17
WE DARE A DEAL
THE CHILDREN RUSHED from the hut into the night and raced toward the campfire. Their father sat on a log with a pile of empty wooden dinner bowls next to him, and the women sat on other logs around him. He was entertaining them with a story.
“So there we were,” he said, “in a cave of white marble beneath the ancient palace at Persepolis. And the staff of the Emperor Cyrus sat on a pedestal in front of us, shining with a mysterious light. I was about to touch it, when my wife pointed up. I followed her gaze and saw that the ceiling was entirely covered in bats. Thousands, tens of thousands of bats. And they were waking up.”
The women laughed and gasped. Dr. Navel loved the attention. Oliver and Celia never cared that much for their father’s bat stories. They preferred watching the show Bat Stories on Saturday morning cartoons.
“Well, my wife said, ‘Maybe they’ll go back to sleep if we sing to them.’ So suddenly, she starts singing this song we used to put Oliver and Celia to bed. And wouldn’t you know it—”
“Dad!” the children yelled as they approached. Their father looked up, startled. He was not used to seeing his children run.
“Oliver! Celia!” He smiled. “I was just talking about you.”
ʺThese . . . these . . .ʺ Oliver panted.
“These are the Poison Witches!” Celia shouted. The women around the circle gasped.
“Children,” Dr. Navel said, his face immediately turning angry. “That is a very, very offensive thing to say. The Dugmas are some of the most hated and feared creatures in this land, and it is completely inappropriate to call our hosts such a thing.”
“Your children have quite the imagination,” the woman with the turquoise headband said, though she was not laughing.
“Not usually,” Dr. Navel replied, slightly puzzled. He turned to the children. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because,” Celia started, “Captain Sinclair should have proposed to the Duchess in Business Class, not the stewardess.”
“And the yak on the tiny airplane screen warned me too,” Oliver added.
Dr. Navel looked at his children a moment, considering what they were telling him. The fire crackled and hissed and insects buzzed in the darkness beyond.
“Television does not have all the answers,” he said at last. “I have spent time with these women, and I assure you that they are lovely hosts and have no intention of poisoning us to steal our souls. Now, if you would please allow me to finish my story, I was just getting to the part where your mother—”
And then their father went pale and wobbly and fell flat on his face on the ground.
“Well, this is not at all how it was supposed to happen,” the woman with the headband said. She was clearly their leader.
“It was supposed to be the children who took the poison,” another complained.
“Maybe Dr. Navel was tired from all the travel?” another suggested. “What’s that called? Jet lag?”
“It’s not jet lag,” the leader said.
“It could be jet lag. You don’t know.”
“Did you poison his stew?”
“Maybe.”
“You weren’t supposed to poison his stew.”
“I couldn’t remember whose stew to poison, so I poisoned all the stews.”
“That wasn’t the plan at all!” The witch walked over to Dr. Navel and lifted his hand up, then dropped it again. “You put enough poison in his stew to bring down a bear,” she said.
“Why would I want to poison a bear?”
“You wouldn’t want to poison a bear.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“Just to make my point.”
“I’ve already forgotten your point.”
“You get everything wrong. You can’t even cook properly!”
“My cooking is delicious!”
The children’s heads snapped back and forth between the witches like they were watching a tennis match. Oliver and Celia were stunned by their father’s sudden collapse.
“We’re in trouble, Ollie,” Celia said.
“Big trouble,” Oliver answered.
“We should have made mashed potatoes,” the leader said. “Then the children would have eaten it!”
“Kids love yak butter stew!”
“I’ve had to eat your cooking for over two hundred years. It’s enough for me to think about poisoning myself!”
“Why don’t you do us all the favor then?!”
“Why don’t you make me?!”
“Why don’t I!” The leader stood with her fists clenched, staring down the other witch. The others started shouting, trying to break up the fight.
“Is he dead?” Celia whispered while the witches shouted at each other, honking like a gaggle of geese.
“I don’t know,” said Oliver.
Their father twitched and the witches stopped their argument and turned toward the children in unison, grinning through their pointed teeth. They didn’t look like a gaggle of geese anymore. They looked like a group of sharks, which was, appropriately, called a shiver.
“So,” the leader said. “We will use the children.”
Celia and Oliver gulped and grabbed hands. Celia tried to step in front of her brother. She was, after all, older by three minutes and forty-two seconds. She had a duty to protect him.
“Use us for what?” Oliver said defiantly. He didn’t want the witches to think he was hiding behind his sister.
“You see, young ones, your father is not dead,” the leader explained. “Our poison works more slowly, and much more painfully. He is being held in a between-place, between life and death. In five days, when the poison has completed its work, all his good karma, all his life force, and all his dreams will pass to us.” The witches licked their lips at the thought. “That is how we survive; it is how we have survived for hundreds of years.”
“Of course,” another witch said, “it does not have to be this way for your father.”
“We had wanted to poison you,” the woman in the headband said, as if that was supposed to make the twins feel better. “And then your father would have done anything to get the antidote. He would have found anything.” She smiled widely and nodded to make her point.
“The Lost Tablets,” Oliver said.
“You want us to get the Lost Tablets for you,” Celia said, “and in exchange, you’ll give our father the antidote?”
“That’s right, child,” a witch said. “The tablets will give us control of all the world’s knowledge. That’s worth quite a lot to trade. No more scrounging in this valley for hikers and pilgrims to poison with yak butter stew. We’ll poison priests and kings with cakes and caviar!”
“You must bring us the Lost Tablets before five days are over,” the leader said, “or it will be too late.”
“How are we supposed to find them?” Oliver asked. “Our father was the explorer. We don’t even like going to the park! We don’t even like gym class!”
“That is our deal, take or leave it.”
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” Celia said, and Oliver agreed. Their father had wagered their freedom with Sir Edmund and now they had made a deal with the witches.
“The ants go marching two by two,” sang the witch who only knew song lyrics. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”
The others laughed and a heavy mist fell around them. A quick wind blew the mist away, and when it cleared, all the witches were gone, along with their huts and the satellite dish, and the logs with the blankets. Even the fire was gone.
“Ummm, Celia,” Oliver said.
“Yeah?”
“They took Dad too.” He pointed to the empty space where their father’s body had been. They stood shivering, not knowing what to do or what to say, or where to go, when the trees rustled. They heard branches cracking.
“What now?” Oliver groaned as he and Celia drew closer together. Whatever came out of the forest, they would face it together. The brush burst open and they squeezed each other’s hands tighter, preparing for the worst.
“So,” Lama Norbu said as he stepped out of the darkness, his bright smile lighting up the night. He looked around at the empty campsite and furrowed his brow. “What did I miss?”
