Jake Atlas and the Quest for the Crystal Mountain Read online

  Neither of the girls noticed as they bundled him to the ground and attacked him with hugs and giggles. I stood back, feeling like I was intruding, but Tenzin called me over. Perhaps it was just Tibetan hospitality, or maybe he wanted to distract attention from himself.

  “Manchester United,” he said. “Come, meet my sisters.”

  They looked a bit wary of me, so I nodded and smiled and said a lot of tashi deleks. I followed as they dragged Tenzin to one of the houses, where more grinning family members waited.

  They were Tenzin’s mum and dad, and they were pretty emotional. I sat apart, to give them space, but after they’d spoken for a while Tenzin’s dad came over to me. He was a huge guy, with skin like tree bark and hair like Albert Einstein’s. He grabbed me up from the rock I was sitting on and gripped my shoulder so hard that I yelped.

  “You save Tenzin life,” he said.

  I looked at Tenzin, who watched from the doorway. I had invaded his home, broken my promise to his lama and destroyed his monastery, but he still introduced me as a hero. The only reply I could think of was the truth.

  “No. He saved mine.”

  The guy’s grip grew even tighter. “You are welcome.”

  He led us into one of the houses, a windowless room with a round hearth and a cauldron hanging on a chain. I tried not to groan when I saw yak butter tea bubbling in the pot and realized it would be inflicted on me in vast quantities. I was hungry and thirsty and desperate for warmth, but the sight and smell of that tea still made me shudder.

  There was no escaping it – a mug of the stuff was shoved into my hand before I’d even sat by the fire. One of Tenzin’s sisters sat close, gripping a ladle to top up the drink.

  I thought Tenzin and his family would have a lot to catch up on, but no one spoke for at least half an hour. I wondered if I should break the silence with some weather chat, but realized after a while that it wasn’t awkward silence – it was simply silence. They were happy just being together.

  I thought of my own family, and the times we’d sat around a dinner table. Barely a minute passed without some sort of squabble. Things had changed a lot since Pan and I discovered our parents’ secret past, and they’d started training us to become hunters. But we were still often at each other’s throats and, as I sat with Tenzin and his family, I wondered why.

  I missed them. A lot.

  I knew they could look after themselves, no matter what danger they might be in. But sitting there in someone else’s home made me even more determined to reach Mount Kailas, to find the Hall of Records, and use it to rescue my family.

  Then, suddenly, everyone started singing. One of the girls brought out a tambourine, and the other banged a drum. I clapped along with Tenzin and his mum as his dad stood up by the fire and started dancing – a sort of hip wiggle and thrust, and some jerky head movements, like a chicken. One of the sisters threw him a yak hide, which he tossed over his back, and a pair of strap-on horns – like fancy dress, although I think they were real – and he began snorting as the singing and drumming grew louder.

  Tenzin leaned close to shout in my ear. “This is yak dance,” he explained.

  “It’s…” I didn’t know what to say. “What is it for?”

  “To give thanks.”

  “Thanks for what?”

  “Yaks!”

  I nodded. Everything was sacred in Tibet, but this one I sort of understood. “The yak gives you a lot,” I replied. “You ride yaks, eat yak, wear yak fur, drink yak butter tea, use yak butter candles and make yak dung fires.”

  “Yes, the yak is very useful,” Tenzin agreed, shouting above the music. “But that not why they are sacred. The yak is in us here.”

  He touched his chest, and for a moment I thought he meant the indigestion you get from yak butter tea. He didn’t. He meant his heart.

  “When something is sacred, Manchester United, you feel it inside you. It is not just useful, it is part of you to love and protect. A monastery is not just a house, it is home. A terma is not just a scroll, it is something more, something in your heart. And a mountain is not just a mountain.”

  Man, that was sneaky!

  “You mean Mount Kailas, right?” I asked.

  “Yes, Manchester United. To you it is useful, like yak. To us it is sacred, like yak. We see same thing, but we see different. Do your smarty-goggles have a way of changing that?”

  I pulled my smart-goggles from my pocket and considered them as if perhaps they did have that setting.

  I understood what he meant, but that didn’t change what I had to do. Searching for the Hall of Records in Kailas upset him, but he’d get over it. After everything my family had been through, I couldn’t stop just to spare someone’s feelings. I couldn’t let them down.

  “I’m only here to help you,” I lied. “I don’t have the Drak Terma, so I can’t find what I was looking for.”

  His eyes brightened, and in the firelight I saw his dad reflected in them, doing the jerky yak dance. Tenzin grabbed my arm and yanked me up.

  “Come, dance!” he said.

  “What? No way!”

  “Come on, Manchester United! Feel the yak in your heart!”

  I didn’t think I had an inner yak, but everyone was now up and at it, dancing around the fire and making yak noises. Maybe all the candle smoke got to my head, but I was enjoying myself. I was amazed that I could dance with the blisters on my feet and cramp in my legs, but somehow I found the energy. Maybe you just do when you’re having fun?

  That night, nestled among blankets by the fire, it took me a while to get to sleep. I lay staring at the embers, watching them throb as draughts crept under the door, and thinking about this mission. I’d grown obsessed with finding the emerald tablets and discovering where they led. With stopping the People of the Snake from hiding their secrets from the world. With wiping the smile off Marjorie’s face.

  I’d thought that no matter how we did it, it was worth it. A lot of stuff had been damaged along the way. Actually, damaged isn’t the word. That suggests it could be repaired. Things were destroyed. In almost every place we’d been, we had wrecked more things than we ever found. That hadn’t mattered to me; they were just things. I’d never realized, or seen, that to some people they’re more than just things. They are everything.

  Mount Kailas was that to more than a billion people. If I climbed it, I’d be breaking a billion hearts. And maybe that wouldn’t be the worst of it. I’d destroyed a mountain in Honduras, after all. But I couldn’t give up now, could I? I was so close. Maybe my family needed me too. Or was I just telling myself that?

  All these thoughts pulsed through my head until I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  I woke to dazzling light, as if someone was beaming a spotlight at me. I sat up, pushing back blankets and rubbing my eyes and realized that someone was beaming a spotlight at me. One of Tenzin’s sisters was wearing my smart-goggles and had activated the torch.

  “Good glasses,” she said.

  I smiled, glancing around the room, embarrassed that I’d slept in while everyone else was awake. The door was open and Tenzin’s dad was outside, yelling at yaks. Someone had relit the fire and yak butter tea bubbled again in the cauldron.

  I couldn’t see Tenzin.

  I raised a hand, shielding my eyes from the torchlight. “They’re called smart-goggles,” I told her. “Watch this.”

  I leaned closer and gave them an instruction: “Show last photograph.”

  Light flickered on the girl’s cheeks, as the lenses showed her the photograph I had taken in the library at Yerpa Gompa.

  The Drak Terma.

  I tried to sound chirpy, like I was just giving a friendly demonstration. “What do you see now? Can you read it?”

  She looked for a few seconds and then removed the glasses. Her smile was gone, and I saw a look that had become familiar to me since I’d been in Tibet. Disappointment. Did she know what I was trying to do?

  She dropped the goggles onto th
e blankets, and walked away.

  “Not so smart-goggles,” she said.

  Great, now I’d upset her too.

  I groaned, shaking away the last of the night’s sleep. My legs had seized up, and I had to rub them before I could stand. Even then, walking was more like hobbling. I winced from the pain of my blisters, which squelched in my socks.

  Outside, Tenzin’s dad greeted me with a whack on the back.

  “You want to help with yaks?” he asked.

  I didn’t, but could hardly refuse. For the next hour I joined him, shouting at the beasts and waving my arms as we rounded them into a pen. It was hard work, and I didn’t see the point of it because he let them out again about two minutes later.

  Tenzin’s mum brought me a mug of yak butter tea. I thanked her and didn’t even think about how gross it was.

  Finally, I had to ask. “Where is Tenzin?”

  She nodded towards the mountain we had walked down from the previous evening. “With uncle.”

  She meant he had gone to pray at his uncle’s sky burial shrine. I wondered if he was her brother, and how he had died, but they didn’t feel like questions I should ask.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She smiled. “Not sorry. His soul now free.”

  I headed up the mountain with a cup of tea for Tenzin, but stopped a little way down from the shrine, waiting for him to finish praying. I could hear his chanting, like a whisper in the wind, and the flap and snap of prayer flags that had come free of one of the poles. A Himalayan vulture circled overhead. Otherwise, everything was calm.

  From where I sat I could see higher mountains beyond the valley, fang-like peaks and gleaming glaciers, stunningly sharp in the high altitude air. I allowed myself a few minutes to soak it all in. That was something I almost never did on missions. We were always in such a rush, racing to follow some clue. There was rarely time to stop and appreciate how incredible the places were.

  I hobbled the rest of the way up the slope and sat beside Tenzin near the shrine. I was far less creeped out than the night before. Tenzin was right; if his uncle’s soul was free here, then what a place to be.

  I gave him his tea, and we sat for a while in silence.

  “Your dad and I herded yaks into a pen,” I said, finally, “although I’m not sure why.”

  Tenzin grinned. “Exercise.”

  “Eh?”

  “That his exercise. Yaks have no need for pens. He does this to stay healthy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are we friends, Manchester United?”

  “I … I guess so.”

  “Friends help friends. That is why they are friends.”

  I nodded, although I wasn’t sure what he meant. “We need to keep walking, Tenzin.”

  “Not walking. My father will drive us to Kailas. It is long drive, but we will be hidden and safe.”

  That was big news to drop on me, but I just nodded and took a sip of the tea that he offered me.

  “You like yak butter tea now?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I replied, because I didn’t want to lie. “But I drink it.”

  30

  Marjorie prided herself on how well she controlled her emotions. She worked mostly with men – arrogant council members or thick-headed mercenaries, people ready to pounce on any “weakness” as proof that she shouldn’t be in charge.

  Hide your emotions, that had been her rule. But, suddenly, she couldn’t help it. She had been smiling for almost the entire journey from Lhasa. A three-day smile! She had slept in guest houses, on itchy and uncomfortable beds with dirty sheets that reeked of stale sweat. She hadn’t washed, had barely eaten, and was underdressed for the cold by at least three layers. Usually such an experience would trigger migraines. But she felt great.

  After Takara had told her where the Atlas family were heading, Marjorie had hired a guide to take her to Mount Kailas, and purchased a knife: a phurba, an ornamental Tibetan dagger. It was a tacky tourist souvenir, its handle studded with fake emeralds and a little smiling Buddha. It was cheap and nasty, but sharp enough.

  It was the weapon with which she would kill Jake Atlas.

  His family would then kill her, she was sure. But that was fine. It was over now. She was on her way to the end.

  And she couldn’t stop smiling.

  31

  Only one road went close to Mount Kailas. I sat sandwiched between Tenzin and his dad in the front of their pick-up truck, disguised in as much spare Tibetan clobber as they could rustle up: another woollen chuba, a huge fox-fur hat that slid off my head each time we hit a rut in the road, and enough scarves to wrap an Egyptian mummy. I’d smeared yak dung on my cheeks to hide my features, but really I looked like a western boy with poo on his face.

  We drove and hoped. I had other plans, crafty ways to approach the mountain, but Tenzin and his dad weren’t hunters. Just taking me this far was a big deal for them; it didn’t seem right to ask for more. We knew we might be stopped, and we had a plan for that.

  The mountains grew higher and the landscape changed again. We’d travelled from lunar nothingness to swamps and woods, but now the trees disappeared and the world turned white.

  We’d seen snow high in the mountains, but the further west we drove, the more it filled the valleys. Several times we had to get out of the car to shovel it away just so we could keep driving. Higher up, the white slopes turned neon blue, where shattered ice fields plunged between serrated peaks.

  We drove through a few scruffy villages, but after six hours the only sign of life was the occasional yak, shrouded in steam from its own breath. The air was even thinner here; I felt the squeeze growing tighter in my chest with each new valley. My nose became blocked, and my mouth grew parched as I struggled to suck in enough oxygen. We were climbing higher, headed into Western Tibet.

  Kailas country.

  Mostly we drove in silence, but each time we cleared a mountain pass, Tenzin and his dad burst into a chorus of “La! So so so so!” and I joined in, even though I had no idea what it meant.

  The closer we got to Kailas the happier Tenzin seemed. He was on his way to find his chorten, to begin the process of rebuilding his home. But with each mile my smart-goggles felt heavier in my pocket – the weight of my lie.

  The Drak Terma. Soon I would need to know what it said. Could I ask Tenzin? He would know then that I had broken my promise, and why I was really here…

  I stared out the window, watching snow geese fly low over pristine slopes. We passed glacial lakes, impossibly blue and super-sacred, judging from Tenzin’s chanting. We stopped several times to spin prayer wheels by the roadside, gleaming bronze treasures in a world of white. At first there were just a few here and there, but after another few hours they were everywhere. More and more chortens decorated the landscape too. Their golden peaks shone like halos in the late afternoon light.

  We kept driving west, with the sinking sun directly ahead. Tenzin’s dad slid sunglasses on, and kept glancing at me over the rims. Finally, after a silence that lasted several valleys, he spoke.

  “You know why Kailas is sacred?” he asked.

  I still wasn’t certain, but had a rough idea. “You believe it is the home of gods.”

  “Not just me. Not just Buddhists. Many people, many religions. To Buddhists it is Kang Rinpoche, the Precious One of Snow. It is the home of Khorlo Demchog and Dorje Phagmo. To Hindus it is Mount Meru, the home of the great goddess Shiva, the centre of the universe. The Jains call the mountain Astapada. It is where their prophet, Rishaba, became enlightened. To the Bon, the mountain is called Tise, the seat of the sky goddess Sipaimen. For some it hides the entrance to Shambala, the land of gods.”

  “Sounds like a busy place,” I said.

  He peered at me again. “It is sacred place,” he replied. “And dangerous one. The Crystal Mountain is protected. It has a guardian, a spirit that attacks those who seek to climb its slopes.”

  “It has followed us, Father,” Tenzin muttered. />
  I shot Tenzin a look. Had he sensed it too, or seen it? If he had, why hadn’t he said anything? Perhaps he read the questions in my eyes, because he smiled and nudged my shoulder.

  “We are safe, because we are only on a mission to find the chorten at the mountain’s base. And, anyway, you do not believe in spirits and gods.”

  Tenzin’s dad asked, “What do you believe in, Jake?”

  I believed that Mount Kailas was the end of my hunt, and that was all. The mountain was bursting with myths and gods and ancient legends, and it was named on the emerald tablets. Surely this was the X that marked the spot – the place the tablets were guiding us to, the Hall of Records.

  “Manchester United, it is time.”

  Tenzin’s dad stopped the car. Fifty metres ahead the road was blocked by army jeeps and soldiers in fur-trimmed coats. It wasn’t dark yet, but the jeeps had their headlights on, so the soldiers were in silhouette, waving us forward for an inspection. They looked like Chinese military, which wasn’t great, but also not unusual. Army inspections were common in Tibet. Even so, they might have been working for the People of the Snake.

  This was where our road trip ended.

  “Are we close to Kailas?” I asked.

  “Very close,” Tenzin said. “Next valley.”

  “Then we’ll go on foot from here.”

  One of the soldiers trudged closer, fingers tight around his rifle. Even from fifty metres I saw the mist of his breath grow faster. The guy was nervous, which is not good for a man with a gun.

  Tenzin grabbed a rucksack from under the seat, filled with clothes and food. He spoke to his dad in Tibetan and they reached across me to touch forehead to forehead.

  The soldier was shouting now, beckoning us to drive to the checkpoint. I coughed a few times and shifted in my seat, hoping to break up the goodbye, but Tenzin and his dad kept talking and forehead-touching. The longer it went on, the more I realized how much the monastery had meant to them. It broke their hearts to be parted, yet still Tenzin went away – it was that important. Yerpa Gompa. The monastery I had destroyed, and which I claimed I was here to help rebuild. Sitting there then, I didn’t feel like their friend…