by P. B. Kerr
“So that he can learn the secret of making gold,” added John.
“He does have an excellent library,” said Nimrod. “Perhaps the best of its kind anywhere in the world. And of course making gold would be very much in keeping with his character.”
John looked at one side of the door and then the other. “Maybe this’ll sound dumb,” he said, “but this is a door that looks like it leads not much farther than the other side of the door.”
“If that were the case,” said Nimrod, “Ti Cosi would hardly have gone to the trouble of creating such a large and elaborate knot with which to bind the bolt.”
“Yes, but if the door was meant to be a trap,” objected John, “then why bother to secure it at all? Also, I can’t imagine that the knot would have presented much of a problem to conquistadors armed with Toledo steel. No more than the more famous Gordian knot presented much of a problem to Alexander the Great. Instead of untying the knot, he just hacked it in two with his sword, right?”
“This knot was for the protection of the local natives,” explained Nimrod. “So that they wouldn’t go through the door by accident. The natives would never have dared cut or undo a sacred knot that had been tied by an important priest like Ti Cosi. That would have been sacrilege. No, the idea was that if the conquistadors showed up they would probably cut the knot and their greed for gold would do the rest. I mean, obviously they would have tried to remove the door and to do that they would need to step through it.”
“But what happens when you step through? Where does it go? And please don’t say ‘the other side’ or I’ll be forced to bang my head against one of those trees.”
“I’m not entirely sure what is on the other side,” confessed Nimrod. “To find out we would have to untie the knot, which I’m not going to do.”
“What? We come all the way here and we’re just going to leave it and go back home again? That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“On the contrary,” said Nimrod. “It makes perfect sense. It seems to me now that if McCreeby has lured us here, to the Eye of the Forest, very possibly with the intention of discovering its exact location, then the last thing I’m going to do now, John, is untie that knot. Even if I could.”
“But suppose McCreeby just cuts the knot in two like Alexander?” John shrugged. “It’s my impression of old Virgil that he might not be too bothered about committing a sacrilege or two.”
Nimrod sighed again and glanced around. “Yes. Perhaps that’s also true. It’s beginning to look as though Faustina was right and that that this site needs some protection other than a sacred knot and a few lupuna trees.”
John looked at the dozen or more trees surrounding the Eye. At least one hundred and fifty feet tall, each one of these trees was as big as a house at its base.
“I don’t see how a few old trees were ever going to stop a guy like Virgil McCreeby,” he said.
“These trees contain ancient spirits that are supposed to protect the rain forest,” said Nimrod. “Spirits that will haunt you if you don’t respect the trees or the chacras — the sacred forest clearings — they sometimes protect.”
“If they can’t stop a few loggers from chopping them down, what chance are they going to have against a bona fide magus like McCreeby? Surely what this particular area needs is a propugnator. A perimeter binding. Like the one you made for our camp after we were attacked by the giant centipede.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not nearly so simple as it sounds.” Nimrod lifted his gaze to the treetops. “It turns out that there’s a good reason no loggers have ever come to this place. Just look again at your surroundings. Don’t they remind you of something?”
John followed Nimrod’s gaze and saw how the highest boughs of the trees — he counted sixteen lupunas — seemed to join in arches, creating a sort of vaulted roof above their heads. He shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I guess it’s kind of weird the way these trees grow so neat and straight. Almost like pillars. And the way they all join up at the top. Sort of like they were designed that way.” He shrugged again. “I guess it reminds me of a church.”
“That’s exactly what it’s like,” said Nimrod. “You see, this is more than a chacra. This is a holy place. This is an abadía de árboles, an abbey of trees. I would no more use djinn power to make a binding within an abbey of trees than I would use it in a church, a mosque, or a synagogue. I don’t think God would like it.”
“We have to do something,” said John. “You said yourself this site needs some extra protection against Virgil McCreeby.”
“Yes, but what?” muttered Nimrod. He shook his head. “Light my lamp, but this requires some careful cogitation. I shall retire to my tent for a short time while I suspend consciousness and consider the matter through introspection.”
John nodded although he had no idea what Nimrod was talking about. But he was more used to that than he had been of old.
“Will you be all right on your own for a while?” asked Nimrod.
“Of course,” said John. “Maybe I’ll look at that book about the khipu. Try to figure out what the one el Tunchi gave me means.”
“Good idea,” said Nimrod, and handed the book over to John, who then left him alone in his tent.
The boy sat down, leaned against a lupuna tree, and started to read.
Minutes passed and John felt his eyelids begin to droop. He’d never been much of a reader. The longest book he had ever read was a copy of the Arabian Nights given to him by Nimrod to which a djinn binding had been attached that caused him to stay awake long enough to finish it all in one sitting. But this book was different. It was all about mathematics, which had never been John’s strong suit, and it was soon patently clear that the writer only had the vaguest idea of how khipus worked.
Much clearer to John were his own ideas, if things dreamed when you are asleep inside a tree can ever properly be called ideas. Not that these were his own ideas any more than they were his own dreams, for everything that swirled around his soundly sleeping mind informing him about the khipu in his hand came from an ancient spirit deep within the lupuna tree. For although the wood of these trees is very hard, lupunas can easily absorb unwary people who fall asleep leaning against them, sometimes for a short period of time and sometimes for much longer. People have been known to disappear inside a lupuna tree for several centuries. But, recognizing John as a djinn — and a good djinn at that — this particular lupuna tree absorbed him for only an hour or two. It was long enough for the tree spirit to pass on to John an understanding of what a khipu was and how it worked, as well as the true meaning and solution of the knot on the door of the Eye of the Forest. This was both complicated and simple at the same time.
John awoke again with a start, certain that he had heard something unusual. One glance at Nimrod’s tent told him his uncle was still cogitating within, like Achilles (although not nearly as bad-tempered), and that he was not the source of the noise. For a moment, all thoughts of the true meaning of the khipu gained from his time inside the lupuna tree were forgotten. And tossing the very learned book he had been reading aside, John stood up and walked around the campsite before finally he realized what it was that had disturbed his wooden slumbers. The door in the Eye of the Forest was shaking very slightly, as if someone on the other side was trying to open it.
Walking around the free-standing Eye of the Forest in a wide circle, John wondered if he should call Nimrod. There could be no doubt about it. Someone, or something, was trying to open the door. It was like a scene in a horror movie when a poltergeist or a ghost moves something inanimate, like a toy on a bookshelf. For as far as he could determine, John knew there was nothing on the other side of the door.
Ignoring his own goose bumps, John picked up his machete, went a little nearer, and tapped the door with the razor-sharp blade. “Hello,” he said. “Is anyone there?”
For a moment the door stopped moving, as if someone on the other side had heard him. That was, he thought, like a horro
r movie, too: the way an object became ordinary again when it ceased to move for no apparent reason.
He went closer still, finally bending his head and then his ear down toward the small shiny golden patch that Nimrod had cleaned with the point of his machete. “Is there anyone there?” he repeated. “Look, the door won’t open because there’s this big knot binding a bolt on the other side. So there’s no point in trying to open it. See?”
Again the door moved within the stone frame, more noticeably this time and then there was someone banging loudly on it, which gave him such a fright that it made his heart leap in his chest like an excited puppy, and caused him to take a few steps back.
“Oooer,” he said, holding his chest. But not before he heard another voice. A voice from very far away. As if from another lost, invisible world. It was a voice he was quite sure he recognized. The voice belonged to Mr. Groanin, and he sounded like he was in trouble.
CHAPTER 17
COMING THROUGH THE DOOR
Upon hearing what he thought must be Groanin’s cry for help, John’s first instinct was to hack with his machete at the large and complicated knot securing the door in the Eye of the Forest, and it was fortunate that his sleeping head had been temporarily absorbed in the lupuna, for the tree had informed the young djinn’s subconscious mind that somehow the knot contained an important and ineffable or secret word. Knotted within the cipher that was the knot, this secret word had been passed on through generations of Incan priests and revealed only to the Inca kings. This fact became more apparent to John only afterward, but now, with his blade less than a millimeter away, he checked himself from cutting the knot and instead set about the business of untying it.
“Hang on, Mr. Groanin,” John shouted through the door. “I’m coming to get you.”
Untying the knot did not take him very long. As with many apparently complex problems beloved of mathematicians, the solution was actually a simple one and began with John pouring the contents of his water bottle onto the knot itself. Because before it had been tied, the rope had been soaked in water, and after it had been tied, the knot had been exposed to direct sunlight which, of course, made it shrink. Thus, by wetting the coils of the knot, John helped to make them looser and, therefore, easier to manipulate.
Not that it would ever have been possible for an adult to have manipulated the knot — wet or dry. Not ever. Manipulation of the rope could only ever have been carried out by the small and more dexterous fingers of an Indian or a boy such as John. It was one of the reasons why the lupuna tree had told John the secret in the first place.
But the most important thing John had learned about the knot from the lupuna tree was that it was not really a true knot with two separate ends, but an ingenious loop that had been cleverly disguised only to look like a knot. The loop had been folded to make two ends and in this had been tied two multiple overhand knots; the two ends of the loops had then been pulled several times over the two knots and the rope then shrank until it was as tight as a miser’s fist.
Knowing all of this made it a matter of less than a minute for John to unravel it.
“John. What on earth do you think you are doing?” It was Nimrod, who had been summoned from his tent by John’s shouting through the door. Despite all of his “careful cogitation,” Nimrod had devised neither a solution for the untying of the knot nor a solution of what to do about Virgil McCreeby. And he was astonished to see that the knot on the door had disappeared and that his young nephew was now holding in his two hands the loop of human-hair rope with which it had been tied. “How did you untie that knot? And, light my lamp, why?”
“It’s all right,” said John. “I didn’t need djinn power. I just worked it out in my head.”
“But why, John, why?” Nimrod looked at him fiercely for a moment. “I thought I made it perfectly clear that we should leave the knot tied. To prevent Virgil McCreeby from ever going through that door.”
“Yes, but that was before,” John said breathlessly.
“Before what?”
“Before I saw the door move,” said John. “And before I heard Mr. Groanin. He’s on the other side of the door and he sounds like he’s in trouble.”
“What?” Nimrod stepped quickly toward the Eye of the Forest and, pressing his ear to the door, listened carefully. Sure enough, albeit from a very long way away, he could hear his own butler shouting. “Light my lamp, but you’re right, boy. Here. Help me draw this bolt.”
Instinctively realizing the importance of the hair rope, John wound it around his waist, like a belt.
The spindle of the golden bolt, which had two large golden handles was, after several centuries, hard to turn in the hole and, in its fastening, even harder to draw back.
“You’re not angry then?” said John, pulling on the bolt with all of his strength. “That I’ve untied the knot? And that we’re going to open the door?”
“Given that Groanin is already on the other side, the question seems academic and no longer important.” Nimrod grunted with the effort. “Let us hope that the others escaped the Xuanaci and are with him.”
At last the bolt shifted and the door was free, although not yet open.
“Stand farther away,” Nimrod ordered John. “We don’t yet know what’s on the other side. If Groanin is in danger, we may also be at some risk.”
As Nimrod hauled at the creaking door, John took a step back. With all his exertions the rope had come loose around his waist, which John thought was just a little ironic given how tight it had been as a knot. He took it off for a moment to retie it, which was when he noticed the colored dots on the inside of the rope and realized he’d seen the same order of colored dots somewhere before. But there was no time now to think about that. The door was open. And on the other side he could see …
… nothing at all. Just a gaping black hole. It was, he thought, extremely weird. Even Nimrod looked surprised.
“Strange,” remarked Nimrod.
“But where’s Groanin?” asked John.
Nimrod took hold of his nephew’s arm and stopped him from going through the open door. “Wait a minute,” he said. “There’s movement.”
Inside the doorway that was the Eye of the Forest, a strange optical distortion of space was underway, as if light itself was bending. Then, on the other side of the doorway, like an old movie flickering into life, a large stone room appeared. This ancient-looking room was stacked high with hundreds, possibly thousands of gold objects, but of Groanin and the others there was no sign.
And yet there was also something unreal about the room and its fabulous, glittering treasure. As if it didn’t quite exist at all.
“What are we looking at?” asked John.
“It’s an illusion,” said Nimrod. “Something those ancient Incan priests must have intended for the greedy eyes of the conquistadors. Only they would probably have called it a vision. Don’t ask me how an Inca like Ti Cosi achieved such a thing. I don’t know. But I think we’re looking at an image of something that really happened. An image that was meant to lure the conquistadors on.
“You see, when Pizarro showed up in Cuzco, he managed, against all the odds, to capture King Atahualpa and promised him his life if he agreed to cooperate. And noticing the Spaniards’ fascination with gold, Atahualpa made a proposition to Pizarro. The king drew a chalk line high on the wall of the room in the Temple of the Sun, where he was now held prisoner, and told Pizarro that if he spared his life, within twelve months he would fill the room with gold objects up to the height of the mark. Pizarro agreed, of course, and the king was as good as his word, even if Pizarro wasn’t. It is said that more than forty thousand pounds in weight of twenty-four-karat gold was turned into ingots by the Spanish. The Incan priest who made the Eye of the Forest undoubtedly knew that seeing a vision of all that gold would, almost certainly, have been interpreted by the Spaniards as some kind of good omen.”
Another moment passed and then the image of the gold disappeared like a mirage and
, for a few seconds, it was replaced by a frozen image of Groanin and Sicky hammering at the door. At their feet lay Philippa, unconscious, and behind them stood Muddy in the act of brandishing a machete at some strange-looking Incan warriors. A second later, the four figures had changed their positions and were now stretching slowly through the door, like something escaping from a black hole.
“Philippa’s hurt,” said John, and bent forward to help Groanin, Muddy, and Sicky drag her through the doorway.
“Don’t touch them,” Nimrod told John. “They’re moving between two dimensions. Which can be dangerous.”
“Will they be all right?” asked John. “I mean, they look kind of weird. Sort of stretched out. Like spaghetti.”
“It might take a few minutes for them to come through,” said Nimrod. “I imagine this was designed to be an entrance, not an exit. But, yes. They should be all right. So long as we are patient.”
“You mean it might be quicker going in than coming out?”
“Exactly. As soon as they are out, we must close the door. Otherwise the Incas, who seem to be chasing them, will also be chasing us.”
“Zadie doesn’t appear to be with them,” observed John.
“I was wondering about her myself,” admitted Nimrod.
Groanin, Muddy, and Sicky were still dragging Philippa through the doorway, but very slowly, as if they were walking through molasses. Then, an arrow appeared in the air above John’s head. It was an unusual arrow because it wasn’t moving more than about half a mile an hour. And, but for Nimrod’s earlier warning, John might easily have reached up and grabbed it.
“That looks like one of Zeno’s paradoxes,” said Nimrod.
“Zeno’s what?”
“Never mind,” smiled Nimrod. “While we’re waiting, you might like to tell me how you managed to untie the knot. I don’t mind telling you, I’m impressed. I know I couldn’t have done it.”