Zally's Book Page 6

  I turned and saw Imishi looking around as wideeyed as I felt. I nudged Kir forward, and I got a blast of the hunger feeling again. We passed a couple of foot-high circular walls with carvings of horses, wildcats, birds, and monkeys on them. I peeked into one circle and saw that it was a well. Another appeared to be a shallow fire pit. I wondered if we could hide somewhere here.

  I heard a low, rumbling growl from the trees behind us.

  Finally I saw what I was looking for: a small domed building made of brown stone blocks set upon a raised foundation. I pointed it out to my companions. The square structure, except for part of the ceiling and a chink here and there, was largely intact. A steep grassy slope led up one side of the raised foundation, and Kir started toward it. There was a sudden shriek and flutter as something zoomed past my head—a brightly colored parrot flying toward the same stone structure.

  Suddenly I started to see animals everywhere around us—some on the ground, some on pyramids, a few floating in the air. Not real, solid animals, but transparent and hazy, like mirages. Or ghosts.

  Then I heard a snarl and a roar.

  Kir didn’t need any encouragement; he ran at full gallop up the slope onto the raised foundation. Imishi and I stayed on with the help of the magical blanket. The square building, about the size of a large gazebo, was directly ahead of us. Dead leaves and vines littered the ground. At each side of the building—at least the sides I could see—I noticed traces of faint stone circles.

  Barely slowing, Kir jumped all the way over one of the stone circles. We came down hard on the other side. Imishi nearly squashed me against Kir’s neck on landing, and both of us were winded. Kir didn’t wait for us to recover. Finding an opening into the building that was barely wide enough to admit a horse, he squeezed through, while Imishi and I kept our heads ducked down to keep from hitting them as we entered the building. As soon as we were inside, we were able to sit up again and saw that the domed ceiling was at least twenty-five feet high.

  Ignoring my sore muscles, I swung off Kir’s back and started to search around for something to block the entrance.

  “There’s a door here,” Imishi said, hopping down beside me and starting to push on a flat block of stone by the entrance that was the same size and shape as the opening we had squeezed through. She was right.

  I helped Imishi push, and the slab started to move.

  There was a sharp squawk overhead, and a harsh voice screamed, “We’re here, we’re here!”

  The parrot! Was it inside with us?

  Another, louder roar echoed around us. I pushed harder, and the door moved a little more. Kir backed up toward us, pressed his rear against the door, and shoved backward. Just as the door closed, I caught a glimpse of something outside—tawny fur spotted with black.

  A jaguar, bigger than any jaguar I’d ever seen. It was as tall as Kir!

  Panting and shaking, I slid to the floor, which felt pleasantly cool after the humid jungle heat. Imishi, tucking her wings up out of the way, sat beside me. With a noisy flutter, the parrot flew down from a hole in the ceiling to perch on the saddle blanket atop Kir’s back.

  For a chamber with no electricity, our refuge was surprisingly bright. Slits and square openings in the walls and a hole in the dome let enough sunlight in to illuminate the room. It was obvious that we weren’t going to be leaving until we were sure the jaguar was gone, so we ate some of our rations and opened one of the pods of water.

  The parrot amused itself, walking around on the floor of the chamber, eating any crumbs we dropped, and squawking, “More for me, more for me!” I tried to ignore it.

  After we ate, Imishi and I peered out various wall slits and saw the jungle cat prowling in slow circles around our building. I got goose bumps each time the jaguar’s mind brushed against mine, and I felt its hunger. I caught a glimpse of its eyes. They glowed jade green, giving me the eerie feeling that the jaguar could see us. Its gaze never left the building. The cat must have weighed hundreds of pounds; it would have been ridiculous to think that we could just outrun it or overpower it somehow. No, we would have to wait and hope it found some other prey in the jungle. Once or twice I thought I saw other animals out there—just a glimmer, and then they were gone.

  The room was not as small as I had first thought. With each wall about twice as long as Kir was from nose to rump, and with the sunlight helping to make the room feel less claustrophobic, there were much worse places we could have been trapped. My eyes traveled upward to the domed ceiling. I thought that at night there would be a wonderful view of the stars through the opening. Then it occurred to me what the little building reminded me of: an observatory. I’d even seen pictures of ancient Mayan observatories, some square, some round. I looked at the sunlight-dappled walls around us, and for the first time I realized that each side of the room was carved.

  “I wish we could leave,” Imishi said.

  I could feel that Kir was anxious about the wasted time as well. Even though we were safe for the moment, we weren’t getting any closer to Kib Valley.

  As best I could tell, three walls held carvings of the building we were in, surrounded by the sun and moon and stars and thousands of animals. Each carving also showed animal constellations outlined in the stars. Whoever had lived here clearly loved animals.

  Imishi pointed to the wall nearest her. “Did you know there is writing here? And something else I believe will interest you. I think you should see it for yourself.”

  I went over to see the writing Imishi was talking about. Beneath the text was a separate carving of a creature with feathers—a dragon? I wondered. Each culture seems to have different legends and various images of such creatures. Chinese dragons tend to be long and snaky, whereas European paintings of dragons remind me of small dinosaurs with batlike wings. This creature was more like drawings of feathered serpents of Maya and Aztec lore, and it had been singled out as special from the host of animals in the other carvings.

  I looked at the writing above the carved serpent.

  Kir nosed between us and looked at the wall.

  “The feathered snake is called Kukulkan,” Imishi said, reading along with me. “According to the carved legend, it was wise beyond all other creatures, fearsome when angered, and could fly with the speed of an arrow.”

  The golden horse gave an uneasy snort.

  Below the image of the snake was an even more intricate carving that took my breath away: a map! I studied it, reaching out a hand to trace the lines. This was what the city had looked like long ago, before it was ruined.

  “¡Ay, mira! Thank you, Imishi. It’s—”

  “Of course!” Imishi interrupted, her face filled with wonder. “I should have realized it before. This is Ool-Kib. It was a Kib fairy city, abandoned in ancient times when a volcano destroyed much of it. Since then, the spirits of innocent creatures have been drawn here after they die.”

  The parrot took that opportunity to stretch its wings and fly through the hole in the ceiling. It then circled the observatory, squawking, “We’re here, we’re here!”

  “Stupid bird!” I muttered in exasperation. I peeked through one of the wall slits but saw neither the bird nor the jaguar. Outside, though, I heard a menacing growl and a snarl, followed by several frantic shrieks from the parrot, some loud snapping sounds like branches breaking, a split second of silence, and then—

  A terrible roar echoed through the room where we stood.

  7

  The Innocent

  The jaguar’s hungry roar echoed in the stone chamber. I quickly scanned the small room for any sign of the jungle cat, but our little band of travelers was still alone. It was obvious that none of the holes in the walls or ceiling could possibly be large enough to admit the cat. The door was still closed. Yet the rumble of the cat breathing in and out sounded so close.

  Imishi jumped onto Kir’s back. She leaned forward with her arms around his neck, her wings spread flat, to protect him. It probably wouldn’t have helped, had the jag
uar actually been in the room with us, but it showed her courage.

  From Kir, I felt the same worry as before: concern for his sire and the rest of Kib Valley. He knew the jaguar was not in the room with us. So why did the roaring suddenly seem so loud? I peeked through the slits one after another but could not catch a glimpse of the jaguar.

  From outside I heard, “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!” The parrot was not dead, then. I smiled as the fleeting thought reminded me of a Monty Python DVD my oldest brother, Ed, sometimes watched—something silly about a dead parrot. It seemed our parrot was safe, though, and hadn’t been eaten by the jaguar.

  I saw no sign of the jaguar outside, but I could hear her and feel her. (I could tell it was female now.) Strangely, I no longer felt hunger in the thoughts of the wild creature; instead came a feeling of fear and being trapped. The parrot called, “Safe now, safe now!” I wondered if the bird had any idea what it was saying. It was possible. I wondered if I could try thinking to it myself.

  Kir whinnied.

  Imishi sat up on his back. “What can you see?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “Just the jungle and our parrot friend. But I feel something, and I need to check it out.” I went to the door and grasped the heavy metal ring that was affixed to the stone slab where I would normally expect a doorknob to be. I pulled and the door swung inward just enough so I could squeeze out.

  “Zally, no—it’s too dangerous!” Imishi cried.

  “Close the door behind me,” I whispered back. “I’ll be okay.” I heard the scraping of stone as Imishi shut the door. Staying close to the small building, I inched to the corner and peeked around it. At the edge of my vision I caught a glimpse of something—the jaguar? No, it was just a ghostly animal spirit of some sort.

  I slid along the wall, taking care not to step into the stone circle of grass and leaves on that side of the building. If Kir had not wanted to step into it, neither did I. At the next corner, I peeked around again: no jaguar.

  I turned the corner and began inching along the wall. Something was different here: the stone circle, which was wider than I was tall, was not completely filled in with grass and debris. A sound came from it, like an echoey, raspy bark. The parrot—minus a few green tail feathers—fluttered down to perch on one of the low encircling stones. “We’re here, we’re here! Safe now, safe now!”

  “Shhh!” I hissed, sending a thought of silence to it at the same time.

  The parrot stopped squawking and continued bobbing his head and shifting his weight as if he were doing a dance. It seemed I was really talking to animals! I wished I could celebrate how cool this was, but this wasn’t the time.

  I noticed a jagged hole in the surface closest to the building. About a third of the ground inside the circle had broken away and fallen inward. I knelt beside the parrot, leaned forward, and looked into the hole. It was a deep pit, more than twenty feet down, and the jaguar was at the bottom.

  Turning her glowing eyes upward, the jaguar saw me. I didn’t sense any threat from her, but she crouched and sprang upward. I gasped and jerked back. I heard the jaguar’s claws scrabble on the hard, smooth stone at the side of the pit for a moment before she fell back with a raspy growl of feline frustration.

  I saw now that the ground inside the circle was nothing more than a thin crust of dried clay covered with dirt, pebbles, leaves, and twigs to disguise it.

  “Safe now,” the bird squawked again.

  I was getting the idea that the parrot really did know what he was saying, albeit with a limited vocabulary. “Okay, okay,” I said. “But what am I supposed to do?” I leaned over and peered down into the hole again. This time when the jaguar saw me, I felt a flicker of … what? Hope? The jaguar’s thoughts and feelings were edged with green. I drew back again and looked through one of the slits into the building. I almost laughed out loud when I saw one fairy eye and one horse eye staring back at me.

  “It’s okay, you can come out now,” I said. “Just don’t step in any of those stone circles.”

  A minute later, Kir and Imishi joined me. I had not moved from beside the pit, and I found myself wondering why Kir’s instincts had steered him clear of the pit when the jaguar’s had not. I felt a strange sensation in my mind as Kir tried to explain something about the way vibrations in the ground had warned him that there was a hollow area ahead. I gave a mental shrug. Maybe the jaguar had been distracted by stalking us—or by that loud parrot.

  “We need to go now,” Imishi said, mounting up. “We have lost much time.”

  I nodded and stood, still staring into the pit, brushing dirt from my knees. Imishi stretched out a hand to help me up onto Kir’s back. Something stopped me. Feelings tingled and poked at my mind: discouragement, disappointment, despair, tinged green at the edges.

  “We have to help her get out of the pit,” I said.

  Imishi stared at me, her face going pale with disbelief. “What? We just spent hours escaping that beast, and now you want to help it?”

  When she put it that way, it did sound like a pretty dumb thing to do. But something told me that this was the right thing to do. Kir neighed and took a step backward. I gave my friends an apologetic look. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, but I have to do this. She won’t try to hurt us now.”

  Imishi snorted. “It is a jaguar! That’s what they do—hunt and eat other creatures!”

  “She needs help, or she’ll die,” I said. “Isn’t that what you Kib Fairies do—help other creatures?”

  The fairy girl’s eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “Not creatures that want to eat us! We’re wasting time, and we need to get back to help Queen Carmina and creatures who deserve our help!” She threaded her fingers through Kir’s mane, and he turned to face the jungle. I knew that they wouldn’t leave without me. So did they.

  I went back to the hole, eased myself down onto my stomach, and stuck my head over the edge. The jaguar’s paws were flecked with blood, as if she had been clawing at the walls. When she saw me, I felt a flicker of anticipation, of pleading. Was that possible? The jaguar crouched and tried to leap again, but this time the leap took her barely halfway up the walls before she fell back to the ground. She turned in agitation, lashing her tail. I saw that the bottom of the pit was littered with the bones of creatures that had not escaped.

  I stared down at the jaguar, trying to catch her eerie gaze, doing my best to send her a message. Our eyes locked, and the jaguar stopped pacing. Focusing on the jade glow, I sent thoughts to her as best I could, thoughts like calm and friendly and rescue.

  The cat sat on her haunches, staring up at me. I sent her thoughts: We are your friends. We are not food. I wondered if the concept of friendship was one the jaguar could even understand, but it seemed to work. She lay down on the floor of the pit, surrounded by bones, and only the tip of her tail twitched. I could tell she was ready to wait patiently for help.

  I stuck my head further through the hole to look around. A couple of my long hair vines slid forward into the hole to dangle beside my face. The jaguar, seeing this, raised a paw slightly, as if to bat at my hair vines—reminding me of one of the kittens playing with the shoestring. My hair dangled only a couple of feet into the hole, but it gave me an idea.

  Wait, I thought to the jaguar. I’ll be back.

  She lowered her paw and rested her chin on it.

  I got up, then spoke to Kir and Imishi. “Look, I’m really sorry. I know you don’t understand this part of my quest. But the jaguar in that pit is an innocent, and I have to help her. Now, the two of you can either wait however long it takes me to do this by myself, or you can decide to help me and we can all get out of here that much sooner.”

  With that, I marched away across the foundation and down the one grassy slope to the edge of the jungle. The apparitions of two mice scampered along beside me. I knew what I needed, and I had to find just the right one. I did not look back, but it wasn’t long before I heard the soft thud of Kir’s hooves on the grass
behind me. That was a relief. It only took a minute or two to find what I was searching for: a tall, fallen stalk of bamboo about as big around as my waist. A bunch of small, leafy branches sprouted from the fat stalk. It didn’t look too large, yet it looked strong enough. I tried to pick up one end. The bamboo was surprisingly heavy—perhaps it wasn’t bamboo after all.

  I turned to look at my friends. “Could you help me get this over to the hole, please?”

  Imishi got a strange look on her face. Then she jumped off Kir’s back, patted his flank, and said, “You will be doing most of the work, cousin.” Kir nodded his understanding.

  Imishi rummaged through the saddlebags and drew out a length of silken ribbon. She unrolled it and, holding each end in one hand, placed the end of the loop under her foot to hold it still. She smoothed the ribbon with her hands, and the ends grew longer and longer. Concentrating, she folded the ends several times, crossing them over each other. Her hands moved so fast they were almost a blur as she wove the narrow ribbon to create a sort of mesh net with a large hole at the center and two long trailing ends of ribbon.

  Moving to Kir, she threw the open part of the loop over his head and pulled it down to his shoulders. Then I understood: Imishi had made a harness. She smoothed out the two ends of the ribbon until they were long enough to reach the bamboo stalk and tied them securely around it. It was nothing short of brilliant, and done in less than five minutes.

  Imishi and I tied the bamboo with the ribbons. Kir did not need me to tell him what to do when we finished. He took a few steps forward until he felt the weight of the bamboo on the harness. Then he leaned into the harness and tried to walk, but the load was too heavy. Imishi and I pushed the bamboo from behind. It budged. Slightly.