Sleeping Beauty (63 page)

“Hey, Ned, it's Pete. You waiting for me?”

Ned's head shot up. “Pete!”

A redhead with a broad grin was looking through the window on the uphill side of the car. He saw Leo and his grin faded. “Jesus. Is he . . . I mean, is he asleep, or what?”

“Asleep,” Anne said over her shoulder. “Tell us what you want us to do.”

“Well, we've gotta start with Leo, but I'm putting a rope on the car first, otherwise we could all end up crashing down when I put my weight on it. So sit tight, folks; one thing at a time.”

They watched through the window as Pete tied a rope
between the roof of the car and the gondola cable. Then, slowly, he stepped onto the roof. The car shuddered beneath the added weight, and, with a sharp retort, broke away from the cable. Robin screamed as they dropped about a foot, and jerked to a stop, hanging from the rope Pete had fastened.

“Wow-ee, fun and games,” Pete said. They heard him but could not see him; he lay on the roof, holding on, until the car stopped swinging. “Okay, next step. Ned, I can't get in the car until you guys move, so how about crawling over the seat?”

Ned looked up. “You sure the rope's gonna hold? Every time we move in here . . .”

“It's fine. I guarantee, this car's going nowhere. Go on, crawl over.”

Anne loosened her hold and Ned wriggled over the seat, headfirst, biting his lips against the pain in his leg. He squeezed into the corner of the seat and gently touched Leo's head as it lay on his folded arms. “Hi, Dad,” he said. “Pete's here; we're gonna take care of you.”

Pete swung into the car beside Anne and Robin. “Okay, Ned, you're my helper.”

“Right,” Ned said proudly.

“Here's the harness. You know how it works; we get it on your dad; fasten it around him . . .”

Anne turned to see if she could help. She let go of Robin for the first time and turned in the seat to face uphill, the way she had begun the trip. Her legs were completely numb from having been folded under her for so long, and she gasped with pain as the blood rushed into them.

“You have to pick him up,” Ned said. “It goes over his head.”

Anne raised Leo's head, and Pete and Ned slipped the harness over it and around his body, fastening it tightly. “Thanks, buddy,” Pete said to Ned. He took the rope that was attached to the harness and crawled back to the roof of the car where he hooked it to a steel ring with a carabiner. By now, Anne saw, there were a dozen patrollers on the slope below, shading their eyes as they looked up at Pete. “Here it comes!” Pete called. He waved to the patrollers and
tossed the rope out and away from the car. It uncoiled in a graceful spiral as it fell.

Pete had swung back into the car. “We've got to lift him out,” he said to Anne. “You kids squeeze over to give us room.” Robin and Ned flattened themselves against the side of the car. Anne took a long breath. Her legs were tingling and so painful she could barely move, but she bent down and lifted Leo's legs and slowly pushed the heavy, limp body as Pete pulled it toward the jagged opening.

“What?”
blurted Leo. His eyes were open and unfocused. “Christ, my head. Can't see . . . Gail? What is it?”

“Dad!” Ned cried. “We're right here.”

“Hey, Leo,” said Pete. “We've got a little problem here; you just let us take care of it, okay?”

“Pete?” asked Leo.

“That's me. Everything's under control; just don't fight us. Okay?”

“Accident,” Leo muttered.

“You got it. But we're okay. We're gonna get you to the ground, you know how; you've done it with us in drills. We're gonna swing you out—” As he spoke, Leo's eyes closed. His body lay across the seatback. “Hold on,” Pete gasped. Anne stopped, breathing hard. “Ned, hold your dad like this, okay?” Pete said.

“I want to help!” Robin exclaimed.

“Sure thing.” Pete shifted Leo's body to lie across the outstretched arms of both children; then he leaned forward, through the opening, and waved to the patrollers. “All set!”

On the ground, two patrollers began to pull slowly on the rope. Pete and Anne, with Ned and Robin helping, held Leo above the seatback and kept him steady as the rope on his harness tightened until he was free of the car. “Good-bye, Daddy,” Robin whispered. She was crying. Leo hung in the air for a moment; then the patrollers began to let out the rope, controlling his descent by playing it slowly through the ring on the top of the car.

Anne watched Leo's still form, turning slowly in midair as it was lowered from the car. He looked so small and helpless, and she held her breath, waiting for him to be grabbed by
the patrollers on the slope who stood in a circle, waiting, shading their eyes. We're all helpless at different times in our lives, she thought, but if we know there's someone waiting to catch us . . .

She thought of Josh. She saw his somber eyes and heard his deep voice on Christmas night.
You mean we're alone in the universe, with no chance, ever, to share, or to touch another person.
And she remembered the cry that had burst within her.
No, that isn't what I want!

“Got him!” Pete breathed, and Anne realized the patrollers were cradling Leo in their arms while one of them unfastened the harness. As soon as it was loose, the patroller shouted, “Okay!” and Pete hauled it in while the others laid Leo on the waiting sled and began to strap him in.

Anne let out a long sigh. They'll take care of him, she thought. They'll take him to the hospital; he'll be all right. The fear of the past hour was gone; it had vanished as soon as the work of lowering everyone from the car had begun. Now it seemed quite reasonable to believe that everything was going to be all right. “How about that,” she said to Ned and Robin with a wide smile. She put her arms around them in a quick hug. “He's going to be all right. And so are we.”

Pete brought the rope and harness through the opening into the car. “Next,” he said.

“Aunt Anne,” Ned announced.

Anne shook her head. “Take Robin first, then Ned.”

“No!” Ned shouted. “Men go last!”

“Unless they're injured,” Anne said quietly. “I'm not hurt, and you are, and the sooner a doctor gets to your leg, and Robin's, too, the better. That's the right way to do it, and you know it.”

“She's right, Ned,” said Pete. He brought the harness to Robin and slipped it over her head. “I need you to help me lift Robin out of here, okay?”

“Yeah,” Ned muttered. He was very quiet, but he worked with Pete to steady Robin as she swung out from the car and descended to the waiting patrollers. A few minutes later, it was his turn to look down and see the slope rising to meet him, and the patrollers waiting to grab him, and he felt
excitement bubble up inside him. He had done this once before, in a drill with his father, but never for real. “Aunt Anne!” he called up to her; he could see her watching from the jagged hole in the gondola car. “Wait'll you do it! It's great!” But mostly he was thinking about telling this to the guys at school.

Pete returned to the roof, to check on the rope he had tied there, and Anne waited in the empty car. She heard the patrollers below, talking to each other, and to Ned and Robin, as they strapped them securely into separate sleds. Two of the patrollers, pulling the sleds, skied down; others followed them.
I don't know if we're alone.
She had said that to Josh, at Christmas. And for a moment he had smiled at her with such warmth that she had wanted to reach out to him, to tell him . . .

To tell him what? She gazed at the hawk, still wheeling smoothly, tirelessly, in the vast expanse of blue sky, alone, strong and independent. It blurred, and she realized her eyes had filled with tears. I don't know how to stop being alone! she cried silently.

“Okay, Anne, your turn,” Pete said, swinging into the car for the last time. He pulled in the rope with the harness at the end, and together, they fastened it around her. They shook hands. “Pleasure to do business with you,” he said solemnly.

“Thank you, Pete. For all of us. I hope I'll see you in town. I'd like to do something for you.”

“Buy me a drink at Timothy's,” he said with a grin, and pushed her free of the car.

They lowered her as smoothly as they could, but there were still little bumps and jerks as the rope fed through the ring. Still, Anne thought it was a delightful way to return to earth. She could not keep herself from revolving, but that gave her a view in all directions, and when she looked down and saw that she was descending into a circle of strong arms, she felt a leap of joy. Not alone, she thought as the arms grasped her and brought her to the solid, snow-covered slope. Not alone. Not alone.

“You okay?” a patroller asked as he unfastened her harness.

“Fine. Thanks,” she said. “Thank you, all of you, so much. Were Robin and Ned all right?”

“Great. They're great kids.”

“And Leo?”

“Sure. By now he's at the hospital. Your turn. You want the sled?”

“Ned told me to ask for a snowmobile.”

“Smart kid. Okay, hop on and hang on tight.”

Not alone, Anne thought as they followed the road down the mountain. Her arms were around the patroller's waist. Snow blew past them in a fine spray, the sun shone, and the town waited below, bustling with people, serene and welcoming.
Not alone.

When she was back, when she knew that Leo and the children were fine, when things were normal again, she had to find out exactly what that meant.

T
he corridor, three hundred feet long, plunged sixty feet into the earth from the glaring heat of the desert, stepping down on rough-hewn stairs, pausing on stone landings, then going on, down and down, into darkness. Josh and Hosni, holding powerful lights, followed the workers as they filed through the narrow space, passing false doors and corridors built by the pharaoh's crews to fool tomb robbers, until they came to a stone door fitted tightly into its opening. Two spitting snakes, painted upon it in bright colors, swayed upright, prepared to strike any intruder. “Fair warning,” Hosni said with a smile. “But I think we'll go in anyway. We've loosened the door, Josh, but it hasn't been opened.”

Josh laid his hand upon it. The stone was warm. “Let's do it,” he said. His voice was tight with anticipation. So many years lay behind this moment, and now that they were here, they might find that the tomb had been plundered once, or many times, over the past centuries, leaving them nothing but fragments, and perhaps, the stripped and mutilated mummy of Tenkaure. Josh stood before the door and said a silent prayer.

Before he had arrived, the workers had carefully chiseled along the plaster camouflaging the door and exposed the edges of it. Now, with Hosni giving directions, they began to pry it loose, sliding pieces of wood into the cracks they made along the sides and the top and the bottom. When they
could feel it move beneath their fingers, they concentrated on one edge, prying it open, pulling on it. Slowly, almost begrudgingly, the door began to swivel outward. Their voices echoing in the corridor with the scraping of stone against stone, the workers pushed at the door, widening the opening until a man could get through. Josh, with Hosni just behind him, stood at the entrance, and played his light through the doorway. It illuminated a room so large he could not see its corners. But he was not looking at the room. On the wall just inside the doorway was a chiseled cartouche, the seal of the pharaoh. He held his light on it and read the hieroglyphics filling the oval outline. “Tenkaure,” he murmured. He looked at Hosni. “Tenkaure!” he shouted, and they threw their arms around each other in a hug of jubilation.

“Now we start!” Hosni exclaimed, and they walked into the room, their powerful lights playing on the walls and ceiling and square pillars, wondrously painted. A fierce, excited murmuring broke out among the workers. “We're the first,” Hosni whispered.
“We're the first!”
Hidden beneath continuous rock slides, like the tomb of Tutankhamen, Tenkaure's tomb had escaped the robbers who had combed the Valley of the Kings through the ages; it had waited, untouched, for twentieth-century scientists to bring it into the modern world.

They walked into the center of the room, the workers behind them. Stepping on piles of rubble that had fallen in the same earthquakes that had caused the rock slides above, they held high their powerful lanterns. And in an instant, everything that had slept for centuries sprang to life. “My God,” breathed Hosni, and behind him, the workers drew in their breath in a long hissing that echoed off the stone. All around them was the gleam of gold. Furniture, statues, bowls, jewelry—all of gold, poking through the rubble, and piled on shelves on the walls. And with the gold were alabaster jars so delicate they were nearly transparent, brilliant jewels, wooden bowls containing grains and herbs, game boards that looked like checkers and Parcheesi, models
of funerary boats, a head of a cow goddess covered with gold leaf, and tiny, gaily painted wooden figures called
shabti
who were meant to serve the pharaoh in the afterlife.

And surrounding all of it, where the limestone had not flaked away, every inch of the ceilings, walls, and pillars were covered with brilliant paintings of daily life of thirty-five hundred years ago. Protected in that total darkness from the relentless, bleaching desert sun, the paints shimmered with the same brightness as the day the artists had used them, and the people almost seemed to move: men hunting rhinoceros, fishermen standing in papyrus boats to cast their nets, teams harvesting grapes and making wine, women weaving, workers slaughtering cattle, chariots leaping to war behind teams of horses, slaves in chains. Josh and Hosni moved from room to room, through doors beneath the widespread protective wings of great painted birds. They gazed at funeral scenes, life-size portraits of Tenkaure and his wife greeting gods and goddesses, and entire walls covered with the text and illustrations from the Book of Life and the Book of the Dead.