We Dine With Cannibals
Read We Dine With Cannibals Online
Authors: C. Alexander London
Also by C. Alexander London
W
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ATEN
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C. ALEXANDER LONDON
With art by JONNY DUDDLE
PHILOMEL BOOKS
AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
To my sister, who first
made books come alive for me,
and to whoever does it for you.
PHILOMEL BOOKS
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Text copyright © 2011 by C. Alexander London. Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Jonny Duddle.
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Published simultaneously in Canada. Printed in the United States of America.
Edited by Jill Santopolo. Design by Semadar Megged. Text set in 11-point Trump Medieval.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
London, C. Alexander. We dine with cannibals / C. Alexander London. p. cm.â(An accidental
adventure) Summary: All eleven-year-old twins Oliver and Celia Navel want to do is watch television,
but their explorer father takes them in search of El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold, and their long-lost
mother. [1. Adventure and adventurersâFiction. 2. ExplorersâFiction. 3. Brothers and sistersâFiction.
4. TwinsâFiction. 5. TelevisionâFiction. 6. Indigenous peoplesâFiction. 7. Rain forestsâFiction.
8. Amazon River RegionâFiction.] I. Title. PZ7.L8419Wg 2011 [Fic]âdc22 2010041993
EISBN: 9781101577356
1Â Â Â 3Â Â Â 5Â Â Â 7Â Â Â 9Â Â Â 10Â Â Â 8Â Â Â 6Â Â Â 4Â Â Â 2
2.  WE CAN'T EVER GET WHAT WE WANT
9.  WE ARE DISAPPOINTED WITH DAD
13.  WE WOULD RATHER FACE LIONS
14.  WE AWAIT OUR PUNISHMENT
15.  WE ARE RECEIVING VISITORS
17.  WE ARE A LONG WAY FROM HOLLYWOOD
18.  WE OOO-LA-LA AND BLAH-BLAH-BLAH
20.  WE DO NOT HEAR PEACE DRUMS
22.  WE ADMIRE THE FURNITURE
23.  WE ALWAYS WEAR UNDERWEAR
24.  WE ARE NOT MONKEYING AROUND
26.  WE GET WHERE WE WERE GOING
27.  WE WOULD PREFER GREG ANGSTURA
28.  WE ARE DOOMED, AS USUAL
29.  WE UPSET SOME OTHER CHICKENS
34.  WE TRY A DIFFERENT TRICK
39.  WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT PLAY-DOH
40.  WE LOSE A FRIEND AND GAIN A FRIEND
“I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any nine other men I know ⦠if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so.”
âPRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
in a letter to Frank Chapman, ornithologist
WE ARE NOT EXPLORERS
CELIA NAVEL CLUTCHED
the rope as if her life depended on it, although
her
life did not depend on it.
Her brother's did.
Even though she could no longer see him, Celia knew that her twin brother, Oliver, was hanging by his belt loops at the other end of her rope inside a deep, dark chimney that stuck out of the ground. The opening was overgrown with weeds, and the chimney looked like the top of carrot. Celia did not like carrots. In fact, Celia did not like vegetables of any kind.
Celia squeezed the rope so hard that her hands turned red and her knuckles ached. She hoped Oliver wasn't bumping into the walls. There could be bats. Oliver did not like bats. In fact, Oliver hated bats.
Celia leaned back, using all her weight to keep the rope from slipping, and she let it out slowly, hand over hand. Every time she moved her feet, the stone ledge crumbled a little more beneath her. She tried to remember what she had learned from the latest episodes of
The Celebrity Adventurist,
starring teen heartthrob Corey Brandt.
Corey Brandt's First Rule of Mountaineering:
Don't let go of the rope.
Corey Brandt's Second Rule of Mountaineering:
Really, don't let go of the rope.
Great, thought Celia. Now all I can think about is letting go of the rope.
The moon shifted behind high mountain peaks, casting strange shadows among the ruins that surrounded her. She squeezed tighter and continued lowering her brother.
The ledge on which she stood, and the chimney into which her brother was sliding, were part of a temple in the ruins of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. The ruins contained old stone houses where no one lived anymore and grand temples where no one prayed anymore and hundreds of steps, towers, and terraces
where no one did whatever people used to do on steps, towers, and terraces. During the day, it was a popular tourist spot.
Oliver and Celia, however, were not tourists. Tourists did not come to the abandoned city in the middle of the night. Tourists did not dress all in black. And tourists did not slide down overgrown chimneys into the ruins.
If we can call Oliver and Celia Navel anything other than Oliver and Celia Navel, we would have to call them explorers, though please don't tell them. They'd rather be called just about anything except explorers. They'd rather be called couch potatoes or dullards or dimwits or even tourists. Just not explorers.
Their parents are explorers. Most of the adults they know are explorers. They live on the 4½th floor of the Explorers Club in New York City. Explorers, they had learned through countless hardships and misadventures, were nothing but trouble. The kind of trouble Oliver was in right now, in fact.
As his sister lowered him down the narrow shaft, Oliver heard the snap of threads in his belt loops. He hoped they wouldn't rip before he reached the floor. Oliver was an expert rope tier, thanks to the Saturday morning survival classes their parents had made the twins take. For every knot they learned how to tie, they were allowed to watch a half hour of cartoons. They quickly learned over a hundred knots and never missed a Saturday morning cartoon again.
