GREAT SANDY DESERT NORTH-WESTERN AUSTRALIA 25 APRIL, 2006, 1130 HOURS
The Toyota four-wheel drive zoomed along the empty desert highway.
In the passenger seat, Lily gazed out at the most inhospitable landscape she had ever seen. Wizard drove, with Zoe in the back. Lily shook her head. If there was any place on Earth further from civilisation, she didn't know it.
Dry barren hills stretched away in every direction. Sand crept out onto the desert highway, as if eventually it would consume it.
But it was an odd kind of sand, orange-red in colour, just like the soil that had been in West's jar.
They hadn't seen another car in hours. In fact, the last living thing they'd seen was a big saltwater crocodile basking on a virtually dry riverbank under a bridge they'd crossed a couple of hours ago.
A sign on the bridge had revealed the river to be named, somewhat appropriately, the River Styx, after the river in Hell. A three-way junction a few miles after it offered three options. To the left: Simpson's Crossing, 50 miles; straight: Death Valley, 75 miles; while going right would ultimately take them to a place called Franklin Downs.
'Go straight,' Lily had said. 'Death Valley.'
Now, two hours later, she said, 'It has to be here somewhere . . .'
She checked her riddle:
My
Lily said, ''Pay the boatman, take your chances with the dog.' In Greek mythology, when you entered the underworld, you first had to cross the River Styx. To do that, you paid the boatman and then took your chances against Cerberus, the dog guarding Hades. We've found the River Styx.'
Wizard and Zoe exchanged looks.
'And Death Valley?' Zoe asked. 'What makes you think that?'
'The next two lines in the riddle, 'Into the jaws of Death/Into the mouth of Hell', they're from a poem that Wizard taught me, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. In the poem, the 600 members of the Light Brigade charge into 'the Valley of Death'. Death Valley'
Minutes later, a series of low buildings rose out of the heat haze.
The town of Death Valley.
A weatherworn sign at the entry to the town read:
WELCOME TO
DEATH VALLEY
HOME OF THE MIGHTY
DEATH VALLEY TIGERS FOOTBALL TEAM!
'Home to both tigers and crocodiles,' Lily said.
Death Valley turned out to be a ghost town—just a cluster of old wooden shacks and farms with crumbling dirt driveways, long-abandoned.
They drove round for a while.
Lily gazed out the window, her eyes searching for a clue. 'Now we need to find a 'great villain' ... a great villain . . .
They stopped at the end of an ultralong dirt driveway. It was so long, the farmhouse to which it belonged lay over the horizon.
At the point where the driveway met the road, however, a rusty old mailbox sat on a post. Like many such mailboxes in rural Australia, this one was a home-made work of art.
Constructed of old tractor parts and a rusted oil barrel, it was fashioned in the shape of a mouse . . . complete with ears and whiskers. Only this mouse wore, of all things, a crown.
'A Mouse King . . .' she breathed.
'How do you know?' Zoe asked.
Lily smiled at the in-joke. 'The Mouse King is a great villain. He's the villain in
Their car bounced up the dusty dirt driveway. At the very end of the long drive, far from the main road, they found a quiet little farmhouse nestled beneath a low hill, its windmill turning slowly.
A man stood on the front porch, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his metal left arm glinting in the sunshine, watching the approaching four-wheel drive.
Jack West Jr.
Lily bounded out of the car and leapt into West's arms.
'You found me,' he said. 'Took you long enough.'
'Where have you been?' Lily asked. 'What were these loose ends you had to tie up for a whole month?'
West grinned. 'Why don't you come and see.'
He led them behind the farmhouse, into an old abandoned mine hidden in the base of the low sandy hill back there.
'Later today, like Imhotep III did at the Hanging Gardens, I'm going to trigger a landslide to cover the entrance to this mine,' he said as they walked, 'so that no-one will ever know that there's a mine here, or what it contains.'
A hundred metres inside the mine, they came to a wide chamber and in the centre of the chamber stood . . .
. . . the Golden Capstone.
Nine feet tall, glittering and golden, and absolutely magnificent.
'Pooh Bear and Stretch helped me get it to Australia. Oh, and Sky Monster, too,' West said. 'But I left them all at the dock in Fremantle. A little later I got them to help me pick up a few other things that we encountered on our adventures. Wizard, I thought you might like to keep one or two.'
Standing in a semi-circle on the far side of the Capstone were several other ancient items.
The Mirror from the Lighthouse at Alexandria.
The Pillar from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
Both last seen in Tunisia, inside Hamilcar's Refuge.
'You didn't get the head of the Colossus of Rhodes?' Wizard asked jokingly.
'I was thinking of going after it in a few months, if you wanted to join me,' West said. 'I could use the help. Oh, and Zoe . . .'
'Yes, Jack . . .'
'I thought you might like a flower, as a token of thanks for your efforts these last ten years.' With a flourish, he whipped something from behind his back and held it out to her.
It was a rose, a white rose of some kind, but one of unusual beauty.
Zoe's eyes widened. 'Where did you find this—?'
'Some gardens I saw once,' West said. 'Alas, they're no longer there. But this variety of rose is really rather resilient, and it's taking in my front garden very well. I expect to develop quite a rosebush. Come on, it's hot, let's head inside and Pll get some drinks.'
And so they left the abandoned mine and went back to the farmhouse, their shoes and boots caked in the unusual orange-red soil.
It was indeed a unique kind of soil, soil rich in iron and nickel, soil that was unique to this area: the north- western corner of what was now the most powerful nation on Earth ... if only it knew it.
Australia.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I am indebted to a wonderful non-fiction book called
