The Mummy's Maid [COMPLETE]

A Tale of Lost Love

That morning, long after Nick left, I was still in my room, cheeks slightly itchy from dry tear streaks. Finally silent, I rubbed the remaining dampness out of my eyes and pulled out a relatively thin book, it's brown leather cover worn soft from ages past.

Softly sniffing, I opened it to the first page and began to read the all to familiar line.

'To anyone who reads this; please understand how important it is that you know my story. Once, when the Earth was young, I was a simple maid working in the Pharaoh's palace when I was cleaning the throne room. Some one was watching me, I could feel his eyes stare into my back. When I looked up, I was gazing into a pair of soft green eyes, ones that would change my life...'

After that, I was always swept up into a simpler time when anyone and everyone believed in gods and monsters without being doubted. A time where taking risks was sometimes the only option to follow your heart.

The plot is simple; Iris, a simple palace maid, was working underneath the pharaoh when she met Ahmanet, the next queen. In the beginning, Iris keep to herself and blankly followed Ahmanet's orders, never interacting with the princess. Until one day when she found Ahmanet crying in her room, worried she wouldn't be a good queen.

After comforting her, Iris started visiting daily and they became good friends and eventually lovers. But since times were still strict when it came to marriage, they vowed to love each other in secret and never tell a soul about each other. Iris continued being a maid, but Ahmanet went down a much darker path.

She made a pact with Set, the Egyptian god of death, so she could become queen. She killed the pharaoh and was mummified alive. But before her imprisonment, she came to Iris for the last time.

Into the story...

I knew Ahmanet was in the room long before she sat beside me. She was uneasy, I could feel it in her bones as she sat down on the bed. She lay her hand gently on my shoulder, unaware I was awake, before standing up again. I took that moment to turn over. 

"You're leaving." It wasn't a question, I already knew the answer. She sighed and nodded, her back still turned. I sat up, crossing my arms before my bare chest. 

"Whatever happened to sticking together no matter what?" No reply. "In the beginning, we promised each other we'd help one another no matter what happened and be fully supportive of any decisions the other one made." Silence. 

"I know what you did, killing the pharaoh and all. I may not like it, but I haven't told any one anything." My arms fell to my sides. "So why...are you leaving me? Without a note, without saying goodbye? That's not like you." 

With a sad sigh, she finally turned around and sat beside me, taking my hands within her own. 

"Iris...you and I both know that after what I've done, we're not going to walk away from this together. I'll keep my part of the bargain, our secret will go to the grave. But you...you can live your life until you die. You can find a man, get married, raise a family. You'll be able to go on." 

"But I don't want to marry a man. I want to start a life, with you! Please...don't leave me." Tears had started falling down my cheeks and she smiled sadly as she brushed them away, shushing softly. 

"I'm afraid I don't have a choice." The sentence was so simple it shocked me to silence. 

"Ahmanet?" "Yes?" I lay one hand on her knee. "I'm not going to see you again..." I gazed into her eyes. "am I?"

But we both knew the answer to that question. 

So I let her go, time seemed to slow as she pulled away, her fingers falling from my grasp. I reached for her, but hardly dared to move from the bed. She smiled weakly. 

"Goodbye my desert ruby." A lone tear fell down my cheek. "Goodbye...my golden cobra."

Back to reality...

I never really liked the rest of the story after that, it was so sad. Ahmanet was imprisoned, Iris went on living a single life, but wrote down her story for other generations of the family to read. She died alone, yet her story still lived on. 

It's strange though, I thought as I got ready for bed, I feel like there's something about that story that relates to me. Like I'm part of it somehow. But that couldn't be the case. I glanced at the book cover. 

"Could it?" But the thought remained unanswered as I drifted off to dreamland.