Poppy Pym and the Pharaoh's Curse

  “I foretell that you will love this book”

  Madame Pym, prognosticator, predictionist and all around mind-reader

  “Simply smashing”

  Luigi, lion tamer

  “Rooooooar”

  Buttercup, the Lion

  To Mum, Dad, and Harry with all my love.

  To Imogen and Alex, who are funny, clever and kind. I am lucky to be your Auntie.

  And to Paul, who wants you to know all the good bits were his idea.

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Map

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  “What you need, Poppy, is a bit of stability, some structure,” cried Madame Pym, clapping her hands together, as we hung upside down, forty feet above the ground. She shifted her weight slightly on the trapeze, her frizzy cloud of black hair crackling and sticking out as if she had jammed a wet finger inside a toaster. My own long, mousy pigtails hung straight down like climbing ropes, and I scrunched my mouth into an angry line. I didn’t want to talk about this again.

  “You need to be spending more time with people your own age. You need to go to a proper school where you can learn about normal things – things it’s important for an eleven-year-old to learn about,” she carried on. I groaned an enormous groan, a groan that stretched all the way down from the top of my toes to the bottom of my head.

  “I do learn normal things,” I sulked, and reaching up to scratch my knee, I started to tell her that Chuckles the clown had been lecturing me in the ancient and glorious history of mime and its beautiful melancholy only this morning, when Pym interrupted again.

  “Now, you see! I don’t think that counts as a history lesson, dear one. You are almost twelve now, and there’s only so much we can teach you here at the circus. It’s time we got serious about school.”

  And that was the beginning of this story. I haven’t written a real story before, but it seems to me like the beginning is a good place to start. Actually, I suppose I should say it’s a bit of a wonky, back-to-front story because in most of the books I’ve read, children run away from school to join the circus instead of the other way around. I guess you might be thinking that this bit at the circus should be the end of my story, not the beginning. Well, stories, like worms, are tricksy things, and you can’t always tell the beginning from the end. And anyway, this is my story, and if you want a different beginning you can just write your own at the top of the page, I can’t do all the work for you. It’s no joke being an author, you know.

  Now, let’s go to the beginning of the beginning and I will tell you about Madame Pym’s Spectacular Travelling Circus and the time a beautiful and precious baby was found there. On that fateful night, the circus crew were busy doing one of their late-night rehearsals in the big-top tent after all the crowds had gone home. The Magnificent Marvin, magician extraordinaire, was leaning over his shining black top hat. He pushed his arm deep inside the hat and felt around for a moment, before pulling out a rather grumpy-looking chicken.

  “Oh, Marvin, not another one,” sighed Marvin’s wife – and assistant – Doris. “We’ll have to put another wing on the henhouse.”

  The grumpy chicken shook its ruffled feathers and skulked off, squawking huffily to let everyone know that it didn’t much appreciate being pulled out of a magic hat, thank you VERY much.

  “Hang on,” said Marvin slowly, one arm still inside his hat. “There’s something else in here. Something … bigger.”

  “Oh dear,” said Doris. “I do hope it’s not another turkey; they make such a row.”

  Marvin leaned over the hat and peered inside. “No, I don’t think so…” He trailed off as he plunged both arms into the hat, bending down until the top half of his body had disappeared inside it. “Good gracious!” His voice echoed from somewhere far away, and a moment later he emerged with a bundle of blankets in his arms.

  “What is it, dear?” asked Doris, peering short-sightedly from behind her thick glasses.

  “Well, it’s … it’s … COME QUICK, EVERYBODY!” Marvin started shouting, which brought everyone else running. There was Chuckles, the sad clown; BoBo, the happy clown; Tina and Tawna, the horse-riding gymnasts; Luigi Tranzorri, the lion tamer; Sharp-Eye Sheila, the knife thrower; and Boris Von Jurgen, the muscly strongman. Even Fanella, the glamorous Italian fire-eater, came slinking over with Otis, a long orange snake, wrapped around her shoulders like a feather boa. And last of all came Madame Pym herself: ringleader, fortune teller and daring trapeze artist.

  “What on earth is the matter?” demanded Pym, who was very tough and very small and had to stretch her neck to look up at Marvin. “What’s all the commotion?” she groaned. “Don’t say you’ve pulled another octopus out of there. We had such a job getting the last one back in.”

  “That was ONE TIME,” said Marvin, hotly, but then he remembered the important matter at hand. “Anyway, it’s nothing like that,” he added nervously, still holding the bundle in his arms.

  “Hopefully not another—”

  “—chicken,” sang Tina and Tawna, who liked to finish each other’s—sentences and who didn’t much like all the omelettes they had to eat every time Marvin’s hat spilled over with chickens.

  Pym looked closer at the bundle in Marvin’s arms. Everyone gathered around it in a circle, then gasped when she pulled back the edge of the blanket, revealing the big, blinking eyes of a baby rudely awoken from a very nice nap. A scrap of paper was pinned to the blanket and there was a pause as Pym unpinned the note and read it out.

  Then, as if to say “What are you all looking at?” the baby started crying. And kept crying. Very loudly.

  Pym lifted the baby out of Marvin’s arms and everyone crowded around, trying to talk the loudest.

  “What in blue blazes shall we do with it?” cried Luigi, whose real name was Lord Lucas, the fourteenth earl of Burnshire, but who felt that Luigi was a much better name for a lion tamer.

  “Poor little mite,” muttered Doris. “Here, Marvin, fetch another blanket for the little dear.”

  “We must call police,” drawled Fanella regally, waving a graceful arm in the direction of the twinkling town lights in the distance. “This not our problem.”

  “Yes! Yes!” exclaimed Tina. “We should—”

  “—call the authorities,” finished Tawna.

  “No,” said Pym very fiercely, and everyone – including the baby – fell silent. “You heard what the n
ote said. It is our job to look after her and make her happy. She will be one of us.” Pym got one of those spoony looks in her eye that meant she had had A Vision of the Future, and everyone who knows Pym knows there’s no arguing with A Vision of the Future.

  With that, everyone sprang into action.

  “I have a lovely crate that will make a splendid cot,” said Luigi. “My own dear Buttercup used to sleep in it when she was but a tiny lion cub.” He wiped a small tear from his eye.

  “I’ll go and warm up some milk,” said The Magnificent Marvin, as he disappeared in a flash of light and a puff of smoke.

  “But what shall we call her?” asked Sharp-Eye Sheila, fixing the baby with her steely glare.

  The baby hid her face in Pym’s shoulder but peeked out again to see Sharp-Eye Sheila’s steely glare had changed into a very nice smile.

  “She is very red. We call her Tomato,” said Fanella firmly. “Is beautiful name.” And she brushed her hands against each other with two short, sharp smacks, to indicate that the decision was made.

  There was a moment of tense silence before Pym broke in. “What a lovely idea, Fanella… But perhaps a different red thing would be better, maybe … Poppy? A poppy is a very beautiful red flower, you know.”

  (And yes, if you haven’t guessed by now, that baby was me, the same Poppy as is telling you this story.)

  Fanella shrugged languidly. “I think Tomato is better name for her, but is up to you.”

  “Yes, yes, Poppy!” cried the others hastily.

  Which is how I became Poppy Tomato Pym.

  After some nice warm milk, Pym took me back to her trailer and there I slept next to her bed, in a small lion’s crate full of straw.

  And that’s the story of my first night at the circus, which is where I’ve lived ever since. Pretty good, eh? I just let Marvin read this first chapter and he thinks I’m a born storyteller, even if he was a bit upset about me mentioning the octopus incident. I told him that it was an important bit of the story and he said, “Yes, important according to Fanella, because she CLAIMS the octopus stole one of her earrings, but that was NEVER proven.” And then he got quite cross and his face got quite red, and he started pretending to be a lawyer and saying “I OBJECT” very loudly, so I left him to it.

  Anyway, the most important bit of this first chapter is that it finishes with me finding my way into the circus.* I had a name, and I had a family. I was home.

  *Marvin would like me to say that another important bit is that you know no octopuses or earrings were harmed in the performing of this trick.

  Chapter Two

  Now, you might think growing up in a circus is one big party, but let me tell you, it’s not all candyfloss and pretty white ponies. I mean, some of it is, but you have to take candyfloss-making class to make sure the candyfloss is the perfect shade of pink and extra cloud-like. And you don’t even want to know what comes out the back end of those pretty white ponies. Also, let me tell you something else: if you eat too much candyfloss – four sticks’ worth of the stuff, for example – YOU WILL BE SICK. This is not just something grown-ups say, and I have conducted several rigorous investigations just to make sure.

  Still, my first eleven years travelling around the country with my new family were pretty spectacular. I learnt natural history and zoology from Luigi, horse riding and gymnastics (sometimes both together) from Tina and Tawna, and cooking, bookkeeping and astrophysics from Doris (she used to be a rocket scientist and world-renowned inventor). Pym taught me almost everything else, including how to do a Russian roll on a trapeze. But maybe best of all, I spent hours and hours reading with The Magnificent Marvin.

  We read everything, but our very favourite books were the Detective Dougie Valentine series. They’re about this boy, Dougie, and his dog, Snoops, and how they go around town cracking cases wiiiiiide open, and getting smugglers to confess to their crimes while the police wait outside the door, and Dougie and Snoops are all tied up, hanging over a hole in the floor above some crocodiles, and the rope’s just about to break. Brilliant. (And I think right now is a good time to say that this story is about solving a mystery too, but there are no smugglers or crocodiles. (And I don’t have a dog either. Even though I would definitely look after one really well and walk it every day.))

  One day, just after my eleventh birthday, a big group of children came to the circus. Now, you might think that was nothing unusual, and normally you’d be right, but THIS group of children had a headmistress with them, and that headmistress got talking with Pym and that was why I found myself In the Soup. (That’s what Luigi always says when he finds himself in a sticky situation.) The headmistress was from a fancy boarding school called Saint Smithen’s and, as I found out later, she asked Pym a lot of questions about me and how I was taught at the circus. Pym told her that I had lessons every day from different members of my circus family, and she showed the headmistress some of my schoolwork, like some of the absolutely ripping adventure stories I had written about ninja squirrels, and my blueprint designs for several new magic tricks. Then, she and the headmistress got their heads together talking about scholarships and gifted student admissions and a whole load of old hooey. Pym went to talk to the rest of my circus family and they all agreed that it was time for me to go to a proper school, and then they ambushed me – I mean, broke the news to me. Let’s just say it didn’t go down very well. Which is why Pym and I were having an upside-down argument in the big top tent.

  “Poppy, I think it is time you went to a real school and made some friends your own age,” said Pym, firmly, over the top of my arguments. “We’ll still be here for the holidays. It’s not for ever.” I felt my eyes start to sting and my bottom lip (or is it your top lip when you’re hanging upside down?) got all wobbly in a way that Dougie Valentine, hard-boiled kid detective, would find most shameful. The trouble was, I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t want to leave the circus. What kind of a deal was that anyway? I mean, I might have never been to school, but I was pretty sure that I’d rather be hanging upside down on a trapeze than scratching my head in a maths lesson. Unfortunately, crying when you’re upside down is even less fun than crying when you’re the right way round, so without another word I pulled myself up and nimbled back down the ladder so that my feet were on solid ground and my tears fell down instead of up.

  Pym was right behind me, and she put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me round to look at her. She has one good eye that seems to see everything around her, no matter how small, and one bad eye that scrunches up a bit and can see the future. Pym always says that’s “one eye for looking out, and one eye for looking in”. Just at that moment she was fixing both eyes on me in a way that might best be described as beady.

  “Come with me,” she said, turning and striding off as fast and purposefully as her short legs allowed.

  I scampered after her, trying to keep up with the record-breaking pace she seemed to be setting, and past a large black sign on which in glistening gold letters was written:

  You might have been wondering why we all call Pym by her last name, and here is your answer. Pym always says that if you had a first name like Petronella you’d use your last name too, and I have to say I agree with her on that one. Plus, Pym just looks like a Pym. She’s the Pymiest person I know, and if you ever meet her I’m sure you’ll think just the same. Sometimes I look in the mirror and imagine that my name is Beth or Sarah, but it just doesn’t fit – I’m a Poppy through and through. It’s just like that with Pym, and that’s all there is to it.

  We hustled past Pym’s performance tent, which was made up of billowing colourful silken scarves and which contained her antique tea set for reading people’s tea leaves and her crystal ball. Pym never really uses these things; she says her premonitions just come to her, but that the customers appreciate these little touches. For a while she had a smoke machine and some tinkling crystals as well, but Pym said they
just gave her a headache so she chucked them out.

  At the back of Pym’s tent was the trailer that she and I lived in together whenever we were on the road. This place was a very different story. The performance tent might have been all for show, but this place was home. The small space was crammed full of old, cosy bits of furniture. Almost every available surface was covered in pictures I had drawn or photographs of me and the rest of the circus family on our travels all over the country. I followed Pym into the trailer, where she was already sitting at the small kitchen table. “Here!” she said, slapping something down on top of the soft, flowery tablecloth and pushing it towards me. I picked it up, and saw that it was a glossy brochure with “Saint Smithen’s: A Home from Home” stamped across the top in fancy gold writing. On the cover was a group of boys and girls in blue-and-white tartan uniforms, with great big smiles like half-moons. They were sitting on a blanket in the grass in front of an enormous building made of honey-coloured stone. It was beautiful. Here, I’ll stick in the front cover so you can see for yourself. I started flicking through, trying not to enjoy the photographs of the cosy dorm rooms, the students toasting marshmallows over a campfire, the giant greenhouse bursting with exotic plants that looked like a corner of the rainforest, and the library. I couldn’t help but stop and stare at the picture of the library, with its battered leather armchairs and walls lined from floor to ceiling with more books than I had ever seen – more books than I even knew existed. But still, a voice inside my head said, school’s so boring. Everyone says so. And what about the other children? They’d probably think you were weird. You’d never fit in.

  I looked up over the top of the pages at Pym, and she smiled at me. “You need to go, lovey,” she said gently. “It will be good for you. You’ll love it there. I know.”