How to Curse in Hieroglyphics (18 page)

He faltered as the Princess herself stalked slowly forward, stepping into a shaft of moonlight that spilled in through a gap in the tent's canvas roof. The golden beads and bracelets adorning Zahara's hair and arms glittered coldly, and her eyes sparked as she stared unblinkingly at Delmer. The carny looked at her, and then to the image depicted on the sarcophagus, and then back again. The resemblance was unmistakable, but for someone who had only ever been familiar with the Pharaoh's daughter in a bandaged and shambling state, Delmer must have thought he was looking at a ghost. He certainly resembled one himself in that moment as all the blood drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale.

“Del-mer,” the Princess said haltingly.

“Looks like she knows her jailers by name, pal,” Cheryl said, thoroughly enjoying his befuddlement. “That can't be good for you.”

“Is that … really her?”

“In living Technicolor,” Tweed said in her best grim, gothly monotone. It made for very effective scolding. “She's been alive all this time. And you and your boss have been treating her like some kind of unfeeling puppet. Shame on you.”

Delmer's eyes went wide and he stammered, “A—A— Alive?! What d'you mean
alive?
I always thought she was just a regular mummy. Like … mummified and such!”

“You thought wrong,” Cheryl said fiercely. “She wasn't evil. It's not like Dudley said. She really
was
cursed by the temple priests and buried alive, and Dudley knew it all along. He's been using her to fleece money off people, and all the while he's been treating her like a thing. She's not a thing. She's a person!”

Delmer frowned deeply, and his lower lip actually seemed to tremble a bit. He took a step forward and looked the Princess in the eye. “Is … is that true? Can you—can she understand me?” He glanced at Artie and the twins.

Artie nodded. “Oh shure. She'sh had to lie there, all wrapped up and under a shpell, lishtening to folksh yap for yearsh without being able to shay anything back. She undershtands. Go ahead. Talk to her. But mind your mannersh or I'll have to busht out my minion movesh on you!”

“Uh. Okay, okay … calm down there, little fella …” Delmer still looked uncertain, but he nodded and spoke directly to Zahara-Safiya. “I'm real sorry, Princess,” he said. “I didn't know. I mean … I know that the Colonel is as mean as a snakebite—heck, of
course
I know that— but I mean, I never knew you were … well … you. I thought that creepy amulet of his was just a way of reanimating a … well … a mummy. Heck, I thought you was dead. And I still never thought it was really right, the way folks gawked at you. It weren't respectful. I always thought your history was so fascinatin'. All these
art-y-facts and such. I even taught myself a little bit o' that picture writing, y'know. Nothing fancy—just the basics … but I thought it might, I dunno, honour your memory or something.”

Zahara tilted her head and said something that Artie listened to for a moment before translating. “She shays she knowsh. She'sh heard you grumbling shometimes after the show. And you were alwaysh careful when you packed up her shtuff … She shays she kinda almosht thought of you like a friend.”

Delmer blinked and the colour flooded back into his face. He mumbled something that was too low for the others to hear.

“Aw, look,” Cheryl said, stepping forward. “Del, buddy, we're on a clock here. Can you help us out? Or, at least, if you can't do that … can you at least just stay out of our way?”

Delmer frowned and looked over his shoulder at the tent door. But when he turned back, there was a glint of determination in his eyes. “He's gonna kill me
dead
when he finds out I helped you, and then he'll have no one to kick around any more and that'll serve him right. Not you, Princess. And not me!” Delmer clapped his hands together and rolled up his sleeves as though he was getting ready for a fight. “I'll help you however I can. What's your plan?”

They told him the plan and he got a little less feisty.

“Dang,” he said. “That's a crazy plan.”

Cheryl and Tweed nodded in agreement, as Zahara and Artie went back to loading up the Moviemobile's trunk. It
was
a crazy plan. The craziest part of it was that the one thing they needed most to make it work was hanging from a chain around the neck of the one person who would do anything possible to stop them. But, with Delmer's help, they might just be able to do it. With his new powers—mostly scales and teeth, but he could also move pretty darn fast—Artie could get close enough to snatch the amulet if Delmer were to, say, distract the Colonel in some way. No offence to Artie, the girls said, but his current appearance was pretty much enough to shock anyone out of their socks. A crucial moment of surprise seemed to be their best bet, and—

“Surprise!”

The twins nearly jumped out of their skins
again
as, for the second time in just a few minutes, a flap door flew wide—this time at the front of the tent—and in strode an unwelcome figure.

“Blimey,” Colonel Dudley sneered in his ridiculous, snooty British accent. “What do we have here?”

Delmer spun on his heel. There was an awkward pause. And then, “I caught ‘em!” he crowed. “I caught ‘em red-handed, sir!”

Cheryl and Tweed stood there, left speechless by Delmer's duplicity. How
dare
he? They had really thought they'd gotten through to him, but it seemed he was nothing more than Dudley's henchman.

Delmer glanced at Artie-croc where he was standing, still hidden from the Colonel's view, and gave him a nudge with his boot that sent him stumbling even farther back into the shadows. Then Delmer stepped in front of the half-open tent flap, past which the Princess was still out loading stuff into the car, and said, “I found these two little girls, Colonel—just these
two
girls,
no
one else, no sign of the
mummy
, and definitely
no
mutant lizard boys—just these two
sneakin around
and trying to pocket some of the jewels and stuff on display.” He grabbed them each by a wrist and started shouting strange, random words and phrases. Things like “water jug!” and “baboon!” and “wheat-sheaf dung-beetle!”

Cheryl and Tweed glanced at each other in confusion as Delmer dragged them toward the Colonel, who was staring at his henchman, utterly mystified.

“Sorry, sir,” Delmer said. “These little sneaks just make me so mad I wanna cuss but—young ears!—so I think it best I substitute non-cussin' words in this situation. Ink pot!”

Dudley's jaw drifted open and he raised an eyebrow.

“Um …” Delmer's face screwed up in a look of intense concentration as he continued to advance on his boss, dragging the girls along with him. “River lotus! Scorpion! Breadbasket!”

Suddenly, the twins realized what was happening. Delmer was
speakingin hieroglyphics
! He really
was
on their side—and trying to tell Artie what to do! The girls
caught on to his strategy just as Delmer let go of their wrists and shouted, “Now, Croc-boy! Now!” The twins gasped in tandem as Artie, who'd clearly been listening to Delmer's cryptic spoken pictograms—and, more to the point, seemed to have
understood
them—came scurrying out on all fours to crouch directly behind the Colonel's legs, right at knee level.

Delmer lunged forward, arms outstretched, and shoved the Colonel right in the lapels of his fancy jacket. Dudley backpedalled as he collided with Artie, and tumbled, heels over head, landing on his back with a
wooff!
Then Artie pounced, closing his elongated reptilian snout around the amulet. One sharp tug and the chain snapped. The Colonel howled in momentary terror as he realized he was being attacked by a strange swamp creature, but that howl soon turned to a roar of rage as Artie scampered away, out of the tent and into the midway, with the mystical Eye of Horus talisman gripped delicately between his snaggleteeth!

Shrieks of fear, and then gales of amused laughter and chatter billowed back into the tent as the Colonel tore through the flaps, wild-eyed and in hot pursuit, and Cheryl and Tweed figured that the Wiggins folk just assumed it was all still part of the act! The girls stuck their heads out for a quick peek to see if they could determine where Artie and the amulet had gone … and were instantly spotted by Mr. Bottoms.

“Girls!” He waved a corndog at them. “Have you seen—?”

“Sure have, Mr. B!” Cheryl cut him off. The last thing they needed in that moment was a panicked search for missing tots. “Just a few minutes ago. Safe and sound, over by the Tilt-A-Whirl. Having the time of their lives. Happy as clams. Boy, they'll sleep tonight. Really gotta run!” And she ducked back inside the tent, hauling Tweed with her.

“What are we going to do?” Tweed asked, her grey eyes wide with worry. “No amulet, no portal! And Dudley's gonna sound the alarm on us for stealing his stuff any minute now, and
then
what'll we do? If anyone even knew Zahara existed, they'd probably call the government and have her taken away and locked in some kind of diabolical testing facility forever! That's what always happens in the movies!”

Cheryl frowned worriedly. Tweed was right. Amulet or no amulet, they had to get the Princess out of there. She'd been a prisoner long enough. She looked back to find that Zahara had come out from hiding and was staring at them all with her solemn, sad eyes.

But then Delmer stepped forward and pointed at the walkie-talkie clipped to Tweed's utility belt. “Your pilot buddy got the other one of those?” he asked.

The girls nodded.

“Then gimme that one.” He gestured at the Princess. “Get her outta here. I'll help your little alligator pal.”

“Hey! That'sh little
crocodile
pal there, buddy,” Artie corrected him.

“All right. Okay. Don't get your tail in a twist,” Delmer said. “Look, we can stay in touch with these here radios and find a way to meet back up. You'll get your amulet back, Princess, I promise, but right this second you gotta get outta here.”

He held out his hand for the walkie-talkie.

Tweed hesitated, wondering if they could really trust the carny after all. But he'd gone out on a limb for them already and, when she looked back at Zahara, it was to see her nod decisively. She trusted Delmer. Tweed decided she would too. She passed it over, but not before calling Pilot and giving him a heads-up.

Delmer took off to go find Artie. The girls packed up the last of the stuff in the trunk of the car and piled in. Cheryl threw the Moviemobile into reverse and burned rubber blasting out of the field, Tweed standing on the seat and barking out directions. As they turned onto the dirt track leading to the highway, the sudden, sharp swerve made Tweed's knee slam up against the “Play” button on the VCR the girls had hooked up to the TV and plugged into the car's old cigarette-lighter power outlet. As the car surged blindly down the track and hit the ditch at the side of the highway, absurdly coincidental strains of car chase music from the last movie they'd been watching blared out of the speakers.

The Moviemobile surged up the embankment, tires biting the asphalt with a cacophony of squealing and plumes of rubber-scented smoke launching the old bucket of bolts into the night like it was the star of the film. The crazy chase soundtrack of the movie rolled ahead of them like a battle cry! The only problem was that Cheryl was finding it really hard not to steer in the direction of the dirt road scenery that spooled out in front of her on the TV screen.

“Left!” Tweed shouted suddenly when Cheryl started to veer distinctly right. “The
other
left!”

“I'm trying! This is like playing pinball on a roller coaster! I can't tell which way's which! Can't you turn that thing off?”

“It's jammed!” Tweed said.

She hazarded a glance over her shoulder to see how the Princess was doing. Zahara-Safiya sat in the middle of the back seat, sandwiched between the Bottoms-filled pet cages, her elbows resting on them like the arms of a throne. It was the first time she'd travelled anywhere in a vehicle when she could actually see the passing sights— not cooped up in an ancient crate in the back of a truck. Her braids whipped madly around her face, which was set in an impassive, regal expression.

But then Zahara's gaze locked on Tweed for an instant. Her wide, dark eyes glittered with the kind of excitement that told Tweed she thought bombing down a road in the middle of the night in a top-down convertible with
music blasting and a trunk full of ancient artifacts on a race against evildoers was, well, pretty cool. Tweed grinned, gave the Princess a quick thumbs-up and turned back to fulfill her navigator duties just in time to shout directions for Cheryl to avoid taking out a row of mailboxes.

Cheryl cranked the wheel and the Moviemobile tilted perilously. And then she cranked it back again as Tweed frantically called out the turnoff to the dirt road that led to the town's airfield. The Moviemobile careened around the hangar that housed Mrs. Armbruster's crop-duster and Pilot's own plane—the old crate his father had loved to tinker with as a hobby project before he disappeared. For a second, as she thought about it, Cheryl knew exactly what Zee had to be feeling. There was a pang in her chest and she blinked her eyes rapidly, suddenly missing the family that existed now only in her hazy memory. She exchanged a glance with Tweed and knew that her cousin was feeling exactly the same way. They both knew that what they were doing for the Princess—regardless of the amount of sheer blazing heck they were all most likely going to be in come the morning—was the right thing.

At least, Cheryl thought, after this experience she could legitimately add “stunt driving” as a skill to her future stunt-double resumé …

Pilot had rolled out the plane and guided it to the edge of the short strip of runway in the middle of the
field. It sat there now, engine idling, beside an orange windsock hanging limply on a pole. He jogged toward the car as Cheryl slammed it to a skidding stop, glancing up at the sky as he ran. At least it was a calm, cloudless night. So calm that when the walkie-talkie in Pilot's hand suddenly crackled to life, it scared the heck out of them.