The Serpent's Shadow

“The scroll burned,” I said. “We couldn’t save it.”

Cleo looked like she might scream. “But that was the last copy! How could Apophis destroy something so valuable?”

I wanted to remind Cleo that Apophis was out to destroy the entire world, but I knew she didn’t like to think about that. It made her sick from fear.

Getting outraged about the scroll was more manageable for her. The idea that anybody could destroy a book of any kind made Cleo want to punch Apophis in the face.

One of the shabti jumped onto the table. He tried to stick a scanner label on the golden cabinet, but Cleo shooed the clay man away.

“All of you, back to your places!” She clapped her hands, and the four shabti returned to their pedestals. They reverted to solid clay, though one was still wearing rubber gloves and holding a feather duster, which looked a little odd.

Cleo leaned in and studied the gold box. “There’s nothing inside. Why did you bring it?”

“That’s what Sadie, Bast, and I need to discuss,” I said. “If you don’t mind, Cleo.”

“I don’t mind.” Cleo kept examining the cabinet. Then she realized we were all staring at her. “Oh…you mean privately. Of course.”

She looked a little upset about getting kicked out, but she took Khufu’s hand. “Come on, babuinozinho. We’ll get you a snack.”

“Agh!” Khufu said happily. He adored Cleo, possibly because of her name. For reasons none of us quite understood, Khufu loved things that ended in -O, like avocados, Oreos, and armadillos.

Once Cleo and Khufu were gone, Sadie, Bast, and I gathered around our new acquisition.

The cabinet was shaped like a miniature school locker. The exterior was gold, but it must’ve been a thin layer of foil covering wood, because the whole thing wasn’t very heavy. The sides and top were engraved with hieroglyphs and pictures of the pharaoh and his wife. The front was fitted with latched double doors, which opened to reveal…well, not much of anything. There was a tiny pedestal marked by gold footprints, as if an Ancient Egyptian Barbie doll had once stood there.

Sadie studied the hieroglyphs along the sides of the box. “It’s all about Tut and his queen, wishing them a happy afterlife, blah, blah. There’s a picture of him hunting ducks. Honestly? That was his idea of paradise?”

“I like ducks,” Bast said.

I moved the little doors back and forth on their hinges. “Somehow I don’t think the ducks are important. Whatever was inside here, it’s gone now. Maybe grave robbers took it, or—”

Bast chuckled. “Grave robbers took it. Sure.”

I frowned at her. “What’s so funny?”

She grinned at me, then Sadie, before apparently realizing we didn’t get the joke. “Oh…I see. You actually don’t know what this is. I suppose that makes sense. Not many have survived.”

“Not many what?” I asked.

“Shadow boxes.”

Sadie wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t that a sort of school project? Did one for English once. Deadly boring.”

“I wouldn’t know about school projects,” Bast said haughtily. “That sounds suspiciously like work. But this is an actual shadow box—a box to hold a shadow.”

Bast didn’t sound like she was kidding, but it’s hard to tell with cats.

“It’s in there right now,” she insisted. “Can’t you see it? A little shadowy bit of Tut. Hello, shadow Tut!” She wriggled her fingers at the empty box. “That’s why I laughed when you said grave robbers might have stolen it. Ha! That would be a trick.”

I tried to wrap my mind around this idea. “But…I’ve heard Dad lecture on, like, every possible Egyptian artifact. I never once heard him mention a shadow box.”

“As I told you,” Bast said, “not many have survived. Usually the shadow box was buried far away from the rest of the soul. Tut was quite silly to have it placed in his tomb. Perhaps one of the priests put it there against his orders, out of spite.”

I was totally lost now. To my surprise, Sadie was nodding enthusiastically.

“That must’ve been what Anubis meant,” she said. “Pay attention to what’s not there. When I looked into the Duat, I saw darkness inside the box. And Uncle Vinnie said it was a clue to defeating Apophis.”

I made a “Time out” T with my hands. “Back up. Sadie, where did you see Anubis? And since when do we have an uncle named Vinnie?”

She looked a little embarrassed, but she described her encounter with the face in the wall, then the visions she’d had of our mom and Isis and her godly almost-boyfriend Anubis. I knew my sister’s attention wandered a lot, but even I was impressed by how many mystical side trips she’d managed, just walking through a museum.

“The face in the wall could’ve been a trick,” I said.

“Possibly…but I don’t think so. The face said we would need his help, and we had only two days until something happened to him. He told me this box would show us what we needed. Anubis hinted I was on the right track, saving this cabinet. And Mum…” Sadie faltered. “Mum said this was the only way we’d ever see her again. Something is happening to the spirits of the dead.”

Suddenly I felt like I was back in the Duat, wrapped in freezing fog. I stared at the box, but I still didn’t see anything. “How do shadows tie in to Apophis and spirits of the dead?”

I looked at Bast. She dug her fingernails into the table, using it like a scratching post, the way she does when she’s tense. We go through a lot of tables.

“Bast?” Sadie asked gently.

“Apophis and shadows,” Bast mused. “I’d never considered…” She shook her head. “These are really questions you should ask Thoth. He’s much more knowledgeable than I.”

A memory surfaced. My dad had given a lecture at a university somewhere…Munich, maybe? The students had asked him about the Egyptian concept of the soul, which had multiple parts, and my dad mentioned something about shadows.

Like one hand with five fingers, he’d said. One soul with five parts.

I held up my own fingers, trying to remember. “Five parts of the soul…what are they?”

Bast stayed silent. She looked pretty uncomfortable.

“Carter?” Sadie asked. “What does that have to do—?”

“Just humor me,” I said. “The first part is the ba, right? Our personality.”

“Chicken form,” Sadie said.

Trust Sadie to nickname part of your soul after poultry, but I knew what she meant. The ba could leave the body when we dreamed, or it could come back to the earth as a ghost after we died. When it did, it appeared as a large glowing bird with a human head.

“Yeah,” I said. “Chicken form. Then there’s the ka, the life force that leaves the body when it dies. Then there’s the ib, the heart—”

“The record of good and bad deeds,” Sadie agreed. “That’s the bit they weigh on the scales of justice in the afterlife.”

“And fourth…” I hesitated.

“The ren,” Sadie supplied. “Your secret name.”

I was too embarrassed to look at her. Last spring she’d saved my life by speaking my secret name, which had basically given her access to my most private thoughts and darkest emotions. Since then she’d been pretty cool about it, but still…that’s not the kind of leverage you want to give your little sister.

The ren was also the part of the soul that our friend Bes had given up for us in our gambling match six months ago with the moon god Khonsu. Now Bes was a hollow shell of a god, sitting in a wheelchair in the Underworld’s divine nursing home.

“Right,” I said. “But the fifth part…” I looked at Bast. “It’s the shadow, isn’t it?”