Going for Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

hyperactive dream life.
    Our tutor half-turned to us, smiling. “Ancient Egyptian temples often had a Corridor of Dreams. Humans would rent a room there for the night, hoping the gods would send a dream to shed light on their problems.”
    I shivered. The conversation had broken my first dream; not the one about Sky and the perfume, the one that made me yell in my sleep.
    I was back in my old school hall taking an exam, but every time I tried to read the question paper to find out what type of exam exactly, a freak wind came whooshing out of nowhere and blew it away!
    Suddenly all the lights went out, and these terrifying beings, half-divine, half-animal, were storming towards me, kicking over the desks.
    “In ancient times, angels and gods did occasionally work together,” Maryam was saying to the others. “Not often, just when something of real cosmic importance was at stake.”
    “Not now though?” I said shuddering, picturing those exam hall monsters with their scary beast heads. “We don’t join forces now?”
    We heard cheerful toots as the tour bus scorched past in a yellow cloud of dust. Khaled was in the driver’s seat, pulling mad faces.
    Maryam sighed. “He is so competitive.” Then her foot hit the accelerator so hard the jeep’s wheels spun in the sand. Relieved to be distracted from bad dreams and surreal old-style gods, I joined in blowing cheeky kisses to Khaled as we surged past the bus and into the lead under a cloudless African sky.
    Eventually our jeep lurched to a standstill by a grove of dusty date palms. Maryam switched off the engine. In the sudden hush, the only sounds were the clicking of palm fronds and the slap-slap of the Nile against its banks. Maryam was serenely smoothing down her headscarf as the bus pulled up alongside.
    Trainees began piling off. The celestial college kids were easy to spot in their vintage-style tropical threads.
    Lola nudged me. “Can you see Indigo?” “I told you already,” I sighed. “This isn’t his kind of thing!”
    Khaled sprinted over, jamming his phone in his pocket as he ran. “I decided to let Maryam win,” he beamed.
    “He let me win last time too,” Maryam told us in a stage whisper. “And the time before that and—”
    Khaled interrupted her breezily. “All that matters is we have reached today’s time-stream site! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ancient town of Seshet!”
    We clambered out doubtfully, clutching our bottles of water.
    I’d been hoping for an atmospheric ruin, but there wasn’t even a pile of stones to show humans had lived in this desolate place.
    “You are feeling cheated, I can tell!” Khaled beamed, obviously enjoying our disappointment. “Why has he dragged us out into the desert to look at nothing! But once you’ve mastered time-streaming, you will be seeing with different eyes!” He gestured at the desert. “What would you say if I told you that under this sand, the streets of long ago Seshet silently wait to be discovered, as they have waited for centuries?”
    The idea of a buried city instantly perked everyone up.
    We spent the next half hour or so wandering around the site, as our tutors pointed out where major buildings would have been, like the temple and the house of mummification and whatever.
    “Over there on the outer limits was the Street of Leather Workers.” Khaled waved vaguely. “A very smelly street I’m afraid! Where you are standing, Melanie and Lola, was a street with much pleasanter smells, the Street of Perfume Blenders!”
    “They had a street of perfumers?” Lola said enviously.
    Khaled beamed at her. “Didn’t you know? For thousands of years Egypt was like the perfume counter of the ancient world?”
    Perfume counter. A tiny shiver went down my backbone. Our tutor had used almost the exact words Sky had used in my dream.
    “And as Khaled was just about to say, the best blenders were usually women!” Maryam pointed out
    mischievously.
    Khaled pretended to mop his