Chapter 5

The Wall of Nothingness

We found the next message five minutes later. It had been a pretty boring five minutes. I mean, as adventures went, so far this one was just dust, rock and clammy air.

The message was on a rock, just like the first one, all little funny pictures. I bent down and pressed my translator bangle.

To the brave brilliant heroine! Hurry! Signed, Fluffy, Queen of the Nile.

‘What’s the hurry?’ I asked. ‘They’ve been waiting for five thousand years! Anyway, I’m hungry. I vote we stop and you can PING! up some pizza and maybe some lemonade and cherries and some of those little fish balls with chilli sauce.’

Phredde fluttered down and perched on my shoulder. ‘I think the message is right,’ she said. ‘I think we need to hurry.’

‘Huh? Look, if they want a heroine they can wait till I’ve had lunch …’

‘Phredde is right!’ interjected Bruce.

‘Look, who’s the heroine here? I need feeding if I’m going to be heroic! Give me one good reason why we can’t take a break and have a snack!’

‘Because the tunnel is dissolving behind us,’ said Phredde.

‘Oh,’ I said. I glanced up the tunnel. ‘OH!’

Where there’d been a long grey tunnel and rock and dust there was now nothing. I mean NOTHING. Just an empty haze that slowly thickened as it drifted towards us.

‘Run!’ I shrieked.

So we ran. Well, I ran, my sneakers clomping up a cloud of dust, and Bruce hopped and Phredde flew like a wasp after some kid’s can of lemonade. After about five minutes of galloping through the dust I looked back. The empty mist was a long way behind us now.

‘I think …’ I panted, ‘we can slow down a bit!’

‘Hey, there’s another message!’ said Phredde.

This one was inscribed on the wall. I pressed my translator bangle and studied it. It said:

You don’t have to run like you’re being chased by a savage hippopotamus! Just walk fairly fast and you’ll be fine. Signed, Fluffy, Queen of the Nile.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I wonder what Her Majesty, Queen Fluffy, thinks is “fairly fast”?’

‘She means no stopping for pizza and fish balls with chilli sauce,’ said Bruce. ‘I suppose it makes sense. They’re not going to leave the tunnel open for just anyone to wander down it. So they’re dissolving it behind us.’

‘Good point,’ I said. Even though Phredde and Bruce had frozen the rest of the class, I could just imagine some other kid skiving off school and wandering down after us.

This was my adventure! I didn’t want to share it!

(I didn’t want there to be any confusion, either, as to exactly which human girl was the heroine if some other girl came down the tunnel. Amelia a heroine? I don’t think so.)

‘Er, Phredde, Bruce?’ I said.

‘Mmm?’ said Bruce, gazing at the ceiling. ‘You know there aren’t any flies in here,’ he complained. He brightened. ‘I wonder what Ancient Egyptian scarab beetles taste like!’

‘Forget about your stomach for a while,’ I said. ‘Are you and Phredde sure you can get us back to our own time safely if the tunnel dissolves?’

‘Yep,’ said Phredde. ‘It’s not like when we went back to the dinosaurs.5 We don’t have to use up all our magic getting into the past. And, anyway, we’re not going so far back in years. We’ll have plenty of magic to get back home again.’

‘And to PING! up pizzas when we get there,’ added Bruce. ‘And a few juicy mosquitoes if the ones by the Nile don’t taste so good.’

I shot a quick glance behind us. The empty mist was getting closer.

‘We’d better keep going,’ I said, just as we passed another sign that said:

Good girl! Signed, Fluffy, Queen of the Nile.