A Crazy Day with Cobras Read online

  Here’s what kids have to say to

  Mary Pope Osborne, author of

  the Magic Tree House series:

  WOW! You have an imagination like no other.—Adam W.

  I love your books. If you stop writing books, it will be like losing a best friend.—Ben M.

  I think you are the real Morgan le Fay. There is always magic in your books.—Erica Y.

  One day I was really bored and I didn’t want to read.… I looked in your book. I read a sentence, and it was interesting. So I read some more, until the book was done. It was so good I read more and more. Then I had read all of your books, and now I hope you write lots more.—Danai K.

  I always read [your books] over and over … 1 time, 2 times, 3 times, 4 times.…—Yuan C.

  You are my best author in the world. I love your books. I read all the time. I read everywhere. My mom is like freaking out.—Ellen C.

  I hope you make these books for all yours and mine’s life.—Riki H.

  Teachers and librarians love

  Magic Tree House® books, too!

  Thank you for opening faraway places and times to my class through your books. They have given me the chance to bring in additional books, materials, and videos to share with the class.—J. Cameron

  It excites me to see how involved [my fourth-grade reading class] is in your books.… I would do anything to get my students more involved, and this has done it.—C. Rutz

  I discovered your books last year.… WOW! Our students have gone crazy over them. I can’t order enough copies! … Thanks for contributing so much to children’s literature!—C. Kendziora

  I first came across your Magic Tree House series when my son brought one home.… I have since introduced this great series to my class. They have absolutely fallen in love with these books! … My students are now asking me for more independent reading time to read them. Your stories have inspired even my most struggling readers.—M. Payne

  I love how I can go beyond the [Magic Tree House] books and use them as springboards for other learning.—R. Gale

  We have enjoyed your books all year long. We check your Web site to find new information. We pull our map down to find the areas where the adventures take place. My class always chimes in at key parts of the story. It feels good to hear my students ask for a book and cheer when a new book comes out.—J. Korinek

  Our students have “Magic Tree House fever.” I can’t keep your books on the library shelf.—J. Rafferty

  Your books truly invite children into the pleasure of reading. Thanks for such terrific work.—S. Smith

  The children in the fourth grade even hide the [Magic Tree House] books in the library so that they will be able to find them when they are ready to check them out.—K. Mortensen

  My Magic Tree House books are never on the bookshelf because they are always being read by my students. Thank you for creating such a wonderful series.—K. Mahoney

  The hottest day of my life was also the day I saw the most beautiful building of my life. Many years ago, friends and I rode for months in a van, traveling through Asia. When we arrived in Agra, India, the heat was so unbearable I could barely think or move. A tour guide led us around to see the sights, and late in the afternoon, we arrived at one of the wonders of the world: the Taj Mahal.

  When I got out of the van, I forgot all about the heat. I felt as if I had stepped from the real world into a dream. Through the heat waves, a twenty-story marble building shimmered in the pink twilight. The Taj Mahal was the tomb of a Mogul queen named Mumtãz Mahal, built by her grieving husband, Shah Jahãn, in the 1600s.

  Since that day, I’ve always wanted to go back to the Taj Mahal. In this book, traveling with Jack and Annie, I finally have.

  Thanks for joining us.

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Mary Pope Osborne

  Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Sal Murdocca

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. Magic Tree House is a registered trademark of Mary Pope Osborne; used under license.

  Visit us on the Web!

  MagicTreeHouse.com

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Osborne, Mary Pope.

  A crazy day with cobras / by Mary Pope Osborne ; illustrated by Sal Murdocca. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Magic tree house ; #45)

  “A Merlin mission.”

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: The magic tree house whisks Jack and Annie to India during the Mogul Empire in the 1600s to search for an emerald needed to break a magic spell.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89875-4

  [1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Tree houses—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. India—History—1526–1765—Fiction.]

  I. Murdocca, Sal, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.O81167Cr 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010013896

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Nikita, Kumar, and Susan

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. A Terrible Mistake

  2. The Red Fort

  3. Complete Respect

  4. The Great Mogul

  5. Not Funny

  6. Morning Breeze

  7. Something Very Weird

  8. SHHHHHH-WISSSSSST!

  9. Camouflage

  10. Caught in the Wild

  11. Heart to Heart

  12. The Meaning of the Emerald

  Author’s Note

  Other Magic Tree House Books

  Only let this one teardrop, the Taj Mahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time, forever and ever.

  —Rabindranath Tagore,

  Nobel laureate poet from West Bengal

  One summer day in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania, a mysterious tree house appeared in the woods. It was filled with books. A boy named Jack and his sister, Annie, soon discovered that the tree house was magic, and just by pointing at a book, they could go to any time and any place in history. And while they were gone, no time at all passed back in Frog Creek.

  Jack and Annie eventually found out that the tree house belonged to Morgan le Fay, a magical librarian from the legendary realm of Camelot. They have since traveled on many adventures in the magic tree house and have completed many missions for both Morgan le Fay and Merlin the magician. On these journeys, they’ve often received help from two young enchanters from Camelot named Teddy and Kathleen.

  Now Jack and Annie are waiting to hear about where they will be going next—for their forty-fifth adventure in the magic tree house.

  “The weather’s getting warmer,” said Jack. He and Annie were walking home fro
m school under a cloudless May sky. A warm breeze blew through the leaves on the newly green trees.

  “I love it,” said Annie. “It makes me feel like something good’s going to happen.”

  “Something good already happened,” said Jack. “My teacher finally gave back my story today.”

  “The one about our adventures in the tree house?” asked Annie.

  “Yep. She said I have a fantastic imagination,” said Jack.

  “Great!” said Annie.

  “And she loved your drawings for the story, too,” said Jack. “She said you’re really talented.”

  “That’s nice!” said Annie. “Maybe she loved the sparkle pens I used.”

  “The only thing she didn’t love was the type I chose,” said Jack. “She said it was hard to read because it was too fancy.”

  “I really like that curly type,” said Annie.

  “Me too,” said Jack. “But it’s no big deal—she still gave me an A plus.”

  “Wow, cool,” said Annie.

  As they reached the edge of the Frog Creek woods, a gust of wind shook the tree branches. Jack’s baseball cap blew off. He grabbed his cap from the sidewalk. The wind blew harder.

  “What’s happening?” said Annie.

  Suddenly two figures rushed out of the woods. Their dark cloaks flapped behind them as they hurried toward Jack and Annie.

  “Teddy!” said Annie.

  “Kathleen!” said Jack.

  The red-haired teenage boy and the beautiful girl with dark wavy hair ran to Jack and Annie and hugged them.

  “You must come with us to the tree house!” said Kathleen. “Hurry!”

  “Why? What’s up?” said Jack.

  “We’ll explain when we get there!” said Teddy. He and Kathleen turned and started back into the woods. As Jack and Annie raced after them, sunlight slanted through the leafy treetops.

  Soon they all came to the tallest oak tree. “Up, up!” cried Teddy.

  One by one, Teddy, Kathleen, Jack, and Annie scrambled up the rope ladder and climbed into the magic tree house. When they were all inside, Teddy heaved a sigh. “My friends, we desperately need your help,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Annie.

  “We made a terrible mistake!” said Kathleen.

  “No, it was me, just me,” said Teddy. “I made the mistake.”

  “What did you do?” said Jack.

  “I turned Penny into a stone statue,” said Teddy.

  “Penny?” said Annie. “A statue?”

  “Oh, no,” said Jack. He loved the little orphan penguin that he and Annie had found on one of their adventures. Penny had helped save Merlin’s life.

  “It was an accident,” said Kathleen.

  “It was stupidity!” said Teddy. “We were in Morgan’s library, and I was looking at spells in her books. Morgan forbids us to try any spells on our own, but I disobeyed when I found a simple one that turns things into stone. I thought I’d just give it a quick try—I turned an apple, a goblet of water, and a writing quill all to stone!”

  “Teddy was pointing at a walking stick by the doorway, reciting the words of the spell,” said Kathleen. “And just as he finished, Penny wandered in, and the spell hit her!”

  “And now she’s a stone statue,” Teddy said miserably.

  “That’s terrible,” said Annie.

  “Well, can’t you just ask Merlin or Morgan to use their magic to bring Penny back to life?” asked Jack.

  “No, no, they must never learn anything about this! If they do, I …” Teddy shook his head and looked away.

  “Merlin and Morgan are both in Avalon for the Festival of May,” said Kathleen. “If they discover what Teddy has done, we fear Merlin will banish him from the kingdom.”

  “Really?” said Annie.

  “Yes, Merlin will be enraged,” said Kathleen. “Penny is the very heart of our kingdom. We all love her very much.”

  “Me too,” said Jack. He thought about the penguin’s fuzzy head, the funny way she peeped, the way she loved and trusted everyone.

  “The good news is that we have found a rhyme that tells us how to reverse the stone spell,” said Kathleen. She took a note from her cloak.

  “The bad news is that it is written in an ancient language,” said Teddy. “We have only translated eight lines so far.”

  Kathleen read from the note:

  Ye say that ye wish

  your spell be reversed?

  Four things ye must find.

  Here is the first:

  In the shape of a rose

  is an emerald stone

  that uncovers the heart

  of one who’s alone.

  “An emerald stone shaped like a rose?” said Jack. He took the note from Kathleen and looked at it. “That’s what you have to find first?”

  “Yes, only we must spend our time trying to translate the rest of the spell before Merlin and Morgan return,” said Kathleen, “so we need you and Annie to look for the emerald rose.”

  “Got it,” said Jack.

  “Where do we look?” asked Annie.

  “We have done some research,” said Teddy, “and we think you should go back almost four hundred years and visit one of the Great Moguls of India.”

  “Great Moguls?” said Annie.

  “They are the emperors who ruled India’s Mogul Empire,” said Teddy. “One of them had the largest collection of precious gems in all the world.”

  “And his stonecutters cut many of his jewels into the shape of leaves and flowers!” said Kathleen.

  “Perfect!” said Annie.

  “Our research says he often gave gifts of his precious gems to visiting ambassadors,” said Teddy. “You will have to pretend to be ambassadors.”

  “And I am afraid, Annie, that you will have to pretend to be a boy again,” said Kathleen. “In Mogul India, girls were not allowed to show their faces in public.”

  “No problem, I’m getting used to it,” Annie said.

  “Wait, even if Annie’s a boy, they’re probably not going to believe that we’re ambassadors,” said Jack.

  Teddy and Kathleen gave each other blank looks. “I do not know why not,” said Teddy, “though I admit we do not really know very much about ambassadors.”

  “They’re people who visit other countries to represent their own country,” said Jack.

  “Splendid!” said Teddy. “So that’s what you’ll do—you’ll represent Frog Creek four hundred years ago.”

  “Except ambassadors are usually grown-ups,” said Jack.

  “Oh. Well. I suppose you must just do the best you can,” said Kathleen.

  “Perhaps this will help you,” said Teddy. “If you have knowledge, you will seem older.” He reached into his cloak and pulled out a book.

  “And we thought perhaps some magic might help, too,” said Kathleen, “if you find yourselves in danger.” She reached into her cloak again and pulled out a tiny blue bottle. “A potion to make you very small.”

  “Wow, great!” said Annie.

  “Uh … very small?” said Jack. He remembered how their friend Augusta had been made tiny by the fairies of Ireland. He remembered that he’d been afraid it might happen to them, too. All kinds of ordinary things could seem huge and scary, he thought. “How long would we stay small?” he asked.

  “It depends on how many sips you take,” said Kathleen, giving the bottle to Jack. “One sip will make you small for ten minutes, two for twenty, three for thirty, and so on.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He put the bottle and the rhyme into his backpack.

  “Go now,” said Teddy. “Find the emerald rose while we try to translate the rest of the spell.”

  “We’ll do our best,” said Annie.

  “Thank you,” said Kathleen. “When you need strength, just think of Penny.”

  “We will,” said Jack. He took a deep breath and pointed at the cover of their research book. “I wish we could go there!”

  Annie waved at
Teddy and Kathleen. “See you later!” she said.

  The wind started to blow.

  The tree house started to spin.

  It spun faster and faster.

  Then everything was still.

  Absolutely still.

  Kathleen and Teddy were gone. The air was hot. Flies buzzed around Jack’s head.

  “These are ambassador clothes?” said Annie.

  Jack and Annie were dressed alike. They both wore wide-brimmed felt hats, stockings, buckled shoes, short jackets, and puffy short pants. Jack’s backpack had turned into a leather bag.

  “I guess,” said Jack. “This must be how we would’ve dressed almost four hundred years ago in Frog Creek.”

  “If we’d both been boys,” said Annie. “So, where are we?”

  Jack and Annie looked out the window. The tree house had landed in a row of tall dark trees. The trees stood next to a red fort with a moat, a drawbridge, and massive red battlements.

  “Cool fort,” said Jack.

  “Yeah, and look—elephants,” said Annie. “I love elephants!”

  Leading away from the fort were two streets. One was filled with oxen pulling carts and people riding horses and elephants. Veiled women sat in carriages on the elephants’ backs.

  “Yeah, and there’s a bazaar like the one we saw in Baghdad,” said Jack. He pointed to the other street, which was lined with tents and stalls.

  “So where do you think we find an emerald stone in the shape of a rose?” said Annie.

  Jack picked up their research book and opened to the first page. He read aloud:

  In the 1600s, India was a vast land of crowded cities and countless villages. A great deal of India, though, was still covered by wilderness. Wild creatures such as cheetahs, elephants, and Bengal tigers lived in its forests. India’s wilderness was also home for many snakes, including the king cobra, one of the deadliest snakes on earth.