We Are Not Eaten by Yaks

by C. Alexander London

  “So?”

  Oliver suggested shoving his father down and then landing on him like a cushion.

  “Like Stephen the Yak,” he said. “Dad wouldn’t mind. He’s not even awake.”

  Celia said no to the idea.

  “Daddy’s girl,” Oliver sneered.

  They dangled from the cliff for what felt like hours. They heard a growl in the distance and the calls of strange birds. Below them stretched a dense forest. Above them, the craggy mountain was quilted with patches of white snow. Every few minutes something would creak, and Celia feared it would be the end. But still, they hung. Their father snorted loudly, but didn’t wake up.

  Above him, Oliver watched a massive tiger creep along the narrow ridge and sniff at the tangle of canvas and plastic that attached them to the cliff. One push from his giant paw and they’d fall over the edge. Oliver had learned all about Tibetan tigers on Asia’s Deadliest Animals Two: CAT-astrophe.

  Tibetan tigers are nearly extinct, he thought. And they don’t normally live at this high altitude. Then again, I don’t normally live at this high altitude either.

  Only the hungriest tiger would dare come so close to humans. Was it crazy or starving? Or both? Celia and Oliver would make a nice snack, wrapped in yellow plastic and hanging like peanut butter crackers in a vending machine. The tiger didn’t move or make a sound. It stayed at the edge, poised. The wind ruffled its orange and black fur, but otherwise, it was as still as a statue.

  Celia couldn’t see the tiger from where she was. She didn’t even know that a tiger was watching them. She was watching the river below them and getting more and more antsy. Hanging upside down for an hour was really boring and really uncomfortable, like going to the opera. Her neck was starting to ache from her father’s body smushing her. She really wanted to be at home right now, comfy on the couch watching something about romance or a game show or anything that didn’t involve hanging upside down off a cliff with her brother and her unconscious father in the highest place in the world.

  Oliver watched the tiger lick its lips. All this falling from the sky and hanging from trees and giant hungry tigers was growing tiresome, and Oliver was fed up.

  “I am fed up,” he said. The tiger let out a low growl and didn’t take his eyes off of Oliver. “This is so boring.”

  “I’ve been looking at the same patch of mist for an hour,” Celia complained.

  The tiger still didn’t move.

  “Nothing is happening,” Oliver said. “This is like watching a blender commercial.”

  “Or an awards ceremony.”

  “Or the local news.”

  “Ugh,” Celia said. “You win. It’s like that. Only without the threat of deadly escalators or killer pickle jars.”

  The tiger moved on, having lost interest in the children.

  “I hate this!” Oliver pouted. His sister hated when her brother pouted. He had this way of sticking his chin out and clenching his forehead and it looked like he was going to cry or explode or both. “We should be home on the couch where there aren’t any evil flight attendants or deep gorges or giant boring tigers or tall men with machine guns!”

  “I know, but stop whining, would you—wait. Tigers?! What? Tall men with what?”

  “Up there,” Oliver said. “Right above us.”

  Celia bent her head around to look up and saw that, indeed, there was a very tall man standing on the rock where their raft was caught. He had a machine gun and was pointing it at them.

  He was bald and his face was wide, with deep wrinkles. He was quite old, but how old the children could not tell. He wore simple sandals with socks, light pants and a monk’s robes. Over his robes, he had a bandolier of bullets, like a cowboy in an old western, except the bullets were long and thin, and clearly intended for the machine gun he was holding. Each bullet was carved with a pattern of symbols. He had a small backpack on his back.

  “Dr. Navel?” he shouted down to them in English, much to the children’s surprise. “Are you alive?”

  “Ummm, we think he is,” Oliver yelled back.

  “Who are you?” Celia shouted up. Oliver was always too willing to talk to strangers. Celia was far more careful. She wished her brother would let her do the talking.

  “My name is Lama Norbu,” the man answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And I assume you must be Celia and Oliver.”

  “Yeah . . .” Oliver said hesitantly.

  “And your father?”

  “He got knocked out by an air marshal and a stewardess. They threw us out of the plane,” Oliver said.

  “Shhhh . . .” Celia whispered. “Don’t tell him too much. We don’t know if we can trust him yet.”

  “You don’t look like a llama,” Oliver called up to the old man. Oliver had seen a cartoon about a talking llama, so perhaps, he thought, they could exist. He never thought he’d meet one in the real world.

  “No, I suppose I don’t,” was all the man said in explanation, and then he broke into a wide gleeful smile. “I am glad to see you are alive. I had arranged with your father and Ms. Thordup to pick you up at the airport, and it seems I won’t be able to. I apologize. I would, however, be happy to help you now. It is not wise to hang there any longer. There are snakes and insects, and much worse here above the gorge.”

  “We’d appreciate that,” Oliver called back, as Celia shot him daggers with her eyes.

  “What?” he whispered. “We need to get up somehow.”

  Lama Norbu went to work right away. He pulled a rope from the knapsack he had slung over his shoulder, tied it to a tree, and before the kids could count to ten, he was hanging from a rock next to them and tying his rope to their raft.

  “Greetings!” he said, smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was hanging by one hand over the edge of the cliff. He had a dazzling white smile, and though he was old, he was all muscle. Close up, the children saw that he had a thin wisp of a white mustache and bushy eyebrows. His cheeks were rosy red. “It is a pleasure to meet the children of such eminent explorers. When I arranged to be your father’s guide, I was thrilled for the chance to meet the rest of the family.”

  “Not the rest of the family,” Oliver corrected. “Our mother isn’t here.”

  “But in spirit!” said Lama Norbu cheerfully. “In the spirit of adventure, I am sure she is with you!” He laughed loudly.

  “Whatever,” said Celia.

  “Anyway, I am not a llama,ʺ the monk explained. The wind howled against the raft. “The llama is a South American camelid growing to about five and a half feet tall and used by the Incan civilization as a pack animal. I am a lama, with one l. A lama-with-one-l is a teacher who has spent lifetimes in study and good deeds. I am also well over six feet tall, and would tower over any llama I came across.” He laughed again.

  “Oh,” the children said warily.

  “You two must be very brilliant explorers, just like your parents,” the old man added.

  “No,” both children said in unison.

  “Okaaay . . .” said Lama Norbu. He quickly changed the subject. “I dreamed something like this might happen,” he said as he scurried back up the cliff using the rope. “The hidden lands have called you to them. Om mani padme hum!” He began to hoist the raft up with his rope. He was much stronger than the Navel Twins could have imagined possible for such an old guy. When they reached the top, the man chanted again: “Om mani padme hum.”

  Oliver and Celia glanced at each other, wondering if the tall man was crazy. A talking llama might make more sense.

  “That is a mantra”, Lama Norbu explained. “A saying that we often repeat to gain wisdom. Its sounds contain the entire teachings of the Buddha.” He smiled. Oliver and Celia were not comforted. He seemed like a total loon.

  “So you’re a lama, huh?” Oliver said.

  “How exactly did you find us here?” asked Celia.

  “Things always go wrong in life,” he said. “Certainty is an illusion. The
odds of finding you here were as good as meeting you at the airport. So I imagined what disaster could befall you, and took a walk into the canyon. Since all space is a creation of the mind, this cliff is the same as the airport. You might as well have been here as anywhere. And perhaps you are!”

  He gestured to the landscape, still grinning from ear to ear. Monkeys howled in the distance.

  Once they were out of their ruined raft, Lama Norbu shook both of the children’s hands with a smile. He bent down to their level and looked them right in the eyes in a way that made them feel respected. Though he was tall, he didn’t seem to look down on them.

  “Grhumgughhhphhh . . .” said Dr. Navel as he started to wake up. After a moment of rocking his head back and forth and groaning, his eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright. “Unhand my children!” he shouted.

  “It’s okay, Dad. We’re safe. We’re on the ground,” said Celia. “Sort of.”

  “We met Lama Norbu,” said Oliver. “He says he’s not a llama.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Navel looked around and rubbed the back of his neck where a branch had whacked him. There was a bump on his forehead where the air marshal hit him. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and sprang to his feet, showing no confusion about where he was or how he got there. He smiled his winning smile, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened. Then he fell down again.

  Lama Norbu came over and helped the explorer to his feet once more.

  “Greetings, Lama Norbu. So nice to finally meet you.” Dr. Navel pulled a long white silk scarf from under his shirt and presented it to the old man, bowing his head low. His children watched him curiously, but the old man did not seem surprised.

  “Greetings, Ogden,” said Lama Norbu, using their father’s first name, which almost no one ever did. He accepted the scarf graciously and hung it around his neck under his cloak.

  “Well, my friends, shall we be on our way, then?” their father said. He wiped his hands on his pants and looked up and down the cliff. “Lama Norbu, lead the way, sir!”

  “But there’s no path,” Celia pointed out. “We’re on the edge of a cliff.”

  “There is always a path,” explained Lama Norbu. “If your mind is open, you will find there is always a path out of your troubles. And in the quest for Shangri-La there are many paths . . . and many troubles.” He laughed at his little joke, and then pointed in front of him. Sure enough, there was a narrow path along the edge of the cliff, leading down into the forest below. “The path provided is not always the easiest,” he explained. “But it is always what is needed. We are meant to descend into the valley, it seems.”

  He slung his gun onto his back and started to walk down.

  “What about going to see the protector-spirit, Dorjee Drakden?” Dr. Navel asked. “Won’t we need his blessing?”

  “The path tells us to go down, so we go down,” the lama replied quickly. “Perhaps the spirit will find us, perhaps not. And truthfully,” he said, lowering his voice to a near whisper, and losing his smile for the first time, “I do not know if we can trust the protector anymore. He has grown unpredictable. Times are dangerous.”

  For a moment Celia thought she saw a guilty look slide across Lama Norbu’s face, but the moment passed and his face snapped back into a smile. He turned and continued down the path, singing a little tune. Dr. Navel shrugged and followed close behind.

  “Oh, children,” he said, turning over his shoulder to look at the twins. “Stay close so you don’t fall or get dragged off by any demons. And watch out for the Dugmas—Poison Witches can be tricky. And also thanks for”—he pointed up at the sky—“you know, whatever you did. Well done!” He smiled broadly, as if this whole situation was just the most fun he’d ever had, which in his mind it may have been. Then he turned and continued after the old monk scrambling down the side of the canyon.

  Oliver and Celia looked at each other in disbelief. Was that really all they got from their dad after saving his life? Celia scooped up their backpack, threw it onto her back and sighed. Oliver turned to go first, like always. Reluctantly, they followed their father down, toward the sound of howling monkeys and dangers they wouldn’t even want to see on television.

  12

  WE LEARN ABOUT LAMAS AND LEOPARDS AND LIFE ITSELF

  THE NAVELS FOLLOWED Lama Norbu down the narrow path for what felt like hours, tripping over gnarly rocks and bushes. Oliver and Celia were tired from traveling all night and most of a day, falling out of an airplane, hanging from the edge of a cliff, being rescued by a machine-guntoting lama, and hiking into the deepest canyon in the world. They usually found Mr. Busick’s gym class exhausting.

  A scorpion scurried up a rock face as they passed, and two dark black birds chirped at them, flashing their wings to show the bright feathers on the underside, brilliant rainbows of color that seemed to glow against the rest of their ink-black bodies.

  “There’s nothing to watch,” Oliver whined as he watched the birds take off into the sky.

  “Nothing worth watching, anyway,” Celia clarified for her brother, who rolled his eyes at her. She really liked being right.

  Their father tried to keep them entertained.

  “Look at that,” he said, pointing to a giant tree that looked like the thousands of other giant trees around them. “That tree right there is one of the last of the great Asian sequoias.”

  “Great,” the children groaned. “Trees. Whoopee.”

  “And that bush there sprouts berries whose juice is poisonous to every creature on earth except one kind of beetle. And that beetle doesn’t even live on this continent. There’s no explanation for it! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Sure,” the kids said flatly.

  “Shangri-La is a hidden land,” added Lama Norbu, trying to spark the twins’ interest and seeing that their father’s science wasn’t working. “Many explorers believe it does not even exist, while many others have been lost searching for it. It will be a perilous journey to try to find it. There are ancient maps created by wise men, but no one knows how to read them.”

  “Then how do you know where we’re going?” Celia said, nervous that they themselves were going to get lost. Maybe this is where their mother got lost.

  “Oh, I lived in this valley many lifetimes ago,” Lama Norbu replied calmly. “I have been a monkey howling from these trees and a fish swimming in these raging rivers. These hidden lands are drawn like a map in my soul.”

  Oliver and Celia looked at each other with their eyebrows raised. The lama talked exactly like wise men on television shows, almost like he had a script that he didn’t really understand himself. Dr. Navel nodded as if it all made total sense, as if it was perfectly rational to have a map in your soul and to use it to get around.

  “Wonderful!” he said.

  Of course, Dr. Navel, like fathers everywhere, hated to ask for directions and probably wished he had a map of everywhere written in his soul so he wouldn’t have to pull into a gas station looking sheepish ever again.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Oliver finally said and stopped walking. He had had enough weird for one day. “How could you have been a monkey and a fish and, you know, yourself? How could you have been around for many lifetimes? Are you, like, a vampire?”

  “Oh, no.” Lama Norbu laughed, slapping his knees and leaning against a tall tree. “A vampire! What a strange idea! No, I am not, nor have I ever been a vampire. Nor will I ever be, I pray. Their skin is like fire to the touch, their necks are long and thin, their bellies hang to their toes, and they groan with thirst for thousands of years. I pray you never meet one.”

  “That’s not how vampires are at all,” Celia objected. “They have alabaster skin and eyes like the sea during a storm. They have dark passions and wander the earth looking for love.”

  “It would be quite impossible to fall in love with a real vampire,” Lama Norbu said and chuckled. “They are incapable of even speaking, and love nothing but misery.”

  “Okay, you’re no
t a vampire,” interrupted Oliver, because he knew how his sister felt about vampires and he didn’t want to see her punch the old lama in the nose. She had a crush on Corey Brandt, who played the teenage vampire on Sunset High, which was canceled after the first season. It broke her heart, especially when it was replaced with Agent Zero. She didn’t care that it had the exact same actor. She had a thing for vampires. “So how were you a monkey?”

  “A vampire would never take the form of a monkey,” Celia muttered under her breath so only her brother heard her.

  “Reincarnation,” Lama Norbu said. “The cycle of death and rebirth.”

  “I see,” said Oliver, though he didn’t see.

  “We monks believe that all living things are born and die and are reborn over and over again, and how we are reborn depends upon what we do while we are alive. We will continue to return to earth again and again, rising and falling—sometimes a beetle, sometimes a god, but always returning until we become enlightened and are set free.”

  “So it’s like reruns,” said Oliver.

  Lama Norbu just furrowed his brow. He knew a lot about life and death and eternity, but nothing about television. “It is karma,” he said. “If you do evil in life, you might be reborn a demon, but if you do great good deeds, you might be reborn as a great ruler, even a god.”

  Celia liked the idea of being reborn as a god. She’d be all-powerful. Then she wouldn’t have to go on these crazy adventures and could just sit on a throne and watch the world like it was a TV show. And she could watch what she wanted. Gods didn’t have to let their twin brothers watch The World’s Greatest Animal Chases Three. It seemed too good to be true.

  “Dad, do you really believe in all this stuff?” Celia asked her father. “Rebirth, and gods and oracles and hidden lands with all the wisdom of the world hidden there? I mean, it can’t be real.”

  “I learned long ago that the line between real and unreal is quite blurry,” Dr. Navel said. “Think about your television. If you showed it to a group of people who lived their whole lives in little huts in this valley, they would think it was magic. Just like you think it’s crazy that there can be reincarnation and oracles and hidden lands, other people might think it’s crazy that humans have walked on the moon or that we watch little glowing boxes for hours and hours and hours.”