We Dine With Cannibals

by C. Alexander London

  As much as she hated to do it, Celia agreed. Leaving Sir Edmund was the kind of thing he would do to them, not the other way around.

  Their mother nodded.

  “Oliver,” she said. “Do you still know your knots?”

  “I do,” said Oliver.

  “Then tie up his wrists,” she told him, tearing off a strand of vines. Oliver did as he was told. Only when his wrists were tied did they pull Sir Edmund from the quicksand.

  “You no-good, lousy, rotten—,” he started the moment his mouth was free, but all three of them gave him a look that told him to keep his mouth shut or they’d dump him back into the quicksand. Just to be sure, they used some moss and another piece of a vine to gag him so he couldn’t talk. The rage in his eyes told them everything he was thinking.

  Then they all ran, stumbling toward the river as the ground swallowed the ruins of El Dorado and the Lost Library, leaving nothing but muddy pools in their place. Trees tumbled as their branches and vines were caught in the sinkholes. Angry birds took flight.

  They jumped into the boat, tossing Sir Edmund on top of the trunk as if he were a sack of potatoes. Celia gave the antidote to their father, who woke up with a groan. When he saw his wife and children, and Sir Edmund tied up, he smiled and hugged his children. He kissed his wife deeply.

  “Gross,” said Oliver.

  “I found it, Oggie,” said Claire Navel, holding up the scroll. “Plato’s Map!”

  “Plato’s Map!” their father cheered. “You mean that’s what this was about? I didn’t even think that existed.”

  “No one did,” said Claire Navel.

  “You did. You knew,” said their father. “And you were right.”

  “Oh, honey.” She smiled as she broke the wax seal on the scroll and began to open it. “I’m always right.”

  Sir Edmund rolled his eyes. Dr. Navel leaned over his wife’s shoulder to see. Oliver and Celia sat with Beverly and Patrick and watched from across the boat as their parents looked at the scroll.

  “But—,” said their father. Their mother went pale. She dropped the scroll onto the floor of the boat and leaped back onto the shore.

  “Honey, wait!” said Dr. Navel, running after her. He turned back to Oliver and Celia. “Kids, stay here. We’ll be right back.” Oliver and Celia watched their parents race into the jungle.

  “What … what just happened?” wondered Oliver.

  Celia got up and scooped the unrolled papyrus from the floor of the boat. She studied it and sat back on the trunk.

  “It’s not a map,” she said. “It’s a note.”

  She turned it so Oliver could see. There was no map, just a note in the middle of the page.

  “Who’s P.F.?” Oliver wondered.

  Celia shrugged. She looked over at Sir Edmund. He looked as surprised as their mother had.

  Oliver scanned the jungle for their parents. The trees shook and animals fled in all directions. After what seemed like an eternity, their father came back … alone.

  “Where’s Mom?” Celia asked.

  “She …” Their father looked sadly at the jungle. “She won’t be joining us,” he said, jumping back into the boat.

  “What?” both children demanded.

  “She’s sorry,” he told them. He looked as upset as they were. “She wants me to take you home. … She says she’s got to look for clues. She can’t stop now.”

  Oliver looked one more time at the jungle.

  “Now you see what your mother really cares about,” Sir Edmund snarled at them, spitting the mossy gag out of his mouth.

  “Are you behind this note, Edmund?” Dr. Navel demanded.

  “Of course I am,” he answered sarcastically. “I trekked all the way through the jungle and got poison-darted by your wife and shot at and nearly drowned so I could look at a smart-aleck note from an unknown explorer and let your wife get a head start looking for the real thing while I’m tied up with you!”

  “No need to be so rude,” said Dr. Navel. “She did give me something for you.” He pulled out a piece of paper and held it in front of the little man’s face. “Read it out loud,” he commanded.

  “I, Sir Edmund S. Titheltorpe-Schmidt the Third, forgive all debts owed by Oliver and Celia Navel—,” he started. “Hey! I do no such thing!”

  Dr. Navel shrugged and reached for the blowgun that Sir Edmund had used on him earlier.

  “Well now, Navel, calm down,” he stammered. “Violence never solved anything. … Okay … okay.” He kept reading. “They are hereby freed and absolved of service to me from this day forward from now and forever. They may also keep my lizard, if they so choose.”

  Oliver was surprised to find himself happy about that. He’d grown to like Beverly.

  “Sign it,” said Dr. Navel, pulling a pen from his pocket and shoving it into Sir Edmund’s mouth. Sir Edmund grumbled but did his best to sign the paper.

  “I didn’t want the lizard back anyway.” He spat the pen out and glared at Oliver. “You ruined her.”

  Beverly hissed at him. Oliver ignored him. He was looking back at the jungle. Celia rested her hand on his shoulder, and he clenched his jaw, fighting back emotion.

  “She won’t be coming, Oliver,” said Sir Edmund. “She still believes she can beat me.”

  “I think she just did,” said Dr. Navel, picking up the blowgun.

  “Now, Navel, don’t do anything rash. I set them free. … I’m sure we can—”

  He fainted before Dr. Navel could even shoot the dart.

  “Well, at least we’ll have some quiet time together,” Dr. Navel said as he started the boat. Oliver and Celia looked sadly at each other. “I’m sure Mom will come home soon,” their father told them, although he didn’t even sound like he believed it. “You guys can tell me what I missed.”

  All three of them looked back at the jungle one more time and then their father eased the boat onto the river and back toward civilization.

  41

  WE ARE PRESENTED WITH A PRESENT

  “THANKFULLY, I REMEMBERED Corey Brandt’s First Rule of Adventuring,” Corey Brandt told the interviewer, with a wink and his trademark smile.

  “Which rule is it this time?” Oliver rolled his eyes.

  “Shh,” snapped Celia, turning the volume up on Celebrity Access Tonight.

  “We’ve watched every interview he’s done. That’s like three hundred by now. And it’s a different rule every time.”

  Celia pressed pause and froze the image on the screen so she could be more threatening when she glared at her brother. Cable television was truly magical.

  “I don’t see you surviving stuck in a tree for two weeks.”

  “All he had to do was not fall,” Oliver complained. “We were the ones who had to have all that … adventure.” Oliver said the word adventure the way you might say boogers.

  Celia hit play again. “Always count on your fans,” Corey Brandt continued.

  “Seriously? Come on!” Oliver tried to grab the remote from his sister. Patrick the monkey sat on top of the refrigerator and clapped. Apparently, he loved a good wrestling match. Beverly, back in Dr. Navel’s favorite armchair, flicked her tongue. She flicked her tongue at most things these days. She hardly ever hissed anymore, ever since Sir Edmund disowned her. As lizards went, she wasn’t the worst.

  It had been almost four months since their adventure in the Amazon. Oliver and Celia spent the last two days of their school suspension using the photos on Corey Brandt’s cell phone to find exactly where the teen star had been trapped.

  Dr. Navel couldn’t believe it when his children begged to go with him to the giant redwood forest in Northern California.

  “You know,” he told them, “giant redwoods sprout copies of themselves from their own branches, duplicating themselves over and over again … sort of like impersonators.”

  “Whatever,” said Oliver and Celia. They just couldn’t wait to meet the real Corey Brandt at last. They didn’t want to learn about tre
es.

  When they found the teen star, he had lashed himself to a tree branch and was delirious from hunger and thirst. He was dreaming about a big Italian feast.

  “Noodles,” he said, and passed out in Dr. Navel’s arms. The teardrop freckle was under his eye, just where it was supposed to be.

  After his rescue, he told everyone the most exciting tale of Janice and the impersonator’s diabolical plot to trap him in a tree and take his place. And he described how the Navel twins and their father had rescued him.

  “Oliver and Celia Navel are the true adventurists,” he said. “And I am honored to call them my friends.”

  When Oliver and Celia came back to school, it was like their first day had never happened. Even the eighth-grade girls wanted to watch Fashion Force Five with Celia. All the boys wanted to be just like Oliver. He was the first picked for every team, even though he was terrible at every sport.

  They never had to play dodgeball again.

  Principal Deaver had not returned to school. Their new principal was friendly, honest, and most decidedly not an explorer. She did, however, bear an amazing resemblance to former president William Howard Taft.

  Mr. Rondon, too, was gone, and the new custodian didn’t know exactly what had become of him. There were rumors he had gone to South America to live with a tribe of cannibals.

  The twins made it to Christmas vacation without anything else exciting happening to them. They missed their mother, but they were thrilled to know that they could watch cable TV over the break and didn’t have to be slaves to Sir Edmund. Their father promised they wouldn’t have to go anywhere exotic or do anything interesting.

  “I cannot, like, wait to join the Explorers Club myself,” Corey Brandt told the interviewer on TV. “I have just pledged all the money from my latest prime-time special to protect the indigenous people of the Javari Valley in Brazil from outside intruders. I love, you know, doing good. Activism is, like, so … you know—”

  Their father stepped in front of the screen and turned it off.

  “Hey!” Celia objected. “We were watching that!”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to spend with Corey Brandt when he comes to visit for the New Year’s banquet. Now, it’s time for dinner.”

  “But—,” Oliver started to ask just as Professor Rasmali-Greenberg came in. He was wearing his red and green tie where all the ducks wore Santa Claus hats.

  “Merry Christmas!” he said. “Happy Hanukkah. Good Diwali!”

  “It’s none of those holidays,” said Celia. “Christmas Eve isn’t even until tomorrow.”

  “Ah, ever since Sir Edmund and his cronies resigned from the Explorers Club, every day feels like Christmas to me!” The professor laughed.

  “Cronies?” Oliver wondered.

  “Oh, just look it up yourself,” Celia answered him.

  “I hear they have started a new club,” Dr. Navel said.

  “Yes, the Gentlemen’s Adventuring Society,” said the professor. “I fear the Council will be far more open with their work now that your wife has thrown down the gauntlet, so to speak. We have no idea who this P.F. is, but rumor has it that your wife is interrogating scholars of ancient Greek history from Athens to Fiji.”

  “Rumors,” said Dr. Navel, glancing at Oliver and Celia. “Just rumors.”

  “Pardon me,” said the professor. “The holidays are no time for such talk.”

  Oliver and Celia looked at each other. Since they last saw their mother, she hadn’t so much as sent them a postcard. During the journey back home, they had told their father everything they knew about the history of the Mnemones and the Council. They told him about the prophecy that the oracle had given them in Tibet and what they’d seen in their vision in the jungle. They even told him about the catalog of the Lost Library in their remote control. Their father was at times shocked, at times amused, and always very impressed with the daring young children he had raised.

  But he shocked them himself when he told them to forget about all of it and just watch TV. He got them cable the day they arrived back at the club. He wanted them to have a normal life, he said, just like he and Claire had discussed when they were trapped in the closet in Snack Cakeville.

  And for the past few months, things had been totally normal. Boring even. It was great. This was the first time they had heard anything about their mother in all that time.

  “The holidays are a time for presents!” the professor exclaimed, and ran out into the hallway, knocking the moon rock off its shelf. He came back with a wrapped box. “This is for you both to share,” he told Oliver and Celia. Dr. Navel looked at him curiously as he stepped into the hall to put the moon rock back.

  Oliver reached out for the present, but Celia got to it first and tore the wrapping paper off. Oliver’s shoulders slumped.

  “A new backpack,” he said.

  From his seat on top of the fridge, Patrick the monkey studied the new backpack carefully. Beverly flicked her tongue.

  “Look inside,” said the professor, smiling.

  “Two wet suits,” said Celia, pulling out the thick black scuba-diving suits. “And a book.” Her shoulders slumped.

  “Professor, what’s this about?” asked Dr. Navel nervously.

  “That’s the complete works of Plato!” The professor smiled. “In translation, of course … but it’s not from me. Open it.”

  Celia opened the book and saw that it was inscribed to Celia and Oliver.

  “Mom!” she said, recognizing the handwriting immediately.

  “Claire!” Dr. Navel exclaimed and almost jumped over the couch to see what his wife had written.

  “Dear Celia and Oliver,” Celia read out loud. “I know you hate doing reading during vacation, but I think you’ll find that your remote control comes in handy here. You might want to learn what the scholars of Alexandria knew about Plato. Enjoy the rest of sixth grade. I’ll see you both very, very soon. With love, Mom.”

  Celia set the book down on the table. The apartment was silent for a long time.

  “Well,” their father said at last. “I think things have been normal around here for about long enough.”

  “Oh no,” said Oliver.

  “Oh no,” said Celia.

  “Why don’t we have a look at that catalog in your remote and see what your mother wants us to know?”

  “I thought you wanted us to have a normal life,” Celia objected.

  “Oh, Celia.” Their father sat down between his children. “Normal is so dull, isn’t it?” He smiled widely.

  “Dinner’s getting cold!” Oliver tried.

  Dr. Navel ignored him and picked up the remote. “Now, how do we work this thing?” He started hitting buttons.

  “That’s not it!” said Celia.

  “She doesn’t know!” said Oliver.

  They both reached for it.

  “Hold on, I think I know,” said their father as he struggled to keep his children from wrestling the remote from him.

  To the people watching from a rooftop across the street, dressed in black and bundled against the cold, it almost looked like innocent family fun.

  But they knew better.

  Two of them held binoculars to their eyes.

  “Let me see,” the third one whined, pushing a wisp of nearly perfect brown hair from his eyes. “You wouldn’t even know about the remote if it weren’t for me hanging out with those kids!”

  “And you would still be half drowned in the Amazon if it weren’t for me coming back to rescue you,” snapped Sir Edmund.

  “Shh,” said Janice McDermott. “I need to read their lips.”

  “Why do you need silence to read lips?” said Sir Edmund.

  “I have to concentrate,” she snapped.

  “Then we have a deal?” Sir Edmund said. “You’ll have your revenge.”

  “Oh yes,” said Janice. “And you’ll have your library.”

  “I just want one thing from it.” Sir Edmund smiled. “And that alone is more than
you can possibly imagine.”

  “Whatever,” said Janice, who didn’t really like all the cryptic explorer talk. Why were they so mysterious about things all the time? She preferred the company of grave robbers.

  “What are they saying?” nagged the fake Corey Brandt, whose real name turned out to be Ernest.

  Sir Edmund lifted the binoculars back to his eyes.

  Through the window across the street, he saw Oliver and Celia Navel let go of the remote control as Dr. Navel pointed at the screen. The professor leaned on the couch behind them and muttered some nonsense that Sir Edmund couldn’t make out. But he watched happily as the twins rolled their eyes and their father excitedly mouthed one word:

  Atlantis.

  “Merry Christmas, Edmund,” Janice said to him with a smile.

  “And to you too, Janice,” he answered her. “Very merry indeed.”

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  THERE ARE A FEW POINTS I feel the need to clarify before we see Oliver and Celia Navel again on their next adventure.

  First, you should be relieved to know that the practice of cannibalism, which was never widespread in the Amazon, is all but extinct. As our friend Qui explained earlier, tales of cannibals were often used by European explorers to excuse their own brutish behavior while they ripped through the Amazon rain forest, stole its resources, and enslaved its inhabitants. Tales of cannibals were often completely made up for no other reason than to sell books!

  While the Cozinheiros are an invention of mine, there are indeed at least seventy uncontacted tribes in the Brazilian Amazon. Their way of life, which may seem strange to us, adds great richness to the ethnosphere—which the real-life explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, Wade Davis, describes as “the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, beliefs, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.” Or as Dr. Navel put it, “from the Songlines of the Aboriginal Australians to celebrity dance competitions.”

  While we outsiders might think it would be good to bring uncontacted tribes into our society so they could have things like flu medicine and celebrity dance competitions, like all peoples, they have a right to determine their own destiny and to choose if and when they would like to reach out to the world beyond the forest.