We Are Not Eaten by Yaks

by C. Alexander London

  The twins said nothing. They were starting to wonder too.

  “That yeti seems to care more for her monstrous child than your mother does for you. I’m not surprised, I suppose. Such dull children you are. I can’t blame her for throwing you out of the plane.”

  “What was that?” Celia demanded.

  “Oh, you hadn’t figured that out yet?” Sir Edmund replied casually. “It seems like something from one of your soap operas, doesn’t it?” He smiled, enjoying himself. “She’s the one who had you thrown from the airplane.”

  31

  WE WISH THIS WAS A BETTER STORY

  OLIVER AND CELIA couldn’t believe it. They stood in silence thinking about their mother and the key symbol and the plane and everything they’d been through.

  Sir Edmund nodded at the guards. They grabbed Oliver and Celia from behind and lifted the kids off their feet.

  “You’re a liar!” Celia shouted. Who could imagine her own mother tossing her out of an airplane?

  Sir Edmund didn’t answer. He just kept smiling. The guards started to drag Oliver and Celia from the room. Celia had seen enough Spanish soap operas to know that if your family was insulted, you had to defend their honor, no matter what. And her family’s honor had been insulted enough for one day. She reached back with her free arm and pulled one guard’s giant curved sword from its sheath. The blade sparked as she pulled it free, and the startled guard released her. She spun to face him and waved the sword to make him back up. The other guards drew their own swords and circled around Celia.

  “Sis, what’re you doing?” Oliver called out, still held firmly by his guard.

  “I’m setting us free,” Celia answered.

  “Is this like the pushing thing again?”

  “A little bit,” Celia answered, spinning slowly with her sword raised, trying to watch the crowd around her.

  “I think it’s going to work about as well,” Oliver said as the guards closed in on her. She swiped at one group, who leaped backwards as another group of guards lunged at her from behind. She ducked and kicked and blocked the way she’d seen Señorita Solano do on Amores Enchiladas. Sparks flew as their blades met, but the guards were wearing her out quickly. Hours and hours of watching romantic sword fights can teach a person technique, but it is hard to build strength sitting on the sofa. And no one sweats on soap operas. Celia’s hands were slippery.

  One of the guards rushed at her with his sword raised high, ready to swipe down and split her in two. She lifted her sword to block him, and, at that moment, another guard grabbed her from behind around the waist and lifted her into the air. Her sword slipped from her hand. The fight was over.

  Sir Edmund clapped.

  “Thank you so much, young lady,” he said. “That was entertaining. But I think we’ve had enough.”

  With that, the guards dragged Oliver and Celia kicking and screaming from the room. One of them snatched Oliver’s backpack with a violent yank, nearly ripping out his shoulders. Celia bit her guard’s hand, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “I didn’t know you could fight like that,” Oliver said as they were pulled along.

  “Me neither,” panted Celia, still out of breath.

  They reached a heavy wooden door with a big lock on it. A prison cell. The room had no windows or other doors. There were no statues with third eyes to press, or corners where strange monk-children could hide to come to their rescue. The guards tossed the twins into the room like rag dolls and slammed the door behind them. They heard locks and bolts slamming shut.

  “This is bad,” Celia said.

  “That wasn’t much of a showdown,” Oliver agreed. “We mostly got beaten up and locked away.”

  “Well, it’s not like we’ve had much help. Our only friends so far have been a yak and a strange kid who might have been a spirit or just a weirdo living in a cave.”

  “You really think Mom had us thrown out of the airplane? Why would she do that?”

  “She had that symbol on her necklace in the picture, the same ring that the air marshal and the man in the shiny suit had.”

  “And the people on the fake Love at 30,000 Feet. What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know,” said Celia. “I just don’t know. I can’t figure all this out. How am I supposed to figure everything out? I’m only three minutes and forty-two seconds older! I can’t do everything!” She was crying now. “I’m not like Mom and Dad at all. I’m not a genius or brave or adventurous. I’m just not.”

  “Calm down.” Oliver hugged his sister. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

  “You don’t know that,” she sniffled.

  “Yeah I do.”

  “How?” She wiped the tears out of her eyes.

  “Because,” said Oliver. “At the end, when things look the worst, there’s always a turnaround. It’s a rule, just like the wire breaking. This is just how things happen. It’s just good storytelling.”

  Oliver knew a lot about good storytelling. You can’t watch as much television as he did and not learn a thing or two.

  “Not on Love at 30,000 Feet,” Celia sniffled. “That show’s been on forever, and things always get worse. The Duchess in Business Class doesn’t even know that Captain Sinclair is hiding his deep vein thrombosis.”

  “That’s that thing you get if you sit too long on an airplane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I always thought it was some kind of musical instrument.”

  “Well it’s not. It’s a serious medical problem. And the captain has it.”

  “Well, Love at 30,000 Feet is different,” Oliver explained. “But trust me, in stories about kids in trouble, there’s always hope.”

  Celia sighed. Her brother was right. If this was anything like TV, there had to be a happy ending. It was about time for their adventures to be more like TV. So far things were not going at all like they should.

  “All right,” she said at last. “We’re going to make our own happy ending.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here we go.”

  Minutes passed in silence.

  “Celia?” Oliver said after five minutes in the dark without a word or a sound.

  “Yeah?”

  “You aren’t doing anything.”

  “I thought you were.”

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. I just figured you’d do something. You know, all that good storytelling and happy ending stuff.”

  “I was trying to make you feel better.”

  “So we still don’t have any way out of here?”

  “No.” Oliver thought for a minute. “Wanna try meditating again?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  They sat in silence again. It was hard to tell how much time had passed in that little room with no windows.

  “Why did that yak lead us here?” Oliver wondered after a while. “Why did Mom’s picture show us this place if we were just going to be betrayed by that old abbot? If Sir Edmund was telling the truth, then Mom’s trying to kill us too!”

  “We were better off in the cave with that kid,” Celia agreed.

  Suddenly, a loud gong sounded right outside their door. There was a moment of quiet and then it sounded again, louder.

  BONG!

  Everything was silent and then they heard the click and squeal of the bolt sliding back. The door opened and the room was flooded with light. The two guards were unconscious on the ground and the old abbot was standing above them holding a big gong. He smiled when he saw the children.

  “I find that sometimes the sound of the gong alone is not enough to chase away evil,” he said. Then he stepped aside. A nun stood behind him covered in robes, her head bowed. She held their backpack out and Celia took it from her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome, Celia,” t
he nun said, dropping the robes from her head and looking up. She had long dark hair and big dark eyes, and she was not a nun at all.

  “Mom!” both children gasped.

  “We have very little time,” said their mother.

  32

  WE ARE FAMILY

  “I AM SORRY I BROUGHT YOU HERE,” their mother told them quickly. “But it was the only way. I am proud you made it this far, but you still have farther to go.”

  They could already hear guards coming around the corner toward them. There was no time for hugs or questions or tears. The monastery was usually a quiet place. The sound of two loud gong strikes and two bodies hitting the floor had certainly been noticed. The abbot dragged the unconscious guards into the cell, tossed the gong on top of them and shut the door.

  “You go,” the abbot said. “I will delay them. It is the least I can do for bringing such misfortune to your family.”

  Their mother nodded at him, then grabbed Oliver and Celia’s hands and rushed with them down the hall. They slipped behind the door to the nuns’ quarters just as they heard loud voices shouting at the abbot. Their mother stopped a moment to listen.

  “What was that noise?” one of the guards demanded.

  “It must have been a loud television,” the abbot explained.

  “There’s no television here!” the guard shouted.

  “Oh, some of our monks have a weakness for the soap operas, The Lovers at 10,000 Meters and whatnot. It’s really quite a fine—” The abbot couldn’t finish his bogus explanation. A guard thumped him on the head and locked him in the cell.

  “This way,” Dr. Navel told her children.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” Oliver asked.

  “I can’t explain right now, Ollie,” she said. “I promise I will. But right now, we have to run, before things get really dangerous.”

  “They already are really dangerous!” Celia whisper-shouted. “Sir Edmund said you had us thrown out of the airplane!”

  “That was for your own safety. If you had landed in the capital, you would have fallen right into Sir Edmund’s hands.”

  “But we fell into his hands anyway!” Celia yelled. “And we could have died!” Her shouts echoed through the halls of the monastery.

  “Honey, I know you’re mad,” their mother said, looking around nervously. “But believe me, things will get a whole lot worse if we don’t go right now.”

  Without waiting for Celia to reply, she half dragged, half pushed them through a maze of hallways and chambers. Monks and nuns poked their heads out of doors and watched the Navels rush past. They all seemed to know Oliver and Celia’s mother; they all wanted to help. As they rushed, Oliver and Celia heard shouting from down the hall. Nuns were arguing with guards.

  “We will go where we please,” they heard Sir Edmund shout. “On the authority of the Council, let us pass! Ouch!”

  Someone had hit him with a cooking pot.

  “Here we are,” their mother said, stopping in front of a high window. The view looked out over a snowy plain, hundreds of feet below. In the distance, they saw the mountain where their father was held.

  “This way,” Sir Edmund was shouting. “Those kids can’t have found this place alone. They have help. I know it!”

  Worry spread across their mother’s face, but she hid it quickly.

  “We have to climb out on the ledge,” she said, stepping up onto the windowsill and pushing open the glass.

  “What?” Celia shouted, not even bothering to whisper-shout. “You disappear for three years, have us thrown out of an airplane, and now you want us to step out on a ledge thousands of feet in the air? We are only here because of you! Because of you and that stupid library.”

  “She’s just angry,” Oliver said, not wanting to hear his mother yelled at the first time he saw her in years, “because whenever we climb anything, we end up falling. I mean, really falling really far . . . like out of an airplane.”

  “I’m sorry, guys. Excitement’s still not your thing, is it? Well”—she looked at Celia—“this time you won’t fall.”

  “Why not?” Celia crossed her arms and leaned back on her heels. She was in full-on stubborn mode.

  “Because I’ve got you,” their mother said as she reached down and pulled Oliver up onto the ledge next to her. He didn’t resist. If felt good to be with his mom.

  “Come on, Celia,” he said. “I’ll go first. Like always.”

  They heard the clanking of boots coming toward them. Doors burst open. Nuns screamed and clapped. The sound was getting closer.

  “Fine,” Celia said, and let her mother help her up to the ledge. “But you carry the backpack.” Their mother agreed and took it, not even asking what was inside.

  They stepped out onto the ledge and knocked the window shut behind them, slipping to the side just as the door burst open.

  “No one here,” Sir Edmund shouted, looking into the room. “Next.” He and the guards continued on, while Celia and Oliver pressed their backs hard against the outside wall. The ledge was slippery and every time their weight shifted, they slipped a little bit. The wind pushed at them like a bulldozer and their mother put her hands across their chests, helping them stay back. Down below them on the ground was a large cage with a heavy wooden door that led back into the monastery. In it, exposed to all the wind and the cold, a yeti paced back and forth. It looked right up at Oliver and Celia and roared.

  “A yeti!” Oliver yelped, remembering his last encounter all too well. This one was smaller than the one that had attacked him, but still looked ferocious.

  “It’s just a baby,” Dr. Navel explained. “They brought it here a few days ago. It hasn’t stopped pacing since they took its mother away.” She grew quiet for a moment. “Okay, stay close to the wall,” she said at last, changing the subject. “Put your feet down carefully in front of you. Don’t shift your weight onto a foot until you’ve set it firmly. You don’t want to slip on the ice. We’re just going around the corner ahead of us. Fifteen feet. That’s all.”

  Their mother was going first. Oliver held her belt with one hand and used the other one for balance. Celia held on to him the same way. And they started forward together without another word. It was the longest fifteen feet of their lives. If they survived it, Celia thought, their mother had a lot of questions to answer: three years, a yak and an airplane’s worth of questions.

  33

  WE VISIT AN OLD FRIEND

  THEIR MOTHER REACHED the corner first. She disappeared around the edge. For a moment Oliver and Celia were alone again, slipping and sliding on the narrow ledge, freezing and shivering hundreds of feet in the air. Then her hand shot back around the corner.

  “Okay,” she called out. They couldn’t see her face, but they could hear her. “One at a time I want you to jump straight out and grab my hand!”

  “What?!” Oliver shouted back.

  “JUMP AND GRAB!” their mother yelled. Oliver looked back at his sister.

  “I followed you out here,” she said.

  Oliver took a deep breath and pushed off from the wall, jumping toward his mother’s hand and the open air. He caught her by the wrist and she tightened her grip around his. She used the forward motion of his jump to swing him around the corner, his feet flying out through the sky behind him. And she kept swinging him, right up above herself, right over the top of her head.

  “Whoaaa!” he yelled. When he was above his mother, looking straight down at her and the ground way below, she let go of his hand. He kept going up in the direction she swung him, and found himself flying through an open window one floor up. He flew through feetfirst and landed on a pile of books, maps and papers, which scattered around him.

  The room was dim. There was only a small lantern glowing on wooden table. He stood up and walked over to the table. He could hear his mother shouting at Celia outside.

  “Just trust me!” she was yelling.

  “Why should I trust you now?” Celia was shouting back.


  “Because we have to get off this ledge!”

  Oliver looked at the table. It was covered in scraps of paper with notes and sketches on them just like the one Choden Thordup/Janice McDermott had brought to the Explorers Club. In the corner of the room there was a mat with a pillow on it. This must be where their mother was hiding. Right under Sir Edmund’s nose. The room didn’t seem to have a door. Was that why their mother had to toss them in?

  Suddenly, Celia came spinning through the window with her feet over her head and landed in a heap on the pile of books. The backpack flew in after her.

  “Oliver!” they heard their mother calling. “Celia!”

  They went over to the window and looked down at their mother.

  “I’m going to jump and, if you can,” she shouted, “please catch my wrists and pull me in so I don’t fall. Then, I promise, you can be mad at me.”

  Oliver and Celia looked at each other and sighed. Then they reached their arms out and caught their mother’s hands when she jumped up. They strained to haul her up into the room. The yeti looked up at them, licked his lips and bared his massive fangs. When their mother was inside at last, Oliver and Celia stepped back away from her, panting to catch their breath.

  The twins and their mother stood for what felt like forever staring at each other. Their mother was lit from behind and her dark hair seemed to glow with the light from the window. After all this time, she didn’t even seem real, but there she was. She had a few more wrinkles on the edges of her eyes and the corners of her mouth than last time they saw her, but otherwise, she looked the same. Her eyebrows were raised in that curious expression she had, one that Celia often made too. Celia used it to show her annoyance, where her mother used it with a kind of eagerness, a welcoming look that said wordlessly “What’s next?”

  “Should I hug you?” their mother asked. “I want to hug you. I know you’re mad, but I’m your mother and I really want to hug you.”