The Egyptian Exodus
Chapter Two: The Field Trip
"Hmph, tastes like chicken."
"What did you tell Ahkemd?"
"That I set them free."
"I mean what did you tell them this was?"
"Eel."
"And they ate it?"
"They wrestled for three hours over a granola bar this morning, I don't think they care where it came from."
Cleaning and roasting snakes in Yellowstone National Park was a little more difficult than Lucy had thought, but not impossible. With the children nestled in sleeping bags, with the exception of Nani, who had a blanket, the three "adults" sat next to the campfire to enjoy their meal.
When they had first arrived it was obvious that the glade was not going to provide enough in the way of shelter, and nothing in the way of food. They were going to have to go somewhere for supplies. Diego suggested that one of them return to Espiritu, check to make sure it was safe, and then quickly bring over supplies.
They had flipped a coin in the end, Zahra couldn't make a gate if she had to leave quickly, so she was ineligible. Diego had won. They had waited for a few hours, and then used Lucy's old amulet to return Diego to their home, Espiritu Institute, in the desert of northwestern New Mexico.
There had been no one at the school, which was under protections that should have kept out anyone but Lucy, Diego, or the Maintainers, the mysterious yet efficient guardians of the western circle. It had taken Diego very little time to round up sleeping bags, tents, and food.
It was remarkably quick because there was no one living at Espiritu anymore. The school had been attacked over a year and a half ago by a mysterious enemy. All gating had been disabled, and the hundred or so occupants to survive the initial siege had taken refuge by gating into a void from which, it was expected, they would never return.
That being the case, it was a simple matter for Diego to slip into apartments and find camping equipment, which was plentiful since most Espiritu residents enjoyed extended trips into the wilderness surrounding their desert home.
Food, however, was another matter. Lucy and Diego no longer lived at the school except on rare occasions, and there had been little left in the kitchen. Diego had returned with several bags of rice, canned soup, and all the cash he could scrounge. They had purchased granola bars and a few other cheap items from the small convenience store near the park. It hadn't lasted long.
Lucy stared down at the last bits of snake on her plate. She had no idea what they were going to do tomorrow.
As if in answer to her prayer, she heard a voice from her pocket.
"Hello? Lucy? Diego? Zahra?"
Instantly alert the other two dropped their plates and peered over Lucy's shoulders as she ripped the communication mirror out of her pocket. It was a piece of leather folded in half, with two mirrors on the inside, one with its face to the leather, another reflecting out. Instead of a reflection on the out-facing mirror there appeared the face of Mr. Sharif.
"Thank God," Zahra breathed.
"You are all safe?"
"Yes," Lucy replied, "Can we come back now?"
"No."
It took a moment to register.
"What?"
"It isn't safe."
"Mr. Sharif, you don't understand, we are in the middle of the woods, in our pajamas, and I just fed your students snake for dinner. We don't have the resources to last another night!"
"You fed them snake? What color was it?"
"Red and black! We have to come back!"
"Hey, that rhymed!"
Diego grinned. Lucy shot him a Look, this was not a laughing matter. Why was it the minute she left a school they didn't let her come back?
Mr. Sharif looked troubled. "I'm sorry, I want the students home as soon as possible, but there are complications. Several other schools were hit at the same time as ours, and more yesterday. It feels like a concentrated search. All the schools targeted so far have had young students, or the only areas of the school that were under attack were those areas with young students."
Diego shook his head. "But a younger student wouldn't know as much."
Zahra thought for a moment. "They must know more than we think. They don't think they need any advanced knowledge, they just need the basics."
"To crack the code," Lucy finished.
"Or to use a child as leverage." Mr. Sharif finished. "We can't bring the students back knowing they are being hunted, and we certainly can't send them home, where they are in even more danger. All the enemy would need is a student roster and they could go straight to their homes!"
"So what is the plan?" Lucy hated to even ask.
"We send them away from us, and keep them moving."
This definitely wasn't sounding good.
"For how long?" Diego demanded.
"Until we can find them a proper sanctuary. Hiding in the non-magical world is the best defense right now, there's no pattern that could be followed to find them. And, there's the additional consideration..."
"Which is?"
"That the traitor among us that we thought was captured last December is still at large. If the children are moving, that person cannot betray their location, because the Circle itself will not know where they are."
"And how do you expect us to manage this?"
"For you two it ought to be easier than for the others; you are experienced gaters, and you have traveled more than any ten other students put together."
"And we aren't supposed to EAT in the meantime?"
"Of course not. If one of you will gate to Istanbul, they are, as you know, our financial center, they will provide you with funds."
Lucy's ears perked up. "Funds?"
"This is an emergency Lucy, not a vacation. You are going to need to continue camping, as you are, or use similarly inexpensive lodgings, I would suggest sticking to warm locations right now. But there will be enough for you to get the children some decent clothes and to take care of food."
Lucy noted the use of the plural. "Locations, as in several? How often do you want us to move?"
"No more than three days and three nights in each location."
"What?"
"The harder you are to pin down, the safer you are."
"What are we supposed to tell the kids?"
Mr. Sharif shrugged, "The truth. It's an extended field trip. I don't think they'll mind. Unless of course you take them somewhere ghastly."
"And we can go anywhere as long as it isn't to another school?"
"Yes, well, almost. The Guild of Minors requests you stay out of North Korea, Haiti, Cuba, Zimbabwe...."
Mr. Sharif went on to list a dozen more countries, and Lucy began to understand. It was one thing to run all over the world when you were living within the safety of a school. The real world was much more dangerous.
"...and given its rate of kidnappings, pretty much all of South America."
"Well, that narrows it down."
"Canada it is."
Mr. Sharif sighed, "It's for your own good, you know."
Zahra spoke up. "Papa, what will YOU be doing?"
"The elders have a plan, but I'm not sure what it is yet. I'll be working to bring you all home just as fast as we can, I promise."
Zahra sighed and nodded.
"All right, are there any other questions?"
"We're taking a school full of children around the world, staying no longer than three days in any location, completely unsupervised, for an unknown length of time. What more could we need to know?"
"That's the spirit my dear. Now, they are rather strict about this, as soon as this communication is finished, you need to move. In case there is any way this is being spied on and someone realizes where you are. Unless it is an emergency you shouldn't contact me or anyone else by mirror, in case the mirrors are being watched at our end. I'll be checking in from a secure connection every few days."
Diego shrugged, "Piece of cake."
Mr. Sharif nodded, "Good luck."
With that the image shimmered and Lucy was left staring at her, Zahra, and Diego's reflection in the small mirror.
"Oh, this should be fun."
They set about packing up camp and getting ready to move.
Thailand had been the first stop. Lucy and Diego had not been to Bangkok in six years, but it wasn't a place they forgot easily, and they managed to step out in a narrow ally on a busy street, where no one would notice their sudden arrival.
An American dollar could go very, very far in Thailand, Zahra had explained. It was the perfect place to stock up.
Their first priority, having fed the children the minute Diego returned from Turkey with the promised funds, was to get them into something other than the filthy pajamas they had been wearing for three days. Diego had managed to grab some clothing and footwear for the three of them from Espiritu, but there had been only a few small children at Espiritu, and they were younger than the Cairo students.
However, as it turned out, neither Lucy, Diego, or Zahra knew the slightest thing about buying children's clothes.
They headed for a market, any market really, and found a stand of cheap tee shirts emblazoned with Japanese style cartoon characters. They managed to find enough suitably masculine shirts to satisfy the boys, the girls had no problem each finding a shirt of their own.
One group shopping excursion was enough to show them that 37 children in a bustling Thai marketplace was far too many to shop with at one time, so they split up; Diego taking 12, Zahra taking 12, and Lucy and Omiri taking 12
The last to leave, Lucy turned to her group.
"Well, what do you want to wear?"
That was a mistake, the boys wanted jeans, the girls wanted dresses, and Jasmine, as Regina's little friend turned out to be named, didn't want to wear anything but her Aladdin princess costume.
It looked like there was nothing on earth that was going to unite her group.
When they rendezvoused back at the vegetable stall, both Diego and Zahra were shocked to see the children neatly lined up against the wall, munching on apples, completely subdued.
They were wearing cheap knockoff's of national soccer uniforms. They had each chosen different countries, but Lucy had them standing in number order, and seemed extremely proud of herself.
"Luce, tell me these aren't their only clothes?"
"What do I look like? They have a pair of jeans, shoes, a bag of underwear, and a swimsuit a piece."
"Swimsuit?"
Lucy nodded, "Hell yes. Remember the kids in Fiji? Put them on a beach and they will LIVE in that thing all day long. Frankly, once they got to pick their own uniforms, they pretty much agreed to whatever else I told them to find and try on. Oh, all but Jasmine, but we fixed that."
Diego scanned the line, and found the little Egyptian girl chatting happily in her jersey and shorts.
He raised an eyebrow, Lucy whistled through her fingers, and, too Diego and Zahra's shock, the children whipped their heads around and straightened up. Lucy made two sharp whistles, and the children turned around.
It appeared Lucy had spent the extra few pennies to have the student's last names emblazoned on the back of their shirts, with the exception of Jasmine's shirt, which instead read "Princess J."
"Nice."
"I thought so." She whistled twice again, and the children relaxed against the wall and returned to talking.
"And the whistle?"
"How else to you get them to fall back in line? It's too noisy to shout."
By the end of the day all 37 students had their own numbered and personalized uniform, the basic pieces of clothing, a towel and toiletries, a backpack to carry it in, and were responding to whistle signals. Zahra abhorred the practice, saying it sounded like she was signaling to a sheep dog.
"If only we could get that kind of obedience," Lucy had commented.
The children seemed to think it was great fun.
"Can we go in yet?"
"Twenty five more minutes, now sit down please."
"But I feel fine!"
"Of course you do, its when you get seized with a muscle cramp and are lying on the seabed drowning that you feel slightly more uncomfortable, now sit down and digest some more."
Not to be defeated easily, Raul moved down the line.
"Can we go in yet?"
"What did Diego tell you Raul?"
It was no use; those two were always on the same side. He had one more chance.
"Can we go in yet?"
"What time is it?"
"1:30."
Lucy turned over and snagged her watch.
"Nice try Raul, you've got twenty four minutes. Now be a nice boy and go play cards with the other children."
"Yes Lucy."
Diego gaped, for the life of him he could not understand the fanatical obedience that the children paid to Lucy; it was unheard of. But here, before his eyes, Raul was sitting down on his towel in the circle, alternating between staring at his watch and out at the Pacific Ocean.
When Abdul crept up and initiated what was certain to be a repeat of Raul's attempt, Lucy intercepted him and whispered in his ear. Abdul returned to his towel and gathered eight of his friends, who then proceeded quite industriously to dig a large pit in the sand. Enlisting the aid of seven or so others, they proceeded to take Diego unawares, drag him into the pit, and bury the good-natured Mexican up to his neck in sand.
Almost as soon as they had finished, Lucy looked at her watch.
"1:30! You're free to drown."
Thirty seven children made a stampede for the Tahitian shore. Lucy lazily stood up, put on her sunglasses and strolled down to the waterline to supervise.
"Come on Zahra, I can't watch them all at once!" She didn't need to, not really, they had the 12 year olds all divided up to watch over smaller groups, but still, she didn't trust Raul's attention span any longer than the time it took to devour three pieces of pizza.
Zahra put on her sunhat, a large, ridiculous floppy thing that they had found abandoned on the beach yesterday, put her sarong around her waist, and followed Lucy to the water.
"No farther than that Regina!"
"Isis, be a lamb and let him up now, I'm sure he's sorry."
"Whatever that is Ahkmed, I want you to let it go now unless you want it for dinner."
The sun sank a little lower, and as Lucy admired a particularly fine sand castle that Omiri and Perseus were building, she wondered where Diego had gone off to.
"Lucy! Can we use your wand for the flagpole?"
She thought about it for a minute, why not, the castle was nearly as tall as she was, it had to have a flag.
"Be VERY careful with this Omiri, you are going to take full responsibility for it?"
"I'll be careful."
Lucy handed him the wand, to which he tied a scarf from Jasmine's Princess costume, and stood on Perseus's back to place it on the top.
It really was quite impressive.
"You boys will have to make sure this stands up until Diego gets back, I'm sure he'll want to see it."
The boys laughed and looked suspiciously contented.
Contentment in an eight-year-old boy was never a good sign.
"What have you two done to my brother?"
"Nothing. But Diego's already seen the castle."
Lucy raised one eyebrow and looked about. She didn't see the tall Mexican anywhere
Then she looked down, and noticed that the sandcastle was built in the middle of where the circle of towels used to be.
Giving the boys a stern look, she walked around to the back of the castle.
The top of Diego's head, and the rim of a diving mask, could just be seen above the sand; that, and a protruding snorkel from which could faintly be heard the muffled sounds of indignation.
Oh dear.
Still, it was rather impressive.
One week later....
Diego and Zahra returned from their walk around the ancient palace, scanning the crowd for the never-stationary forms of their young charges.
They broke into a run when they saw them.
Lucy was apparently undisturbed, reading a stack of newspapers and sipping on a bottle of water.
She looked up, "Where HAVE you been?"
When Diego began to blush she shook her head, "Never mind, I don't want to know. It's pretty, sure, but really not that impressive."
Diego raised an eyebrow and looked back over his shoulder at the Taj Mahal. He decided not to ask Lucy what would qualify in her book as impressive.
Zahra was still panicked, "Lucy, what happened to the children?"
Lucy looked at the ground before her, where the students lay prone in a variety of positions.
She sighed guiltily. "I'm sorry, I caved. These arrived and I was dying to read them and I knew I wouldn't be able to if I was simultaneously supervising the boys' attempts to climb that thing."
"They climbed it!"
"Only the first fifty feet. They left a cap on the ground and we actually made a tidy sum, but I made them come down when the owl arrived with those."
Diego followed Lucy's fingers to the stack of newspapers. He picked one up. "The London Times?"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "Of course not. But you know the way the pictures move on those things, if I sat here reading one uncovered I'd be bound to attract attention."
Diego pulled the paper open to the second page, and found himself reading the front page headline of the Daily Prophet.
"Who sent you those?"
"A friend from school."
Zahra still wasn't satisfied. "Lucy, you didn't, like, DO anything to the children did you?"
Lucy shook her head. "I promised a granola bar to whomever reached Nirvana first."
"Um, Lucy, don't they know that some monks have been trying for years- OW!"
Diego doubled over from where Lucy had punched him in the stomach.
"No they do not!" She hissed, "And if you say one word about it that breaks them out of this lovely comatose state they are in I will hex you to Hogwarts and back."
It was then that Diego noticed she had her wand out and, while hidden subtly behind the newspaper, pointed directly at his heart.
"You wouldn't dare..."
"Do anything permanent. No, I wouldn't. But there are a few things I picked up from the Slytherins that I am dying to try out."
Diego raised his hands up, "Fine, fine, I won't spoil your fun." He sat down on the wall beside her. "How did that owl find you anyway?"
"Don't worry, a normal owl couldn't. It was one of my students, and they know how to get in touch with me. I told him I'd be here today. Didn't seem too dangerous, after all, we're leaving tonight unless they call and tell us to come home."
Zahra sighed, Lucy passed her the water, and they didn't say much. Every time they discussed moving on it was with the caveat "unless they call to tell us we can come home." They hadn't had any news in a week, so that didn't seem likely.
Diego lay down for a nap, Zahra took out a book, and Lucy continued to leaf through several weeks worth of Daily Prophets, catching up on the news of the wizarding world.
Most of it wasn't terribly interesting. Lots of Quidditch reporting, Cornelius Fudge's birthday celebration, the elusiveness of the Dementors, despite an anonymous tip that had helped aurors to pick up their trail... Lucy had smiled at that one. Increased intensity of muggle badgering by Death Eaters, a wizard missing from his home in Dorset, a particularly scathing letter to the editor about Dumbledore, heightened construction at Gringott's for some mysterious purpose, a witch missing from her home in London, more Quidditch, the discovery of the missing Dorset wizard and the London witch in a MOST unorthodox position in Bath, appearance of the Dark Mark, an attack on the French Embassy resulting in the serious injury of-
"Oh my god."
Diego saw Lucy's face pale as she hurridly tore through the paper to where the front page article continued on page five.
"What is it?"
She didn't speak a word for a full five minutes, and Diego could see her eyes reading through the article. When she finished she neatly refolded the paper and tied the stack back together with string.
"I need to go take care of something."
Author's Notes:
I seem to always start these by saying that I don't normally do them, but I really don't. However, just to clear a few things up:
1. To clear any confusion, yes, the lights in the hallway at Imhotep were on when books started to fall on Lucy's head. But Lucy, you see, was in her bedroom, so those lights would not be much of a help to her at the time. She had planned to turn on her lamp, but the third tremor knocked it over and broke it, so she had to use her wand to find her way to the door.
2. The first four chapters of this are pretty much already written, simply because I wanted to see if I could make it work. If you have never read my writing before I must inform you that this is not typical, and normal updating speed is not very good. Especially with fall semester starting on Monday. If you need a good story to read in the meantime, check out the Serpent's Society stories, the newest one should be coming out any day now. Writing is incredibly smart. You can find more about them in my profile.
I talk too much, this is why I shouldn't do author notes.