’ He turned to Cy. ‘I must go.’
Cy looked at his friend for a long moment. ‘You’re still wearing my trainers,’ he said eventually.
Aten removed one shoe and gave it to Cy. ‘I keep the left sandal, as a bond between us,’ he said. ‘You hold the right one, my friend through Time. I will remember you always, as you remember me.’ He struck his brow with his hand and then touched Cy’s forehead with his fingertips. ‘It is done,’ he said.
Cy watched Aten run down the slope towards the great river. This would have to happen Aten’s way, and he, Cy, would have to accept what fate dictated.
Suddenly he was aware of a presence beside him. The Dream Master was biting his beard and muttering like a bad-tempered child.
‘This is a Right Royal Rameses, I can tell you. Thirteen Thundering Thunderclaps say it’s never going to work out. Camels and crocodiles . . . of all the Desperate Dynasties, I do not know . . .’ Cy realized that the little man was as worried as he was.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Cy said.
The barge had moored by the edge of the river. From it came armed soldiers, attendants and white-robed priests. Leading the procession was a young woman, who cried at once in delight as she saw Aten.
‘I knew we would find him if we kept looking,’ she shouted. ‘I knew it.’
‘Hesen!’ Aten called out her name.
She ran forward and knelt in the sand before Aten. ‘General Horemheb has returned and taken control of the army once more,’ she said. ‘He freed your uncle Ay so that he could search for you.’
‘Come forward, Ay,’ Aten called out.
An old man stepped from among the officials. ‘It is well that you have been found and are safe,’ said Ay. Then he turned and stared at the court officials who moved backwards from him. ‘Be it known to all, that from this day if any harm comes to Aten, I will be mightily displeased.’
The Dream Master touched Cy’s sleeve. ‘Aten is safe now. We may go. Take firm hold of my cloak and do not release it.’
Cy reached out and gripped a corner of the black silk. Again he felt the rushing silky wind. But, as Cy tightened his grip, the Dream Master’s cloak tore in his hand. Cy gasped. The Dream Master’s cloak had ripped and they were separated. The fabric of Time had split, and now he was lost. He was falling, out of sequence, out of place.
With a thump he tumbled onto his own bed. Dazed, Cy sat up and uncurled his fist. In his fingers lay a tiny fragment of the Dream Master’s cloak. The piece of black material fluttered and then was still. Cy looked around his room. He knew that he must put it away. Somewhere safe. Under the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers was where he kept his most secret things, away from Lauren’s prying eyes: Grampa’s war medal, his fossil stone, the matchbox with the sand inside. Cy pulled out the drawer. The fragment of black silky material rippled, and a faint exotic scent brushed his nostrils. Cy hesitated, his fingers curled. A thin tremor lingered in the air. Cy let go, then straightened up and lifted the drawer back in place.
A few days later, in school, they were clearing up the classroom before the start of the summer holidays. Vicky and Cy were gathering all the Egyptian display material together. A very subdued Eddie and Chloe were folding up the costumes.
‘Put all of that in a box and store it with the props,’ said Mrs Chalmers. ‘It will be useful when the next Egyptian project is being done.’
As Cy collected the papyrus signs, Vicky stopped to read from one of the display cards, which showed the boy Pharaoh sitting on his throne. ‘Why is it,’ she asked Mrs Chalmers, ‘that here the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s name is written as Tutankhaten?’
‘Because Tutankhamun changed his name,’ said Mrs Chalmers. ‘He was originally called Tutankhaten. Not long after he became Pharaoh he changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun.’
Cy stopped what he was doing and took the card from Vicky. The name leapt out at him. Tut-Ankh-Aten.
‘Aten!’ Cy whispered softly. Around him, Time slowed down. Cy looked at the picture. It was a scene from the back of Tutankhamun’s throne. His wife was standing before him anointing his chest with perfumed oil. His wife, Ankhesenamen . . . Ankh-Hesen-Amen. On her right foot she wore a sandal, the other was bare.
The king sat on his throne. His left foot was sandalled, the other one unshod.
Underneath, it said that no-one knew for certain, but it was believed that this was a sign of great affection between two people. Cy smiled. He knew for certain. ‘I am Aten of the Ankh.’ That was what Aten had said when Cy had first met him face to face in his dream.
‘Tut-Ankh-Aten,’ Cy whispered, ‘Tut-Ankh-Amun . . . Tutankhamun.’
Cy walked over to where the golden portrait mask lay on Mrs Chalmers desk. He remembered Aten’s fascination with it, and how it was that after seeing it, Aten had insisted he must return to his own place. Cy lifted the golden mask of the boy king which Aten had posed for. His head spun as he tried to work it out.
Was it this mask which Aten had seen in a classroom in Britain in the twenty-first century and copied for his own sarcophagus? And therefore, if Cy’s dream had not flipped over, bringing Aten into Mrs Chalmers’ classroom, the explorer Howard Carter would not have had any mask to find? Or had Aten recognized the face depicted on the gold portrait mask as his own, and that was why he was so insistent about returning? Knowing he had to keep faith with his own destiny.
It wasn’t possible. Was it?
Cy traced the outline of Aten’s features on the golden mask. That was why it was so similar to the photographs of the original in the Cairo Museum. It was the original, or, rather, more original than the original.
‘Bring peace to your kingdom, Aten,’ he said softly. ‘Rule wisely and well.’
Cy turned and looked into the mirror which hung on the classroom door. Mrs Chalmers had told him that the Ancient Egyptian word for ‘mirror’ was ankh. Cy raised the golden mask of Tutankhamun to cover his face and stared through the eye-slits at the reflection of the boy Pharaoh. His own eyes gazed back at him. And then, to Cy’s astonishment, one eyelid closed slowly in a deliberate wink.