Empire of Ruins (21 page)

He concentrated. Unfortunately, his weight and speed would ensure that the stakes would pierce him through.
Unless
, he thought,
I twist myself
. He’d seen cats fly through the air. They were always able to turn and land on their feet. If he landed on his side there was a chance he’d fall into the gap between the stakes.

He twisted his body, only to find he was now falling back-first. He glimpsed the natives at the edge of the hole, angry faces glaring down as they waited for his death. Desperate, he twisted again. He’d die with his murderers as his final sight. At the last moment he rotated—and fell between the stakes. One glanced off his mask, knocking it askew; then he thudded against the ground on his right shoulder.

He lay there for several seconds, gasping for breath. His attackers let out a disappointed groan. Objects poked into his flesh. He couldn’t see, so he pulled his mask down to his neck. He shuffled around, creating a clatter. He was lying on a bed of bones! Human? Or animals? Beetles ran here and there and a green scaly lizard scampered away, its tail zagging wildly.

One native shouted, and Modo expected to feel a spear puncture his vital organs.
Look death in the eye
, he decided. He turned over onto his back, bones aching, and stared up at his soon-to-be murderers.

The tribesmen let out a cry of terror. One began wailing and pulling at his dark, curly hair. Another flung away his spear, covered his eyes, and fell to the ground.

What is it?
Modo looked over his shoulder, expecting some tiger or monstrous creature to be standing there. He
turned back just as the remaining tribesmen dropped to their knees and then, he assumed, to the ground. He could no longer see any of them over the edge of the pit.

After a moment’s pause, he stood, legs shaking. The pit was at least twelve feet deep, and the natives appeared to be gone. Maybe they’d backed away. Or it was a trap! They might spring on him.

Sturdy vines hung down at one corner of the pit, over the reddish-brown soil. They must have been used by the natives to descend and butcher their kills. He yanked two of the stakes from the ground, tucked them in his belt for weapons, and climbed the vines, his mask swinging on his neck. Near the top he held the sharpened bamboo in front of him, then poked his head out warily.

He was stunned to find the tribesmen still on the ground, some shivering and kneeling, their dark skin painted with white lines and handprints. Others were prostrate, flaps of leather clothing covering their backsides. One looked up, his face marked with a series of white leopardlike spots. He muttered a cry of alarm and lowered his head again.

Modo pulled himself out of the hole and dropped the stakes. Only moments ago they had been hunting him like a wild beast, and now they were bowing before him. What had changed?

He wiped the sweat from his eyes, and his hands felt his fallen-in nose, the mangled chin, the bumps across his cheeks. They were seeing his face for the first time.

He stood absolutely stupefied, and it was all he could do not to fall over: they’d actually been brought to their knees by his ugliness. To their knees! He wanted to pull out his hair. He felt a scream building deep inside him, a
scream that had been waiting in his soul, in his heart, since birth.

Instead, he let out a sudden hiccup of a laugh tinged with madness. Several warriors shivered visibly and covered their ears.

“Am I so ugly?” he asked them.

He picked up one of their spears, saw that its shaft was held by a wooden extension, used to make the throw even stronger. A clever device! They’d been carrying wooden shields, too. He picked one up. It was carved with an image that had been outlined in white lines—a representation of a supremely ugly face. He nearly dropped the shield. The features on it were similar to his own!

“ ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ ” he quoted. “ ‘I knew him; Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.’ ” He paused, then let out another bark of laughter that echoed in the forest. “Don’t you know Shakespeare?”

He tossed the shield aside. For a third time he laughed, then cut it short.
Modo, you self-pitying fool! Behaving like a madman won’t help you—you’ll just be dragged off to Bedlam
.

He didn’t stop to consider just who would actually take him to Bedlam from here. Once again he looked down in disbelief at the prostrate natives. None even dared to peek at him!

But one pair of eyes didn’t look away. A girl, no more than ten years old, stood about twenty paces from him, mostly hidden in the folds of a fern. She straightened her back, pushed aside the leaves, and walked toward Modo, even though the warriors whispered admonishments and waved her away. The girl’s curly hair was white as snow, her dark skin painted with intricate spiderweb lines. She strode
fearlessly between the men, not taking her eyes off Modo. She stopped in front of him.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She replied with several words that made no sense. Seeing that he wasn’t understanding her, she paused and pointed at the canopy of trees with her little finger and said what sounded like “
Jiri, jiri.
” Then she pointed at him with the same little finger.

“What do you mean?”

She pointed skyward again. “
Daray.
”

“I fell from the sky, yes, that’s right.” He wondered if that was it. Had they seen the airship battle? They would have heard it, at least. All that strange thunder above them, then a man falls from the sky and lands in the middle of their hunting grounds.

No, not a man. A god! After all, he fell from the sky. He chuckled to himself.
Me, a god? Ha!

But the warriors remained prostrate, had been cowering before him for some ten minutes now. It was the way emperors and kings were treated not so long ago, he’d read.

Modo pointed at his chest. “Modo,” he said. “Me, Modo.”

The girl had a brilliant spark of intelligence in her eyes. She pointed at herself with her little finger. “Nulu,” it sounded like. She pointed at him again. “Meh Moh-Doh.”

“Modo,” he repeated.

“Moh-Doh.” She nodded and let out a little huff of satisfaction. “Moh-Doh. Moh-Doh.” She pointed at herself. “Nulu.”

“Nulu,” he said. The smile that appeared on her face made him want to hug her. She started babbling ever so
quickly, gesturing at the sky and then at him and the forest and back at the warriors. Then she made a circle with her hands.

Modo held up his hand and she stopped babbling.

“I have no idea what you are saying.” He spoke slowly, and more loudly than usual. “Tell them to get up,” he said, pointing at the warriors. She stared uncompehendingly at him. Then it dawned on him—she was looking at his face without grimacing. In fact, he would have described her as looking blissful, as though she were staring at something she’d wanted to see for her whole life. Blissful? He really was going out of his mind.

He gestured upward several times, saying, “Get up! Get up!”

Nulu stood beside him, imitating his actions but speaking in her language. One warrior raised his head and looked at Modo and Nulu. He whispered to his companions and they all got warily to their feet. They were taller than Modo, much taller than he’d expected them to be. He’d always thought of these uncivilized tribes as being short and stout, but these men were even taller than Mr. Socrates. White handprints ran along their bodies and faces. A few had clearly dined a little too heartily, but most of them were slim and muscular. They kept their eyes cast down as though chastised.

“What am I to do with you now?” Modo asked.

M
iss Hakkandottir scanned the sky and the rain forest below the airship with her spyglass. She had been presented with a chance to swoop down from the heavens and scoop up her lifelong enemy and a handful of his key agents. It had all been coming together so perfectly until, in only minutes, that hunchback had shattered her plans.

He’d moved with more speed and agility than she’d dreamed would be possible, and his strength was truly staggering. To actually lift the steam engine! It had taken a crane to lower it into the car! Her only consolation was that Modo was dead now, though even that represented a failure of sorts. As much as she’d wanted Socrates and Tharpa and all the information inside their brains, she’d wanted Modo more.

When she’d told the Guild Master and Dr. Hyde about meeting Modo on the deck of the
Wyvern
, and explained that he had the ability to change his physical appearance,
the possibilities had staggered both men! They’d wanted him captured alive so they could study him. Perhaps his talents could be duplicated.

And she’d almost had him, right here on the very deck of her airship. But now he was a shattered corpse on the rain-forest floor, the buzzards and lizards and whatever other creatures down there consuming all his secrets piece by piece.

A piece. A piece! But that was all she needed! Just a piece of him. An earlobe. A toe!

Then she remembered that furious swing of her saber, and she ran to the place near the railing where his blood had spattered. Below that, curled up next to several spent shells, she discovered his little finger. She picked it up with her metal hand and called for a tin box. Gently she placed the finger inside, then slid the tin into her trouser pocket and buttoned it. When they landed she would bottle the finger up with formaldehyde. It was something, at least; a fine trophy. The good doctor could work with this, she hoped.

“Hurry with that engine!” she commanded. “Time is of the essence.”

She returned to surveying the sky and the rain forest. Mr. Socrates had certainly landed somewhere. The tribes or the crocodiles would likely destroy them, if they had even survived their crash. But she knew from experience that one should never take chances by assuming such things, and when it came to her old enemy, she would never count him out. If he had lived he would likely scurry toward Port Douglas. She would dispatch patrols and cut him off.

M
odo waved his arms, then put his nine fingers together in a gesture that he hoped looked like a temple. It was where he needed to go. If only Octavia and Mr. Socrates could see him now. Then, with a pang of panic, he wondered whether they were alive. Had he succeeded in preventing the
Prometheus
from capturing them? If so, they might have darted back to the coast. But would they leave him here? Or, more important, would they leave the temple in the hands of Miss Hakkandottir? He doubted that. He would have to find them.

While they couldn’t have landed too far away, the most logical place to find them would be the temple. Even if the worst had happened and they were all dead, Modo could still complete his assignment and exact his revenge.

These men standing before him would surely have seen the temple at some point. Perhaps they’d even explored it.
He pointed in the direction he believed was northwest and performed the temple gesture again, saying, “Egyptian temple! Egyptian temple.”

They wouldn’t even know what Egyptians were. It was useless. He dropped his arms. His missing finger throbbed, an odd and painful sensation. Every once in a while it dripped blood.

He felt a tug on his sleeve; then Nulu grabbed his good hand. This caused a hiss of surprise from the surrounding warriors, who, Modo guessed, expected her to vanish or explode. She pulled gently and led Modo through the group and beyond. The warriors began following several steps behind. She found a clear path through the foliage.

“Are you taking me to the temple?” Modo asked as he ducked under a vine.

Nulu nodded, and they walked silently for several minutes. To his surprise, he saw that her white hair was not dyed that way, but had clearly grown out white, as if at birth she’d seen something frightful. She walked with a confidence he wished he possessed, as though she saw strangers such as him every day.

There was movement in the brush ahead and Modo was tempted to grab his knife, but three young girls and two boys stepped out of the forest and joined the girl and Modo, falling in line behind them as if on parade.