We Dine With Cannibals

by C. Alexander London

  The conquistadors conquered the Inca empire, garroted the emperor, and became the new rulers. They took all of the gold and silver that they could find and melted it down and shipped it off to the king of Spain. They liked all the Incan treasures, but they were not impressed with the oracles and the native religions, so they tore down the shrines, destroyed all the records, and renamed all the places. They didn’t want to merely conquer the Incas. They wanted to destroy their culture completely.

  But some things survived; stories told in whispers, secret places that the conquistadors could never find. Machu Picchu was one of those places. And this chamber, the secret home of the priests, was a place no one had seen since the last priest fled into the jungle hundreds of years ago.

  When Celia finally squeezed through the door and stood beside Oliver, it was a relief. He didn’t like being alone with all that history.

  Celia scanned the tunnel with her flashlight. “No creepy skeletons so far,” she said as she nudged Oliver forward.

  “There’s always creepy skeletons,” he answered her. “Didn’t you see Sleepwalker 2?”

  “There were no creepy skeletons in Sleepwalker 2. You’re remembering it wrong.”

  “Am not,” Oliver objected. “There were creepy skeletons all over that cursed temple they discovered. They’d been garroted.”

  “I never forget a Corey Brandt movie,” Celia answered.

  “Fine,” Oliver said. His sister was obsessed with Corey Brandt. Maybe she did remember the movie better than Oliver. “If there’s no creepy skeletons, that’s good then, right? Maybe this won’t be so bad.”

  “Not exactly,” Celia sighed. “There were mummies. Lots and lots of mummies.”

  Oliver’s heart sank. Now he remembered. The cursed temple in Sleepwalker 2 was lousy with mummies. After he’d seen it, he couldn’t look at a roll of toilet paper for over a month.

  If you are keeping a list of the things Oliver hated, you might want to put mummies above bats and lizards and tunnels and the garrote. He really hated mummies. Celia felt the same way, perhaps even more so.

  Even with Corey Brandt in the movie, there was nothing cute about mummies.

  5

  WE BATTLE BIODIVERSITY

  THEY HAD TO CLIMB over broken stones and fallen pillars as they made their way down the hall. They stumbled and tripped over sheets of solid gold that had fallen off the walls. As they walked, their feet kept crunching on the dead bugs on the floor. They held their flashlights in front of them like magic wands. Celia heard a noise behind her and spun on her heel. She couldn’t see anything.

  Oliver would have asked what was wrong, but at that moment he couldn’t speak. His face was suddenly covered in cotton candy.

  At least it felt like cotton candy.

  It wasn’t cotton candy.

  Celia froze where she stood and looked right at Oliver.

  “Don’t move,” she said.

  Oliver had just walked face-first into a large spiderweb and woken up the large spider that lived there. The spider did not appear to appreciate the abrupt end to her nap. She dropped from the shadows and landed directly on top of Oliver’s head. He could feel her legs moving around through his hair. He felt sick to his stomach.

  “What is taking you two so long?” Sir Edmund’s voice crackled over the speaker. “What have you found? Are you alive down there? Over? Over!”

  Celia ignored Sir Edmund and focused on her brother. She had to think clearly now. She had to remember everything she knew about spiders.

  Her brother was the one who watched nature shows. She preferred soap operas and dramas. Anything with a good story and plenty of romance. How would that help her now?

  “Celia,” Oliver whispered through the strands of web covering his face. He stood stiff as a board.

  “Yeah?” Celia whispered back.

  “Is there a spider on my head?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Is it a big one or a little one?”

  “I don’t know. Big compared to what?”

  “I guess compared to my head!”

  “Yes, it’s a big one.”

  Oliver gulped. “What’s it doing?”

  “It’s moving around, like it’s dancing,” Celia explained.

  Oliver turned pale, and not just because he hated dancing. The South American wandering spider was known to dance back and forth just before it attacked. He’d learned that on Insect Files: Along Came a Spider. He’d also learned that the South American wandering spider was the most venomous spider in the world.

  “Beverly,” Oliver whispered. “Where are you? You still hungry, girl? A little dessert after your bat? There’s a yummy spider on my head. …”

  Oliver couldn’t believe he was actually trying to get the most poisonous lizard in the world to jump on his head, even if it was so it would eat the most poisonous spider in the world. This was not how he imagined his day would go when he woke up that morning.

  Beverly, however, did not jump on his head. She had just eaten a bat and half a snack cake and she was scurrying around in the dark, crunching on beetle shells like they were popcorn. She was as happy as a Heloderma horridum could be. She had no desire to fight the poisonous spider on top of Oliver’s head.

  “Just stay calm,” Celia told her brother. “I’ll think of something.”

  Celia thought about her favorite soap operas. Amores Enchiladas was no help. Love at 30,000 Feet wasn’t either. Why would there be spiders on a show about an airplane? Captain Sinclair once had an affair with a woman called the Black Widow, which was a kind of spider. She tried to poison his doughnut. That wasn’t really helpful. What did The Celebrity Adventurist have to say about this?

  Don’t let go of the rope, she thought.

  That was not helpful. She remembered an interview with Corey Brandt on Celebrity Access Tonight. He grew up in Idaho. He liked to swim. His astrological sign was Capricorn.

  She pictured him sitting with the interviewer, slouched in his chair, a wisp of brown hair falling across his forehead. The freckle under his eye looking like a little teardrop. “I’m a normal guy, you know? I don’t have a personal shopper. I don’t hang out with supermodels. I’m afraid of heights.”

  How was that supposed to help her? Why couldn’t celebrities say useful things in interviews? She didn’t know what to do.

  She did know that she hated standing in the dark thinking about TV shows that couldn’t help her. She did know that this was a terribly dangerous place for two eleven-year-olds to be, and that if it weren’t for their father’s dumb bet with Sir Edmund or their mother’s disappearance or the Lost Library of Alexandria, they wouldn’t be there at all.

  She thought about what her parents would do in this situation.

  They would want to study the spider and think about why it behaved the way it did, and wonder what they could learn from it about biodiversity, which was just an explorer’s way of saying “weird stuff in nature.” She decided to do the opposite of what her parents would do.

  Celia took a deep breath and then snatched the giant spider with her bare hands. In one swift motion, she tossed it to the floor and stomped it under her foot into a squishy mess.

  “Ah!” Oliver screamed.

  “It’s gone!” Celia screamed back.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Someone had to do something!”

  “But that was the most poisonous spider in the world.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that!”

  “They’re very rare!”

  “Well, it could have killed you!”

  “It could have killed you!”

  “Well, it didn’t.”

  “Sometimes you need to stop and think more,” Oliver told his sister. She could be very impatient.

  “Are you still alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then stop complaining and come on.”

  “There’s some good news,” Oliver added.

  “What’s that?”


  “We’ve found the janitor’s closet.”

  “The what?”

  Oliver pointed his flashlight ahead of him. The hall opened up into a grand chamber and the far wall was covered with what looked like hundreds of colorful mops.

  “We’ve found mops,” Celia said into the walkie-talkie. “A room full of ancient mops. Over.”

  “It’s a miracle!” Sir Edmund’s voice boomed through the speaker. “Go in, get a closer look!”

  “Is he going to want us to clean down here?” Oliver asked nervously. “I hate cleaning.”

  6

  WE ARE NOT CLEANING UP

  THEY SHINED THEIR lights around the room.

  “Whoa,” Oliver said.

  “You’re sooo good with words.” Celia rolled her eyes.

  Along the far wall, hundreds of thick bundles of colorful string were hanging on golden hooks, all the way from the floor to the ceiling. As they stepped closer, Oliver and Celia saw that the bundles were definitely not mops. Each thick cord of string had different colored strings hanging off of it, sometimes hundreds, and every string was filled with knots.

  Oliver looked all the way up to the ceiling, which was decorated with a giant golden key, studded with sapphires and rubies. “It’s that symbol,” Oliver said. “Mom’s symbol.”

  “The Mnemones,” Celia sighed. “Of course. Why couldn’t we just break into a normal Inca ruin?”

  The Mnemones were the secret society their mother had told them about. Mnemones, for those of us who are not experts in phonics, sounds like “knee-moans,” because the first m is silent. The k in knee is silent too. There’s no good way to describe a secret society that doesn’t use silent letters.

  The Mnemones were an ancient society of scribes from the Library of Alexandria. Their symbol was a jeweled key with Greek writing beneath it. They were the scholars of the library, recording every book and prophecy and object in the ancient collection. They preserved all the knowledge in the world, examined it, studied it. They had known the Lost Library better than anyone.

  Their enemies were a mysterious Council made of the most powerful people in Alexandria, who wanted to control the library for themselves. Somehow, in the conflict between these two groups, the Great Library of Alexandria went from being great to being lost.

  Some scholars said it burned down. Some said it was looted and then burned down. And some, like Oliver and Celia’s mother, believed that it had been hidden and not burned down at all.

  The Mnemones and the Council were now locked in an ancient and deadly race to find it again. That’s what had led the twins to Tibet, and that’s why their mother had not come home, and that’s why Sir Edmund had brought them to South America.

  He worked for the Council. He might even be its leader. They didn’t know why he wanted to find the library so badly, but he was not the type of explorer who would donate his discoveries to a museum. His plans were certainly as selfish as they were mysterious.

  Oliver and Celia couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to find an old library so badly, but they were caught up in the race now. Between their mother’s secret society, Sir Edmund’s Council, and Janice McDermott, the grave robber bent on revenge, Oliver and Celia Navel found themselves wishing the Lost Library had just burned down two thousand years ago. Then maybe they’d be left alone. Then maybe their mother would come home.

  Sir Edmund’s voice crackled over the speaker. “What do you see? Celia? Oliver? I swear if you don’t speak soon, I will feed you to a llama!” Oliver looked concerned.

  “Relax,” Celia said. “He can’t feed us to anything while we’re down here and he’s up there.”

  “Do llamas eat people?” Oliver wondered.

  “Llamas eat grass. How many nature shows have you watched?”

  “Tons, but still … things are always weirder in the real world than on TV.”

  “We just see a lot of moppy, stringy things,” said Celia into the walkie-talkie. She knew she couldn’t tell Sir Edmund about the symbol on the ceiling. She wondered if he already knew. He’d sent them down there for a reason, after all. “Over.”

  “What is this place?” Oliver wondered. He went over and touched one of the bundles of string. Some of the knots were different colors and different shapes. From what he knew about knot tying, it would be very hard to tie so many different kinds of knots so many times. Why would someone do that?

  “Look for one with gold on it,” Sir Edmund said. Oliver and Celia scanned along the wall with their flashlights, looking at the different colors on the strings. There were strings dyed blue and yellow and red. There were strings dyed turquoise and purple and black. There were strings dyed neon green and neon orange.

  There was a burst of static and the walkie-talkie squealed with feedback. Celia let go of the button. More static came through.

  “You’re breaking up. Over,” Celia said.

  “The—gold—if—find the golden—,” Sir Edmund’s voice crackled.

  “I can’t understand him,” Celia said. “Something about gold.”

  She put the walkie-talkie down and ran her hands through the strings.

  “I found one with gold on it,” Oliver said. He pointed up high toward a thick golden cord with more little strings hanging off of it than any other bundle. The other strings were every color under the rainbow, but the thickest one was made of shining golden thread.

  “Climb up and get it so we can get out of here,” Celia said.

  Oliver just sighed. It wasn’t worth arguing about with her. He never won. So he started climbing up, using the bundles of string for handholds.

  Celia was studying the bundle in front of her. The cord was smooth and a little slick to the touch. She was running her hand along a knotted neon-green string, lost in thought. Her brow was wrinkled.

  “I don’t know what this place is,” Oliver said, “or what it’s got to do with Mom.” His voice was strained with the effort of climbing. “But I wish they’d left a ladder down here.”

  Beverly was scurrying up the wall next to him. She seemed most comfortable when she was climbing. Not Oliver. He was exhausted when he finally got his hands on the golden cord about fifty feet off the ground.

  “Got it!” he called back down happily.

  “Deserted—thirty—victorious,” Sir Edmund’s voice crackled over the speaker, though both twins were ignoring it now.

  “Of course it would be the one all the way up here,” Oliver said. “Why can’t people ever be looking for things that are on the ground?”

  “This isn’t right,” Celia said, still staring at the string in front of her.

  “What? I can’t hear you! Hold on. I’ll be right down.” Oliver pulled the golden cord off the wall. It was really heavy with all the string. He couldn’t imagine what Sir Edmund would want with it, but he knew better than to ask. Explorers were always looking for weird old things that made no sense, the older and weirder the better.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Celia suddenly screamed up at him. “We have to get out of here now! It’s a trap!”

  By then, however, it was too late. As Oliver pulled the heavy bundle of string off its hook, one of the strands pulled tight. He saw that it disappeared into a hole in the wall, while all the others hung loosely. He pulled it a little harder. There was a loud clicking sound.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. The giant key in the ceiling started to rotate, like it was unscrewing from the ceiling. It sent clumps of dust and stone falling to the ground as it turned. He put the golden cord quickly back on its hook, but it didn’t help. A stone slab slammed down behind them, blocking their way out.

  “Um … we’ve got a problem!” he yelled down at Celia, who was staring at the giant stone blocking their path. She wanted to yell at her brother but she didn’t have time. She had to dodge chunks of falling rocks. Then the floor started to split open in the middle. As the key in the ceiling turned, the crack in the floor grew wider. Celia jumped off to one side to avoid falling
in, but the crack kept growing. The floor was disappearing under the walls, like a rug being pulled out from under her. She was running out of floor very fast.

  From where Oliver was hanging, high on the wall, he could see right down into the pit as the floor opened. It was about as a deep as a swimming pool, but they would never survive a fall into it.

  “Oh no,” he said as his worst fear came true.

  He really hated mummies.

  7

  WE PLAY PEGGO

  “CLIMB UP HERE!” Oliver shouted down at his sister.

  Celia looked up at Oliver and then down at the pit in the floor. There were hundreds of mummies. They were wrapped in rotten cloth, with dark stones for eyes. Their lifeless mouths grinned up at the wall of strings and their lifeless eyes stared blankly ahead. Each of the mummies held a sharp spear in its wretched hands. If Celia fell into the pit, she’d be skewered on the spears like a marshmallow on a stick.

  She rushed to the wall that was covered in strings, stumbling a little as she ran. The floor kept moving out from under her. Just as she was about to run out of floor and fall into the pit of mummies, she leaped into the air and caught onto a bundle of string. The floor disappeared underneath her. She looked down over her shoulder at the pit and realized that the only way to go was up. There were no safety ropes this time.

  Celia started to climb. She wanted to get as far away from the mummies as she could. They still looked mummified for the time being, but if Celia knew anything about mummies it was that they never stayed dead for long. If there was a mummy on TV, it was sure to come to life eventually. It was like a law.

  As she pulled herself up, she felt the string pull away from the wall and then stop. There was a hissing sound. She looked up for Beverly the lizard, but Beverly was climbing back and forth on the ceiling. The sound didn’t come from her.

  “Duck!” Oliver shouted.

  Celia turned and saw a shining spear flying right at her. She swung out of the way like a monkey on a vine and grabbed another bundle of string just as the spear slammed into the wall where she had been. As her weight settled onto the new string, she heard another hiss and turned to see a spear shoot out of a mummy’s skeleton hand. It was flying right at her. She let go and fell. The spear stuck into the wall again, just where she had been. She caught onto another bundle of string just before she fell into the pit. Again there was a hiss, and a spear was shot from a mummy’s hand, aimed right at her.