Mr. Peabody & Sherman Junior Novelization (Mr. Peabody & Sherman) (5 page)

The boy leapt from his throne and ran to Penny’s side. “What’s the matter, my sweet little desert blossom? Are these barbarians bothering you?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, they are,” Penny answered.

The boy frowned at Sherman and Mr. Peabody. “Bow, barbarians!” he demanded.

Sherman was shocked to see Mr. Peabody sweep a courteous bow. “Who’s that, Mr. Peabody?” he whispered.

“That, Sherman, is the Living Image of Amun—son of Akhnaten, lord of the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom—King Tutankhamen, otherwise known as King Tut,” Mr. Peabody explained.

“My boyfriend,” Penny added with a snooty smile.

“King Tut is your boyfriend?” Sherman’s mouth fell open in shock.

Penny took King Tut’s hand and announced that they were going to be married.

“You can’t marry this guy! He’s … he’s … he’s bald!” Sherman sputtered. For some reason, the thought of Penny having a boyfriend made him furious.

“I don’t care,” Penny said. “I’m gonna have a big fat Egyptian wedding!”

Mr. Peabody remained calm. The news of Penny’s
wedding was actually just what he needed to convince her to go home. “Spoiler alert: King Tut dies young. Are you sure you’ve thought this through?” he asked.

“Oh, trust me, I’ve thought it through,” Penny said, smirking. “I’m getting everything.”

Mr. Peabody asked the king’s advisor, Ay, to tell Penny exactly what it meant to be married to the pharaoh.

“It means she will be bound to King Tut in eternity through the sacred ceremonies of disembowelment and mummification, as described in the holy texts,” Ay explained. He pulled a scroll from his robes and unrolled it to show to Penny. The hieroglyphic drawings were a step-by-step guide to mummification—and it wasn’t pretty. Once the king died, his queen was killed, too. Her organs were removed and placed in jars, and then she was turned into a mummy.

Penny immediately realized that marrying the pharaoh wasn’t as great as it sounded. There was no way she was going to end up a mummy! “I’m ready to leave with you now,” she told Mr. Peabody. Unfortunately, the love-struck boy king had other plans. He nodded to Ay, who declared grandly that the wedding would take place the next day at dawn.

“Mr. Peabody! Sherman! Do something!” Penny
shouted as King Tut and his servants led her away.

“Don’t worry, Penny! We’ll save you!” Sherman said valiantly.

But saving Penny wasn’t going to be easy. Suddenly, the king’s guards appeared and dragged Mr. Peabody and Sherman out of the palace. The guards threw them into a dark, dank tomb and rolled a heavy stone slab over the entrance, sealing them inside.

T
he Egyptian tomb was a spooky place. It was pitch-black, cold, and musty. Sherman stood close to Mr. Peabody and grasped his hand in fear.

“Boy, your hand is cold, Mr. Peabody,” Sherman whispered in the darkness. He thought it was best to keep his voice down. The tomb was a final resting place for the dead, and he didn’t want to wake them.

“That’s not my hand, Sherman,” Mr. Peabody replied. He found a piece of flint and struck it against a wall, creating sparks. In seconds, he lit a torch. Light flooded the chamber.

Sherman gasped as he realized he was holding the cold, dry hand of an ancient mummy! He jumped back from the figure wrapped in tattered strips of cloth and ran over to Mr. Peabody, who was staring at a string of
hieroglyphics painted on the sandstone wall.

Mr. Peabody traced the ancient picture writing with his paw. He studied it closely, looking for any clue that might help them escape. “Hmm, this depicts the god Anubis sailing a boat of Ra to the underworld. It appears the boats of Ra are the key,” he reasoned. “We must find them in time to stop the wedding.”

Sherman’s expression soured at the mention of the wedding. “Well, if you ask me, we should let her marry that guy! They deserve each other,” he said, sulking.

Mr. Peabody looked away from the hieroglyphs to cast a quick glance at Sherman. The boy’s lower lip was poking out in a surly pout.

“If I didn’t know any better, Sherman, I’d say you were jealous,” Mr. Peabody observed.

Sherman reeled in surprise and then spluttered, “You think I
like
Penny?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Mr. Peabody nodded.

“Gimme a break! It’s not like I want to hold her hand or go to the park with her or watch her while she’s brushing her hair … or anything.” Sherman’s eyes glazed over as he lapsed into a daydream and his hand reached out to stroke her beautiful blond hair.

“Aha!” Mr. Peabody exclaimed, snapping Sherman
out of his reverie. He found a loose tile in the stone wall and pushed it. The wall rumbled and slid back, revealing a secret passageway.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman ran down the dark corridor, which opened into a vast chamber with high ceilings. The floor was composed of elaborately decorated square tiles, each bearing a hieroglyph.

Sherman was about to step on one of the tiles, but Mr. Peabody held him back. “Careful,” he warned.

Mr. Peabody looked closely at the squares and realized he would have to step on them in a certain order. Otherwise, he and Sherman could stumble into a deadly trap. Luckily, the hieroglyphs on each tile showed him the way.

Mr. Peabody leapt from one tile to the next, hopscotching his way across the room. He recited the meaning of each hieroglyph aloud as he jumped so Sherman could follow the pattern. “ ‘The boat … of Ra … sails straight … to … day.… Take … the wrong boat … man … will pay.’ ”

Mr. Peabody landed safely in the passageway on the opposite side of the room. “Now it’s your turn, Sherman,” he called, cautioning him to follow in his exact footsteps.

Sherman was nervous. His palms were sweating, but he knew that sometimes even the bravest explorers got a little sweaty. He jumped out onto the floor squares and spoke the words in a shaky voice. “The boat … of Ra … sails straight … to … day.… Take … the wrong boat … man … will play.”

Just then, Sherman looked down. He’d landed on the wrong tile. “I mean
pay
!” he said, hopping quickly to the right square. But he wasn’t fast enough. The tiles around him rumbled ominously with a sound like thunder. They split and cracked, and within moments, the entire tomb started to crumble. Stones fell from the walls, and the floor itself began to disintegrate.

“Run!” Mr. Peabody yelled.

Sherman sprinted the last few feet and dove into the passage where Mr. Peabody was waiting. They raced down the corridor as the floor broke apart behind them, stones slipping away beneath their heels. The passage opened into a cavernous space with two golden boats sitting side by side in the middle of the room. Each boat was docked on a wooden platform in front of a stone chute.

“The boats of Ra!” Mr. Peabody shouted over the roar of crumbling tomb. “One boat is the way out; the other will send us plunging into darkness and certain death!”

“What?” Sherman asked, alarmed.

Mr. Peabody quickly scanned the chamber, looking for the mechanism to launch the boats. His eyes came to rest on a row of three stone blocks, each painted with a sparkling scarab. He studied the blocks for a moment and figured out what he had to do.

“Sherman, get in the boat! As soon as I move these blocks together, it’s going to move very fast,” he told him.

“Which boat?” Sherman asked. He could barely hear Mr. Peabody over the rumble.

“That one!” Mr. Peabody answered, pointing.

With all the commotion, it was hard for Sherman to see which boat Mr. Peabody was talking about. Chunks of stone dropped from the ceiling, churning up dirt and dust. Sherman sprinted through the falling stones and hopped into the boat on the left.

Mr. Peabody arranged the scarab blocks in the proper order and launched the ships. Both boats rose on their platforms and tipped forward into the chutes. At the last possible moment, Mr. Peabody scrambled through the rubble and jumped into the boat on the right.

“We did it, Sherman!” he said triumphantly. When Sherman didn’t answer, Mr. Peabody spun around. The back of his boat was empty!

In the chute across from his, Mr. Peabody watched as the other boat slid into view. Sherman was riding at the helm. When Sherman realized he’d gotten into the “certain death” boat, he panicked. “What should I do, Mr. Peabody?” he called across the growing chasm between the two chutes.

Mr. Peabody quickly came up with a plan. He noticed a length of rope on the floor of his boat and leapt into action. He tied one end of the rope to the mast of his ship and looped the other around his waist. In a daring display of courage, he jumped from his boat and swung out across the chasm.

Mr. Peabody swooped down into Sherman’s boat and scooped him up. Together they swung back across the abyss into Mr. Peabody’s boat.

Up ahead, both chutes came to a sudden end. Sherman’s boat plunged into the deep, dark cavern below, while Mr. Peabody’s boat sailed into the air. The ship shot through a narrow tunnel into the bright, hot desert. It crashed into a giant dune in a swirling cloud of sand.

When the sand settled, Mr. Peabody and Sherman climbed to their feet. If they hurried, they’d have just enough time to stop Penny’s wedding.

T
he wedding of King Tut and Penny Peterson was a highly anticipated event. The entire village had gathered in the courtyard beside the pharaoh’s palace to witness it. In the center of the courtyard, Penny and Tut faced each other on a specially decorated wedding dais. Ay stood between the bride and groom, dressed in his finest ceremonial robes. He bowed and called everyone to attention.

“The sun god Ra commands us to begin the ceremony!” Ay proclaimed.

Penny looked across the crowd of spectators. Royal servants stood guard at the head of each aisle, blocking every escape route. Penny gulped. It looked like she might actually have to go through with the wedding.

After a sacred prayer and a reading of the holy texts,
Ay announced that it was time for the blood oath. Penny’s eyes widened in alarm as an attendant approached with the knife used for the ritual. Ay took the knife and held the sharp blade above Penny’s palm. She tried to pull away, but several guards stepped forward and forced her to hold out her hand.

“Where blade meets flesh in this sacred rite, we pay tribute to the sun god Ra!” Ay declared.

“Wait!” boomed a menacing voice.

Ay, Penny, and King Tut looked up in wonder. At the edge of the raised dais was a tall stone statue of Anubis, the dog-headed god of death. Smoke billowed from the statue’s muzzle, and its eyes glowed like hot coals. The crowd gasped as a deep voice rumbled from the statue’s mouth, “This wedding must not continue!”

“Why, Anubis?” the crowd asked, startled.

“Plagues! Plagues!” Anubis roared. “If this marriage pact is sealed, I will shower down upon the land uncountable plagues!”

Penny sighed in relief. The Egyptian god was on her side! She looked carefully at Anubis and realized why. It was no coincidence that the dog-headed statue had learned to speak—she suspected there was a talking dog hidden inside.

“But, Anubis,” Ay said, stunned, “the sun god Ra has decreed that this girl is to be the boy king’s wife!”

“That’s so funny. I was talking to the sun god Ra just the other day, and he told me he’d changed his mind,” Anubis replied casually. “Old Flip-Flop Ra, we call him here in the Underworld.”

“Really?” Ay blinked, confused. “But it’s too late. We’ve already paid for the catering!”

“Too bad!” Anubis barked angrily. A great ball of flame roared from his mouth, and the wedding guests cowered in fear.

Inside the head of the statue, Mr. Peabody and Sherman proceeded with their clever rescue plan. To make smoke, Sherman worked a bellows over a small fire surrounded by a ring of stones. At the same time, Mr. Peabody spoke into a megaphone to project his voice.

“Deliver the girl to the gates of the city and leave her there, where the gods will retrieve her!” Mr. Peabody commanded. “Only in this manner may the plagues upon this land be avoided.”

Ay and King Tut were eager to obey Anubis. They motioned to the royal guards to take Penny to the city gates.

Mr. Peabody watched from inside the statue’s
mouth. “More smoke, Sherman,” he whispered. “This canine subterfuge is working.”