The Crocodile Caper

by A. B. Greenfield

  Overboard was not a word I wanted to think about, so I was glad when Miu interrupted us. “Ra! Khepri!” She raced down the gangplank to the landing. “I have to talk to you.”

  “Don’t miss your boat!” Khepri warned. “The sailors look like they’re ready to go.”

  “Don’t worry,” Miu reassured him. “I’ve got a few minutes. They’re still bringing food on board. The cook says a crate of meat on board has spoiled and needs to be taken away.”

  How spoiled? I wondered. If it was merely a touch, I wouldn’t mind nosing around. “Thanks for the tip,” I told Miu.

  “That’s not the tip,” Miu said. “It’s the crocodiles. I heard them splashing around as Kiya looked over the railing. ‘Now there’s a delicious morsel,’ one of them said. ‘Just like the one who came out at dawn.’” I looked at her in horror. “They saw Dedi?”

  “What if they ate him?” Khepri clacked in dismay.

  It was starting to look like a possibility, and the thought was so terrible that I stopped feeling hungry. In fact, I stopped feeling pretty much anything.

  “I hope I’m wrong.” Miu’s whiskers twitched anxiously. “But it didn’t sound good. I yelled down to the crocodiles to get their attention, but they only laughed and swam away. They’re still around, though. Well, one of them is, anyway. You can see him lying in the mud near the landing. He’s the one with the huge ridges on his tail and the snout that’s bigger than anyone else’s.”

  I was starting to feel something now: anger. I gazed past the busy landing, where men were carrying crates on and off the royal barge, and scanned the riverbank. It took me a while, but I finally spotted Miu’s crocodile.

  He was the biggest, meanest crocodile I’d ever seen. Even bigger and meaner than the one that had lunged at Khepri and me the night before.

  “I have to get back to Kiya,” Miu said. “I led her to her cabin, but I don’t know how long she’ll stay there. It’s up to you two to get that crocodile to talk.”

  “We’ll make him talk.” My fur bristled. “We’ll go on the attack.” I was so angry, I almost charged down to the riverbank then and there.

  But then the crocodile opened his mouth wide. Even from this distance, I could see his many, many teeth—and I felt something else: a cold trickle of fear.

  I sat down hard. “Er…maybe I’ll have breakfast first.”

  “Oh, Ra.” Miu turned a disappointed gaze on me. “Does food always have to come first? I thought you were a Great Detective.”

  “Great Detectives need Great Snacks,” I told her.

  “Maybe you should be the one to go with Kiya,” she said.

  “No, you should,” I said.

  “No, you.”

  “But—”

  “Hey, the barge is leaving!” Khepri broke in.

  Miu careened down to the edge of the landing. I raced down with her, but it was too late. The barge was headed down the Nile, with Kiya on board—and without a single Great Detective to guard her.

  CHAPTER 11

  Great Detectives?

  “Oh, no!” Her torn ear drooping forlornly, Miu stared at the widening gap between us and the barge. Ten cubits. Fifteen cubits. Twenty cubits.

  I brushed up alongside her. There was something about the way she was standing that made me worry. “You can’t jump that far, Miu. No cat can.”

  “Don’t do it, Miu,” Khepri put in.

  Miu stayed put, but she didn’t stop watching the barge, and now her whole head was drooping. “She’s so small. Practically a kitten. And now she’s on her own. We really messed up, getting distracted like that.” As the barge glided away, she stared down at her paws. “I really messed up.”

  “You’re not alone,” Khepri said. “Ra and I didn’t do a very good job of guarding Dedi, either.”

  “I guess we shouldn’t call ourselves Great Detectives anymore,” Miu said sadly.

  I sat up straight. “Now, wait a minute. That kind of talk isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

  “But it’s true, Ra,” Khepri said with a sigh. “Great Detectives don’t let two children vanish.”

  “Kiya hasn’t vanished,” I pointed out. “We know exactly where she is. And she has guards and a nursemaid to protect her, even if they’re under the weather.”

  “And Dedi?” Khepri buzzed.

  “Well, that’s more of a worry,” I admitted. “But we’ve barely started detecting. And you can bet we have a better chance of finding him than anyone else does.”

  Miu perked up. “You’re right, Ra. We need to focus on this case. And I know just where to begin.” She started trotting down the landing.

  “Where?” I called out.

  She sped up. “That crocodile, of course!”

  “No need to be so hasty!” I shouted after her. “Remember, we haven’t even had breakfast yet. And maybe he hasn’t, either!”

  “She isn’t listening, Ra.” Khepri climbed onto my back. “We’d better go after her. You know how she can be with suspects.”

  I certainly did. Miu is a kindhearted cat, but put her in charge of an investigation and she acts like a lion. Still, even a lion isn’t a match for a crocodile.

  I caught up with her at the top of a landing wall covered with fishnets drying in the sun. Below us, the huge crocodile was clambering onto the muddy riverbank. I measured the distance down to the ground with my eyes. It was an easy jump for a cat—but not a wise one.

  “Miu, you can’t go down there!” Khepri warned. “He’ll eat you.”

  The crocodile was already watching us, his golden-green eyes aware of our every move. He slithered closer to our spot on the wall.

  “You better not have eaten Dedi, you big bully!” Miu shouted down at him. “You’ll be in trouble if you did. He’s the crown prince of this whole kingdom, you know.”

  “Crown prince?” The crocodile’s jaws snapped. “What do you know about that?”

  It wasn’t easy to understand him. Maybe it’s all those teeth, but crocodiles have very poor enunciation, as you probably know if you’ve tried to talk to one yourself.

  Not that I’ve ever complained to them about that. Nobody in their right mind complains to a crocodile about anything. Well, except Miu. But even she was looking daunted now that those snapping jaws were so close.

  “Let me handle this,” I said to her. “I’ve been trained for it.”

  It was true. I had been. Sort of. My father knew that when I succeeded him as Pharaoh’s Cat, I would accompany Pharaoh on his Nile trips, so he’d warned me about crocodiles. Always show respect, he’d said. After all, they’ve been in Egypt longer than the rest of us, except maybe the scarabs. They have their own rituals, and their own way of doing things. And they’re very touchy.

  “O most noble and worthy crocodile,” I began. “I am Ra the Mighty, Pharaoh’s Cat, Lord of the Powerful Paw, and I greet you with—”

  “Cut to the point,” the crocodile growled. “What do you know about the crown prince?”

  Hmmmmm…This encounter wasn’t going the way I thought it would. But I decided to meet him on his level. (Not on the mudbank, of course. I mean his conversational level.) “No, you go first. What do you know?”

  Miu scowled down at the crocodile. “Did you see the crown prince this morning? Did you eat him for breakfast?”

  “What are you talking about, you stupid cat?” The crocodile thwacked his bumpy tail against the mud. “Why in Sobek’s name would we eat one of our own?”

  Miu and I sat back on our haunches, confused.

  Up on my head, Khepri murmured, “Now that’s interesting. You know, I—”

  Without finishing his thought, he shrieked and slid down under my belly. I ducked my head down between my forelegs and peered at him. “Khepri? What is it?”

  “Up there!” he croaked. “In the sky!”

&n
bsp; Glancing up, I spotted the dirty feathers and bright-orange faces of vultures, soaring high above us.

  “She’s going to eat us,” Khepri wailed.

  “I thought vultures only ate carrion,” Miu said. “You know, dead things?”

  “Er…mostly,” I said. “But they’ve been known to eat small animals.”

  “They eat insects, too,” Khepri put in from under my belly. “And dung. Sometimes insects and dung. That’s what happened to my cousin.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I told him. “This one probably hasn’t even noticed us. She might not even be hungry.”

  Letting out an excited hiss, one of the vultures dived for us.

  “Sounds hungry to me!” Miu said.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  CHAPTER 12

  A Deal’s a Deal

  Miu and I ran, all right—into each other. In our panic, we got caught in the fishing nets that were drying on the wall.

  The vulture swooped down on us. Trapped on top of the wall, we were easy pickings. Kicking at the knotted strings only made the tangle worse. I ducked my head, waiting for the claws to sink in.

  But instead of the rip and tear of talons, there was only a whistle of air. The vulture pulled up short, then touched down on the landing wall in front of me.

  When I lifted my head up, the vulture was peering down at the crocodile.

  “Hey there, Admiral,” she croaked. “I didn’t see you at first. Are these friends of yours? I don’t want to make a meal of your buddies.”

  “They’re no friends of mine,” the Admiral rumbled. “You can eat them if you want.”

  The vulture turned back toward me. Her eyes were bright and eager under her fringe of frilly head feathers. I struggled to free my paws from the net, but it was no use.

  “I’m Ra the Mighty, Pharaoh’s Cat,” I babbled to the vulture. “Believe me, you really, really don’t want to eat me. Or my friends.”

  “I’m Nekhbet,” she said, drawing closer. “And believe me, I really, really do.”

  Kicking again at the nets, I got my forepaws free, but my hind legs were still trapped. “Sorry,” I whispered to Khepri. “Run for it, if you can. I can’t save us.”

  “But I can save you!” Khepri bounded out from my belly fur. Balancing on top of the nets, he shouted, “I know where the crown prince is!”

  “What?” Miu said.

  “Where?” I said.

  “Who?” Nekhbet said. She waddled after Khepri.

  “Khepri, watch out!” I clawed at the netting. My desperation to save him must have given me strength, because this time I managed to slice through the string and free myself. I bolted for Khepri, reaching him moments before Nekhbet did.

  “Khepri, buddy, where’s Dedi?” I panted.

  “Not that prince,” Khepri said. “The other one.”

  He’d lost me. “What other one?”

  “You crocodiles have a crown prince, don’t you?” Khepri called out to the Admiral. “That’s the one I’m talking about.”

  “You’ve seen little Sobek Junior?” Nekhbet darted closer. “Why didn’t you say so before? We’ve been looking everywhere for him. That cutie-pie likes to climb high on the riverbanks to sun himself, and that’s not safe for a little crocodile. He’s been gone for two days now.”

  Down on the mudbank, the Admiral had risen up on his stumpy front feet. “Where is our prince? What have you done with him?” His lizardy eye glared at us. “Did you eat him?”

  “Of course we haven’t eaten him!” Khepri hopped as he made his point. “But I think I know where he is.”

  I tried to look like I was in on the secret, but I was clueless. Crocodile prince? All I’d seen were these huge granddaddy-sized lizards out on the Nile. Well, except for that crocodile baby on Lady Satiah’s—

  Oh.

  “I know where he is, too,” I called down to the Admiral.

  “And so do I,” said Miu, who finally had freed herself from the netting. “And if you’re nice to us, we might even help you get him back.”

  “Nice?” Nekhbet waddled toward us. “I’ll give you nice. A nice peck on the patootie!”

  The Admiral lashed his tail. “Knock it off, Nekhbet. If they know something, we’d better hear it. We need all the help we can get. King Sobek is going to chew my head off if I don’t find Sobek Junior soon.”

  So there was an even bigger, scarier crocodile somewhere on this river? I gulped.

  “We’d better tell them everything we know,” I whispered to Khepri.

  But Khepri had other ideas. “Sure, we’ll help you,” he called down to the Admiral. “But first you have to help us. We’ve got a missing prince of our own—a boy about twelve years old. He might have come down to the river right before dawn, and he maybe went out in a small boat. Did you see him?”

  The Admiral shut his eyes and sank back down into the oozing mud.

  “You ate him!” Miu cried. “I knew it!”

  The golden-green eyes flashed open. “Hold your horses. I’m just thinking. Yes, there was a human out on the landing around first light. And he did mess around with the boats.”

  “How old was he?” I asked. “What did he look like?”

  “Who knows? A human’s a human.” The Admiral grinned. “We don’t keep track of their ages. We don’t even look at their faces. We only care about how they taste.”

  “A delicious morsel,” Miu said, looking sick. “That’s what you called him.”

  “You heard that?” The Admiral’s own earflaps went up—a sign of annoyance in a crocodile. “That was just one of my captains joking around. We saw a human come down to the dock, that’s all. We might’ve eaten him if he’d fallen in, but he didn’t.”

  “Did he go out in one of the boats?” Khepri asked.

  “Who knows?” the Admiral said. “I’m not paid to keep tabs on humans. Anyway, we crocodiles were busy then. We always are, at dawn.”

  “Busy doing what?” Khepri wanted to know.

  “Well, who do you think makes the sun come up?” the Admiral said. “The crocodiles, that’s who.”

  Khepri wriggled his antennae. “But that’s ridicu—”

  “—really wonderful of you,” I interrupted, nudging Khepri back. Never insult a crocodile.

  “You bet it’s wonderful,” the Admiral snapped. “But don’t think flattery is going to get you out of our deal. I helped you, and now you’d better help me. Tell me where Sobek Junior is.”

  Khepri tiptoed closer to the edge of the landing and peered down at the Admiral’s scaly head. “We’re pretty sure Lady Satiah has him.”

  “Lady Satiah!” the Admiral roared. “That vulture!”

  “Ahem,” said Nekhbet.

  “You’re right,” the Admiral said. “Vulture’s too good a word for that human. Is she planning to roast our crown prince in her kitchen?”

  “Actually, I think he’s part of her zoo,” Khepri said.

  “They’ve got a zoo at the palace?” The Admiral blinked, then glared up at the vulture. “Why didn’t you tell me, Nekhbet? That should’ve been the first place we looked.”

  “I didn’t know she had a zoo,” Nekhbet said. “Maybe that’s why she’s put netting over the courtyards. You have to get real close to see through it, and I can’t afford to do that, not when she’s ordered her guards to shoot arrows at any vultures they see.”

  The giant crocodile paced along the mudbank, gnashing his teeth. “So close, and yet we can’t get to him. Not unless the river floods the palace. Then we can break in. But it usually doesn’t.”

  “Never mind, Admiral,” Nekhbet comforted him. She swept her wings in our direction. “Remember, these animals promised to get him out for you.”

  “We did?” I said.

  “No, we didn’t,” Khepri said.<
br />
  “Well, I said we might help,” Miu told the Admiral. “But I figured you’d be the one leading the expedition. I mean, we’re strangers here. We can’t—”

  She stopped short as Nekhbet swung her sharp beak toward us. “A bargain is a bargain,” she croaked. “Betray the crocodiles, and you’ll regret it.”

  “You sure will,” the Admiral snarled. “We’ll lay the crocodile curse on you.” He pointed his long snout at us and opened his toothy mouth wide.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what the crocodile curse was, but I had a bad feeling it involved teeth.

  “No need for any curses,” I said hastily. “Pharaoh’s Cat is at your service. And so are his friends. We’ll do everything we can to get your crown prince back to you.”

  “But we can’t get anything done from here,” Miu pointed out.

  “And we could work faster if we weren’t so worried about our own crown prince,” Khepri added. “We’ve heard a boat went missing last night. If you could check downriver, and see if our prince is in it—”

  “Sure,” the Admiral agreed, with surprising enthusiasm. “We’ll do that.”

  “And if you find him, don’t eat him,” Miu added fiercely.

  The Admiral snorted. “I could say the same to you about our prince.”

  “No worries there,” I said. “I don’t even like crocodile.”

  The Admiral thwacked his tail against the mud. “Cut the wisecracks, cat. This is a serious situation. We’ve got a deal, and you’d better live up to it.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re on it.” Khepri jumped onto my back. “Come on, Ra. We’ve got a crocodile to rescue.”

  Even before he’d scrambled up to his perch between my ears, I was carefully picking my way around the nets. Miu was by my side, and within moments we were running over the bridge to the palace gates.

  But it was the Admiral who had the last word.

  “Remember, a deal’s a deal,” he snarled. “If I find your prince, and you don’t bring back mine, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s snack time.”