Secret of the Ankhs: A Maggie Edwards Adventure (Maggie Edwards Adventures Book 2)

by Nellie H. Steele

  “Yeah,” Maggie answered. “Got a lighter? We can save on flashlight batteries.”

  Emma dug a lighter from her pants’ pocket. She flicked the spark wheel, igniting the lighter’s small flame. Emma marched around the room’s perimeter lighting the torches.

  “That’s better,” Maggie said as the last one caught fire. “We’ll be able to make at least a cursory search with the light from the torches.”

  As they approached the room’s center, Maggie draped herself in some of the jewelry. “What do you think? Is it too much?” she asked as she shoved a large ring onto her finger after hanging a ruby necklace around her neck and donning several bracelets.

  “For you? Nah,” Emma responded.

  “Can you imagine having this much wealth?”

  “No,” Emma admitted.

  “Here, try some on,” Maggie suggested.

  “Pass. Let’s just finish the work.”

  “Oh, come on, Emma. Have some fun. We’ve earned it! When are you ever going to have an opportunity to do this? Once we get out, they’ll send in the catalog team and you’ll never see this stuff up close again!”

  Emma side-eyed her. After a moment, she gave in. “Okay, okay.”

  “Here,” Maggie said, handing her several items. “Try the sapphires. It’ll bring out the blue in your eyes!”

  “Mmmm,” Emma mumbled. “I’m not sure. Sapphires? Or diamonds?” Emma held up a sparkling bracelet.

  “Both!” Maggie exclaimed.

  She shimmied next to Emma and fastened the ostentatious sapphire necklace around Emma’s neck. With Maggie’s help, Emma fastened a sapphire bracelet and a diamond bracelet on each wrist.

  “Not complete without a ring!” Maggie added.

  Emma accepted the emerald ring and shoved it on her ring finger. “Well? How do I look?” Emma struck a pose.

  “Fabulous, darling,” Maggie answered in a posh voice.

  Emma admired the jewelry. Maggie dug her cell phone from her pocket. She toggled on her camera app and leaned close to Emma.

  “Selfie!” she announced.

  Maggie held her bejeweled wrist and hand near the necklace as she posed for the camera. Emma gave the camera two thumbs up, flashing the emerald ring and both bracelets. Maggie snapped a few shots before pocketing her phone.

  “Never show those to anyone,” Emma warned. “Do you realize how much trouble I’d be in if anyone saw those?”

  “Just between us girls!” Maggie promised. “I’m always getting you into trouble, aren’t I?”

  “You’ve been doing a good job of it recently,” Emma answered. Maggie sat silently for a moment. “Never mind,” Emma continued. “We should get back to checking for the ankh.”

  “You’re probably right,” Maggie admitted. “Goodbye, beautiful jewelry!” Maggie peeled the pieces off one by one and set them back where she found them. Emma did the same.

  “Did you happen to notice the time when you had your phone out?” Emma inquired.

  “Almost one,” Maggie answered.

  “Yikes,” Emma responded with a yawn, “no wonder I’m so tired.”

  “Not as chipper at 1 a.m. as you were in college, huh?”

  Emma yawned again. “Not even close.”

  The yawn proved contagious and spread to Maggie. “Oh, stop doing that. Perhaps we should take a quick nap. Who knows what is waiting for us after this? We may need the energy.”

  Emma glanced around the room. “We have a lot of ground to cover,” she replied.

  “We can press on,” Maggie said.

  “No, maybe you’re right. We’re safe at the moment. And after all the adrenaline rushes, I’m beat.”

  “You and me both,” Maggie agreed. “It hit me like a ton of bricks while we were fooling around with the jewelry.” Maggie pulled her phone from her pocket. “I’ll set an alarm for an hour from now. We’ll have a quick nap.”

  “Sounds good,” Emma answered mid-yawn. They stretched out on the floor near the jewelry in the room’s center.

  Despite the eerie silence, Maggie nodded off within minutes. Her alarm chimed an hour later. Maggie jumped, startled, as she searched for her phone to snooze the alarm. She flung her hand next to her, expecting to find her phone on her night table.

  After a moment, Maggie recalled their current predicament. She shot up to sitting. Maggie grabbed it and swiped the alarm off. She still felt tired, but there would be no sleeping now.

  She took a minute to recover from her sleep-induced stupor. The room remained quiet. Emma must have slept through the alarm, she surmised.

  “Emma, wakey, wakey,” Maggie said as she stretched. Maggie glanced to Emma then leapt to her feet. She backed a step away as she swallowed hard.

  “Emma!” Maggie whispered. “Emma! Wake up!”

  Emma began to rouse. “Huh?” she groaned. On her back, Emma rolled her head from one side to the other.

  “Emma, don’t move!”

  “What?” Emma inquired as she opened her eyes.

  “Don’t move!” Maggie whispered again.

  Emma glanced at Maggie. In the process, she realized the cause for Maggie’s alarm. Emma’s eyes widened as she stared at the scorpion on her chest. She swallowed hard and creased her brow.

  Maggie’s eyes darted around the room in a desperate search for a tool to help. She rushed to the corner of the room and retrieved an object. She crept toward Emma, holding it high.

  “Whoa! Wha-what are you going to do with that?!” Emma shouted.

  “Stab it!” Maggie announced. She lifted the ceremonial knife higher.

  “NO!” Emma shouted.

  “Why?”

  “If you miss, you’ll stab me! Even if you don’t miss, you still might stab me!”

  Maggie slumped her shoulders. She dropped the knife and searched for something else.

  “Hurry!” Emma urged.

  “I’m trying!” Maggie answered as she searched through items for anything useful. “How about this?” Maggie held up a chalice.

  “How’s that supposed to help?”

  “I’ll cover it with the chalice and then we’ll knock it off you.”

  “It could still sting me. Besides, that looks way too small!”

  Maggie tossed the chalice aside. She picked up a golden scepter. “Here! I’ll knock it off with this!”

  “No! If you miss, you’ll make it angry!”

  “Emma! We’re running out of options here. I have to do something!”

  “Not that!”

  “What do you propose? That I ask it nicely to leave?”

  “Do you imagine that would work?”

  Maggie offered her a wry glance. “I won’t miss.” Maggie eased the scepter near the scorpion, lining up her shot.

  “Ahhh!” Emma exclaimed as the scorpion recoiled to the close proximity of the object.

  In a split second, Maggie reacted to the movement. She swung the scepter and knocked the scorpion across the room. It smacked onto the floor and scurried into a darkened corner. Maggie dropped the scepter, quivering from the experience.

  Emma breathed a sigh of relief as she jumped to her feet. She brushed the spot on her shirt where the scorpion had sat.

  “Oh, that was so gross!” Maggie exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Emma answered. “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks for the save.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Maggie allowed Emma a few moments to recover from her scare. “I guess we should keep searching for the ankh,” Emma said after a few breaths.

  “Yeah. Ugh,” Maggie said with a shiver. “I hate the idea of searching with that thing in the room. You should have let me stab it.”

  “You smacked it into the part of the room we already checked, at least. We should be okay.”

  “Wait!” Maggie exclaimed.

  “What now?”

  “What if there are more?”

  “Good point,” Emma said. “We’ll be careful. Don’t pick anything up.” Emma grab
bed the scepter Maggie dropped. “We’ll use this to poke around.”

  Maggie nodded. They continued exploring the chamber. With their new method of probing items, this half of the chamber’s exploration took twice as long as the first half.

  After a thorough inspection, they found nothing. “Ugh,” Maggie groaned. “Not here either! You’ve got to be kidding?!”

  “Maybe we missed it.”

  “I am NOT going back through ALL this, especially with that creature lurking around.”

  “It’s hardly a creature. And the scorpion is probably just as afraid of us now as we are of it.”

  “You go through the stuff then,” Maggie snapped.

  Emma held up her hands in defeat. “Perhaps we’ll find it in the burial chamber itself. Assuming the burial chamber is in the next room.”

  “I like that assumption. Let’s hope it’s in there. We’ll only check here if we can’t find it there.”

  “If we can return here. We’re not having the best luck with getting out the way we came in.”

  “True,” Maggie said with a sigh. “Well, let’s hope our luck holds out, it’s in the next chamber AND we can get out going forward instead of back.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Emma replied.

  She glanced across the glittering space toward the doorway leading out. Nothing obstructed their path into the next chamber.

  They approached the doorway. Both women hesitated a few feet from the egress. Maggie crossed her arms and stared at the doorway. Emma pursed her lips as she peered at it.

  “What are the chances we can just… walk through it and nothing happens?” Maggie inquired.

  “With our luck lately? Slim to none.”

  “I didn’t spot any triggers,” Maggie answered.

  “Me either, but perhaps we should have a closer look.”

  Emma used the flashlight’s beam to scan the entire doorway. Maggie tapped her foot on the sill, retracting it quickly. She eyed the jamb for another moment before she leapt through.

  Maggie landed on the other side. She spun to face Emma. “I made it!”

  “Yeah. So far so good.”

  “Your turn,” Maggie encouraged.

  Emma took a deep breath and hopped over the sill into the room. Both breathed a sigh of relief. Emma swept the flashlight beam across the room. As opulent as the previous room, the centerpiece of the chamber contained a large pedestal topped with a sarcophagus.

  Maggie pointed to it. “There! Is that him?! Is that Marc Antony?”

  “Wow,” Emma whispered. “I’d bet so. Let’s find out.”

  “Okay,” Maggie agreed. “Careful!”

  Emma nodded. She aimed the flashlight at the floor and scanned it as they approached the body. They made it unscathed. Emma used a similar technique to approach the walls and light any torches along them. She rejoined Maggie at the room’s center. Emma studied the pedestal and sarcophagus. She circled the funerary display, inspecting it.

  “Well?” Maggie asked after a few moments.

  “It’s him,” Emma confirmed. “See these markings here?” She pointed to a few hieroglyphs on a painted cartouche decorating the sarcophagus. “This confirms his identity.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened. “Wow! We found him! Emma, we did it!”

  Emma smiled at Maggie. “We’re the first people to be here in thousands of years! We’re the first people to lay eyes on the body of Marc Antony!”

  “Pretty thrilling, huh?” Maggie asked.

  “My heart is hammering in my chest!”

  “I bet the ankh is here!”

  “One way to find out!” Emma exclaimed.

  “Where should we start?”

  They picked a corner to begin their search. After two hours, their quest proved fruitless. Maggie moved to the sarcophagus. She examined the surrounding items. Maggie crouched to inspect four jars at the foot of the pedestal. Placed in a neat line, the stone jars were decorated with lids in various shapes. An Anubis head adorned one, a cat topped the second. The third’s lid was shaped into a snake’s head and a falcon head capped the final stone jar.

  “Could it be in one of these?” Maggie questioned.

  “Ah, no,” Emma answered with a chuckle.

  “How can you be sure? Shouldn’t we double check?”

  “It’s not in there,” Emma assured Maggie.

  “I think we should check,” Maggie countered.

  “Go ahead,” Emma said. “If you like organs.”

  “Organs?”

  “Those are canopic jars,” Emma informed her. “They hold the organs of the body. One holds the stomach, another the intestines, another the lungs and another the liver.”

  “Ew!” Maggie said as she recoiled from the jars.

  “I’m surprised to see them in a tomb from this dynasty, but it seems they were committed to following the ancient practices.” Emma bent to study the jars. “It’s interesting. They retained the practice of the canopic jar, but the lids don’t follow the standard pattern.”

  “Let’s leave that for the archaeologists to worry about,” Maggie requested.

  “I AM an archaeologist,” Emma retorted.

  “Then you can worry about it when you’re deconstructing and cataloging all of this. Not now.”

  Emma continued to study the jars for a moment longer. Maggie glanced around the funerary chamber. She slapped her thighs with her hands. “No ankh so far. Where could it be?”

  “Perhaps we missed it in the previous chamber.”

  “Where was Cleopatra’s ankh?”

  “I’m not certain, I didn’t catalog that piece.”

  Maggie pulled her lips into a thin line, frustrated by their lack of progress. She spun in a slow circle as she eyed the room. After her inspection, she focused on the sarcophagus.

  “You don’t imagine it’s in there, do you?”

  “In where?” Emma inquired.

  Maggie poked her finger toward the body. “In there,” she mumbled. “With him.”

  “Wrapped with his body? I’d doubt it.” Emma paused for a moment. “Although…”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie moaned. “Please don’t tell me we have to unwrap him!”

  “No,” Emma corrected, “maybe not in with his body but near his body! I didn’t catalog Cleopatra’s ankh, but if I remember correctly, it was found near her. There was a big discussion in the mess tent about such an unglamorous object being found near her.”

  “That makes sense,” Maggie stated. “But I didn’t see it anywhere on the pedestal or the floor.” She glanced around near the sarcophagus.

  “Neither did I. Let’s have another look.”

  Maggie and Emma knelt down near the sarcophagus. Together, they made a careful search of the surrounding area and the pedestal. They worked around the entire platform. As they approached the head, Emma snapped on the flashlight and aimed its beam under the base.

  “Look!” she exclaimed. She pointed under the slab of the funerary base.

  “A heart-shaped gemstone!” Maggie responded. Emma and Maggie exchanged a glance. “You don’t imagine it opens a passage leading further down, do you?”

  Emma grimaced at the stone. “I hope not.”

  “Should we press it?” Maggie inquired.

  “I’m afraid to,” Emma admitted.

  “Do you expect it’ll trigger a trap?”

  “It may.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Maggie answered. She reached toward the ruby.

  “Wait!” Emma said, batting her hand away. “Let’s think this through.”

  “What is there to think through? So far, we’ve come up with nothing. We haven’t found the ankh yet and we’re stuck in the bowels of a tomb.”

  “We’re not ‘stuck’ completely,” Emma countered. She pointed toward an opening on the far wall. “There’s an exit door.”

  “Okay,” Maggie answered. “So, if we press this, we’ll either find another chamber with the ankh or we won’t, right?�
��

  “Or we’ll trigger some trap that ruins our chance of escaping this place.”

  Maggie nodded as she considered Emma’s statement. “Okay, you make a good point. I don’t want to be trapped in here but…”

  “But?” Emma answered as Maggie’s voice trailed off.

  “But,” Maggie continued, “it wasn’t a trap the last time we pressed it.”

  “How do you figure that?” Emma argued. “We’re stuck in the ‘bowels of a tomb’ as you put it because of the last time you pressed one of these.”

  “Technically, yes, but we found Marc Antony! We were only temporarily stuck. I say we push it. No risk, no reward.” Maggie reached for the gemstone again.

  “And I say we don’t,” Emma retorted as she blocked Maggie’s hand. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Maggie shoved Emma’s hand away and reached for the ruby heart again. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “Look before you leap!” Emma cautioned.

  Maggie dropped her hand to her side. “We can trade idioms all day, but eventually we have to make a decision.”

  “We’ve made a decision. We just can’t agree on that decision.”

  Maggie ruminated for a moment. “Okay, let’s compromise,” she suggested.

  “Push it halfway?” Emma inquired.

  “No. You go through that exit door and then I’ll press the heart and see what happens. If anything goes wrong, it’ll be me who deals with the consequences.”

  Emma considered the idea. She shook her head. “No. No, I’m not going to leave you here.”

  “You’re not leaving me. You’re just waiting for me in the other room in case something goes wrong.”

  “I’m not a coward. If we press it, I’m going to stay and be part of it.”

  “So, should we press it?”

  “No, wait!” Emma exclaimed as she climbed to her feet.

  “Wait for what?”

  “Let’s check out the exit door first and see if there are any booby traps. In case we need to rush out, I don’t want to trigger something.”

  “Good idea,” Maggie agreed. She climbed to her feet and joined Emma. Together, they searched the door jamb.

  While they inspected it, Maggie asked, “You keep calling this the exit. What are the chances this really leads us out of here?”

  “They usually built an exit,” Emma answered. “I’d guess this tomb was no exception, particularly given the unusual layout with the double burial.”