We Dine With Cannibals (5 page)

THEY SHINED THEIR
lights around the room.

“Whoa,” Oliver said.

“You're
sooo
good with words.” Celia rolled her eyes.

Along the far wall, hundreds of thick bundles of colorful string were hanging on golden hooks, all the way from the floor to the ceiling. As they stepped closer, Oliver and Celia saw that the bundles were definitely not mops. Each thick cord of string had different colored strings hanging off of it, sometimes hundreds, and every string was filled with knots.

Oliver looked all the way up to the ceiling, which was decorated with a giant golden key, studded with sapphires and rubies. “It's that symbol,” Oliver said. “Mom's symbol.”

“The Mnemones,” Celia sighed. “Of course. Why couldn't we just break into a normal Inca ruin?”

The Mnemones were the secret society their mother had told them about.
Mnemones,
for those of us who are not experts in phonics, sounds like “knee-moans,” because the first
m
is silent. The
k
in
knee
is silent too. There's no good way to describe a secret society that doesn't use silent letters.

The Mnemones were an ancient society of scribes from the Library of Alexandria. Their symbol was a jeweled key with Greek writing beneath it. They were the scholars of the library, recording every book and prophecy and object in the ancient collection. They preserved all the knowledge in the world, examined it, studied it. They had known the Lost Library better than anyone.

Their enemies were a mysterious Council made of the most powerful people in Alexandria, who wanted to control the library for themselves. Somehow, in the conflict between these two groups, the Great Library of Alexandria went from being great to being lost.

Some scholars said it burned down. Some said
it was looted and then burned down. And some, like Oliver and Celia's mother, believed that it had been hidden and not burned down at all.

The Mnemones and the Council were now locked in an ancient and deadly race to find it again. That's what had led the twins to Tibet, and that's why their mother had not come home, and that's why Sir Edmund had brought them to South America.

He worked for the Council. He might even be its leader. They didn't know why he wanted to find the library so badly, but he was not the type of explorer who would donate his discoveries to a museum. His plans were certainly as selfish as they were mysterious.

Oliver and Celia couldn't imagine why anyone would want to find an old library so badly, but they were caught up in the race now. Between their mother's secret society, Sir Edmund's Council, and Janice McDermott, the grave robber bent on revenge, Oliver and Celia Navel found themselves wishing the Lost Library had just burned down two thousand years ago. Then maybe they'd be left alone. Then maybe their mother would come home.

Sir Edmund's voice crackled over the speaker. “
What do you see? Celia? Oliver? I swear if you don't speak soon, I will feed you to a llama!
” Oliver looked concerned.

“Relax,” Celia said. “He can't feed us to anything while we're down here and he's up there.”

“Do llamas eat people?” Oliver wondered.

“Llamas eat grass. How many nature shows have you watched?”

“Tons, but still … things are always weirder in the real world than on TV.”

“We just see a lot of moppy, stringy things,” said Celia into the walkie-talkie. She knew she couldn't tell Sir Edmund about the symbol on the ceiling. She wondered if he already knew. He'd sent them down there for a reason, after all. “Over.”

“What is this place?” Oliver wondered. He went over and touched one of the bundles of string. Some of the knots were different colors and different shapes. From what he knew about knot tying, it would be very hard to tie so many different kinds of knots so many times. Why would someone do that?

“
Look for one with gold on it,
” Sir Edmund said. Oliver and Celia scanned along the wall with their flashlights, looking at the different colors on
the strings. There were strings dyed blue and yellow and red. There were strings dyed turquoise and purple and black. There were strings dyed neon green and neon orange.

There was a burst of static and the walkie-talkie squealed with feedback. Celia let go of the button. More static came through.

“You're breaking up. Over,” Celia said.

“
The—gold—if—find the golden—,
” Sir Edmund's voice crackled.

“I can't understand him,” Celia said. “Something about gold.”

She put the walkie-talkie down and ran her hands through the strings.

“I found one with gold on it,” Oliver said. He pointed up high toward a thick golden cord with more little strings hanging off of it than any other bundle. The other strings were every color under the rainbow, but the thickest one was made of shining golden thread.

“Climb up and get it so we can get out of here,” Celia said.

Oliver just sighed. It wasn't worth arguing about with her. He never won. So he started climbing up, using the bundles of string for handholds.

Celia was studying the bundle in front of her. The cord was smooth and a little slick to the touch. She was running her hand along a knotted neon-green string, lost in thought. Her brow was wrinkled.

“I don't know what this place is,” Oliver said, “or what it's got to do with Mom.” His voice was strained with the effort of climbing. “But I wish they'd left a ladder down here.”

Beverly was scurrying up the wall next to him. She seemed most comfortable when she was climbing. Not Oliver. He was exhausted when he finally got his hands on the golden cord about fifty feet off the ground.

“Got it!” he called back down happily.

“
Deserted—thirty—victorious,
” Sir Edmund's voice crackled over the speaker, though both twins were ignoring it now.

“Of course it would be the one all the way up here,” Oliver said. “Why can't people ever be looking for things that are on the ground?”

“This isn't right,” Celia said, still staring at the string in front of her.

“What? I can't hear you! Hold on. I'll be right down.” Oliver pulled the golden cord off the wall.
It was really heavy with all the string. He couldn't imagine what Sir Edmund would want with it, but he knew better than to ask. Explorers were always looking for weird old things that made no sense, the older and weirder the better.

“Don't touch anything!” Celia suddenly screamed up at him. “We have to get out of here now! It's a trap!”

By then, however, it was too late. As Oliver pulled the heavy bundle of string off its hook, one of the strands pulled tight. He saw that it disappeared into a hole in the wall, while all the others hung loosely. He pulled it a little harder. There was a loud clicking sound.

“Uh-oh,” he said. The giant key in the ceiling started to rotate, like it was unscrewing from the ceiling. It sent clumps of dust and stone falling to the ground as it turned. He put the golden cord quickly back on its hook, but it didn't help. A stone slab slammed down behind them, blocking their way out.

“Um … we've got a problem!” he yelled down at Celia, who was staring at the giant stone blocking their path. She wanted to yell at her brother but she didn't have time. She had to dodge chunks
of falling rocks. Then the floor started to split open in the middle. As the key in the ceiling turned, the crack in the floor grew wider. Celia jumped off to one side to avoid falling in, but the crack kept growing. The floor was disappearing under the walls, like a rug being pulled out from under her. She was running out of floor very fast.

From where Oliver was hanging, high on the wall, he could see right down into the pit as the floor opened. It was about as a deep as a swimming pool, but they would never survive a fall into it.

“Oh no,” he said as his worst fear came true.

He really hated mummies.

“CLIMB UP HERE!”
Oliver shouted down at his sister.

Celia looked up at Oliver and then down at the pit in the floor. There were hundreds of mummies. They were wrapped in rotten cloth, with dark stones for eyes. Their lifeless mouths grinned up at the wall of strings and their lifeless eyes stared blankly ahead. Each of the mummies held a sharp spear in its wretched hands. If Celia fell into the pit, she'd be skewered on the spears like a marshmallow on a stick.

She rushed to the wall that was covered in strings, stumbling a little as she ran. The floor kept moving out from under her. Just as she was about to run out of floor and fall into the pit of mummies, she leaped into the air and caught onto a bundle of string. The floor disappeared underneath
her. She looked down over her shoulder at the pit and realized that the only way to go was up. There were no safety ropes this time.

Celia started to climb. She wanted to get as far away from the mummies as she could. They still looked mummified for the time being, but if Celia knew anything about mummies it was that they never stayed dead for long. If there was a mummy on TV, it was sure to come to life eventually. It was like a law.

As she pulled herself up, she felt the string pull away from the wall and then stop. There was a hissing sound. She looked up for Beverly the lizard, but Beverly was climbing back and forth on the ceiling. The sound didn't come from her.

“Duck!” Oliver shouted.

Celia turned and saw a shining spear flying right at her. She swung out of the way like a monkey on a vine and grabbed another bundle of string just as the spear slammed into the wall where she had been. As her weight settled onto the new string, she heard another hiss and turned to see a spear shoot out of a mummy's skeleton hand. It was flying right at her. She let go and fell. The spear stuck into the wall again, just where she had
been. She caught onto another bundle of string just before she fell into the pit. Again there was a hiss, and a spear was shot from a mummy's hand, aimed right at her.

“It's all booby-trapped,” she said as she climbed up and out of the way.

“Keep moving!” Oliver yelled. “Climb toward me!”

Celia, who had spent more hours watching shoe commercials than playing on jungle gyms, found herself climbing and swinging like an acrobat from string to string, leaping and falling and catching on as spears shot at wherever she landed. She couldn't stay still for more than a second.

Her arms were tired, but she couldn't stop to rest. Every rope she caught onto set off a spear that was aimed right at it. The trap was designed so that you needed to use the ropes to climb when the floor pulled away, but the ropes made the spears shoot right at you. It might have been fun for a gymnast or a circus performer, but it was exhausting and deadly for Celia Navel. It was way too much like gym class.

Celia was swinging up one side of the wall and
down the other, dodging spears as she climbed and swung and jumped. Oliver knew his rope had set off the trap, but it didn't seem connected to a spear. He was safe where he was, so he reached out a hand and tried to catch Celia when she got close to him. She caught the rope right below him and pulled herself up, her face red and sweating. Just as their hands met, a spear shot between them and Celia let go so her brother's hand wouldn't be impaled. She fell.

“Celia!” Oliver yelled out in helpless agony, but his sister caught another bunch of string near the bottom.

As the rope hissed with her weight, she kicked her legs out behind her, using the string like a swing. She was flying through the air again, up and away, as the spear found its mark where her head might have been a moment earlier. As she flew forward, exhausted from her aerial acrobatics, she saw the shaft of a spear sticking out from the wall in front of her. She wrapped herself around it with a thud. It wobbled and shook, but it stayed in the wall.

The spears weren't connected to a trap, she realized.
Only the strings. Celia hung from the spear while she caught her breath. She was relieved she hadn't been impaled.

“You okay?” Oliver called to her.

“The spears …” She panted. “The spears … playing Peggo.”

“Peggo?” Oliver shouted. “Why are you talking about Peggo?”

Peggo was a game that people played on
Name Your Price
, an afternoon game show about guessing what things cost, like toilet paper and new cars. In Peggo, the contestant dropped a disc down a board covered in pegs so that it bounced around all the way to the bottom and the player won prizes depending on where it landed. Why his sister was babbling on about Peggo was beyond Oliver's understanding.

He looked down at his sister, slung like a rag over the shaft of the spear. Straight down below her, the cruel stone eyes of the mummies gaped upward.

“What do we do now?” Oliver called down.

“It's just like Peggo,” Celia called up. “The spears are the pegs.”