by P. B. Kerr
“Truly, I never heard such magnificent tunes so wonderfully performed,” admitted el Tunchi and set about whistling a much more complicated version of the same tune that John had heard earlier. But even he was forced to admit that his whistling hadn’t the dexterity and melodic breadth of John’s near symphonic whistling. “Perhaps you can, it’s true, whistle a better tune,” he said, angry with himself. “But I doubt there’s anyone who can touch me for the sheer power of my whistling.”
“All right,” said John. “But this time you go first.”
El Tunchi took a deep breath, pursed his lips, and let out a long, piercing whistle that sent several birds and quite a few insects heading nervously for the comparative quiet of the clouds.
John nodded. “Not bad,” he admitted. “But I can do better.” And wishing that he could whistle up a storm, as is the saying, he put his fingers in his mouth and started to blow.
At first the whistle was merely loud — indeed it was very easily as loud as el Tunchi’s. But as the whistle continued, the wind generated by the considerable movement of air from John’s mouth began to gather in power until the bushes and trees surrounding them began to move. Then el Tunchi’s headdress blew off, revealing his bald head. Next the shaman’s fur rug blew away, leaving him standing there in just a loincloth. Last of all, the lizard in his mouth was carried off. John might have laughed but for the fact that this would have required him to stop whistling.
“Please,” yelled the shaman in his own squeaky billy-goat voice, which wasn’t in the least bit frightening.
John reflected that when you heard a thin, reedy voice like that it was easy to understand why el Tunchi had used a lizard to do his talking for him.
“Stop, I beg of you,” wailed the shaman, who looked much smaller now that he had lost his curious wig and his fur wrap. He put his fingers in his ears, closed his eyes, and cowered down on the ground as if he thought the very forest would blow away. “Please. Stop that whistling. It’s driving me mad.”
But John kept on whistling like the north wind, determined to teach el Tunchi a good lesson. Never was whistling heard like it. Not ever at the South Pole nor at Cape Horn nor on the Russian steppes nor on the high seas, which are all places where great whistling winds carry all before them. And when he had blown away el Tunchi’s clothes, John blew away the shaman’s morbid organ: the stops made from tapir vertebrae, the pedal board made of human shinbones, the pipe casing made of armor, and, of course, the pipes themselves that were made of human skulls; all of them were blasted over the treetops or shattered into dust and never to be seen again.
After his experience with the Prozuanaci Indians, John was in the mood for handing out lessons. And while he sympathized with anyone who had been a victim of the Spanish conquistadors, he did not think this was sufficient justification to go around drilling holes in people’s heads and using their empty skulls as the pipes for some horrible organ. Only when he was quite satisfied that he had blown away every part of the organ did John finally take his fingers out of his mouth and stop whistling.
Gradually, the forest settled down again.
“Er, do you give in?” asked John, although it was quite clear that el Tunchi was beaten.
Looking very shaken, el Tunchi got up slowly, flexed his ears — for by now he was a little deaf — and bowed gravely to John. “Sir,” he said. “Most esteemed sir. Never before have I heard the like. Not in all of the five hundred years I have haunted this forest. Such whistling. The mere word doesn’t do it justice. My abject apologies, sir. I will restore you to your uncle, immediately.”
“Wait a minute,” said John. “All this whistling to catch people for their skulls has got to stop, do you hear? It’s not civilized.”
“Yes, sir. As you wish, sir. My organ is gone, so there’s nothing to take their skulls for.”
“Do you promise never to do it again?”
“Yes, sir. You have my most solemn promise. Never to do it again.”
John felt sorry for the poor creature. Now that he had destroyed his terrible organ and forbidden him to torment people in the forest it was clear el Tunchi would have nothing with which to amuse himself throughout all eternity.
“You know, you could use a real organ,” said John. “A proper organ with pipes and stuff, like the kind you get in a church.” And muttering his focus word, John made a facsimile of an organ he’d once seen in a cathedral.
El Tunchi regarded it, openmouthed and awestruck, like a sort of spaceship.
“It’s amazing,” breathed the shaman. “Astonishing. What an instrument. I just wish I knew how to play it.”
“You’re right,” said John. “It’s not much good to you if you don’t know how to play it. Your wish is my command.” And using his djinn power again, he gave el Tunchi a new talent. He made him a very great organist.
John spent the next five minutes persuading el Tunchi that his wish had been granted before at last he sat down and played some great organ music by Bach and Handel, and when he finished he knelt before John and kissed his hand.
“Thank you, great sir, thank you,” said el Tunchi. “You have given me my dearest wish in the world. I never liked making people disappear and then stealing their skulls. Only part of the reason for what I did was revenge. Mostly it was borne of frustration at not being able to play on a proper organ.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.” And he was. The huge organ sounded fantastic in the jungle. Indeed, to John’s ears it was the sound of civilization.
“But before I restore you to your uncle,” said el Tunchi, “there is something important I must give and tell you. Something that will help you on your quest to find Paititi.”
“There you are,” said Nimrod. “I was wondering where you’d wandered off to.”
“I didn’t wander off,” said John. “I disappeared. On account of the fact that I answered el Tunchi’s whistle.”
John told Nimrod about el Tunchi and the whistling contest.
“That explains it, then,” said Nimrod. “A little while ago, there was a violent wind that swept through the forest for no apparent reason. So it was you.”
“Where exactly was I? When I disappeared?”
“Difficult question.” Nimrod shrugged. “The next world. The one before. The one beside it. None of these words really means anything when applied to where you were. Or, to be more accurate, where you weren’t. You were here and there at almost the same point in time and space. Which is almost nowhere at all.”
“You mean like two dimensions?”
“Yes. But not quite.”
“So how is it possible that you felt the wind from my whistling?”
“Ah well, that’s the thing about whistling. If the sound keeps on going long enough, then it can actually move between these two so-called dimensions. There are a lot of hurricanes that get started by the idle whistling of ghosts.”
“I see,” said John, although he didn’t. Not quite.
“Anyway,” said Nimrod, “you’re back now. That’s all that matters. We’ve got to get moving. While you were off having fun, Zadie’s bat, Zotz, came back with a message for her from Virgil McCreeby. He says that he’s lost in the jungle. He asks Zadie to take on the shape of the bat so that she might come to him and help him discover exactly where he is.”
John nodded gloomily, still very worried about his sister and the others.
“Does that mean there’s time to go and look for Philippa and the others?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not,” said Nimrod. “Look, John, they’ll have to take their chances. Need I remind you of what Faustina commanded us to do? To secure the Eye. And if we can’t do that, then we can’t prevent anyone from finding the lost city of Paititi. If that’s where McCreeby is trying to get to, it won’t be for anything good. You can bet on that much. We have to stop him. At all costs. Do you understand? At all costs.”
John nodded. It wasn’t often that Nimrod sounded so alarmed about something.
/> “Speaking of which,” said John, “el Tunchi gave me this. Said it might help us find the city. Although I have absolutely no idea how, or even what it is.”
John handed Nimrod what looked like a necklace made of several hundred lengths — many of them knotted — of colored string.
“It’s a khipu,” said Nimrod, examining it carefully. “Unlike any other Bronze Age civilization, the Inca had no written language and so this was the way in which they encoded and recorded important information.”
“Yeah? So what does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” admitted Nimrod. “I don’t think anyone does. Khipu are as much of a mystery today as Egyptian hieroglyphs were until Champollion deciphered their meaning. Let us hope that a solution to how these things work presents itself. But since hope is seldom enough by itself …”
Nimrod opened Mr. Vodyannoy’s backpack and removed a book. “Inca Khipu Made Simple, by Terence Forelock. Frank Vodyannoy brought this from his library at New Haven because he thought it might come in handy. You’ll remember that it wasn’t just the tears of the sun that were stolen. Faustina reported several khipu and a golden staff stolen from that museum in Berlin. Perhaps this book will tell us something of what we need to know in order to understand the message contained in these pieces of string.”
“So, where to now?” asked John.
“We must press on, to the Eye of the Forest,” said Nimrod. “Along the route I memorized from Faustina’s map.”
CHAPTER 15
THE RISING
As Philippa plunged down the huge underground shaft she wished for — what else? — a parachute. But sufficient heat had not yet returned to her body for her djinn power to function and by the time she uttered her own focus word and a parachute did not appear, the last syllables of FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL had turned into a scream. Of course, she could not help it and she screamed loudly, like someone falling from the window of a very tall Manhattan skyscraper.
Or out of an airplane without a parachute.
And then, just as she closed her eyes and thought she might actually die of fright — for her heart felt as if it was beating faster than the hooves of a galloping horse — the rate of her descent slowed suddenly until, for a moment, she seemed to remain almost stationary. Philippa heard herself gasp with relief and opened her eyes again. The current of air had returned and was already strengthening.
“I’ve stopped,” she gasped. “Thank goodness. I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped.”
Gradually, she began to ascend the shaft. And when she reached the ledge from where, just a few heart-stopping seconds before, she had jumped, she was moving up almost as quickly as she had been moving down. There was just time to wave and to shout at Groanin, Sicky, and Muddy that she would see them at the top or on the outside.
If she had been going only a little slower she might have heard Groanin’s remark as he turned away from the edge of the shaft with a tear in his eye.
“I thought she was a goner for sure,” he said. “I say, I thought that little lass was a goner, for sure.” He shook his head, and took out a handkerchief. “I’d never have forgiven myself if something had happened to her. What we’ve been through together. I couldn’t begin to tell you. The times she’s saved my bacon.” He blew his nose loudly. “Sorry.”
His small head still observing Philippa’s progress up the chimney shaft, Sicky whistled. “Even for a djinn girl, I reckon she’s got plenty of guts,” he said.
“That she has,” said Groanin.
Intermittently poking a hand into the severe current of air now blasting up the shaft, Muddy said, “Ain’t never seen anything like this. The way the current of air goes on and off like a gigantic hair dryer.” He started to walk back along the rocky path. “I figure if I stopped to think about this, then maybe I wouldn’t find the nerve to go after her. So I ain’t gonna do it.”
“That’s the way I feel about it, too,” said Groanin, quite mistaking the thrust of what Muddy was talking about. “I don’t think I could ever jump now.”
“Stop to think, I mean,” added Muddy and, taking a long run at it, he jumped into the current of air and went sailing up the shaft after Philippa with a loud whoop of relief and exhilaration.
“Flipping heck,” said Groanin. “I thought he meant he wasn’t going to do it. Not that he was actually going to jump.” He looked at Sicky uncomfortably. “How do you feel about doing this, Sicky, old mate?”
Thoughtfully, Sicky stroked the pieces of string that had been threaded through his lips by the Xuanaci Indians, and which looked like the whiskers of a Chinese Mandarin.
“Sick,” he said, shaking his shrunken head. “Pretty sick. My stomach feels like I swallowed something nasty. But maybe Muddy is right. Maybe it’s best not to think at all. Maybe it’s best just to do, huh?”
Sicky was already walking back down the path that led to the edge of the shaft. Then he turned, clenched his fists, and readied himself like a sprinter.
Groanin gulped loudly. “Sicky,” he said weakly. “Sicky, old mate. Let’s talk about this. If you jump, it’ll be just me down here on my own, and I’m not sure I can do this.”
“You is the one who has done the parachute training,” said Sicky. “Not me. I never jumped off anything before. Not even a bed, on account of the fact that I always slept in a hammock. I ain’t got no head for heights. Truth be told, I hardly got a head at all. But Muddy’s right. How’s that old poem go? ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do …’”
Sicky charged back up the path without bothering to finish his quotation. Indeed, he hardly knew that it was a famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. But Groanin did. Moreover, he knew the last two words of the line Sicky had spoken and uttered them quietly as the guide launched himself off the edge of the chimney shaft: “‘Theirs but to do and die,’” he said, and grimaced uncomfortably.
But Sicky did not die. The guide’s head may have been unusually small but there was nothing wrong with his ability to judge a long jump and, like a shuttlecock, he quickly sailed up the chimney.
“What the heck did you want to go and quote that poem for?” Groanin shouted after him. “‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’ Hardly inspiring of confidence, is it? ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred.’ It shows a want of consideration, that’s what it does, a want of consideration.” Groanin shook his head. “Still, what can you expect of a foreigner?”
Groanin hefted another yellow stone into the shaft and, as it followed Sicky up the shaft, he had an idea. Just before he started his run up he would throw another stone, and if the air carried the stone up he would run, and if it didn’t, he would wait. That way he might avoid what had happened to Philippa. And this was what he did, although such was the strength with which he threw the rock that it almost went straight through the powerful current of air without stopping. Of course, thanks to the twins (and Dybbuk) Groanin was possessed of an extra-strong arm. But because of his largish stomach he was no athlete and certainly not much of a runner, and when he did jump, instead of jumping feetfirst, he jumped headfirst. This had the effect of turning him upside down and, yelling noisily, Groanin sailed up the chimney like a large and loudly deflating balloon.
Instead of exiting the chimney at ground level and in the open air, Philippa found herself flying up through a broken crystal ceiling and into a large stone chamber. Fortunately for her and the others who followed, the crystal ceiling had been smashed when, to test its strength, Groanin and Sicky had tossed the yellow boulder into the maelstrom of warm air. But for that they might have met the same sticky fate as a few bugs squished on a car windshield.
Being young and agile, Philippa landed on her feet, but her first thought was for her larger, heavier companions and how they might land. She glanced around at her surroundings. The chamber was circular, as large as a circus tent, and covered by a larger glasslike roof, which was mostly overgrown with jungle vegetation that allowed only a few shafts of greenish light
to shine through. The air was thick, wet, steamy, and larded with a strong smell of decay. Philippa thought it was like being in a giant aquarium. But already she was warm enough to feel djinn power returning to her bones. And she had just enough time to mutter her focus word and conjure a large pile of thick mattresses on the floor all around the shaft’s crystal ceiling before Muddy shot up into the air like a Ping-Pong ball in a carnival shooting gallery. He managed to twist his way through the air like a large cat, and to fall safely on the pile of mattresses Philippa had thoughtfully provided.
Guessing their origin, Muddy smiled at Philippa and nodded his gratitude. “Thank you, miss,” he said, picking himself off the floor. “‘Preciate it.”
Sicky arrived less than a minute later. He seemed to go higher in the air than Muddy or Philippa and, but for the fact that his head was so small, he might have banged it on the roof. Picking himself up off the mattresses he said, “What is this place?”
“I don’t know,” said Philippa, who hardly dared to think about where they were until she knew Groanin was safe. “But it’s kind of creepy.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Where’s Mr. Groanin?” she asked Sicky. “Guess he’ll be along in a minute. Soon as he’s plucked up the nerve.”
And then he was there, yelling loudly and flailing his arms and his legs as he attempted to right himself, and looking more than a little like a trapeze artist whose act had gone very wrong. As he reached the roof he reached for a creeper, clung on to it tightly and stayed there, swinging twenty or thirty feet above the heads of Philippa and the others.
“Let go,” said Philippa. “This pile of mattresses will break your fall.”
“Come on, Mr. Groanin,” said Muddy. “Jump.”
“I’m all right up here, thank you very much,” Groanin said stiffly, for he was still unnerved after his unusual flight. “I’ll come down when my stomach has caught up with my head.”