all the materials from the internet?” Alice asked, though rather hopelessly.
“Don’t be silly!” Katy answered, putting aside those books that might have worked for them. The pile looked quite hefty.
“Katy, we’ll grow old sitting here until we read all of that! We’ll get shriveled, parched up and turned into mummies, just like those Egyptian pharaohs…”
“You’re definitely in no danger of withering over books!” Katy comforted her sister. “And we’ve got no need to read them all. We’d just look them through, put aside essential ones, shoot the most interesting points on the smartphone, and then calmly type the text in at home. Now you pick here and I’ll be searching there…”
“Bye-bye amusement ride as it seems,” Alice muttered. She looked several folios through without choosing which one to pick.
Katy had already gone to the reading room with a stack of books. Having fetched first book within her reach, Alice caught up with her sister.
The girls shared a table and got themselves engaged with reading. The topic was interesting enough for even Alice to be captured. But they had no chance to go deep into Ancient Egypt’s history, as lamps started twinkling… and went off. The room drowned in shadow.
Katy tore herself away from the book:
“What’s happened?”
“That’s a sign for us not to waste the whole festive evening in here!” Alice brightened up.
Amusement ride loomed on the horizon again. However she had got excited too soon: the lights went on.
“It’s probably because of popped out fuses” Katy suggested.
“Oh, look!” Alice exclaimed suddenly. “What a beautiful figurine!”
On the shelf of one of the bookcases there really was an elegant figurine of a yellow-eyed cat.
“How odd…” Alice uttered thoughtfully, “it wasn’t here earlier…”
“We probably haven’t noticed it. It couldn’t have jumped over there by itself!..” Katy resounded. “The librarians must have put it here, on the shelf with Ancient Egypt books, as Egyptians considered cats to be godlike creatures, worshipping them.”
Katy was pleased to always find rational explanations for everything. She believed there was no such thing as inexplicable stuff – only a lack of knowledge and logics.
The lights began twinkling and went off again. And suddenly Katy seemed the cat… stretched and gave a wag of its tail in the shadow of the room.
Katy blinked for a split second, and then opened her eyes. The mysterious figurine was standing on the shelf, as stiff as a sphinx.
“It has just been a delusion,” Katy told herself, though with a definite lack of confidence. She looked around: the room was almost empty.
“Look at that weird light!” Alice exclaimed suddenly.
Katy turned round. Some kind of bright-blue light was pouring out of nowhere next to the figurine.
The electricity blinked again, like eyes of scores of library lamps – and the room was well-lit again. But, having captured their attention, the strange blue glow was there to stay – having simply become less visible it the brightly lit room…
Without any concord, the sisters came up to the stack and took a closer look: it was something glowing right among books.
“What could that possibly be?” Alice nearly whispered, as if watching out for scaring this unusual phenomenon away.
Katy had just shrug her shoulders if response.
“Could it be a bomb?” Alice whispered in even smaller voice. “I think there’s something ticking in there…”
Katy kept her ears open.
“Don’t be ridiculous! It’s just…”
But now even Katy had no answer. They were both standing doubtful next to the book shelf still overflown with bluish white glow.
“What if it’s dangerous? Maybe, we should call for miners? Or un-miners? I’ve seen it on TV…”
“You should spend less time watching that idiot box,” Katy retorted. “Bombs don’t glow.”
“How can you know for sure?” Alice snorted.
Curiosity got the better of cautiousness. Alice was the first to gain enough courage. She stretched her hand and took the glowing object from the shelf… It was a heavy leather-covered book. It itself wasn’t glowing, except for the drawing at the cover, crowning right in the middle. There were two symbols, resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs, right below the drawing.
“Look, Katy, it’s the drawing that glows… Now where could I have possibly seen it before?”
Katy glared wide-eyed at the odd sign, consisting of straight lines, slightly resembling a bird swooping down. It seemed familiar to her as well. She put her hand carefully on it. As if responding, the glowing brightened.
“It’s impossible…” Katy whispered astonished. She eyed the weird sign in utter disbelief. “What the?…”
In splits of seconds an ordinary book turned for her into the inconceivable Book, the mystery of which they had to solve…
“What ‘what the’?” Alice could hardly remain patient.
“That’s what!” Katy gasped, leveling up the sleeve of her sister’s summery blouse.
Alice had the drawing, left as a remembrance of their mother, standing out vividly on her shoulder; it was exactly like the one on the Book’s cover!
“Katy it’s just exactly the same as the one you and I have!” Alice whispered under breath, bewildered by everything. He was shifting her gaze from her arm to the cover; there weren’t any doubts – the symbols matched perfectly.
Those identical drawings on each sister’s shoulder had been as an inherent part of their bodies as, for instance, a birth mark on Katy’s arm or a freckle on Alice’s nose. Michael had said this was some kind of a talisman, fallen to the girl’s share from their mother. And those words were enough to consider the drawing to be a part of them.
“Yeah,” Katy took the Book carefully, “that’s exactly our symbol, though I had never seen it before, no matter how thoroughly I searched… Why had it been depicted here?”
Katy pulled the cover carefully but it dug in heels.
“It won’t open!” for some reason Alice exclaimed somehow with enthusiasm. She increasingly liked that weird folio: the goings-on were highly queer… She put her hand at the cover, trying to help her sister, but the Book only glowed brighter. “Wow!” Alice let go of their odd discovery, and the glow fainted. But as soon as she touched it again – she symbol started glowing more intensely. “It responds to touch… But how do we open it?”
“Maybe, some secret lock is hidden there somewhere? The kind of that put into girls’ diaries?” Katy suggested.
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