The Eye of Ra #1 Read online

  John stood and dusted himself off and was relieved he didn’t have a twisted ankle or torn knee.

  “Wow,” he said to himself. “Got lucky that time.” A jagged rock like a Native American hunting knife stuck out from a boulder mere inches from where he’d tumbled down. If he’d slid across that, he might not have been so lucky.

  John reached the tunnel. He couldn’t see Sarah inside, but he cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted in. “I still don’t think this is a good idea, Sarah. Come out. Let’s get Dad and Mom to explore this with us. You know they say we shouldn’t go spelunking without proper gear.”

  Sarah popped her head out of the void, startling John backward. His foot hit a rock at an awkward angle, and he was about to fall back down the slope again when Sarah’s hand reached out and grabbed him by the shirt. For a moment he dangled backward, then pulled himself up to vertical.

  “You mean proper gear like this?” Sarah said, flicking on and off her flashlight.

  John really meant parental supervision, but he didn’t want to tell that to his sixth-grade sister. No, wait—seventh-grade.

  “I’m going whether you’re coming or not,” Sarah said. “Just a quick peek and then we’ll catch up with Mom and Dad. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

  For the second time this evening, John’s shoulders slumped and he put his head back, reluctant to accept that she was going no matter what he said. “Fine. But make it quick.”

  “Two minutes, promise. Yay!” Sarah disappeared into the tunnel.

  John checked his watch: 6:52 p.m. He flipped on his flashlight and poked his head across the line of darkness. It wasn’t particularly noisy outside, but once he stuck his head into the portal, sound seemed to get sucked away. It was a kind of quiet he’d never experienced.

  The flashlight fought away the darkness, but even its light seemed suppressed. John smacked it on the side, thinking maybe the battery was low.

  When he aimed the beam back into the tunnel, Sarah’s face appeared in an instant, sending a jolt of sheer panic up John’s spine, and he jumped and dropped his light. What should have been the clatter of it falling into the ground sounded muted.

  John saw Sarah’s lips move and he could hear her faint whisper. It felt like he had cotton in his ears. He picked up his flashlight.

  “What?” John asked, wiggling a pinky in his ear.

  “Quiet in here,” Sarah said, not really any louder than she had before, but closer to his ear.

  “Yeah, it’s weird,” John shouted. “Isn’t there usually an echo in a cave like this?”

  “And that smell,” she said, sniffing.

  John took a snort of air. What was that smell? He closed his eyes and took another full inhale. A memory of the beach in California with his cousins came into his mind. Not the ocean, but when he’d been buried up to his neck in the sand. That smell of hot sand, not like dirt or silt or anything else—the smell of a zillion tiny rocks.

  “Sand?” John asked, opening his eyes. But Sarah was gone. “Sarah?”

  The dim beam from her flashlight danced up ahead, then turned a corner and disappeared.

  “Sarah!” John yelled after her. “We shouldn’t go any deeper! This isn’t safe!”

  John stood still, ears perked, waiting for a response. He couldn’t even hear his own breathing. Sarah probably hadn’t heard him. Or she’d decided not to respond.

  A look back to the tunnel entrance reassured John. He was barely inside the cave, but it seemed so much darker than it should, as if light couldn’t penetrate past the entrance. Leaning back out of the cave, he heard a flush of sound and he breathed in fresh mountain pine air. It calmed him. With a lungful of that, he straightened up and took a few more steps forward. After about ten steps, the passage veered to the right. Up ahead another five or six steps, he could see Sarah, her flashlight tracing over shapes on the wall.

  John looked back to the cave entrance. It looked so far away, like the light just stopped immediately at the cave entrance. The rectangle of shimmering light sparkled so brilliantly bright compared to the darkness surrounding him. If he stepped further toward Sarah, he wouldn’t have that touch point with the light; he wouldn’t be able to see his exit.

  A pressure weighed on his chest and pushed thick blood up into his neck that pounded through his temples. His breaths were harder to force. He’d just take the few steps to Sarah and drag her out. If she wouldn’t come, then he’d go get their parents and tell them. Sure, she’d call him a tattletale, but this was too much. This—this was too much.

  He didn’t quite realize it until he got all the way to Sarah, but John had been holding his breath since losing sight of the exit. When he touched her arm, he exhaled heavy air and inhaled another lungful, though it felt like it only filled him up a quarter full at most.

  “We have to go.” He moaned the words like they could be his last.

  “Look at this,” Sarah said, amazement in her calm voice. She didn’t seem to be suffering any of the same effects John endured. Her eyes were big round orbs staring at the wall in front of them.

  John followed her gaze and looked at the wall. Into the stone, worn etchings depicted shapes and animals and what might be interpreted as letters, though not in English.

  “It’s so cool,” Sarah said, transfixed. “Are these hieroglyphs?”

  “You mean like from ancient Egypt?” John asked. Sarah’s wonder had momentarily distracted him from his own panic, and his breathing had almost miraculously returned to normal.

  “Ancient Egypt,” Sarah repeated.

  She stepped closer to the wall and traced one particular carving in the shape of an eye. It had two lines coming out from the bottom of it, one going straight down with a knifelike edge, another that stretched at an angle diagonal, with a curlicue finish.

  As soon as her finger finished following the line of the eye, a bright flash illuminated the chamber for nothing more than the blip of a nanosecond, as if an electric bulb had exploded and gone out. John blinked back a sudden headache, wondering if he’d imagined the burst.

  “Did you see that? So cool!” Sarah exclaimed.

  John’s heart was in his throat. “Can we get outta here now?”

  “So cool,” Sarah repeated, shaking her head. “I wish I had my phone to take a picture of this. Dad will love it!”

  John tugged on Sarah’s shirt. “Can we please go now, Sarah? Please?” He could feel sweat on his forehead.

  “Yes, fine,” Sarah said, pulling her arm away from his tugging. “This is a dead end, anyway. Let’s go.”

  She marched off back to the corner and around it, John close behind. John could feel his chest loosening with every step, could almost taste the mountain air again. He plodded along behind her in the tunnel without looking up.

  As soon as they were out of the cave, John smashed into the back of Sarah, who’d stopped suddenly.

  “What the—” she muttered.

  John didn’t smell the fresh mountain air. When he looked around his sister, expecting to see the scree slope and forest and the way back to the trail, instead he dropped his flashlight and his jaw at the same time.

  He’d never seen anything like it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sand, Sand, and More Sand in a Strange Land

  JOHN

  “Sarah, where are we?” John asked, frozen in place despite the heat. In front of them was a vast ocean of sand as far as the eye could see. It rolled in carved waves, dunes that sparkled in the low-slanting rays of the sun.

  Dunes? John thought.

  Sarah staggered forward, shielding her eyes from the glare. “I—I—”

  It was rare for her to be speechless. And it was kind of spooky, her not saying anything and stepping forward with the jerky movements of a zombie.

  “Are you okay?” John followed his sister out into the sand, suddenly very afraid to be even a foot away from her.

  “Woo-hoo!” she shouted, jumping into the air in her signature move, arms shooting up in a V shape.

  “You’re excited about this?” John snapped. “Sarah, how are we in a desert all of a sudden? Where’s the mountain? The cave?” The incredible moment tickled at his brain, and he couldn’t put two and two together. “Am I dreaming?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “Dreaming. We must be dreaming. Together.” She knelt into the sand, picked up a handful, and let it drain out of her fist. “This feels pretty real to me.” She turned around to John as she said it, so he could see the roll of her eyes.

  “How could we be in the mountains in one moment and then . . .” He trailed off, watching Sarah’s eyes go up and her head tilt back, taking in something very large behind him. John wasn’t sure he wanted to turn around.

  Sarah laughed, her face turned toward the sky, her hand covering her mouth. “So.” She took a full breath. “Cool!”

  The curiosity got the better of him. John held his breath and rotated on his heels in the sand. He’d been stunned by the vast golden dunes, but what he saw now made him squeak out a chortle of disbelief.

  “What—? How—? Is that—?” John stammered. His finger reached out, pointing to the scene as if maybe he could poke it, like it was a postcard of a giant pyramid and not a real one.

  “A pyramid,” Sarah said, awestruck.

  “A pyramid,” John repeated, more a question than a statement, asking himself if it was real. He’d heard his dad use the word “flabbergasted” a few times before, and it seemed to accurately sum up the state of utter astonishment he felt now. John blinked his eyes, hoping the illusion would disappear. Flabbergasted.

  John moved his head to look at Sarah. Only at the last degree of his head’s slow rotation did he take his eyes off the huge stepped-stone structure. Then he swallowed hard. This could
n’t be real. No, this couldn’t be real. “I’m kinda freakin’ out here, sis. What’s happening? Where are we?”

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders up and held them there, her head ticking back and forth like a slow metronome, obviously in shock. “Egypt?”

  “Egypt?” John asked, incredulous. “There’s no way we could be in Egypt. Something happened . . . When I fell down the hill, yes! I must’ve hit my head. I’m unconscious and dreaming. Obviously dreaming. That’s all this is.” He chuckled a nervous laugh. “I have to be—”

  “Look.” Sarah pointed to a small rectangle in the base of the pyramid. About the size of the mirror that hung on the back of their bathroom door, the doorway was edged with freshly etched hieroglyphs. Set back into the stone on either side, a statue of a woman with a scorpion on her head stood guard. The quality of the material made it appear practically brand-new.

  “Is that where we came out?” Sarah asked. “From the cave?”

  “What? That can’t be,” John replied in a knee-jerk reaction. “This is just a dream.”

  Sarah cocked her head and looked at him in response. “A dream?”

  “Yeah, this is a dream,” John reiterated. “I’ll wake up any minute now and have a good lump on my head, and it’ll be fine because we’re not in Egypt. We can’t be, that’s impossible.”

  Sarah seemed to ignore the rant and instead scanned their surroundings. John watched her eyes stop to stare at something on their left. He couldn’t help but look too.

  Beyond the edge of the pyramid, shimmering on the near horizon, it looked like palm trees and a village of squat houses, wavering as if a mirage. Turning a bit farther, John could see a huge river winding away over the horizon.

  “This is quite a dream,” John muttered under his breath.

  “Over there.” Sarah pointed. A brown-skinned boy, barefoot and bare chested, wearing a white kilt-like wrapping around his hips and thighs, walked away from the river holding a large clay jug. He moved toward the village.

  “Hey!” Sarah yelled.

  “Shush!” John hissed. “We don’t know him.” He immediately felt silly for reacting that way. What did it matter, if this was only a dream? But John’s chest grew heavy, anxiety weighing him down regardless. He’d never had a dream so elaborate as this. He was starting to consider that maybe it was, in fact, not a dream. His brain ached admitting the possibility.

  Sarah laughed. “Aw, come on. He’s just some kid. Maybe he can help us figure out what happened.” She ran off toward him, but it was slow going through the sand. John hesitated, feeling immobilized by the what-ifs. His fear of being left alone won out, and after a heavy sigh, he trudged after his sister.

  As soon as the boy caught sight of them, he stopped in his tracks and gave them a strange look.

  “Stop!” the boy said, taking a few steps back and putting the clay jug in front of himself almost as a shield. “Who are you?”

  If this really was Egypt, John was surprised that he could understand the boy. What language did they speak in Egypt, anyway? The fact that it didn’t seem to matter? Add it to the growing list of oddities. And another: Why wasn’t this boy wearing a modern pair of shorts? Is this how they still dress in Egypt?

  “I can understand you,” Sarah said, obviously having similar thoughts as John about their ability to communicate.

  “And I can understand you,” the boy said, his narrowed eyes conveying distrust while also bedazzled by the flashes off Sarah’s glittery sequined shirt. “But who are you?”

  “I’m Sarah. And he’s—” She gestured to John.

  “I’m very confused,” John said.

  “He’s John,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes.

  “Sarah,” the boy repeated. “And John. Uh-huh.” His dark brown eyes tried to catch John’s. The boy still didn’t move the jug or change his feet from their defensive position, as if he was getting ready to wrestle. “I’m Zachariah, son of Imhotep.”

  “Howdy, Zack,” Sarah said, thrusting her hand out to shake.

  Zack winced in his defensive posture. After apparently assessing that it wasn’t an attack, he gave her outstretched hand a questioning look. “Where are you from? And what’re you doing here?”

  “Well.” Sarah retracted her hand. “That’s a very good question. Can you tell us where ‘here’ is, exactly?”

  Zack moved his gaze up to her face, his brow furrowed and his face scrunched up as if she’d just asked the funniest thing in the world. “This is Saqqara, land of King Djoser.” He gestured around with his head.

  “King Joe-sir,” Sarah repeated, nodding.

  “Yes, King Djoser,” Zack said, nodding with her.

  They both nodded a few more times together, eyeing each other. Watching them in unison, John felt himself suddenly nodding along too. It went on for a few odd moments, everyone nodding together.

  Then Zack stopped his head from bobbing and asked again, “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” John said to Sarah, making a reference to The Wizard of Oz movie, when Dorothy woke up in a fantastical land after getting sucked up into a tornado. She eventually escaped the magical land of Oz in a hot air balloon. If he wasn’t going to wake up soon in a hospital in Colorado from hitting his head, John hoped they’d find an easier way home than by hot air balloon.

  “Does that make him a Munchkin?” Sarah kicked her thumb over at Zack, alluding to the inhabitants of Oz. John let out one dazed chuckle. This all still seemed too unreal to fathom, but, just as it had sunken in with Dorothy, John could feel his mind coming to terms with it, whether he liked it or not. Exactly what “it” was that he was coming to realize still seemed foggy.

  Zack watched their exchange with a wrinkled forehead. “You two are strange.”

  “Well,” Sarah said, one hand on her hip. “That’s kind of rude.” But she smiled after the mock offense.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Just traveling through,” Sarah said with a smirk. “Kind of by accident, really. I take it you don’t see many people like us?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone like you,” Zack said, his eyebrows shooting up. “Your clothes are—I’ve never seen that type of shendyt.” Zack pointed at John’s loose gray shorts that weren’t all that different from the fabric wrapped around his own waist. “Or a woman not wearing a kalasiris. Why do you wear that odd shendyt when you should be wearing a dress?” He gestured to Sarah’s jean-colored stretch pants.

  “Excuse me?” Sarah put both hands on her hips and cocked one side out at an angle. “Girls don’t have to wear dresses all the time, you know.”

  Zack raised one eyebrow, seemingly befuddled by Sarah’s attitude. “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  “Colorado,” John said.

  “Never heard of it,” Zack said.

  “United States?” Sarah added.

  Zack shook his head.

  John wiped the back of his hand across the sweat that had suddenly sprouted on his forehead. This wasn’t feeling right. How could someone not have heard of the good ol’ U.S. of A.?

  “What is that bracelet?” Zack pointed to John’s arm with a finger, his hand still clasping the jug. With the movement, John heard water sloshing inside.

  “This?” John asked, pointing at his watch.

  “Yeah, is that cowhide?” Zack stepped closer.

  This was getting weirder by the second. First this boy is dressed in a cloth kilt, then he doesn’t know about America, now he doesn’t recognize a watch? Was Egypt really so far behind the times?

  John held out his arm, going along with Zack’s request to see it, but thoroughly confused. He could smell tangy sweat and sweet incense on the boy. “Cowhide? It’s plastic. It’s a Timex. It’s—”

  John tapped on the face, looking for the time. It was frozen at 6:55 p.m. and 48 seconds.

  “Timex?” Zack asked. “Is that a form of onyx? What are those markings?”

  John tapped on his watch face again. The seconds didn’t change. Still stuck at 48. “Sarah, look,” he said, tapping harder on the watch.

  “What am I looking at?” Sarah said, holding his forearm.

  “The time. It’s frozen!” John said, shaking his wrist.

  “So? Your watch is broken. Ask for a new one for Christmas.”