Tut--My Epic Battle to Save the World

by P. J. Hoover

  Tia picked at a loose thread on Gil’s chair, and a huge chunk of it started to unravel. She twirled it around her finger and pulled at it some more. “Not yet. Auntie N kept going on and on about how he had to wait for the fullness of the noonday sun so Apep would be at his weakest. I’ve had about as many of her crackpot prophecies as I can take.”

  So Tia didn’t put much merit in them either. That made me feel better, because I knew I was powerful enough to imprison Apep. I didn’t care what Auntie N said.

  “Forget the noonday sun. I’m going right now,” I said. Hapi had as good as counted Gil dead. But I hadn’t. I was not going to give up on Gil. If Gil died, I would never forgive myself.

  Humbaba loped up to my side. He was prepared to save the world with me. He stuck his snake tail out straight behind him and dug his lion claws into the wood of my floor. But his red bow still looked really pretty.

  “I’m coming with you,” Tia said, standing up, avoiding the shabtis who had started vacuuming the floor around her.

  “No you’re not,” I said. I may have been in danger, but it was going to stop there. I was not going to endanger anyone else just because the crazy Lord of Chaos was after me.

  She placed her hands on her hips. “And you’re going to stop me, Boy King?”

  Even though she sounded completely sarcastic when she said it, she also sounded cute. Really cute. Like, if one person in the world could call me Boy King and get away with it, it was Tia.

  “You can just tell me where the entrance is,” I said. I would not be swayed by her cute factor.

  “Not going to happen.”

  I stammered, looking for the perfect reason why she shouldn’t come along. “It could be dangerous.”

  She pursed her lips at me. “Yeah? Imsety and Qeb? Dangerous?”

  She had a point. Imsety and Qeb, alleged guardians of the Hall of Artifacts, were so harmless even Henry wouldn’t have been afraid of them. I mean Henry from before. Henry now seemed to be getting braver with each day that passed.

  “You probably have something else you need to do,” I said.

  “Nope,” Tia said. “You’re all I have on my agenda.”

  “Why do you want to go, anyway?” I asked. Sure, part of me entertained the idea that Tia just wanted to spend time with me, but I knew this was a bunch of baloney. Tia definitely had some ulterior motive.

  “I just want to,” she said. And then she smiled. And my insides went all wobbly because she had about the best smile in the world.

  “Fine,” I said, even though I knew she was keeping something from me. “But let me do the talking.”

  “Whatever you say, Boy King,” Tia said.

  I thought everything was settled. Then the doorbell rang again. With Tia here, that seriously narrowed the possibilities of who might be visiting. Next to me, Humbaba tensed.

  “Ready for camp?” Henry said, the second Colonel Cody opened the door.

  Great Amun, camp?

  I knew he wasn’t kidding, because he wore a shirt that read, : THE ELEMENT OF CONFUSION. I couldn’t believe it. Here Gil’s life and the entire fate of the world was in my hands, Henry knew this, and he still planned to go to science camp?

  “I’m not going today.” I didn’t even try to make it sound apologetic. There was no way in all the realm of Anubis that I was going to camp.

  Henry’s face fell. I would have felt bad if I didn’t have such a good excuse.

  “But you promised, Tut.” He eyed Humbaba warily, but the monster-dog didn’t act like he was going to eat Henry.

  Tia crossed her arms and waited to see what I was going to say. Perfect. Now I was going to sound like a complete jerk who was bailing on my friend.

  “I promised last week. I went three times. That completely fulfills the promise. It more than fulfills the promise.”

  Henry looked to Colonel Cody for support, but the shabtis of course stood by me. Even if I had given Henry his immortal energy, they would always side with me.

  “The promise was for two weeks,” Henry said. “And if you do anything less, then…”

  “Then what?” I said, waiting to see what kind of threat Henry could possibly pull out.

  I guess he realized it was futile, too, so he tried for pure logic. “But it’s at the Botanical Gardens today, Tut. You love plants.”

  I used to love plants, back when they did what I wanted them to. Now, I’d say my relationship with plants was somewhere in the range of lukewarm, but getting better with each hour that passed.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Tia said. “The Botanical Gardens?”

  Henry nodded, inspired by her interest. “Yep. We get the behind-the-scenes tour. You know, they don’t give that tour to just anyone. You have to get a special pass nearly six months in advance.”

  Tia grabbed my arm and pulled. It actually kind of hurt. “We’re going to camp, Boy King,” she said.

  She may as well have just told me that we were going to cross-stitch for the rest of the day. I figured Tia would have been about as interested in science camp as she would be in macramé. But that said, she did like baking.

  “We are?” I said, because maybe camp wouldn’t be so bad if Tia was there. No, what was I thinking? I had to get on with things. I shook my head. “No, we’re not. You promised you’d show me how to get into the Hall of Artifacts.”

  “Wait, you guys were making plans without me?” Henry said.

  Now I had to worry about hurting Henry’s feelings? To make matters worse, Horus’s hissing from under the futon got loud enough for the neighbors to hear. It was only eight in the morning, and it was already a horrible day.

  “She just got here,” I said. “And she said she knew how to get in. I would have texted you.” I figured this wasn’t a lie. It might not have been the first thing on my list, but I would have let Henry know.

  “So we can go after camp,” Henry said.

  Tia looked at both of us like we’d grown antennae. “Don’t either of you get it?”

  I hated to admit that I didn’t get something, especially when she might as well have said, “Any idiot who does not understand what I’m talking about, please raise your hand.” But the problem was that I really didn’t get it. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I don’t get it.”

  Henry shook his head, too. At least I had an ally in my ignorance.

  “The entrance that I’m talking about,” Tia said. “It’s in the Botanical Gardens.”

  “Sweet!” Henry said, doing some awkward victory fist pump.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “You’re just trying to stall.”

  Tia crossed her arms and shook her head slowly, as if she were talking to a small child. “Tut, tell me, what buildings make up the Capitol complex?”

  “Duh. The Library of Congress.”

  “And?”

  Well, there were a bunch, most of them small. But then there was also …

  “The Botanical Gardens,” I said. Since it seemed like more of a museum, that’s what I mostly considered it. But it was actually part of the Capitol, not the Smithsonian.

  “I knew you’d get it,” she said, patting my cheek.

  “Um, not to be a pain here, but can we hurry?” Henry said. “I don’t want to be late to camp.”

  18

  WHERE I VISIT THE MOTHER OF ALL PLANTS

  Maybe Henry was right to be concerned. We were the last kids to get there. And no pets were allowed in, so I told Humbaba to wait outside. But he kept following me. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight. So I did the only thing I could think of. I summoned a fireball and threw it with all my immortal strength.

  Humbaba let out a bark-roar and then tore after the fireball, disappearing within seconds.

  “Stop showing off,” Tia said, and pushed her way past me. The closer we’d gotten to the Botanical Gardens, the more on edge she’d seemed. Or maybe it was my imagination.

  When we walked in, Camp Couns
elor Crystal scowled at Tia, who crossed her arms and scowled right back at her, but she didn’t say anything since she was about to start lecturing. I guess there were pretty big goings-on at the Botanical Gardens. One of the corpse plants was about to bloom. Thankfully it hadn’t bloomed yet or we’d have all been plugging our noses.

  “You know why they call it a corpse plant?” Blair said, rushing over to join us at the first possible second.

  “’Cause it’s dead?” Tia said, turning her scowl to Blair.

  They were like complete opposites of each other. Blair had a curly blond mess of hair and was bouncy enough to be captain of the cheerleading squad. Tia, on the other hand—well, I was willing to bet cheerleading was pretty far down on her list of hobbies, just below macramé.

  But Blair wasn’t swayed in the least by Tia’s sour attitude.

  “No, silly,” Blair said. “It’s not dead.”

  “Blair’s right,” Henry said, totally backing her up. “Technically, for it to be blooming, it needs to be alive. Otherwise, it would be more of a mutation. Like a wart or something. Warts don’t bloom. And you know that whole myth about hair and nails growing after death? It’s totally not true. Nothing grows after death.”

  I shot him a look, hoping he’d get the idea that Tia didn’t care. I cared, but that’s because I really did like plants. I’d seen corpse plants here at the Botanical Gardens bloom lots of times before. I’d caused some of them to bloom. After all, I’d had power over plants for three thousand years. Just to see how my powers were doing, I reached out, barely touching a nearby vine, willing it to grow.

  It worked. The vine started crawling up the side of the blue-tiled wall, snaking around the other vines already in place. It felt amazing, better than slaying a charging rhinoceros. And I was overcome with the urge to cause an explosion of blossoms in this entire place. To really make the Botanical Gardens come alive.

  Tia smacked me on the arm, bringing me back to my senses. “Enough already.”

  Of course she was right. No need to call attention to myself. But it had worked. I’d focused on it, and the plant had grown. I loved that I had my powers back. Osiris was with me. It was such a positive omen that I almost didn’t notice Blair staring at the vine. But I did, and she was. And then I pretended that I didn’t see her, because I didn’t want her to think that I thought she thought anything weird was going on.

  “That stunk that you guys couldn’t come over on Saturday,” Brandon said, walking up with Joe.

  Saturday night I’d been digging up a grave with Henry. I’d had the blisters to prove it, but then I’d healed myself. Henry still had them.

  “Yeah, sorry. Something came up,” I said.

  “We got pizza,” Joe said. “It was so good. And we drank, like, ten sodas apiece. But then Brandon’s little sister overflowed the toilet, so we had to go to the bathroom outside for the rest of the night.”

  “Pizza sounds great,” Henry said, totally ignoring the toilet part. If I ever did go hang out with Brandon and Joe, maybe I’d bring a few shabtis along in case there was another toilet disaster.

  “Hey, we should come over to your house sometime, Tut,” Brandon said.

  “Henry’s house is a lot more fun than mine,” I said quickly. I might at some point hang out with Joe and Brandon, but it would be a cold day in the underworld before I had kids from school over to my place for pizza. The last time I’d done that, the Cult of Set had delivered snakes to my house instead.

  “Give me a word,” Henry said to the two of them.

  I looked at him like he’d lost his mind. I was about to tell him that he’d lost his mind. But before I got the chance, Joe answered.

  “Pizza,” Joe said.

  “Farts,” Brandon said.

  I mentally groaned. Now Henry was running around acting like he was the Lord of Divine Words or something. I never should have let him and Thoth play Senet for that long.

  “Good words,” Henry said, but he didn’t offer any back in reply.

  Camp Counselor Crystal led us into the big main room, which was filled with trees that reached four stories high. Two upper levels of walkways ran around the outside glass, and water droplets fell from above. I’d spent lots of time here in the past, especially when I’d felt lonely. But now, even with Gil gone, I realized that it had been months since I’d had that sinking, lonely feeling I used to get so often. It was good to have friends … even if my best friend did currently have googly eyes for some girl.

  Speaking of which, Blair grabbed Henry and dragged him to the front of the group. Well, I say “dragged.” It wasn’t like Henry needed that much persuasion. Tia and I fell to the back.

  “So where is it?” I asked.

  She leaned close. Really close. So close I felt her breath on my neck and the sweet smell of her lotus blossom perfume filled my nose. I focused my thoughts. Now was not the time to be thinking about how pretty Tia was.

  “It’s near the carnivorous plants,” Tia whispered.

  I thought about her words, not the perfect sound of her voice. She was helping me. We were in this together.

  “Where near there?” I whispered back.

  “There’s a path,” Tia said. “And a hidden door at the end of the path.”

  I nodded and then pretended to listen to Camp Counselor Crystal because she had stopped talking and was looking directly at me and Tia.

  “Are we disturbing you?” Camp Counselor Crystal asked.

  The truth was that yes, camp was disturbing me. It was getting in the way of me saving the world. But Camp Counselor Crystal didn’t need to know that. Hopefully I’d make everything better and all the clueless mortals in the world wouldn’t be any wiser. It wasn’t the hero’s reward that I might have dreamed of, but it would save Gil and the rest of humanity.

  “Sorry,” I called, waving my apology. After everyone turned away, I tried to motion to Henry, but Blair had clenched hold of his arm and was not letting go. So I texted him and told him to come back with us.

  I know he saw the text. I saw him reach into his pocket and check his phone. He looked back. Nodded. And then continued to listen to the camp lady. We moved from the big room to the southern room, where all the American desert plants were kept. And I knew we were in the right place when Camp Counselor Crystal started talking about Venus flytraps. I’d enlisted the help of many a carnivorous plant in my time. They were tricky and temperamental, but they did work exactly as promised, swallowing up anything that landed on them. I’d even threatened Horus with them on occasion.

  I texted Henry again. This time, he whispered something to Blair, who finally let go of his arm. She didn’t look happy at all about letting him out of her grasp.

  “What’d you tell her?” I asked, once Henry finally joined me and Tia.

  “That I had to go to the bathroom,” Henry said.

  The camp group moved forward, past the carnivorous plants. We fell behind a little more. Now was the perfect time. Except just then, someone strolled through the door we’d come through. Someone with the head of a baboon.

  “Turn around,” I hissed. Henry, Tia, and I turned back to Camp Counselor Crystal and took a few steps forward, pretending we were listening. Well, Henry probably was listening. Out of my peripheral vision I barely saw Hapi. He glanced around, and since he thought no one was watching, he stepped off the main walkway, onto a side path next to the carnivorous plants. And then he disappeared behind the greenery.

  “It must be close to noon,” Tia said. “We have to follow him.” It was like she wanted to find this disk as much as I did. I loved that.

  “Come on,” I said, and I headed for the same path Hapi had taken. Tia was by my side. Henry cast one last glance at our science camp group, and then followed.

  19

  WHERE I LEARN MORE THAN I EVER WANTED TO ABOUT WHITE HOUSE CHINA

  When we reached the end of the path, there was a hidden door, just like Tia had said there would be. It was already closed, meaning Hapi w
as well ahead of us.

  “He can’t get there before us,” Tia said, pulling the door open. The hinges made a gods-awful screeching that they probably heard over in the White House. Stupid Hapi. He’d probably cast some spell so no one heard the door when he opened it. I looked back, but our group had already moved on to the next room.

  “Why do you care so much?” I asked. I mean, sure, I was happy that Tia was willing to help me, but she had to have some ulterior motive here.

  Tia pretended to look shocked. “Because I’m just a caring kind of gal.”

  Whatever. She could keep her secret. I’d find it out eventually.

  After the three of us were through, we closed the door behind us. If anything, it was even louder than when we opened it. My muscles tensed with each second that went by. Hapi was probably listening to us breathe.

  Ahead of us was a hallway lit by a flickering fluorescent bulb that looked like it hadn’t been changed since the 1970s. It gave me a headache just looking at it.

  “I don’t hear him,” Henry said.

  I didn’t either. That wasn’t a good sign. Hapi was a god. He could probably move at superspeed. I tiptoed down the hallway, but I swear Tia’s boots were clomping loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Can you try to be quieter?” I asked.

  “Can you try to hurry up?” she said.

  So I walked a little faster and she walked a little quieter, and the three of us came to the top of a set of concrete steps. Tia immediately started down, like she’d been here a million times before. For all I knew, she’d been sneaking down, playing Mario Kart and enjoying hot chocolate with Imsety and Qeb. They were probably all BFFs by now. Maybe we could use that to our advantage.

  There were a million steps ahead of us, illuminated by the fluorescent bulbs. It would have been better to have no light at all. We were all lit up in a ghastly zombie glow, and it gave me a headache. It felt like an eternity, but we finally reached the bottom. Far ahead, I heard something that sounded a lot like a door closing. Or maybe it was coming from above and just echoing down the stairway. It was hard to tell. Aside from turning back, there was only one way to go. And I was not going to turn back. I was still going to find a way to get the sun disk before Hapi. Or I’d steal it from him. We moved forward, and at the end of a hallway was a door.