We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (26 page)

Frank Pfeffer smirked.

“But you can't kill us later,” Celia added angrily. “Bad guys do that kind of thing all the time.”

“Deal. Though it won't be much help for your father with those witches,” he said, and laughed.

“You snake, you lousy, scheming . . .” Celia searched for the right word to yell at him.
“Charlatan!”

Frank Pfeffer just laughed. “We're running out of time for name-calling, little girl. Why don't you just give me what you've got now?”

“No,” Dr. Navel said. “It's too important.” She was pleading with her children.

“Here you go,” Oliver said, ignoring his mother. He dropped the remote control into his backpack and pulled out the collar he'd taken from the yeti.

“What is that?” Frank Pfeffer said.

“It is the Great Key of Alexander,” Oliver said. Celia and his mother looked at him like he was crazy.

“What does it open?” Frank was practically panting.

“The Catalog Room of the Great Library,” Oliver said. “The room is the size of a circus tent, with thousands of scrolls telling you all its mysteries.” He winked at his mother and sister.

“The Lost Tablets,” said Frank Pfeffer.

“Yeah,” said Oliver. “They existed all along . . . right here in Shangri-La.”

“You will not make me look like a fool again,” Frank said.

“Why would I lie now? You've got the gun.”

“All right then, Oliver. Lead the way.”

Oliver slipped carefully down the trapdoor. His mother followed. Celia was at the back with Frank, who held her by her collar and kept his rifle pointed at their mother's back.

“No funny business,” he said.

“Trust me,” Oliver said. “I don't want to be funny.”

They climbed down the ladder into a dark hallway. They pressed themselves flat against the wall when they heard guards rushing down the hallway. They streaked past, all clattering swords and flapping robes. The man in the baseball cap led them.

“You go that way,” the man shouted. “And you lot, that way. Find them! Go!” The guards ran off in opposite directions. Oliver waved their little group forward and they continued to a winding stairwell.

“I think it's this way,” he said. Celia wondered what her brother was doing, but if she'd learned anything in the last three days, it was that she should probably just trust him. They'd kept each other from dying so far.

“What are you doing, Ollie?” Dr. Navel whispered.

Oliver ignored her. He led them down a narrow hallway to a heavy wooden door on the outside wall.

“This is it,” Oliver said.

“Good,” said Frank Pfeffer. “Now give me the key.”

“You'll need to show it to the guardian of the room, in order to get past,” Oliver explained, handing him the collar.

“No, Oliver,” Celia added. “Don't give it to him!” She'd realized what her brother was up to.

“Give that to me,” Frank said, snatching the collar from Oliver's hand. “Oh! I am about to become the most famous explorer in the world. Too bad your father won't survive to see this. Maybe I'll get your apartment at the Explorers Club.” He laughed and opened the door right into the baby yeti's cage.

“ROOOOAAAR!” the yeti growled as it stood up straight, at least twice the height of Frank Pfeffer.

“Bow to the Key of Alexander,” Frank shouted.

The yeti cocked its head to the side for a moment, confused. He looked at the explorer and he looked at his mother's collar in the man's hands. He cocked his head to the other side. Then he saw the rifle.

“ROOOOAAAR!” he said again and knocked the gun from Frank's hand with a single swipe.

“Ahhhh!” Frank said, and turned to run, but Oliver and Celia slammed the door on him. They rushed away toward the exit to the courtyard. They didn't want to stick around and hear what the yeti did to the man it thought had taken his mother.

“Good thinking, guys,” Dr. Navel said to her kids.

“You're a real Agent Zero,” Celia told Oliver, and she meant it this time. Oliver blushed a little bit.

“The yeti just misses his mother,” Oliver explained. There was a long silence while Oliver and Celia looked at
their
mother.

“So what did you mean we have everything we need?” Celia asked at last.

“Shhhh,” their mother said.

They crouched down as another group of guards rushed past, led by Sir Edmund. Once the group had gone, she gestured for Oliver and Celia to follow her. They got out to the courtyard, where their yak was still tied up.

“You have to go to the mountain and get your father,” Dr. Navel said.

“What about you?” Celia asked.

“I am going to lead the Council away from you.”

“But you can't just leave again,” Oliver said.

“I promise, one day, I will be back.”

“But what about the prophecy and stuff?”

“Trust me, guys. Don't freak out. I love you very much. Just remember to always be yourselves and you'll be okay. You know far more than you think you do. When the time is right, you'll find me again. For now, just try to get home and watch some TV. And don't let Sir Edmund get his hands on the catalog.”

“But we don't even know—”

She cut Oliver off with a tight hug and kiss on the top of his head. Though Celia resisted a moment, she did the same to her and Celia melted into her mother's smell of perfume and shampoo and dirty yak fur.

“What do we do about the witches?” Celia said at last. “Without the Lost Tablets, how will we get Dad?”

“Just remember what you know,” Dr. Navel started to say. “They can't make—”

“Hey!” The shout came from above. It was Sir Edmund standing with a phalanx of guards on a stone balcony. “Stop them!” he shouted.

“Good-bye, kiddos,” Oliver and Celia's mom said as she set them on the yak and whacked it on the behind. The yak took off toward the slopes of the mountain in the distance. Oliver and Celia looked back as their mother raced off on foot in the opposite direction, pursued by large Tibetan warriors.

As their yak raced upward over gnarly rocks and frozen scrub, they saw the guards only a few feet from their mother. She had stopped at the edge of the gorge, which dropped off thousands of feet below. She turned around and pulled a leather journal from under her robes.

“Is this what you want?” she shouted. “My copy of the Lost Tablets?” The guards froze. She waved the book in the air a few times. Then she gave one look back at her kids riding to safety, and tossed the book into the air. The pages flew apart and scattered in the wind.

“Noooo!” Sir Edmund shouted as the guards scrambled to catch the loose paper. Dr. Navel laughed and took one big leap out into the void.

“Mom!” the twins shouted, but a moment later, they saw her sailing along the edge of the canyon, gripping tightly to the wings of a small glider.

“Stop her!” Sir Edmund shouted as he raced down from the monastery and sprinted across the icy ground, snatching and jumping at loose papers as he ran. Though the warriors tried shooting arrows and firing their rifles at Oliver and Celia's mother, they couldn't even come close. She was rising like a hawk on the wind and in only a few minutes, she was gone. As the yak moved farther and farther from the monastery, they heard Sir Edmund shouting at his guards.

“You fools! The papers were blank! It was a trick. Go after her! I can't believe you fell for that!” His voice faded into the distance. The twins were alone again and their father was running out of time.

THE YAK KNEW WHERE
it was going. It didn't hesitate and it didn't look back. All Oliver and Celia could think about was hesitating and looking back. The last few hours felt like a dream. Had they really just seen their mother? Had she really just left them again?

The yak shot up the mountain as fast as a . . . well . . . a really fast yak. There's nothing that really compares to a yak running at tremendous speed. Except maybe an out-of-control bulldozer covered in fur.

“What do you think she meant,” Celia shouted, “when she said the witches can't make something? What can't they make?”

“I don't know!” Oliver shouted.

When they arrived at the edge of the mountain, the sun was just beginning to set. It was the fifth day. If they didn't get to the witches soon, their father would be lost forever. The yak stopped. It wasn't going any farther. Oliver tried to yank it, to keep it going up, but an eleven-year-old who sits in front of the TV all day has little chance of moving a two-ton yak that has just run a marathon. Oliver had never run a marathon. Neither had Celia. The yak's expression told them that it was not easy.

The children had to go on foot. Celia let Oliver carry the backpack.

“Thanks,” he said sarcastically.

“I'll go first,” Celia said.

“You will?”

“Yeah. I'm better at stealth than you.”

“Since when?” Oliver demanded just as he tripped over a knobby root sticking out of the ground.

She's protecting me again, Oliver thought, kind of annoyed. And kind of grateful. He really didn't want to go first. Those witches scared him.

The twins scrambled over rocks and leaped between boulders. They ducked behind a bush when they saw a group of the council's large guards pass on horseback. The men were huge. They carried shining swords and were dressed like warriors from another time, some time long ago when people didn't hesitate to slice children in half with their shining swords.

They climbed as quickly as they could over rocks and ice. When they came to the witches' camp inside a cave of ice, they ducked behind a boulder and watched the witches in the reflections off the ice. They were reflected back over and over again at crazy angles. It was like being in a funhouse.

The witches had set up their huts in the same circle they had in the valley. They had even set up the satellite dish. They sat around a campfire, cooking. Dr. Navel lay unconscious on the ground next to the fire. He was snoring quietly. Every few seconds, he would groan.

“At least Dad's still warm,” Celia said.

“He's almost out of time.”

“What do we do?”

They listened in on the witches.

“Put in more butter! That's too much salt!” the leader shouted at the one stirring a big pot.

“Don't tell me how to cook. Everything you make tastes like wood.”

“I wish what you made tasted like wood!” she snapped back. “I don't even want to say what your food tastes like.”

“Say it, I dare you.”

“Or what?”

“You'll regret it.”

“The only thing I regret is letting you make dinner!”

“Gimme that
TV Guide
,” Celia whispered. “We'll make a trade for something even better than the Lost Tablets of Alexandria.”

With that, she stood up and waved the
TV Guide
in the air.

“Yoo-hoo!” she shouted out. “Ladies! We're back!”

The witches stood up, startled.

“Hey!” they shouted, looking in every direction at the reflections around them. Celia was reflected over and over again on the ice, like she was on a thousand different TV screens.

“Which one is she?” one of the witches cried out.

“We all live in a yellow submarine!” sang the musical witch.

“Hush up,” the leader with the turquoise headband snapped. “Navels! So good to see you again. I am happy that strange man you were with didn't manage to kill you. We never liked him. In truth, we have never been too fond of explorers.”

“You could have told us who he really was,” Oliver said, standing. He liked the way the ice reflected him over and over again. It was the first time in days he had seen himself. He and his sister were really dirty. You never see it on TV, but adventuring is a messy business, and adventurers don't smell so great either.

“Well, that wouldn't have been any fun,” the leader answered.

“I wanna rock and roll all night! And party ever-y day!” the singing witch sang.

“You see what kind of entertainment we're stuck with?” the leader said.

“That's why we're here,” Celia added. “We're willing to make a trade with you.”

“But there are no Lost Tablets of Alexandria. That was our deal.”

“We'll make a better trade,” Celia said. “You're bored? What I have here”—she held up the
TV Guide
—“is a Lost Tablet of Entertainment!”