Snyder, Zilpha Keatley (13 page)

land of Egypt. And, just as they both had feared, he had not been at the nursery school. So there had been nothing they could do but wait for school to be over and the time for Egypt to come.

Fortunately, it had stopped raining during the day, although the sun never came out. But when the time finally came, and all six Egyptians squeezed back through the fence into Egypt-Security wasn’t there, either. The storage yard was wet and muddy-and bare. Inside the temple, things were damp and messy from the wind-blown rain. Ashes and papers were blown around and some plastic flowers had fallen off the bird bath-but there was no sign of Security anywhere.

That day Marshall wouldn’t even take part in the ceremony. He just sat on a box against the fence and watched with big sad eyes. Everybody tried to talk to him and cheer him up, but he wouldn’t answer. Looking at him, the others remembered with a feeling of shock that he was awfully little. He usually seemed bigger.

Somehow, no one felt very enthusiastic about starting the ceremony, without really knowing why. It was almost as if they were a little bit afraid of finding out whether there was any mysterious writing on the slip of paper that still hung, damply limp, from Thoth’s beak. But at last Melanie, whose turn it was to be high priestess, got things going. She did pretty much

what April had done the day before until she got to the part where she took the slip of paper out of Thoth’s beak and read it. On one side was April’s question, just what Melanie had thought it would be:

o

/ And on the other side—

Melanie looked up at the other Egyptians with wide eyes, and then she turned and looked, long and hard, at Thoth. Finally she walked right out of the temple, threw the paper on the ground, and said, “I think we just better stop playing this awful game.”

Everyone crowded around, grabbing for the paper and asking questions. As it went the rounds, it left a lot of startled faces behind it. The back of the paper, which they all knew had been clean and blank when they had left Egypt the night before, was now covered with writing. In the same small wavery hand that had answered Ken’s question, the oracle had written:

Again, no one had seen the words written. Again, what they said didn’t sound like anything that a kid would make up. Something very strange was going

on. As one man the five biggest Egyptians turned and looked at their temple. There on the left was the altar to Set that they had built themselves from nothing but an old egg crate, and on top of it was the made-by-hand statue of Set, looking a little more sunken and slimy than usual from the blowing rain of the night before. On the right was the bird-bath altar with the plaster head of Nefertiti, lovely and gracious in spite of the cracks and chips. And at the back was the new altar to Thoth, with its candles and incense still burning in front of an old stuffed owl that Toby had cut his teeth on.

It had only been a game. Of course, it had been a very special one, more serious and important and mysterious than most-and a lot more fun. And there had been times when it had seemed to have a mysterious sort of reality about it. But no one had believed, when you came right down to it, that it was anything more than a game. At least, no one had until today.

“I think Ross is right,” Ken said suddenly. “I told you guys before there was something kooky about this whole thing.” He grinned at Toby. “How about it, Tobe? You ready to go back to basketball?”

Toby shrugged. “I think you guys are a bunch of chickens,” he said. “Just when things get good and something really exciting starts happening, you want to cop out. What I want to know is, if you don’t dig

a little excitement, why’d you start fooling around with stuff like Egyptian gods and ancient magic in the first place?”

“Look, wise guy,” April said, “it just so happens that / didn’t say I wanted to cop out. And if you’re so crazy about excitement why don’t you go jump off the bridge or something? That ought to be exciting enough to suit you. It just so happens that some people think there’s such a thing as too much excitement.”

Toby grinned at April in a way that said he wasn’t looking for a fight. “I’m not arguing,” he said. “If everyone wants to split, it’s all right by me. Let’s just forget-“

“No!” Marshall said suddenly in a loud clear voice. It was the first thing he’d said since he found out that Security definitely wasn’t in Egypt. “No!” Marshall got up off his box and came over to where the rest of them were standing. His chin was up and he was looking much more like himself. “Let’s not stop. Let’s not stop till 7 ask a question. I’m going to ask about Security.”

Everybody tried to talk him out of it. April and Melanie and Elizabeth all tried because they could see how hard he was going to take it if the oracle didn’t come through. And for some reason, Toby tried hardest of all. He squatted down by Marshall and talked to him a long time about how he didn’t

think that was the kind of question that oracles answered, but Marshall only shut his eyes and shook his head and said “NO!” And everybody knew that Marshall never said no unless he meant it. So Melanie wrote,

on a piece of paper, because Marshall didn’t do much writing yet, and Toby went through the ceremony just as he had the two times before.

Marshall went home acting almost as if Security had already been found, but everyone else went home worried. Melanie and April and Elizabeth and Ken didn’t quite know whether to worry because the question might be answered or because it might not be. The whole thing was getting to be so weird and creepy that they couldn’t really wish for another answer-but at the same time, what were they going to do about Marshall?

But Toby was the most worried of all.

Confession and Confusion

THAT NIGHT, WHILE THE ORACLE OF THOTH IN THE Land of Egypt struggled with the question “Where is Security?”, Toby Alvillar struggled with his conscience. He thought and worried and thought; and at last he broke down and did something. entirely against his principles-he called up a girl. When April answered, all he said was, “Look, I got to talk to you and Ross tomorrow early. Meet you out by the parallel bars first recess. Can’t talk now-party line.” He had it all worked out so it wouldn’t look fishy. When recess started, he went whooping down the hall and down the stairs with the rest of the guys who were headed for the basketball court, but on the way down the stairs he pretended to stumble and turn his ankle. He denied that he was badly hurt, but he managed to look bravely-in-pain as he stumbled over

to sit out the recess on the bench near the parallel bars. The girls were in the midst of a jump-rope fad, so the parallel bars were pretty much deserted.

When April and Melanie wandered over-and registered exaggerated surprise to find him there-he got right to the point. “Look,” he said, “I was the one who wrote those answers. I was the oracle. But I don’t know where Marshall’s old octopus is. What’re we going to do?”

Of course April and Melanie had a lot to say. They made Toby explain how he’d managed to steal a peek at the questions while he was conducting the ceremonies-while everybody was bowing-and then how he’d looked up the main words in a big book of his dad’s, called Somebody’s Famous Quotations. Then, when he’d picked out a nice mysterious quotation, he’d sneaked back to Egypt at night with a flashlight and written it on the back of the paper.

“But how’d you get out of the house like that, late at night and in the rain and everything? Did your folks know?”

“Did my folks know?” Toby said. Girls could ask the dumbest questions at times. “Fat chance! They never bother me in the evenings. They’re usually working late in my dad’s studio or off at some blast somewheres. It was a cinch.”

“Weren’t you scared?” Melanie asked. “Going down there all by yourself alone in the dark?”

“Well,” Toby admitted, “I wasn’t exactly whistling ‘Yankee Doodle/ if you know what I mean. Did you happen to notice that the oracle’s handwriting was a little bit shaky? Well, I didn’t just do that to disguise my writing. As a matter of fact, I was about to quit the oracle business even before the rest of you decided to, yesterday. That last night when I went down there, there was somebody in the alley when I was going home.”

The girls gasped. “Honestly? In the rain and everything? Are you sure?”

“As sure as I’d want to be. In fact, for a couple of seconds he was just a few steps behind me. It was too dark to see his face-but he was there, all right.”

“Ohhh! What did you do? How’d you get away?”

“How’d I get away? Look, Melanie, you ought to know how I got away. Who’s been the fastest runner in our class ever since second grade?”

“You,” Melanie agreed.

“Right! And when I saw someone behind me, I really cut out. I mean-jet-propelled or something.”

Toby could always manage to be funny, even about something that was really pretty scary. But after a while, Melanie quit laughing and said, “But who do you think it was? What if it was the man who-“

“The murderer, you mean?” Toby interrupted. “Yeah, I thought of that, all right. Did I ever! But after I got home and calmed down I decided it was

probably just some guy taking a short cut home through the alley. I’m not sure he tried to catch me. I didn’t wait around to find out.”

The girls laughed some more, but then April sobered up enough to mention that Toby’s crimes weren’t going entirely unnoticed-fooling everybody, and lying about the oracle-

“Lie to you!” Toby said. “I did not. I didn’t lie once. I just gave the wrong impression. There’s a difference. Besides, I should think you’d be grateful to me for going to all that trouble just to keep things livened up. My dad says that livening things up is my most outstanding talent. But what I think is, somebody has to do it. Or else everything would just lie there and turn to dust.”

“Okay,” Melanie said. “So you really livened up the oracle. You livened it up so much that Marshall thinks it’s going to tell him where Security is. What are you going to do about that?”

“What am I going to do about that?” Toby said indignantly. “That’s what I got you out here to ask you. What are we going to do about Marshall?”

“Well,” April and Melanie said to each other-only just with a look, not out loud, “wasn’t that like a boy. They got things into a mess and then expected a girl to get them out of it.”

But, since Toby was admitting he needed their help, they were willing to give it. And it didn’t take

them long to decide on a plan. April would conduct the ceremony that afternoon, and she would pretend to read something off the back of the paper. It would say that Security had gone on a trip to visit his relatives in Los Angeles, and that he would be home in a few days. Marshall wouldn’t be completely happy about it, but at least it would give them a little more time to look for Security, or to think of something else.”

“Then,” Melanie explained, “if we never can find him, at least Marshall will have a few days to get used to the idea, a little at a time. When you lose something like Security, it helps if you can do it sort of gradually.” And Toby and April agreed that that was probably true.

Marshall was eager and happy when they picked him up at nursery school. Apparently, he was absolutely positive that the oracle was going to find his octopus for him.

In Egypt April got ready to be the high priestess again because she had practiced just what she was going to say. Fortunately, there wasn’t much chance of an argument. When it came to conducting ceremonies, Ken and Elizabeth were definitely the spectator type.

Everything was going smoothly until April took down the question and with a dramatic flourish got ready to pretend to read. But then, instead of starting

in on her speech about Los Angeles, her mouth dropped open and nothing came out except a strange gulping sound. Toby bounded into the temple and snatched the paper from her hand. Then he looked at April in a strange way and they both walked over to where the rest of the Egyptians were waiting.

On the back of the paper, in a fine, pointy, old-fashioned looking handwriting, it said:

Toby read it out loud very slowly and hesitantly, as if he didn’t really believe what he was saying; and while everyone else was still standing as if paralyzed, Marshall went into the temple and lifted up the piece of old bedspread that covered the egg crate altar of Set. He reached inside, felt around for a minute, and then his face lit up with a smile so starry that for just a second the other, wiser, Egyptians felt just as pleased with their oracle as he did. But after that they went right back to being incredulous.

April and Melanie looked hard at Toby, but he shook his head so hard his shaggy hair stood out like an umbrella. “No sir!” he said wildly. “I didn’t. I did not! I absolutely did not do it!”

The girls looked at each other and nodded in agreement that Toby was telling the truth. Nobody,

not even Toby, was that good an actor.

“Toby didn’t do it,” Marshall said, hugging a slightly damp octopus to his chest. “Set did it.”

“Set did what?” April asked, staring at Marshall in consternation.

“Set took Security. I left him right there on the ground, like I thought, and in the nighttime Set took him.”

“Sheee-eeesh!” Ken moaned all of a sudden, clapping his fist violently to his forehead. “I knew it! I knew all you guys were going to crack up some day if you didn’t quit fooling around with this hocus-pocus stuff.”

“Nobody’s cracking up,” Toby said thoughtfully, “but something pretty fishy is going on around here.”

“You’re telling me,” Ken said. “And if somebody doesn’t start telling me what it is, I am going to walk right out of here and resign from the whole Egyptian race!” ‘

“I guess we better, huh?” Toby said to April and Melanie. “I mean, tell everybody all about everything?” The girls nodded.

So they went ahead and told the other three all about what Toby had done-and what Toby hadn’t done-and when they were through, they all stood and looked at the temple that they had made themselves, out of ordinary stuff and their own imaginations, and

Confession and Confusion

felt-well, maybe a little like Dr. Frankenstein had when he created the monster. They just stood there looking for a while and wondering and then they all went home.