I tugged harder at my bonds. My wrists ached. “What is that for?” I asked.
The old man’s face seemed to sag further. “You are a child. We know you mean no evil. But you have come to us according to the prophecy. And we cannot allow you to fulfill it. Please understand. It is for the good of all.”
I was certain then that I had wandered into a kind of nightmare bedlam, an island sanatorium of the insane. Surely I could escape.
The bonds seemed to be loosening a bit, but not quite enough to work my hands free. As I struggled, R’amphos edged closer. Time. I needed more of it. Perhaps I could try to reason with him. Convince him he’d made a mistake. Argue and delay him.
“What prophecy?” I asked. “Tell me all. You owe me that at least, before murdering me.”
“Not murder. Sacrifice.” The old man paused, his eyes growing more watery. He did not look homicidal or deranged but wearily determined. “It is foretold that Qalani’s child will return, riding the storm. He will be dying. And die he must. Because if he tries to save himself, he will, in time, destroy the world.”
For a moment I went numb with shock. Riding the storm … dying … It was as if he knew—knew of our shipwreck, my illness.
No. He couldn’t have. These things were coincidences. Guesses. Quasi-religious idiocy. I refused to be killed by these lunatics before Father had a chance to find the cure for my disease. I had to think clearly.
“Listen to me,” I begged. “You have the wrong person. My mother is named Greta, not Qalani. Greta Wenders. It doesn’t even sound close. My father’s name is Herman.”
R’amphos reached out toward me. I flinched as his cold, skeletal fingers gripped the side of my head and turned it. “You carry the mark,” he said.
I pulled away. I could feel one of the vines snap. My hands had a little more give. I could move my fingers, work my wrists.... “What mark?” I asked.
“I am sorry,” R’amphos replied. “I bear you no ill will, my child. But you see, this is a happy day. We all die. We become dust; we are missed by friends and family and then forgotten. But your death will bring life. You will be prevented from doing to the world what was done to the land of Qalani.”
“But—but I—”
The chanting started again in earnest. The monkey bounced eagerly, clapping its hands. R’amphos lifted high the sword and stepped toward me. He was so close I could smell a faint, musty odor from his silken robes.
I took a deep breath, raised my head high, said a prayer, and spat.
I had not lost my boyhood talent. The saliva jettisoned like a slingshot, directly into the monkey’s one good eye.
Wailing, the creature jumped toward me, teeth bared. The priest staggered, thrown off-balance.
I pulled against my bonds with all my strength. With a snap, they came loose. I swung my right hand around toward the monkey as it grabbed for my face. Its teeth clamped down hard on the tangle of vines I held. I completed the arc, sending the sadistic little creature into the well.
I brought my leg up. The old man was surprisingly quick, but my knee clipped the blade at the hilt, sending it into the air.
It smashed against the stone wall and fell to the platform. In a flash, three of the priests were upon me. As I fended off one with a blow to his bony jaw, the others grabbed me from behind. They were wrinkled and liver spotted, yet their agility and strength overwhelmed me. First one arm, then the other, was pinned behind my back.
“I am not what you think I am!” I cried out.
R’amphos had picked up the sword and was stepping toward me. “We will not be turned back,” he rasped. “You must comply. For your own safety and that of everything you see.”
I yanked myself left and right. They had me immobilized. I watched in utter horror as R’amphos raised the blade and brought it down.
“No!” I screamed.
But as the word ripped from my throat, I was blinded by two quick flashes of orange and white.
The blade seemed to disintegrate into the air as an explosion blasted through the chamber. “LET HIM GO, YOU MONGRELS!”
Father’s voice rang out, seeming to come from all directions. He was running in from a dark opening to my right, smoke trailing from the barrel of his gun. In his other hand he held a flaming torch aloft, and he thrust it toward one of the priests.
The man screamed as his robe burst into flames. He jumped into the well below, his shrieks joining with the monkey’s. My captors let go, running away from the new intruder. The second bullet must have struck another priest, who lay bleeding on the ground.
R’amphos turned toward Father. “You must allow us to complete the sacrifice!” he cried in his language, his voice plain through the pandemonium.
Although Father did not understand a word, he was not at a loss for a reply. “Go suck on a rock,” he said, pulling me toward the opening.
We ran through a tunnel that sloped sharply upward. At the top of the slope, the pathway forked a couple of times, but Father seemed to know where he was going. I followed him until we emerged into fresh air.
He stopped, doubled over with exhaustion. “Must … catch my breath …”
“Thank you, Father.” I was relieved to be standing still, as my head pounded horribly. Taking the torch from him, I beat it against the rock wall until the flames died. The sun was rising now, and we wouldn’t need it. “How did you find me?”
“The monkeys …” he replied. “Loud beasts, you know … not much for secrecy when they’ve got what they want … so I followed their yammering through the woods.... I nearly lost them. But eventually I found my way here.”
He glanced back toward the opening. It appeared to be in the side of a rock cliff, roughly triangular and about six feet high. Beside it stood a massive stone that matched its shape, like a door that had been pulled aside.
“Are you all right, Son?” Father continued. “Did they harm you in any way?”
I held the back of my head. That seemed to ease the pain a bit. “The priest … he said—”
“Said?” Father cut in. His eyes were wide. “You understood him?”
“It was as if I learned the entire language in moments, just from the few words they chanted,” I told him.
“Remarkable,” he whispered.
Now the music was intensifying, as if summoning me back … back into the opening. My head felt as if it might explode. “Father, what is happening to me? What is going on? Why did those men want to kill me?” The story poured out—the prediction of my arrival, the deadly procession, the sword, the nonsense about my mother being named Qalani.
Father listened in silence. I was expecting outrage, surprise, shock. But he merely nodded. With growing horror, I saw that he did not look terribly surprised.
“He said that I was going to destroy the world, Father!” I cried out, finishing the tale.
That seemed to shake him. “What? That’s absurd, Burt. Pay no mind to that superstitious claptrap. How could a mere boy destroy the world?”
“But the other things, the other parts of the prophecy—you seem to know them!” I blurted out. “It seemed like you recognized the story!”
Father looked away.
“‘He will be dying. And die he must’—that is what the priest said,” I recounted. “Is it true, Father?”
He bowed his head. In a silence that lasted maybe three seconds, I felt an epoch go by. “There are … things I should tell you,” he began.
The sound of distant shouting made him stop. I saw a flicker of light from inside the black triangle. Father’s eyes widened with alarm. “Run!” he cried.
We took to the woods. The voices were close behind us now. The priests had found the entrance. Father and I charged through the brush, but the old men were surprisingly swift, and they knew the terrain. As we burst into a clearing, one of them emerged from behind a tree—ahead of us.
We stopped. Three other priests were at our backs. One of them carried a long wooden pole, while another was
brandishing a fist-sized rock. The third was the fellow whose robe had caught fire. It hung from his shoulders, a blackened, sodden mess. The hair on one side of his head had also been singed away. “Release the boy,” the priest said in the ancient language.
Father raised the gun.
“Stay back,” I replied in the same tongue. “We have no wish to harm you. But if you try to take me, we will.”
The priests hesitated. Then the burned one hurled himself at Father. With a curse, Father squeezed the trigger.
CLICK.
The gun was out of bullets.
The priest landed upon Father, yelling in fierce triumph. As the two of them rolled on the ground, the other three advanced on me. I backed away.
“Go, Burt!” Father said.
“No!” I protested. “I won’t leave you!”
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “It’s you they want! Run! Lose them in the jungle! I’ll find you at the shore camp.”
My heart ached. Leaving him went against everything I felt and believed. But I knew he was right.
“Go!” Father repeated. “I will find you!”
I turned and ran. I was traveling blind, pointed in the vague direction of the shore. My foot clipped a root, and I fell with an involuntary shout.
Picking myself up, I raced on. My ankle twinged sharply; I had twisted it as I fell. Around me, the cawing of birds was like a mocking chorus. They seemed to be scolding me, giving voice to what my heart and soul were feeling.
I went as far as my ankle would allow, before it began to throb painfully. I ducked into the shelter of a bramble-choked rock outcropping.
This outcropping. Where I sit now. Where worms poke their heads lazily from the soil, and grubs burrow into the mossy tufts between rocks. They will be here tomorrow, too. And the next day and the next century.
I will not.
I have felt safe while writing this. But the sun will go down, and the priests will not rest until they find me. I must return to the camp. I must find Father.
If he does not live, I will be alone. If he lives, how long will I? Where is a cure for my disease in this place of ancient priests and green-blooded beasts and net-weaving monkeys?
What is this place?
Who am I?
I pray that he will find me soon. That before I die we will have time to discover a way to save me. To save the world, if the prophecy is true. Perhaps the secret is in deciphering the tablets. If not—if we die here—I hope it will not be in vain.
The birds have silenced. Something must be nearby.
I will attempt to bury this now for safekeeping, for I think I hear
* * *
This is where the journal ends.
The rest is a jagged margin of paper, ripped to the binding. Sadly, the rest of the story is lost, but a search is on to find the missing pages and whatever secrets they contain. We will not give up until all possibilities are exhausted.
Meanwhile, it’s back to work. The story begins soon—in the Seven Wonders Book 1, The Colossus Rises.
—PL
EXCERPT FROM THE COLOSSUS RISES
The thrills continue in The Colossus Rises,
the first installment in the newest adventure
from bestselling author Peter Lerangis:
Jack McKinley is an ordinary kid with an extraordinary problem. In six months, Jack is going to die. No one ever asked Jack if he wanted to be a hero. He just has to be one.
Jack needs to find seven magic Loculi that have the power to cure him. But the Loculi are relics that haven’t been seen in thousands of years. They are hidden in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Join Jack and his friends as they unlock the mysteries of an amazing lost civilization!
CHAPTER ONE
RED BEARD
ON THE MORNING I was scheduled to die, a large barefoot man with a bushy red beard waddled past my house. The thirty-degree temperature didn’t seem to bother him, but he must have had a lousy breakfast, because he let out a burp as loud as a tuba.
Belching barefoot giants who look like Vikings are not normal in Belleville, Indiana. But I didn’t really get a chance to see the guy closely.
At that moment, I, Jack McKinley, was under attack in my own bedroom. By a flying reptile.
I could have used an alarm clock. But I’d been up late studying for my first-period math test and I’m a deep sleeper. Dad couldn’t wake me because he was in Singapore on business. And Vanessa, the au pair I call my don’t-care-giver, always slept till noon.
I needed a big sound. Something I couldn’t possibly sleep through. That’s when I saw my papier-mâché volcano from last month’s science fair, still on my desk. It was full of baking soda. So I got my dad’s coffeemaker, filled it with vinegar, and rigged it to the volcano with a plastic tube. I set the timer for 6:30 A.M., when the coffeemaker would release the vinegar into the volcano, causing a goop explosion. I put a chute at the base of the volcano to capture that goop. In the chute was a billiard ball, which would roll down toward a spring-loaded catapult on my chair. The catapult would release a big old plastic Ugliosaurus™—a fanged eagle crossed with a lion, bright-red.
Bang—when that baby hit the wall I’d have to be dead not to wake up. Foolproof, right?
Not quite. Around 6:28 I was in the middle of a nightmare. I’d had this dream way too many times: me, running through the jungle in a toga, chased by snarling, drooling, piglike beasts, whose screeches fill the smoky sky. Nice, huh? Usually I awake from this dream when a gap in the earth opens beneath my feet.
But this time, I fell in. Down into the darkness. To my death.
At the moment of contact, the Gaseous Giant burped in real life. The sound woke me up.
The coffeemaker-volcano alarm went off. And the Ugliosaurus whacked me between the eyes.
Which, in a nutshell, is how the worst morning of my life began. The last morning I would awaken in my own bed.
“@$%^&!” I screamed, which means I can’t tell you the actual words.
I sprang off my bed in agony. That was when I caught a glimpse of Red Beard on the sidewalk. Which caused me to drop to the floor, embarrassed to be seen, even by a wacked-out barefoot stranger. Unfortunately my butt landed squarely on a sharp Ugliosaurus wing, which made me scream again. That was way too much screaming for someone who just turned thirteen.
I lay there with gritted teeth, wishing I’d used the alarm clock. In my mind I saw Vanessa goading me: You think too much, Jack. Which she used to say about a hundred times a day. Maybe because I think too much. Always have.
I got off the floor, clutching my head. Red Beard was padding down the street, his feet slapping the pavement. “Next time, close your mouth,” I grumbled under my breath as I staggered to the bathroom.
I should have wondered who he was and why he was here. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my nightmare, which still lingered like the taste of moldy cheese. I tried to replace it with thoughts of math. Unfortunately, it felt about the same.
Looking in the mirror, I saw that the Ugliosaurus had made a gash on my forehead. Not too deep, but it looked pretty bad, and it stung.
I turned on the tap, dampened a washcloth, and pushed aside a mass of rat-brown hair to uncover my wound. As I dabbed it, I noticed a little tuft of blond hairs sticking out from the back of my head.
Weird. I’d never seen them before. Without Dad around to bug me, I hadn’t had a haircut in a while, so those blond hairs looked like loose wires. As I leaned closer to look, a sharp creak made me spin around.
“Vanessa?” I called out.
Aha. She’d heard my scream. I imagined her cowering behind the door, planning how not to be blamed for whatever happened. But she wasn’t there.
I glanced at the bathroom clock: 6:39. I had to leave the house by 6:45. But I wanted to see that little blond patch. I had enough time.
I pulled open the bathroom cabinet and reached for a hand mirror I hadn’t touched in years. Dad and I had bought i
t at CVS when I was in second grade, for an art project. Picking it up, I looked at the message I’d carved into the plastic frame.
I turned the mirror around. On the back I’d laminated a photo to the surface. In it, I was four years old and dressed in a puffy winter coat, sliding down a gentle hill on a sled. The white snow was tinged yellow-green with age. Mom was on the hilltop, laughing, wearing her favorite Smith College wool jacket. Dad was at the bottom, turned away. It was our game: Boom to Daddy. I’d slide into his legs and he would keel over, howling in pretend pain. Then he’d carry me back to the top and we’d do it all over again.
I smiled. Back then, I thought this game was hilarious. Every little thing we did was fun. Life was pretty perfect before Mom died. Before I started having those nightmares. Before Dad had decided home was a place to avoid.
Turning my back to the big bathroom mirror, I used the hand mirror to see behind my head. That was when I realized the blond hair wasn’t blond—it was white. And it wasn’t just a couple of hairs. I patted them down and noticed a pattern, an upside-down V. I tried to scrape it off with my fingernails, hoping it was some kind of weird stain. But nothing happened. My hair had just changed color—like in those cartoons where someone’s hair goes white with shock. Was that what the Ugliosaurus did to me? No way were the kids at school going to ignore this. I thought about what Mom would say: Wear a hat.
Quickly I brushed my teeth. I dropped the mirror into my pack, in case I wanted to investigate further at school. Then I ran into my room and grabbed my peacoat off the floor. Peeking out from under a Wendy’s bag was my wool knit cap. I wiped off a crust of congealed ketchup and Chocolate Frosty from one side. It didn’t smell too bad, so I jammed it on my head, shoved my math notebook into my backpack, and bolted.
It was 6:43.
As I reached the top of the stairs, my cell phone beeped.
Dad!
Ugh. Our 6:30 Wednesday morning Skype session. I’d totally forgotten—and he was late! How could he do this on a test day?
Seven Wonders Journals: The Select Page 3
