The Need For A Change

(excerpt from The Ankh Akademy I - The Great Keys)

In class, Mrs. Ramsey prepared the lesson for the day as the children
went about situating themselves.  Alu quietly prepared himself and
took his seat in the center of the classroom close to the window.  Alu
had requested it because he needed to occasionally look out and be
reminded that there is life after school.  Besides, since he was the
top ranked seventh grader, Mrs. Ramsey didn't see it as a problem
and happily obliged Alu.  
Today seemed different to Alu.  The unusual occurrences during the
morning had transpired and the air was different.  Something was
going to happen today and Alu could feel it.  As he sat patiently
waiting for class to begin, he began to doodle on his paper.  He
usually didn't doodle, but today, it was like he couldn't control
himself.  His hand began moving frantically, back and forth across
his paper.  He didn't think his hand was following any particular
pattern but when it finally stopped moving, he looked down at his
paper and a picture of an Egyptian cross, or ANKH, was perfectly
drawn on his paper.  The design was very intricate and had small
heiroglyphic letters that decorated it.  What was so intriguing about
the art was that Alu wasn't a good artist at all.  He had even joked
about how he couldn't even draw stick figures!
Even stranger was that at the same time in two other classrooms,
Usir, Karum and the girls, Tia and Safiyyah were experiencing the
same thing.  Usir had a perfectly drawn ankh, but his decoration was
slightly different.  Instead of Egyptian heiroglyphs, his ankh was
decorated with Native American symbols with feathers and a dream
catcher in the center.  Karum's Ankh was drawn out of what seemed
like wood and had various African symbols on it while Tia and
Safiyyah had both drawn Ankhs that were identical except that Tia's
was shaded lighter than Safiyyah's.  Their Ankhs gave the
appearance of being very shiny and each had a single word written
under it in a language that neither of them understood.  They would
find out later that Tia’s word said “gold” and Safiyyah’s word said, 19
“silver”.
While the children were all drawing, they had attracted the attention
of their classmates and their teachers.  When they stopped and were
marveling at what they drew, the class began to mumble and stir.
"What was that?"  A student in the back of the class inquired.
"Don't know," another student piped up who was sitting directly
next to Alu.
"Alu, are you okay?" Mrs. Ramsey asked, concerned.
"I ... I'm fine, Mrs. Ramsey."  Alu was slightly bewildered, "I just
blacked out for a minute.  I’m okay now."
The five students had just had a premonition of some very
interesting news that they were going to receive later on that day.
After a brief stir of excitement, the classes then settled down and
prepared to finish their day...