the ground. It was their best chance of not becoming Fish and Bird Jam, and the last thing standing between them and their Sonic Suitcase (apart from the possibly cursed mummy, which Frankie REALLY didn’t want to think about).
Now that the demo was over, Dr squared his shoulders. ‘Watch an learn, my friends,’ he said, half crouching like an Olympic marathon runner waiting for the starting pistol. Then he took three steps and planted his right foot onto the right wall, bouncing off easily to find the opposite wall. He made it look so effortless that Frankie started to feel nervous, like he was lining up for a rollercoaster ride he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on.
Salama went next, and turned out to be surprisingly good at springing along between the walls. The last to go was Frankie (‘The tail of the Fish,’ Drew joked), who took a big breath and then launched himself down the doomsday hallway.
He seemed to be going OK. He wasn’t doing it with quite the same amount of flair as his ballroom dancing in the last challenge, but he was quietly impressed with his own Ninja Warrior skills.
Drew, already halfway along, was holding the fire stick, which provided enough light for Salama and Frankie. ‘Hurry up, slow coaches!’ Drew yelled as he continued crab-crawling along the walls.
Frankie’s fingers found some small dents in the walls, which he grasped at gratefully. They made him feel more confident, and he moved along with a little more urgency. He hooked his fingers into a hole and was able to steady himself as his foot rose to find the little ledge he had been aiming for. But just as he paused, his right foot slipped on the wall, sending a small shower of dust to the ground. ‘Ahhh!’ he muttered, breathing hard.
Drew and Salama came to a halt ahead. ‘Are you OK?’ Salama asked tensely.
‘Yep,’ Frankie answered shortly. ‘It’s just a little slippery.’
‘No wuckas,’ Drew replied, then added sassily, ‘but do hurry up, I’m getting hungry.’
Frankie rolled his eyes. He was about to take his fingers out of the hole in the wall when he felt something crawl over them. He swallowed another yelp. Drew was pretty far ahead with the fire stick, so Frankie could barely see the wall now. There was, however, just enough light to see a big hairy spider crawl out of the wall and onto his hand.
This next yelp he could NOT contain.
‘AHHHHHHHHHHH!’ he shouted, slipping from the wall and landing on the floor of the CORRIDOR OF CARNAGE with a THUNDEROUS BOOM!
Salama and Drew turned to see Frankie splayed on the ground. Then came the sound of something moving. Specifically, the sound of massive stone walls moving inwards. And Frankie could now feel three or four hairy spiders on him, too. He sprang to his feet and roared, ‘RUN!’
It turned out the CORRIDOR OF CARNAGE wasn’t just a pressure passage. It was also a HELLISH HALL OF SPIDERS!
Eight-legged creepy crawlies came tumbling down the corridor walls as Frankie, Drew and Salama sprinted their way towards freedom.
As the walls pressed in deeper and deeper, Frankie could feel his shoulders bumping on the bricks, his robe catching on rough bits of stone. It really would have been way easier to have agreed to wear the tutu! he thought to himself. Blast those Mosley triplets!
Just as Frankie Fish was about to scream a final goodbye to the world, the light from the fire stick disappeared. The walls stopped moving in, but Frankie could still hear them straining and scraping towards each other.
‘Keep running,’ screamed Drew from the darkness ahead. Frankie didn’t have to think twice. He ran as fast as he could, the spiders still creepily crawling on him. Frankie heard the snap of a thick branch as he dived forwards, tumbling into Drew and Salama just as the walls met each other with an almighty clash.
Frankie shook off his spiders and patted his body all over. Every limb seemed to be accounted for. ‘What? How?’ he asked, completely baffled as to how they were still alive.
‘I grabbed the fire stick from Drew,’ Salama explained in the darkness, ‘and jammed it between the walls.’
‘It bought us a few very valuable seconds,’ said Drew quietly, still a little shell-shocked.
‘It bought us our lives,’ Frankie laughed as he flung himself at his friends and gave them a group hug. He was as relieved as an orphaned wig finding a new bald head to live on.
Home felt a little closer all of a sudden.
FROM A MUMMY TO A DADDY
Once the walls had crashed together, they began retreating back to their original positions. Thankfully, one half of the now-broken fire stick had been hurled closer to the corridor’s exit. Frankie carefully reached down and, shuddering, retrieved the stick, which was now covered in the remnants of dead, furry spiders.
‘Getting through the Haunted House at next year’s St Monica’s Halloween Parade will be easy after this,’ he whispered to Drew.
Salama managed to get the fire stick lit again, and after a short – and blessedly uneventful – trip down another passageway, they found themselves at the entrance to the burial chamber at the centre of the pyramid. Salama whooped at the sight of treasure twinkling in the firelight, but Frankie and Drew just stared at the sarcophagus.
Frankie had assumed that all six sarcophagi would be in the chamber together, but there was only one. And without the other coffins there for comparison, he couldn’t tell if this was the biggest one. His palms started to sweat nervously, and Salama caught the confused look on his face.
‘There’s more than one burial chamber in a pyramid,’ she said airily. ‘I just led you to the biggest one because I figured that’s where they’d put the biggest coffin.’
Frankie stared at her, aghast. ‘So how do we know if this is the right one?’ he asked, trying to stay calm.
‘Only one way to find out!’ Drew replied.
One of the good things about not-yet-Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi is that they weren’t sealed with 21st century technology, and if you had the strength of a burly man – or, say, three well-nourished if slightly tired young people – you could just about heave the stone covering off the top of them with a great deal of effort.
Well, maybe not the whole way off. But it was good enough. As soon as Frankie, Drew and Salama had moved the lid about a foot away from the base, they crowded around the coffin, Frankie hoping madly that this was the right one and that the Sonic Suitcase was still where Drew had left it.
To his immense relief, he saw the prized suitcase sitting patiently beside the freshly wrapped mummy, which appeared to be neither cursed nor terrifying – just dead. As Frankie pulled the suitcase out of the sarcophagus, being EXTREMELY careful not to activate any more booby-traps, Salama shrugged and turned away.
‘Is THAT all you wanted?’ she said, scooping up swathes of riches and jewels that were lying on the floor among piles of glistening fruit and various other foods. ‘You guys make terrible tomb raiders.’
‘Doesn’t this food have a use-by date?’ Drew asked, a little bewildered.
‘Yeah, why do they put all this stuff in here?’ Frankie asked, equally curious as he clipped the translating padlock onto the suitcase’s handle and tucked it behind his back.
‘We believe it helps them on the long journey to the afterlife,’ Salama said as gold coins trickled through her fingers.
‘Makes sense,’ Drew replied. ‘Whenever we drive to the beach I like to take snacks.’
Frankie grinned, but he noticed Salama wasn’t even smiling. In fact, the joy she’d had on her face just moments ago had completely vanished. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
Salama looked up, lost in thought. ‘All my life I’ve wanted to raid tombs because that’s what my father and my brothers do … but now that I am here, I feel different,’ she said a little sadly.
‘How so?’
‘What if this mummy really does need all this to get to the afterlife? My father believes it is all nonsense, but what if it isn’t? What if it is real? And what if this mummy has family waiting in the afterlife? If I take this treasure, I could ruin the
ir chances of ever being reunited.’
‘I guess when you put it like that, it seems kinda wrong,’ agreed Frankie, Drew nodding beside him. ‘Sort of like stealing.’
It was EXACTLY like stealing, and it made Frankie wonder whether he was stealing, too. But was taking something that was already yours really stealing? He decided (perhaps conveniently) that it wasn’t.
As Salama returned the treasure to its rightful place, Frankie wondered if he and Drew should say their goodbyes and see her on her way before hitching a ride home via the retrieved suitcase. It would be a LOT easier than going back the way they’d come. But then Salama started rubbing her leg and grimacing.
Drew’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It’s the mummy’s curse!’
Salama looked at him oddly. ‘It’s not a curse,’ she said. ‘I just twisted my ankle a bit in that last corridor.’
Drew sighed with relief. He looked at Frankie, and Frankie knew they’d had the same idea.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ Frankie said. ‘Together.’
So Frankie, Drew and Salama pushed the top back onto the sarcophagus and wished the mummy well on its trip to the afterlife. Amazingly, Salama told them, the booby-traps only got activated when people entered the chamber, not when they left it. ‘It’s so that the mummy isn’t injured on its way out,’ she explained.
And with that, the three friends left the burial chamber. They went back through the weirdly still CORRIDOR OF CARNAGE – the spiders had all gone, and only the odd disgusting hairy leg remained to be seen. They walked on the DANCE FLOOR OF DOOM (well, Salama limped along it), and this time they were NOT nearly sliced and diced. When they were halfway along it, they could see the passage leading back to the pyramid’s main entrance, and …
‘Salama?’ someone called, in a very peeved-off voice. ‘How dare you?!’
Frankie and Drew were more than a little shocked to see the Large Spitty Man up ahead.
‘Father?’ Salama called back nervously.
‘Father??!!’ Frankie and Drew yelled in unison.
‘Who else would it be?’ he yelled back.
Standing inside the entrance of the pyramid was none other than Salama’s father, holding a fire stick and looking angrier than a bull who had just been told nose rings were out of fashion. The three almost-tomb raiders stopped dead in their tracks – smack bang in the middle of the DANCE FLOOR OF DOOM.
‘How dare you steal my map?’ he roared, before recognising Frankie and Drew. ‘And what are you doing with these two weird jerks!?’
‘Father, they are not weird!’ Salama yelled back, then added, ‘OK, they are a little weird. But they are definitely not jerks!’
‘What are you even DOING here, Salama?’ he bellowed. ‘This is too dangerous for you!’
‘I just wanted to show you I could be brave too,’ Salama cried, her voice trembling.
‘This is no business for a daughter of mine!’ he bellowed, and began marching towards his daughter. He obviously hadn’t had the chance to study the map before Salama had snuck away with it, because no-one in their right mind would stomp towards the DANCE FLOOR OF DOOM like that.
‘Stop!’ the three kids boomed.
But it was too late. As soon as Frankie heard the creaky noise coming from the ceiling, he knew it was bad – and he was right. He heard a SWISH and everything seemed to go into slow motion. Salama sprinted towards her father, much to his shock and Frankie’s horror. As an axe came into view, Salama leapt into the air and straddled the axe’s handle, kicking out a leg at the same time to push her father to the ground.
‘Whoa,’ Drew whistled. ‘When did she turn into such a rock star?’ Then he and Frankie dived to the ground as axes began whooshing over them, and belly-crawled to safety like snakes getting off a hot tin roof.
Salama, the self-appointed Ninja Warrior champion, soared off the axe to the safety of the end zone. She held her hand out to her shaken father, who could not believe what he’d just seen.
He burst into tears and hugged Salama like he had never hugged her before. ‘Salama, you saved my life. I am so sorry I have underestimated you,’ he said, weeping.
She grinned at Frankie and Drew, then threw her hands around her dad and hugged him back. ‘It’s OK, Father,’ she told him ‘You were right – I wasn’t brave before. But it turns out that courage comes afterwards.’
TUTU-KARMA
Perhaps no-one on Earth knew what the expression home sweet home really meant more than Frankie Fish and Drew Bird. After saying goodbye to Salama, they used the Sonic Suitcase to whisk themselves back to school and soon found themselves sprawled behind the bike sheds, where they’d left their school uniforms only minutes – or thousands of years – before.
They had survived another close encounter, and were now so giddy with relief that they couldn’t stop giggling. They were also VERY keen to check the footage they’d recorded that would prove once and for all that Ancient Egyptians walked totally normally, and that both the Mosleys and the Bangles were dead wrong.
There was just one problem.
‘Drew,’ Frankie said slowly, his face suddenly as serious as a mouse at a prestigious cheese-tasting contest. ‘Is this footage of your … knees?’
‘No!’ said Drew, peering closer. ‘Maybe?’
Frankie buried his head in his hands. ‘Did you have the suitcase’s camera facing the wrong way?’
Drew hung his head. ‘I had the suitcase’s camera facing the wrong way.’
Frankie’s face went pale. They’d seen freshly wrapped mummies, survived a booby-trapped pyramid and even made a new friend, but …
‘But this means we have to wear the tutus tomorrow!’ Drew asked in horror. ‘After all that?!’
Frankie nodded.
‘But it’ll be so humiliating!’ Drew moaned.
After a long pause, Frankie gave his best friend a wry grin. ‘Well,’ he said with a wink, ‘we’ll just have to be brave.’
And that was that.
The next morning, Frankie and Drew felt as numb as a frozen nose as they changed into their pink tutus, which had been specially selected by the Mosley triplets at Mrs Hagarty’s World Of Wonder costume store. Mrs Hagarty made the triplets promise to get a photo of the boys in their tutus so she could display it on her wall behind the counter.
As Ron Fish parked the car at the school gates, a smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth, it seemed that the entire population of St Monica’s was waiting for the boys to arrive. One of the Mosley triplets spotted the car and began a slow clap.
‘I guess we’d better get this over and done with,’ said Frankie.
‘To be honest, I think I look quite good,’ replied Drew, admiring his frills. ‘Maybe pink IS my colour after all.’
Frankie smoothed down his tutu and squared his shoulders. He could hear the slow clap building momentum outside, and the crowd’s giggles getting louder. ‘OK,’ he said with a whoosh of air. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘Have fun, boys,’ Ron said, trying desperately to keep a straight face. ‘You look lovely!’
As Frankie and Drew walked slowly inside the school gates, the slow clap built into applause and the giggles turned into roars of glee. The next thing Frankie knew, Drew was flashing past him, leaping and spinning with his arms outstretched all the way into St Monica’s – sending the entire school, teachers and students, into uproarious fits of laughter.
Drew threw a wink back at Frankie, loving every minute of it. ‘Maybe I love dancing more than parkour,’ he yelled, and Frankie felt all his nerves melt away.
Considering everything they had been through, prancing around for a day in a pink tutu wasn’t scary at all.
So Frankie embraced the madness of the moment and flung himself into the schoolyard, prancing with joy alongside his best friend. He even caught a glimpse of Kimmy Klute grinning fondly at him, which made his heart flutter just a bit. (DO NOT tell ANYONE about this.)
As the first bell of the
day rang, Frankie and Drew finished their performance with a hearty, if ungainly, twirl and bow. Everyone clapped and cheered, and Frankie whispered to his best mate, ‘Another mission accomplished!’
Frankie Fish and the Tomb of Tomfoolery
published in 2020 by
Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantchildrenspublishing.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
Text copyright © 2020 Peter Helliar
Illustration copyright © 2020 Lesley Vamos
Series design copyright © 2020 Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing
Series design by Kristy Lund-White
Illustrations by Lesley Vamos
eISBN 9781743587096
Hardie Grant acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the country on which we work, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and recognises their continuing connection to the land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
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