Seven Wonders Journals: The Select (3 page)

This is it, Burt. All my life I’ve hoped these existed
.

It occurred to me, in a wave of revulsion, that this place had been our goal all along. We had reached the
X
on Father’s map. And it was indeed a “most unimaginable hell.”

Wenders the genius. Wenders the Great Discoverer. Wenders who stopped at nothing to get the great artifact.

“Is this why we are here?” I blurted out.

“Pardon?” Father said, momentarily distracted from his work.

“We rushed into a voyage without proper preparation, equipment, or personnel,” I barreled on. “We sacrificed an entire ship’s crew. Is this the price for your archaeology?”

Musa came closer, curious.

“There is a reason for this,” Father said. “A good one. You will have to trust me, Burt.”

“Trust you?” I said. “After you led us to a place your own map warned you away from? I sit here, ill with tropical fever. I don’t want to die on this island! Why couldn’t you have left me at home?”

Father turned away. When he faced me again, his eyes were rimmed with tears. “It’s not tropical fever, Burt.”

I braced my back against a tree. This was not the reaction I had expected. “Then tell me, what is it?”

“Something else,” Father replied. “It matters not, Burt. I do not want to stir fear—”

“I am already afraid!” I protested. “You raised me to be honest, Father. Can I no longer expect the same from you?”

Father replied in a halting voice, barely audible. “You have a rare disease, described in ancient texts. Those who suffer it bear an unmistakable physical marking on the back of the head. No one has survived past a very young age.”

“Is there no medicine?” I asked, my voice dry with shock.

“There is no cure for this, Burt,” Father said. “Except that which is in the texts. And as you know, there is a fine line between history and myth. The texts speak of an ancient healing power on a sacred island. Several of them corroborate the same location. And that location matches the place on the map.”

I shook my head, hoping that this was some bizarre dream. Hoping that I could shake away the monkeys and the deadly green-acid-blood creatures and the infernal music.... “A sacred island? Ancient healing power? This is not science,” I said. “These are stories, Father. When I was a child you taught me the difference!”

“Power traveling through wires, glass bulbs that transmit light, conversations carried across continents—these were once stories, too,” Father replied. “The first requirement for any scientist, Burt, is an open mind.”

I wanted to protest. I wanted to translate for Musa. To have him share my outrage and confusion. But Father took me by the shoulders and gently laid me down on the blanket. “You must sleep to regain your strength. Musa and I will protect you through the night. I will explain more in the morning, and we will continue.”

I knew I could not slumber. I had to know more. I had to translate for Musa, who was tending the fire and trying to look unconcerned with our conversation.

But then my head touched the blanket, and I was fast asleep.

I woke several hours later, with a start.

Had I heard something?

I sat up. My head was no longer pounding. My body, drenched in sweat, felt cool. The illness had broken.

The jungle seemed eerily silent. Gone were the chatterings and hootings that had filled our day. Gone, too, was the buzzing, murmuring music. It was as if the night itself held its breath.

Musa’s fire had burned to coals. I could see him in the dim glow, dozing, curled up on the ground. I glanced around and made out Father’s silhouette at the opposite rim of the clearing. He was clutching his revolver, his back propped against a tree.

Snoring.

“Father!” I called out.

He muttered something, his head lolling to the other side. They were both exhausted.

For our own safety, I would have to take the night shift. As I rose, intending to take the gun from Father, I spotted a movement in the woods behind him. Not so much a solid thing as a shift of blackness.

I heard a stick snap to my right. A high-pitched “eeeee.”

Behind me, Musa let out a brief yell. I spun around.

He wasn’t where he had been. In the dim light of the coals, I saw his legs sliding into the black jungle.

I called his name, running after him. But I stopped at the edge, where the darkness began. Entering it would be a colossal mistake. I needed the gun, now. I leaped toward Father. I saw him awake with a start.

My shirt suddenly went taut, pulled from above. My feet left the ground, and I rose swiftly into the trees as if on marionette strings. The silence erupted into a chorus of earsplitting screams. I felt sharp, furry fingers closing around my arms and legs. The monkeys! They were pulling me, turning me around. I fought to free myself, but their strength was astounding. More swung toward me from the surrounding trees as if summoned—dozens of them. Below me, Father shouted in horror.

In the red light of the waning fire, I could see them exchanging palm fronds, twigs, ropelike vines. They jabbered to one another, eyes flashing, as they braided, twisted, and tied knots with speed and dexterity. Before I could understand what they were doing, they let their creation drop from the branch.

Then they pushed me over.

I screamed as I landed in the taut mesh they’d just woven. It was a carrying net, which they passed from monkey to monkey like relay racers as they swung from the branches. In jerking fits I glided over the jungle, rising higher and higher into the blackness. Father’s anguished shouts soon faded, and I could see the gibbous moon peeking through the tree canopy.

In the dim light, the black mountain loomed nearer. The little creatures were tossing me now. Cackling. Playing. I tried to tear my way through the net, but it had been twisted into an impossibly tight mesh. I swung like a pendulum, smacking into trunks and branches. The monkeys’ cries seemed to grow more excited now, rising in pitch and intensity as if in argument.

Finally I saw one monkey leap from a tree and sink its teeth into the arm of another who was holding me. The whole troupe quickly joined in, screeching and beating at one another.

They were fighting for my possession.

I curled into a ball and prayed.

The chanting came as a relief.

I had been swung and dropped, slung over shoulders, tossed like a ball. I did not know where they’d carried me, as it occurred in nearly complete darkness. Through the mesh I had seen only fur and occasional eyes and teeth.

When the net was removed, I was sitting on a smooth rock surface at the edge of a large hole. The monkeys quickly dismantled their sack, then used the vines to tie my arms behind my back. The air was quite a bit cooler here, and I could hear languid drips fall into the blackness below. Rock walls rose all around me, their crags seeming to shift and dance with the reflected flicker of candlelight.

Across the hole was a doorway into another chamber, cut into the wall. People were chanting in there, their shadows moving in the light. I heard the strange music, too.

The voices were chanting in harmony to it.

“Hello?” I called out across the hole.

My voice boomed out, echoing off the walls. I looked up into a rock ceiling high above. I was in an enclosed place, some sort of cavern. I had been so smothered by the monkeys and the net that I had no idea how I’d gotten there.

In reply, a wizened man appeared in the cave opening. His cragged face seemed to have been hewn out of the rock itself, and his wispy white hair hung down to a silken robe. A gold-filigreed sash hung over the man’s shoulder with an intricately embroidered sun symbol. Under any other circumstance, I would have complimented his wardrobe. But the one-eyed monkey sat on the sash, grinning at me sassily

The man’s eyes rolled back into his head as he doddered toward me, and he held high a chalice so heavy that I was afraid it would break his frail arms. Behind him followed six other men, also chanting. The second carried an elaborately carved black sword on an embroidered cushion. I expected an orchestra to follow them, but their little cave appeared to be empty. The music, as always, was coming from nowhere.

And everywhere.

The old men circled the hole. The third in line had a small basket, from which the monkey pulled little stone tokens and dropped them into the hole. Each token landed with a loud, watery plop. So—a well.

“Who are you?” I pleaded, but they ignored me.

I edged away. Despite the horrific trip there, I felt oddly strong. The music, louder than ever, no longer hurt my head. In fact, for the first time in days my head did not ache at all.

As I listened to the strange guttural chant, the words seemed to arrange themselves inside my brain. Like the ingredients to a complex recipe, they flew through filters of grammar, structure, context, relationships. I was certain this was no language I’d ever heard before, but to my utter astonishment, I was beginning to understand it. Some of the words were obviously names—Qalani, Karai, Massarym—but I picked out “long-awaited visitor” … “select” … “sacrifice” … and something that sounded like the Greek letter lambda.

As they drew closer, I yanked at the bonds around my wrists. Yes. I felt a certain give. Talented as the monkeys were, they were better at weaving nets than binding wrists.

The men did not seem to see me. “Hoo ha, la la la!” I sang out, fearing that the men might be in some kind of sightless trance. Then I attempted their own language: “Where am I?” The words were awkward and thick on my tongue. “Who are you? Why am I here?”

Several of the priests gasped. The leader stopped. Close up, his face was almost transparent, a skull with a paper draping. If I could guess his age, I would start with one hundred and work upward. His eyes lit on me, seeming to return from some distant galaxy. I felt a sharp chill.

His ancient, creaky voice seemed little more than air. But he spoke slowly enough for me to understand. “I am R’amphos, high priest of the Great Qalani. You look on us with fear. With revulsion. You see us as we are now— broken, waiting. But a great time ago our people were abundant, our land fruitful, our leaders fair. We lived in balance and harmony.”

“Waiting?” I said. “For what?”

“For the glorious completion of our long-awaited task,” he replied. “A task granted to us by Qalani, whom we praise for allowing us to live to this day.”

“Praise Qalani!” the other men shouted.

“Eeee!” the one-eyed monkey concurred.

R’amphos handed the chalice to the third priest. The second priest lifted the carved sword off its cushion and bowed low, presenting the weapon to R’amphos. He grabbed the massive hilt. Its blade was thick obsidian, etched with runes.

I tugged harder at my bonds. My wrists ached. “What is that for?” I asked.

The old man’s face seemed to sag further. “You are a child. We know you mean no evil. But you have come to us according to the prophecy. And we cannot allow you to fulfill it. Please understand. It is for the good of all.”

I was certain then that I had wandered into a kind of nightmare bedlam, an island sanatorium of the insane. Surely I could escape.

The bonds seemed to be loosening a bit, but not quite enough to work my hands free. As I struggled, R’amphos edged closer. Time. I needed more of it. Perhaps I could try to reason with him. Convince him he’d made a mistake. Argue and delay him.

“What prophecy?” I asked. “Tell me all. You owe me that at least, before murdering me.”

“Not murder. Sacrifice.” The old man paused, his eyes growing more watery. He did not look homicidal or deranged but wearily determined. “It is foretold that Qalani’s child will return, riding the storm. He will be dying. And die he must. Because if he tries to save himself, he will, in time, destroy the world.”

For a moment I went numb with shock. Riding the storm … dying … It was as if he knew—knew of our shipwreck, my illness.

No
. He couldn’t have. These things were coincidences. Guesses. Quasi-religious idiocy. I refused to be killed by these lunatics before Father had a chance to find the cure for my disease. I had to think clearly.

“Listen to me,” I begged. “You have the wrong person. My mother is named Greta, not Qalani. Greta Wenders. It doesn’t even sound close. My father’s name is Herman.”

R’amphos reached out toward me. I flinched as his cold, skeletal fingers gripped the side of my head and turned it. “You carry the mark,” he said.

I pulled away. I could feel one of the vines snap. My hands had a little more give. I could move my fingers, work my wrists.... “What mark?” I asked.

“I am sorry,” R’amphos replied. “I bear you no ill will, my child. But you see, this is a happy day. We all die. We become dust; we are missed by friends and family and then forgotten. But your death will bring life. You will be prevented from doing to the world what was done to the land of Qalani.”

“But—but I—”

The chanting started again in earnest. The monkey bounced eagerly, clapping its hands. R’amphos lifted high the sword and stepped toward me. He was so close I could smell a faint, musty odor from his silken robes.

I took a deep breath, raised my head high, said a prayer, and spat.

I had not lost my boyhood talent. The saliva jettisoned like a slingshot, directly into the monkey’s one good eye.

Wailing, the creature jumped toward me, teeth bared. The priest staggered, thrown off-balance.

I pulled against my bonds with all my strength. With a snap, they came loose. I swung my right hand around toward the monkey as it grabbed for my face. Its teeth clamped down hard on the tangle of vines I held. I completed the arc, sending the sadistic little creature into the well.

I brought my leg up. The old man was surprisingly quick, but my knee clipped the blade at the hilt, sending it into the air.

It smashed against the stone wall and fell to the platform. In a flash, three of the priests were upon me. As I fended off one with a blow to his bony jaw, the others grabbed me from behind. They were wrinkled and liver spotted, yet their agility and strength overwhelmed me. First one arm, then the other, was pinned behind my back.