Milo had exactly twelve minutes to finish his history worksheet, seven minutes to brush his teeth, and negative three minutes to find his other sock. This would have been fine—Milo was excellent at panicking efficiently—except there was a cat on his homework.
"Whiskers," he said, tugging at the edge of the paper. "Please relocate your entire fluff to literally anywhere else."
Whiskers, who was a silver-and-smoke cat with the posture of a queen and the morals of a raccoon, blinked slowly. She stretched across the worksheet like a blanket learning yoga.
"I'm writing about Ancient Egypt," Milo tried, bargaining now. "You'd like it. They worshipped cats."
Whiskers groomed a paw. Her collar—thin leather with a round metal charm—caught the lamp light and flashed.
Milo leaned closer. The charm wasn't like normal pet tags. It didn't say "Whiskers" or "Please Return to Milo, Who Is Responsible Despite Appearances." It was a smooth little circle etched with lines that looked like spiderwebs… or maybe like a clock's face, if clocks were trying to be mysterious.
"Hey," Milo whispered, because whispering felt appropriate around mysterious jewelry. "Where did you even get that?"
Whiskers' ear twitched. All at once the charm made a faint sound: tick.
Milo froze. "Did you just—?"
Tick. Tick.
Whiskers paused mid-groom, eyes going wide and gold. The charm glowed, the tiniest, tiniest bit—like someone had slipped a lightning bug under the metal.
"Okay," Milo said, scooting his chair back. "Okay, okay, okay. We don't panic. We observe. Scientific method. First, we note a—"
Tickticktick.
The sound sped up the way a heart speeds up when sneakers squeak in a haunted hallway. The glow brightened. Whiskers stood, fur lifting in a static halo, tail ballooning to maximum floof.
"Mom?" Milo called, but only his poster of the solar system answered, silently judging him with a hundred rocky moons. He took a breath. He reached for the collar.
Whiskers swatted his hand. Not hard. Just… a cat reminder: I am both fragile and all-powerful.
"Fine," Milo muttered. "I'm not touching it. I'm just—this is fine."
It was not fine. Because the charm clicked again, louder.
Tick. TOCK.
The air around the desk rippled like heat over a road. Paperclips jittered. A pencil rolled uphill.
"Oh," Milo said. "This is a Situation."
He scooped Whiskers up and she let him, which was how he knew it was serious. Under her fur, she felt like a tightly coiled spring. Her whiskers trembled. Her eyes were not on Milo. They were on nothing—no, not nothing—on something Milo couldn't see. She stared the way cats stare at corners and make humans question reality.
"Milo," called Mom from the kitchen, oblivious. "Do you want pancakes or waffles?"
"Uh," Milo said to the expanding bubble of shimmer around his desk, "time waffles?"
"What?"
"PANCAKES!" Milo yelped, voice going helium as the shimmer snapped into a sphere. The room tipped. His stomach did a rollercoaster loop without asking permission.
Whiskers dug her claws gently into Milo's hoodie, not enough to hurt, just enough to say hold on. The charm blazed. It wasn't hot. It wasn't cold. It was… elsewhere, like he was holding the idea of ice or the memory of sun.
The tick-tock became a drumline. The world folded in on itself like someone had tried to put his bedroom in a backpack and the zipper got stuck halfway.
"DO NOT THROW UP," Milo told his body, sternly.
And then everything went white.
It wasn't a long white, like a hallway. It was a short white, like a blink.
In blink-white time, Milo heard a sound: a whoosh that wasn't air and a hum that wasn't electricity. He smelled something dusty and sweet, like books and summer and old wood.
Then the light shrank back into the charm, and the world returned.
The world was not his bedroom.
For one thing, the ceiling was sky. Bright, brutal blue. The kind of blue that made you squint even if you were trying to look cool about it. For another, his floor was sand. Not the coarse beach kind that pretends to be rocks, but fine, warm, sift-through-your-fingers sand that got everywhere instantly—inside socks, behind ears, under nails, somehow in elbow creases.
Milo staggered. "Whiskers," he croaked. "What did you do?"
Whiskers hopped out of his arms, landed with a muffled pff, and shook each paw in disgust. She looked around, tail high like a tiny flag. Her collar gave one satisfied tock and went quiet.
On the horizon, a line of triangles rose from the earth, pale and enormous, like mountains built by someone who really loved geometry. Closer, low mud-brick houses huddled together, their roofs flat, their doorways hung with woven curtains. People in linen swished by, skin sun-browned, eyes sharp, arms balancing baskets. In the distance, a ribbon of green cut through the gold — trees, reeds, a shimmer that had to be water.
Milo's brain put the picture together the way you put together a puzzle where all the pieces are cats: too many possibilities, but one right answer.
"No way," he whispered. "No way no way no way."
Whiskers sat, delicately, and began to lick the sand off her paw. She tasted it, made a face like she'd licked a cactus, and sneezed.
A child about eight ran past, chasing a goat. The goat, who had significant opinions, yanked free and trotted directly to Whiskers, lowering its head to sniff. Whiskers stared at it like it was an inferior beanbag. The goat reconsidered all its life choices and left.
"Um," Milo said to the air, because the air was the only thing not staring at him. "Hi. Hello. I come in peace? Mostly."
He turned in a slow circle. The triangles—pyramids—loomed like they'd been waiting patiently for him to notice them for five thousand years. Which, if this was actually Ancient Egypt, was not far off. His heart was beating so fast that the beat skipped. Somewhere inside the skip was a thought:
The collar didn't just glow. It moved us.
Another thought stepped into line:
We are not the first ever to notice this, because the collar exists and so do weird clock lines and—
"Messenger!" someone shouted.
Milo jumped. A group of adults stood a few yards away. They weren't pointing at him.
They were pointing at Whiskers.
"Messenger of Bastet," said a woman in a white linen dress and gold collar. She dropped to one knee, head bowed. "Blessed be. You have come."
Whiskers blinked. The woman kept her eyes down, but her shoulders trembled the way shoulders tremble when they're hoping. Two men behind her knelt too, and a third, and then a cluster of kids, and then the goat again, which clearly just liked being in the middle of a scene.
Milo looked at Whiskers, then at the people, then at Whiskers. He tried to translate "Are you seeing this?" into Cat. He settled for eyebrows.
Whiskers stood, tail going from vertical to question mark. She walked forward with great ceremony, paws placing themselves like little stamps of authority. The kneeling people gasped softly, like they were watching sunrise do a magic trick.
"Uh," Milo said, then corrected himself, because his brain had just hauled up a memory from his homework: Bastet, goddess of protection, home, childbirth, and (importantly) cats. "Greetings? From the… uh… whiskered realms?"
Whiskers flicked her tail at him. He took that as don't make it worse.
The woman rose, studying Milo. Her eyes paused on his hoodie, slid down to his sneakers, flicked to his wristwatch with a look that said she didn't know what it was but she respected it for being shiny. "You are the Messenger's keeper?" she asked, carefully.
Milo opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "I—uh—we're more like roommates."
"That is an honor," she said solemnly, and somehow made it sound like an honor and a warning at once. "Please. The Pharaoh requests—no, requires—the Messenger's presence."
"The Pharaoh?" Milo squeaked, forgetting he was trying to be cool. He coughed and tried again. "The Pharaoh. Right. Totally normal. Are there snacks?"
Whiskers, who had been pretending not to listen, turned so precisely that you could have balanced a muffin on her head. Snacks were a universal language.
The woman smiled, just briefly. "There are always offerings for the Messenger."
Whiskers sashayed forward like a parade of one. The group formed around her like a moving sunbeam, leaving Milo to jog awkwardly at the edge.
As they walked, Milo whispered, "Can you at least pretend you don't understand human words?"
Whiskers' ear flicked back toward him. She didn't look, because she was busy receiving the adoration of an entire ancient civilization, but the ear was enough to say I choose when to pretend, hairless kitten.
They moved off the sand and onto a packed-earth road. The air smelled like warm bread, crushed herbs, and river water. People peeked from doorways; some bowed, some pressed hands to hearts. Cats watched from rooftops, tails flicking, pupils thin with interest. Milo stumbled over a basket of dates and nearly introduced his face to a pot of something bubbling. A boy caught his elbow, steadied him, and grinned.
"First time?" the boy asked in Egyptian that Milo didn't technically speak—but the words slotted into his head anyway, the way the tick-tock had slid under his skin. Maybe the collar did accents, too.
"Kind of!" Milo said, too loudly.
The road opened into a courtyard. Beyond it stood the palace, walls tall and whitewashed, painted with scenes of boats and birds and fields. Flags snapped in the hot wind. Guards in kilts and spears stood straight as exclamation points.
The woman lifted her hands. "Make way for the Messenger of Bastet."
The guards stepped aside at once.
Milo's feet wanted to turn around and take him back to his math worksheet, which suddenly seemed like a cozy, safe adventure where nothing ever ticked. But his curiosity grabbed the steering wheel. Also, Whiskers kept glancing back, and even though her glance translated to keep up, peasant, Milo could read the thread underneath: Stay close.
They crossed cool shade into cool stone halls. Murals spilled along the walls—blue rivers, green reeds, yellow sun. Between pillars, servants hurried like fish in a stream. And cats—so many cats. Sleeping in doorways. Perched on windowsills. Winding around ankles like living bracelets.
Milo's chest loosened. Somehow, in a place bursting with strangers, he didn't feel alone.
They stopped at towering double doors carved with lotus flowers. A guard banged his spear butt twice. The doors swung open.
The throne room glowed like a sun caught indoors. Gold glinted from every angle: narrow bracelets, wide collars, thin diadems, a polished chair on a raised platform. On that chair sat a kid.
The Pharaoh was maybe Milo's age, maybe a year older. Their hair was braided under a striped headdress. Their chin was high. Their eyes were bright, curious, and—Milo noted with relief—very, very human.
The Pharaoh leaned forward. "Messenger," they said, voice echoing. "Finally."
Whiskers walked exactly halfway down the aisle, sat in a perfect loaf, and meowed like she'd invented the concept of greeting.
The Pharaoh smiled with all their teeth. "Welcome," they said, then looked at Milo. "And welcome to the Keeper."
"Milo," he blurted.
"Keeper Milo," the Pharaoh said graciously. "I am Nebet-Amun. You arrive at a time of… complication."
Milo's stomach did the rollercoaster thing again. "What kind of complication?"
Before Nebet-Amun could answer, Whiskers' collar gave a soft, secret tick—not the kind that starts something, but the kind that says I'm still here. I'm watching the clock you can't see.
Milo swallowed. In his pocket, his phone buzzed with a text from Mom: PANCAKES GET COLD FAST.
He stared at the golden walls, at the tiny motes of dust dancing in the sunlight, at the cat who had just been promoted to divine messenger. Pancakes had never felt so far away.
Nebet-Amun nodded to the woman in linen. "See that offerings are brought for the Messenger. Fish. Milk. Honey, if the kitchens have it."
Whiskers' ears pricked at fish. She stood, tail swishing thoughtfully.
"And," Nebet-Amun added, gaze sharpening, "bring the Keeper to the Hall of Records. If he is truly the Messenger's companion, then he must hear the riddle."
Milo's heart did a cartwheel and fell down.
"Riddle?" he said, trying not to sound excited and failing spectacularly.
"Of Bastet," Nebet-Amun said. "The one that will lead us to what was taken."
Whiskers tilted her head. The charm on her collar caught a spear of light and flashed—just once—like a wink.
Milo glanced at her. "I really hope 'what was taken' is not my other sock."
Whiskers yawned, displaying a neat row of weaponized cuteness, and then trotted after the servants bearing trays.
Milo hurried after her, sneakers squeaking faintly on stone. He didn't know how they'd gotten here. He didn't know how they'd get back. But for the first time since the tick-tock started, a thought settled in his chest like a puzzle piece finding home:
We're supposed to be here.
A cat statue watched from a niche in the wall. Its eyes were painted black, its mouth curved in a secret not-smile, like it knew something and was enjoying the suspense.
"Okay," Milo whispered to Whiskers, to the statue, to the collar, to whoever was listening across time. "Let's not mess this up."
Whiskers didn't answer. She didn't need to. Her tail lifted like an exclamation mark.
And the adventure—like the ticking—kept going.