Snyder, Zilpha Keatley (11 page)

All the other ceremonies and rites had been developed in the same way, but this time there was a difference. This was the first new ceremony to be made up since the coming of the two new Egyptians, and the first real ceremony they’d actually taken part in. April and Melanie had often wondered if they ever really would.

But they needn’t have wondered. The boys took part, all right, and to an extent that nobody had expected. For instance, it was Toby who suggested that they march around the altar, beating their chests and sprinkling their heads with ashes and wailing. That wasn’t so much of a surprise. He’d already demonstrated that he had lots of good ideas. It was the way he threw himself into the part that came as a shock to the girls. He was so different from what he was at school. At school he was Toby the cool-cat sophisticate; and now, suddenly, he was Toby, the grief-stricken ancient Egyptian. And, somehow, he gave the feeling there were a lot of other roles he could play just as well.

Ken was a different matter, although he, too, did a lot better than anybody would have expected. He was of course, absolutely perfect at being himself, and he was very much at home in the role. But this Egyptian business was something else, again.

The Ceremony for the Dead

And so, while Toby staggered around the altar, beating his chest with wild-eyed abandon, sprinkling real ashes-left over from Set’s sacrificial fire-in his hair, and wailing like a wounded electric guitar; and while, right behind him, April and Melanie did more or less the same things, just about as realistically, except they were using imaginary ashes-because to a girl even the death of a pharoah isn’t worth a dirty head; and while Elizabeth did everything April and

Melanie did only softer; and while even Marshall marched with solemn assurance, thumping his chest firmly with the hand that wasn’t holding Security, and making a noise like a stuck record player; Ken brought up the rear.

If the rest of them could do it, Ken Kamata could, too, and he did. But it wasn’t easy. Every time he thumped his chest or made a brief, halfhearted wail, he felt his ears get hot; and from time to time he announced to nobody in particular, “Sheesh! I feel like a nut.”

When 5: 30 came and everyone was leaving, Toby told the other members of to call him up that evening and he would assign them something to bring. He was going to do some research, he said, to find out exactly what was needed to make a mummy. But there was an awful lot to learn about mummies, and even after a whole evening of study it turned out that Toby’s information wasn’t all that complete. For instance, when Ken, who was assigned to bring oil, wanted to know what kind, Toby couldn’t exactly say. It didn’t seem likely that the ancient Egyptians used any of the kinds Ken and Toby knew about-crankcase, sewing machine, polyunsaturated or bicycle. They finally settled for bicycle, because oil was oil, and bicycle was the only kind that Ken owned personally.

When the Egyptians had assembled the next afternoon, bringing their offerings of oil and spice and salt and perfume, Toby-Ramose-gave a little talk on how to prepare a mummy. It was a good speech, but it suffered from frequent interruptions because Bastet and Aida had read the same book and had some ideas of their own. And there was another pause while everyone tried to comfort Queen who got all upset when Ramose spoke indelicately about “taking out the guts.” It turned out that Queen felt so strongly about “cutting holes in Petey” even if he were dead, that it was decided to dispense with that part of the procedure.

“It’ll be all right, Tobe-uh-Ramose,” Horemheb said. “He’s so little he can’t have enough guts to make that much difference.”

Toby was disappointed, but he had to admit that according to the book there was another way. Poor people, who couldn’t afford the more expensive process, had been simply soaked in brine.

So, the rest of the afternoon was taken up in preparing a salt water bath for Prince Pete-ho-tep and placing him in it with the proper pomp. Then he was left to soak.

The appearance of the mummy-to-be when he was removed from his brine bath, on the following afternoon, was something of a shock to everybody. His wet feathers stuck to his tiny body and he was covered with a thick white salty scum. When Toby lifted

him gingerly out of the brine by one claw, everybody felt a little queasy, and Elizabeth’s eyes became suspiciously liquid.

Toby glanced at her and sighed impatiently, “Now just cool it a minute, ,” he said. “I’ll have him all fixed up in two seconds.” He hastily poured some fresh water over the parakeet, and. dried him off on the tail of his T-shirt, which was huge and dingy and probably belonged to his father.

When Pete-ho-tep was dry and his feathers rearranged, he did look almost as good as new, and the mummification process continued. In the next few days he was annointed with spices and perfume, wrapped in thin strips of oil-soaked cloth, and laid to rest with a supply of bird seed and a few of his favorite toys, in a smallish pyramid made of old bricks.

It was a good week in the land of Egypt. Melanie collected several new ceremonies to add to the sacred records; Ken began to find being an ancient Egyptian a little less embarrassing; and Elizabeth felt so proud of the important part that Petey had played, she almost forgot how much she missed him.

But as became second nature to its six participants, and they began to feel more and more at home in the land of Egypt, they gradually began to forget about being cautious. Ceremonies, discussions and arguments began to be carried on in

normal or even louder than normal tones and no one stopped to worry about being oveiheard. Only one very small Egyptian bad an idea that the land of Egypt was being watched, and for some reason, that was his own and private, he didn’t choose to teff.

The Oracle of Thoth

STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM, MRS. GRANGER, THE SIXTH grade teacher at Wilson, was responsible for the next phase of . It all grew out of the fact that an assignment the class was reading just barely mentioned something called an oracle. Toby had a pretty good idea of what an oracle was but he decided to ask Mrs. Granger about it, in the hopes of getting her started on one of her long-winded explanations. A test was scheduled for the end of the period, and Mrs. Granger had been known to forget about such things, if you handled it just right.

So Toby asked a question about oracles and sure enough it worked. He’d picked on a subject that Mrs. Granger could really get her teeth into. She got that gleam in her eye and started out full blast, and Toby settled back feeling sure she was good for the rest of

the time until recess.

But the way it turned out, the whole thing sort of backfired, because by the end of the period the whole class-Toby included-was as hung up on the whole oracle bit as Mrs. Granger was. As a matter of fact, it had completely slipped Toby’s mind that he’d only asked about it to head off a test. Mrs. Granger could do that sort of thing to you, if you weren’t ‘careful.

During library, period, which came next, a lot of people got stuff to read about oracles, and that afternoon there was another discussion in class. Everyone had come up with a lot of dope about the different kinds of oracles and how they predicted the future in different ways-through the actions of sacred snakes or birds or fish or even through the way the insides of a dead animal were arranged when the priests cut it open. There was even one very famous one that was run by a priestess who went into a kind of trance or fit, and while she was clear off in this trance she spouted out a lot of messages and stuff that were supposed to come right straight from the mouths of the-gods. The oracles all had special sacred places, caves or grottoes or specially built temples, and there were all sorts of far-out things connected with them like sacred fires and mystic vapors and magical statues.

Among the stuff reported to the class was a list of the countries that had depended on oracles to help the rulers decide how to run things. And one of the

countries was Egypt.

As soon as he heard it, Toby remembered reading something about the Egyptian priests making predictions, but he just hadn’t been thinking about the oracles in connection with until that moment. He snuck a glance in the direction of Ross and February, to see if they had the same idea, and sure enough, they had. It was easy to tell. They were staring at each other in that way they had. If they were where they could talk, Toby thought to himself, one of them would be starting a sentence and the other finishing it-as if they had Siamese brains, or something. Just at that moment the girls stopped staring at each other and turned and stared at Toby.

They were giving him that same bit with the eyes that they used on each other; and if he’d wanted to, Toby could -have given it right back. He knew what they were saying, all right. Instead, he slowly and deliberately made his eyes go crossed and let his mouth fall open in a “stupid-idiot” face.

The reaction was just what he’d expected. The girls looked shocked, then angry, and then they turned their backs and worked hard at ignoring him for the rest of the period. Toby let his mind go back to his plans for the afternoon with a feeling of satisfaction. They would have forgotten about being mad by the time school was out-and besides, they’d really asked

for it. He’d told those dames before, Egypt was Egypt, but at school you had to play it cool.

That afternoon’s two hours in Egypt turned out to be mostly a long discussion of the What and How of the Egyptian Oracle. April had her mind set on the kind of oracle that got its messages from the gods through a high priestess with fits. And, naturally, she was all set to be the high priestess. She would sit on a throne before the sacred fire, surrounded by swirling mystic vapors, and people who wanted predictions would write their question on a slip of paper and drop it in the fire. She would go into a trance, and then she would speak with the voice of the gods.

That was just great as far as the trance was concerned, Toby thought. If anybody could throw a far-out fit, April could. And if he hadn’t cooked up such a great idea, himself, he’d have been tempted to go along with April’s version just to see how she’d do it. But the fact of the matter was, he had a scheme that was going to make the oracle bit just about the greatest thing that had ever hit the land of Egypt. So, much as he hated to do it, he set about spoiling April’s plans.

“So, when they drop their questions in the fire,” he asked, “how are you going to know what to answer? Particularly if you haven’t even seen the question?”

“You must not have been listening in class, today,” April said. “7 don’t have to know. The gods speak

through the mouth of the priestess.” Sometimes it was hard to tell whether April was kidding or whether she really believed stuff like that.

Ken was looking at April in consternation. “You really think the gods are-” his voice faded away and for a minute he just stared at April. “Sheesh!” he said at last. “You really are cracking up this’ time.”

But Toby only raised an eyebrow and gave April his cool-amusement look. “Sure,” he said, “but don’t you think we ought to have something else planned? Just in case the gods don’t get the message.”

Then, while April glared at him, Toby told everybody his idea, and naturally everybody thought it was the greatest. Even April, after she’d had a chance to cool off. The way Toby saw it, somebody would think up a question they wanted answered about the future. Then they would write it on a piece of paper and bring the paper to the temple of the oracle. At the temple the priest, or priestess-he added graciously-would pass the paper over the sacred fire, and do whatever other stuff he could think up. Then-and this was the good part-he would take it to this special altar they would build for Thoth and put the question in his beak and leave it there overnight.

Toby jumped up and grabbed Thoth down off the shelf and dusted him off. “After all,” Toby said, “Thoth was the Egyptian god of wisdom, and this crazy priestess bit was something the Greeks

thought up.”

That was a good point, and after that there wasn’t much more argument-except that April did say if they were going to be so particular, how about the fact that actually Thoth was supposed to be an Ibis and not an old chewed-up owl. But nobody paid much attention to her. They were all to busy starting in on Thoth’s altar and planning the ceremony for Consulting the Oracle.

It was decided that they would draw straws and the winner would get to be the first one to ask the oracle a question. They gave the straws to Marshall to hold and everybody drew. And, just as you’d think, the winner was Ken, the one guy who really didn’t want to win.

“Sheesh,” Ken said. “I don’t know anything to ask. Anything I can’t find out for myself, I don’t even want to know.”

“Now look,” Toby said. “You won and you can’t cop out on it. That’s poor sportsmanship. Anybody can think of a little old question about the future. I’ll bet even Marshall could think up a lot of questions, and he’s only four years old.”

“I can think up three bags full,” Marshall said.

Nobody ever got away with calling Ken a poor sportsman. His chin got the hard look it got just before he slammed a home run, and after a minute you could tell he’d thought of something because

The.Egypt Game

his ears got red. “Okay,” he said, “I got a question. Give me the paper.”

At that point, Melanie suggested that perhaps the questions to the oracle ought to be written in hieroglyphics, but for some reason Toby was against it. As soon as Ken had written his question, Toby grabbed the folded paper, and stepping up to the new altar, he started right in being the priest of the oracle. By the time a certain party realized what had happened, she was too. interested in what was going on to argue.

Toby pressed the slip of paper to his forehead and walked three times around the temple. Then he made Ken kneel before the altar of Thoth and press the paper to Thoth’s forehead, while Toby sprinkled them both with holy water from the tuna can. Next he hung the paper on one of Thoth’s long sharp toenails and sprinkled it with more holy water. Finally he waved it back and forth in the smoke from the incense burner, chanting, “Hear us O Thoth, aneient and wise. Hear us and answer.”