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“Are those supposed to be hieroglyphics?” Isis asked. She was sitting on the kitchen worktop, but Tom’s mum and dad couldn’t see or hear her.
“One arm’s shorter than the other,” Tom said.
“The jumper’s from Nan,” Mum explained, and then handed Tom another present. “From me,” she said, smiling.
Tom felt the package. It was square and hard. “Computer game?” he guessed correctly, unwrapping Timeline of Fire. “Yesssss!”
Then Dad plonked something large and heavy on the kitchen table. He cleared his throat. “And this is from me.”
Tom unwrapped the gift. “The Young Historian books box set!” Tom yelled. “Wicked! Look, it’s got an Aztec Empire special edition too.” He grinned at his parents. “Thanks, Mum and Dad, you’re the best!”
As Tom gobbled up his fried egg, Isis’s voice floated over the room.
“A computer game, some books and a knitted thing? What boring presents!”
Tom noticed that Isis’s shoulders were slumped. Perhaps she was feeling left out, especially if she’d never celebrated a birthday before. He quickly ate the rest of his breakfast. “Let’s go upstairs and try out my new game,” he whispered.
“Deal!” Isis said, smiling.
As they ran upstairs, Mum shouted out, “Don’t forget we’re leaving for the bowling alley at ten thirty!”
“Those shoes are ugly,” Isis said, pointing to the red, white and blue bowling shoes that Tom and his friends were putting on.
“Nobody’s asking you to wear them,” Tom said.
Mum and Dad were programming everybody’s names into the machine that kept score.
In the next lane, a tall man stood up to take his go. Tom watched as the ball thundered down the lane. There was a loud crash as it sent every single pin flying. The man jumped up and down and punched the air.
Isis gasped. “That’s not very sporting, is it?”
Tom started to laugh. “He got a strike,” he explained. “He’s happy because he knocked down all the pins. That’s the point of the game, you see? The more you knock down—”
“I bet I can do that!” Isis said.
Tom nervously glanced over at his friends. “No, Isis. Just watch. Please don’t try to join in—”
But Isis had already picked up a bowling ball and flung it down the lane.
“Woo-hoo!” she cried, as Cleo scampered after the ball.
Tom’s friends stared as, seemingly on its own, the ball rolled down the lane and knocked over all ten pins.
“That ball just bowled a strike by itself!” Veejay said, blinking in disbelief.
Tom gulped. “Someone must have dropped it.” To distract his friends he said, “Hey! Who wants some lemonade?”
Suddenly, Tom’s voice was drowned out by a loud, rumbling noise. At the end of the lane, the giant, jackal-headed god of the Underworld, Anubis, burst out, splintering the wood and sending the pins flying.
“Just when I was getting the hang of it!” Isis grumbled.
Anubis’s eyes glowed red. He folded his arms and bared his sharp teeth at Tom and Isis. “Are you ready to face your toughest challenge yet?” he boomed.
Tom looked at his school friends who were all sipping their lemonade. They had no idea the Ancient Egyptian god was there.
“Not really,” Tom said. “I’m in the middle of my birthday party.”
“SILENCE!” bellowed Anubis. “Your last challenge will be a real test of bravery. Fail, and Isis will never get into the Afterlife!”
Suddenly, a wind blew up round Tom, Isis and Cleo, pulling them out of the bowling alley and into the tunnels of time.
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“Wheeeee!” Tom cried.
Thunk!Thunk!Thunk! The three travellers shot out of the time tunnels into hot, dry air and blinding sunlight. They landed on the dusty ground. Tom looked round and saw an enormous river, twisting like a dark green snake into the distance. Closer by, there was a grid of buildings with golden desert beyond.
Tom gazed up at scaffolding made from tree trunks. Men were scurrying up and down it, carrying stones. They seemed to be building some sort of temple.
“You know where we are, don’t you?” Isis said excitedly, gripping Tom’s arm. No longer a mummy, she had her body back again. Her kohl-lined eyes shone with glee.
“Not really,” Tom said, looking down at their white linen tunics.
Cleo purred loudly then stretched out her legs and licked her stripy fur. Isis scooped the cat into her arms.
“We’re home, Fluffpot!” she said. “I’d know that river anywhere. It’s the Nile!”
“Ancient Egypt?” Tom said, staring at the builders. They had the same dark skin as Isis. Some were bald, but others wore ponytails.
“Cool! Where’s your palace then?”
Isis shielded her eyes from the sun and peered round. “Good question. To be honest, I don’t recognise any of these buildings. There’s not a pyramid in sight.”
Tom called over to a worker, who was lifting a basket full of mud on to his broad shoulders. “Excuse me,” he said. “What city are we in?”
The worker frowned at him.
Tom wondered if the man hadn’t understood him. So far, thanks to Anubis’s magic, he and Isis had been able to speak to people in every time and place they had visited. Had the magic worn off?
“The capital, of course!” the man finally said, to Tom’s relief.
“Memphis?” Isis asked, looking hopeful.
As he started to climb the scaffold, the man laughed. “No, Amarna, silly girl.” He looked down at Isis and shook his head. “Do you think we’re still in the Old Kingdom, or something?”
Tom expected Isis to tell the worker off for being so rude to a princess, but instead she just looked puzzled.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I was sure me and Fluffpot had come home.”
“Let’s go and look over there,” Tom said, pointing to a high stone wall that had already been finished. Two men were chiselling away, covering the wall in hieroglyphics.
“Those men are scribes,” Isis said. “This must be a temple of some sort.”
When they reached the wall, Isis pointed excitedly at a figure carved into the stone.
“Look!” she said. “Here’s a picture of my father.” She smiled as she traced the carved surface with her fingertips. “Everyone used to tell me I looked just like him.”
Tom looked at the carving, but couldn’t see much of a resemblance.
“We are in Egypt,” Isis said, studying the wall. “But judging from how old this carving looks, it seems we’ve turned up long after I was alive.”
As she spoke, there was the sound of splitting rock above them. Tom looked up and saw three men pushing the head off the biggest statue he had ever seen. It slowly rolled forward and then …
CRASH!
The whole statue came tumbling down. Cleo darted out of its way. Tom grabbed Isis, and they stumbled backwards as bits of stone smashed all round them.
“Whoa!” Tom cried. “That thing nearly killed us!”
“This is too dangerous, even for someone as brave as me!” said Isis. “Let’s find my amulet and get out of here.”
“The ring,” Tom said. “Ask your ring for help.”
Isis looked down at her magical scarab ring, which had once belonged to the goddess Isis herself.
“Oh, goddess Isis,” she began. “Please help us one last time. Tell us where we can find the final amulet!”
Silvery words drifted up out of the ring and hung in the air in the shape of a riddle.
Tom cleared his throat and read out loud:
“From the north, ill tides do flow,
As neighbours seek to breach the bank.
Into battle you must go,
If you want to find what’s in the ankh.
This final quest has brought you home,
But the kingdom’s threat is very real.
Seek the boy king! Crush his foe,
Beneath the chariot’s mighty wheel.”
“What does that mean?” Tom said. “For a start, what’s an ankh?”
“It’s an Ancient Egyptian symbol that means the key to life,” Isis said, watching the silvery words disappear.
Tom was wondering whether the words ‘ill tides do flow’ and ‘breach the bank’ had anything to do with the River Nile, when a gruff voice shouted, “You two! Get over here and stop slacking!”
Swinging round, Tom spotted a short man with a bald head and an enormous pot belly that hung over his loincloth. In his hand was a large whip.
“Somebody’s been eating more than his fair share of cake,” Isis giggled.
With the pot-bellied foreman cracking his whip at their heels, Tom and Isis were forced to join a group of workers pulling a sledge across rolling logs. The sledge held a giant lump of stone.
Tom grabbed the rope.
“HEAVE!” the foreman yelled. His whip snapped on a worker’s back. “HEAVE!”
The sledge hardly moved an inch, even with everyone pulling. Tom could feel the scratchy rope biting into his hands. To make matters worse, the sun blazed down on his head.
“This is not a job for a princess!” Isis gasped.
Crack! went the whip. “Get on with it, boy!” the foreman barked at her.
Isis’s eyebrows bunched together. “Boy? I’m not a boy – I’m a princess. I’m going to teach that bully a lesson!” she hissed, throwing the rope to the ground.
“No, Isis! Don’t—”
Tom reached out to stop her, and lost his grip on the rope.
“No!” he cried.
Too late! Tom stumbled and several huge, muscly builders piled on top of him and Isis, as the entire line gave way. From underneath the mountain of workers, Tom spied a very angry-looking foreman.
“You! Get over here!” he snarled at Tom, cracking his whip. “I’m going to give you the thrashing of your life!”
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Snap! The foreman’s whip whizzed through the air and cracked on the sand, right by Tom’s feet.
“I don’t have time for weaklings!” the foreman shouted, grinning nastily.
Tom braced himself for the whip’s sting. But suddenly a young man, dressed in a pleated loincloth, ran up to the foreman. He whispered urgently in his ear.
The foreman frowned at Tom and Isis. “It’s your lucky day – I don’t have time to give you a beating. Get over to the old temple wall and help chisel off the picture of Aten!” He pointed at a stone building in the distance.
Tom, Isis and Cleo ran off before he could change his mind.
The temple was full of workers hacking away at a picture of a large disc carved into a lump of pink granite.
“Yikes. That was close,” Tom said. “Who’s this Aten?”
Isis shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.
