England -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction; Wishes -- Juvenile fiction
So Jane took the Amulet from Robert and held it up between the two men,
and said, for the last time, the word of Power.
“Ur Hekau Setcheh.”
The perfect Amulet grew into a double arch; the two arches leaned to
each other Λ making a great A.
“A stands for Amen,” whispered Jane; “what he was a priest of.”
“Hush!” breathed Anthea.
The great double arch glowed in and through the green light that had
been there since the Name of Power had first been spoken—it glowed with
a light more bright yet more soft than the other light—a glory and
splendour and sweetness unspeakable.
“Come!” cried Rekh-marā, holding out his hands.
“Come!” cried the learned gentleman, and he also held out his hands.
Each moved forward under the glowing, glorious arch of the perfect
Amulet.
Then Rekh-marā quavered and shook, and as steel is drawn to a magnet he
was drawn, under the arch of magic, nearer and nearer to the learned
gentleman. And, as one drop of water mingles with another, when the
window-glass is rain-wrinkled, as one quick-silver bead is drawn to
another quick-silver bead, Rekh-marā, Divine Father of the Temple of
Amen-Rā, was drawn into, slipped into, disappeared into, and was one
with Jimmy, the good, the beloved, the learned gentleman.
And suddenly it was good daylight and the December sun shone. The fog
has passed away like a dream.
The Amulet was there—little and complete in Jane’s hand, and there were
the other children and the Psammead, and the learned gentleman. But
Rekh-marā—or the body of Rekh-marā—was not there any more. As for his
soul...
“Oh, the horrid thing!” cried Robert, and put his foot on a centipede
as long as your finger, that crawled and wriggled and squirmed at the
learned gentleman’s feet.
“_That_,” said the Psammead, “was the evil in the soul of Rekh-marā.”
There was a deep silence.
“Then Rekh-marā’s _him_ now?” said Jane at last.
“All that was good in Rekh-marā,” said the Psammead.
“_He_ ought to have his heart’s desire, too,” said Anthea, in a sort of
stubborn gentleness.
“_His_ heart’s desire,” said the Psammead, “is the perfect Amulet you
hold in your hand. Yes—and has been ever since he first saw the broken
half of it.”
“We’ve got ours,” said Anthea softly.
“Yes,” said the Psammead—its voice was crosser than they had ever heard
it—“your parents are coming home. And what’s to become of _me?_ I shall
be found out, and made a show of, and degraded in every possible way. I
_know_ they’ll make me go into Parliament—hateful place—all mud and no
sand. That beautiful Baalbec temple in the desert! Plenty of good sand
there, and no politics! I wish I were there, safe in the Past—that I
do.”
“I wish you were,” said the learned gentleman absently, yet polite as
ever.
The Psammead swelled itself up, turned its long snail’s eyes in one
last lingering look at Anthea—a loving look, she always said, and
thought—and—vanished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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