A Little Rhine Must Fall by Erin Evans

you,” Cecily said under her breath.
    The light was different. It was still daytime and very, very hot, but the sun was clearly setting, and we had left Melbourne in the morning. We were in some sort of deserted ally. Brown clay walls with open doorways clued me in to the fact that, not only was this not Kansas, it also wasn’t the Continental United States. Maybe the sun should have told me that too, but sometimes my brain can be a little slow when pulled across the globe in a flash.
    “Where are we?” I asked.
    Bastet jumped down from my shoulders and gave the nearest wall a loving rub. :Home: she purred.
    “Home?” I looked around. Down at the other end of the alley I could catch glimpses of people strolling by. The women were wearing brightly colored scarves over their hair. I followed Cecily down to the alley mouth and gasped. Poking over the top of the buildings was a huge triangular shape.
    “Egypt!” I squeaked. “We’re in Egypt? ”
    Cecily looked back over her shoulder at me. “Ziplines to the moon are not easy to create.”
    “Meaning?”
    :The power has to be funneled. For jumps around the globe, any shape will do. But the moon …:
    I followed Bastet’s gaze to the Great Pyramid. My eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me that we have to climb that?”
    Cecily nodded. “And we’d better get a move on. The pyramid complex should be closing now.”
    “Then how are we going to get in?”
    She gave me a pointed look.
    “Oh, no! No. No. No! I am not using the Voice here! We don’t even know if it works in a foreign language!”
    :All the antiquities guards speak English:
    “No!” I protested, not that anyone was listening.
    Cecily took off down the road. I was happy I’d decided to wear tennis shoes this morning. It made it easier to keep up with her long stride. She was wearing four-inch spike heels and was still leaving me in the dust.
    The road slanted up and I was almost too busy panting and gasping for breath to watch all the tourists milling about. Skeletal horses strained to pull heavy tourist carts up and down the hill. I about tripped over my feet as a camel swayed by. The colors, the movement, it was hypnotizing.
    Cecily turned impatiently and motioned me forward. We entered a flat parking lot. A tall stone wall blocked my view of the bottom of the Pyramids. They were huge ! I mean, I’d seen pictures, but I’d never imagined how big they were! And I was going to have to climb one.
    Several uniformed guards were ushering people out of a gate and preparing to lock it.
    “Hurry up!” Cecily hissed. “I don’t want to have to jump the wall in this skirt.”
    I looked at her skirt. Then I looked at the wall. It was twenty feet tall if it was an inch. I shook my head.
    “Move your rear, Piper!” Cecily called.
    Move my rear! I’d show her ‘move my rear.’ After I caught my breath. And had a heart attack. Being a full time mom does not give you a lot of time to hit the gym.
    “How is everyone else getting in?” I panted, bent over at the waist, hands on knees, trying to draw more oxygen into my lungs.
    “Get us past the guards and then I’ll answer anything you want,” Cecily said.
    I looked around. “Where’d Bastet go?”
    Cecily grinned. “She has her own ways of getting in. Now, get us past the guards!”
    She dropped a few feet behind me as I approached the gate.
    “No entrance! No entrance!” the guard said in a bored voice. He probably was tired of riding herd on a bunch of stupid tourists all day long.
    “We will go in,” I commanded in the Voice.
    He blinked at me and stopped pulling the gate closed. “You will let us in,” I commanded again.
    “Need ticket,” he said. “I sell ticket for one-hundred pounds. Very good deal!”
    Cecily snorted. “Even under the Voice they still try to rip people off. Tell him you don’t need a ticket and even if you did, he’s overcharging us.”
    “I don’t need a ticket,” I commanded.
    “You have camera?” he