Snyder, Zilpha Keatley (10 page)

“And maybe, after a week or two, they’ll lose interest,” Melanie said. “Maybe they’ll play for a while and then they’ll get homesick for their old ball games, and everything will be just like it used to be.” “Yeah,” April agreed. “I’ll bet they do. Or else, maybe they won’t even come back at all. Maybe they were just curious, and now that they know all about it, they just might not bother to come back. And I don’t think they’re going to fink to the other kids, either. At least, not as long as they don’t get mad at us, or something. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just don’t show up tomorrow at all.”

Hieroglyphics

KEN AND TOBY SHOWED UP IN EGYPT THE NEXT DAY, all right. They showed up right on time, overflowing with ideas and loaded down with stuff. At least, Toby was overflowing with ideas, and Ken was carrying most of the stuff.

The four original Egyptians were especially thrilled and amazed about the stuff the boys brought for Set. It seemed that sixth grade boys just normally kept a lot of things around that were perfect for the altar of an evil god. Set’s altar, which had always been rather bare in comparison to Isis’s jeweled and flowered throne, was suddenly rich with ornaments. There were several lifelike rubber things-spiders, snakes and bugs. There was a real skull of a medium-sized animal, maybe a cat or a skunk, and a well-preserved dead tarantula. There was a wicked-looking

theatrical dagger, with a twisted blade that sank into the handle to make fake stabbings look real. But the two best things were a shrunken head and a large stuffed owl.

The shrunken head wasn’t real, of course, but it was an expensive rubber one that did look terribly real. It was Ken’s, and he was obviously quite pleased with himself for bringing it. The owl was Toby’s and it was real; that is, it had been once, but now it was stuffed. It was a little beat-up looking, but Toby said that was because he’d had it ever since he was a baby. Actually, what he said was that his father had given it to him to cut his teeth on when he was five months old, but that might only have been one of Toby’s stories.

Anyway, it looked great perched on a little shelf just above the altar of the evil god. It sat there, in the shadows among the spider webs, and peered down balefully over its tooth-scarred beak. At first Toby suggested that it could be a servant of Set, whose duty was to carry the message of doom to Set’s victims; but later on someone remembered Thoth, the bird-headed god of wisdom and writing. From then on the owl was known as Thoth.

Besides all the other stuff, Toby had also brought some pencils and paper. He said he’d been thinking

it over, and he’d decided the first thing they ought to do was finish the alphabet of hieroglyphics the

girls had started.

“Oh, is that right,” April said. “Is that what you’ve decided? Whose Egypt Game do you think this is, anyway? Just because-“

She had a lot more things to say, but Toby interrupted. “Okay, okay. Cool it for a minute and let me finish. Let me tell you the rest of my idea before you start flipping your wig. Then if you don’t dig ft-” he shrugged, “we won’t do it.”

That seemed fair enough so April shut up, but she kept her eyes narrowed warily as Toby explained. When they had the alphabet all made up, they could memorize it and use it to write secret messages-at school and everyplace. They could write about things like when to meet in Egypt again, and what they thought of the teacher, and all sorts of other private information. Then if the messages fell into enemy hands, no one would know what it was all about Besides that, Toby thought they should each choose an Egyptian name-Marshall was already Marshamosis-and a hieroglyphic symbol that stood for the name. That way each one could sign his messages with his symbol and that would make the whole thing more mysterious. Toby took out a piece of paper all folded up into a tiny square and spread it out on the floor of the shed. On it were some hieroglyphics and some Egyptian names that he had copied out of books the night before. Everyone except April

immediately got down on hands and knees and began to examine the paper eagerly and discuss possible names.

April was telling herself it was a crummy idea, when all of-a sudden she remembered Bastet. Bastet had always seemed especially intriguing to April. She was a sort of cat goddess, and there was a famous statue of her as a cat, with cruel mysterious eyes and earrings in her ears. If you were to pick the name of Bastet, your symbol could be a cat’s head with earrings. ”Hey,” she said, dropping down to join the group, “I’ve got a great one.”

Everybody liked April’s name and hieroglyph. In fact, Toby said it gave him an idea for a hieroglyph for himself. He’d already picked out his name. It was going to Ramose, after a famous Egyptian wise man. And since an owl was supposed to be wise, what could be better than an owl’s head for a symbol.

Melanie knew right away what she wanted her name to be. She had gone once with her parents to hear Leontyne Price sing Aida and had been fascinated with the tragic story of the beautiful princess who had been a captive in ancient Egypt. As a matter of fact, she’d already thought of herself as Aida, at times, when they were playing , but she hadn’t told anyone. A symbol to go with Aida was a bit of a problem, but finally Melanie picked the bird hieroglyph because it stood for the letter A in

the real Egyptian alphabet.

When everyone was through choosing, Melanie made a new scroll and added it to the secret records.

Ken had picked the name of Horemheb because Toby said Horemheb had been a great general and also a pharoah. He thought up his own hieroglyph of a bloody sword. There wasn’t anything particularly Egyptian about it, but it did seem to go with being a general. Elizabeth’s symbol was April’s idea. It was a real Egyptian hieroglyph and it meant “heart,” to go with Nefertiti, which means “Beloved One.” And of course Marshall’s hieroglyph was the double crown of Egypt because he was already the boy-pharoah-and that’s what he liked to be best.

The next few meetings of the Egyptians were taken up with finishing the hieroglyphic alphabet and memorizing it. Some of the letters that they used in their alphabet were actual Egyptian hieroglyphs, but for the sounds that were missing in the Egyptian alphabet, as well as a few that were too difficult to draw in their original form, they made up their own. Then because their book on Egyptian writing told how hieroglyphics were considered magical works of art as well as writing, and because they were always done in many bright colors, it was decided that some sets of colored pens were necessary. So the game was suspended for a couple of afternoons while money was raised to buy the pens. Ken and Toby mowed a

few lawns, and the girls and Marshall scouted the neighborhood for empty bottles to return to the grocery store.

Just buying the pens took most of another afternoon because it took so long to get waited on at Schmitt’s Variety Store. Melanie said her mother said that the reason Mr. Schmitt never had a clerk for long was that he paid such low salaries. Except for Mr. Schmitt’s cousin, a stocky redheaded young man with blotchy freckles, there was no one working in the store that day but Mr. Schmitt. The cousin never waited on customers, but only dusted shelves and brought stuff out from the backroom; and Mr. Schmitt, himself, never waited on kids until after all the grownups were taken care of, no matter who’d been there longest. So the Egypt gang waited and waited and it was all pretty frustrating.

But the pens were worth the effort, and during the next few days Egypt was full of scribes practicing the ancient art of hieroglyphic writing. In a short time all sorts of possibilities were suggested and explored. Letters were written and exchanged and deciphered. Decorative hieroglyphic borders were added to the poster-paint pictures that already adorned the walls of the temple. Secret mailing spots were picked out all around the neighborhood, such as a certain clump of weeds in an untended parkway or the crotch of a particular plum tree. A mysterious and beautifully

drawn page of hieroglyphics got loose in the sixth-grade class at Wilson School and was passed around and puzzled over by everyone, including the teacher; but no one came even close to figuring it out. And of course, no one was as loudly and dramatically puzzled as the four sixth-grade members of .

Later, there was a brief and bloodless war, a sort of battle of the scribes, when Ramose and Bastet started an argument over whether a line of hieroglyphics should be written from left to right or from up to down. Everybody took sides and went home mad; and for a day or two Toby and Ken went back to playing basketball after school.

It turned out to be a good thing really, because they were just in time to find out about a plot. Some of the other boys had gotten so curious about what Ken and Toby had found to do after school that was better than basketball, that they were getting ready to launch an investigation.

Toby took care of that in a hurry. Without exactly saying so, he managed to spread the rumor that he and Ken had an after-school job-a very serious job involving actual work. Toby figured that there was nothing less interesting to most of the kids he knew than an after-school job, and he was right. After that the other boys weren’t nearly so curious.

Then when a few days had passed and all the

Egyptians had had a chance to cool off, Ken and Toby turned up in Egypt again-and the others were glad to see them. It did seem best not to talk about hieroglyphics right away-but that was all right because everyone was a little tired of them anyhow-particularly Marshall.

It wasn’t that Marshall hadn’t taken any interest in hieroglyphic writing, because he had. As a matter of fact, he could almost do a better job of reading and writing in Egyptian than he could in English. But, since he wasn’t even in kindergarten yet, he wasn’t exactly fluent in either one. So towards the end of the hieroglyphic period, when he’d learned about as much Egyptian writing as he felt ready for, he hadn’t had very much to do. Most of the time he spent just watching. He had watched the other Egyptians writing and planning and arguing, he had watched an ant hole in the corner of the storage yard, and every once in a while he had watched the little window in one of the walls of the land of Egypt.

Then, one day not long after Ken and Toby returned to the land of Egypt, a neighbor’s cat got into the Chung’s apartment and killed Peter the parakeet-the only pet Elizabeth had ever owned. Elizabeth was brokenhearted, and it was while they were trying to cheer her up that April and Melanie got the idea Cor the Ceremony for the Dead.

The Ceremony for the Dead

IT WAS SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND APRIE, MELANIE and Marshall had just come down to get Elizabeth to join the boys in Egypt for a previously scheduled rendezvous. When Elizabeth met them at the door with her dead pet, and tears in her eyes, it was only natural that somebody should think of a funeral. And when April and Melanie started tossing the idea back and forth, decorating and elaborating the way they always did, it worked just the way it was supposed to. Elizabeth’s tears slowed up, and a damp dimple flickered in her cheek

By the time the three girls and Marshall squeezed through the fence to Egypt, where Ken and Toby were already waiting, a great deal of the necessary background material was already beginning to take shape. Prince Pete-ho-tep, son of the great Queen

had just fallen in a battle with a terrible monster, and his body was being taken in solemn procession to the temple of Anubis, God of the Dead.

Ken and Toby were gratifyingly enthusiastic. In fact, Toby, who always had to be right in the middle of everything, insisted right away that he and Ken-Horemheb, that is-were going to be the high priests of Anubis.

“Now, just a minute,” April said. “Melanie and I thought up this ceremony. We get to be the high priestesses of the dead.”

“You mean Aida-you and Aida,” Toby corrected. Just the day before a rule had been passed that members should be called only by their Egyptian names while they were inside the land of Egypt.

“Okay1 Me and Aida. Anyway it was our idea.”

“Yeah, but I’ve just finished reading a great book that tells all about what they did to the mummies and everything. I’ve got some tough ideas.”

“So have I,” April said.

“Queen ought to choose the high priest,” Melanie said, interrupting the exchange of glares. “After all, it’s her parakeet.”

That broke the deadlock. Elizabeth didn’t want to decide against anybody, so she put a pebble in one hand and let them choose. Ken and Toby won and got to be the high priests of Anubis.

The first thing Toby did as high priest was to

announce that the whole thing was going to take a long time. In real Egyptian times, he said, the preparation of the dead and the funeral ceremony took as much as forty days. Theirs wouldn’t take that long, but maybe it would last as much as five or six. He said that before he could really get started, they were going to need a lot of supplies, so until he could get the things he needed they might just as well go on with the procession to the temple.

Melanie suggested that the procession needed palm branches and flower petals and that sort of thing; and of course everyone thought of the trash bin behind the florist shop. So, a few minutes later, the entire population of Egypt was sneaking up the alley on the way to sort over the florist’s recent rejects. As soon as they returned, loaded with loot, the procession got under way.

Marshall came first carrying the smoking incense burner. Next came Elizabeth, as the Queen Mother and Chief Mourner. One of the curtain robes was draped over her head as a veil and she carried a big bouquet of only slighty wilted dahlias. Then came April and Melanie as the mourning populace, scattering flowers and chanting, “Weep for Prince Pete-ho-tep-fallen in battle,” in a high mournful wail. And last of all, came the two high priests of Anubis, carrying on a flower-strewn plank the dead body of Prince Pete-ho-tep.

The Ceremony for the Dead

The procession wound its way back and forth across the storage yard several times, and came to a stop in the temple. There the bier was placed on a specially prepared altar in the middle of the floor. At that point the ceremony had to stop for fresh ideas. Since this was the first Ceremony for the Dead there was no record scroll to follow, and it was necessary to stop now and then for discussion and new suggestions. Afterwards, of course, Melanie would make a record of the things that were done-and any future Ceremony for the Dead wouldn’t have to stop and start.