16.03.2015

Sadie Kane

I can't believe someone would willingly get married in a museum. Even Carter isn't that big of a nerd! Nevertheless, the Brooklyn Museum's glass dome glowed with light underneath our feet.

I should backtrack a bit, shouldn't I?

Well, I woke up this morning to my brother, Carter, knocking on my door. He looked a little out of it, but most people do for at least an hour after a ba trip. Turns out our guy, Horus, had visited him and told him that we need to break into the Brooklyn Museum and take some statue. Honestly, I didn't really pay attention to the details after "steal". Excuse me, Borrow.

So we assembled a quick mission team and set to work. The plan was simple enough: Jaz and Walt, two of our initiates, had to open the side window. Meanwhile, me and Ayanna were to unlock the beforementioned big glass dome in the middle of the roof. Khufu, who basically invited himself to the mission but no one had the heart to tell him no (he'd been extra clingy since Uncle left for Egypt three months ago) would open the dome when he saw us approach with the statue.

As for Carter, well, he was being his pessimistic self.

The sounds of the wind mixed with the noise from the orchestra underneath us was so annoying that I had to borrow Aya's second pair of noise-canceling headphones. Unfortunately for Carter, that meant he had to wave to get our attention.

"What happened to the museum being closed?" he complained.

"Well, it was supposed to be empty." I said. "Google said it closes at five. How was I to know there'd be a wedding?"

Carter looked down and frowned. Understandable, the wedding cake looked awful. It was one of those painfully white cakes, as if adding any kind of color would ruin the sterile white party theme. If I ever get married, someone better remind me that the rainbow exists.

Khufu tapped on the glass.

"Agh!" he grunted.

"Khufu's right," Aya interpreted. "We'll have a hard time sneaking out through the party."

"We can disguise the statue as something else." I said.

Aya nodded. "Or blend in with the guests."

"Or if we pretend we're a maintenance crew-"

"Sure," Carter said, interrupting our creative flow. "'Excuse us. Five kids coming through with a three-ton statue. Just going to float it up through the roof. Don't mind us.'"

I rolled my eyes, pulled out my wand and pointed it at the base of the dome. A golden hieroglyph blazed, and the last padlock popped open.

"Well, if we're not going to use this as an exit," I said, "why are we opening it? Couldn't we just come out the way we're going in-through the side window?"

Carter sighed. "I told you. The statue is huge. It won't fit through the side window. Plus, the traps-"

"Try again tomorrow night, then?"

He shook his head. "Tomorrow the whole exhibit is being boxed up and shipped off on tour."

I raised my eyebrows. "Perhaps if someone had given us more notice that we needed to steal this statue-"

"Guys!" Aya called out. "Forget it."

She wasn't looking at us. I followed her eyes to my wand, which I was still tightly holding onto. There were golden sparks flying out of it.

This always seemed to happen. I love my brother, really, but he is so annoying! He always has to be right, always has to act like he knows best. Fine, maybe I am a little stubborn, too. And, okay, he is older. But that doesn't give him the right to boss me around, even if he is technically the leader!

"Let's just stick to the plan," I said. "Go in through the side window, find the statue, and float it out through the ballroom. We'll figure out how to deal with the wedding party when we get that far. Maybe create a diversion."

Carter frowned. "A diversion?"

"Carter, you worry too much," I said. "It'll be brilliant. Unless you have another idea?"

I kinda hoped he would. But his face said enough.

"So we push on and improvise?" Aya asked.

Carter looked down at the wedding. "Guess so."

"Lovely," I said. "Khufu, stay here and keep watch. Open the dome when you see us coming up, yeah?"

"Agh!" said the baboon.

"Come on." Carter sighed. "Let's see how Jaz and Walt are doing."

We dropped to the ledge outside the third floor, which housed the Egyptian collection.

Jaz and Walt had stuck four Sons of Horus statues around the edges of the window and written spells on the glass to counter the curses and the mortal alarm system.

As we landed next to them, they seemed to be in the middle of a serious conversation. Jaz was holding Walt's hands. Now, some accounts of that day state that I "squeaked like a mouse". This is false. I was, in fact, calm and collected like a calm and collected mouse.

You might be asking yourselves who were Jaz and Walt. They were our very first initiates.

Walt arrived just a few days after we sent out the recordings and the Djed amulet. He had just turned fourteen in January, but he was still somehow taller than Carter. Walt had dark brown skin and a buzz cut and the facial structure of a model. He looked like one of those unrealistically perfect teenagers on Disney, like the cool but also kind captain of the football team or something.

If we're running with the Disney metaphor, Jaz would be the best friends to lovers story. You know, "they were childhood friends and he was pinning after someone else, but then they realize they love one another" – that one. She had long blond hair that she often covered, especially when she was doing magic. Today she had used a black bandana, that we had made together from an old linen shirt. Slung across her shoulder was her magician's bag, marked with the symbol of the lion goddess Sekhmet.

Jaz was a healer, and an incredibly skilled one at that. And she was always the kindest, most generous person in the room. Always ready to help, always there for everyone. She was just perfect.

She was just telling Walt, "We'll figure it out," when the three of us dropped down next to them.

When we interrupted their conversation, Walt let go of Jaz's hands real quick and stepped away. My eyes moved back and forth between them.

Walt cleared his throat. "Window's ready."

"Brilliant." I looked at Jaz. "What did you mean, 'We'll figure it out'?"

Jaz's brilliant eyes looked back at me and I had to look away. Her lips were moving soundlessly, searching for words.

Walt answered for her: "You know. The Book of Ra. We'll figure it out."

"Yes!" Jaz said. "The Book of Ra."

I was about to say more when Aya cut me off.

"Okay." She flashed us that smile of hers that was way too cute to possibly mean trouble, but always seemed to lead to it. "Let's go have fun!"

The window swung open easily. No magic explosions. No alarms. No gods chasing us or invading our brains. So far it was better than most museums I'd been in since Christmas.

We walked past many artifacts, but I was spacing out, so my memory is hazy. You know, maybe Carter should've narrated that part. I do remember Jaz laughing at some joke Walt made. Even her laugh was pretty! If summer days and sunshine on your skin made a sound, that would be it.

In the second Egyptian room, we stopped in front of a stone frieze the size of a garage door. Chiseled into the rock was a picture of a monster trampling some humans.

"Is that a griffin?" Jaz asked.

Carter nodded. "The Egyptian version, yeah."

The animal had a lion's body and the head of a falcon. Its wings ran across the top of its back-long, horizontal, and bristly. The frieze had once been painted. I could make out flecks of red and gold on the creature's hide; but even without color, the griffin looked eerily lifelike.

"Griffins were protectors," Carter began, in his mini-lecture voice. "They guarded treasures."

"Fab!" I said. "So you mean they attacked, oh, thieves, for instance, breaking into museums and stealing artifacts?"

The look Carter gave me could've stopped a griffin dead in its tracks. "It's just a frieze."

"There." Walt pointed across the room. "That's it, right?"

We made a wide arc around the griffin and walked over to a statue in the center of the room.

The god stood about eight feet tall. He was carved from black stone and dressed in typical Egyptian style: bare-chested, with a kilt and sandals. He had the face of a ram and horns that had partially broken off over the centuries. On his head was a sun disk, braided with serpents. In front of him stood a much smaller human figure. The god was holding his hands over the little one's head, as though giving it a blessing.

I looked at the inscription. "KNM. That'd be pronounced Khnum, I suppose. Rhymes with ka-boom?"

"Yeah," Carter agreed. "This is the statue we need. Horus told me it holds the secret to finding the Book of Ra."

"Who's the little guy in front?" Walt asked. "A child?"

Jaz snapped her fingers. "No, I remember this! Khnum made humans on a potter's wheel. That's what he's doing here, I bet-forming a human out of clay."

She looked at Carter for confirmation. Why not look at me? I'm also a teacher, you know!

"Yeah, good," Carter said. "Man out of clay. Exactly."

Ha! He'd forgotten!

I frowned up at Khnum's ram head. There was a memory crawling out of the basement of my mind. "Looks a bit like that old cartoon. Bullwinkle, is it? Could be the moose god."

"He's not the moose god," Carter said.

"All he's missing is the uniform." I pressed on.

Aya raised an eyebrow. "Sadie, what uniform?"

"You know, the camp one."

"Are you talking about that moose from Camp Lazlo?"

I gasped. "Oh, f-yeah! Wrong moose."

"Still a moose, though."

"Not a moose." Carte repeated.

"But if we're looking for the Book of Ra and Ra's the sun god, then why are we searching a moose?"

"Khnum was one aspect of the sun god," Carter said. "Ra had three different personalities. He was Khepri the scarab god in the morning; Ra during the day; and Khnum, the ram-headed god, at sunset, when he went into the underworld."

"That's confusing," Jaz said.

"Not really," I said. "Carter has different personalities. He goes from zombie in the morning to slug in the afternoon to-"

"Sadie," Carter said, "shut up."

Aya shook her head. "Carter, if you don't like moose just say so."

"Enough with the moose." he said. "We've got to get this statue back to Brooklyn House. It holds some sort of clue-"

"But how do we find it?" Walt asked. "And you still haven't told us why we need this Book of Ra so badly."

Carter hesitated. We still hadn't told the initiates that the world might end in five days. It would just cause panic and everyone's on edge anyways.

"I'll explain when we get back," Carter promised. "Right now, let's figure out how to move the statue."

Jaz knitted her eyebrows. "I don't think it's going to fit in my bag."

"Oh, such worrying," I said. "Look, we cast a levitation spell on the statue. We create some big diversion to clear the ballroom-"

"Wait." Aya kneeled in front of the smaller human figure. "Look at his amulet. It's a raised scarab, but there is no shadow underneath it. Dad uses the same technique on the snacks drawer in the kitchen."

Carter frowned. "I didn't know there was a snack drawer in the kitchen."

"Exactly!"

Walt clicked his fingers. "So maybe we don't need the entire statue. Maybe the clue is-"

Of course!

I pulled out my wand. "Brilliant."

I tapped the little dude's amulet. Khnum's hands glowed. The smaller statue's head peeled open in four sections, and sticking out of its neck was a yellowed papyrus scroll.

"Voila!" I said proudly and slipped my wand into my bag.

I grabbed the scroll just as Carter shouted, "It might be trapped!"

He could've warned me a bit earlier, you know? It's not like he couldn't predict what I was about to do.

As soon as I plucked the scroll from the statue, the entire room rumbled. Cracks appeared in the glass display cases.

Something flared in front of my eyes and I yelped. The scroll in my hand had burst into flames. Strangely, they didn't hurt, but when I tried to shake out the fire, ghostly white flames leaped to the nearest display case and raced around the room as if following a trail of gasoline. The fire touched the windows and white hieroglyphs ignited on the glass, probably triggering a ton of protective wards and curses. Then the ghost fire rippled across the big frieze at the entrance of the room. The stone slab shook violently. There was a raspy scream - like a really large, really angry parrot.

All around me, my friends were pulling out their weapons.

I tried to shake the scroll off, but it was glued to my hand. "Get this thing off me! This is so not my fault!"

"Um," Jaz pulled her wand. "What was that sound?"

"I think," Carter said, "Sadie just found her big diversion."

/Oh no. Oh no. Oh nononononono./