We Are Not Eaten by Yaks (2 page)

“Well,” he said, changing the subject. “We have a dinner to go to. It's in honor of your mother.”

The twins stood slowly. They couldn't argue with him about their mother.
Ten Ton Taco Challenge
would have to go on without them.

“Another banquet,” Celia groaned.

“There will be a prince, and a hot-air balloonist, and a deep-sea diver,” Dr. Navel said excitedly.

“Ugh,” Oliver and Celia said together and deflated like two hot-air balloons crashing into the sea.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE
that the activities of the Explorers Club are as secret as they are exciting, and take care not to discuss the affairs we are about to witness too loudly or in the company of those who love to gossip or appear on afternoon talk shows. We who love adventure have a special privilege to witness the calamity, the disasters and the dangers that befall Oliver and Celia Navel, who would have much preferred to be left out of this story altogether. Too bad for them.

Every year for the past three years, the Explorers Club held a grand dinner on the anniversary of their mother's disappearance, and every year for the past three years Oliver and Celia were the only children sitting at the long banquet table under the stuffy portraits of old explorers. In fact, for their entire lives, they were
always
the only children at the Explorers Club.

Their parents held the prestigious title “Explorers-in-Residence,” which meant that their whole family lived at the club. They went to all the speeches and lectures and dinners at the club, and Oliver and Celia often had to go with their father to make new discoveries around the world so that they wouldn't lose their prestigious title and get kicked out onto the street. Finding a new apartment that could fit all of their parents' collected artifacts, like cursed arrowheads and medieval torture devices, would be very difficult.

Their mother's disappearance made keeping the job even harder for their father. He and his wife had always been a team, and explorers who disappeared never kept a good reputation for long.

“Perhaps she got lost in a good book,” Edmund S. Titheltorpe-Schmidt III joked once the food had been served. He popped a greasy chunk of alligator potpie into his mouth and laughed uproariously at his own joke.

The twins had never liked alligator potpie, nor did they like Edmund S. Titheltorpe-Schmidt III, or Sir Edmund as he (thankfully) insisted on being called. His wealth paid for missions of exploration all over the world, though he usually only used the discoveries to make himself richer. He bragged about having dinner at the White House and Buckingham Palace and the summer residence of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Rumors said that he had bought his membership in the Explorers Club, rather than earning it by climbing Mount Everest or discovering ancient ruins.

“I wish we could sell him our membership,” Celia grumbled to Oliver. She hated that she was missing the best TV hours of the day for this stupid dinner.

Sir Edmund also claimed to be an expert in cryptozoology, the study of mythical, rare and fantastical animals. He claimed to have a master's degree in cryptozoology from Oxford University, but he had never shown anyone his diploma.

In spite of his wealth, his powerful friends, and his dubious degree, Sir Edmund was a very short man. He was always glaring into the children's faces with his bushy red mustache and his breath that smelled like boiled carrots and stale feet. Or like stale carrots and boiled feet. The twins could not decide.

“I do not know how such a family as the Navels could hold the title Explorers-in-Residence,” he complained as they settled in for the main course of the dinner: Nigerian monkey curry, “when one of them has not managed to explore her way home after three years. Perhaps it is time for them to relinquish the title to a more qualified explorer.”

“If only,” muttered Oliver to his sister.

“Then we could live in a normal house,” whispered Celia. “And we wouldn't have to miss the best shows to go to stupid dinners.”

They both sighed at the thought. They longed for a life with cable television and without the endless Explorers Banquets. It was the day before summer vacation. They shouldn't have to get dressed up and listen to adults argue.

“My wife,” Dr. Navel said to Sir Edmund, “is on the trail of the greatest source of ancient knowledge in the universe. The Library of Alexandria held thousands of documents from all over the world: books of magic and power and priceless objects and treasures. No one knows what became of its wonders when it burned down. Finding out will take some time. And until then”—he smiled at his children next to him—“we will be brave and wait patiently for her return.”

The twins' mother had always thought that the Great Library had simply been misplaced, like a pair of glasses or a set of keys, and that it was waiting patiently to be found and put back to use. She had believed this even though everyone else in the world did not.

The twins believed the
Masterpiece Showcase
movie they saw about it that said that the library and its thousands of books, scrolls and artifacts were destroyed in a fire two thousand years ago. The idea that all its mysteries had been hidden someplace else for all those years seemed crazy.

Oliver wondered who would want to find something after all that time. He once found a sandwich he'd left at the bottom of his locker for the whole school year. It smelled terrible and had somehow grown fur. Explorers, though, were obsessed with old lost things, the older and more lost the better. They never seemed to mind the smells.

“I hope you will not go off searching for the Easter bunny, Dr. Navel,” Sir Edmund sneered at the twins' father. “What would become of your poor children?”

His sudden explosion of laughter made the Navel Twins wince and shift nervously in their seats.

“I'm reminded of Colonel Percy Fawcett.” He chewed loudly while he talked. “Colonel Fawcett disappeared into the Amazon in nineteen twenty-five looking for the Lost City of Z. Did you know that he took his oldest child, Jack, with him? I imagine they fell victim to cannibals or venomous snakes. At least your mother had the good sense to
abandon
—excuse me, I mean
leave
you safely at home.” He took a big gulp of his sickly sweet Ethiopian honey wine. “Don't worry, children,” he said, and smiled. “If your father misplaces himself like your mother did, I would take responsibility for your upbringing
personally
.” He laughed again and stuffed another stringy piece of monkey meat into his mouth. Oliver had never thought of the word
personally
as a curse word before, but the way Sir Edmund said it made his skin crawl.

“I wonder if he has cable,” Celia whispered to her brother.

“He's not even an explorer,” their father said to himself while Sir Edmund banged on his glass to get the waiter to bring him more honey wine. “He's a businessman and a . . . a . . . a
charlatan
!”

The children had to assume from their father's tone that it was a terrible thing to be a businessman or a charlatan, let alone both at the same time. Even if they didn't know what a charlatan was (and who does?), for their part, being an explorer wasn't so grand either. It had cost them their mother and no end of headaches.

“What's a charlatan?” Oliver asked his sister.

She didn't answer him. She didn't want their father to think she cared about any of this explorer nonsense. She also didn't know and didn't like to admit when she didn't know something. She was three minutes and forty-two seconds older and that meant her brother had to respect her the way a younger brother should.

“It means a faker, a liar and a fraud,” Sir Edmund said. “And though there may be a charlatan at this table, I promise that it is not me.”

Oliver couldn't believe that Sir Edmund had heard him. Though he was tiny and looked ridiculous with his big red mustache, he was dangerously clever and had really good hearing.

The twins ate the rest of their dinner in silence. Their last day of fifth grade was tomorrow and once that was over, summer vacation would finally start. They looked forward to three months of doing nothing but watching television and learning as little as they could. Starting middle school in the fall would be enough of an adventure for them.

During the school year they had to do homework and go to classes, and take “educational field trips” with their father, which usually ended up with them getting lost in ancient mazes of doom or in Oliver getting bitten by a newly discovered lizard.

It had happened.

Twice.

The first time, the bite made his skin turn purple and everything smell like old bananas for a week. The second time, his skin turned green and his whole body ached, even his hair. Again, everything smelled like bananas. And Oliver hated bananas.

Their teachers often objected to the classes they missed, but their father ignored the objections.

“Adventure is the greatest source of education,” he always said.

Their classmates objected, wishing they could go off with a famous explorer instead of sitting through vocabulary lessons and filling in bubbles on multiple-choice tests.

“Wish you could go in our place,” the twins always said. Adventure, in their opinion, was more fun to watch from the sofa than to experience.

During the school year, aside from being forced to take dangerous trips to exotic lands, they only got to watch two or three hours of TV every day, which they thought was far too little.

Every winter they dreamed of entire summer days spent in front of their programs, and every summer their father interfered with their plans.

They hoped this summer would be different. They were eleven now, going into the sixth grade, and wanted to take control of their destiny and their television. The dinner party was already messing up their plans.

The conversation had finally moved on from talking about their mom. Their father was talking to an African prince about ancient pygmy myths, and Sir Edmund was lecturing everyone on his side of the table about the difficulties of hunting mythical creatures. He claimed to have captured bigfoot and sold him to the president of a Canadian mining company. All the explorers, adventurers, daredevils, globe-trekkers and businessmen at the table were fascinated.

Oliver and Celia, as usual, were not.

“The key with mythic creatures,” Sir Edmund explained, “is to find their weaknesses. For some it's food. Others, like the yeti—or abominable snowman, as you might call it—love musical theater and have an almost fanatic devotion to their children.” He winked at the twins. “Still others only want to taste human flesh. Keeping such creatures in a zoo is, I must say, an expensive challenge, but one I very much enjoy. Bigfoot, the abominable snowman, the basilisk . . . my zookeepers are never bored.”

“Zoos,” Celia sighed. She could imagine nothing more boring than watching a bunch of caged animals—mythical or not—sleeping and eating and sniffing each other. Oliver secretly wondered what you fed an abominable snowman, but he was afraid that if he asked, the answer would take hours and hours. Explorers love to talk. Celia would kill him if Oliver made the dinner take any longer than it already was. They both wanted to get the night over with and get through the last day of school.

After another hour of chatter about venomous
this
and ancient
that
, they were finally excused from the dinner table. They rushed out of the room to get back to their apartment on the 4½th floor.

Their father hardly noticed that the twins were leaving. He was too engrossed in a story the African prince was telling him about poisonous plants of the Ituri Forest, but Sir Edmund watched them go.

If they had been paying any attention to him at all, they would have seen him smiling at them with cruelty in his eyes, as if he knew something terrible about their future and was enjoying the thought immensely. And truth be told, he did and he was.