by Adam Sidwell
Mariah nodded. “I did,” she said. “But I wasn’t sure if I dreamt it, or if he really was the man in the green hat.”
“I think he was following us in case we needed help,” Guster said. “Kind of like a bodyguard. He was trying to save us from Bubalatti.”
Mariah looked down at the floor of the airplane. “And we were so stupid, we ran,” she said.
Now they were kidnapped, flying to who-knows-where, with no idea why. It was times like this that Guster really wished Mom were there.
“But how did he know where we were?” Mariah asked. “New York City is a big place, and not even Felicity knew we were going to be there.”
Guster shrugged. They’d gone to New York trying to disappear. Apparently it hadn’t worked.
Nothing about their situation seemed to make much sense right now. There were a whole lot of questions that needed answering right away.
“Vanilla,” Zeke groaned. His eyes were still closed. He was licking his lips. “So creamy.” A big smile spread across his face. He must’ve been dreaming.
Mariah shook him. “The fun’s over Zeke. Time to get up,” she said.
“Just one more bowl,” he said, turning over and curling up into a ball.
Mariah shook him harder. “Wake up! We’ve been kidnapped!” she shouted into his ear.
Zeke snapped upright into a sitting position. “Kidnapped?” he asked. He looked groggy. He smacked his lips together and rubbed his eyes. “What will we eat?”
Mariah shot him a disapproving glance. “Is that all you can think about?”
Zeke nodded, then looked around the cargo hold. “Cool. A submarine,” he said. “Oh, hey Gaucho,” he said, waving at the sleeping conquistador.
Mariah sighed.
Zeke pointed at Guster. “What’s that?” he asked.
Guster looked down. His backpack was sitting on his lap. One of the pockets was glowing red.
Without thinking, Guster leapt backward, shoving the backpack away from him like it was full of rattlesnakes. It fell to the floor.
Mariah ducked behind a row of sacks. “What’s in there?” she asked, peeking out like they were sandbags.
The glow from the pocket pulsed red, faded off, then glowed red again. When things did that they were usually lasers or explosives or something just as dangerous. This was not good.
“Lemme see,” said Zeke.
“Careful. What if it’s a bomb?” said Mariah. Guster backed away.
Zeke unzipped the pocket and pulled the glowing thing out. “Nah, it’s just a jelly doughnut.”
Guster let out a long whistle of air. He’d been holding his breath.
Zeke held the pastry up, admiring it. It was golden brown and covered in a crystal clear layer of glaze. There was no hole in the middle and a small drop of jelly filling peeked out one side where it had been injected into the dough. The jelly glowed bright red through the fried pastry dough.
Zeke shoved it toward his mouth.
“Stop,” said Mariah, grabbing his arm just in time. Guster was sure he hadn’t packed any doughnuts.
Zeke looked annoyed. “What did you do that for?”
“We’ve been kidnapped, we’re riding who-knows-where in a plane piloted by some conquistadors, and you’re going to eat some strange jelly doughnut that someone planted in Guster’s backpack?”
Zeke shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
She pried the doughnut from Zeke’s fingers. “Let’s approach this logically,” she said. “Guster, did you put that doughnut into your backpack?”
Guster shook his head.
“Was it there yesterday?” Mariah asked.
Guster shrugged. “Not sure,” he said. “Probably not.” He hadn’t checked the pockets very often. He’d mostly been concerned about what was in his cooler.
“Okay, so someone put this doughnut inside your backpack, and those two up there are the most likely suspects. Considering that they’re probably not from the Red Cross, and probably not taking us to Happy-Snuggle-Land right now, my guess is that doughnut is bad news, just like the rest of the situation we’re in.”
Zeke raised his hand. “I told you we should’ve gone to California.”
Mariah scowled. She looked like she was going to hiss at him.
“Fine,” said Zeke. “I won’t eat it. But I think Guster should.” He held the jelly doughnut up to Guster. “You should taste it and do that mind-reading mega-taster thing you do with your food.” Zeke pressed it carefully into Guster’s hands.
Mariah shook her head.
“It’ll give us some clues, and maybe help us figure out where we’re going,” Zeke said. He was serious. “But only if you want to P.”
Guster took the doughnut. “I do.”
Mariah threw up her hands, but she didn’t object. If Guster had to guess, Mariah probably wanted to know what that doughnut could tell them just as bad as Zeke did.
So he held it up to his nose. It smelled good. The glaze flaked off and stuck to his hands. This was risky, but it was also one way to find out.
He touched his tongue to the squishy, glowing red strawberry jelly drop that had squeezed out the side.
It was cool to the touch, and vibrant and viscous, and, as is always the best part of all jelly in doughnuts, it did not resist—it came easily and willingly onto his lips when he squeezed the dough with both hands.
“Mmmmmmm,” Guster sighed. He’d tasted just a drop, but it was delicious and wonderful and very, very familiar. Instantly he knew where it had come from. “Mom made this,” he said.
He was startled as he said it and had to turn the doughnut around in his hands to get a better look. How would Mom’s doughnut get here? He was absolutely sure now that he hadn’t packed this. Its red glow pulsed on again. Mom had never made anything that glowed before.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Mariah.
Guster nodded in agreement. Mariah was right. It didn’t make sense. “At least we know it’s not dangerous,” he said.
“Dibs!” cried Zeke. He lunged for the doughnut.
Guster drew it back under his arm, twisting aside as Zeke brushed past. “No, we should keep this.” He felt strangely protective of it now. Maybe because it came from Mom.
“He’s right Zeke,” said Mariah. “There’s more to it than meets the eye.”
There was a clang and rustle as Gaucho sat up and stretched. “Oh,” he said, looking blearily back and forth at Mariah, Zeke, and Guster. “I see that I am not the only captive of the Extravío Vigilar.” He tugged at his tied wrists.
“The who?” asked Guster. He assumed Gaucho was talking about the pilots.
“The men who have captured us and are taking us away. The Extravío Vigilar, of course,” said Gaucho. “Everyone knows them. You know, Mayor Bollito’s enforcers and thugs. He calls them guards, but they are really just bullies.”
“So you’re not one of them?” asked Zeke.
“Oh no!” said Gaucho, scowling. “I would never cast my lot with such scoundrels! They call themselves protectors! HA! El Extravío Vigilar will be the doom of the city!” He swung his arms like a sword as he spoke, his head shaking with anger. “I tell you, if I were in charge of the city, I would fire all such guards!”
Mariah pressed her face up against one of the small circular windows. “I’ve never seen mountains so impossibly high,” she said.
Guster clambered over the piles of canvas sacks to the window nearest her. For the first time since waking up, he peered through the glass. They were flying next to an enormous mountain range. Not over it. Next to it. The ground was still far below them, and the mountains should have been too. Instead, the mountains towered over the landscape, brown and gray rock reaching up into space. Guster felt small, like a tiny gnat flying alongside the gigantic range.
“Ga
ucho, do you know then where they’re taking us?” asked Mariah.
“Home,” said Gaucho.
Mariah knelt down and looked him in the eye. Gaucho’s sword was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have used it if he wanted to.
“And where exactly is your home?” she asked.
He closed his eyes and breathed a deep, long breath as if calming himself. When he opened them, his face was so serene and peaceful he could no more have lied to them than a baby could fake its first laugh.
“We are going beyond the last horizon, to where the highest mountain in all the earth has touched heaven and absorbed its goodness. In your language they call it the Himalayas. Really, they are the Mountains of Succulence, and they are the cradle of the jewel of the world, the Delicious City.”
Just then, the plane took a sudden dive toward the earth.
Chapter 9—The World’s Most Dangerous Runway
Guster lurched backward, grabbing onto whatever sacks or boxes he could find for support. His stomach floated into his mouth, suddenly weightless as the plane fell.
“We’re going to crash!” Mariah cried.
Guster clawed his way to the window, past tumbling cargo, and pressed his cheek up against the glass. It was hard to tell where the plane was going from that angle. What Guster could see was the valley they were flying through was a dead end, and they were diving deeper into it.
Zeke crawled to the steel framed door at the cockpit and began to pound against it. “Maniacs!” he shouted. “Pull up! Pull up!”
To Guster’s surprise, the plane leveled off, the force of the maneuver pushing him to the floor. He pulled himself up to the window again, his heart thumping. The sheer rock wall rose in front of them like a giant that had stepped in their path. It was far too high to fly over now. They were headed straight for it.
Then he felt the plane tilt upward. The engines whined loudly in reverse.
At the foot of the massive rock wall was a smaller cliff, and, below that, another sheer drop into the valley. The plane dropped quickly, the top of the cliff suddenly rushing up to meet them, then, with a thump and a squeal of rubber, the plane bounced once and finally set all 3 wheels on the ground.
The engines roared as the plane rolled uphill toward the sheer rock wall.
Guster wiped sweat from his eyes. The pilot had actually landed the airplane on top of a very short cliff going uphill. The plane braked abruptly to a stop.
“Everyone okay?” asked Mariah. She was shaking, her eyebrows quivering as she fought back tears.
“Yeah. Okay here.” Zeke leaned over to Guster. “Are you in one piece?”
Guster nodded. He felt okay. Surprised that they were alive, but okay. He’d seen a lot of landings with Braxton, but never one like that.
Gaucho stood up and shuffled toward the side door that led out of the plane. “Ah, well, it will be nice to see the mountains again.” Of the four of them, Gaucho seemed the least concerned about their landing.
“Have you done this before?” asked Mariah.
Gaucho shook his head. “Not landed here, no. But I flew away from this very place. I stowed myself away on an airplane here when I was coming to find you, Guster Johnsonville.”
The plane turned off the main runway—which was not much bigger than the farmhouse’s gravel driveway back home—the engines shut off, and the cockpit door rattled open.
The two men from Bubalatti’s emerged, each with a short, sharp black beard that came to a point on their chins. They were wearing fur-lined boots and jackets. One of them was shorter than the other, with a much stronger build. “Hola, Gaucho,” said the taller of the two.
Gaucho faced him and stared, his eyes slanted in anger, his face growing hot red. “Pancho de Pistachero,” he said to the taller one. “And you, Camilo de Caramelo. Still immune to the laws of the City, even as you enforce them, I see. Will you always be nothing more than the Mayor’s goons?”
The taller one, the one Gaucho had called Pancho de Pistachero, said something back to Gaucho in what sounded like Spanish. Guster didn’t need to speak Spanish to know it was an insult.
Gaucho made a reply, and the shorter conquistador, Camilo de Caramelo, joined the argument. Their language was slow for Spanish, even for arguing. It had a steady, humming gait to it, plodding along much slower than any Spanish Guster had ever heard. It sounded like it could be very old.
Pancho de Pistachero made some reply to Gaucho in his strange language as well, which must have made Gaucho even angrier because Gaucho started shouting back at the man.
They shouted a few more angry, very quick words at each other, and then the shorter conquistador seized Gaucho by the arms, pulled a knife from his boot, and cut the ropes binding Gaucho’s wrists. He swung the plane’s outer door open and held his arm outward.
“Fine, do as you wish,” Camilo said, sneering. “There is only one place for you to go.”
The two conquistadors grabbed a pair of backpacks and stalked off the plane, shoving their way past Gaucho.
“What was that about?” asked Guster.
“I am a criminal and a fugitive from the Delicious City,” said Gaucho. “When I came to warn you, I committed a horrible crime. They have brought me here to justice.”
“But they’re letting you go?” Guster asked. He had a hard time imagining eccentric but harmless Gaucho as a criminal.
“Well, in a sense. You, Guster, must go with them. They will make sure of that. They told me that I can do what I want, but now that I’ve found you, well, they know there is nowhere else for me to go but home.”
Guster looked out the open door. There were a handful of simple, rectangular stone buildings with blue tin roofs surrounding the runway. A chain link fence separated the airport grounds from a small crowd that had gathered outside.
Next to a gate that led into the village was a polished stone statue of two men wearing old climbing gear. They had ropes coiled around their shoulders and ice axes in their hands. Their arms pointed skyward toward the peaks.
Zeke grabbed his backpack and clambered down the steps. Mariah and Gaucho went with him, so Guster carefully stuffed the glowing jelly doughnut into his backpack and followed.
A crowd had gathered on the other side of the fence, their faces pressed up against the links, staring at the strange new arrivals. They did not look like Gaucho or the conquistadors. Instead, their faces had fuller cheeks and no beards. They were pointing at Guster and his siblings and muttering back and forth to each other.
Zeke stopped at a blue sign hanging from the fence with yellow letters that said “Tenzing- Hillary Airport.”
“Tenzing-Hillary?” said Zeke loudly. “What’s a Tenzing-Hillary?”
A man next to Zeke in green puffy climbing jacket stopped immediately and stared at Zeke in shock, like he was trying to comprehend that anyone could ask such a stupid question.
“Tenzing Hillary? Tenzing Hillary?” he said in broken English. He shook his head disapprovingly. “Have you never heard of May 29, 1953?”
“I don’t think I—” Zeke started.
Another man interrupted Zeke, repeating it louder. “May 29, 1953!”
The crowd around them began to chant, louder still, pumping their fists in the air, like they were at a football game. “May 29, 1953! May 29, 1953!”
Zeke looked just as confused as Guster felt. “Huh?”
The whole crowd erupted in cheers. “May 29, 1953!”
Mariah pointed to the statue. “That’s Sir Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay,” she said. “They were the first people in history to reach the summit of Mount Everest. We’re in the Himalayas, and they’re kind of local celebrities around here.”
Zeke nodded. “Got it. Kind of like when you go to Graceland to see Elvis.” Zeke looked like he was thinking hard when his face slowly lit up. “Or when people show up i
n Louisiana just to see me play football,” he said, pointing to himself with both thumbs.
“Kind-of-not-at-all,” Mariah said. She pulled them through the crowd toward a plaque fixed to the base of the statue. “See, May 29th is the day Tenzing and Hillary first made it to the peak.” She pointed to a date on the plaque: May 29, 1953.
So this was the Himalayas. Guster took in the peaks towering all around him so high they blocked out the sky. He, Zeke, and Mariah were standing at the feet of the highest mountains in the whole world. They were almost as far as they could possibly get from home.
Of all the places they’d traveled, this one made him feel the smallest and least significant. Like a mouse in a shopping mall.
The taller conquistador grabbed Guster by the arm. “Come,” he said gruffly. “We must prepare for our journey. There are many miles ahead of us.” He tugged Guster toward the narrow stone path that led between the rectangular buildings.
Guster looked back toward Mariah for approval, but where else would they go? They could try to escape into the village, but it was so small, they’d be found within the hour. The drop was so sheer below them, and the cliffs above so high, there was nowhere to go without climbing or falling. It was like trying to hide on the head of a pin.
And really, when it came down to it, Guster was not going to pass up on this chance of a lifetime—to see the Delicious City for himself.
“We’d better go with them,” he said.
Zeke nodded. “These guys made the ice cream right? I agree.”
Mariah frowned. She clearly did not like the idea, but there was nothing she could do.
“This journey will not be for yellow-bellies,” said Gaucho. “It will require much of your strength, and all of the courage you possess.”
Guster nodded to Gaucho. He was ready. This was what he wanted.
Camilo de Caramelo tugged on Guster again. “We cannot wait,” he said. “And it is not yours to decide. The Mayor and the City Council have already decreed that you must be brought to trial.”
Guster allowed himself to be led up the stone path into the village. They passed through streets too narrow for cars. Guster doubted there were roads that led up to such a remote, isolated village anyway. The rest of the world was just too far away.