The Magic and the Mummy
THE
MAGIC
AND
THE
MUMMY
Illustrated by Helen Flook
A&C Black • London
Reprinted 2009
First published 2004 by
A & C Black Publishers Ltd
36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
www.acblack.com
Text copyright © 2004 Terry Deary
Illustrations copyright © 2004 Helen Flook
The rights of Terry Deary and Helen Flook to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
eISBN 978-1-40811-590-9
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior permission in writing of the publishers.
This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading RG1 8EX.
Table of Contents
Chapter 2. Fate of the Pharaoh
Neria couldn’t sleep.
She lay on the cool floor of her room and wriggled with excitement.
“The House of Death!” she whispered in the dark. “The House of Death!” And she remembered over and over again what her father had told her the night before.
“Neria,” he said. “You are a clever girl.”
“Thank you father,” she muttered and blushed. He hardly ever seemed to notice her. He was a grand priest at the royal temple. He certainly hadn’t told her she was clever before. How did he know?
He dusted crumbs of bread off his hands and wiped his thin mouth. His scary, dark eyes looked into her. “I can trust you,” he went on.
“Oh, yes, father,” she said quietly.
“I have a very special task for you,” he said. Her brothers and sisters fell silent and looked at her.
She was the oldest and they always knew she was a special girl. She was like a mother to them since their own mother had died a year ago. Their faces were still but their ears were twitching like hippos on the banks of the Nile.
Neria nodded.
“Tomorrow I am taking you to the House of Death with me,” the man said. His shaved head glowed in the golden light of the oil lamps and he looked like a god.
“Oooh!” her youngest brother, Karu, cried. “House of Death! Neria is going to die.”
The priest turned his head slowly and looked at his little son. The boy gave a hiccup of fear. “The House of Death is not the pace you go to die, my son. It is the place you go after you are dead … at least the place the great people of Egypt go when they are dead.”
The little boy’s mouth fell open. “Oooh!”
“The House of Death is where we preserve the bodies of people …”
“What’s ‘preserve’?” Karu whispered.
Father nodded. “If you have a piece of meat, and you leave it in the sun, what happens to it?”
“The cat would pinch it!” the little boy said.
“Or the jackals would come in from the desert and gobble it up.”
Father closed his eyes for a moment and took a slow breath. “If you put it on the roof, where the cats and the jackals couldn’t get it …”
Karu wriggled. “The birds would eat it.”
The priest held the table so tightly his knuckles turned white. Neria tried to shake her head – to tell her little brother to close his mouth before their father lost his temper.
