The Lost Cities

by Dale Peck

  Last off were Iussi, Gunnar, and Iacob. It was a strange goodbye, since no one could really understand anyone. Murray did his best to translate, but all he came up with was “Thank you,” and “Be well,” and, again, “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Charles,” Iacob said, his eyes half crossed in concentration. “You…are… strong.” They shook hands.

  “Thank you, Iacob,” Charles said back to him. “You are strong too.”

  Iacob looked to Murray. “Strongtu?”

  Murray smiled, stuttered a few words.

  “Ah!” Iacob said, nodding. “Strong!” He pointed at Charles. “You…me… strong!”

  He turned to Susan.

  “Susan,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Susan opened her mouth but nothing came out. She felt as if she knew less English than the Greenland boy. Surprising herself, she grabbed Iacob and pulled him close in a tight hug, then suddenly pushed him away. She had felt something press against her chest.

  “Iacob,” she said, reaching for his neck, “did Murray give—”

  Iacob stepped back, glancing at Murray nervously.

  “Susan,” Murray said. She looked at her much older brother. He shook his head.

  Susan sighed. She wanted to ask. But the look on Murray’s face was so severe that she didn’t dare. She turned back to Iacob.

  “Goodbye,” she said, in the most level voice she could muster.

  Iacob nodded. “We…meet… again?” There was a question in his voice. Susan wasn’t sure if he was wondering whether they would ever see each other again, or if he was merely wondering if he’d gotten the words right.

  She smiled weakly. “Maybe.”

  Iacob glanced at Murray, then back at Susan. He shook his head vehemently, took her hands in his. “We meet again,” he said emphatically. This time it was Susan who glanced at Murray, who shrugged, a small grin playing on his face.

  “Maybe.”

  And then they were gone. The crew of Drift House watched to see that the boat landed safely ashore, and then Uncle Farley turned them to open water. When they were out of sight of land, Uncle Farley pressed a few buttons on the little radio, and a moment later Susan and Charles felt the rolling subside considerably, and the light turned yellow and warm. They were back on the Sea of Time. They stayed only long enough to discharge Murray, who settled himself in the punt Mario had with him when he first showed up. No one asked him where he was going or when he would be back.

  Before he went he hugged Susan and Charles. His embrace was warm but strange—grownup, slightly distant. Charles had met one of his mother’s aunts on a trip to London, and the hug she had given him felt like Murray’s: affectionate, but a little businesslike. As Susan said, “He might as well have shaken our hands.”

  “Maybe it’s better though,” Charles said as the strange figure rowed out into the Sea of Time. “At least he doesn’t seem to miss us so much.”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “I guess there’s that.” She turned to her brother. “He gave Iacob the locket, you know.”

  Charles blinked his eyes in surprise. “The—amulet? Why would he do that? He needs it to get back to us.”

  Uncle Farley put a hand on his niece and nephew’s shoulders. “I think the locket is only a piece of it, and perhaps not even the most important piece. I think there are things he has to do first. He will come back when he wants. When it’s the right time.”

  A few days ago one or the other of the Oakenfeld children might have protested. What could be more important than family? But they had seen so much in such a short time, had come to realize how full and rich the world was, how much more than any one person, any one family. Still, Charles felt there was nowhere he’d rather be at that moment than with his sister and uncle. He only wished his brother—his little brother, the brother he knew—was there with them.

  Apparently, Susan felt the same.

  “Uncle Farley,” she said, “I think it’s time we went home, don’t you? A slice of pie,” she said with a small grin. “Then home.”

  “A capital suggestion,” Uncle Farley said, rubbing his stomach. “And who knows what adventures are still in store for us. It’s only the beginning of the summer, after all.”

  But Susan surprised him. “No,” she said. “I want to go home.” She looked at her uncle and her brother. “I think I’ve seen enough, at least for now.”

  At his sister’s words, Charles thought of Tankort and all the other Wendat. He had looked them up in a book in Uncle Farley’s library and discovered that they had in fact perished in the French and Indian War—that even though a truce was declared, the Iroquois had tracked them down and killed all but a tiny party, who legend said had taken to their canoes and disappeared into the waves. He nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.” He turned to Uncle Farley. “Let’s go home.”

  EPILOGUE

  1492: The Captain and the Cabin Boy

  He sailed under the Spanish flag. Ferdinand and Isabella, who paid for his journey, and were to use the profits of his discovery to drive the last of the Jews and Moors from a newly unified Spain, knew him as Colón. In his own language he was known as Colombo, but English speakers, who were also to benefit greatly from his voyages, remember him as Columbus. Cristóbal, Cristoforo, or Christopher: he is the man credited with discovering the new world, even though he arrived five hundred years after Erik the Red settled his family at Brattahlid, Greenland, and fifteen or thirty thousand years after the first Eurasians walked across the frozen waters of the Bering Strait, and didn’t stop walking until they had settled every square foot of the new continents, from the Aleuts to Tierra del Fuego, from Ellesmere to Piura, from the Golden Gate to Hispaniola. History remembers also that the great captain wasn’t looking for new lands, but rather a new route to India. But in this too the history books do not quite have the story correct.

  “Land!”

  The cry from the crow’s nest of the Santa Maria doesn’t wake the dozing captain in his berth belowdecks. He has been at sea for forty days. Water and food rationing have been in effect for the past two weeks, and days earlier, the Pinta deserted in the middle of the night. The nimble Niña ranges far afield from its lumbering command ship, as if it too is eager to abandon this fool’s quest. By now it has become clear there is no route to India, only water and water and more endless, empty water. Some have even heard whisperings that India was never the goal. That the captain is looking for something…new.

  The only thing that keeps them from mutiny is the fact that they do not have enough food to return to a known port.

  Now a dozen weary sailors make their way to the bow. They do not trust the cabin boy high on the mast. In the first place, he is not Spanish or Italian, but hails from some barbaric northern land. And, as well, he spends an inordinate amount of time with the captain, despite the fact that he is the lowest-ranking member of the crew. For the past four days, however, he has been up in the crow’s nest, insisting they will reach their destination soon, and most of them believe the hot sun and lack of adequate food and water have addled his wits, until his eyes have made up the thing they want to see. But because there is nothing else to do, they too shade their eyes with their hands, and squint across water that has been empty for so long most doubt they will ever see land again.

  It’s true the water looks different. Bluer than the dark green depths that have surrounded them for more than a month. And Cook insisted he saw a bird two days ago. Half the crew disbelieved him, the other half thought it had been an albatross, an omen not of land but of death.

  Suddenly someone points. There, in the distance!

  Could it be? The thinnest green line separates sky and sea, which are nearly the same color. Someone calls for the glass. More sailors run to the stern. Could it really be…land?

  The captain hears the sailors’ tread creaking on the planks above his stateroom. He pulls a pillow over his head. He knows he should restore order, but he too has come to doubt the realit
y of the dream he is chasing. How could he have let a strange boy convince him that a new world lay on the western edge of the Atlantic, let alone convince him that he could find it, that his name would become the most famous in sailing history, save perhaps that of Odysseus?

  The captain met his informant six years ago on a trip to the Norwegian colony of Iceland, when the young Italian had been little more than a cabin boy himself. The boy, still a teenager, had come up to him as if he already knew of the desire for discovery that lay in the Italian mariner’s heart. Without preamble, the Icelander launched into stories of limitless lands to the west. Of cities to rival Rome and Cordoba, rivers that could drink the Nile and Danube, of plants and animals that were sweeter, stronger, stranger than anything previously known. In fact, many of the men in the Reykjavik taverns talked of western lands, although their descriptions sounded far less hospitable than the boy made them out to be. But the boy had one thing they did not: a tiny golden locket of a craftsmanship more delicate than anything else in all of Iceland. It was possible that the boy had stolen it from one of the European ships that occasionally docked in Reykjavik, but the boy insisted it came from the new world. As proof of its distinctiveness, he allowed the young Italian to look inside the locket. There were the most remarkable miniatures he had ever seen. A boy and a girl, the former wearing spectacles with strange, thick rims, the latter short-haired and staring at him with the most assertive eyes he’d ever seen on a female. Hills lay in the background, empty sky stretched overhead. The young Italian had never heard of a painting so small, so realistic, let alone seen one. He had asked if the new world the boy spoke of was filled with objects as remarkable as this one.

  The boy’s smile was mysterious and full of promise.

  “It will be.”

  Now there is a knock on the captain’s stateroom. The door creaks open, and the captain pulls the pillow off his head to see his cabin boy leaning into the room. His hair—pale brown, unlike the dark-haired Italians and Spaniards who make up the rest of the crew—is pulled back into a ponytail, and his skin is bronzed from the sun, which has grown relentless in recent days.

  “Eh? What is it, boy?” Still half asleep, the captain blanks on the cabin boy’s name. It is an odd word—the captain is quite sure the boy made it up when he left Iceland. “Quoin,” he says now, not sitting up. “What is it?”

  “Captain,” Quoin says, “we’re here.”

  Charles’s Glossary of Affected Words

  baluster: No two ways about it, “baluster” is just a fancy word without much use, since all it refers to is a post—in this case, the post of the railing that runs around the poop deck.

  congregant: A congregant is a member of a congregation. A congregation is the collective name for the members of any organization, but nowadays it is almost always used to refer to the members of a church—which is how Charles is using it too.

  coniferous, deciduous, chlorophyll: Charles, being a bit of a science geek (well, more than a bit, really) knows that “coniferous” and “deciduous” refer to the two different kinds of trees. Coniferous trees are evergreens—i.e., the ones with needles that stay green all year long. Deciduous trees have leaves that fall to the ground each autumn. If you live in the city, as I do, I doubt that means much to you, but if you live in the suburbs or the country, then you’ve probably helped your parents rake fallen leaves into a huge pile and then jumped in them, which is fun as long as the leaves are dry and springy, but a little gross if they’re wet and slimy. Oh, and chlorophyll is the stuff that makes leaves green, and that also helps plants turn sunlight into energy through a process called photosynthesis. I don’t know how that works, myself. Charles probably does, but since it doesn’t really have much to do with the story—and since this glossary entry has gone on plenty long enough—I think we’ll skip it for now.

  evanescent: “Evanescent” is a very pretty word (if I do say so myself) that has a very specific meaning: it refers to something that is seen in the very act of disappearing. I suppose I could’ve just written “fading away” or something like that, but as I said, “evanescent” is such a pretty word …

  faggot: A faggot refers to sticks that have been tied together to make them easier to carry. See, that’s easier to say, isn’t it?

  fealty: Someone or something, either Karl Olaf or Charles’s translation charm, was working a bit too hard here, because “fealty” just means “loyalty.” It specifically means “loyalty to your king,” which is what Karl Olaf likes to think he is, so I guess it was Karl Olaf who was reaching for the fancy word, not the translation charm.

  hubris: See, the danger of acting like a smarty-pants is that someone who’s even smarter than you will come along and make you realize that no one likes to be talked down to—which is what President Wilson is doing to Charles when he accuses him of having hubris. “Hubris” means “excessive or obnoxious pride”—as in the kind of pride that goeth before a fall—and President Wilson could’ve just said “excessive pride,” but then he wouldn’t have shown Charles that he still knew a few things Charles didn’t.

  infinitesimal: A big word with a small definition. No, really: it means “small.” If you want to get technical, it means “really crazy small,” but in general it just means “small.”

  men-at-arms: Soldiers. Get it? Men with arms (not the kind that grow out of your shoulders, but, like, weapons). That’s all: soldiers.

  Nordseta: The Nordseta was an annual hunt the Greenland Vikings, who lived on the southern tip of the island, used to take up the northwest coast each year. They would hunt things like polar bears and arctic foxes and gyrfalcons and other things that have white fur or plumage, such things being prized commodities in their society, and also back in Europe. (“Nord” is the old Norse word for “north,” if that helps.)

  rune: A rune is a character in one of the alphabets used by various civilizations a long time ago—from, say, the third century all the way to the thirteenth. They look kind of like pictures, but to the people who used them, they looked like letters—or, more accurately, words, since a rune usually referred to a specific thing, and not just a sound, like the letters A, B, C, etc.

  sentient: You mostly hear people use the word “sentient” when they’re speculating about whether there might be life on other planets, and whether that life is like humans—namely, able to think. Which is what “sentient” means. It’s how we distinguish ourselves from animals, who—as far as we know, anyway—aren’t able to think, although I myself think President Wilson might have a thing or two to say about that.

  subliminal: Oh, Charles. He really shouldn’t tease Susan for the way she talks when he uses words like “subliminal,” huh? “Subliminal” means, literally, “below the threshold of conscious perception,” which is so complicated it requires a definition in and of itself. Basically what it means is that there are some things your regular senses—sight, hearing, smell, etc.—can’t pick up consciously, but some other part of your brain that you’re not really aware of can, the idea being that this information is stored somewhere, and you just have to figure out how to find it. If only the brain came with Google. Who knows what we’d find in those subliminal archives?

  umiaq: First Norse; now Qaanaaq. You’ve probably heard of (or even seen) a kayak, which is a small boat invented by the various peoples who lived in the North American Arctic. The umiaq is another boat, only it’s much bigger, and not covered like a kayak. In fact, it’s a lot like a big canoe. Except they called it an umiaq.

  vitrify: To vitrify something means to turn it into glass, usually by making it really, really, really hot. (No, you can’t stick something in your oven and turn it into glass: it’ll just catch fire, so DON’T DO IT!) If you’ve ever taken a pottery class, you’ve vitrified clay when you put it in the kiln and fired it, but some things in nature also get that hot, like sand when it’s struck by lightning, or the lava that comes out of volcanoes. Hot. Really, really hot.

  winsome: Although it looks like
a typo (win some, lose some?) “winsome” actually means “to be charming,” in the way that children are said to be charming. Do you ever think of yourself as charming, let alone winsome? I doubt it—this is clearly one of those words coined by adults who don’t remember what it’s like to be a kid.

  ziggurat: A ziggurat is a pyramid, but a very specific kind of pyramid. When you hear the word “pyramid,” you probably think of the famous ones in Egypt that have nice smooth triangular sides. But a ziggurat is built in a series of levels, or terraces, each of which is smaller than the one below, so that the silhouette looks a bit like a staircase. The Mayan pyramids were often built in ziggurat form, as were many temples throughout the Middle East.

  Copyright © 2007 by Dale Peck

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

  Published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

  Electronic edition published in October 2011.

  www.bloomsburykids.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Peck, Dale.

  The lost cities : a Drift House voyage / by Dale Peck. — 1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Drift House.

  Summary: Siblings Susan and Charles receive a mysterious book before leaving to visit their Uncle Farley at his time-traveling house, where they become separated in the Sea of Time and struggle to find their way home.