We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (20 page)

One of the witches hissed and the rest clapped again. They didn't like Sir Edmund very much. Not many people did.

“I had thought it would be easier to find this woman, of course. I hadn't expected the Navels to be thrown off the plane or that Pfeffer might try to change our deal, but all is well again. I will find her and I will get what I want.”

“And what about what we want?”

“Apologies,” Sir Edmund said, though it was obvious he wasn't really apologizing. “Come with me after Frank Pfeffer, and when I have what I want, you can have Frank's soul too. How does that sound? Two explorers for the price of one.”

“And the children?”

“No.” Sir Edmund smirked. “I will keep the children. I have something
else
in mind for them. Their work is far from over.”

The leader held up her finger to Sir Edmund, demanding silence. She turned and huddled with the other witches and they murmured to each other like a football team planning a play. They talked for a very long time, while Sir Edmund kept checking his watch, which had a symbol of a scroll in chains on it, and looking down at the tiny form of Frank Pfeffer climbing the walls of the canyon. At last, the witches turned around again.

“We have consulted,” the leader said gravely.

“And . . . ,” Sir Edmund prompted. She puffed up her chest and looked as though she was about to make an important pronouncement.

“Sure,” she said at last.

Sir Edmund shook his head. “All right, so we follow wherever he goes and you do as I say until we get there.”

“Agreed,” the leader said. “But . . . there is a problem.”

“Oh, what now!?” Sir Edmund threw his tiny arms in the air in exasperation.

“We are forbidden to leave this valley. Ever since the protector-spirit banished the unruly gods in ancient times, we have been confined to this valley.”

“Ha!” Sir Edmund scoffed.
ʺThat's
your worry? Dorjee Drakden is my prisoner now. I have locked up his oracle. We talked just the other day. He won't interfere with you.”

“You make many assumptions, Sir Edmund.” The leader's face grew grave and serious as she spoke. “Dorjee Drakden will never submit to someone like you. We have known him since the dawn of time. He went by a different name then. They called him Pehar Gylapo, and he was the most feared and dangerous of all the gods. He has only ever bowed to the pure of heart, those who do not seek power.”

“Huh,” Sir Edmund snorted. “Don't seek power? I don't know anyone like that. Now, if we have deal, let's go.”

One witch grabbed the unconscious Dr. Navel and tossed him over her shoulder like a rag doll. The group began their climb behind Frank Pfeffer, who had no idea what dangers were following him.

OLIVER EXPLAINED TO
his sister that the yak in his dream on the airplane had said
You must remember enduring Love if you want to avoid a terrible fate.
He thought he had used up the yak's prediction back with the Poison Witches.

“When the yak said
love
,ʺ Oliver told Celia, “he meant
Love at 30,000 Feet
, how I
endured
that marathon. That's why I got the message instead of you. You wouldn't have thought of it as anything you had to endure. You loved that marathon.”

“It's a great show.”

“Okay, whatever. Just listen. I figured once I realized how the predication could save us back with the witches, that was it. Prophecies are sort of one-time things, right? The hero hears a mysterious message and then realizes what it means just in time to save the day and that's it.”

“So now you're the hero?” Celia scoffed. “I'm the one who realized what the note really said and I'm the one that pulled us back onto the wire over the gorge.”

“We're both the heroes, okay? We're both stuck, right? The point is that this prophecy from the yak wasn't, you know, disposable. I always thought it was dumb when a hero—sorry,
heroes
—got some supernatural message and could only use it once.”

He took the backpack off and rummaged around in it. The
TV Guide
was soaked and what was left of the cheese puffs was squished into a weird orange mush, but he pulled out the fancy remote control.

“It's just like having a different remote for the TV and the DVD player and the stereo and you can never figure out which one goes with which thing. If you had one remote like this that worked for everything, that'd be better, right? It's the same with the yak.”

“But you can never figure out what all the buttons do. How does that help with the yak?”

“If anyone could solve the riddle every time, what would be the point of sending a mysterious message? But I think I figured it out. The yak was talking about this moment too! He wanted me to remember that
Love at 30,000 Feet
marathon so we would know that the witches were showing us a fake show, but
also
because we sat still and quiet for fifty hours—”

“Fifty-two.”

“Fifty-two hours. If we can do that, we can meditate. We just have to pretend we're watching television.”

“We're at the bottom of a pit in a ruined shrine to a demon king, while a fake monk is looking for ancient tablets that our lost mother says don't exist, while our father is in a soul-stealing death coma.
How
are we supposed to pretend we're watching television? If I saw that on TV, I wouldn't believe it!”

“Just imagine that statue there is the TV, like a really dull public TV documentary, and, you know, watch it.”

Celia sighed, but she decided to humor her brother. What choice did she have?

“I get to hold the remote, then,” she said.

“But it's all wet. It's probably broken.”

“Still. I get to hold it.”

“But you always get to hold it,” Oliver argued. “And there's not even a real TV!ʺ

“If we're going to do your silly meditation plan, then I need to hold it so it's like normal,” she explained. “When we watched the
Love at 30,000 Feet
marathon, I had the remote.”

Oliver couldn't argue with her logic, so he handed over the remote, and the twins returned to their cross-legged positions.

As the light flickered on the floor behind them, the twins stared at the statue of the ferocious protector-spirit. At first, their minds were racing over their troubles again, over boring public television documentaries they'd seen in the past, over their grim future if they lost their father, if they became Sir Edmund's slaves, if they started middle school without cable TV.

“How can I tell if I'm meditating?” Celia whispered.

“I don't know,” Oliver replied. “Sometimes, on TV, people hum.”

“They hum?”

“They hum when they're meditating.”

“What do they hum?”

“I don't know.”

“I could hum the
Love at 30,000 Feet
song again.”

“Anything but that!”

“Hey, you said yourself it was part of the yak's message.”

“Okay, hum it.” Oliver sighed. His sister was right. If the yak said it, it might be a good idea to obey. So far, the yak with the green eyes had known more about the dangers they faced than their father had.

“Hmmm Ummmm m mmm mmmmy . . . mmm's m mmm m mmmmyy,” Celia hummed. “Hm mmmm um . . . hmmm mmm mmm mmm . . . hum mmm mm hum-mmmm. Hum . . . mmmm.”

Oliver listened and looked at the statue. His mind wandered to the green-eyed yak. Celia was focused on the tune of the song, on turning the words into hums, on how the opening credits went.

But then, as they let the sound of the waterfall in the distance take over, their minds started to clear. They stared with blank faces at the way the shadow of the statue in front of them danced on the wall, the way the darkness around the statue grew darker the more you stared at the brightly lit parts. They sat in the dark with their mouths slightly open, their eyes somehow wide and half closed at the same time, and their limbs hanging limp by their sides, unaware of the world around them, just like they were in the late hours of Saturday morning cartoons.

Oliver didn't notice that Celia had stopped humming. Celia didn't even notice that she had stopped humming. They were approaching a state their parents called
couch-potato-zombie brain
, but the monks of the monastery might have called it
Samadhi
—the perfect state of meditation.

It didn't help when a figure stepped from the shadows behind them and tripped over the flashlight in the middle of floor.

“Ouch!” a voice shouted. Oliver and Celia snapped out of their trance and spun to see a pile of maroon and yellow cloth, with a tiny shaved head poking out of it, facedown on the floor. “That hurt,” the voice said.

“Who are you?” Celia snapped.

The face looked up quickly. It was a boy, a young monk about the same age as Oliver and Celia.

“I live here,” the boy answered. “I was supposed to watch over the monastery . . . but it caught on fire, so I hid. I hoped someone would come back eventually to get me. Are you here to get me?”

“We don't even know who you are,” said Celia.

“I just told you,” the boy said as he stood up and brushed the dust and ash off of his bright robes. “I live here. I was supposed to be on guard, but . . . you know . . . I got distracted and the place caught on fire.”

“Another monk.” Celia looked nervously at her brother and raised her eyebrows.

“I'm Oliver,” Oliver told the boy, extending his hand. The boy shook it. Hesitantly, Celia introduced herself too.

“Have you lived here a long time?” Oliver asked.

“Almost as long as I can remember,” the boy answered. “I grew up here.”

“So you would know if there were any visitors?” Oliver was excited now, and no longer annoyed that their meditation was interrupted. “Did you ever a see a woman here? One who maybe looked like us a little bit? She, ummm, well . . . she made that film projector upstairs.”

“Dr. Navel!” The boy smiled. “Yes! We made that projector together. I love to build things. I helped her find some pieces for it because it's not so easy to get parts down here. She taught me English too, so I really liked her. She left the projector here for me and I was happy it didn't burn up too, though I don't have any movies for it. You are her children! Now I recognize you from the film she showed! Oliver and Celia, of course, of course. Hi! Welcome! How are you? How was the journey here? Not too hard I hope.”

He spoke really fast, like he hadn't talked to anyone in a long time.

The twins looked at each other, amazed.

“Where . . . ummm . . . Where did our mother go?” Celia asked. She was nervous. Of all the clues they'd chased all over the world with their father, this was the first real one they'd ever found.

“She went to seek the source of the greatest knowledge in the world,” the boy said. “Surely you knew that.”

“We . . . well,” Oliver said, while Celia just looked at her feet. Neither one wanted to admit that they'd never believed their mother was really still looking for the Lost Library of Alexandria. They thought she'd just run away from them.

“She won't find it, though,” the boy said.

“She won't?” Oliver said. “How do you know?”

The boy just shrugged. “Can't say.”

“Because it's not real?” Celia asked.

“Who can say what is real and what is not? We had ice cream here until the freezer broke. Then it melted into soup. Was it still ice cream? I ate it to find out. Then it became part of me. When was it ice cream? When was it soup? When was it me? All reality is an illusion.”

“You sound like Lama Norbu,” Oliver said. “And he turned out to be a total fake. His real name is Frank. He wasn't a lama at all. Or a llama. He pushed us down here.”

“Oh,” the boy said sadly. “So you didn't come here looking for me?”

“Well . . . no . . . ,” Oliver said. “Not exactly.”

The boy sighed.

“But we can take you with us, if we find a way out of here,” Celia promised.

“No,” the young monk said. “I think I should stay and watch over this place a while longer. I think I may have fixed the ice cream machine. I just need a few more weeks working on it. With ice cream, this place was pretty nice. But, if you wish to follow your mother's path to Shangri-La, I can show you the way.”

“So Shangri-La is real?” Oliver wondered.

“Names are not important. Call it whatever you like. Find it wherever you like.” He smirked at the twins. “But to continue your journey, this is the path to take.”