Tut--My Epic Battle to Save the World Read online

“No clue, Little Tut,” Imsety said. They actually looked worried. Whatever was happening was not planned. And never before had they looked so serious. So godlike. It was easy to forget these two really were gods sometimes, because of how they acted, but now, they seemed to double in size and awesomeness.

  Something huge pounded on the ground below us, shaking the entire floor. The plates, so well secured in their display cases, rattled and fell from the wall, crashing below. People all around us ran for the exit. The pounding from below came again, as if something huge was coming up the stairs, right for us.

  “We need to get the sun disk and get out of here,” I said. Whatever was happening, this was not Hapi coming for the sun disk. It had to be Apep. Somehow he’d found out about my plan.

  Imsety looked to Qeb. “Based on the circumstances, Little Tut may be right.”

  “I am right,” I said. “This is what I was talking about. You may not want me to have it, but if you don’t give it to me, then Apep is going to get it. And it’s not like he’s going to imprison himself.”

  The display cases rattled again, and more plates fell. Around us, the mannequins wearing the fancy First Lady dresses fell over, toppling through the broken glass of the cases. People tripped on them and landed on the ground. And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, all the lights went out.

  “Chaos is coming!” a voice screamed in my head. But not just in my head, because when I let some light escape from my scarab heart, I could tell that Tia, Imsety, and Qeb had all heard it, too.

  “You’ll keep it safe?” Imsety said, fixing his eyes on me, daring me to say no.

  “I promise,” I said. “I’ll make things right.”

  “You’ll bring it back to us?” Imsety said.

  I forced myself not to look at Tia. “Yes.” I crossed my fingers behind my back.

  Imsety looked to Qeb, who nodded. And then Qeb slammed his fist into the glass of the display that hadn’t yet broken, shattering it everywhere. He grabbed the only plate still hanging on the wall. It was dull brown, with chips and cracks all around the sides. It couldn’t be the Sun Disk of Ra. But he shoved it my way.

  “Do what you need to do, Little Tut,” Qeb said. “Just get out of here. Now.” And then he and Imsety ran toward the entrance of the exhibit.

  Something landed in front of them. It was the monster from the mirror trap at the funhouse. It had the body of a snake, the head of a bird, and tons of tentacles waving around in the air. It lashed out its tentacles and grabbed Imsety, wrapping him around the waist.

  Qeb jumped for Imsety, but another tentacle latched onto him. They struggled against the monster as it flailed them around in the air. I started back for them, but Tia grabbed hold of my arm.

  “We need to go, Tut,” Tia said.

  “We need to help them!” They could die. The monster in front of them was as tall as the ceiling.

  “They’ll get out of this,” Tia said. “We need to get the sun disk out of here.”

  And even though I hated her words, I knew they were right. Imsety and Qeb were gods. They had their path in this, and I had mine.

  I looked around the exhibit room for a way out that wasn’t toward the monster, but the back entrance was blocked where part of the wall had collapsed. There was no getting out that way.

  “Go, Little Tut!” Qeb screamed. He’d bitten off part of the tentacle that had been holding him with his beak and freed himself, but this had made the monster really angry. It thrust its own beak head down at him and he dodged it.

  I glanced upward, scoping out the ceiling. Fiber tiles fifteen feet up. No problem. Before she could argue, I grabbed Tia around the waist and jumped.

  “Tut…!”

  We busted through the fiber tiles, sending pieces everywhere.

  I set her down on one of the ceiling supports.

  “Warn me next time,” Tia said, stomping her foot on one of the tiles. This wasn’t a good idea because her foot punched through, and she lost her balance and started falling.

  I grabbed her arm and caught her. “Don’t fall through,” I said, and we took off, making sure only to run on the supports and not the tiles. One wrong step and the monster would find us. Also, Tia was mortal. She could die. I didn’t want either of those things to happen.

  It felt like forever that we ran, but I didn’t stop until we were as far away from the monster as possible. At the far side of the museum, we reached a hatch. I grabbed hold of the cover and yanked it off. It punched through the ceiling tiles and clattered onto the floor below.

  “Chaos is coming!” the voice screamed again in my head.

  “Come on!” I pulled Tia through the hatch. I didn’t need the extra threats of the world ending to hurry me, but they certainly did make the situation seem more immediate.

  The sirens weren’t as loud up here in the attic, and we twisted and turned our way through the shelves. Endless row after row of stuff. But we didn’t slow down. What Tia and I needed to do was get out of this museum and back to my townhouse. Horus’s wards would protect us there … I hoped.

  We got to a back staircase and ran down without stopping. Once we hit ground level, we tore out the back door of the museum. Outside was chaos, just like the voice had said. But not just because all the museum alarms were still blaring. The museum wasn’t even the half of it. The sun, which should have been bright and full like it had been only hours before, was about two-thirds of its normal size, and even though it wasn’t possible, it seemed to shrink more with each second that went by.

  I turned to Tia, about to tell her the importance of finding Apep, but whiteness flooded my mind, and I fell to the ground. Searing pain ripped through my thoughts, and I knew it was pain that Gil was feeling. We were sharing it, through the scarab heart in my chest. He’d thought that he was saving me by giving me his scarab heart. But what he’d really done was linked himself to me, forever. And with each wave of pain, I was sure that my immortality was not secure. If Gil died, I would die, too.

  23

  WHERE I MAKE A WAGER ABOUT THE FATE OF THE WORLD

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tia said, yanking on my arm.

  I sat on the ground, propped up against a building. Cars drove by, horns blaring as they cut around each other. My head pounded with the vision, still so fresh.

  “Nothing,” I said, letting her pull me to my feet. I had the sun disk, so at least I had that going for me. I hurried over to the nearest street vendor and bought a drawstring bag, which I then shoved the sun disk into.

  “Nothing? It didn’t seem like nothing.” She narrowed her blue eyes at me and bit her lower lip, like she was actually concerned.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Can you just stop lying?” Tia said. “I won’t judge you. I won’t think you’re weak. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  It was like Tia could see into my soul. I hated being weak—hated that there was something I had no control over. But I also wanted to tell Tia. I wanted to share it with someone.

  “It’s just this weird thing with Gil. This connection I have.”

  “Connection, like you know where he is?” she asked. We hurried down the street, away from the museum and back toward my townhouse. Gil wasn’t at the museum. Apep wasn’t even there. The monster had been the same servant of Apep from the funhouse, this time out to stop me from getting the disk.

  I shook my head. “Not quite. I can’t see anything in the visions. But I can hear things. And smell things. And feel things.” Gil was in pain. It made me feel so helpless. But I was not helpless. I was the great Tutankhamun. Pharaoh of Egypt. I would find Gil and make everything better.

  “Have you asked Auntie N about it?” Tia asked.

  “Auntie N,” I said. “She told me I was going to fail. She doesn’t want me doing any of this at all.”

  Tia shook her head. “Maybe she’s wrong. We should go back and talk to her.”

  Of all the things I should do, going back to Nephthys was not
one of them. She would take the sun disk away from me and give it to Hapi.

  “There is no way I’m doing that,” I said.

  “But the sun…” Tia said.

  “I see the sun. And I’m going to fix it. I’m going to re-imprison Apep. But first I have to find Gil. Because there is no way I am taking care of Apep before I’m sure Gil is safe.”

  “Just talk to her,” Tia said, and her eyes pleaded with me, almost like she really was concerned for me. And that’s when I realized what was going on. She didn’t think I was strong enough to do this either.

  “You go talk to her,” I said. “I’m going to find Gil.” And before she could bat her eyelashes or tilt her head just the right way to make my thoughts go all wonky, I walked away. I had a plan, and so far it was going perfectly.

  * * *

  When I walked into the townhouse, there wasn’t a shabti in sight. Not one. That had never happened before. From under the futon, I still heard Horus, but it sounded more like a hyperventilating, frantic purr. Maybe he’d scared the shabtis away.

  “Colonel Cody?” I called.

  Nothing.

  “Major Mack?”

  Not a sound.

  “Lieutenant Roy?”

  There was no reply, but Horus stopped making noise for a second, long enough for me to hear sounds coming from the hall closet. I shoved aside the camel seat that had been pulled up against it to barricade it, and I threw open the door. Hundreds of shabtis tumbled out; they’d been packed in there like cockroaches. Colonel Cody tumbled down the stack and stood at attention.

  “Did you forget to invite me to a party?” I asked.

  Colonel Cody looked back at the troops, and with practiced precision, they broke up into their legions and stood ready for orders. “Great Pharaoh, we were having a meeting.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of meeting?” Seriously, what would the shabtis get together to talk about? New tactics for destroying scarab beetles?

  Colonel Cody bowed low in front of me. “We are thinking about making an offering to a god.”

  “An offering?” I said. “To what god? Horus?” He’d started his purring back up at full force, making it hard to hear the shabtis.

  Colonel Cody balled his fists in frustration. “Oh, Great Master, everything is dreadful. The cat won’t stop making that horrifying noise. The heathen heart still beats in your chest. The sun is vanishing from the sky. What are we to do? Please impart your great wisdom on us.”

  I was glad Tia and Henry weren’t around to hear that. And it probably didn’t even register on Horus. But the thing was that aside from the heathen-heart thing, the shabtis were right. Things were looking pretty grim.

  I pulled the sun disk from the drawstring bag and laid it on the ground in front of Colonel Cody. “I got it. And I’m going to use it to make everything better.”

  The shabtis’ eyes got super-wide, like cartoon characters’. “The Sun Disk of Ra,” Colonel Cody whispered, and every single shabti fell prostrate to the ground.

  Horus stopped purring. The townhouse fell into silence. The very air around us seemed to freeze in place. And I knew that this was going to work. I could do this. What I needed was a solid plan of attack.

  I picked the sun disk up and walked to the futon, tripping over a pile of Gil’s stuff on the way. A couple stone tablets fell, but the shabtis hurried to set them back in place. Once Gil got home, all this stuff was going back into his room.

  I set the sun disk on the coffee table.

  “Horus, are you going to come out here and help me?” I called down under the futon.

  He let out a low purr in reply, but he didn’t answer and he didn’t come out. And I knew I couldn’t count on him. He had passed the point of no return. If I didn’t stop Apep, then Horus would be lost forever.

  “Will you bring me a map?” I asked Colonel Cody.

  He snapped his fingers, and ten shabtis ran off. They returned less than a minute later with piles of maps. I should have been more precise. I sifted through them until I found the most recent one. Even at that, it was still five years old. Paper maps were going out of style faster than dial-up Internet. But paper helped my mind work better. It was easier to see the whole picture. I grabbed a pencil from Lieutenant Roy and got to work.

  * * *

  I was still awake the next morning when the doorbell rang. I’d pored over the maps all night, labeling every possible place Gil could be based, on the information from my visions. I would check them out, one by one, until I found him.

  “I’m not going to camp!” I yelled through the door. I knew it was Henry.

  I couldn’t hear Henry’s muffled reply.

  “We should barricade the door,” Colonel Cody suggested. “Then you won’t find yourself with this dreadful science camp dilemma.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said.

  “At your command,” Colonel Cody said.

  But Henry was persistent. He kept ringing the doorbell until it was driving me crazier than Camp Counselor Crystal’s droning voice.

  “Fine. Let him in,” I said to Colonel Cody. I dragged myself off the futon and went upstairs to the bathroom. But I couldn’t understand why Henry was here so early. The sun wasn’t even up.

  “Tut, you’re not going to believe it,” Henry said, rushing up the stairs. Gil’s door was still blue and gold, even though I’d asked the shabtis to repaint it. I’m sure it was on their to-do list, just not anywhere near the top. There would be plenty of time to deal with it later, once Gil was back.

  “Try me,” I said. At this point, I’d believe almost anything.

  “Camp is canceled today,” Henry said. It must’ve been a complete surprise for him, too, because he’d already gotten dressed for the occasion, a bright green shirt that read, .

  Think. Think. Think. That’s exactly what I had to do. I had to figure out where Gil was. There were so many possible places. I needed a way to narrow them down.

  “Good,” I said, and I grabbed my toothbrush. My teeth were super-healthy, part of my immortal perks, but bad breath was never in style.

  “Good?” Henry said. “Don’t you want to know why it’s canceled?”

  “Sure. Why’s it canceled?” I kept brushing so it came out as a mumble, but Henry still understood.

  “Have you even looked outside, Tut?”

  I spit out the toothpaste. All I’d looked at for the last eight hours were maps.

  “What’s outside?”

  Henry dragged me to a downstairs window that faced east. It was dark, like just before the sun rises or just after it sets, not quite pitch black. But the problem was, although the sun was still in the sky, it looked like someone had taken a giant straw and placed it near the sun and then started drinking, like every bit of sunlight was being sucked away. A huge funnel had formed between the sun and whatever was pulling at it.

  “Why is it doing that, Tut?” Henry said. “This can’t be Apep.”

  Prickles of energy ran through me. Not only could it be Apep, it had to be Apep. Yesterday had just been the beginning. Just a hint at what was to come. Today was the real thing. At the rate the sunlight was vanishing, within days there would be no more sun at all.

  “I can’t believe it’s already gotten this bad,” I said. “Great Amun, I have to stop this.”

  “It’s not just camp,” Henry said. “The entire government is talking about closing down. Fireworks are going to be canceled. I had to sneak out of the house today because my mom told me not to leave. Can you believe that? I snuck out.”

  It was a little surprising. Henry never bent the rules.

  “Oh, and did you get my text?” Henry said. “About Blair?”

  “What about Blair?” I hadn’t checked my phone. I’d been too caught up looking at the maps.

  “Her dad invited us over for dinner,” Henry said. “Well, he invited me, because I helped Blair yesterday when she hurt herself. But Blair said that it was totally cool if you come along also. I
t was her idea, so you should definitely go.”

  “Dinner?” Food was so far down on my priority list right now. “I’m not going to dinner at Blair’s house. I have bigger things to worry about. Like the sun? Apep?” I pointed out at the mess in the sky.

  Henry shook his head. “No, that’s the thing, Tut. Do you know what her dad does?”

  “He’s running for Senate,” I said. “She told us, like, five million times. There’s no way I could possibly not know.”

  “Yes, he’s running for Senate,” Henry said. “But he has a ton of side businesses. You know, like the carnival. Remember?”

  There was no way I was forgetting the carnival. Stupid funhouse disaster.

  “And one of his businesses is a research lab,” Henry said. “They spend a ton of money doing solar research. Blair says that he knows what’s wrong with the sun.”

  “It’s Apep,” I said. “I told you that.”

  But Henry was not convinced. “It’s not Apep. And Blair says that her dad has a completely scientific explanation.”

  That, I wanted to hear. Maybe there was a scientific explanation. Maybe I was the one who was wrong. Maybe we could mix together a few elements from the periodic table and solve everything. And maybe pigs could fly.

  “There’s no scientific explanation, Henry.”

  “Tut, you are wrong,” Henry said. “And I’ll make you a bet. Go to dinner with me. If her dad’s explanation has any merit, then I win.”

  “Win what?” I said.

  “I get to borrow half your shabtis,” Henry said.

  At this, Colonel Cody clutched onto the leg of my jeans. “Please, Great Master, don’t get rid of us. If we have done something to offend…”

  “Shhh…” I said, silencing him. “And when we find out her dad is full of baloney? What do I get out of it?”

  “If her dad is wrong, and it really is Apep, like you say, then I never again question your Egyptian gods,” Henry said, making an X over his heart.

  “They’re your Egyptian gods now, too,” I said. “Whether you want them to be or not.”

  “I’m still skeptical.”

  Henry was always skeptical. I didn’t think, even when he found out that Apep was behind trying to destroy the world, that would change. But his whole wager, the way he put it out there … well, it was weird, but I felt compelled to agree. Like deep in my gut, I had to do it.