We Sled With Dragons (5 page)

“COREY BRANDT!” THE
Dinka boys had finished dragging Ernest up the wall and pulled the gag out of his mouth. They poked and prodded at him. “We are big fans! Big fans! Although you should have chosen Lauren at the end of
Sunset High.
”

“Hey,” the real Corey Brandt objected, pulling the chicken off his head. The boys looked back and forth between Ernest and Corey, puzzled. “I'm Corey Brandt!”

The boys shrugged, shoved the gag back into Ernest's mouth, and ran over to poke and prod and question the real Corey Brandt. He nodded and smiled and gave vague answers, glad to find his fans even in this remote corner of Djibouti.

“Excuse me.” Dr. Navel approached one of the tall warriors, opening his arms wide to show that his intentions were friendly. The warrior took a step backward, wary of a hug from the strange explorer whose glasses were sliding off his nose. “I'm Dr. Ogden Navel and this is my wife, Dr. Claire Navel. We are the Explorers-in-Residence at the Explorers Club in New York City. This man”—he pointed at the professor—“is Professor Rasmali-Greenberg, club president. I want to thank you for your assistance.”

“Yes.” The warrior nodded, keeping his spear pointed at the alley below. “We know who you are.”

“You do?” Dr. Navel was puzzled. He looked to his wife.

“Don't ask me,” she said. “I don't know them.”

“We know who
they
are.” One of the boys pointed at Oliver and Celia.

“You do?” Oliver asked.

“You are Oliver and Celia Navel,” said the boy. “And you are known throughout the world for your daring exploits.”

“Exploits?” Oliver shook his head.

“Daring?” asked their parents.

“Is this
Bizarro Bandits
?” Celia wondered.

On
Bizarro Bandits
a team of pranksters sneak into people's houses in the middle of the night and did things like change the furniture and shrink all their clothes and dye their pets green, so when the people woke up they believed they were in some bizarro world. More than one contestant had gone totally insane. Those who didn't go insane won a vacation or a new toaster.

Celia was not interested in a vacation or a new toaster. Oliver was looking around for hidden cameras.

“Who are you?” asked Oliver

“How did you know we'd be here?” asked Celia.

“Your friend told us.” The boy shrugged.

“Our friend?” Celia cocked her head to the side like a confused puppy.

She and Oliver didn't have a lot of friends in the sixth grade. Their father had pulled them out of school to go on adventures for most of the school year, and when they were in school, most of the kids only talked to them because they knew Corey Brandt. Celia didn't expect any of the squeaky girls who had Corey's face on their notebooks to know any Dinka warriors, and Oliver was pretty sure that none of the boys in his class had ever been to the Bahr al-Ghazal region of southern Sudan. Most of them weren't even allowed to ride the subway alone.

“Celia!” A girl dressed in a flowing white tunic with a colorful cloth bag over her shoulder climbed up on the other side of the roof.

Celia broke into a smile when she saw the girl. She wasn't a Dinka warrior and she wasn't from Oliver and Celia's school either.

“Qui!” Celia smiled at her old friend from the Amazon, whose whole name was Quinuama, but she let people call her Qui to make it easier for them. She was thoughtful that way, even though she quite liked her full name. Qui had helped Oliver and Celia find the lost city of El Dorado in the Amazon and she was their first real friend in the world. Celia had no idea how Qui had gotten all the way to North Africa, or why.

Celia ran across the roof and gave her a hug. Friends, we should note, never start by asking why.

Oliver interrupted the hug. “What are you doing here? How do you know these warriors?”

“We met on the Internet,” Qui answered him with a shrug.

“The Internet?” Oliver and Celia asked.

“We use it all the time,” said Qui. “We indigenous peoples have to stick together.”

“Indigenous?” Oliver looked at his sister.

“You know that one,” she said.

“Like native?” said Oliver. Celia nodded.

“My people are facing many of the problems the Dinka and other tribes are facing,” said Qui. “From pollution and the destruction of our cultures to getting into a good college when you've lived your whole life in the jungle.”

“Or in the desert,” said the Dinka boy.

“Right,” said Qui. “It's hard being an indigenous kid these days. So we have Internet forums and stuff. That's where I met these guys.” She pointed to the Dinka warriors.

“And where I learned about your prophecy,” the boy said.
“The greatest explorers shall be the least. The old ways shall come to nothing, while new visions reveal everything. All that is known will be unknown and what was lost will be found.”

“That prophecy is, like, mega.” Corey Brandt whistled.

“We know.” Celia groaned.

“I can't believe you read our prophecy on the Internet,” said Oliver. “Isn't that, like, a violation of privacy?”

Qui shrugged.

“Do we really still have to do this whole prophecy thing?” said Celia. “It seems kind of worn out.”

“Honey.” Her mother held her shoulders. “You have to fulfill a prophecy before it can be over.”

“That is so totally unfair,” said Celia.

“You say that a lot,” said her father.

“Well.” Celia shrugged. “Everybody needs a catchphrase.”

Suddenly, sirens wailed on the street below.

“That will be the police,” one of the warriors said. “We have to go. Follow us.”

He turned and the warriors began moving across the roof.

“Wait!” Oliver rushed to catch up with the boy in the lead. “You didn't tell me your name!”

“I know I didn't.” The boy smiled enigmatically, which Oliver would have known meant mysteriously if he had spent more time watching educational programming on TV instead of
Agent Zero
and
Bizarro Bandits.

“Come on!” Oliver complained. “Why won't anyone explain anything? What's your name?”

“Sam,” the boy answered.

“Sam?” said Oliver.

“What?” The boy wondered. “Sam is not a good name?”

“No,” said Oliver. “It's fine. I was just expecting something more . . . I dunno. Exotic.”

“Exotic?” Sam wondered.

“You know,” Oliver said. “Like foreign.”

“But you are the foreigners here,” said Sam.

“Oh,” said Oliver. “Right.”

“Come this way.”

“So where are we going?” Oliver jogged to keep up. “Sam! Hey, Sam! You can't just herd us like cows! Why are you being so mysterious? Why won't anyone ever explain anything?”

Oliver's complaints echoed across the rooftops of Djibouti, but no one answered his question. Sam now knew what Celia had discovered years ago: it was fun driving Oliver Navel crazy.

BEHIND THEM, THEY
heard the whine of fire engines racing to the burning hotel and the screech of police sirens racing after the pirates and the mob of goat herders.

The Dinka warriors, the tweens, their parents, Qui, their pets, Corey Brandt, his impersonator, and the professor climbed down from the rooftop to an empty square and crossed under a shady colonnade where a few women covered in brightly colored headscarves sold mangoes and vegetables and stinking piles of tiny fish. The women vanished into doorways as soon as they saw the Dinka warriors coming their way.

A few moments later, half a dozen armed pirates ran past the women in hot pursuit.

Just ahead of Oliver and Celia, a police jeep blocked their path.

“Stop!” two policemen in blue outfits called out, pointing their rifles at the warriors, who froze. The pirates scattered and disappeared while the Navels put their hands into the air.

“You are under arrest by the authority of the Djibouti Police!” one of the police officers said and spoke quickly into his radio in Arabic.

“He said Djibouti.” Oliver chuckled. Celia elbowed him.

“He's calling for backup,” said Sam.

“I'm Corey Brandt!” Corey Brandt stepped forward, his hands high in the air, a friendly smile spread across his face. “From television's hit shows
Agent Zero, The Celebrity Adventurist,
and
Sunset High
!”

The police shouted and waved their guns at him. He stepped backward.

“I tried.” He shrugged. “They're not fans.”

Sensing the danger, or maybe just enjoying a good fight, Patrick and Beverly charged forward through Oliver's legs. The monkey jumped onto the head of one policeman while Beverly hissed and snapped her jaws at the other one. The police dropped their guns and dove into their jeep, locking their doors. Oliver smirked. He'd grown to like Beverly quite a lot.

Dennis clucked. Being a chicken, he was often left out of the action, which was too bad. Chickens can be frightfully vicious when they want to be.

The warriors looked at the animals who had subdued the police, looked at each other, and shrugged. They picked up their spears again and kept running past the police jeep. The Navels and their entourage followed. As soon as they turned a corner, Bonnie and her pirates appeared ahead of them.

“Aha!” Bonnie shouted.

Dennis the chicken charged toward her, clucking wildly. The pirates were more confused than frightened, but it gave everyone a chance to turn back and run the other way again, past the jeep with the frightened police officers, through the square, and down another alley. Dennis raced after them to keep up, and the pirates, enraged at having let a chicken distract them, gave chase.

At that point, the women selling vegetables decided to pack up and call it a day.

“You can run but you can't hide!” Bonnie shouted after the Navels, although she kept one of her goons in front of her in case one of the warriors threw his spear. “I'm your worst nightmare,” she taunted, unleashing a barrage of cheesy threats. Celia wondered if Bonnie knew she was acting like a second-rate TV villain. She really needed to get scarier lines.

As they turned down a side street, the mob of goat herders blocked their path.

“Raaarw!” the mob shouted, as mobs so often do. They charged forward.

Oliver and Celia ran around the corner to the left while everyone else ran to the right. The twins ducked through the alleys as fast as they could, turning and weaving, before they noticed they were suddenly alone. They were about to turn back when they heard the roar of the mob nearby. They kept running and found themselves in front of a wide blue door.

Celia pushed, but it didn't open.

“Let me do it,” said Oliver, taking a step back and throwing himself at the door with his shoulder. He bounced off.

“Ow!” He slumped down, holding his shoulder. “That looks easier on TV.”

“Oh. It's a pull door, not a push,” said Celia and casually pulled the door open. She stepped over her brother. “Come on,” she said. “We'll hide in here until the mob passes.”

She gestured for Oliver to go first. He grunted and scampered inside and Celia shut the door behind him.

They weren't exactly inside. The room was large and had four thick stone walls but no ceiling. There were rows and rows of chairs spread out in front of them and there was a hole cut out of the wall above the chairs. Behind them was a narrow stage with a big white screen along the back. A big concrete tower rose from the side of the building, with rusty old letters wrapped around it.

“
ODEON
,” Oliver read out loud. “I think this is some kind of movie theater.”

“You should be a superhero,” said Celia. “Captain Obvious.”

They heard police sirens wailing past them.

“I think if this were TV we wouldn't be superheroes,” said Oliver. “We'd be the bad guys.”

“Our parents just stole a truck from some goat herders and burned down a hotel in the middle of a city, and we used a poisonous lizard and a monkey to threaten the police just before sneaking into a movie theater,” said Celia. “I think even in real life we're the bad guys now.”

“This is so
Bizarro Bandits,
” said Oliver. His sister did not disagree with him.

“I can't believe we thought we could help Mom and Dad find Atlantis,” Celia said. “We can't even get out of this city. We are just not supposed to be explorers.”

“But what about the prophecy?” Oliver wondered.

“Maybe it was all a mistake. Like, it was given to the wrong kids.”

“I don't think prophecies work like that.”

“I'm going to check if the coast is clear,” said Celia, cracking open the door they'd come through to peek out. Oliver looked around. There were mannequins all along the side wall, each dressed like a famous character from a classic movie. There were even a few from famous child actors back in the early black-and-white days of film. Oliver didn't recognize any of them. He looked up at the hole in the wall.

“That must be the projection booth,” he said out loud, and glanced away to make sure his sister hadn't heard him. Maybe he really was Captain Obvious. When he looked back at the hole, a beam of light shot out toward the screen. He turned around. The picture was washed out in the sunlight, so it was hard to make out exactly what he was seeing. He figured that the movie theater must only get used at night. He squinted to study the picture.

He saw a bearded old man on a ship, battling a giant squid with a large spear. The man's hair hung down over one of his eyes and he was shouting to the sky, but the movie had no sound. Oliver didn't recognize the actor. It couldn't have been an American movie. He would have seen the ads for it before.

“That looks just like the kraken we fought in the Pacific Ocean,” Oliver said, but Celia's head was poking out into the alleyway and she couldn't hear him.

The scene changed suddenly to a picture of the same man with the white beard fighting pirates.

“Must be a ‘coming soon' kind of thing,” Oliver said.

The scene changed again, now showing the man crossing mountains as shadowy snow creatures watched from caves, their eyes aglow.

“Those are just like the yetis we met in Tibet . . .” Oliver stepped closer to the screen, trying to make out what sort of movie this might be an ad for. His heart was pounding against his rib cage.

He saw the bearded man in a jungle somewhere, walking with a tribe of painted warriors toward a golden city, and the warriors looked a lot like they were from Qui's tribe.

“Bizarro,” Oliver whispered, looking around once more for a hidden camera crew playing a practical joke.

Then the scene froze. It showed a snowy plain with a glowing city in the distance. The city had a large temple in the center surrounded by rings of walls stretching out across the snow. It looked just like the drawing of Atlantis in Percy Fawcett's journal. Suddenly, the bearded man appeared on the screen, leaning against a large tree and looking down at the city. A rainbow came down from the sky and the man walked right onto it, strolling toward the city. The scene didn't show his face, but he had a sack over his shoulder, and the sack was embroidered with the symbol of a key.

Oliver felt his stomach drop into his toes. The key was the symbol of the Mnemones, the guardians of the Lost Library of Alexandria. His mother's secret society.

“No way!” said Oliver.

“Come on!” Celia turned back around. “The coast is clear. Let's go find Mom and Da— What are you doing?”

Oliver stood in the center of the aisle, his head titled all the way back, looking up at the screen with his jaw hanging open. Celia worried that her brother had gone crazy. Maybe the strain of the day had been too much for him. Maybe he'd gotten toxic parasites. Celia shook her head. She hated how fragile little brothers' brains could be.

“It. Is. Time. To. Go,” she said very slowly, so he could understand even if he had a toxic parasite in his brain.

Oliver pointed up.

“What?” said Celia. “It's just an ad for some foreign movie. It probably has subtitles. That's how movies trick you into reading.”

Oliver grabbed the backpack and pulled out the old explorer's journal.

“Just look closely,” he said as he flipped pages in the journal.

“It looks like some Christmas movie,” said Celia. “Like Santa Claus has to save Christmas or somethi—oh.” Celia's jaw dropped. She saw her mother's symbol and then the film looped back to the beginning again. She saw the scenes of the bearded man battling the kraken and meeting the tribe in the jungle and being watched by the yetis. “Oh no.” Celia gulped.

Oliver held up the page in the journal he was looking for. It was what he'd seen back in the hotel room, the drawings of the bearded man. They looked just like the man in the movie. And the rest of the pictures were there too, on the screen and in the journal.

Celia looked at the page and started shaking her head slowly back and forth.

“No way,” she said. “It can't be.”

“I think so,” said Oliver.

He flipped through the pages and showed the giant tree drawings that filled the last pages of the journal. It was the same tree in the movie.

“That's why the catalog showed us that book by the saint.”

“Saint Nicholas,” said Oliver. “I think we have to tell Mom and Dad.”

“Tell them what?” his sister said, although she knew. It just sounded too crazy to actually say out loud.

“We have to tell them that we need to go to the North Pole,” Oliver said. “If we want to find Atlantis, we have to find Santa Claus.”

It didn't sound any less crazy when her brother said it out loud.