The Adventure Begins!
“I’m awake!” Chilli gasped. She flopped back onto her pillows with relief, but immediately shot back up when she remembered her grandmother’s words. The amber! She slowly opened her clenched hand and there it lay - the proof that it hadn’t just been a dream. The dragonfly’s wings shimmered softly in the weak morning light. She had brought the fossil back into her waking life.
“The dream! It was real!” she said aloud. “Mom and dad really are in danger! I’ve got to help them!”
Chilli leaped out of bed, quickly washed and dressed and rushed to the kitchen. Her feet thudded on the thick carpeting as she ran through the house, but she didn’t care if she woke the Warthog or the whole world for that matter.
At breakfast, Chilli did her best to pretend that nothing was wrong. She quickly and calmly ate her breakfast and chatted to Lettie even though, inside, she was frantic. She had decided not to tell the housekeeper about her visit to the Amazon in case the housekeeper went into panic mode and spilled the beans to the Warthog. Her aunt would most probably whisk her off to a psychologist or a loony bin.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Chilli finally managed to get away from the house. She ran down to the river and sat impatiently waiting for Ty and Oubaas to join her. As she waited, she nervously picked at the long grass bordering the stream.
She became lost in thought, trying to remember everything her grandmother had told her and what on earth it all meant.
“Eeek!” She yelped with surprise when a cool hand touched her arm. It was Oubaas.
“Hey, never frighten a baboon like that!” warned Ty, “they could easily rip off your arm!”
“Sorry, Oubaas” she said, patting the baboon’s head in apology. Then she turned to the serious matter of her dream.
“Ty, I’ve got something... something strange to tell you. Promise me you won’t laugh” said Chilli.
“Uh, ok. You look like someone’s stolen the salami from your sandwich. What’s the matter?” Ty could see his friend was very upset, so he listened silently as Chilli breathlessly told him about her dream. When she had finished telling her story she stared at Ty, expecting him to laugh at her.
“What do you think?” she asked. “I know that it sounds crazy. But my parents are in trouble, and I’ve got to help them. And I need you to help me.”
“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? It was just a dream, Chilli.”
“Then how do you explain this?” she asked, handing him the piece of amber.
“My granny gave it to me before I woke up.”
Ty stared at the fossil warming in his hand. There could be no rational explanation for the amber. As impossible as it sounded, it wasn’t just a bad dream. It really had happened to Chilli.
“Even if it wasn’t a dream, how can we help them? They’re in the Amazon and we’re thousands of miles away, on another continent. How are we even going to get there? Flap our arms and fly?” Ty asked with a grimace.
“We’ve got to try. I can’t tell the Warthog. She’d have me locked up in an asylum if I did. She’d use any excuse to get rid of me” argued Chilli.
“Okay, okay, okay. You win. Let’s start at the beginning. What exactly did your grandmother say?”
“Uhm, she said thaaaat... uhmmm... the first clue is in Grimsby Manor’s crest. Then she told me to give the crystal heart to someone I trusted to help me. Oh, and she also said something about a special gift she gave me whose name is the answer to the question. That’s all I can remember...” she babbled.
“Whoa, slow down! First things first. What’s on the manor’s crest?” asked Ty. Despite the craziness of the situation, he was excited at the idea of solving the mystery.
“I don’t remember. I only saw it the night I arrived” Chilli replied.
“Right. Then let’s go and check it out. Oubaas, you’ll have to come with us.”
Ty turned to Chilli and explained, “Grandpa’s away today and I don’t want Oubaas alone at home in case he gets himself into trouble. Let’s go!”
The friends ran through the bushes and down onto the driveway with Oubaas limping along behind them. They sprinted down the dusty drive until they reached the rusted gates. Ty looked up at the sign and groaned.
“‘Veritas’. That looks like Latin. So, how’s your Latin, Einstein?” Ty asked.
“About as good as my Afrikaans” replied Chilli, referring to an indigenous South African language.
“That’s just great!” groaned Ty. “We’ve already hit a dead end. What do we do now?” wondered Ty, scratching his head.
“Well, we can’t Google it. There’s no computer in the house. Uhmmm...” Chilli thought about their problem for a moment. “Wait, I know! The house has got lots and lots of rooms. There must be a library in there somewhere. My mom once told me her uncle collected books and things from all over the world. Maybe he kept them in the house!”
“Then let’s check it out” shouted Ty as he and Oubaas started running towards the house.
Chilli followed them, not caring that the Warthog would have a fit if she saw a stranger and a three-legged baboon in the house.
As they reached the kitchen door, Chilli whispered: “Lettie’s gone shopping, so we can get into the house this way. Be as quiet as you can”. She figured that the Warthog was in her room as usual. And if they were careful, they could avoid both her and Buckley.
As they made their way through the Manor, Chilli wondered where they would find the library in such an enormous house. Then she remembered the pile of books standing in the passage. The library was slap bang next to her room!
“I know exactly where the library is. Follow me,” she whispered urgently.
Chilli led the way over creaking floorboards, listening for other voices. But the house was as silent as a cemetery.
They quietly sneaked through the house until they stood outside the room next to Chilli’s.
“At least these weren’t my imagination” said Chilli, pointing to the books standing outside a pair of sturdy double doors.
Chilli gave the doors a firm push, but they only opened slightly, then creaked shut again.
“They’re stuck,” she whispered.
“Let’s both try” suggested Ty. He put his weight behind hers and they threw their combined weight against the doors.
Creeeeeek!
The doors complained with a loud squeak, and then suddenly burst open, hurling Chilli and Ty into an untidy pile on the faded carpet.
“Well, it’s definitely the library” said Ty, glancing around the room as he scrambled to his feet. But it was difficult to see much because of the thick drapes hanging over the windows.
“Jeez” remarked Chilli, “these curtains are everywhere!”
“Time to shine a light” announced Ty, grabbing hold of one of the drapes. “Grab the other one.”
“Careful! They’re so old, they might fall apart” warned Chilli, gently opening the curtain’s twin. Clouds of dust, untouched for decades, swirled in the rays of sunlight that flooded the room.
“It’s almost as big as the public library at home!” gasped Chilli. Whoever had built and stocked the collection was a great lover of books.
It was a long room with massive bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling lining all the walls. Above them, huge chandeliers, covered in dust and cobwebs, hung from intricately carved ceilings. It was a sad, abandoned refuge of ancient books and wisdom.
“Oy” groaned Chilli looking at the thousands of books, “how’re we going to find what we’re looking for? This could take forever!”
“The books are in alphabetical order according to subject” noted Ty, running his eyes up and down the towering shelves.
“Maybe we should look under ‘L’ for ‘Languages’, or ‘Latin’?” suggested Chilli.
“Great idea! I’ll start at the other end of the room and you start here. That way we’ll save time.” Ty darted to the far end of the room, and started following the alphabetised signs.
“Let’s see... D, E... F, I think it’s down this way. G, H, I... J, K... Here it is! I’ve found ‘L’. I’m going to need that ladder over there.” Ty pointed to a wooden ladder on wheels resting against another shelf.
“Ladder... on its way” said Chilli, wheeling it over on its rails.
Ty guided the ladder into place, then climbed to the top rung and started checking the books. “Uhhhmm... here’s the ‘Languages’ section... And here’s ‘Latin’!” He grabbed the leather-bound tome in his arms and jumped down from the ladder.
Chilli knelt next to Ty as he opened the book on the floor and started furiously paging through it. He finally stopped on a page and ran his finger down the paragraphs.
“Found it!” Ty shouted excitedly. ‘Veritas – truth’. So ‘veritas’ means ‘truth’.” He slammed the book shut. “So how does that help us?”
“Let’s think about it,” suggested Chilli. “Truth – house, house – truth. Mmmm, the house is the truth… the truth is the house. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t you think it could mean that the truth is inside the house? Ty suggested.
“I think you’re right. So let’s see if we can solve the second clue. Uuhm, what else did granny say?” pondered Chilli, wracking her brains. “She said something about a ‘special gift whose name is the answer to the question’. Those were her exact words.”
“What did she give you that you brought with you?” asked Ty.
“I know! Huggermugger! I’ve got Huggermugger. She once told me that one day I’d understand why she gave him such a strange name. You better get back up that ladder and find an English dictionary, while I get Huggermugger.”
“What’s a ‘huggermugger’?” asked Ty, puzzled.
“You’ll see,” said Chilli as she ran out of the library.
By the time Chilli came back with the teddy bear, Ty already had the English dictionary and was searching for the word ‘huggermugger’.
“Hah, got it!” Ty said excitedly. “It says here that ‘huggermugger’ means ‘clandestine’ or ‘secret’. Your gran said that the name is the answer to the question, right? That means that Huggermugger must be hiding a secret.”
“I don’t think so. He’s just a teddy bear” frowned Chilli as she examined the bear. She turned him over in her hands and poked and prodded the toy’s tummy. “I can’t feel anything” she muttered.
“Try opening him up” suggested Ty.
“Okay” replied Chilli, turning Huggermugger onto his stomach. The thought of saving her drowning parents gave her the strength to tear apart her beloved teddy bear.
“There’s something on his back I never noticed before! There’s some velcro holding the seams together!” Chilli yanked the edges of the teddy’s back apart and it burst open, sending a little pile of stuffing flying to the floor.
Chilli stuck her hand into Huggermugger’s back and pulled out something.
“Spectacles! It’s a pair of old wire spectacles” she wailed in disappointment.
“How’s an old pair of glasses going to help us?” groaned Ty.
Chilli didn’t answer. She slipped the glasses onto her nose and peered through the lenses. She blinked hard, twice, and then gasped.
“Ha ha” laughed Ty. You look like an old-fashioned school teacher.” But he stopped laughing when he saw the expression on her face.
“What is it? What’re you looking at Chilli?” Ty asked anxiously as he saw her eyes widen and her face grow pale.
“Well, it... it... I... “ Chilli stammered.
“Chilli!” Ty urged, “what’s going on?” he demanded impatiently.
“I think I’m seeing a d... a... a dead person” she said, pointing at thin air.