We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (13 page)

“I do hope you will join us for a meal,” the other one said, ignoring the woman who kept singing pieces of Beatles songs.

“I am fasting while we look for Shangri-La,” Lama Norbu said to the Navels. “But please, enjoy this food. These women are from the Bön sect, the oldest religion in Tibet, and you could learn much from them. I will seek out a quiet area to meditate, now that we have found a safe resting place for the night.”

With that he bowed politely and wandered off past the camp and into the thick brush of the forest.

“He is a strange man, this monk,” the woman with the headband said.

“He's a lama,” Oliver said. “Not a llama.”

“I see,” the woman answered quizzically.

“Thank you for having us,” Dr. Navel said as he settled onto a log. “I am very eager to learn about your culture.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “We are just simple women who have spent our lives in this canyon. Our only knowledge of the world comes from that television and from the pilgrims who pass this way. We are not great explorers like you.”

Celia and Oliver shifted anxiously on their feet. They wanted to get to the television already. They kept glancing at the hut with the satellite dish.

“I am sure you know a great deal more than you think,” Dr. Navel said.

“Dad,” Celia whispered. “Can we please go watch the television? Pretty please?” She made her sweetest puppy-dog face.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You can hear about the ancient ways of the Bön—did you know that they place their dead on tall towers of stone and let the vultures eat the corpses instead of burying them?”

“That's disgusting,” said Oliver.

“That's not disgusting, Oliver. It's called sky burial. Their culture represents an entirely different way of imagining the world than you and I have. Remember what I said about—”

“Yes, yes . . . television is magic . . . wonders of the world . . . blah blah blah . . . we get it. But we walked all day and we got thrown out of a plane and we saved your life,” Celia said.

“Twice,” added Oliver, not wanting them to forget his heroics with the rifle that fired blessings.

“We shouldn't have to learn about new cultures too.” Celia felt the need to make their position very clear to their father.

“The children are welcome to rest in front of the television,” the woman with the headband said. “We receive many channels they might enjoy.” She winked at them.

“All right,” Dr. Navel sighed. “Go on.”

The twins rushed off to the hut while their father began asking excited questions about myths and legends and human sacrifice. The woman with the headband, in spite of what she had said, knew quite a lot about all of those things, especially the last one.

“The shinbone's connected to the knee bone,” sang the musical woman.

 

Inside the hut, there was another log spread with furs facing the television, and steaming hot bowls of food were set beside it, as if the children were expected.

“Nice women,” Oliver said. “They even made us snacks.”

The bowls were filled with what looked like curdled milk, all clumpy and grayish, with yellowish chunks of butter floating around and thick mounds of crushed barley. Each bowl had one lump of blackened meat sitting in it, the fat still sizzling. It smelled like chili peppers, leather and wet dog.

“What is that?” Celia wondered.

“It's yak,” Oliver said, his face turning green.

“How do you know?” Celia asked nervously, not really wanting to hear the answer.

“Because . . .” Oliver pointed at the wall, where a pile of fur and bones was topped by a giant skull with dark black horns: a slaughtered yak.

Both children turned quickly and tried to put the frightening image from their minds. They thought for a second about running back outside, but out there the women would insist on watching them eat; that much they knew about hospitality. Inside with the yak skeleton they at least had privacy and, of course, television. Oliver grabbed the bowls of food and carefully dumped the lumpy steaming contents behind the pile of bones.

“Sorry,” he said, though the creature was long past hearing any apologies for becoming dinner.

While her brother disposed of the “meal,” Celia flipped on the old television. It lit up with a static hum.

Outside, they heard their father's voice praising the delicious food.

“Yak butter and barley flour, is it?” he fawned. “It tastes just like my wife used to make before we were married! And you say you make offerings of this to the protector-spirits in the valley? Who are they? Are they violent gods? Helpful?”

They heard the women laughing.

The children looked nervously at each other, but didn't say a word. The screen glowed with fuzzy snow and static. Oliver pulled the cheese puffs out of their backpack for a snack and Celia started turning the tuner. Both children held their breaths in anticipation. The last time they had watched TV was on the airplane, and that had been quite rudely interrupted by Sir Edmund's henchman trying to kill them. This time, deep in the valley on the path to Shangri-La, under the silent gaze of a yak's carcass, they hoped they would finally have some peace and quiet—and some decent entertainment.

When the picture came into focus, Celia shouted with glee, but Oliver's heart sank into his dirty sneakers.

“
Love at 30,000 Feet
!” she squealed as the theme song played over images of sunsets, jet engines and kissing.

“Oh, no,” Oliver groaned.

ON A BOULDER JUTTING
out into the valley below the camp, Lama Norbu stood with his head bowed, but he was not meditating. His mind was far from peaceful, and the words he muttered scared the birds from their perches. He was angry at the glowing device in his hand, and he whacked it with his palm.

“Come on, you lousy phone!” he cursed. “Get some reception already! What good is a smartphone without any stinking reception?” He smacked the small phone against the side of a tree and it made a series of unhappy beeps, but still didn't dial the number he wanted. “No, I don't want to play Scrabble! I want to make a call!!” he growled at it, and whacked it again. “Aaargh!!”

“That is not a very peace-loving thing to do,” a voice spoke from the darkness behind him. “In fact, I have never in my life met a monk whose meditation involved cursing at a phone.”

Sir Edmund stepped from the darkness with a smile on his face. He wore a khaki explorer's outfit with dozens of pockets and a little pith helmet, like something out of an old movie. He strolled over to Lama Norbu like it was perfectly natural for him to be taking a late night walk in the Tsangpo Gorge.

“You,” was all Lama Norbu said as he moved his hand toward his rifle.

“Don't bother,” said Sir Edmund. “I am not alone and, though you cannot see them, you are surrounded.”

“What do you want then? To finish what your abominable snowman could not?”

“Snow
woman
”, Sir Edmund said, and laughed. “Anyway, the yeti was just a test. I knew a wise monk like yourself could handle it.”

“It nearly killed Dr. Navel.”

“They do get rather aggressive when you take their children away,” he said. “She's one of the most vicious monsters in my zoo these days.”

“You are the monster, Edmund.”

Sir Edmund shrugged and looked out over the dark valley, and up to the canopy of stars. It was a beautiful sight, but he didn't seem to be enjoying it.

“Let's cut out the nonsense, shall we?” said Sir Edmund. “We are all impressed that you found the Navels before us. But we had a deal. The Council wants them and you are supposed to bring them to me. You should not have gone off on your own.”

“The Council keeps too many secrets.”

“The Council has a higher purpose.”

“This is also about revenge,” Lama Norbu added. He stood even taller and suddenly appeared many years younger than he had appeared moments before. He didn't really look like Lama Norbu at all.

“You are so angry at the Navels you would dare defy us? What would your partner say after we went to all the trouble to arrange this?”

“We both feel the same. After what that Navel woman cost us in the Gobi Desert . . . our price has doubled.”

“You are hardly in a position to negotiate. I do wonder what would happen,” Sir Edmund chuckled, “if Dr. Navel were to find who you
really
are. Or if the Explorers Club were to learn what had really become of you, the long-lost Frank Pfeffer, discoverer of the Jade Toothpicks.”

“You want to blackmail us?”

“I want you to stick to the agreement. If not, you and your partner will be unmasked and, I promise you, destroyed. We had a deal and you will not break that deal.”

“Your threats don't frighten me.”

“You may have learned the transformative arts from the Hyena People of Gondar, and you have done an admirable job disguising yourself, for such a freakishly tall man, but the truth has a way of shining through. I wonder if I can get Internet access here. Maybe I should update my blog. Does your phone take pictures?” He chuckled. “They make the most remarkable gadgets these days, don't they?”

“You don't have a blog.”

“I could start one just for you.”

“You are despicable.”

“I think the same could be said of you, Frank—I'm sorry,
Lama Norbu
,ʺ Sir Edmund sneered. “You don't really have any choice. We'll get what we want whether you help us or not. Our new friends are taking care of that.” He turned and walked back into the shadows, murmuring a song as he went. “The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah!”

Lama Norbu, who wasn't really a monk at all, listened as Sir Edmund's voice faded and then kept listening to the darkness to be sure he was alone once more. He smacked his phone with more urgency this time, and at last, his call got through.

“It's me, Frank,” he said into the phone. “The Council found us. I'll have to move quickly now. The tablets will be ours!”

He hung up and sighed into the night.

“And we will have our revenge,” he said to no one in particular. He hid the phone back inside his cloak. With a shake of his shoulders he resumed his calm and friendly pose, practicing the monk's smile.

OLIVER AND CELIA SAT BUG-EYED
in front of the television, stuffing cheese puffs into their mouths. Their faces were blank, their minds even blanker. Nothing existed for them but
Love at 30,000 Feet
. Even Oliver had overcome his resistance to all the kissing and was entranced. The children watched and were happy.

Of course, they didn't understand a word.

The show was dubbed over in Chinese, so that when the actors' mouths moved to make the English words, Chinese words came out. Subtitles ran at the bottom of the screen that indicated what the actors were saying, but the subtitles were in Tibetan, so even reading them was no help. They couldn't tell that
Nga kayrâng-la gawpo yö
meant “I love you” or that
Há la gyuk! Ngempa-po khyö!
meant “Get away, you rogues!” but they could figure out what was going on by facial expressions and lip-reading and how the people moved or shouted at each other. It helped that they had seen every episode.

In this episode, the captain was arguing with his copilot about something. He kept pointing toward the fuel gauge. The copilot pressed a lot of buttons and the plane jerked in all directions. Passengers shouted, and the stewardess said calming things to them, trying to maintain her balance. The actress playing her had bright white teeth and smiled widely in a familiar way, but she wasn't very comforting. She also wasn't very steady on her feet. She fell right into the lap of a man in a shiny birthday clown costume with a bright red nose. He said something to her that made her laugh. He said something else and she slapped him.