by Jon Scieszka
Sam looked relieved. I felt awful, thinking about Anna probably being held hostage by Hatsnat.
“... but you must be priests to know so much about our rituals,” said Hatshepsut. “Let’s go.”
Hatshepsut thanked all the guests and servants for helping us look for Anna. Then she got rid of everyone, equipped us all with torches, and led us down into the dark cool passages beneath the palace. We stopped at a fork in the long vaulted tunnel. Hatshepsut gave us our orders.
“The rooms to the left are where my departed husband, Thutmose II, was prepared to come forth again. I know those and will search there. The rooms to the left have not been used for ages. The four of you stay together and search there.”
Sam raised his hand. “Um, don’t you think we should all stay together? Because you know, this is what always happens in those horror movies. The group splits up and then people start getting bumped off one by one.”
Hatshepsut gave Sam a funny look. “Horror movies? Bumped off? Let’s just find Anna, then meet back here.” She disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel and left Thutmose, Sam, Fred, and me nervously looking around.
“That Curse of the Mummy stuff was just made up for the movies,” said Fred to no one in particular. “Mummies don’t go around strangling people for real.”
“Right,” I said firmly.
“There are winged spirits, the ba of those here, who might not be happy.... whispered Thutmose. He held up his torch to look in the shadows.
“Right,” I said less firmly.
Sam groaned. “I told you this would happen.”
“Knock it off,” said Fred, pulling his hat down low on his forehead. “You guys are giving me the creeps. Hatshepsut said to search this side. So let’s search.” Fred walked down the tunnel, and we had no choice but to follow him.
We started out walking as close together as humanly possible. But as our eyes adjusted to the flickering torchlight, we began to check out the figures and hieroglyphs on the walls.
“Hey look,” said Fred. “There’s that dog-headed guy.”
“Anubis,” said Thutmose. “The god of mummification.”
“Of course,” said Fred. “Good place for him, down here.”
Sam held his torch up to the ceiling and lit up a figure that stretched all the way overhead and back down, her toes at the bottom of one wall, her fingertips at the bottom of the other. “Nut,” said Sam. “Goddess of the heavens.”
We walked below the arched goddess and searched every nook and cranny for some sign of Anna. We must have looked in twenty different rooms. But Hatshepsut was right. They hadn’t been used for ages. There was nothing in them.
“We’re just about down to the end of these torches,” said Fred. “We’d better get back to meet Hatshepsut.”
I didn’t want to leave, but we had searched everywhere. We headed back, hunting for any spot we might have overlooked.
I found a whole parade of gods walking along a wall we hadn’t seen, and tried to remember who they all were. Thutmose supplied most of the answers.
“The bird-head man with the two crowns of Egypt.”
“Horus, god of kings,” said Thutmose proudly.
“The lady with a cow head?” I said.
“Hathor, goddess of love and beauty,” said Thutmose.
“And who is this nasty-looking character?” said Fred, running his hand over a guy with a head that looked like an anteater with square ears.
“Seth,” answered Thutmose. “God of chaos, brother and killer of—” He pointed to a figure holding a crook and flail crossed over his chest—“Osiris.”
The mention of Osiris made me think of his sister, Isis, who had found the ripped-up pieces of him, put them back together, and brought him back to life. “Where is Isis? If anybody could help us, it would be her.”
“Here,” said Thutmose. “Right next to Osiris.”
Sam’s torch sputtered and went out.
“Our tour guide says the exhibits are closing. Time to get out of here while the lights are still on.”
And I’m not sure why, but when I bent over to take one last look at Isis, I rubbed the ankh she held in her hand and said, “Isis.” The raised bit of carved stone felt warm. I put my hand flat on the wall. The whole wall was warm.
I leaned against it and called to Fred, Sam, and Thutmose, already walking away down the tunnel. But I only got as far as, “Hey you guys. Feel this wall. It‘s—” Because when I leaned against the wall, the whole thing swung back like a giant stone door to reveal a hidden room. A fire burning in the corner fireplace lit up everything. I saw a pile of linen strips, a bunch of jars, a table covered with knives and hooked tools. A small mummy, half wrapped, lay in a plain sarcophagus. The mummy moved. I froze. The mummy groaned, then sat up.
ELEVEN
If my legs hadn’t turned to rubber, I would have run the fastest hundred-yard dash ever, right out of there. But luckily, my legs weren’t going anywhere. Because the mummy groaned again and said, “Hi, Joe. Have I been asleep long?”
“Anna!” I stumbled over to the little mummy in the sarcophagus. It was Anna. “What happened? Are you okay? We were looking all over for you.”
Fred, Sam, and Thutmose piled into the secret room. Anna yawned again and stretched. A few strips of linen fell to the ground.
“Wow,” said Fred. “Did you get turned into a mummy?”
“Yeah,” said Sam. “She got her brain pulled out with the nose hook and now she’s running on battery power.”
“I must have taken a wrong turn coming back to the party with Cleo,” said Anna. “I followed some lights to this room, but then the door shut and I couldn’t get out. I was tired, so I lay down in this little bed with Cleo and used some of these covers. But now I’m all wrapped up.” Cleo poked her head out from under the linen in Anna’s lap, then made a big show of yawning, arching her back and stretching out her front paws. Thutmose patted her head and scratched under her chin.
“Thank Isis we found you,” said Thutmose. “Hatshepsut was worried.”
My torch gave a little sputter then died out.
“Uh, oh,” said Fred. “We’re running out of time.” He stubbed his torch out on the floor, then handed it to Thutmose. “Here. You take the last two torches and go get Hatshepsut. When yours starts to go out, light mine. We’ll get Anna free and wait here for you.”
“With your magic sandals I’ll be back in an eye blink,” said Thutmose.
Fred dragged a stone block over against the secret door to keep it from closing, and Thutmose ran down the hall, leaving us in the dim circle of light cast by the fire.
I started to unwrap Anna and noticed something strange. “Didn’t you say you put these covers on yourself?” I asked.
“I was cold.”
“But these are tied in knots.”
“Hey,” said Sam. He adjusted his glasses to study a stack of papyrus scrolls next to the fireplace. “Book of the Dead texts. Here’s the whole scene of the Weighing of the Heart: Anubis checking the scale with the heart and the feather of truth, the Devourer waiting to chow down on any bad heart. It’s just like my project scroll.”
“Correction, Mr. Humble Genius,” said Fred. “Your project scroll is just like this one. I think it beats you by a couple of thousand years.”
“You know what I mean,” said Sam.
“Do you mean what you say?” said Fred. “Or do you say what you mean?”
“I say you’re mean,” said Sam.
“Could you guys stop for just a minute and look at this?” I said. “Look at these knots.”
“So?” said Fred. “They’re knots.”
“But Anna couldn’t have tied these herself,” I said. “So that means someone else has been in here, and someone else tied her up.”
Sam checked out the knots and frowned. “Someone else like our old friend Hatsnat. He still wants to get rid of all of us because we know about his secret room.”
Sam’s words were chill
ing enough, but I felt a cool breeze from the doorway and turned to see an even more chilling sight. Hatsnat and four very large priests filled the doorway.
“Well said, my little magician,” said Hatsnat. “And how nice of you to call me your ‘old friend.”’
We stood frozen like statues. Even in the flickering firelight I could see Hatsnat’s smarmy smile. He turned to his goons. “Wrap them up.”
We put up a pretty good struggle. Fred got in a few excellent karate kicks. Sam did some furious toe stomping. Anna conked a guy on the head. And I almost escaped out the door, but got the wind knocked out of me by one of the monsters tackling me from behind.
In about five minutes we were right where Sam was afraid we were going to be—wrapped up like mummies, about to be buried alive.
The muscle-bound priests propped us up in four sarcophagi leaning against the wall, then left the room. Hatsnat stood with one sandled foot against the stone block propping the door open. “I would love to stay and torture you for humiliating me in front of the Pharaoh, but I simply must run down the tunnel and tell Thutmose and Hatshepsut the terrible news.”
“What terrible news?” said Sam. “That your real name is Earwax?”
“No.” Hatsnat smiled grimly. “The terrible news that you accidently triggered the stone block that will seal this end of the tunnel forever.”
“They won’t believe that lame story,” said Fred.
“There won’t be any other story to believe,” said Hatsnat. “Because no one will ever find you behind this mountain of stone.” Hatsnat pointed above us.
“When they weigh your heart,” said Sam, “it will be heavy enough with badness to feed the Devourer breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a bedtime snack.”
Hatsnat paused like he was going to say something, then kicked the block away and swung the door shut with a heavy boom. We heard a few sharp blows of rock against rock. Somewhere overhead, stone slid against stone. Something bigger and noisier than five hundred subway trains rumbled above us. The whole world shook and fell, with one final gut-thudding whump. Then it was quiet, way too quiet.
A few wisps of dust floated under the door. The fire seemed to dim.
“I guess it wouldn’t do much good to scream,” said Fred from his sarcophagus.
“Nope,” said Sam. “It would just use up our oxygen faster.” The wedjet eye painted on his sarcophagus stared at me.
I thought about trying to wiggle free of the wrappings and use the sticks of firewood to dig our way out, but I couldn’t even wiggle my fingers. “I know this doesn’t look good,” I said, trying to sound positive. “But we’ll think of something.”
Fred wrestled with his wrappings. “Ooff. Like what? Taking turns breathing?”
Sam moaned. “It is really going to mess up my social studies grade if I croak and don’t turn in my project. Joe, don’t you know some Houdini magic escape trick?”
“We need more than a Houdini escape trick,” I said. “If only I could have figured out how to hang on to The Book.”
Anna stirred in her sarcophagus. “Can The Book help us get out of here?”
I tried to blink back the wrappings squashing down over my eyes. “Help us? It would have us out of here and sitting back in my room in a second.”
“Well Isis told me if we ever got in trouble and needed her help to just ask,” said Anna.
“She’s delirious,” said Sam. “Lack of oxygen. Talking about her imaginary friend again.”
“We’re completely tied up, trapped behind a million tons of stone, and all we have to do is ask a goddess who’s not even here for help?” said Fred.
“Yes,” said Anna.
“No way,” said Sam and Fred in unison.
“You want to bet?” said Anna.
“Sure,” said Sam. “What have we got to lose? Our coffins? I’ll bet you a million dollars.”
“Two million,” said Fred.
“No,” said Anna. “It has to be something you can pay. Like a week’s allowance and a week of cat-litter-box cleaning.”
“It’s a bet,” said Sam.
“It’s a bet,” said Fred.
“Okay,” said Anna. “We really should pinky swear, but I’ll have to trust you.”
The fire dimmed even more. The feeling of being trapped under a mountain of rock started to weigh on me.
“Isis,” said Anna, “please help us find The Book.”
The firelight flickered. Somewhere a few loose pebbles fell. Then silence.
“That’s it?” said Sam.
“Um, Isis,” I said, “if you could work on the Book thing as fast as possible? We’re kind of running out of time.”
Deathly silence.
There was a scratching sound, and suddenly Cleo was standing on the table. She sat down, looked at Anna, looked at me, then jumped down to the stack of papyrus scrolls Sam had been reading. I could just barely see her out of the corner of my eye. She was pawing away at the top of the stack.
And I can’t be sure because of the bad light and weird angle, but something either fell down and opened up, or else Cleo pulled it down and opened it up. Either way, the thing that fell down was one beautiful blue book with twisting silver designs. And the green mist that rolled out when it opened was our ticket through 3,500 years to home.
TWELVE
Sam sat on my bed admiring Fred’s ox-hide sandals. Every other trace of our Egyptian robes, jewelry, and makeup had somehow disappeared. “Nice,” he said. “I think these could be the start of a whole new sneaker line—Air Thutmose III.”
Fred turned his ‘Making of the Mummy’ diorama so it faced the wall. “I don’t mind the sandals, but don’t ever mention the word ’mummy’ to me again. I get the willies just thinking about getting wrapped up like that.”
“I wonder what happened when Thutmose came back with Hatshepsut,” I said. I added the last of the new sugar-cube columns that turned King Tut’s tomb into Hatshepsut’s temple. “Do you think they believed Hatsnat’s story?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam, rolling his Book of the Dead scroll. “I think they probably knew he did something sneaky. But I’ll bet he did get away with making his secret room.”
I leafed through my Civilizations of Ancient Egypt book. “It says here that Thutmose III was one of the most successful Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. They call him ‘The Egyptian Napoleon.’ But look at this. After Hatshepsut died, her statues were wrecked, and most monuments with her name were defaced. Some blame Thutmose, but they don’t really know who did it.”
“I’ll give you three guesses what sneaky bald-headed priest did it,” said Sam. “And the first two don’t count.”
There was a knock on my door. Sam hid the sandals under my bed. We all tried to look as innocent as possible. “Come in,” I said.
The door swung open, and there stood Anna, cradling Cleo and Barbie in her arms. She held out her hand. “Allowance money please. Joe, you clean the litter box this week. Sam will clean next week. And Fred can clean the week after.”
Fred and I dug in our pockets and handed over our cash. Sam just kept his arms folded. “You know—I don’t think we really lost the bet, because it was Cleo who helped us, not Isis. I mean come on, she’s a mythological figure. What proof do we have that it wasn’t just a lucky accident? Maybe Cleo was just looking for her litter box and knocked down the papyrus where The Book was hidden.”
Anna sat her Barbie down on my sugar-cube temple. “Maybe we could ask Isis to wrap you back up and bury you in that room for proof.”
Sam looked at Anna. Cleo sat up in Anna’s arms and gave Sam her full golden-eyes-wide, ears-up stare. Sam dug into his pocket as fast as he could.
“On the other hand, since it would be virtually impossible to recreate the exact circumstances for a valid scientific proof ... I’ll just give you the cash.”
Anna smiled, tucked her handful of dollars in her jeans, and left.
Sam, Fred, and I looked at each other and shrugged.
&nb
sp; And I don’t know what look most Barbies have, but the one sitting on my sugar-cube model of Hatshepsut’s temple is definitely smiling.
BONUS MATCHING QUIZ
Match the terms on the left with the best description on the right.