“So if Shangri-La is real, how are we supposed to find it?” Celia said. “I want to get to it as quickly as possible and get home. All the good summer shows start next week.” She pulled out their mother’s note and handed it to her dad.
Dr. Navel just shook his head and looked down at the note. “Her writing’s not easy to read: ‘November fourth, little time left; they are close behind me, letting me search for the missing pages until they strike. I’m closer now than I’ve imagined. No one thought the Great Library might be in Shangri-La. Only the shamans’ eyes can tell the way from here.ʹ ʺ He looked up at Lama Norbu. “What shamans do you think she meant?”
“There are many shamans in this valley,” Lama Norbu said. “Some good. Some evil. Her clue isn’t very helpful, I’m afraid.”
“So where do we find some of them?” Oliver asked. Celia couldn’t believe that they were actually doing this. Oliver secretly liked the idea of meeting a shaman, but he didn’t want to let his sister know. She’d think he was becoming an explorer. He’d seen a show about shamans once, and thought they were cool. He imagined them with bones through their noses dancing around fires in front of camera crews.
“That’s hard to say,” Lama Norbu answered. “Anyone could be a shaman. A shaman is just someone who can show people things they cannot see themselves.”
“So I could be a shaman,” Celia said. “I can see that we should be at home right now instead of wandering around in some valley on the other side of the world!”
“Oh, to be a shaman takes great powers of meditation,” Lama Norbu answered her. “You must clear your mind and sit very still and focus. It can take hours, days, years, even lifetimes of sitting and meditating to see the truth. Life is filled with many dangers and distractions to keep you from this path.”
“Like the abominable snowman?” asked Oliver.
Lama Norbu smiled. “No, the yeti, or as you call him, the abominable snowman, is just a legend. The real dangers are in your mind. They are your illusions and your selfishness.”
“So that yeti right there is an illusion?” Oliver said, pointing at the giant white creature that stood on its hind legs in front of them. It looked like a cross between a polar bear and a person. Its teeth were the size of a man’s fingers and were stained with dried blood. Everyone turned toward it and it roared. Birds took flight and leaves shook. The forest grew still and silent with fear.
“No,” Lama Norbu said, slowly moving for his gun. “I fear that creature is very real and wishes to send us to our next rebirth sooner than we would like.”
13
WE BLAST SOME BLESSINGS THROUGH THE AIR
THE CREATURE LOWERED down to all fours and snarled and scratched deep grooves into the ground with its long black claws.
“No one move,” Lama Norbu whispered. “A creature like this would never reveal herself to humans. She must be desperate and therefore very dangerous.”
“She?” Celia said.
“Yes,” he answered. “In the stories I have heard, the females are much larger than the males. They are also more aggressive.”
“Amazing!” Dr. Navel exclaimed. He dropped their mother’s note on the ground. He was entranced. The excitement of the discovery washed away any fear he felt, and he stepped closer to get a better look at the furry giant. Fear, he always said, was the most boring of the emotions. Oliver and Celia found it pretty useful. They jumped backwards.
“Dad . . .” both of them warned. Their father cocked his head to the side like a curious puppy while the creature’s black marble eyes stared back at him.
“Ogden, I must warn you that . . .” Lama Norbu began, but before he could finish the monster had sprung from where it crouched to a boulder above Dr. Navel and, in one swipe of her giant paw, sent the curious adventurer hurtling through the air off the side of the mountain.
“Dad!” Celia shouted. Lama Norbu spun the gun off his back but tripped over a rock as he stepped forward. Oliver, moving with speed he didn’t know he had, snatched the gun from the ground and waved it toward the creature.
“Back up!” he yelled, because he didn’t know what else to yell. He had never held a gun before, nor had he ever yelled at a monster. He waved the gun at the monster again, just to make sure his point was clear.
The yeti cocked its head curiously at Oliver, just like his father had cocked his head curiously at the yeti.
“Hey,” Oliver called out. “Shoo!”
“Shoo?” Celia shouted. “Shoo??”
“I don’t know! What should I yell?” Oliver called back.
“Try shouting!”
“Aaaaargh!” Oliver shouted, and waved the gun over his head like it was a spear.
The monster roared and took a huge swipe at Oliver with her giant paws. He dove out of the way.
“That didn’t work!” he yelled. The monster swiped again and snagged the edge of Oliver’s shirt as he jumped backward.
Oliver dove right and left, trying to dodge the giant yeti. When it lunged at Oliver again, he jumped up and caught onto its back. He saw it was wearing a collar and he held on to it for dear life.
“Throw me the rifle!” Lama Norbu called out.
Oliver tossed the rifle toward Lama Norbu, so he could hold on with both hands, though he missed the throw by several feet, and Lama Norbu had to go scrambling after the gun. The yeti tried to get Oliver off her back by leaping and spinning. Oliver rode the monster like a cowboy riding a bull.
“Ahhhh!” he shouted, and actually wished that all he had to deal with right now were lizard bites. The yeti stopped thrashing and started to charge backward toward the wall of rock behind them. She wanted to slam Oliver against it and crush him. He unbuckled the collar and dove off the yeti, just as Lama Norbu reached the gun. The creature turned and charged right at the monk, swiping the gun out of his hands. It flew through the air and Celia caught it.
“I don’t know what to do!” she yelled, and tossed the gun to her brother, like a hot potato, while Lama Norbu ran in circles, chased by the angry yeti. Oliver didn’t have time to think or to aim. He’d seen enough cowboy movies to know what to do. He pointed the gun at the monster and closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
“Ahhhhhhhh!!!!” he yelled as the gun kicked and bucked in his hand, nearly knocking him over. The gun’s recoil felt like a punch in the arm from a bear. He opened his eyes to see what he’d done, and prayed he hadn’t accidentally shot his sister or Lama Norbu.
The yeti stood upright and looked back at Oliver. She turned toward him, puzzled. He raised the gun again, but didn’t really know if he had the strength to fire it.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and knew he would never be much of a hunter. He didn’t have the aim, the arms or the stomach for it.
The yeti roared and pounded her chest like a gorilla, and then took one big leap, effortlessly jumping over Oliver and bounding up from boulder to boulder.
In seconds the creature was gone into the mist, and only the echo of its roar lingered in the air.
The twins ran to the edge of the cliff and peered over the side. They saw their father hanging by one hand from a tangle of roots. The ground was thousands of feet below him. He smiled up at his children.
“Well, that was unexpected,” he said. His face was a little bruised and his glasses cracked, but his good mood was unflappable. “That must be the creature that the Royal Geographical Society claimed to have discovered in nineteen twenty-one! The Wild Man of the Snows! They called it the yeti, which is probably a mispronunciation of the Tibetan words for ‘man’ and ‘bear.’ Amazing! I can’t say it looked much like a man, but—”
“Excuse me, Doctor, but would you like us to lift you up?” Lama Norbu interrupted as he took the rifle from Oliver’s shaking hands. Dr. Navel had gotten so excited by his ideas about the yeti that he’d forgotten he was hanging off the edge of a cliff.
“That would be appreciated, thank you,” he replied, smiling.
For the second time that day
, Lama Norbu scurried down the side of the cliff to rescue Dr. Navel. This time the kids watched from above and talked while Lama Norbu hoisted.
“So that was a yeti,” Oliver said.
“I guess so,” Celia answered.
“I just shot at the abominable snowman!”
“Snowwoman, and yeah, I guess you did.”
“Do you think I hurt her?”
“It didn’t look like you hit her at all. You don’t have very good aim.”
“Well, I never shot at a mythical creature before, so excuse me. I didn’t see you racing to the rescue.”
“You’re a real Agent Zero,” Celia said sarcastically, but Oliver took it as a pretty huge compliment. He stood a little taller and smiled.
“Remember the special we saw, Monsters—Myth or Reality: The Expert Files?” Celia asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you couldn’t sleep for a week because you thought there was a yeti under your bed.”
“I did not think there was a yeti under my bed,” Oliver said, his pride deflating like a day-old birthday balloon.
“You did too,” his sister said.
“Not a yeti. A basilisk, which is a kind of snake demon. That’s totally different from a yeti.”
“Well, that’s not the point anyway.”
“What is the point then?”
“Remember what Sir Edmund said about bigfoot, and the basilisk and . . .”
“The yeti.” Oliver’s eyes grew wide. “Yeah, he said he had them in his zoo. He was talking about it at that banquet.”
“Right.”
The twins knew that Sir Edmund collected rare creatures the way some people collect stamps or playing cards or action figures. Sometimes he hunted them and hung their stuffed heads on his wall, sometimes he sold them, and sometimes he kept them in his zoo. His hobby was a lot more dangerous than collecting playing cards.
“He could easily have dropped that yeti in front of us, ready to attack,” Celia said.
“I think so too,” Oliver said, and held up the collar. It had a symbol engraved on it: a scroll locked in chains.
“Which means we must be on the right track to finding those tablets,” said Celia.
“We better get cable if we survive this.”
“Yeah,” she answered.
“At least we have Lama Norbu and his gun for protection.”
“Not really, children, I am sorry,” Lama Norbu said, suddenly standing beside them.
“What?”
“The gun is not real,” he said. “That is why you did not hit the creature when you shot at it, Oliver. We Buddhists do not believe in violence, so a real gun, whose only purpose is to kill, would be unthinkable. This weapon fires blessings, loud ones.”
He smiled and showed them his “bullets.” Each one was carved with elaborate symbols and images of angry-looking Buddhas sitting on lotus flowers.
“The symbols represent the mantra I told you about, om mani padme hum, and the pictures are of the wrathful Buddha, who is angry at the suffering of the world and destroys pain and death with his anger. The bullets do not fire, they just sound like it, like fireworks, so that even as I seem violent, I am actually firing blessings into the sky, showering my enemies with wisdom and kindness.”
“So I blessed that monster?” Oliver said with relief.
“Exactly,” Lama Norbu said. “You did a double good deed by saving our lives and blessing the yeti.”
“So, if it hadn’t been afraid of the exploding blessings . . .” Celia wondered.
“We would surely have all been eaten.” Lama Norbu smiled. “That is why we must find a place to rest for the night. We cannot wander the canyon after dark.”
“Because of other monsters?” asked Oliver, nervous. He was sure Sir Edmund had worse than the abominable snowman planned for them.
“Not monsters,” said Lama Norbu. “We who are pure of heart have nothing to fear from the monsters of the hidden lands. People present much more of a problem for us. There are bandits in these forests.”
“Bandits!” cried Celia. Bandits had hijacked the plane on Love at 30,000 Feet, and she never forgot the way they shouted and threatened to throw the Duchess in Business Class out of the window. Now that Celia herself had fallen out of an airplane, she knew that it was not the most pleasant experience. “We should definitely not walk after dark,” she agreed.
She picked their mother’s note up off the ground and shoved it into their backpack. Their father was clearly too excited to carry their only clue. Who knew when he’d go chasing after some dangerous animal again?
“Where should we camp?” Dr. Navel asked. “A cave? A lean-to?” He sounded very excited about a cave or a lean-to. He loved sleeping in uncomfortable places. We should not be surprised to learn that Celia and Oliver did not share his excitement.
“How about down there?” Lama Norbu said, pointing to the slope just below them.
There was a circle of small round huts less than two hundred yards away. A large fire burned in the center of the circle, and a group of women were squatting around it.
There were several unusual things about this camp, but Celia only noticed one: the largest hut had a satellite dish attached to its roof, and wires snaked from it into the little building. With a satellite dish, you could pick up channels from all over the world.
“This seems like a good place to camp,” Celia said.
“This might not be the worst trip of our lives after all.” Oliver smiled. “I wonder if they get the Reality Network?”
“And the Soap Channel,” Celia added. Dr. Navel just shook his head at his children and sighed, and they all made their way carefully down the slope toward the strange camp.
14
WE HAVE A TV DINNER
THEY WERE MET by a group of smiling Tibetan women wearing colorful clothes and handmade jewelry. The women were not young, but they didn’t look old either. They looked, strangely, ageless . All of them, however, had dirty teeth, and all of their teeth had been filed down to sharp points.
Lama Norbu called out to them in his language, and the women answered with smiles and bows.
“They welcome us to their camp,” he explained. “They are just preparing dinner and would be honored if we would stay the night. We will be safe here.”
“Please, come in,” one of the women said in English. She had a turquoise headband encrusted with shining stones and heavy rings on her fingers. “You are very welcome here. We receive many travelers and it would be our pleasure to be your hosts.”
The other women nodded and gestured toward some logs that were spread around the fire. They rushed to cover each log with a thick animal fur so it would be a more comfortable seat. Two of them ran off to continue cooking, while the others ushered the family to the logs to rest their tired feet. They took hospitality very seriously.
“You are American?” asked the one with the headband, who appeared to be their leader.
“We are citizens of the world,” Dr. Navel answered, as he always answered that question when someone asked. He didn’t like to be defined by borders.
“Yes,” Celia said, because she wanted to hurry the conversation along and get to watching the satellite TV. Her father shot her an annoyed look.
“Yankee Doodle dandy!” one of the other women sang, laughing. “Old McDonald had a farm!”
“She speaks no English,” the woman with the headband explained. “But she knows many songs.”
“Can’t buy me lo-ove,” she sang, smiling and nodding. “The Beatles!”
“I do hope you will join us for a meal,” the other one said, ignoring the woman who kept singing pieces of Beatles songs.
“I am fasting while we look for Shangri-La,” Lama Norbu said to the Navels. “But please, enjoy this food. These women are from the Bön sect, the oldest religion in Tibet, and you could learn much from them. I will seek out a quiet area to meditate, now that we have found a safe resting place for the night.”
With that he bowed politely and wandered off past the camp and into the thick brush of the forest.
“He is a strange man, this monk,” the woman with the headband said.
“He’s a lama,” Oliver said. “Not a llama.”
“I see,” the woman answered quizzically.
“Thank you for having us,” Dr. Navel said as he settled onto a log. “I am very eager to learn about your culture.”
“Oh,” said the woman. “We are just simple women who have spent our lives in this canyon. Our only knowledge of the world comes from that television and from the pilgrims who pass this way. We are not great explorers like you.”
Celia and Oliver shifted anxiously on their feet. They wanted to get to the television already. They kept glancing at the hut with the satellite dish.
“I am sure you know a great deal more than you think,” Dr. Navel said.
“Dad,” Celia whispered. “Can we please go watch the television? Pretty please?” She made her sweetest puppy-dog face.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You can hear about the ancient ways of the Bön—did you know that they place their dead on tall towers of stone and let the vultures eat the corpses instead of burying them?”
“That’s disgusting,” said Oliver.
“That’s not disgusting, Oliver. It’s called sky burial. Their culture represents an entirely different way of imagining the world than you and I have. Remember what I said about—”
“Yes, yes . . . television is magic . . . wonders of the world . . . blah blah blah . . . we get it. But we walked all day and we got thrown out of a plane and we saved your life,” Celia said.
“Twice,” added Oliver, not wanting them to forget his heroics with the rifle that fired blessings.
“We shouldn’t have to learn about new cultures too.” Celia felt the need to make their position very clear to their father.
We Are Not Eaten by Yaks Page 8