Jake Atlas and the Quest for the Crystal Mountain

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  That night was nasty too. I kept waking with a dry mouth, like I’d been chewing sand. When I did sleep, I had crazy dreams. In one I was with my family in a Himalayan valley, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, looking up at Mount Kailas. The valley swarmed with military vehicles, trucks and helicopters. The People of the Snake were uncovering the mountain’s secrets. I turned and saw Marjorie, the Snake Lady, right beside me, her snow-white hair lit almost orange by the sun and her ruby lips curled in a smug, victorious grin. It felt so real, the heartbreak of defeat…

  I hated that woman.

  I woke again and went to get more water. A curtain rustled, and I saw that the balcony door was open. I edged closer and slowly pulled back the curtain.

  “Dad?”

  He sat wrapped in a duvet, gazing across Lhasa, as the morning sun began to paint the rooftops pink and red. When he heard me he looked away, wiped his face on the duvet, and then turned back and smiled.

  “Hey, Jakey,” he said.

  He only called me Jakey when he wanted to hide something. His eyes looked red and blurry. Was it the altitude, the lack of sleep … or had he been crying? He slid his glasses on and stared again across the city. A flock of birds swept through a sea of mist and up past the Potala, which looked like a fairytale castle in the clouds.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Were you here before?” I asked.

  “Yes. A long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Another lifetime.”

  “What happened? Has it got something to do with the person we hope to meet?”

  Dad didn’t look at me. I sensed that he couldn’t. His gaze stayed lost somewhere among the dawn-coloured roofs.

  “Are you OK, Dad?” I asked.

  “I will be if I get a hug.”

  “No way.”

  “Come on! One hug!”

  I hugged him, and saw salty tracks on his cheeks. Suddenly I felt awkward, like I was intruding, so I left him alone and rushed back to bed.

  I didn’t really sleep after that. I lay awake, angry at Mum and Dad for keeping secrets. We were supposed to be a team, but it didn’t always feel that way.

  Maybe, though, some things weren’t meant to be shared. All I knew was that this place – Tibet – held a difficult memory for my parents. I had no idea then that the story would soon involve me too, and in the worst possible way.

  9

  The breakfast buffet was insane.

  I piled my plate with far more food than I could eat: pancakes and syrup, sausages and bacon, watermelon chunks and chocolate cereal. My family stared at me as I shovelled the mushed-up mix into my mouth.

  “That’s disgusting,” Pan muttered.

  “It really is,” Mum agreed.

  Mum had a tiny bit of toast, Pan picked at a yoghurt, and Dad downed three coffees. We all looked bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. It wasn’t just the dreams that had kept us awake, but also all the water we’d had to drink to help us acclimatize. I’d needed to pee about ten times.

  “What time’s our tour?” I asked, between mouthfuls.

  “We’re not going on a tour, Jake.”

  I knew that; I was playing dumb to get information. “But you booked us on one with every guide in Lhasa. How will that help us find your contact?”

  Dad looked at Mum, who shrugged, giving him permission to reveal more of their plan.

  “The name we used to book the tours,” Dad said.

  “The Russian name. Zolotaya?” I asked. “That’s just a made-up identity that Sami put in the passports, isn’t it?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Mum hissed. “It’s not just a random name. We gave Sami specific names for some of the documents.”

  “The names are signals,” Pan realized. “You booked a tour with every company, so there will be twenty guides holding up a card with that name. To most people it will look like a prank, but if your contact sees it they’ll recognize the name.”

  Dad poured himself a fourth coffee. “It’s an old trick,” he said. “Not one that always works.”

  “But who’s the contact?” I asked. “And how will they know where to meet us?”

  Mum dropped her toast and pushed the plate away. “Just eat up.”

  I wish I hadn’t eaten so much. After treasure hunting, overdoing it with food is my favourite thing. But this time I had overdone overdoing it.

  “Does altitude do weird things to your stomach?” I asked.

  “No, Jake,” Mum replied. “Fifth helpings at breakfast do. Now look sharp.”

  I was supposed to be looking out for signs that the People of the Snake might be watching. But it’s hard when you’re in a new place to look at anything other than the new place. Especially a place like Lhasa.

  We walked past shoeshine boys, ear cleaners and eyebrow pluckers. Noodle stalls, hair salons, discos, and karaoke bars. Shops flogging expensive souvenirs to tourists – traditional woven carpets, turquoise and coral jewellery, jewelled Tibetan knives. There were guesthouses and teahouses and yak-steak houses. Yaks seemed big business here: there were places selling yak butter, yak cheese, even coats stuffed with yak hair. Children leaned out of windows, yelling “Tashi delek!” and sticking out their tongues. At first I thought they were being rude, until Pan explained.

  “‘Tashi delek’ means blessings and good luck,” she told me.

  “So why are they poking their tongues out at us?” I asked.

  “That’s a form of respect here, Jake.”

  That was awesome! I continued along the street, sticking my tongue out at every local I passed. It was easy to spot the Tibetans among the tourists. They had rounder faces, which they needed for their crazy big smiles. Some of the men dressed like cowboys, in wide-brimmed hats and heavy woollen tunics called a chuba. Women wore layers of fur and leather, and flowerpot hats with hanging flaps.

  Most of the buildings looked the same: low and whitewashed, but with crazy splashes of colour. Wooden shutters were painted with intricate patterns in bright yellow, red and green, and chains of multicoloured flags hung from roofs, like festival bunting. Every flag was covered in written prayers that were thought to rise into the sky each time they fluttered.

  The decorations were amazing, but they looked ordinary compared to the Potala. Sheer whitewashed walls, dazzling in the sunlight, led up to the red and gold palace, with its fluttering flags. I’d seen hill-forts before; they usually glared down in warning at a town. The Potala, though, looked like a welcome banner in the heart of the city.

  Sleepy-looking sightseers clambered from tour buses in the palace forecourt, watched by suspicious Chinese army officials. As we approached, the soldiers shifted their attention to the other side of the forecourt, where a bunch of tour guides were getting into a squabble. They’d all begun to notice that their placards showed the same name: Zolotaya.

  Pan spotted me grinning. “It’s not funny, Jake,” she muttered. “Those guides just lost a morning’s work.”

  “Yeah, but for a good reason, right?”

  “Our reason. Not theirs.”

  “None of them lost anything,” Mum said. “We paid them all up front. Come on.”

  We carried on past the guides and into a warren of streets, where so many soldiers watched from rooftops that it felt like we’d entered a siege. They were on every corner too, with riot shields and machine guns. Maybe the locals were used to them, or perhaps they refused to be intimidated, because none of them seemed to notice. Everyone was too busy being religious.

  Almost immediately we became part of a flow of Tibetans shuffling in the same direction through the narrow streets, all thumbing prayer beads and chanting.

  “They’re walking the kora, aren’t they, Dad?” Pan asked, shouting above the noise of all the prayers.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “This area is called Barkor,” Dad said. “It’s the holiest part of Lhasa. Devout Buddhists come here to walk a route known as a kora, a clockwise pilgri
mage around its temples.”

  Almost every building here was a temple, judging from the number of people chanting outside them. Monks in rose and saffron-coloured robes scattered petals around flagstones. Some pilgrims were on their knees praying; others ran their hands along rows of bronze drums that spun on wooden frames.

  “What are those spinny things?” I asked.

  “Prayer wheels,” Mum replied. “Each one contains hundreds of written prayers. Each time you spin it all of the prayers are supposed to fly up to heaven.”

  “No one needs that many prayers, do they?”

  “Buddhism is all about merit, Jake,” Pan explained. “If you say enough prayers and make enough pilgrimages, you’ll get reincarnated as a better person.”

  I kept staring, turning, trying to take it all in. One thing still seemed weird: if Buddhists were all about helping other people, why were there so many beggars? Dozens of them sat along the walls holding out pots and croaking “Guchi, guchi…”

  “Why are there so many homeless people?” I asked.

  “They’re not homeless,” Dad told me, “they’re pilgrims. Some have spent everything they have to get here. They ask for money to get home, and other pilgrims help.”

  We kept moving with the pilgrims until the lanes opened to a small square outside a temple that made all the others seem like a warm-up. Everyone here was going nuts – weeping, chanting, and shuffling in circles. Some people slid on their stomachs along the ground, thrusting their arms towards the temple. The paving stones were polished to a shine from all the people sliding around.

  I hadn’t known religion could be done at such volume. The train-carriage rattle of spinning prayer wheels and the constant chanting were so loud we could barely hear ourselves speak.

  “This is the Jokhang Temple,” Pan said. “It’s the holiest place in Buddhism.”

  The building was a bit bigger than the others: two big white square blocks and a smaller red one in the middle. But it was nothing grand, considering its importance. Two gold statues of deer guarded an entrance draped with banners and prayer flags.

  “So why are we here?” I asked.

  Pan and I looked at our parents, thinking they might finally tell us what this was all about. But they just stared at the temple with glazed eyes, like they were at a funeral. Dad reached out to take Mum’s hand, but she snapped it away and suddenly she was all business again.

  “Let’s get on with this,” she said.

  I still had no idea what this was, only that we were in this madness. I was beginning to get annoyed; our parents kept banging on about how we had to act like a team and then deliberately kept us in the dark.

  I guess Pan felt the same, because as we followed our parents into the temple she mouthed a few words that I can’t write here. Mum and Dad seemed to know what they were doing, but as I followed them through the gloomy entrance, I began to get a bad feeling about this place.

  10

  Our parents led us deeper into the temple, past a huge bronze prayer wheel. Pilgrims shuffled clockwise around it, turning the drum by a handle at its base. Some were going round several times, grinning like kids in a revolving door. The deeper we went into the temple, the thicker the air grew with smoke from incense and yellow candles in racks against wall.

  “That smoke reeks,” Pan muttered.

  “Yak butter candles,” Dad replied. “You’ll smell that a lot in Tibet.”

  Inside, we joined a throng of pilgrims on a kora route around pillared chapels with so many drapes and banners that it seemed like we were walking through a series of tents. Statues of the Buddha watched us from altars, their wide candle-lit eyes glaring as if they’d just caught us stealing one of the pilgrims’ prayer beads.

  The place was absolutely pulsing. Pilgrims chanted, whispered, gasped and sobbed. Beads clicked, drums banged and cymbals clashed. Some pilgrims were on the ground, dragging themselves around the chapels on their bellies. Yak butter smoke drifted through sunlight shafts from high windows.

  It was a really interesting place, but I was so annoyed with my parents for being secretive that I was on the verge of walking off, until Dad suddenly stopped. He’d led us into a niche off one of the chapels, the only altar that didn’t seem to feature on the pilgrimage route. There was no statue here, just about a hundred yak butter candles flickering in tiered rows.

  My parents exchanged another weird look, and Mum sighed so heavily that every one of the candles flickered.

  “You do it,” she told Dad.

  “Do what?” Pan seethed. “This is infuriating. Tell me, I’ll do it.”

  “Be quiet, Pandora,” Mum snapped.

  There was a touch of “or else” about that, so Pan just huffed. Mum and Dad didn’t seem to hear as they gazed at the altar and its racks of candles.

  “I’ve forgotten the sequence,” Dad said.

  “John, you can’t have.”

  “It was fourteen years ago, Jane.”

  “Fine, I’ll do it.”

  All Pan and I could do was watch as Mum leaned towards the altar and blew out six candles up and down the racks. Foul-smelling yak butter smoke rose in columns, causing her to splutter. I still had no idea what was going on, but Pan had sussed it out.

  “That sequence of candles was a code, wasn’t it?” she breathed.

  Dad checked that no one was watching. “A hatch just opened under the altar,” he whispered. “We need to go through, hands and knees, one by one. Jane, you first. Ready?”

  “But you taught us to never go through a secret entrance unless you know what’s on the other side,” I said.

  “That was not in your training.”

  “Actually it was, John,” Mum muttered.

  “Was it? Well, I’m changing the rule. It’s OK to do that if your parents tell you to.”

  “That’s a terrible rule,” Pan said.

  “Well, it’s the rule now. Are you ready?”

  “What’s the big deal, though?” I asked. “We’ve been through secret hatches before. And secret doors and secret tunnels and secret other things. Why’s this one more secret than all those other secrets? It’s needlessly mysterious.”

  “Very needlessly,” Pan agreed. “And not even that mysterious. It’s a secret hatch. Ooh, big deal.”

  “Jane, go!” Dad hissed.

  Mum vanished, dropping and diving through the drape that hung down in front of the altar. Pan went next, then me. I rose into a small chamber with just enough light to see a wooden spiral of steps twisting up into darkness.

  Dad crawled through after me, then sprang up into a slightly unnecessary action pose. “Everyone OK?” he asked.

  “You could have just said there were stairs here,” I replied.

  “So needlessly mysterious,” Pan mumbled.

  Dad led the way up, our footsteps echoed into the darkness. I don’t know what I expected to find at the top: a secret hideout, maybe, or a trap, or something. Instead there was … nothing.

  “Torch,” Dad whispered.

  His goggles shone a super-lumen beam around a wood-panelled room that was totally empty other than a rack of candles that didn’t look like they had ever been lit. A slim opening led to a corridor and more darkness.

  Dad touched Mum’s hand, but she snatched it away and gripped her amulet. This room meant something to them. I was about to ask what, when a creak echoed from along the corridor.

  “Someone’s coming,” Pan whispered.

  There was another noise now too, a sliding sound that, together with the creaky floorboards, sounded like a groaning old man dragging a sack.

  It was just a beggar, whispering “Guchi, guchi” to ask for coins. The person slid along the ground, face hidden under an avalanche of shawls and robes. A calloused hand reached out, and unhealthy-looking yellow eyes peered from under the flaps of a flowerpot hat.

  “Please,” the beggar croaked, “help me stand.”

  Pan reached to help the beggar up. Mum shot forward, as if she
’d been zapped with electricity.

  “No, stop!” she cried.

  The frail hand snatched hold of Pan’s wrist. Pan didn’t have time to scream before the beggar was standing up, twisting her arm, while the person’s other hand whipped out a knife and held it to my sister’s neck.

  I could just see enough of the beggar to tell it was a woman. She looked Tibetan, with a face like old leather. Her yellow eyes grew wider, glaring. Her voice was as rough as sandpaper.

  “Back off. Don’t make a move.”

  She twisted Pan’s arm tighter, causing my sister to cry out. I was about to rush at her, but Dad held me back.

  “It’s OK, Jake,” he insisted.

  I shook him off. “OK? She’s got a knife to Pan’s throat!”

  I threw the crazy woman my fiercest glare. “I don’t know who you are, lady, but if you harm one hair on her head, all the prayer wheels in Tibet won’t forgive what I’ll do to you.”

  A gold tooth glinted from the shadow of the beggar’s hat. She was smiling.

  “He really is your son, Jane,” she hissed.

  “You know this lady?” Pan screamed.

  Mum moved slightly forward, hands raised in surrender. “Hello, Takara,” she said. “Thank you for coming. Please could you let go of my daughter? We are here to talk, nothing more.”

  “The last time you promised me that,” the woman shot back, “a lot more happened than just talking. Or have you forgotten?”

  “We’ve not forgotten.”

  “So why are you here? I saw your little signal with the guides.”

  “We need information.”

  “I don’t help treasure hunters any more. I’m a pilgrim now.”

  Dad edged forward too, pushing me gently back as he did. “Fourteen years, Takara. That whole time you’ve been here?”

  Her golden tooth gleamed brighter in his torch light. “Perhaps you think forgiveness for what we did comes easier than that.”

  “We gave up treasure hunting too,” Mum said. “After…”