The Halloween Tree

"Look," said Moundshroud, hung upon the very air above them.

And the million tiger-lion-leopard-panther eyes of the autumn Kite looked down, as did the eyes of the boys.

And the sun rose showing them...

Egypt. The River Nile. The Sphinx. The Pyramids.

"But," said Moundshroud. "Notice anything--different?"

"Why," gasped Tom, "it's all new. It's just been built. That means we really have gone back in Time four thousand years!"

And, sure enough, the Egypt that lay below was ancient sand but new-cut stone. The Sphinx, with its great lion paws treaded out on the golden stuffs of desert, was sharp-cut and freshly born out of the womb of stone mountains. It was a vast pup in the bright and empty glare of noon. If the sun had fallen and lay between its paws, it would have cuffed it like a fireball toy.

The Pyramids? Why they lay like strange-shaped blocks, yet other games to be puzzled over, played with by the woman-lion Sphinx.

The Kite zoomed down and skirted the sand dunes, flirted over one pyramid and was drawn, as by suction, by an open tomb-mouth set in a small cliff.

"Hey, Presto!" cried Moundshroud.

With a flap he gave the Kite such a kick as made the boys toll like clamorous bells.

"Hey, no!" they cried.

The Kite shuddered, fell down, hovered ten feet above the dunes, and shook itself like a wild dog ridding itself of fleas.

The boys fell safe in golden sand.

The Kite broke away in a thousand shreds of eyes, fangs, shrieks, roars, elephant trumpetings. The Egyptian tomb-mouth sucked them in, and Moundshroud, laughing, with it.

"Mr. Moundshroud, wait!"

Leaping up, the boys ran to shout into the dark tomb doorway. Then they lifted their gaze and saw where they were.

The Valley of the Kings, where huge stone gods loomed above. Dust shifted in a strange downpour of tears from their eyes; tears made of sand and powdered rock.

The boys leaned into the shadows. Like a dry river bottom, the corridors led down to deep vaults where lay the linen-wrapped dead. Dust fountains echoed and played in strange courtyards a mile below. The boys ached, listening. The tomb breathed out a sick exhalation of paprika, cinnamon, and powdered camel dung. Somewhere, a mummy dreamed, coughed in its sleep, unraveled a bandage, twitched its dusty tongue and turned over for another thousand-year snooze....

"Mr. Moundshroud?" called Tom Skelton.

And from deep in the dry earth a lost voice whispered:

"Mound--sssss--shroud."

Out of the darkness something rolled, rushed, flapped.

A long strip of mummy cloth snapped out into the sunlight.

It was as if the very tomb itself had stuck out its old dry tongue which lay at their feet.

The boys stared. The linen strip was hundreds of yards long and might, if they wished, lead them down, down into the mysterious deeps below the Egyptian earth.

Tom Skelton, trembling, put one toe out to touch the yellow linen strip.

A wind blew from the tombs, saying: "Yessss--"

"Here I go," said Tom.

And, balancing on the tightrope of linen, he wandered down and vanished in the dark under the burial chambers.