“The children are welcome to rest in front of the television,” the woman with the headband said. “We receive many channels they might enjoy.” She winked at them.
“All right,” Dr. Navel sighed. “Go on.”
The twins rushed off to the hut while their father began asking excited questions about myths and legends and human sacrifice. The woman with the headband, in spite of what she had said, knew quite a lot about all of those things, especially the last one.
“The shinbone’s connected to the knee bone,” sang the musical woman.
Inside the hut, there was another log spread with furs facing the television, and steaming hot bowls of food were set beside it, as if the children were expected.
“Nice women,” Oliver said. “They even made us snacks.”
The bowls were filled with what looked like curdled milk, all clumpy and grayish, with yellowish chunks of butter floating around and thick mounds of crushed barley. Each bowl had one lump of blackened meat sitting in it, the fat still sizzling. It smelled like chili peppers, leather and wet dog.
“What is that?” Celia wondered.
“It’s yak,” Oliver said, his face turning green.
“How do you know?” Celia asked nervously, not really wanting to hear the answer.
“Because . . .” Oliver pointed at the wall, where a pile of fur and bones was topped by a giant skull with dark black horns: a slaughtered yak.
Both children turned quickly and tried to put the frightening image from their minds. They thought for a second about running back outside, but out there the women would insist on watching them eat; that much they knew about hospitality. Inside with the yak skeleton they at least had privacy and, of course, television. Oliver grabbed the bowls of food and carefully dumped the lumpy steaming contents behind the pile of bones.
“Sorry,” he said, though the creature was long past hearing any apologies for becoming dinner.
While her brother disposed of the “meal,” Celia flipped on the old television. It lit up with a static hum.
Outside, they heard their father’s voice praising the delicious food.
“Yak butter and barley flour, is it?” he fawned. “It tastes just like my wife used to make before we were married! And you say you make offerings of this to the protector-spirits in the valley? Who are they? Are they violent gods? Helpful?”
They heard the women laughing.
The children looked nervously at each other, but didn’t say a word. The screen glowed with fuzzy snow and static. Oliver pulled the cheese puffs out of their backpack for a snack and Celia started turning the tuner. Both children held their breaths in anticipation. The last time they had watched TV was on the airplane, and that had been quite rudely interrupted by Sir Edmund’s henchman trying to kill them. This time, deep in the valley on the path to Shangri-La, under the silent gaze of a yak’s carcass, they hoped they would finally have some peace and quiet—and some decent entertainment.
When the picture came into focus, Celia shouted with glee, but Oliver’s heart sank into his dirty sneakers.
“Love at 30,000 Feet!” she squealed as the theme song played over images of sunsets, jet engines and kissing.
“Oh, no,” Oliver groaned.
15
WE WONDER WHY THE LAMA SPEAKS FRANKLY
ON A BOULDER JUTTING out into the valley below the camp, Lama Norbu stood with his head bowed, but he was not meditating. His mind was far from peaceful, and the words he muttered scared the birds from their perches. He was angry at the glowing device in his hand, and he whacked it with his palm.
“Come on, you lousy phone!” he cursed. “Get some reception already! What good is a smartphone without any stinking reception?” He smacked the small phone against the side of a tree and it made a series of unhappy beeps, but still didn’t dial the number he wanted. “No, I don’t want to play Scrabble! I want to make a call!!” he growled at it, and whacked it again. “Aaargh!!”
“That is not a very peace-loving thing to do,” a voice spoke from the darkness behind him. “In fact, I have never in my life met a monk whose meditation involved cursing at a phone.”
Sir Edmund stepped from the darkness with a smile on his face. He wore a khaki explorer’s outfit with dozens of pockets and a little pith helmet, like something out of an old movie. He strolled over to Lama Norbu like it was perfectly natural for him to be taking a late night walk in the Tsangpo Gorge.
“You,” was all Lama Norbu said as he moved his hand toward his rifle.
“Don’t bother,” said Sir Edmund. “I am not alone and, though you cannot see them, you are surrounded.”
“What do you want then? To finish what your abominable snowman could not?”
“Snowwoman”, Sir Edmund said, and laughed. “Anyway, the yeti was just a test. I knew a wise monk like yourself could handle it.”
“It nearly killed Dr. Navel.”
“They do get rather aggressive when you take their children away,” he said. “She’s one of the most vicious monsters in my zoo these days.”
“You are the monster, Edmund.”
Sir Edmund shrugged and looked out over the dark valley, and up to the canopy of stars. It was a beautiful sight, but he didn’t seem to be enjoying it.
“Let’s cut out the nonsense, shall we?” said Sir Edmund. “We are all impressed that you found the Navels before us. But we had a deal. The Council wants them and you are supposed to bring them to me. You should not have gone off on your own.”
“The Council keeps too many secrets.”
“The Council has a higher purpose.”
“This is also about revenge,” Lama Norbu added. He stood even taller and suddenly appeared many years younger than he had appeared moments before. He didn’t really look like Lama Norbu at all.
“You are so angry at the Navels you would dare defy us? What would your partner say after we went to all the trouble to arrange this?”
“We both feel the same. After what that Navel woman cost us in the Gobi Desert . . . our price has doubled.”
“You are hardly in a position to negotiate. I do wonder what would happen,” Sir Edmund chuckled, “if Dr. Navel were to find who you really are. Or if the Explorers Club were to learn what had really become of you, the long-lost Frank Pfeffer, discoverer of the Jade Toothpicks.”
“You want to blackmail us?”
“I want you to stick to the agreement. If not, you and your partner will be unmasked and, I promise you, destroyed. We had a deal and you will not break that deal.”
“Your threats don’t frighten me.”
“You may have learned the transformative arts from the Hyena People of Gondar, and you have done an admirable job disguising yourself, for such a freakishly tall man, but the truth has a way of shining through. I wonder if I can get Internet access here. Maybe I should update my blog. Does your phone take pictures?” He chuckled. “They make the most remarkable gadgets these days, don’t they?”
“You don’t have a blog.”
“I could start one just for you.”
“You are despicable.”
“I think the same could be said of you, Frank—I’m sorry, Lama Norbu,ʺ Sir Edmund sneered. “You don’t really have any choice. We’ll get what we want whether you help us or not. Our new friends are taking care of that.” He turned and walked back into the shadows, murmuring a song as he went. “The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah!”
Lama Norbu, who wasn’t really a monk at all, listened as Sir Edmund’s voice faded and then kept listening to the darkness to be sure he was alone once more. He smacked his phone with more urgency this time, and at last, his call got through.
“It’s me, Frank,” he said into the phone. “The Council found us. I’ll have to move quickly now. The tablets will be ours!”
He hung up and sighed into the night.
“And we will have our revenge,” he said to no one in particular. He hid the phone back inside his cloak. With a shake of
his shoulders he resumed his calm and friendly pose, practicing the monk’s smile.
16
WE SEE A BRAND-NEW RERUN
OLIVER AND CELIA SAT BUG-EYED in front of the television, stuffing cheese puffs into their mouths. Their faces were blank, their minds even blanker. Nothing existed for them but Love at 30,000 Feet. Even Oliver had overcome his resistance to all the kissing and was entranced. The children watched and were happy.
Of course, they didn’t understand a word.
The show was dubbed over in Chinese, so that when the actors’ mouths moved to make the English words, Chinese words came out. Subtitles ran at the bottom of the screen that indicated what the actors were saying, but the subtitles were in Tibetan, so even reading them was no help. They couldn’t tell that Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö meant “I love you” or that Há la gyuk! Ngempa-po khyö! meant “Get away, you rogues!” but they could figure out what was going on by facial expressions and lip-reading and how the people moved or shouted at each other. It helped that they had seen every episode.
In this episode, the captain was arguing with his copilot about something. He kept pointing toward the fuel gauge. The copilot pressed a lot of buttons and the plane jerked in all directions. Passengers shouted, and the stewardess said calming things to them, trying to maintain her balance. The actress playing her had bright white teeth and smiled widely in a familiar way, but she wasn’t very comforting. She also wasn’t very steady on her feet. She fell right into the lap of a man in a shiny birthday clown costume with a bright red nose. He said something to her that made her laugh. He said something else and she slapped him.
Back in the cockpit, the captain regained control of the airplane and everyone cheered. Then he looked at his copilot and said something very serious. His face was pale, his eyes like steel. A tear trickled down the copilot’s cheek.
“Captain Sinclair is about to ask the Duchess in Business Class to tango!” Celia exclaimed. It was her favorite moment in the whole series. She had made Oliver watch this episode at least ten times. She had wanted to watch it again the night their father dragged them to the Ceremony of Discovery.
“I thought this was the one where Captain Sinclair falls unconscious and the traveling birthday clown has to land the plane,” Oliver said.
“That wasn’t even in this season. Just watch.”
“I’m pretty sure Captain Sinclair’s about to fall over. You can tell when someone is going to faint on television. They get all pale and wobbly.”
“That’s romance. He’s in love.”
“Looks pale and wobbly to me.”
“That’s what love looks like.”
“If you say so.”
“Shhh, just watch,” Celia hissed.
They watched as Captain Sinclair rose, pale and wobbly, to his feet. He left the cockpit, holding on to the backs of the big leather seats to steady himself as he marched down the aisle. Passengers gazed at him with awe. His uniform was crisp and blue.
When he reached her seat, the captain extended his hand to the duchess and helped her to stand. He said something to her, and she smiled. His eyes looked glassy and his legs swayed. He didn’t fall over, though. And he didn’t ask the duchess to tango, either. He pointed her toward the bathroom. Then he went to the stewardess and said Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö, which of course the twins still didn’t know meant “I love you,” but they did know what it meant when he got down on one knee and proposed to the stewardess with a diamond ring.
“Hey!” The twins said in unison. The twins knew that that wasn’t supposed to happen. Oliver and Celia were quite certain that reruns didn’t change when you watched them again.
The stewardess broke down in tears and her lips clearly said “Yes, I will. Yes!” even though her voice said something in Chinese and the screen said Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö, which by now the twins guessed meant “I love you.”
The show was completely different than they remembered it. And if there was one thing they were sure of, it was how their shows were supposed to go.
“I’ve never seen this episode,” Celia muttered. “Maybe they get different seasons of it here.”
Oliver suddenly remembered the yak that came to him in a dream on the airplane. “You will have to remember enduring Love if you want to escape a terrible fate,” it had said. Enduring Love . . . it must have meant he would have to remember enduring that marathon of Love at 30,000 Feet that his sister had made him watch. He thought back to that weekend when they watched fifty-two hours of this silly soap opera, only pausing to nap and to go to the bathroom. Their father was away in Bhutan at the time, otherwise he never would have let them spend so long eating junk food in front of the television. Oliver thought as hard as he could through the story of the show, through all those seasons.
“This never happened,” he said. He looked closer at the screen. That stewardess did look familiar, but not because they had ever seen her on the show before. She was the stewardess from their flight! On her jacket, she wore a gold pin with a tiny key on it. “Do you recognize that symbol?” Oliver asked.
“Yes!” Celia gasped. “That’s the symbol from the tunnel at the Explorers Club and it’s what the air marshal and the man in the shiny suit had on their rings when they threw us out of the plane!”
“And I think that birthday clown looks awfully familiar.”
“His suit is really shiny . . .”
“There’s something else,” Oliver observed, terrified. It was his turn to get all pale and wobbly.
“What is it?” his sister asked, alarmed.
“The TV’s not even plugged in.”
The children looked at the flashing images on the television and then to the limp cord resting on the dirt floor.
The flicker of the TV set cast crazy dancing shadows across the skeleton of the yak in the corner, and the strange dubbed laughter of the smiling stewardess filled them with dread. They remembered the warnings of Choden Thordup and of Lama Norbu, and they both had the same thought at the same time.
“The Poison Witches!”
17
WE DARE A DEAL
THE CHILDREN RUSHED from the hut into the night and raced toward the campfire. Their father sat on a log with a pile of empty wooden dinner bowls next to him, and the women sat on other logs around him. He was entertaining them with a story.
“So there we were,” he said, “in a cave of white marble beneath the ancient palace at Persepolis. And the staff of the Emperor Cyrus sat on a pedestal in front of us, shining with a mysterious light. I was about to touch it, when my wife pointed up. I followed her gaze and saw that the ceiling was entirely covered in bats. Thousands, tens of thousands of bats. And they were waking up.”
The women laughed and gasped. Dr. Navel loved the attention. Oliver and Celia never cared that much for their father’s bat stories. They preferred watching the show Bat Stories on Saturday morning cartoons.
“Well, my wife said, ‘Maybe they’ll go back to sleep if we sing to them.’ So suddenly, she starts singing this song we used to put Oliver and Celia to bed. And wouldn’t you know it—”
“Dad!” the children yelled as they approached. Their father looked up, startled. He was not used to seeing his children run.
“Oliver! Celia!” He smiled. “I was just talking about you.”
ʺThese . . . these . . .ʺ Oliver panted.
“These are the Poison Witches!” Celia shouted. The women around the circle gasped.
“Children,” Dr. Navel said, his face immediately turning angry. “That is a very, very offensive thing to say. The Dugmas are some of the most hated and feared creatures in this land, and it is completely inappropriate to call our hosts such a thing.”
“Your children have quite the imagination,” the woman with the turquoise headband said, though she was not laughing.
“Not usually,” Dr. Navel replied, slightly puzzled. He turned to the children. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because,” Celia st
arted, “Captain Sinclair should have proposed to the Duchess in Business Class, not the stewardess.”
“And the yak on the tiny airplane screen warned me too,” Oliver added.
Dr. Navel looked at his children a moment, considering what they were telling him. The fire crackled and hissed and insects buzzed in the darkness beyond.
“Television does not have all the answers,” he said at last. “I have spent time with these women, and I assure you that they are lovely hosts and have no intention of poisoning us to steal our souls. Now, if you would please allow me to finish my story, I was just getting to the part where your mother—”
And then their father went pale and wobbly and fell flat on his face on the ground.
“Well, this is not at all how it was supposed to happen,” the woman with the headband said. She was clearly their leader.
“It was supposed to be the children who took the poison,” another complained.
“Maybe Dr. Navel was tired from all the travel?” another suggested. “What’s that called? Jet lag?”
“It’s not jet lag,” the leader said.
“It could be jet lag. You don’t know.”
“Did you poison his stew?”
“Maybe.”
“You weren’t supposed to poison his stew.”
“I couldn’t remember whose stew to poison, so I poisoned all the stews.”
“That wasn’t the plan at all!” The witch walked over to Dr. Navel and lifted his hand up, then dropped it again. “You put enough poison in his stew to bring down a bear,” she said.
“Why would I want to poison a bear?”
“You wouldn’t want to poison a bear.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“Just to make my point.”
“I’ve already forgotten your point.”
“You get everything wrong. You can’t even cook properly!”
“My cooking is delicious!”
We Are Not Eaten by Yaks Page 9