Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware Read online

  “Yes, yes. There my jeep. I leave it right here.” He guided them to the right, between a couple of thatched cottages, and pointed to where his jeep lay upside down in a ditch.

  The three stared at the wreck.

  “We turn it over before we get in,” said Bntno.

  “Well,” said Katie, “at least we’re here.”

  “Atoms to gluons!” Jasper exclaimed, smacking himself in the forehead. “We have to go back! I forgot to pay the vaultapult attendant his fifteen cents!”

  Lily said, “I think maybe you can pay him another time.”

  “I’m a man of my word, Lily.”

  “Jasper,” said Katie, with warning in her voice. “Jaaaaasper!”

  “Does a man’s sworn oath mean nothing? Are words mere puffs of air?”

  Bntno was attaching ropes to the side of the jeep. “Not to go back now, child. We pull jeep up.”

  A large group of locals had come out of their businesses to watch Bntno struggle with his jeep. Now they all lent a hand with the ropes. Katie, Lily, and Jasper also yanked. In no time whatsoever, the jeep had flipped back over. It was not in great shape. There was a line of dirt and silt wavering across its windshield where the water had lapped for some days.

  And once they got in and started driving, they realized there was probably some kind of problem with the rear axle, because they wobbled. And there were soft-shell crabs on the seats.

  They tossed the crabs and headed toward the forests of the north.

  33

  I am afraid that now comes the part in the novel of foreign adventure that I really can’t stand. We have a lull in the action, so the characters get informative about local industries: weaving, pottery, major imports and exports, farming techniques, etc. They have idiotic conversations like “Now, how do the interesting people in this country make these colorful baskets?” or “So, what about smelting?”

  They talk about the life cycle and running speed of some animal they drive past or about the unusual customs they see. The whole time, you just want the story to get back to all the chasing and the riddles and the cabin in the woods and the fighting, but no, all you get are three pages on the history of origami. It’s like seeing someone’s vacation slides but in a room half filled with cold water and a stingray.*

  For several hours, they had driven through rice fields. Dover had dwindled to a speck on the horizon. They had passed through small towns, half-timbered houses built over irrigation ditches. Jasper had asked many intense questions about local vegetable farming and, later, about the pasta fields that waved in the welcome breezes beneath the hot sun. They stopped to pluck some ziti for lunch.

  The last large town they passed in the plains was Smyrna, built upon a great peak of stone, a massive granite boulder that jutted up out of the grasslands, houses clinging to its sides. At its highest point stood the ruined fortress where, four centuries before, the last few men and women of Smyrna had withstood the ferocious attack of the Silent Butchers of Deakyneville.

  By three o’clock, they had reached the foothills of the mountains. Forest grew upon the slopes. The jeep bumped and rattled through little village squares where people squatted in a few shops that sold lentils and spices or copper wire.

  Bntno sang the old, wailing songs of Dover. At first Lily was thrilled to hear them, but after an hour or two, she had a headache. When he wouldn’t stop singing twenty or thirty verses per song, Katie tried to interrupt with questions, at first about what the words might mean (“That’s so interesting. So what do the—”; “Could you translate what you—”; “Um, could you just keep your hands on the wheel? And could you—”), and then, later, just questions of any kind that might make him stop singing. (“Now, how do the interesting people of this state make these colorful baskets?”; “So, what about -smelting?”)

  The jeep juddered over hills where red clay houses stood among rich orchards and bridges swung over deep, leafy ravines.

  They stayed that night in a village. They ate at a small tavern there, and sat outside on the porch, seeing the billion stars above them and hearing the wild dogs bark in the forest. There were lights far up in the mountains—lonely lights—lights from people who saw others only once every few months. Soon, the three friends would be up in those mountains. They would be far from any civilization, any help.

  The night smelled of orchids and green.

  In the morning, they left behind the last villages. They rambled down the far side of the foothills, and they were in a jungle valley. Moss grew on the trees, and the wide, waxen leaves of exotic plants hung low over the rutted dirt track. Monkeys watched the jeep from trees.

  As they drove, Jasper scanned Lisa Buldene’s There and Back Again ™ for clues as to how to find the mountain monastery.

  “It mentions the four mountains,” Jasper reported. “Their names are Drgsl, Minndfl, Bdreth, and Tlmp. Vbngoom lies atop Tlmp.”

  “I thought they were supposed to have supersecret names that no mortals knew,” said Katie.

  “Well,” said Jasper, somewhat bothered, “I guess some mortals now know them. The mortals who have looked them up in the index.”

  Lily could tell that Jasper was a little hurt that his secret mountains were in the book’s index. She asked him gently, “What does the book say about the mountains?”

  Jostled by the road, Jasper held the book up close to his eyes and, elbows bobbing, read out: “‘Though the Four Peaks look the same height, trekkers will find that Mount Minndfl is actually considerably shorter than the nearby peak covered with deceptively inviting pine woods. English explorer and adventurer Leslie Arbuckle-Smythe climbed both that forested peak—despite its imposing height—and Mount Bdreth because he was too superstitious to climb near the ancient, rune-inscribed pillar that stands on one of the other mountains.’”

  “Too superstitious?” asked Lily. “What does it mean by that?”

  “He was a fellow archaeologist and adventurer,” said Jasper. “After a few scrapes, we think twice about anything that might get us bitten by a mummified cat.”

  “I mean, what was he worried about with the pillar?”

  Jasper flipped a few pages. “Doesn’t say,” he said. “But it reminds us this is a carry-in, carry-out park.”

  They drove through the jungle wastes. The heavy green foliage hung all around them. Wild boar scampered out of their way. Swamps gleamed through the trees.

  They saw no sign of civilization. They now saw no house, no farm, no logging teams or goatherds. No one. Birds flew above them. Monkeys called from branches. The wilderness was complete.

  That night, they pulled off the track and pitched their tents in the jungle. Lily was a little scared of sleeping outside when unknown things lurked in the woods. Jasper tried to reassure her, but she was not used to jungle adventures in the way that he was, and she found herself lying awake, listening as things shuffled and slid through the underbrush.

  At last, exhausted by a day of being thrown around in the jeep, she fell asleep. She had not slept long, however, when Katie shook her awake.

  “Lily,” whispered Katie. “There’s someone coming.”

  Lily’s heart froze in her chest. She listened.

  Yes, she too could hear a jeep engine, hear the quiet crunch of gravel under tires as someone drove slowly along the road. As if someone was looking for someone.

  She could see the headlights through the fabric of the tent. They lay awake and panicked. They both hoped that Jasper was silently awake, too. They both thought about what to do.

  The strange jeep stopped and the engine idled. There was a swoop of light—a flashlight being played across the tents—and then it was snapped off. There was a lot of crunching and snapping as the jeep turned around. The girls lay rigid, each balanced on an elbow, afraid to move.

  Then they heard the mysterious jeep head back up the road the way it had come.

  “It’s going,” said Lily. “Thank goodness.”

  “Yeah, thank goodness,�
� said Katie. “Unless those sounds just after the flashlight switched off were someone quietly getting out of the jeep.”

  Lily, in the pitch-black, could feel herself turning pale.

  34

  “Jasper,” hissed Katie through the wall of her tent. “Jas!”

  “I saw it,” he whispered back. “I’ll rev up my atomic torch. Let’s take a look.” With a sound like a very small UFO rounding Neptune, Jasper’s light filled his tent.

  Carefully they crawled outside into the black night. Bntno still lay snoring in his tent. Lily held her flashlight at the ready, but she didn’t turn it on—thinking that it was better if they kept themselves at least somewhat hidden in the darkness.

  The three of them stood side by side, Jasper in the middle, the valiant beams of his atomic torch sweeping the ferns and mossy trunks. Nothing moved.

  Far off, monkeys howled.

  Jasper gestured for the other two to walk away from his light. If there was anyone else there, they’d be blinded and wouldn’t be able to see Lily and Katie.

  The three moved forward and into the road. Each step was agony, announced by snaps and grindings beneath their feet. Each footfall might have well been an explosion. If anyone was crouched in the bushes, listening, he would have no trouble telling where and how many of them they were.

  Lily now switched on her flashlight. She ran it over the ruts and tracks, each pebble picked out in the stark glare. “Here’s where the other car turned around,” she whispered.

  Jasper and Katie headed over toward her. She ran her light along the treaded tire tracks.

  “And here,” she said in a voice strangled with horror, “is the footprint where someone got out.”

  35

  Sunrise found the three friends huddled around the remains of a fire, looking pale, jittery, and thin. They had not slept a wink all night. They had been waiting for someone to prowl out of the darkness with a gleaming blade.

  The first thing they had done was to compare the tire tracks in the dust to Jasper’s memory of the white van’s tire tracks, to see if maybe this was the Stare-Eyes team again, but Jasper said that no, this was a jeep about the size of their own. Then they had carefully searched the whole area for more footprints, and had found a few near Bntno’s jeep. But from there the tracks led into the jungle, and soon the spongy plants hid all traces of their mysterious visitor. There was no further sign of him, and there was no telling when he might return.

  So they waited through the night.

  Toward dawn, an incredible chorus of birdsong and snakesong arose in the jungle around them, the macaws singing high in the branches, the vipers and pythons swaying on the ground below, emitting their weird, worshipful chirps for the sun that warmed them.

  A booming voice startled the three. “Glad day, little ones!” Bntno had finally woken up and clomped out of his tent in his rubber shoes. He stretched. “Sleep, it is the glorious restorer!” he exclaimed. Then he regarded the three with new interest. “Maybe you have made eggs?”

  “We have not made eggs,” said Jasper sourly. “We were disturbed in the middle of the night by a strange jeep that appeared to be looking for us, which dropped off someone when it found us.”

  “Ah,” said Bntno. “This is probably government spy.” He began to take down his tent. “We leave in half an hour, okay?”

  “How much farther until we reach the four mountains?” asked Jasper. “I reckoned on about three days’ driving.”

  “Three days?!” Katie protested. “You can’t drive straight north in Delaware for three days. You’d end up in Canada.”

  “Katie,” whispered Lily. “I really think it’s better if you let this one go.”

  In half an hour they had packed their tents and sleeping bags in the jeep and were ready to go. Bntno, humming Doverian pop, hopped into the driver’s seat, twisted the key in the ignition, and said, “Now we is rock and roll, disco dancer!” He clapped his hands.

  The engine turned over a few times and the jeep rattled about ten feet, then there was an awful noise. The jeep quit.

  Bntno tried the key again. Nothing. The engine choked and died.

  “One minutes, disco dancer,” he said, holding up his finger. He climbed out, went in front of the jeep, and opened the hood.

  Jasper got out to help look for the problem.

  “This jeep has been upside down in a ditch full of rainwater,” said Katie. “Do they really need to look for the problem?”

  Jasper had an idea. He went around to the side of the jeep. He fiddled with the lid of the gas tank. He pulled it off, ran his finger along its edge, and sniffed his finger.

  “Grave news,” he said. “The jeep has been sabotaged. Our mysterious visitor has put sugar in our gas tank.” He smelled again. “Hmm. And a refreshing hint of cinnamon and cloves. We clearly are not dealing with your average roustabout ruffian here.”

  There was nothing for it. They were going to have to walk.

  “It’s going to take weeks to walk,” said Katie. “Do we even have enough food?”

  “There is one way we can walk,” said Bntno. “Shortcut. It is in a very dangerous place, Greylag—a ruined city with very many creature—but there is a bridge over the Drawyer River there. I do not say it before, because we had jeep and jeep could not go across this bridge in Greylag, but if you want to make walk shorter, we could go on this bridge. Cut off many days.”

  Jasper thought about it. “Time is of the essence,” he said. “It was three days ago that I received that mental message from Drgnan Pghlik. Who knows what Bobby Spandrel and his World-Wide Lootery might be up to by now at the monastery?”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” said Lily. “It might not be worth it to go through the ruined city if there are a lot of…creatures.”

  “I have my ray gun,” said Jasper confidently. “Somewhere.” He began patting his backpack.

  “What kind of creatures?” Katie asked Bntno.

  “Oh, tooth creatures. Stompy creatures. Old creatures.”

  “Those don’t sound like a good kind of creatures,” Katie said to Jasper.

  Jasper looked down. “You’re right,” he said. “I can’t ask you to risk your lives for my friend. But I must go that way. I must take the shortest route possible to reach Vbngoom. Give me those two packs, and I will set off.”

  Katie and Lily exchanged a look.

  “If you go that way, Jasper, we’re all going that way,” said Katie. “We’re not going to let you do something that dangerous alone.”

  “Yeah,” said Lily. “We’re with you, whatever happens.”

  “Here. I’ll even take your extra pack,” said Katie, grappling it onto her shoulder.

  “You don’t need to take my extra pack,” said Jasper.

  “We stick together,” said Katie.

  Jasper was clearly moved. “By the squealing fruits of Arcturus, you are the best friends a man could have,” he said.

  They pulled their other packs out of the jeep and prepared the long walk toward the terrors of the jungle.

  36

  They tromped along the white, chalky road through the rain forest. Hours had gone by.

  The sun was swelteringly hot. Lily felt like all of her bones were made of warm lead. She was sweating so much it was embarrassing. She couldn’t walk as fast or as far as Jasper or Katie. She kept taking swigs from her canteen, but she was afraid she would run out of water if she wasn’t careful.

  Bntno sang Doverian pop tunes, playing air guitar.

  “Just think,” said Katie. “We would have been driving this whole way and it would have taken us about twenty-five minutes to get this far if it hadn’t been for that jerk last night and his sugar. When I get my hands on him…” She shifted the weight of the extra bag on her shoulder. It rattled and clanked. “What’s in here, anyway?” she asked Jasper.

  “Supplies,” he answered vaguely. “You know. Supplies.”

  “What supplies?” Katie asked. “It weighs like a m
illion tons.”

  Lily, who had not spoken for a while, suddenly said, “The government must have heard enough of our plans through the clown picture in the hotel room to know where we’re going. Maybe they sent someone to trail us. But if they want to find out where Vbngoom is, why would they sabotage our jeep and stop us from getting there?”

  “Hmm,” Jasper mused. “That is an excellent question.”

  “But they’re probably still out here,” said Katie. “You saw the footprints.”

  After this discussion, the three of them had the creeping feeling that someone was following them. Every once in a while, one of them would stop and wheel around—but there was nothing behind them but the white road, the green leaves, and the blue sky. They walked and they sweated.

  Late that afternoon they came to a huge stone post, green with moss, out of which peered toothy gargoyle faces and long words in some forgotten script. “This is the place,” said Bntno. “Here we take path.”

  They were just starting down the path when they heard a distant sound. The sound of an engine.

  None of them thought, We’re saved! They knew exactly what it would be before it even reached them.

  “Hide!” said Jasper, but Lily and Katie had already barreled down the path and were peering back toward the road out of the ferns. Bntno, confused, followed them.

  The white van. It rolled along the track. All of the players within stared straight ahead. Team Mom drove, holding her cigarette out the window.

  The van passed the place where the stone post marked the point where the path diverged from the road. It continued down the road, throwing up clouds of white dust behind it.

  “Those dastards,” said Jasper. He turned to Bntno. “Is there any way we can reach Vbngoom by foot before them?”

  “No,” said Bntno. “This way is shorter, but still long time by feets.”

  “Still,” said Jasper, “we’ve got to try.”

  And with renewed vigor, the four of them set off along the path toward Greylag, the ruined city, haunt of stompy creatures, and the treacherous bridge over the mighty river Drawyer.