“Gesundheit,” Marco said, gazing upward.
“It’s the Ishtar Gate,” Cass said. “One of the three most famous structures in Ancient Babylon, along with the Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel, aka Etemenanki.”
“Thank you, Mr. Geography,” Marco said.
“Not bad for someone who thinks he’s lost his memory powers,” Aly said, a smile growing across her face.
Cass shook his head dismissively. “That was easy stuff. You knew it, too, I’ll bet.”
If we weren’t in a parallel world, I’d be taking a zillion photos. Along with the sculpted lions were other elaborate animals—mostly bulls, but also a hideous-looking creature I’d never seen before. It had a long snout with two horns, the front legs of a lion, rear legs with talons like a raptor, and a tail with scorpion pincers. I ran my hands along it, and the tiles were so sharp they nearly cut my skin.
Daria winced. “Is mushushu. Good for people of Bab-Ilum. Means youth. Health. Also means . . .” Her voice dropped to a respectful whisper. “. . . Marduk.”
“What’s a Marduk?” Marco asked.
“Not what—who,” Aly said. “It was the name of the Babylonian god.” She turned to Daria. “The mushushu is, like, a symbol of the god? A representation?”
Daria thought a moment. “Representation . . . one thing meaning another. Yes.”
“Is it a real animal?” Cass asked.
“Yes,” Daria said. “Was in cage. In Ká-Dingir-rá. But escape when Nabu-na’id near. Mushushu bit foot. Bel-Sharu-Usur tried to help father, but mushushu attack face.”
“So this creature is the thing that mangled the king’s foot?” Aly asked. “And it injured Bel-Sharu-Usur in a way that caused his eyes to move funny?”
“All because they had it in a cage,” I said. “But why would they treat the mushushu like that? If it was the symbol of a great revered god—”
“King Nabu-na’id does not honor Marduk,” Daria said. “Each year we have celebration—Akitu—for new year. For Marduk. In this celebration, guards slap king, kick king to the ground.”
“Sounds like a laugh riot,” Marco said. “No offense, Dars, but that’s a pretty weird way to celebrate.”
“It is to remind king that he is a man,” Daria said. “He is not god. People love their king even more after this. But when Nabu-na’id becomes king, he does not come to Akitu. This makes Marduk angry.”
As we got closer to the gate, guards bowed to Bel-Sharu-Usur from the two turrets at the top.
As the trumpeters moved into the gate, Bel-Sharu-Usur gave a harsh command. Nodding, the two men reversed course and scampered out of sight. He bustled on through, with the rest of us following behind. We hurried out the other side of the gate and onto another tiled, walled walkway. The walkway soon emptied us into another part of the outer city. This section was less built up, a scattering of buildings among fields, leading to the outer wall in the distance.
To our right was a small field, and just beyond it a temple that was cracked and neglected like Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. At the base of the temple wall, a group of wardum knelt in worship. Bel-Sharu-Usur stormed toward them.
Immediately Daria sang a high-pitched tune of four notes. Hearing it, the wardum leaped up and scattered. Bright potted flowers and bowls of food had been placed on the warped windowsills, and Bel-Sharu-Usur quickly moved in, sweeping them to the ground.
“Whoa,” Marco said. “He ditched the trumpeters so he could sneak up on these people? What’s he got against them?”
Daria’s body shook at the sight. “This place is Esagila. A temple. King Nabu-Kudurri-Usur build Esagila to honor Marduk. But Nabu-na’id . . .” Her voice trailed off.
The crowd was growing, murmuring, looking aghast and angry at what Bel-Sharu-Usur had just done. A giant clay pot came hurtling up from its midst, directly for his head.
“Yo, Twinkle-Eyes—duck!” Marco shouted.
Bel-Sharu-Usur turned abruptly. The pot was dead on target for his face. My reflexes kicked in, and I jumped toward him. But Marco was already in the path of the missile, swatting it away.
The two tumbled to the ground. The king’s son sat up, his eyes perfectly still for the first time. His entourage of wardum gathered around, closing into a circle that faced outward, preparing to take any further attack.
But the crowd of onlookers stared at Marco with an expression of unmistakable awe.
Guards had appeared upon hearing the commotion. With a shrieking command, Bel-Sharu-Usur pointed to a thin, trembling young man dressed in tatters. The guards seized him, pulling him toward the gate despite his anguished pleas.
“That guy wasn’t the one who threw it!” Marco protested.
“It does not matter,” Daria said sadly. “Bel-Sharu-Usur will punish who he wants.”
Now the king’s son put a scaly hand on Marco’s shoulder. As he spoke, Marco’s face began turning green. “What’d I do now?”
“Bel-Sharu-Usur is thanking you,” Daria said. “You saved life. He will do good thing for you now.”
“Oh,” Marco said, fanning the air between him and Bel-Sharu-Usur. “Make him promise to buy a toothbrush. And tell him to take us to the Hanging Gardens.”
As Daria translated, Bel-Sharu-Usur took Marco by the arm and led him to the Ishtar Gate. The king’s son shouted a command up toward the turret. In response, the guard unhooked his quiver and tossed it down, along with a longbow. Marco stepped in and caught them easily. “Thanks, dude,” Marco said. “I’ll treasure it. Hang it on my mantel. But really, I’d rather see the garden.”
Bel-Sharu-Usur spoke to Daria. Her face stiffened. She seemed to be pleading with him, but he turned away, ignoring her.
“The weapon is not for you to keep, Marco,” she said. “Bel-Sharu-Usur is grateful you saved his life. He believes you are a man with great power. How do you say . . . ?”
“Superpower?” Marco replied. “Yeah, I’ve heard that.”
“Like a god,” Daria continued.
“I’ve heard that, too,” Marco said. “Also hero. But what about my request?”
“He will consider this,” Daria said. “But he believes you can help Bab-Ilum with your powers. So you must pass a test.”
“Dang . . .” Marco exhaled deeply. “Can’t we see the Garden first and do the test later?”
Daria shook her head. “In order to grant your wish, Marco, Bel-Sharu-Usur says you must take this weapon to the king’s hunting ground, and kill the mushushu.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE DARKNESS
IT WASN’T SO much the screeching noises that came from the king’s royal hunting grounds. Or the putrid smell of death. Or that we’d had to walk about a zillion miles up the river, far from the borders of Babylon. Or the fact that Bel-Sharu-Usur’s guards and wardum were all shaking with fright.
It was the darkness that gave me the willies.
We stopped at the tree line. Although the leaves rustled in the breeze and water flowed gently into the forest via dug-out streams and culverts from the Euphrates, a strange pitch-blackness hovered in the distance. A shimmering ribbon over the tree line. We’d seen it from the river, but up close it seemed to make the ground vibrate.
“There it is again,” Cass said. “That . . . thing.”
“What is that, Daria?” Aly asked.
“King’s hunting ground,” she said. “Animals inside. When mushushu escape from Ká-Dingir-rá, it went here. Now King Nabu-na’id is afraid. He will not hunt here, for the mushushu is vicious.”
“I wasn’t talking about the forest,” Cass said, pointing above the trees. “The darkness. Over the top.”
Daria looked confused. “It is Sippar, of course. You do not recognize?”
“Sippar’s a country?” Marco said. “You need to talk to them about their carbon emissions.”
“Sippar . . . was country,” Daria said, her head cocked curiously, as if she were teaching basic arithmetic to a twenty-year-old. She gestured in a wide circle. “Now is
name for all . . . around us . . . You must not go near.”
“Everything around Babylon is called Sippar?” Aly scratched her head. “I think we’re missing something in translation.”
Bel-Sharu-Usur seemed to be taking an interest in this part of the conversation. He jabbered demandingly at Daria, who obediently answered. “What is he asking?” I said.
“He sees everything,” Daria said. “He is surprised you do not know Sippar. Everyone knows Sippar. Thus he wonders if you come from a place of magic.”
She looked up to the sky.
“Can we discuss this later?” Marco said, turning toward the woods.
“He’s right,” I added. “We’re on a schedule.”
“Please give Mr. Peepers a good-bye kiss from us,” Marco said, stepping toward the forest. “Next time he sees us, we’ll be with a dead moosh. And he’ll owe us a trip to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.”
Marco and I heard it first.
We had gotten out ahead of Cass and Aly, and the suspicious rustling of branches drew us into a dead run. We lost the trail and ended up in a dense, dark area of thickly knotted trees. “Aly?” I called out. “Cass?”
“Ssssh,” Marco said, crouching low, his eyes darting in every direction.
The air filled with screeches. I couldn’t see the birds above us, but they were everywhere. And they seemed furious. “Yo, angry birds, chill,” Marco said.
“Maybe they sense the mushushu,” I said.
“What kind of name is mushushu anyway? Sounds like some old dance craze.” Marco stood and began moving his hips and arms awkwardly. “Come on, come on, do the mushushu . . .”
“Not funny!” I said. “What if it hears you?”
“That’s the point,” he said. “We flush it out.”
“And Aly and Cass?” I said.
“We’ll find them afterward,” Marco said.
As we moved deeper into the woods, I realized there wasn’t a moment in my life when I wished more for a cell phone.
Crack.
“What was that?” I asked.
“You stepped on a twig,” Marco replied.
“Sorry.” As I moved forward, I thought I saw a shadow skittering through the underbrush.
Marco stiffened. “That’s him,” he whispered. “Moo shoo pork.”
He put a protective hand on my arm. Slowly we inched toward the shadow. The bird noises seemed to be quieting, as if they were watching us. I tried to listen for something mushushu-like—which would be what? Hissing? Snorting? Growling? I heard none of those. But I did hear another sound, a dull roar from deeper in the woods, like a distant engine.
There are streams here, McKinley. That’s the sound of running water. Focus.
But the noise was growing louder, deeper, like radio static. Despite the clear sky, the sunlight seemed to be flickering. I glanced away from the shadow toward the noise.
Beyond the trees was the shimmering wall of black, up close. Way closer than I’d expected. It shuddered and shifted, as if someone had pulled a solid curtain behind the hunting grounds.
“It’s a lizard,” Marco was saying.
I spun around. “What?”
“The shadow? Behind the rock? It’s not Munchkin. It’s a big old—” Marco’s eyes narrowed. “Whoa. Who’s playing with the lights out there?”
The ends of his hair rose upward. The air was changing, the temperature dropping. I could hear strange noises, like voices sped up, mechanical roars, stuttering beeps, high-pitched scraping.
“Sounds like we’re near a highway,” I said.
Marco nodded. “Okay. This is freaky.”
Sippar was country. Now is name for all around . . .
Daria’s words were stuck in my head. And I began to think their meaning hadn’t been lost in translation. “Marco, we know that this place—Babylon—is traveling at the slow time, right?”
“Check,” Marco said.
“And according to Daria, they haven’t had outside visitors for thirty years,” I added.
Marco nodded. “Because everyone else sped ahead. Like us.”
“Okay, so say you’re a Babylonian and you want to go to, like, Greece,” I said. “Or Spain or Africa or Antarctica. What would happen to you if you tried? If the rest of the world sped up, then what’s out there—out where those countries are supposed to be?”
Marco fell silent, looking toward the black curtain. “I’m not sure it matters, dude.”
“No? I think we’re hearing us, Marco,” I said. “Sippar—that black thing—may actually be the line between play and fast-forward. We’re hearing the twenty-first century racing ahead.”
“You have an active imagination, Brother Jack,” Marco said.
“After the crack in time,” I barged on, “this area was isolated. It became a world by itself. With its own rules of space and time. Like Einstein’s spaceship. So that’s why they can’t travel. There is no next town. The next town is in another century.”
Marco sank into thought. “Okay, okay, say you’re right. This would be a good thing, no? Maybe we don’t have to swim through that dumb portal. We can just walk through the magic curtain!”
As he began jogging toward the darkness, I called out, “Are you crazy? Where are you going?”
“A short detour,” he shouted back. “Let’s see this thing up close!”
In a moment he was out of sight. And I did not want to be alone with a lurking wild mushushu.
I followed the sounds of his footfalls until they became impossible to hear. The eerie sound of Sippar was seeping along the ground like smoke, bouncing off trees. Its frequency was hurting my eardrums, upsetting my balance. I stumbled over a root and tumbled to the ground.
That was when I caught sight of Marco, crouching by the base of some destroyed mud-brick structure. It looked like it might have once been a wall, a fortress, a gate.
I wanted to yell at him, to tell him never, ever to run away like that again, but the words bottled up in my throat.
Marco was staring at a small plain that stretched out before us. On the horizon, maybe a hundred yards from us, the wall pulsed like a curtain. For a nanosecond I had a flashback to a time in Nantucket with my dad, where we saw the aurora borealis in the northern night sky, a huge ribbon of color waving like a rainbow flag. The blackness was a borealis with the color sucked out, a borealis with evil designs, moving, swallowing up the ground before it, uprooting trees, sweeping dust like a tornado.
Marco turned. “You ready for this, Brother Jack?”
“No!” I said. “I’m not ready. Wait. Ready for what?”
With the noise of a freight train, the blackness came hurtling toward us.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
COOPERATION
I COULDN’T FEEL my feet touch the ground. The noise washed over us, seizing our bodies like a river of sound. Marco was yelling. Pulling me away. His fingers were tight around my forearm as we raced back into the forest, but my eyes saw only inches ahead. A bat dropped lifelessly into my path. A tree groaned and fell to my right. I kept focus on the ground, until the earth cracked directly beneath me.
My ankle caught. I hit the ground, face-first. A root dug into my left cheek. I felt a wrenching pain in my back.
And then everything fell silent. Not a cheep from the birds or a babble from the brook.
“Jack?” came Marco’s voice. “Are you hurt?”
“Only when I breathe,” I said.
Marco emerged from the settling dust to my left. He helped me up, brushing off my tunic. His face was blackened, the hairs at the back of his head singed. “I think maybe if we’d just taken it at a run . . .”
“You are out of your mind,” I said. “But thank you for taking us away. And by the way, you look terrible.”
Marco smiled. “You, too.”
Slowly his eyes rose upward, focusing on something behind me. I sat up and turned.
The curtain of blackness was receding, kicking up dirt and debris. In its wake, whe
re the forest had just been, was a field of ash with smoldering silhouettes of trees, blackened and bent like rubber. Carcasses of animals and birds lay in states of arrested flight, some burned to the bone. Wisps of smoke rose from a culvert, now cracked and empty.
“You seriously thought we could just run through that, Marco!” I said.
He shrugged. “I thought maybe. You know, us being Selects and all. I was delusional.”
The gray field’s border lay maybe thirty yards ahead of us, stark and definite. Our side of the border was dusty but untouched. Water gurgled nearby, and a lone bird let out a confused chitter overhead. “What if that thing comes back for us?”
Marco stood and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s bag this beast, give it to Ol’ Whirly, and find our Loculus. If we keep the black hole to our backs and follow the flow of the water, we’ll be going in the right direction.”
“Promise not to run off,” I said.
“Deal.”
We picked a path through the trees, keeping within earshot of the culvert. The air was clearing now, and one by one the birds started to sing again. After a half hour or so, I expected us to be reaching the edge of the preserve. But nothing seemed familiar. “How big is this place?” Marco said.
I shrugged. The forest was dank and humid. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “I don’t know.”
As I leaned against a tree, catching my breath, Marco paced. “This is nuts. We’re never going to find this thing. I say we break off and go to the Hanging Gardens ourselves.”
“We’re supposed to cooperate with the Babylonians,” I reminded him. “Professor Bhegad’s orders.”
“To heck with P. Beg,” Marco said. “We listen to him and we’ll be dead by the end of the week. I am so over that guy. That whole lame organization.”
I couldn’t believe the words leaving his mouth. “So we just go rogue whenever we feel like it—like what you did? Be real, Marco. The KI has been at this for years. They know what they’re doing. We can’t play around with our own lives.”
“Brother Jack, no offense, but I’ve had some time to think,” Marco said, his voice weary and exasperated. “Did you ever think this whole thing just . . . smells funny? Try to imagine yourself as him—Bhegad. You’re this old professor who thinks he’s discovered Atlantis. You figure out this stuff about G7W, you set up a secret lab. You put your whole life into it, drop your teaching gig at Harvard—”