“What’s happening? Where did everyone go?” Pandy asked, her curiosity bubbling.

  Wang Chun Lo looked at the servants, who nodded in unison, then they too disappeared as Wang Chun Lo walked slowly toward the center of the tangerine tent. Several more oil lamps had been lit but the light didn’t shine out in all directions. Instead, their beams focused on a specific area of the tent. A few shone their light directly into the center, making that area almost as bright as day.

  Wang Chun Lo spread his arms wide as he glided noiselessly, his orange robe blending with the tangerine, melon, and apricot cushions and the fabric walls until he appeared to be nothing more than a long, black braided queue floating through space. Reaching the center, he turned back toward Homer and the girls. Suddenly, they could focus only on his eyes, reflecting the strong beams of red light from the lamps. With a jangle of the coin ribbons in his hands, he began to speak, his voice and manner now those of a great storyteller.

  “Honored guests, elders, and young ones. Highborn and slave. All are welcome, and tonight all are one. For tonight, there are no boundaries between thought and action, light and shadow, real and unreal. Tonight, you shall each share the experience of delight and amazement.

  “My friends, there are places in this world where the sun refuses to shine, strange rituals are commonplace, up is down, and in is out. We shall take you there, the places not shown on any map . . . rarely seen by human eyes. For the next few moments we shall remove you from the dreary day-to-day existence of your modern lives with its ease and comforts . . .”

  Pandy, Alcie, and Iole looked sideways at each other.

  “. . . and you shall see a woman fly, grown men no larger than newborn babes, and a man of the north so fierce he destroyed his country’s foes with a single blow. All this I promise you—and more! You will be shocked! Amazed! But remember: there is absolutely nothing to fear. Prepare yourself, my friends, for it all begins . . . now!”

  He shook his coin ribbons violently. Then, with a clap of his hands, the oil lamps went out and the tent was plunged into complete darkness.

  “Apples,” whispered Alcie.

  “Why am I suddenly frightened?” asked Iole.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” said Pandy. She struggled to remain alert, looking for any clues as to something that might help her; but she knew she was quickly falling under the spell of the caravan.

  Two oil lamps seemed to flicker on by themselves, their beams illuminating the center of the tent where Usumacinta now stood dressed in one of her feathered robes. Singing beautifully and turning slowly in a circle, her song told the story of a Mayan princess, a girl born so lovely that the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl, Mayan God of the Morning Star, fell in love with her and sent parrots and hummingbirds to fetch her to him. After each sentence, Usumacinta would pause and one of her bright green birds would fly down through an opening at the top of the tent, landing at her feet. Soon there were ten birds at her feet, each one taking its place in one of two small pyramids: three birds on the bottom, two on top. As Usumacinta finished, a hundred hummingbirds flew into the tent, alighting on her arms and in her hair. Singing the last notes, telling how the princess was saddened to leave her village but joyous about her new life with Quetzalcoatl, Usumacinta stepped lightly onto the two parrot pyramids and all the birds together lifted her off the ground and into the air. She held the final note, clear as the ringing of a wind chime, as she flew through the opening and out into the night.

  Pandy, Alcie, and Iole were stunned.

  “I think that is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” said Pandy finally.

  “Hades didn’t send birds when he wanted Persephone to be his wife. He just pulled her onto his black chariot while she was walking in a field one day,” said Alcie.

  “No imagination,” said Iole.

  They began clapping wildly.

  From out of the darkness came the voice of Wang Chun Lo.

  “Now we take you east to India. To the land of Buddha, Vishnu, and Kali. To the land of Krishna, Shakti, and Brahma. To the land of . . .”

  Suddenly, outside the tent there was a sharp yell, a loud squawk, a dull thud, and a moan.

  “. . . to the land of . . .”

  “They dropped me . . . again!” Usumacinta’s voice rose outside.

  “We keep telling you, you’re eating too much!” came another voice.

  “I am not, you dried-up lizard,” Usumacinta said.

  “. . . to the land of . . . ,” Wang Chun Lo continued.

  “If they drop me once more during a real show, we’re all eating parrot for dinner!” Usumacinta yelled.

  “Quiet!” Wang Chun Lo cried in a hoarse whisper. “You have finished! Let the others perform.”

  Pandy, Alcie, and Iole heard a great rustling of feathers and a loud harrumphing sound as Usumacinta herded her birds back to her tent.

  “Um . . . ,” Wang Chun Lo went on. “Oh yes—to the land of many-armed Shiva, the destroyer, and Ganesha, he of the elephant head. Come with us to India!”

  Into the pool of light tumbled the three tiny men. Swiftly, to the odd sounds of unseen instruments, they writhed, jiggled, and bent their bodies into the shapes of the Indian elephant god, Ganesha, then into the form of Buddha, with his legendary helmet of snails, or Hanuman, the monkey god, and other exotic Indian deities. Sometimes they simply twisted themselves into knots and then, in a flash, they unraveled. At the very end of their act, as the lamps in front of them were extinguished, they stood one upon the other in silhouette and portrayed the god Shiva, the destroyer of the world in Indian culture, with his four arms. Just as they were wiggling their arms up and down to represent Shiva’s ferocity, one arm hit another arm, which hit another arm, which hit someone’s head, which sent the trio collapsing to the floor in a way that left everyone who was watching in hysterics. In silhouette, the three men tried to stand again, and again only to trip over a leg here or an arm there. Finally they began pummeling each other, cursing in small high voices until the dark outlines of three servants grabbed hold of each of the Hindi men and carted them, like infants, out of the tent.

  And so it went. Every act, every performance began beautifully and ended with something going wrong in such a way that caused Pandy, Alcie, and Iole to laugh so hard they began to hurt with each breath.

  Mehlika, the Hittite woman wearing the turquoise top and yellow pants, entered the tent, this time also wearing a full black wig. She was a human torch who could throw flames with her breath; but more than that, she painted whole pictures in the air with nothing but fire. For several minutes she created seascapes complete with ships, animals grazing in pastures, chariot races, trees in the wind. Then she tried to paint women dancing in a circle and inadvertently lit her head on fire. Two servants standing in the shadows were obviously prepared and immediately doused her with water from wooden buckets. Screeching, she dashed outside and Pandy heard her grumbling to someone nearby that she was running out of horsetail hair for her wigs.

  Olaf, the Viking, the “fierce man of the north,” rode in standing on the backs of two oversized horses waving his double-headed ax—which flew off its shaft halfway through his act of ax-throwing marksmanship and, narrowly missing a terrified servant, split one of the smaller tent poles in two.

  The Ethiopian sisters, joined at the hip, brought forth ferocious, brightly colored cats on long chains. With one sister singing a haunting African melody and the other accompanying on a crude clay flute, the animals were supposedly kept from attacking either their trainers or the unsuspecting audience. The act went well, with the sisters moving gracefully around the center of the tent, until the cats got bored, curled up, and went to sleep.

  Then a cage was lowered into the tent through the hole at the top. Inside a man was battling the red snake Pandy had seen in the makeshift corral. As the cage hit the floor, its door flew open and the man and snake burst from inside to begin dueling in the ring of light. Sometimes rising to a height of almost two meters, the snake slinked and slithered as it pretended to bite in what was, to all appearances, a deadly battle. Finally, after subduing the snake, the man coaxed it to coil itself around his body; he was completely encased within seconds, and proceeded to roll around the tent, with the snake, in a wide circle. When it came time for the snake to release him, however, the snake only coiled tighter and the man had to be carried from the tent, his face turning purple, with several servants trying to pull the serpent off him.

  “Do you notice how the servants know exactly what to do?” asked Iole.

  “They’re the real stars of the show,” said Pandy.

  Alcie said nothing. Only a moment earlier she had felt a slight shift on a cushion close by and realized that Homer had slipped back into the tent and was watching the show.

  They saw the “strange” two-eyed Cyclops, the giant dwarf, and the thousand-year-old man with the face of a boy.

  “Figs! Those are just plain men,” whispered Alcie, in the dark.

  “You are an unbelie-e-e-ever,” giggled Iole.

  Pandy wondered for an instant if any of them were the key for which she should be hunting.

  There were Balinese shadow puppets, one of which lost its head in the middle of the act. Scylla and Charybdis did a routine full of bad jokes in Greek. The strange animals, the goats with long horns, and the half-horse, half-dog beasts were brought in, to the special delight of Iole.

  Suddenly, all of the oil lamps were relit and the four beautiful Arabian girls entered the tent with a swoosh of brightly colored silk scarves and a light tinkling of metal. The black-garbed servants shed their dark covering to reveal gold pantaloons and silver vests. They sat and took up stringed instruments, drums, and flutes. One of the girls shook a small, flat drum with metal discs high over her head. The others had these same metal discs attached to their fingers. They struck a dramatic pose and there was silence in the tent. Pandy, Alcie, and Iole held their breath at the sight, but Alcie managed to notice that Homer had silently slipped out yet again.

  In a rush of sound and color, the musicians began to play and the girls to dance. Whirling skirts in green, blue, pink, and red, black hair flying in all directions, fingers clinking, and lovely faces hidden by opaque silks—then revealed again and again as they spun in fast circles. Then there were different movements as the girls undulated in unison like tall reeds, forcing their bellies in and out, shaking their hips, the coins sewn to their garments jingling.

  As the music grew faster, the four girls began a series of highly intricate steps then finished with a set of furious whirls, with both musicians and girls stopping with a flourish at precisely the same moment.

  “What went wrong?” asked Alcie, as Pandy and Iole beat their hands together.

  “Nothing!” cried Pandy. “Not one thing!”

  “Okay . . . then, whoo-hoo!” yelled Alcie.

  The tent was plunged into blackness once more. The air shifted almost imperceptibly and the small hairs on Pandy’s arms stood straight up as she strained to see in the dark.

  One by one, the lamps illuminating the center flickered back on. On the floor was the empty cage of carved ivory that Pandy had seen the day before. Seven servants entered carrying five very large rectangular panels of a hard, clear substance and small stands on which the panels were placed to stand upright, forming a semicircle around the cage.

  Pandy remembered a set of crystals she’d seen once in a market stall in Athens. These panels looked exactly like those hard stones, the same fine cracks running through them, barely perceptible, only these panels had been cut from crystals that were enormous.

  The servants departed and there was silence.

  Slowly, the clear crystal began to cloud; a fine, white smoke passing through each panel. Then muted colors began to appear, then general shapes: a hillside, the corner of a building, a tall column. Pictures were drawing themselves inside the crystal and the shapes became more distinct. The hillside now had fruit trees and bushes with a road passing through. The corner of the building had a flowing fountain carved into its side. And the tall column was part of a temple where people walked up and down a series of nearby steps and a man sold incense and oranges from a rickety cart. A scene of a field had cows grazing and a picture of snow-covered flatlands had small, crude homes with lights in their windows.

  All at once, Pandy, Alcie, and Iole saw Wang Chun Lo descend the steps of the temple in the crystal. He stopped only for a moment to take a stick of incense from the vendor. Then, looking directly ahead, he walked right up to the panel and passed through into the center of the tent.

  “Huh?” said Alcie.

  Wang Chun Lo bowed deeply from side to side as if he were in front of a large audience. He held the stick of incense high and with a snap of his fingers, lit it on fire. He placed it in the ivory cage, where it smoked lightly, filling the tent with the aroma of sandalwood.

  Then Wang Chun Lo stepped into the panel with the building and its fountain. Taking a piece of cloth from the folds of his robe, he soaked the fabric in the water, then crossed out of view and immediately reappeared in the snow scene. He placed the cloth on the frozen ground, walked around the crude house, then he picked up the piece of cloth, which had now frozen solid. Again, he walked back through the crystal and into the tent. He tapped the frozen cloth against the ivory cage where it made a tinny, clinking sound. With another snap, he lit another fire at his fingertips and held it to the cloth. As the ice melted, the water dripped off the cloth and it became pliable once more. This too Wang Chun Lo put into the ivory cage.

  Once more he stepped through a panel, this time onto the hillside with its fruit trees. He swiftly plucked two apples from a tree, took a bite out of one, and left the picture. Suddenly, he was walking up to a bewildered cow in the pasture and holding out the other apple in his hand. The cow took one bite before Wang Chun Lo whisked it away and began to stride toward the panel. As he stepped again into the tent, holding the two apples up high, everyone heard a soft thud as the cow tried to follow Wang Chun Lo, only to bump its nose against the strange barrier. Alcie and Iole began to laugh through their astonishment at the cow’s bewilderment, its large pink nose smearing the crystal. Pandy, however, was silent.

  As the cow wandered away, Wang Chun Lo placed both apples into the ivory cage. Then he swung the cage slowly from one side of the tent to the other, displaying the contents for all to see.

  He closed the small cage door and passed it once behind his back. When he held the cage up again, the contents were gone and there was something new inside. He opened the cage door and withdrew a snow white dove.

  “Gods!” said Iole.

  Wang Chun Lo held the bird high, then quickly released it into the scene of the hillside, where the bird flew up and landed on a high branch of the nearest apple tree.

  Wang Chun Lo turned, waved his hand past the five panels causing them all to go completely clear once more, then bowed very low to his audience.

  Alcie and Iole were on their feet, whooping and cheering. Even the servants and a few of the other performers who had snuck in were clapping wildly.

  Only Pandy sat stock-still.

  Her brain had locked onto one thought as soon as she’d seen the wondrous panels and her mind was racing with possibilities. This had to be the “interesting force” to which Artemis had guided her! Pandy became more and more excited. If this were nothing more than a trick then her idea was out of the question. But if it was as she suspected, that Wang Chun Lo actually had the ability to easily move through different parts of the world, then . . .

  Suddenly, Pandy was jolted by Iole’s firm tug on her arm.

  “Pandy,” Iole was saying. “Didn’t you like it?”

  “What?” she mumbled.

  Snapping out of her daydream, she saw much commotion at the center of the tent. The last of the panels was being carried out of the tent as the musicians took to their instruments once again. One by one the performers were entering to take their bows. Pandy began to clap, but she thought only of her plan. She was trying to think of how she could best explain her idea to Wang Chun Lo when the four Arabian dancers entered. Instead of bowing, they began their dance again, everyone joining in the celebration. All except Wang Chun Lo, who was nowhere to be seen.

  Even though most of the performers were somewhat worse for wear, the music was lively and the dancing was infectious, and soon everyone was doing his or her own version of a belly dance. Then Almase, Mahfouza, Nabile, and Sabahat danced their way over to Pandy, Alcie, and Iole, beckoning them.

  All three froze, and Pandy forgot her plan altogether.

  Almase took hold of Iole’s hand while Mahfouza led Pandy into the circle. But it required both Nabile and Sabahat to tackle Alcie as she tried to crawl away over the orange cushions.

  “I can’t dance!” she wailed, unheard in the din. “I can barely walk!”

  On the floor, Mahfouza smiled down at Pandy, circling her with a series of quick turns. From far away, these girls seemed to be rare birds, not really girls at all; surely nothing human could move like that. Up close, Pandy saw they were even lovelier than she imagined. A picture of her mother flashed again in her mind. These girls were just as beautiful, perhaps even more so. And then, even though Jealousy was trapped securely in the wooden box in her leather carrying pouch, Pandy remembered what it had felt like when it consumed her so completely in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Was she experiencing it again? Jealousy of these girls, whom she could never be like in a million moons? She stood like stone in the center of the tent, too petrified to move no matter how much the music enticed her.

  If she didn’t move, she thought, she would never know exactly how embarrassed she could be; how her clumsy body might betray her in front of these girls who were . . . perfect. If she stayed still, she could avoid at least some humiliation and try to concentrate on explaining her plan to Wang Chun Lo.