The Stuff of Legends, Chapter 5
by Pleasant Dreamer
Chapter 5: Magic and Mystery
Later after dinner Mel and I had a private meeting and luckily I found out that she really liked Kim too. I had originally hoped that we could discuss the matter with Dad together, but Mel just seemed too excited about the whole thing. I figured all her energy and emotion would just get in the way of what I knew needed to be an adult conversation so I convinced her it would be best if we took turns trying to convince Dad. I of course offered to go first.
I asked Dad if he had a few minutes to discuss the issue of who he should hire again. Dad agreed to hear me out and we sat in the living room. Trying to sound more grown up than I was I started by thanking him for agreeing to listen to what I had to say, the whole thing had a feeling of a business meeting.
“First I’d like to say that after our discussion at the game today I have a better understanding of what you look for in a nanny and why you keep hiring the same type of person each time. That being said, you have to admit that none of those people have ever worked out…”
“And I suppose you had nothing to do with that, huh.” The look he gave me was had to decipher. It didn’t exactly feel disapproving, but sort of like an all knowing smirk. It threw me a bit, and the last thing I had expected was for him to interrupt me while I was making my case. I recovered quickly though.
“I’ll admit there have been certain personality clashes, but that’s bound to happen when you keep hiring people with the exact same personality over and over again.” I was kind of proud of myself for coming up with that so fast and being able to get back on track with the speech I’d been rehearsing all afternoon.
“Also I don’t think age should be as big a factor in your decision as you said before. You’ve always told me how responsible I am, and I’m younger than Kim. Plus you’ve always said you would feel safe leaving Mel and the house in my care, but the law wouldn’t allow it. Kim may be young, but she is legally an adult so there’s no problem there. I really think Mel and I would get along good with her, unlike the other women you’ve hired who just fight with me and ignore Mel.”
Dad was listening as he spotted the notebook Mel had been writing in earlier. I continued pleading my case while he flipped it open. “One last thing to consider is that Mel’s growing up and she’s going to need an older woman in her life to talk with. There’s going to be stuff she’s not going be comfortable talking to either of us about and certainly not some old woman.”
I could tell Dad was listening intently as he smiled and slid her notebook across the coffee table towards me. The seriousness of my speech was shattered by the sound of Dad’s laughter. “She may be growing up, but she’s definitely the same old Mel.” I wasn’t sure why Dad was laughing until I saw what Mel had written down between all the doodles of unicorns and fairies she had made.
The page had the words NEW NANNY written in giant letters on the top of the page and was numbered 1 to 12; each number had comments like too old, smells like cat pee, weird eye, written down next to most of them. The only one that had apparently caused her to reflect for more than 2 seconds was number 9. Kim is sooo pretty and she smells good too. She’s nice and she has a little sister, so I bet she knows lots of cool games and stuff. I bet she’s a great big sister. I hope Dad picks her. I can tell Brandon likes her too. He won’t stop staring at her boobs. She had drawn a little smiley face next to that.
I could feel my cheeks starting to get red as I cursed the fact that I hadn’t found that notebook first. Dumb kid, I knew I couldn’t count on her to take this seriously. Dad (being the awesome guy he was) saved me from my embarrassment by not commenting on the last line of Mel’s evaluation of Kim when he leaned back in his chair and continued to talk.
“You know Brandon; you might be right about all this.”
I was absolutely floored by what I was hearing.
“You certainly don’t need a nanny. You haven’t in a long time and maybe what Mel needs right now is less of a nanny and more of a big sister. I’ll tell you what,” there was a long pause as he gathered his thoughts, “there are still a lot of details I need to work out with her, but if you promise to go easy on her and not scare her away I’ll call Kim tomorrow morning and tell her she has the job.”
I was speechless, which was good because apparently Dad had more to say.
“Now that that is finally out the way, I’d like to talk about something really important.” I could tell by that excited look in his eye and the sly way he spoke that Dad had definitely switched over from Dad mode to archaeologist mode.
“Your souvenir from my latest trip to Egypt arrived today. It’s sitting on my office desk waiting for you to solve the riddle of its origin.” At this point he wasn’t even attempting to hide his enormous grin. “I’ve got to warn you though, this one’s obscure and even I had a hell of a time figuring it out.”
I couldn’t wait to get a good look at the “souvenir” so I headed directly to his study. I carefully opened the package on his desk and under a layer of packing peanuts and bubble wrap found a small statue of a black cat. I sank into his chair as a wave of disappointment washed over me. I was expecting something major after all the build up from Dad, not some common looking statue.
The complete and totally unoriginality of the artifact was going to make this a nearly impossible task. It looked exactly like dozens of other statues I’d seen in Dad’s books. There had to be something unique about it to cause him to be so excited. The question was how in the hell was I supposed to identify a statue of a cat when ancient Egypt was practically littered with statues of cats? To win the prize Dad would want real information about it, how old it was, where it came from, what purpose it served, serious facts and I didn’t even know how to begin separating this one statue from all the other nearly identical ones out there.
The only hope I had was the knowledge that the job wasn’t impossible. Dad had deliberately told me he had figured it out, most likely to let me know that it could be done. I turned the statue over and examined it from all angles. There were a few odd features to it. The first was that the cat’s eyes weren’t sculpted, they looked like small precisely cut jewels. That made me pause, it wasn’t like Dad to leave me with an artifact of any real value and I bet those alone were worth a small fortune.
The only other clue I found was that on the bottom of the statue there was a deep hole directly in the middle as if something once screwed into it. “Hmmm, maybe it’s from a scepter or something.” I was so caught up in thought and speculation that I wasn’t certain if I had said those words out loud or just thought them when Mel poked her head into the study.
Mel knew the rule about Dad’s study, which is mainly that she’s not allowed in there and it’s a rule she’s never broken. I think she understands that with all the really fragile, irreplaceable, and not to mention expensive stuff in there, her going in had disaster written all over it. She never seemed to care much about what was in there anyway. She poked her head into the door and asked how my talk with Dad went.
“Oh that. Yeah, my talk with Dad went great. He’s going to hire Kim, just like we wanted.” I was still holding the statue as I walked over towards her. Mel was so happy she was practically bouncing as I reached for the door oblivious to whatever she was babbling about. I understood her feelings, but I wasn’t in the mood for her noise at the moment. I’d celebrate later. Right now I had a mystery to solve. I needed to concentrate and I knew from experience that when Mel knew I need her to be quiet was when she had the hardest time not pestering me. Adding to that her current level of excitement, I knew if I didn’t get rid of her I wouldn’t get any research done.
“Hey what’s that? It looks just like Jinx!” I stepped back just in time to keep her from grabbing the statue. “Whoa, careful Mel, this is Dad’s newest artifact.” “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think.” Her voice sounded ashamed and hurt. Maybe I snapped too loudly, or maybe she felt like a knucklehead for acting without thinking, but either way the pain in her voice shook me out of my daze. “Ah, don’t worry about it kiddo, I know how you get when you see a cat. You get tunnel vision.” That made her smile and I decided now that I knew her feelings weren’t hurt it was time to get her to go.
“Speaking of cats, where’s that little hairball of yours?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Is this the souvenir for you latest challenge you told me about, the one you think will get you the jeep? What’s so special about it, I’ve seen lots of those on the History Channel?”
I had hoped she would have taken my bait and gone off to play with her annoying little cat, but it was obvious she was going to stand there annoying me instead. She began to list off one ridiculous guess after another about the origins of the statue. They all involved mummies, curses, magic, and crap like that. Her theories combined with her mentioning the History Channel (which was on a lot in our house) reminded me of a goofy show we had watched a year or so ago. Some researcher was trying to prove that aliens were behind the building of the pyramids and many other technological and cultural evolutionary leaps around that time in Egypt. I found it laughable, but Mel of course found the entire thing fascinating. I remembered thinking how unlike her it was the way she sat quietly and watched the entire program.
Mel showed no sign of leaving me alone as she continued to pester me about the statue and talked of reincarnated pharoses and their curses. I had to get her to leave me alone or I’d never get any work done.
“Look, don’t tell Dad, but I already figured the whole thing out.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t that hard actually. You see I’d already read all about this statue before in one of Dad’s old books, it’s called the Magic Cat’s Eye statue. It belonged to an evil wizard who gave it to a wicked pharaoh. Legend says that the wizard enchanted the jewels in the statue’s eyes giving them the ability to control the minds of anyone who stared directly into them. The pharaoh then used the statue to turn people into his obedient slaves and to worship him like a god.”
I knew as soon as I said it that I’d gone overboard with the whole magic eye bit. There was no way she was dumb enough to buy that, but I’d come up with the whole thing off the top of my head. “Wow, mind control, it’s like when those magicians hypnotize people at the magic club, right?”
“Um..Yeah Mel, it’s exactly like that.” I couldn’t believe she actually bought that nonsense. “Now if you don’t mind I need to do some more research and begin writing this all up for Dad so I can claim my prize. Why don’t you go find Jinx?”
“Yeah, I’ve got to feed her anyway.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as she turned and began to walk away and silence began to creep over the room again. Unfortunately that silence was shattered almost as quickly as it returned.
“Is it real? I mean do you think it really works? We’ve seen people really get hypnotized before, we know that’s a real thing. If there’s a legend about that statue doesn’t that mean that people used to talk about it a lot? Maybe because it really did work and they were all afraid of it. I bet it really works somehow and they thought it was magic.” There was a quick pause before she added, “I bet the wizard was really an alien and the statue is some kind of alien technology designed to turn humans into obedient slaves. Did you read anything about how it works? How do you turn it on?” (I guess it goes without saying that we also watch a lot of the Sci Fi Channel in our house too.)
Now I was just pissed at myself. What was I thinking mentioning magic to Mel? It had only amped up her excitement level and made her more curious and annoying. She was barely stopping long enough to take a breath between sentences. There was no way she was going to let me get any work done. “It’s not real Mel. You know as well as I do that there was never any magic mind controlling statues in Egypt, alien visitors, curses, or any of that other nonsense. It’s probably just something that the pharaoh told his subjects to keep them scared and obedient.”
That seemed to deflate her a bit as she began walking away again. “Yeah, I suppose so, but if it’s the stuff of legends then maybe it really is magic. Wouldn’t that be cool?” She laughed as she walked into her room. God that kid was so gullible, she’d believe just about anything I told her. Now that she was out of my hair I figure I’d settle in for a little research and try to figure out the real truth behind the statue.
>>Chapter 6>>