Chapter 8

Disclaimer: none of the characters belong to me, but to their appropriate owners.

Sadie Kane

For several moments we just stared at the shadowy serpent and it stared right back at us. Eventually, Carter broke the silence. "Impossible! You cannot be back! We've execrated you!"

"Ah, little pharaoh," the serpent hissed with a clear menace, "that may be so, but I am Isfet! I am the shadow of Ma'at and I will always Be, as long as there is the world." It paused and added. "Though you have diminished me and hurt me greatly, I grant you that – but I will be back!"

"What is it talking about?" senhorita Vasquez chose the wrongest time to speak up (and yes, I known that 'wrongest' is not a real word, Carter, to shut up!). "What is it, anyways?"

"This is Apophis," Carter said weakly. "Well, his shadow – sort of. Um, it prevents us from getting the tools."

"Mmm," senhorita nodded sagely. "Fascinating. What if I asked him nicely, something along the lines of – Please, Mr. Apophis, can we get our things and leave? You can remain here undisturbed as much as you want!"

"No!" For some reason Apophis seemed even more angry at this polite suggestion than ever before. "I am Apophis! I am the shadow of the world! I do not do politeness!"

"Really?" senhorita's eyes narrowed. "Why is that? You would rather sound like a kettle boiling over?"

"Exactly!"

There was a pause as we all stared at the infuriating serpent as if it was mad – mad as in, you know, wearing underpants on your hand and nothing else, and not mad as in the mad scientist who plans to destroy the world, mind.

"I get it!" Carter said suddenly. "You're not inherently evil; you're just selfish, not unlike Set. Only Set can learn to get along with others and to care about them – well, about some of them, and you cannot. That's why you're so miserable!"

"What did you say?" Apophis whirled around to look at Carter. "Pharaoh, if you think that your status gives you the privilege-"

"Hey! We're not done yet, you glorified masculine principle!" senhorita yelled at Apophis (seriously, we are the House of Life, we do not need assistance!)

"What did you call me?" Apophis whirled back to her, angrier yet. "You dare-"

Senhorita Vasquez threw something straight into Apophis' mouth, who instinctively snapped it shut. For several moments afterwards, too, there was silence, and then Apophis uncoiled from the local nome, stuck his head into a nearby bog, and began to vomit, rather like the upper-grade schoolboys back in Boston.

"What did you do to him?" Carter asked, but before he could receive a reply, Walt ran.

Straight into the nome-lodge, just as Apophis appeared to have collected himself and turned around... only to see Walt close the door behind him from the inside.

"Fools," Apophis hissed as he raised his body upwards and spread out his hood. "Now your friend is trapped and I will destroy you-"

"Ahem," was the reply, and it was not from us. Rather it was from a small Arctic fox that had been shadowing us for a while, ever since Zia tried to do that stunt with the local mosquitoes and it backfired. "Dear guest, this just crosses the line."

For once, I was stunned into silence. Sure, it was a talking fox, but it still was just a small one, hardly one to challenge Apophis!

The snake, however, did not think so, as he turned to face the newcomer. "Mother Russia!" he hissed, "what are you doing here?"

"This may be my heels, but it is still me," the Arctic fox replied, "and you, dear guest, are not welcome anymore!"

"So?" Apophis hissed but his heart (even he did not have one to begin with) was not in it anymore.

The fox (Mother Russia?) just stared and after several moments of that stare Apophis just was gone: one moment he was here, the next – he was not.

"...What was that?" Carter asked no one in particular as the fox scratched behind its ear.

"Me," it replied in a decisively feminine voice. "And by the way, oh Egyptian king, the only reason why I haven't yet evicted all of you yet is because you have one of my own among you."

"Yes, well," senhorita Vasquez looked uncomfortable, "my father may be from here, but I am not much of a Russian. Or a communist, for that matter."

"My dear," the fox trotted over to her, "it's the spirit that matters. As long as you and your children feel that this is home, it will be." The fox paused. "Though Sobek isn't the worst god to follow, either – he's just lonely and misunderstood."

"Misunderstood?" I exploded: who did this Mother Russia think she was? Carter was the only know-it-all in my world and he was more than enough. "He's a giant humanoid crocodile with buffalo horns! He almost killed me!"

The fox turned and gave me a look. It was hard to tell, because her eyes were somewhat small, but it looked like Mother Russia was not very impressed with me.

And then Walt came out. "I got them!" he yelled loudly.

"Well, hello there, handsome!" the fox purred, and suddenly she was a woman, dressed in actually rather concealing clothing, but very, well, womanly, and she sort of looked good, too, and she was sort of flirting with Walt too – or was it with Anubis? In any case-

"Hello to you too, ma'am," Walt (or Anubis?) said quickly, as he was suddenly at my side. (Yeah, it probably was Anubis.) "Um, I think that we have to go-"

"So soon?" the fox-woman seemed genuinely upset, but at the same time she somehow understood something too. "Very well, if you got to go, then you got to go-"

...And suddenly we were back at the twenty-first nome once more.

TBC