“Be careful,” Choden said. “The monastery where I found this page was guarded by more than just men. This is the realm of the Dugmas—the Poison Witches—and countless unknown terrors. I barely escaped them myself.”
“So we will first have to see the Oracle of Dorjee Drakden,” Dr. Navel said casually. “For his blessing.”
“Wait,” Celia gulped. “He’s the one with the sword?”
“And the yak?” Oliver spluttered.
“That’s the one.” Dr. Navel smiled. “How exciting!”
And with that Dr. Navel and the Tibetan mountain climber disappeared toward the map room with the ancient piece of paper. The children stood alone among the explorers in the Great Hall, thinking about cable television and Lost Tablets, and wondering whether or not yaks ate people.
But most of all, they were thinking about their mother.
7
WE HEAR FROM A YAK
TIBET IS LOCATED in Central Asia, in the highest region on earth, and getting there isn’t easy. On the first part of the flight, Oliver watched three movies and a twenty-minute show about exercises you could do in your seat to keep from getting something called “deep vein thrombosis,” which sounded like a kind of musical instrument, but was really a dangerous medical condition. Then they had to change planes in Germany and fly for another eleven hours to get to an airport in China, where they would then fly another two hours to get to the capital city of Tibet, called Lhasa.
Oliver found himself happy to be going on such a long trip. He was happy because the airline had installed personal television screens on the back of every seat, so he could watch whatever he wanted and he had hours and hours to do it. His father didn’t complain or suggest Oliver read a book. He didn’t even notice that Oliver had been watching movies and television for almost twenty hours straight. Celia had drifted off to sleep after watching some romantic comedies with titles like Summer’s Storm and Kissing Cousins.
Dr. Navel was two rows ahead, madly flipping pages in the books and charts and maps Choden had given him. Occasionally, he would shout “Aha!” and the people around him would shift uncomfortably in their seats.
“Couldn’t he just snore or something?” a man behind Dr. Navel said loudly.
Across the aisle from Oliver, Celia muttered in her sleep: “He’syourcousin, don’tmarryhim . . .ʺ She sighed and shifted without waking up.
On his little screen, Oliver was suddenly watching a nature show about mountain wildlife. He liked nature shows, though he thought he’d been watching a movie. These airplane systems were weird, he guessed, changing channels on their own. He didn’t mind, though. On nature shows, you could see the entire world without getting bitten by any lizards. And you got to drink the endless supply of soda the airline gave out.
But when a wild yak stared out of the tiny screen at Oliver and said, in an ancient language unheard for over two thousand years, You will have to remember enduring Love if you want to escape a terrible fate, Oliver realized, much to his surprise, that he was asleep and dreaming a most unusual dream.
The yak had bright green eyes that looked cold and hard, like the jade statue that Oliver and Celia had hidden behind in the Explorers Club library.
“Why am I dreaming about a yak?” Oliver wondered to himself. “I don’t think I was even watching a nature show when I fell asleep.”
Yes you were, the wild yak with the jade eyes told him.
“No I wasn’t,” he thought.
Yes, you were. I’m reading your mind. I know everything. Stop arguing with me or I’ll climb out of this screen and eat you.
“Yaks don’t eat meat,” Oliver replied.
Well, then I’ll climb out of the screen and skewer you with my horns, the yak answered.
“Okay,” Oliver thought, because it’s never a good idea to argue with mind-reading yaks. “How do I understand you? I don’t speak any ancient languages.”
How do you know I’m speaking an ancient language?
“It’s my dream. I just know.”
All right. I guess I am speaking an ancient language, but that’s not really the point. I’m a yak. I shouldn’t be speaking at all.
“I agree.”
Good. Now that we understand each other, I have a cryptic message for you.
“What does that mean?”
Cryptic? It means “serving to camouflage an animal in its natural environment.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
It also means “having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure.”
“That makes more sense.”
Thank you.
“Youʹre welcome. So whatʹs the cryptic message?”
I said it already: You will have to remember enduring Love if you want to escape a terrible fate.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I don’t know. It’s a cryptic message. I’m just the messenger.
“Well, who are you carrying the message for?”
It will be clear in time.
And with that, Oliver found himself awake, staring at his screen. A movie about a lonely superhero was on. He hadn’t been watching a nature show at all. It was just a dream.
ʺAha! I knew it! The yak was wrong!ʺ he shouted. The people around him looked over nervously. The man in the seat next to Oliver grunted and pushed earplugs into his ears, shaking his head. Across the aisle, Oliver’s sister jolted out of her own nap.
“Why are you yelling?” she snapped at him.
“I . . . ummm . . . there was a . . . nothing. Just a dream.”
“Well, you didn’t have to shout.”
Oliver turned the volume up on his headset and acted like he was watching the movie, but he was really thinking about his dream. What could the green-eyed yak have meant? How would remembering enduring love help him? What terrible fate did he need to escape? It really was a cryptic message.
Meanwhile, Celia, now awake from her nap, was feeling sore. She was tired of sitting in the uncomfortable airline seats and tired of traveling and tired of worrying what awaited them high in the mountains of Tibet. The man at the window seat next to her kept shoving her arm off the armrest with his elbow. He was reading a newspaper and wore too much cologne. His nose was red and short and he was wearing a shiny black suit that hadn’t wrinkled at all during the long flight. He breathed too loudly through his nose and wouldn’t give back the armrest. She shoved at his arm, reclaiming it by force. Without a word he jabbed right back with his elbow and pushed her off again.
“Ow!” she shouted. “Stop being a jerk!” The man glared at her and reached up to press the button that summoned the stewardess.
“May I help you?” the stewardess asked, appearing almost instantly. She had the whitest teeth Celia had ever seen, but her skin was caked with makeup, like she’d painted her face with the kind of paint they use for road signs.
“This young lady is being very rude. She has attacked my arm on more than one occasion,” he said, smiling at the stewardess and adjusting the lapels on his shiny suit. “Normally, I wouldn’t complain, but I worry that this family is troubled. They have all shouted at some point during this otherwise pleasant flight. Her latest outburst was simply the last straw.”
“Young lady?” the stewardess asked, raising her eyebrows at Celia, who really didn’t know what the question was.
“He pushed me first,” she said.
“Where is your father?”
Celia’s heart sank as she pointed to her father, who had now asked a small Chinese lady next to him to hold her finger on a point on a big paper map while he measured some distance with a string.
“Hold still, ma’am! Please try to hold very still, otherwise I’m sure we’ll find ourselves lost in the Gobi Desert.”
“Sir,” the stewardess interrupted. “Could I speak to you, please?”
Dr. Navel looked at the Chinese lady, who smiled at him, but used her eyes to plead with the stewardess for help.
“Perhaps we could talk
at the back of the plane?” the stewardess suggested. Dr. Navel reluctantly put his maps and strings down on his seat and followed her to the back. Celia watched while the stewardess lectured her father. He had that pose that boys get when they’re in trouble. He slumped and shrugged and acted like he wasn’t listening. Then the stewardess pointed at Oliver and then at Celia, and Dr. Navel got angry and started lecturing her. And then she got angry and pointed at him. Then she poked him in the chest and out of fairness, he poked her back, which was not a good decision.
“Do not dare touch me, sir!” the stewardess shouted, and everyone turned to look.
“You touched me first,” Dr. Navel said sheepishly, realizing he had gone too far.
The stewardess picked up the little phone next to her and spoke into it very quickly. A man stood up from a seat near the front of the plane and walked back toward them. When he passed Celia’s seat, she saw him wink at the man in the shiny suit, who gave a quick nod of his head, like they were old friends.
When the man reached Dr. Navel and the stewardess, he pulled out a badge.
“Air marshal,” he said. “Is there a problem here?”
“No problem, sir,” Dr. Navel said, trying to undo the damage that had already been done.
“He has been a disturbance this entire flight,” the stewardess said. “We have reason to believe his children are . . . unbalanced, as he is himself, and now he has assaulted me.”
“I did not assault you,” Dr. Navel tried to say, and Celia looked at Oliver with worry in her eyes. Oliver’s eyes showed worry too.
“We’re not unbalanced,” Oliver whispered, and then thought about the talking yak in his dream.
“Sir,” the air marshal said. “Please do not interrupt. Unfortunately, I have been noting your unusual behavior since leaving New York, and I cannot allow you and your family to continue to put this aircraft and its staff in danger.”
“I promise we will sit quietly until we land.”
“Unfortunately, sir, you cannot be permitted to remain on board.”
“What?!”
“You and your family will have to leave the plane.”
“But we’re forty thousand feet in the air somewhere over Central Asia!”
“Sir, please don’t cause a scene,” the air marshal said. “We are only at thirty-eight thousand feet, and we are just passing over Mount Everest. It’ll be a lovely piece of sightseeing for you.” He glanced back at the man next to Celia and smirked. Then he winked at Celia and gave her a thumbs-up, like the whole thing was one big joke. If getting thrown out of an airplane was a joke, she didn’t get it.
8
WE FEEL THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION
EXITING AN AIRPLANE IN MIDAIR is not an easy thing to do, even if you wanted to do it. And the Navel family certainly did not want to do it.
In fact, Celia tried to bite the air marshal’s finger when he came to grab her, but the shiny-suited man in the seat next to her grabbed her and held her still while the air marshal tied her hands in front of her. Celia noticed that each man wore a gold ring with a tiny key inscribed on it and the key had tiny shining stones embedded in it.
“If you can’t behave, I’ll have to leave you restrained,” the air marshal said cruelly. “I don’t want to do that.”
Two of the stewardesses tied Oliver’s hands in front of him and moved him to the back of the plane. One of them looked at him and mouthed the words “I’m sorry,” but it did little to comfort him. He didn’t like heights. He could already taste the dry chicken and soggy strawberry shortcake he’d eaten an hour earlier. It was far less pleasant-tasting going in reverse. He wanted to look brave for his father, so he took deep breaths and kept himself from throwing up. His father, meanwhile, had already been handcuffed to the duty-free shopping cart. He looked pale and his eyes darted frantically, trying to think of a way to save his family from a thirty-eight-thousand-foot fall. His glasses slid down on his nose and he could not get them up again.
This was not the first disaster Oliver and Celia had faced with their father, but it was perhaps the worst. River rapids could be navigated. Wild horses could be calmed. Angry cannibals could be persuaded to go vegetarian for health reasons. There was no arguing with a thirty-eight-thousand-foot fall.
“You’re really going to kill us for causing a disturbance?” Dr. Navel asked the air marshal. Some of the other passengers on the plane looked concerned, but no one seemed to want to interfere. Many people didn’t seem concerned at all. They kept staring at their glossy magazines, paperback novels or miniature television screens. Oh, how the twins longed to be back in front of the television at home!
“I’m not going to kill you,” the air marshal said. “I am just going to remove you from the plane. What happens after that is up to you . . . and gravity.”
ʺThis is crazy,ʺ Dr. Navel said to the stewardess.
“You should not have poked me,” she replied coldly, and dragged the duty-free shopping cart—and Dr. Navel with it—through the door to the tail of the plane. The air marshal shoved the twins after them.
“You can’t do this!” Dr. Navel shouted.
“Oh, yes, I can,” said the air marshal, and he knocked Dr. Navel on the head. Dr. Navel crumpled to the floor, unconscious. The marshal took off Dr. Navel’s handcuffs, untied the children’s hands, and, without a word, he and the stewardess left, locking the door that led back to the airplane cabin.
“What happens now?” Celia asked.
“They are going to open the tail and the pressure will suck us out and we’ll fall,” Oliver said. “I saw this in a movie.”
Suddenly, the door opened again, and the stewardess was back.
“Excuse me,” she said, smiling like she was interrupting their nap. “Don’t forget your carry-on bag.” She set Celia and Oliver’s small backpack on the floor and left the tail again, locking the door behind her. Celia and Oliver just stared at the door. Oliver ran over and pounded on it a few times, but nothing happened.
“We’re in trouble.” He leaned against the door and sighed.
“We need parachutes,” Celia said, tugging her brother out of his slouch. “Fast.”
They scurried around the back of the plane and found a big square of yellow plastic with a string on it.
“What’s this?” Oliver pulled at the string. Suddenly, there was a whoosh of sound, and the square unfolded and started to fill with air. It knocked Oliver over as it took its shape: a life raft.
“That’s great,” Celia said. “If only we were on a boat.”
Oliver ran over to the duty-free cart that the stewardess had left behind and pulled out a heavy canvas poncho with the airline’s logo on it.
“They’re selling these for twenty-three ninety-five,” he said. “That’s a good deal.”
“What are you doing? This isn’t the Home Shopping Channel, Oliver! We’re about to die!”
“I have an idea,” Oliver told his sister excitedly. He pulled out three more of the canvas ponchos and started tying them together by their hoods. Celia saw what he was up to and started to help him. When they ran out of ponchos, they started tying plastic garbage bags to the ponchos. Within a minute, they had a giant canvas and plastic quilt that sort of looked like a parachute.
“I know the movie this idea is from,” Celia said anxiously. “Things don’t go well, remember?”
“The heroes survive the fall, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but they end up eating bugs. I hate eating bugs.”
“Don’t think about that now. We just need to tie this to the raft somehow,” he said. “And get in it quickly.”
They found bungee cords and started attaching the patchwork parachute to the raft as fast as they could. Their parents had made them take a survival class every Saturday during kindergarten and they still knew their knots pretty well. Dr. Rasmali-Greenberg had been their teacher. For every knot they learned, he let them watch a half hour of cartoons. Much to his surprise, they learned over a hundred
knots and reclaimed their Saturday mornings for Ducks Incorporated and Flappy the Parrot Prince. They were excellent students when they had the right motivation.
As they tied, they heard a loud clank and the floor started to shift.
“Uh-oh,” Oliver said.
“They’re opening the hatch,” Celia shouted. Daylight began to slice into the dim space and their ears popped. The air roared around them.
“Ouch!” they both shouted. Oliver grabbed his father’s feet and Celia grabbed his arms and they tossed him into the raft. He hit his head on the floor when they did it.
“Sorry, Dad,” Oliver said, but his father didn’t react at all. Celia put on their backpack and then they jumped into the raft themselves and kept working at the knots on their parachute.
“I hope this holds together,” Celia said. The raft started to slide toward the opening at the back of the plane. They saw the clouds far below them.
“Hang on to Dad!” Celia yelled. Oliver grabbed his father by the foot with one hand and held on to the handles of the raft with the other. He sat down on the parachute they’d made so that it wouldn’t open up right away. At the speed they were going, the wind would tear it to shreds. He would let it out once they’d fallen a bit. He knew that much from action movies. If he’d had the Discovery Channel, he probably could have made something better, he thought, but it was too late to worry about that now. If they survived, they’d get cable.
Well, if they survived and avoided the Poison Witches and found the Lost Tablets of Alexandria in the land of Shangri-La and won the bet with Sir Edmund. Put like that, it seemed impossible.
Oliver closed his eyes to quiet his thoughts, and felt a rush as the raft with three-fourths of the Navel family slid through the opening and fell out of the airplane.
He heard his sister’s high-pitched scream, which was strange, because he opened his eyes and saw that her mouth wasn’t open. Then he realized it was his scream and they were falling through the sky.
We Are Not Eaten by Yaks Page 5
