Big Change for Stuart (5 page)

Stuart reached out to touch it, and instead
of
a flat, painted surface, his fingers felt a series of grooves and, at the centre of them, a little flat button. Cautiously, he pressed it. There was a metallic squeal, like a hinge in need of oiling, and one of the sides shifted just a little, enough to let in a narrow triangle of light. He gave it a push and it opened completely.

So that's how it worked
, thought Stuart.
Great-Uncle Tony's assistant, Lily, would press the button and sneak out of the back, and when Great-Uncle Tony opened up the pyramid for the audience to see, it would be empty!

It occurred to him that he could play a trick on April to pay her back for being late – he could hide inside the pyramid, wait until she was in the room, and then creep out and surprise her. Confidently this time, he pulled the side shut. He waited for a while in the red-starred darkness before something began to nag at the back of his mind, something about the luminous star on the floor.

Once again he reached down to touch it, and with his fingertips explored the pattern of grooves. There were six of them, radiating out like the
spokes
of a rimless wheel. He felt a great surge of excitement. He delved into his pocket and took out the metal star – it would fit, he just
knew
it would.

Heart trotting, mouth dry, he slotted the star into place.

The effect was instantaneous.

All four sides of the pyramid fell open with a noise like a thunderclap, and Stuart screamed.

He was in the middle of a desert.

SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY
, Stuart stood up and looked around.

Instead of the side room of Beeton Museum, he saw a sweep of greyish sand peppered with rocks. A few low thorn trees were the only vegetation; not far away, a camel was grazing on one of them. The air was cold, damp and misty, the sky a dirty white. Overhead, a large dark bird was circling.

Stuart shivered. This felt much too real to be a dream.

This was – this had to be – magic.

A breeze ruffled across the plateau, stirring the mist. Stuart waited, still stunned by the sudden change in his world. Where was he? What was he doing here? How could he get back home again?
It's
a puzzle
, April had said when they found Great-Uncle Tony's letter – but what sort of puzzle was this?

The mist shifted and swirled, like a set of lacy curtains, revealing odd glimpses of a wide and empty landscape. Sand stretched out in all directions. It was so quiet that Stuart could hear the ripping sound of the camel tearing off stringy strips of bark, and then the soft thud of its feet as it moved on to the next tasty branch.

Stuart looked down at his own feet. He was still standing on the square base of the Pharaoh's Pyramid. The six-spoked star lay snugly in its matching slot. The base didn't look broken or damaged, although he noticed that there were two little holes punched in each of the edges.

So where was the rest of the pyramid?

No sooner had the question jumped into his head than a splinter of sun poked through the low cloud, turning the sand from grey to golden. Out of the corner of his eye Stuart saw a bright flash, and turned to see a blinding triangle of light some distance off. Shielding his eyes, he walked
towards
it and realized that it was one of the pyramid sides, leaning against a huge boulder and reflecting the sun.

At that moment, just behind him, the camel gave a snort and took another step forward. One of its feet made the usual soft thud, and the other a metallic clang. Stuart switched direction and found another of the pyramid sides, this one half buried in the sand. He waited until the camel had moved on, and then heaved the metal triangle out of its resting place. It was heavier than he'd imagined, and one of its edges bore a pair of prongs, sticking out like short, blunt fingers.

‘Oh, I get it,' said Stuart out loud. ‘I think I get it. It's a
jigsaw
puzzle.'

The third side he found wedged in a rocky cleft, and somebody seemed to have built a camp fire on top of the fourth: it was covered in ash, and a large half-charred log lay across it.

It took him an age to drag the four sides back to the base. The sun was burning off the mist and it was getting hotter all the time; Stuart's T-shirt was dark with sweat. Would it be possible to die of
thirst
in a magic landscape? There wasn't a scrap of shade to sit in, nothing to drink and nothing to eat apart from a single stick of chewing gum in the pocket of his jeans. He tore it in two and saved one half for later.

Overhead, the large dark bird had been joined by three others. They weaved silently across the deepening blue.

‘OK …' murmured Stuart. He braced himself and lifted one of the sides. The two prongs slotted neatly into the two matching holes on the base. Easy!

There was a belch behind him and he turned to see the camel watching with what looked like contempt.

‘What?' asked Stuart.

The camel flared its nostrils and went on eating. It was wearing a set of reins, he realized, and the remains of a saddle, having presumably dumped its rider somewhere in the desert.

Stuart turned back to his task.

The second and third sides of the pyramid slotted in just as neatly as the first. Stuart lifted the
fourth
side, started to manoeuvre it into place, and then paused. He had a sudden horrid vision of the Pharaoh's Pyramid vanishing, leaving him standing alone in the desert. He needed to be
inside
it when it disappeared. He stepped onto the base, crouched down and, with a sense of quiet triumph, slotted the fourth side into place and began to pull it shut.

Immediately, with a dull thud, the other three sides fell over.

Stuart looked round and stared, open-mouthed, at the triangles lying flat on the sand. ‘No,' he said out loud. ‘Now that's not fair.'

The sun bored into his back. The horizon rippled in the heat.

Stuart got to his feet and gave it a second go. One side, two sides, three sides, four si—And then
wham!
As he pulled the fourth side closed, the other three collapsed back onto the desert floor.

He stood, hands on hips, breathing heavily, panic crawling inside his chest. How was he going to solve this? And what if he
couldn't
? He took a deep breath.

‘OK, it's a puzzle,' he said out loud again – somehow it was easier to think in a calm and logical way if he imagined he was talking to someone else. ‘And it's
not
just a jigsaw puzzle.'

Grimly, for the third time, he lifted three sides into place. He remembered that there was a small loop right at the top of each, and this time he hooked the fingers of one hand through them. Could he hold up three of the sides while he lifted the fourth?

He reached out vainly.

No, he couldn't, it was too far away – he'd need an arm the length of an orang-utan's.

‘If I had a thin rope of some kind,' he said, ‘I could slip it through the loop on the fourth side, and pull it up while I was still holding onto the others. But where can I find a thin rope?'

The answer to his question walked by just a few metres away, reins dangling.

‘OK,' said Stuart to himself. ‘So all I have to do is catch a camel.'

STUART HAD ONCE
watched a programme on camels in which it had been shown that they could spit accurately and kick in any direction. But was this camel real, or was it a sort of figment of Great-Uncle Tony's imagination?

He moved closer.

It looked real. It
smelled
real.

‘Stay,' he said feebly, edging towards it. ‘Nice camel.'

It glanced at him, and then went on ripping at the thorn tree with teeth the size of piano keys. The reins were tied to a woven nose band which fastened just under its chin. Just under its chin and very close to its teeth.

‘Good boy.' Stuart remembered the half-stick of
chewing
gum in his pocket. He took it out and held it at arm's length.

The camel stopped eating.

‘Here, boy,' said Stuart, his voice sounding reedy and nervous. ‘Yum yum.'

The camel took a pace forward.

‘Lovely chewing gum.'

With incredible swiftness, the camel lunged towards Stuart and snatched the gum out of his hand. Stuart made a grab for the reins. The camel tossed its head and Stuart found himself flying through the air.

‘Ow,' he said, landing in the sand several metres away. The camel gave him a contemptuous look and then cantered off into the shimmering distance, chewing as it went. Stuart was left alone.

As he got to his feet, he thought of a phrase in Great-Uncle Tony's letter:

‘A little stronger than I intended,' finished Stuart,
rubbing
his leg. And then he noticed something on the ground and stooped to pick it up. It was a length of bark, revoltingly saturated with camel spit, but quite long and stringy nonetheless. He hunted around for some other pieces, and knotted three or four lengths together until they were long enough to thread through the loop. Feeling a bit like a survival expert on the telly, he gave the bark string an experimental tug. It broke. Clearly it needed to be thicker.

‘Perhaps if I make three strings and then plait them …' he said doubtfully. He'd never done any plaiting, but it couldn't be that hard, could it?

After about three minutes of hopeless twiddling and twisting and unravelling, he caught himself wishing that April was with him. He had no doubt that
she'd
know how to plait – it was just the sort of thing that girls always knew. They'd be out of here in two minutes.

A drop of sweat trickled into his eyes, and he paused to wipe his forehead. His T-shirt was damp, his jeans sticking to his legs, the buckle of his belt so hot that it was actually—

‘
Belt!
' shouted Stuart, leaping to his feet. ‘My
belt
!'

It took him about six seconds to get back into the pyramid, take his belt off, slip it through the loop on the fourth triangle and grab the loops on the other three sides. He took one last look at the blistering landscape, the circling birds, the blurred and distant blob that was the camel, and then he gave the belt a pull.

As the fourth side closed, the blurry distant blob moved closer, and Stuart realized that it wasn't the camel at all, but something much smaller. Something white and brown. And then, before he could see it properly, the fourth side snapped shut.

Slowly he released his grip on the loops. For a moment all was darkness, apart from the glimmer of red stars, and then Stuart yelled as a vivid green shape writhed suddenly across the inside of the pyramid. It was an emerald S, which stretched and tautened and glowed and grew – and then disappeared utterly as one side of the pyramid opened.

‘Are you all right?' asked one of April's sisters, peering anxiously in on him. Behind her, the museum looked reassuringly normal. ‘I heard you shouting,' continued May (or June).