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letterboxd · 4 years ago

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In Focus: The Mummy

Dominic Corry responds on behalf of Letterboxd to an impassioned plea to bump up the average rating of the 1999 version of The Mummy—and asks: where is the next great action adventure coming from?

We recently received the following email regarding the Stephen Sommers blockbuster The Mummy:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of the nation, if not the entire globe, who frankly deserve better than this after months of suffering with the Covid pandemic.

I was recently made aware that the rating of The Mummy on your platform only stands at 3.3 stars out of five. … This, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply unacceptable. The Mummy is, as a statement of fact, the greatest film ever made. It is simply fallacious that anyone should claim otherwise, or that the rating should fail to reflect this. This oversight cannot be allowed to stand.

I have my suspicions that this rating has been falsely allocated due to people with personal axes to grind against The Mummy, most likely other directors who are simply jealous that their own artistic oeuvres will never attain the zenith of perfection, nor indeed come close to approaching the quality or the cultural influence of The Mummy. There is, quite frankly, no other explanation. The Mummy is, objectively speaking, a five-star film (… I would argue that it in fact transcends the rating sytem used by us mere mortals). It would only be proper, as a matter of urgency, to remove all fake ratings (i.e. any ratings [below] five stars) and allow The Mummy’s rating to stand, as it should, at five stars, or perhaps to replace the rating altogether with a simple banner which reads “the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking”. I look forward to this grievous error being remedied.

Best, Anwen

Which of course: no, we would never do that. But the vigor Anwen expresses in her letter impressed us (we checked: she’s real, though is mostly a Letterboxd lurker due to a busy day-job in television production, “so finding time to watch anything that isn’t The Mummy is, frankly, impossible… not that there’s ever any need to watch anything else, of course.”).

So Letterboxd put me, Stephen Sommers fan, on the job of paying homage to the last great old-school action-adventure blockbuster, a film that straddles the end of one cinematic era and the beginning of the next one. And also to ask: where’s the next great action adventure coming from?

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah in ‘The Mummy’ (1999).

When you delve into the Letterboxd reviews of The Mummy, it quickly becomes clear how widely beloved the film is, 3.3 average notwithstanding. Of more concern to the less youthful among us is how quaintly it is perceived, as if it harkens back to the dawn of cinema or something. “God, I miss good old-fashioned adventure movies,” bemoans Holly-Beth. “I have so many fond memories of watching this on TV with my family countless times growing up,” recalls Jess. “A childhood classic,” notes Simon.

As alarming as it is to see such wistful nostalgia for what was a cutting-edge, special-effects-laden contemporary popcorn hit, it has been twenty-one years since the film was released, so anyone currently in their early 30s would’ve encountered the film at just the right age for it to imprint deeply in their hearts. This has helped make it a Raiders of the Lost Ark for a specific Letterboxd demographic.

Sommers took plenty of inspiration from the Indiana Jones series for his take on The Mummy (the original 1932 film, also with a 3.3 average, is famously sedate), but for ten-year-olds in 1999, it may have been their only exposure to such pulpy derring-do. And when you consider that popcorn cinema would soon be taken over by interconnected on-screen universes populated by spandex-clad superheroes, the idea that The Mummy is an old-fashioned movie is easier to comprehend.

However, for all its throwbackiness, beholding The Mummy from the perspective of 2020 reveals it to have more to say about the future of cinema than the past. 1999 was a big year for movies, often considered one of the all-time best, but the legacy of The Mummy ties it most directly to two of that year’s other biggest hits: Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. These three blockbusters represented a turning point for the biggest technological advancement to hit the cinematic art-form since the introduction of sound: computer-generated imagery, aka CGI. The technique had been widely used from 1989’s The Abyss onwards, and took significant leaps forward with movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but the three 1999 films mentioned above signified a move into the era when blockbusters began to be defined by their CGI.

A year before The Mummy, Sommers had creatively utilised CGI in his criminally underrated sci-fi action thriller Deep Rising (another film that deserves a higher average Letterboxd rating, just sayin’), and he took this approach to the next level with The Mummy. While some of the CGI in The Mummy doesn’t hold up as well as the technopunk visuals presented in The Matrix, The Mummy showed how effective the technique could be in an historical setting—the expansiveness of ancient Egypt depicted in the movie is magnificent, and the iconic rendering of Imhotep’s face in the sand storm proved to be an enduringly creepy image. Not to mention those scuttling scarab beetles.

George Lucas wanted to test the boundaries of the technique with his insanely anticipated new Star Wars film after dipping his toe in the digital water with the special editions of the original trilogy. Beyond set expansions and environments, a bunch of big creatures and cool spaceships, his biggest gambit was Jar Jar Binks, a major character rendered entirely through CGI. And we all know how that turned out.

A CGI-enhanced Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

Sommers arguably presented a much more effective CGI character in the slowly regenerating resurrected Imhotep. Jar Jar’s design was “bigger” than the actor playing him on set, Ahmed Best. Which is to say, Jar Jar took up more space on screen than Best. But with the zombie-ish Imhotep, Sommers (ably assisted by Industrial Light & Magic, who also worked on the Star Wars films) used CGI to create negative space, an effect impossible to achieve with practical make-up—large parts of the character were missing. It was an indelible visual concept that has been recreated many times since, but Sommers pioneered its usage here, and it contributed greatly to the popcorn horror threat posed by the character.

Sommers, generally an unfairly overlooked master of fun popcorn spectacle (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is good, guys), deserves more credit for how he creatively utilized CGI to elevate the storytelling in The Mummy. But CGI isn’t the main reason the film works—it’s a spry, light-on-its-feet adventure that presents an iconic horror property in an entertaining and adventurous new light. And it happens to feature a ridiculously attractive cast all captured just as their pulchritudinous powers were peaking.

Meme-worthy: “My sexual orientation is the cast of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).”

A rising star at the time, Brendan Fraser was mostly known for comedic performances, and although he’d proven himself very capable with his shirt off in George of the Jungle (1997), he wasn’t necessarily at the top of anyone’s list for action-hero roles. But he is superlatively charming as dashing American adventurer Rick O’Connell. His fizzy chemistry with Weisz, playing the brilliant-but-clumsy Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, makes the film a legitimate romantic caper. The role proved to be a breakout for Weisz, then perhaps best known for playing opposite Keanu Reeves in the trouble-plagued action flop Chain Reaction, or for her supporting role in the Liv Tyler vehicle Stealing Beauty.

“90s Brendan Fraser is what Chris Pratt wishes he was,” argues Holly-Beth. “Please come back to us, Brendaddy. We need you.” begs Joshhh. “I’d like to thank Rachel Weisz for playing an integral role in my sexual awakening,” offers Sree.

Then there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bey, a member of the Medjai, a sect dedicated to preventing Imhotep’s tomb from being discovered, and Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Imhotep’s cursed lover. Both stupidly good-looking. Heck, Imhotep himself (South African Arnold Vosloo, coming across as Billy Zane’s more rugged brother), is one of the hottest horror villains in the history of cinema.

“Remember when studio movies were sexy?” laments Colin McLaughlin. We do Colin, we do.

Sommers directed a somewhat bloated sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001, which featured the cinematic debut of one Dwayne Johnson. His character got a spin-off movie the following year (The Scorpion King), which generated a bunch of DTV sequels of its own, and is now the subject of a Johnson-produced reboot. Brendan Fraser came back for a third film in 2008, the Rob Cohen-directed The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Weisz declined to participate, and was replaced by Maria Bello.

Despite all the follow-ups, and the enduring love for the first Sommers film, there has been a sadly significant dearth of movies along these lines in the two decades since it was released. The less said about 2017 reboot The Mummy (which was supposed to kick-off a new Universal Monster shared cinematic universe, and took a contemporary, action-heavy approach to the property), the better.

The Rock in ‘The Mummy Returns’ (2001).

For a long time, adventure films were Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’re surprisingly thin on the ground these days. So it makes a certain amount of sense that nostalgia for the 1999 The Mummy continues to grow. You could argue that many of the superhero films that dominate multiplexes count as adventure movies, but nobody really sees them that way—they are their own genre.

There are, however, a couple of films on the horizon that could help bring back old-school cinematic adventure. One is the long-planned—and finally actually shot—adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise, starring Tom Holland. The games borrow a lot from the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll be interesting to see how much that manifests in the adaptation.

Then there’s Letterboxd favorite David Lowery’s forever-upcoming medieval adventure drama The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander (who herself recently rebooted another video-game icon, Lara Croft). Plus they are still threatening to make another Indiana Jones movie, even if it no longer looks like Steven Spielberg will direct it.

While these are all exciting projects—and notwithstanding the current crisis in the multiplexes—it can’t help but feel like we may never again get a movie quite like The Mummy, with its unlikely combination of eye-popping CGI, old-fashioned adventure tropes and a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble of overflowing hotness. Long may love for it reign on Letterboxd—let’s see if we can’t get that average rating up, the old fashioned way. For Anwen.

Related content

How I Letterboxd with The Mummy fan Eve (“The first film I went out and bought memorabilia for… it was a Mummy action figure that included canopic jars”)

The Mummy (Universal) Collection

Every film featuring the Mummy (not mummies in general)

Follow Dom on Letterboxd

#the mummy #brendan fraser #stephen sommers #action adventure #fantasy adventure #action adventure film #the green knight #david lowery #dominic corry #letterboxd

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belphegor1982 · 5 years ago

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*deep breath* Okay, here goes.

FAIRY TALES AND HOKUM

Summary: 1937: Two years after the events of Ahm Shere, the O’Connells are “required” by the British Government to bring the Diamond taken there from Egypt to England. In Cairo, while Evelyn deals with the negotiations and Rick waits for doom to strike again, Jonathan bumps into an old friend of his from university, Tom Ferguson. Things start to go awry when the Diamond is stolen from the Museum and old loyalties are tested… (story on AO3; on FFnet)

(Chapters on Tumblr: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)

Chapter 19: Run (on AO3 here; on FFnet here)

Evelyn wasn’t used to feeling claustrophobic in a pyramid. She had entered dozens of temples and mastabas, opened tombs and sarcophagi, and never felt so much pressure, such a sensation of being boxed-in. It must have to do with the jungle, she thought. The tombs she was used to were dry, dusty, but the temperature was more or less constant. Here, she was reminded of the Oasis of Ahm Shere after sunset: hot, humid, stifling. Unlike the desert, the canopy had kept the day’s heat inside and trapped moisture. The fact that the jungle was shut inside the pyramid now made the suffocating feeling even worse.

There was no conceivable way to follow the sound after the explosion, although she had an inkling Rick and Jonathan could not be far from it, without necessarily being the cause. Her mission and her priority was to find Hamilton first, she kept reminding herself, and her husband and brother second.

The encounter with the pygmy mummies seemed to have spooked Izzy, but only insofar as he looked tense. Sweat was beading down the side of his face she could see, whether due to the oppressive heat or the knowledge that death might lurk somewhere among the big fronds and the shrubs. She didn’t blame him. Her palms were slick with sweat, and she had to wipe them on her trousers from time to time.

Between the heat and the promise of danger, the tension was so high it was almost a relief to hear screams and gunshots again.

The hapless men in the next chamber were discharging weapon after weapon, but as Evelyn saw when she came out of the corridor at a run, they were outclassed and outnumbered. The pygmy mummies were as relentless as they were ferocious, and they were in much greater numbers than what they had faced earlier. What was worse, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were toying with their prey and would soon enough get bored of the game.

No matter how quickly she and Izzy fired, reloaded, and fired again, it was never enough, and soon the rescue turned into covering for a hasty retreat. Fortunately, the corridor they had come in was narrow, forcing the creatures into a bottleneck; the humans all piled up in the previous chamber behind the walls on either side, dodging deadly spears and poison darts and picking off the little beasts one at a time.

“We need to close this corridor!” yelled one of the agents. “Who has dynamite?”

Evelyn almost protested. This was the quickest route to the heart of the pyramid, the former lair of the Scorpion King, and any other way would take much longer to reach it. However, as a spear narrowly missed the side of her head, she had to admit that way was impracticable. Nobody would survive long down there.

One of the men rummaged in his rucksack, lit an ingot of dynamite, and threw it into the swarming, hissing horde.

“Take cover!”

Evelyn clamped her hands on her ears and screwed her eyes shut.

The blast, amplified by the small space of the corridor, sent enormous blocks of stone and metal flying as though they were made of paper and a giant cloud of dust. When she opened her eyes, she first spotted the heap of rubble that effectively plugged the corridor, and, on the other side of the archway, the surviving agents. The dust the explosion had blown over them coated one side of their suit as they hunkered down next to the wall, making their clothes and their faces look strangely two-tone.

Then, to her horror, there was a small snarling sound somewhere in the dust.

One of the pygmy mummies had made it through before the blast.

Evelyn raised her gun.

The creature lifted its spear.

A shadow fell, stealing her breath and turning her stomach. It scurried away down the destroyed corridor as fast as it had come, leaving everyone dazed and confused – including, it seemed, the pygmy mummy, which had gone still, spear still held above its head.

Evelyn aimed again, but there was no need. The creature stiffened, an astonished look on its decaying face, and crumbled into dust.

The whole room let out a collective sigh of relief.

“What… what were those things?” an agent asked, his voice trembling.

“Apart from one of the reasons you should never have come here in the first place?” said Izzy scathingly, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. It only smudged the mingled dust and sweat there. “Probably guardians meant to keep dumb twats like you lot away from evil places like that damn pyramid!”

Evelyn had nothing to add to Izzy’s accurate, if rather rude, answer. She let her arms come down and her shoulders slump, her chest heaving, shivering slightly from reaction. Her eyes slid closed.

Anubis’ Army had been sent back to the underworld. It was over.

Her mission had failed, but in the end it did not matter. All that did matter was that the world was safe again, from supernatural threats, at least. The jackal-headed soldiers were gone.

They had won.

All that remained to do now was finding Rick and Jonathan, getting back to Alex, and checking on Ardeth and his people.

Evelyn’s eyes snapped open. It couldn’t possibly be that easy, could it?

The next second proved her right as the whole pyramid started to shake, slowly and slightly at first, then harder and harder, until she had to lean on the wall for support.

The agents looked at each other, and ran towards the chamber entrance, one or two barely taking the time to hastily thank her and Izzy for their help.

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Izzy called after them with a derisive gesture. “We only just saved your bloody lives, that’s all! Ungrateful bastards. C’mon,” he added urgently, turning to Evelyn, “they got the right idea. We need to get the hell out, now.”

“But…” Evelyn knew she ought to run, knew there was nothing she could do except try to stay alive, but her husband and her brother were still somewhere in there. To come so far into the pyramid and still leave them to their fate was sheer torture.

Izzy looked more serious than she had ever seen him.

“I know. But O’Connell has got out of more sticky situations and your brother looks wily enough. They’ll make it out. And do you think they’ll be fine if anything happens to you down here?”

The memory flashed through her mind like fire. Rick kneeling over her, morning sunlight in his hair and tears in his eyes, lost in a sea of grief he was close to drowning in.

She could not let her family go through that again. Not if she could help it, not if there was even the slightest chance of survival.

Evelyn nodded, and she and Izzy darted for the exit amidst the dust and the falling rubble.

.⅋.

Despite what Rick had told Jonathan, he had absolutely no intention of letting them get separated. The two of them had gone – okay, gotten dragged – into that pyramid, the two of them would get out, period.

Sure, they had to dodge bullets and duck random debris, but they would get out.

Baine was still after them, and a number of flunkies with him. Rick hadn’t looked back to find out how many.

The guy must really hate them, he thought as he ran, to come after them like that, while the world – well, only the pyramid, thankfully – crashed down on and around them. You’d think he would have more pressing concerns, like his men, or at least saving his own skin. But no, he chose to hound them, as though they had done him personal harm and not saved the world by making a gong fall on a megalomaniac.

That had to be the most ridiculous way to save the world yet. Rick still couldn’t believe it had worked.

He had hated Imhotep, the first time. Oh, how he had hated the mummy when Evy had walked away from him and toward the prospect of death in order to save their lives. Rick O’Connell had realised, at that moment, that he had never truly loathed anyone before. And strangely, as he watched a mortally-wounded Imhotep stumble into that dark goo, any semblance of humanity being quickly stripped away, it had been tempting to feel sorry for the guy, just for a second.

The second time… When Anck-su-namun had stabbed Evy, Imhotep barely taking the time to look smug about it, as though snuffing the life of the most incredible woman Rick had known was nothing, an afterthought – then Rick had truly known what hate felt like. It had been burning, all-consuming, and only Evy’s unhoped-for return had extinguished it enough that he allowed himself the luxury of almost feeling sorry for Imhotep, at the very end. Watching an enemy get pulled out of the fire by the love of his life and then having your own girlfriend bail on you at the last moment had to sting. He was pretty sure there had been tears in the poor chump’s eyes before he let go of that ledge. Who knew a three thousand years old abomination could cry.

In hindsight, Imhotep had been… not exactly a worthy opponent, because a worthy opponent came at the one they had a beef against, not their family; but he hadn’t really been entirely devoid of honour. And while honour was not usually an important part of Rick’s vocabulary, he believed in fighting fair and square – if the situation allowed. Hence why he had zero qualms in not taking Baine – or Hamilton – one on one and sneaking around to beat them instead. Neither were anything close to worthy or honourable. When the deck was stacked against him, he just made sure there were other ways to come out on top.

In the present circumstances, the only way to come out on top was to literally go to the top, which meant running up endless stairways and sloping corridors. At some point, collapsing pyramid or not, those stairways and slopes took their toll and they were forced to stop, their lungs burning and their legs turned to liquid.

“How much… farther…?” gasped Jonathan, looking like he was about to dissolve into the stone tiles. Rick had to gulp air a few times before he was able to answer.

“Dunno, but… not that far.” Man, I hope it’s not far. “We really need to go, now.”

“In… a minute…”

“We may not have a minute, Jonathan!”

But Jonathan was not listening to him. He had been staring at something near the wall; now he lurched closer and pushed a frond aside, eyes wide.

“Good Lord,” he breathed.

For a second, Rick could only share the sentiment. It looked like a cross between a magpie’s nest and a pirate cache, a stash of various gold trinkets and shiny things, haphazardly thrown in a heap. A row of spears had been erected behind it, like a hedge, a small shrunken head planted on every other spike.

Amidst the urgency and the exhaustion, Rick wondered, in the back of his brain, how come they had seen neither head nor tail of the pygmy mummies since they had taken down Hamilton.

Jonathan seemed to have no such questions, and he hastily plunged both hands into the stash and stuffed the contents into his pockets. Just as Rick thought he would have to physically haul him from the treasure and out of the pyramid, Jonathan turned a triumphant grin to him.

“No bloody way I’m coming home empty-handed this time!”

“How many times do I gotta tell you it’s not worth risking your life, you idiot?” Rick yelled as a chunk of ceiling missed him by inches and they hugged the walls to the exit.

“As many as it takes, old boy!”

Just as they reached the corridor, a bullet hit the doorway two inches from Rick’s head, leaving a chink in the dark gold. A second’s glance behind told him Baine had mostly caught up with them.

“Save your breath to run!” he shouted at his brother-in-law, and ran like he had rarely run before.

The necessary respite had done him good, but not nearly enough. If they hadn’t been running through a slowly collapsing pyramid, Rick had no doubt Baine or one of his men would have put a bullet in their brains right there and then. But if the floor shook, debris fell from everywhere, and dust and shredded leaves almost blinded them, then the same thing applied to the agents behind them. Rick ran for his life, his chest on fire, bullets and rubble flying around him, expecting to get hit any second. When his heart seemed to burst in his chest, he kept running. When Jonathan stumbled and almost pitched forward, he reached behind and grabbed him by the collar to help him keep up. When his legs threatened to give out he still ran some more.

His entire body was screaming. There was only one thought spinning in his mind, over and over, as steady as a heartbeat.

Get out get out get out –

And then – suddenly – there was light at the end of the corridor. Real, glorious light, beckoning them forward, the possibility of freedom and safety.

The sight lent him a speed and breath he didn’t know he still had.

Somehow, Rick accelerated.

.⅋.

“THERE!” Evelyn shouted over the noise, grabbing Izzy’s arm. “There’s the way out!”

Finally, the exit. They had found the way they had come in. The last few metres were arduous, between the slope of the stairs, the tremors, and the leaves and ferns whipping at them as they ran. They burst into the open air and half tumbled down the enormous stones of the outer pyramid, and Evelyn felt the sweet, cool caress of a desert sunrise on her face. The sensation was so familiar and unexpected after the long, long night that she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

She opened her eyes again quickly when she heard Izzy gasp.

The smell of dying fires struck her before anything else. The whole camp was in shambles, the tents either taken apart or burnt, the fabric trampled on the ground. Around the pyramid entrance stood a handful of Medjai with guns and scimitars, all of them bearing tell-tale signs of a fierce battle.

There was no trace of the dirigible. Evelyn’s heart seized up in her chest. Where was Alex?

Izzy slowly raised his hands, finger distinctly off the trigger of his gun.

“Lower your hands, Izzy,” Evelyn said impatiently, before calling out, louder, “Alex! Has anyone seen my son? Or my husband and my brother?”

“Evelyn!” The voice was familiar. Evelyn looked to her right to see Atifa push past between two warriors. “Lower your weapons, now,” she said in Arabic to her men. “They’re friends. Evelyn, your husband and brother aren’t here, but your son is safe. Look.”

She pointed up, and Evelyn and Izzy followed her gesture. There was the dirigible, a couple of dozen yards in the air, making a hiccuping descent.

Evelyn reached for a block of stone for support, her gaze still upwards. She was still worried sick about Rick and Jonathan, but at least Alex was safe and sound. Oh, thank goodness.

“What happened?” she asked as Izzy stared at his beloved Dee, gaping.

Atifa looked battered and bruised, and grim-faced. “A detachment of the Army of Anubis came this way,” she said in English. Izzy tore his eyes from his dirigible to stare at her – then at the balloon again – in horror. “We did our best to hold them off. The white prisoners even fought by our side. They did well, considering.”

“How many dead?” asked Evelyn, dreading the answer.

“About a third of our men and half the prisoners. The Army went back to the sands some time ago. Did you –?”

Evelyn shook her head. “No, I had nothing to do with it. We didn’t even see Hamilton. We were too late to stop him before he released Anubis’ Army, and we were too late to stop him after.” She drew a ragged breath. “I failed my mission.”

“I reckon you would have kicked his arse if it hadn’t been for those nasty critters,” Izzy pointed out, making Atifa look at him curiously.

“You saw the guardians of Ahm Shere and lived?”

“They were hunting down a few of Hamilton’s men. I think they were all sent back to the Underworld when the Army of Anubis was. Did the men get out?”

“Yes. That’s why my orders were to intercept anyone who got out of the pyramid. We’ve been collecting prisoners since the battle ended.”

“Good,” said Evelyn with a firm nod. “They need to be held accountable for their actions. If –”

“Watch out!” shouted Izzy, pushing the two women away from the foot of the pyramid.

The next second, the big dirigible all but crashed into the sand and the bottom row of the stone blocks. When the dust settled and the noise died down, Evelyn looked up to see a rope ladder be thrown down and a small blond head pop up from the rail.

“Mum!”

“Alex!”

She hastily saluted Atifa and climbed aboard as fast as her legs allowed. She had barely got down from the ladder when her son barrelled into her. She fell to her knees and hugged him as tight as she could, breathless, eyes screwed shut, bursting with love.

“Oh, sweetheart…”

A thud and a few incoherent sounds behind her told her that Izzy had climbed up as well.

“How – what did – my dirigible!”

“I had to,” Alex piped up, breaking away from the hug. He looked halfway between exhilarated and nervous. “The Army of Anubis were coming this way, I had to, otherwise they would’ve just – I don’t know, but I didn’t want them to, so I tried to get Dee to go up, I mean, first I couldn’t remember – but then I thought, positive buoyancy! And then I switched the whatsit on to fire up the whole thing –”

Her brave, clever boy. He never ceased to amaze her, did he.

“It’s all right,” said Evelyn. She was smiling so wide it almost hurt. “It’s all right, you’re here, you’re safe, that’s all that matters. And,” she added with something of a wicked smile behind her, “I’m sure Mr Izzy will thank you for taking such good care of his dirigible.”

Izzy, who was bent over the rail trying to assess the damage done by the somewhat… rough landing, threw them a dirty look over his shoulder. The next second, surprisingly, he softened.

“You did good, kid,” he said, as though reluctantly. “Could’ve been gentler, but… Yeah, that was right clever of you.”

Alex beamed at the praise. Then Izzy’s eyes went round.

“My moorings! What –”

“Oh, yeah, I had to, er, cut those in a hurry.” Alex actually sounded sheepish. “Sorry.”

“Look at the state of the – oh, bloody Christ on a bike, the balloon!”

Evelyn was on the verge of calling him out for his language, but Izzy took off at a run towards the wheelhouse. When she bent over the rail and looked up, the dirigible’s balloon had started sagging dangerously. Trusting the pilot to restore the proper state of things, she turned back to her son, who was staring up with a look his mother knew only too well. That look ran the gamut between ‘what just happened’ and ‘um, did I do that’, and seemed to run in the family.

“Oops,” Alex said. “I kinda forgot to take the jammer off the handle.”

Evelyn had no idea what that meant, but somehow she almost burst out laughing. She only just managed to turn the mounting giggles into a grin and reached for him again. To her surprise, he happily complied and returned her embrace with all the strength of his arms.

“I take it the child is safe?” came a voice from the ground. Evelyn, still smiling widely, broke away from the hug and walked to the rail.

“Yes, he’s safe and sound, thank goodness.”

Atifa nodded. Some of the tension left her face. “Good.”

“Mum?” said Alex behind her. “Did you see Dad and Uncle Jon while you were down there?”

Evelyn’s smile slid abruptly.

“No, dear, I didn’t,” she said softly, running a gentle hand through his hair. “But I’m sure they –”

Someone cried, in Arabic, “More coming!” She only had time to go to the rail again before two men came sprinting out of the pyramid entrance directly towards the dirigible.

Alex let out a wordless cry of joy. Evelyn thought her heart was about to burst right through her ribcage.

The first to climb aboard turned out to be Jonathan. As soon as he reached the top of the rail, she threw her arms around him to help him on board, then tightened her grip into a bear hug, her hands clasped against his back. When he hugged her back, she could feel his body quiver, and only held him tighter.

“Jon,” she gasped, “oh, Jon, I thought –”

She broke away from the embrace, smiling giddily, and couldn’t resist the impulse to kiss his forehead. Jonathan looked too breathless to speak, still trembling and panting from their last run, but he gave her a small smile.

And then an exhausted voice said with a smile she could actually hear, “Hey, hon.”

Rick was sitting on the deck, chest heaving, as grimy and covered in dust as Jonathan was, smiling up at her. He had his arms around Alex, who was wrapped up around him like an octopus, as though two arms and a torso were just not enough for the kind of hug he needed.

Evelyn’s grin threatened to split her face in two.

She lay a hand on Jonathan’s arm and made sure he was propped up against the wall of the cabins before going over to her husband. Rick whispered something in Alex’s ear and ruffled his hair – and how she had missed this, missed the small affectionate touches between all of them. He stood up slowly, and while Alex ran to his uncle, Evelyn finally crossed the last yard and took her man into her arms to hold him close.

There was some kind of commotion from the ground, voices raised angrily, but she only had eyes and ears for Rick.

He had lost his jacket and smelled of sweat, grime, and the sap of exotic plants, but underneath his own scent was still there; there was a half-healed cut on his forehead as well as small bruises and scratches all over his body, but his hands were warm against her side and the back of her head. She clung to him with all her might, hands gripping the fabric of his shirt, drinking in the smell and feel of him, feeling the fear and worry of the past few days ebbing little by little.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered into his shirt. “I just… You… Oh, Rick, I missed you so much.”

He made a small noise at the back of his throat and she felt his lips press against the side of her head. She broke away, taking his hands into hers. When she looked up, it was into a pair of intense blue eyes, misted over and glistening.

The kiss drew both of them in at the same time. When she came up for air, trembling with emotion, she marvelled at the way her husband looked at her, as though he couldn’t believe she was real. Not that she felt any different, of course. Having him in her arms like this, kissing him like this, after a week of fearing for his life, was like drinking from the purest spring after a week of wandering in the desert.

His breath trembled against her lips. She closed her eyes and basked in all the precious sensations she had missed so much for the past week.

“Evy, I…” She heard a sharp intake of breath, and opened her eyes. “Evy, you got hurt!”

“No,” she said, puzzled. “I didn’t –”

Rick was looking down in alarm; she followed his gaze to her hands, still entwined in his.

Her palms were covered in drying blood.

Fear rose into her like bile.

“Are you—?”

Rick shook his head.

“Then what…”

Instinctively, her head swivelled to the other two members of their family. Jonathan was where she had left him, braced against the wall of the cabins, while Alex regaled him with a spirited version of the adventure he’d had.

“So then I grabbed the axe to chop off the ropes, and the darn thing was so heavy I almost couldn’t – Uncle Jon? Uncle Jon, are you okay?”

Jonathan had gone utterly white. He blinked, a confused look on his face.

“Wha—”

Then his knees buckled and he abruptly slid down the wall, blood smeared where his back had been.

There was a considerable amount of blood.

“MUM! DAD!”

Her son’s scream pierced through the icy fog in Evelyn’s brain. She ran over and dropped in front of Jonathan while Rick strode over to Alex and picked him up.

This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when they were finally together again, safe again, not when the world had been saved once more… They were supposed to have so much time in front of them, a whole life of it…

“Jonathan,” she said in the most assertive voice she could muster, “Jonathan, look at me.”

He looked at her. Incredibly, after so many years, the voice still worked.

“Jon, please, stay with me. You’re going to be just fine, just… don’t close your eyes.”

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out except the sound of his shallow, whistling breathing. The sound pitted a shard of ice against her heart. What drove it in was the expression on her brother’s face. He looked flat out terrified.

The same terror drenched her entire body in ice. She had not felt this helpless in decades.

“HELP!” she screamed, turning away to the rail, to the wheelhouse, to anyone who would listen. “Somebody, please!”

Her eyes met Rick’s, just beside her. He had crouched down to her level, unable to hold Alex’s weight much longer; he still had their son in his arms, small head tucked against his chest, one large hand gently stroking the back of his neck. When he looked at her, there was unutterable sadness in his eyes.

He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“No,” Evelyn whispered. She grabbed Jonathan’s hand, and with her other hand cupped the side of his face. “No, Jon, no – don’t go, don’t leave me, please, Jon, don’t –”

His hand tightened around hers. She could have sworn, later, that he tried to say something. She stared into his eyes, desperately ignoring the greyish tint of his skin, the blue tinge of his lips, willing him to stay a little longer still.

Jonathan could be lazy, absent-minded, and a bit of a ne’er-do-well, but he had always made an effort when she asked.

She was so focused on his face that she didn’t notice his hand had gone slack right away. He seemed to be staring into the distance, his expression still a mixture of fear and incomprehension; but his eyes, so blue, so lively, so ready to twinkle, were dull, the light faded out.

Evelyn opened her mouth, and his name died on her lips. The mind she had always prided herself on was an utter blank.

She was barely aware of Rick reaching out, and, with a gentleness he hadn’t had since Alex had been an infant, closing Jonathan’s eyes.

.⅋.

...

(don’t kill me?)

#Fairy Tales and Hokum #fanfiction #my stuff #the mummy films #the mummy

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