Chapter Thirty-Two

You’d think by the verdant smells and the heat and the familiar flailing leaves of palm and banana and the welcome dartting and tasty scent of lizards that this place called Florrriba would have monkeys, but it did not—a monkey knows immediately, even just staring out a wimdoe at the rushing irreality, a keening caught in the head. We debarked from the trayn in another vast hall, quick peeks through swishing orange fabric, the monks slower than ever, their fragrance less floral (but all the more adored), came at last to a barking lot lacking only a shubble buzz. Florrribba, the very air, gave off a kind of zzoo mood, which I may not have felt so profoundly but for Deeps, who shuddered and shivered looking out from our fold in the orange fabric of holy robes, this sudden world of concrete and palm trees, stiff hot wind.

“I fear,” she said.

Suddenly a large conveyance pulled up, not a buzz but a vann, if I was reading the emanation correctly, this driven by a third monk, who screeched to a joyous, rocking stop, leapt out, embraced Brother Bangg, kizzed both his cheeks, kizzed his mouth, a kind of holy lightning bursting from their congress.

Brother Bangg parted his robes just so and I took an Inga-like bow, drew Deeps out of hiding by the hand.

“Monkeys!” the new monk cried, his face like a thousand suns. “The very monkeys!”

“We chanced upon them in Grand Central,” Brother Bangg said.

“And harbored them,” Monk Two said dourly.

“Oh, blessed world!” the new monk exclaimed. “I wouldn’t call it chance.” His eyes were kindly upon us: “I’ve been watching your progress on Twitter and CNN and YouTube. Fox News thinks you’re the devil! And Mrs. Devil, I guess! They guess you’re still in Nyork! But I felt you near, I knew it! Bangg here, he has powers!” The new monk opened a large door in the side of his vann, and our monks got in. “Monkeys in front!” he cried. “I’ll fazzen your sea-belts!”

And so Deeps and I huddled in a sitting contraption with a sea-belt across our chests and a view of the sky through a wide wimdoe, and motion. The new monk turned a noob among the many mysterious controls for the vann, and suddenly there were voices in the air around us, excited timbre, high squeaks, low reassurances, confident connective phrases, none of it making sense.

“They’re talking about you!” Brother Bangg cried from behind us.

And then a voice I did recognize: Charlene!

Who’d made it to the warm just as we had. “If anymonkey is listening,” she said, and Brother Bangg transmoodled, “and I know you are, just this: I’ve made it to the warm waters, now you sweet-treat kizzy monkeys get yourselves home.”

Apparently something about her and her buzzload of reptiles had continued to beguile the pleece, who instead of stopping and a-wristing her, imposing their own sad upbringings, had apparently instead accompanied her not just out of Nyork but for the entire journey, along with an increasingly enormous retinue of other sensitives.

“All animals accounted for,” Charlene announced to cheers.

Another goddess, more blessings.

Then another voice, and this one I recognized only when Brother Bangg said it was Becky Crankbrood. The mean girl from Inga’s ssscoola, identified as Inga’s best friend! “Inga is innocent” was the only phrase I understood of her piping.

And the announcer again, dulcet tones: “The people have gone mad, and not only the animals!”

“These are not continental monkeys, nor Afriggan,” the driver nearly sang, tilting his head.

“Best guess via a quick google is either South or Central American,” said Monk Two.

“That worldly phome,” the driver said, now shaking his head.

“They only want to get home,” said Bangg. “There’s a prophecy, or so I’m gathering. We’re at a historical flexion, and these monkeys are the pivot.”

“I’ve felt that, too,” the new monk said in his excited way. “I think a lot of us have!”

“You’re both nuts,” the second monk said. “And we’re all going to end up in jail.”

The others ignored him. The new monk steered our craft, much bouncing and shifting of light.

“Home is all they want,” Brother Bangg said.

“And home, then, teacher, where is that?” Monk Two said. “South America? Central? Brother, that’s a vast region.” He had pride, plus all the answers: “These are squirrel monkeys. I’ve been reading up on them, the world in the poggetz of my robe!” Meaning he had his phome. The other monks ignored him. But on he went, like carved wood in the Bronzoo, all the unimportant things, nodding his head for emphasis, though he was only emphasizing himself: “Limited to the jungles of Colombia, subspecies one; subspecies two, limited to the rainforests of Panama and Costa Rica,” nod, nod. “And like all primates worldwide, threatened,” nod, nod, nod, “with the latter population listed as endangered,” nod. “The South American subspecies is larger, darker,” nod. “The Central American is considerably smaller, with orange fur upon their backs.”

“We’ve one of each, is my guess,” said the new monk, smart fellow, not entirely dismissive.

“We’re guessing Cozza Rica,” Brother Bangg said, though I’d heard no such guess.

“Panama Canal will take them straight there,” the driver said. “I mean to the Central American Pazific Coast, and from there they can head into proper habitat. I was merchant marine before I found this calling. Are ye monkeys above stowing away?”

“They’ve stowed away with us,” Bangg said.

“Fugitives,” Monk Two muttered.

“Canal,” Deeps emanated darkly.

“Explain what a canal is,” Bangg said to the driver. “Explain it like you’re talking to a monkey.”

And he mooded his moodle for us as the driver spoke air words, monk mind to monkey minds: “Shibs go from ocean to ocean through a kind of river that you-mens made by digging and destroying the terrain much as water might do in any case, cutting straight through the Isthmus of Panama, which is the you-men pretend designation for that narrow stretch of land, which along with Cozza Rica is what they call the lands that are your home—your sea is the far sea from this one.”

“Beep’s sea, maybe,” Deeps said.

“Soon yours,” I said. “And the first you’ve had.”

“And then what are shibs?” Deeps said.

“They float upon the water,” Bangg moodled solemnly. He would live, this one.

I said, “We used to see them sometimes, far out on the ocean, and think them islands. We called them gone-tomorrows and fast-floaters.”

“Shibs, then,” Deeps said.

“Your talk at the Beaut-ist Center is not till evening, master,” said the new monk.

“Yes, true, plenty of time, dear Brother Chaudhari.”

Monk Two looked very concerned. He said, “Where are the docks? Do we really have time? And what shibs go through the canal? Is there a way to know? There’s no way to know.”

Chaudhari only seemed amused. “The answer to question one is: I’ll take you right now. The answer to question two is: We have time. The answer to question three is: PortMiami, where they are very proud of their capability with post-Panamax shibs, now that the canal has been widened. And four: Yes, there is a way to know. We simply visit the Portage Page in the Miami Herald, available online.”

I said something my Inga had liked to say: “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Bangg, he who would live, was patient, clear-mooded: “He’s saying we think we can get you home.”