“Theo?” said Bea quietly. She sat on the moss-cushioned rock where Captain Bontoc had sat earlier. The listening horn was pressed to the lid of the Squeak Jar, and Bea’s ear was pressed to the listening horn. Phoebe crouched in the grass and watched intently, as though she might catch sight of a miniature seven-year-old boy shimmering in the moonlight that filled the jar. The noise at Cambio Falls was as great as ever, but this was where Bea had first heard Theo’s disembodied voice, and it seemed the natural place to try to hear it again.
“Anything?” said Phoebe.
“Ssshh!” said Bea. She had located the distant voice, but she had to tune into it before she could make out his words, like a weak radio signal.
“Where did you go?” said Theo’s voice.
“I woke up,” said Bea. She wasn’t sure if the Theo in the Squeak Jar would remember the conversation she had had with the Theo in her dream. She wondered if he would know what she was talking about.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Theo. “First you were asking if I was in a giant jar, which is a stupid question, I think you’ll agree. Then when I looked you were gone. Now you’re back.”
Bea let this sink in for a moment. “You can see me?” she said.
There was a pause. Bea could picture Theo’s face, his nose wrinkled with incredulity. “You’ve gotten really weird since we came on holiday. Of course I can see you. I don’t need glasses, you know.”
“Can he see us?” said Phoebe. Her voice sounded loud, and brought with it a rush of noise. Bea flapped her hand at her urgently, then poked her finger in her free ear.
“What am I doing?” she said to Theo.
Theo sighed patiently. “You’re sitting on the branch beside me. You’ve got your finger stuck in your ear. You’re listening to a jam jar through a thingie. Are you going to ask me why next?”
“Why?” repeated Bea.
“I haven’t a clue,” said Theo. “Did you bring Nails?”
“Nails is fine,” said Bea. She had not tried to put the meerkat back in the backpack. From the corner of her eye she could see him foraging for beetles in the long grass. Now that he had won his freedom in a daring escape he seemed content to stay close.
“You keep saying that,” said Theo, “but where is he? I caught a big green thing for him, but it keeps trying to climb out of my pocket.”
“Never mind that,” said Bea.
“I do mind. What if it’s got a stinger?”
“Theo, listen to me. I know this will sound strange, but…” She tried to think of a way to phrase what she had to say that would not alarm him. “You can see me, but I can only hear you. I’m not actually sitting on a branch; I’m sitting on a rock.”
“No, you’re not,” said Theo. “The rock would fall out of the tree. Then you’d fall out of the tree. Then you’d cry, and I’d get the blame.”
“No, it wouldn’t fall, because…Look, just describe to me where you are. Pretend I’m blind.”
“Okay,” said Theo after a moment. “There’s trees. Lots of them.”
“What kind of trees?”
“Skinny thin ones, mostly. They wave about a lot.”
Bea looked into the forest through which they had just walked. The trees were old and sturdy there. Even the thinnest ones had trunks far thicker than a man’s torso. “What else can you see?” she asked.
“Just a bunch of leaves. And the Tree People.”
“What Tree People?”
“The ones who live here. They have tons of pets. They’ve got about a million cats, and a couple of lizards, and a big parrot called Trigger….”
“Are they there now?” asked Bea.
“Of course,” said Theo.
“Ask them where you are.”
Theo’s voice became muffled, as though he were talking away from the phone.
“We’re Here.”
“Where’s here?” asked Bea. They were both talking now with that sort of exaggerated politeness people use when their patience has stretched to its limit.
“Just…Here,” said Theo. “I think that’s actually the name of it.”
“Let me talk to them,” said Bea.
“I’m not stopping you,” said Theo.
“But I can’t hear them,” said Bea in exasperation.
“That’s because they don’t talk with voices.”
Bea searched for a question that might produce an answer that was of use to her. Her ear was numb from being pressed so hard against the flat end of the horn, and the strain of hearing his distant voice was making her dizzy. “What else can you see?” she said.
“I can see you and that stupid jar,” said Theo. “I can see trees. I can see leaves; I can see the sky. It’s nice here, but I want to go back to the busmarine now.”
His voice seemed to be getting fainter as he grew more impatient. Bea could barely hear him, and in desperation she shouted one last question. “What color is the moon?”
The sound of the falls rushed into her ears like water breaching a dam, and if there was any reply from Theo she could not hear it. She called his name again, but there was no answer. She put the Squeak Jar down in the grass and ran her hands through her hair.
“Is he gone?” said Phoebe.
Bea nodded, trying to ignore the clammy feeling in her chest.
“Don’t worry,” said Phoebe. “Granny Delphine said you’d be able to find him when you’ve had some training.”
“I don’t think Ma will allow it. She’s always hated Mumbo Jumbo.”
“What is Mumbo Jumbo?”
“I don’t know exactly. It’s some kind of secret thing that Granny Delphine belongs to. We were always told never to mention it, ever. Ma says it’s dangerous. Pa says it doesn’t exist, but he says it in that voice he uses when he’s making stuff up.”
“Like when he told us a giant lizard runs the pizzeria?”
“Yes. Or about the chocolate mines of Kathmandu.”
“Did he really think we’d believe those stories?”
Bea shrugged. “Would you have believed him if he had told us about a car wash that sent you to another world?”
Phoebe poked in the grass with a twig. For a while she said nothing; then she looked up at Bea. “You know what this place is, don’t you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Bell Hoot is an anagram. Think about it.”
Bea scratched her head. “Boot Hell?” she said. “Tell Hobo?” She knew she wasn’t nearly as good at this as Phoebe was.
“No,” said Phoebe. “I reckon it’s a bolt-hole.”
“What’s a bolt-hole?”
“It’s where people go to hide. It comes from rabbits, I think. This must be where people come to hide when the Gummint men are after them.”
“Do you think we’ll ever get back?” said Bea. She had been too concerned with Theo’s disappearance during the short time they had spent in Bell Hoot to think about much else. Now for the first time it occurred to her that Phoebe might never see her parents again. She pictured Phoebe’s dressing-gowned mother, her straw-colored hair showing two inches of gray roots and a cigarette glued to her mouth with scarlet lipstick, and the father who lurked in the sitting room with the curtains drawn, oblivious to anyone who was not holding a fistful of playing cards. Phoebe seldom mentioned her parents, and she certainly seemed to prefer the bustle and chaos of the Flints’ apartment to the smoky cave of her own. “Will they be worried?” said Bea. “Your parents, I mean.”
“They won’t even notice I’m gone, probably,” said Phoebe.
“Still,” said Bea, “I don’t see why you couldn’t go back sometime if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to,” said Phoebe, concentrating on the small crater she had dug with the twig. “And I can’t. You heard what the captain said. There’s always seven more coming through.”
“Yes, but if Bontoc arranged it in advance, maybe they could bring through one person less.”
Phoebe got to her feet. “If I did want to,” she said, pointing at the opened compartment in the Blue Moon Mobile, “I could just stow away.”
“I think that would still count as—,” began Bea; then she stopped dead. A terrible thought struck her. She stared at Phoebe.
“What?” said Phoebe.
“I thought it was Nails who made Theo disappear,” said Bea.
She saw her friend’s eyes widen with the same realization.
“Arkadi!” they whispered in unison.