said, relieved.
“We saw the glockenspiel from real close up,” Molly chirped from the navigator’s seat.
Rebecca hushed her with a stern look.
“Come to 1-6-0 south, southeast, Papa Bear,” Kit directed.
“But one thing puzzles me,” Baloo said, banking the plane to the right.
“Only one thing?” Rebecca shot back.
“How you could go sightseein’ without buyin’ every souvenir in sight.”
Airily, Rebecca replied, “Oh, we didn’t find anything terribly exciting, did we, Molly?”
“Nope,” Molly said with a grin and conspiratorial wink.
Two Hours Later
Mondobobo
Kit treaded lightly across the scorching, shimmering sand that blanketed the country of Mondobobo. The last time that he was here, there had an Olympic Diving Competition to determine who would marry the princess. It was an odd custom, considering that there were no pools or lakes, that the ‘diving board’ was a cliff top, and that the participants were heavy hippos.
While Baloo was busy chatting and eating with the tribal chief, Kit had decided to revisit the place where the ‘diving competition’ had taken place. He was sure that the view overlooking the vast desert with its shifting sands would be spectacular. Better still, this time he could actually enjoy it, because Trader Moe and his goons weren’t around.
Kit wended his way through the crowded, open-air market. This was where Rebecca and Molly had said they were going, but, as yet, he hadn’t seen them, which was odd. Two bears should have stuck out like sore thumbs in a market full of hippos. Something told him that they weren’t anywhere in the marketplace. It was the same something that was telling him that the Cunninghams were hiding something from him and Baloo. For one thing, Rebecca didn’t want them along to carry their souvenirs. In fact, they emphatically insisted on going sightseeing alone. For another thing, Molly seemed too excited over shopping with her mom, a activity that she normally loathed.
Something’s not adding up.
As he drew closer to the cliff, he noticed something blue and pink on the ground beside a large boulder. To his surprise, it turned out to be Molly. The little girl was lying flat on her stomach, looking over the cliff’s edge.
“Molly, what are you doing?” Kit grabbed her by her overalls straps and pulled her away from the edge. In his best big brother voice, he said sternly, “This is no place to play high-diver queen.”
“I wasn’t playing!” Molly said indignantly. “I was looking!”
“What were you looking at?” Kit peered over the cliff. When he saw Rebecca, a rope tied around her waist, hanging halfway down the cliff, he was so surprised that Molly had to grab onto his sweater to keep him from toppling over. “Miz Cunningham! What are you doing down there?”
“I...uh, felt like rock climbing?” Rebecca said with a half-hearted chuckle.
Kit wasn’t buying it. “What’s that in your hand?”
“This? Oh, it’s...nothing.” She quickly stuffed the box inside her cardigan and searched for a handhold in the rock.
“That ‘nothing’ looks like a box to me,” the boy said shrewdly.
Simultaneously, Rebecca and Molly whispered, “Shh!”
“What?”
“We don’t want Baloo to find out that we’re on a treasure hunt,” Molly explained.
“Molly!” Rebecca cried.
Molly cringed a little. “You never said not to tell Kit.”
Meditatively, Kit said, “You’re on a...?”
“Shh!” hissed the Cunninghams.
“Treasure hunt?” Kit murmured incredulously. From the way Rebecca had talked the day before, he thought Thembria would thaw before she would ever go on a treasure hunt.
Rebecca started climbing up the cliff face slowly, but steadily. “But you’ve got to promise not to tell Baloo.”
Kit nodded solemnly. “Because he’ll make fun of you?”
“Yes.” Rebecca sighed, then smiled at him. “Now that you know, you might as well help me up.”
The cubs grabbed onto the rope that was tied around a large boulder at the top of the cliff and began to tug.
A few minutes later, Rebecca was sitting on the cliff. Kit crouched nearby while Molly brushed the sand out of her mother’s hair.
“What’d we get this time, Mom?”
Rebecca extracted the box from her cardigan, fitted the key into the lock, and opened it. As she expected, it was: “Another marble, another key, another number.”
“‘Another’?” Kit exclaimed.
The Cunninghams briefly filled him in.
“Where are we going next, Pumpkin?”
Molly compared the number found in the treasure chest to the page number in the sketchbook. “Lhasa Apso!”
“The sketchbook that Baloo gave you is a treasure map?” Kit shook his head in disbelief. “Then he really did find treasure at Stu’s Secondhand Store.”
“But Baloo’s not going to know about it.” Rebecca shoved the box back under her cardigan and, getting to her feet, started back towards the Sea Duck with the cubs right behind.
Two Hours Later
Lhasa Apso
Baloo hurried over a bridge spanning a pond filled with lotus blossoms, then past a row of ornate pagodas that edged a flagstone path that led up the lush, green mountain. Looming over everything at the very top of the mountain was the Great Temple. Perfect peace and tranquility reigned in this small village where the Doggie Lama, the wisest man in the world, resided. But Baloo was anything but peaceful or tranquil at the moment.
“I’m tellin’ ya, Kit...” the big bear paused to bow to a brown-hooded monk, because the Ancient Tradition of Bow-Wow decreed that one had to bow to every monk that was met on the street, “it’s like Becky’s completely,” bow, “lost her marbles. I don’t get how,” bow, “a gal who’s such a stickler,” bow, “about time,” bow, “can possibly be late.”
“You’re not worried,” bow, “about her, are you, Papa Bear?” Kit said with a sly gleam in his eyes.
“Nah.” Bow. “It’s just that’s she’s,” bow, “so gung-ho about makin’ a buck that she,” bow, “always winds up,” bow, “gettin’ into trouble.”
Just then, Rebecca, with Molly under one arm and a silver box under the other, sped past them, down the mountain.
“What in the...?” Baloo muttered.
They then heard loud shouting and footsteps pounding on the flagstone street. A stampede of angry brown-hooded monks was coming their way.
Pilot and navigator spun around and raced to catch up with the Cunninghams.
Baloo glanced over his shoulder at the mob that they were running from. “What’d you do to make ‘em so barkin’ mad, Becky?”
“Save the jokes until we’re out of here!” Rebecca panted, too intent on escaping to glare at him.
Seeing some cloaks hanging on a clothesline, Baloo snagged four of them, much to the amazement of the monk who had just hung them up. The big bear ducked around the corner of a pagoda, shoved robes at the other three bears and ordered, “Put these on an’ do what I do!”
They all sat down and shielded their faces with the hoods. When the angry voices faded in the distance, they gave a collective sigh of relief.
Baloo doffed his hood, straightened his pilot’s hat, and asked quietly, “Now, what was all that fuss and flub-a-dub about, Becky?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, attempting to shield her face with her hood. “Molly and I were just walking through that beautiful temple when...”
“Lemme get this straight. You an’ Molly went into the Temple of the Doggie Lama?”
“Yes.”
Baloo chuckled a little. “No wonder them guys were so steamed. Outsiders ain’t allowed. How come you went in there?”
Determined that Baloo would never discover her secret, Rebecca looked him straight in the eye and stated positively, “Like I said, Molly and I were just sightseeing.”
Molly nodded emphatically, but Kit look slightly uncomfortable.
Baloo wasn’t convinced. He put his hands on Rebecca’s shoulders and gazed intently at her. “Uh-huh. What were you really doin’ in there?”
Sheer willpower allowed her to hold his gaze for a long while, but finally he won out. Her eyes dropped. “Looking...for something...”
“Lookin’ for what?”
Rebecca was glad that the bulky robe hid the box that was concealed under her sweater. “Nothing...important.”
Drastic times called for drastic measures. Baloo knew that Rebecca would never spill the beans until she had been softened up a little, so he picked a little yellow flower and gave it to her. In his gentlest voice, he said, “Come on, honey. You can tell ol’ Baloo.”
Rebecca looked at the flower, then looked up into the big bear’s smiling face. She silently cursed the Powers That Be that made her a sucker for a flower and a sweet endearment. Besides, it would almost be a relief letting him in on the secret; hiding it from him and Kit had turned out to be a lot of work. Sighing in defeat, she said despondently, “Oh, all right. I’ll tell you on the way to Tundra City.”
On the Way to Tundra City
“Ha! You’re kiddin’, Becky!” Baloo couldn’t help but smirk. “If my little ol’ noggin remembers rightly, you said somethin’ like treasure huntin’ was a waste of time.”
Rebecca could have kicked herself from Cape Suzette to Thembria. She silently, savagely yanked the petals off of the flower Baloo had given her.
“Only an idjit would run all over the world followin’ a treasure map,” Baloo said, looking smugly superior.
Steaming mad, Rebecca continued to pluck petals from the helpless flower.
Baloo, who was thoroughly enjoying himself, added, “An’ X never, ever marks the spot.”
Rebecca couldn’t take it anymore. She flung the stem at him and shouted, “I never said that! Besides, there are no Xs on these maps! Other letters, but no X’s.”
Baloo chuckled good-naturedly. “What treasure were ya lookin’ for?”
Molly piped up, “Jewels. Or one jewel. That’s what the hidden letters spelled out.”
“A jewel, huh?” Baloo stroked his chin. “And what have you found so far?”
Ashamedly, Rebecca said, “Three marbles and three keys.”
Molly
7657 visits
Report this fanfic
