The Lost Cities

by Dale Peck

  “Enough!” Karl Olafson shrieked. It was obvious that Iacob’s questions had frightened him. “The Amulet of Babel has guided me perfectly to this point. It will not fail me now. You,” he added, pointing to the guards, “gag him if he attempts to speak again.”

  Karl Olafson unsheathed his knife and Susan stifled a gasp. But he only used it to flick away the last burning threads of Charles’s backpack. As he reached toward the pair of books, Susan looked all around the room for something—anything—to stop him. But there were only the two guards and Iacob, who was struggling so hard it took both of them to hold him. Desperate, Susan used the only resource available to her: her voice.

  “KARL OLAFSON!”

  Susan had shouted. The radio turned this shout into a sonic boom. A tankard of ale on one of the flat-topped boulders clattered to the ground and the smoke coils were pushed against the far wall like cats shying from a barking dog. But Karl Olafson only started slightly, then sheathed his knife and reached toward the pair of smoking books.

  “DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RELEASE THE MAGIC, KARL OLAFSON, LEST YOU UNLEASH MY WRATH!”

  Susan shouted with all the force of her lungs, but Karl Olafson’s face was so transfixed she couldn’t tell if he’d even heard her. His eyes glistened as his right hand stretched out slowly but eagerly, even as his left hand stroked the amulet at his throat. A look of ecstasy passed over his face as his index finger stroked the seven grooved lines on the cover while the thumb of his left hand stroked the matching lines on the amulet. His eyes closed, his lips moved as if he were praying. If he was praying, Susan didn’t want his prayer to come true.

  Suddenly the radio began to rattle like a boiling pot. Susan had to splay her hands and feet to stay upright. Outside the radio, the pulsations seemed to be even stronger. It was hard to tell if they actually knocked over Iacob and his guards, or if they were simply cowering in fear, but at any rate the two men and the boy were on their knees. The men covered their faces, but Iacob’s eyes were fastened on his father. The energy seemed to swirl all around Karl Olafson, rippling his hair and waving the polar bear skin that cloaked his shoulders. But he kept his finger on the smoldering mirror book and continued to move his lips soundlessly.

  “Father, no!” Iacob screamed.

  “NO!” Susan screamed with him.

  The metal tankard clanked as it bounced across the floor. The torches flickered wildly. Their smoke seemed to be coiling away from the wall now, circling Karl Olafson. Susan had never felt more afraid in her life, and Marie-Antoinette had taken to her wings within the narrow confines of the radio and was flapping and screeching crazily.

  “NO! NO!” bird and girl screamed together.

  “No!” Iacob screamed at his father.

  And then their voices were echoed by an answering shout:

  “No!”

  And again:

  “NO!”

  Susan’s heart raced. She would know those voices anywhere! But were they in time? Were they saved?

  Pressing her eyes to the slot to see as much of the cave as she could, she yelled, “CHARLES? MARIO?”

  She couldn’t see her brothers, but Karl Olafson could, for he’d suddenly snatched the two smoking books and held them in his arms. He was staring right at her—no, not at her. Past her.

  Susan beat at the sides of the radio. “CHARLES! MARIO!” she screamed. “YOU HAVE TO STOP HIM!”

  A blurry form four or five feet in the air shot into view. At first Susan thought her brothers had somehow been catapulted into the room, but then she realized they were on Charles’s flying carpet, which swooped straight for Karl Olafson. For his chest, where the two mirror books hovered a mere inch or two away from the Amulet of Babel hanging from his throat. Suddenly Susan remembered Karl Olafson’s words about rejoining the amulet to its berth, and she realized it mustn’t come into contact with Mario’s book.

  “NO!” she screamed, so loudly that the rock table split in two.

  Or perhaps something else split the table, for even as Susan screamed, the carpet crashed into Karl Olafson’s chest, forcing book and amulet together. There was a blinding flash of light, and something that felt like solid noise pulsed through the room.

  THROOM!

  Even when she could focus again, Susan could only catch glimpses of what was happening in the cave. The carpet fluttering like a piece of silk in a hurricane. Karl Olafson falling backward and losing hold of one of the books. His smirk of triumph shining like a beacon—then transforming into a snarl of pain and fear.

  For the room was… was melting. Collapsing, crumbling, swirling, fading. Disappearing in a gale that splintered rock itself.

  Yet not even that was as scary as what was happening to Karl Olafson.

  It seemed as though someone had turned on a light inside his body. At first it just came out the holes—ears, mouth, nostrils—but then his eyes seemed to burn away, and then his skin seemed to turn black even as white lines began to show up, bright glowing tiger stripes that showed even through his shirt. Karl Olafson’s mouth was open wide but the only thing that came out was a beam of light that seemed to shine through the fading walls of the cave. And he was fading too, or being consumed by the light that shone out from inside his body.

  And then, quite suddenly, he was… gone.

  Susan blinked. But she didn’t have time to wonder what had happened to Karl Olafson, because her eyes caught sight of Charles, who was hanging on to the carpet with one hand even as his other clasped something close to his chest. Mario’s book! But where was Mario? And Iacob? Susan couldn’t see her youngest brother anywhere, but she spotted the Greenland boy. He seemed to be wading against a tide as his hand reached out toward something—the second book!—that hung in the air, its pages flapping wildly like a bird’s wings. But before his fingers could close around it one of the guards grabbed his ankle and tripped him. And then Mario appeared as if from nowhere. He launched himself at the guard and knocked him off Iacob. Susan could hear his voice above the growing din in the room.

  “Get the book and get on the carpet!”

  Even as he spoke, the second guard ran to the aid of the first. He grabbed Mario and tried to pull him off his friend, but Mario refused to let go.

  Iacob looked between Mario and the book. He seemed about to go to Mario’s aid when Mario managed to look up at him.

  “Go! Or all will be lost!”

  There was something so commanding in his voice that Iacob didn’t hesitate. He leapt for the book and caught it, then seemed to roll through the air and catch the edge of the carpet. Charles was there, and hauled him aboard. As soon as he was on the carpet, he turned for Mario, but he was already far away and still grappling with the two guards. And now Susan saw something glint in the hand of one of them. A knife!

  The cave was gone now. In its place was just a vortex. The carpet with Charles and Iacob on it spun at one side while Mario wrestled with the guards at the other.

  Something flashed. The guard with the knife had raised his hand in the air.

  “MARIO, LOOK OUT!” Susan screamed.

  Mario looked up from the two men who held him, directly at Susan. Despite the roaring in the cave, she heard his voice clearly.

  “You were right, Susan. I’ll find another way home.”

  The blade flashed down, disappearing into Mario’s chest.

  Susan screamed again, even as a second and more blinding flash of light seemed to travel up and down the jetty. It was as though a new star were being born. The explosion spun the box wildly, Susan fell away from the slit, Marie-Antoinette squawked, Susan hit her head again. For the second time that day everything went black. But this time Susan, who had just witnessed the death of one of her brothers, welcomed the darkness, and wished it would never end.

  PART THREE

  In and Out of Time

  TWENTY

  Babel

  The fire in the pit turned into yellow ribbons.

  The walls and floor of the cave turned into
sand, and then into water, and then into wind. The wind swirled all around Charles like a tornado, but what Charles thought about was the Great Drain, emptying the Sea of Time into the next world—the world from which nothing returned. But unlike a tornado, or the Great Drain for that matter, the swirled blur that had been Karl Olafson’s cave made no sound at all.

  And Karl Olafson.

  Karl Olafson made no sound either.

  Nor did he move, after the carpet had knocked the book in his arms against the pendant hanging from his neck.

  The Amulet of Babel.

  Charles had seen what was going to happen even before Susan shouted from the radio. He stomped his feet on both sets of arrows to stop the carpet, but it was too late: the carpet slammed directly into Karl Olafson, and crushed mirror book and pendant together, reuniting them after more than two thousand years apart.

  Then, motionless, soundless, Karl Olafson still somehow… changed. He began to glow. And, though he didn’t move, something told Charles that the glowing wasn’t painless. It was like a fire had been lit deep in Karl Olafson’s belly and was burning its way out of him. As he watched, the man that had been Karl Olafson flaked away like an incinerated stick, leaving behind only a formless light that swirled into the whirling nothing that had been the real world.

  Only a few things held on to their shape: Charles, for one thing, and Iacob. And the two mirror books, and Drift House’s radio, out of which came unintelligibly loud shrieks and squawks.

  And Mario. Mario stayed real, along with the two guards, and the knife in one of the guard’s hands.

  Suddenly Iacob flashed close to Charles. Acting on instinct, Charles grabbed Iacob’s hand and hauled him onto the carpet, and so he was spared the sight of the knife plunging into Mario’s chest. All he saw was the flash of light that illuminated Iacob’s face so brightly that Charles thought the Greenland youth was going the same way as his father. But then the light faded and Iacob was still there, staring over his shoulder with an expression of dumbfounded horror. Charles turned, and saw only the two guards—the two guards and the knife and a rapidly dissipating glow he knew had been his brother until a moment ago. Then the light was gone, and the two guards spun away, flung to the outer edges of the vortex, their mouths open in soundless cries of fear.

  The jetty was expanding now, in diameter, in length, in speed. The bottom spiraled down into an inky blackness while the top opened up into electric white. Already the guards had disappeared, but the radio was more or less directly across the void from the carpet. Charles looked at the wooden box that contained his sister, then turned to Iacob, fixing the traitor with a stern eye.

  “Hold on.”

  “To what?”

  Charles didn’t answer. At that particular moment he didn’t really care if Iacob fell off the carpet or not, since by his reckoning it was Iacob’s theft of the mirror books that had created this situation. He slammed the right arrow and the star at the same time. The arrows turned the carpet sharply, the star boosted its speed. The rug shot over the center of the spiral toward the radio; Iacob tumbled backward but managed to stay on the carpet.

  Before they’d gone even a few feet, however, something went wrong. The carpet began spinning wildly. It was an odd sensation, because there was no centrifugal force accompanying it: neither Charles nor Iacob were thrown toward the edge of the carpet as they should have been. The carpet began to sink rapidly. Again, there was no sensation. Charles didn’t feel it in his stomach as he did when he fell backward on the school trampoline—but he did have a sinking feeling in his heart as he and Iacob fell down and down and down the huge whirling spiral, while the radio, with Susan inside it, shot up and up and up into the celestial emptiness.

  Still, Charles managed to keep his head. The carpet was spinning clockwise, so he pressed hard on the left arrows. Slowly the revolutions decreased, and when they’d stopped spinning Charles pressed the forward arrows and inched them toward the wall of the vortex. Once in the outer channel, the carpet seemed to sink into a groove, spinning in a spiral that was so slow and wide you had to look at the far-flung walls of the vortex itself to realize you were moving in a circle.

  “Charles?”

  Charles looked at the boy at the other end of the carpet. He tried to think of something to say but nothing came.

  “I’m sorry, Charles.”

  The boy held the mirror book he’d taken from his father. The cover was turned out, and Charles could see the golden seal, a blobby triangle with seven scored lines on it, floating amidst the deep red leather of the cover. Charles assumed that was the book the Wanderer had directed him to take from under Murray’s head, until he looked down at the book in his hands and saw that it too was red, and titleless, its cover marked only by the seven-lined seal. The two books were indistinguishable now.

  “I thought if I gave my father the books,” Iacob continued, “he would return the box that controls your ship, and of course Susan as well.”

  Charles stared at the mirror book a moment longer. He’d been to bookstores a million times, had seen multiple copies of the same book. But these volumes were identical—were, indeed, mirrors of each other.

  “Some plan,” Charles said, finally tearing his eyes away from the amulet on Iacob’s book. “We lost Susan and the radio, and Karl Olafson got to open the time jetty. Everything worked out perfect.”

  “It would appear that my father also lost something, Charles. His life.”

  Charles fell silent, chagrined. Then: “I’ve never seen anyone turn into light before.”

  Iacob managed a small, mirthless laugh. “It is not so common on Greenland either.”

  “Is that what happened to Mar—to my brother?”

  Iacob paused a moment, then nodded.

  “Maybe they didn’t die,” Charles said quickly. “Maybe they were just… transformed.”

  Iacob shrugged. “Maybe your brother was. I don’t think your brother is made from quite the same stuff as you or me, or my father.”

  “That’s probably true,” Charles admitted. “Well, um, I’m sorry too. About your father. You tried your best, I guess.”

  Charles looked into the whirling vortex now. It seemed to have thinned, and through it he could see a galaxy of stars—above and below and all around the carpet. Measured against their limitless expanse, the spiral, which had seemed so large a moment ago, now seemed like a fishing line dropped into the ocean.

  Iacob cleared his throat. “Should we look in the books?”

  “No!” Charles said quickly. Then, more calmly: “I think opening them would be dangerous.”

  “Why? What do they do? What are they for?” Iacob dropped his eyes. “I have to tell you that I …I don’t read. No one on Greenland can read anymore. Not even Father Poulsen, the priest.”

  Charles smiled. “It’s not the words. I don’t even know if there are words in them. One of them used to have pictures, but might have changed now that the amulet is on it. Anyway, the Wanderer said we should only open them at the end of the jetty.”

  Iacob peered down into the seemingly infinite spiral. “So there will be an end?”

  Charles shrugged. “I hope so.”

  Iacob stood up and walked gingerly across the carpet, as if the view might be different from the other side.

  “Careful,” Charles said, when Iacob’s foot landed an inch or two from a symbol of some four-legged animal, possibly a dog or a wolf. Charles had no idea what pressing it would do.

  “Thank you, Charles. But I do not think I will fall off.” Charles laughed. “No, I didn’t mean that. I don’t want you to step on one of the controls.”

  “Controls?” Iacob looked down at his feet in confusion. Charles looked at Iacob’s feet too: boy, were they dirty.

  He pointed at the thin-stemmed tree woven down the center of the carpet. “See all these symbols at the ends of the branches? They control the way the carpet flies. The arrows turn it left and right, the sun makes it go up, the moon makes it go
down.”

  “Ah,” Iacob said. He seemed to comprehend the design woven into the carpet’s fabric for the first time, the leaves at the branches’ ends with the symbols embedded in each one. “And this?” He pointed his blackened toe at the symbol below the wolf/dog. It looked a bit like an Easter egg.

  “Careful!” Charles said again. “I dunno what all of them do. It could transport us inside a volcano or something.”

  “A mountain of fire?” Iacob said, and Charles realized that must be how the translation charm had rendered “volcano” in Iacob’s language. “There are strange things in your world.”

  “There are volcanoes in your world too. You just never saw one.”

  “I don’t mean mountains of fire. I mean carpets that fly, and that can harm you if you use them incorrectly. Do all the amazing things in your world come with so many hidden dangers?”

  Charles was about to say “Of course not,” then suddenly heard his mother and father’s voices in his head, warning him from touching the stove while it was hot, shelving certain medicines in high cabinets, installing filter programs on his Internet connection to keep him off certain websites—and of course sending him to live with Uncle Farley last September.

  “I, um, I guess that’s what happens when you invent complicated things. You have to be careful. I mean, cars—”

  A skeptical frown creased Iacob’s face. “Speeding four-wheeled carts with no visible means of propulsion?”

  Charles returned Iacob’s frown. The translation charm was one of those things that worked perfectly and invisibly—except when it didn’t, in which case it didn’t really work at all.

  “Okay, um, ships. Ships help you travel great distances. But sometimes they sink and people drown. It’s just a risk that comes with them. Anything can have negative as well as positive effects. I mean, even food. If you eat too much you get fat.”

  “No one I know has ‘eaten too much,’ “Iacob said in a slightly mocking tone, “for many hundreds of years.” Iacob paused, then went on thoughtfully. “When the ship from Norway came during my father’s youth, people marveled at its size and speed and strength. There was much talk about the superiority of Ropian life over our own, and over the Qaanaaq. But the sailors took all our stored furs and ivory and gave us only a Bible and a few iron tools in exchange, and that winter three people froze to death just walking to church, because there was not enough fur to make winter garments for them. But when spring came we were able to dig their graves just fine, with the shiny new shovel.”