Horten's Incredible Illusions (4 page)
“Yes.”
“And change your clothes sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“And go to bed at a reasonable time?”
“Yes.”
“And if you go out during the day, will you stick with friends and leave notes for Dad so he knows where you are?”
“Yes.”
“Because if you only
tell
him things, he forgets. You have to write it down.”
“I know.”
She bit her lip, undecided.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” said Stuart. “We’ll be absolutely
fine
.”
The next morning he got to the museum early and was walking in small, impatient circles outside the main entrance when the caretaker turned up at ten past nine, shortly followed by the curator.
“Don’t forget your official identification,” said Rod Felton, and Stuart pinned on his hideous MINI EXPERT badge and then made his way to the side room. Sunlight was streaming through the window.
“Can you finish those descriptions by midday?” asked Rod Felton, popping his head around the door. “Then we can print them up and laminate them, ready for the exhibition opening tomorrow.”
Stuart nodded, sure that April would remember a notebook and pen. He checked his watch and frowned. How could she be late when there was so much to do?
He waited another five minutes. Still no April.
He got the little six-spoked wheel out of his pocket and studied it intently from every angle, but there was nothing new to see.
He trudged along to Rod Felton’s office and borrowed some scrap paper and a pencil and—as an afterthought—a tape measure.
He wrote THE PHARAOH’S PYRAMID in large careful letters at the top of the page and then underlined it. Twice. And then checked his watch yet again.
It was ten o’clock.
April was three-quarters of an hour late. She’d said, “Don’t touch anything till I get there,
“
but if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t be able to describe the tricks properly, and he’d miss Rod Felton’s deadline. And besides, they were
his
tricks, even if he couldn’t actually prove it to anyone. So, of course he could touch them if he wanted to.
“Right then,” he said out loud, secretly feeling rather pleased with himself. “I’ll just have to start on my own …”
A gold-colored pyramid, the sides covered in swirly marks. The base is square, and each of the four sides is an equilatteral triangle. The appex of the pyramid is about 5 feet high.
He had to write
about
because (as usual) he was too short to measure it properly.
Each of the sides has a gold-and-silver handle right at the top, shaped like a curling snake. There are no obvios hinges joining the sides together.
He stood on tiptoe, gripped the nearest snake-shaped handle, and pulled. The whole triangular side immediately swung down, cracking him on the head; it was hinged at the bottom, he realized, and was heavier than it looked. He lowered the side to the floor, and stood rubbing his skull for a moment, and then he stooped to get a clearer view of the inside of the pyramid.
It was jet-black, so shiny that the varnish still looked wet, and the walls were painted with a scattering of red stars. Stuart took the metal star out of his pocket and held it against one of the painted ones. It was exactly the same size and shape.
He put the star back in his pocket and walked around the pyramid again. However hard he tugged at the handles on the other three sides, none of them would shift.
Stuart lifted the first side up again, and it clicked neatly into position, the pyramid complete once more.
Then he tried one of the other handles again. This time it opened easily.
Grinning, Stuart added a line to his description:
It is only possible to open one side at a time.
He crouched down and stepped inside the pyramid. It was quite roomy—easily big enough for an adult to sit in. He could almost imagine the scene on stage, as Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten introduced the trick: “
Ladies and gentlemen, my lovely assistant, Lily, will now climb into the Pharaoh’s Pyramid. As you can see, once the side is closed again, she will have no possible means of escape …
“
And yet there had to be a way out: a concealed button, or a spring, or a handle, operated from the inside, so that the assistant could secretly get out. Stuart ran his fingertips over the walls and felt, near the top of each, a little loop of metal, just big enough to hook a finger into and colored the same jet-black as the rest of the surface. He checked, and found that there was one on the open side as well.
He hooked his finger into the latter and heaved. The side began to swing shut.
Should I wait for April?
he wondered.
No
, he thought, pulling harder.
I want to solve this myself.
After all, what was the worst that could happen? He could be stuck inside the pyramid until April or Rod Felton turned up. A bit embarrassing, but not actually disastrous.
Unless, of course, the pyramid was airtight.
In which case he might start to suffocate and be found unconscious or possibly dead some hours later, so perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea after all—and maybe, on second thought, it would be better if he didn’t actually fully shut the—
There was a loud and definite
click
, and Stuart found himself in utter darkness. Not the faintest chink of light was visible. He pushed at the walls but they didn’t budge. He pulled at the metal loops: nothing.
“Brilliant,” he muttered, trying not to panic.
And then he saw a glimmer of red light, a glimmer that strengthened and grew and multiplied—a constellation of glimmers all around him. The red stars were luminous!
Nine or ten twinkled from each wall; as he twisted around to look at them, a glimpse of red on the floor caught his eye. One single star shone from the center of it.
Stuart reached out to touch it, and instead of a flat, painted surface, his fingers felt a series of grooves and, at the center 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, and 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 explored the pattern of grooves with his fingertips. 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 pounding, 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 grayish 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 and 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 the letter from Great-Uncle Tony—but what sort of puzzle?
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 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 gray 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 toward it and realized that it was one of the pyramid sides, leaning against a huge boulder and reflecting the light of 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 campfire on top of the fourth: it was covered in ash, and a large half-charred log lay across it.
It took him a very long time 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 other than 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 sky.
“Okay …” 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 maneuver it into place, and then paused. He had a sudden horrible 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 around and stared, openmouthed, 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 try. 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.
