Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

P aige's eyes went wide at the two words. "Are you kidding?"

"Nope. If we touch the wrong tomb, the thing will just open up and swallow us alive, and we'll be stuck in there until we die."

"OMG," Paige said with a slap on her thigh. The whispers still cluttered the air around them, creating an irritating drone.

Paige's temples started to ache as the nonstop noise bristled against her eardrums. "This is awful."

"Tell me about it. You have those tiny ears. Try having my ears. With my sensitive hearing. I can hear a pin dropping over a mile away. This is torture."

The whispers slowly began to fade, and Paige heaved a sigh of relief. "Okay, they stopped with all the whispers. Maybe this'll be easier now."

"Doubt it."

"Well, with your sensitive hearing, it should be a snap." Paige leaned closer to one of the stone tombs. A whisper cut through the quiet air. "There, this one whispered. This one isn't the right one."

"Did it? Or did the one next to it? Or on the opposite side of it?"

Paige wrinkled her nose. "I don't know. Ugh, this is going to be impossible."

"Probably," Dewey answered. "Plus, let's say we identify one that's definitely whispering, how will we remember it's whispering? There are hundreds here. And we have no way of marking them."

Paige sank down to sit on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. "So, we're just going to die here with the whispers surrounding us."

"Unless Drucinda finds us. With her Valkyrie ears, she probably can figure it out."

Paige fell back, lying against the stone floor, and covered her eyes. "Once again, we're just waiting to be rescued."

Dewey paced back and forth next to her. "It's not a bad gig. We just hang out. Would be better if we had some food."

"Well, we don't," Paige said. "We have no food. We'll just be sitting here starving and hoping Drucinda finds us."

Dewey plopped down on the floor. "Man, I'd kill for some breadsticks. Or fish and chips. Candy. Popcorn. Basically anything."

"Please stop talking about food. I'm hungry, too."

"Sorry. I can't help it. I'm really hungry."

Paige rolled onto her side, curling into a ball as a few wayward whispers tickled her ears. After a second, she climbed to her feet. "No."

"Uh, yeah, Paige, I am. Starving, actually."

"No, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and wait to be rescued. We are smart. We are capable. We can figure this out."

Dewey let out a harsh laugh. "How do you figure that? "

"Because I'm going to figure this out if it kills me."

Dewey fluttered into the air. "It just might."

"Well, we'll find out." Paige marched down to the start of the rows and studied the stone sarcophagus in front of her. "Okay, each of these has a different symbol on it. We can identify them that way."

"Oh, I'm sure that'll work, yes. We'll just need to remember hundreds of symbols. Is it the open eye that whispered or the closed one? Was it the alligator with its mouth open or closed?"

Paige wrinkled her nose as she stared down the long aisle of stone coffins. "Okay, good point, but we have to do something. We can't just sit here thinking about food and waiting to be rescued."

"We can," Dewey countered. "I could sit around thinking about food all day, every day. It's one of my favorite pastimes, in fact."

Paige huffed at him. "Well, you'll have to engage in it at another time, we have work to do."

"We can't do it, Paige. We can't. This is impossible."

"No, it's not. We just have to think. What can we use to mark these? Think, Dewey."

Dewey pinched his eyebrows together and rubbed his chin. After a second, he shook his head. "I got nothing. The only thing in my mind is a cheeseburger."

Paige offered him an unimpressed stare. "Seriously? The only thing in your mind is a cheeseburger?"

"Actually, no," Dewey admitted. "Also, fries and a strawberry shake."

Paige's nostrils flared as she vetted through her frustration. "Stop thinking about food!"

"Easier said than done, Paige."

She turned in a circle, trying to find something to help them in their quest. When she'd made two full rotations, she stopped. "Nothing. And now all I can think about is burgers, fries, and shakes."

"Oh, yeah, come over to the dark side, Paige. We have cookies."

"No, you don't. If you did, we wouldn't be this hungry." Her eyes landed on Bones. "Wait a second."

Dewey's eyes went wide. "Do you?"

"Huh?"

"Have cookies? Do you have cookies? You said wait a second."

"Not for that. I don't have any cookies."

"Are you sure? Did you check?"

Paige turned out her pockets. "No cookies. Cookie-free, see? My wait a second was for a different thing. The main problem thing because I actually am actively trying to solve that."

"Well, you're a better person than me."

"If these sarcophagi kill us–"

"Wait a minute," Dewey said with a shake of his head. "Sarcophagi…is that correct? Sarcophagi or sarcophaguses?"

"What?"

"Which is the correct plural?"

"Sarcophagi," Paige said with a shake of her head.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" Paige said with a stamp of her foot. "I'm sure. One hundred percent sure. It's sarcophagi. And that's beside the point. If these…things kill us if we touch the wrong one…can't we just push Bones into each one of them until one doesn't kill him?"

Dewey's jaw dropped open at the theory. "Sacrifice him?"

"He comes back. We'll push him in, he dies, pops back out here, we push him into the next, and on and on until we find one that doesn't kill him."

"That could work. Yeah. Way to creative problem solve. "

Paige grinned at him as she bobbed her head up and down before setting her gaze on the Mummy next to her. "Hiya, buddy."

The corners of the bandaged lips tugged upward. "Hi."

"So, here's the thing…we sort of need your help with something important, but it's not going to be fun. But I was wondering if…well…"

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Paige, just shove him into one." Dewey pushed the Mummy from behind. He stumbled forward and fell into one of the stone coffins. It swallowed him whole as a scream escaped his lips.

"Ohhhh, that was…." Paige stood staring at the sarcophagus that had eaten her Mummy friend.

"Pretty cool," Dewey said. "Even cooler that it didn't happen to us."

A second later, the Mummy popped back into existence next to Paige, dusting off his shoulders.

"There he is," Dewey said as he buzzed toward him. The Mummy crouched into a defensive position. "Come on, no reason to fight it. On to the next one."

"Dewey, stop. He's scared. He doesn't want to do it."

"Uh, well, too bad for him. He's the only one who can."

Paige tensed her jaw. "Yeah, but he's scared. And we need his help. What if he runs away and we're stuck here? Just…let me talk to him."

"Fine, fine," Dewey said, waving his arms in the air. "Talk to the Mummy."

"Bones," Paige said. "I know when Dewey pushed you into the coffin, it was scary. But…the thing is… we need to figure out which one won't be scary. And neither of us can do that. You're the only one who can. So, can you be super brave and help us?"

The Mummy stared at Paige, his red eyes glowing before he said, "Brave. "

"Than–" Paige began when the Mummy raced headlong into another coffin. It swallowed him whole before he reappeared next to them and tried another.

"Wow, look at him go. He's literally just trying every one of them down the line. Great job, Paige. You're some kind of motivator!"

"Yeah, I feel kind of bad, but better him than us. I mean, he just pops right back out after a few seconds, and he's perfectly fine."

"Yeah, and he shows no signs of slowing down, either," Dewey said as they shuffled further down the corridor. "That's like his sixth death, and he's still going strong."

"Let's hope he's got another hundred in him because we're nowhere near the end of the first row."

"He can do it. I have every faith in him." Dewey buzzed further down as Bones raced headlong into another sarcophagus before reappearing.

He dove into a dozen more before he reappeared and ran into the next coffin, marked with a spider. This time he didn't reappear.

"Uh-oh. Did he die for like the final time?" Paige asked. Her pulse quickened as she waited a much longer time than normal for the Mummy to reappear.

"There isn't a limit," Dewey said. "Oh wait, or is there?"

"Dewey! Do you mean we could have accidentally killed him by asking him to sacrifice himself too many times?"

"I don't know! I didn't think so! I thought they had unlimited lives unless very specific criteria were met."

"What criteria? What if the criteria was inside that coffin? What if he got killed?" Paige pressed a palm against her forehead with a groan. "Oh my goodness, I'm responsible for killing a dead guy."

"Calm down, Paige."

She blew out a long breath and slid her eyes closed. " Right. Calm down. There's no reason to panic. He was dead anyway."

"The real tragedy here is how are we going to find our way out of here now that our sacrificial lamb is…sacrificed."

"Dewey! This is no time to be thinking of ourselves. We've lost a friend."

Dewey wrinkled his nose. "That's taking it a little far. He was a weird little Mummy who followed you home thanks to your Snow White Syndrome. I'd hardly call him a friend."

She stamped a foot on the ground. "Well, I would. He sacrificed himself to help us. And now he's gone."

"Mama," a voice said.

"Bones? OMG!" Paige's eyes went toward the ceiling. "He's speaking to me from the beyond."

"No, Paige, he isn't."

She lowered her gaze to her flying friend. He poked a claw at the sarcophagus that had swallowed Bones moments earlier. The Mummy poked his head back into the room before he waved a bandaged hand, signaling them to follow him. "Exit."

Paige's heart skipped a beat. The little guy lived. "Exit? Ohhhh, you didn't die. You disappeared from this chamber because this is the right sarcophagus."

Paige grinned as she shot a glance at Dewey.

He curled his paws into fists. "We did it!"

"We did."

"On to the last test. Let's go see what it is."

Paige's grin faded fast. "Last test? There's another one of these?"

"Yep. Three trials, then the big meet-up. With any luck, though, we'll breeze through this one, too, then face the Mummy Lord. Maybe he'll swipe right on you and just give us the scepter. "

"Ew," Paige said with a wrinkled nose. "The last thing I need is another admirer."

She reached for the sarcophagus, allowing her hand to slip through the stone and push into the next chamber.

"Tell me about it. Especially of this type. If you think Devon's methods were bad, just wait. You ain't seen nothing yet, sister."

"What would a Mummy Lord do?"

"Have you ever seen The Mummy?"

Paige shook her head. "Say no more. I don't want to be taken over by some ancient Egyptian woman and then have to kill myself to complete the transformation."

"Or…embalmed alive."

Paige's knees wobbled as fire sprang to life, lighting the new chamber. She stared at a wall twice her size filled with a grid of twenty-four tiles carved with patterns and a blank space.

"What kind of puzzle is this?"

Dewey's eyes went wide, and his lips tugged into a deep grimace. "Oh, no."

"What?" Paige asked. "What do we have to do."

Dewey wagged his head back and forth before he covered his face with his paws. A second later, he flung his head back as he shouted at the ceiling, "Noooooooo!"

"Dewey! What is it? What's wrong?"

He fixed his glassy eyes on her, a flicker of fear shooting across them. "We're doomed."