by Dakota Chase
We passed by another set of the stone sphinxes I’d seen earlier, and entered a spacious, square marketplace. Colorful booths lined the square, selling everything from bolts of cloth to pungent spices and jewelry. Merchants called out to us as we passed, jingling bracelets and necklaces, waving peacock or ostrich feathers, or holding up squawking chickens, trying to entice us to their booth.
The one good thing I realized immediately was that I could understand them! Merlin had kept his word about the language magic.
“Young master, come see! I have Nubian gold, very nice! Come see!”
“My wares are the rarest in all of Egypt! Come see my cloth, the best linen made only from the finest flax!”
“Furs! Fox and hyena! Come see my fine furs!”
“Barley! Wheat! Sesame seeds, and honey, here! Come, a taste for the young master!”
My stomach rumbled at the sweet smells coming from that last booth. I nudged Grant and nodded in the direction of the merchant. “Come on,” I whispered. “Free samples!”
“We need to find Tut,” Grant said. “We don’t have time to sightsee.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not going to be able to sneak into the palace if my stomach is growling like a bear, either. We missed lunch, remember? Come on, it’ll only take a minute,” I insisted. I hurried over to the merchant.
“What shall it be, young master?” The merchant was an older man with skin like leather. One eye was milky-blue and stared straight ahead. The other was nut-brown and shrewd.
“Um, that bread. What kind is it?” I asked. It was really strange to hear myself speak in ancient Egyptian. I didn’t have to try to think in Egyptian, either. I just spoke the way I always did, in English, but my lips formed words that I’d never heard before. My ears heard a fluid stream of nonsense syllables, but my brain understood every word spoken. It was disconcerting, but I figured I’d get used to it. I’d have to, if I was going to retrieve all of Merlin’s lost artifacts.
“It is honey-wheat, young master. A taste, perhaps?” He broke off a small piece and handed it to me.
This was not the sliced white bread I was used to! The texture was rough and grainy, with whole seeds stuck inside the dough, and there was a hint of sweetness to it, probably from the honey. It wasn’t bad, though, just not what I was used to. I ate it and nodded. “It’s good,” I said.
“How many loaves do you wish, young master? One piece of brass will buy five loaves. It is a bargain, yes? ”
I didn’t want to tell him that I didn’t have any money. Who knew if there was a penalty for taking free samples if you had no money to buy the goods you liked? “I’m in a hurry now, but I’ll come back later,” I said, and left. The merchant yelled angrily at my back. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him shaking his fist at me. I guess he’d expected to make a sale since I obviously had liked the bread, but all I’d done was eat his merchandise and leave. I suppose he felt gypped.
“Nice. We’re here five minutes and you’ve already pissed somebody off,” Grant grumbled when I caught up with him.
“I couldn’t help it. I was hungry. I figured it was like when you go the grocery store and somebody’s handing out free samples. Nobody expects you to buy the stuff right away.”
“Evidently, they do here. No more samples, okay? If we get arrested, we’ll never be able to get Merlin’s amulet, and we’ll never get home again.”
I nodded. At least my stomach had quieted—for now. That little bit of bread wasn’t going to stave off starvation for long, not when I’d been known to pack away a couple of quarter-pound cheeseburgers, fries, and a shake without barely pausing to swallow.
As we made our way toward the gleaming building I’d thought might be Tut’s palace, I began to notice a few things about the Ancient Egyptians.
First, they all wore makeup. From the oldest to the youngest, they’d painted their eyelids with dark gray or green color that extended past the outer corner of the eye in a straight line. Some had reddened their cheeks and lips, too, and most had colored their fingernails orange or yellow.
Weird.
“What’s with the makeup?” Grant asked in a whisper.
“Beats me.”
“It looks like a drag queen competition.”
Wow. I wouldn’t have thought Grant knew what a drag queen was, let alone that they had beauty pageants. It was food for thought, but for later. I had more pressing things to think about now, like how I was supposed to steal an amulet out from under the nose of King Tut.
The second thing I noticed was that, in Memphis, clothing was optional. Little kids wore nothing but their skins, and while some women wore sleeveless dresses, most people only wore skirts. Few people wore even sandals. No one batted an eye at all the nudity, either. I guess they were used to seeing everyone else’s bits and pieces, and they didn’t care.
It was a little embarrassing for me, though. I felt like a skeevy Peeping Tom, and I know my cheeks were red, which only made me more uncomfortable because I was trying hard to be cool and pretend that I’d seen it all before, but I knew that one look at my blotchy face surely gave me away. I didn’t mention it to Grant, but I figured I didn’t need to point out the obvious. His cheeks were sort of rosy, too.
Luckily, the building we thought might be Tut’s palace was just ahead. It gleamed bright white under the desert sun. The entire front of the building was such a mass of sculptures, hieroglyphics, and paintings that I didn’t know where to look first.
We ducked into the slightly cooler shadows cast by the magnificent building, watching, trying to figure out how to get inside. Didn’t a person need a special invitation to enter the palace of the king? I didn’t think the average Joe Schmuck could just waltz inside whenever he felt like it.
It seemed I was wrong. As we watched, a steady parade of people entered the palace. The king must be a pretty busy guy if he gets that much business every day, I thought, watching what seemed to be an endless line of people disappearing inside the beautiful building. There were guards armed with curved swords, but they didn’t seem overly concerned with who was waiting to enter, so Grant and I slipped into the line.
We kept our heads down as we passed the guards. I expected a big hand to clamp down on my shoulder, demanding to know why I was trying to get inside the palace, but to my relief, none did. We passed through the immense, golden double doors easily.
Grant and I found ourselves at the tail end of a traffic jam. It was very hot, and I wiped sweat out of my eyes. I supposed all the body heat crammed inside the hallway was raising the temperature even higher than it already was. People filled the wide, long corridor from side to side and end to end, and no one seemed to be going anywhere. Craning my neck, I could see another set of golden doors far ahead. People were being let in two and three at a time.
It was then that I noticed that everyone seemed to be carrying something—carved boxes full of large gold rings, armfuls of ostrich and peacock feathers, food, or bolts of cloth. Four men carried a cage in which a cheetah paced, its long tail swishing back and forth. Another man had a gigantic, bright yellow boa constrictor wrapped around his body.
Was everyone supposed to bring a gift when they came to the palace? I felt kind of like a kid showing up at a birthday party without a present. Tut must be spoiled rotten, I thought peevishly, if all he does all day is get gifts. What a life! I was lucky if I got a video game or a pair of jeans at Christmas and on my birthday, and here Tut was, getting gold and live animals and stuff. It just wasn’t fair.
Grant grabbed my elbow and nodded toward the left. There was another, smaller hallway branching off from the main one. With a quick glance at the guards to make sure they weren’t looking (they were busy with the men carrying the cheetah, which was snarling and trying to slip a paw tipped with razor-sharp claws through the bars of its cage) we slipped out of the crowd and down the second passageway.
There was no one around. We both breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the crowd and away from th
e guards. Now all we had to do was find Tut’s bedroom, where we figured the amulet would be.
Our leather sandals made soft clicking noises against the marble floor as we walked. The hallway was much shorter than the main one, and led into a square, lush garden surrounded by high white walls and open to the sky.
Flowering bushes and trees filled the garden. There was a small, clear pool at its center. Wading in water up to his knees was a guy about our own age. Like everyone else in Memphis, he was wearing only a skirt, except his was intricately pleated and trimmed in gold. His head was clean-shaven except for a few long braids that began on the top of his skull and hung down past his shoulders, tied with colorful beads. His skin was the color of burnished copper, and he had a nice, if slender, build.
He turned and stared at us. His eyes were very dark, almost black, and outlined in dark green makeup. He was a good-looking guy, almost too pretty, with delicate features and a slightly receding chin.
And he was wearing Merlin’s amulet. He had to be King Tut, himself!
Chapter Seven
Who are you? What are you doing in my gardens?” Tut demanded. He was frowning, and I could tell he wasn’t pleased at all to find two strangers gawking at him in his private garden.
“Uh, we’re sorry, your, uh, your...,” I stammered. How did you address a king? I couldn’t remember if it was My Lord, Your Highness, or Your Majesty. I tried to think of what kings were called in video games. “My Liege.”
Tut’s frown intensified, and I realized I must’ve picked the wrong title. Damn it, why didn’t Merlin give us a clue before we left? Then again, I suppose he was hoping we’d get in and get out with the amulet without ever running into Tut. Yeah, and if wishes were fishes we’d be up to our nose hairs in tuna.
Luckily, Grant took Tut’s attention away from me by executing a deep bow. “Forsooth, Ye Majesty, we humbly beg thy forgiveness! We have strayed from the path and wandered by error into thy presence.” He actually tried to fake a British accent.
He failed, and sounded like Monty Python on helium.
I turned and smacked him on the arm. “Where do you think you are? In the middle of Macbeth? They don’t talk like that here.”
He turned on me with a scowl, rubbing his arm. “How do you know what they sounded like? When were you here last? Wait, let me think... oh, that’s right. Never! At least I got out a full sentence!”
“I was working on it!”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t working fast enough. He would’ve thought we were idiots!”
“And he would’ve been half right,” I huffed.
Grant snarled and gave me a push.
I pushed back, a little harder than I’d intended. He rocked on his feet, losing his balance, but before he fell over onto his butt into the small pond with a big splash, he managed to grab my arm and drag me in with him.
It wasn’t that deep, but I fell backward and my head went under. I came up sputtering and seeing red, but my anger paled quickly. I was horrified to see that we’d managed to knock Tut over, too! He was sitting in the pond, sopping wet. There was a leaf plastered to his skull.
Oh, man. We’d blown it big time. Tut was going to yell for his guards any second now!
To my amazement, Tut didn’t call for the men with the sharp, curvy swords.
Instead, he laughed.
I mean really laughed. He threw his head back and laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes, smudging his makeup, and he snorted.
He sounded just like any other kid, laughing at something stupid his friends had done. Grant and I exchanged a dumbfounded look, then started to chuckle, too. I suppose we couldn’t help it. It wasn’t every day that you found yourself sitting next to one of the most famous dead people in the world, up to your armpits in pond scum.
“Sorry, Tut,” I said, struggling to my feet. I held out a hand to help him up out of the water.
“Tut?” He seemed to find that funny, too, and laughed again. “My name is Tutankhamen. How is it that you don’t know my name? Everyone else does. Sometimes I tire of hearing it.” He affected a high-pitched falsetto. “Tutankhamen, come here. Tutankhamen, go there. Tutankhamen, do not get your kilt dirty. Tutankhamen, it is time for your appointment with your tutor.” He rolled his eyes. “My second-mother, Nefertiti, never leaves me a moment’s peace.”
I grinned. I knew exactly how he felt. “Sounds like my stepmom. I’m Aston, and this is Grant.”
Grant smiled at him and gave a little half-wave.
“Strange names,” Tut said. “I have not heard such before. You must not be Egyptian. From where do you come?”
“The U.S.,” I answered.
He cocked his head. “You-Ess? I have never heard of such a place. Who is your king?”
“It’s really far away. We don’t have kings. We have presidents,” Grant said.
Tut laughed again. “You are very funny. Everyone has a king.” He stepped out of the pond and reached for a piece of linen, wiping his face. His makeup came off, but he didn’t seem concerned about it. I supposed he had somebody ready to redo it if he needed it. A personal assistant or something. Most rich people had them, I guessed. Without his eyeliner, he looked even more like an average teenager. “Now, what is the name of yours?”
“Kong,” I said, wincing as the first name I thought of slipped out of my mouth. “King Kong.” I heard Grant swear softly under his breath, but Tut didn’t bat an eye.
Tut shrugged. “I have not heard of him. But then, there are too many places with too many kings, are there not? Even we once had two, until my ancestor, Menes, may he live forever, united Upper and Lower Egypt.” He bent and used the linen to wipe his feet. “So, why have you come to Egypt? Has your King Kong sent you with tribute?”
I couldn’t tell him we were there to steal his amulet, but I didn’t have anything to give him, either. If I’d been wearing my jeans, I probably would’ve found something—a key, or stick of bubble gum, something—but kilts didn’t have pockets.
He waved a hand at me. “Never mind. That was a silly question. Everyone sends tribute, because everyone wants Egyptian gold. Did you know the king of Mesopotamia once told my grandfather he believed gold was like dust here? He must’ve been a very stupid man to think such a thing. Our gold comes from the mines in Nubia,” Tut said. Then he changed the subject as swiftly as the wind changes direction. “I am hungry. You will eat with me. The cook has made duck, and it is my favorite.” He turned and walked away, as if fully expecting us to follow him. He didn’t seem to care that he was dripping water all over the floors of the palace as he headed down a corridor.
Of course, we followed him. After all, it didn’t seem wise to turn down an invitation to lunch with the king. Plus, my stomach was starting to growl again. I’d never had duck before, but I figured I was hungry enough to chew rocks. We followed several paces behind him, dripping, too.
“Did you see it?” Grant asked me in a whisper.
“The amulet? Yes,” I answered, nodding. “How are we supposed to get it if he’s wearing it?”
Grant shrugged. “We’ll have to wait until he takes it off.”
“What if he never takes it off? What if it’s like a lucky charm or something?”
Grant didn’t have a chance to answer me because at that moment Tut looked over his shoulder at us and told us to hurry along. He looked impatient. We stopped talking and walked faster, since we certainly didn’t want him to overhear us plotting to steal his jewelry. We’d never get the amulet or lunch if he had our heads chopped off.
Not that Tut seemed the type of guy to do such a thing, but you really never knew, right?
He led us up a steep flight of stairs that were made from carved blocks of stone, and down another hallway. I thought we’d been heading to a dining room or kitchen, but the room Tut eventually brought us into didn’t have a table. Instead, it had a low, wide bed covered head to foot in overstuffed pillows and embroidered linens. Several ornately carved wooden boxes
and chests were scattered around. Woven rugs in bright colors covered the floor. There was a big, glassless window in the room, and I realized it overlooked the same garden where we’d met. Was it his bedroom? From the looks of the big bed, I figured it was.
Tut sat on the wide bed and motioned for us to join him. Servants appeared seemingly out of nowhere, rushing to fluff Tut’s pillows and make him comfortable. One stood at his side with a handful of black and white ostrich feathers tied to a long stick, slowly fanning him.
Another servant took up a station near the door and tasted a bit of each dish brought in before it was offered to Tut. I realized the servant was testing the food for poison. Jeez. And here I thought I had it bad because I was paranoid about my stepmom going through the dresser drawers in my room when I wasn’t at home! I couldn’t imagine being worried that somebody would poison my bologna sandwich!
It also reminded me that Tut would be murdered in a couple of years. Logically, I knew that by the time I was born he would’ve been already dead for three millennia, but somehow, as he sat next to me picking a seed out of his teeth, it seemed even more... final. How could this very much alive boy be the same one who would be found mummified by archeologists in the 1920s?
Then I remembered what that documentary had said about the mummification process, and I completely lost my appetite.
First, they cut you open and ripped out your lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines. The only thing they left in place was the heart. Then they shoved a long hook up your nose into your brain. It was like the hook was the ancient Egyptian version of a blender set on puree, and they were making a brain smoothee. Then they pulled the whole mess out through your nose and threw it away. The rest of your organs went into little bottles called “canopic jars,” which they buried with you. Then they’d stuff what was left of your body with salt and leave you to dry out for forty days! By the time they were ready to wrap you with one hundred and fifty yards of linen, you looked like a dried-out corn husk.