Some people love craft projects that involve sewing, knitting, or needlepoint. Other people become drowsy the moment they hear someone say “yarn” or “crochet.” Samantha Spinner was somewhere between the two camps. But she was confident that her brother and the twenty ninjas chasing them fell solidly into the second group.
Samantha led Nipper through the front door of the store. They passed a young woman sitting behind a glass case of ribbons and zipper parts. It looked like she was knitting a skull and crossbones, but they had no time to ask her about it. They turned and sped down an aisle lined on both sides with rotating racks of colorful felt. Then they dove behind a bin labeled “Misprinted Flannel 90% Off!” and crouched out of sight.
Immediately Nipper started yawning.
“No daw-awgs!” the woman called out in a singsong voice.
Dennis scampered around the corner and squeezed between Samantha and Nipper.
“This is the most boring store I’ve ever seen,” said Nipper. He looked around at the displays of thread and bobbins. A long sheet of woven fabric with gold braid trim dangled from the ceiling.
“Why on earth would anyone want to—”
“Shhhh!” Samantha glared at her brother.
The store was nearly silent. They could hear the muffled clicking of the woman’s needles as she knit, and the faint buzz from Dennis’s collar.
Nipper’s eyelids were half closed and his breathing was becoming slower and deeper as he petted a stack of folded lace tablecloths.
They heard the door swing open and the sound of forty sticky feet creeping one by one onto linoleum.
“Nipper?” Samantha whispered.
Her brother was sound asleep.
Samantha began to get drowsy, too. Then the strong smell of rotten pickles, corroded batteries, and moldy cat food hit her, and she snapped out of it. She could hear the ninjas shuffling around the store. They were opening and closing display cases and poking at spools of fabric and bunting with their samurai swords.
Peeking through a gap between bins, she saw two legs in black tights approaching. Someone was getting close to their aisle. She held Dennis by his muzzle to keep him from growling.
When she turned to peek through the gap again, the legs were still there, but they were wobbling.
Then the ninja fell to the floor like a bag of wet sand.
He was fast asleep.
Seconds later, she heard what sounded like nineteen more bags of wet sand hitting the floor. Ninja by ninja, the RAIN had collapsed onto the floor of Seattle Fabric Center. Samantha waited, holding her nose against the stench. Soon the sound of twenty snoring ninjas filled the store.
Samantha stood up and hoisted her sleeping brother over one shoulder. She climbed out from behind the bin and, as quietly as she could, carried him to the front of the store.
“Happens all the time,” said the woman. She paused and sniffed the air disapprovingly several times but didn’t look up from her knitting.
Samantha pushed open the door and held it for Dennis, then followed him out, carefully balancing her unconscious cargo.
She carried Nipper for half a block, set him on his feet, and shook him a few times.
“Wake up,” she said. She held out the umbrella and used it to point toward the park in the distance. “Egypt is that way.”
Once again, Samantha and Nipper stood in front of the mailbox with their pug at their feet.
Samantha carefully opened and closed the metal flap three times and the steel chamber rose from the ground on cue. As soon as it locked into place, Sam, Nipper, and Dennis stepped inside and headed down the secret staircase.
They paused in the center of the dark room. Sam and Nipper both put on their sunglasses.
“Show ’em what you can do, old pal,” said Samantha. This time, she did a fairly good impression of her father.
“Wruf!” said Dennis.
The X-27B switched on, bathing the room in bright white light.
For the first time, they got a true look at the magtrain station.
The floor was a colorful mosaic of tiles that formed a map of the world. A different type of stone had been used for each country. Germany was slate. Brazil was turquoise. India was rose quartz. There were hundreds of colors and textures.
Art deco columns stood between the portals to the magtrain tunnels. Stained-glass rings covered each pillar from top to bottom, reflecting the light up to the ceiling.
Just a few feet above the kids’ heads, the chamber ceiling extended into a shallow dome that looked like it was made of white marble. Hundreds of shiny golden objects dangled from the dome, glittering as they slowly turned. They were small sculptures: a bird, a flower, a fruit, a statue, a famous landmark.
Samantha and her brother stood and stared. They looked up, down, and all around, taking everything in.
“There is so much to do,” Samantha said softly.
She reached up and touched a golden model of the Lincoln Memorial. Through the columns, she could see Abraham Lincoln.
“There are so many places to go,” she added.
“Look!” Nipper shouted, snapping Samantha out of her thoughts. He was pointing at the archways surrounding them. “We can see all the writing now.”
With the room lit so brightly, smaller words were visible beneath the large carved letters.
DYNAMITE
Have a blast in the Pacific Northwest
PARIS
City of Light
BARABOO
Town of clowns
DUCK
North Carolina is coming at you
ZZYZX
California’s spelling-bee favorite
EDFU
Phun for pharaohs
WAGGA WAGGA
Planes, trains, and kangaroos
WAHOO
Nebraska loves you
EXIT
To the Emerald City
Samantha pointed up at the word Edfu with the umbrella and waved the metal tip under the small writing.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s have some phun.”
They both took one more moment to marvel at the magnificent chamber around them and then marched into the tunnel labeled “Edfu.”
They took their familiar places in the magtrain car and Dennis hopped onto Samantha’s lap. Thirty-three minutes later, they stood in a new station, studying the Plans by the light of the X-27B.
After exiting the magtrain, Samantha, Nipper, and Dennis had followed a ramp from the train tracks up into a small square room. A ladder that led up to a hole in the ceiling was attached to one wall. An enormous falcon was painted on another wall. It stood at attention and wore a tall cylindrical hat.
“I recognize that bird. It’s the Egyptian god Honus,” said Nipper. “Uncle Paul told us about him.”
“You’re close,” said Samantha. “That’s the god Horus.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure I remember the name Honus.”
“He was on your baseball card. Don’t you remember?” Samantha asked.
Nipper didn’t answer, though, because he was already climbing the ladder. Samantha popped open the umbrella quickly.
“Wait,” she called. “I’ll find us a secret hidden exit.”
Nipper stopped climbing. “Uh, ladder?” he said, pointing to the opening directly above him. “Come on,” he said, and kept going. He pushed open a round hatch above him, and light spilled down from the world outside.
“Close the umbrella and bring the dog,” he added, and disappeared through the hole.
Samantha shrugged. “That works, too,” she said.
She stood there for a moment, thinking about all the things, secret or obvious, that weren’t on the umbrella. She closed the Plans and slung them o
ver her shoulder, tucked Dennis under one arm, and started climbing. It was a tricky maneuver, scaling the ladder with a pug under her arm, so she climbed carefully. Finally, she got to the hole in the ceiling and stopped. Nipper stood outside, waiting. She passed Dennis up to her brother and quickly joined him.
They were standing on the head of an enormous stone bird statue exactly like the one in the picture. They were just tall enough that their own heads poked out of the bird’s hat.
“Crow’s nest,” said Nipper.
Falcon’s nest, Samantha thought, but she didn’t bother to say it out loud.
Dennis barked and switched off the light in his collar.
They were perched above a sun-drenched courtyard surrounded by ancient ruins. They faced a massive stone structure. It was almost a hundred feet high, with walls that sloped so that the whole building looked like a giant upside-down W. It was covered with carvings of Egyptian men and women and animal-headed gods.
A shorter building, about half as high, stood behind them. It had round columns that fanned out at the top like stone palm trees. A steady stream of visitors came and went through a metal gate behind the columns.
“Let’s go there,” said Samantha, pointing to the gate.
They waited until there was no one in sight. Then they climbed out of the hat and slid down the back of the falcon’s neck, over its body, and down its stone tail feathers.
“Are you sure that’s where we need to go?” asked Nipper, following closely behind Samantha and Dennis.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Are you even sure we’re supposed to be here in Edfu?” he asked. “Maybe those letters on the wall were just a coincidence.”
Samantha recognized that sound. It was the sound of her brother getting impatient. She adjusted the umbrella over her shoulder as she walked faster, passing between the columns and through the gate.
Glass walls enclosed a lobby to the museum beyond. Several signs on metal bases lined the way to a wide pair of glass doors. Each sign welcomed visitors in a different language. Samantha recognized Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and several others.
She pointed to the English-language sign.
OUR NEW EXHIBIT
DISCOVERIES FROM THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY
DON’T MISS OPENING DAY!
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” she said.
Nipper nodded in agreement.
They removed their sunglasses and pushed one of the doors open. Dennis padded happily behind.
As soon as they entered the lobby, a woman in a uniform stepped in front of them. She held up one hand and pointed to the dog with the other.
Samantha picked up Dennis and cradled him like a baby. Then she looked up at the guard with a hopeful smile.
“Min fadlik?” Samantha asked in perfect Arabic.
The guard look surprised, then nodded, with a wide approving grin.
“You said ‘please’ so nicely, young American lady,” she said. “I do not see a small dog with a sparkling collar.” She waved them in.
“See?” Samantha told Nipper quietly. “If you’re nice, it opens doors for you.”
“Sure,” Nipper replied, even quieter. “But it doesn’t get your Yankees back.”
They entered the large room. Hundreds of ancient artifacts were on display around them. A sacred boat appeared next to a chair on long poles that servants had used to carry Egyptian nobles from place to place. Fragments of statues rested on pedestals in a dozen locations.
At the center of the exhibit, a long sheet of woven fabric with gold braid trim dangled inside a glass case. The fabric was painted in black, green, and bright orange.
A museum guide beckoned. “Come closer,” he said. “This is our most recent find, and we are very excited about it.”
The Spinners approached the man as he gestured toward the exhibit.
“This fantastically preserved artifact was discovered pinned to a wall inside the Temple of Horus,” he told them. “Nobody knows how it got there.”
He paused and looked at each of them for dramatic effect.
“Archaeologists are still trying to determine the age of this fantastic object,” he continued. “It may be only a few years old, or it may be several thousands of years old.”
He pointed to a small round detail in the bottom corner and lowered his voice to a soft whisper. “Our only clue is down here. This mysterious symbol looks a lot like English letters,” he said. “Don’t you agree?”
“What was that last part?” asked Nipper, beginning to feel very nervous.
Samantha leaned in to examine the tiny mark. It was a big letter S surrounding the letters F and C.
“Up here,” the guide announced enthusiastically, “these four illustrations tell the story called ‘The Traveler and the Monkey King.’ ”
Colorful drawings featured animals, gods, and several familiar-looking Egyptian symbols. The central figures in all four pictures were a human-sized monkey wearing a black robe and a man in a gold vest. Only, instead of the white skirt of ancient Egyptian dress, the man wore green plaid pants that looked a lot like pajamas.
And his shoes were, unmistakably, orange flip-flops.
Samantha smiled.
It was Uncle Paul.
“In ancient times, a monkey king danced round and round in the golden warmth of the sun,” said the museum guide, interpreting the object in the display case.
He swept his hand up to point at the first illustration. It showed the monkey waving both its arms in the air. A dark circle looped around its waist.
“It looks to me like that monkey’s using a hula hoop,” said Nipper.
“While the king danced and danced, a traveler came and stole his magic spear,” continued the guide, waving his hand below the second illustration.
In that picture, the man in orange shoes tiptoed behind the monkey. He held a red triangle with a J-shaped handle at the bottom.
“That spear looks like an umbrella,” said Nipper.
Samantha glanced at her own umbrella, then back at the exhibit.
“The traveler gave the magic spear to a young woman who was very brave and very clever,” the guide explained.
The third picture showed the man running away from a pack of identical warriors dressed all in black. He was handing the red triangle to a young woman.
Samantha smiled.
“The traveler knew that everyone he loved was in terrible danger. So he ran to a land far, far away,” the guide concluded.
In the final picture, the man stood beside a tower. It looked like the Washington Monument, but it was covered in Egyptian symbols.
The guide bowed his head to show that he was finished.
“What kind of stupid story is that?” Nipper asked loudly. “What could it possibly mean?”
The museum guide held out his hands, palms up.
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” he said, and shrugged.
Samantha tugged at Nipper’s sleeve and pulled him a few feet off to the side.
“That artifact is definitely not thousands of years old,” she told her brother.
Samantha put Dennis on the floor. Then she took out her journal and drew some letters at the top of a blank page.
She began to sketch the tower from the fourth illustration of the story.
Section 07, Detail MEXICOUTEA
The Temple of Horus
The Temple of Horus is located in the city of Edfu near the banks of the river Nile. It is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt.
Completed in 57 BC, it is a shrine to the falcon-headed god, Horus. Carvings on the wall reveal many details about the culture of Egypt thousands of years ago.
In ancient times, the temple was the center of sacred festivals. Today, it
is a major tourist attraction. Millions of people visit Edfu every year.
* * *
• • •
Look for a sacred boat resting on a pedestal. There is a secret passageway below it. If you press on one of the panels of the pedestal, it will swing inward to reveal a ramp. This leads to a hidden tomb directly below the Temple of Horus.
These secret chambers were built five thousand years before the Temple of Horus. The Ptolemaic Egyptians didn’t even know about this tomb.
There is no natural light inside. You will have to bring your own lamp. The hallways, rooms, and everything in them have remained undisturbed since they were built—until very recently.
Normally, Nipper was the not the first person that Samantha would want anywhere near her while she tried to sketch an artifact. Yet there they were. She kneeled on the ground as she copied the picture of the tower slowly and carefully. Nipper stood and waited…and fidgeted.
While his sister was still drawing in her journal, he picked up the umbrella and popped it open.
“Let’s see,” he said as he scanned the lining through his magnifying glass.
He lowered the umbrella and looked around. Then he snapped the umbrella shut and dropped it back on the floor next to Samantha.
“Sam,” he said excitedly. “There’s a secret door just across the way. I think it’s underneath a boat.”
“Let me finish,” said Samantha, drawing faster. “I’m almost done.”
Nipper walked away from the exhibit.
Dennis trotted after him.
Samantha copied the last few symbols. Then she looked up.
Nipper was gone.
Quickly, she got to her feet and slung the umbrella over her shoulder. Looking left and right, she marched through several pairs of stone columns until she reached a model of a ceremonial riverboat.
The boat stood balanced on a wide rectangular pedestal. Samantha saw a small panel on one side of the base. The panel had been pushed open.
“Nipper,” she muttered to herself.
Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans Page 9