Eye of the Forest by P. B. Kerr

Author:P. B. Kerr [Kerr P. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-545-30160-2
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2009-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

“There you are,” said Nimrod. “I was wondering where you’d wandered off to.”

“I didn’t wander off,” said John. “I disappeared. On account of the fact that I answered el Tunchi’s whistle.”

John told Nimrod about el Tunchi and the whistling contest.

“That explains it, then,” said Nimrod. “A little while ago, there was a violent wind that swept through the forest for no apparent reason. So it was you.”

“Where exactly was I? When I disappeared?”

“Difficult question.” Nimrod shrugged. “The next world. The one before. The one beside it. None of these words really means anything when applied to where you were. Or, to be more accurate, where you weren’t. You were here and there at almost the same point in time and space. Which is almost nowhere at all.”

“You mean like two dimensions?”

“Yes. But not quite.”

“So how is it possible that you felt the wind from my whistling?”

“Ah well, that’s the thing about whistling. If the sound keeps on going long enough, then it can actually move between these two so-called dimensions. There are a lot of hurricanes that get started by the idle whistling of ghosts.”

“I see,” said John, although he didn’t. Not quite.

“Anyway,” said Nimrod, “you’re back now. That’s all that matters. We’ve got to get moving. While you were off having fun, Zadie’s bat, Zotz, came back with a message for her from Virgil McCreeby. He says that he’s lost in the jungle. He asks Zadie to take on the shape of the bat so that she might come to him and help him discover exactly where he is.”

John nodded gloomily, still very worried about his sister and the others.

“Does that mean there’s time to go and look for Philippa and the others?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not,” said Nimrod. “Look, John, they’ll have to take their chances. Need I remind you of what Faustina commanded us to do? To secure the Eye. And if we can’t do that, then we can’t prevent anyone from finding the lost city of Paititi. If that’s where McCreeby is trying to get to, it won’t be for anything good. You can bet on that much. We have to stop him. At all costs. Do you understand? At all costs.”

John nodded. It wasn’t often that Nimrod sounded so alarmed about something.

“Speaking of which,” said John, “el Tunchi gave me this. Said it might help us find the city. Although I have absolutely no idea how, or even what it is.”

John handed Nimrod what looked like a necklace made of several hundred lengths — many of them knotted — of colored string.

“It’s a khipu,” said Nimrod, examining it carefully. “Unlike any other Bronze Age civilization, the Inca had no written language and so this was the way in which they encoded and recorded important information.”

“Yeah? So what does it mean?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Nimrod. “I don’t think anyone does. Khipu are as much of a mystery today as Egyptian hieroglyphs were until Champollion deciphered their meaning. Let us hope that a solution to how these things work presents itself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.