The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit (important books to read txt) 📕
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In this conclusion to the Psammead Trilogy, Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane are reunited with the cantankerous Sand-fairy. While the old creature can’t grant them wishes anymore, it points them towards an old Egyptian amulet that can grant their hearts’ desire—in this case the return of their parents and baby brother. While their amulet is only half of a whole, it still acts as a time portal which they use to visit locales like Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Atlantis, and even a utopian future in search of the missing other half.
Perhaps one of E. Nesbit’s most personal works, The Story of the Amulet benefited from her interest in the ancient world, particularly Egypt. With the help of A. E. Wallis Budge, to whom the book is dedicated—then Head of the Assyrian Departments of the British Museum and translator of the Egyptian Book of the Dead—she conducted extensive research on the topic and is thus able to bring an exquisite attention to detail. For example, the titular amulet is shaped after the tyet, an Egyptian symbol also known as the “knot of Isis.” Likewise, the inscription at the back of the amulet is written in authentic Egyptian hieroglyphs.
A staunch supporter of democratic socialism and a founding member of the Fabian Society, E. Nesbit cultivated friendships with other like-minded writers, such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, whose influence on this book is easy to notice. She practiced what she preached, so much so that despite her literary successes, her acts of charity brought her close to bankruptcy.
These political beliefs are prominently displayed in the book. The children encounter memorable characters during their adventures, chief among them the Queen of Babylon, who causes quite a stir when she later pays them a call in their contemporary London. When the visiting Queen witnesses the squalid living conditions of the London working class, she’s amazed at how poorly they’re treated compared to the slaves of her own Babylon. Likewise, the utopian future—which features a wink to her friend H. G. Wells, the “great reformer”—is a striking contrast in terms of the happiness, care, and education of the general populace.
The book’s legacy can be found in the works of other writers. Most notably, C. S. Lewis incorporated several elements in his Chronicles of Narnia: the Calormene civilization of The Horse and His Boy draws heavily from The Amulet’s Babylon, and the episode in The Magician’s Nephew where Jadis, the White Witch, causes chaos during her short stay in London is also a direct homage to the aforementioned visit from the Queen. The format of these stories, where a group of people take their audience on adventures through time and space to learn about distant cultures, is an uncanny precursor to the popular British TV series Doctor Who.
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- Author: E. Nesbit
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“And that’s all right,” said the Psammead, breaking a breathless silence.
“Yes,” said Anthea, “and we’ve got our hearts’ desire. Father and Mother and The Lamb are coming home today.”
“But what about me?” said Rekh-marā.
“What is your heart’s desire?” Anthea asked.
“Great and deep learning,” said the Priest, without a moment’s hesitation. “A learning greater and deeper than that of any man of my land and my time. But learning too great is useless. If I go back to my own land and my own age, who will believe my tales of what I have seen in the future? Let me stay here, be the great knower of all that has been, in that our time, so living to me, so old to you, about which your learned men speculate unceasingly, and often, he tells me, vainly.”
“If I were you,” said the Psammead, “I should ask the Amulet about that. It’s a dangerous thing, trying to live in a time that’s not your own. You can’t breathe an air that’s thousands of centuries ahead of your lungs without feeling the effects of it, sooner or later. Prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet.”
“Oh, what a dream!” cried the learned gentleman. “Dear children, if you love me—and I think you do, in dreams and out of them—prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet!”
They did. As once before, when the sun had shone in August splendour, they crouched in a circle on the floor. Now the air outside was thick and yellow with the fog that by some strange decree always attends the Cattle Show week. And in the street costers were shouting. “Ur Hekau Setcheh,” Jane said the Name of Power. And instantly the light went out, and all the sounds went out too, so that there was a silence and a darkness, both deeper than any darkness or silence that you have ever even dreamed of imagining. It was like being deaf or blind, only darker and quieter even than that.
Then out of that vast darkness and silence came a light and a voice. The light was too faint to see anything by, and the voice was too small for you to hear what it said. But the light and the voice grew. And the light was the light that no man may look on and live, and the voice was the sweetest and most terrible voice in the world. The children cast down their eyes. And so did everyone.
“I speak,” said the voice. “What is it that you would hear?”
There was a pause. Everyone was afraid to speak.
“What are we to do about Rekh-marā?” said Robert suddenly and abruptly. “Shall he go back through the Amulet to his own time, or—”
“No one can pass through the Amulet now,” said the beautiful, terrible voice, “to any land or any time. Only when it was imperfect could such things be. But men may pass through the perfect charm to the perfect union, which is not of time or space.”
“Would you be so very kind,” said Anthea tremulously, “as to speak so that we can understand you? The Psammead said something about Rekh-marā not being able to live here, and if he can’t get back—” She stopped, her heart was beating desperately in her throat, as it seemed.
“Nobody can continue to live in a land and in a time not appointed,” said the voice of glorious sweetness. “But a soul may live, if in that other time and land there be found a soul so akin to it as to offer it refuge, in the body of that land and time, that thus they two may be one soul in one body.”
The children exchanged discouraged glances. But the eyes of Rekh-marā and the learned gentleman met, and were kind to each other, and promised each other many things, secret and sacred and very beautiful.
Anthea saw the look.
“Oh, but,” she said, without at all meaning to say it, “dear Jimmy’s soul isn’t at all like Rekh-marā’s. I’m certain it isn’t. I don’t want to be rude, but it isn’t, you know. Dear Jimmy’s soul is as good as gold, and—”
“Nothing that is not good can pass beneath the double arch of my perfect Amulet,” said the voice. “If both are willing, say the word of Power, and let the two souls become one forever and ever more.”
“Shall I?” asked Jane.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The voices were those of the Egyptian Priest and the learned gentleman, and the voices were eager, alive, thrilled with hope and the desire of great things.
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 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 quicksilver bead is drawn to another quicksilver bead, Rekh-marā, Divine Father
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