Ren eyed the edge of the river warily. She’d seen enough nature documentaries to know that that’s where crocodiles ambushed their prey. Up close, the current was coffee-colored and thick with sediment, the kind of water that made it very hard to spot crocodiles, and impossible to spot snakes.
“Oh wow!” said Alex.
Ren reluctantly lifted her eyes from the river’s murky surface and gasped in astonishment.
The far shore, which had been hidden in haze as they walked, now revealed itself. More fields filled the floodplain on the other side, but beyond them, a vast kingdom stretched to the horizon. White stone temples, majestic houses, and even a few colossal pyramids glowed and shimmered in the golden light. It was a scene from out of a history book, a museum painting come to life.
And moving along the broad avenues, just visible from where she stood, people walked, alone or in small groups. As Ren watched, not blinking and barely remembering to breathe, she even saw a glittering, horse-drawn chariot, looking like a tiny toy in the distance. It kicked up a plume of dust and sand behind it before turning a corner and disappearing.
The kingdom of the dead.
She nearly fainted.
“Let’s get that boat,” said Alex.
“Uhhh,” said Luke, and Ren thought that summed it up pretty well.
She looked at Alex, incredulous. “How are you not freaked out by all this?” She pointed across the water. “By all of them?”
“I am freaked out,” said Alex, and a slight tremble in his voice confirmed it. “But dead doesn’t necessarily mean evil. These are the good ones, I think. And, anyway, we have work to do.”
“The good ones,” said Luke. “What, like … Casper the Friendly Ghost?”
Instead of answering, Alex shrugged his backpack off and lowered it to the ground. He unzipped it and carefully pulled out the small wooden carving of a boat. It was a little more than a foot long and a little less than three thousand years old. They’d taken it from a storeroom in the museum. Its edges worn down and its paint worn off, it was one of thousands of items that didn’t quite merit display space.
But the little boat was about to earn its keep now.
“I don’t see how we’re supposed to get across this huge river in a toy,” said Luke. “What is that, a boat for ants?”
“They put these in the tombs so the spirits could cross the Nile,” said Alex. He walked over to the river’s edge. Ren followed a step behind and watched as he knelt down and placed the little boat on the gently rippling surface.
Immediately, the boat’s frame pushed up and out, quickly reaching the height of Ren’s shoulders. As she and Alex both jumped back to avoid getting knocked over by the bow, Ren thought of the packet of little sponge dinosaurs her dad had given her once, the ones that expanded when you dropped them in water.
By the time the little boat stopped growing, it was a real boat big enough for three. It was made not of wood but of bundled reeds that rose up to a high point on each end. All Ren managed to say was “Whoa.”
And then it occurred to her that she was supposed to get in this thing now — and to travel to the other side. Where so many of the dead were. Suddenly, the possibility seemed all too real. “I don’t know … ” she said.
“We have to, Ren,” said Alex, stepping forward and gingerly touching the reedy side of the craft. “I am getting such a strong signal from over there.”
Ren looked at him. There was something wrong with what he had just said, a hole in the logic, but she couldn’t place it. Her brain was too full of wonder and fear.
A moment later, it got worse.
“That is not your vessel,” she heard. “The one it was made for has already crossed over.” The voice was strong and steady. And it did not belong to Alex or Luke. “Where did you get this boat?”
Ren wheeled around to see who the voice belonged to.
He was tall and muscular and dressed in ancient garb. A white-and-yellow shendyt kilt was wrapped around his waist, and a wide, ornate collar necklace hung from his neck. Thickly woven straps crisscrossed his broad chest, meeting at a massive, perfectly round ruby. He held a long, thin staff in one hand. But who could possibly care about any of that when his head — the head talking to them right now — was that of a jet-black jackal?
As she stared in disbelief, he turned to meet her eyes. Her knees felt like jelly, and her punch-drunk brain had its finger on the light switch.
Talking dog, she thought vaguely. Good talking dog man.
Don’t bite.
Anubis.
The guardian of the underworld.
Not just an ancient Egyptian god but, as Alex’s mom would say, one of the big ones.
“I asked you a question,” said the deity, the daggerlike tips of two huge white canine teeth appearing as he spoke. “Where did you get this boat? And answer carefully. The afterlife is a perilous place for tomb raiders.”
Alex gulped in just enough air to squeak out: “In a museum.”
Anubis’s jackal ears swung toward the small sound. He looked at Alex, considering. Alex’s heart hammered hard in his chest.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ren swaying on her feet. He wanted to run over and help her, but he didn’t dare move. He had the distinctly unpleasant feeling that he was being judged. Luke was standing beside her, staring at the ancient god in wide-eyed, slack-jawed wonder. Please don’t say anything stupid, thought Alex.
“I will accept your answer,” said Anubis, and Alex relaxed just a little. Even Ren seemed to stop wobbling. Luke’s mouth closed and opened again silently, like a goldfish’s. “Your museums empty our tombs just as surely as the thieves do, but at least they take good care of what they find.”
Anubis paused and then added cryptically, “And then, too, you have been vouched for.” His jackal head looked off to a spot farther up the bank. “It is funny, in a way.”
Alex had no idea what any of that meant. Vouched for? Funny? Did gods like jokes? He had zero chance of mustering a polite laugh at the moment, so he stuck to what he knew. “Thank you,” he said, bowing slightly. “We’re sorry about the boat, but we need to cross … ”
“You may not,” said Anubis, suddenly striding forward.
The three friends scrambled to get out of his way. Alex turned to see the deity raise his staff and tap the bow of the boat. As the boat shrank and shriveled, Alex dropped his head in defeat. A moment later, he saw the little wooden carving once again bobbing like a bath toy on the river. All three of them watched silently as the current caught it and it began to float away.
“We needed that,” said Alex to his own feet.
“Why is that?” said Anubis.
Alex looked up slightly, still not daring to make direct eye contact with the deity. “Because we are looking for something,” he ventured. “Something important.”
“All hope would seem to be lost, then,” said Anubis.
And there was something about the way he said it: almost playful. Is he teasing me, wondered Alex, or mocking me? “The people — well, the things — we’re after are evil,” he protested. “Our world is in danger.”
Anubis sized him up with glowing green eyes, and Alex was afraid he had gone too far. Would the next thing he felt be those dagger-like teeth? That battle staff?
And then … Anubis smiled. He smiled in the way dogs do sometimes. It would have been cute, if he weren’t a seven-foot-tall death god. “I know they’re evil,” he said. “That’s why I did not let them cross, either.”
A hundred questions flooded Alex’s mind, but Anubis was already walking away. “I take no part in this conflict, other than to protect my realm,” said the ancient guardian of the afterlife. “What you seek and the ones you fear are here on the borderlands. But hurry, for this land is no place for the living, especially at night.”
As the god headed up the bank, Alex turned to look at the others. “That really just happened, right?” he said. “You heard all that?”
“Oh, that happened all right,” said Luke. “That Snoopy-looking dude was hella real.”
“That was Anubis, wasn’t it?” said Ren. “I’ve seen his, like, statues.”
Alex nodded and turned back for one more look.
But Anubis was gone.
As soon as Ren registered that fact, she let Alex have it. “I can’t believe you were going to magic-boat us over to the city of the dead for no reason! The Death Walkers aren’t even over there!”
Alex looked at his amulet. “But I got such a strong signal,” he protested, his voice breaking slightly.
“Yeah,” said Ren, “because that thing detects spirits, too.” She pointed to the endless city on the far shore. “And, I mean, hello, the kingdom of the dead?”
“Oh yeah,” said Alex.
He looked down at his feet, embarrassed. He saw his shadow stretching out behind him. Behind him … He looked up. The fiery vessel had crossed over the river and begun its descent.
“Um, we should really get going,” he said, reaching down to pick up his pack.
“Yeah,” said Luke. “Let’s get out of here before the rest of the zoo shows up.”
As they walked quickly back up the bank, Alex picked over what Anubis had said: Did not let them cross … Something big occurred to him.
“The gods are more powerful than the Death Walkers,” he said, and as soon as he heard the words out loud, he knew they were true. Back in the Egyptian desert, Sekhmet had obliterated a Death Walker their amulets had been powerless against. Anubis had stared down The Order’s stone warriors and turned them back.
“Yeah,” said Ren. “Obviously. They’re gods. It’s kind of in the definition.”
Alex knew there was some greater significance to that fact, something he wasn’t quite getting. Amazingly, Luke was the one to put his finger on it.
“It would be cool if the gods could put the beatdown on The Order,” he said. “Instead of leaving it up to three middle schoolers from Manhattan.” Then he quickly added: “Not that we’re not awesome.”
Alex stared at his cousin. It was a statement so obvious that it had taken Luke to say it. “That would be cool,” said Alex. “So cool.”
As they neared the top of the bank, Ren came up next to him. “You know,” she said, “if the gods did that we wouldn’t need to use the Spells.”
He nodded. His best friend was just as worried about what might happen to him if they used the Spells as he was. She wanted him to live, too — even if she did yell at him sometimes.
“Of course,” she added, “that’s a pretty big if.”
He knew she was right about that, too. Relying on the divine intervention of ancient, animal-headed deities wasn’t much of a plan — it was like planning to win the lottery as a career goal. It was a nice thought, but the time for daydreaming was over. Now they needed to figure out how to do it for themselves. Alex scanned the ground near the top of the bank. Anubis had said that what they were looking for was on this side of the bank. But where?
He scanned the bank in both directions, and then looked down at his feet. There in the dark dirt of the timeless Nile he saw a scattering of small footprints. He huffed out a little laugh. “I think I figured out who vouched for us back there,” he said, pointing down.
The others gathered around. “Are those … cat prints?” said Luke.
“Anubis was right,” said Alex. “It is kind of funny. Imagine being saved from a dog-headed god … by a little cat.”
“Pai!” exclaimed Ren, dropping to her knees and tracing the tracks with her fingers.
“It must’ve been her,” said Alex.
They looked all around, but there was no sign of Ren’s undead BFF, and the tracks vanished into the harder dirt higher up the bank.
Ren stood up and brushed her hands on her jeans. “Okay, Pai did her part,” she said. “I guess it’s time I did mine.”
She took a deep breath and reached for her ibis.