Eye of the Forest (15 page)

“You mean jump into that pit, without a parachute?” said Groanin.

“Yes. Except that we’d hardly be jumping into the pit. It would be more a case of jumping onto the current of hot air that’s coming out of it and riding that current of air all the way up through the chimney.”

“You’re mad,” said Groanin, and sat down on a large yellow rock.

“I don’t think so. Heat rises. And so would we.”

“You make it sound like we’re no heavier than a handful of leaves, miss,” said Groanin. “Myself I weigh more than two hundred pounds. I’d like to see the current of air that could blow me around like a bubble.”

“I think you’re looking at it, Mr. Groanin,” argued Philippa. “But I bet that boulder you’re sitting on must weigh quite a bit. Why don’t we throw the boulder into the current of air and see what happens to it?”

“Good idea,” said Muddy.

“You’re mad,” Groanin told Muddy. “Here, Sicky, how do you feel about this idea of hers?”

“Sick,” said Sicky. “Sick to my stomach. Still, best we chuck the rock into the air current first and then figure if there’s another way to get out of here. Experiment first, like she says. Then argue. Okay? That’s scientific.”

“I’m not doing it,” said Groanin. All the same he stood up, and he and Sicky carried the yellow boulder along the path to the edge of the pit. “This rock is warm, you know.”

“And plenty heavy,” said Sicky.

“Aye, but how heavy?” Groanin grunted with the exertion of moving the boulder. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

“More expensive than that, I reckon,” said Muddy. He would have helped but there was no room for three on the path. “Much more.” He chuckled. “My life is, anyway.”

“This rock is at least a hundred pounds, maybe,” said Sicky. The guide’s head may have been unusually small but there was nothing wrong with his ability to guess the weight of something heavy.

“At least,” said Groanin. “Right, then. Here goes.”

Groanin and Sicky stood cradling the boulder at the edge of the pit and began to swing their arms.

A second later, the two men tossed the yellow boulder into the pit and then watched in amazement as the hot current of air quickly carried it up the shaft like a pellet in the barrel of a BB gun.

“I think that answers your doubts, Groanin,” observed Philippa.

“I’m still not doing it,” he said. “I never liked jumping out of a plane when I was in the British Army. And that was with a flipping parachute on my back.”

“You mean you’ve done this kind of thing before?” said Philippa.

“This kind of thing? No, miss.” Groanin smiled thinly. “That was merely dangerous. This is foolhardy. I’m an English butler, not a flipping daredevil. Look here, suppose the air batters us against the walls of the chimney. We could be knocked senseless. And what happens to us when we shoot out of the top? How high up will we go before gravity takes over? We could land on anything. And anywhere. We could find ourselves lost in the Amazon jungle. Or senseless at the top of a very tall tree.”

“You’re forgetting,” said Philippa. “I’m a djinn. The minute I’m in sunshine, I’ll have my power back.”

“I’m not doubting your word, miss,” he said. “But what if it’s still raining? Underneath the tree canopy there’s not a lot of sunshine on the forest ground. It might be several hours before —”

“I’m going to try it,” said Sicky.

“Me, too,” said Muddy.

Philippa shrugged as if to say, “Me, too.”

Groanin muttered darkly. “I’m certainly not staying down here by myself.”

“If you’ve done a parachute jump before,” said Philippa,
“then perhaps you can demonstrate the best way to do this. I mean the best way to make this jump.”

Groanin nodded. “Very well, miss. I reckon the best thing to do would be to take a running jump at it. To launch yourself into the center of the current of air so that you aren’t buffeted on the sides of the shaft as you shoot up the chimney.” He wagged a forefinger at Sicky, and then Muddy. “As soon as you hit the air current, you should throw out your arms and legs in a star, so that the air can catch as much of you as possible.”

“Who’s going to be first?” asked Sicky.

“It ought to be me,” Philippa said bravely, and put her glasses inside her pocket for safety. “After all, this was my idea. Plus, we might get lucky. I might shoot straight up and out of here into a beam of hot sunshine and find my power restored before I hit the ground.”

“Stranger things have happened,” said Groanin, and then told himself that they probably hadn’t.

Philippa walked back along the path and prepared to make her run. She’d never been much of a long jumper. Thinking was her stronger suit, which was one of the reasons why her last thought before sprinting toward the gaping pit was to wonder what the yellow crystal that encrusted the walls of the cave was made of, and to put a piece in her pocket so that later on, if she survived, she might examine it more closely.

At the last second and just as she jumped, Philippa heard Sicky shouting and saw Groanin waving as if urging her on, and she was already airborne by the time she realized that
they’d actually been shouting at her to stop. It was easy to understand why. The air current had stopped. For one sickening, heart-stopping moment Philippa hung in the air above the pit, instead of being blasted all the way up the shaft. Then she started to fall.

F
or several minutes, absolutely certain that it was not he who had disappeared into thin air but Nimrod, John walked around the deserted camp, shouting for his uncle and hacking at the thick undergrowth with the machete. He wondered if Nimrod’s disappearance was self-inflicted or if there was some other force involved. Nimrod wasn’t the type of uncle who disappeared without telling anyone. Almost immediately, John heard the whistling again and this time he was careful not to answer it with some whistling of his own, quite unaware that it was already too late, and that the wrath of
el Tunchi
had now fallen upon his young head.

This time it actually seemed possible to follow the source of the whistling, which grew stronger as John went deeper into the forest. He was not afraid. He was, after all, a djinn and, as he emerged into a sunlit clearing, the power felt strong in him. John was not even afraid when finally he laid
eyes upon the fearsome-looking author of the melodious whistling.

The man wore a filthy fur rug around his large waist, and his black hair was long and shaggy. The upper half of his face was painted black and the lower half white. The upper half was remarkable on account of the fact that he had only one eye. The lower half was chiefly remarkable in that the man held the head of a living lizard in his mouth, with the rest of the black-and-white reptile’s tail and body wrapped around his neck, like a necklace. It was through this lizard’s head that the man seemed to do his whistling and, as John quickly discovered, most of his talking, too. Indeed, it almost seemed as if it was the lizard that was in charge of the man. Most odd of all, perhaps, was the jaunty little tune itself — quite at odds with the man’s appearance — that continued to be whistled from the lizard’s mouth.

“You whistle extremely well,” said John. “For a lizard.”

The lizard stopped whistling. “I whistle splendidly well for any sort of being,” it said sibilantly.

“And that’s a nice tune,” said John.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you,” demanded the lizard man, “never to whistle in a theater? Or on a ship? Or in a house, in case you invite the devil in? And above all, never to whistle in the rain forest?”

“No,” said John, “she never did. But then my mother isn’t like most mothers. In fact, she’s not even particularly like my mother. At least not since she started to look like someone else.”

“You make no sense, boy,” hissed the lizard man.

“It’s a long story,” said John. “Some other time, perhaps.”

“You don’t seem to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not.” John shrugged. “What’s the big idea making my uncle Nimrod disappear like that?”

“He didn’t disappear. You did.”

“Well, who are you to go around making people disappear? Are you a ghost?”

“No, not a ghost. I am
el Tunchi.
A shaman. The spiritual echo of a witch doctor who took his last breath in the rain forest, having been tortured to death by Spanish conquistadors about five hundred years ago. They were after gold, of course. And thinking that they were all going to be rich, they liked to whistle. They even whistled while they were torturing me. Nobody ever whistled in South America before they turned up. Nobody knew how. Ever since then, I have been here to punish all those, like them, who dare to whistle in the jungle. It is my revenge.”

“But I’m not like them. And where I come from, people whistle when they’re happy. And I think it’s pretty sick of you to take revenge on people for doing something as ordinary as that.”

“Who are you to tell me what I can and what I can’t do?”

“My name is John Gaunt. And I’m on a quest to find the lost city of Paititi. And to save the world from the great destruction. The
Pachacuti.”

“I care nothing about that, John Gaunt. All I care about is my revenge.” He grinned horribly. “First I’m going to
drill a hole in your head. Then I’m going to suck out your brain. And then I’m going to use your empty skull for a note on my organ.”

“You mean like a pipe organ? In a church?”

“Yes. Except that instead of pipes I use human skulls. My organ has sixty-one notes and five octaves. Would you like to see it?”

John shrugged coolly. “Sure.”

He followed
el Tunchi
to a little hut in the forest, where John now gazed upon the strangest musical instrument he had ever seen.

“The five keyboards are made from locally sourced horn and bone,”
el Tunchi
explained proudly. “Jaguar teeth and antelope horn. The stops are made from tapir vertebrae. The pedal board is made of human shinbones. The pipe casing is made of armor taken from the bodies of many dead conquistadors. Curses be upon them all. And of course, as you can see, the pipes themselves are human skulls arranged by timbre and pitch into ranks and mounted vertically onto a wind chest that’s really just a wooden box over an ancient hole in the ground from which hot air comes forth. There are lots of holes like that in this part of the jungle. When the wind whistles through these pipes it makes a truly infernal noise.”

El Tunchi
sat down and started to play. And soon John was obliged to cover his ears.
El Tunchi
had spoken the truth: It was a truly infernal noise. Like something from the deepest, darkest pit.

“I think your playing really stinks,” said John.

“I never learned to play,” admitted
el Tunchi.
“Not that it matters here in the jungle. There’s no one around to listen. Besides, I don’t play for other people. I play for myself. But if ever I wanted an audience I’d just whistle one up.”

John thought carefully. It was beyond his power and imagination to figure a way of restoring himself to the parallel world he had occupied with Nimrod just a few minutes before. For that he knew he needed
el Tunchi.
But he did not think it was beyond his power to goad the shaman into some kind of contest out of which he might make some kind of advantage for himself.

“Speaking of whistling,” he said. “You’re not much better at that, come to think of it. I bet I could beat you in a whistling contest.”

El Tunchi
grinned and the lizard head fell out of his mouth. Popping it back in again, he said, “Are you challenging me?”

“Sure.” John grinned back at him. “But look here, if we are going to have a contest there had better be something worth competing for.”

“Like what?”

“Like you get my skull if you win, and if you lose, you fix it for me to go back with my uncle Nimrod.”

“All right,” said
el Tunchi.
“It’s a deal.”

“Who goes first?” John asked.

“It ought to be you,” said
el Tunchi.
“Since you’re the challenger.”

John shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said, and muttering his focus word, “ABECEDARIAN!” wished that he was the best whistler the world had ever heard.

After warming up with a few bars of “Dixie” and “Yankee Doodle,” which are commonly whistled tunes in most parts of the United States, John began in earnest with a tune called “Buffoon,” followed it up with another called “Lovely Lady” and, by the time John finished “Moonlight,” the whistling jungle shaman was looking worried.

“Truly, I never heard such magnificent tunes so wonderfully performed,” admitted
el Tunchi
and set about whistling a much more complicated version of the same tune that John had heard earlier. But even he was forced to admit that his whistling hadn’t the dexterity and melodic breadth of John’s near symphonic whistling. “Perhaps you can, it’s true, whistle a better tune,” he said, angry with himself. “But I doubt there’s anyone who can touch me for the sheer power of my whistling.”

“All right,” said John. “But this time you go first.”

El Tunchi
took a deep breath, pursed his lips, and let out a long, piercing whistle that sent several birds and quite a few insects heading nervously for the comparative quiet of the clouds.

John nodded. “Not bad,” he admitted. “But I can do better.” And wishing that he could whistle up a storm, as is the saying, he put his fingers in his mouth and started to blow.

At first the whistle was merely loud — indeed it was very
easily as loud as
el Tunchi
’s. But as the whistle continued, the wind generated by the considerable movement of air from John’s mouth began to gather in power until the bushes and trees surrounding them began to move. Then
el Tunchi’s
headdress blew off, revealing his bald head. Next the shaman’s fur rug blew away, leaving him standing there in just a loincloth. Last of all, the lizard in his mouth was carried off. John might have laughed but for the fact that this would have required him to stop whistling.

“Please,” yelled the shaman in his own squeaky billy-goat voice, which wasn’t in the least bit frightening.

John reflected that when you heard a thin, reedy voice like that it was easy to understand why
el Tunchi
had used a lizard to do his talking for him.

“Stop, I beg of you,” wailed the shaman, who looked much smaller now that he had lost his curious wig and his fur wrap. He put his fingers in his ears, closed his eyes, and cowered down on the ground as if he thought the very forest would blow away. “Please. Stop that whistling. It’s driving me mad.”

But John kept on whistling like the north wind, determined to teach
el Tunchi
a good lesson. Never was whistling heard like it. Not ever at the South Pole nor at Cape Horn nor on the Russian steppes nor on the high seas, which are all places where great whistling winds carry all before them. And when he had blown away
el Tunchi’s
clothes, John blew away the shaman’s morbid organ: the stops made from tapir
vertebrae, the pedal board made of human shinbones, the pipe casing made of armor, and, of course, the pipes themselves that were made of human skulls; all of them were blasted over the treetops or shattered into dust and never to be seen again.

After his experience with the Prozuanaci Indians, John was in the mood for handing out lessons. And while he sympathized with anyone who had been a victim of the Spanish conquistadors, he did not think this was sufficient justification to go around drilling holes in people’s heads and using their empty skulls as the pipes for some horrible organ. Only when he was quite satisfied that he had blown away every part of the organ did John finally take his fingers out of his mouth and stop whistling.

Gradually, the forest settled down again.

“Er, do you give in?” asked John, although it was quite clear that
el Tunchi
was beaten.

Looking very shaken,
el Tunchi
got up slowly, flexed his ears — for by now he was a little deaf — and bowed gravely to John. “Sir,” he said. “Most esteemed sir. Never before have I heard the like. Not in all of the five hundred years I have haunted this forest. Such whistling. The mere word doesn’t do it justice. My abject apologies, sir. I will restore you to your uncle, immediately.”

“Wait a minute,” said John. “All this whistling to catch people for their skulls has got to stop, do you hear? It’s not civilized.”

“Yes, sir. As you wish, sir. My organ is gone, so there’s nothing to take their skulls for.”

“Do you promise never to do it again?”

“Yes, sir. You have my most solemn promise. Never to do it again.”

John felt sorry for the poor creature. Now that he had destroyed his terrible organ and forbidden him to torment people in the forest it was clear
el Tunchi
would have nothing with which to amuse himself throughout all eternity.

“You know, you could use a real organ,” said John. “A proper organ with pipes and stuff, like the kind you get in a church.” And muttering his focus word, John made a facsimile of an organ he’d once seen in a cathedral.

El Tunchi
regarded it, openmouthed and awestruck, like a sort of spaceship.

“It’s amazing,” breathed the shaman. “Astonishing. What an instrument. I just wish I knew how to play it.”

“You’re right,” said John. “It’s not much good to you if you don’t know how to play it. Your wish is my command.” And using his djinn power again, he gave
el Tunchi
a new talent. He made him a very great organist.

John spent the next five minutes persuading
el Tunchi
that his wish had been granted before at last he sat down and played some great organ music by Bach and Handel, and when he finished he knelt before John and kissed his hand.

“Thank you, great sir, thank you,” said
el Tunchi.
“You have given me my dearest wish in the world. I never liked making
people disappear and then stealing their skulls. Only part of the reason for what I did was revenge. Mostly it was borne of frustration at not being able to play on a proper organ.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.” And he was. The huge organ sounded fantastic in the jungle. Indeed, to John’s ears it was the sound of civilization.

“But before I restore you to your uncle,” said
el Tunchi,
“there is something important I must give and tell you. Something that will help you on your quest to find Paititi.”

“There you are,” said Nimrod. “I was wondering where you’d wandered off to.”

“I didn’t wander off,” said John. “I disappeared. On account of the fact that I answered
el Tunchi
’s whistle.”

John told Nimrod about
el Tunchi
and the whistling contest.

“That explains it, then,” said Nimrod. “A little while ago, there was a violent wind that swept through the forest for no apparent reason. So it was you.”

“Where exactly was I? When I disappeared?”

“Difficult question.” Nimrod shrugged. “The next world. The one before. The one beside it. None of these words really means anything when applied to where you were. Or, to be more accurate, where you weren’t. You were here and there at almost the same point in time and space. Which is almost nowhere at all.”

“You mean like two dimensions?”

“Yes. But not quite.”

“So how is it possible that you felt the wind from my whistling?”

“Ah well, that’s the thing about whistling. If the sound keeps on going long enough, then it can actually move between these two so-called dimensions. There are a lot of hurricanes that get started by the idle whistling of ghosts.”