by P. B. Kerr
“Are you sure that’s not a sheep?” asked Grace.
It is said that adrenaline will enable a man being chased by a bull to leap a gate at one bound or a child to lift a very heavy object off its stricken parent. It was the same with John, except that he was a djinn and, as anyone knows, the djinn are made of fire. The boy did not think. He just did what survival urgently obliged him to do. He reached into the blazing fire, lifted a burning log and, in the same moment that the otorongo raced toward him, thrust it into the cat’s open jaws. The otorongo’s roar turned into a high-pitched scream, and the big cat shrank back from the fire in John’s hand. It turned all the way around, took another look at John with luminous eyes, as if judging the wisdom of mounting a second attack against someone armed with fire and, seeming to think better of it, gathered itself like the string on a crossbow and then shot out of the window.
John let out a breath and tossed the log back into the fire. “Man, that was close,” he said.
“Funny-looking sheep,” said Grace.
“Wasn’t it?” said John. He could see little point in arguing with her.
Grace grabbed John’s hand and looked at it with astonishment. “Your hand,” she said. “There’s not a mark on it. No burn. Nothing. Not even a smudge.”
John looked at his hand and was a little surprised to discover that she was right: His hand was quite unscathed.
“You’re not human,” she said almost triumphantly.
John smiled and for once hardly cared that a human should know the truth about who and what he was. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”
A little fearfully, Grace dropped his hand. “Hey,” she said, “don’t tell me you really are dead.”
“No,” said John, “I’m not dead. I’m a djinn.”
“Is that like a sheep?”
“Yes. It’s just like a sheep. Look here, why are you so interested in sheep?”
“‘Cause I’m a sheep myself. Not only that, but I’m a sheep that’s lost. If I find some of the other sheep that are lost, then I figure my brother, Bo, might come and find me. You know. Like in the nursery rhyme.”
John, who thought this was just about the saddest story he had ever heard, persuaded Grace to come back with him to the butler’s pantry where Bo was very pleased to be reunited with his sister.
“I’m afraid there’s a bit of a mess in the hall of shadows, Bo,” said John. “Like, the talking boards are all over the floor. But I kind of figured it was better to bring Grace back here ASAP rather than spend time cleaning up.”
“Please, sir, leave it to me.” Bo hugged Grace, who now started to cry almost as if she finally realized what had happened to her. “I am very grateful to you, sir, and am forever in your debt. If there is anything I can do for you.” And so saying, he kissed John’s hand gratefully.
“There is something you could do,” said John, taking back his hand, for he disliked being kissed on the hand by anyone, least of all a grown-up man. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone. My uncle Nimrod might get a bit uptight about it if he found out what I’d been up to. He’s English, you see.”
“Yes, sir. I understand perfectly. No further explanation is required. I used to work for a junior member of the British royal family, and they don’t get any more uptight than that, let me tell you. Those people are so stiff they could whip eggs into a meringue with one look.”
“Yes. That describes it very well, I think.”
Bo took John’s hand into his own, and John decided to go to bed before the Hungarian butler could kiss it again. He felt the evening had not been a complete waste of time. He had failed to gain any information about Mr. Rakshasas but at least he had rescued Grace.
As John went up the stairs, he saw Philippa and his uncle were still playing Djinnverso in the library. It looked like they were going to go on all night. Now that really was a waste of time, thought John. As complete a waste of time as you could have found on any college football field.
CHAPTER 3
MANCO CAPAC
The next morning, John came down to the breakfast room to find Uncle Nimrod and Mr. Vodyannoy wearing the same clothes as the day before and expressions that were brimful of accusation.
“It seems that there was an incident last night,” said Nimrod delicately.
John made a fist and cursed Bo for opening his mouth. No. That was unfair. Bo wasn’t the type to squeal on a guy. Not even when his master was a powerful djinn. His crazy sister, Grace, must have mentioned something. John bit his lip and hoped he could bluff it out.
“Oh, really? What kind of incident?”
“It seems there was a break-in at the Peabody Museum,” explained Nimrod.
John breathed a sigh of relief and tried to conceal a smile as he helped himself to a large steak.
“A violent break-in of a most peculiar nature,” continued Nimrod. “The front door of the museum was battered down by a large object, and a number of valuable artifacts were thrown about the place.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” said John.
“You were at the Peabody for two hours yesterday afternoon, were you not?” asked Nimrod.
“Sure,” said John. “And it was dullsville. I certainly didn’t steal anything from the place, if that’s what you were suggesting.”
“Let me finish telling you exactly what happened,” said Nimrod. “And then you will understand why I am speaking to you about it at all, John. You saw the Torosaurus outside the front?”
“Yes. It was cool.”
“This Torosaurus?” Nimrod handed John a photograph of the bronze dinosaur on the granite plinth in front of the Peabody.
“Yes.”
“It might interest you to know that this is what the Torosaurus looks like now.” He handed John a second picture. John shrugged. “I don’t see …”
“It’s the wrong way around on the plinth,” said Nimrod. “It now faces the museum, instead of facing away from the museum.”
John felt his jaw drop.
“You see the problem, John. Like a real Torosaurus, the bronze statue weighs several tons. So this goes beyond any normal student prank. In other words, it is impossible to imagine how anyone could do this who was not in possession of a very large crane, which seems unlikely. So the implication is clear. Someone must have used djinn power to have that Torosaurus climb off its plinth and batter the door down with its horn. Why, I’m not sure. Anyone who could achieve such a feat had no need to draw attention to their crime.”
Mr. Vodyannoy shrugged apologetically. “The police are baffled, of course. But they have found pieces of the Peabody’s front door on the bronze statue’s horn.”
“Mr. Groanin tells me you were most impressed with the statue,” said Nimrod. “That you actually mentioned what might happen if ever it came alive.”
“Yes, I did,” said John. “But look, I had nothing to do with the break-in. Honest.”
He was about to say more and then checked himself. Was it possible that this strange occurrence had something to do with the incident involving the talking board in the hall of shadows? Could the ghostly man with the feathered cloak he’d summoned from the other side have brought the bronze statue to life and broken into the Peabody Museum?
“Yes?” Nimrod said. “I think you were about to say something?” He waited for a moment. “Odd, don’t you think, that something as bizarre as this should happen on the very same night that Bo’s sister, Grace, is rescued from the east wing of Nightshakes after being missing for eight months? Or is that merely a happy coincidence?”
“I didn’t do anything to that Torosaurus,” said John. “And I certainly didn’t steal any silly old artifacts.”
“Perhaps. However I’ll hazard a guess that you can offer a better explanation for what happened than the one we have at the moment, which is to say, no explanation at all.”
John sighed. He could see no way around a full and frank confession now. Nimrod was onto him.
Of course, John was hardly surprised about this, given the amount of fish his uncle ate. The guy had a brain as big as a basketball. He was busted. So John told his uncle and Mr. Vodyannoy what had happened with the talking board on the outermost limits of the west wing.
“Light my lamp, are you mad, boy?” exclaimed Nimrod.
“Those boards should never be used,” added Mr. Vodyannoy. “They’re extremely dangerous. That’s why they’re kept hidden away.”
“I’m sorry,” John apologized. “I meant no harm, really. I only wanted to try to make contact with Mr. Rakshasas.”
Nimrod nodded. “I miss him, too, you know.” He put his hand on John’s shoulder.
“Do you really think it’s possible that my using the board is what caused the incident at the Peabody?”
“I’m afraid that’s the conclusion we must form,” said Nimrod. “Whoever it was you summoned would have been very upset.”
“Yes, but why?” asked John.
“Because he must have failed to do the one thing he had been summoned by you to do, which is to communicate,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “He was probably furious that you couldn’t speak his language. Can you remember what it was? Or any of the words he used?”
“No,” confessed John.
“Then we’ll have to work it out from the board you used. You see, each one will summon a different entity, from a different part of the world, depending on the origin of the board. Do you think you could remember what the board looked like?”
“If I saw it again, I’m sure I’d recognize it,” said John.
They went back to the hall of shadows. In daylight, it looked quite different from what he remembered. Hardly creepy at all, John thought. Bo had tidied all of the boards away into the thirteen drawers of the red lacquer cabinet and was already repairing the broken windowpane. He was even whistling. Mr. Vodyannoy opened the drawers and started to show John the various boards in his collection, and it wasn’t long before John recognized the one he’d used the night before.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the one. I recognize the Native American pictured on it. And the man in the armor.”
“Actually,” said Mr. Vodyannoy, “the Native American, as you call him, is an Inca. And the fellow with the armor is supposed to be Pizarro. This is the conquistador design. And it was made in South America about a hundred and fifty years ago. This makes it much more likely that the spirit you summoned, if spirit it was and not a demon or an elemental, came from that part of the world. It would certainly explain the otorongo.”
“I do remember the man had very large earlobes,” said John. “And a cape of feathers.”
“Then you actually saw him,” said Nimrod.
“Just for a second. A gust of wind from the chimney blew out some smoke that seemed to give his body a kind of form.”
“If only you could remember his name,” said Nimrod.
“We’ll go to the Peabody,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Perhaps one of the museum’s many South American exhibits will help to jog the boy’s memory.”
There was a police line in front of the broken door of the Peabody, and nobody was being admitted except museum officials and crime scene unit investigators from the New Haven police department. But none of this presented an obstacle to the three djinn. Away from the curse of Nightshakes, they simply left their bodies in Mr. Vodyannoy’s car and walked invisibly past the policeman on duty in front of the wooden smithereens that had once been the front door. But not before pausing to listen to some of the various local explanations of the same story that were being told to the several reporters, photographers, and television crews who now surrounded the Torosaurus. Some people suggested that students were somehow responsible for the new position of the bronze statue. Others pointed to the skies and insisted that aliens must have done it. An eccentric geologist claimed he had measured a small earthquake in the immediate vicinity of the university museum, which might, he claimed, have turned the statue around on its plinth. A few religious eccentrics were suggesting a divine explanation, while a group of conspiracy theorists were mooting the possibility that the Torosaurus had never been made of bronze at all, but had been a real Torosaurus in some kind of suspended animation.
John laughed out loud at some of these wildly different ideas and commented on their stupidity to Nimrod, forgetting for a moment that he was invisible and that someone might hear him. Someone did. One of the policemen. And he quickly told a television reporter that, in his opinion, the museum was haunted.
Inside the museum, the three invisible djinn — who were holding hands so as to avoid getting separated from each other — went into the rooms exhibiting South American artifacts and learned for the first time that these were the rooms that had been vandalized. Several glass cases had been smashed and their mostly golden contents now lay strewn on the floor, where a police photographer was busy recording the scene of the crime.
“Well, that makes sense, I suppose,” whispered Nimrod.
“What does?” asked John.
“That our anonymous South American friend in the cape of feathers should have come here. To the Hiram Bingham treasures.”
Mr. Vodyannoy told John that many of the artifacts in the Peabody had been brought to Yale from Machu Picchu, a lost city of the Incas discovered in the Peruvian Andes by Hiram Bingham — who was perhaps the model for Indiana Jones — in 1911. “The Peruvian government has long petitioned Yale for their return. Perhaps our invisible friend has lent his weight to the Peruvian cause.”
“That is one possibility,” admitted Nimrod.
For a few moments, they eavesdropped as a police detective spoke to a bespectacled man wearing a gray suit and a yellow bow tie.
“Can you tell us what’s missing, Professor?” asked the detective.
“Three rather large coins or medals,” said the professor. “Made of solid gold and Incan in origin. And some khipu. Incan message cords.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. One of our Incan mummies is missing.”
“You mean like an Egyptian mummy?” asked the detective. “Wrapped in bandages ‘n’ stuff?”
“It wasn’t just the ancient Egyptians who mummified their dead aristocrats, Lieutenant,” said the professor. “A number of pre-Columbian South American civilizations did so, too. Only they didn’t wrap them in bandages. And they didn’t seal them inside pyramids. At least, the Inca didn’t, anyway. They carried their dead kings around with them and got them out for ceremonial occasions. For all intents and purposes, they treated them like they were living people.”
“So what did this mummy look like?”
“Actually, rather ghastly. Like someone who had been dead for a very long time. They were embalmed, of course, but the effect is still somewhat horrific.”
“And who was this mummy, exactly?” asked the police lieutenant.
“I have no idea. Hiram Bingham was more of an explorer than an archaeologist and infuriatingly careless about properly identifying the Incan artifacts he brought here from Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. It could have been anyone, really. That is, any member of the Incan royal family.”
“Interesting,” murmured John.
“What’s that you said?” asked the professor.
“I didn’t say anything, Professor.” The detective shook his head. “Why do you think anyone would want to steal a mummy?”
“I was kind of wondering that myself,” whispered John, and felt Nimrod pull him quickly away as the detective and the professor stared suspiciously at each other.
“You must learn to be silent when you are invisible, John,” hissed Nimrod.
“I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t help it. With all that gold on the floor, a mummy seems like such a weird thing to steal, that’s all.”
“I very much doubt that it has been stolen,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “After all, you can hardly steal something that belongs to you in the first place.”
“You think the mummy belonged
to the guy in the feather cape?” asked John. “That it was his own mummified body?”
“I can’t think of a better explanation,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Can you?”
“Which makes it all the more imperative that we try to identify him,” said Nimrod.
“I don’t see how,” argued Mr. Vodyannoy. “You heard that professor. They have no idea who it was.”
“Let me think for a minute,” said Nimrod.
The three invisible djinn stopped in front of a wall-sized photograph of Machu Picchu. John recognized it from a history lesson at school: a lost Incan city on top of an eight-thousand-foot-high plateau in the middle of the Peruvian jungle.
“It can’t be easy to lose a whole city,” said John. “I mean, it’s not like a set of keys, is it? Or ten dollars. A city’s not exactly something you leave lying around. I mean, I bet there were lots of local Peruvian people who knew it was there all along. I bet it was never really lost in the first place. I bet this Hiram Bingham decided to say it was lost just to make himself famous.”
“Bravo,” said Nimrod. “I think there’s a lot of truth in what you say. There is, of course, a proper lost city of the Incas. But Machu Picchu isn’t it. Never was. That was just Hiram Bingham’s wishful thinking.”
“So what’s this other lost city, then?” asked John.
“Paititi,” said Nimrod.
John’s heart skipped a beat. “What did you say it was called?” he asked.
“Paititi,” repeated Nimrod.
For a moment, John’s mind’s eye pictured the heart on the talking board spelling out the word. “Is that P-A-I-T-I-T-I?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Nimrod. “Why? And do try to speak more quietly. I just saw a policeman cross himself.”
“Paititi was the first word that got spelled out on the talking board,” said John.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” After wringing his brain like a sponge for a moment, John added, “I’m sure. There was one other word I was able to distinguish. The language being written. I think it was Mancocapac.”