Snyder, Zilpha Keatley (8 page)

After that Melanie suggested that maybe they’d better stay up with the group a little better or the fathers would notice and start watching them. But even when they were trying, it wasn’t easy to catch up because their costumes were such a success. At almost every house they had to be admired and questioned and other members of the family had to be called to see them-particularly Elizabeth and Marshall. Everyone thought Elizabeth and Marshall were just “darling,” and “adorable,” and they had to be admired and fussed over before the Egyptians could take their candy and leave.

At last, at one house they had to wait while the man got his flash camera out to take their picture, and when they finally got away and rushed down the stairs the big group of Trick-or-Treaters had completely disappeared.

There they were, all alone on the dimly lit sidewalk and it was suddenly very quiet. They ran down

the block to the corner where they could look all four ways, but still there wasn’t a person in sight. They were still just standing there looking around and wondering what to do, when suddenly Melanie pointed at the horizon. “Look,” she said. “A shooting star!”

“A shooting star!” Everybody repeated it in whispered unison as if they’d been rehearsed. Then everybody looked at April. She nodded. “The secret omen,” she said slowly, making every syllable heavy with significance. Marshall started turning around and around, smelling the air.

Looking around one last time to be sure no one was watching, the girls grabbed Marshall out of his tailspin and started down the sidewalk in the direction that they had come. They scurried down two blocks without seeing a soul, turned the corner, and a moment later ducked into the alley that led to Egypt.

If the secret and mysterious land of Egypt was fascinating in the daytime, it was doubly so at night. Dimly lit by a distant street light, two flashlights, and a jack-o-lantern, it was almost too fascinating to bear. April told everyone to wait just inside the fence while she tiptoed forward and lit the cone of incense on the altar of Set and the two candles that stood before the goddess Isis. Then she motioned everyone forward.

“The Great Ceremony of the Celebration of the Return to Egypt has begun!” she chanted, and all four Egyptians prostrated themselves before the egg crate and the bird bath.

APRIL AND MELANIE ROSE TO THEIR KNEES FROM their deep bows before the double altars of Egypt. Over the heads of Elizabeth and Marshall they exchanged a glance that said, “Okay. What’s next?” Melanie reached over absently to help Marshall with his pharoah’s crown, which had slipped down over his eyes while he was touching his forehead to the floor. Suddenly her eyes lit up with an “I have it” expression. She gave the crown a final tug down over Marshall’s ears and turned to face the altar of Set. She raised her arms and April quickly followed suit.

“The gods are angry at us for being gone so long,” she chanted.

“The gods are angry,” April repeated. A quick glare at Elizabeth and Marshall got them going.

“The gods are angry,” they parroted.

Melanie nodded and continued with her inspiration. “The gods demand that we make a sacrifice so that we may be forgiven.” She looked over at April, and April nodded delightedly.

“The gods demand that we make a horrible and bloody sacrifice,” April took up Melanie’s theme with relish.

“A horrible and bloody sacrifice,” Melanie agreed.

“A horrible and bloody sacrifice,” Marshall and Elizabeth repeated dutifully, but Elizabeth’s voice quavered a little and Marshall leaned over and poked his sister.

“What sort of bloody?” he demanded in a whisper.

But now April was off and away, and Melanie was following. “The gods will tell us what the sacrifice must be,” April said. “We must approach the altar one at a time and touch the Crocodile Stone, the sacred symbol of Set. We must touch the sacred symbol of Set and wait for a message about the sacrifice. Then we will decide whose message is the best.”

April went first. She approached the egg crate using the correct Egyptian walk, which was done by walking with your shoulders sideways, arms held out from the body and bent sharply at the wrist. In front of the altar she bowed deeply with her head tucked between her upraised arms, and then placed her finger tips on the Crocodile Stone. She stood for a minute with her face turned upward. Melanie poked the

other kids and motioned for them to watch closely.

When April stalked back to them looking wildly secretive, Melanie walked up to the altar and followed her example, doing exactly the same things. Then came Elizabeth’s turn and finally Marshall’s. Then they all sat down in a circle on the floor.

As soon as everyone was seated, Elizabeth raised her hand and shook it frantically. She was looking excited and pleasantly surprised with herself. She had just had a terribly daring idea and she couldn’t wait to tell it.

“All right, Elizabeth first,” Melanie said. “Okay April?”

April nodded. “Go ahead, ,” she said, “but put your hand down, for heaven’s sake. You’re not in school, you’re a lady pharoah.”

Elizabeth snatched her hand down and suggested eagerly that Set’s message was that they should stick their fingers with a needle and write him a letter in their own blood.

April and Melanie exchanged surprised and appreciative glances, and Elizabeth beamed proudly. She didn’t think it was necessary to mention that her teacher had just read Tom Sawyer to the class-and just possibly Set had had a little help from Mark Twain.

However, there was one small detail-nobody had a needle. Elizabeth looked crushed. “Don’t feel bad,

Bethy,” Melanie said. “It was a neat idea.”

“I’ll say,” April agreed. “It was a terrific idea.”

“It was a dumb idea,” Marshall muttered. “When you stick your finger you get infested.”

“Infected,” Melanie corrected. “You go next April.”

April made a trance-like face. “When I stood before the altar,” she chanted, “I heard the voice of the Crocodile god. He said the object to be sacrificed must be something very dear to us. It must be something we hate to part with. Otherwise it won’t count. The Crocodile god has told me that we must sacrifice-” she pointed dramatically, “-Security!”

“NO!” Marshall shouted jumping up and hugging Security to his chest. “NO! NO! NO!” With every shout he stamped his foot. All three girls were around him in a moment, shushing and begging him to keep still. He shushed, but he went over to the edge of the shed and stood with his back to them.

“All right, Marshall. We won’t sacrifice Security. Will we April?” Melanie said.

April went into a quick trance with her fingers to her forehead. “The gods have changed their minds,” she announced in a moment. “They say they don’t want Security. But just don’t yell like that any more. Somebody will hear us, and we’ll get caught.”

“Somebody already heard us,” Marshall muttered darkly.

“What do you mean, somebody already heard us?” Melanie gasped. But Marshall only shrugged and said nothing more.

“Come on back to the circle,” Melanie coaxed. “We take it all back about Security. Besides, it’s your turn to say what the message was.”

Marshall allowed himself to be led back to the circle, but his chin was still sticking out, and he was glaring at April. He put his hand to his forehead the way April had done and then jerked it away. “Let’s sacrifice April,” he suggested.

That gave everybody the giggles, and finally Marshall broke down and smiled, too. Then it was Melanie’s turn. Melanie said that she had read about some people who cut off their fingers as sacrifices. At that point even April looked shocked, and Elizabeth almost fainted. But Melanie only laughed. “I didn’t mean we should do that,” she said. “It just gave me an idea. We could pull out some hairs-and maybe cut off some fingernails.”

“No scissors,” Elizabeth reminded with just a touch of satisfaction.

“We could bite them “off,” April suggested. “I do it all the time.”

A few minutes later a small fire of twisted paper was burning in the mixing bowl firepit, and the high priestesses (and junior high priest) of Egypt were parading in a circle before the altar. They were walking in the Egyptian manner-one shoulder forward, arms bent at the wrist-except from time to time when they had to chew off another fingernail. Now and then one or another would approach the altar, bow and drop a scrap of humanity on the flames; a hair or two or a shred of fingernail.

It was just about the best ceremony they’d ever had, and it was a shame to end it; but Melanie was just thinking that perhaps it was time to leave when suddenly she heard Elizabeth give a gasp of pure terror. Following Elizabeth’s gaze, Melanie was horrified to see a huge misshapen figure teetering on the top of the high board fence. The figure teetered wildly in the dim light, and then sprang forward to land in a horrible threatening crouch, right in the middle of Egypt.

Elizabethan Diplomacy

WHEN THE SHAPELESS INHUMAN FIGURE SPRANG INTO the middle of the storage yard, the four Egyptians could only clutch each other in panic, too shocked for the moment to even scream. April had just managed to get her mouth open to yell for help, when suddenly Marshall pointed and said, “Look.” A second figure was appearing over the top of the fence.

This second invader, who was having some difficulty climbing over the wire at the top of the fence, had a strangely angular look about him. Strangely angular-and strangely familiar. In all four Egyptians frozen fear boiled at once into a choking mixture of anger and relief. In April it overflowed in stuttering sputter. “You-you d-d-dirty f-f-finks!” she yelled.

On top of the fence Toby finally managed to get his boxy legs free of the barbed wire. He jumped

Elizabethan Diplomacy

down, losing his T.V. head in the process. Then, as the four badly shaken Egyptians turned loose of each other and tried to regain their dignity, the monster and the box-man leaned on each other and choked with fiendish laughter.

They laughed leaning on each other and standing up-bending over as if they were in pain-and finally collapsed, sitting flat on the ground. Then, while the four members of the Egypt gang stared at them in helpless fuming anger, they just sat there, leaning against each other’s backs, still shaking with gradually weakening seizures.

“Man-oh-man!” Toby gasped finally. “I’ve got to quit laughing. My stomach’s killing me.”

“Sheesh! Me too,” Ken said. “I’m dying.” Ken fell over backward and just lay there, holding his stomach and saying “Sheesh” weakly from time to time. But Toby crossed his legs and leaned forward with his chin on one hand and stared at the angry Egyptians.

“Hey, February,” he said finally. “How do you say panic button in Egyptian?”

April clenched her fists and took a step forward. Toby started to scramble to his feet-he’d seen April in action before. But Melanie and Elizabeth grabbed her and held her back.

“Turn loose,” April said. “I’m going to punch him in the nose.”

“There’s no use doing that,” Melanie whispered. “That won’t do any good. We can’t keep them from telling on us by punching them in the nose.”

After a moment’s consideration April nodded. “Okay. Turn loose. I won’t punch them. At least not till we find out what they’re going to do.” She unclenched her fists and all three girls approached the enemy. Left behind, Marshall sat down on the edge of the temple floor in a good position to watch everything that might happen. Both the boys were standing now, watching the girls warily.

“Well,” Melanie began. “Are you going to tell on us, or not?”

“Tell on you?” Ken said. “What makes you think we’d do a thing like that?”

“Of course not,” Toby said. “We don’t go around finking on people.” The girls glanced at each other in surprised relief. “However,” Toby continued, “this is not a matter of plain and simple finking. Letting you Egyptians get away with all this secret stuff just might be considered-like, unpatriotic, or something.”

“Hey, you’re right,” Ken said. “Maybe we ought to tell the F.B.I.”

“Maybe we should. Or maybe we could just make an official report on the whole scene-like, for current events tomorrow morning.” Toby stalked to the middle of the yard in what was obviously meant to be the Egyptian walk. Then he faced the group, cleared

his throat, and in a phony voice he said, ” ‘What’s Happening in Egypt’-a very official report by Tobias Alvillar, Secret Agent.”

Toby was pretty funny all right, but no one laughed but Ken. April was thinking a horrible thought. If they knew about the Egyptian walk, how much else did they know? Up until then she’d been thinking that the fence was too high to look over-and they couldn’t have seen very much while they were scrambling over it. She ran to the loose board and looked out into the alley. When she pulled her head back in, Melanie guessed the awful truth before she heard it.

Taking Melanie aside, April whispered, “There are boxes piled up out there. They could have been watching forever! Shall I punch them now?”

Melanie shrugged hopelessly. “Go ahead if you want to. But it won’t do any good. I think we might as well-leave the country, or something.”

Elizabeth had followed Melanie and listened to April’s horrible news. Now all of a sudden she said, “I have an idea.”

Both the bigger girls looked surprised. Elizabeth wasn’t the kind of person you expect to come up with ideas in an emergency. But the situation was desperate so April and Melanie listened.

When Elizabeth finished whispering, April shook her head gloomily. “It’ll never work,” she said.

“Well, we may as well try it,” Melanie said. “It

can’t make things any worse.”

The enemy watched cautiously as the girls returned to face them. For a few seconds April and Melanie couldn’t think of a way to get started, and the five of them just stood there staring at each other. Melanie spoke first.

“We don’t have permission to be here from the Professor, or our folks or anybody.”

Toby grinned. “So what else is new?” he said.

April’s fists clenched but she forced herself to open them. “We’ll be in terrible trouble if you tell on us,” she said in as pitiful a voice as she could manage. To her ama/cmcnt she noticed that the look the two boys exchanged was just the tiniest bit confused. And Kamata and Alvillar were two guys who weren’t easy to confuse. Warming to her theme, she went on, “We’ll probably get beaten and everything.”