Illustrations by Gilbert Ford
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
New York Boston
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Table of Contents
Copyright Page
WITH SECRET THANKS TO
SB, JH, AND MP
AND TO MY MOM,
WHO STILL HELPS ME WITH MY HOMEWORK
An ibis stood, silent and still, on the shore of the Nile.
Below him, birds dove into the river’s murky shallows, vainly stabbing at frogs and fish. Occasionally, one or two rose victorious out of the water, dangling their dripping prey from their beaks. The other birds squawked in jealousy. But the ibis—the sacred ibis, as the Egyptian variety of the species is known—seemed unaware of the commotion around him.
With his snow-white body, ink-black head, and long, curved beak, he looked proud, elegant, inscrutable.
He took no notice of the villagers washing their linens on the rocks. Nor of the fishermen passing by in their reed boats. When children threw stones at the other birds, they flapped their wings in fright; the ibis kept his wings closed around his body like a shell. Only the brief appearance of a crocodile crawling through the papyrus plants caused the ibis’s feathers to ruffle; and even then, his stick-like legs never moved.
For hours, the ibis stared unwaveringly at the horizon. It was as if he were waiting for a signal—a red flag, say, or a puff of smoke—but the sun set, the moon rose, the stars twinkled, and still he did not stir.
Then, well after more cautious birds had retired to their nests, the ibis suddenly and without warning spread his wings and jumped into the air. He flew swiftly and purposefully across the Nile, his slender neck stretched forward into the night, his wide, white wings illuminated from behind by the brilliant light of the Saharan moon.
Elsewhere in the desert, on the steep stone steps of a temple to the god Thoth, an innocent man was being executed by order of the pharaoh.
There was no way the ibis could have heard the condemned man’s cries, let alone have read the fateful secret the man had inscribed only a moment before on a piece of papyrus. And yet it almost seemed the ibis was heeding his call.
Pick one:*
a) A short time ago, in a land uncomfortably close by…
b) He was a dark and stormy knight.
c) He was the best of mimes.
He was the worst of mimes.
d) This book looks lame. I’m watching TV.
e) Run!
OK, you’ve waited long enough. Let me put you out of your misery right now.
I will reveal the Secret—a secret that people have sought for centuries, for millennia even—on the very next page….
Well, maybe the next page…
The next…?
No, no, I can’t. It’s much too soon.
If I tell you the Secret now, you won’t want to read any further, will you?
I’ll do it before the end of this book.
I promise.
Maybe.
It depends on a few things.
For instance—how you look at it.
Are you really sure you want to know the Secret, anyway?
Revealing a secret is a bit like releasing air from a balloon: the secret spirals around and makes a fun noise—and if you aim right, it might even hit somebody in the nose—but afterward it always falls to the ground, and everyone is left with that sad, after-the-balloon feeling of loss and abandonment.
That doesn’t sound very satisfying, does it?
Then again, when have you known me to satisfy anything but my own cravings for chocolate?
Honestly, I don’t know why you bother to read a word I write. If you want to give up on me now, I understand completely. Never mind all the time you’ve already put in; sometimes it’s better to cut and run (see Chapter One).
Now’s your chance to escape. Don’t worry—I won’t look. I’ll just close my eyes and have a nibble of this delicious bar of dark, dark—
Hmmgh… well, maybe just one more… hmmgh…
—No? You’re staying put? Stubborn, aren’t you? Or just morbidly curious?
I know, this book is like a car accident. You don’t want to stare—you just can’t help it.
If it’s any comfort, your old friend Cass is anything but satisfied at the time this story begins. She, too, is desperate to learn the Secret.
Recently, remember, she came torturously close to learning the Secret. Among the things she inherited from her ancestor, the Jester, was a fragment of papyrus with the Secret written on it in hieroglyphs. Alas, the papyrus disintegrated in front of her eyes.
Now Cass is headed for her grandfathers’ place. She has just heard that her grandfathers are selling their old firehouse, and she wants to make sure the Jester’s trunk doesn’t get lost in the move. She hopes that another clue about the Secret may lie inside the—
Oh! There she is, walking down the road to the firehouse with Max-Ernest. I didn’t realize I’d been going on for so long.
If I’m not mistaken, they are discussing the assignment they just turned in for their class’s Egypt unit: make a list of the ten things you would take with you into the afterlife. As I’m sure you know, the ancient Egyptians were very keen on keeping as many of their possessions as possible—for as long as possible.
Here, let’s listen:
“… and a giant bar of chocolate, of course, in case I get hungry in the afterlife, and a pair of underwear, because, you know,” Max-Ernest was saying. “Oh, and a deck of cards. Or do you think that’s cheating? Since there are fifty-two cards in a deck, and we’re only supposed to take ten things?”
“No, I think you can count a deck as one thing,” said Cass, walking a few feet ahead. Max-Ernest struggled to keep up.
The view couldn’t have been more familiar. The backpack. The braids. The big pointy ears. Always, always from behind. Which was very unfair, when you thought about it. He, Max-Ernest, was shorter than Cass. Rightfully, he should go first; he wouldn’t block her line of vision.
“Did the Egyptians have cards?” Cass asked casually. “It seems like hieroglyphs would make a cool deck of cards.”
Max-Ernest lit up. “That’s a great idea! I don’t think the Egyptians had them, but we could make our own cards and—”
“There are just twenty-four hieroglyphs in the Egyptian alphabet, right?” asked Cass, cutting him off. “Or are there more? I feel like I heard both things.”
Cass stopped at an intersection. Cars passed at a snail’s pace, honking their horns impatiently. It was unexpectedly busy for their quiet neighborhood.
“Well, there are twenty-four main ones. They stand in for sounds, like our letters do,” Max-Ernest explained, happy to discuss a topic that was of such passionate interest to him. “But there are thousands and thousands of others that are more like picture-words. I don’t think anybody knows how many—”
Cass’s face fell. “They don’t—?”
“Yeah, think about it—your card deck could be as big as you want,” said Max-Ernest enthusiastically.
“Oh no. That’s just what I was afraid of….”
Max-Ernest looked at Cass, confused by her sudden change of mood. “What do you mean? Why is that a bad thing?”
Cass bit her lip. She was the Secret Keeper; the Secret was supposed to be hers alone. Not to mention, it was common knowledge that Max-Ernest couldn’t keep a secret. And yet, despite his faults, he was her best friend and unflagging investigative companion. She’d been resisting for weeks, but she couldn’t help wanting to confide in him.
She looked at her friend and took the plunge. “What if I told you I got the Jester’s trunk open?”
Max-Ernest’s eyes widened. “You figured out the com
bination?”
Cass nodded. “And what if I told you there was a piece of papyrus inside, with writing on it?”
“With hieroglyphs, you mean? That’s why you’re asking about them?”
Cass didn’t say anything.
Max-Ernest stared at her. “Wait—this doesn’t have anything to do with the Secret, does it?”
“Shh!! What are you thinking—?!”
They both looked around. Nobody was within earshot. (You and me they couldn’t see, of course.)
“Sorry,” said Max-Ernest, red-faced.
Not mentioning the Secret aloud was one of the most important rules—almost the only rule—for members of their secret organization, the Terces Society. Normally, even the compulsively talkative Max-Ernest abided by it.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter what it was. It was so old that it turned to dust as soon as I saw it,” said Cass glumly.
“So what you’re saying is, you had the you-know-what in your hands, and then it just disappeared?” The full weight of it was sinking into Max-Ernest’s head. “That’s… that’s horrible!”
Cass sighed and started walking across the street. “I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you—”
“Don’t worry. You didn’t tell me—I guessed,” said Max-Ernest, following her. “Anyway, how could you not tell me? I’m the one who knows hieroglyphs. Can you remember any? I could translate them—”
“I know, it’s driving me crazy. It’s the one time I need your help, and I can’t ask—”
“The one time—?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. You’ve needed my help exactly six hundred and thirty-two times.”
Cass shook her head in amazement. “You’ve been counting?”
Max-Ernest shrugged off the question. “So what else was in the trunk the Jester sent you, besides the papyrus?”
“Nothing important. Just treasure.”
“You mean like treasure treasure? Gold coins and stuff?”
“Yeah, a lot, actually,” said Cass, as if it were no big deal. “I want to look again in case there are any other clues in there about… it.”
“I can’t believe you waited so long to tell me all this,” said Max-Ernest. “No wonder you’ve been acting so weird lately. You’re… rich.”
But Cass wasn’t listening; she was staring down the street, where there was a terrible traffic jam. Cars were stalled. People were shouting. Babies were crying.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her pointy ears tingling in alarm.
As they got closer to the old firehouse where Cass’s grandfathers lived, men and women and children walked by, holding boxes and bags with odd old objects peeking out: a broken banjo, a Hula Hoop, a fireplace poker, a fishing rod, several ancient computers, even a cash register.
“Maybe there’s going to be a hurricane or a flood?” suggested Max-Ernest. “Or a big fire?”
Cass, who was normally the one to predict disasters of that sort, shook her head. “Uh, I don’t think so. It’s… something worse.”
“What—nuclear war?”
“No, a garage sale,” said Cass grimly.
She was right.
Their progress slowed to a near halt as they came within view of the firehouse. The entire street was crowded with cardboard boxes and people combing through them. Tables were piled high with dusty glassware and broken ceramics and hard-to-identify appliances. Mismatched shoes and neckties of all sizes and colors flew into the air as people discarded them. Old books and magazines covered the ground like fallen leaves.
“Are your grandfathers really selling all their stuff? I can’t believe it,” said Max-Ernest.
“I know—it’s weird,” said Cass, slightly nauseated.
She stopped in front of the firehouse, where a new yellow sign had been planted. Instead of a sign for her grandfathers’ antiques store, the Fire Sale, there was now one that said
Cass stared at the sign as if it were an alien spacecraft that had landed on her grandfathers’ front steps. “My mom said they were moving, but I guess I didn’t really think about what that meant. It’s like they’re selling my childhood—”
“So where did you leave the trunk?” asked Max-Ernest, who was understandably eager to get his first view of real treasure.
He glanced around. A few trunks lay on the street, but none that looked like the ancient trunk that Cass’s ancestor had sent her so many centuries ago—and that had circled the globe so many times before reaching her.
“Huh? Oh, I hid it way in the back.” Cass started up the front steps of the firehouse. “Come on, let’s go inside before my grandfathers see us.”
But when they looked inside, the firehouse was completely empty—that is, aside from the cobwebs and dust that had accumulated behind all the boxes and shelves and tables that had, until very recently, cluttered the space.
The one familiar thing that remained: the brass fire pole, as shiny as ever. Cass swallowed, remembering all the times she had slid down it.
“Um, Cass, shouldn’t we go look outside before somebody—?”
“Don’t even think it!” said Cass, running out the door.
If they didn’t find the trunk before some lucky garage-sale customer snatched it away, Cass’s glittering inheritance—not to mention any clue it might contain about the Secret—would be lost forever.
They found Grandpa Larry standing by a table of books.
“How much is this old set?” a scowling man was asking.
“The encyclopedia? Why, it’s a classic, and it’s not for sale!” said Grandpa Larry automatically.
“Then what’s it doing out here?” the customer replied angrily.
“Fine, twist my arm, five dollars,” said Grandpa Larry grumpily.
“Eh, maybe I’ll just—”
“Oh, heck, twenty-five cents.”
“Deal!” The gleeful customer started scooping up encyclopedia volumes and tossing them into a cardboard box.
“Hey, Grandpa Larry.” Cass tugged on her grandfather’s sleeve. He was wearing a vintage Hawaiian shirt and a Panama hat—as if he were dressed for a tropical vacation.
Grandpa Larry smiled in delight. “Cass! I didn’t know you were here.”
“Well, I didn’t know you were moving!” said Cass accusatorily.
“Didn’t your mother tell you? We’re going on an around-the-world cruise.”
“Cruises are for old people. You hate all that stuff.”
“What do you mean? We are old people.”
“I still don’t understand why you have to sell everything. Aren’t you going to come back? What about my graduation?”
Grandpa Larry put his arm around Cass. “You know as well as I do, this place hasn’t been the same since Sebastian left us,” he said gently.
Cass nodded. Six weeks earlier, the ailing basset hound, who had survived long beyond the dire predictions of veterinarians, had died in his sleep. Cass, who loved Sebastian as if he were her own dog, had been unable to bring herself to visit ever since.
“All this stuff—it was bogging us down.” Grandpa Larry gestured to the piles around him. “And, besides, you know what they say: you can’t take it with you.”
While Cass tried to absorb what he was saying, Grandpa Larry turned to Max-Ernest. “Max-Ernest, my friend, anything you want, I’ll give you a great deal—it’s called free,” he whispered confidentially. “I have some joke books you’ll like. Also, a set of loaded dice—”
“Thanks, Grandpa Larry,” said Max-Ernest, wistfully eyeing the tables around him. “But right now, um, Cass has a question.”
“Oh yeah,” said Cass, who was so upset she’d all but forgotten the purpose of their visit. “Grandpa Larry, have you seen a big old trunk around—you know, the kind with a lot of travel stickers?”
Larry looked curiously at Cass. “That wasn’t yours, was it? We couldn’t remember where we picked it up. Figured it must have been one of those lost weekends in the 1970s�
��”
“Yeah, no, I mean, it’s not mine!” said Cass in a rush. “I was just wondering if you had a trunk like that because… because we’re doing a unit on ancient Egypt at school, and we’re supposed to put together a box of all the stuff we would take into the afterlife.”
Grandpa Larry laughed. “After you’re mummified, you mean?”
“Exactly,” said Cass.
Max-Ernest nodded, playing along. “On Friday, we’re going on a field trip to the mummy exhibit at the Natural History Museum.” (That part, at least, was true. As for the afterlife assignment, it had been turned in already.)
“Well, the trunk I’m thinking of would be perfect—it’s a time capsule all by itself,” said Grandpa Larry. “Last I saw, Grandpa Wayne was hauling it outside.”
Grandpa Wayne, who was dressed not in tropical finery but in his usual grease-stained mechanic’s overalls, was in the middle of explaining the intricacies of repairing a fifty-year-old black-and-white TV to a bored customer. When Cass and Max-Ernest ran up, the customer hurriedly—and gratefully—excused himself.
Grandpa Wayne remembered the trunk—he had spent forty-five minutes trying to open the lock before giving up—but there were so many people coming in and out that he couldn’t remember whether he’d sold it or not.
“Try looking by my truck—that’s where all the big stuff is.”
The “big stuff” lying by Wayne’s rusty old truck included such marvels as a purple player piano; a tuba with a small palm tree growing out of it; and a dry aquarium with a miniature pink castle that was home to a family of cockroaches.
Unfortunately, there was no trunk in sight. Cass and Max-Ernest looked around nervously, neither of them voicing their fears.
“What’s Sebastian’s bed doing here?” asked Max-Ernest, nodding at the threadbare doggy bed lying on the truck’s open tailgate.
Nestled on the bed was a ceramic cookie jar shaped like a bone. Next to the bed was a sign: NOT FOR SALE.
Cass bent down and sniffed Sebastian’s bed. “It smells like him.”
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