The Mystery of the Pink Phoenix Papers

By Claudia Mauner and Elisa Smalley · Illustrated by Claudia Mauner

My name is Zoe Sophia and I am nine years old. I’m an explorer at heart, but my home is New York City, on the Upper West Side. I live in a building called the Antwerp. Our apartment is 8B. My favorite color is purple and my favorite person in the whole world is my great aunt Dorothy Pomander, whom I visited last year in Venice. D. P. is a famous writer, which I hope to be myself one day.

Dorothy sends me e-mail, but when she has something important to say, she sends me snail mail from Venice. I just got a letter today, announcing her arrival tomorrow!!! I can’t wait. Visits with Dorothy are always full of surprises.

Mickey is a homebody here in New York. He loves to watch me feed my guppy, Gordon.

My school bus is the 86
^th
Street crosstown bus, which I catch at the southeast corner of 86
^th
and West End. (In New York City, lots of kids take city buses to school.) At Broadway and 86
^th
we pick up my best friend, Alexa. I always save her a seat. At Central Park West, Angela Vanderhuff gets on the bus. She always rides the bus standing in fifth position.

Our school is the Wildendorf School for the Exceptionally Curious, a school for thirsty little minds. It is directly across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. Our teacher, Ms. Fionnula Feinschmecker, has the millefiori paperweight I brought her from Venice on her desk.

Alexa and I have ballet after school today. Angela is in the class too. The ballet mistress is Madame Ludmila, who came here a gazillion years ago from the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. She wears a ton of black eyeliner and pounds a stick on the floor to keep time. “
I raz, i dva, i tri
(and
1
and
2
and
3
).” She counts in Russian.

Today I can barely focus on my port de bras. All I can think about is Dorothy’s arrival tonight! She’ll be here for a whole week! I even got us a pair of tickets for the New York City Ballet’s performance of Stravinsky’s
Firebird
at Lincoln Center for Saturday night. Blossom, our Jamaican housekeeper, is picking me up after ballet. We are going shopping for some very special ingredients for Dorothy’s welcome dinner!

Dorothy is famished when she finally arrives. Luckily, Blossom has prepared gobs of jerk chicken, complete with mango chutney and all the trimmings—a recipe straight out of her new cookbook on Jamaican cuisine called
Come Nam Yuh Bickle,
which means “soup’s on.”

My parents barely have time to kiss Dorothy hello before rushing off in a cloud of perfume and aftershave. (My mother is the travel editor at
Savoir Faire
magazine, and they’re always having these galas.) “How delightful to be back in my city of so many years!” exclaims Dorothy with gusto as we sit down to enjoy our feast and toast her arrival.

Just then, we hear the buzzer. It’s Tibor from 7B—he is always borrowing a clove of garlic or something. He ends up staying for dinner, telling tales of his days as a tightrope walker in the National Hungarian Circus.

Tibor has gypsy blood and is a big believer in
mulatschag,
which is Hungarian for “living it up.” After dinner, he offers to give Dorothy a Tarot card reading. She is delighted. We dim the lights and he takes out a worn pack of cards, fanning them out on a silk cloth. He asks Dorothy to select a card. She pulls one out and turns it over to reveal a bird surrounded by fire. “Aha!” Tibor exclaims, “The phoenix!”

Dorothy and I are both thinking the same thing: the
Pink Phoenix.
Tibor explains that a phoenix is a mythical bird that perishes in flames only to rise again from its ashes. “You are on a quest,” he says, “the lady must face south for answers!”

We get a little spooked by all this, so Blossom whips us up a batch of banana fritters to calm our nerves.

It is very late by the time we finish, and Dorothy says she needs matchsticks to keep her eyes open. Victor the doorman calls a cab to take her to her hotel in Greenwich Village. Tomorrow after school we will go directly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the famous
Pink Phoenix.

You need three days to see the whole Met, but we are only going to the Egyptian wing. We pass through halls of jewelry and slabs of stone engraved with Egyptian symbols called hieroglyphics. At last we find it: the
Pink Phoenix!
It is in a case by itself. Its rose color glows against black velvet. A gold plaque reads as follows:

THE NAME OF THIS SCARAB COMES FROM ITS UNIQUE COLOR AND THE ENGRAVING OF A PHOENIX ON ITS UNDERSIDE. THE PINK PHOENIX IS ONE OF THE GREAT TREASURES OF THE 18TH DYNASTY. DATING FROM CIRCA 1350 B.C., IT WAS ONE OF THE PRIZED POSSESSIONS OF QUEEN NEFERTITI, WHO BELIEVED IT TO HAVE MAGICAL POWERS. IT WAS DISCOVERED IN 1864 BY AN ENGLISH ARCHAEOLOGIST, VIOLET PILFER-SNODGES, WHOSE JOURNAL WAS LOST IN A LONDON HOUSEFIRE. STOLEN FROM LONDON’S VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM IN 1922, THE SCARAB RESURFACED YEARS LATER AT AN AUCTION IN BANGLADESH.

“I’m certain that at least one copy of that diary survives,” says Dorothy as we leave the museum. Ravenous, we buy two falafels at a stand. “Fit for a pharaoh!” says Dorothy with glee. “I must find that journal,” she muses between mouthfuls, “but where?” It’s late now and we must hurry so I can still show Dorothy the Penguin House.