how long does he have to stay in the hospital?
Time travel can lead to unexpected encounters. I am a proud fan of Doctor Who, and I must say that even if I haven’t yet met any aliens during my travels, I did meet some supernatural folks from time to time. Which is, I grant you, rather scary, but exciting at the same time.
This week, a weird encounter awaited me again...
I was in the Mansfield Park’s kitchens, mixing my mixture for the almond puffs (which, I must say, was becoming a bit too granulous, but I managed to avoid a cooking catastrophy). A few minutes before, I had been enjoying a nice round of gossips with Rowena, the cook, and Lottie, the under cook. We had mainly talked about the guests, but also had fun imagining what vegetable each member of the Bertram family looked like. But now that everything was ready and served, and since the only thing left to do was bake the dessert, Rowena and Lottie had left me alone to take care of it.
So here I was, in the now silent kitchen, tasting the mixture one last time before putting it in the oven, when an enormous noise made me jump so high that the almost-ready-mixture ended up on my face and clothes. Instinctively, I turned around to see who was the person whose joke transformed me into Super-Almond-Girl. And there it was. Coming out of the pantry. Not Rowena. Not Lottie. Not even Oscar, the scullery maid, well-known for his tricks and jokes. Nope. The person (maybe ex-person would be more appropriate) standing in front of me was a Mummy. A classic, white-bandaged, growling Mummy.
I was more furious than scared. Not only was I covered in almond mixture, but I also had to start the recipe all over again ! Would the guests believe me if I told them that “the dessert was delayed because of the unexpected appearance of a Mummy in the kitchen” ? I think not. Except for Miss Marple. I’m sure she would’ve loved it.
So, what did I do ? I did something absolutely logical and sane : instead of running off screaming, I asked the mummy if it could help me preparing the new almond puffs. And it kindly obliged. And it was fun. Ok, the mummy couldn’t talk and would only answer my questions with ‘mwouas’ and ‘gwoos’, but I could tell it was enjoying this little cooking party. All in all, we finished right on time. We even had time to fix the poor Mummy’s bandages, which were kind of raggedy.
I have no idea why the Mummy was in the pantry.
I have no idea where it went after our little cooking meeting.
Mysteries are like that.
All I know is that I shall make a trip to Egypt one day and meet its friends.
Because Mummies sure CAN cook.
* answer to trivia question: Until he is completely recovered. -David Lubar
* guest post by The Book On The Hill
