The Lost Cities

by Dale Peck

  “I hope Charles is okay,” she said as Uncle Farley slipped the vial over her neck.

  Uncle Farley’s face tightened as he slipped his own vial on and tucked it inside his shirt as Murray did with his golden locket. It seemed that the gesture reminded him of Murray just as it did Susan, because the next thing Uncle Farley said was, “We’ll get back to Charles and Murray as quickly as we can. Until then, we shall have to trust in President Wilson’s ability to lead your brother safely.”

  Susan and Uncle Farley looked at each other for a moment, and then the two of them burst out laughing.

  “Can you imagine!” Uncle Farley guffawed. “Charles! Charles! Slow down, Charles!”

  “Charles!” Susan echoed, doing her best imitation of President Wilson’s panting. “You wouldn’t happen to have any peanuts in your bag, would you, Charles?”

  “I’m willing to bet five American dollars he’s riding on Charles’s shoulder at this very moment—and giving orders every step of the way!”

  “Orders that I’m sure Charles is ignoring.”

  “Oh dear,” Uncle Farley said, “we’d really better hurry back, hadn’t we? They’re probably a greater threat to each other than anything else.”

  Before Susan could answer, a faint “Rak!” echoed throughout the house.

  “Was that—?” Susan began. “But I thought he was with Charles!”

  Uncle Farley smacked his forehead.

  “That wasn’t President Wilson,” he said, heading rapidly, if unsteadily, toward the door.

  “What? Who—you mean Marie-Antoinette?”

  “She spends most of her time in the solarium,” Uncle Farley said as they made their way through the library. “She hides in here when President Wilson’s wooing gets too much for her.”

  “Rak! Rak!” came from the far side of the closed doors, louder now, and distinctly angry.

  Uncle Farley threw open the doors. Susan barely had time to register the splendor of the solarium’s great banyan before a red and blue blur flashed into the passage and swooped around the two humans.

  “Rak! Rak, rak!”

  “She doesn’t sound happy at all,” Susan said, dodging the flashing wings until she realized Marie-Antoinette was actually aiming for her shoulder. The parrot settled on Susan’s upper arm unsteadily, her claws digging into the girl’s skin as she dragged herself upward. “Ow! Marie-Antoinette, please—”

  “Rak!”

  Uncle Farley smiled weakly at Susan. “We must remember that Marie-Antoinette doesn’t understand us like President Wilson—”

  “RAK!”

  Between the pitching floorboards and the screeching parrot in her ear, Susan felt ready to fall over. She was looking outside the solarium now, at the gray water and whitecapped waves and bullet-shaped clouds whipping through the air. She had long had her own suspicions about how much Marie-Antoinette understood, but she suddenly thought of something else.

  “Uncle Farley? Who’s, um, who’s steering?”

  Uncle Farley smiled. “That, at least, is one question I can answer. The house has its own piloting mechanism. Once a course has been plotted, it takes you right there.”

  Susan studied her uncle closely. He was staring at the floor, a poorly concealed grin curling up one side of her mouth.

  Susan put her hands on her hips.

  “Where did you go?” With his toe, Uncle Farley traced a curved line in the carpet. The action threw him off balance on the rocking waves, and he had to catch himself on the wall.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You must have gone somewhere, or you wouldn’t know how the house steers. Or how to program the radio. Or the fact that we wouldn’t feel anything when we sluiced. Or did you find an instruction manual somewhere?”

  “Rak,” Marie-Antoinette croaked quietly. “Man-u-al.”

  Uncle Farley’s fingers drummed the wall. “When I was a teenager—not much older than you are now—I used to love to go to Renaissance fairs. The jugglers and the bards and the costumes! The richly colored velvets, and the capes, and the hats, and the leggings! They had a real sense of deportment back then, instead of running around in, in Dockers.”

  Susan looked her plump uncle up and down, trying hard not to smirk. “You wore tights?”

  “Not tights, Susan. Leggings. Cotton, and not at all stretchy.”

  “You wore tights! And those funny little elf boots! Oh, I’m going to make Mum show me pictures as soon as we get back!”

  Uncle Farley frowned. “Well, let’s concentrate on getting back and worry about pictures later.”

  “Never mind that! Where did you go?”

  And now a strange smile crept over Uncle Farley’s face. A smile of such rapture and wonder that Susan felt as if she were looking inside her uncle’s soul.

  “I went to see Shakespeare.”

  Susan clapped a hand over her mouth. Through her fingers she said, “You…met… Shakespeare?”

  Uncle Farley shook his head. The faraway look was still on his face, and his voice was equally distant. “Oh, I wanted to, but I thought it would be too risky. What if I spilled the beans about something that happened in the future and he put it in one of his plays? The course of history could literally be changed. Electricity might have been discovered during the reign of James I rather than George III. No, I went to the see The Tempest.”

  Susan was dumbfounded. “You traveled five hundred years to see…a play?”

  “Not just a play, Susan. The Tempest, as Shakespeare wrote it and Shakespeare staged it. In the Globe Theatre, with the smell of urine rising up from the pit, and stale beer, and the audience catcalling the actors.” Uncle Farley laughed. “The truth is I didn’t understand half of it because of the Elizabethan accent, but it was still magic, I tell you. Just … magic.”

  Susan had a hard time imagining how a play performed without any lights or special effects could be particularly “magical,” especially to a man who lived in a house that could sail the Sea of Time. And the smell of urine? Blech! But she could tell from Uncle Farley’s face he wasn’t faking it. He had witnessed something no one else alive had. And suddenly she wanted that too. Maybe she wouldn’t have picked the Greenland Vikings out of all the peoples and places of the past, but still, they were the first Europeans to come to America, and they had almost disappeared from history. It was kind of the opposite of Shakespeare really. Everyone knew about Shakespeare. But hardly anyone knew about the Vikings on Greenland. She would learn things no one else in her time even dreamed of.

  As it turned out, she would learn it sooner than she expected.

  “Susan?”

  The eldest Oakenfeld followed her uncle’s pointing finger. There was an odd expression on his face. Nervous yet eager. Awed. Winsome. (Don’t say “winsome,” Susan heard Charles’s teasing voice in her head. It’s affected. She did hope he was okay.)

  Uncle Farley nodded at the windows beyond his niece’s head.

  “Look.”

  Susan turned. Although she knew where they were going, she was still surprised to see that the ocean had an edge now: even a few hours on the open sea can convince you that land is just a trick of memory. But there it was. A wavy ribbon of brown and green stretched between the steel-gray water and the cold northern sky. The deep green hills reminded Susan of nothing so much as the Island of the Past, but even from a distance she could sense the difference. The density. These weren’t hollow vaults housing all manner of creatures. They were dense piles of rock to which a few feet of soil clung desperately, held in by a net of grass that, however green, looked coarser and colder than the grass on the Island of the Past. Even the beaches were rocky and forbidding, and between several hills lay sparkling stripes, water possibly, or maybe ice. The place was eerily treeless as well, and Susan’s mind flashed on her tree, her redwood, growing in New York City thanks to global warming. Would this place ever be that warm? She knew global warming was supposed to be a bad thing, but she thought a little sunshine and a nice
forest would do wonders for the barren land before her.

  Susan turned back to her uncle. She didn’t know what to say. There it was: the past.

  “Let’s go to my study. The spyglass is there. We’ll be able to see better.”

  Susan hurried after her uncle, Marie-Antoinette flapping on her shoulder. Once in the study, the parrot flew to a table, and Uncle Farley handed Susan the spyglass.

  She stepped close to a floor-to-ceiling window and brought the telescope to her eye. Immediately a second, lower set of hills appeared. Susan twisted the spyglass, focused, and realized with a start that the hills were actually the turf-covered homes she had seen on the walls of the drawing room. Again she thought of the Island of the Past. Had Pierre Marin been inspired by these buildings? Had he come here? But unlike the hollow hills of the Island of the Past, there weren’t windows in these low, long structures. Just the occasional door and even more occasional chimney. A thread of smoke, so thin it seemed as cold as the water in the fjords between the hills. An involuntary shiver ran down Susan’s back.

  “It doesn’t look very… inviting,” she said. “Does it?”

  Uncle Farley’s voice was quiet when he spoke, serious.

  “Well, the colony was founded by Erik the Red around the turn of the first millennium. Erik was a murderer on the run from the law, and he named the place Greenland because it sounded better than Snow-and-Ice-Covered-Land.” Uncle Farley shrugged. “I can’t imagine five hundred years in this climate has done anything for his descendants’ dispositions. We will want to proceed with, um, caution.”

  Susan was about to ask Uncle Farley what “caution” meant in such a context, when something thin and dark burst through the window, shattering the glass of a single pane. It knocked against a marble bust of Beethoven and clattered to the floor. Only when it was still could Susan and Uncle Farley get a good look at it.

  It was a spear.

  TWELVE

  Wendat

  The morning dawned earlier than Charles would have liked, and colder too. Bolts of mist snaked through the glade where he’d made camp, congealing to a general fog over the stream; it was too cloudy to even think about lighting a fire. Charles’s nest was snug, though, and only the need to relieve himself drove him out of bed. He had never peed against a tree trunk before, and found it less liberating than chilly. Fortunately, President Wilson remained blissfully snoring on his branch.

  Charles was well rested but hungry. Last night’s meal had been tasty, but there hadn’t been anything left over, and somehow he couldn’t face the prospect of fish for breakfast. When the camp was clear, he made another attempt at straightening out his glasses, then shouldered his backpack and roused President Wilson. The parrot immediately stretched his wings and said he would fly up to look for the smoke to make sure they set off in the right direction.

  “I climbed a tree and looked myself,” Charles said. And then, in a nonchalant tone, he added: “They must’ve put their fire out too. The smoke’s gone.”

  President Wilson eyed the boy suspiciously. Charles was a nervous child, and for him not to be anxious about the disappearance of their smoke beacon suggested he had a trick up his sleeve.

  “Yes?” the parrot said in the driest tone he could muster—drollery was really more suited to music rooms and mahogany perches than the great outdoors. “How do you propose we set our course then?”

  Beneath his lopsided glasses, Charles’s face split into a grin. He had obviously been waiting for just this question. Leading President Wilson to the other side of the filled-in firepit, he showed the bird a large arrow that had been pressed into the soft ground with stones.

  “My stars! They’ve marked their path! How convenient!”

  Charles frowned. “They didn’t mark the path. I did—last night, while you were gathering berries.”

  President Wilson, who would’ve loved some berries at that particular moment, looked at the arrow. It pointed up the hill in a direction roughly perpendicular to the rising sun—north, the parrot realized. They were heading more or less due north. Now the parrot looked back at his human charge and said,

  “You have demonstrated your cleverness and resourcefulness many times in the past twenty-four hours, Charles Oakenfeld. But be careful not to add hubris to your list of attributes.” And, without waiting for an invitation—he was too tired and hungry to care about his pride—he flew to the boy’s shoulder.

  Charles realized he was showing off a bit. But he could hardly help it. While President Wilson had done little more than ride on his shoulder, he, Charles Oakenfeld, had started a fire from pieces of wood, caught wild trout, erected his own sleeping quarters, and built the bed he slept on. And now, thanks to his own foresight, he was navigating through unknown wilderness! Why shouldn’t he be proud?

  As if in answer, the book in his bag tingled against his skin. It felt less like wings than like eyes staring at the back of his head, as if Charles were being watched by unseen forces. Pushed even. Guided along a path he only thought he was choosing himself. But the way Charles figured, even if his newfound resourcefulness had come from Mario’s book, the book had chosen him to share it with. So that meant there must be something special about him, right? And, swatting some branches out of his way, he strode purposefully forward.

  “Be careful, Charles! You almost knocked me off your shoulder!”

  Then fly like a bird, Charles thought. But he didn’t say it aloud.

  Three hours later, Charles’s confidence had diminished considerably. The climb had been steadily uphill for one thing, over land that was alternately thickly grown, requiring Charles to beat a path with his stick (after four or five thousand whacks the appeal kind of faded) or else over pebbly slopes that kept slipping out from under his shoes. A half dozen times he tripped, and although he never actually fell or twisted his ankle or anything like that, his shoulder took a beating: each time Charles wobbled, President Wilson dug his claws in for purchase, and the last time he actually drew blood.

  “Be careful, Charles! You nearly spilled me!”

  “Me be careful!? You’re the one cutting my shoulder open!”

  “Well, if you could walk steadily I wouldn’t have to grip so tightly!”

  Charles looked at the blood on his fingertips and saw red. “You don’t like the way I walk? Fine! Fly!” And, scooping the parrot into his hand, he tossed him into the air.

  President Wilson dipped and swirled like a ball of yarn swatted by a kitten, then righted himself and flew to a low-hanging branch.

  “When… your uncle…hears about…this!”

  Charles scowled back at President Wilson. “You just be careful I don’t open the world’s first Kentucky Fried Parrot franchise.”

  As soon as he’d said it, Charles wished he hadn’t mentioned food. His stomach was so empty it actually hurt. Though he’d kept his eyes peeled for anything edible, he’d seen nothing he was willing to put in his mouth all day. Nor had he come across another stream, and his throat was parched.

  The only thing to do was keep walking. Occasionally a flash of red would sweep by as President Wilson flew from branch to branch, but the parrot didn’t speak, either because he was too angry or too winded.

  And it was hot now. The sun wasn’t even directly overhead, but the air felt thick and warm, like the air in a bakery. Except there were no doughnuts or muffins. Or napoleons. Or cookies—no gingersnaps or chocolate chips or peanut butter–rum raisin–pecan sandies. No thick slice of red velvet cake or German chocolate or (Charles’s favorite, which he had had for his birthday last year) deliciously sweet-crunchy-chewy-flaky baklava. Charles had carried pieces of it to school for the next week, but now, when he unzipped his backpack and rooted around the bottom seams, he found nothing but unidentifiable brown blobs spotting the bottom of the bag. They could have been faded crumbs of phyllo dough, but more likely they were just lint.

  They tasted like lint.

  He still had the book. Charles paused, letting his p
alm rest on the enigmatic empty lines. They were palpably warm to the touch, and their electric pulse seemed to bounce the blood in his veins.

  It was only after Charles’s fingers had sat on the scored lines for several seconds—or minutes, or hours, he couldn’t tell—that he realized the title was gone. The Lost Cities. Charles felt around his backpack in case the golden letters had simply fallen off, but found no trace of them. And even as he tried to figure out what that might mean, he realized he was no longer alone. He didn’t hear anything—no twig or cleared throat. Maybe that’s what tipped him off: the birds had all stopped singing, and in every book Charles had ever read there was only one creature whose presence compelled the creatures of the forest to silence.

  Man.

  Charles looked up.

  He saw only one person at first: a boy really, only a year or two older than he was. The stranger was lean and brown, his upper body bare and his lower half covered in soft-looking buckskin leggings, his feet shod in moccasins. A thin string, also leather, crossed his torso, from which dangled a smooth brown pouch about the size of the boy’s head, which was also smooth and brown, having been shaved bare. There was also a knife in the boy’s hand. It had only a single slightly crude-looking stone blade on it, but Charles had no doubt it could slice right through his empty stomach.

  Charles did his best to smile. “Um…hi?”

  The expression on the boy’s face didn’t change. But suddenly there were more of him. At first Charles thought he was seeing double through his lopsided glasses—no, triple—because the two newcomers were dressed identically to the boy. But then he saw they were older, grown men with the same lean, oval faces and large almond-shaped, impassive eyes. In addition to knives and pouches, the two newcomers had bows slung across their backs. A dozen feathered shafts poked from each man’s quiver.