We Dine With Cannibals

by C. Alexander London

  “It’s all booby-trapped,” she said as she climbed up and out of the way.

  “Keep moving!” Oliver yelled. “Climb toward me!”

  Celia, who had spent more hours watching shoe commercials than playing on jungle gyms, found herself climbing and swinging like an acrobat from string to string, leaping and falling and catching on as spears shot at wherever she landed. She couldn’t stay still for more than a second.

  Her arms were tired, but she couldn’t stop to rest. Every rope she caught onto set off a spear that was aimed right at it. The trap was designed so that you needed to use the ropes to climb when the floor pulled away, but the ropes made the spears shoot right at you. It might have been fun for a gymnast or a circus performer, but it was exhausting and deadly for Celia Navel. It was way too much like gym class.

  Celia was swinging up one side of the wall and down the other, dodging spears as she climbed and swung and jumped. Oliver knew his rope had set off the trap, but it didn’t seem connected to a spear. He was safe where he was, so he reached out a hand and tried to catch Celia when she got close to him. She caught the rope right below him and pulled herself up, her face red and sweating. Just as their hands met, a spear shot between them and Celia let go so her brother’s hand wouldn’t be impaled. She fell.

  “Celia!” Oliver yelled out in helpless agony, but his sister caught another bunch of string near the bottom.

  As the rope hissed with her weight, she kicked her legs out behind her, using the string like a swing. She was flying through the air again, up and away, as the spear found its mark where her head might have been a moment earlier. As she flew forward, exhausted from her aerial acrobatics, she saw the shaft of a spear sticking out from the wall in front of her. She wrapped herself around it with a thud. It wobbled and shook, but it stayed in the wall.

  The spears weren’t connected to a trap, she realized. Only the strings. Celia hung from the spear while she caught her breath. She was relieved she hadn’t been impaled.

  “You okay?” Oliver called to her.

  “The spears …” She panted. “The spears … playing Peggo.”

  “Peggo?” Oliver shouted. “Why are you talking about Peggo?”

  Peggo was a game that people played on Name Your Price, an afternoon game show about guessing what things cost, like toilet paper and new cars. In Peggo, the contestant dropped a disc down a board covered in pegs so that it bounced around all the way to the bottom and the player won prizes depending on where it landed. Why his sister was babbling on about Peggo was beyond Oliver’s understanding.

  He looked down at his sister, slung like a rag over the shaft of the spear. Straight down below her, the cruel stone eyes of the mummies gaped upward.

  “What do we do now?” Oliver called down.

  “It’s just like Peggo,” Celia called up. “The spears are the pegs.”

  “And we’re the little discs?” Oliver asked.

  “That’s right,” Celia said.

  “What about the mummies?”

  “They aren’t real mummies, Oliver,” Celia said. “They’re just part of this trap. They’re like the robot bears at Super Fun Pizza Animal Jamboree.”

  “I hate those robot bears. Bears shouldn’t play country music. It’s just wrong. And the pizza there is rubbery.”

  “I know, but as long as we use the spears and don’t put any weight on the strings, we won’t set off the trap again. Though we have to figure out how to get out of here.”

  “Now all I can think about is pizza.”

  “I think I see a way out,” Celia said.

  She pointed at the key on the ceiling that had spun around when the floor opened up. It was like a big screw. Now that it had been loosened, they could see a spiral staircase on the back of it. That was their way out. Beverly was hanging upside down next to the stairs, waiting for Oliver and Celia. The only problem was that the stairs were in the middle of the ceiling over the pit of mummies below.

  “We’ll need more pegs to climb up there,” Celia said. “And it’s your turn.”

  “What? Why? No!”

  “I said when we came down here that I’d go first the next time, remember? You made me promise. And I did. Look at all the spears I put in the wall.”

  “You didn’t do it on purpose,” Oliver said. “That’s not fair.”

  “I went first. Now it’s your turn,” Celia said. “You’ve had longer to rest anyway.”

  “Hanging up here isn’t resting!”

  She just glared at him. He sighed. His sister was right. She was always right. Even when she was wrong. That’s what it meant to have a sister who was older by three minutes and forty-two seconds.

  Oliver let go of the rope he was on and fell a few feet to the next one down. He caught it with his right hand. There was a hissing sound when he grabbed on and he saw a spear firing out from one of the mummies down below. He whipped his legs out behind him and dodged the spear, swinging away to the next rope as the spear hit the wall. He swooped and swirled along the wall, up and down like an acrobat.

  Beverly’s head moved from side to side as she watched. Celia called out to him as he raced along.

  “Duck down … swing left … now to the right … no, your other right … now leap!” she called. If it weren’t for her, Oliver would have been shish kebab.

  Oliver caught another spear stuck in the wall just above Celia. He was out of breath and soaked with sweat, but happy he was still alive. The wall of colored strings looked like a pincushion.

  “Okay,” Oliver said. “Peggo.”

  “Great job,” Celia said. “Now we’ve got to climb.”

  His arms felt like floppy noodles at that point. “If this were TV,” Oliver said, “there would be some heroic music and they’d cut away and we’d be safe already.”

  “Well, it’s not TV, so we have to climb.” Celia started climbing. Oliver groaned and followed.

  High above the blank stares of the long-dead mummies with glistening spears, Oliver and Celia climbed from spear to spear, all the way up to the ceiling. When they reached the top, Oliver balanced himself on two spears and took a big leap to the giant key. He caught on and his legs dangled in the air. For a moment he thought he might fall, but he pulled himself up. His sister jumped after him, and he caught her arms and pulled her onto the stairs. She was very happy she had a younger (by three minutes and forty-two seconds) brother.

  “I don’t think Sir Edmund’s going to be happy with us,” Oliver said. “I don’t think we found what he was looking for.”

  “I think somebody else beat us to it,” Celia said. “That was no ancient trap.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Fashion Force Five,” Celia explained, as if it were obvious how a fashion reality TV show explained it all. “I’ll tell you later,” she added.

  Beverly climbed onto Oliver’s back and the twins started up the winding stairs, side by side.

  8

  WE BORROW A LLAMA

  SIR EDMUND WAS STANDING on a pile of rubble, scolding the small girl as she packed up the llamas.

  “Hurry up! Put that in the bag … here … here … aquí … sí? You don’t even speak Spanish, do you?” He was muttering and stomping in frustration, although he didn’t offer to help the girl. “Useless! Useless!” he shouted. “Why am I always stuck with children? If they aren’t dumb TV-addled brats, they are mute jungle people with no sense at all!”

  The girl just kept packing bags onto the llamas, but her eyes glowed angry under her long dark hair. If he’d been paying attention, Sir Edmund would have noticed that she could understand every word he said.

  Oliver and Celia came out from underground onto a terrace above them. They were sweaty and dirty and tired. The sky was growing brighter in the east. Tourists would be arriving soon with their fanny packs and their digital cameras. Sir Edmund wanted to be out of there before anyone spotted him.

  “Lousy, lazy kids … too much TV! … I should have known … could
n’t even find their way through an Inca ossuary,” Sir Edmund was muttering.

  “What’s an ossuary?” Oliver whispered to Celia.

  “It’s a final resting place for human bones,” Celia said.

  Oliver stared at her.

  “Wally Worm’s Word World.”

  “But how do you remember it?”

  “You make a rhyme, like Bones are scary, lock ’em in the ossuary.”

  “Ossuary’s a strange word to be on a kids’ show.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Celia said. “I didn’t write it.”

  One of the rented llamas tilted its perky ears toward Oliver and Celia. It was copper colored with long scraggly fur that looked like dreadlocks. It showed its teeth in a giant llama grin.

  “Heuuurrr,” it bellowed. The little girl looked over toward the twins and smiled.

  “Oh, be quiet, you ridiculous-looking creature, or I’ll make dog food out of you,” Sir Edmund scolded, but the llama stepped away from him and trotted up toward Oliver and Celia.

  It looked back at Sir Edmund and added a quick “heuuurrr,” with another grin.

  “You two!” shouted Sir Edmund when he saw Oliver and Celia. “What are you doing still alive? You stopped answering me. I had hoped you did so because of an untimely demise, not because you were being rude! I should have known you’d do something like this.”

  “Like what?” Celia said.

  “Survive,” Sir Edmund answered. “With nothing to show for it.”

  “We nearly died,” said Oliver.

  “You led us into a trap,” said Celia. “What was in that place?”

  “All you had to do was tell me what you saw.” Sir Edmund ignored her question.

  “We saw a bunch of string,” Celia said. “Like old mops.”

  “Those weren’t mops,” Sir Edmund said. “They were khipu.”

  “Key-poo?” Oliver asked. “Is that like bug poo?”

  Celia shrugged. This time she didn’t know the word either.

  “Khipu,” Sir Edmund said, “is an ancient Incan form of writing using colored knotted strings where each color and each knot mean something. Every ‘mop,’ as you call it, is an entire book of knowledge. So far, no one has been able to decode them. The Spanish destroyed most of them when they conquered the Inca empire.”

  “But the Spanish never found Machu Picchu,” Oliver added. Sleepwalker 2 was coming in handy. “They never knew about all those key-poops.”

  “Khipu,” Celia corrected him.

  “That’s what I said. Key-poops. So you were here looking for old books.” Oliver threw his hands in the air. “Another library! What is it with explorers and libraries?”

  Sir Edmund picked at his fingernails. He was wearing shining silver cuff links that showed an image of a scroll wrapped in chains: the symbol of the Council.

  “One of those khipus could have told us the way to El Dorado if you hadn’t been so careless,” he said. “You’ve heard of the Lost City of Gold, I assume?”

  “We’ve heard of it,” Celia snapped at Sir Edmund. “So you want gold now?”

  “What I want is none of your business,” Sir Edmund grunted.

  “Well, those were fake khipus down there,” Celia said. “That wasn’t a real Incan library or whatever.”

  “Nonsense,” Sir Edmund answered, but there was doubt in his voice.

  “It was a trap.”

  “Rubbish. The Inca didn’t make booby traps. You’ve seen too many movies.”

  “The Inca didn’t make these traps,” Celia said. “They were new.”

  “And how do you know that, young lady?” asked Sir Edmund.

  “How do you know that?” asked Oliver.

  “Fashion Force Five,” Celia said. “And Celebrity Fashion Crimes. Neon colors weren’t even invented until the twentieth century. The Incas couldn’t have used those colors. When I saw the neon strings, I knew that the place was fake.”

  Sir Edmund thought about it a moment.

  “You aren’t lying to me, are you?” he asked.

  “No,” Celia said. “I never lie.”

  Oliver gave her a knowing look.

  “About TV,” she added.

  “You’ve told me everything?” Sir Edmund asked.

  “Yes,” Celia lied. She hadn’t told him about the big key in the ceiling.

  “All right then,” Sir Edmund said. “That is enough. You are free to go.”

  “What?”

  “I am done with you for now. You may return to your home at the Explorers Club.”

  “But we’re in the mountains,” Oliver said. “In Peru.”

  “Please be quiet. I have to think now. I said you are free to go.”

  “But—”

  “You may take a llama.”

  “But—”

  “That is all.”

  The llama with the dreadlocks nudged Celia with its nose and bared its teeth again.

  “Heuuurrr,” it told her. “Heuuurrr.”

  “Where is that llama girl?” Sir Edmund said, looking around. “Where did she go?”

  The girl was nowhere to be seen. Sir Edmund called out to her, though he only knew her as Llama Girl. He got no answer. She was gone and hadn’t left so much as a footprint.

  “I should have known she’d do something like this. The natives are terribly unreliable. At least she left her llamas. I can get a good price for these two back in the capital.”

  “You’re just going to steal her llamas?” Celia asked.

  “They are my llamas now and you better get moving with that one,” said Sir Edmund. “I believe you have school in about a week and llamas do take their time getting from place to place.”

  “But what about the girl?” Celia looked around, hoping the girl would pop out and demand her llamas, maybe yell at Sir Edmund.

  “Oh, don’t worry about her. … I’m sure she’s just run home for some cannibal feast.”

  “Cannibals? Like eating people?” Oliver looked nervously to the jungle on the slopes of the mountain.

  “Yes, Oliver, like eating people. The natives in this part of the world are savages. They lack our civilized refinements.” He laughed. “Now go. Take that llama before I change my mind and leave you for her friends to make a stew out of.”

  Sir Edmund turned away from them and looked back across the mountains at the chimney they had gone down hours before. Celia kept looking around at the ruins, wondering if the llama girl was all right, wondering if cannibals were lurking in the shadows. Why had the girl run off like that?

  “Oh,” Sir Edmund called out to the twins. “And take Beverly with you. She’s fond of Oliver for some reason, and I’d hate to upset her. I’ll get her back from you in the city.”

  Beverly licked the back of Oliver’s neck, which was her way of saying, “I am happy about this turn of events. It is most fortunate for our relationship and I will treasure your company.”

  Oliver thought her tongue felt like sandpaper.

  “You know what I really hate?” he said as he climbed onto the llama’s back with Beverly.

  “Let me guess,” Celia said as she climbed on behind him, trying not to disturb the poisonous lizard. “Is it llamas now?”

  “No,” Oliver said. The llama started to make its way along the rocky slope between a giant temple and the ruins of a small stone house. Oliver scratched it behind the ears. “They’re actually kind of cute. Cuter than yaks anyway.”

  He looked back at Sir Edmund, who was writing frantic notes in a small book and shaking his head. He didn’t even turn to watch Oliver and Celia go. “Explorers,” Oliver said. “I really hate explorers.”

  9

  WE ARE DISAPPOINTED WITH DAD

  OLIVER AND CELIA’S FATHER, whom Oliver did not hate, in spite of his being an explorer, had cleaned up their apartment on the 4½th floor of the Explorers Club for the twins’ homecoming, though one could hardly notice.

  Piles of paper sat next to the sofa and the top of the fridge was sta
cked with old leather books. It was hard to find a place to put all of his maps and charts, because their apartment was filled with knickknacks and bric-a-brac and tchotchkes, which is just another way of saying a lot of stuff from all over the world. They had shards of thousand-year-old pottery and a knife made from the bones of a whale and a fanged spirit mask of the Liberian chimpanzee devil.

  When Oliver and Celia’s parents traveled, they never brought back T-shirts.

  Dr. Navel had put his rolled-up maps in the corner between a collection of traditional Zulu fighting sticks and the Cabinet of Count Vladomir, which was a medieval torture box. He had shoved his charts into the freezer, where there was plenty of room. He cleaned all the crumbs from under the couch cushions and even discovered loose change from five different countries that no longer existed. He didn’t want to throw it out, so he put it back under the cushions.

  He cooked Celia and Oliver’s favorite dinner: macaroni and cheese. He didn’t even do anything weird to it, like adding spicy Mexican habanero chilies or fried Bolivian grubs. Dr. Navel couldn’t imagine eating macaroni and cheese without spicy Mexican habanero chilies or fried Bolivian grubs, but he was willing to do anything for his children. So he made boring old mac and cheese, and he set up snack tables in front of the television.

  Normally he would not allow them to eat dinner in front of the television, but it was their first night back and it was his bet that had made them Sir Edmund’s slaves. So he was prepared to let them eat in front of the TV.

  He stood in front of the couch next to the steaming bowls of cheesy noodles and listened for their footsteps on the stairs. When he heard them coming, he was overwhelmed with excitement and flung open the door.