Chapter 23. Professor Thoth’s Final Exam

SADIE HERE. SORRY FOR THE DELAY, though I don’t suppose you’d notice on a recording. My nimble-fingered brother dropped the microphone into a pit full of...oh, never mind. Back to the story.

Carter woke with such a start, he banged his knees against the drinks tray, which was quite funny.

“Sleep well?” I asked.

He blinked at me in confusion. “You’re human.”

“How kind of you to notice.”

I took another bite of my pizza. I’d never eaten pizza from a china plate or had a Coke in a glass (with ice no less—Americans are so odd) but I was enjoying first class.

“I changed back an hour ago.” I cleared my throat. “It—ah—was helpful, what you said, about focusing on what’s important.”

Awkward saying even that much, as I remembered everything he’d told me while I was in kite form about his travels with Dad—how he’d gotten lost in the Underground, gotten sick in Venice, squealed like a baby when he’d found a scorpion in his sock. So much ammunition to tease him with, but oddly I wasn’t tempted. The way he’d poured out his soul...Perhaps he thought I didn’t understand him in kite form—but he’d been so honest, so unguarded, and he’d done it all to calm me down. If he hadn’t given me something to focus on, I’d probably still be hunting field mice over the Potomac.

Carter had spoken about Dad as if their travels together had been a great thing, yes, but also quite a chore, with Carter always struggling to please and be on his best behavior, with no one to relax with, or talk to. Dad was, I had to admit, quite a presence. You’d be hard-pressed not to want his approval. (No doubt that’s where I get my own stunningly charismatic personality.) I saw him only twice a year, and even so I had to prepare myself mentally for the experience. For the first time, I began to wonder if Carter really had the better end of the bargain. Would I trade my life for his?

I also decided not to tell him what had finally changed me back to human. I hadn’t focused on Dad at all. I’d imagined Mum alive, imagined us walking down Oxford Street together, gazing in the shop windows and talking and laughing—the kind of ordinary day we’d never gotten to share. An impossible wish, I know. But it had been powerful enough to remind me of who I was.

Didn’t say any of that, but Carter studied my face, and I sensed that he picked up my thoughts a little too well.

I took a sip of Coke. “You missed lunch, by the way.”

“You didn’t try to wake me?”

On the other side of the aisle, Bast burped. She’d just finished off her plate of salmon and was looking quite satisfied. “I could summon more Friskies,” she offered. “Or cheese sandwiches.”

“No thanks,” Carter muttered. He looked devastated.

“God, Carter,” I said. “If it’s that important to you, I’ve got some pizza left—”

“It’s not that,” he said. And he told us how his ba had almost been captured by Set.

The news gave me trouble breathing. I felt as if I were stuck in kite form again, unable to think clearly. Dad trapped in a red pyramid? Poor Amos used as some sort of pawn? I looked at Bast for some kind of reassurance. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Her expression was grim. “Sadie, I don’t know. Set will be most powerful on his birthday, and sunrise is the most auspicious moment for magic. If he’s able to generate one great explosion of storm energy at sunrise on that day—using not only his own magic, but augmenting it with the power of other gods he’s managed to enslave...the amount of chaos he could unleash is almost unimaginable.” She shuddered. “Carter, you say a simple demon gave him this idea?”

“Sounded like it,” Carter said. “Or he tweaked the original plan, anyway.”

She shook her head. “This is not like Set.”

I coughed. “What do you mean? It’s exactly like him.”

“No,” Bast insisted. “This is horrendous, even for him. Set wishes to be king, but such an explosion might leave him nothing to rule. It’s almost as if...” She stopped herself, the thought seemingly too disturbing. “I don’t understand it, but we’ll be landing soon. You’ll have to ask Thoth.”

“You make it sound like you’re not coming,” I said.

“Thoth and I don’t get along very well. Your chances of surviving might be better—”

The seat belt light came on. The captain announced we’d started our descent into Memphis. I peered out the window and saw a vast brown river cutting across the landscape—a river larger than any I’d ever seen. It reminded me uncomfortably of a giant snake.

The flight attendant came by and pointed to my lunch plate. “Finished, dear?”

“It seems so,” I told her gloomily.

Memphis hadn’t gotten word that it was winter. The trees were green and the sky was a brilliant blue.

We’d insisted Bast not “borrow” a car this time, so she agreed to rent one as long as she got a convertible. I didn’t ask where she got the money, but soon we were cruising through the mostly deserted streets of Memphis with our BMW’s top down.

I remember only snapshots of the city. We passed through one neighborhood that might’ve been a set from Gone with the Wind—big white mansions on enormous lawns shaded by cypress trees, although the plastic Santa Claus displays on the rooftops rather ruined the effect. On the next block, we almost got killed by an old woman driving a Cadillac out of a church parking lot. Bast swerved and honked her horn, and the woman just smiled and waved. Southern hospitality, I suppose.

After a few more blocks, the houses turned to rundown shacks. I spotted two African American boys wearing jeans and muscle shirts, sitting on their front porch, strumming acoustic guitars and singing. They sounded so good, I was tempted to stop.

On the next corner stood a cinder block restaurant with a hand-painted sign that read chicken & waffles. There was a queue of twenty people outside.

“You Americans have the strangest taste. What planet is this?” I asked.

Carter shook his head. “And where would Thoth be?”

Bast sniffed the air and turned left onto a street called Poplar. “We’re getting close. If I know Thoth, he’ll find a center of learning. A library, perhaps, or a cache of books in a magician’s tomb.”

“Don’t have a lot of those in Tennessee,” Carter guessed.

Then I spotted a sign and grinned broadly. “The University of Memphis, perhaps?”

“Well done, Sadie!” Bast purred.

Carter scowled at me. The poor boy gets jealous, you know.

A few minutes later, we were strolling through the campus of a small college: red brick buildings and wide courtyards. It was eerily quiet, except for the sound of a ball echoing on concrete.

As soon as Carter heard it, he perked up. “Basketball.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “We need to find Thoth.”

But Carter followed the sound of the ball, and we followed him. He rounded the corner of a building and froze. “Let’s ask them.”

I didn’t understand what he was on about. Then I turned the corner and yelped. On the basketball court, five players were in the middle of an intense game. They wore an assortment of jerseys from different American teams, and they all seemed keen to win—grunting and snarling at each other, stealing the ball and pushing.

Oh...and the players were all baboons.

“The sacred animal of Thoth,” Bast said. “We must be in the right place.”

One of the baboons had lustrous golden hair much lighter than the others, and a more, er, colorful bottom. He wore a purple jersey that seemed oddly familiar.

“Is that...a Lakers jersey?” I asked, hesitant to even name Carter’s silly obsession.

He nodded, and we both grinned.

“Khufu!” we yelled.

True, we hardly knew the baboon. We’d spent less than a day with him, and our time at Amos’s mansion seemed like ages ago, but still I felt like we’d recovered a long-lost friend.

Khufu jumped into my arms and barked at me. “Agh! Agh!” He picked through my hair, looking for bugs, I suppose [No comments from you, Carter!], and dropped to the ground, slapping the pavement to show how pleased he was.

Bast laughed. “He says you smell like flamingos.”

“You speak Baboon?” Carter asked.

The goddess shrugged. “He also wants to know where you’ve been.”

“Where we’ve been?” I said. “Well, first off, tell him I’ve spent the better part of the day as a kite, which is not a flamingo and does not end in -o, so it shouldn’t be on his diet. Secondly—”

“Hold on.” Bast turned to Khufu and said, “Agh!” Then she looked back at me. “All right, go ahead.”

I blinked. “Okay...um, and secondly, where has he been?”

She relayed this in a single grunt.

Khufu snorted and grabbed the basketball, which sent his baboon friends into a frenzy of barking and scratching and snarling.

“He dove into the river and swam back,” Bast translated, “but when he returned, the house was destroyed and we were gone. He waited a day for Amos to return, but he never did. So Khufu made his way to Thoth. Baboons are under his protection, after all.”

“Why is that?” Carter asked. “I mean, no offense, but Thoth is the god of knowledge, right?”

“Baboons are very wise animals,” Bast said.

“Agh!” Khufu picked his nose, then turned his Technicolor bum our direction. He threw his friends the ball. They began to fight over it, showing one another their fangs and slapping their heads.

“Wise?” I asked.

“Well, they’re not cats, mind you,” Bast added. “But, yes, wise. Khufu says that as soon as Carter keeps his promise, he’ll take you to the professor.”

I blinked. “The prof— Oh, you mean...right.”

“What promise?” Carter asked.

The corner of Bast’s mouth twitched. “Apparently, you promised to show him your basketball skills.”

Carter’s eyes widened in alarm. “We don’t have time!”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Bast promised. “It’s best that I go now.”

“But where, Bast?” I asked, as I wasn’t anxious to be separated from her again. “How will we find you?”

The look in her eyes changed to something like guilt, as if she’d just caused a horrible accident. “I’ll find you when you get out, if you get out....”

“What do you mean if?” Carter asked, but Bast had already turned into Muffin and raced off.

Khufu barked at Carter most insistently. He tugged his hand, pulling him onto the court. The baboons immediately broke into two teams. Half took off their jerseys. Half left them on. Carter, sadly, was on the no-jersey team, and Khufu helped him pull his shirt off, exposing his bony chest. The teams began to play.

Now, I know nothing about basketball. But I’m fairly sure one isn’t supposed to trip over one’s shoes, or catch a pass with one’s forehead, or dribble (is that the word?) with both hands as if petting a possibly rabid dog. But that is exactly the way Carter played. The baboons simply ran him over, quite literally. They scored basket after basket as Carter staggered back and forth, getting hit with the ball whenever it came close to him, tripping over monkey limbs until he was so dizzy he turned in a circle and fell over. The baboons stopped playing and watched him in disbelief. Carter lay in the middle of the court, covered in sweat and panting. The other baboons looked at Khufu. It was quite obvious what they were thinking: Who invited this human? Khufu covered his eyes in shame.