Her voice must have been heard through the door. “It’s I … Shaduf!”

Frowning, Jake crossed to the door and unlatched it. As he pulled the door open, Nefertiti’s uncle came rushing inside. He wore a dusty cloak, spilling sand with each step. He’d finally shaved his beard, revealing how much he looked like his older brother, the pharaoh. Still, a wildness remained in his eyes.

“Shaduf,” Kady asked, “what’s wrong?”

Something had plainly got the man all riled up.

Shaduf crossed to the table and set down a parchment scroll. “I came straight here,” he said. “Knew you two should see this first.”

Jake moved next to him. Kady stepped to Shaduf’s other side.

“I was in the desert,” he said. “Exploring near the Crackles.”

Jake knew Shaduf spent most of his time outside now. After two years of being imprisoned in Kree’s dungeon, the man found any walls around him hard to take. Plus Shaduf had always had a fascination with the sands around Ankh Tawy and the crystals found there.

“I set up my bedroll in the shadow of the cliffs—but shortly after moonrise, a scraping drew me to the wall.” He glanced to Jake and Kady. “To the Prophecy of Lupi Pini.”

Jake looked to Kady. “The words Mom wrote …”

“Yes, yes, that’s right,” Shaduf said in a rush. “But as I reached the cliff, I found new marks carved into the stone.” His eyes grew huge. “As I watched, more and more came to life, stroke by stroke.”

He pantomimed with thrusts of his arm, his eyes glinting too brightly.

“They appeared right below the old prophecy.” He pointed to the scroll. “A new prophecy … but I could not read it, so I sketched it and brought it to you.”

“Why us?” Kady asked.

He turned full upon them, agitated, trying to get them to understand. “It is a new prophecy … a new prophecy of Lupi Pini!”

The old man nodded to Jake.

“You think our mother wrote this new message?” Jake asked.

“Yes, of course. Who else?”

With his heart beginning to pound, Jake shared a look with Kady. They both leaned closer.

“Show us,” Jake said.

Nodding vigorously, Shaduf pinched the scroll and unrolled it across the tabletop. Words appeared, scrawled in a crude script.

“I took great care in sketching it,” Shaduf said. “It looks like it was written with some haste, with some fright.”

Kady turned to Jake. “It’s English. Could Mom have really written this? Is this some message from the past?”

Jake pictured his mother escaping the fall of Ankh Tawy but remembering something she needed to say, to tell them. The only way she could do it was to return to the cliffs of the Crackles and add to her older message. The new words must have traveled up through the centuries and appeared here on the cliff face.

From the frantic lettering—so unlike his mother’s—he knew she must have written it with some desperation, with little time to spare.