Eye of the Forest (16 page)

“I see,” said John, although he didn’t. Not quite.

“Anyway,” said Nimrod, “you’re back now. That’s all that matters. We’ve got to get moving. While you were off having fun, Zadie’s bat, Zotz, came back with a message for her from Virgil McCreeby. He says that he’s lost in the jungle. He asks Zadie to take on the shape of the bat so that she might come to him and help him discover exactly where he is.”

John nodded gloomily, still very worried about his sister and the others.

“Does that mean there’s time to go and look for Philippa and the others?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not,” said Nimrod. “Look, John, they’ll have to take their chances. Need I remind you of what Faustina commanded us to do? To secure the Eye. And if we can’t do that, then we can’t prevent anyone from finding the lost city of Paititi. If that’s where McCreeby is trying to get to, it won’t be for anything good. You can bet on that much. We have to stop him. At all costs. Do you understand? At all costs.”

John nodded. It wasn’t often that Nimrod sounded so alarmed about something.

“Speaking of which,” said John, “
el Tunchi
gave me this.
Said it might help us find the city. Although I have absolutely no idea how, or even what it is.”

John handed Nimrod what looked like a necklace made of several hundred lengths — many of them knotted — of colored string.

“It’s a
khipu,”
said Nimrod, examining it carefully. “Unlike any other Bronze Age civilization, the Inca had no written language and so this was the way in which they encoded and recorded important information.”

“Yeah? So what does it mean?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Nimrod. “I don’t think anyone does.
Khipu
are as much of a mystery today as Egyptian hieroglyphs were until Champollion deciphered their meaning. Let us hope that a solution to how these things work presents itself. But since hope is seldom enough by itself …”

Nimrod opened Mr. Vodyannoy’s backpack and removed a book.
“Inca Khipu Made Simple,
by Terence Forelock. Frank Vodyannoy brought this from his library at New Haven because he thought it might come in handy. You’ll remember that it wasn’t just the tears of the sun that were stolen. Faustina reported several
khipu
and a golden staff stolen from that museum in Berlin. Perhaps this book will tell us something of what we need to know in order to understand the message contained in these pieces of string.”

“So, where to now?” asked John.

“We must press on, to the Eye of the Forest,” said Nimrod. “Along the route I memorized from Faustina’s map.”

A
s Philippa plunged down the huge underground shaft she wished for — what else? — a parachute. But sufficient heat had not yet returned to her body for her djinn power to function and by the time she uttered her own focus word and a parachute did not appear, the last syllables of FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL had turned into a scream. Of course, she could not help it and she screamed loudly, like someone falling from the window of a very tall Manhattan skyscraper.

Or out of an airplane without a parachute.

And then, just as she closed her eyes and thought she might actually die of fright — for her heart felt as if it was beating faster than the hooves of a galloping horse — the rate of her descent slowed suddenly until, for a moment, she seemed to remain almost stationary. Philippa heard herself gasp with relief and opened her eyes again. The current of air had returned and was already strengthening.

“I’ve stopped,” she gasped. “Thank goodness. I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped.”

Gradually, she began to ascend the shaft. And when she reached the ledge from where, just a few heart-stopping seconds before, she had jumped, she was moving up almost as quickly as she had been moving down. There was just time to wave and to shout at Groanin, Sicky, and Muddy that she would see them at the top or on the outside.

If she had been going only a little slower she might have heard Groanin’s remark as he turned away from the edge of the shaft with a tear in his eye.

“I thought she was a goner for sure,” he said. “I say, I thought that little lass was a goner, for sure.” He shook his head, and took out a handkerchief. “I’d never have forgiven myself if something had happened to her. What we’ve been through together. I couldn’t begin to tell you. The times she’s saved my bacon.” He blew his nose loudly. “Sorry.”

His small head still observing Philippa’s progress up the chimney shaft, Sicky whistled. “Even for a djinn girl, I reckon she’s got plenty of guts,” he said.

“That she has,” said Groanin.

Intermittently poking a hand into the severe current of air now blasting up the shaft, Muddy said, “Ain’t never seen anything like this. The way the current of air goes on and off like a gigantic hair dryer.” He started to walk back along the rocky path. “I figure if I stopped to think about this, then maybe I wouldn’t find the nerve to go after her. So I ain’t gonna do it.”

“That’s the way I feel about it, too,” said Groanin, quite mistaking the thrust of what Muddy was talking about. “I don’t think I could ever jump now.”

“Stop to think, I mean,” added Muddy and, taking a long run at it, he jumped into the current of air and went sailing up the shaft after Philippa with a loud whoop of relief and exhilaration.

“Flipping heck,” said Groanin. “I thought he meant he wasn’t going to do it. Not that he was actually going to jump.” He looked at Sicky uncomfortably. “How do you feel about doing this, Sicky, old mate?”

Thoughtfully, Sicky stroked the pieces of string that had been threaded through his lips by the Xuanaci Indians, and which looked like the whiskers of a Chinese Mandarin.

“Sick,” he said, shaking his shrunken head. “Pretty sick. My stomach feels like I swallowed something nasty. But maybe Muddy is right. Maybe it’s best not to think at all. Maybe it’s best just to do, huh?”

Sicky was already walking back down the path that led to the edge of the shaft. Then he turned, clenched his fists, and readied himself like a sprinter.

Groanin gulped loudly. “Sicky,” he said weakly. “Sicky, old mate. Let’s talk about this. If you jump, it’ll be just me down here on my own, and I’m not sure I can do this.”

“You is the one who has done the parachute training,” said Sicky. “Not me. I never jumped off anything before. Not even a bed, on account of the fact that I always slept in a hammock. I ain’t got no head for heights. Truth be told, I
hardly got a head at all. But Muddy’s right. How’s that old poem go? ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do …’”

Sicky charged back up the path without bothering to finish his quotation. Indeed, he hardly knew that it was a famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. But Groanin did. Moreover, he knew the last two words of the line Sicky had spoken and uttered them quietly as the guide launched himself off the edge of the chimney shaft: “‘Theirs but to do and die,’” he said, and grimaced uncomfortably.

But Sicky did not die. The guide’s head may have been unusually small but there was nothing wrong with his ability to judge a long jump and, like a shuttlecock, he quickly sailed up the chimney.

“What the heck did you want to go and quote that poem for?” Groanin shouted after him. “‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’ Hardly inspiring of confidence, is it? ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred.’ It shows a want of consideration, that’s what it does, a want of consideration.” Groanin shook his head. “Still, what can you expect of a foreigner?”

Groanin hefted another yellow stone into the shaft and, as it followed Sicky up the shaft, he had an idea. Just before he started his run up he would throw another stone, and if the air carried the stone up he would run, and if it didn’t, he would wait. That way he might avoid what had happened to Philippa. And this was what he did, although such was the strength with which he threw the rock that it almost went straight through the powerful current of
air without stopping. Of course, thanks to the twins (and Dybbuk) Groanin was possessed of an extra-strong arm. But because of his largish stomach he was no athlete and certainly not much of a runner, and when he did jump, instead of jumping feetfirst, he jumped headfirst. This had the effect of turning him upside down and, yelling noisily, Groanin sailed up the chimney like a large and loudly deflating balloon.

Instead of exiting the chimney at ground level and in the open air, Philippa found herself flying up through a broken crystal ceiling and into a large stone chamber. Fortunately for her and the others who followed, the crystal ceiling had been smashed when, to test its strength, Groanin and Sicky had tossed the yellow boulder into the maelstrom of warm air. But for that they might have met the same sticky fate as a few bugs squished on a car windshield.

Being young and agile, Philippa landed on her feet, but her first thought was for her larger, heavier companions and how
they
might land. She glanced around at her surroundings. The chamber was circular, as large as a circus tent, and covered by a larger glasslike roof, which was mostly overgrown with jungle vegetation that allowed only a few shafts of greenish light to shine through. The air was thick, wet, steamy, and larded with a strong smell of decay. Philippa thought it was like being in a giant aquarium. But already she was warm enough to feel djinn power returning to her bones. And she had just enough time to mutter her focus word and
conjure a large pile of thick mattresses on the floor all around the shaft’s crystal ceiling before Muddy shot up into the air like a Ping-Pong ball in a carnival shooting gallery. He managed to twist his way through the air like a large cat, and to fall safely on the pile of mattresses Philippa had thoughtfully provided.

Guessing their origin, Muddy smiled at Philippa and nodded his gratitude. “Thank you, miss,” he said, picking himself off the floor. “‘Preciate it.”

Sicky arrived less than a minute later. He seemed to go higher in the air than Muddy or Philippa and, but for the fact that his head was so small, he might have banged it on the roof. Picking himself up off the mattresses he said, “What is this place?”

“I don’t know,” said Philippa, who hardly dared to think about where they were until she knew Groanin was safe. “But it’s kind of creepy.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Where’s Mr. Groanin?” she asked Sicky. “Guess he’ll be along in a minute. Soon as he’s plucked up the nerve.”

And then he was there, yelling loudly and flailing his arms and his legs as he attempted to right himself, and looking more than a little like a trapeze artist whose act had gone very wrong. As he reached the roof he reached for a creeper, clung on to it tightly and stayed there, swinging twenty or thirty feet above the heads of Philippa and the others.

“Let go,” said Philippa. “This pile of mattresses will break your fall.”

“Come on, Mr. Groanin,” said Muddy. “Jump.”

“I’m all right up here, thank you very much,” Groanin said stiffly, for he was still unnerved after his unusual flight. “I’ll come down when my stomach has caught up with my head.”

Philippa shrugged. “He’ll come down in a minute,” she said, and followed Sicky around the strange chamber.

“Bit like an Incan greenhouse in here,” said Sicky. “Sure is warm enough.”

“Yes,” agreed Philippa. “It feels great to be warm again.” She smiled up at Sicky. “I’m sorry, but we’re like lizards, we djinn. We only thrive in warmth.”

Strange plants were growing out of the cracks between the huge stones in the floor. They had leaves as big as dinner plates and smelled unpleasant.

Around the circumference of the chamber were more than a dozen squarish alcoves. Each was about three or four feet tall and covered with an opaque, grayish material that was like a window you couldn’t quite see through.

“What is it?” asked Sicky. “Glass? Plastic?”

Looking closely at the opaque material, Philippa saw that it was full of little strands and spirals. She tapped one experimentally with her fingernail.

“You know what I think this is?” she said. “I think it’s fossilized gossamer. This is made of ancient spiderwebs.”

“Spiderwebs?” Alarmed, Sicky took a step back. “Pretty big spider,” he said.

“Or a lot of spiders working together,” Philippa said hurriedly. “Don’t worry. This stuff must be hundreds of years old. The spiders who wove these webs are long dead. Like the men who built this place.”

“Maybe that’s what I don’t like about it.” Sicky sniffed the air suspiciously. “The smell of death. This whole place stinks of it.”

“I thought it was just me being fanciful.” Philippa sniffed the air and made a face. “But you’re right. And it is kind of overpowering, isn’t it?” She took his big hand and squeezed it encouragingly. “All the same, I think it’s just the cloying smell of tropical plants in the heat. That’s what. Nothing to worry about.”

She tapped the ancient gossamer glass again, only this time it felt sticky to the touch. Almost as if it was softening.

“That’s odd,” she said. “This gossamer glass. It seems to be melting.” And then it dawned on her. “Of course. The heat from that shaft. For centuries it was probably blocked by the ceiling on the chimney shaft. Until we broke it. The heat is melting these gossamer glass coverings.”

“Maybe it’s best we’re not here when they melt, eh, miss?” said Sicky.

“On the whole I tend to agree with you. Come on. Let’s look for a way out of here.”

Continuing their trip around the circular chamber they walked down some stone steps and out into the open air and found a very long rope bridge that stretched across an apparently bottomless chasm. The chasm was apparently endless, too, for the bridge led into a thick cloud of mist. The rope itself was made of a very finely stranded black material that shone like silk.

Philippa peered over the edge of the chasm. She realized she had little appetite for a journey upon an old rope bridge when you couldn’t even see the bottom of the space you were crossing.

“A door,” shouted Muddy. “I found a door.”

They looked around and for a moment failed to see him.

“Over here,” shouted Muddy.

Down a few steps at the opposite side of the chamber from the bridge, they found Muddy staring at an ancient door. Philippa stooped to inspect it. As well as the mold of several centuries, it was covered with the same creepers that continued up to the roof. She took hold of a creeper that was stuck fast to the door and pulled it. The door moved inside its frame, but only just. “It seems to be locked,” she said. “From the outside.”

“Reckon this is the way out, miss?” asked Muddy.

“If we can get it open, it might be,” said Philippa. “But don’t worry. I’m sure I can shift all these creepers with djinn power. And then we’ll know for sure.”

She muttered her focus word and a machete appeared in Muddy’s hand. He grinned and then struck at one of the
creepers with the razor-sharp blade as if it had been a dangerous snake.

“I say,” shouted Groanin from the rooftop. “What about me? I say, what about me? Stuck up here, like a dusty old chandelier.”

“I’d forgotten about poor old Groanin.” Philippa laughed. She stood back from the door and shouted up to the butler, who continued to remain dangling at rooftop level. “All you have to do is let go,” she told him. “The mattresses will easily break your fall.”

“It’s not breaking my fall that I’m worried about,” said Groanin obstinately. “It’s breaking my flipping leg. Or worse. I don’t bounce as high as I used to. I say, I don’t bounce as high as I used to.”

“Hey, can you see anything out of that glass roof?”

“‘Tisn’t glass,” said Groanin. “It’s something else. Something like glass. As a matter of fact, I can see something. I’m not sure what, but it’s on the same bearing as that there rope bridge you were looking at a moment ago. I daren’t reach for me glasses to make sure. But there’s a mountaintop. And there might just be a city sitting on top of it, like a cherry.”

Meanwhile the gossamer glass coverings had all but melted in the heat. Sicky walked over to the one of the alcoves and was inspecting the now visible occupant closely. “Miss,” he said. “I think you’d better take a look-see at this, quick.”

Philippa stood beside him and felt her jaw slowly drop.

In the alcove were the mummified remains of what looked
like an Incan warrior. He was seated with his legs bent and his arms resting on his ample stomach and, but for the tightness and color of the skin on his face he looked to all the world like he was just sleeping. On his head was a golden helmet decorated with eagle feathers, a golden breastplate, and beside him on the ground were a rectangular shield, a spear, a bow and arrows, and a short, vicious-looking club.

“Fascinating,” said Philippa. “He must have been a warrior or something. Look at all those weapons.”