Eye of the Forest (4 page)

The hall of shadows was well-named. The ceiling chandelier seemed not to be working but a log was burning in the huge grate and this made everything seem uncomfortably vivid and penumbral, as if the room itself might be moving. John turned on the flashlight, let out an unsteady breath, and gritted his teeth for a moment.

“Nothing to be scared of,” he said. “Just the fire, that’s all.”

In the center of the room stood a tall hexagonal cabinet made of Chinese red lacquer. In the firelight, it looked quite infernal. It had exactly thirteen drawers. On each drawer was painted one word in gold lettering:
CAVE
. For a moment John wondered if he might have the wrong drawers until he remembered that
cave
was the Latin word for “beware.” But it was another Latin phrase that immediately presented itself to John’s nervous mind.

“Carpe diem,”
he said.
“Carpe diem.
Seize the drawer handle.” He seized one of the drawer handles and pulled.

“Looking for something?”

John let out a yelp of fear and, spinning around, saw a woman sitting in a high-sided chair who looked like the witch of the place. She had long unkempt hair, dirty clothes, and a strange smile on a grubby face that was all yellow skin and bone. Instinctively, he guessed this strange creature must be Bo’s lost sister.

“You must be Grace,” he said, swallowing his fear.

“I don’t think I know you, boy,” she said.

“Your brother, Bo, told me about you,” said John.

“What did he say?” Grace asked sharply.

“Nothing. Only that you had gone missing in the east wing.”

“That’s easy enough in this house, right enough.”

“You’re in the west wing now,” said John. “I can show you the way back if you like. When I’ve done what I came here to do.”

“I suppose you want to play cards. Do you want to play cards?”

“Cards? No, not particularly.”

“What are you doing in those drawers? There are no cards in those drawers, if that’s what you’re after. And no food, either. I’ve already looked.”

“I was looking for one of Mr. Vodyannoy’s talking boards,” answered John, and removed one of the boards from the open drawer. It was rather a fine wooden board, with a picture of what looked like several Native Americans and a man with a beard, who was wearing armor.

“Those boards,” said Grace, “they’re dangerous. You shouldn’t mess around with them.”

But John wasn’t listening. He took the board and a little balsa-wood heart, which acted as a kind of pointer, over to the fire, laid it on the rug, and sat down in front of it. Printed on the board was an alphabet, ten numbers from one to zero, and the words
sí, no, hola,
and
adiós.
Curious to see what might happen, Grace came over and sat opposite John. She was close enough for him to smell her, and it was not a good smell, but John was too polite to tell Grace she stank and to move away. Besides, he was still a little scared of her as she obviously was quite mad. He took a deep breath, placed his hands on either side of the board, and stared at it intently.

“My name is John Gaunt,” he said loudly. “I’m trying to get in touch with a friend of mine, named Mr. Rakshasas, to find out if he has passed over to the other side. If Mr. Rakshasas is there, or if there’s someone here with us who might know Mr. Rakshasas and where he is, then please make yourself known to us.”

Nothing happened except that Grace shook her head. “Listen to me, boy,” she whispered. “This is not something a child should ever do.”

“Quiet,” hissed John. “Please. I’m trying to make contact with the other side.”

“The other side of what?” sniggered Grace.

“I dunno, exactly,” admitted John. “But a medium made contact with me once. And that’s the kind of thing she said.”

“A medium made contact with you?” Grace frowned. “Are you dead? You don’t look at all dead.”

“Look, don’t ask me to explain it now,” said John, and moved his hands onto the board, which seemed to work because almost immediately the little wooden heart moved.

“You moved that yourself,” said Grace.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

John decided to ignore her and concentrate on the talking board. “Is anyone there?” he asked, and looked around nervously as he heard something tap on the windowpane. But it was just the branch of a tree outside. The wind moaned in the fireplace, stirring the flames, and a small wisp of wood smoke drifted across the board. Then the heart moved again, this time more noticeably than before, pointing to one letter, then another, and then another. John spelled out the letters.

“P-A-I-T-I-T-I.”

Then the heart stopped.

“Paititi? Is that a name? A word? I don’t understand.”

Now the heart began to move rapidly, and John found himself struggling not just to spell out the words, but to understand them, too.

“You’re going too fast,” he said. “Slow down. And, please, what language is this? I don’t recognize it.” Finally, he shouted, “Look, whoever you are, what language is this?”

The heart stopped for a moment and then slowly moved again.

“M-A-N-C-O-C-A-P-A-C. Mancocapac? I’m afraid I don’t speak Mancocapac. I mean, I wish I did. But I don’t.”

Now, in all normal circumstances John’s wish that he spoke Mancocapac would have done the trick because he was a djinn, after all. Once before, in Berlin, John wished he could understand German, and immediately found that he could. But the ancient Ifrit binding on Nightshakes meant that John’s wish went unfulfilled, and unfortunately, he was left none the wiser as to what his invisible interlocutor wanted to communicate.

The heart began to vibrate on the board.

“I think you’ve upset him,” said Grace.

The next second, the little heart flew into the fireplace as if flicked there by some unseen, powerful forefinger. Even as John quickly retrieved the antique heart from the fire, something picked up the talking board and hurled it across the room, hitting one of the thirteen panes in the window and breaking it. The log fire seemed to stretch out to this new current of oxygen. A huge gust of smoke, which billowed down the chimney and into the room, seemed to clothe an invisible figure, and, for the briefest moment, John saw what looked like a man with the longest earlobes he had ever seen. The man had a fringe of hair that almost covered his eyes and was wearing a cloak of feathers so that he looked like an enormous peacock. Then the man disappeared from sight, although not from the room, it seemed, for something hauled every one of the thirteen drawers out of the hexagonal red lacquer cabinet, emptying all of Mr. Vodyannoy’s talking
boards onto the floor. A moment later, the window burst open and the spirit — for John was sure that was what it was — disappeared into the stormy night.

“He’s gone,” said Grace. “Good riddance, too, if you ask me. Smashing up the place like that. Diabolical liberty.”

John pressed a finger to his mouth because something remained behind. Something hidden in the shadows of the hall of shadows. Something that had not been there before.

It sounded like a rumble of thunder. Or perhaps a very large man snoring after a heavy lunch. A very large man with powerful jaws and sharp teeth. A very large man who was rather more feline than human. John felt the hair rise on his head, as it suddenly dawned on him that this sounded less like a large man and more like a very big cat. The kind with spots on it. Like the one he’d seen in the trophy room. The growling came closer and he saw a definitely catlike shape edging forward from the corner of the room.

“What is it?” gulped Grace. “A sheep?”

“It definitely isn’t a sheep, you crazy witch,” whispered John.

“Then what is it?”

John didn’t answer. But already he recognized the kind of big cat he was dealing with. It was a South American jaguar, or
otorongo.
A big one, heavily muscled, about six feet long and probably weighing as much as two hundred pounds.

“Are you sure that’s not a sheep?” asked Grace.

It is said that adrenaline will enable a man being chased by a bull to leap a gate at one bound or a child to lift a very heavy
object off its stricken parent. It was the same with John, except that he was a djinn and, as anyone knows, the djinn are made of fire. The boy did not think. He just did what survival urgently obliged him to do. He reached into the blazing fire, lifted a burning log and, in the same moment that the
otorongo
raced toward him, thrust it into the cat’s open jaws. The
otorongo
’s roar turned into a high-pitched scream, and the big cat shrank back from the fire in John’s hand. It turned all the way around, took another look at John with luminous eyes, as if judging the wisdom of mounting a second attack against someone armed with fire and, seeming to think better of it, gathered itself like the string on a crossbow and then shot out of the window.

John let out a breath and tossed the log back into the fire. “Man, that was close,” he said.

“Funny-looking sheep,” said Grace.

“Wasn’t it?” said John. He could see little point in arguing with her.

Grace grabbed John’s hand and looked at it with astonishment. “Your hand,” she said. “There’s not a mark on it. No burn. Nothing. Not even a smudge.”

John looked at his hand and was a little surprised to discover that she was right: His hand was quite unscathed.

“You’re not human,” she said almost triumphantly.

John smiled and for once hardly cared that a human should know the truth about who and what he was. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

A little fearfully, Grace dropped his hand. “Hey,” she said, “don’t tell me you really are dead.”

“No,” said John, “I’m not dead. I’m a djinn.”

“Is that like a sheep?”

“Yes. It’s just like a sheep. Look here, why are you so interested in sheep?”

“‘Cause I’m a sheep myself. Not only that, but I’m a sheep that’s lost. If I find some of the other sheep that are lost, then I figure my brother, Bo, might come and find me. You know. Like in the nursery rhyme.”

John, who thought this was just about the saddest story he had ever heard, persuaded Grace to come back with him to the butler’s pantry where Bo was very pleased to be reunited with his sister.

“I’m afraid there’s a bit of a mess in the hall of shadows, Bo,” said John. “Like, the talking boards are all over the floor. But I kind of figured it was better to bring Grace back here ASAP rather than spend time cleaning up.”

“Please, sir, leave it to me.” Bo hugged Grace, who now started to cry almost as if she finally realized what had happened to her. “I am very grateful to you, sir, and am forever in your debt. If there is anything I can do for you.” And so saying, he kissed John’s hand gratefully.

“There is
something
you could do,” said John, taking back his hand, for he disliked being kissed on the hand by anyone, least of all a grown-up man. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone. My uncle Nimrod might get a bit
uptight about it if he found out what I’d been up to. He’s English, you see.”

“Yes, sir. I understand perfectly. No further explanation is required. I used to work for a junior member of the British royal family, and they don’t get any more uptight than that, let me tell you. Those people are so stiff they could whip eggs into a meringue with one look.”

“Yes. That describes it very well, I think.”

Bo took John’s hand into his own, and John decided to go to bed before the Hungarian butler could kiss it again. He felt the evening had not been a complete waste of time. He had failed to gain any information about Mr. Rakshasas but at least he had rescued Grace.

As John went up the stairs, he saw Philippa and his uncle were still playing Djinnverso in the library. It looked like they were going to go on all night. Now that really was a waste of time, thought John. As complete a waste of time as you could have found on any college football field.

T
he next morning, John came down to the breakfast room to find Uncle Nimrod and Mr. Vodyannoy wearing the same clothes as the day before and expressions that were brimful of accusation.

“It seems that there was an incident last night,” said Nimrod delicately.

John made a fist and cursed Bo for opening his mouth. No. That was unfair. Bo wasn’t the type to squeal on a guy. Not even when his master was a powerful djinn. His crazy sister, Grace, must have mentioned something. John bit his lip and hoped he could bluff it out.

“Oh, really? What kind of incident?”

“It seems there was a break-in at the Peabody Museum,” explained Nimrod.

John breathed a sigh of relief and tried to conceal a smile as he helped himself to a large steak.

“A violent break-in of a most peculiar nature,” continued Nimrod. “The front door of the museum was battered down by a large object, and a number of valuable artifacts were thrown about the place.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” said John.

“You were at the Peabody for two hours yesterday afternoon, were you not?” asked Nimrod.

“Sure,” said John. “And it was dullsville. I certainly didn’t steal anything from the place, if that’s what you were suggesting.”

“Let me finish telling you exactly what happened,” said Nimrod. “And then you will understand why I am speaking to you about it at all, John. You saw the
Torosaurus
outside the front?”

“Yes. It was cool.”

“This
Torosaurus?”
Nimrod handed John a photograph of the bronze dinosaur on the granite plinth in front of the Peabody.

“Yes.”

“It might interest you to know that this is what the
Torosaurus
looks like now.” He handed John a second picture. John shrugged. “I don’t see …”

“It’s the wrong way around on the plinth,” said Nimrod. “It now faces the museum, instead of facing away from the museum.”

John felt his jaw drop.

“You see the problem, John. Like a real
Torosaurus,
the bronze statue weighs several tons. So this goes beyond any
normal student prank. In other words, it is impossible to imagine how anyone could do this who was not in possession of a very large crane, which seems unlikely. So the implication is clear. Someone must have used djinn power to have that
Torosaurus
climb off its plinth and batter the door down with its horn. Why, I’m not sure. Anyone who could achieve such a feat had no need to draw attention to their crime.”

Mr. Vodyannoy shrugged apologetically. “The police are baffled, of course. But they have found pieces of the Peabody’s front door on the bronze statue’s horn.”

“Mr. Groanin tells me you were most impressed with the statue,” said Nimrod. “That you actually mentioned what might happen if ever it came alive.”

“Yes, I did,” said John. “But look, I had nothing to do with the break-in. Honest.”

He was about to say more and then checked himself. Was it possible that this strange occurrence had something to do with the incident involving the talking board in the hall of shadows? Could the ghostly man with the feathered cloak he’d summoned from the other side have brought the bronze statue to life and broken into the Peabody Museum?

“Yes?” Nimrod said. “I think you were about to say something?” He waited for a moment. “Odd, don’t you think, that something as bizarre as this should happen on the very same night that Bo’s sister, Grace, is rescued from the east wing of Nightshakes after being missing for eight months? Or is that merely a happy coincidence?”

“I didn’t do anything to that
Torosaurus,”
said John. “And I certainly didn’t steal any silly old artifacts.”

“Perhaps. However I’ll hazard a guess that you can offer a better explanation for what happened than the one we have at the moment, which is to say, no explanation at all.”

John sighed. He could see no way around a full and frank confession now. Nimrod was onto him. Of course, John was hardly surprised about this, given the amount of fish his uncle ate. The guy had a brain as big as a basketball. He was busted. So John told his uncle and Mr. Vodyannoy what had happened with the talking board on the outermost limits of the west wing.

“Light my lamp, are you mad, boy?” exclaimed Nimrod.

“Those boards should never be used,” added Mr. Vodyannoy. “They’re extremely dangerous. That’s why they’re kept hidden away.”

“I’m sorry,” John apologized. “I meant no harm, really. I only wanted to try to make contact with Mr. Rakshasas.”

Nimrod nodded. “I miss him, too, you know.” He put his hand on John’s shoulder.

“Do you really think it’s possible that my using the board is what caused the incident at the Peabody?”

“I’m afraid that’s the conclusion we must form,” said Nimrod. “Whoever it was you summoned would have been very upset.”

“Yes, but why?” asked John.

“Because he must have failed to do the one thing he had
been summoned by you to do, which is to communicate,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “He was probably furious that you couldn’t speak his language. Can you remember what it was? Or any of the words he used?”

“No,” confessed John.

“Then we’ll have to work it out from the board you used. You see, each one will summon a different entity, from a different part of the world, depending on the origin of the board. Do you think you could remember what the board looked like?”

“If I saw it again, I’m sure I’d recognize it,” said John.

They went back to the hall of shadows. In daylight, it looked quite different from what he remembered.
Hardly creepy at all,
John thought. Bo had tidied all of the boards away into the thirteen drawers of the red lacquer cabinet and was already repairing the broken windowpane. He was even whistling. Mr. Vodyannoy opened the drawers and started to show John the various boards in his collection, and it wasn’t long before John recognized the one he’d used the night before.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the one. I recognize the Native American pictured on it. And the man in the armor.”

“Actually,” said Mr. Vodyannoy, “the Native American, as you call him, is an Inca. And the fellow with the armor is supposed to be Pizarro. This is the conquistador design. And it was made in South America about a hundred and fifty years ago. This makes it much more likely that the spirit you
summoned, if spirit it was and not a demon or an elemental, came from that part of the world. It would certainly explain the
otorongo.”

“I do remember the man had very large earlobes,” said John. “And a cape of feathers.”

“Then you actually saw him,” said Nimrod.

“Just for a second. A gust of wind from the chimney blew out some smoke that seemed to give his body a kind of form.”

“If only you could remember his name,” said Nimrod.

“We’ll go to the Peabody,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Perhaps one of the museum’s many South American exhibits will help to jog the boy’s memory.”

There was a police line in front of the broken door of the Peabody, and nobody was being admitted except museum officials and crime scene unit investigators from the New Haven police department. But none of this presented an obstacle to the three djinn. Away from the curse of Nightshakes, they simply left their bodies in Mr. Vodyannoy’s car and walked invisibly past the policeman on duty in front of the wooden smithereens that had once been the front door. But not before pausing to listen to some of the various local explanations of the same story that were being told to the several reporters, photographers, and television crews who now surrounded the
Torosaurus.
Some people suggested that students were somehow responsible for the new position of the bronze statue. Others pointed to the skies and
insisted that aliens must have done it. An eccentric geologist claimed he had measured a small earthquake in the immediate vicinity of the university museum, which might, he claimed, have turned the statue around on its plinth. A few religious eccentrics were suggesting a divine explanation, while a group of conspiracy theorists were mooting the possibility that the
Torosaurus
had never been made of bronze at all, but had been a real
Torosaurus
in some kind of suspended animation.

John laughed out loud at some of these wildly different ideas and commented on their stupidity to Nimrod, forgetting for a moment that he was invisible and that someone might hear him. Someone did. One of the policemen. And he quickly told a television reporter that, in his opinion, the museum was haunted.

Inside the museum, the three invisible djinn — who were holding hands so as to avoid getting separated from each other — went into the rooms exhibiting South American artifacts and learned for the first time that these were the rooms that had been vandalized. Several glass cases had been smashed and their mostly golden contents now lay strewn on the floor, where a police photographer was busy recording the scene of the crime.

“Well, that makes sense, I suppose,” whispered Nimrod.

“What does?” asked John.

“That our anonymous South American friend in the cape of feathers should have come here. To the Hiram Bingham treasures.”

Mr. Vodyannoy told John that many of the artifacts in the Peabody had been brought to Yale from Machu Picchu, a lost city of the Incas discovered in the Peruvian Andes by Hiram Bingham — who was perhaps the model for Indiana Jones — in 1911. “The Peruvian government has long petitioned Yale for their return. Perhaps our invisible friend has lent his weight to the Peruvian cause.”

“That is one possibility,” admitted Nimrod.

For a few moments, they eavesdropped as a police detective spoke to a bespectacled man wearing a gray suit and a yellow bow tie.

“Can you tell us what’s missing, Professor?” asked the detective.

“Three rather large coins or medals,” said the professor. “Made of solid gold and Incan in origin. And some
khipu.
Incan message cords.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. One of our Incan mummies is missing.”

“You mean like an Egyptian mummy?” asked the detective. “Wrapped in bandages ‘n’ stuff?”

“It wasn’t just the ancient Egyptians who mummified their dead aristocrats, Lieutenant,” said the professor. “A number of pre-Columbian South American civilizations did so, too. Only they didn’t wrap them in bandages. And they didn’t seal them inside pyramids. At least, the Inca didn’t, anyway. They carried their dead kings around with them and got them out for ceremonial occasions. For all intents and purposes, they treated them like they were living people.”

“So what did this mummy look like?”

“Actually, rather ghastly. Like someone who had been dead for a very long time. They were embalmed, of course, but the effect is still somewhat horrific.”

“And who was this mummy, exactly?” asked the police lieutenant.

“I have no idea. Hiram Bingham was more of an explorer than an archaeologist and infuriatingly careless about properly identifying the Incan artifacts he brought here from Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. It could have been anyone, really. That is, any member of the Incan royal family.”

“Interesting,” murmured John.

“What’s that you said?” asked the professor.

“I didn’t say anything, Professor.” The detective shook his head. “Why do you think anyone would want to steal a mummy?”

“I was kind of wondering that myself,” whispered John, and felt Nimrod pull him quickly away as the detective and the professor stared suspiciously at each other.

“You must learn to be silent when you are invisible, John,” hissed Nimrod.

“I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t help it. With all that gold on the floor, a mummy seems like such a weird thing to steal, that’s all.”

“I very much doubt that it has been stolen,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “After all, you can hardly steal something that belongs to you in the first place.”

“You think the mummy belonged to the guy in the feather cape?” asked John. “That it was his own mummified body?”

“I can’t think of a better explanation,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Can you?”

“Which makes it all the more imperative that we try to identify him,” said Nimrod.

“I don’t see how,” argued Mr. Vodyannoy. “You heard that professor. They have no idea who it was.”

“Let me think for a minute,” said Nimrod.

The three invisible djinn stopped in front of a wall-sized photograph of Machu Picchu. John recognized it from a history lesson at school: a lost Incan city on top of an eight-thousand-foot-high plateau in the middle of the Peruvian jungle.

“It can’t be easy to lose a whole city,” said John. “I mean, it’s not like a set of keys, is it? Or ten dollars. A city’s not exactly something you leave lying around. I mean, I bet there were lots of local Peruvian people who knew it was there all along. I bet it was never really lost in the first place. I bet this Hiram Bingham decided to say it was lost just to make himself famous.”

“Bravo,” said Nimrod. “I think there’s a lot of truth in what you say. There is, of course, a proper lost city of the Incas. But Machu Picchu isn’t it. Never was. That was just Hiram Bingham’s wishful thinking.”

“So what’s this other lost city, then?” asked John.

“Paititi,” said Nimrod.

John’s heart skipped a beat. “What did you say it was called?” he asked.

“Paititi,” repeated Nimrod.

For a moment, John’s mind’s eye pictured the heart on the talking board spelling out the word. “Is that P-A-I-T-I-T-I?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Nimrod. “Why? And do try to speak more quietly. I just saw a policeman cross himself.”

“Paititi was the first word that got spelled out on the talking board,” said John.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” After wringing his brain like a sponge for a moment, John added, “I’m sure. There was one other word I was able to distinguish. The language being written. I think it was Mancocapac.”

“Manco Capac?” Nimrod asked.

“Keep your voice down,” said John.

“Did you say Manco Capac?”

“Yes.”

“Manco Capac isn’t a language,” said Mr. Vodyannoy. “Manco Capac is a name. Manco Capac was the founder of the Incan Dynasty in Peru. This is why he is sometimes known as Manco the Great. That was who you summoned in the hall of shadows, John. That was who you saw. It was Manco Capac himself.”