The land below was a thick green carpet, but these were not fields, they were treetops, the canopy of a rich ecosystem positively throbbing with life. Darwen stole a look at Rich and was pleased to see that he sensed it too. Rich’s anxiety had melted away once they got airborne, and there was a hungry excitement as he gazed at the jungle below.
And somewhere down there, thought Darwen, is a creature that doesn’t belong, and it’s taking kids.
“Good thing Princess dumped her evening gowns, huh?” said Alex.
They landed less than an hour later on a grassy strip of land cleared of trees with what looked like a bus shelter next to it. It was so hot when Darwen climbed out that he thought he was too close to the plane’s engine, but as he walked away and the temperature didn’t change, he tugged at his tie and unfastened his collar button. Then someone screamed.
Darwen spun around and saw Barry Fails, one hand clasped over his mouth, the other pointing at something long and green in the grass: it was four feet from head to tail and covered with spines like something out of one of Darwen’s old dinosaur books. Several people jumped and took hurried steps away.
“Chuffin’ ’eck!” Darwen gasped.
“It’s a dragon!” Barry exclaimed.
“Probably,” said Rich, taking a step toward it. “Or, since dragons don’t actually exist, it’s an iguana.”
He said it casually, but he shot Darwen a look, and there was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes that Darwen immediately understood. They had, after all, seen plenty of things that shouldn’t exist: flittercrakes, scrobblers, gnashers, shades, and other things for which they had no names. They had come here searching for a monster called the Insidious Bleck. Were there dragons in Silbrica? Darwen had no idea, but if there were, it was at least possible that they might be here too.
Rich got a little closer to the iguana and squatted beside it. The massive lizard took a few slow, lumbering steps away, then settled again, watching him. Rich was sweating heavily but looked as happy as Darwen had ever seen him.
“Man,” Rich muttered, almost to himself, “this is going to be a great trip.”
The other students didn’t look so sure.
They were loaded into dirty jeeps and pickup trucks and driven along a narrow winding road through the jungle, occasionally passing clusters of ramshackle houses. At one point they forded a swollen river, and the water rose alarmingly above the wheels, though the drivers seemed unconcerned, laughing and calling to each other in Spanish as if nothing could have been more normal.
Alex, who was riding up front, leaned toward their driver, a small man with a deep tan and a faded baseball cap, and said something in Spanish. When the driver nodded and muttered a few words, Alex began looking around at the river with new urgency.
“What did you ask him?” said Darwen.
“If there were crocodiles in this river,” said Alex, without taking her eyes from the brown, sluggish water.
“And?” Darwen pressed, staring.
“There are,” said Alex. “Lots. And sharks.”
“Sharks?” said Rich. “But sharks don’t live in rivers. They live in the ocean.”
“You’d think,” said Alex, still scanning the water uneasily.
Darwen wanted to think the driver was pulling her leg, but he wasn’t so sure, and it took the edge off his enthusiasm. In his mind he saw the slobbering shark mouths of the gnashers from Silbrica and, imagining them swimming up and down the river, he gripped the armrest a little tighter.
They disembarked on a stony beach lined with coconut palm trees, where a single vulture sat tearing at a stinking fish the size of a sheep.
“Gross,” said Genevieve Reddock, stepping hurriedly away, as if she might throw up.
Though it was hot, it was also overcast, and the sky promised rain. Darwen moved down toward the shore, picking his way between the hundreds of tiny hermit crabs that seemed to be everywhere. Mr. Peregrine came waddling down the beach, looking like some kind of robot penguin: he had changed into the kind of rubber overalls that fishermen use for deep wading. Barry Fails pointed and laughed, but the other students took this to be an ominous development.
“Why is he dressed like that?” asked Rich, looking alarmed. After all the talk of sharks and crocodiles, Darwen couldn’t blame him.
Moments later, Rich got his answer. The students were loaded onto motorboats, which meant having to wade knee-deep into the ocean and clamber on board, assisted by a pair of strong local men.
“My shoes are ruined!” exclaimed Princess Clarkson, sitting miserably on the side of the tossing boat.
No one said anything. Even the teachers were silent and watchful. It was becoming clear that Mr. Peregrine’s idea of a school trip was not what they had had in mind, and some of them were starting to worry about far more than their shoes.
“We take the boats around the coast,” Mr. Peregrine announced happily. “Just twenty minutes or so. The camp can only be reached by water.”
“Camp?” Mr. Sumners repeated in a stony voice.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Peregrine, apparently oblivious to the fact that everyone except Rich was starting to look genuinely panicked. “You can’t experience the jungle from outside, can you? Got to get right into it. Live in it. Sleep in it.”
There was a rumble of thunder and the first steady pattering of rain. Somewhere from the tree-lined shore something started to call, a wild, whooping shout that might have been a bird or something else Darwen couldn’t begin to name. Maybe it was the call of whatever had taken Luis. It was a sound that would have been quite at home in the strange and unpredictable world beyond the mirror, but this time, Darwen thought with an unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach, he couldn’t just climb back into a safer and more familiar reality. Here, the weirdness and danger were everywhere.
The tent camp redefined the term basic. There was a long tin-roofed shelter open on one side, where meals would be served at wooden tables with benches. There was a makeshift building that constituted office, kitchen, and storage unit. At the back of the camp, at the end of a path that wound through heavy vegetation, there was a complex of toilets, washrooms, and showers made of concrete blocks. Darwen peered in and saw, squatting beside one of the toilets, a brown toad the size of a volleyball. There was no hot water, and the electricity was powered by a generator that ran for only two hours each evening. Darwen eyed it warily, half expecting to find little seats with wires running to great Silbrican batteries, but the generator looked quite harmless. There was no computer, no fridge, no phone, and the students who had brought cell phones quickly discovered that they were miles from any service. Sleeping accommodations were in a series of yellow tents on wooden platforms, each tent just big enough for three students and their luggage. The tents, they were told, should be kept zipped up at all times to keep the snakes out, and no one was to move around at night without a flashlight.
“Can I share with you?” asked Gabriel.
Darwen gave Rich a shrug and said, “Sure. Come on in.”
Alex was sharing with Naia and Mad.
“Thanks,” said Gabriel half-apologetically. He was olive-skinned and dark-haired, and his voice—on the rare occasions that Darwen had heard him speak—had a lilt to it that sounded like Carlos’s.
“So . . . where are you from?” asked Darwen.
“Florida,” said the new boy, his eyes down.
“This is gonna be way more fun than anything in Florida,” said Rich, slapping Gabriel heartily on the back so that he almost fell over. “A bit, you know, exotic, but fun nonetheless.”
“Tell Alex,” said Darwen, rummaging through his backpack. “She didn’t sound too thrilled about the crocodiles and sharks.”
“Alex is a city girl,” said Rich sagely. “Me, I’m a country boy at heart. Living in the rainfores
t for a week?”
“Jungle,” said Darwen.
“Rainforest,” said Rich. “Surrounded by the kind of nature most people never get to see? Trust me, this is going to be a blast. I read there are jaguars around here.”
Gabriel looked like he was going to say something skeptical, but he caught Darwen rolling his eyes at Rich’s enthusiasm and just grinned.
“Come on,” said Rich, checking his watch. “We have a meeting.”
“Do I have to go?” asked Gabriel. “I would prefer to stay here and read.”
“Wouldn’t risk it if I were you,” said Darwen. “I’m sure Sumners is looking for an opportunity to remind everyone that Hillside rules still apply.”
They crawled out and put their shoes back on.
“Don’t forget to zip the tent,” said Rich. “All the way. There’s a bit still open.”
“Nothing could get through,” began Darwen, but Rich pushed him aside and carefully zipped up the last half inch. “Better to be safe,” he said breezily, as if he didn’t really care one way or the other.
The camp was only yards from the ocean, and the sandy dirt swarmed with even more hermit crabs than before. The three boys followed the path up to the dining shelter. It was late afternoon, and the light was already softening. Halfway up, Rich paused, gazing through the heavy branches toward one of the other tents where an old man in shorts and a screamingly loud Hawaiian shirt was snoozing in a hammock tied between two palm trees.
“Is that . . .” he began. “It can’t be . . . Mr. Peregrine?”
It could and it was. The former shopkeeper clambered awkwardly from the hammock as they watched and checked his gold pocket watch on its chain, which he had fastened to the belt of his shorts.
“Oh, that’s just wrong,” said Alex, who had appeared behind them and was gazing at the spindly old man in his shorts and sandals. “That man needs a suit. I don’t care if we’re in the jungle. He needs a suit.”
Mr. Peregrine beamed at them as he sauntered over, gazing up at the once again threatening sky. A vivid, green bird—some form of parakeet, Darwen guessed in amazement—soared overhead, and Mr. Peregrine pointed at it, smiling proudly, as if he had arranged for it to be there.
“What a delightful place,” he said. “Quite remarkable.”
The students made uncertain noises in response, so Rich swooped in with, “It’s fantastic,” as if he was their elected representative. Alex raised her eyebrow.
“And it’s just starting!” said Mr. Peregrine.
“I’ll bet,” said Alex darkly.
“First, dinner,” said Mr. Peregrine, unabashed, “and then we meet our guide. You’re going to like him. He’s a real expert on the area.”
“Pretty cool, huh, Darwen?” said Rich.
“What?” Darwen replied vaguely. He had been gazing off into the trees, which marked the beginning of the jungle proper.
“You okay?” asked Alex.
“Just, you know,” said Darwen. “Keen to get started. The mission, I mean.”
“Cut yourself a little slack,” said Alex. “We just got here.”
“We don’t even know where to start looking for the boy, man,” said Rich.
“Luis,” Darwen shot back. “His name is Luis. And if we don’t know where to look, then we had better get on that, don’t you think?”
“We will,” said Alex, her tone rising to match his. “But we just got off the plane, Darwen, and we can’t just wander off into the jungle without any idea where we’re going! Sheesh.”
“Someone needs to be looking for him now!” Darwen returned. “Don’t you get it? His parents have been taken away from him, and he’s been alone for weeks now.”
“You mean he’s been taken away from his parents,” said Alex.
Darwen blinked.
“What did I say?” he said.
“That his parents have been taken away from him.”
“Oh,” said Darwen, flushing. “Same difference.”
Dinner was served on the uneven wooden tables of the long shelter. From their seats there, the students of Hillside Academy could look out over the camp’s gardens to the Pacific beyond, where the sunset was painting the clouds with a blaze of color. They ate red beans and rice on tin plates, followed by a selection of extraordinary local fruit—mango, banana, and pineapple—all of which tasted so much like it had been picked only minutes earlier that the students’ moods improved significantly.
“That wasn’t bad,” said Alex. “Could have used some hot sauce, but yeah, not bad. Tasty. Scrumptious, even. Healthy too. And fresh. A hearty meal—”
“Okay, Alex,” said Rich, shooting Darwen and Gabriel a knowing look. “You liked the food.”
Not everyone did. Princess Clarkson had refused to touch anything but a few pieces of fruit, and Barry Fails had complained loudly that there was no meat.
“I could have brought some if I’d known we were coming to, like, the third world,” he said.
“And stored it where?” asked Nathan Cloten lazily. “There’s no fridge.”
“If I’d brought some, you’d want to share it,” Barry persisted.
“Oh yes,” said Nathan. “Rancid hamburger à la Usually. Sounds delicious.”
Chip Whittley gave his woodpecker laugh, and Miss Harvey told him to be quiet.
“We are still to behave like young ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “even if the surroundings are a little . . .”
“Rustic?” Alex offered. “Rural? Woodsy?”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Nathan, “that despite all the luggage restrictions we were able to find room for O’Connor, the Incredible Talking Thesaurus.”
“Thesaurus?” said Barry. “Right. ’Cause she looks like a dinosaur.”
“Thank you, Barry,” said Miss Harvey with tired finality. “Always helpful. Now simmer down, Hillside. It’s time to meet our guide, and I want you to make a good impression. Remember, ‘Manners maketh man’ and ‘Learning is the path to self-improvement.’”
Alex rolled her eyes, but a hush had descended on the students, who were craning to see who was striding up the path from the camp below.
The man who was coming toward them through the gardens might have stepped out of a movie screen. He was perhaps thirty, tanned, athletic, with jet-black wavy hair and large dark eyes. He wore a short-sleeved safari shirt and rugged-looking shorts with hiking boots. He also had a sizable snake draped over his shoulders, and, judging by the way he was holding its head, it was alive and irritated.
“This,” said Miss Harvey, her voice carefully neutral, “must be Jorge.”
There was an uneven attempt at the typical Hillside greeting (“Good afternoon, Jorge”), but too many of the girls were nudging each other and giggling, while the rest were trying to get either as close to or as far from the snake as possible. One person in the latter group was Rich.
“I thought you liked animals,” said Darwen.
“I do,” said Rich through tight lips. “Just not . . . those.”
“Hi,” said Jorge simply, smiling to show white, even teeth, a gesture that was met with even more giggling from the girls. “My name is Jorge, and I will be your guide.”
“What’s the snake called?” asked Carlos.
“He is not a pet,” said the guide. “I found him in the kitchens and thought I would show him to you before I released him back into the forest. Normally I would not handle him, but today I make an exception so that you can see one of the beautiful creatures who is sharing the camp with us.”
This last remark did not get quite the response Jorge seemed to want.
“Do not be scared,” he said. “He is a boa constrictor. Not poisonous.”
“Couldn’t he, you know, squeeze you to death?” asked Bobby Park, looking
alarmed.
“No!” Jorge laughed. “He is only a baby. It will be many years before he can kill you.” He paused. “I am joking, of course. He will probably only reach about ten feet long. Here in Costa Rica, it is the venomous snakes that we need to watch out for.”
Bobby didn’t look entirely comforted.
“And are there poisonous snakes here?” asked Darwen.
“Oh yes,” said Jorge cheerfully. “I saw an eyelash viper on the flowers by the showers”—he paused to consider—“four days ago. It is not there now. When you walk past the bushes, even here in the camp, you should always keep your arms close to your body. Snakes sometimes coil around branches with flowers,” he said, curling one hand around the other, “and wait for birds or other prey. Some of them are very aggressive and quite dangerous, so please be very careful. Also, pay attentions to the ground, especially where there are a lot of fallen leaves, and never put your hands where you cannot see. Two weeks ago—no, one week ago—wait, what day is it?”
“Monday,” said Mr. Sumners. He was watching Jorge carefully, apparently unsure of whether the man was stupid, dangerous, or both.
“Really?” said Jorge. “Huh. In the jungle, all days are the same. So, one week ago I saw a bushmaster on the trail we will be walking tomorrow.”
Rich went pale. Jorge noticed.
“Yes, this is a very dangerous snake. This and the fer-de-lance. We have both here.” He sounded quite proud. “So it is very important that you are always on the alert.”
“Do you have antivenom?” asked Nathan, shifting in his seat.
“We do,” said Jorge. “But it will take a long time to reach a hospital from here, and antiveneno is . . .” He waggled his hand to indicate shaky, unreliable. “It will be much better if you do not get bitten.”
The students exchanged wary looks, and Jorge started to speak again with more urgency.
“You need to understand that this is a very wild place,” he said. “People are used to thinking of the land around them as theirs, the places where they live and work and sleep. Animals in such places are pets or have strayed in from outside. But here in the jungle it is the other way around. It is people who do not belong here. You are in the world of the animals, and some of them can be quite—what is the word?—lethal. Yes. So please pay attentions.”
Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck Page 8
