by Ann Hood
“Remember, I told you to be more thoughtful when you do this,” he said firmly. “You know that you are looking for Dr. Livingstone. You know the Congo is a dangerous place.”
Felix swallowed hard.
“You know that if you say lame demon, you will get out of any predicament.”
Great-Uncle Thorne paused.
“You know you may only use that three times.”
He held up three fingers and waved them in front of the children.
They all nodded.
“And by all means,” Great-Uncle Thorne said in his big voice, “stay together!”
A chill swept over Felix and he shivered. Maisie took his hand and squeezed it.
When Great-Uncle Thorne held the map out to them, a look of nostalgia crossed over his face.
“How I wish I could go with you,” he said with a sigh.
Maisie took the map. First Hadley, then Rayne, then Felix put their hands on it, too.
They lifted up, up, up.
The smells of Christmas trees and hot chocolate and flowers in bloom filled the air.
A breeze blew across them.
Great-Uncle Thorne’s upturned face grew smaller and smaller until he vanished altogether and they tumbled through time.
CHAPTER 4
SILVERBACK!
When Maisie looked up, all she saw was green. From somewhere way above her came a tiny pinprick of light. But otherwise, just green. She was looking up because she seemed to be tangled in something that prevented her from looking anywhere else. She wiggled and writhed, trying to free herself, but it seemed the more she moved, the more tangled she became.
Maisie squinted.
The green, she realized, was all leaves. A canopy of thick green leaves hung over her. Over everything, really. In fact, she realized as she struggled to free herself, she seemed to be caught up in foliage of some kind.
Maisie wiggled and writhed some more.
Not just leaves. Vines. She was caught up in vines so strong that she couldn’t bend or break them.
“Felix?” she called.
From the distance, she heard a grunt. Is Felix trapped, too? Maisie wondered.
“I’m stuck!” she yelled. “In vines and stuff!”
Another grunt.
Maisie tried to stay perfectly still and think. She knew that Felix could be an extraordinary hypochondriac, always thinking he was hurt worse than he was or worrying over getting a terrible deadly disease. But it was possible, she thought, glancing around as best she could, that he had gotten hurt. Vines and foliage, after all, belonged in a jungle. Which was exactly where they had wanted to land—a jungle along the Congo River. Maisie swallowed hard. She had been excited to come to Africa and find Amy Pickworth and Dr. Livingstone. But now that she was here, alone, tangled up in vines, with her brother maybe seriously hurt, she didn’t like the idea so much.
Plus, it was hot. A kind of hot she’d never felt before, almost as if the air was an electric blanket, laying on top of everything and generating heat. She started to sweat, and almost immediately she heard buzzing. And then flies circled her. And then they started to land on her and . . .
And? And what? Maisie tried to figure out, wriggling even more to make the flies fly away.
But they didn’t budge. In fact, it felt like they were biting her. No, not biting. Licking.
Gross! Maisie thought.
The flies were licking her sweat.
“Yuck!” Maisie shouted, trying to swat at them.
Birds cawed.
The ground beneath her trembled slightly.
“Felix?” Maisie said, softly at first, then louder: “Felix!”
Nothing but that grunting.
The flies nibbled her sweaty neck.
Maisie squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on just her right arm. If she could get her right arm free, then she might be able to get all of herself free.
She felt like she spent an hour or more trying without any luck to release her arm from the vine’s clutches. The flies kept eating her sweat, and the heat felt hotter and every now and then she heard the sound of an animal she did not recognize. Maisie tried not to think about lions or snakes or hippos. She tried not to think about how Mr. Landon, her science teacher last year, had told them that the hippopotamus was one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. They’ll charge you, Mr. Landon had said. And you won’t be able to outrun them. Then it had seemed funny, sitting safely in P.S. 3 surrounded by other kids and the smell of books and paint and ink. The image of a hippo running fast had made Maisie laugh. But now, as the earth trembled again and an animal’s calls echoed through the air, it didn’t seem funny at all.
Frustrated, Maisie stopped being so careful and methodical and just tried to yank her arms free. The vines cut into her and held on tight.
Now she felt an unmistakable trickle of blood on both arms and what sounded like the footsteps of someone running. Or maybe slipping?
Then came a series of yelps and groans before Felix tumbled right past her, slipping and sliding down what Maisie saw was a steep embankment.
“Ugh!” she heard Felix say.
She could turn her head just enough to see him climbing slowly up toward her, using vines and branches and whatever else he could grab on to so that he wouldn’t go falling back downward again.
“I . . . have . . . looked . . . every . . . where,” he panted as he finally reached her side.
His face was smudged with dirt and his glasses hung crookedly on his face.
“Just get me out of here,” Maisie said. “Please.”
Felix took a couple of deep breaths, then straightened his glasses and studied Maisie’s predicament. He remembered how a few years back, their mother had gone through a knitting phase, bringing home skeins of yarns and needles and patterns. She would sit after dinner, frowning at the sweater or scarf she was trying to make, all of it turning out ugly and lumpy or full of holes. She always got her yarn tangled, and he and Maisie would help her straighten it out, pulling it through loops and back again, trying to follow its knotty, complicated path.
This is just like that, he told himself. Pretend you’re untangling Mom’s yarn.
Carefully, he lifted a vine and began to send it backward, away from Maisie. Then he did another. The work was slow and frustrating. Just when he thought he’d released one, he saw that it was looped through yet another.
Maisie moaned. “Can’t you go faster?”
“I’m trying,” he said.
“It is so hot,” Maisie complained.
Felix nodded.
Sweat dripped off his forehead and onto his glasses. Flies kept landing on his face and hands. He didn’t know when he’d last felt this miserable.
“Are these flies biting me?” he said, knocking them off his nose.
“I think they’re eating our sweat,” Maisie said, disgusted.
“Do you think they’re tsetse flies?” Felix asked, pausing in his work to stare at his sister.
“Maybe?” she said.
“Tsetse flies give you sleeping sickness,” Felix said in a trembly voice. “And sleeping sickness can kill you,” he added in an even more trembly one.
Still in the distance, but closer now, came more of those grunts.
Maisie’s eyes widened.
“I thought you were making that noise,” she said softly.
Felix shook his head, a vine dangling in his shaky hand.
“Do you think it’s a hippopotamus?” Maisie asked.
“Maybe?” Felix said.
“Remember what Mr. Landon said? That they’re the most dangerous animals in Africa?”
“Uh-huh,” Felix said, trying to calm himself so he could get Maisie out. But his hands shook so much he had to quit and sit on them to make them stop.
Maisie wriggled a bit and her left arm came free.
She wriggled a bit more and her left leg came free, too.
“Pull,” she told Felix, offering up her arm and leg.
“You don’t understand how steep the ground is,” he said. “If I stand up, I’ll slide all the way down.”
“Pull,” she said, gritting her teeth.
Felix knew this was one of those times that he could not win. So he got to his knees, one leg already sliding out from beneath him. Quickly, he grabbed on to a vine. It slipped through his hand as he fell back even more.
Once again, he climbed back to Maisie, holding on to whatever he could find, his hands burning from the vine whipping through them.
When he reached Maisie again, he tried not to say I told you so.
“See?” he said, which he knew meant the same thing.
“Plant yourself against that tree,” Maisie said, pointing with her chin. “And then pull.”
It took more crawling to get to the tree, and then a lot of slippery maneuvering before Felix had his back supported against the tree’s trunk in such a way that he could lean forward and take Maisie’s hand without sliding down the hill again.
But finally he did it.
He reached forward as far as he could, barely able to grasp Maisie’s fingers. He held on tight. He pulled.
All of Maisie except her right foot sprang free.
“Aaarrgghh!” she said, collapsing in frustration.
Felix crawled back to his sister, and the two of them slowly unraveled the vine that still held on to Maisie’s ankle.
“It’s like Mom’s knitting,” Maisie said with a weak smile. “Remember?”
“I was thinking the same thing!” Felix said.
Their shared memory gave them renewed energy and in a few more minutes they had managed to free Maisie’s foot, too.
If they could have, they would have jumped for joy.
But any movement sent them sliding. So Maisie gave Felix a light high five, and then they sat still, gazing upward, trying to figure out how to make it to the top without falling all the way to the bottom.
“Um,” Felix said, his voice cracking.
“What?” Maisie said, her brows wrinkled the way they always did when she was thinking hard.
“Um,” Felix said again, blinking and pointing.
“What’s the . . . ,” she began.
But then she saw exactly what was the matter.
Standing no more than twenty feet away, staring at them, was a family of big black gorillas.
“Don’t move,” Maisie whispered.
As if I could, Felix thought. He tried to remember everything he knew about gorillas. They lived in Africa, so he and Maisie had definitely landed in Africa. Something needled at him, something he was forgetting. But Felix ignored it. When five gorillas were standing this close, there was no need to worry over something forgotten. Gorillas, he reminded himself. What do I know about gorillas? They were endangered. But of course, not here in this place at this time.
The gorillas peeled bark off trees, examined it in their very humanlike hands, then ate it. One burped. One farted.
Despite herself, Maisie giggled.
Felix glared at her, like a warning.
She turned her attention back to the gorillas.
Each of their faces looked different, just like people’s do. One gorilla had a thoughtful expression, another seemed happy. The third gorilla had the face of an old man, and the fourth seemed bored. The fifth . . . the fifth wore a cocky expression that reminded her of an older boy who had lived near them on Bethune Street. The boy’s name was Ethan, and he used to ride his skateboard up and down the neighborhood like it was the easiest, coolest thing ever. He wore bright orange shoes made out of plastic. Once Maisie asked him about those shoes and he’d said, as if she was the dumbest person on the planet, “They’re skateboarding shoes.”
The cocky gorilla stopped eating bark and turned his big, cocky face toward Maisie and Felix.
To Felix, it seemed like the gorilla tilted his head and stared right at them. Felix gulped. No matter how hard he tried, he could not remember anything else about gorillas. They lived in Africa. And they were endangered. That was it. He couldn’t remember if they were dangerous, like hippopotamuses. He couldn’t remember if they were carnivores. Nothing.
“He acts like that kid, Ethan,” Maisie said out of the side of her mouth.
“Ssshhh,” Felix hushed.
“The skateboarder,” Maisie added.
The gorilla took a few steps toward them, then stopped.
Stop talking! Felix told his sister silently, hoping mental telepathy might work.
“Doesn’t he?” Maisie said. “Not just his expression, either. His face looks like Ethan.”
Apparently, she had forgotten to be quiet altogether because she was talking in her regular tone of voice.
And the gorilla was walking toward them again.
The gorilla did not speed up or slow down. He just kept moving toward them with his big gorilla steps, his gorilla arms swaying as he moved, just like a cartoon gorilla.
The other gorillas kept eating bark and scratching themselves, and burping and passing gas. The old-looking one leaned against a tree, folded his arms across his hairy belly, and went to sleep. Immediately, he began to snore. Loudly.
And the gorilla that looked like Ethan the skateboarder kept moving toward Maisie and Felix, his head bent quizzically.
Felix, already sweating in the oppressive jungle heat, began to tremble.
Maisie, however, was not afraid. As the gorilla got closer and closer, excitement swelled in her. She had never seen a gorilla before, not even in the zoo. And now she was almost ready to touch one, although she figured that probably wasn’t a very good idea.
“Don’t make eye contact,” Felix whispered, his voice dry and cracked.
“Why not?” Maisie asked.
The gorilla stopped and looked at her, frowning.
Maisie grinned at him. His fur was coarse and black, but his stomach was pink and the hair on his back was tipped with silver.
Felix noticed these things, too. He noticed that the gorilla’s face looked like a rubber gorilla mask and that his black eyes looked like a person’s eyes peering out through a Halloween mask. Then he remembered one more gorilla fact: Silverback gorillas acted like teenagers. Big and playful and, Felix thought as he sized up this silverback gorilla, probably weighing seven or eight hundred pounds. He could crush them. Easily. He could knock them out or knock them down or just about anything.
Go away! Felix thought, trying mental telepathy again. Go away!
But the gorilla did just the opposite. He took several bounding steps forward, and came to a stop just three feet from Maisie and Felix.
“Cool,” Maisie said as soft as an exhalation of breath.
The gorilla reached forward and touched Maisie’s hair with one long, gray finger.
Felix wondered if he might actually faint for the first time in his life.
The gorilla wrapped a wavy strand of Maisie’s hair in his finger. He paused. Then he pulled it, hard.
“Ouch!” Maisie said and, without thinking, she slapped his hand away.
He stepped back, startled.
For an instant, Felix thought the gorilla might walk away. The silverback shook his head and started off in the direction of the jungle.
“I can’t believe a gorilla pulled your hair,” Felix whispered, his voice full of fear.
“I can’t believe a gorilla pulled my hair, either,” Maisie said, her voice full of wonder.
Felix looked out of the corner of his eyes. Relieved, he did not see the gorilla.
“That was awesome,” Maisie said. “Wait until I tell Hadley.”
Hadley! That was what was needl
ing at Felix’s brain. The Ziff twins!
Maisie and Felix seemed to remember them at the same time. They looked at each other.
“Uh-oh,” Maisie said.
The sound of footsteps pounding toward them from behind echoed through the air.
Felix started to turn to see what it was, but before he could make sense of the blur that was the silverback, the gorilla was right at Maisie’s back. He made a fist and punched Maisie right between the shoulder blades, hard.
Felix heard himself yell his sister’s name as she flew through the air and landed face-first on the jungle floor.
Felix ran toward her, but the gorilla ran faster. Felix watched as the silverback picked up Maisie in his mighty, hairy arms, held her tight, and ran.
CHAPTER 5
LAME DEMON
Foolishly, futilely, Felix shouted at the gorilla’s hairy back: “Put her down!”
There was nothing to do except run after them. Slipping and sliding down the embankment, Felix made his awkward way in the direction the silverback ran. Hanging on to vines and branches, Felix took slow steps, glancing up every now and then to be sure he still had the gorilla—and Maisie—in his sights.
Eventually, the ground flattened out enough for him to move faster. But then he found himself in large muddy puddles, and he began to slip and slide in the muck. The puddles were strange shapes, flat and wide with funny scraped marks at the top. Staring down as he lifted one foot after the other through the deep mud, Felix paused.
These weren’t puddles.
He bent and studied the shape.
They were footprints.
Hippo footprints.
Maisie knew she should be scared. A gorilla had punched her in the back, sent her flying through the air, then picked her up from the jungle floor and was at this very minute running away with her. Even one of these things should be enough to scare the heck out of her. But somehow, Maisie felt calm.
The gorilla stunk. Worse than the monkey house at the zoo. Worse than almost anything she’d smelled. Like a million skunks spraying, plus a million gym socks, plus a million classrooms of sweaty kids. Her father always told her to breathe through her mouth when something around her smelled bad, so Maisie did that, opening her mouth and breathing in and out, in and out. The gorilla had slowed down. But he did not loosen his grip on Maisie.