“How big of a piece are we looking for?” Melki asked. He picked up a chunk of tree bark and threw it at Ethan.

Ethan caught the bark with one hand and chucked it back at Melki. “I don’t know —big enough to carve a tent peg from.” He brushed sand away from the end of a buried branch.

“Well, if we can’t find it here, I don’t think we’ll find it anywhere,” Melki said. “This is probably the only dead tree within a hundred miles.”

Ethan looked around. Melki was right. There was plenty of mountain and sand to go around, but wood was pretty scarce in the desert. “I think I found something here,” he said as he tried to wedge his fingers under the buried branch. “Give me a hand.”

“What happens if we don’t find the right piece of wood? Is your father going to stone us to death?”

Ethan looked up so quickly, he almost lost his balance. Melki was staring at him with a sarcastic gleam in his eye.

“How do you know about that?” Ethan asked. “It just happened yesterday.”

“Word travels fast in this camp,” Melki answered.

“How did you find out?” Ethan demanded.

“Calm down, son,” Melki said as he knelt next to Ethan and started digging out the other side of the branch. “If you must know, Jeru told my father about it.”

“Your father knows Jeru?” After Ethan asked the question, he realized how harsh it sounded.

Melki lifted his chin defiantly. “Yeah, he knows Jeru! They grew up together in Egypt. Is that any worse than your father knowing people like Elizah, who would stone someone to death just for saying what’s on his mind?”

“Jeru was getting ready to cross the boundary line,” Ethan said. “I was there —I saw it.”

“Aren’t we getting ready to cross the boundary line?” Melki asked. “Do you think we deserve to die if we go through with our plan?”

Ethan looked down, watching his fingers dig in the sand. He wasn’t sure what to say. The mountain was as inviting as ever, and not just because of the lightning. Each day it seemed more like a symbol of what he wanted more than anything else —to be free of rules, free of this awful desert.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Ethan finally said. “When Jeru said we have too many rules, I agreed with him. But then when my father says that rules are important, I believe him too.”

“What about when Leah says rules are important?” Melki asked.

“I want to punch her in the face,” Ethan said.

Melki fell face-first into the sand, his body shaking with laughter. Ethan couldn’t help laughing too, even though he hated it when people laughed at their own jokes.

“Come on,” Ethan said between chuckles. “Help me get this branch out.”

Melki wiped the tears from his eyes, pulled himself up, and grabbed the end of the branch Ethan was holding. “One, two, three —pull,” Ethan grunted, yanking back as hard as he could.

The branch slid out of the sand more easily than Ethan had expected. Melki let go in time, but Ethan tumbled backward, pulling the branch, some sand, and a weird-looking black thing about three inches long with him.

The branch flew over his head, the sand rained down on his face and chest, and the black thing landed at his feet. Then it started crawling toward him.

“Look out! It’s a scorpion!” Melki yelled.

The large, crablike creature seemed stunned by its short flight and hard landing. It moved from side to side as it walked and slapped its stinger tail wildly in the sand.

Ethan tried to scream, but it came out sounding like a whimper. He kicked his feet and tried to back away from the deadly pest, but he couldn’t get a foothold in the ground. All he managed to do was throw a cloud of sand in the air.

The scorpion moved so fast that Ethan didn’t have time to kick twice. It scampered across the strap of his sandal and up his leg. Ethan’s flesh tingled as he felt the scorpion’s hard-shelled body crawling over his ankle and shin. The creature stopped just above Ethan’s knee and slowly waved its stinger in the air.

“Don’t move!” Melki shouted.

Ethan closed his eyes tightly and tried to control the shiver that was running through his body. He felt the scorpion shift its weight on his leg and knew without looking what was coming. He braced himself for the sting.

Thwack!

Ethan opened his eyes and saw Melki standing over him with the tree branch in his hand. Melki pointed to a spot about twenty feet away where the scorpion was lying on its back, writhing and twisting its body as it tried to flip over.

“Thanks,” Ethan said weakly, “for not hitting my leg when you swung that thing.”

Melki grabbed him by the hand and pulled him up. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go have some fun.”

Still too shaken to move, Ethan watched Melki creep toward the injured scorpion. Melki poked the scorpion with the branch and flipped it over. The creature tried to crawl away, but Melki was too quick for it. With a flick of the branch, he turned it back over. “These things aren’t as dangerous as everybody says,” Melki explained.

Watching Melki roll the helpless scorpion on the ground, Ethan remembered what his father had told him a few days earlier —that Mount Sinai was like a dangerous scorpion that should be treated with respect. He looked toward Mount Sinai. The dark clouds were still there, along with the thunder and lightning. But the mountain didn’t seem quite as scary as it had before. It seemed almost . . . climbable.

“I’m bored,” Melki announced, giving the scorpion a final swat. “Let’s go explore those hills out beyond the camp over there.” He pointed to the area just west of Mount Sinai.

“Okay, but we can’t go too far,” Ethan said.

“Why, will your father stone us?” Melki asked.

“Stop saying that,” Ethan complained. “It’s not funny.”

“All right, all right,” Melki said. “Here, catch.” He tossed the tree branch to Ethan. “If you can’t make a tent peg out of it, you can save it as a souvenir of your first battle with a scorpion. Now, let’s go.”

Ethan stared at the ground in front of him as they walked, making sure there were no more scorpions around. Melki stared at the mountain. Neither of them spoke for fifteen minutes or so. Finally Ethan broke the silence. “What are you looking for over there?” he asked.

“Some other way up the mountain,” Melki answered. “If there’s another path somewhere, we won’t have to worry about getting past the guards at the boundary marker.”

“Do you see anything?” Ethan asked.

“No, it’s too steep on this side,” Melki answered.

Ethan saw he was right. The west side of Mount Sinai was a sheer wall that rose at least 150 feet straight up before receding into more rugged, and slightly more horizontal, terrain. “There’s no way we could —”

“Shhhh,” Melki interrupted, holding up his hand for silence. “Did you hear that?”

Ethan halted, listening. Noises that sounded like a scuffle came from behind a large sand dune to his left. Then he heard a series of boys’ voices:

“You will all bow down before Anubis, the god of the dead!”

“No one is greater than Sobek, the crocodile god!”

“I am Geb, the earth god, and this ground is mine!”

“Ptah is ruler over all!”

These strange announcements were followed by more sounds of fighting, groaning, and grunting.

Ethan looked at Melki and shrugged. Melki put his finger to his lips and motioned for Ethan to follow him. Ethan tried to make his way to the sand dune as quietly as possible, but the strap on his sandal was loose and it slapped against his foot each time he took a step. The scuffling sounds stopped.

Ahead of him, Melki was on his hands and knees, peering as far as he could around the dune. Melki’s body froze just for a moment, and Ethan had a sudden urge to run away. But then Melki stood up and brushed the sand off his legs.

Ethan stepped forward and saw four boys about his age, maybe a little older, standing on top of a small hill. They were looking down at him and Melki with their arms folded across their chests.

“We’re playing Mountain of the Gods,” one of them explained. “If you want to play, choose a god and try to knock us off the mountain.”

“Choose a god?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m Anubis, he’s Sobek, he’s Geb, and he’s Ptah.”

Ethan glanced at the players. “Anubis,” the one doing the talking, was about Ethan’s size and had a front tooth missing. “Sobek” and “Geb” were obviously twins. The only difference between them was that Geb’s nose was bleeding. “Ptah” was the biggest of the four by far. He was even bigger than Melki. He had a scratch on his face that ran from the middle of his forehead to the side of his left cheek.

Ethan had never seen any of them before. Probably from the southern part of camp, he thought. From the looks of them, he guessed they liked to play rough.

“Okay, I’ll be Osiris,” Melki announced. Ethan stared at him in shock —not just because he was willing to play, but also because he was able to name an Egyptian god so quickly.

“What about you?” Ptah asked, pointing at Ethan.

Ethan cleared his throat nervously. “Those are all . . . Egyptian gods, aren’t they?” he asked.

“Yeah. So what?” Ptah replied. He started down the hill toward Ethan and Melki.

“Um . . . uh . . .” Ethan fumbled. Then he remembered his father’s words: You have a lot of strength, Ethan. . . . It’s here and here. Ethan recalled how his father had touched his head and his chest. He took a deep breath and announced, “Moses said that the God of Israel is the only true God.”

Ptah grinned and looked around at his three friends. “Look, it’s one of Moses’ sheep!”

“I’m not a sheep,” Ethan said.

“Baaaaa! I will follow you wherever you go, Moses,” the bloody-nosed twin said in a mocking voice. “Baaaaa, I will do whatever you say.”

“Baaaaa! Your mother’s calling you, little lamb!” his brother added.

“I’m not a lamb!” Ethan yelled.

“Go back to your shepherd, sheep!” Ptah said. Suddenly he charged, his arms straight out and pointed at Ethan’s chest.

“Oof!” Ethan grunted as the air was shoved out of his lungs. Losing his balance, he found himself tumbling backward into the sand.

“Go back to your shepherd, if you can find your shepherd,” Ptah declared. “If he’s still alive, he’s somewhere up there.” He pointed to the top of the mountain.

“Let’s show him what we do to Moses’ sheep in our part of camp,” Anubis suggested with a cackle that made Ethan dread what was coming next.

Ptah reached down and grabbed the front of Ethan’s tunic.

“Leave him alone,” Melki said. His voice sounded firm but calm. Ptah let go of Ethan’s tunic and turned toward Melki. Ethan scrambled to his feet.

“We’ve got five players already,” Melki said with a friendly smile. “We don’t need him. If he doesn’t want to play, let him go.”

Ptah looked at his three friends and then nodded at Ethan. “Okay, little sheep, we’ll let you run along home. But if we see you out wandering around again —”

“We’re going to sacrifice you!” Anubis finished. All four of them burst out laughing.

His cheeks burning, Ethan looked to Melki for help. Melki just looked away and started up the hill.

The laughter followed Ethan as he walked away. He clenched his fists and tried to hold back tears. He couldn’t decide whether to be grateful to Melki for saving him from a pummeling or to be mad at him for staying behind to play. Ethan’s throat seemed to get tighter and tighter as he made his way back to camp.

That’s what I get for trying to obey Moses’ rules, he thought, staring at the sand in front of his feet. Now all I have is enemies.

He glanced over his shoulder at the mountain. If he was ever going to be free now, it looked like he’d have to do it himself.