We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (25 page)

THEIR MOTHER REACHED
the corner first. She disappeared around the edge. For a moment Oliver and Celia were alone again, slipping and sliding on the narrow ledge, freezing and shivering hundreds of feet in the air. Then her hand shot back around the corner.

“Okay,” she called out. They couldn't see her face, but they could hear her. “One at a time I want you to jump straight out and grab my hand!”

“What?!” Oliver shouted back.

“JUMP AND GRAB!” their mother yelled. Oliver looked back at his sister.

“
I
followed
you
out here,” she said.

Oliver took a deep breath and pushed off from the wall, jumping toward his mother's hand and the open air. He caught her by the wrist and she tightened her grip around his. She used the forward motion of his jump to swing him around the corner, his feet flying out through the sky behind him. And she kept swinging him, right up above herself, right over the top of her head.

“Whoaaa!” he yelled. When he was above his mother, looking straight down at her and the ground way below, she let go of his hand. He kept going up in the direction she swung him, and found himself flying through an open window one floor up. He flew through feetfirst and landed on a pile of books, maps and papers, which scattered around him.

The room was dim. There was only a small lantern glowing on wooden table. He stood up and walked over to the table. He could hear his mother shouting at Celia outside.

“Just trust me!” she was yelling.

“Why should I trust you now?” Celia was shouting back.

“Because we have to get off this ledge!”

Oliver looked at the table. It was covered in scraps of paper with notes and sketches on them just like the one Choden Thordup/Janice McDermott had brought to the Explorers Club. In the corner of the room there was a mat with a pillow on it. This must be where their mother was hiding. Right under Sir Edmund's nose. The room didn't seem to have a door. Was that why their mother had to toss them in?

Suddenly, Celia came spinning through the window with her feet over her head and landed in a heap on the pile of books. The backpack flew in after her.

“Oliver!” they heard their mother calling. “Celia!”

They went over to the window and looked down at their mother.

“I'm going to jump and, if you can,” she shouted, “please catch my wrists and pull me in so I don't fall. Then, I promise, you can be mad at me.”

Oliver and Celia looked at each other and sighed. Then they reached their arms out and caught their mother's hands when she jumped up. They strained to haul her up into the room. The yeti looked up at them, licked his lips and bared his massive fangs. When their mother was inside at last, Oliver and Celia stepped back away from her, panting to catch their breath.

The twins and their mother stood for what felt like forever staring at each other. Their mother was lit from behind and her dark hair seemed to glow with the light from the window. After all this time, she didn't even seem real, but there she was. She had a few more wrinkles on the edges of her eyes and the corners of her mouth than last time they saw her, but otherwise, she looked the same. Her eyebrows were raised in that curious expression she had, one that Celia often made too. Celia used it to show her annoyance, where her mother used it with a kind of eagerness, a welcoming look that said wordlessly “What's next?”

“Should I hug you?” their mother asked. “I want to hug you. I know you're mad, but I'm your mother and I really want to hug you.”

“Not yet,” Celia added, still angry. “First tell us what's going on.”

“I can't,” Dr. Navel said. “It's better if you don't hear it from me.”

“No!” Celia yelled. “I've had enough of that. No more deciding what's better for us and what isn't. Dad says it's better for us if we don't watch too much TV, if we get out and see the world. Well, the world has nearly gotten us killed and all that television is the only thing that's kept us alive so far! So you tell us and
we'll
decide what's better for us. We're not kids anymore, like when you left. We're eleven now. Did you know that? We turned nine while you were gone. And then ten, and you still weren't back. Now we're eleven and you have to tell us why you were gone so long and why we had to almost die to get you to come find us!”

Their mother just looked at Celia for a long time. She looked a little sad, but also a little happy, the way people look when they listen to violins.

Oliver and Celia shifted uncomfortably in the silence. They heard the high mountain wind whistling outside.

“You have grown up a lot,” their mother said at last. “But I meant that it is better if you hear it from him.”

She pointed behind them and both children turned. Standing in front of them was a monk dressed in elaborate robes and armor with a sword shimmering in the dim light.

“Oliver, Celia,” their mother said. “I'd like to introduce you to my friend Dorjee Drakden, oracle, warrior-god and Consul General for the Great Protector Pehar Gylapo.”

The spirit suddenly filled the monk's body and he let out a loud hiss. His chest puffed and he slashed his sword through the air, spinning and coming toward them. Oliver and Celia drew closer to each other. The oracle stopped in front of them and spoke in the voice of Dorjee Drakden.

“The greatest explorers shall be the least,” he chanted. “The old ways shall come to nothing, while new visions reveal everything. All that is known will be unknown and what was lost will be found.” His face had turned red and agitated. He paused and then added.
“Trust no one!”

“Um,” Celia said. “What was
that
about?”

“That was a prophecy,” Oliver said.

“How do you know?”

“Because that's what prophecies sound like. They're cryptic.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“It means, ‘having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure,' ” Oliver said. “At least, that's what the yak told me.”

“That was why I brought you guys here,” their mother said. “To hear that prophecy. It is
your
prophecy.”

“But why?” Oliver demanded. “Why us? We don't even like to leave the couch!”

“Because it is your destiny to find the Lost Library,” their mother said.

Suddenly, the oracle spun around the room waving his sword, hissing and panting. He knocked all the papers from the desk and tipped over a small chair. The little monk seemed barely in control of his body, like the spirit was trying to break free of him. Finally, he stopped in front of Oliver and Celia again. He raised his sword above them and gripped it with both hands, like he was going to chop them apart. And then he pulled a universal remote control out of his sleeve. It was the one they'd left in the cave with the boy.

“For you,” the oracle said, in a totally different voice, almost like a child's. “All fixed.” He hissed again, right into their faces, and crumpled to the floor in a pile of robes. “Told you we'd meet again.” He winked and then fell sound asleep. The spirit had left his body.

Oliver stood looking at the remote, wondering how it could have gotten here from the cave.

“I'm sorry,” their mother said. “I tried to protect you for so long.”

“Yeah, great job,” Celia said.

“I did what I could. I made that note that only you would understand to try to get you here without the Council knowing why. Dorjee Drakden and I did what we could with the airplane and the yak. We even made that fake version of your soap opera, Celia, because I knew you would recognize that it was fake. It's hard even for Pehar Gylapo to broadcast images mystically like that, and he's the most powerful spirit in these mountains. It took a lot of convincing, but I thought it might save you from the Poison Witches. I'm sorry it didn't work in time to save your father, but mystical television programming is not as easy as it looks.”

“Who is this Council?” Oliver wanted to know.

“They're also looking for the Lost Library. They have been for thousands of years. They want all of its treasures so they can rule the world. For the last three years, I've been trying to beat them to it.”

“But why bring us now, though?” Celia demanded. “Why after all this time?”

“Because of the prophecy you just heard,” she said. “Because it means that I cannot find the library myself; only you can find it. I wanted to spare you. I thought I could find it without you, but I couldn't. You are the only ones who can uncover its true location.”

“In Shangri-La?” Oliver asked.

“Some might call it that,” she said. “Others might call it Atlantis or El Dorado or the City of Z. It's a blank spot on the map. Every time in history has such a place. Shangri-La is just one of them. But there are others, lost places where lost things go.”

“How are we supposed to find
that
?” Celia asked. “Why do people keep expecting us to find things? We're not explorers! What are we supposed to do?”

“You have all the tools you need. I've kept it from Sir Edmund and his Council all this time—a perfect copy of the Lost Tablets.”

“We have that?”

“I hope you do,” a voice said from behind them.

Frank Pfeffer climbed up from a trapdoor in the floor, pointing his gun at the Navel family. “Because you're going to give it to me. And I can't wait to announce the discovery myself at a very large press conference! Where the Navel family failed, Frank Pfeffer succeeded! The Lost Library of Alexandria! Should I announce it in Beijing? New York? Los Angeles? Perhaps there's a movie deal in it for me. . . . Oh, and before you get any ideas,” he added, “I assure you, the bullets in the gun are quite real this time.”

“
YOU'LL NEVER WIN
,” their mother said. “I didn't tell you anything in the Gobi Desert; I won't now.”

“You made me look like a fool.”

“I did what I had to do.”

“And you will again. You will give me this copy you mentioned, or I will shoot one of your children. Which should it be?” He lowered the gun to Oliver and Celia's level and moved the barrel back and forth. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a Navel by the toe,” he chanted.

“Is this the happy ending you mentioned?” Celia whispered to her brother.

“Wait!” Oliver said. “We'll help you.”

“What?” their mother said.

“What?” Celia said.

“What?” Frank Pfeffer said.

“We'll give you what we have. We don't care about all this Lost Library stuff. It's just a bunch of books.” He looked over at his mother sadly. “We just want our mom back.”