Season of the Sandstorms: A Merlin Mission (2 page)

J
ack put his math homework aside. He opened the drawer beside his bed and pulled out a small, handmade book. For the hundredth time, he stared at the title on the cover:

For weeks, Jack had kept the book hidden in his drawer, wondering when he and Annie would be able to use its magic again. The book’s ten rhymes were to be used on four missions, and each rhyme could be used only once. Jack and
Annie had already used two rhymes on a mission in Venice, Italy.

“Jack!” Annie rushed into Jack’s room. Her eyes were shining. “Bring the book! Let’s go!”

“Where?” said Jack.

“You know where! Come on!” Annie called as she ran back downstairs.

Jack quickly put Teddy and Kathleen’s book into his backpack. He pulled on his jacket and took off down the stairs.

Annie was waiting on the front porch. “Hurry!” she cried.

“Wait! How do you know it’s there?” Jack said.

“Because I just saw it!” Annie shouted. She hurried down the porch steps and crossed the yard.

“You saw it? Actually saw it?” yelled Jack as he followed Annie through the chilly afternoon air.

“Yes! Yes!” Annie yelled.

“When?” shouted Jack.

“Just now!” said Annie. “I was walking home from the library and I had this
feeling
—so I went and looked! It’s waiting for us!”

Jack and Annie raced into the Frog Creek woods. They ran between the budding trees, over the fresh green moss of early spring, until they came to the tallest oak.

“See?” said Annie.

“Yes,” breathed Jack. He stared up at the magic tree house. Its rope ladder dangled above the mossy ground. Annie started climbing up. Jack followed. When they got inside, Jack pulled off his backpack.

“Look, a book and a letter!” Annie said. She picked up a folded letter from the floor, and Jack picked up a book with a gold cover.

“Baghdad,” Jack said. He showed the book to Annie. Its title was:

“A golden age?” said Annie. “That sounds cool. Let’s go!”

“Wait, we should read our letter first,” said Jack.

“Right,” said Annie. She unfolded the paper. “Merlin’s handwriting,” she said. She read aloud:

“Wait, what’s a
caliph
?
”
said Jack. “And what’s Merlin mean—‘spread wisdom to the world’? That’s a big responsibility.”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. “Let me finish.” She kept reading:

“This sounds pretty easy,” said Annie.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Jack. “All these instructions are so mysterious. We don’t know what any of them mean.”

“We’ll find out when we get there,” said Annie. “But first we have to get there. Make the wish.”

“Okay,” said Jack. He pointed to the cover of
the book. “I wish we could go to the golden age of Baghdad,” he said.

The wind started to blow.

The tree house started to spin.

It spun faster and faster.

Then everything was still.

Absolutely still.

J
ack felt hot. He opened his eyes. Burning sunlight was flooding into the tree house. He and Annie were wearing long robes tied with cords. They wore white head cloths and pointy slip-on
shoes. Jack’s backpack had turned into a leather shoulder bag.

“We look like characters in that book Aunt Mary gave us,” said Annie,
“Tales from the Arabian Nights.”

“Yeah, like Aladdin and Ali Baba,” said Jack.

Shading their eyes from the bright sunlight, Jack and Annie squinted out the window. They had landed in the spiky crown of a palm tree. It was the tallest tree in a clump of palm trees.
Thorny shrubs and sparse green grass grew under the trees. A small spring bubbled up from the ground. Surrounding the clump of trees were miles and miles of scorching sand.

“This doesn’t look like a golden age to me,” said Annie.

“Yeah, and where’s Baghdad?” asked Jack. He picked up their research book and opened it to the first page. He read aloud:

Jack looked up. “So the caliph is a ruler,” he said, “and he probably lived in Baghdad.”

“Yeah, but how do we
get
there?” asked Annie.

“Patience,” said Jack. “Remember on our last
mission, we learned that we have to do things in order, one thing at a time.” He read the first part of Merlin’s instructions.

“I wonder what a ‘ship of the desert’ is,” said Jack, looking up.

“Well, whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll find it eventually,” Annie said slowly, as if she were trying to sound patient. “We could just sit here and keep an eye out for a big boat. Or …”

“Or what?” said Jack.

“Maybe we could use one of Teddy and Kathleen’s magic rhymes.”

“Not yet,” said Jack. “Merlin said to use our magic wisely. We just got here. We used two rhymes on our last mission. And we only have eight left to divide between three—”

“Okay, okay—” Annie broke in. “We can only
use a rhyme when there’s absolutely nothing else to do, right?”

“Right,” said Jack.

“So …,” said Annie. “What do
you
think we should do?”

“We could start walking,” said Jack.

“Walk where?” said Annie. “Which way is Baghdad?”

Jack looked out the window. Beyond the palm trees there was nothing but sand and sky. In the distance were lonely dunes. The desert was eerily silent.

“We could, uh …” Jack couldn’t think of anything else they could do. “We could look in the rhyme book,” he said. Jack pulled the book of magic rhymes out of his pack. He and Annie read down the table of contents together.

“Make a Stone Come Alive,”
read Annie. “We did that on our last mission. We can’t do that again.”

“It wouldn’t help, anyway,” said Jack. He looked at other rhymes.
“Bend Iron,”
he read.
“We’ve already done that, too.”

“Turn into Ducks,”
read Annie. She looked at Jack.

“No,” he said.

“Mend What Cannot Be Mended,”
read Annie.

“Nothing needs mending,” said Jack.

“How about
this
one?” said Annie.
“Make Helpers Appear out of Nowhere.”

“Well …,” said Jack. “Maybe …”

“Come on, it’s perfect,” said Annie. “That’s where we are—nowhere. And we could sure use some helpers.”

“Okay,” said Jack. “I’ll read the line Teddy wrote. You read Kathleen’s line in her selkie language.”

“Okay,” said Annie. She turned to the page with the rhyme. She held the book out to Jack.

Jack read in a loud, clear voice:

From far beyond, send helpers here!

Then Annie read:

Hah-ee-by, hah-ee-keer!

The second that Annie finished the rhyme, wind gusted in from the desert, blowing a cloud of sand through the window. The wind shook the palm trees. Sand blew into Annie’s eyes. “Oww!” she said.

“Get back!” cried Jack.

Jack and Annie jumped away from the window. They pressed themselves against the wall and covered their faces. Gritty sand kept blowing into the tree house.

“It’s a sandstorm!” said Jack.

The hot sand piled into drifts all over the floor. Then the wind died down as quickly as it had started. The palm trees stopped shaking.

Jack and Annie looked out the window. The air was thick with grainy dust, making it hard to see. But the sand was still.

“I think it’s over,” said Annie.

“I hope so,” said Jack. “Why did our magic rhyme cause a sandstorm instead of sending us helpers?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. “Maybe we said it wrong.”

Jack brushed the sand off their research book and looked up
sandstorms
in the index. He found the right page and read:

“I don’t understand,” said Jack. “We don’t need to lose our way. We need to
find
our way.”

Just then the sound of bells came from outside.

Jack and Annie looked out the window. Through the haze, they saw four riders perched high on the humps of camels. The riders wore brightly colored robes. Behind them a dozen more camels were tied head to tail and loaded down with saddlebags. As the camels swung from side to side, bells tinkled from around their necks.

Annie grinned. “Helpers!” she said.

A
nnie stuck her head out the tree house window. “Hey!” she called.

“Shhhh!” said Jack, pulling her back in. “Don’t let them see us up here! It’s too hard to explain the tree house. Let’s go down.”

“Good point,” said Annie. She handed Merlin’s letter to Jack and started down the rope ladder. Jack grabbed his shoulder bag. He put the letter inside, then added their research book and rhyme book. He slung the leather bag across his chest and climbed down.

When he stepped onto the ground, Jack twisted the rope ladder behind the tree trunk so it wouldn’t be noticed. “Okay,” he said to Annie.

“Hey!” Annie called again, waving. She and Jack stepped out into the open.

The camel riders headed toward the palm trees. The man in the lead made his camel kneel. As he climbed off, Jack and Annie ran over to him. The man wore a long white robe. He had a black beard and stern, dark eyes. “Who are you?” he asked, unsmiling. “From where do you come?”

“I am Annie, and this is my brother, Jack,” said Annie. “Our home is far away in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania.”

“I have not heard of such a place,” the man said. “How do you come to be here in the desert alone?”

“Uh …” Jack didn’t know what to say.

“We were riding with our family,” Annie said. “We stopped to rest here. My brother and I took
a nap behind these trees. When we woke up, everyone was gone. They left us by mistake. See, we have a really
big
family. There are many brothers and sisters—”

“Annie,” said Jack. She was saying too much, he thought.

The man looked concerned. “Why have they not come back for you?” he said, gazing out at the desert. “I hope they have not been attacked by bandits.”

“Are there bandits around here?” asked Annie.

“There are many bandits prowling the desert,” said the man.

Jack looked anxiously around at the vast sandy plain.

“That is why one must always travel with others,” said the man. “But I hope your family is safe and will return for you soon.”

“Excuse me,” Annie said politely. “But who are you? How did you happen to come here?”

“I am a merchant,” the man said. “My caravan was traveling from the west, when we were surprised by a sudden sandstorm. It seemed to come from nowhere. But luckily it brought us to this oasis. We will rest and water our animals until the sun goes down. In the cool of the night, we will travel on to Baghdad.”

The caravan leader walked over to his men and spoke to them. They dismounted and started taking saddlebags off the camels.

Annie turned to Jack. “See, our rhyme worked!” she whispered. “The sandstorm was magic! It brought them here on their way to Baghdad!”

“But how can we get
them
to help us?” said Jack.

“Well, Merlin said we should be humble, so let’s offer to help
them
,” said Annie. She walked over to the caravan leader. He was filling a canvas bucket with water from a small spring.

“Excuse me,” said Annie, “we wondered if we could help you.”

The man gave her a quick smile. “Thank you, yes,” he said. “If you could gather dates, it would be most appreciated. My men are very hungry.” He handed Annie two large baskets.

“No problem,” said Annie. “We’ll gather dates.”

Annie carried the baskets to Jack. “Do you know what a
date
is?” she whispered. “We’re supposed to gather some.”

“I’ll look it up,” said Jack. With his back to the
camel riders, he pulled their research book out of his bag and looked up
dates.
He read:

“Okay, got it,” interrupted Annie, putting the baskets down. “Let’s start shaking the trees!”

Jack put the book away and looked around. For the first time, he noticed bunches of brown fruit hanging from the trees. He grabbed hold of the nearest tree trunk. Annie grabbed the trunk from the other side. Together they shook the tree until dates began falling to the ground.

In the desert heat, Jack and Annie went from tree to tree, shaking each one and gathering the dates that fell to the ground. By the time they had filled their baskets, the trees were casting long shadows over the oasis.

Tired and sweaty, Jack and Annie carried their heavy baskets back to the caravan leader. He was boiling water over a fire of twigs. “Ah, very good,” he said. “Thank you, Jack and Annie.”

“You’re welcome,” said Annie. “What else can we do for you?”

“You should rest from the heat now,” said the man. “Would you like to sit and have tea with us?”

“Sure,” said Annie. “By the way, what’s your name?”

“My name is very long,” the man said with a smile. “You may call me Mamoon.”

While their camels grazed, Mamoon and his men sat on a woolen rug spread over the grass. They shared dates and tea with Jack and Annie. The dark, plump fruit was sweet and chewy. The tea was strong but good.

In the fiery red glow of the setting sun, Jack watched the grazing camels. He thought the
humped animals looked really funny. They had knobby knees, big clumsy feet, and little ears that twitched. Some camels smacked their droopy lips as they drank water. Others gobbled down whole branches of thornbushes without chewing.

“Don’t the thorns hurt the camels’ throats?” Jack asked Mamoon.

“No,” said the caravan leader. “Their mouths are very tough. They can eat anything: sticks, bones—”

“Even our tents and saddlebags if we let them!” said a young camel rider.

Annie and Jack laughed. “What’s in your saddlebags?” Annie asked.

“Our bags are filled with goods from Greece, Turkey, and Syria,” said Mamoon. “We have many things: jewels, beads, and precious spices, such as cinnamon, pepper, and vanilla. We are taking everything to Baghdad to sell.”

“We have to get to Baghdad, too,” said Annie.

“We have to meet with the caliph.”

The camel riders chuckled as if they thought Annie was making a joke.

Only Mamoon did not laugh. “Your family is to meet with the caliph?” he said.

“No,” said Annie. “Just Jack and me. We have to help him spread wisdom to the world.”

“Annie,”
warned Jack.

The camel riders laughed loudly.

“What’s so funny?” Annie asked.

“The caliph does not meet with children,” said a young man. “He is the most powerful and important person in the world.”

“Oh,” said Annie, frowning.

The news worried Jack, too.

Mamoon looked at Annie and Jack with a curious expression. “Night will soon be upon us. Since your family has not yet returned, would you like to travel with us to Baghdad?” he said. “You have journeyed by camel this far. I trust you can ride camels the rest of the way.”

“Sure we can!” said Annie. “We
love
camels!”

We do?
thought Jack.

“Good. We love our ships of the desert, too,” said Mamoon. “We will set sail on them soon.”

“So that’s what ‘ships of the desert’ are!” Annie whispered to Jack.

Camels
, thought Jack.
Oh, brother
.