We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (22 page)

Oliver looked in the other direction and saw a vast icy plain stretching into jagged mountain peaks under a bright blue sky. As they continued up, they could see behind them and down toward the gorge, a shock of tropical green below the brown and white of the high plains. Both of the twins felt light-headed from the altitude, but the yak climbed onward, upward, for hours and hours.

“Khruuumpf.”

“Did the yak say something?” Celia asked.

“No,” Oliver said sadly. “That was my stomach. I'm starving.”

Celia just grunted. She was hungry too. They hadn't eaten since breakfast with Lama Norbu, back when he was Lama Norbu. She hoped that wherever they were going, they had some not-poisoned food. Cheeseburgers would be nice, chicken soup would be fine. Maybe some hot chocolate. She hoped it wouldn't be something slimy.

The sun was setting and the sky turned a glistening shade of orange and yellow and red over the snowcapped mountains. The ice shimmered in the last light of the day, and the cold seemed to thicken around the twins.

“It's getting really c-c-c-cold,” Oliver said through chattering teeth.

“I hope we g-ge-get where we're going s—ss—sss—soon,” Celia agreed.

Within seconds it was dark, a terrifying, howling-wind, ice-cold dark. The yak didn't seem to mind and just kept climbing, stepping up onto rocks and scurrying up the steep slope at impossible angles. The children wrapped their blankets tighter around themselves and held on tighter to each other.

There is a kind of tiredness that only an unlucky few ever know. It's the tiredness of ultralong-distance drivers and of deep-undercover-special-forces soldiers, and of students who forgot to study for their history test until the night before. Celia and Oliver felt that kind of tiredness. Even though they were cold, and frightened, and the yak smelled worse than a turkey sandwich left all year at the bottom of a locker, they both fell into a deep sleep.

Oliver dreamed of his mother giving them a slide show of the years she had been missing, using the strange skeleton projector. Celia dreamed that her father was riding a yak into the Himalayan Mountains toward Shangri-La to save her from the Poison Witches while she slept peacefully in a hut with satellite TV.

With a shock, the children awoke to the sound of a gong, a really big gong. When they uncovered their faces, they saw that they were stopped inside the courtyard of a monastery, surrounded by young monks who were all dressed just like the little boy they met in the cave. There were children of different ages and sizes, but all of them had shaved heads and wore maroon and yellow robes. Some were playing around, chasing each other or making faces, but most were standing in a circle around the yak, clapping. The sun was high and bright overhead. The yak was chewing comfortably on some grass that a group of young monks were feeding it.

“Where are we?” Celia asked.

“And why are all these kids clapping at us?” Oliver wondered.

“They clap to ward off evil,” a voice called from a wall high above them. It came from an old man wearing a monk's robes with a giant yellow hat shaped like a crescent moon. Two giant Tibetan warriors stood on either side of him wearing large swords, heavy cloaks and grim expressions. When the old man in the big yellow hat spoke, all the children grew quiet. The gong next to him sounded again. “They clap so that you would wake and be free of the dark dreams that brought you here.”

“Okay,” Celia shouted up, still quite distrustful of monks. “Where is
here
?”

“You are at the Monastery of the Demon Fortress of the Oracle King,” the old man said. “I am the abbot here, and I have been expecting you. I'm very glad you survived the waterfall and found your way to us. Come inside and have a bite to eat before we get down to business, as they say.” He glanced quickly at the guards next to him and Oliver thought the old abbot looked frightened.

“What do we do?” Oliver wondered.

“Eat, I guess,” said Celia as they hopped off the yak.

From the shadows of an upper window, a figure watched the twins follow the abbot and the large warriors inside. Just as Celia glanced up, it disappeared from view. She wasn't sure if she even saw anything at all.

“Something's not right about this place,” she said to no one in particular. She had no idea how true that was.

THEY ENTERED A GRAND
room with a giant U-shaped table in the middle of it. The walls of the room were hung with painted silk that showed stories from the history of Tibet. There was even an unfinished image that looked like it was the Hidden Falls with the three rainbows in front of it.

The table was set with wooden bowls and platters, bronze and bone cups and plates. Over a hundred young monks were seated around the table and they were chatting loudly. When the abbot entered the room with the twins, all their heads turned toward them and the room fell silent.

“We are a monastery devoted to finding the next generation of sacred oracles,” the abbot explained. “All of our students are studying the Buddhist arts of divination. That is how we came to expect your visit. I, myself, had a vision of your arrival.”

He gestured for Oliver and Celia to sit with him at the head of the table. There was a giant curtain behind them that made Oliver feel like they were on a stage, like they were actors in a big show.

After a moment, all the monks started talking to each other again. It didn't feel like a stage anymore. It felt like a school cafeteria, with all the murmuring and the curious glances toward the twins. Kids at school glanced at them like that too, whenever they returned from some exotic country covered in bites from exotic lizards.

“Why do people keep looking at us?” Celia asked. She did not trust monks after Lama Norbu had turned on them. The boy from the cave seemed all right, though. He had gotten them out after all.

“We do not get many visitors here,” the abbot said. “We are hidden from the rest of the world.”

“Is this Shangri-La?” Oliver asked.

“All will be made clear to you,” said the abbot. He glanced nervously at the two large warriors standing right behind him. The abbot was making Celia nervous. “First, you should eat,” he added.

A gong sounded and servants appeared carrying giant iron pots. The abbot said a blessing and then all the young monks grabbed at plates covered in something like flour and dropped them into their steaming cups of butter tea, swirling the mixture until it became a wet paste. Then they grabbed the wet paste into clumps and popped the clumps into their mouths. Servants poured noodles and vegetables from the iron pots into wooden bowls, and the whole room filled with the sounds of slurping and sipping. Celia smiled widely. She was starving and hadn't seen any fried bugs being served.

Suddenly, the servants appeared beside Oliver and Celia and set out steaming plates of noodles with bubbling blobs of meat.

“Just for you,” the abbot said. “White sheep's tail. We are, of course, vegetarians here, but you are growing and need your strength. The tail of the white sheep is a special delicacy.”

The pinkish blobs of meat glistened in the sunlight. Celia squirmed. Oliver started to reach for the plate, because he was hungry, but Celia elbowed him under the table.

“If you eat it, then I have to eat it,” she said. “And I am
not
eating it.”

“You have no sense of adventure,” Oliver said.

“You sound like Dad,” answered Celia, and Oliver blushed. He hated to think he was turning into someone who liked adventures.

“Of course, if you prefer, we have steamed vegetables, noodles, barley flour, and dried yak's tongue,” the abbot interrupted, trying to make the twins more comfortable.

Oliver's eyes went wide thinking of the yak who had saved their lives. His stomach did a back-flip. Certainly they wouldn't cook a mystical yak.

Nope, he thought, I am not turning into someone who likes adventures at all.

“Where's your sense of adventure now?” Celia laughed. She thought how her parents would have loved this, sitting in a weird monastery on a mountaintop, watching everyone eat gooey butter-tea bread balls. The sounds of sipping and slurping made her stomach grumble.

“I told you.” She elbowed Oliver again. “I told you on the plane that this is exactly what would happen.”

“You said bugs,” Oliver snapped back. “You said we'd have to eat bugs. And there's no bugs.”

“Curried yak's eye?” the abbot offered gently, gesturing toward a bowl of reddish liquid with little slimy balls the size of marbles floating in it. Both children's faces turned green. Celia had gone eleven years without eating an eyeball and she planned to keep it that way. Oliver just froze. He almost wished for bugs.

The abbot did not want to make his guests ill. He had two more bowls of noodles and vegetables placed in front of them and he waved the bubbling sheep's tail, sizzling yak tongue, and steaming eye-curry away. The two warriors behind him immediately snatched it all from the servants and devoured the steaming meat with their bare hands. The abbot looked at the warriors with wide eyes.

“Something's not right here,” Celia whispered.

“I know,” said Oliver. “Keep eating, though. Don't make them suspicious.”

The twins focused on the noodles and soups and even tried dropping the flour into their tea to make little wet bread balls the way the other monks were doing.

It felt amazing pouring the warm food into their stomachs. The noodles were thick and hot and the broth was rich and soothing. Even the butter-tea bread balls were tasty and salty and filling.

“I could win
Celebrity Whisk Warriors
with this stuff,” Oliver said.

“You've never cooked anything in your life.” Celia laughed. This was the first rest they'd had in ages and for a minute they forgot about their mother and father and their long list of worries.

But they didn't forget for long.

After only a few minutes, the abbot smiled and rose. The monks around the table fell silent again and stood up. Oliver and Celia stood too, even though they weren't done eating, because they didn't want to be the only ones not standing. The abbot seemed in a hurry.

“When in Somalia,” their father used to tell them, “do as the Somalis do.” The twins assumed the same lesson was true for Tibet.

“Now that you have eaten,” the abbot said, “I must talk to you about the important matters that brought you here.”

The twins looked at each other, wondering how much he knew.

“I am afraid,” the abbot said, “that you are in much more trouble than you know.”

“Well, we know that our father made a bet with Sir Edmund about the Lost Tablets of Alexandria, and that the Poison Witches took our father to try to get them, and that we are lost on a mountain in the middle of nowhere in Tibet.”

“You are not nowhere,” the abbot corrected her kindly. “You are at the home of the sacred oracle. As for the other matters you mention, they are unfortunate.” The abbot sighed. “The witches are treacherous, but they can always be bargained with. They do love to trade.”

“We were supposed to trade the Lost Tablets with them.”

“I am afraid that will be impossible. There are no tablets.”

“We know,” Oliver objected. “But it's the only way to save our father! Our mother's note sent us here. The yak brought us here. Even that kid—Pehar something—helped us get here! There has to have been some point to it!”

Celia wanted to shush her brother, but she also wanted to hear what the abbot had to say.

“
Who
helped you?” the abbot asked, his face suddenly looking alarmed and glancing quickly at the large men behind him. Celia didn't like it when a monk's face looked alarmed. The last time that happened, Frank Pfeffer revealed his treacherous plans.

“Pehar Ghee-lap something,” Oliver said.

“Pehar Gylapo?”

“Yes,” Celia said. “That was it. That's the kid we met in the cave.”

“We met him in the cave behind the Hidden Falls,” Oliver explained. “And he showed us the way to get here.”

“That is quite impossible.”

“That's what he said,” Celia huffed.

“Why would we lie?” Oliver pouted.

“Well, children.” The abbot bent down to their level. His face showed great concern. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Pehar Gylapo is the Great Protector of Tibet. If what you say is true . . . if the Great Protector has chosen to help you, there may be hope yet. I will pray for you, but right now, I can do no more than that.”