“Yes, a Ghost Leopard.”
The mist flew out of the pot revealing a tiny mountain valley held within its depths.
“Destined to wander the lonely mountains as a ghost, the Leopard would be invulnerable to the Monkey Man.”
Inside the pot a practically see-through leopard roamed through a high mountain valley.
“The gods promised that as long as the Ghost Leopard wandered the Earth, the evil Monkey Man could do no more harm.”
The valley inside the pot grew bigger and bigger until it took up the full floor of the hut. I couldn’t understand how it was possible, but what had been the ceiling of the hut was now a night sky filled with billions of twinkling stars. A shooting star fell out of the sky and through the Leopard as it walked. The Leopard continued on as though nothing had happened. Then the Leopard walked straight through a stunted dead tree, and then, a boulder. It was obvious that the Leopard was a ghost. It clearly had no body. Nothing could harm it.
“But once every hundred years, under the light of the full moon, the gods decreed that the Leopard would be given back its physical body.”
A full moon moved into the starry sky above. The moon shone down on a snowy mountainside and as its light fell, the Leopard’s ghostly form solidified. Now I could only see little glimpses of fur and tail as the Leopard moved stealthily between the rocks.
“Just like a werewolf?” Zak asked.
“Did he say werewolf?” I said to Zak.
“I don’t get it,” Zak said.
“Please. Not a wolf,” Mukta said, “a Ghost Leopard. Once every hundred years, under the light of the full moon, the Ghost Leopard is given its body back. At this time, the gods bestow the Leopard with the strength it needs to continue its lonely walk. But in its physical form the Leopard is also vulnerable. If found, the Monkey Man can kill it.”
I watched as the Leopard moved between the rocks, always concealing its position. Though I tried, I never got a good look at it.
“If the gods are so great, then why didn’t they just make the Leopard invulnerable all the time?” Zak asked.
“Because fair is fair, my young friend, and that would not be fair to the Monkey Man.”
I stared at the pot. I felt a strange calm as the cobra slowly uncoiled, inching higher and higher above it. Then, what looked like fire began to twirl in an ever-bigger ball about four feet above the pot. Sparks and flames rained down out of the fire just missing the Ghost Leopard as it slinked through the boulders below. “It has been five thousand years, but the Monkey Man seeks it still,” Mukta said. “And he grows smarter. He pays very bad men to help him. He uses technology. If he should succeed in shooting an arrow through the Leopard atop the sacred peak of Tendua Tibba, the Monkey Man will grow greatly in power. All living things will suffer. Fire will rain from the sky.”
Without warning, the whoosh of an arrow cut through the air. It was the loudest arrow I had ever heard and both Zak and I dove down into the mist, covering our ears. As we did, the Ghost Leopard bolted for cover. There was still a ball of fire and sparks floating above the brass pot and that’s where the scariest thing of all happened. The cobra extended its hooded head into the ball of sparks and flame. Then it hissed and struck, lightning flying from its mouth.
Both Zak and I jumped backward. The lightning bolt actually hit the front door which briefly broke into flame before it began to smoke, a charred scar running down its length. Mukta threw a jug of water on the door and the cobra calmly curled back around the brass pot. What looked like a miniature model of the mountains complete with roads, trees, and rivers now sat in the pot.
“You have been chosen to see that this does not happen,” Mukta said. He traced a route with his old, wrinkled finger through the tiny mountains in the pot. “Take the North bus toward Tatura. Where the road ends, the way to Tendua Tibba begins. Paw prints will lead you to her crooked spire. Once there, you will wait for the first glimpse of the full moon.”
“What then?” Zak asked.
“Why then, my young friend, you will protect the Ghost Leopard.”
“Then we'll take its picture,” I said.
“Oh no, one must not do this. The Ghost Leopard is one with India. To capture its image would be to steal its soul.”
I considered what Mukta had said. “So why doesn’t the Monkey Man just steal the Leopard’s soul with a camera. Seems easier than shooting an arrow.”
“To steal a soul, one must first have a soul, Mud Devil. The Monkey Man and those who work for him have long since lost theirs.”
I thought about it. What Mukta was saying was crazy. A soulless Monkey Man? A Ghost Leopard? None of it made any sense. Of course, neither did Mukta's strange brass pot or any of the rest of it, and that I had seen with my own eyes. Mukta reached for the cobra, picking it up by its tail. The cobra hissed and twisted as though at any moment it might double back and bite him. Both Zak and I now had our backs to the wall. Mukta handed the snake’s tail to Zak who cringed back as far as the hut would let him.
“Take this whip.”
Whip? We looked down again and the snake’s tail that Mukta had been holding was now the leather handle of a bull whip. What had been the body of the snake now looked like black braided leather with a silver tip where the cobra’s fangs had been. The whip’s handle had four dime sized depressions on it as if it had once contained some kind of ornament that had long since fallen out. Zak cautiously accepted the whip, holding it loosely in his right hand.
“Cool,” Zak purred. “My very own snake whip.” Zak thought for a moment. “I’m naming it Stryker,” he said.
“Be cautious and alert,” Mukta said. “Your fate is with the mountain now, Mud Devils.”
I ran my tongue along the roof of my mouth as I thought about what I was going to say. The truth was, I didn’t need to think. Even though I had seen some strange things, I already knew what I thought. The thing I was thinking about was whether or not I could restrain myself from saying it. Apparently I couldn’t. “Do you really believe any of this crazy story?” I finally asked.
“It is not what I believe,” Mukta said.
He turned down the oil lamp and took my hand in his, showing me that he too had the strange spotted birthmark.
“It is what you believe, my friend.”
9
NOT EXACTLY HOW I WANTED TO START MY DAY
I dreamt again that night. I dreamt that I was sleeping on the floor of a hut. I dreamt I got up in the middle of the night because I was thirsty. But there was no water in the hut. So I went outside. There was an old-fashioned pump there, the kind with a handle that you pump down with one hand. It was dark, but I found the handle and began to pump water out of the ground. I pumped harder and harder, but no water came out for a long time. When the water finally did start to come out, it was dirty. Not dirty, but blue. That’s when I ran my fingers under the water and saw that it wasn’t water, but butterflies flowing from the pump. Weird, I know. The butterflies filled the air around me, their spotted blue wings flapping hard enough to actually blow my long hair back in the wind. Then, in an instant, the butterflies disappeared and the wind dropped, leaving nothing but silence. I looked up to see an enormous cat-like shadow cast across the ground. I took a step toward the shadow and it was gone.
When we woke up, it was barely light out, gray clouds hanging low in the sky. Given the circumstances, I had slept well. Mukta had fed us some hot Indian bread called naan and given us some blankets, and we’d gone to sleep on the floor. I had insisted that Zak put his new whip, Stryker, outside because some part of me was worried that it would turn back into a cobra, but other than that, the night had been fine. True, my dream had been strange, but who didn’t have a weird dream once in a while? I guess when I thought about it honestly I had weird dreams more than once in a while. I had them every night. But it was day now, and after a few biscuits and hot chai, we said our goodbyes and climbed the steep path away from Mukta's hut. We wore our new striped pajamas, m
ostly because our own clothes were still covered in wet muck. Zak seemed to like his new outfit more than I did. I thought we looked like prisoners who had just escaped from some old cartoon.
“He was a good dancer,” Zak said.
“Phone,” I said back to him.
I only spoke one word because I didn’t want to waste time talking. We needed to find a telephone and fast. In a few minutes we found ourselves in an open-air bazaar. Among the peanut vendors and jewelry makers and rug shops was a tiny shop with a picture of a mobile phone. A man with oily brown hair and a creepy look in his eye kept watch on us while I spoke into an antique phone. The phone had a handset that sort of looked like a black banana, kind of like the one I had once found tucked away in my grandfather’s basement.
“Well, if you can’t reach her, that’s OK. Please tell her we’re just checking in and we’ll see her soon.”
I hung up. I had left a message at the hotel front desk for the rent-a-nanny. I already knew I wouldn’t be able to reach my mother, so I hadn’t bothered to call. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, but I remembered that both my mother and Zak's father had said they most likely wouldn't be able to talk for three or four days because there’d be no mobile phone coverage. I didn’t want the rent-a-nanny to freak out any more than she had to though. At least this way she could avoid sending the National Guard, or whatever they used in India, out to find us. Plus, just in case my mom had been able to call, I wanted to let her know that I was all right.
Zak, for whatever reason, didn’t seem too worried about what his dad would think about him taking off from the hotel. Maybe it was because he was a boy. I knew I didn’t get boys. All I knew was that Zak could be very selfish about the way he acted. I didn’t dwell on the whole thing any longer, because the creepy clerk had taken back the old telephone. The clerk’s fingernails were cracked and worn like claws. I didn’t like the way that he was looking at us with the yellow tint in his black eyes, so we left right away. When I glanced back though, I saw that the clerk was already whispering into a phone of his own.
After the phone call we got on a bus. It turned out that in order to get back we would have to either take a train back down out of the mountains, which didn’t leave for another two days, or take a bus to the next town in order to get back down to an airport. Since I didn’t want to wait two days, the bus was the obvious choice. The bus was old and beat up and decorated in flowers and garlands and bright colors. It had a big letter “T” on its front grill. I think it was a “T” for terrible. The thing looked like it was at the end of its natural life. Still, all in all, it was semi-normal. Semi-normal that was, until we got on board.
Inside the bus, wickedly loud Hindi music screeched through the aisles. Hindi music has got this crazy wail to it. It makes you want to get up and dance, but relax at the same time. I sat in the back with Zak on one side of me and a woman with a goat on her lap on the other. There were chickens and pigs in the aisles and I was pretty sure I saw a baby sheep in the overhead rack. The passengers were stuffed in absolutely everywhere. If you can believe it, it was even more crowded than the train.
What was bothering me more than the cramped quarters, however, was the fact that I had just realized that I had lost my camera. I felt at my fanny pack, but it wasn’t there. I knew I'd taken it out of my fanny pack at Mukta's and now I was sure I’d left it there. The bus was already sputtering down the road, so it was too late to go back. At best I'd be able to get Mukta to mail it to me. But not in time to get any pictures of India. It was a bummer. A real major bummer. As the bus twisted around the tight corners, I felt sick, like I could throw up at any moment. The inside of the bus was as stuffy as the inside of an oven. No fresh air, not even an open window in sight.
“So we couldn’t get in touch with the rent-a-nanny. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is she’s going to go crazy trying to find us. And her name’s Anu. If she somehow manages to get in touch with our parents they’ll be worried sick.”
I was just as guilty of thinking about Anu as the rent-a-nanny as Zak was. I don’t know why I had corrected him. Sometimes I could be a bit mean. I thought about saying sorry, but Zak spoke again before I could.
“You left a message saying we’d see her soon.”
“I did.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So I don’t get the problem,” Zak said.
I looked at Zak. There I was, ready to apologize to him, and then he said he didn’t get the problem. I didn’t even know where to begin with a comment like that. We were twelve years old and running loose in India. Our parents were going find out one way or another and when they did, they were going to freak. That was the problem. I had no camera. That was another problem. The biggest problem at the moment, however, was that I felt like I might throw up.
“We just need to get back, Zak,” I said.
“My dad and your mom are gone for at least three more days. We have plenty of time. You sure you don’t want to look for this legendary magical Ghost Leopard?”
“You’re serious?”
Zak seemed to think about it. “Yeah. Why not?”
“I already told you why not.”
“You sure you don’t want an awesome picture of it?”
I didn’t answer him. But that was because Zak had somehow, in his general Zak dumbness, hit on the real dilemma. Of course I wanted a picture of the Ghost Leopard. Maybe I could find a camera for sale in one of the bazaars. Maybe I could get a shot of it and win the contest and be famous as the first person to ever take the Ghost Leopard’s picture. But the thing was, I also wanted to get back to the hotel before we got caught. Plus there was all that protecting the Leopard stuff that Mukta guy had been going on about last night. I felt totally confused and more than a little motion sick. A ray of sunlight flickered through the bus.
“I need air,” I said.
Zak jammed open his dirty blackened window and stuck his head outside. A light breeze finally blew through the bus. I closed my eyes and gulped it down. But when I turned my head to Zak to thank him, all I saw was a pair of mud-caked sneakers standing in the window frame, dirty shoelaces dangling. Then, the shoes disappeared as well. I was shoved over in the seat as a man carrying a squealing piglet pushed the woman with the goat on her lap closer to me at the window.
“Zak?” I said to nobody in particular.
“Zoe.”
I heard my muffled name called out, but didn’t know where it had come from. I couldn’t see Zak anywhere. He had disappeared. I turned my head to the back of the bus trying to find him.
“Over here.”
I whirled around. There was nobody at my window. I looked around through the crowd. Still no Zak. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blackened window on the opposite side of the bus edge open a little farther. I craned my neck and saw Zak's head appear, hanging upside down outside of it. His scraggly blonde hair blew in the breeze. Zak dropped his arm and took a bite out of a slice of watermelon. Watermelon? Where did he get that?
“Come on up,” Zak said.
I hesitated. The bus was overfilled and smelly. But was wherever Zak was riding any better? The watermelon said yes. Against my better judgment, I decided it couldn’t be any worse and I slid closer to the window. I put my head out first and saw a rock wall approaching. The bus was only inches away from it as we rounded the corner. I quickly pulled my head back in, but once the bus was back on a straight-away, I decided to try again. I knew my mother would kill me, but I let it go. My mother wasn’t there. Besides, I bet the diseases that could get me inside the bus were way worse than anything I could catch outside.
I carefully put my head outside the window for a second time. So far so good. There were no rock walls and no oncoming traffic. I pulled my feet up onto the seat and pushed myself a little farther out. Above me, on the roof of the bus, I saw the painted metal roof rack. I used one hand to hold the frame of the window and grasped at the roof
rack with my other hand. But I wasn’t far enough out of the bus yet and couldn’t quite reach the rack. Zak poked his head down at me from the roof.
“It’s easy. Just grab on.”
I pushed myself a little farther out the window and was able to just touch the roof rack with the tips of my fingers. I pushed myself out just a bit more, my left hand still securely grabbing the window frame, and clamped onto the roof rack with my right hand. Now I had a solid grip. I decided to go for it and slid my whole body out, grabbing the roof rack with both hands and pulling my feet out onto the window frame. I looked ahead and saw that the bus was approaching a high trestle bridge. Did I mention that I’ve always hated heights? Heights make me feel sick to my stomach and more than a little dizzy. I figured I might even have that dizziness disease, the one my mom calls vertigo, but it didn’t matter now. I had come too far to quit.
Zak patted the roof above as I pulled myself up. I used my legs to push up from the window frame, but it was hard going. I didn’t know if I had the strength to pull myself up all the way, but I didn’t really want Zak to help me either. The bus twisted onto the bridge.
“Don’t look down,” Zak said.
Hanging there, my whole body dangling over the side of the bus, of course I looked. I almost swallowed my tongue. The bridge was so narrow that there was no rail, no lip, nothing but air for thousands of feet below me. The vertigo hit me like a bag of bricks. I felt myself getting dizzy, blackness pushing in around the corners of my vision. But I also felt Zak clamp a reassuring grip on my forearm from the roof above. Despite all of our differences, I was really happy to have Zak there, right then. If a friend was a person who helped haul you onto the roof of a speeding bus, I guess Zak was a friend. I grit my teeth and pulled, doing my part to wrench myself up onto the roof. The hard metal roof rack rubbed under my belly as I rolled over it and sprawled beside Zak. The blackness hovering around the corners of my vision went away and the dizziness slowed as I caught my breath.
Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) Page 9
