the_kane_chronicles__book_one__the_red_pyramid

London without him, but I believed Amos about one thing: right now Dad was beyond our
help. I didn’t trust Amos, but I figured if I wanted to find out what had happened to Dad, I
was going to have to go along with him. He was the only one who seemed to know
anything.
Amos stepped aboard the reed boat. Sadie jumped right on, but I hesitated. I’d seen boats
like this on the Nile before, and they never seemed very sturdy.
It was basically woven together from coils of plant fiber—like a giant floating rug. I
figured the torches at the front couldn’t be a good idea, because if we didn’t sink, we’d
burn. At the back, the tiller was manned by a little guy wearing Amos’s black trench coat
and hat. The hat was shoved down on his head so I couldn’t see his face. His hands and
feet were lost in the folds of the coat.
“How does this thing move?” I asked Amos. “You’ve got no sail.”
“Trust me.” Amos offered me a hand.
The night was cold, but when I stepped on board I suddenly felt warmer, as if the
torchlight were casting a protective glow over us. In the middle of the boat was a hut made
from woven mats. From Sadie’s arms, Muffin sniffed at it and growled.
“Take a seat inside,” Amos suggested. “The trip might be a little rough.”
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Sadie nodded at the little guy in back. “Who’s your driver?” Amos
acted as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Hang on, everyone!” He nodded to the
steersman, and the boat lurched forward.
The feeling was hard to describe. You know that tingle in the pit of your stomach when
you’re on a roller coaster and it goes into free fall? It was kind of like that, except we
weren’t falling, and the feeling didn’t go away. The boat moved with astounding speed.
The lights of the city blurred, then were swallowed in a thick fog. Strange sounds echoed
in the dark: slithering and hissing, distant screams, voices whispering in languages I didn’t
understand.
The tingling turned to nausea. The sounds got louder, until I was about to scream myself.
Then suddenly the boat slowed. The noises stopped, and the fog dissipated. City lights
came back, brighter than before.
Above us loomed a bridge, much taller than any bridge in London. My stomach did a slow
roll. To the left, I saw a familiar skyline—the Chrysler Building, the Empire State
Building.
“Impossible,” I said. “That’s New York.”
Sadie looked as green as I felt. She was still cradling Muffin, whose eyes were closed. The
cat seemed to be purring. “It can’t be,” Sadie said. “We only traveled a few minutes.” And
yet here we were, sailing up the East River, right under the Williamsburg Bridge. We
glided to a stop next to a small dock on the Brooklyn side of the river. In front of us was
an industrial yard filled with piles of scrap metal and old construction equipment. In the
center of it all, right at the water’s edge, rose a huge factory warehouse heavily painted
with graffiti, the windows boarded up.