Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (26 page)

The horrible screech had given me new strength. I trudged on as snow fell lightly from the gray sky. I was above the tree line now and there wasn’t much snow on the ground yet, but it was still cold as I hiked along the narrow shale trail. I had to say I was happy to at least have the screeching monkeys gone. What was strange was just how fast the temperature was falling. I kept walking and within fifteen minutes the ground was already covered in light drifts of snow. Fifteen minutes after that, it was dark and absolutely freezing. Night had fallen, but the moon reflected off the snow drifts. I wheezed. The higher I got up into the mountains, the harder it was to breathe. It was the thinner air at higher altitudes. The higher you go up, the less oxygen there is. We had learned about it in science, but I had never really given it much thought until now. Every step I took felt heavier and heavier, but I knew I had to go on.
 

The path narrowed and steepened. I reached what looked like the end of it. A rock landslide had come down from the cliff above. I carefully crossed the landslide, slipping on the flat, loose rocks. Then I reached another gap in the trail. There was nothing below but a giant rock crevice. I could barely see, but that was probably a good thing given my vertigo. I took a running leap across. I felt my toes hit solid ground, but nothing below my heels at all as I scampered up the slope. Luckily, I just made it, shale and stone falling into the crevice behind me. Maybe the old elephant god was looking out for me after all.

That was a close one, I thought. I hiked on, my mind randomly wandering. I thought about my mother. I thought about my friends and my school back home. I wondered if my mom would ever find me if I went missing in these mountains. After all, Zak had a lousy sense of direction. I doubted he’d even be able to tell them which way I went. I wondered about other stuff too. Would I get a picture of the Ghost Leopard? Would I be able to protect it? Was Amala really a ghost? I wondered about all these things until I found myself on a snowy ridge. The wind whipped down from the surrounding peaks, moonlight reflecting off the crystals in the snow. In the distance, I saw a low-lying shale hut.

By the time I reached the hut, I was unsure if I could go on. The lack of sleep had finally caught up with me. I would see if anybody was there. Maybe they would let me rest, if only for just a little while. I poked my head into the low doorway of the hut. It was more of a shelter really. There was no door, just a hole in the stones. There was enough moonlight to see that there was some straw on the floor, but not much else. I put a hand on the rocks to maintain my balance. I felt dizzy in the thin air. I heard a noise, or at least I thought I did. Maybe it was only the howling wind. I knew I needed to rest to get used to the altitude. There just wasn’t enough oxygen up here. Despite my best intentions I felt my thoughts slipping back to what seemed like a lifetime ago.
 

I imagined I was back in the sunny flooded street talking to Zak. “This Indian Ghost Leopard is a myth. It's make believe,” I said.

“It’s never had its picture taken,” Zak replied.

The flooded street in my head transformed into the misty ledge below the waterfall. I watched in horror as Amala was strangled by the bhagwan's tail.

“Promise me. Promise me you’ll protect the Leopard,” Amala said.

“I promise.”

I shook myself awake and shone my newly acquired flashlight into the hut. The hut was empty except for some straw. Whoever had lived here had probably gone farther down the mountain because of the cold weather. I knew one thing. If I didn’t rest, I wouldn’t make it. I removed my backpack and bent low to enter the shelter. At least I was out of the wind. I lay down in the straw and wrapped myself in my new woolen blankets. I would rest for a few hours, I told myself. Then I would hike on.

I dreamt that the Ghost Leopard padded around the hut that night. It was huge and its coat was white and thick, but it had no spots, which was unusual for a leopard I guess. I wasn’t able to see all of it. I could see it through the cracks in the hut, but only a small bit of it at a time. But even though it was large and powerful, the Leopard didn’t scare me. Instead, it made me feel safe. I felt like the Leopard was there to protect me and, for that reason, I lay back down and closed my eyes, sleeping soundly. The dream went on like that, the Leopard standing guard while I slept in the straw. It was such a pleasant, comforting dream, that I almost didn’t wake up.

It was the man’s voice that finally woke me. “Search the hut,” the deep voice said.
 

I cracked an eyelid, daylight sneaking in through the cracks between the stone. Heavy footsteps crunched on the snow. I shook my head in case I was dreaming, but no such luck. Somebody was coming. I searched frantically for an escape, my eyes darting around the tiny hut. There was only one way in and one way out and the footsteps were getting closer. Unable to escape, I figured the next best thing was to hide. I clawed at the straw, covering myself and my backpack up. I reached for the frying pan strapped to the back of my pack. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all I had. I peered through the musty straw, hidden, but ready to run if I had to. The footsteps were right outside now. A shadow was cast across the doorway.

It was worse than I thought. The shadow was huge. A dark, hooded man hunched through the opening. I didn’t know what to do, but I was pretty sure that if I was going to have any chance, I'd need to surprise him. I had already seen the way Rhino Butt fought on the roof of the bus. I wasn’t going to get out of this one by playing fair.

“Who’s there?” the deep voice said.

I didn’t know if I had been seen or not, but I leapt forward anyway, swinging the frying pan at him. I was aiming for his head, but he turned and I got his shoulder instead.

“Ow!!!”

I pushed my way through the low opening into the sunlight. I lifted the frying pan again, debating whether to run or to strike. It would be freezing cold without my things.

“Zoe!”

I hated that this freak knew my name. It was enough that he was trying to kill me. Did he have to talk to me like he knew me?
 

“I knew you were mad, but I didn’t think you were crazy.”

I thought I recognized the voice. I carefully peered back into the hut as the guy removed his scarf. Crud. It was Zak.

“I hike all night and that’s my greeting?”

Grasping his sore shoulder, Zak crawled out of the hut.

“Luckily you got the side the arrow didn’t,” Zak said.

For the first time, I relaxed enough to take in my surroundings. The ground was covered in fresh snow, the crooked spire of Tendua Tibba reaching high above the other mountains.

“Why were you talking like that?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“With your voice all deep like you swallowed a rock.”

“I don’t know. I was playing around. I was bored. You know how long I’ve been hiking?”

Of course I knew how long he’d been hiking. I’d just done it myself. “What happened to coming up here being too dangerous?” I said.

“It’s still too dangerous.”

“So what are you doing here then?”

“Well, I thought about it. I might hate boiling monkeys, but there’s no way I was going to let you do something this scary all by yourself.”

I couldn’t believe it. For a moment there, I almost felt like Zak cared. He had actually turned around and come up the mountain after me. Zak looked away from me. I didn’t know what he was looking at, but his voice was softer now. It was like he was feeling shy or embarrassed. I had never seen him like that before, so I couldn’t be sure, but I think that was it. I guess climbing up the mountain had given him time to think.

“You know, Zoe,” Zak said. “Sometimes I act all tough and stuff, but I’m pretty scared too.”

“I know,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “How can you tell?”

“Your lip,” I said. “You bite the bottom of it when you start to get freaked out.”

“I do not.”

“You do. The bottom of your lip is all red. I can tell you were doing it just now.”

Zak felt the bottom of his lip. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I didn’t know I did that.” He fidgeted uncomfortably. “I know it’s my fault you’re here, Zoe. We would never have gotten stuck in that trunk if I hadn’t made such a big deal about going to Rhino Butt’s hotel room in the first place. Then, once we got off the plane, I thought, we were there anyhow, so why not explore? I didn’t mean for everything to turn out like this.”

“Don't sweat it,” I said. “I didn’t want to show it, but I was kind of into getting a picture of the Leopard just like you were.”
 

 
“You know the only guaranteed thing we're going to find up that mountain is a really mean guy with a bow and arrow,” Zak said.

“Don’t forget the hairy back,” I said.

“Or the creepy tail,” Zak added.

“Especially the creepy tail,” I said.

Neither of us said anything for a long moment. “So we’re cool?” Zak asked hopefully.

I thought about messing with him, but didn’t. It just didn’t feel like the right time. “We’re cool,” I said.

Zak smiled. There wasn’t a lot left to say so we bumped fists. It was sunny and bright outside as we glanced upwards at Tendua Tibba, the clouds blowing past its jagged snowy peak. We admired it for a minute before Zak turned away. Then he looked back at me. His expression had changed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Look.”

I stared up at Tendua Tibba. It was the closet I'd ever been to a giant mountain and it was the most majestic thing I had ever seen.

“I know,” I said. “It’s awesome. Really awesome.”

“Not there. Here.”
 

Zak pointed down. A red and gold carpet laid outside the door of the hut like a doormat. I recognized it as the carpet from Mukta's hut. I had no idea how it had gotten there, but it was there, looking kind of strange out in the middle of nowhere. But it wasn’t the only thing that was there. There were paw prints. Large, cat-like paw prints, each as big as a basketball, littered the ground before trailing off across the snow toward the base of Tendua Tibba. I was stopped cold.
 

I didn’t know if my dream had been real, or if some other animal with giant feet had been out crawling around in the snow, but there was only one way to find out. Zak and I followed the paw prints. It turned out though, that distances were hard to gauge in the mountains. Tendua Tibba that had looked so close that morning had only looked that way because of its huge size. It took us hours just to get to its base. Zak tried the magic carpet out to hurry things along. He sat on it. He asked it to move. He even asked me to ask it to move. But the carpet wouldn’t do anything. It might have flown for Mukta, but it wouldn’t even float for us, so Zak refastened it to my backpack and we were forced to hike up the mountain the old-fashioned way — with our legs. It went on like that all day and then, just before the sun went down, we came upon a spotted lizard basking on a rock, with its butt in the air and its green back in a high arch.

“Is that Downward-Facing Dog?” I asked.

“As in the lizard after Lord of the Fishes? The one that was yet to come?”

“It would make sense. That lizard has a pretty intense arch to its back.”

Zak and I shared an uncertain look. “Nah,” we both said together.

I snapped a shot of the lizard as it posed there, back arched, on the rock. I didn’t bother trying to figure out how it had gotten there, or why a cold-blooded lizard hadn’t frozen to death on a rock in the middle of a snow field. Too many weird things had happened since we’d been in mountains for me to concern myself with those little details. I did notice, however, that as we walked past it, the lizard winked at me, which might not have been so strange if the paw prints behind us didn’t start to magically disappear, one by one, as we hiked up the mountain.

It got darker and darker and then it was night. This was it. The night of the full moon. The one night in a hundred years that the Ghost Leopard would get its body back. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but it would soon, I could feel it. Our journey had changed from hiking to straight-up climbing. The wind blew ferociously as we scaled the icy rock wall in the darkness. I would have liked to have rested, but there was no time. We chewed on what was left of the cookies I had brought with me as we climbed. Though it would have been nice, I hadn’t had time to make eggs or rice. If there was one thing I could have changed about this trip, besides, you know, boiling monkeys and freaky tail-guy, it would have to have been the cookies. Two or three cookies, yum; two or three hundred cookies, and I guarantee you’ll want to barf. I swallowed what was left of my semi-dry cookie and focused on climbing. If anything was going to happen, if we were going to see the Ghost Leopard, it would happen tonight. We had to be ready. Hyperventilating, I caught my breath on a mountain ledge and took out my camera. I marveled at just how well the waterproof casing had protected it before firing off a long line of shots of the mountain peaks below.

“Come on,”Zak said. “We’re not there yet.”

Zak found a crack in the wall and pulled himself up to the next level, extending his hand down to me. I guess his arm was feeling better, because he was really going. I took his hand and we continued to climb. I had wool gloves which were great because they stuck to the ice, but my fingers were still starting to get cold. Even though I felt much better than I had the night before, I still noticed that every foot I pulled myself up the mountainside, I felt heavier and heavier. Mountain climbing at these heights was like running in water. Even though I pushed myself as hard as I could, the going was slow. But we were getting there, I could see it. Bit by bit we were climbing Tendua Tibba’s crooked peak.

We kept climbing, Zak leading the way, me following, until I was pretty sure I couldn’t go any farther. I guess altitude affects everyone differently. I had been able to run faster after the bus, but up here, Zak was the better climber. But only a bit better, he looked really tired too. It didn’t matter. We pushed on, and on, and on. At some point, I don’t know when, I stopped thinking about whether we would ever get to the top. The thing was that right about then, right around when I stopped thinking about it, was when we got there. Heaving upward together, we found ourselves atop a mountain plateau, a white strip of cloth flying from a lone bamboo pole. I rolled over onto my back on the windswept rock, gulping in the thin air. It felt like I was getting no oxygen at all.