Eye of the Forest (8 page)

“Makes sense, I guess,” observed John. “What happened then?”

Sicky shrugged. “They gave me a mirror that they had once traded for a shrunken head and let me look at myself. Which they thought was plenty funny.”

“And how
did
you feel?” asked Philippa who, in spite of herself, was equally fascinated.

“Sick,” said Sicky. “Very sick. Sick to my stomach. How would you feel?”

“Sick,” agreed Philippa.

“Then they let me go. I went back to my village and everyone was plenty pleased to see me, but also very sad because of what the Xuanaci had done to me and my head.”

“And did you ever get revenge on them?” asked John, who, being a boy, was inclined to think that way.

“Oh, yes. But many years later.” Sicky looked at Mr. Vodyannoy and smiled.

“I was on vacation down here,” said Mr. Vodyannoy, “and Sicky saved my life. Stopped me from being bitten by a
Scolopendra gigantea,
a Peruvian giant centipede. These are highly venomous and quite deadly. Even more so to djinn than to mundanes.”

“I guess that’s only fair, given that we’re immune to snake venom,” said John.

“How giant are they?” Philippa asked.

“They can easily reach fifteen inches in length,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Anyway, I gave Sicky three wishes. And after wasting the first one —”

Sicky grinned sheepishly as he remembered it. “I wished that I knew if he was telling the truth or not. And then, of course, I did.”

“So, forgive me,” Zadie said carefully, “and no offense, Sicky, but why didn’t you wish for a normal-sized head?”

“Because I didn’t want one,” Sicky said simply. “I was used to my head the size it was. So was everyone else. It didn’t seem that important.”

“I get it,” said John. “Your second wish was to have revenge on the Xuanaci.”

“Oh, no,” said Sicky. “My second wish was to have my own business. Here in the jungle. To support my family. Which is how I have this tour and expedition company. My third wish was to have the tattoo I told you about. The one that turns things to stone.”

“And I thought you were a sculptor,” said Philippa.

“Those very lifelike statues of animals I’ve seen around the place. Those were once real animals, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” said Sicky. “I make some money by selling them to tourists.”

“And the Xuanaci?” said John.

Sicky grinned sheepishly again. “You are right, boy. One day, using this tattoo, I went deep into the jungle, looking for some Xuanaci and turned some of them to stone, too.”

“Wow,” said John. “How did you feel about that?”

“Sick,” said Sicky. “Very sick. Sick to my stomach. It gave me no pleasure to do that. Anyway. Perhaps you will see the statues for yourselves since we will have to go upriver, deep into Xuanaci country, to get to where you want to go.”

Groanin returned to the table.

“Do they still hunt heads?” John asked with one eye on Groanin.

Sicky shrugged. “Difficult question. I have not seen any Xuanaci for a very long time. So, maybe yes. Maybe no.” He smiled at Groanin and added quietly, “Keep very still please, Mr. Groanin.”

“What’s that you say, Sicky, old chap?”

“Keep quite still, please. There is something on your back.”

Groanin gulped and turned very pale. “Something? What sort of something? You mean a creepy crawly something?”

Sicky’s hand disappeared behind Groanin for a moment and when it returned it was holding a giant centipede. It had
about twenty-eight red leathery segments and a couple of dozen pairs of yellow claws that were bigger than the teeth of a large comb. The centipede looked like something from another planet, and an inhospitable planet at that.

“Holy centipedes,” exclaimed John, rising from the table. “A
Scolopendra gigantea.”

“Precisely,” said Nimrod.

“Biggest I’ve ever seen,” said Sicky, and held it up to the light so that everyone could get a better look at it. Even in Sicky’s hand the giant centipede looked as big as a snake. “This one must be twenty inches long. Plenty poisonous, too.”

“You look a bit pale, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “How do you feel?”

“Sick,” said Groanin. “Very sick. Sick to my stomach. How do you think I feel?”

And then he fainted.

Sicky did not, however, kill the giant centipede or even throw it away. Later that same evening the three children discovered he was keeping the centipede in a large box and feeding it with mice and cockroaches.

“Ugh,” said Zadie. “Why are you keeping that disgusting thing, Sicky?”

“I’m going to feed him up until he’s plenty bigger,” said Sicky. “Then I’m going to show him the magic tattoo on my belly and turn him to stone. He’ll fetch a good price as a piece of sculpture, from tourists. Same as the others.”

He pointed at some of the beautifully detailed stone animals that were on the veranda outside his living quarters. There was a bird-eating spider, an anteater, a sloth, an opossum, a howler monkey, a short-eared dog, a tapir, a porcupine, and a puma. It looked like quite a cottage industry Sicky had going at his simple wooden home at Manu.

“Is that how you make all your sculptures?” asked John. “You just show them your belly?”

Sicky nodded. “I used to have a stone Xuanaci Indian,” said Sicky. “But a famous British artist bought him and sold him to a modern art museum in London for plenty money.”

“How did that make you feel?” asked John.

“Sick,” said Sicky.

“I can see why someone might want a stone puma,” said Philippa. “Even a porcupine. But what kind of weirdo would want a stone centipede?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said John. “I wouldn’t mind one. Tell you what, Sicky. I’ll buy it.”

“I guess you just answered my question,” said Philippa.

“That is, when you’ve completed the, er, the actual transformation into stone,” John added quickly. “It might look good on my mantelpiece at home.”

So John was a little disappointed when, a little later on, just before bedtime, Sicky informed him that the giant centipede had escaped from the box.

“I think he was a very clever centipede,” said Sicky, scratching his grapefruit-sized head with puzzlement. “I think maybe he pretended to be a lot smaller than he was. Stretched
out, he must have been longer than I suspected. Anyway, he’s gone now. We won’t see him again.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Zadie.

But while she instinctively disliked centipedes, it seemed that Zadie felt rather differently about bats, for the twins were surprised to discover that she was keeping one on her arm as a pet. “I found it hanging on the wall in my room,” she explained, and invited the twins to stroke it. “It’s quite tame, really.”

Mr. Vodyannoy inspected the creature. “It’s a
Sturnira erythromos
,” he declared authoritatively. “A yellow-shouldered bat. Quite harmless.”

“Its fur is very soft,” said Philippa, rubbing the bat’s head with her finger.

“The Incan Emperor Atahualpa had a robe softer than silk that was made from the very finest bat skins,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “So, one of Pizarro’s brothers, Pedro, informs us in his account of the conquest of the Incas.”

“I’m calling it Zotz,” said Zadie. “After Camazotz, the death bat god of the Maya Indians.”

Muddy’s dog, Hector, growled at the bat when Zadie attempted to introduce them, which earned him a pat on the head from Groanin.

“I couldn’t agree more, Hector, old chap,” muttered the butler. “There’s something plenty wrong with that girl.”

V
ery early the next morning, with a thick mist rising above the water to meet an even thicker mist coming down from the trees, the party set off along a narrow tributary of the Amazon river, aboard two long dugout canoes powered by small outboard motors. Sicky, Nimrod, John, and Groanin traveled in the first canoe, and Frank Vodyannoy, Muddy, Muddy’s dog, Hector, Zadie, and Philippa traveled in the second. Steering the first canoe, Sicky led the way and, early on, he pointed out a giant river otter, a red brocket deer, and, among the tall trees, a sheer cliff face that seemed to be swarming with noisy macaws. They were following the route described on the map that Faustina had given to Mr. Vodyannoy, which, they assumed, was the same route to the Eye of the Forest chosen by the earlier expedition — the one that had appeared in the newspaper. Sicky had asked all of the other jungle guides in the Manu National Park for information concerning the other expedition, but this seemed to
be shrouded in mystery or secrecy and nobody had anything to report other than the fact that its members were mostly English and German archaeologists. With one notable exception: It seemed one of the team was a boy of about fourteen years old.

“Did anyone describe this boy?” John asked Sicky as the dugout canoe chugged steadily through the limpid green water.

“Just a boy. That was all they said. English. Maybe American. Just a boy. Bit like you, maybe.” He grinned. “Maybe not so friendly.”

“You would think a boy of fourteen would be in school,” said John. “Getting an education.”

“I might say the same to you,” observed Nimrod.

John shrugged. “Travel broadens the mind. Isn’t that what they say?”

“Yes, but first you have to have a mind,” said Nimrod. “And there’s only one way to get that. Reading. School. College. University. Not gallivanting around the jungle.”

“If you ask me, all travel’s wasted time,” grumbled Groanin. “I mean, what’s the point of coming halfway around the world to look at a bunch of pigging otters and parrots. Worth seeing, perhaps. Just about. Maybe. But hardly worth
going
to see. There’s a subtle difference. I say, there’s a subtle difference. And none of this beats the beach at Lytham St. Annes in summer.”

“There speaks the true born Englishman,” said Nimrod.

Around five o’clock, after a full day on the river, they
stopped on the shore at a picnic spot, where they ate an excellent dinner prepared as usual by Muddy. But after the unfortunate business with the
chichai,
Groanin could not be tempted to eat anything other than a few of the sterile jars of baby food he had brought with him from England.

When the meal was over, Sicky and Muddy built up the fire and then settled down in hammocks, which was their usual custom in the jungle and, wrapping himself in several yards of mosquito net, Groanin did the same. Hector lay down beside the fire and went to sleep. Nimrod and Mr. Vodyannoy played a game of
perudo,
a South American game that is not unlike Djinnverso, while the three children sat around the campfire and talked excitedly about their first day on the great Amazon river.

“Do you think there are any piranhas in that water?” John wondered aloud.

“Why don’t you leave your hand trailing in the water tomorrow and find out?” suggested Zadie.

“Very funny.”

“Where’s Zotz?” Philippa asked Zadie.

Zadie glanced at her upper arm which, until recently, was the bat’s preferred resting place, but this was now empty.

“Oh,” Zadie said sadly. “He must have flown off somewhere. I hope he comes back.”

“It is dark,” said Philippa. “I mean, bats are nocturnal, right? So I expect he’s gone off to get some fruit or something.”

“I gave him some orange,” said Zadie, and looked around anxiously. “I’m not stupid.”

“I’m sure he’ll come back,” said Philippa. “You’ll see.”

Suddenly, Sicky sat up in his hammock and reached for his rifle. Nimrod tossed his cigar away and stood, looking expectantly at Sicky. The guide’s head may have been unusually small but there was nothing wrong with his hearing or indeed his sense of smell. He lifted his tiny nose in the air and inhaled. Hector did the same and growled quietly.

“I smell dead mouse,” said Sicky.

“Zotz, perhaps?” said John. “Zadie’s bat?”

Sicky shook his head. “Bigger,” he said. “Something is hunting us. Something that eats a mouse.” Quietly, he worked the breech on his rifle.

Everyone looked around and moved instinctively closer to the fire. That is, everyone who was awake. Groanin was already snoring like a small outboard engine.

“I thought maybe I heard something about ten minutes ago,” said Sicky, swinging his legs out of the hammock and placing them firmly on the ground. “And now I’m sure of it.”

Something shifted in the undergrowth. Something large. Hector tucked his tail between his legs and whimpered. Zadie went to stand closer to the fire. It seemed like the safest place to stand. John and Philippa moved alongside her. Placing his hands on his head, John tried to flatten the hairs that were already standing on end. To his surprise, he realized
that both Nimrod and Frank Vodyannoy were also pointing guns at the undergrowth behind Groanin’s hammock.

“Whatever that thing is,” said Nimrod, “it appears to have poor Groanin on the menu.”

Sicky raised his gun to his shoulder. And there was a long silence. A minute later, the thing attacked, swooping down on the butler’s hammock with a slithering, scrambling sound that was like a dozen pairs of claws on a kitchen table, and a dreadful hiss that was part cockroach and part snake.

At first, they thought it was a very large boa constrictor or anaconda, but no snake ever moved so quickly, or had
legs. Twenty-eight pairs of orange legs.
And no snake had
antennae.

For half a moment, Philippa imagined they were being attacked by some kind of creature from outer space, and screamed involuntarily.

The next second, there was a deafening roar as Sicky, Nimrod, and Mr. Vodyannoy fired almost simultaneously and the leathery, brown, segmented creature, still partly hidden by thick jungle foliage, howled like a careening bird of prey and twisted around in a vain attempt to make its escape. The three armed men fired again and the enormous centipede — this one was as big as a horse — collapsed dead beside Groanin’s hammock, oozing a hideous yellow muck from the six holes that now perforated its saddlelike back.

Groanin sat up in his hammock and yawned. “What’s all the racket about?” he demanded. “Can’t you see there are folk trying to get some sleep?”

Sicky laughed with relief and kicked the thing where it lay on the ground. Hector began to chew the creature furiously.

“Pity him dead,” said Sicky. “Biggest centipede I’ve ever seen. Make plenty of money in a zoo. Looks like the big brother of the giant Peruvian centipede we find back at lodge.”

“Centipede? What centipede?” Groanin was looking at the front and then the back of his shirt.

Mr. Vodyannoy knelt beside the huge centipede and began to examine it more closely. Each one of the orange legs was as big as his forearm. “The very big brother,” he murmured. “Rather too big, wouldn’t you say, Nimrod?”

“Yes,” agreed Nimrod. “Unnaturally so.”

Groanin looked over the edge of his hammock at the huge creature lying dead beneath him and swallowed biliously. “You don’t think it intended —?”

“To eat you?” Nimrod put down his rifle. “It’s a distinct possibility.”

Groanin fainted, again.

Sicky and Muddy took turns to sit up and keep watch. And Nimrod used djinn power to create a propugnator, which is a sort of protective wish that acts like a perimeter fence, surrounding their camp to prevent any further attacks. But that night, nobody slept particularly well. The thought that there might be similarly large and hideous monsters lurking in the rain forest was on everyone’s mind, and they all looked
forward to resuming their journey up the Amazon. The river was in the open, after all, and it seemed a lot harder for something to creep up behind you when you were traveling in a boat. At least it did until the next morning, when several miles farther up the Amazon, Zadie reminded them all that on the river it was also easier for some silent monster to swim unseen underneath the boat.

“Anything could be under this dugout canoe and you wouldn’t know a thing about it,” she said, shifting a toothbrush from one side of her mouth to the other, like Mr. Vodyannoy’s pipe. “Piranhas, anacondas.” Even as she spoke, an alligator on the riverbank slipped into the water and moved into the depths like a wooden torpedo. “To say nothing of all the river crocs and alligators.”

“If you can’t say anything helpful,” said Groanin, eyeing the water suspiciously from the other boat, “best not say anything at all. That’s what my old mum used to say.”

“I was only saying,” said Zadie.

“Well, don’t,” said John. “Don’t say a word.”

“If you like, I could sing a song,” she offered brightly. “To keep everyone’s spirits up.”

“I can’t see how you singing could possibly achieve that result,” Groanin said sourly. “In fact, speaking for myself, it would have entirely the opposite effect. But if you want to tap-dance on the water, don’t let me stop you.”

John laughed cruelly. And Zadie pulled a face at them.

A little later on Zotz the bat came back and settled on Zadie’s arm, which cheered her up a lot. And after that, it
seemed that the bat was always coming and going. Somehow, like a racing pigeon, he always seemed to know exactly where to find them in the forest or on the river.

It was about midday when they encountered the next obstacle to their progress. Sicky’s head may have been unusually small, but there was nothing wrong with his eyesight. He cut the dugout’s fifty-five horsepower engine and sat silently staring in front of him.

“What is it, Sicky?” asked Nimrod.

“Something is in front of us, boss.”

Sicky pointed up the river. In the distance, a black cloud hung over the water ahead of them. The cloud shifted shape but it did not move away, and it was immediately obvious to everyone that so long as they remained on the river, they could not go around it. Nimrod fished out his binoculars and took a closer look.

“That’s odd,” he said. “It appears to be an unusually large cloud of mosquitoes.”

“What’s odd about that?” said Groanin. “We’re on the Amazon. The whole country’s crawling with this and that.”

“Yes, but mosquitoes mostly feed at night. It’s very peculiar to see them venture out into the heat of the day in such large numbers. I’m afraid they could be extremely hazardous to the human members of our party. Normally, insects don’t bother djinn very much. But, given their sheer number, it’s safe to assume that these mosquitoes might be different.”

“Protective bee suits?” suggested Mr. Vodyannoy.

“It seems like the obvious solution,” said Nimrod, and was about to utter his focus word when Mr. Vodyannoy raised his hand.

“Here,” he said. “Let me do it.” He thought for a moment, stroked his red beard, and then murmured, “ZAGIPNOTIZIROVAVSHEMUSYA,” which is a Russian focus word meaning “to him who has hypnotized himself.”

Seconds later, they were all wearing bee suits — including Hector the dog — and heading through a swarm of mosquitoes that hummed furiously like a million little currents of electricity.

“I hope these suits work,” said John, who was already sweating profusely inside his protective outfit.

But seeing the river travelers seemed to drive the mosquitoes into a frenzy, and it wasn’t long before one had managed to bite someone because it is a little-known fact that forty percent of mosquitoes are able to bite through clothes, even protective bee suits.

“Yaroo!” yelled Groanin. “One of the little blighters got me.”

“And me,” shouted John.

Hector barked loudly as if he, too, had been bitten through the suit.

Nimrod clapped his hands in the air, crushing one of the insects. Opening his gloved hands he saw that the mosquito he had killed was three or four inches in size, with a proboscis at least as long as and sharper than a hypodermic needle.

“It’s no wonder,” he said, wincing as a mosquito managed to penetrate the suit on his behind. “These mosquitoes are unusually large.”

Mr. Vodyannoy conjured a large aerosol of insecticide out of nothing and began to spray the air around him. John tried to follow his example, but got stuck trying to imagine the synthetic chemical compound of the spray and managed only to create a room deodorant, which did little to deter the airborne plague that now afflicted him.

Philippa had better luck, and uttering her own focus word — which was FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL — she successfully created several large dragonflies, which eat mosquitoes. But there weren’t nearly enough of these to put a real dent in the sheer number of insects now swarming around the two boats.

“Yaroo!” yelled Groanin again. “Do something, you great fathead, sir. Before we all get eaten alive.”

“More speed,” Nimrod shouted at Sicky, who shook his diminutive head hopelessly.

“We already going at full speed, boss,” said Sicky, waving the insects away from the visor on his shrunken hood. “No more power in engine.”

“I’ll soon fix that,” said Nimrod and, uttering his focus word — QWERTYUIOP — he doubled the horsepower of the outboard engines for both of the boats.

And with that, finally, they made their escape.

Another fifteen minutes’ travel took them to the end of the river, where Sicky snatched off his hood and let out a
euphoric breath. “That was close,” he said. “I thought we get killed for sure.”

“Did you get bitten, Sicky?” John asked him.

“Bitten plenty,” said Sicky, pulling the front of his suit down and showing John several livid-looking bites on his shoulders.

“You feel all right?” said John.

“I feel sick,” said Sicky. “But I is okay.” Gradually, he slowed the engine and the two boats coasted toward the riverbank.

“I’m itching all over,” complained Groanin. “I feel like a Scotsman’s picnic blanket.” He inspected one of the insects he’d killed with a rolled-up newspaper. “Look at the size of these,” he exclaimed. “They’re monster mozzies.”