Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (11 page)

“Vbngoom lies hidden in a mountain range in northern Delaware, where the cruel ice still clings to the slopes. There are four mountains in this hidden range. It was at the base of these four mountains that I, stung by the killer bees and hunted by the counterfeiting ring, passed out beneath a banyan tree. When I woke up, I had been spirited away to Vbngoom, which lies on the top of one of these mountains.”

“Can't you remember which mountain?” asked Katie.

“No. I was unconscious, Katie, and all I know is that the temple lies atop one of the four peaks. No mortal knows which. And it is said that these mountains, in deep mist, switch places to keep their secret hidden, so that no prying eyes can view the monastery.”

“Well, clearly,” said Katie, “some mortals know about it now.”

“Yes,” said Jasper. “Unfortunately so.”

“The Stare-Eyes team.”

“Exactly.”

“And Bntno. If he really knows anything.”

“Indeed.”

Now village dancers of the six-armed race of the north were performing complicated hurls and spins, all their arms wheeling. Jasper and Katie were seated with their backs to them, but Lily could see their incredible bounding, the swivel of their tusked heads, the clapping and twirling. She was dazzled. She could feel the rhythm in her ankles.

“Hello,” said Katie. “Earth to Lily. Come in, Lills.”

Lily didn't want to tear her eyes away from all the eight-limbed whirling. “It's beautiful,” she said.

Katie turned around and looked for a second. She shook her head. “I get motion sickness too easy.”

Pulling herself back from the dance, Lily

asked Jasper, “What can you remember about the mountains?”

“Only what I told you before. That there were four of them: one with a lake, one with a pine forest, one with a huge stone pillar covered in ancient writing, and one with a glacier that never melted.”

“What are they called?” asked Katie. “We can get a map.”

“They have names not pronounceable by mortals.”

“That's really inconvenient,” said Katie. She took a bite and wiggled her fork around. “Oh, and hey. Explain to us about these secret powers that the Stare-Eyes team got.”

“At the center of Vbngoom are pits where sacred flames burn. No one without special training and great humility is allowed to go near them. Monks who have meditated by these flames acquire special powers. They can levitate and speak with their minds. I fear the boys from the Stare-Eyes team have been exposed illegally to these flames.”

“So they're kind of becoming a powerful force of supernatural evil?”

“I am afraid so, Katie.”

“That would explain why the bugs in Pelt went crazy when they appeared.”

“I fear for the Stare-Eyes players themselves, as well as for us. It is dangerous to get close to those flames without years of training. I worry they are being pushed by Team Mom and their coach to acquire powers that might destroy them.”

“So why don't the monks stop them from going to the sacred flames?”

“Most of the monks of Vbngoom have taken an oath of nonviolence. Only a few, like my friend Drgnan Pghlik, have learned the ways of martial arts so that they can protect the monastery. I suspect the art-thieving gang has complete control of Vbngoom at this point.”

Lily heard the discussion, but she was looking past them. She watched the six-armed men and women weave patterns in the air, tapestries of muscle and sinew that had been braided on
the looms of ten centuries, and she imagined herself as a little six-armed goat-girl, high in the steppes of the Newark Mountains, playing her Pan-flutes, and her fiddle, and her drum, and her finger-cymbals, all at once. She imagined herself learning these ancient dances, wearing rough clothes of yak's wool and ogre skin—and maybe there would be a six-armed boy with a knowledge of all the old epics of their kind who would look shyly at her, and she would see him from the hilltop, and wave, and wave, and wave, and wave, and wave, and—

The waiter appeared at their side. “Everything good?” he asked. “Let me to fix the reception.” He adjusted the knife and fork on the fourth placemat. “We can't hear good what you are saying.” He looked toward the kitchen.

A man in a black suit gave him a thumbs-up.

The waiter nodded and said, “Much better, friends. Speak loud and not too near ashtray. You would like more mixed veg?”

Drgnan Pghlik awoke from his heavy slumber. He opened his eyes, and found that there was nothing to see. Everything was dark.

At first, he thought he was still asleep. His head was filled with outlines and blurs. He moved his hand across his face. He felt his nose, his mouth. He held his hand an inch from his eyes. Nothing. Absolutely black.

Carefully he swiped his hands through the air. He reached for the floor beneath him. It was made of stone. It was dusty. He ran the heel of his hand along through the grit. He found the bottom of a wooden door.

He walked his fingers up the slats until he found the handle. He rattled it.

Locked. He was locked in. “Hello?” he called. “Hello?”

There was no answer.

He reached out in the other direction. Fumbling in the air, he felt a wide, empty space… then… cardboard. He felt a stack of thin, cardboard boxes.

Slowly light dawned in his woozy, confused brain. He realized that he was locked in the closet where they stored board games. Board games and… He couldn't remember what else. Board games and…

“Hello?” he called, even louder this time.

Things shifted in the darkness around him. He pulled himself up against the door.

A light went on in the next room. There was a line of light under the door. Drgnan bobbed his head down and pressed it against the cool floor, trying to see what was in the next room.

Shoes. The soles of black shoes.

“The kid's awake,” said a gangster in the next room.

The door briefly unlocked. Two men stood there. They shoved a bowl at him and slammed the door. He heard them turning the key in the lock.

He put the bowl on his lap. He reached in. Something smooshy… Some kind of thick paste. Wet.

He picked up a handful. He held it up near his nose.

It was raw hamburger.

He dropped it back in the bowl.

“I shall not eat this,” he announced through the door. “I do not believe in eating the flesh of animals.”

“You hear that?” said one of the gangsters. “Kid in a dress don't believe in eating the flesh of animals.”

“Okay. Okay. Kid in a dress: You want we should take it away?” asked the other.

“Take it if you want,” said Drgnan Pghlik darkly. “You shall never make me eat it.”

“Hokey-dokey, girly blokey.” The keys rattled.

Something dimly registered in the back of Drgnan's brain.

The door opened again—the gangster stooped down, grabbed the bowl, and slammed the door shut.

This time Drgnan heard that not all of the shuffling motion was on the other side of the door.

Something was in the closet with him.

“Hello?” he said again, quietly.

There was a deep, bass growl. A growl so slow, so low, he could hear the spaces between its
R
s.

And then he realized: He knew where he was. He knew what was in the dark with him.

He was in the closet where they stored the board games and the monastery tiger.

That raw hamburger meat hadn't been for him.

“It's a real shame,” said the gangster, “that the tiger's food is outside of the closet. See, 'cause the tiger, he's
in
the closet, and he ain't eaten in a few days.”

Awful. Drgnan Pghlik slapped his hand to his forehead.

His sticky hand.

“And it's even more of a shame,” said the gangster, “that you handled his grub. Because now you probably smell like fresh meat.”

Drgnan Pghlik had romped with the tiger when he was a small tot. He had fed him, on occasion, in the years since. He knew that when the tiger was hungry, nothing would stop him from pouncing. The tiger was dangerous. He called softly, “Nrrrgarha? Nrrrgarha, boy?”

There was an answering growl. The tiger shifted in the shadows.

“You won't eat me, boy, will you?”

The tiger stood. The tiger paced to Drgnan's side. The tiger sniffed at Drgnan's wet palm and wet forehead.

The tiger growled again.

“Naw, he won't eat you,” said the gangster. “Not today. You know, he might even cuddle up to you. For old time's sake. Auld lang syne.”

“Tomorrow,” said the other gangster. “Now tomorrow is a whole different story.”

“Tomorrow he might commence to getting a little peckish. He might commence to getting a little bite-y. In fact, I won't be any surprised if the claws come out tomorrow.”

The tiger sniffed at Drgnan's hand. The tiger growled louder.

Jasper
, thought Drgnan Pghlik.
Jasper Dash, I hope you're on your way.

Nrrrgarha drew long breaths and pictured corned beef.

It turned out that Lisa Buldene was staying at the same hotel as our heroes. They met her at the rooftop restaurant that evening when they sat in plastic garden chairs, watching people get flung through the sky from vaultapults as the clouds turned red with sunset. The tiny little bodies hurtled, catching the light for a few instants before the arc of their motion brought them back down upon another rooftop. Slowly, wearily, people migrated home from their jobs, briefcases flapping, to make dinner over their gas rings or cook-fires.

“What are you drinking?” Lisa Buldene asked Katie, sitting down beside her.

Katie looked at the label. “The state-sponsored cola. Yum. ‘Tyrant Splash.'” She took a big swig.

“Sure,” said Lisa Buldene, smiling. “I tried it earlier. But it's actually not a cola. It's the Delaware government's brand of bottled water. Straight from the St. Jones River.”

“What do you mean?” said Katie. “It sure tastes like a cola. And it's brown and bubbly. And fizzes. And… um… So it's really…? ”

Lisa Buldene nodded.

Katie's face kind of dropped. She ran for the railing of the balcony and began spitting up.

“So did you catch your van today?” Lisa Buldene asked Lily and Jasper. “I looked it up in my
There and Back Again
, and the only vanlike thing they had was a cart that carries the god of traffic through the major intersections of the city at noon on Fridays to pray for no gridlock.”

“That is not the van in question,” said Jasper. “This is a different van.”

“We have our own private van situation,” said Katie from the railing.

“Where are you off to next?” Lisa Buldene asked. “You decided?”

“Vbngoom, the Platter of Heaven,” said Katie. Jasper hissed in warning.

Lisa Buldene gasped. “Oh, break my heart! You're not! You're going to Vbngoom? I thought no one could find it! I haven't even been able to find a postcard of it! My
There and Back Again
says it moves all the time.”

“It's in the guidebook?” said Jasper.

“Yeah, sure. Everything's in my
There and Back Again.
” She opened her bag, ducked her head inside, and reemerged with a guidebook. She handed it to Jasper, who began flipping through it.

The New Yorker watched him, slouched in her seat. “Do you think you've seen the
real
Delaware yet?” she asked. “I mean, we all hear the stories—you know, the camels, the temples, the jewels, the snakes with women's heads, the women with snakes' heads, that whole thing—but I'm saying, sometimes I go to all the places it says to go in my
There and Back Again
, all the places where it says you can see the real,
authentic Delaware, and then I get there, and there are just these fifteen other tourists standing there in the courtyard of that castle or that particular volcanic crater, looking around with their fingers stuck in their own copies of
There and Back Again.
” Lisa Buldene looked very tense. “Then I get really worried I'm not actually seeing the real Delaware at all, and that maybe there isn't a real Delaware anymore, because it's all just set up for tourists now. We can't see it because we know too much what to expect from the
There and Back Again.
No place is real anymore.”

Jasper read aloud, with interest—and then increasing disgust, “‘Vbngoom has been the most secret of the hidden mountain monasteries for centuries. Currently located on top of scenic Mount Tlmp, it offers great views, cheap meals, comfy lodging'—
comfy lodging?
—‘private bathrooms, and eternal life. When you've made it to Vbngoom, you know you've made it to someplace unique.'”

“See?” said Lisa Buldene. “That's why I want to get to Vbngoom. Not because they have eternal life. But because I know it's still real and untouched. Hardly any other tourists have been there. If I got there, I would know I was really living—you know,
living.
Myself.”