R. LaFevers - Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos

Something about this wasn’t quite right.

As we reached the anteroom, I could hear Snowthorpe’s voice coming from within and could almost feel Father sending out mental SOS signals.

“What are you going to tell them?” I whispered.

“Don’t worry. I have it under control,” Mum said.

That didn’t comfort me as much as she thought it would.

Mother straightened her spine, smoothed her skirts, and plastered a cheerful smile on her face (which looked more like a grimace) and marched through the door. I followed in her wake, not wanting to miss this one.

“There you are, ladies,” Snowthorpe nearly bellowed. “I’d thought perhaps you’d got lost.” He chuckled at his own feeble cleverness.

“Not at all, Snowthorpe,” Mum replied, rather harshly.

He clapped his big hands together. “Well, let’s see it, then.”

“Yes, well.” Mother cleared her throat. “I’m afraid you’ve chosen a particularly bad time, Snowthorpe. It’s being cleaned at the moment.”

The man frowned. “Cleaned? Well, I don’t mind seeing it in progress, as it were.”

Mum glanced desperately at Father. He knew at once something was wrong, even if he hadn’t caught on to exactly what yet.

I jumped into the fray. “It’s a very delicate process. Er, due to the condition of the piece.” I used my most knowledgeable voice, the one Father calls my Miss Bossy voice.

Mother leaped onto my reasoning like a cat pouncing after a mouse. “Yes! That’s it. The cleaning process on a piece like this is very complex, as you can imagine.” Mum went over and took Snowthorpe’s arm and began gently steering him toward the door. “Once it’s ready, you’ll be the first we show it to.”

Her voice faded away as she led him down the hall.

“Theodosia?” Father’s sharp voice cracked through the room. “What’s going on?”

“The Heart of Egypt’s gone missing, that’s what’s going on.”

As soon as Mum came back, she and Father disappeared into Father’s office and closed the door. I could hear them talking in clipped, urgent tones. In minutes, they would no doubt begin tearing the museum apart, looking for it.

I didn’t think they’d find it.

It was just too odd a coincidence that Snowthorpe should show up on the very morning we learned the Heart of Egypt was missing. I mean, how did he even know it was here?

Snowthorpe was our only clue as to who else might have known about the artifact — someone had told him it was here. And before we could figure out who had taken it, we had to discover who else had known about it. If I got the Heart of Egypt back for my parents, surely that would impress them. Then they’d see what a huge help I could be, if only they’d let me.

I grabbed my things and slipped out the front door after Snowthorpe. I ignored the dark gray clouds that were lazily spitting down rain and hurried after him. Spotting the fluttering of his coattails as he turned the corner, I quickened my pace.

After several blocks, we reached the British Museum. I hurried up the stairs and followed Snowthorpe into the marble foyer filled with elaborate buttresses, gothic arches, and an enormous diplodocus skeleton. (I half hated the museum for how much grander it was than ours.) As I forced my gaze away from the display, I caught sight of Snowthorpe turning down a hall on the left.

Of course, even the hallway was grand here. It had lush carpet and deep, rich paneling, and mahogany doors with shiny brass nameplates. As Snowthorpe paused to talk to a man in the hallway, I quickly spun away and pretended to study one of the nameplates. I didn’t want Snowthorpe to see me. Besides, a young girl viewing the museum’s collection was explainable, but a young girl hanging about the offices was not.

The two men finished speaking and went their separate ways, the unknown man raising his eyebrows when he spotted me in the doorway. I flashed him a quick smile, pointed toward Snowthorpe, muttered some nonsense, then hurried along.

Snowthorpe turned into one of the offices and I stopped two doors away, straining to listen. It wasn’t too difficult. Not with the way Snowthorpe tended to shout whenever he spoke.

“Well, Tetley,” Snowthorpe barked. “You were dead wrong. The Throckmortons don’t have the Heart of Egypt.”

Aha! So it was this Tetley fellow who’d known about the artifact and blabbed to Snowthorpe.

There was a murmured reply that I couldn’t quite hear. I glanced around, relieved to find the hallway empty, and inched closer.

“No. No. I think they’re bluffing. Made up some story about it being cleaned. Next time check your sources better!”

“Yes, sir. Very sorry about that, sir,” I heard Tetley say. Snowthorpe cleared his throat. “Very well, then. Carry on.”

Panic raced through me as I realized the conversation was over and Snowthorpe would be stepping out of the office — and directly into me —any second. I looked around at the long hallway. There was no place to hide, except for the door in front of which I’d been standing. I pressed my ear up to the wood and heard nothing, no murmur of voices or rustle of paper.

I had no choice. Ever so quietly I turned the knob and opened the door a crack. It was a storage closet of sorts. I stepped inside and pulled the door closed, careful that it not make too loud a click.

I backed up and bumped into a bolt of rolled-up carpet. Discarded chairs and unused lamps were tucked in corners. Dusty old scholarly journals were stacked on the floor in towers nearly as tall as I was. Ignoring the clutter, I focused my attention on the hallway on the other side of the door and listened. Merely a second later, I heard, or felt, rather, Snowthorpe’s heavy tread as he retreated down the hall.

That was close. How on earth would I have explained my presence to that know-it-all? And who was this Tetley fellow anyway? How had he heard about the Heart of Egypt?

It seemed I had discovered nothing but more questions!

I heard the soft click of a nearby door being closed. Once again I heard footsteps in the hall. “The old codger wasn’t supposed to go looking for it,” someone muttered as they passed the closet door.

I waited a second or two, then quietly opened the door a crack. I looked to the right and saw that Tetley’s door was now closed. When I looked to the left, I saw a young man with a hat and cane walking briskly, as if he were heading out. Odds were that was Tetley.

Interesting. As soon as he heard Snowthorpe report back on the absence of the Heart of Egypt, he had to leave the museum suddenly? Really, it was just too suspicious. Once again, I needed to follow.

IT WAS MUCH EASIER FOLLOWING TETLEY. He’d never met me before and had no idea who I was, so it didn’t really matter if he spotted me.

I strolled along behind him as he made his way down Great Russell Street, then turned left on Bloomsbury. We walked along that street for a couple of blocks until we came to Oxford Street, which presented a bit of a problem. First of all, it’s very busy road, and getting across it without being plowed into by a hansom, growler, or omnibus, or worse yet one of the new motorbuses, required quick thinking and even quicker feet. Second, Oxford Street was my boundary, the street past which I was not allowed to go without my parents. Ever.

I would like to say my conscience caused me to at least pause before I stepped into the street and dashed across, but that would be lying. I valiantly forged ahead, visions of Mother’s and Father’s faces alight with joy as I presented them with the lost Heart of Egypt filling my head.