Empire of Ruins (23 page)

He munched on a few berries from his front vest pocket, followed them with some smoked meat. The sun set quite suddenly, as though someone had just blown out a candle. He couldn’t see much beyond all the vines and leaves.

He hadn’t thought this through very well. For one thing, where would he sleep? On the forest floor? Up in a tree with the snakes and the monkeys? One of those huts he’d just left would be handy now.

He didn’t dare light a fire for fear of alerting Miss Hakkandottir to his presence, so he slept with his back up against a tree, legs pressed as close to his chest as possible for warmth. It was a horrible, buggy, cold, fitful mockery of sleep, but when he awoke as the light appeared in the east, shining yellowish green through the leaves, he found that a fur blanket had been laid over him and someone had placed a basket of berries at his feet without making a noise or leaving a footprint. He whispered his thanks and ate his breakfast. Then he got up, stretched his aching muscles, and began to follow his compass.

T
he first night in the rain forest had dampened Octavia’s enthusiasm for being alive. It had been a grand adventure while they were in the air, but on the ground among the hooting animals, chirruping insects, and wet chill, she loathed it. Rats she could take; London had millions of them. But scaly things that slithered, creatures that made odd growling sounds, others climbing in the trees, bats the size of owls, and a pestilence of insects biting and crawling on her skin—it was all a little much for a girl from Seven Dials.

A night of no sleep had been followed by a cold breakfast of canned meat and water. Then Mr. Socrates barked commands like an infantry general and they packed up camp and marched on, tracing the path indicated by the map in his hand.

“Miss Hakkandottir will expect us to make a beeline for the nearest port,” Mr. Socrates explained. “I’m guessing that
she’s now got her soldiers patrolling the paths leading to Port Douglas and Cooktown. She may even have created allegiances with whatever natives inhabit this area. So we will circle westward and approach the temple from that direction. Nothing like the element of surprise.”

“I don’t mean to be impertinent, sir,” Octavia said as she stomped on one of the millions of ferns carpeting the forest floor, “but how can we be certain that the artifact is actually still in the temple?”

“We can’t. The only way to be certain is to enter the temple ourselves. My guess, and I admit this is only a guess, is that Miss Hakkandottir is still here because she wanted to revel in my obliteration or she’s attempting to steal the relic. After all, we don’t know for certain what it was that drove Alexander King mad. Perhaps whatever it is, is proving to be a bulwark against her.”

It was now clear to Octavia that it was the jungle that had driven the explorer mad. She followed Tharpa as he swung the machete, cutting a path through the hanging vines.
We’ll have to hack our way back to London!
Octavia thought as she struggled under the weight of her haversack—it was stuffed to the top with smoked meat, biscuits, ammunition, and any other useful supplies they had retrieved from the
Prince Albert
’s wreckage. Mr. Socrates held his elephant gun as if he were waiting for a charge, and Lizzie brought up the rear.

After three bug-bitten hours they stopped for lunch, sitting on a fallen tree trunk and munching hard biscuits with marmalade. Tharpa sharpened the machete between bites and Mr. Socrates made notes in his journal.

Lizzie sat staring into the forest. Octavia drank water
from a tin cup and studied Lizzie’s tattoos. In the jungle light they made the woman look less civilized.

“Lizzie, do you know this area very well?”

“Been here once or twice,” she grunted.

“Ah, and you lived to tell the tale, that’s a good sign.” But Lizzie didn’t smile. She was on par with Tharpa for humorlessness. “You’re of native blood—is your tribe from here?”

“No. This is the land of the Rain People.”

“And what are they like?”

“They live. They hunt. What more do you need to know?”

Octavia shrugged. It was like conversing with a python. “Well, where are your people?”

“In my heart,” Lizzie said with a hint of bitterness.

Octavia nodded and fell silent.

A few minutes later they were back on their feet. Mr. Socrates marched ahead, but Octavia had lost all sense of direction. With all these leaves it was impossible to tell whether the sun was in the east or west! She’d never understood the use of a compass; it was streets, their curves or straight lines and landmarks, that made sense to her.

According to Mr. Socrates, humanity had risen out of a jungle just like this one. As she slapped at a mosquito, she found it very hard to believe. Humans built cities and ships to get away from these uncivilized places. It was insanity for any English citizen to return willingly to the jungle.

She trudged over the moist earth, catching her foot on a thick vine and biting back a curse. Lizzie was walking along as if it were Hyde Park, for pity’s sake.
You should try to be half as graceful as her
, Octavia told herself. A lock of
hair slipped in front of her eyes; humidity made her hair unruly with curls. She shoved the lock back under her sun helmet and looked over at Lizzie, envious of her cropped hair. At least they both had trousers on. Octavia didn’t even want to imagine what it would be like trekking through this green hell wearing a dress.

Her thoughts turned to Modo, as they had a thousand times already that day. He might be dead. She’d been trying to keep her spirits up by dreaming of more cheery scenarios in which he had hit his head and lay unconscious somewhere, or had landed on two feet and was right now doing jumping jacks to keep warm. All the scenarios ended with their emotional reunion.

He might have lived. He was much stronger than any man she’d known, and he could, as her old gang would have said, “take a beatin’.” But the fall was from such a great height that his body would have been shattered. She pictured him lying on the forest floor, splayed out, his mask several feet from him. His face turned toward her. Of course, it was featureless. Even in her imagination she couldn’t put a face to him.

What did he look like? In death he could still be a stranger to her; would always be a stranger to her.

And now she would give anything to see him again, with or without a mask. Even if he was the ugliest man on earth, she wanted to look into his face again.

T
hroughout the day, Modo watched and listened carefully, but the tribe no longer seemed to be following him. He felt relief and fear; if they weren’t watching over him, then he was very much on his own. With each step he wondered if his encounter with the natives had gone exactly as he remembered it. He’d lost blood and was still a little woozy from his fall. Could the whole thing have been a dream? His pocketful of berries told him otherwise.

The deep rumble of a steam-powered engine could be heard in the sky. He scrambled to the topmost branch of a pine tree—so high that the tree began to wave back and forth—hoping to see the
Prince Albert
. To his dismay, he spotted the
Prometheus
. The airship had been repaired and was traveling northwest. Perhaps they were searching for him. He ducked behind the branches. Well, if they were going back to their base, he’d been heading in the right direction.

He climbed back down to the forest floor and followed
his compass. After another hour of trudging he came to the river that he was sure had been on the map. The map had led Modo to believe it would be a relatively minor river, but instead it was a deep body of green water that cut through the bottom of a gorge. Using vines as handholds, he carefully climbed down the gorge wall and stood on a large flat rock, staring at the surface of the river. What demonic jungle creatures lurked below? A school of piranha, which would consume a man one razor-sharp bite at a time? Water snakes that swallowed their prey whole? Several gigantic smooth rocks jutted across the river, looking as though they’d been tossed there by some capricious god. They were so far apart, it would be impossible to hop from one to the other, and he wasn’t going to risk swimming across. But it was heartening to find the river, for it meant he was closing in on his destination.

He hopped from stone to stone along the bank, searching for a way to cross and keeping his eyes open for predators. The gorge provided a break from the overhanging forest, so there was a lot more sunlight, so much that he had to squint at times.

He began to give up hope of finding an easy way to cross and once again contemplated swimming the river. He eyed a few of the fish he could see in the clear water, small, with backs speckled black and white. Piranha? Or perch? Once again he admonished himself for not memorizing some of the naturalist illustrations he’d seen as a child. His education was lacking!

He finally found one lone tree at a bend in the river that had grown in an arc toward a tree on the opposite shore. Something moved in the nearer tree’s foliage and, as he
approached, an animal that looked half kangaroo and half monkey hopped and climbed through the branches, using its long tail to steady itself. It swung from the tree to the one on the opposite side, making the feat look relatively easy. Moments later it had jumped to another tree and vanished in the forest.

Modo inspected the unusual tree. Its bark was gray, its narrow roots well exposed above ground, buttressing the tree. He shinned up the trunk to the closest leafy branch, beginning to feel the exhilaration he’d always felt when climbing, but kept a wary eye out for snakes. When he was near the top, the tree started to bend and he began to feel fear. In his excitement about finally crossing the river he’d forgotten he was a lot heavier than the monkey creature. He inched farther along the branch. The tree on the opposite bank didn’t look so close now, but he was pretty certain he could still make the leap.

And so he grabbed a branch above him and swung back and forth, building momentum. Just as he was about to let go, it broke! By pure luck he hit the branch below with both feet and pushed off it, launching himself over the water and catching a branch on the opposite tree. It snapped and he fell, crashing through several branches, then latching on to one only a few feet above the water.

It promptly snapped and he dropped into the water with a great splash, falling so hard and deep that his buttocks hit the rocks on the bottom. Piranha! Snakes! He shot up in a wild panic, to find he was standing in waist-deep water. He charged the short distance to the riverbank, gasping and panting in relief that nothing had bitten him.

Laughter could be heard in the trees on the other side
of the river, and Modo wondered whether it was a human or a kookaburra bird, known for its cry that sounded like human laughter.

Modo straightened himself, squeezed the excess water from his cloak, and climbed up the gorge and back into the rain forest. According to the map, the temple wasn’t far from the river, but it wouldn’t be easy to spot; after a thousand years or more of growth, the forest would have reclaimed it. That said, if Miss Hakkandottir was already there, he would hear the camp noises before he saw them.

As if on cue, there was a metallic clanging in the distance. Modo shook his head. Such a coincidence had to be his imagination getting the better of him. He listened intently. Nothing. He pushed his way through the vines until—
Clang! Clang!
There it was again. It wasn’t a noise animals would make, and so far as he’d seen, the natives didn’t have metal. He moved toward the sound, working his way up an incline. The map had indicated that the temple was on the slope of a small mountain, looking down on the surrounding forest.

He came to a clearing and there it was, at the far end of a great plateau, jutting out of a small mountainside.

The temple.