by Dakota Chase
Merlin went to the bookcase and pulled a fat volume from the shelf. He plunked it down on top of his desk with the cover facing Vaughn and me. There was a photograph of a golden face on it. It was a burial mask, and it looked familiar—I’d seen it before, on television.
King Tut, I recalled. That’s who it is. I thought the show I’d seen had been called The Boy King, although I wouldn’t put money on it since it’d been a bunch of years since I’d seen it. I remembered the narrator saying Tut had been made king of Egypt when he was only eight or nine years old, and I’d thought it was a pretty silly move to make a little kid king of an entire country. I mean, if the kiddie king misbehaved, who could give him a time out? He was the king, for corn’s sake. You can’t send the king to his bedroom for breaking curfew or not eating his vegetables.
They’d said on the show that Tut was only nineteen when he died, just a couple of years older than me. The narrator of the program had said Tut had been murdered. I’d supposed that any king, even a teenaged one, could be killed for his throne or the gold in his treasury. Nobody knew for sure who killed him, though. Some thought it was one of his advisors, a man named “Ay” or something, while others thought it might’ve been an assassin from one of the countries bordering Egypt. My money was on Ay. It was always the person closest to the murder victim, wasn’t it? At least it was in every movie I’d ever seen.
I remembered they’d said that Tut’s tomb was discovered in the nineteen-twenties, and it had been filled with gold and treasure. Now, that had caught my attention! Imagine, digging a hole in the sand and finding gold and jewels and stuff! Was it finders-keepers? How awesome would that be?
I also remembered something about how, sometime after he died, Tut’s name was erased from all the monuments and buildings and statues. That seemed pretty harsh to me. I mean, after all the kid had been put through and being murdered so young and all, you’d think the least they could’ve done was to leave Tut’s stuff alone. But no, it was like somebody going in and deleting your Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter accounts. If somebody googled you, nothing would come up, as if you’d never existed at all! It was three thousand years before an archaeologist named Carter discovered his tomb, and people found out who Tut was.
The tomb was also cursed, or so they said. It was where Hollywood had gotten the idea for the mummy movies. I’d thought that part was pretty cool, even if I didn’t really believe in curses.
Then again, I hadn’t believed in magic or time travel until about a half hour ago.
The title of the book on Merlin’s desk was The Wonders of Ancient Egypt. Merlin opened the book and flipped through the pages until he found the one he wanted. It was page 248 and showed a picture of a piece of jewelry. It looked like a big, gaudy pin or pendant. According to the ruler lying next to the piece in the photo, it appeared to be about six inches long. The piece looked like it was made of gold, with colorful stones set into it. The black outline of a large eye was in the center, set above a pair of wings.
“This is an amulet once owned by King Tut, himself,” Merlin said. “The eye you see in the center is called the Eye of Horus or the Eye of Ra. It was a very powerful symbol of protection. The ancient Egyptians thought it kept them safe from harm, and ensured them good fortune. At other times, it was said to be linked to great destruction, to slaughter and death by fire.”
I winced at the mention of “fire,” the reason I was there in the first place.
“Your first task will be to retrieve this amulet. It was one of my most prized possessions,” Merlin continued. “You will find yourselves in Memphis, a city on the Nile River. It was one of the cities where Tutankhamen lived and ruled during the time that is known as the New Kingdom. The amulet should be somewhere in his palace, most likely in his private quarters.”
“How are we supposed to get into a king’s bedroom?” I asked in disbelief. In my head, I pictured big, burly men dressed in white skirts and sandals, carrying huge, sharp scimitars, guarding the king’s door. “Won’t it be guarded? What are we supposed to do? Ring the bell and pretend we’re selling magazine subscriptions for school?”
“The mechanics of gaining entrance is your problem,” Merlin said. “I’m certain you two bright boys will figure it out.”
Did I detect a trace of sarcasm in Merlin’s voice? Of course I did. I looked at Vaughn and rolled my eyes. Adults, even ancient, magician adults, could be so lame!
“What about language?” Vaughn asked. “We don’t speak ancient Egyptian, or whatever.”
Good question. I wished I’d thought of it first.
“My magic will temporarily gift you with the ability to understand and speak whatever the local language is in whichever time and place you are. Sadly, language magic is short-lived. You will forget it the moment you return here, but it will suffice for your missions,” Merlin explained.
He made it seem so reasonable, as if using magic was an everyday occurrence, like making coffee or reading the paper. I guess for Merlin, it was.
“Have you any more questions?” Merlin asked, looking first at me, then at Vaughn.
“No, I guess not,” Vaughn said.
I wasn’t quite done. I knew how these time-travel things worked. I’d watched enough movies and television. “Is this where we get the ‘don’t change anything in the past’ lecture that everybody gets in the movies where they go back in time? You know, the one that says if you kill a butterfly in the past, you’ll come back to find everybody still living in caves, or having three heads or something?”
Merlin snorted. “You can’t change the past, young Mr. Uh, even if you tried. Fate always finds a way to complete its master plan.”
How was it that Merlin could make me feel like a complete idiot with one sentence every time I asked a question? Undaunted, I tried again. “What happens now?” I asked. “Do you need to make a potion in a cauldron with, like, eye of newt or tongue of frog to send us back?”
Merlin smirked at me. “Rubbish and nonsense. The magic is in me, boy, not in silly trinkets and props!” He closed his eyes and began murmuring in a strange language again, his long, bony fingers tracing patterns in the air.
I felt the floor under my feet tip, tilting like one of those platforms you’d find inside a funhouse at the county fair. I got dizzy and felt Vaughn grab on to my elbow, although I didn’t know if it was because I was swaying, or he was.
Suddenly, there was wind inside the classroom. It whipped our clothing and hair, and blew papers off Merlin’s desk. It felt hot, like the wind at the beach in the middle of summer. It even smelled hot.
I glanced at Vaughn and realized with a start that I could nearly see through him. It was as if he were made of colored glass, almost transparent. I raised my hand in front of my face and saw that I was disappearing too.
My last thought before the entire universe imploded was that Merlin had better know what he was doing, or Vaughn and I were royally screwed.
Chapter Five
WHEN I woke up, I was lying facedown in hot sand. I could feel the broiling sun beating on my back, and felt my skin beginning to burn. For a split second, I thought I was on vacation with my dad and stepmom, and had fallen asleep on the beach. I thought it was funny that I couldn’t hear the ocean.
I sat up, and that’s when I realized I wasn’t at the shore. I was surrounded by smooth, golden, rolling hills of sand as far as I could see. The wind had whipped beautiful, abstract patterns in the sand like a sculptor carves stone.
Looking down, I realized my jeans and T-shirt had been replaced by a grayish, coarse linen skirt that fell to just above my knees. My tennis shoes had been swapped out with a pair of sandals that consisted of no more than a couple of stiff leather soles tied to my feet by rawhide thongs. I was wearing a hat… well, more of a headdress, really. It was white, tied around my forehead with a cord, and fell in soft folds to my shoulders. Hats were never really my thing, but since it kept the worst of the sun off my head, I kept it on. It hadn’t occurre
d to me before that Merlin would dress us in the clothing style of the period, but it made sense. We’d never blend in wearing Levi’s and Nikes.
I looked to my right and saw Vaughn. He was lying on his side, facing me, his eyes closed, dressed very similarly to me. I scooted over to him and shook his shoulder. “Hey! Hey, Vaughn! Wake up!”
His eyes cracked open, and for a minute I could see confusion in them. Then he must’ve remembered what had happened, and sat up so quickly he nearly knocked me over. “Where are we? Are we there? In Egypt?”
I gestured toward the sand surrounding us. “Either that, or he dumped us in the world’s biggest kitty litter box.”
“Funny,” Vaughn said, in a tone that meant he didn’t find me funny in the least.
Some people just don’t have a sense of humor. “So, what do you think we should do now?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Find the city Merlin mentioned, Memphis, and then find Tut’s palace, I guess.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied. I jumped to my feet and extended my hand to help him up. After all, we were alone, just the two of us, and we were really, really far from home. We had only one another to depend on. Even though we hadn’t been friendly before, I figured it would be best if we could be now.
He took my hand and gave me a smile, which I returned. Grant—since I wanted to be friends, I figured I should start calling him by his first name instead of his last—was a nice-looking guy, I realized, especially when he smiled. He had a little dimple in his cheek that you only saw when he grinned, and really pretty green eyes. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before.
Probably because I was too busy being jealous of his Rolex, four names, and private lawyer. Just goes to show what you can miss when you’re busy being petty, I guess.
His hand was warm in mine, and I must have held it a little longer than was necessary, because he pulled away from me with an odd expression on his face. I felt myself blush and turned away.
I liked boys. I always had, but maybe he didn’t. Probably didn’t, I told myself. Don’t be stupid and get all flirty with the guy. It’ll make things even weirder than they are already. I looked away and cleared my throat. “So, which way?”
Grant frowned, as if deeply in thought, then brightened. “Assuming it’s the same time here as it was when we left the classroom, then it’s afternoon and the sun is lower in that direction,” Grant said, shielding his eyes as he looked up at the sky, and pointed. “That means this way is west.”
“Great. So… how do we know where the city is?”
He shrugged and grinned again. “I dunno. Sounded like I knew what I was talking about, though.”
Giving him a playful shove, I laughed. “Yeah, you’re a genius, all right. Listen, Merlin said he would stick us somewhere close to the object we need to find. Let’s just climb one of the higher dunes and see if we can spot the city. It can’t be far, unless Merlin botched it up.”
“I hope not. If he did, we’re really screwed. This is the Sahara Desert. It’s not like there’s going to be a 7-Eleven or Walmart anywhere close by.”
The image of an icy-cold, sixty-four ounce, 7-Eleven Coke Slurpees suddenly exploded in my brain. I was thirsty, the sun was hot, and my mouth felt like I’d been chewing cotton balls. Crap, just what I needed. Why did he have to remind me that I was in a desert with nothing to drink? I plunged ahead, leading him across the sand as I wondered what passed for frozen, sugared beverages in ancient Egypt.
Climbing the dune was easier said than done. We had to continually shade our eyes with our hands or part of our headdresses to keep the windblown sand out of our eyes. Our feet slid on the soft sand, making walking difficult. Not to mention hot—imagine walking on a beach at noon. My feet felt like the skin was being baked right off my bones.
When we finally made it to the top, we stopped and stared. Stretching out before us was a scene straight out of a history book. In the far distance, we could see three gleaming, white triangles, which I realized were the pyramids. They looked tiny from where I stood, but I knew the distance was playing tricks on my eyes—they were huge in real life, or so I’d heard. Closer was a bustling city full of people.
I don’t really know what I expected to find when I got to ancient Egypt, but this wasn’t it. I suppose I’d thought I’d see mud huts, maybe a crumbling pyramid, and everything would be really dirty, old, and cracked.
Memphis—if Merlin had gotten his magical OnStar right—was nothing like that. From what I could see from the top of the dune, it was beautiful. The buildings, walls, streets, and statues were white and clean. Gardens of flowers, trees, bushes, and ponds made bright splashes of color here and there.
Boats shaped like big, funky canoes dotted the Nile, the wide, blue-green river winding sluggishly alongside the reedy edge of the land. I caught sight of something slicing through the waters, and wondered if it was a crocodile. Maybe it was a hippo. I couldn’t tell from that distance, but that was okay. I really didn’t want to get up close and personal with either one of them.
I guess what startled me most was the newness of everything, and the size of it all. Memphis wasn’t a crumbling, small pile of ruins like I’d imagined. It stretched out along the banks of the Nile for a very long way. Nothing looked broken or destroyed. The buildings ranged from one-story huts to multiple-story houses. There were huge statues everywhere, some white, and some painted with vivid colors. People moved along the wide streets, herding animals, or carrying baskets. Others gathered at the riverbank, although I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Getting water, maybe, or washing clothes or themselves. I could see children playing, waving ribbons, or chasing one another. The soft hum of a busy city drifted to us on the hot wind.
“Wow,” Grant said. The awe in his voice matched what I felt exactly.
“Yeah. That’s really something, huh?”
“Think its Memphis?”
“It must be. At least, I hope so.” I pointed toward the center of the city. “I wonder if that big building back there could be Tut’s palace? I would think he’d be holed up in the biggest house in the city. If I were a king, that’s where I’d hang my crown. Come on. Let’s go down there and take a look,” I said.
Going downhill was a lot easier and faster than going up had been. Gravity helped push us along. We started walking slowly down the steep slope of soft sand but were soon running, our momentum carrying us, and we reached the bottom in a very short time.
We were at the edge of the city. A high wall surrounded Memphis, with openings cut at regular intervals. The closest opening to us was flanked by a pair of statues. They had the heads of men, but the bodies of lions. They looked like the gigantic Sphinx I’d seen in the documentary about Tut on television, but were much, much smaller. Even so, they towered over Grant and me. I didn’t know if they were gods or kings, but they were impressive either way. Their painted eyes seemed to stare right at me, as if they knew I didn’t belong there.
Freaky, I thought. They give me the creeps. I wouldn’t say it out loud, of course. I didn’t want Grant to think I was a wimp, getting spooked by a couple of statues. I pointed toward the river. “Maybe we should start there. We might be able to blend in with those people and follow them back into the city.”
Grant nodded. “Good idea. Two strangers walking in through the front gates might draw too much attention.”
It occurred to me that we were getting along, agreeing. I wondered about it for a while as we walked toward the river. Just like us and the ancient Egyptians, Grant and I were from two different worlds. My dad was working class, Middle America right down to his Elks Club pin and riding lawn mower. Grant’s father was corporate America, with limousines and platinum credit cards. My dad had a bowling trophy. His dad had a trophy wife. We had nothing in common except for our rap sheets.
Yet here we were, thrown into a situation beyond the realm of either of our experiences, and we were getting along fine. Joking, laughing, just like we were friends.
Weird.
“What?” Grant asked me when we paused behind a shielding screen of ferns. On the other side, people waded in the shallows of the river, scooping out urns of water, and washing clothes. Little kids screamed and splashed nearby. There were several men with long, wicked-looking pikes standing guard, although whether against strangers like us or crocodiles, I didn’t know. I was hoping for the crocs.
“What, what?” I asked.
“You were staring at me.”
“Sorry. My mind wandered.” Yeah, it had too, all over the fact that he was shirtless, and had a pretty decent body, and a perfect tan. Back off, Walsh, I told myself. No flirting, remember? Focus. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah, let’s do this thing,” Grant replied. He gave me a small, shaky grin and nodded.
We both took a deep breath and stepped out of the reeds.
Chapter Six
TO OUR relief, we attracted nothing but a few curious glances. Perhaps strangers were a commonplace sight in Memphis. It made sense if the king made his home there, that dignitaries and other visitors would come to the city. I only hoped nobody would try to talk to us. Even though Merlin had promised we’d be able to speak in the language of whatever time period and country we were in, I was hesitant to try it out. What if I struck up a conversation with an ancient Egyptian, only to find out I was speaking Swahili or Chinese?
Grant and I moved through the crowd, trying to keep our heads low and not make eye contact with anyone as we headed toward the steady stream of people walking back and forth from the shore of the Nile to the city gates.
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.
