We Sled With Dragons (4 page)

“Agreed,” said Oliver. “Now, gimme the remote.”

“
Celebrity Fashion Crimes
isn't over yet.”

“But you just said we could use the remote to help Mom and Dad.”

“After
Celebrity Fashion Crimes.
”

“No,” Oliver whined.

“Just a minute!”

“Come on!” Oliver dove for the remote and Celia tried to pull it away.

“No!” she yelled as he tugged at it and she tugged back. They pulled and twisted and wrestled and pushed over the remote control while Dennis and Beverly watched from Ernest's back.

“Give it!” grunted Oliver.

“You'll break it!” grunted Celia.

“Will not!”

“Will too!”

“Will—oh.” Oliver stopped struggling and Celia snatched the remote back from him. She followed his eyes to the TV screen and saw that they were no longer watching
Celebrity Fashion Crimes.

Instead, they were looking at an entry in the catalog of the Lost Library of Alexandria.

“The Life and Voyages of Saint Nicholas of Myra,”
Celia read aloud. “Fourth century AD, three scrolls in his own hand.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” said Oliver.

“It means that the library had three scrolls written by Saint Nicholas of Myra in the fourth century.”

“When was that?”

“A long time ago.”

“Where's Myra?”

“Beats me.”

“Who was Saint Nicholas?”

Celia shrugged.

“Is he, like, Santa Claus?”

Celia looked sideways at her brother.

“You know,” said Oliver. “Like Old Saint Nick?”

“Don't be such a baby,” said Celia. “There's no such thing as Santa Claus.”

“How would you know?” said Oliver.

“Because,” said Celia, “I'm older.”

“We're twins!”

“I'm still older.”

“By three minutes!”

“And forty-two seconds,” she added. “Anyway, what would Santa Claus have to do with the Lost Library?”

That one stumped Oliver.

“See?” said Celia. “He's not real.”

“He could be real,” Oliver grumbled.

“Could not,” said Celia.

“Could too,” said Oliver.

“Could not.”

“Could too.”

Although their argument was of the utmost seriousness, Oliver and Celia actually quite enjoyed arguing with each other and could have happily debated the existence of Santa Claus for hours, if, at that moment, their parents, Professor Rasmali-Greenberg, Patrick the monkey, and the real Corey Brandt had not burst through the door, out of breath.

“Oliver, Celia!” Their father rushed across the room. “We've got to go, right now!”

“But we were just about to—” Oliver had just pointed back at the screen when he heard the unmistakable shouts of an angry mob growing nearer. Explorers—and the children of explorers—learn from a very young age what the shouts of an angry mob sound like—a bit like the ocean in a seashell, a bit like a handful of forks tossed into a blender.

In this case, a very big blender and a whole lot of forks.

“HEY GUYS.” COREY
nodded at Oliver and Celia as he slammed the door behind him and leaned against it. He had a bruise next to his left eye, just to the side of his teardrop freckle, and his perfect hair was long and greasy and not at all perfect. His clothes were tattered. “I guess I'm doing a whole, like, retro-grunge look, huh?” He smiled widely.

“So retro,” Celia said, not really knowing what he meant but liking the way he smiled when he said it.

Oliver rolled his eyes, but Celia elbowed him in the side. Corey gave Oliver a high-five, which he happily accepted.

“So, did the pirates torture you?” Oliver asked.

“Only on the first day.” Corey shrugged. “An argument broke out about the series finale of
Sunset High
and, well, they settled it with fists. Team Annabel and Team Lauren took out their disagreements on my face. Who knew that pirates cared so much about romance? But after that was settled, they were pretty decent. My hand got sore from signing autographs and scrubbing floors, but otherwise—”

“There's no time!” Dr. Navel cut him off and pulled Ernest up from the bed.

“Mrrrmmm,” Ernest groaned.

“We're not, like, taking him with us, are we?” Corey asked.

“We made a promise,” said Dr. Navel.

“We'll turn him over to the authorities once we've escaped the angry mob,” said their mother.

“Bwak!” squawked Dennis.

“So, uh, why is there an angry mob chasing you?” Oliver wondered.

“You don't need to say angry mob,” said Celia. “You can just say mob. All mobs are angry.”

“Whatever,” said Oliver. “Why is there a mob after you?”

“The rescue didn't go all that smoothly,” their mother explained. “Patrick snuck into the pirate stronghold and located Corey Brandt, just like he was supposed to.”

The monkey clapped for himself.

“The pirates were running around, packing things up to leave,” their mother continued. “Bonnie was furious that the professor had escaped and she was preparing a search party to go after him.”

“She imagined that I would fetch a nice ransom.” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg smiled. “As president of the Explorers Club, I do have many wealthy friends. The royal family of Monaco attended my last birthday party.”

“Uh-huh.” Oliver and Celia shrugged, unimpressed.

“Anyway,” said their mother. “To make a long story short—”

“Too late,” said the twins in unison.

“The professor created a distraction while your father and I took Corey.”

“They kept me chained to a post outside!” the teenager added. “Check out my tan! And my scorpion bites!”

He seemed pretty excited about his tan and his scorpion bites. Celia was afraid he'd gone crazy, but it was very hard to tell with celebrities, and even harder to tell with teenage boys.

“Anyway, we were making our way out of the camp when—,” their mother said.

“There's a window back here.” Dr. Navel ran in from the bathroom. “We can climb out that way and escape the angry mob.”

“You don't need to say angry,” repeated Celia.

“Honey,” said their mother, smiling way too politely, “I am trying to tell the story about why the mob is chasing us in the first place.”

“But honey,” Dr. Navel said, smiling back, “the mob is going to tear us apart any minute.”

“Yes, honey.” Claire smiled back at her husband. “Don't you think the kids would like to know
why
the mob is going to tear them apart?”

“I don't think they do, darling,” said Dr. Navel. “I think they'd prefer to escape without being torn apart.”

“But it's a really good story, sweetheart,” she answered him.

“I am sure they'd love to hear it later, dear.”

“It won't be as interesting later, dear.”

“I think it will be interesting later, dear.”

“I think it won't.”

“It will.”

“It won't.”

“It will.”

“It won't.”

“It will—oh, never mind.” Dr. Navel threw his hands in the air. “Finish the story then. If we're still alive when this mob of goat herders tears us limb from limb, then we'll make our escape.”

“Ogden!” Claire Navel shook her head. “You just ruined the end of the story. The goat herders were the best part. Now I don't even want to tell it.”

Just then, a large bottle with a flaming rag sticking out the top of it smashed through the window and crashed into the television, where it burst into flames.

Outside, the mob roared.

“They seem really angry,” said Oliver. “I think we can go back to calling them an angry mob.”

“Yeah,” agreed Celia as she shoved the remote control back into their backpack and handed it to her brother, who put it on without complaint as the wall behind the television caught fire. “Now, can we please make our escape?”

Her parents nodded. There was no arguing with an angry mob, a wall of fire, or Celia Navel.

ONE BY ONE,
the band of explorers, tweens, the celebrity, the imprisoned celebrity impersonator, and the odd assortment of animals squeezed through the tiny bathroom window at the back of the hotel. Clouds of black smoke belched out around them.

One by one, they landed, coughing, in a dusty alleyway. Corey shoved Ernest, still tied up, ahead of him out the window, so his impersonator landed face first on the ground with a thump. Beverly scurried out along the wall, Patrick jumped, and Dennis flapped his useless wings, dropping through the air in a flurry of smoke and feathers.

Lastly, Professor Rasmali-Greenberg squeezed his considerable bulk through the small opening, dropped to the ground, stumbled, dusted himself off, and smiled.

“So,” he said. “Shall we hail a taxi?”

“I think, like, we better just run for it,” Corey suggested. “That mob is A-N-G-R-Y.”

Celia narrowed her eyes at him but didn't say anything.

“We can't go that way.” She pointed toward the far end of the alley, where a few stragglers from the angry mob passed by. Everyone ducked behind some old crates. Dr. Navel peeked his head out to check if they had been noticed.

“Why did you guys make all these goat herders so angry?” Oliver whispered.

“It wasn't on purpose,” Corey whispered back. “The professor tried to create a distraction by letting loose a herd of goats. The goat herder got angry and started shouting. The pirates weren't far behind us, so we had to borrow the goat herder's pickup truck.”

“You
stole
it?”

“Borrowed,” Corey said. “We were being chased by angry pirates and an angry goat herder. Anyway, it turned out that the truck belonged to the goat herder's brother, who also started chasing us, and he has a lot of sons, so they joined in, and pretty soon, they ran into the pirates. Pirates and goat herders don't usually get along. The goat herders make an honest living and the pirates kidnap people. So they started fighting. That's when your father made a wrong turn—”

“Shh,” Dr. Navel called. “Someone's coming!”

They fell silent and waited as a few stray goats ambled past the alley, joining their herders in the mob.

“Anyway,” Corey whispered. “After your father turned down the wrong road, we decided we needed to take a shortcut to get back to the city, so there was this field where another herd of goats were grazing. We had no choice but to cut across it, which upset those goats and those goat herders, so they joined the chase—”

“Guys,” said Celia.

“Well,” Corey continued, “they started calling everyone they knew—it turns out they all have cell phones—and pretty soon there was an entire mob of angry goat herders after us.”

“What happened to the pirates?” Oliver wondered.

“Guys?” said Celia.

“I don't know what happened to the pirates,” said Corey. “I guess the goat herders took care of them.”

“They didn't!” yelled Celia.

Everyone turned to look at her and then to look at the other end of the alley behind them, where she was pointing.

There stood Bonnie with five more of her pirate goons, blocking their way out.

“How nice to see you all again,” Bonnie sneered.

“Aha!” someone yelled from the other end of the alley. Oliver and Celia spun around to see the goat herders gathering at that end, filing into the narrow space next to the burning hotel. The angry goat herders were wielding clubs and machetes and sticks. So were the pirates.

“Now what?” Oliver groaned, seeing that they were trapped between two armed groups and a burning building.

Celia found herself wondering what the other sixth graders at her school were up to at the moment. She would have happily traded places with any of them, even if they were taking a test or giving a report or climbing a rope in gym class.

She stopped herself. That was crazy thinking. Nothing could be worse than climbing a rope in gym class.

“This way,” a voice called to them from the roof on the building on the other side of the alley. A rope dropped down next to them.

In storytelling, there is a trick some writers use called
deus ex machina.
It is a Latin phrase that means “a god from the machine,” and writers use it to get characters out of impossible situations by bringing in a new character or idea that comes from nowhere and saves the day. In ancient plays, the writer would actually have a god lowered onto the stage by a crane to solve all the characters' problems. The god actually came from the machine.

At this moment, the closest the Navels had to their own
deus ex machina
was a boy about Oliver and Celia's age, who was standing above them on the opposite rooftop holding onto a rope. He was dressed in rags, his skin dark against the bright blue sky, and he had three thick scars in straight lines across his forehead.

“Oh man,” Celia whined, staring at the rope.

“Scarification,” Dr. Navel whispered, staring at the boy. “The marks of maturity in the Dinka tribe of Sudan.”

“The what tribe?” Oliver wondered.

“The Dinka are a Nilotic cow-herding people of the Bahr al-Ghazal region,” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg said.

“No-what-ic cow people of where?” Oliver wondered.

“The Bahr al-Ghazal is in south Sudan,” the professor answered. “It is largely inhabited by—”

“Can we skip the educational programming and get out of here?” Celia pleaded.

“Hurry!” the boy on the roof called down.

“Just like gym class,” Celia muttered as she grabbed onto the rope. More ropes dropped down and two more boys appeared next to them, smiling.

“This is the worst,” Oliver groaned as he started hauling himself up, hand over hand, beside his sister.

“Use your legs more and your arms won't get tired,” Celia told him.

“So you're a gym teacher now?” he muttered.

“Fine, do it your way, but when your arms turn into floppy noodles and you fall back into the alley and the angry goat herders tear you limb from limb, don't whine to me about it.”

“I won't,” said Oliver.

“Good,” said Celia.

“Whatever,” said Oliver.

Beverly scurried up the wall as Patrick raced ahead of the twins. The adults grabbed on and started climbing.

Corey climbed up after the Navels with Dennis clucking and gripping his hair.

“Ow, stop scratching me!” Corey complained.

Professor Rasmali-Greenberg lashed a rope around Ernest's ankles and then made his way up the ropes himself, grunting and pouring sweat.

“Ooph, ooph,” grunted Ernest as the boys on the roof pulled his rope taut and hauled him up the wall upside down, banging and scraping him along the rough stone as they went.

“Stop them!” shouted Bonnie from below.

Her thugs charged forward. The mob of goat herders charged at the same time, but the pirates and the goat herders stopped short when a heavy spear slammed into the ground between them.

A group of full-grown Dinka warriors, each at least seven feet tall, stood next to the boys with the ropes.

“Cow herders?” Celia called down to her parents, who were climbing below her.

“The Dinka are also legendary warriors,” her mother added.

“Do you think Mom knows these guys?” Oliver asked.

“I dunno,” said Celia.

“I hope they're friendly,” whispered Oliver, squinting up at the large men towering above the alleyway.

Down below, the goat herders and the pirates cursed at each other in a variety of languages, but no one dared to attack as long as the warriors with the spears stood poised above them.

“Just keep climbing,” Celia urged her brother, because she did not want to think what would happen if these Dinka warriors turned out to be unfriendly.