“Evelyn?” Bitsy asked.
“Max’s friend,” Alex explained. “She has a condition called scleroderma.”
“It makes scar tissue form on your skin, like you had an injury—only it happens for no reason, and the skin stays hard and stiff,” Max said. “It can form over large parts of your body. It ends up affecting the blood vessels. And then the blood stops flowing. There’s no cure for what she has. Odds are one hundred percent she’ll die soon.”
“That’s harsh,” Bitsy said.
“It’s a fact,” Max replied. “I don’t know what the odds are for this whole mission to succeed. But even if it’s like one percent possible, that’s better than zero. What if we can make it work, and then get scientists to make more of the formula? All we need to do is find these ingredients and give it a try.”
“Five ingredients from all over the world, in places we can’t even figure out,” Bitsy reminded him. “The information we have is coded, vague, and brief. It’s just a list. There are no instructions of what to look for and look out for. Are you sure you’re ready to do this?”
Max closed his eyes and recited in a monotone: “‘Sometimes you can’t be ready to do the things you really need to do. You just do them. And that makes you ready.’ It’s the Alex Verne motto.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” Alex said.
“You are one remarkable lad,” Nigel said, wiping his brow. “You give me faith in humanity. But you and your cousin are young. May I suggest the obvious—that you would benefit from adult guidance and expertise?”
“You mean, you?” Alex asked.
As Nigel nodded, Alex gave Max a look. She didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really imagined taking on this adventure with anyone but Max. “I don’t think so. Max and I are kind of a team.”
“Tell me, do you know where the Kozhim River is?” Nigel asked.
“Not offhand,” Max said. “But it’s easy enough to—”
“Russia,” Nigel shot back. “In one of the northern republics—Komi, I believe. As a dancer I traveled the world, and I speak fluent Greek, Russian, Spanish, French, German, and Mandarin. Also a smidgen of Tibetan and Nepali. I may be advanced in years, but I am agile! Crafty too—without old Nigel you never would have decoded the message at all.”
“Oh, it does sound ever so exciting,” Bitsy added, her eyes wide and hopeful. “I would love to help. Would you consider expanding to four? I’ve spent summers trekking through Arabian deserts, rock climbing, scuba diving, and such. I won’t tell Mummy, if you’re uncomfortable about her connection to Stinky. I’ll say you’ve invited me on a little Mediterranean jaunt in your private plane. That’s the truth, after all—sort of.”
“Stinky?” Nigel said.
“Long story.” Alex took Max by the arm. “This is kind of confusing. Give us a minute. Talk among yourselves.”
Together they left the room, and Alex pulled the door shut. “What do we do, Max? It’s one thing to solve codes together, but so far it’s been just you and me.”
“We could just run now,” Max replied.
“I don’t even know if we can do this,” Alex said, pulling out her phone. “It’s a small jet.”
She quickly texted Brandon:
hey. wd there be rm on jet for 2 more peeps?
“What if he says yes?” Max said.
Alex took a deep breath. “I don’t know, maybe they’d be a help. Everything they said makes sense. We could use the skills and brainpower. And we don’t have time for do-overs, not if we’re going to help Evelyn.”
“But what if they try to steal our discoveries?” Max said.
Alex nodded. “I guess it’s a risk. But the waters won’t do any good without the Isis hippuris. And we have that, Max. In Ohio. The waters won’t work without it.”
From inside the closed room, Alex heard a sudden, “Ha!”
Then Bitsy’s voice, slightly muffled: “What is it, Nigel?”
Alex and Max both inched closer to listen.
“‘Extracted from the red coat of the ancient wet river horse from the source of the River Styx . . .’” Nigel’s voice replied. “I believe I know where that would be.”
“River Styx led to the underworld,” Bitsy said. “It’s not a real place.”
“Ah, but like many legends, it was based on something observed,” came Nigel’s answer. “Scholars believe the journey began when the dead entered a boat on a river in the northern Peloponnese called the Mavronéri, which means ‘black water.’ But it is in the southern entrance, at the caves near Pirgos Dirou, where the locals believe the underworld actually began! Yes, that would be a splendid place to start. I will collect some vials. We will need different sizes. And I believe I can conjure up a large collection canister that will hold them all . . . .”
Max sighed. “I don’t know what to think. Can you tell me what to think?”
Alex laughed. “Would you listen to me?”
“This time, yeah,” Max said.
She closed her eyes. The voices on the other side of the door were rising—Bitsy and Nigel, brewing up all kinds of ideas. Collecting things for the trip.
They’re not Spencer Niemand, she thought. They weren’t André and Pandora and Niemand’s other wicked cohorts. She and Max had succeeded despite that bunch of criminals. It would be amazing to have smart people on their side. Good people.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I think we should do it. With them.”
“Then I think so too,” Max replied.
Alex felt her phone vibrate in her palm, and she looked at the message.
yup. 7-seater. works fine. can b ready 2 go anytime. at this short notice only cleared for athens ok?
“Your boyfriend?” Max asked.
Ignoring him, Alex opened the door and barged into the room. “Wheels up in twenty,” she announced. “Everybody’s invited to the party.”
15
MAX was glad he had forgotten to eat that day, because he would have lost it all on the drive up the Peloponnesian mountains of Greece.
The road was steep and narrow, barely wide enough for one car. It wound in tight, switchback turns against a steep rock wall with zero visibility. To the right was a small grassy shoulder and a sudden drop-off to . . . nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Way below, barely visible in the distance, were clusters of houses and shops. Separated only by an expanse of blue sky.
“Grigora, ippos!” Nigel grunted as he floored the accelerator.
“What does that mean?” Alex shouted. “‘We’re about to die’?”
“Sorry, practicing my Greek!” Nigel shouted back. “Grigora means ‘go faster,’ and ippos is the Ancient Greek way of saying horse. Which is what this jalopy feels like—an ancient horse!” The uphill angle was getting steeper, and Nigel floored the accelerator. “Got to get momentum or she’ll stall! Hang on!”
Max slammed back into his seat. The car groaned in protest, picking up speed. The rock wall whizzed by on one side, inches from his window. Max tried not to look toward the other side, but as they neared a blind turn, he couldn’t help it. On the road’s shoulder was a smattering of white crosses decorated with flowers and ribbons, as if they’d sprouted from seeds. “What are those for?” Bitsy demanded, her fists clutching the dashboard.
“Each cross is where someone died, driving this road!” Nigel shouted. “A Greek tradition!”
Max could see Bitsy’s face grow about three shades whiter. Alex took his hand but he pulled it away.
Nigel leaned into the sharp turn. Max could hear the roar of another engine, somewhere. A horn blasted. Nigel slammed on the brakes. The car’s rear end jackknifed right . . . left . . . . From around the wall came a sharp, eye-level glint—the grill of a cobalt-blue tour bus.
“Slow down!” Bitsy screamed.
The bus swerved to the right, just missing a collision. Its deafening horn did not drown out Alex’s and Bitsy’s screams in the car.
Max could feel the rush of wind as it
sped by inches away. The smell of fish was so powerful, he couldn’t breathe. “Let me out! I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this trip!”
Max reached for the door handle but Alex yanked him back. “Max, you can’t do that, you’ll die!”
“We’re going to die anyway!” Max said.
“I’ve got this!” Nigel shouted. “I did this trip many times, when I was touring with the Swansea-Hellenic ballet exchange! Oh, the memories!”
“Stop remembering—and slow down!” screamed Bitsy.
A red convertible screamed toward them around the next turn. Max nearly barfed. The driver, a dark-haired guy with sunglasses, waved to them as if this were a lazy Sunday drive in Ohio.
Max unhooked his belt and sank to the floor of the car. There he could see nothing but the worn black floor pads of the rented car and the scuff marks from other people’s shoes. He stared and stared at those patterns. If you looked at them a certain way, they resembled a herd of giraffes. Giraffes were a nice thing to think about. They took his mind off the drive.
He heard Alex gasping about something and heard a whoosh from another car. But they were alive, and the giraffes hadn’t noticed a thing.
“Let me know when we get there,” Max said.
Max must have fallen asleep, because when Alex tapped his shoulder, the car was stopped.
“Are we dead?” he asked.
“I would hope not,” came Bitsy’s voice, “though we are positioned near the entrance to the underworld.”
Alex was leaning in through the open window. She waved a sugary, sweet-smelling bread pastry under his nose. “You missed a great bakery in Sparta and a really pretty town called Diros. But we saved this for you.”
From behind Alex came Nigel’s voice. “Ah, the sleeping traveler wakes!”
Max didn’t realize how hungry he was. He sat up and shoved the pastry into his mouth. It was still warm, with a strong taste of cinnamon and a faint smell of . . . ocean?
He turned and looked out the car window. They were no longer on the side of a mountain. Across the road, the land sloped gently to an expanse of vast, dark sea. In the distance, small villages dotted the coastline, and beyond them loomed a green-gray mountain. Their car was parked in a small lot against a tall, scrubby hillside. A few yards to their left, also against the hill, was a small outdoor waiting area under a metal roof—a gate, a booth, a map, some plastic seats, and a doorway. A few dozen tourists were walking past their car, milling about, talking in languages Max didn’t understand.
He stepped out, squinting his eyes against the blazing Greek sun. A man in white clothing strolled by holding out small baskets of green and purple fruit. “Sicko?” he said to Nigel.
“He drives like one,” Max said.
“That is the Greek word for ‘fig’—syko,” Nigel said. “Shall we get some?”
“I don’t like them unless they’re Newtons.” Max squinted at a brown-and-white sign attached to the roof, which said Cave of Vlihada. “At least you didn’t get us lost.”
“Wait,” Alex said. “I thought the place was called Piggos . . . .”
“Pirgos Dirou is the name of the town we drove through when I was sleeping,” Max said. “Technically, it’s Diros, but there’s a famous tower. Pirgos means ‘tower.’ Dirou means ‘belonging to Diros.’ Vlihada is the name of the cave site.”
Bitsy stared at him, slack-jawed. “Have you thought of competing on Jeopardy?”
“I looked it all up on the plane. I love factoids.” Max shot Alex a glance. “I would have learned more if Brandon had better Wi-Fi. Anyway, this is a vast underground waterway that goes through a network of caves, with sections that have still not been explored. Vlihada was the first section to have been opened to the public. That was in 1949. But it had already been explored for years by rock scientists. Don’t ask me their names. I know, but I can’t pronounce them.”
“Thank you, Encyclopedia Brown,” Nigel said. He looked behind him toward the entrance, then lowered his voice to a near whisper. “While you were asleep, old boy, I arranged for two of the guides to give us a private boat tour. We will split into two boats. They will be smaller and easier to navigate through the narrow limestone passageways. We will be careful of stalagmites and stalactites, as some of the latter hang very low to the water surface. They will take us wherever we ask them, as the rules allow.”
“Do we even know what we’re looking for?” Max said.
“The ‘red coat of the ancient wet river horse,’” Alex said. “Duh.”
“In other words, no,” Bitsy added.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Max said. He picked up his backpack and opened it. Inside was a thin cylindrical case where he’d packed his collapsible hang glider. It weighed the pack down, but it reminded him of Evelyn. Quickly he pushed it aside and removed the lid from a large rectangular collection canister labeled ST. STEPHEN’S. Inside were several empty glass vials wrapped in bubble plastic. “Nothing broken. We are locked and loaded.”
They walked to the little ticket area under the metal roof. Two men rose from plastic seats as they approached. The shorter of the two was heavy and balding, with a shaved head and a gap-toothed smile, and an old T-shirt that said I ♥ MILWAUKEE. The other, a thin, craggy-faced guy with hair like a stack of scorched hay, was dressed in a rumpled, navy linen suit that appeared to have done double duty as pj’s. “Kosta,” the thin guy said, and then pointed to the other: “Kosta.”
The other man let out a noise like a car horn, which Max figured was a laugh. “They have the same name?” he asked.
“Kontonikolaos, me,” the man continued, “and Doundoulakis, him. Last names.”
“Well, that makes it easier,” Bitsy said.
“I dub thee Kosta K. and Kosta D.,” Nigel said. “Come.”
The two guides led them through the waiting crowd. They stopped before a modest-looking closed wooden door. “We can skip the restroom,” Max said. “I’ll wait.”
“It’s not the restroom,” Nigel said. “It appears to be the entrance to the cave.”
“Really?” Bitsy said. “I would expect something a little grander. Festive lights. Picture windows.”
Kosta K. pulled the door open to reveal a small room with a slanted rock wall. He muttered something in Greek, moved inside, and began to sink downward.
Peering in through the open door, Max realized that the room was actually the landing atop a stone staircase that sank deep into the earth. He followed Kosta K. down to a smooth, dimly lit rock floor. A group of small blue rowboats floated lazily in shallow water, moored to metal hooks in the rock. Orange life jackets were arranged neatly on the boat’s narrow benches.
At the bottom, the stairway wall gave way to a wide-open cavern. Max stopped motionless on the stairs, causing Alex to nearly tumble into him from behind. Maybe she complained, maybe she didn’t. Max wasn’t noticing.
He wasn’t moving either. He couldn’t.
Seeing the Cave of Vlihada wasn’t really seeing, in the ordinary way. It was more like an all-points bulletin to the senses.
Wet alabaster columns oozed down from the ceiling like the beards of a thousand petrified giants. A pool of black water meandered into the blackness among jagged, warty monster arms reaching upward. It seemed like sound itself had been squeezed out of existence, save for a tiny series of drips like the soft stroking of the highest key on a hundred distant pianos.
Behind them, Kosta D. burped. Which was just as well, or Max might never have moved.
“Wow,” was the first thing that left his mouth, and honestly it felt like the dumbest thing he’d ever said.
“It’s so . . . so . . .” Alex said, “underworld-y.”
“Ffffffuhhh . . .” exhaled Bitsy. “Gllrp.”
“Bits?” Alex said softly. “Are you OK?”
Bitsy was taking deep breaths. A thin film of sweat formed above her brow. “Yeah. Just a bit of, you know . . .”
Alex nodded. “Claustro—”
&
nbsp; “Don’t say that word,” Bitsy said.
“Really?”
Bitsy laughed. “Really. I know the word exists. I can easily put it out of my mind. But if I hear it aloud, I kind of freak. It’s weird, right? I know it’s weird. Don’t judge me. I can do this.”
“You don’t have to come along, you know,” Alex said gently. “You can wait for us on the beach. It’s a beautiful day.”
“I’m feeling clau—feeling it too,” Max said.
“Thank you,” Bitsy said. “But the show must go on. Am I right, Max?”
Max nodded.
“We need to face our fears,” Bitsy said. “If Max can do this, so can I. To the river, then!”
“Sto potamós!” Nigel said, eyeing the walls with awe.
“I’m guessing sto means ‘to’ and potamós means ‘river,’” Max said.
The two Kostas each untied a small boat. Bitsy was shaking as Kosta K. took her hand to help her into the boat. “Is good,” he said. “Is no be afraid.”
“Ahhhh-choooo!” Nigel sneezed. “Sorry, allergies.”
Alex gave Max a look. “I’m not feeling good about this,” she whispered.
As they stepped into their boat, Max thought maybe she was right. He missed traveling as a duo.
It had its advantages.
16
USING their wooden oars, the men pushed off from the stone dock. As they floated away in the two boats, Kosta K. spoke in rapid Greek. Nigel nodded patiently and then spoke aloud, his voice easily heard in the other boat. “Our boatman does not speak English well and has asked me to translate. You will notice that the lighting system is quite clever. High wattage lamps are placed strategically behind some of the wider stalagmites, making it appear as if the caves are magically lit.”
Strategically didn’t seem like the right word, Max thought. You didn’t need strategy to light this place. You could put a lamp anywhere. It was all crazy impossible. Walls of green-and-white stone seemed to undulate in the light like curtains. Just beyond them were clusters of tapered columns that mirrored each other, thrusting upward from the floor and dropping from the ceiling, as if two city skylines had grown over the ages and fused in the center. Vast islands rose up like forests of candles lumped with wax. None of the columns were alike, some thick and treelike, some stubby and broken, others as fine as needles. They were like baseball bats, like bones, like fingers, like icicles, like unruly hair that defied gravity.