‘Go on, reckless boy, open me if you dare!’
Harley was sweating. An image glowed on the screen of the school computer.
It was a picture of a magical scroll of papyrus from Ancient Egypt and it sat there daring him to unroll it, pulsing with light.
‘All I have to do is slide the mouse across,’ Harley thought. ‘Then I just point the little cursor at the scroll and click to make it flip open on the screen. Cursor?’ He gulped. ‘Is that what I’m going to bring down on my class, on the school, on all our parents who are visiting us on our class Egypt Day - a curse?’
Harley’s glance flicked down to the computer mouse on the desk. The mouse suddenly looked scary, like a giant scarab.
His eyes went back to the screen.
He’d found the scroll on the internet and he planned to open it as a special display, but should he go ahead after what had happened the last time he’d tried to open it?
His forefinger twitched in the air above the mouse.
“We’re waiting,” said Miss Manning.
Their teacher was tall and skinny and she looked a bit like an Egyptian mummy who had come along to supervise their Ancient Egypt Day celebrations. “I know this is our Ancient Egypt Day, Harley, but we haven’t got four thousand years to wait for you!”
A little joke for the parents. She never joked with the class.
Harley’s glance swept the classroom. They had created a Land of Egypt in their classroom and visitors, parents and teachers crammed the place. Classmates Lisa, Enzo and Amanda stood closest to Harley. Like him, they wore ancient Egyptian costume. They had painted their eyes with eye-liner and added fanned out tails at the sides. The dark outlines gave their eyes the shape of fish.
For Harley it felt as if they were all performers in some kind of historical play, except the audience, school visitors, teachers and parents - including his own parents - were here in the classroom.
Harley’s class had furnished their classroom with a hoard of Egyptian treasures made from cut out cardboard, then painted and covered with glittering gold foil. His glance ran over coffins, statues, obelisks, a sphinx, gods and goddesses. A pyramid bulked in one corner. A miniature River Nile, edged with paper palm trees, snaked across the floor, but not the blue-green colour of real Nile water. Instead, it was a bright, glossy red - the way it must have looked after Moses turned it into a river of blood.
“We’re waiting!” said Miss Manning again. No joke this time. Firmly.
Click, click.
The scroll quivered. There was a dry shuffle as the papyrus scroll unrolled itself realistically on the screen to lay bare its contents. It swarmed with hieroglyphic writing.
A wind sprang up outside, sobbing around the classroom. Then from far away and drawing closer, the sound of chanting shivered out of the computer’s speakers. Harley imagined it coming out of the throats of a thousand bald-headed priests in some dim Egyptian temple.
Ooh, said the parents.
Hieroglyphs on the scroll grabbed Harley’s eye. Painted in black with a reed brush, tiny symbols marched in neat rows, edged by rules, down a golden surface.
Harley scanned a row, wishing he could read it ...
Flash. The computer screen exploded in light.
A row of hieroglyphic symbols streamed out of the screen like a length of motion picture film. Feathers, bees, serpents, plants, eyes, animals and gods flickered through Harley’s vision.
Then it seemed to Harley that he knew why the Egyptians used picture writing. Run a column of it through your head like a strip of film through a projector, and the little pictures, bordered by lines like the edges of movie celluloid, came vividly to life.
He was watching an amazing movie, an ancient story about the struggle between the children of humankind and the creatures of the earth, the heavens and the waters and a quest to discover the forbidden secrets of the gods ... What was he bringing down on his class, his school friends, teachers and parents?
It all happened, in Harley’s view, because of their teacher, Miss Manning. She had the idea of holding the Egypt Day celebration at school to go with their Ancient Egypt studies.
“Our Egypt Day is coming soon, Class,” she told them, beginning the disaster. “So we need to gather some bright ideas. We’ll start with a school excursion to the museum. I expect a great effort from each one of you. This is a pet project for me!”
Miss Manning loved Ancient Egypt and so did Harley. In fact, her remark about pets gave him a brilliant idea. Pets - and animal mummies! How about wrapping up his pet mouse Tut-mouse like a mummy and bringing it to school? Wow!
Harley took a lot of trouble wrapping the mouse. He cut little bandage strips and scuffed them up on the ground so they looked old and rotting like real mummy wrappings. Then he wrapped the mouse from head to tail, not too tightly, just snug like a tiny suit. Tut-mouse didn’t seem to mind. Its eyes shone out between the tatters like bright pink beads.
Then, to turn the mouse into a proper mummy, Harley said an Egyptian spell over his friend: ‘May Tut-mouse live forever like the sun god Ra!”
Harley was delighted with his mummy mouse. “You look quite scary, Tut-mouse! I think I’ll smuggle you into the museum so I can compare you with the real thing.”
“Stay down, Tut-mouse,” Harley whispered, pushing the wriggling shape to the bottom of his sweater. “Miss Manning might see you and it’ll spoil our surprise.”
The class reached the lobby of the museum. It was filled with dinosaur bones. Harley studied the tail of a Tyrannosaur. The predator’s bones soared to the roof like a staircase in a nightmare. Scary. But it wasn’t half as scary as the Egyptian mummies upstairs, Harley thought. Dinosaur bones didn’t come with magical curses.
His mummified mouse, smuggled into the museum, scaled up his sweater. It poked its head out at Harley’s neck to take a peek around. A museum guard sitting on a chair in the hall spotted the mummy mouse and gave a blink of surprise.
The guard frowned and was about to raise his hand to say something. But Tut-mouse whipped its head back. It happened in a blur. The guard thought he was seeing things. He lifted his cap and scratched his head. ‘Must be spending too much time in the mummy room,’ he probably thought.’
When he was safely out of sight, Harley transferred Tut-mouse to the inside of his shirt. He joined his classmates swarming behind the tall figure of Miss Manning up the steps to the Egyptian gallery. Their school shoes shuffled and squealed on the steps. The place echoed like a passage in an Egyptian tomb. ‘We’ll wake up the mummies,’ Harley thought.
The racket stirred Tut-mouse. It started to do laps around the inside of Harley’s shirt, tickling his belly. Harley laughed and tucked the shirt into his belt more tightly so the mouse wouldn’t drop out.
“Hang on, Tut-mouse, we’re nearly there,” he whispered.
“Let me see him!” said Lisa, coming up the steps beside Harley.
Harley opened the neck of his shirt for her to peer inside.
“What you got in there?” It was a big kid named Enzo, poking his nose over Lisa’s shoulder.
“Ooh!” said Lisa, looking down Harley’s shirt in bright-eyed delight. “Tut-mouse looks like a big fat ball of string!”
“What’s in there?” Enzo demanded again.
You didn’t keep Enzo in any kind of doubt for long. Enzo was strong. He sometimes worked after school in his father’s greengrocer shop. Enzo could lift boxes of fruit and vegetables the size of pyramid blocks and just toss them around. He could do the same with an enemy, if he ever made one.
“It’s just a mummified mouse,” said Harley.
“You lifted a mummy already? That’s pretty good. How’d you do that when we haven’t reached the place yet? You trying to joke around with me?”
Harley joked around with everybody, but not with Enzo.
“No joke. I didn’t steal it. I brought it from home. It’s my pet mouse. I’ve wrapped him in bandages like a mummy.”
“Cool.”
This was high praise from Enzo and Harley glowed.
Another boy named Nick overheard: “Great idea, Harley. I want to see it too.”
“Not now,” said Harley. “We’re going into the Egyptian room.”
Standing wooden coffins like creepy, human-shaped telephone boxes lined the back of the gallery. The coffins had painted faces, big ears that stuck out like radar dishes and round black eyes that looked like dead planets in space.
The room echoed with the sounds of visitors, mostly school children. Their excited voices bounced off the case-lined walls.
A group of convent school girls filed in ahead of Harley’s class. The girls gathered around their teacher at a glass display case in the middle of the mummy room.
Miss Manning directed Harley’s group to a display case against a wall. The case was about chest high, with a flat glass top. There, right under their noses, lay mummified animals from ancient Egypt. Caught in the glare of the case lights, like animals in a car’s headlights, lay cats and birds and creatures like weasels, bundled up in mummy wrappings. The cats had funny looking moulded faces, painted-on whiskers and pointed ears. Their bandages were shabby with age, but cunningly wrapped, criss-crossed to make designs. Very old and yellowed, Harley thought admiringly, some of the bandages peeling away in places as if the cats were shedding their coats.
Harley made some mental notes. He’d better scuff up the bandages on Tut-mouse a bit more.
“They put us to shame, Tut-mouse,” he murmured.
“As you can see, the ancient Egyptians not only made mummies out of people, but their favourite animals, especially pets - birds, dogs and cats,” their teacher told them. “They had whole cemeteries filled with thousands of cat mummies.”
“That’s a catastrophe!” said Harley, using a big word he’d heard his father use about him.
“What’s a catastrophe?” said Enzo.
“It means a bad accident,” Lisa explained.
“Yeah, like this cat in here. I reckon he’s been in a really bad accident,” Harley joked. “They had to bandage his whole body.”
The class grinned. Frowns like road speed-humps appeared on Miss Manning’s forehead. Slow down, Harley. The tomb-black eyes were growing even blacker behind her glasses. Jokes didn’t light up those eyes. They swallowed jokes like black holes in space swallowed light. Jokes were Miss Manning’s deadliest enemy and the school headmaster’s too. Had he gone too far? Would there be telephoned complaints to his father again? Angry parents after school?
“Still making silly jokes? You’re a very stubborn boy, Harley. Just be careful.” Her eyes swallowed him, then swept the rest of the class. “If you’ve been reading your Egyptian books, you’ll have learnt that as well as people, the Egyptians mummified bulls, ibis birds, falcons, crocodiles, shrew mice, monkeys, everything you can think of.”
“All those animals wrapped in bandages - the place must have looked like a zoo hospital,” Harley remarked. He was powerless to keep back a joke.
The class gave him a laugh.
“Now who can tell us how mummies were made?” Miss Manning asked, trying to ignore him.
Lisa shot up her hand. So did Amanda, but Lisa was quicker.
Another frown from the teacher. She would have preferred to ask Amanda. Miss Manning’s eyes always softened in a friendly light for Amanda. Daughter of the local church minister. Sweet, kitten face. Friendly to everyone, except Harley. But Lisa beat Amanda to the answer by a mile.
“Yes, Lisa?” The teacher tried to look interested.
“Mummy pets or mummy people?” Lisa asked.
“It doesn’t matter. But not too many gory details, please,” the teacher warned her.
Lisa. Soft brown eyes, curly lamb hair. You’d have thought she was the minister’s daughter instead of Amanda. Until she opened her mouth. Lisa was famous for saying and doing things that made people squirm, things that people didn’t want to hear or see. Except Harley, who usually sat next to her at the front of their class where they’d both been put to keep them out of trouble.
“How to make a mummy,” Lisa began, giving her subject a title. “First of all the Egyptians took out all the squishy bits, the stomach and insides and these sausagey things ...” Lisa suddenly clutched at her stomach, ripping invisible objects out of herself with her fingers.
“You mean the intestines.”
“Yeah, those. But I haven’t got to the best part yet.” She made a hook with the end of a finger. She stuck the finger up her nose, amazingly far, and started to talk in a funny voice. “Up da dose. Dey pushed a hook up da nostrils ... way way ... up to the bvvvvrain.” The class hooted.
“Go Lisa!” said Harley.
Lisa kept going. Almost reaching the second knuckle. Stopping. Something in the way. She pulled the hook-finger back out of her nose. “But it’s hard to get the brains out, so they cut the bottom of the nose here where the nostrils join.” Now she was forming an imaginary pair of scissors with two stiffened fingers. Cutting the air once or twice for practice. Lifting scissors to the bottom of nose and snipping spot with precision. “Ouch.” She clipped the bottom of her nose, made herself sneeze.
Harley smiled happily. It was always pleasant listening to Lisa.
Up the nose again with her finger. “So now they could scoop out the bvvvrains,” she continued in her funny, blocked-nose voice.
“Did they use an Egyptian ice cream scoop?” Harley muttered. The others heard him. Laughter. Yuks, from the girls, especially Amanda.
“That’s utterly gross, Harley!” Amanda complained, shuddering.
Miss Manning could take no more. But Harley was loving it.
“Enough nonsense from you, Harley,” said the teacher. “And Lisa, not so dramatic please and watch the gory details!”
But Lisa just went on happily with her gruesome demonstration of mummification.
“Then to make the mummy dry, they put it on a slab and piled on special salt, called natron.” She pretended to shake a giant imaginary salt shaker over her curly blond head. “Then they left the body forty days for an ordinary person and seventy days for a pharaoh. Till it was dry as an Egyptian potato crisp. Then they would start doing the bandaging.”
Now she was wrapping invisible bandages around herself, winding lengths of cloth around arms, body, head, face, even across her mouth. Starting to talk in smothered voice as if through bandages. “They use huddeds of yards of liden. Sometibes from old baterial lying around da home. Some bummies are wrapped in twenty layers of bandaging with jewels and amulets hidden inside da wrappings.” Lisa bursting. Wild eyed. Can’t breathe. Gagging. “Then the priests said bagic sbells over da bummy’s body ...”
People in the mummy room were turning to stare at the schoolgirl who was talking in a strangled voice. Miss Manning went red. “Thank you Lisa, you can stop your demonstration now, that’s quite enough.”
Lisa was gasping for air, ripping the invisible bandages from her mouth. She was still bound tightly at the ankles it seemed. She tottered back dramatically in the mummy room and was about to get the applause she deserved, but Miss Manning moved in quickly, drawing attention away.
She pointed into the case.
“Notice the skilful bandaging, Class, some with diamond patterns, some with squares. Cats and dogs were kept as pets, just as they are today and both were considered to be sacred animals. Cats were very valuable and if anybody killed a cat they risked being put to death themselves. When a cat died in a household, the whole family went into mourning, shaving off their eyebrows as a mark of grief. After being mummified, the cat would often be laid in its own cat-shaped coffin.” Miss Manning pointed to another bandaged creature in the display case. It looked like a big weasel. “Who can tell me what creature that is?”
“A possum,” said Enzo, sure of himself.
“Yeah, a possum,” someone else agreed. Somebody always agreed with Enzo.
“Very good try, Enzo,” said Miss Manning, “but no, there were no Australian marsupials in ancient Egypt. This creature is a sacred Egyptian animal called a mongoose, or Pharaoh’s Rat. It was prized for its skill at killing snakes. Like the cat, the mongoose was a ruthless enemy of rodents and snakes and was also a hunter of insects like scorpions. ”
“Funny looking goose,” Enzo grumbled.
Harley bent low over the case to examine it. Then a scream broke his concentration
“It’s a mouse!” Amanda. She was yelling her head off.
“No, Amanda,” said Miss Manning in a kindly tone. “Don’t be afraid. It’s not a mouse at all. A mongoose is quite different.”
Amanda’s face was screwed up in horror. But not at the sight of the mummy mongoose. It was something else. It had popped out of Harley’s shirt and was bobbing along the top of the display case. A mouse - a living mouse. Tut-mouse was on the loose in the museum!
Tut-mouse froze. It found itself looking through the glass top of the display case at the bandaged shape of a cat beneath. It saw a cat’s triangular ears, painted eyes, whiskers. The old enemy!
Now Tut-mouse froze like a rabbit caught in the glare of an approaching car’s headlights. Did it actually recognise a long-dead enemy or had Amanda’s scream frozen it stiff?
Maybe it was trying to look as stiff as a real mummy.
Harley made a grab.
Miss Manning still had not spotted the mouse. But Harley’s sudden movement broke its dream. It shot away from him. The fingers of Harley’s outstretched hand closed and missed. All he got was one end of a bandage that had come undone.
Tut-mouse was now tumbling off the edge of the case. Harley was still holding the end of the bandage. The mouse wound down like a yo-yo on a string, gently arriving on the floor. The rodent darted away, whipping the end of the bandage out of Harley’s fingers.
Tut-mouse, Harley’s mummified mouse, was gone - running loose in the mummy room of the museum!
Harley dropped onto all fours.
The convent school girls were still standing around the case in the middle of the room. Tut-mouse scooted towards them, scuttling between their feet. Harley following on his hands and knees, crawling at high speed.
Screams batted around the Egyptian gallery. Girls leapt aside.
Who was scaring them more? Tut-mouse - or him?
“Sorry girls,” said Harley. “It’s not a real mummy - only a mouse.” This explanation was not helpful. There were more screams.
Tut-mouse ran on to the back of the room, arriving at big glass cases filled with standing mummy coffins. Harley crawled after the mouse and reached the case. He found himself at the foot of a mummy coffin. He glanced up at the painted Egyptian face at the top. The round black eyes looking down seemed even more like dead planets in space.
“Sorry,” he said under his breath.
Tut-mouse scooted to a corner. Harley crawled after it.
“Got you, pest!”
Finally, he’d cornered the mummy mouse.
Harley, scooped it up. He stuffed it back into the shirt and this time did up the top button so the adventurous rodent couldn’t get out again.
Harley started to pick himself up from the floor. Suddenly, he found himself staring at the black sandals on Miss Manning’s long, skinny feet. It was a bit like being at the foot of the mummy coffin, only a bit more scary. Harley looked up. Round black eyes like dead planets in space looked down at him.
“What are you doing down there, Harley?” said Miss Manning.
“Looking for a mummy mouse,” he said.
“More jokes? You’re getting to be beyond a joke, my boy. I can see you want another visit to the headmaster’s office!”
On the way out, Amanda said:
“Serves you right, Harley for giving me such a scare with that horrible mouse. Still, I forgive you, because you gave me an idea for my project. I’m going to give everybody a big surprise. Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“No.”
“Do you really want to know?’
“No.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. But you must promise to keep it a secret.”
“Only if you keep quiet about my mummy mouse. Miss Manning still hasn’t spotted him yet.” Harley was relieved that Miss Manning didn’t know about Tut-mouse. It would have spoiled everything.
“I’m going to wrap up my Barbie doll in bandages like a mummy, Harley. What do you think of that?”
It was pretty wild for Amanda.
Other people in the class were looking at Harley thoughtfully.
At least he was giving people ideas, he consoled himself.
As they were leaving, Miss Manning stopped Harley downstairs at the museum’s entrance. Lisa hung around to listen
“I want a word with you, Harley. Not you, Lisa, just keep going please.”
Lisa threw a sad look as she went out with the rest of the class. Not sad for Harley. Disappointed to be missing something, he guessed.
“Yes, Miss Manning?” he said, staying behind.
“Harley, it’s about this continual joking around. I thought it was going to stop, but you’re stubbornly going on. Why? You’re making a joke of your schooling and if you don’t learn anything, your whole life is going to end up a joke and everybody is going to laugh in a way you won’t like.
I want you to stop messing around. Our class Egypt Day is just around the corner and this project is a good chance to show what you can do when you put your mind to it - especially since you seem to like Egypt so much. I want you to take what I’m saying seriously and try really hard with your project. I’m expecting something special from you.”
“Now that you’ve gathered some good ideas from the museum, we’re going to have a class show-and-tell,” Miss Manning informed them later. “This will be our last event before our big Egypt Day celebration. I want each one of you to bring something Egyptian to school - a book, a picture, anything you like.”
‘Maybe this is the right moment to reveal my surprise,’ Harley decided. Miss Manning was still giving him glares. He decided to move his plans forward and bring his mummy mouse to school for the show and tell.
Unfortunately, he’d given other people ideas.
They were gathered at the front of the classroom the next day.
“Look at my mummy mouse!” said Harley excitedly. He held up his pet white mouse in the palm of his hand. The ball of bandages twitched, eyes shining out and whiskers peeping through the wrappings. Miss Manning and Amanda took a step back as if they’d just seen a real mummy.
“Cool,” said someone in the class, impressed.
Bringing a pet to school may have been all right, if Harley had been the only one to do it, but some of the others had done the same thing, copying his idea.
His friend Lisa had brought her cat Leo to school too.
“Look at my mummy cat!” said Lisa. The golden tom cat was wrapped in white toilet paper like a cat mummy. Its ear tips were pressed down flat and its yellow eyes glared out of the wrappings like an angry lion’s in a snowstorm.
The mouse caught sight of the cat and it started to twitch violently in Harley’s hand. Then the cat saw the mouse and started to wriggle in Lisa’s arms.
And that may have been all right, except Nick had brought his big Labrador Chester along.
“Look at my mummy dog!” said Nick. The dog was wrapped up loosely in stretchy bands of pink, crepe bandaging, with its black nose hanging out the end of the like Snoopy and its long tongue drooling in a lazy pant.
And that might have been all right too, except big Enzo had come to school dressed as a human mummy.
Enzo stuck out his arms and a dusty-sounding moan came through his bandaged face.
“Look out - the mummy monster’s coming for us!”
The sight of the boy mummy lurching forward frightened the dog silly.
“Wroof!” Chester gave an angry, rumbling bark.
“Screeeeoooow!” the cat yowled.
That made the mouse go ‘squeak’.
Tut-mouse popped out of Harley’s hand. It made a soft landing on the floor, bouncing harmlessly like a tennis ball. Then it scooted out of the classroom and down the corridor.
And that made the cat’s fur stick up through the toilet wrappings and its claws shoot out like rose thorns and scratch Lisa’s arm. And that made Lisa yell and drop her cat. Then the trouble really began.
The show-and-tell quickly turned into a show-and-yell.
The cat sprang after Tut-mouse, streaming bandages like a toilet roll in a tornado.
“Stop the cat!” Harley shouted. “He’ll eat Tut-mouse!”
The mummy dog, barking, charged off after the cat.
“Doesn’t anyone want to see my mummy doll?” Amanda tried to get everyone’s attention in a forlorn voice. She waved her Barbie doll above her head. It was wrapped in little bandages and looked as if it had escaped from a dolly’s casualty ward.
Enzo, dressed as the human mummy, was the closest to the door and he made a lurching, sideways step to try to block the cat’s escape. But the cat dodged around him and flew out after the mouse.
Chester ran straight through Enzo’s legs. Unluckily, a spike in the labrador’s collar was sticking out and it hooked on to Enzo’s wrappings, sending him spinning, before yanking him out of the door after the dog.
A mummy mouse, chased by a mummy cat, chased by a mummy dog and chased by a large mummy boy ran in tatters down the school corridor.
Unluckily, the headmaster’s office lay at end of corridor.
Harley ran after the mouse, the cat, the dog and the large mummy boy, followed closely by Lisa shouting ‘here kitty kitty’ and Nick whistling for his dog to come back.
Miss Manning came running after them, the rest of the class just behind her.
The office door was partly open. Harley saw the bandaged tail of the cat disappear from view in pursuit of Tut-mouse. Then the bandaged labrador caught up and hit the door and almost took it off its hinges. Enzo did a spin like a top with its string pulled. Then he was tugged inside into the office too.
They vanished.
A lady’s scream rang out of the office. The school secretary.
Lisa and Harley reached the doorway. It was the outer office that led to the headmaster’s office. The school secretary normally sat at a computer. But now she was standing beside it on the desk top, her hands up to her mouth, her eye-brows up to her hairline. Enzo flew around the desk, dragged by the growling labrador.
Harley dropped to the floor and crawled around on all fours.
“Tut-mouse, Tut-mouse! Where are you?”
“Leo’s probably bitten its head off and now he’s busy ripping its body apart with his claws,” said Lisa, helpfully.
Harley was shocked.
“Hey, that’s my friend you’re talking about!”
“Leo’s just doing the natural catty thing. Cats eat mice. Even mummy mice. I just hope he doesn’t choke on the bandages. If anything happens to my cat you’ve got to shave off your eyebrows like the Egyptians did and go into mourning.”
“Who cares about your cat choking? I didn’t ask you to bring your cat to school, Lisa. You shouldn’t have copied my idea.”
Another door led to the headmaster’s office. It opened as the headmaster came out to see what all the fuss was about.
Tut-mouse, seeing an escape route and trailing bandages like the wake behind a tiny boat, darted inside and ran between the headmaster’s legs.
The cat followed.
Chester the dog was next, sending the headmaster spinning and almost knocking him over. The headmaster steadied himself with the arrival of Enzo. His arms ended up wrapped around the large boy’s shoulders, his eyes staring into a bandaged face.
A cry of bafflement came from the headmaster.
“Please, Mr Broadhurst, I need my mouse back!” said Harley, crawling past him into the office.
Unluckily, Harley’s mother and father were sitting there in the headmaster’s office.
His mother and father had come to see the headmaster about Harley.
“Harley!” said his mother, gasping. “What are you doing on the floor?”
Tut-mouse took a short cut under the desk. That would have been all right, except the bandaged mouse ran over Harley’s mother’s foot and his mother hated mice.
His mother jumped.
“Mum, what are you doing on the headmaster’s desk?”
Enzo, the headmaster and Lisa were running around the desk chasing after the animals and Harley was still on all fours. Unluckily, bandages were coming off Enzo and the animals. They were all getting tangled up as if a giant spider was trying to trap them in its web.
Miss Manning finally appeared at the door.
Seeing the headmaster tied up to Harley’s father and the two of them tied to Lisa and Enzo to Chester the labrador and all of them struggling to untangle themselves, she seemed sorry to have found them at all.
Tut-mouse spotted the open door and made a rush for freedom. The cat, spitting rage, leapt after it.
Miss Manning seeing them both coming, looked horrified, as if she’d opened the door of a madhouse.
Saying nothing, she closed the door. Swiftly.
Harley made a dive and caught Tut-mouse. He was pretty excited by now. His little eyes were bursting with fright. His whiskers, peeping through the bandages, were spinning like propellers. Lisa grabbed her cat and Harley’s father grabbed the labrador by its collar.
Tut-mouse was fine.
Harley’s mother came down from the desk and started undoing the tangled mess of bandages everybody was stuck in. It was like undoing a tricky piece of knitting.
“Is this another of your jokes, Harley?” said his father in a controlled tone.
Nobody was smiling.
“No, it’s no joke.”
“It certainly is not,” the headmaster agreed.“Why is everybody running around as if there’s been a fire in a hospital ward?”
“It’s just a show and tell we’re having before our Egypt Day,” said Harley. “Miss Manning told us to use our pets as mummies.”
“I see.”
The headmaster had a frosted glass panel in his door but it wasn’t as frosted as his face. They could see the shadow of Miss Manning standing rock still on the other side.
“Miss Manning,” said the headmaster patiently. “Would you be so good as to come inside please.”
The door opened.
Miss Manning looked as stiff as an Egyptian mummy. The class stood behind her, grinning.
Ancient Egypt probably wasn’t Miss Manning’s pet subject at that moment, Harley thought.
His good idea for the class Egyptian project seemed to have caused a bit of trouble.
It was time to explain to the headmaster.
“I didn’t tell the class to bring their pets,” said Miss Manning firmly.
“But you said this was a ‘pet project’,” Harley protested.
“That’s because I love Ancient Egypt.”
“I thought you were giving us a clue.”
“There’s clearly been some misunderstanding,” said the headmaster. He looked at Harley. “I’m glad to hear this wasn’t one of your jokes, Harley. I keep hearing about your joking around in class and it’s got to stop. No more.”
“Say sorry, Harley,” his father told him.
“Sorry Mr Broadhurst,” said Harley.
“You might say sorry to your teacher too,” his father prompted him.
“Sorry Miss Manning. I hope this hasn’t spoiled ancient Egypt for you, because it’s still my favourite subject.”
“And say sorry to your parents,” said the headmaster. “Your father took time off work to come here.”
“Sorry Dad.”
“And to your mother,” his father added. “You know she hates that mouse.”
“Sorry about the mouse mummy - I mean the mummy mouse.”
“I hope that wasn’t a joke at a time like this, Harley,” said his mother.
Harley tried his best to look surprised and innocent. But he didn’t get away with it.
“Harley, we’re running out of patience. I’m going to give you this warning here and now,” said his mother. “You’ve got your class Egypt Day coming up soon. If you don’t knuckle down and do something special, you’re going to be punished. We’re not going to allow you to go to Egypt with Grandpa on your Christmas holidays. We expect you to shine!”
Oh no. Miss out on going to Egypt?
It had been his dream for years.
The whole point of his life was to go to Egypt some day! He loved Ancient Egypt, its magic and mummies.
After the museum incident and the show and tell disaster, their teacher seemed a bit glum.
“I think we can all do better, Class” she told them. “Maybe it’s my fault for leaving it to your imagination. Here are some ideas to start you off. On Egypt Day your parents and other classes are going to be coming here to visit us. We’ve got to fill the class and halls with Egypt so that when they step in here it’s like introducing them to the Land of the Pharaohs, filled with tombs, temples and artefacts on display. You’ll all be guides, dressed in ancient Egyptian costume and you’ll provide expert information on all the attractions for our visitors. We’ll also write essays and make scrolls and scrap books of ancient Egypt about religion, magic and pharaohs. Have you got the idea now?”
“I have,” said Amanda.
She would.
Miss Mannings set the class to work like the Israelite slaves of Egypt, under her lashing gaze. They constructed cardboard pyramids, palaces, temples and tombs with pharaohs and gods painted on the walls, that you could walk inside. They built a river Nile on a board on the floor, with clay river banks and poured real water in it. They built coffins covered with gold paper, painted columns made of rolled up paper and life-size cut out statues of pharaohs and gods and goddesses with their arms bent at the front and back of them. The Hebrews had it easy. They only built pharaoh’s cities and temples. Harley’s class built the whole of Egypt!
But still they were driven on.
“Now I want you to make scrapbooks, ancient scrolls and write study projects,” their teacher told them. “You can start tonight. That’s your homework.”
At least the children of Israel were given a chance to sleep after building pyramids.
Miss Manning gave them no rest.
How could Egypt have turned against him like this? Harley felt upset. He loved ancient Egypt and this was his reward.
His mother said he really had to shine on Egypt day. But the best idea he’d ever had about Egypt had caused all this trouble.
What should he do? Just go along with everybody else’s ideas? That wasn’t exactly shining. But if he did try to come up with something even more brilliant, would it backfire on him too?
I’m in a jam, he thought.
He could see his trip to Egypt sailing down the river Nile without him. That decided him.
He was disappointed, but he would not give up. He’d come up with something that was absolutely magic. But first he needed to do some research. ‘I’ll go onto the internet, he decided, ‘and see what amazing stuff I can find.’
Harley caught sight of his own reflection in the computer screen as he switched on the machine. Looking back at him was a kid with stubborn, streaky-looking hair that refused to sit flat on his head (“Harley’s stubborn streak”, his mother called it) and a face that liked to joke around, but right now was set in a determined expression.
Harley went onto the internet and found a search engine while his mind roamed over the Egyptian landscape his classmates were constructing in their classroom. What would make a great study project to go with that?
Where did he begin looking? He typed in the word ‘tomb’ and up came the reply: ‘Found 95 matches containing ‘tomb’. Displaying matches 1 - 20.”
He went down the first twenty. Not bad, some of them, but not exciting enough. This had to be amazing. It was in the third group of twenty matches that he found this link:
‘The virtual reality tomb of the Egyptian magician Nefrekeptah.’
Virtual reality. Wow. This was for him.
He double clicked on the blue hyper-link.
A background of textured yellow papyrus appeared first on the screen and then new text:
‘Welcome to the Virtual Tomb of the Egyptian Magician Prince Nefrekeptah.
Visit the tomb
He went straight for “visit the tomb” and clicked on it. He watched it open.
The shadowy mouth of a tomb gaped on the screen in front of his eyes. He felt a warm breath of excitement blowing down his neck. He pointed the cursor at the entrance to the tomb, clicked and felt himself sucked inside, into the dimness of a lamplit corridor, past sliding past walls of painted stone. It seemed as if a lamp was moving along ahead of him, its beam bathing the painted walls.
He came to a tablet of stone. It said:
Warning. Go back. This tomb contains the sacred Book of Thoth, the ancient world’s most dangerous secret. This book of shuddersome magical power was written by the god Thoth himself, the ibis headed Lord of Magic, Time and writing. Open this book at your peril.
When this book is opened it releases the powers of the earth, the sky, the waters, the infernal regions of the abyss, the mountains, beasts, birds, creatures, reptiles as well as the awful magical powers of the gods of Egypt themselves ...’
‘Wow, this is getting good,’ Harley thought. Some more text came up on the screen saying:
‘When Nefrekeptah came upon found the book of Thoth, he found an iron box entwined with living snakes and scorpions. When he had overcome these creatures with his magic, he opened this first box, an iron box and then found a bronze box inside. In the bronze box he found a sycamore box. Opening that he found one of ivory and ebony, and inside that silver, and finally a box of gold - and in that he found the book of Thoth.’
Harley didn’t hang around here. Instead he pushed on to a pillared chamber and then on through another doorway. It was here that the tomb scene suddenly changed.
He found himself moving through some kind of animal cemetery. Pots crammed the walls. Mummy pots, he guessed. Little bird-houses for the dead. Harley moved on. A new corridor flung its length ahead.
He pressed along it then stopped as a mass of writhing objects reared in front of him. He flashed his beam over it and gave a small cry of delight.
It was a mass of writhing snakes and scorpions and they were guarding a great chest with hieroglyphs written all over it. What was it, a treasure chest? How would he get past those creatures to look inside? He tried moving closer, but they turned to face him like an army. The scorpions’ bodies gleamed like black suits of armour, their tails raised like spears to strike. The snakes reared, hoods puffed out, blocking his view of the chest. He tried to advance through the wall of creatures, but the screen flashed and he found himself thrown back along the passage. He ended up against a wall. It was a wall carved and painted with a river scene of a thicket of reeds with crocodiles and boatmen in the reeds and a mongoose climbing up a single reed that was bending under its weight.
There must be some way to get past the guardian creatures and see what was in that box. What could he use to defeat them?
He heard footsteps coming down the hallway and quickly pushed ‘quit’ on the computer.
It was already 11 o’clock at night.
But he couldn’t stop wondering about the book of Thoth. He decided to visit his grandfather the next day after school.
His grandfather was a retired Egyptologist. He’d know all about a scroll like that.
“Do you believe in magic, Grumpy?” said Harley to his grandfather.
“Because I do.”
Harley had always called his grandfather ‘Grumpy’. It started when Harley was a little kid. He couldn’t say Grandpa properly and so it came out as ‘Grumpy’. The name stuck.
They sat on either side of a green leather topped desk in Grumpy’s study, with a tea tray between them. Harley loved this darkened room. Egyptian scrolls, carvings and statues lined the place and the air smelt of dust and ancient secrets. It was like having tea inside an Egyptian tomb.
Another attraction sat on the tea tray. Harley’s eyes lit up at the sight. Oh great! His grandfather had remembered Harley’s favourite treat, chocolate marshmallow snowballs. They always made Harley think of pyramids rolled in coconut flakes. Harley took one and munched on it as he gazed happily around the familiar jumble of the room.
Fragments from diggings jostled with books on the shelves - broken pottery, crumbling Egyptian figurines of gods and goddesses with animal heads, a sharp-faced dog, an ibis, a cat, a jackal, a crocodile, a vulture and a cow. His grandfather had gathered quite an Egyptian collection over the years and it was matched only by the patient gathering of dust particles.
Harley’s eyes settled on a collection of mummy parts that were shedding their wrappings like snakes shedding their skins. A child’s hand crooked a blackened finger from its bandages as if inviting Harley to come nearer and a set of toes peeped out from a bandaged foot. He wondered who they had belonged to.
Harley couldn’t wait for the day when his grandfather would take him to Egypt and show him real Egyptian tombs and mummies of the great pharaohs like Rameses.
Grumpy seemed to dodge Harley’s question with his answer.
“Magic, hm? Well, Harley, let me say this. I don’t believe in the kind of magic some people believe in - lucky and unlucky days, lucky clothes, lucky shoes, lucky pens, fortune telling, omens, ghosts, crystals and silly superstitions about umbrellas, ladders and black cats and avoiding cracks in the pavement!”
Harley believed in most of these and loved mysteries of all kinds. It was this love of mystery that had drawn him to ancient Egypt with its scary curses and spells, mummies and mysterious scrolls of papyrus.
“What about Egyptian magic?”
Here his grandfather surprised him. Grumpy didn’t laugh at the idea, instead his pale eyes went thoughtful as he considered the question. He scratched his white beard which had twin-spikes.
“The Egyptians believed in it, that’s the point we must remember.”
“Can you tell me about the Book of Thoth?” said Harley.
That made Grumpy sit up in his leather chair.
His grandfather broke away. He reached for the teapot and steadied his old man’s speckled hands in the routine of pouring the tea. If there were a god, he would look something like Grumpy, Harley thought. And he would hand out chocolate marshmallow snowballs.
“Well?” said Harley, prodding him for an answer.
“Where did you hear about it?”
“On the internet.”
Grumpy frowned. “I’ve heard there are many dangerous and forbidden things on the internet. The trouble with the world today is that people are hungry for forbidden knowledge.”
“Why is the Book of Thoth forbidden?” said Harley, trying to head him off from grumbling about the internet.
“Do you know who Thoth was?” said Grumpy.
“An Egyptian god. A strange guy with a bird brain,” Harley joked.
“No, he had a bird’s head. An ibis bird’s head. He was also shown as a great baboon with eyes of gleaming electrum and he was the Egyptian god of time, magical spells and writing. Thoth was the author of a magical scroll of power that according to legend would give great magical power to the finder. This book was the source of all the ancient magic of Egypt, a land famed for its magic even by the Hebrews who had a saying that the height of pointlessness was ‘taking magic to Egypt!”
“So they believed in Egyptian magic in bible days?”
“They feared the evil of Egypt’s gods and their magic. These gods and their magic made the real god angry. His plagues on Egypt struck against the gods - when Moses turned the Nile into blood, he was striking against the Nile God, called Hapi. When he turned the sky dark for three days, he was striking against the sun god Ra. His most awful plague of all, the death of Egypt’s first born killed the pharaoh’s son and pharaoh was considered a God-king.”
“But in the story, didn’t pharoh’s magicians match some of the miracles of Moses?”
“The devil can produce a counterfeit imitation of all God’s miracles and all his delights. That’s why the pharaoh’s magicians were able to match some of the miracles. They used dark forces.”
“So your God, I mean the real God, wouldn’t have liked the Book of Thoth much?”
“I have a theory about that,” said Grumpy, his face darkening. “The Book - or Scroll - of Thoth posessed frightening power and so it was always safely hidden away. It was divided into pages, or chapters, and if you got hold of all of them you could release the forces of the underworld. People who found it in ancient times came to regret it. Thoth’s book of power put a dreadful curse on their lives. The first man who found it, a magician prince called Nefrekeptah, used magic spells to overpower its snake and scorpion guardians and he took it. The scroll destroyed him and he had it buried with him in his tomb. It killed his entire family.
The Book then disappeared for centuries. But later, another prince found it again. His name was Kha-em-waset and he was the son of Pharaoh Rameses 11 - the pharaoh of the Exodus who persecuted the Israelites and struggled against Moses. I think it’s more than a co-incidence that God called down his plagues on Egypt just at the same time that this forbidden scroll of power came to light again. I believe this scroll of magic provoked God’s holy anger!”
“There’s something I don’t understand, Grumpy,” said Harley, puzzled. “Why didn’t pharaoh just give up and let the Hebrews go after the very first plague? Why did he keep on saying no to Moses?”
“Pharaoh’s heart was hardened,” said Grumpy, shaking his head in disapproval. “When Moses asked God’s name, the Lord answered ‘I Am Who I Am.’ But pharaoh would never believe that God was who He was and I think the scroll had something to do with that. So you see, the Scroll of Thoth was not something to fool around with.”
It was quite some scroll, Harley thought in awe, especially if it could make Grumpy’s God angry. Imagine if he could get hold of the scroll and open it up for a special show and tell on Egypt Day!
“How come so many of the Egyptian gods had animal heads?” Harley asked. “They couldn’t really have existed, could they? Do you think the gods really lived?”
“The Egyptians did. And so did the Greek historians writing about them later.”
In his grandfather’s study, crammed with Egyptian scrolls, carvings and statues, it was easy to imagine creatures with the heads of apes, crocodiles, jackals and falcons.
When Harley got home from his grandfather’s, he went back on the internet as quickly as he could.
The same scene of a tomb passage came up on the computer screen just as before. A pile of serpents and scorpions appeared like a restless sea that shifted and shimmered, and floating on this sea was the magical nest of boxes.
For the magician Nefrekeptah, things had been easier, Harley recalled. He was a magician who knew spells that could render the creatures powerless. What spells did a schoolboy know?
There had to be way to get past the creatures and reach the nest of boxes, but how?
Maybe he could play with the graphics. Harley looked around the tomb on his screen, flashing his Virtual Reality lamplight around the walls. It threw up the painted river scene. He saw a bare-chested Egyptian in a white kilt hunting birds in the marshes. The man threw sticks like boomerangs into the air. A flock of birds flew up from the reeds in a big flap of multi coloured wings, chased by a ginger cat in the reeds. As well as a cat, Harley spotted a mongoose in the scene. The sleek little animal was climbing a papyrus plant to reach a nest and its weight bent the stalk.
Harley paused to admire the mongoose and the cat, a ginger striped cat just like Lisa’s cat Leo. The mongoose looked a lot like a weasel, but with a striped coat, a long, bushy tale which ended in a black tip, a long pointy face and small rounded ears. Harley remembered Miss Manning’s words in the museum. “This sacred Egyptian animal is called a mongoose, or Pharaoh’s Rat. It was prized for its skill at killing snakes and rodents. Like the cat, the mongoose was a ruthless enemy of rodents, snakes and also a hunter of insects like scorpions.”
Harley wondered.
The enemies of snakes and scorpions. An idea prodded his brain like a finger. Was it a clue? Could he bring these graphics to life and use the creatures to fight the guardians for him? He double-clicked on the image of the mongoose. The screen flashed and instantly a mongoose popped out of the picture and landed on short legs on the tomb floor. The creature’s eyes glinted redly for battle.
“Got it!”
Sliding the curser across the painted reeds, Harley chose the ginger cat. He clicked again. “Yes!” Tabby jumped out of the painted scene and landed in the tomb on springy feet. He produced six cats by doing the same thing.
Harley clicked again on the mongoose painting. Another popped out in a flash, and then another. It was like a computer game. He kept on popping animals out of wall until a whole gang appeared.
“Go get ‘em, guys!”
The electronic hunters had already seen the writhing heap of creatures guarding the casket. Their natural enemies! The cat in the front flattened its ears before attacking and the mongoose at the front pointed its shrew-like nose and quivered. Then they flashed forward at the heap of snakes and scorpions. The heap squirmed and writhed in panic, and surged back like a tide retreating. They made scuttling and slithering sounds in their panic. The attackers pounced with sharp claws and teeth. The snakes hissed.
“Got you! You’re finished!” Harley cheered.
“So are you finished, young man,” said his mother, slipping quietly into the room behind him. “Bed, Harley. And fast. It’s nine thirty.”
“Not now, Mum,” he pleaded. “I’m busy. Just half an hour more.” Harley looked around to reason with her, but his mother’s face was as hard as a tomb wall.
“Shut down now, Harley. Right this minute. Or I may have to ban you from using the computer at all. You should have your nose in a book, not in a computer screen.”
“But this is for my Egypt Day.”
“I don’t think so. It looked like a game.”
Just when he was getting somewhere, he thought, his shoulders slumping. Now he’d have to wait to find out what was in that box. And he was running out of time.
Then he had the idea.
Why didn’t he arrange a special demonstration for Egypt Day as his project? His school was hooked up to the internet. He would open the scroll of Thoth right there in the classroom, revealing its secrets in front of the amazed eyes of the parents and teachers!
That would really be something. You’ve got to shine on Egypt Day his mother warned him, or you can forget about going to Egypt!
He could almost see himself in Egypt already, sailing on the Nile with Grumpy beside him and chewing chocolate coated marshmallow snowballs that were shaped like the passing pyramids! No, better change that picture, chocolate snowballs would melt in the Egyptian sun.
Harley arrived at school early on Egypt Day.
He came dressed as a magician. He wore a white T-shirt with rows of beads around his neck to form an ornamental collar. He wore a white kilt made out of a piece of linen sheet, a snake bangle curled up one arm, made out of silver foil, and a fake leopard-skin robe made from an old coat of his mother’s draped over one shoulder. Sandals completed the picture. For a magic wand, he carried a branch shaped like a pharaoh’s crook. He’d cut the branch from a peach tree and painted black and gold bands around it.
At school Harley struck the first sign of Egyptian civilisation as he reached the hallway outside his classroom. An Egyptian princess, pale and deathly-looking, wearing a vulture headdress on her head and painted eyes, stepped out from behind a decorated Egyptian pillar of cardboard.
“Stop, Egyptian!”
“Lisa!”
“Who are you supposed to be?” she said, eyeing his costume.
“Can’t you tell? I’m one of pharaoh’s magicians. And look at you -you gave me a fright popping out at me like that.”
“Why? You told me to meet you here early.”
“I mean looking like that. You look like a dead Egyptian princess or something.”
“Thanks, Harley.” She looked pleased.
“I’m glad you got here early. I wanted to give you a peep at the scroll before the others. I haven’t actually opened it yet. I just hope it’s going to work properly.”
“I hope this is worth it. What’s so good about a boring old scroll anyway?”
“This one killed all the first born of Egypt.”
“Excellent!” Her painted Egyptian-eyes sparkled. “Let’s see it!”
The magician and the princess made their way through an Egyptian corridor, past statues of pharaohs and brightly painted tomb scenes hanging on the walls. Their classroom looked like a clearance sale in an ancient Egyptian tomb maker’s shop. The place was crammed with coffins and tomb furniture.
They crossed a painted desert on the classroom floor. They stepped over a river Nile filled with real water. Harley knocked a cardboard pyramid over and swept away a few palm trees with his leopard skin robe which trailed on the floor. Never mind. He could fix them later. It wouldn’t take long to repair a pyramid and a few palm trees with paper and glue.
At the back of the class stood a desk with a computer and modem, set up for his demonstration.
He sat down, logged onto the internet and punched up the tomb of Nefrekeptah on the screen.
He tracked along the tomb passage.
“This isn’t bad!” said Lisa appreciatively.
There was the box. The former guardians of dead scorpions and snakes still lay strewn around the chamber like heaps of garbage.
“Ready?” said Harley. “Hold on to your vulture hat.”
He double-clicked on first box, an iron box. It sprang open to reveal a bronze box. Inside the bronze box he revealed a sycamore box. Opening that he found and ivory and ebony box, and inside that a silver box, and finally a box of gold. “Here goes,” he said. The scroll of Thoth should be right in here.”
He clicked again and there it was. An ancient roll of papyrus. It was mustard coloured, a bit cracked on the outside.
“The magical scroll of Thoth,” he whispered.
“Go on, open it, before someone comes. I want to see it first,” Lisa urged him.
Suddenly his grandfather’s words of warning came back to him.
The Book of Thoth had frightening power and it was always hidden away safely... I believe this scroll of magic provoked God’s holy wrath!”
“Come on, Harley. What are you waiting for?”
Still he hesitated. What if he made God angry by opening this scroll and releasing the ancient magic of the gods once more? Could a kid fooling around on the internet really do anything to anger God? What if you didn’t believe in God? Could he still get mad at you?
You’ve got to shine on Egypt Day, his mother had warned him. But what if he opened the scroll and there was nothing inside? He would let everyone down, including himself. That was hardly be seen as a shining. He had to find out the truth about the scroll.
With a shaky hand, Harley put the curser on top of the scroll and double clicked.
A sighing like wind moaned around their class room. Next, came a sound of chanting; it seemed to come out of the throats of a thousand bald-headed priests in an ancient Egyptian temple and it made the computer’s stereo speakers tremble.
Then the scroll shuffled open with a dry rustling sound.
Hieroglyphs of small birds, eyes, mouths, insects, gods, animals and snakes marched across the screen. But there was no time to scroll down the page.
“Someone’s coming!”Lisa whispered.
Harley’s finger jumped in panic, double-clicking on the computer mouse. Immediately the scroll rolled tightly shut again.
He quit the internet.
“What are you two doing here?”
It was Miss Manning.
“Just setting up for my internet demonstration,” he said.
“Well you’d better get outside now and greet our visitors. You’re the hosts today and you’ve got to meet our guests and show them around ancient Egypt.”
The crowd was building up nicely in the hallway, parents, kids from other classes as well as the headmaster and teachers.
Keeping the visitors from going inside was a whole movie cast of ancient Egyptian characters in costume. Soldiers, pharaohs, gods, goddesses, princes and princesses, stood waiting for the word from Miss Manning before bringing visitors inside to hear their expert commentaries - whisking them back in time to the land of Ancient Egypt.
Amanda had dressed up as an Egyptian Queen called Nefertiti and wore a tall green crown made from an upside down lamp shade. Enzo had come dressed up as a slave driver with a whip in hand and a kilt around his hips and his muscles gleaming with oil.
Come on, Miss Manning. It was time for the grand opening of Egypt Day.
Harley looked at Lisa. What was holding things up?
Then a woman’s scream almost shattered the classroom windows. Miss Manning. What was wrong? Had she spotted the pyramid and palm trees he’d knocked over?
“Who poured red ink into our River Nile!?” she shrieked from inside.
Harley heard her voice clearly and so did the waiting parents.
Miss Manning emerged from the class. She made her way through the crowd. “Harley? Where’s that blessed boy? This better not be one of his jokes!” she said threateningly. She spotted him. “There you are!”
She startled him by grabbing the edge of his leopard skin robe and tugging him into the classroom, dragging him across the desert floor to the edge of the River Nile. This intrigued Lisa and she followed.
Harley blinked in astonishment at the River Nile.
The water had been clear when he’d stepped over it that morning. Now it was a startling, glossy red.
“Did you do this? Is this your idea of a trick - trying to recreate one of the miracles of Moses?’
“Not me,” he said faintly. “I’m not playing Moses. I’m playing a magician.”
Was it ink? To test it, he stuck the end of his magic staff in the river and waggled it about. It didn’t swish like inky water. It was gluggy, like something else, something you didn’t expect to see in such quantities.
Like ...
“Blood!” said Lisa with certainty. Lisa knew about such things and she was always happy to say things people didn’t want to hear.
“The River Nile ... turned to blood! Wow!” Harley said, surprised. His astonishment must have convinced Miss Manning of his innocence. Thinking quickly, she said. “Very well, we’ll get to the bottom of this later. Meanwhile we’d better change plans and make the most of it. There’s no time to do anything else. You stand here Harley and hold your magic staff over the water. Be one of pharaoh’s magicians and pretend you’re amazed to find the river Nile turned to blood.”
“I am.”
“Come on outside, Lisa and bring in the parents. Don’t you move, Harley.”
Goggling parents, teachers and school children flocked into the Land of Egypt, accompanied by guides giving loud commentaries. The river of blood was a hit. It drew the biggest crowd of all and Miss Manning was quite flushed in the cheeks with all the praise she received. She seemed to have forgotten about Harley though. She’d left him hanging over the Nile, holding his staff in the air. The staff was heavy and growing heavier, still full of the sap of the peach tree he’d cut it from, and as the minutes went by, it seemed to turn to lead. His arms and shoulders and muscles started cracking under the strain. No wonder Moses liked hurling his staff to the ground if it was half as heavy as this one, he thought.
“Miss Manning,” he pleaded.
She ignored him.
“Very imaginative, Miss Manning,” said the headmaster, Mr Broadhurst, trying to be frienjdly after their recent misunderstanding. “That blood almost looks like the real thing. Used a few bottles of tomato sauce, did you!”
Harley looked around for his parents. He hadn’t spotted them yet. Maybe some other kid had grabbed hold of them. Or maybe they were running late.
“Why are you shaking, Harley?” Miss Manning finally noticed his arm trembling over the Nile.
“You’ve left me holding out this magic staff for hours. I’m dying!”
“Oh very well. Drop it then!”
With a sigh of relief Harley let it come down and then his muscles gave out. The staff left his fingers and crashed down on top of a pyramid. But the stick didn’t just lie there. It shivered, wriggled and then streamed across the classroom floor. Harley blinked. There were gasps and scattered applause from the parents.
“Did you see that - a rubber snake just shot across the classroom. The magician turned his staff into a snake!”
“Snake?” said Miss Manning, baffled. She’d missed it. “We’ve certainly stimulated some imaginations today, haven’t we?”she said in a jolly voice for the parents. In a whispered aside, she said: “Harley, you’d better start on that computer demonstration you talked about.” “There’s too much of a crowd building up on the River Nile.”
He went over to the computer.
That was no rubber snake he’d seen shooting across the classroom floor. It was the real thing. What was going on?
His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Had he let something loose by opening the scroll of Thoth, something weird? First a blood-stained Nile and then a staff turned into a snake. What would happen if he went on?
“We’re waiting, Harley,” said Miss Manning, scowling at him.
Harley brushed the smooth, rounded back of the computer mouse with a nervous forefinger as if it was a giant scarab. He was sweating.
Should he click on it?
The rolled up Ancient Egyptian scroll loomed on the screen.
“I know this is our Egypt Day, but we haven’t got four thousand years to wait for you, Harley,” said Miss Manning.
Lisa shot over to be at his side. If this scroll was as dangerous as he’d said, she wanted to be the first to see it in action.
What was he bringing down on his school, on all of them?
Too late to back out now.
He opened up the tomb of the magician. The sound of chanting priests began to shiver out of the computer’s loudspeakers. The audience made oohs and ahs. A wind sprang up outside the classroom, sobbing. Harley found his way back to the scroll. It was still there at the bottom of the golden box, lying rolled up, ready to be opened.
Harley swallowed hard then double-clicked.
The scroll opened with an electronic shuffling sound. The sound of wind moaning and of a thousand bald-headed priests chanting swelled out of the computer.
Painted rows of hieroglyphic text swarmed across the surface of the opened papyrus. Harley wished he could read it.
Flash.
That’s when the images streamed out of the screen into his head - feathers, bees, serpents, plants, eyes, animals and gods and it seemed he was watching an amazing movie ...
He felt something cold and slimy bump against his ankle. Darting a look down, Harley saw a bulgy-eyed frog gulping up at him. More bumps on the other ankle. Harley checked again. More frogs under the computer desk. Scary.
He jumped as a girl’s scream cut the air. It sounded like Amanda. The crowd was stirring. People were shuffling around. Harley twisted in the computer chair to look behind him. Amanda’s Nefertiti crown toppled off her head. More frogs came hopping into view and she was running to escape them.
The painted desert floor of the classroom was alive and jumping. So were the visitors - trying to get out of the way. Frogs came from every direction, green slimy, warty frogs clambering over each other in bulgy-eyed eagerness to reach the computer. People were darting and dodging to get out of their way. Enzo, the slave driver, cracked his whip to drive the frogs back, but it had no effect. They kept coming. Enzo backed towards Harley.
A few of the parents broke into uncertain applause.
Lisa was ecstatic.
“This is so-oo brilliant, Harley!” she said. He’d forgotten Lisa was right there at his shoulder.
The headmaster was stunned.
“Miss Manning - you’ve performed miracles!” he congratulated her. “First the river of blood, then the stick turning into a snake - and now a plague of frogs! Bravo! Almost too realistic!”
“How’d you do this?” said Enzo. “Pretty cool trick!” He’d backed all the way to the computer to join Lisa, peering over Harley’s shoulder at the computer.
Amanda came next, looking white in the face.
“Harley, I don’t know what’s happening, but I feel you’re behind this. Can you stop it, please?’ She sounded like Miss Manning. “That’s enough!”
The parents stopped applauding. Swarms of buzzing flies, dark hordes of them, filled the air with a sound like worry and despair. The audience looked up in panic. Now helicopter squadrons of locusts buzzed overhead. Parents, teachers and children ducked, ready to rush the doors.
Only one thing stopped a stampede out of the classroom and that was a sudden and shocking onset of darkness. All went dark as the tomb. With the classroom windows covered for Egypt Day, no chink of light fell inside. The only dim light was the eery glow of the computer screen, filled with the image of the scroll and its hieroglyphs.
A river of blood, serpents, frogs, locusts, darkness ...
Then the truth hit Harley. Somehow, he’d managed to let loose the plagues of Egypt on his classroom.
Things were getting worse by the second. People were going frantic and falling over each other. Hordes of unseen creatures were leaping, hopping buzzing and flying around in the swirling darkness.
Where was all this going ...?
He remembered the last and most terrible plague of all ...
The death of the first born.
Were these plagues happening in order? He hadn’t see hail yet, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. Maybe it was hailing outside ... Was the death of the first born coming?
Would half of his school suddenly fall over dead? ‘Hey, that includes me! I’m the first born - the only child. And so is Lisa!
What had he brought upon himself, on his friends, on his school? What could he do to stop this madness?
‘ I’ve made God angry, me, Harley, a school kid! But Pharaoh and his magicians couldn’t stop the plagues so what hope do I have?
Who can I turn to?
The hieroglyphics on the screen pulsed, grabbing his eye. Tiny symbols, painted in black with a reed brush, ran in neat rows, divided by rules, down the golden surface.
“I wish I could go back - undo what I’ve done - and stop this!” said Harley out loud, like a prayer.
The school’s computer screen exploded with light.
Flash.
A row of hieroglyphic characters streamed out of the screen like a length of movie film. It flickered through Harley’s vision - feathers, bees, serpents, plants, eyes, animals and gods. Then he understood why the Egyptians used picture writing. Run it through your head like film through a projector, and these little rows of images, edged by border lines like strips of movie celluloid, came vividly to life.
He was watching an amazing movie, an ancient story about the struggle between the children of humankind and the creatures of the earth, the heavens and the waters and a quest to discover the forbidden secrets of the gods ...
Then, entirely on its own, the scroll on the screen rolled itself shut.
It made an amplified roar, like the noise the headmaster made at assembly when he scratched the microphone to test the loudspeaker system.
A force ripped at Harley. He felt himself being sucked out of his chair, as if the rolling papyrus was gathering him up like a wave.
Harley went spinning from the chair and tumbling in dizzying turns through darkness. He felt other falling bodies brushing against him as he flew. He came down again and hit the floor hard on his back, grunting as someone landed on top of him.
“Harley, what’s happened? Is that you?”
“Lisa, are you okay?”
“I think so,” she said, dazed.
“Help me someone,” said another small, trailing voice. It was Amanda. “I can’t stop falling and falling!”
“Oh yeah. Well you stopped all right when you landed on top of me!” Enzo. Where were they? It was dim, hot and airless. Harley tried to wriggle free. What had happened? Had a trap door in the floor opened up just as he clicked on the computer mouse? Had they landed under the classroom? No, this was some large hollow. It echoed.
Could the scroll have done this? How?
Wriggling under Lisa, Harley tried to get to his knees. A light was coming, illuminating the group of them on the floor.
Where was the classroom and the crowd of parents and school visitors who had come to their class Egypt Day? And why was the wooden floor now made of stone? Who was coming? He peered. The approaching light was almost here. A torch? Not an electric one. It threw twisting shadows like a flame.
He sat up and felt his eyes grow wide. Coming towards them, a flaming torch held high in the air, was a mummified boy with the pointy head of a rat. No, not a rat ... something else, something he had seen very recently! And there were others behind him carrying torches and weapons!
The flickering glow lit up a whole column of mummified, weaselly animals marching upright on two legs and in close order, like a company of model Egyptian soldiers Harley had once seen in a museum. Flames from their torches found answering gleams on spears and swords.
The creatures looked oddly familiar. Where had he seen them before? Then it hit him. The museum - their school excursion. These creatures were Egyptian mummy mongooses!
The shadows of the new arrivals were spiky like their snouts and weapons.
“Who’re these kids dressed up like Egyptian animal mummies?” said Lisa irritably. “This was supposed to be our class Egypt day.”
“Watch out, Lisa. I don’t think they are kids.”
“What are you saying?”
“I wish they were kids. I think the scroll ... when it rolled itself up ... rolled us back!”
“Back where?”
“Back when is more like it.”
“Cool!” Enzo said. “You mean back to the past? Like ancient Egypt or something?”
“I don’t think so. People in Egypt didn’t look like this,” said Amanda in a scared little voice. “They’re real animal mummies - and they’re alive!”
The classroom had gone. They lay sprawled on the floor in some kind of cave or passage and shadows from flaming torches were twisting on walls of stone.
What have I done? Harley thought. What do I do now?
“Hey, who are you?” Lisa challenged the new arrivals. “Why are you kids dressed up like mummy animals? And where are we, anyway?”
“Do you not know? Foreigners, by the look of you! Well, you will discover to your sorrow that you have strayed into the Animal Mummy Kingdom of Wa-pet!” the mongoose-headed boy shot back sternly. “And that you have met Prince Kha-em-weasel, protector of the tombs of his forefathers and punisher of robbers.” His small eyes flashed redly. “What are you doing in this sacred place? Seize them!” he commanded the spearmen.
“Rik-a-tik!” they gave a mongoose cry.
The mummy mongoose soldiers sprang forward in a blur, moving almost more quickly than Harley’s eye could detect. Spear tips lunged at the throats of Harley, Enzo, Lisa and Amanda. Harley looked up. Trained behind the spear, an animal’s pointy muzzle stuck through mummy wrappings, as sharp as a spear tip. Small, red eyes glinted as brightly as the spear tip.
These weasel-like creatures were fearless killers of snakes and insects, Miss Manning had told the class. They also looked like fearless killers of school kids, Harley thought.
“Hey possum-face, you want trouble?” growled Enzo. “Watch it - don’t you point that thing at me!”
“They’re not possums, Enzo. There were no Australian marsupials in Egypt,” said Amanda said in their teacher’s tone. “They’re mummy mongooses.”
“Well I preferred the mummy mongooses I saw in the museum,” muttered Lisa. “Dead ones!”
Harley thought some explanation to their attackers might help things. He didn’t need this new strain of nightmare. Whoever these newcomers were, he had to get away from them. He had bigger problems to worry about, like getting back to the classroom and trying to stop the disasters he’d let loose on his school by opening the scroll. The death of the firstborn could strike at any moment.
“We didn’t mean to come here,” said Harley, apologetically. “It’s the scroll I found ... something happened.”
“Scroll?” That sent a quiver through the mongoose-headed mummy prince. “What scroll, boy?”
“Of Thoth,” he finished.
That made the weasel boy jump again. “The scroll of Thoth?” Mongoose-Boy took a step back. “The very scroll I am hunting for. You’ve found it here?”
“No, not here. We found it on the net,” Lisa said.
The prince and his mongoose soldiers exchanged puzzled glances.
“What net?”
“The internet. You know - the web,” Lisa said.
“I don’t think he’s heard of the web,” Harley whispered.
“Of course I have heard of a web. You are saying a spider has the scroll hidden in its web,” said the prince. “But which spider? Where is her web? Speak exactly and tell me the truth!” He had a sharp way of ferreting out answers that matched his ferrety nose.
“Who said anything about a spider?” said Lisa, scowling.
“You did, girl. You said web, clearly. Why are you changing your story?”
“She said net, possum face,” Enzo told him in a dangerous tone. Enzo was not used to being shoved around. He was also shaky on the subject of Australian marsupials and their migration habits, Harley noticed.
“Net or web? Which is it to be?” said the prince, probing for answers.
“Same thing,” Lisa explained. “The world wide web.”
“So - a very large spider’s web!”
“Will you leave off about spiders!” sad Lisa angrily.
“A web is for spiders, while a net is for trapping fish ... or birds. Is that your meaning? This is a bird cemetery. You are speaking in riddles to lead us into a trap.” His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Then you will come with us. You will go ahead and fall into the trap first. Up!”
At his pointed command, the mummy mongoose spearmen jabbed with their spears forcing the newcomers to their feet.
“What are going to do?” Lisa whispered.
“You got us into this, Harley,” said Amanda. “Can’t you do something? I don’t like the look of them!”
“Yeah, what happens now?” said Enzo.
Harley gave a slow, quivering sigh.
The ring of torches seemed to press in on him accusingly, dazzling him, testing him, the flames twisting and distorting in slow-motion along with the scared faces of his friends. This was his fault. He had opened the forbidden scroll in spite of his grandfather’s warning. Now they were all going to have to pass through fire.
Because of him And what about the visitors to his class Egypt day? Was the angel of death moving like a grey mist of destruction over his school, just the way it had done in bible movies like Prince of Egypt, and The Ten Commandments? He pictured the mist creeping down corridors, flowing into his classroom, fingers of the mist prying under his desk lid where an old banana sandwich lay mummifying in a lunch bag. He gulped. He pictured kids, teachers, parents, his own parents clutching their throats and falling down dead.
My mum and dad! Please, don’t let it happen! God. Someone!
He calmed. I’m still alive and I am a first born child. So it must be okay. Maybe this turn of events, this tumbling into a pit of the past, has somehow put a check on the attack.
Harley recalled the last thought that had gone through his head as the plagues had swirled around him. It had been a heartfelt wish.
I wish I could go back and undo this.
Had his wish come true in some twisted way? He’d wished to go back, but not this far back! Where was this place? Some unknown, nether-realm of ancient Egypt?
Why was he here? There must be a reason. Was he being given a chance to undo his mistake? How could he undo anything when he was powerless, held at spear-point by animal mummy creatures? Could he go on trying to reason his way out of this situation? Or perhaps create a distraction and try to escape? The red mongoose eyes of his attackers glowed like the ring of flames, daring him to try to resist.
Should he just give up, go numb? No, he was too stubborn for that. He hadn’t given up after the museum disaster. He hadn’t given up after the show-and-tell disaster. He wasn’t going to give up with this new disaster! Keep alert and look for a way out.
Harley drew in a long, deep breath. I’ve done things without thinking. Now I’d better start thinking clearly for all of us. I mustn’t make things worse. I’ll buy time, see what opportunity comes along. I must find out why I’m here and find a way to get us all back home again
“Don’t anger them,” he whispered to his friends. “Let’s just play along until we can shake them off.”
“Silence!” the mongoose prince commanded him. “Take us to the scroll.”
“It’s not here,” Lisa protested. “We told you.”
“It may be here - now,” Harley whispered under his breath.
“Stop talking and move,” the mongoose soldier at the front ordered them.
“You - come in front with me,” the weasel-faced boy instructed Harley, then he signalled to the mongoose who was in charge of the body of soldiers. “Guard the rest, Amon-Goose. If any one tries to escape - punish them swiftly!”
Harley shrugged and started walking. They went down a corridor. The place seemed oddly familiar as if he had been here before in a dream. It was an underground gallery in a tomb.
“Ibis mummies,” said the weasel boy a respectful murmur. “A sacred flock of millions.”
Harley turned to look at a wall. Dust motes, undisturbed for thousands of years, billowed around him like a net curtain of time. As the curtain parted, he saw things more clearly. Bunched up together like larvae tucked in honeycomb cells, rose thousands upon thousands of clay pots. The pots had stoppered mouths, crusty-lipped with the plaster used to seal them thousands of years ago.
But no honey lay inside these pots, he knew. Not even an atom of moisture. This was a teeming flock of dead birds, ibis mummies, each one nested for eternity in a clay tomb, its body blasted dry by the power of natron then wrapped in fancy bandaging.
“What is this place?” he asked the mongoose prince.
“You do not know what this is? You must be from afar. This is an ibis catacomb sacred to Thoth,” the boy prince told him. “What is your name and where are you from, tomb robber?”
“I’m Harley and I’m from the future.”
“Har-ley from the future,” the prince repeated after him and shook his head rapidly as if to shake a flea out of his ear. “You speak in riddles I do not understand, but I will speak plainly. You have no future here, robbing tombs! How dare you enter a holy place of Thoth?”
A picture of his grandfather popped into Harley’s thoughts as he went on through the tomb. He recalled Grumpy talking about Thoth. Thoth was the scribe of Egypt’s gods, the god who attended the judgment of the dead. He was the one who weighed the hearts of the dead in a set of scales and wrote down the verdict on a scroll. A freaky looking guy, he took the form of an ibis-headed man, or sometimes of a dog-faced baboon. He was Egypt’s Lord of Time, Wisdom, Magic and Measurement and inventor of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The dust in the gallery was stifling, yet the glowing grains floating in the flame light seemed charged with mystery
“You mentioned that you were after the scroll yourself,” Harley said, trying to strike up a conversation with the sharp-faced boy. “Why?”
“I am a seeker of the lost knowledge and magic of Animal Egypt,” the prince said. “And there is no greater source of power than the scroll.”
The scroll had brought them here, Harley thought. If it had the power to do that, then it might also have the power to take them back again. He had to find it. But how? Could he reason with his furry captor? The prince seemed to want the scroll for himself. “Look, we need this scroll to find our way home again, so I’ll make a deal with you,” said Harley. “I’ll join forces with you and help you turn up the scroll, but only if you’ll agree to let me use it first to get me and my friends safely home.”
“Use it - before me? Then you would become the greatest magician in Animal Egypt instead of me.”
“But opening the scroll doesn’t make you a magician. I’ve already opened it.”
“You have opened it?” The furry hand that held the flaming torch gave a quiver.
“Well I clicked on one page, that’s all.”
“Then it’s already too late! The forces have already begun in you. You now have the power to perform acts of wondrous power.”
“Me? I don’t think so.”
“It must be so. Test your powers now. Can you use magic to make my torch burn more brightly?”
Harley looked at the torch.’I wish it would burn a bit brighter,’ he thought. ‘It’s a bit gloomy in this passage and the others seemed to be falling behind.
Whoompf! Flames spurted up to the roof and the mongoose prince nearly dropped the torch in fright.
“See!” he said, backing away from Harley. “You have powers!”
“Good timing, but it was only a draught that did it,” said Harley, peering ahead. “Never mind that now - look what’s coming up.”
“I’ve seen this place somewhere before,” said Harley under his breath. “I know where! On my computer screen.”
The brightly burning flame revealed a great chamber choked with a mountain of shaggy material - it looked like garbage heap of old mummy wrappings - and perched on the top was a casket of metal or dark wood.
Prince Kha-em-weasel threw the light of his flame on the fringe of this tattered heap. Harley saw long, wriggly shapes trail from the pile and smaller bundles with curved tails, some with segmented bodies peeping through, and with spread-apart claws.
They were looking at a mountain of dead, mummified snakes and scorpions - creatures of enormous size.
The others arrived to join them. They gaped at the heap. Harley noticed the mongoose soldiers twitching at the sight of so many of their dead enemies.
“Yuk, what is this? It’s smelly!” Amanda complained.
Lisa was impressed. “Wow! It’s a whole garbage heap of dead scorpions and snakes!”
“This is exactly as legend tells it,” said Prince Kha-em-weasel excitedly. “As the story was written, the casket, containing the secret scroll of Thoth, was guarded by seething demon snakes and scorpions!”
“They’re not seething now,” Amanda noted, wrinkling her nose.
“No, stinking, more like it,” said Lisa. “Rotting in their bandages.”
The prince went on, ignoring their comments, speaking in an awed voice, his sharp snout quivering: “When the magician prince Nefre-Raptor first came upon the sacred book of Thoth, he found an iron box entwined with snakes and scorpions.”
He tried to control a shake of awe in his voice. “When he had overcome these creatures with his magic, he opened the first box, an iron box and then found a bronze box inside. Inside the bronze box he found a sycamore box. Opening that he found an ivory and ebony box, inside that a silver box, and finally a box of gold - and in that he found the forbidden book of Thoth.”
Another soldier spoke in a hushed, graveyard whisper. “Can the sacred scroll be there on that heap?” He was Amon-Goose, the captain of the mongose soldiers.
“Who’s going to go and see?” said Lisa.
Amanda made a gagging sound. “Not me. I wouldn’t go on that heap for anything.”
“I’ll go,” said Harley, surprising everybody. He needed to keep some control over proceedings, so he could find a chance to grab the scroll first and try to transport his friends back home again.
Kha-em-weasel turned to give him a frown as if Harley was some unwanted nuisance that had popped up in his life, distracting him from his great purpose.
“Very well, Harley. It is your quest now, it seems.” He appeared to have forgotten this fact, carried away by the prize in front of his eyes. “And your magic may be needed for protection. But I shall go with you. Stay close to me at all times and do not try to escape.”
“My Prince, please do not go there!” pleaded Amon-Goose, the mongoose captain. “I am your bodyguard. Let me face the danger.”
“Normally, I would agree, Amon-Goose. But this scroll is not for your eyes.”
“Do not let the snakes and scorpions brush your skin, My Prince,” said the mongoose warrior with revulsion in his voice. “These dead creatures were once filled with poison, do not forget. Perhaps the poison still lingers. This vile heap bristles with a million poison barbs and fangs.”
Harley hadn’t thought of that. It made him boggle at the pile.
“Still want to go, Harley?” said Lisa, daring him.
“Don’t do it Harley,” Amanda warned him.
Was getting the scroll back worth the risk? Harley asked himself. Yes, it had to be. More than his own life rested on the outcome. If he didn’t try to recover the scroll, others would die - his parents, visitors to the school, the rest of his classmates.
And if he shrank from this danger now, then he and his friends might be stuck forever in this rotting world of ancient Egypt. He had to go on.
“I must go. Come on, let’s go and climb the mummy mountain,” he said.
With Kha-em-weasel holding a torch, they edged towards the heap, looking for a valley between hillocks of dead snakes and scorpions. Harley found a spot and stepped carefully onto the pile. The surface appeared springy, but as he lifted himself, it gave a crackle underfoot.
Kha-em-weasel hopped up and together they scaled the heap.
The shaggy remains of snakes and scorpions shifted under Harley’s feet as if the long dead creatures were coming alive.
“I’ll swear they’re squirming!”
“No, it is only your stomach squirming!” Kha-em-weasel quipped, with a twitchy smile. Was it a joke? Did this creature from a nightmare world have a sense of humour? It wasn’t something Harley could have expected of a mummy boy with the head of a mongoose. They kept moving.
Things that spent their lives hiding under rocks or slithering on their bellies, seemed to stir under their advance. A stink of rot wafted up from underneath their feet, filling Harley with a sense of hopelessness. Prince Kha-em-weasel twitched his whiskers.
The flame that lit up the pile showed snake bodies wrapped in peeling bandages the colour of old tobacco, jagged shapes like lightning bolts and here and there, where the bandages had come apart, they revealed the diamond shapes of snakes’ heads. Twisted among the snakes were scorpions, some with their erectile tails hooked through their wrappings like poisonous question marks.
Just looking at the heap made Harley’s skin break out in an itch. He recalled Amon-Goose’s remark about venom.
Egyptian scorpions were much feared by the ancients and had the power to kill. So did cobras and adders, which held even more venom in their bodies. But could snakes and scorpions still be poisonous after thousands of years?
Kha-em-weasel seemed calm enough.
“Aren’t you worried about poison?” said Harley.
“I am protected. The mongoose family can survive a snake bite, but only one, or two if we are lucky.”
“Excuse me for asking, but is everybody around here like you?”
“Like me? No, my father, the pharaoh, is a rat.”
Harley laughed. “You’re brave calling your father a rat. Where I come from, it could land you in a heap of trouble!”
The prince frowned. “In the land of Wa-pet, rats are greatly admired for their cunning and persistence, as is my father Rat-meses.”
“Is the queen a mongoose then?”
“No. The Great Wife, Queen Feather-Tari is a vulture. She has no children. My elder brother and I are children of lesser queens. My own mother, a lesser queen called Ist-No-feret is a mongoose.”
“Aren’t there any people?”
“Only child people. We only tolerate children. Grown children are too hard to control. We banish them and raid neighbouring countries for more children. We prefer the little ones. They are smaller, more amusing and easier to work with. Children are our servants, workmen, builders of pyramids, carriers of bricks, and, most of all our, our pets, for we are greatly amused by your animal-like antics.”
Amanda was a teacher’s pet, Harley thought, but this was going too far.
What kind of a kingdom was this? The Prince had called it the Animal Mummy Kingdom of Wa-pet. Was it a secret underworld realm beneath the real Egypt, a sort of crazy underside where animal mummies ran the world?
If they are all mummies, Harley thought, how can they be alive? It was a mystery - like everything that was happening to him. Would he ever find an explanation?
Right now his attention was occupied with the task of picking his way across the foul smelling heap. They were poised above tons of dead creatures, a slag heap of millions, he estimated. With each step they took, a stench belched up from the surface, as if they were disturbing a garbage heap.
With no warning, Prince Kha-em-weasel shot out a hand to grab Harley’s arm. Harley felt the roughness like a paw gripping him, then felt a tug on his arm, followed by a mighty haul. He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Kha-em-weasel slipped from his arm and dropped as if a trap door had swung open. Harley saw horror jump into the mongoose’s face before he was sucked down.
“Help Harley!”
The flaming torch fell from the prince’s hand.
Whoompf!
The heap of mummy remains gulped in the flame and ignited a blaze of sparks.
The pile had given way. Was there a hollow? The prince was gone. What should he do now? If he let the fire take hold, the prince would cook. If he ignored the prince and put out the fire, the prince would smother.
“Hold your breath! I’m coming!”
Harley hoped that the mongoose had taken a big gulp of air when he fell because the air belching from the hole was putrid. Go for the flames first, he decided. Stamp them out. But first get the torch. He snatched it up by its handle. By now the mummy bandages were crackling like dry leaves in a garden bonfire. He stomped on them.. Ouch. Barbecued toes! He wasn’t wearing sneakers, just sandals. Keep going. The flames fought back, but a few more stomps and he had the fire under control, smoking sullenly.
Harley now dived for the spot where the heap had closed over the prince’s head. Gone. Not even a muffled cry to be heard. The ghastly landslide of mummies had swallowed him.
Harley jammed the handle of the torch into the heap so it was standing upright and then set to work digging, using his cupped hands like spades, ignoring the hidden scorpion tails and snake fangs lying like thorns in a pile of cuttings. Dry shreds of mummy creatures flew. No sign of him yet. Where was he?
“Prince?”
He’d suffocate in the stinking pile.
“What is happening? Is my lord safe?”
The cry came from an anxious Amon-Goose, raking the pile with his flame light, trying to discover what was going on.
Then Harley saw a single scorpion mummy squirm on the surface, lit in the glow of the flame, and now another. A snake shed its bandages like an old skin, gave a wriggle. A small disturbance grew like a quake in the pile, then furry, bandaged fingers emerged through the dead remains, like tenacious weeds of life. Something was trying to come up. The prince - alive!
Harley scooped mummy pieces away from the wriggling fingers. First the mongoose’s fingers came clear, then a hand and next a wrist. Harley clamped his fingers around the wrist. Got him. Now he hauled, his feet skidding on the heap. Don’t go down with him or you’re finished! Come on, you little weasel! He pulled harder. The top of a bandaged head, then the forehead and now the whole pointy face, spluttering, gasping for air, emerged wild eyed into view. Now the shoulders were clear, streaming snake and scorpion remains. The prince grabbed on to Harley’s hand with both of his, helping himself up, kicking to try and gain a grip on the slithering pile as he slid up on his belly. He almost pulled Harley over with him. Harley braced himself, pulling harder. Kha-em-weasel edged clear.
“Pull me out!”
“I’m trying.”
With a few more tugs, Harley had the mongoose up on his knees and then back on his feet. He was out! Kha-em-weasel jumped to his feet and shook himself briskly. Harley removed off a snake mummy wrapped in a choke-hold around the prince throat. The prince brushed off a shower of dead scorpions.
Kha-em-weasel spat out mummy shreds. “Thanks to you, I am saved. Now I am bound more than ever to help you.”
“Do you want to go back to the others? I can go on without you.”
“Not after surviving such a disaster!” His mongoose eyes glowed with angry resolve. “What could be worse?”
“Harley, are you all right?” It was Amanda calling from the far side of the heap. Amanda? Wasn’t Lisa worried about him? No, he shouldn’t expect that. Very few things worried Lisa. And he could hardly expect Enzo to work up a twinge of concern.
“We’re okay,” Harley called back.
Prince Kha-em-weasel plucked up his burning torch and they went on over the mountain of snakes and scorpions, carefully testing the surface with their feet before putting their weight down, drawing close to the casket in the centre of the pile.
Made it! They were here at last. The prince’s flamelight washed over the casket. Black - metal, by the look of it. Harley felt a tremor of excitement. Was their ticket home lying hidden inside it?
They drew closer to the casket. It sat there like the holy black rock of Mecca, surrounded by its seething hordes of worshippers, dead mummy snakes and scorpions, and like worshippers too, Harley and the Prince rested their hands reverently on its cold surface. It was metal all right.
Had they found the outer chest of the nest of caskets that contained the Book of Thoth?
Harley was impatient to know the answer.
“Let’s open it and take a look. Come on, don’t stand there - shine the light closer,” he ordered the mummy boy, then added more politely, “please,” as he noticed a flash of resentment in his eyes. I must remember, Harley thought. This furry litle guy in bandages is a member of royalty.
Kha-em-weasel knelt with him in front of the casket, forgetting the creatures underneath his knees.
His torch flame wobbled in excitement.
“Let me see!”
Harley reached for the outer box. The metal box had no lock and after some effort, it opened on a pair of hinges that creaked mournfully. They peered inside, the prince’s whiskers bristling. A bronze box, blotched with green stains, greeted their gaze. Harley carefully lifted it out, grunting under its weight.
The bronze box proved to be a bit harder to prise open. Kha-em-weasel helped. It opened with a groan of bronzed jaws to reveal a timber box inside. Harley carefully lifted out the box and put it on the heap.
Tension gathered around them, along with fumes from the mummy snakes and scorpions.
Harley’s hands were shaking as he opened the wooden box. He peered inside. Greeting his eyes was a smaller box of smooth, black ebony and inlaid ivory, yellow-tinged with age.
“Only two to go,” the mongoose gulped.
Harley lifted out the ebony and ivory box and set it on the pile too. A collection of boxes was gathering at their elbows. He opened the box. Silver! He lifted it out. Now the prince drew close and they both held their breath. The next box after this silver one, was supposed to be made of solid gold.
“Proceed!” said the prince anxiously.
Harley took out the silver box, held it up in the air for a moment as if hefting it to see if a gold box could be inside, before putting it down. Now he hesitated, bracing himself. What if it was all for nothing and it was empty? Wisps of mummy odour filled the silence.
“Do it!” Kha-em-weasel commanded him. “Or I shall.”
“Okay, okay.”
Harley flipped open the lid of the silver box. The squeak of its hinges was almost drowned by the rik-a-tik-a-tik mongoose cry of delight from the prince.
“It is here,” he croaked. “A golden box.”
Gold blazed in their eyes like a hidden sun inside the box.
“Must be worth a heap!” said Harley.
“Forget the gold. My father’s palace is filled with it. Look for the scroll of magical power instead!” For this prince, knowledge was the real treasure of his searches. “Open it!” he ordered Harley
Harley shrugged. “Here goes.” He flipped the lid open. Was that it? They found themselves staring in silence at a scrap of papyrus, a tiny scroll.
Harley wanted to howl in disappointment. Where was the big scroll he had opened on the internet?
He brought it out numbly, wondering if it would crumble to dust at his touch. But it didn’t. Maybe there was clue in this scroll, small as it was? He closed the lid of the sycamore box so he could use the flat surface as a desktop to examine his find. The prince brought the light closer, flooding the scrap with his torch light, almost set it on fire. A corner of the papyrus bent up in a dog ear and light bled through the yellow and rust grid of its weave.
Did he dare unroll it? He had never handled a real piece of ancient papyrus before, but he had seen his grandfather restore papyrus documents. To a papyrus expert, that yellow-rust grid pattern was more exciting than gold: it held the treasure of messages from the ancient past.
Thankfully, the litlte scroll seemed to be in good condition.
Harley gently unrolled the scroll. Hieroglyphic writing swarmed into view.
Kha-em-weasel stabbed his stubby bandaged finger at the top of the scroll.
“See that rubric?”
“What’s a rubric?”
“A heading in red ink.”
“Oh. Yes, I see it. It’s about Thoth,” said Harley, reading it.
“So you can read!”
“Of course I can read. I go to school.”
“Yes, But does your school teach the ancient sacred writing?” The prince had a point. Harley was reading hieroglyphs, the ancient Egyptian pictorial style of writing. It was as easy to read as Miss Manning’s bold printing on a blackboard. How had he suddenly learnt to read this stuff? It was another mystery to add to the list.
He bent closer to study the hieroglyphic characters. What did the rest of the scroll say? The meaning of the little pictures jumped into his head like film running through a movie projector. He read it out loud:
“This is the beginning ... or frontispiece ... to the chapters of the forbidden Book of Thoth, hidden in sanctuaries in the Animal Mummy Kingdom of Egypt. At the opening of this scroll, Thoth himself will appear to the finder, setting special challenges for the one who seeks to gain its secrets of power. Only by succeeding in these challenges will you find the missing chapters in their hiding places and so gain the full magical powers of the heavens and of the abyss ...”
Harley broke off and gave a yell, not of surprise, but pain. Was it the flare of the Prince’s torch or was the scroll suddenly streaming with a blaze of angry light? His hands flew up to cover his eyes. There was a crack like lightning. When he opened his eyes, the Prince Kha-em-weasel was lying flat on the heap, his snout buried in the mummy pieces.
“What are you doing?” said Harley. “Do you like the smell down there?”
“Get down, Harley, get down!” Kha-em-weasel cried in a muffled, spluttery voice that was filled with terror.
“No thanks. I prefer the air up here.”
Then Harley looked up and he saw what had thrown such a scare into the mongoose prince.
Squatting on its haunches in front of him was the world’s biggest ape, a colossal blue-black baboon, shaggy-coated and dog-faced. It was wreathed in blue smoke and its eyes were narrow-set and deeply sunk. The eyes glittered like stars.
“Thoth!” the Prince wailed. “The god Thoth has appeared before us! Turn your eyes away, Harley. His eyes of burning electrum will strike you blind!”
“Thoth?” Harley said in shaky whisper. “But I thought Thoth was a bird, not a monkey.” But then Harley remembered. Thoth could also take the form of an ape.
The apparition didn’t move. It just sat with its hands resting on its knees, its deep eyes boring into him. The ape was pretty scary looking and when it opened its mouth it unsheathed teeth like daggers.
“Hello,” said Harley. “You wrote the scroll of Thoth I found on the internet, didn’t you?” No answer. “Well can I have it back please? My friends and I are in a bit of a jam,” he jabbered, “and we need the scroll back to get home again soon. We have to stop a crazy plague that’s attacking our school.” Then Harley had a thought. “Unless you can just send us home without the scroll, using your magic powers.”
The great ape ignored what Harley was saying as if his chatter was no more important than the buzzing of a fly.
“Hear me!” Its voice was a thunder-crack. “This is your challenge. The book of Thoth has now been divided into separate chapters, each one hidden in a different, secret tomb. I will guide you to the danger-filled sanctuaries where the chapters of the book are waiting to be won, but I will only agree to help you if you succeed in a series of magical trials that come before you.”
“Magical trials?”
“Contests of magical power. A foreign magician from the desert will come and try to exert his will over pharaoh with many signs and wonders, but you must strengthen pharaoh’s heart so that he stands firm, using all the powers that will be given to you. Fail to persuade pharaoh and you lose the contest. You will never go home. You will stay trapped in the land of Wa-pet where you and your companions will become slaves until you die. And when you die, you will have no tombs, no afterlife. You will fall into the black pit of everlasting nothingness where the eater of hearts will feed on your souls.”
“Magic? Me? I’m not very good at magic tricks,” said Harley. “I’m better at cracking jokes.” He thought he’d better give him an example: “I go ape over jokes - ”
The ape had about as much sense of humour as Miss Manning, he discovered. The deep eyes swallowed him. “Go and face your first trial. Already, the enemy magician has come to challenge the court of pharaoh. Remember the curse that will befall you if you fail - and see that you succeed!”
Poof!
The ape vanished, and a wisp of blue smoke was all that hung around to show where it had been.
Kha-em-weasel still lay there with his face pressed into the reeking mattress of mummy snakes and scorpions.
“You can come up for air now,” he told Kha-em-weasel. “The monkey has disappeared in a puff of smoke.”
The prince lifted his eyes fearfully.
“Did you hear what he was telling me ?” said Harley.
“No. He spoke? Then he must have done so for your ears only. What did he say?”
“You mean you didn’t hear him? It was like thunder going off.” Harley told the Prince what the ape had said. “Thoth also said he’ll help me look for each of the missing chapters of the Book of Thoth. But he’ll only help me if I pass some magical tests he has in mind. I wish everyone would stop talking about magic, though. I’ve never been any good at it. I was given a magic set once for my birthday. It came with a book of tricks, but I was hopeless. Even my mother could see through my tricks. I got a coin stuck in my father’s ear.”
“Well you had better take a powerful interest in magic now for your challenge will soon be upon you.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“Back to the palace. You will be safe under my protection. I think I shall introduce you as a new court magician and your friends will become my pets.”
Pets? Only Amanda was used to being a pet, a teacher’s pet.
Lisa, Enzo and Amanda were waiting beside an anxious-looking Amon-Goose and his men.
“All is well,” the prince assured him.
“What’s going on?” said Enzo. “What did you find?”
“A piece of the scroll,” said Harley. “And a great ape, who looked like King Kong. He popped up out of nowhere and promised to help me find the rest of the scroll so that we can get back home again.”
“Cool. These mummified possums are pushing their luck. What do they think they’re going to do with us?” he demanded to know.
“You will be taken to the palace and become our pets,” the Prince informed him, overhearing.
Pets? Enzo squinted at the prince and back at Harley. “Did you hear what that bandage head said ...?”
“Guests,” Harley put in quickly. “He said guests.” Lisa was starting to scowl too. Amanda didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t see anything funny about being a pet. But Harley did not want Enzo and Lisa to start making things tricky. As he saw matters, they had an ally in Kha-em-weasel who could help them in their quest and they were going to need all the friends they could get in this alien Animal Kingdom if they were ever going to succeed in returning home.
“Good,” said Enzo. “It’s just that I thought he said ...”
“Guests, guests,” Harley murmured, calming him. “But we’re going to have to play along with them for a bit. We don’t want stick out too much and draw attention to ourselves until we can find all the parts of the scroll. We’re just going to have to act cool. You’ve got to understand that things are a bit different here. In this place, the animals look after the children instead of the other way around.”
“You mean the animals do all the work?”
“Well, not exactly. The animals run things. But it’s important we don’t make a fuss and look shocked about anything or we’ll never blend in. Just try to act cool,” he said pointedly to Enzo.
Enzo pulled an ugly face. “You sayin’ I’m not cool?”
“Not me.”
“Nothing shocks me,” said Lisa.
But now Harley struck unexpected resistance from Amanda.
“What kind of a world is this where animals are on top? Animal mummies! Yuk! God made us in charge of the animals.” She must have learnt this from her father, the church minister, but did she have to go and bring it up now? Her mouth was set in a firm line.
“Just play along, Amanda. Please. Pretend it’s a game, like wrapping your Barbie in bandages.”
“All right, Harley, if you want me to. But I don’t think this is a very a nice game so please hurry and get us back home again.”
“Come,” Kha-em-weasel called to them. “We must return to the palace before daybreak. I do not want to draw too much attention to your arrival. There are those in my father’s government who may prefer to set you to work with the other slave children, building the new city of Pi-Rat-meses.”
It was dark when they emerged from the tomb to find themselves on warm desert sand under stars. A pale half-ring of moon hung in the sky. It looked like a ring left by a hot tea cup on a table.
Harley thought of Grumpy and having tea with him in his study and he felt a pang to be home again.
A faint smudge of light in the sky showed that the morning sun was still a long way from dawning. Would it be the same sun that shone on his school and his home? How could he have ended up so far away from home in time and distance?
Harley blinked, not just at the unexpected hour, but at the sight outside. Waiting for them in a clearing of flaming torch light were children with carrying chairs, flat bottomed, open chairs tied to long carrying poles that had flared ends in the shape of golden papyrus plants. Who were these children? The child servants, prince Ka-em-weasel had spoken about?
The carrying chairs took two passengers at a time and they had to sit with their knees up. Harley went with Ka-em-weasel, the two girls Lisa and Amanda were put in another chair, while the captain of the mongoose guard, Amon-Goose, climbed into another with Enzo.
“Cool,” said Enzo. “I can ask him all about possum warfare.”
They set off, the company of mongoose soldiers going ahead and behind, carrying torches to light the way. Harley couldn’t see much except stars like white specks of chalk on a blackboard sky. How could this kingdom be underground if it had deserts and skies and stars?
Harley could not relax in the carrying chair, even though it was gently swaying on the shoulders of its child porters. I’m being carried along by kids. Am I too heavy? How does it feel for them? Maybe if I hold myself stiff I won’t be so heavy. But they seemed to be coping well enough and even picking up their pace.
“Where is your land, Harley?” Ka-em-weasel asked.
Harley hesitated. How could he explain it to the mummy creature? He couldn’t explain it to himself.
“My land is in a different place and time.”
Ka-em-weasel gave a rapid shake of his head like an animal trying to dislodge a flea in his ear. Maybe he was trying to dislodge an unwelcome fact from his brain.
“This is a hard answer and too puzzling to think about. I will fix my mind on helping you discover the chapters of the scroll instead. That is what matters now.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I want to inherit the scrolls when you have used them. I also fear this magician coming from the desert. Our prophets have prophesied his coming and the magical powers he will use against us. Since you will gain the powers of the scroll first, it will be up to you to save Egypt and so I must help you.”
They reached a river, thronged with papyrus reeds and in another clearing a large boat stood waiting at a stone quay, glowing in lamplight. They climbed out of their carrying chairs.
“What kind of tub is that?” said Enzo. The vessel was made from papyrus bundles lashed together with ropes, it’s bow and stern swept up into the air and it had a deckhouse amidships.
On board, brown skinned children crewed over the boat, under the command of a fat, mummy toad. The captain had the broad head and bulging eyes and a croaking voice to match. He squatted on top of the deckhouse, croaking orders to his crew of children.
“Roll out the gangplank for his Highness, stand by to cast off. All rowers - to your oars!”
A gangplank rumbled out of the boat onto the bank and the new arrivals went on board.
The child crew stood by, wooden oars at the ready. Harley felt their curious stares as they went on board.
“Pampered pets!” a boy spat over the side. “We slave at the oars, while they come here in carrying chairs! What’s so special about them?”
“Look at their funny clothes,” another laughed. “Where did they capture specimens like these?”
“Hold your tongues!“ The toad captain puffed his throat, making his mummy bandages stretch and twang like guitar strings. “Or I’ll sell you all to the brick-makers where you will be set to work building pharaoh’s great new city. There you will feel the lash and stagger under load of bricks. Then you will think of this as a pleasure boat. Be glad of your fate!”
“Go inside the deckhouse and remain there,” the mongoose soldier, Amon-Goose, instructed Harley and his friends. “It is better that you keep out of sight.” He guided them into a darkened cabin and closed a door behind them.
What now? Harley thought.
The deckhouse was dark as a cave and hot. It was the first time the four had been alone together since they’d landed here. The others couldn’t see Harley in the dark, but they pinned him with questions just the same.
“Okay, Harley, what’s really going on here?” It was Lisa’s voice, angry and demanding.
“How did we get here, please Harley?” It was Amanda’s voice, pleading.
“What do you mean you saw King Kong?” It was Enzo’s voice, puzzled and growing cranky.
“You got us into this Harley, how are you going to get us out? I’m getting tired of this and want to go home.” Lisa again.
Harley told them everything that had taken place on the heap of snake and scorpions and explained about the quest that he - and all of them - must complete. “We’ve got to work together, if we’re ever going to have a chance of getting back.”
“What do you know about magic, anyway?” said Lisa dubiously.
“The mongoose prince thinks I’ve got powers because I opened and read part of the scroll.” Harley told them about the prince’s torch and how it had mysteriously flared up at the moment when he’d made a wish.
“I don’t like magic,” said Amanda. “It’s wrong to believe in it.”
“I could do with a bit of magic right now,” said Lisa. “I wish somebody would shine a light in here.”
“Let there be light,” Harley muttered. The words popped out of his mouth. Instantly there was a flash in the darkness and a flame danced into life on an oil lamp that was sitting on the floor.
Everybody turned to stare at the new light and then everybody turned to stare at Harley in a new light.
“Cool!” said Enzo. “Great trick, Harley. How’d you do that?”
“Harley, you’re a magician!” Lisa announced, impressed.
The four were bathed in light from a lamp on the floor, a pottery jar with a twisted cloth dipped in oil. |