by Dakota Chase
Feeling much better, I dug into the platters now heaped around us. There was bread, of course, except this had a much finer texture than the bread I’d tasted in the marketplace. It still wasn’t the white sliced bread I was used to, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it tasted good. It was more like the coarser whole grains bread my health-conscious stepmother bought from the specialty foods store.
Besides the bread, there were green olives, figs, dates, and roasted meat, all washed down with a cup of sweet wine. I grinned at Grant when I realized there was wine in my cup. My drinking any type of alcohol would’ve freaked my dad out, but I couldn’t risk offending Tut by not drinking his wine, now could I? We ate with our fingers and licked them clean afterward.
“Tell me about this place you are from,” Tut said after we’d finished eating. He leaned back on his elbows, his dark eyes watching me. “What was the name? You-Ess? It must be a very insignificant country if I have not heard of it.”
Okay, king or no king, I wasn’t going to let Tut knock the good ol’ US of A. “It’s called the United States, US for short, and it’s not insignificant. It’s five or six times bigger than Egypt!” I snapped, sticking out my chin. I might’ve been a thief but nobody could say I wasn’t patriotic.
Tut laughed at me. “You are a funny man. No country is bigger than Egypt! Egypt is the greatest country in the world! I thought everyone knew this.”
Grant flicked me on the back of the head with two fingers. “Of course we know Egypt is the greatest country in the world,” he said. The warning was clear in his voice. I could almost hear him saying, “Don’t go upsetting the king, not until after we get the amulet!”
“Do you have hippopotamuses in this You-Ess?” Tut asked. “Their meat is good. We hold it sacred and only eat it on special days. Their tusks are useful, and our artisans carve them, but the animal is very dangerous to hunt. They kill many of our people every year. The only good hippopotamus is a roasted hippopotamus,” he said wryly.
“No, no hippopotamuses,” I said.
“Crocodiles?”
“No.”
“Gazelles?”
“No.”
Tut raised an eyebrow. “No gazelles? They are good eating. No matter. I will send some home with you when you return.”
I bit back a laugh, picturing us showing up in Merlin’s classroom with a couple of slender, long-horned gazelles in tow. Then the laugh escaped me as I thought of the expression on Headmaster Meek’s face if he saw them. “That’s very generous of you, Tut.”
“Tutankhamen,” he said. “Can you not remember my name?” He turned to Grant but gestured toward me. “Is he simpleminded?”
“Yes,” Grant said with a completely straight face. “Very.”
I socked him one on the arm for that. “I’m not stupid. Where we come from, friends sometimes use nicknames—shorter versions of their full names.”
“Ah, a You-Ess custom. I see,” Tut said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then added, “Ass.”
Ass. Short for Aston, I realized. Great. First it was “Mr. Uh,” and now it was “Ass.” My nicknames were really starting to suck.
Grant thought this was uproariously funny. Did I mention that he could be a real jerk sometimes? “So, Ass,” he said, “why don’t you ask Tutankhamen about his necklace? I noticed you were admiring it earlier.”
Make that a complete and utter jerk-off.
“Uh, yeah. It’s… really pretty,” I said lamely. “What is it?”
Tut looked down, lifting the beautiful gold amulet in his hand. “It is a charm against evil. As long as I wear this, I have the protection of Ra,” he said, pointing to the eye in the center of the amulet. “He watches over me.”
“It looks pretty heavy,” I added. I knew from Merlin that Tut’s amulet was solid gold, and studded with large pieces of turquoise, lapis, amethyst, and malachite.
Tut shrugged. “I am used to its weight. I have worn it since I was very young. I only take it off when I sleep and bathe.”
Well, crap. Unless we were going to hit Tut over the head and snatch the necklace from around his neck, we’d have to wait until he fell asleep! I didn’t want to hurt Tut… he was cool, in a slightly overbearing, I’m-the-king-and-you’re-not sort of way. It looked like we were going to be in ancient Egypt longer than I’d anticipated. I’d thought we’d only be there for a few hours at most. Plus, I was still determined to make sure Tut didn’t end up on the ancient Egyptian equivalent of a milk carton.
I looked at Grant. He seemed to be thinking the same things I was, and didn’t look any happier about it than me. How long were we going to have to stay in Egypt?
Chapter Eight
“YOU HAVE not told me what brings you to Egypt,” Tut asked. His dark eyes flickered back and forth from Grant to me.
“Uh, yeah, about that… we…,” Grant began, but looked at me to finish.
Coward. Well, I already said he could be a jerk, didn’t I?
“We heard so much about Egypt,” I lied. “You know, about the great pyramids, and the Sphinx, and all. We wanted to see it for ourselves.”
I guess it was a good answer, because Tut smiled and nodded. “The tombs of my ancestors are indeed a grand vision. Did you know it took over twenty thousand men eighty years to build the tomb of Khufu, the largest of them?”
“Wow, that’s a lot of manpower,” I said, meaning it. Twenty thousand men? That was like an entire town full of people! And they kept at it, every day for eighty years? Some people didn’t even live that long, especially back in ancient times! It blew my mind to think of all of those people living and dying, generations of them, putting up block after tremendous stone block, day after day.
“I have not visited the tomb of Khufu to leave an offering for a long time. On the morrow we will go, and you will see the artistry of my people for yourselves,” Tut said. It was obvious that he didn’t think we’d disagree with him. “You will take back tales of our skill to your You-Ess.”
Leave an offering? I swallowed hard and hoped the offering Tut had in mind wasn’t human. I knew the Aztecs sometimes sacrificed people to the gods. Did the Egyptians do the same? “Uh, sure, that’d be great, Tut.”
“You will spend the night here, in my palace,” Tut said. He clapped his hands together twice. A servant hurried to his side. “Take my new friends to a chamber so that they might rest. See to it they are bathed and perfumed, and treated as valued guests of Egypt.”
Oh, no. Not perfume! I didn’t even like to wear cologne. And I hadn’t needed anybody to wash me since I was five years old! A quick glance told me Grant didn’t look any more enthusiastic than I felt.
Plus, if we were in another room, how would we be able to steal the amulet? Things were not going as we’d planned, not at all, but there didn’t seem any way for us to get out of it, not without offending Tut. I was still mindful of the big men outside the door to Tut’s bedroom, the ones with the big, sharp, curvy swords.
“Thanks, Tut,” Grant said. I echoed him, meaning it about as much as he did.
“I will see you on the morrow, with the rising of the sun. It is not an overlong journey to the tombs, but I wish to be there before the worst heat of the day. Sleep well, Grant and Ass.” Tut stood up, leaning on his cane as his servants began readying his own bath. When they stripped off his kilt, I figured we were dismissed and it was time for us to leave.
We followed Tut’s servant to another room, farther down the hall from Tut’s. It wasn’t as big as Tut’s room. The bed was smaller, laid with white linen and a few pillows, and there were only a couple of rugs on the floor. It was still a nice room, though, and bigger than my bedroom at home. My favorite piece of furniture was a table shaped like a cheetah. The cheetah’s back was long and flat and held a bowl of water with flower petals floating in it. Kind of girly, but it smelled nice. A few fat white candles burned next to the bowl. Torches flickered in wall sconces. They were the room’s only source of lighting.
&
nbsp; I sat on the bed and looked up at Grant. “So, what do we do now?”
“Wait until Tut falls asleep, then sneak into his room and take the amulet?”
“Brilliant. Except I doubt those big guards of his sleep while on duty. How do you figure we get past them?”
“Good point. Maybe you can distract them while I go inside to get the amulet.”
“If what you mean by ‘distract them’ is letting them chop me up into Aston sushi, then I’ll have to pass. Try again, Einstein.”
Grant huffed and folded his arms across his chest. “Well, I don’t hear any ideas coming from your corner, Ass. What do you think we should do?”
I cringed at his use of Tut’s nickname for me. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked you.” I lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. “I guess we’re going to have to wait. Maybe we can snatch it on the trip to the pyramids.”
Grant looked panic-stricken. His face was pale in the dim candlelight as he began to pace back and forth in front of the bed. “We can’t go sightseeing! We have to get back to the school. We can’t stay here forever!”
“Calm down. We won’t. Another day won’t matter. Remember what Merlin said about time? We could stay here for a year and only a few minutes will probably have passed back home.” I didn’t know if it was true, but I sure hoped it was. I figured we didn’t have any choice but to trust Merlin on that one.
He calmed down a little—or at least, he stopped pacing. “Yeah, I remember. I still don’t want to stay here one minute longer than we have to.”
“And you think I do? No television. No video games. No cell phones. No air-conditioning. There aren’t even any bathrooms!” Mentioning that last one made me aware of the fact that I had to go, something I’d been studiously trying to ignore for the past few hours. I felt like an overfilled water balloon about to pop. “What do you suppose they use for toilets, anyway?”
Grant shrugged. “I don’t know. A pot?” He gestured toward a tall earthenware vase on the floor. It was painted with Egyptian figures and reached past my waist. I figured I’d need to stand on the bed in order to make the shot neatly.
“Maybe I should just pee out of the window,” I said, eyeing the tall pot and shaking my head doubtfully.
That finally brought a smile to Grant’s face. “I can just imagine people looking up at the sky and wondering where the yellow rain was coming from. I just hope you don’t have to do anything else.”
I wrinkled my nose, but couldn’t help laughing too. “Gross!” Still and all, when you have to go, you have to go. I poked my head out of the window and looked down, just to make sure no one was standing underneath it, then let it fly.
My business had just finished when a handful of women entered our room. Evidently, ancient Egyptians didn’t knock on doors. They just walked on in. I thought it was a good thing I wasn’t in the middle of showering the streets of Memphis with golden rain, because I might’ve fallen right out of the window.
I wondered briefly whether if I died in the past, if I’d be instantly transported to the present, and if I’d still be dead when I got there. I sure as heck didn’t want to find out the answer.
The women, wearing long, plain white, sleeveless dresses and carrying big vases, went directly to a low, square tub I hadn’t noticed before, and poured water into it. They left and more women came in, all silent and all carrying jugs of water that was poured into the tub.
Finally, two more women came in and stood expectantly at the side of the tub. They were older than us, although not by much. After a few minutes of mutual staring with neither Grant and me or them speaking, one of them broke the stalemate by asking, “Young masters will bathe now?”
No. Oh, hell no. I didn’t even like to shower with the other guys after gym class. There was no way I was getting naked with these strange women in the room! Not to mention seeing Grant naked, who I still thought was pretty hot despite our current almost-friends relationship and my thoughts that he could be a jerk. Ever since I turned fifteen, my body had grown a mind of its own, and I knew exactly what would happen to me if I saw him without even that skimpy little kilt covering his essentials. Plus, if I was naked and in the same tub, he’d see me and that would just make everything worse.
“Uh, I think we’re good,” Grant said. His face darkened, and I knew in the sunlight it would be bright red. I wondered for a moment if he was thinking along the same lines as me, but told myself to get a grip. He was straight, right? I mean, he’d never said he had a girlfriend or anything, but then, we hadn’t known each other for very long before the whole Merlin-time-travel-disaster thing happened. Still, he’d never looked at me as if he were interested in anything but grabbing Merlin’s artifact and getting home again.
The women looked confused. “Young masters bathe now, yes?”
“No,” I said. “No bath, not tonight. We’re really tired. We want to go to sleep.”
“Yes, sleep,” Grant agreed. “We’ll take a bath tomorrow. At the river,” he added. Mentioning the Nile was a stroke of genius, because the women nodded and left the room. Most of the ancient Egyptian people must bathe there regularly, I reasoned. Plus, it ensured that nobody would come barging in bright and early the next morning and try to get us into the tub.
We looked at each other and sighed after the women left, silently agreeing that we’d averted a near major disaster. I knew what my reasons were and was less than sure of his, but it was apparent we were equally happy with the outcome.
Dirty, but happy. A little smelly, but happy. I figured it was a small price to pay for my self-respect.
I was about to lie down and go to sleep when he pointed to a square, wooden box next to the tub. It had a hole cut in the center, and I knew as soon as he pointed it out that I hadn’t had to shower the good people of Memphis with my body fluids after all. It was an ancient Egyptian potty.
Swell.
I lay down and rolled my back to him as Grant made use of the facilities, such as they were. By the time he was finished, I must have been drifting off to sleep, because I never felt him crawl into bed.
When I dreamed, it was of a bronze-skinned young man in a kilt, but I couldn’t decide if it was Tut or Grant.
I wish I knew which one it was, because in my dreams, I kissed him.
And he liked it.
Chapter Nine
WE AWOKE the next morning with the sun streaming in through the window of our room, and a loud commotion echoing in the halls outside of our door.
People were shouting, and we could hear people running back and forth, bare soles and sandals slapping the marble floor. We sat bolt upright in bed, looking at each other. Had we been discovered? Did Tut and his people somehow learn that we were there to steal the amulet?
My heart was pounding. We each quickly took care of the necessities, one turning his back politely as the other did his business, but we talked nonstop during the entire process.
“Do you think they know?” I asked in a whisper. I was facing the far wall, keeping my back turned toward Grant.
“How could they?” Grant replied from behind me. “It’s not like they saw our pictures on the news or hung up in a post office. Besides, if they knew about us, they’d be in here dragging our butts out to Tut by now.”
“Then what’s going on out there?” I looked down and was surprised to find a pair of twig-like brushes next to a bowl of water on the cheetah table. It took me a minute to figure out it was the ancient Egyptian version of a toothbrush. I smiled gratefully and used one to scrub the sleep-scum from my teeth while I waited for Grant to finish.
“I don’t know… I was in here with you, remember?” He was next to me now, tugging on my arm. “Come on. We have to go out there and try to figure out what’s happened.”
He made sense, and I nodded, following him to the door.
We cracked open the door and peeked outside. Servants were running up and down the halls, and all of them had worry etched into their expressions. Somet
hing was wrong, all right, and it was something bad, from the look of fear in the servants’ eyes.
I reached out and grabbed a boy’s arm, pulling him to a halt. “What’s happened?”
He turned wide, kohl-lined eyes at me. “The queen mother is missing! Ra protect us! Osiris guard us!” He jerked away from me and ran off.
“Tut’s mother? Nefertiti?” Grant asked.
Something about Nefertiti gone missing rang familiar, and it brought the documentary about Tut I’d watched to mind. Hadn’t the narrator said something about Nefertiti disappearing? Yes! He had. Nobody knew if she was murdered, abducted, or had run away, but at one point in history, she’d just vanished. She was eventually found, since her mummified body was found in a tomb, but no one knew for sure what had happened to her during the time she was missing.
I quickly outlined what I remembered to Grant. “Nefertiti wasn’t Tut’s mother. I don’t think anyone knows the name of his real mother. He was raised by Nefertiti.”
Grant looked at me askance. “Since when did you become an expert on Egyptology?”
“Since I saw a documentary once on PBS, and you evidently didn’t. We should go see Tut,” I said.
“You don’t strike me as the type to watch documentaries,” he said as we trotted down the hallway toward Tut’s room. We didn’t know if he’d be in there, but it was as good a place as any to start looking for him.
I sniffed as if offended. “Just because I ended up at the Stanton School for Boys doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were stupid. I just figured you were more the jock type. You know, football and baseball, and stuff.”
A jock? Me? I didn’t even own a pair of cleats. “There was nothing else on TV that night. It was pretty interesting, though, I guess. It’s coming in handy now, that’s for sure.” I cast a sideways glance at him. “What about you? I figured you for a tennis player, or that game rich guys play on horses.”