Viking Raiders

Thunder started to rumble. The ground shook. Anubis snatched all six amulets and tossed them into the air. With a loud crack and a flash of lightning, they vanished.

“You hid them from me!” he boomed. “Now I have hidden them from you – in the most dangerous places throughout time.”

Isis’s bandaged shoulders drooped in despair. “So I c-c-can’t come into the Afterlife then?”

“Not until you have found each and every one. But first, you will have to get out of this…” Anubis clicked his fingers. A life-sized pottery statue of the goddess Isis, whom Isis was named after, appeared before him.

Isis felt herself being sucked into the statue, along with Cleo. “What are you doing to me?” she yelled.

“You can only escape if somebody breaks the statue,” Anubis said. “So you’ll have plenty of time to think about whether trying to trick the trickster god himself was a good idea!”

The walls of the statue closed around Isis, trapping her and Cleo inside. The sound of Anubis’s evil laughter would be the last sound they would hear for a long, long time…

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“I want to go to the cinema too!” Isis said to Tom over the breakfast table. “Please take me with you!”

Her pet cat, Cleopatra, who was sunbathing on the kitchen windowsill, mewed in agreement.

Tom stared at the mummified princess in disbelief. She was sitting on the edge of the table, right next to Dad, and had helped herself to a slice of his toast. Loose strands from her bandages drifted down into his porridge. Luckily, Isis was invisible to everyone except Tom. But even if Dad had been able to see or hear her, he was in a world of his own, reading Archaeologist Weekly.

No, he simply shovelled the porridge, now flavoured with five-thousand-year-old bits of Egyptian mummy, into his mouth.

“Mmm,” Dad said. “Crunchy.”

Tom suddenly lost his appetite. He jumped up from his chair and dropped his half-eaten cereal bowl in the sink with a clatter. Returning to the table, he took Isis by her crumbly arm and pulled her into the hall.

“Hey! I’ve not finished breakfast yet!” Isis grumbled.

“You don’t need to eat breakfast – you’re dead!” Tom said, letting go of Isis’s bandaged arm. “And you can’t come to the cinema with me because I know what you’re like – you’ll mess about and distract me.”

Ever since he’d accidentally smashed a statue in his dad’s museum, setting the Ancient Egyptian princess free, Tom had been stuck with Isis and her pet cat. And he’d continue being stuck with her until they found the six amulets that Anubus, the god of the Underworld, had scattered throughout the most dangerous times in history. So far they’d found two, but there were four more to collect.

“If you weren’t such a troublemaker, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Tom added, reminding Isis that their task was her punishment for cheekily trying to steal one of the amulets from Anubis.

“You’ve never had so much fun in your life!” Isis scoffed. “All these adventures! Since you met me, you’ve trained as a gladiator in Ancient Rome and met King Arthur! What do you offer me in return? Chess? History books? A GAME OF FOOTBALL?!” She started to make snoring noises.

“You’re only saying that because you’re rubbish at football,” Tom said. He glanced into the kitchen and saw that Mum was busy wiping the worktops and Dad had his nose in his magazine.

Isis waggled her foot at him. “It’s not easy kicking a ball when you’re wrapped in bandages.”

Tom breathed out heavily in frustration. “Do you even know what a cinema is?”

he asked.

Isis shook her head sheepishly.

Tom explained that it was a place where stories were told along with moving pictures. “Everything on the screen is about ten times its normal size and the best bit is that it’s really, really loud,” he finished.

“Oh, I love stories,” Isis said, clapping her hands in glee. “The priests in Egypt wrote the most amazing ones, with beautiful pictures on papyrus scrolls. They used to read them to me when I was little. Sometimes, because I was so beautiful…”

Tom spluttered, but Isis ignored him.

“… they wrote me into the stories too!”

Tom hesitated. If he took Isis to the cinema, at least she wouldn’t be able to cause mischief at home. He sighed. “All right, then. You can come with me.”

Isis shuffled stiffly over to the front door and called out to Cleo. “Come on, Fluffpot! We’re going to the cinema!”

Inside the cinema, the screen flickered brightly as the characters in the film blew up an old building containing fireworks. Kaboom! Rockets fizzed up into the nightsky before exploding in a shower of colourful sparks.

As Isis cowered behind a row of seats Cleo yowled and clambered on to Tom’s lap.

“Take cover, Fluffpot!” Isis cried to her cat. “The world is ending!”

Tom chuckled. “It’s OK, you know,” he said, reaching into a giant tub of popcorn. He put a fistful of the sticky kernels intohis mouth. “It’s not real. The pictures can’t hurt you.”

Isis held her hands over where her ears would be. “What about the noise?” The explosions were quite loud.

“You’ll get used to it,” Tom told her.

“Are they gods?” Isis asked, pointing to the characters on the screen.

“They’re just actors,” Tom explained. He thrust his tub of popcorn towards Isis. “Here, try some of this. And be quiet because you’re ruining the film for me.”

Isis sat back on her seat nervously. She plunged a hand into the tub and stuffed some popcorn through a hole in the bandages that covered her face. “Mmm, this tastes great,” she said, jaws creaking as she chomped away.

“Leave some for me!” Tom said.

Somebody’s dad in the row behind leaned forward and tapped Tom on the shoulder.

“Hey! Keep it down, son. I didn’t pay to listen to you talking to yourself for an hour.”

Tom slumped down in his seat. He was glad that, in the dark of the cinema, nobody could see his cheeks glow.

Isis giggled and kept hold of the popcorn tub. “You heard the man,” she said. “Stop ruining the film for everyone!”

Tom looked longingly at his popcorn.

“Can I have some, please?” he whispered, checking that the man behind wasn’t listening.

Isis ignored him. The yellowy bandages on her face glowed white as she stared up at the flickering light of the screen. Isis started to laugh as the hero of the film said something funny.

Tom could tell she was utterly absorbed in the thrilling story. “Isis!” he hissed, giving her a good poke with his elbow.

“Shh!” she hissed. “This is a good bit.”

Tom’s stomach growled. “I bought that popcorn for me. Give it back, will you?”