by Dan Metcalf
To Harry & George Edwards.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Glossary
Did You Know?
Brain Teaser
Crack the Code
Chapter One
London, 1928
Lottie bit her lip and frowned in concentration. This was the hardest puzzle she had ever had to solve and knew that if she got it wrong, she would be in deep trouble. She sighed and read through it again:
“Argh!” she moaned. “Why does Uncle Bert always set the hardest homework?”
Lottie was sitting at a coffee table in the middle of the small, untidy apartment that she shared with her Great Uncle Bert. She looked around at the mess: piles and piles of books, shelves crammed with ancient artefacts that Uncle Bert had collected on his digs in Egypt, and photographs of his time in Africa. Her eyes rested on a picture of Uncle Bert with a young, smiling couple in the desert. They were her parents but they had been killed in an accident when a tomb they were exploring caved in. Her Great Uncle Bert had taken Lottie back to London, where he had managed to get a job and a place to live in the greatest museum in the world – The British Museum.
Living in the museum had its perks: Lottie could roam the halls when the public had gone home, she could read any book she liked from the vast library, and she didn’t even have to go to school! Although sometimes she wished she did, as the lessons that Uncle Bert gave her were getting harder and harder. She tried to read the question again but all the words jumbled up in front of her eyes, so she stepped away for a while.
It was Sunday morning and the museum wasn’t yet open to visitors. The sunlight came streaming in through the apartment window and Lottie decided that a walk around the museum would be just the thing to clear her head and make her brain work again.
As Lottie walked down one of the many halls that filled the museum, mulling over her tricky homework, she heard a call come from the main entrance hall, “Lottie? Is that you? Come and give me a hand!”
Lottie jogged over to where the sun rolled in through the museum’s large open doors. Giant pillars reached up to the high ceiling. Standing in the main entrance was Uncle Bert. He was a round fellow with a bushy white moustache and a face that went pink when he got excited, like he was doing right now. He stood over a large wooden packing case with a crowbar in his hand.
“How’s the homework going, my dear?” asked Uncle Bert.
“Um…fine. Almost done!” Lottie fibbed. “Ooh! Is this a new exhibit?” she asked, quickly changing the subject and succeeding in stopping Uncle Bert from asking any more homework related questions.
Uncle Bert nodded excitedly. “My friends in Cairo sent it to me. It will be the centrepiece to my new collection,” he said proudly.
Uncle Bert set about opening the wooden packing case like a giddy child at Christmas. Within minutes he had managed to lever the lid off and the sides of the packing case fell away to reveal the treasure inside.
“Wow,” gasped Lottie. “An Egyptian mummy!”
A large sarcophagus now lay before them. It was a stone coffin, painted gold and decorated with pictures and symbols. A face was drawn on the top: an image of a sleeping woman.
“This was a rich lady. She died around three thousand years ago,” explained Uncle Bert. “She was found in a tomb in Egypt that some of my friends discovered. She was surrounded by her special treasures when they found her.”
“Amazing,” said Lottie. She approached the sarcophagus to get a closer look but hit her toe on a smaller box. “Ow! What’s this?”
“Ah yes, that. Why don’t you open it and find out for yourself, my dear?” said Uncle Bert, handing her the crowbar. She began to lever the nails out of the top of the wooden box. With a POP! the lid came off, revealing what was inside.
“Ah!” exclaimed Lottie. “Dolls!”
“Pah! Dolls indeed,” scoffed Uncle Bert. “These, my dear, are shabtis.”
Lottie carefully took one of the little models out of the box. It was about the same size as a doll but made of clay. It had writing all over its body and its arms were folded like a mini-mummy.
“When the Egyptians died, they believed that they went to an afterlife where the God Osiris would make them work on the land. Rich people were buried with shabtis, who would come alive and do the work for them. Poppycock, of course.”
Lottie was fascinated by the shabtis. She ran her fingers over the engraved writing.
“What is the writing, Uncle Bert?”
“Hmm? Oh, just a spell,” said Uncle Bert. He was busy throwing the wood shavings and crumpled up paper that surrounded the sarcophagus over his shoulder.
Wow! A spell! thought Lottie and she almost dropped the shabti in excitement.
“What on Earth is going on?” came a bellow from behind them, interrupting Lottie’s train of thought.
Oh, no, thought Lottie. It’s Sir Trev!
Sir Trevelyan Taylor, the Head Curator of the museum, was the grumpiest man that Lottie knew. He hated Uncle Bert and Lottie living at the museum and was always trying to come up with new ways to get them thrown out. He came striding towards them, wearing a dapper blue suit.
“Professor West! What is this mess?” he barked.
“This mess, as you call it, is a three thousand year old mummy. We’re very lucky to have it at the museum,” said Uncle Bert, his moustache twitching with annoyance.
“But you’re blocking the main entrance! You should have unpacked this in the Egyptology section,” Sir Trevelyan cried.
He had a point. Lottie looked around at the dismantled packing crate and wood shavings scattered across the floor. It would take ages to clear it up.
“I’ll get a broom,” sighed Lottie.
“You’d better be quick,” sneered Sir Trevelyan. “In one hour, the most important people in London will be coming through that door for a donors’ meeting. They are very rich and with any luck will give lots of money to the museum. I will not be impressed if they have to step over your rubbish. So you had better get it cleared up. Now!”
“Or what? You’ll give Uncle Bert the sack?” snapped Lottie. She was fed up with Sir Trevelyan threatening them every time he got angry.
“Oh, no,” grinned Sir Trevelyan. “I’ll give him the sack!”
He span around and pointed at a door, where Reg the caretaker had just appeared, holding a broom and innocently munching on a sandwich.
“Wotcha!” he said with a mouthful of bread. “Did somebody mention a broom?”
“That’s not fair!” said Lottie. “You can’t fire Reg for a mess he didn’t make!”
“Why not?” said Sir Trevelyan with an evil laugh. “He is the caretaker, after all. He should be keeping the place tidy. And anyway, whenever I threaten Professor West’s job and home, you always seem to wriggle out of it. Let’s see how you do trying to save someone else’s skin for a change.”
He marched away, leaving Lottie and Uncle Bert pulling faces behind his back.
“Don’t worry, you two!” said Reg. “I’ll get this lot cleared up in a jiffy.”
“Reg, dear boy, it’s not your fault. We should be clearing it up,” said Uncle Bert.
It simply isn’t fair. Why does Sir Trev have to be so nasty all the time? thought Lottie. She looked around at the mess that now filled the entrance hall, trying to think of a way out of this situation. Suddenly Lottie had a brainwave.
“If I can read the spell on the shabti, then maybe I can get them to do our clearing up for us,” she muttered to herself. She looked down at the shabti she was still holding in her hands. Could it work? Probably n
ot. No. Definitely not, she thought. But it’s worth a try.
She placed the shabti she was holding gently back in the box so she could pull her trusty detective’s notebook from her cardigan pocket. She flipped through it to find the right page. She had all sorts of information in her notebook; telephone numbers, important dates, even ways to say, ‘Stop! You’re under arrest!’ in fifty different languages. She also had a key to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics that she had copied from one of Uncle Bert’s many books:
While Uncle Bert muttered about Sir Trevelyan being a ‘nincompoop’ and Reg started to sweep up, Lottie began to note down and translate the spell:
Lottie bit the end of her pencil as she tried to work out the spell.
“Hmm...the first letter seems to be L, and the next is E. Lem? Led? Ah, I see! ‘Let’!”
Once she had the hang of it, she translated the spell in no time. She was ready to give it a try and cleared her throat.
“Ahem, ahem,” she said in a grand way. “Let the shabtis awake and be free!”
Electricity filled the air as she said the words and the box of shabtis started to shake and bounce around on the floor.
“What the ‘eck is going on?” shouted Reg.
Lottie began to worry. “Um...I was just trying a spell,” she said with a foolish grin.
“You tried a WHAT?”
Chapter Two
KA-POW!
An emerald light exploded from the box of shabtis, which shook and bounced on the floor. Lottie backed away, scared of what she had done. Suddenly the shabtis seemed to leap from their box and clatter on the floor. Reg and Uncle Bert watched open-mouthed as the shabtis glowed with energy.
“Oh ‘eck!” shouted Reg. “They’re alive!”
And they were. Each shabti crackled with electricity and began to stand. They stretched their tiny arms and legs and looked around.
“Woo-hoo!” cheered one of the shabti. The rest joined in, waving their little fists in the air in triumph.
“Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”
Lottie, Uncle Bert and Reg stood back from the little crowd of twenty or so shabtis. The little Egyptian servants looked at Lottie and seemed to clap their tiny hands together.
Then, faster than anything Lottie had ever seen before, they all sped out of the main entrance hall and into the museum.
Lottie stood very still, listening to the squeaking voices of the shabtis as they ran further into the museum.
“Lottie,” said Uncle Bert. “What on Earth did you do?”
“Nothing,” said Lottie. “I just read the spell on the front of the shabti. Let the shabtis awake and be free.”
Uncle Bert frowned and scratched his head.
“You didn’t then continue onto the back?
If I remember correctly, the whole spell says, Let the shabtis awake and be free from the spell, ready to serve me.”
Lottie thought about it. Oh, no! Instead of making tiny servants that would follow her orders, she had set them free to do whatever they wanted!
“If Sir Trev doesn’t like mess, he really won’t like a bunch of magical dolls running loose in his museum,” Reg pointed out. “We’d better get after them!”
They raced off in the direction they had last seen the shabtis headed, running through the exhibits and into the library.
“Aaagh!” cried Lottie. “Mess! Everywhere!”
Piles of books lay open on the floor, having fallen from the shelves. The shabtis were climbing up the shelves, throwing books all over the room.
“Hey! You! Get down from there!” shouted Uncle Bert. He then ducked as a book on the history of Rome came flying towards his head.
“Wicked little tykes, ain’t they?” said Reg.
Lottie watched as one of the shabtis seemed to shout at the others in a strange, squeaky voice. It was a language she couldn’t understand. He was standing on top of a tall set of shelves. He shouted some more and pointed towards the far door. The rest of the shabtis stopped what they were doing and followed his order, jumping off shelves and running towards the far door.
“He’s the leader!” called Lottie. “I’ll grab him!”
She darted towards the crowd of living dolls, leaping over desks and sofas. She reached the shelving that he was on and began to climb. The shabtis on the ground shrieked a warning at their leader. But it was too late. Lottie reached out and grabbed the tiny doll.
“Got you!” she said triumphantly. “Now, there has been an awful mistake, I –”
Lottie was interrupted by the leader yelling at her in his strange language. Even though she couldn’t understand him, she could still tell that most of the words he was yelling were insults.
Lottie tried to carry on. “I meant to ask you to help tidy up, but I freed you instead. I think we should –”
She was interrupted again by a long raspberry from the little figure. The crowd of shabtis below laughed and cheered. Lottie was about to tell him off when he opened up his mouth and bit down hard into the skin on her finger.
“Ow!” she screamed. She dropped the shabti, who landed with ease on the ground.
The crowd of shabtis cheered and ran out of the room again, leaving the library in a mess. Lottie climbed down.
“Now what?” asked Uncle Bert.
“Well I’ve tried talking to them,” said Lottie. “But that clearly didn’t work. We need a Plan B.”
“I’ve got loads of mousetraps in my cupboard,” suggested Reg, rubbing his hands together with excitement. “I could round up the little blighters and trap them.”
“Oh no! We can’t hurt them,” said Lottie, nursing her bitten finger. “We just need to get them back into their box.”
“If we can do that, I may be able to find a spell to turn them back to clay,” said Uncle Bert. “But we’ve got to find them first. Which way did they go?”
They followed the shabtis out of the same door they had just run through and down a corridor. Around them, the museum was in tatters. The exhibits lay on their sides, the paintings were wonky on the wall, and every last guidebook had been shredded by the shabtis’ tiny hands.
“The good news is, I know where they’ve gone,” said Reg. “The bad news is, they’ve gone down to the basement.”
Lottie groaned. The basement held the museum’s archives, rows and rows of shelves holding old exhibits, files and boxes. It was a mess to start with, and Uncle Bert had once got lost down their for six whole hours!
Lottie gulped. “I suppose we’d better go down there then. Good luck, Gentlemen.”
Turn the page to find out if Lottie, Uncle Bert and Reg can make it through the basement!
They agreed to stick together, with Lottie leading the way. They all held hands to stop them from getting separated. Lottie could hear the impish shrieking of the shabtis as they hurried through the miles and miles of shelving.
“I think we’re getting closer,” said Lottie. “Agh! Dead end.”
They turned tail and began to run to keep up with the sounds of the chattering shabtis. Every now and then they would come across a shelf which had been pulled over to slow them down.
“It’s an awful mess down here. Whose job is it to keep it organised?” asked Uncle Bert.
“Yours!” replied Lottie and Reg at the same time.
They rushed and raced through the basement and eventually found the way out. It was clear that the shabtis had definitely found the way out too, as they could see tiny footprints in the dust on the steps leading up to the ground floor.
“I’ll be glad to get out of here,” said Lottie. “But I’ll be even happier when we catch the little devils!”
Chapter Three
Stepping up into the light of the ground floor, Lottie, Uncle Bert and Reg walked out of the building and into the sunshine of the large main courtyard. They all paused to catch their breath.
“Is there any way this day could get worse?” said Uncle Bert, panting.
Just then, Sir Trevelyan Taylor walked ou
t of his office.
“Of course it could,” grumbled Lottie.
“You three! Get back to work!” came a call from across the courtyard. Sir Trevelyan Taylor waved as he walked towards them. “The main entrance is still a mess and the donors are arriving at twelve o’clock sharp.”
Reg was bent double, huffing and puffing.
“All right! Keep your hair on!” he panted. Sir Trevelyan’s face dropped into a scowl and he jabbed a finger at Reg.
“Do I need to remind you that your job is on the line?” he growled. “You should remember who runs this place.”
Reg frowned and stepped forward, so that he was nose to nose with Sir Trevelyan.
“And you should remember who has keys to your office and a pot of quick-drying glue,” he muttered. “Watch where you sit Sir Trev, or you may be stuck there for a long time.”
Sir Trevelyan gulped. Lottie put her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh. Reg was the gentlest man she knew but he could be pretty terrifying when he wanted to be.
“J-just get it cleaned up,” stammered Sir Trevelyan mustering as much bravado as he could. He turned and walked briskly away. As soon as he was out of sight, Lottie burst out laughing.
“Good one Reg!” she smiled. “Now, what are we going to do about those silly statues?”
There was a crash from inside the museum. It was the sound of something very old and expensive being knocked over.
“Follow the chaos, I suppose,” said Uncle Bert. They quickly ran back into the museum.
Reg kicked open the doors and the three of them followed the racket made by the mischievous shabtis into the Ancient Japanese department. A samurai suit and a priceless old bell from a royal palace lay on their sides. At the far end of the room a crowd of giggling shabtis were trying to push over a large statue of a dragon.