The Maharajah's Monkey (26 page)

“That would make it nearly three hundred years old,” I gasped.

Monkey-Jorge's face glistened with fountain dew. It was an outlandish tale. I looked at the creatre marveling, not really believing. But slowly I began to see something human beneath its white fur. The shape of the nose. Those clever yellow eyes. Its devouring greed. Could any other animal beside a human
want
so terribly?

“Have you heard of Tithon?” Maya murmured.

Tithon. The name rang the faintest of bells. The Greek mortal who had asked for eternal life, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. When his wishes were granted he was condemned to torment, an infinity of endless babbling old age.

“
Be careful what you wish for.”

A refrain started in my head. I don't know if it was Maya or the trees whispering, or even my own conscience. The screeching voice was back too: “
She only told you that monkey story to scare you
,” it said. “
She doesn't want you to have it. She wants to keep it for herself
.”

I looked at the Guardian for a moment, full in the face.

“Do
you
drink from these waters?”

She didn't answer the question.

“How old are you, Maya?”

Her body rippled, as if she was laughing inside. “A hundred? Two hundred? Does it matter?”

She hadn't answered any of my questions. But I realized then, that she didn't need to. Despite the screeching voice in my head, I knew Maya was different. She wasn't like me or you. She truly was special. But I wasn't. I was just me. And you know what? I didn't care. I didn't want, at that moment, to be better, richer, cleverer, or to live forever. I didn't even want to heal my burning scar. A momentary heat, a flash, flamed inside me. My head felt as if it was cracking open, something heavy floating away leaving only wonder and light behind. Then, finally, I understood.

Some blessings are curses in disguise
.

One of the Baker Brothers turned and saw me. A pitted face and a mouth puckered in a sneer.

“You!”

The butterfly took fright and fluttered off.

“Have some. Plenty for all.”

I shook my head.

“Might help you get rid of that scar. You'll never be pretty, granted. But a mark like that'd put anyone off. Never get a husband looking like a navvy, will you?”

“I don't want the water,” I replied steadily. “It's not for me.”

“How very quaint.” The pockmarked Brother gave a
disagreeable smile. “And why is that?”

I struggled for the words. “It won't work,” I said simply. “It's against nature.”

The Brothers sneered.

“Who taught you such an idea? Your hopeless father? Your idiot aunt?”

“Poor child,” muttered the other Brother, as the monkey/Jorge gibbered on his shoulder. “Such dull wits.”

“There will come a day, not so very far off, when you look back on these waters and you will weep over your mistake.”

“Never.”

The Baker Brother turned and spat. It was such a twisted gesture; so wrong in this beautiful place.

“It's the tragedy of youth,” he said. “They have it all in their hands but they don't know how to use it.”

“We will not make that mistake,” said the other. “Not this time.”

“When we see something we want, we take.”

Maya was watching our exchange, not showing by the merest flicker what she thought. Barefoot, in her orange robes, she was still as a tree. There was something about her that seemed to melt into the forest, to disappear into gnarled wood and leave us to our battle.

“In this place, I think, they believe you have to give
things up,” I said. “Not cling on to wealth. That's what wisdom means. A kind of letting go.”

The pockmarked Brother sniggered.

“Out of the mouths of babes,” he said. “Such pocketbook morality.”

The monkey was trying to fill its bottle. The frustration of trying to capture the dancing waters was driving the monkey—or I suppose I should call it Jorge—to lunacy. It held the bottle up to the sun, where it glinted with a thousand rainbow sparks. Empty of all but air. Jorge hurled it away. In a fit of rage, it leapt off the Brother's shoulder and waded into the spring. Its pink tongue arced, long as an adder. Greedily it began to lap at the water. It caught a drop on its curling tongue and the Brothers forgot me and turned to watch.

I was aware of the singing of the brook, the wind in the leaves, the humming of bees, and above it all a horrible, greedy gurgling and belching as the monkey's tongue lashed this way and that, desperately trying to catch the dancing waters. Time hung suspended as we all waited.

The creature before us, this gibbering
thing
, had once been a man. Born three hundred years ago, what times he must have lived through. I gazed at its wizened little face, the yellowish skin surmounted by a ruff of white hair and yes, I could see something human. The forward
thrust of the jaw, the mouth. You could call those things that chittered above decaying teeth
lips
. Above all, its flaring yellow eyes, they were so canny, so clever. From the very first glimpse, they had chilled me.

Now, to my amazement, this thing was transforming from ape to man. The fur was beginning to recede from its face, its eyes to broaden and lengthen, its mouth to become a little fuller. Something human—almost handsome—was under that simian mask.

The monkey stopped and looked down at its hand. It was shedding its fur, patches of pale skin visible. A smile of vengeful glee lit up the creature's face and it threw back its head. Out of its mouth came the most chilling sound, half howl and half exclamation of pure, human joy.

“I've won,” the creature cawed. At least I think that was what it said, for it was not yet fully human.

The Baker Brothers took that as a signal. They too stepped into the waters and began to lap, as hungrily as beasts. It wasn't easy, for the dancing waters did not want to be trapped. They skittered and glinted, fleeing from their reptilian tongues. It was a truly awful sight, the naked hunger in the Brothers' eyes. It was too much for me. However evil these men, I could not stand by and watch them condemn themselves to an eternal torment.

“NO!” I shouted, stepping forward and taking one of
the Brothers by the shoulder. “Don't.”

He ignored me and sticking his head deeper into the spring, guzzled. Water dripped out of his mouth and down his chin. The Brothers took no notice at all of the trees watching them. Of the indrawn breath, of the disapproving stillness, which I heard as plainly as the loudest roars. They were immune. They had what they wanted. Aunt Hilda had been wrong. There was something these men wanted even more than gold.
Immortality.
Now, they'd achieved their hearts' desire.

The skin was tautening on the cursed Baker's face, the pocks disappearing. For a moment I felt a pang, I too could be remade in a better image. My scar healed. I could be a new and pleasing Kit; all smiles and soft edges, without those quirks that made Waldo tease me. But it was an impulse that quickly vanished as I watched the grasping folly before me.

Baker gazed upon Baker. They looked at each other and saw what I did.

Two pale young men. Clothed in new flesh, the shining glory of their prime. It was as if someone had taken a knife, cut the loose skin off their faces, and then pulled it taut. Pockmarks, pimples, rough skin, imperfection of all sorts, had been flamed away. They had been pulled, stretched and reshaped into Greek gods.

The Brothers didn't smile, just looked upon each
other with a terrible, greedy intent. And the monkey, too, was fully transformed. He prowled the glade, a handsome olive-skinned man, with strong black brows and an arrogant nose.

“Come,” Maya said. “It is time to go home.”

She melted into the trees; I followed her as if pulled by a magnet.

Before I went I could not resist turning to deliver a last, parting shot.

“It won't last,” I called to the men in the glade. “When you leave it will turn to dust.”

I had a vision of panicked eyes.

“Piffle!” a Brother called. “We will drink to your health in London.”

“Have no fear,” the other sneered, his plump top lip curling. “We intend to cure you once and for all of your childish fancies.”

Their threats, meant to gash, to terrify, glanced off me. Did they not realize the waters only worked while they remained here in Shambala? For such worldly men they faced a terrible choice: to remain in this simple paradise, bereft of silks and cognac. Or to return to their luxurious world and watch, second by second, their phantom youth melt away. I followed Maya into the murmuring trees. Their branches folded about me, shutting off the noise made by Jorge and the Brothers. It felt
good, here in the forest. As tendrils of leaf and vine crept into my vision, soothing me with their antique wisdom, I felt sure I had made the right choice.

I would never look back and regret what might have been. Far better to be Kit Salter, with all her flaws, than a creature whose beauty was a fleeting mask and whose very soul was condemned.

We had traveled so far and we came back empty-handed. We had found no gold, or precious relics, as Aunt Hilda so desperately wanted. Even the diamond-studded turban that the Maharajah had given Waldo had been lost in the cruel mountains. Only my father still had Father Monserrate's manuscript, precious to him, if worth little to the rest of the world. By any normal reckoning our voyage to India had been a failure. Worse than a failure, a tragedy, if you reflect on Monsieur Champlon. Poor Gaston. The proud, brave Frenchman had saved Aunt Hilda from the avalanche, only to pay with his own life. For a while we had hoped that by some miracle he would be found. Alas, thus far, we had no word at all of his fate.

And yet.

I could not call our journey to India, and my dreamlike voyage to Shambala itself, a total failure. I felt I had
learned so much. Maddeningly, it is hard for me to put into words exactly what. I had been touched by the generosity of the people I met. Come through pain and fear. Most of all, in the mountains, I had learned that sometimes to let go is as important as to take. That to not want may be better than wanting too much. Achieving your heart's desire may just show how empty your desire was.

My journey out of Shambala was even mistier in my mind than my journey into that fabled land. The Guardians had spirited me out, through the passage in the mountains, through the ice and snow, to be reunited with Aunt Hilda and the others, just inside the Indian border. I thought that days, if not weeks must have passed, but it seems my sojourn in the mountains had taken a matter of hours. Afterward I would have thought it all a dream, except for one thing, a swirl of vivid orange cotton which I had torn from Maya's dress as we said goodbye.

I have the cloth still. I keep it in a carved Indian sandalwood box by my bedside. It is the only remembrance I have of Shambala.

As for the Bakers, the Maharajah and the abominable monkey man, Jorge, well, for many weeks we had no news. Then, Aunt Hilda was invited to a party, graced by Florence Nightingale and the Prince of Wales. The
reclusive Baker Brothers were there, in the Prince's party. Aunt Hilda was stunned by the change in them. Their skin was youthful. Their ghostly aura replaced by blooming health. They were almost handsome, my aunt reported. She overheard the Prince joking about how they had been “taking the miracle cure at Baden Baden.” The rumors of the men cursed by “mummy bite” were triumphantly dispelled. But a clumsy waiter had spilled a little wine on one of the Brothers glove and Aunt Hilda caught a glimpse of the hand underneath.

What she saw truly appalled her. It was not a hand but a claw. Wrinkled, wizened the thing resembled a monkey's paw more than anything human.

Truly, their blessing will come to haunt them
.

Aunt Hilda was devastated by the loss of Champlon. She is not one, however, to wallow in grief. Nor is she one to acknowledge failure. A few weeks after we returned to Oxford, on a particularly wet and windy afternoon, Aunt Hilda bustled into our parlor. She had, she announced, some stupendous news. The Royal Geographic Society was to award her a medal! In the following edition of their journal she was to publish an article about how she, Hilda Salter, had become the first ever explorer to penetrate into Tibet's forbidden land. Proudly, she showed us a copy of the article. The headline read:

I
NDOMITABLE
E
XPLORER ON THE
R
OOF OF THE
W
ORLD
H
ILDA
S
ALTER
R
EVEALS
S
ECRETS OF THE
L
AND OF THE
Y
ETI

This was picked up by
The Times
, and the
Morning Post
, both of which printed articles about her—so at least my aunt had found the one thing that mattered even more to her than gold in the Himalayas—fame! In sotto voce, Aunt Hilda confided to us that she expected a summons any day from the Queen. Yes, that is right, an audience with Queen Victoria herself!

As for my father, you will be pleased to hear he recovered from Delhi Belly and vowed never to travel again. I take it as seriously as all his promises. Which is to say, not seriously at all, for he will surely forget his pledge as soon as the words have left his mouth.

Poor Waldo, with the loss of his finger, was the one who suffered most. For many weeks it seemed he would never shoot again and sad to say, his handwriting deteriorated appallingly. Then one day Isaac appeared sporting a big grin and the most amazing news. He had made Waldo an artificial finger. My friend tried it on and it soon began to feel just like a real one. If anything, I believe it has improved his (always erratic) shooting.

I will leave you with that piece of happy news and the even happier outcome that Miss Minchin remained in Baroda, ensconced in luxury in the Maharajah's palace. I expect wedding bells any day now.