Any Fin Is Possible

by Mo O'Hara

  Frankie had jumped out of the torch and was standing on my head trying to push back the ceiling with his fins, but it wasn’t making any difference.

  ‘Look around!’ cried Pradeep.

  I looked up and down, not caring if I was making Pradeep sick with all the moving about. Frankie held on tight to my hair.

  ‘Wait, I see something, just there,’ Pradeep shouted. I stopped and looked at the tiny writing in the middle of the far wall.

  ‘It says, “The path of the cat will lead through the door, follow the sun before the ceiling meets the floor”.’

  ‘I see a sun!’ I cried, and half ran, half crawled over to the wall to look at it.

  ‘Do the rays of the sun point at any thing?’ asked Pradeep.

  ‘Ummm, I don’t know.’ I was panicking now.

  Frankie splashed back into the torch, then popped his head out and pointed a fin at the longest rays of light painted around the sun. They were pointing down and to the right. ‘Yes! This way,’ I cried as I crawled over to the right side of the room as fast as I could.

  Another sun was painted on this wall that seemed to be rising out of the stone floor like a sunrise. It made an arch on the wall just big enough for a cat to get through.

  ‘It’s a door!’ Pradeep shouted down the mic.

  ‘Or a cat flap,’ I replied. ‘I might be able to squeeze through. Mark’s shoved me through the pet flap at our house so many times it’s like I’ve been training for this my whole life! How do I open it?’

  Then I spotted it. A goldfish-shaped groove cut into the stone of the door.

  ‘Frankie!’ I shouted. ‘You’re the key!’

  Frankie took one look and threw himself out of the torch and into the fish-shaped hole. Immediately the door flipped back and I pushed my way through, wriggling commando-style on the floor. Frankie jumped on to my back and hung on to my jacket as we slipped out of the room and into the darkness!

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sanj screeched through the microphone. ‘Have you reached the sarcophagus yet?’

  My face hit the ground first. Again. I have to start going down slides the right way. I rubbed my head and opened my eyes but it was too dark to see anything. There wasn’t even a green glow from Frankie’s eyes.

  ‘Frankie?’ I called. There was a whoosh as torches on the walls burst into flame. The room I was in was about the same size as the one I had just escaped from but more colourfully decorated and with a higher ceiling. Two large statues – a cat and a dog – stood at either end of the room and a large sarcophagus was in the centre. A stone table stood in front of the sarcophagus with a golden goblet on top.

  ‘Yes!’ I heard Sanj say. ‘You’re in the inner burial chamber. That’s the sarcophagus of the Cat of Kings!’

  Frankie jumped off my back and flopped into my hands. He’d been out of water for ages and needed to get back in, fast.

  The torch! I’d managed to hold on to it as we squeezed through the cat flap, but all the water had spilt out as we slid down. What was I going to do? Suddenly Frankie leaped from my hand into the goblet on the little stone table.

  ‘Frankie!’ I started to shout, when I heard a splash of water. ‘But how . . . ?’ I said out loud.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Sanj interrupted. ‘We have to get the coffin open.’

  ‘And then you promise you’ll release Pradeep?’ I demanded.

  ‘Sure,’ Mark muttered.

  I walked up to the sarcophagus and pushed at the lid. It didn’t move. I heaved, I huffed, I strained, I shoved and I even hove. But it still didn’t budge an inch. ‘It won’t move!’ I yelled.

  ‘Maybe there’s some kind of riddle we have to solve to open it,’ Pradeep said. ‘Look around.’

  ‘More riddles?’ I sighed as I scanned the room.

  There were a lot of little wooden and stone carvings of people lined up on the floor around the sarcophagus. They all seemed to have some kind of hieroglyphic painted on their chest.

  ‘Those must be the servants for the cat in its afterlife,’ Pradeep said. ‘Can you line them up so I can see them?’

  I lifted down the goblet with Frankie in it and he jumped out to help me. While Frankie was pushing figurines around, I ran my hands over the sarcophagus lid. There were four grooves, one carved into each corner, each about the same size and shape as one of the figures.

  ‘Pradeep, there are four spaces on the coffin lid where the little carved servants would fit perfectly. Maybe we’re supposed to spell something out to open the lid?’

  ‘But what?’ Pradeep said, thinking aloud.

  ‘Maybe it’s just his name?’ I replied. ‘King Cat. Or Cat King. Or Kingy, Kingy Kitty-Cat?’

  ‘It must be the word “cat”!’ Pradeep interrupted.

  ‘“Cat” doesn’t have enough letters,’ I said. ‘Even I know that!’

  ‘In Egyptian it does. It has three hieroglyphics that make a sound and one that tells you what it is.’

  Pradeep directed me and I set the carved figures up. Then I grabbed Frankie’s goblet and stepped back.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Try saying it out loud,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘How am I supposed to know how to say “cat” in Ancient Egyptian?’ I spluttered.

  ‘MiaaoOOOw!’ screeched Fang in the background.

  ‘Fang’s right!’ Pradeep said. ‘It sounds like “Miaow!”’

  Frankie looked at me as if I was betraying all of fish-kind by even thinking about making a cat noise.

  ‘Sorry, Frankie, but I have to do this,’ I said. And then I let off a very loud, ‘MIIAAOOOOOWWWW!’

  Very slowly, the lid of the sarcophagus started to creak to one side to reveal the mummy of the Cat of Kings. It was much, much smaller than I thought it would be. In fact, it was tiny!

  ‘All this, just for you?’ I whispered.

  As the lid finally stopped moving, I heard a truly evil ‘Miiaaaoooow’, and suddenly Mark ran into the chamber carrying Fang.

  ‘How did you get here so fast?’ I asked, jamming a hand over the top of Frankie’s goblet so he couldn’t leap out and start a fight.

  ‘All the booby traps have been disabled and the front door of the tomb has opened, so I could walk right in.’ Mark grinned, readjusting his earpiece.

  ‘Pradeep,’ I called out, ‘can you still see everything? Did they free you like they promised?’

  ‘Pradeep isn’t trapped by the stone statue any more, so we’ve kept our word,’ Sanj replied.

  ‘Technically,’ Pradeep said. ‘Now I’m tied up over by the cabinet instead. It’s a bit more comfortable, but I’m not free.’

  ‘This is not the time for chit-chat,’ Sanj interrupted. ‘We need to move on to the next stage of our evil plan!’

  ‘Aren’t you scared of the curse?’ interrupted Pradeep. ‘Mark and Fang are hardly “pure of heart”.’

  ‘I don’t believe in any stupid curse!’ spluttered Sanj. ‘You’ve annoyed me now, so I’m going to put you back in the grip of the Anubis statue!’

  Mark grinned at me. ‘Now the dead cat is ours we’re going to—’

  ‘Try not to let the cat out of the bag, Mark!’ Sanj interrupted.

  ‘Miiiaaooooww,’ screeched Fang.

  ‘Not a literal cat in a literal bag,’ Sanj sighed over the earpiece. ‘Really, people. We need to find one last thing before we can . . . continue with our evil plan. We need the heart of Bastet.’

  ‘And how are you going to get that?’ I asked. Frankie was nipping my fingers now, trying to escape, but I made sure I held on tight.

  ‘We aren’t,’ Sanj replied. ‘You are. I have to monitor things from the Egyptian evil lair to make sure everything goes to plan.’

  ‘The cat statue over there is the one we need,’ Mark said, pointing at the big statue at one side of the room. ‘The heart is some kind of stone. You need to get it out, and I’m here to make sure you do it right!’

  Fang hissed from Mark’s pocket.

  ‘You�
��re gonna help us too, Fish!’ Mark leaned towards the golden cup. ‘Or Pradeep gets a big cuddle from the stone statue!’

  Sanj spoke up. ‘Pradeep is back in the statue’s grip, so you have to do want we want, both of you!’

  ‘Fine,’ I muttered. ‘But after this, you have to let us both go!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Sanj.

  Carefully I lifted my hand off the top of the goblet. Frankie’s fins were clenched ready for a fight, but he allowed himself to be poured back inside the torch without attacking Fang.

  I looked up at the two big statues as I screwed on the torch lid.

  ‘Are you OK, Pradeep?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m OK,’ Pradeep replied. ‘Let’s finish this.’

  ‘According to Sanj’s research, the heart of Bastet should be about the size of a ping-pong ball and is hidden inside the cat statue,’ Pradeep said.

  I looked at the statue of the cat god. In its hand was a tablet covered in hieroglyphics. I looked at it closely so Pradeep could see.

  ‘It says, “Follow the scent to the heads of the gods. Pick both stones together to increase your odds”,’ Pradeep translated.

  ‘This is lame. Why can’t they just give us a map?’ Mark grumbled.

  ‘So we need to climb up to the statues’ heads? I asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Pradeep. ‘And it sounds like you need to get something from both statues at the same time.’

  ‘I’ll do the cat one, you do the dog,’ Mark snapped. ‘Man, I’m gonna scuff my trainers climbing this.’

  It didn’t take long to scramble up the statues. I propped Frankie’s torch on top of the dog’s head. ‘What now?’ I called.

  ‘I suppose you need to get to the heart of the statues somehow,’ Pradeep answered.

  I looked at the dog’s nose. ‘There’s an opening in one nostril,’ I told Pradeep. ‘Do you think we have to reach inside the statues to get the stones out?’

  ‘YES!’

  Pradeep replied. ‘That’s what the clue means. You and Mark will have to “pick both stones together to increase your odds”! Like picking a nose!’

  ‘I’ve gotta pick the nose of a giant stone cat-god statue?’ Mark moaned. ‘Gross.’

  ‘I can’t get my hand in – the hole’s too small,’ I called. ‘We might have to use Frankie and Fang instead.’

  ‘Whoever gets the stones, just remember you have to do it at the same time,’ Pradeep added.

  I unscrewed the lid of Frankie’s torch so he was ready to jump. Mark and I looked at each other. ‘One . . .’ I said. ‘Two . . .’ Then Fang leaped out of Mark’s pocket, scrambled on to the nose of the cat statue and thrust her paws deep into its right nostril. ‘You were supposed to wait for three!’ I shouted.

  ‘Cats can’t count,’ Mark shouted as the statues started to shake. ‘Just get the fish in there now!’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Pradeep asked.

  ‘I think the statues are mad at us for not picking their noses at the same time!’ I replied as Frankie leaped into the dog’s left nostril.

  I shoved my fingers in after Frankie. The hole was thick with dust and some kind of slime. I could just feel the edge of something round and cold with the tips of my fingers, but I couldn’t get a grip on it!

  Mark was shouting, ‘Come on, kitty, you can do it!’

  Then I felt Frankie push something cold and round towards my hand. A few seconds later I pulled out a round blue stone with Frankie stuck to the back of it. I dropped him back into the torch.

  ‘Good Fang!’ cooed Mark as his evil kitten fished out a ball of the same size but a snowy marbled pink colour from the cat god’s nose.

  ‘The quartz heart of Bastet!’ Sanj clapped.

  The statues were shaking so hard now that they had started to tilt forward alarmingly.

  ‘They’re going to fall!’ I shouted.

  I shoved the stone into my pyjama pocket and quickly screwed up Frankie’s torch. Then I held on to the dog’s neck for dear life.

  ‘Hold tight, Mark!’ I shouted.

  ‘Miiiaaooooow!’ Fang screeched.

  A second later there was a small bump as stone met stone. I opened my eyes to see that the two statues had fallen nose to nose and were propping each other up.

  ‘Phew,’ I sighed as Mark and I climbed down. Fang’s evil miaowing had turned into a purr.

  ‘She knows it’s nearly dinner time,’ Mark whispered, grabbing the torch.

  ‘Hey!’ I cried, trying to grab it back, but Mark held the torch up out of my reach and shoved me away.

  Then he took some electrical tape out of his Evil Scientist coat pocket and wrapped it around the lid to make sure it stayed on.

  ‘Don’t want him getting out too soon!’ Mark laughed his loudest Evil Scientist laugh. ‘And don’t try and grab the fish again or I’ll get Sanj to give his little brother a hug!’

  ‘Are you quite finished?’ Sanj snapped over the earpiece. ‘We need to get the stone in place. The transformation has to happen tonight.’

  ‘Transformation?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m calling it,’ Sanj replied. ‘Put us on video on your phone, Mark. Now we have everything we need it’s too late for them to stop our evil plan anyway. Can you see me? Right.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We call it the “transformation”, because it’s a bit long-winded to say the “reanimation of the powerful Cat of Kings mummy using the combination of an ancient sacred stone and the zombification stare of an undead zombie goldfish”.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll use your fish and this stone to create a reanimated zombie cat mummy slave, which we’ll use to take over the world!’ Mark snapped.

  ‘Oh no!’ Pradeep and I gasped at the same time.

  ‘Send the kitten back to pick up the mixture. It looks like it’s ready,’ Sanj ordered.

  Mark patted Fang on the head and she slunk out of the door of the tomb.

  While Mark was looking at the weird pink stone and fiddling around with some ropes he’d brought with him, I crept over to his phone, which was propped up on the lid of the sarcophagus. I gave Pradeep a look that said, ‘We can’t let them do this. We need a plan.’

  Then I said out loud, ‘Does that writing say anything helpful?’

  I’d noticed more hieroglyphics inside the coffin, including a picture of a weird fish with glowing eyes.

  ‘It says, “Grave robbers beware. The Cat of Kings is watched by the emerald-eyed protector for whom the afterlife holds no fear”.’

  ‘Didn’t it say that before? When we were first trying to get in?’ I asked. ‘But what’s that got to do with that little drawing of a fish?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Pradeep replied. ‘The Egyptians had a lot of animal gods. Maybe they protected each other on some kind of rota?’

  Then he shot me a look that said, ‘There’s more to say but I’ve lost my juice and stickers and am very unhappy to be stuck in the Anubis statue right now so can’t really talk.’

  I gave him a look that said, ‘Sorry, Pradeep! You’re so upset that your looks aren’t really making sense. We’ll stop them. I’m just not sure how right now.’

  Then I put my hand on the screen and said out loud, ‘I’m sorry you’re stuck being Sanj’s prisoner while I have to do all the dangerous archaeology stuff out here.’

  Pradeep just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  Mark placed the heart of Bastet into a dip on a stone ledge that jutted out from the lid of the coffin. It fitted perfectly. Even though the pink quartz was hazy, you could still just about see through it.

  ‘Stage two complete,’ said Sanj. ‘Now it’s perfectly placed to illuminate the head of the mummy.’

  I looked over at Mark, holding Frankie in the torch. ‘You’re going to shine Frankie’s zombie stare through the heart of Bastet, aren’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Position the fish,’ Sanj commanded.

  Mark took the torch over to the sarcophagus lid. At that moment F
ang bounded back into the tomb with a test tube of green liquid clenched in her teeth.

  Mark reached down and took it. ‘Good kitty,’ he cooed.

  Fang hissed.

  ‘I mean bad kitty. Very evil, bad kitty.’ Fang purred and rubbed against his leg.

  Mark hooked the test tube up to a rope he’d suspended above the head of the cat mummy and took out the stopper.

  ‘The toxic zombie goo will drip on to the mummy while Frankie’s zombie stare shines through the heart of Bastet,’ Sanj explained. ‘If all goes to plan, the cat will be reanimated as a super-zombie mummy cat slave, and it will be entirely under my control.’

  ‘Our control!’ growled Mark.

  ‘Quite,’ said Sanj.

  Mark positioned the golden goblet on the stone table behind the heart of Bastet and started to untape the torch lid so he could pour Frankie in. As soon as Mark took off the cover, Frankie leaped up and fin-slapped him across the face.

  ‘You’ll regret that, Fish!’ yelled Mark.

  Suddenly we heard Pradeep shout, ‘Ouch! Ouch! ARGHHH!’ It sounded as if the arms of the Anubis statue were tightening around him.

  ‘Stop it, Sanj!’ I shouted.

  Mark’s phone screen showed Pradeep wriggling in the grip of the statue.

  ‘The fish can stop me pressing this button at any time,’ Sanj answered.

  Frankie stopped fin-slapping Mark and plopped into the goblet.

  ‘Perfect!’ Sanj laughed.

  Pradeep had stopped shouting. The statue must have released its grip.

  Mark set the toxic goo dripping on to the mummy by swinging the vial over its head like a pendulum. Then he flicked the side of Frankie’s goblet to get his attention. ‘Hey, Fish, not long until you’re an evil kitty snack!’

  Frankie popped his head out of the water and his eyes went bright green.

  ‘Stay calm, Frankie,’ I said quietly. ‘Don’t let them make you mad.’