How It All Goes Down
We Meet the Monkey
- Carter takes over the narration, saying they had to turn off the tape while being followed by—well, he never really tells us. Tease.
- Sadie and Carter follow Amos down to the reed boat and cautiously step on.
- Amos nods at the steersman—a little fellow in a coat and hat whose face is hidden—and suddenly everything lurches. The boat is enveloped in fog.
- Nauseated and surrounded by weird voices and screams and blurred lights, Carter is relieved when the fog lifts and he can see—the New York City lights.
- Somehow, after only traveling for a few minutes, they've gone from London to New York. They dock at Brooklyn near an industrial yard with a warehouse.
- There it is: a five-story mansion atop the warehouse. We're guessing it violates a lot of building codes, but that's okay, because it's magic.
- Always curious, Sadie asks why they couldn't live in Manhattan, and Amos says they've got other problems and other gods there. He doesn't elaborate.
- Amos introduces the house as the Twenty-first Nome. Which is different from a gnome. Amos explains that nome is a term from ancient Egyptian times, when Egypt was divided into provinces or regions by that name.
- Egypt itself is the First Nome by this count, while Greater New York is the Twenty-first.
- Amos leads Sadie and Carter to the entrance, which is barred by a huge block of wood. He tells Carter to figure out how to open it.
- Somehow, Carter thinks to extend his arm and raise his hand. The wood lifts too, thus opening the main entrance. Amos is impressed by this, saying it's not the way he would've done it.
- The Great Room is the first room they see, and boy, is it great: there are huge stone pillars with hieroglyphs holding up a really high ceiling, balconies, a giant fireplace, and a huge flat screen TV. There's a set of doors marked with the Eye of Horus and locked up with padlocks.
- In the center of the Great Room is a statue of Thoth, god of knowledge, depicted as a thirty-foot-tall dude with the head of a bird.
- Sadie recognizes the hieroglyph for Per Ankh on the scroll he's holding, and translates Per Ankh as the House of Life.
- Sadie asks what the deal is with the gods having animal heads, and Amos says they don't normally appear that way. The gods could appear in many forms, and since they're bridges between humanity and nature, having animal heads shows that they exist in both worlds at once.
- Amos goes on to say that Thoth founded the House of Life.
- Carter has tons of questions, but Amos tells him to go to bed, and they'll talk in the morning.
- Amos calls out, "Khufu!" Carter thinks Amos has sneezed until a baboon shows up in response.
- This baboon is wearing an L.A. Lakers jersey (that's Carter's home team). Khufu shows Sadie and Carter to their rooms after Amos takes Julius's workbag and locks it in the library.
- Carter and Sadie get adjoining rooms on the third floor. The room is swank, though Carter's mystified by the lack of pillows. Instead there's an ivory headrest like Carter has seen in Egyptian tombs.
- Before they go to sleep, Carter and Sadie talk through their locked doors about whether they're prisoners (possibly) and whether what they saw that night was magic (definitely).
- Carter feels oddly protective of Sadie since she's his little sister. He's not used to that feeling, since she's usually the brave and bold one.
- The ivory headrest is uncomfortable, so Carter puts it on the floor instead of sleeping on it. Big mistake, he tells us.