by Ryan Graudin
“Then where would we POOF to?” Marisol wondered.
“If your name is recorded in a ledger, you’re tethered to the World. The Unknown just spits you back into another thin spot. I ended up all the way over in the Aral Sea once, lost my whole haul to another scavenger! And that cart had a diamond in it!”
“Do you find a lot of treasure?” Marisol tried to sound casual, but her heart was beating hard enough to meet her teeth. The shifting sand by their feet and the salty smell of the sea reminded her of the beach house, and thinking of the beach house reminded her that she still hadn’t found a way to save it.
Small in the scheme of things.
But big in its own way.
The scavenger shook her head, her colander gleaming in the sun. “Not enough. Never enough. But my luck’s about to turn! Just you wait and see!”
Marisol suddenly felt a shiver go through her—hungry, but not hunger.
She stood bolt upright.
Jake’s gaze snapped over to her. “Mari, are you okay?” he asked quickly. “You look like you swallowed an electric eel.”
In reply, she lifted both hands and wiggled her fingers at him. It was impossible not to grin. “They’re back, Jake.”
His eyes widened. “The magnet fingers?”
“¡Sí! Maybe it’s because we’re on dry land, I don’t know! Maybe Christopher forgot to concentrate again? But they’re tingling. I can feel it.” Marisol’s hands swiveled toward the nearest dune, where blue sky waved against orange sand. It seemed their first hunch was right! “He went this way!”
“Let’s go,” Jake said immediately. He looked across at the collector to say goodbye, but she was already leaning down again, muttering to the ground. So he simply nodded, and Marisol took off at a jog up the hill.
A couple of hours later, nobody was jogging. The desert’s giant undulating slopes reminded Marisol of waves as she and Jake struggled—shin deep—through the sand. Swimming would be so much easier. They’d only managed to get past three of the huge dunes.
“This way?” Jake asked, pointing toward yet another grueling hill. There was no reason to change direction, but she knew what he really meant: Are you sure?
Because if she was wrong, then they were trekking out under the blazing sun for nothing. It was too hot to wear Amelia’s jacket, so she’d tied it tight around her waist. Her stomach pinched against the leather. Her hands tugged straight ahead, stronger and stronger with each stride.
“This way,” she said firmly.
Her cousin groaned. “I wonder if there’s a charm for walking across sand.”
“Even if there were we couldn’t afford it,” Marisol reminded him. “We’ve almost caught up with Christopher, though. My fingers are burning!”
“So are my calves,” Jake muttered.
As they scaled the next set of dunes, Oz fared best out of all of them, his paws leaving tiny golden avalanches as he skipped to the top. Something had gotten the thylacine excited: his ears were stiff as arrows and his nose quivered. He danced on all fours, waiting for the cousins to join him.
“See anything?” she called to their companion.
“Ah-ah-ah!”
Jake paused to wipe his hair out of his eyes. “Does that mean yes or no?”
“I’m still learning the accent,” Marisol teased.
Thankfully, it turned out that Oz meant yes.
The cousins struggled their way to the crest of the dune, and when they joined their friend, Jake and Marisol found themselves staring over a city.
The place was half swallowed by amber sands. Columns covered in colorful hieroglyphics burst out from the ground, alongside sphinx statues and branches that reminded Marisol of the palm fronds on Folly Beach.
“Wow,” Jake breathed, all troubles momentarily forgotten. “This place must be Egyptian. This is so cool.”
“This is so hot,” Marisol replied, dabbing sweat off her forehead, and he laughed.
Oz led the charge snout-first, still snuffling after some scent, and Marisol and Jake ended up rolling down the hill, tumbling to a stop near the edge of the city. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious that it wasn’t all Egyptian. Medieval castle turrets rose out of open courtyards. Lavish gardens pushed back at the desert, filled with buildings that had stone Chinese dragons crouched on their roofs.
“What is this place?” Jake wobbled dizzily to his feet. “Places, I should say.”
The tumble hadn’t shaken any sand in Marisol’s hourglass, but it had twisted her necklace. Script flashed through the monocle when she spun it straight, telling her that the gardens had been relocated from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace in 1860, and the wider city was called Amarna. Back home it’d been devoured by the Sahara. Here it served as a . . . centerpiece of the royal collection?
Marisol kept reading. “I think this is Queen Nefertiti’s palace!”
“Really?”
“The monocles haven’t been wrong so far,” she said. “We should’ve used them to learn more about that woman in Kitezh. The one Christopher loves. The one who’s forgotten everything. . . .”
A strange look drifted over her cousin’s face.
“Jake?”
“What?” His eyes snapped back to where they were standing. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Which way are we supposed to go from here?”
Marisol fought off a frown and focused on her fingers instead. They ended up following Oz, who was following his own nose between sets of dune-throttled pillars, through the palace’s wide-open doors.
Queen Nefertiti’s court was even more impressive up close. Crowded too. Brightly muraled halls bustled with courtiers—gossiping whispers and shiny sets of jewels. Silk dresses and embroidered robes and garments from all across history swished past massive statues of Akhenaten. Or so the inscription at the base read.
“There’s a lot of crowns here,” Jake whispered when they passed a pair of golden-haired princes in velvet sleeves that looked uncomfortably puffy and hot. “Those two definitely aren’t Egyptian. Nefertiti must not be the only lost royal. We studied her in school, just like you studied Amelia. She was a pharaoh’s wife, but lots of Egyptologists think she became a pharaoh herself when he died. There are no official records, though. History lost track of her.”
“I’ll bet that’s why she’s in the World Between Blinks,” Marisol said.
Everyone in this palace seemed fancy, flashing with colors and coronets—kings and queens and courtiers from all over the map and every era were mingling. Marisol could have people-watched for hours. Would have, if her fingers weren’t prickling with pins and needles, if a glimpse of white up ahead hadn’t snagged her attention.
It was only another frilly dress, but she just knew that Christopher Creaturo was in this building somewhere.
“Do you smell Christopher, Oz?”
The thylacine was certainly tracking something, following his nose past billowy skirts and uniformed staff. It was all the cousins could do to keep up. They passed through courtyards and garden paths. Oz’s whiskers shuddered; his tail stuck straight.
They were close. . . . And when they caught Christopher, perhaps they didn’t have to return the ledger to the Curators straightaway. Perhaps they could hunt for a small bit of treasure first.
Marisol’s heart thrummed as they followed Oz into a vast glowing room. Candles—there were hundreds of them—reflected off walls made of amber. It was like stepping into a fire that didn’t burn. Warm and gold and red and rich.
“Oh no.” Jake’s shoulders slumped. “Oz smelled something all right.”
The Tasmanian tiger sat on his hind legs, shamelessly begging for a slice of cake on a servant’s silver platter. It did look delicious. But that wasn’t the point!
“I said Christopher! Not cake!” she scowled.
“You did ask him to fetch some food for us,” Jake reminded her. “Besides, Oz probably needs a full stomach to concentrate on tracking things he can’t eat.”
“What about my hands, though?
They’re never wrong, Jake. ¡Nunca!”
It seemed that they were this time. Marisol’s fingers felt as fiery as the room around them, yet Christopher was nowhere in sight. She spun around, in hopes that she’d overlooked him, but there was nothing but amber.
Jake touched her shoulder gently. “Don’t worry, Mari. We’ll figure it out. Right now, maybe Oz has the right idea.” He stepped closer to the servant, who was now putting a slice of cake on the ground for the Tasmanian tiger. “Excuse me, sir. Can we have some cake too?”
“Are you guests of Queen Nefertiti?” The man looked the children up and down, and Marisol suddenly felt very sandy. Her shorts and sandals and salt-tangled hair couldn’t look more out of place. Everyone else touring this room was dressed to the nines.
“We’re visitors,” Jake replied, in that wriggly not-lie way of his. “Hungry visitors.”
“In that case, welcome to the Amber Room!” The servant gave a grand wave. “This is one of Her Majesty’s favorite finds, and it ranks among the greatest treasures in the World Between Blinks! It vanished from St. Petersburg’s Catherine Palace in the old world in 1941, during the thick of the Second World War.” His expression grew solemn. “There were Nazis involved. As evil as evil can get.”
The cousins followed the servant as he explained all about Peter the Great and his daughter Empress Elizabeth and the half a million amber pieces used to create the room’s mosaics back in eighteenth-century Russia. It was a far cry from ancient Egypt. . . . For all the Curators kept trying to catalog everything around them, the World did seem to keep on jumbling itself up.
“This room is unspeakably valuable,” the servant droned on. “Some estimates place it at around five hundred million dollars!”
Marisol’s thoughts caught on the number. Five hundred million? She hadn’t realized amber could be worth so much. Though it was very possible her fingers had. They flickered like birthday candles when she paused to study a panel’s fragments. Some were tiny—as small as the shells she and Nana used to collect. Queen Nefertiti wouldn’t notice if a sliver went missing. . . .
A not-magical itch grew in Marisol’s hands. Yes, stealing was wrong . . . but this room was technically already lost. So wasn’t this just finders keepers?
She found herself starting to reach out, glancing around to check if anybody was watching, all while imagining her family’s response when she told them she could pay for the repairs to Nana’s house. “We can keep it!” her mother would say. “No more packing!” Victor would add with a pump of his fist.
Then Jake turned a little and bumped against her, and she snatched her hand back.
Wait a minute.
If she didn’t want Jake to know what she was doing, that meant it was wrong. Suddenly she could picture the face he’d make if he realized she’d stolen from their host, and her cheeks heated up in a quick flush.
First she’d led them off track with her magnet fingers, because she couldn’t stop thinking about gold/diamonds/fill-in-the-treasure-here, and now she’d very nearly done something she would have been ashamed of. Something her family would have been ashamed of. And Nana? Oh . . . what would Nana say if she were here?
The thought ached in Marisol’s chest, right where her heart should be.
“Mari!” Jake hissed, grabbing her hand.
She jerked back as if she’d been stung. “What? I didn’t!”
“What?” Her primo shot her a confused look, then nodded toward the door. “Look who’s there, you did find him!”
Christopher stood on the threshold. Relief crashed over Marisol, almost dumping her on the ground like the waves at the beach that picked you up and gave you a good sandy tumble back to shore. She had tracked Christopher Creaturo here!
Hadn’t she?
It would be a very big coincidence otherwise, but stranger things had happened since they’d arrived in the World Between Blinks and there was no time left to wonder. The ledger sat open in Christopher’s hand. He was wielding that very same ballpoint pen he’d used to scratch out Nessie and the London house and probably the USS Seawolf too.
Uh-oh.
“Maybe we can sneak around the edge of the room, get close before he sees us,” Jake whispered as he eased back behind a large potted plant. “You go left and I’ll go right—”
Before the plan was finished, Christopher’s pen struck.
The Amber Room vanished!
Ladies and gentlemen who’d been admiring the painstaking mosaics found themselves staring at air. The servant shrieked, his platter of cakes flying over what was now just a vast stretch of desert. Oz enjoyed the sugary shower—jaws wide open. Everything else was chaos. Shoes stampeding. Guards yelling. Sand flying.
“He’s getting away again!” This time when Jake grabbed Marisol, she didn’t shrink back.
They ran toward where the door used to be. But so did dozens of other people—they were caught up in a mass of hoop skirts and hysteria, and Marisol lost sight of Christopher almost immediately. Hand in hand with Jake, she plunged in the direction she’d last seen him.
The ground started shaking—same as it had next to the scavenger—and Marisol looked down to see another crack forming.
There.
Blink.
Gone.
Blink.
There.
The tear stretched from the center of what used to be the Amber Room, through Nefertiti’s palace, over the dunes, all the way to the scavenger’s thin spot. Many of the courtiers saw it too. They clucked and scattered, sweeping the children away from the crevasse in their silky wave of panic.
“The World is falling apart!”
“The Amber Room is gone!”
“Ack! My wig!”
Marisol’s throat felt straw-thin when she pulled out her monocle to get a steadier view of the damage. This crack was just as see-through as the previous ones. Past the sands was another palace—Catherine’s, no doubt—where more tourists stood with more cameras, taking pictures of the sudden doubling of amber. The old and new were colliding, the walls twice as thick as they had been, jagged cracks running across them.
Christopher had sent the Amber Room back to Russia.
Jake paused too—monocle to big blue eye. “This tear looks way bigger than the others, doesn’t it?”
“WHO DARES TO STEAL FROM NEFERNEF-ERUATEN NEFERTITI, GREAT OF PRAISES, LADY OF GRACE, SWEET OF LOVE, MOST POWERFUL QUEEN IN THE LAND OF THE LOST?” This voice was thunder and sun, scathing everyone who heard it.
The crowd around Marisol and Jake froze, then dropped to their knees.
Not wanting to stand out, the cousins did too.
Even Oz slunk to his belly when the queen appeared in the doorway.
She looked like a statue brought to life. Her cheekbones were high, and her eyes were rimmed with furious black makeup. Her wig was a deep blue, matching the tall crown that sat atop her head. A serpent reared up near its golden base—Marisol couldn’t think of a more perfect animal to match the woman’s expression.
“WILL NO ONE SPEAK?” Queen Nefertiti’s pleated gown spit sand when she turned. “WHO IS TO ANSWER FOR THIS?”
Marisol’s palms went cold and clammy. She was very glad they weren’t holding the piece of amber she’d been eyeing. . . .
Jake’s hand shot up. “Um, we know!”
¿Está loco? Everything inside Marisol shriveled—mummified—when Nefertiti looked at them.
“Do you now? What is your name, boy?” The queen’s eyes narrowed, flicking to his hourglass. “Assuming you know it?”
“My name is Jake Beruna, Your—Your Majesty. This is my cousin Marisol Contreras Beruna, and this is our companion, Oz. We’ve been chasing this man, you see. His name is Christopher Creaturo, and he stole a ledger from the Curators.” At least her primo was smart enough to omit their helping hands from the story. “He’s been crossing items out of the book and sending them back to the, uh, other world! We’ve been chasing him all over the World Between Blinks, trying to s
top him.”
“Have you?” the queen asked dubiously. “But you’re so tiny and your legs are so short, and the Curators don’t often surrender their control. Why would they ask you to chase this thief?”
Um . . .
Jake’s expression struggled between the truth and anything else. If they admitted it was their fault Christopher had the ledger—and therefore, their fault that Nefertiti’s beloved Amber Room was gone—that wouldn’t be good. And it certainly wasn’t smart to say, “The Curators sent us because they didn’t want the Administrator finding out they let someone steal a ledger in the first place.” Getting the Curators into trouble might change their minds about sending the cousins home.
Marisol decided on a distraction. It usually worked when her parents asked difficult questions. “Your Majesty, I saw Christopher in the doorway just a minute ago.” She sounded much surer than she felt. “If we hurry we can catch him and find a way to get your treasure back.”
Queen Nefertiti’s nose wrinkled as she considered this, showing off a small bump Marisol hadn’t noticed before. “No. Guards!”
This was it! They were going to get thrown into a dungeon to rot for the rest of their immortal lives! If ancient Egypt had dungeons . . . Maybe they’d get locked in a tower instead, like those princes in England.
But when men with spears answered the queen’s call, she did not have the children whisked away. “Gather the Ninth Roman Legion and the Lost Army of Cambyses and send them searching for this Christopher Creaturo. He has one of the Curators’ ledgers in his possession.”
“He’s dressed like a Curator too!” Jake piped in. “He might even try to pretend to be an official. He’s crafty like that.”
“We should go with your soldiers to help them!” Marisol added.
“No.” Nefertiti’s blue wig swayed as she shook her head. “My armies will move faster without children attached. This is a matter best left to grown-ups. Oh—don’t look so crestfallen! You’ll both be richly rewarded for helping me catch this criminal.”
Richly rewarded? Marisol’s insides glittered with the possibilities. Diamonds? A crown? Something valuable enough to save the beach house? If Nefertiti gave it to them, that was completely different from stealing.