We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (10 page)

AFTER ABOUT FIVE MORE
minutes drifting through the sky, the bottom of the raft started to skim the snowy boulders and jagged trees on the edge of a mountain.

“We're almost down,” Oliver said. “I hope we don't get stuck in a—ouch!”

“Are you all right?”

“A tree branch just poked me in the butt,” he said as he shifted uncomfortably. They saw their father's limp body jolt. For a second, they thought he was awake, but it was just another branch whacking him from underneath. “Dad's going to have some bruises.”

“I hope he's not mad,” Celia said.

“He'd be dead if not for us,” Oliver said. “And we nearly died because of him . . .
as usual
. If anyone gets to be mad, it should be us.”

Suddenly, with a terrible crunching, cracking, breaking noise, the raft smashed through a sheet of snow, scraped off a boulder and, suddenly rolling and spinning, became like a sled, screaming down the side of the Roof of the World. Colorful birds took flight all around them. A small red panda cocked its head curiously as the bright yellow raft streaked past, trailing its strange parachute like a tail.

“Ahhhh!” both children screamed together. They raced along, the world a blur of white and blue and green. Rocks and bushes smashed into them, knocking their raft around like a pinball.

“Oh, no!” Celia shouted.

“What is it?” Oliver screamed back to her, because his eyes were closed.

“A cliff!”

Oliver opened his eyes and saw that they were about to go over the edge. Their parachute was shredded. All he could think to do as they took to the sky again was grab his father's ankle and scream.

“Ahhhh!” both children yelled as they were yanked brutally backwards.

They stopped.

Their parachute had tangled and snagged on a boulder, and the life raft swung to a stop several thousand feet above a raging river in the gorge below. The children were dumped into each other, with their father lying on top of them. The raft made a creaking noise as it settled and swung in the breeze. A bright red bird perched for a moment on their father's foot, screeched and flew off again.

“Are we alive?” Celia wondered, her father's foot smashing into her face.

“I think so,” Oliver answered, his face dug into his father's armpit. “It smells like we are.”

“Hmmm,” Celia added. At this point, the raft was more like a hammock. They were piled on top of each other in a jumble of legs and arms. Celia was looking down toward the forest and the river, while Oliver was twisted upward, looking at the sky and the icy walls on top of the cliff. They hung for a while with the high mountain wind howling against their yellow raft.

“Hey,” Oliver asked, forming an idea. “What's below us?”

“A river,” Celia said.

“The riverbank could be pretty soft,” Oliver said, remembering Choden Thordup's story about jumping from the window of the monastery.

“So?”

Oliver suggested shoving his father down and then landing on him like a cushion.

“Like Stephen the Yak,” he said. “Dad wouldn't mind. He's not even awake.”

Celia said no to the idea.

“Daddy's girl,” Oliver sneered.

They dangled from the cliff for what felt like hours. They heard a growl in the distance and the calls of strange birds. Below them stretched a dense forest. Above them, the craggy mountain was quilted with patches of white snow. Every few minutes something would creak, and Celia feared it would be the end. But still, they hung. Their father snorted loudly, but didn't wake up.

Above him, Oliver watched a massive tiger creep along the narrow ridge and sniff at the tangle of canvas and plastic that attached them to the cliff. One push from his giant paw and they'd fall over the edge. Oliver had learned all about Tibetan tigers on
Asia's Deadliest Animals Two: CAT-astrophe.

Tibetan tigers are nearly extinct, he thought. And they don't normally live at this high altitude. Then again, I don't normally live at this high altitude either.

Only the hungriest tiger would dare come so close to humans. Was it crazy or starving? Or both? Celia and Oliver would make a nice snack, wrapped in yellow plastic and hanging like peanut butter crackers in a vending machine. The tiger didn't move or make a sound. It stayed at the edge, poised. The wind ruffled its orange and black fur, but otherwise, it was as still as a statue.

Celia couldn't see the tiger from where she was. She didn't even know that a tiger was watching them. She was watching the river below them and getting more and more antsy. Hanging upside down for an hour was really boring and really uncomfortable, like going to the opera. Her neck was starting to ache from her father's body smushing her. She really wanted to be at home right now, comfy on the couch watching something about romance or a game show or anything that didn't involve hanging upside down off a cliff with her brother and her unconscious father in the highest place in the world.

Oliver watched the tiger lick its lips. All this falling from the sky and hanging from trees and giant hungry tigers was growing tiresome, and Oliver was fed up.

“I am fed up,” he said. The tiger let out a low growl and didn't take his eyes off of Oliver. “This is so boring.”

“I've been looking at the same patch of mist for an hour,” Celia complained.

The tiger still didn't move.

“Nothing is happening,” Oliver said. “This is like watching a blender commercial.”

“Or an awards ceremony.”

“Or the local news.”

“Ugh,” Celia said. “You win. It's like that. Only without the threat of deadly escalators or killer pickle jars.”

The tiger moved on, having lost interest in the children.

“I hate this!” Oliver pouted. His sister hated when her brother pouted. He had this way of sticking his chin out and clenching his forehead and it looked like he was going to cry or explode or both. “We should be home on the couch where there aren't any evil flight attendants or deep gorges or giant boring tigers or tall men with machine guns!”

“I know, but stop whining, would you—wait. Tigers?! What? Tall men with what?”

“Up there,” Oliver said. “Right above us.”

Celia bent her head around to look up and saw that, indeed, there was a very tall man standing on the rock where their raft was caught. He had a machine gun and was pointing it at them.

He was bald and his face was wide, with deep wrinkles. He was quite old, but how old the children could not tell. He wore simple sandals with socks, light pants and a monk's robes. Over his robes, he had a bandolier of bullets, like a cowboy in an old western, except the bullets were long and thin, and clearly intended for the machine gun he was holding. Each bullet was carved with a pattern of symbols. He had a small backpack on his back.

“Dr. Navel?” he shouted down to them in English, much to the children's surprise. “Are you alive?”

“Ummm, we think he is,” Oliver yelled back.

“Who are you?” Celia shouted up. Oliver was always too willing to talk to strangers. Celia was far more careful. She wished her brother would let her do the talking.

“My name is Lama Norbu,” the man answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And I assume you must be Celia and Oliver.”

“Yeah . . .” Oliver said hesitantly.

“And your father?”

“He got knocked out by an air marshal and a stewardess. They threw us out of the plane,” Oliver said.

“Shhhh . . .” Celia whispered. “Don't tell him too much. We don't know if we can trust him yet.”

“You don't look like a llama,” Oliver called up to the old man. Oliver had seen a cartoon about a talking llama, so perhaps, he thought, they could exist. He never thought he'd meet one in the real world.

“No, I suppose I don't,” was all the man said in explanation, and then he broke into a wide gleeful smile. “I am glad to see you are alive. I had arranged with your father and Ms. Thordup to pick you up at the airport, and it seems I won't be able to. I apologize. I would, however, be happy to help you now. It is not wise to hang there any longer. There are snakes and insects, and much worse here above the gorge.”

“We'd appreciate that,” Oliver called back, as Celia shot him daggers with her eyes.

“What?” he whispered. “We need to get up somehow.”

Lama Norbu went to work right away. He pulled a rope from the knapsack he had slung over his shoulder, tied it to a tree, and before the kids could count to ten, he was hanging from a rock next to them and tying his rope to their raft.

“Greetings!” he said, smiling like he didn't have a care in the world. He was hanging by one hand over the edge of the cliff. He had a dazzling white smile, and though he was old, he was all muscle. Close up, the children saw that he had a thin wisp of a white mustache and bushy eyebrows. His cheeks were rosy red. “It is a pleasure to meet the children of such eminent explorers. When I arranged to be your father's guide, I was thrilled for the chance to meet the rest of the family.”

“Not the rest of the family,” Oliver corrected. “Our mother isn't here.”

“But in spirit!” said Lama Norbu cheerfully. “In the spirit of adventure, I am sure she is with you!” He laughed loudly.

“Whatever,” said Celia.

“Anyway, I am not a llama,ʺ the monk explained. The wind howled against the raft. “The llama is a South American
camelid
growing to about five and a half feet tall and used by the Incan civilization as a pack animal. I am a
lama
, with one
l
. A lama-with-one-
l
is a teacher who has spent lifetimes in study and good deeds. I am also well over six feet tall, and would tower over any llama I came across.” He laughed again.

“Oh,” the children said warily.

“You two must be very brilliant explorers, just like your parents,” the old man added.

“No,” both children said in unison.

“Okaaay . . .” said Lama Norbu. He quickly changed the subject. “I dreamed something like this might happen,” he said as he scurried back up the cliff using the rope. “The hidden lands have called you to them.
Om mani padme hum!”
He began to hoist the raft up with his rope. He was much stronger than the Navel Twins could have imagined possible for such an old guy. When they reached the top, the man chanted again:
“Om mani padme hum
.”

Oliver and Celia glanced at each other, wondering if the tall man was crazy. A talking llama might make more sense.

“That is a
mantra
”, Lama Norbu explained. “A saying that we often repeat to gain wisdom. Its sounds contain the entire teachings of the Buddha.” He smiled. Oliver and Celia were not comforted. He seemed like a total loon.

“So you're a lama, huh?” Oliver said.

“How exactly did you find us here?” asked Celia.

“Things always go wrong in life,” he said. “Certainty is an illusion. The odds of finding you here were as good as meeting you at the airport. So I imagined what disaster could befall you, and took a walk into the canyon. Since all space is a creation of the mind, this cliff is the same as the airport. You might as well have been here as anywhere. And perhaps you are!”

He gestured to the landscape, still grinning from ear to ear. Monkeys howled in the distance.

Once they were out of their ruined raft, Lama Norbu shook both of the children's hands with a smile. He bent down to their level and looked them right in the eyes in a way that made them feel respected. Though he was tall, he didn't seem to look down on them.

“Grhumgughhhphhh . . .” said Dr. Navel as he started to wake up. After a moment of rocking his head back and forth and groaning, his eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright.
“Unhand my children!”
he shouted.

“It's okay, Dad. We're safe. We're on the ground,” said Celia. “Sort of.”

“We met Lama Norbu,” said Oliver. “He says he's not a llama.”

“Oh.” Dr. Navel looked around and rubbed the back of his neck where a branch had whacked him. There was a bump on his forehead where the air marshal hit him. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and sprang to his feet, showing no confusion about where he was or how he got there. He smiled his winning smile, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened. Then he fell down again.

Lama Norbu came over and helped the explorer to his feet once more.

“Greetings, Lama Norbu. So nice to finally meet you.” Dr. Navel pulled a long white silk scarf from under his shirt and presented it to the old man, bowing his head low. His children watched him curiously, but the old man did not seem surprised.

“Greetings, Ogden,” said Lama Norbu, using their father's first name, which almost no one ever did. He accepted the scarf graciously and hung it around his neck under his cloak.

“Well, my friends, shall we be on our way, then?” their father said. He wiped his hands on his pants and looked up and down the cliff. “Lama Norbu, lead the way, sir!”

“But there's no path,” Celia pointed out. “We're on the edge of a cliff.”

“There is always a path,” explained Lama Norbu. “If your mind is open, you will find there is always a path out of your troubles. And in the quest for Shangri-La there are many paths . . . and many troubles.” He laughed at his little joke, and then pointed in front of him. Sure enough, there was a narrow path along the edge of the cliff, leading down into the forest below. “The path provided is not always the easiest,” he explained. “But it is always what is needed. We are meant to descend into the valley, it seems.”