We Dine With Cannibals (16 page)

“Swim!” he called out.

Celia started to follow her brother. She let her head turn to the side to see why Oliver was swimming so hard and Corey Brandt was shouting. They were fast approaching a waterfall.

“Oh crud,” Celia said, except she didn't say
crud
either. Then she and Oliver went right over the edge of the waterfall.

They tumbled head over heels through the air. Sheets of whitewater poured down on top of them as they kicked madly to the surface. They popped up in the calm brown waters of the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.

That wasn't so bad, thought Oliver. Not nearly as bad as the giant waterfall they'd gone over in Tibet. Then he saw the splinters of wood that used
to be their boat and realized that he had missed being smashed onto the rocks by only a few inches. Celia was treading water nearby. He was relieved she was safe, though she had a bloody scrape on her forehead.

“We gotta get out of the water fast,” Oliver told her.

“Caiman?” Celia gulped, suddenly picturing herself as dinner for an alligator-looking creature.

“No,” Oliver said. “But the Amazon is where piranhas live. Everyone knows that!”

Celia shot like a dart to the edge of the pool and practically leaped out of the water. Oliver followed close behind. Just as he was at the water's edge, he saw their backpack snagged on a rock.

“I know what you're thinking, Oliver,” Celia said. “Don't do it.”

But it was too late. Oliver swam through the water and grabbed the backpack off the rocks and then made his way, exhausted, toward shore.

“Ahh!” he shouted, and disappeared below the surface, just a few feet from Celia.

“Oliver!” she screamed.

“It's okay.” Oliver gasped, reappearing. “A twig brushed my leg. I thought it was a piranha.” He
pulled himself out of the water and flopped onto the riverbank. Celia tied her shoe back on quickly.

“Listen,” she said.

“No more drums,” said Oliver.

The brush rustled and Oliver and Celia turned and grabbed on to each other. Corey Brandt came stumbling down toward them.

“I think we're safe!” he called out.

“Shhhhh!” Oliver snapped at him.

The three of them crouched in silence on the riverbank for a while to make sure that the drums were gone.

“Well,” Celia whispered. “Now what?”

“I have an idea,” Corey answered with a smile. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and hit some buttons on it. His smile vanished. “My phone's busted! That was a nice phone!”

“So I guess we're walking,” said Celia.

“Yeah.” Corey Brandt ran his fingers through
his hair. It was somehow perfect again. “Now it's just Corey Brandt versus the wilderness! A real
adventurist
! At least the camera's waterproof.”

He dropped the phone back in his pocket and pulled the camera out. He pointed it at himself and hit record. He wrinkled his brow. He smoothed his hair. He pursed his lips. He unpursed them. He pursed them again. Celia was surprised at the amount of lip work that acting demanded. Satisfied with the degree of lip pursing he had achieved, Corey spoke.

“Having barely survived the uncharted rapids, my crew and I were forced to make our way by land into hostile territory. Will we find the dreaded Cozinheiros—cannibals lurking in the forest? Will they find us first? What has become of our companions? I feel a great responsibility, greater than anything I've felt in all my sixteen years.” He gazed up into the trees, looking serious and thoughtful. He snapped the camera off.

“Cool, huh? I'm gonna get some cutaway shots of the waterfall and the rapids while you guys rest.” He jumped around, filming everything and practicing his dramatic voice, which was deeper and louder than his normal voice.

“I think Corey might be insane,” Oliver whispered to his sister.

“It's Hollywood,” she replied. “That's how celebrities are.” In truth, Celia was worried. She couldn't place it, but something seemed wrong about the teen star. She didn't want to make Oliver
nervous, though. “We'll just have to look out for him,” she added.

“Sure,” said Oliver. “But who's going to look out for us?”

Someone was indeed looking out for them—or rather looking out
at
them. There were a dozen pairs of eyes watching Oliver and Celia from the darkness of the forest, their skillful camouflage rendering them invisible to all but the most careful observer. Their drums were silent. We cannot yet be sure what they intend for our intrepid twins, but we must hope they do not plan to invite our heroes for dinner.

AS A SCIENTIST,
Dr. Ogden Navel could not help but be curious about the nature of the poison that had been shot into him with a dart. As an explorer, he was deeply curious about the painted warriors who had broken into the hotel room and abducted him. But as Oliver and Celia's father, he was terrified. He didn't know what had become of his children, where he was, or why he had been kidnapped.

His head ached, but otherwise he felt fine. He wiggled his fingers. He wiggled his toes. Everything seemed to be working. He also noticed, much to his surprise, that he was not tied up. Nor was he blindfolded. And he was sitting in what appeared to be a plaid armchair in a bland suburban living room.

In his study of the ethnosphere—which is what
an explorer like Dr. Navel would call all the wonderful things that people and cultures have dreamed up since the dawn of civilization, from the Songlines of Australia's Yolngu people to televised celebrity impersonator competitions—Dr. Navel had seen many strange things. He had seen Tendai monks run for a thousand days without breaking a sweat; he had seen a child in Indonesia dance with a black mamba snake; he had seen a sixth-grade classroom. But he had never seen a tribe that kidnapped people and then left them sitting in a plaid armchair. And yet there he was.

The room looked just like the living room he'd grown up in. There was a sofa and a side table. There was a low bookshelf and cabinet for a radio or a television, although it was empty. There was a potted plant. There were two bright windows, the sun slicing through them. The wallpaper was striped, but peeling. The carpeting was brown and moldy, and as his head cleared, Dr. Navel noticed that the room smelled terrible. He saw his glasses sitting on the side table next to him and he slid them on.

As soon as he could see clearly, he noticed that the wallpaper was not striped. Vines were growing
up the walls. The potted plant was not a decorative feature of the room, but rather a small tree that had broken through the floor and was growing inside the house.

A gray howler monkey with a shock of black hair on its head perched on the windowsill, watching him carefully. When Dr. Navel stood, the monkey screeched and ran off. Dr. Navel walked out of the living room to look around. He was in a hallway. Discolored paint showed where pictures had once hung on the walls.

“Hello?” he called. “
Hola
?
Guten Tag
?” He received no response.

Dr. Navel had learned, through a life of travel and awkward dinner conversations, that it was always helpful to know how to say hello in a variety of languages. It was also helpful to know how to say, “Your mother-in-law looks lovely in that dress,” but he didn't think that would be helpful at the moment. He might save it for when he met his captors.

“
Moino
?” he tried, in the Apalai language. “
Pitsupai
?” he tried in a Xingu dialect. Again, he was met with silence.

He wandered down the hallway to an empty
study where the bookshelves had long ago collapsed and rotted, then to a decaying kitchen, where he saw a tree sprouting from a very old refrigerator. The house had clearly been abandoned for a long time.

He found a bedroom at the back of the house. It contained only a rusty metal bed frame, an old steamer trunk, and curtains that had perhaps once been the color of ripe peaches but had been sun baked for so long they looked like the color of overcooked carrots. He opened the trunk. It was filled with Velma Sue's snack cakes, still wrapped in shining plastic and gleaming in unnatural yellows and pinks. He shut the trunk and peered out the window.

He was in the jungle; that much was clear. But this was unlike any jungle he had ever seen. There was a wide street with an overgrown sidewalk, and quaint houses were lined up on both sides of it. Some had collapsed roofs and some of their doors had fallen off their hinges. In the distance, poking over the treetops, he saw a rusty water tower. It was as if someone had taken a nice American suburb and dropped it into the jungle, leaving it to rot. Who would do such a thing?

Bang! Grrr. Bang!

A sudden noise startled him. The noise had come from inside the house, inside this very bedroom.

Bang, bang, bang!

The noise was coming from the closet.

What sort of wild animal could that be? he wondered. A warthog? A panther?

Dr. Navel felt bad for whatever animal was trapped in there. If he were a wild animal, he would be terrified to be stuck in a closet in a suburban housing development.

He reached for the door handle and braced himself. Whatever came out might attack him out of fear, but Dr. Navel never let fear—a jungle creature's or his own—get in the way of curiosity. He could never understand why his children
always
did.

He pulled the door open and leaped to the side to let whatever was in there escape, but nothing ran out. He peered inside and saw what had been making all that noise.

Sir Edmund was curled in a ball in the closet, with his hands and feet tied together and a gag tied in his mouth. He looked up at Dr. Navel in a desperate rage. Dr. Navel bent down and removed the gag.

“Who put you in here?” Dr. Navel demanded. “Where are Oliver and Celia?”

“How should I know? Our captors shot me with a poison dart right after they shot you.” Sir Edmund squirmed. “Will you untie me, Navel? I won't lie here talking to you like a trussed pig.”

“First you'll answer my questions. I know you won't help me once you're free.”

Sir Edmund grunted angrily, but didn't disagree. “My nose itches,” he said.

“Did you see anything before you were knocked out?”

“Our captors wore red and black paint on their bodies. I have heard of a tribe of cannibals that paint themselves like that and attack logging camps. It costs a fortune to replace the workers.”

“Well, maybe logging companies shouldn't be destroying their forest. You do know that it is a sacred land to the people who live in it.”

“Are you really defending them, Navel? For all you know, they might have eaten your children.”

“My children, I am sure, can defend themselves. They have survived worse than cannibals. They have survived you, after all.”

“I never put your children in more danger than you yourself have, so don't start with that. Exploration isn't a game for children, especially children as dull as yours.”

“I will not stand here and have you insult Oliver and Celia. They are brilliant in their own way.”

“Brilliant! Ha! My lizard has more smarts than those two brats combined.”

Dr. Navel started to close the closet door on him again.

“Wait!” Sir Edmund called out. “We've both been betrayed. Powerful forces are trying to stop us. Ancient forces. They are manipulating your children, putting them in grave danger.”

“How do you know that?”

“I
am
one of those forces,” he said. “But I am not the only one. If you untie me, I can explain myself.”

“I'll untie you after you explain yourself.”

“Untie me now, and then I'll explain myself.”

“Explain yourself first.”

“Untie me first!”

“Explain!”

“Untie me!”

“You are … incorrigible!” Dr. Navel threw his hands in the air in frustration. Arguing with this scheming millionaire was like arguing with Oliver and Celia. Especially Celia. And like when he argued with Celia, he never really won. So he bent down to untie the little man. He had to know what Sir Edmund was talking about. He had to save his children from whatever terrible fate lay in store. It was his fault, as usual, that they were in danger.

As he reached for the rope at Sir Edmund's wrists, a voice spoke behind him.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

He turned quickly to face his captor, who was standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the sunlight.

“The children will be here shortly,” she said.

“Oh,” said Dr. Navel. And he passed out where he stood.

“I should have known,” sneered Sir Edmund as the closet door was slammed shut on him once more.