Treasure Hunters--Quest for the City of Gold Read online

  “Cool!”

  “But the symbol after that is one I don’t understand at all.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’ll come to you. It always does.”

  My compliment seemed to surprise Storm. “Thank you, Bick. I hope it will.”

  Finally, a very sweaty hour later, we arrived at a small cluster of homes made of bare boards. The thatched-roof shacks were bunched together at the edge of a muddy river. I was super-glad there was a covered shelter we could all squeeze into because as soon as we reached the village, it started raining.

  “Our ancestors have lived in this clearing for many centuries,” said Chaupi over the pattering of the torrential downpour.

  “However,” said the young girl Q’orianka, “we may not be able to live here much longer.”

  Chaupi rested his hand on the head of the youngest member of his family—a son who looked to be maybe six years old.

  “What my oldest and wisest daughter says is true,” he said. “With so many trees being cut down, the sun is much stronger than it was when I was a boy growing up in this valley. Now, the sun feels so close, it burns our skin. It is as if the sun god is angry at those who have ruined our land and taken away his gift of the trees. Without a canopy of leaves over our heads, the sun beats down mercilessly, drying out the fruit and the fishes and the birds, making everything so much smaller. Without the trees’ roots gripping the ground, the very earth is in danger of washing away.”

  “It makes me wish the legends of Inkarri were true!” added Q’orianka. “That he would rise up from the dead and restore the earth to peace and harmony for the people of Peru!”

  “Well,” said Mom, “I may not be able to rise up from the earth like Inkarri could, but I can most definitely stand up to the powerful logging lobby in Lima.”

  As the rain kept beating down in unrelenting sheets, she told our hosts about the big rain-forest conference that was coming up at the presidential palace.

  “Here in this village,” she said, “you are dealing with the consequences of deforestation on a daily basis.”

  “This is why I must come with you to Lima,” said Chaupi. “And voice our concerns.”

  “I would be honored to have you travel with me, Chaupi,” said Mom. “You will speak more eloquently than I ever could!”

  “I just hope it is not too little too late,” said Chaupi.

  That’s when his son shrieked and pointed uphill to a roiling wall of swirling mud.

  “Flash flood!” screamed Chaupi. “Head to higher ground or you will all be washed away!”

  Chaupi and his children led us up a hill.

  Until a wall of water rolled over them and swept away his youngest son!

  CHAPTER 38

  “Yacu!” shouted Chaupi as the mud-choked floodwaters carried his little boy downhill toward the river.

  “Tayta!” screamed the boy.

  The churning current dragged him along like driftwood.

  “Come on, Beck!” I hollered. “Time to swim like we’re in shark-infested waters again!”

  “Right behind ya!”

  “Wait, you two!” shouted Dad.

  We disobeyed Dad’s order and dove into the muddy gully washer as it streaked down the slick slope toward the swollen river. I could see Yacu’s head bobbing in the choppy waves.

  “Hang on, Yacu!” I cried. “We’re coming!”

  Since Beck and I were the closest in age and weight to the six-year-old boy, the rushing flood seemed to carry us along at almost the same pace as it was carrying him. Fortunately, all those years living on the Lost had made us both excellent swimmers—no matter the conditions.

  While I kicked my legs and worked my arms, I couldn’t help thinking that this was what happened when you chopped down way too many trees in the rain forest: there weren’t enough roots in the ground to stop the earth from sloughing off and washing away in a downpour.

  Behind me, I heard a mighty crunch and a jumble of twisting snaps.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  The flood had just bowled down the shelter we’d all been standing under and sent it sailing toward us.

  “We can use this!” I said.

  “How?” cried Beck.

  “We can ride the roof downstream to rescue Yacu!”

  “Good idea.”

  Beck and I swam over to the floating hut and hauled ourselves up onto its slanted top.

  “Hang on, Yacu!” I cried. “We’re coming!”

  “And,” added Beck, “we’re bringing a boat. A houseboat!”

  Beck lay facedown on the roof. She jabbed her feet through the thatching and braced them against a beam. I walked along the peak until I reached the edge of the roof, right in front of Beck.

  “Grab my ankles!” I shouted.

  “Got ’em!”

  The hut swung sideways. We were parallel with the boy being washed downstream in the raging rapids.

  With Beck holding my legs, I crouched down.

  Yacu was coughing and spitting out everything the angry river was forcing him to swallow.

  I lunged forward. Beck tightened her grip.

  I went underwater for a swirling second but sprang right back up to the surface.

  I grabbed Yacu’s hand. He grabbed mine.

  I pulled Yacu up to the roof.

  He was shivering, but he was safe.

  He hugged me. I hugged him back.

  “I’ve got you,” I told him. “And I’m not letting go!”

  The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun.

  Our floating shed snagged itself on a dam of rocks and mud and lumber that the flood had left in its wake.

  The sun peeked through the clouds. When it did, I realized why the ancient Incas might’ve worshipped it—because the sun usually brings good things and puts an end to the bad ones.

  Like the rains that tried to wash away our new friend’s youngest son.

  CHAPTER 39

  Dad gave Beck and me a little grief about doing something so dangerous. “We’re better when we all work together,” he told us. “Think about that before you two jump into danger headfirst again.”

  “Yes, sir,” we both said, even though, between you and me, I think Beck and I did an amazingly spectacular job on our own.

  That night, after the sun spent the day drying out the village, we had a huge celebration. All the locals put on their most festive feathered costumes. They cooked us a feast, banged drums, tooted wooden flutes, and danced. Beck and I were given feathered necklaces and crowns.

  “These two, the twins, saved my son,” Chaupi announced. “From this day forward, they are both honorary members of the Harakmbut people! Anything you need, ask, and it will be given to you!”

  “Woo-hoo!” Beck and I shouted.

  Tommy was dancing with Q’orianka. We found out that, while we had been saving Yacu, Tommy was saving Q’orianka. He apparently squirmed out of his pants while treading water, tied off the ends of the pant legs, zipped up the zipper, waved the pants over his head to fill them with air, knotted off the waist to trap as much air as he could, and then handed the bubble-butted khaki balloon to Q’orianka for her to use as a flotation device.

  “You know,” he told Q’orianka as they slow-danced together to the haunting flute music, “I’d fall in love with you right now but I promised my family I wouldn’t have any more girlfriends for at least a month.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Thomas,” said Q’orianka. “Because you are my hero. I thank you and your pants for saving my life.”

  “Ah, what the heck,” said Tommy. “One day with you is worth a month with anyone else. Everybody, I’m officially in love again!”

  “Whoa, hang on, dude,” said Chet Collier, trying to cut in on Tommy and Q’orianka’s dance. “What about me, sweet eagle girl?”

  “You?” she said. “When the floodwaters rose, you climbed a banyan tree.”

  “Chya,” said Tommy. “Totally.”

  “I only did i
t to make sure the branches were safe enough for you to climb up and join me, my dear.”

  Chet wiggled his eyebrows. Q’orianka laughed.

  Then she and Tommy danced away together.

  Meanwhile, Storm sat on a fallen log, drawing something in the dirt with a stick. Everybody else was celebrating, but she was pouting. Beck and I went over to check out the situation.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I’m still stumped,” said Storm. “This ‘village of the feathered ones’ is definitely on the map. But I don’t understand where we’re supposed to go next. I can’t find the lost city we need to go to before we can reach the City of Gold.”

  “What’s the hieroglyph?” asked Beck.

  Storm tapped the symbol she had etched in the dirt.

  It looked like a ball sitting on a diving board or the bottom step of a staircase.

  Chaupi strolled over to see what we were all staring at.

  “Ah,” he said. “The city of the uqha pacha.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “That is the top-right section of a chakana, or Incan cross,” he explained. “It has many meanings for us. In this section of the cross, we see the three levels of life: heaven on the top step, the earth in the middle, and the underworld, or uqha pacha, below.”

  “Huh,” said Storm. “I did not know that.”

  (Guess there’s a first time for everything.)

  “This is the next symbol on our treasure map,” I explained.

  “Then, my friends, you do not have far to journey.” Chaupi pointed to the east. “Your map is sending you to a nearby necropolis.”

  “What’s that?” asked Beck.

  The elder’s face grew very serious. “The Lost City of the Dead. The home of the Sacred Stone.”

  CHAPTER 40

  The next morning, as we were packing our gear, some villagers emerged from the jungle carrying a pair of wounded beasts, each tied to a pole.

  Our ATVs!

  “You saved my son,” explained Chaupi, “so we will repair your vehicles. We will send for new tires while you journey to the Lost City of the Dead.”

  “Thanks, bro! Oh, what about the SUV?” asked Tommy.

  “It was too wide for us to carry along the narrow paths,” said Chaupi. “Most unfortunate.”

  Beck and I were still feeling like total heroes for saving Yacu’s life. And now we were getting our rides back! Plus, they’d given us those feathered necklaces, each one decorated with a golden medallion.

  “The left leg, and the right leg,” Chaupi had told us when he draped the gold medals around our necks like we were Olympic champions. To be honest, the images carved in gold didn’t really resemble limbs. To me, they looked more like tiny tables or weird chess pieces with toes.

  I wasn’t exactly sure why the village president wanted to give Beck and me an antique set of golden legs. Maybe because we’d kicked the flood’s butt. Or because we danced with danger. Something epic and leggish like that.

  “The amulets you wear have been in our village for many centuries,” Chaupi told us.

  “Inkarri!” mumbled one of the elders. “Inkarri!”

  “What’s he saying?” asked Dad.

  Chaupi smiled kindly at the old man. “Legend has it that Inkarri—or one of his most loyal followers—left the golden medallions here in our village for safekeeping. That he would come back and reclaim them after he rose from the dead.”

  “Then we should give these back to you,” I said.

  “Definitely,” added Beck. “We don’t want to upset a dead guy. Especially if he’s coming back.”

  We both went to lift our nifty new lanyards over our heads.

  Chaupi held up his hand. “No. They are my gift. May they protect you as you protected my son.”

  “We’ll bring them back,” said Dad. “After we complete our quest.”

  “We’ll trade ’em in for the ATVs!” I added.

  Chaupi grinned. “Very well.”

  His grin faded fast.

  “But wear them this day as you venture deeper into the jungle. For you will need all possible protection as you approach the necropolis—the Lost City of the Dead.”

  The way he said that?

  Somebody should’ve added a spooky “Dun-dun-dun!”

  CHAPTER 41

  We were trudging through the sweltering jungle when I heard a strange blurp of a chirp.

  I thought maybe it was a Peruvian monkey’s mating call.

  Then I realized the thing making the noise was zipped inside Mom’s backpack.

  “I hope that’s not an angry monkey,” I said.

  “Sounds more like a sick parakeet,” said Beck.

  “Well,” said Storm, shifting into her rain-forest tour-guide mode, “this particular jungle region is home to a wide and wonderful diversity of birds. It could be a yellow-billed jacamar, a yellow-rumped cacique, a golden-headed manakin…”

  She probably could’ve gone on for hours. (She usually does.) But Mom finally pulled the annoying blurper out of her pack and raised her hand for silence. The thing that was making the noise was a jumbo-size satellite phone. It looked like a black brick with a stubby antenna—one of the older models. I figured she’d bought it on sale at a CIA Spy Store clearance sale.

  “This is Sue Kidd,” she said into the phone.

  She listened intently. The rest of us waited to find out who was calling Mom in the middle of the Peruvian rain forest.

  “But the meeting was supposed to be next week. Oh. I see. Señor Rojas won’t be available next week? He demands that the meeting take place tomorrow? Ha! That’s ridiculous.”

  There was a pause as Mom’s jaw dropped.

  “It’s set for noon? But we don’t have the additional resources we discussed. We haven’t found the gold…”

  Mom sighed. Pinched that spot on her nose between her eyeballs that she always pinches when she has to make a tough decision.

  “Have them send in the bird,” she told whoever was on the other end of the line. “I’ll fly to Lima immediately. A local leader named Chaupi will be traveling with me. He knows more about the impact of deforestation than anybody.”

  Yeah, I thought. He almost lost his son to it.

  “Maybe the two of us can buy some extra time while my family continues on to Paititi,” Mom said. “We have a high degree of confidence that we will soon find the gold we need to outbid Rojas and preserve the land for the Peruvian people.”

  Whoa. I liked hearing that.

  But not all the other stuff. Because it sounded like Mom would be leaving us (again) and heading to the capital of Peru to meet with big-time government officials plus our main rain-forest rival, Juan Carlos Rojas.

  “You think we’ll ever do a complete treasure hunt as a whole family again?” Beck whispered to me as Mom ended her satellite-phone call.

  “We all have different jobs to do on this team, Rebecca,” said Dad, because Beck isn’t the quietest whisperer in the world. “If your mother needs to go with Chaupi to Lima, then that’s where she’ll go.”

  Then he reminded us of our new primary mission: to save the most precious treasure on the planet—the planet itself.

  “Chet?” Mom said to Collier.

  “Yes, Mrs. Kidd?”

  “Keep recording any rain-forest devastation you guys see. Beam it up to the Cloud. I’ll download it onto my laptop in Lima and share it with the president and interior minister.”

  “You got it, Mrs. Kidd,” said Chet.

  That meant Chet wasn’t choppering out with Mom. Too bad. I’d kind of hoped someone would beam him up to a cloud. I still didn’t trust the guy. He was a Collier. He wasn’t family.

  Thirty minutes later, the leaves and trees around us started swaying as a helicopter hovered overhead. There was no place for it to land, so the pilot lowered a rope ladder.

  “We’ll double back to the village,” Mom shouted over the rotor wash. “Pick up Chaupi.”

  “Good luck,”
said Dad, giving her a kiss.

  Mom grabbed hold of the rope ladder and climbed up into the green canopy of fluttering foliage.

  It reminded me of the way Dad had left us one stormy night aboard the Lost, even though none of us had seen him go.

  CHAPTER 42

  “So what do you know about this Sacred Stone?” asked Chet Collier as we hiked up a steep and steamy hill.

  He had his camera trained on Storm.

  “We know it is sacred,” said Storm. “And that it’s a stone.”

  (Have I mentioned that Storm isn’t exactly crazy about being on camera?)

  “But what does it have to do with finding Paititi, the Lost City of Gold?”

  “We won’t know the significance of the stone, Chet, until we secure it,” said Dad, coming to Storm’s rescue. “However, according to a letter written by a Spanish missionary named Father Toledo and addressed to ‘His Holiness, the Pope,’ once we find the Sacred Stone, todo será revelado.”

  “That’s Spanish,” said Tommy. “Because the priest was, like, from Spain and they used to speak Spanish in Spain. Still do.”

  “Indeed,” said Dad, arching an eyebrow, marveling at Tommy’s illogical logic.

  “Well, what exactly do those Spanish words mean?” asked Chet.

  “‘All shall be revealed,’” replied Dad. “Let us hope such will be the case.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because that is the final instruction in Father Toledo’s letter to the pope.”

  “Wait a second,” said Tommy. “There aren’t any more bonus clues?”

  Dad shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Then this stone must be super-important,” said Beck.

  “Exactly,” Dad said. “I suspect it might be a lodestone.”

  “You mean like real heavy rock?” I asked. “A real load?”