DRAGON FRUIT
Though its flesh is sweet, this fiery fruit has scales like the meanest dragon.
Cass tried to discard the hitchhiker fruit she’d picked only to have it stick to her shirt. (So that was what the sign meant about hitching a ride…!)
STINKY FRUIT
Known as the King of Fruits, the odor of this prickly fruit is so strong the fruit has been banished from many places in Asia.
HITCH-HIKER FRUIT
Don’t brush against this fruit unless you want it to hitch a ride.
Needless to say, Max-Ernest wouldn’t sample any of the fruit. “What are you guys going to do if I have an allergic reaction? You can’t very well take me to the hospital,” he pointed out. “So why do you think all these trees are here anyway? You think there was a fruit section in the old zoo? That doesn’t really make sense.”
“Wouldn’t the trees be bigger then? Most of these don’t look very old,” said Yo-Yoji.
“Maybe Hugo planted them—and they’re ingredients for chocolate, you know, like different fillings and flavors,” said Cass.
Max-Ernest considered this. “Maybe. But then where are the cacao seeds? That’s what you really need to make chocolate.”
“What do cacao trees look like?” asked Yo-Yoji. “You guys did all that research…”
“They grow kind of straight up with branches sticking straight out,” said Max-Ernest. “They look kind of like cartoons. Also, they only grow in the shade. So they wouldn’t be out here—hey!” Max-Ernest covered his head protectively. “Would you stop throwing things at me already?!”
“I didn’t! But now I’m going to…!” Yo-Yoji laughed, ducking as something sailed past his head. “You threw that back so fast—who knew you could!”
“But I didn’t…”
“Ow!” This time it was Cass who got hit—in the face. “It’s neither of you, you buttheads! Look—”
A monkey was hanging by his tail from a tree limb at the edge of the orchard. In outline, he looked like a classic monkey, the kind of monkey you might see collecting coins for a street performer in an old movie. But his face was an unusually dark shade of brown and his fur was a fluffily perfect snow white.
In one hand, he held some kind of orangish reddish fruit that resembled a deflated football. Laughing merrily, he picked seeds from the fruit. Ate one or two. Then threw the rest at the kids below.
“Hey, cut that out!” said Cass.
Yo-Yoji picked a seed off the ground—it was purple—and threw it back at the monkey, narrowly missing him. “How do you like that, monkey-dude?!”
The monkey snorted unrepentantly. Throwing his half-eaten fruit to the ground, he dropped from his perch and caught a lower branch by one hand. With the appearance of ease, he swung himself to another tree—and disappeared into the rainforest.
Max-Ernest ran to the bottom of the tree the monkey had abandoned, and he grabbed the now squashed remains of the fruit.
“Yuck!” He held it as far away from his face as possible. Sticky white pulp oozed onto his hands. But as disgusted as he felt, he grinned with excitement. “This is it! This is a cacao pod. It looks just like the pictures.”
“So those things he was throwing were cacao seeds?” Yo-Yoji scrambled to find more of the seeds on the ground.
“Forget the seeds—follow the monkey,” shouted Cass. “Maybe he’ll take us to the tree!”
They caught sight of the monkey almost as soon as they reentered the rainforest.
As the monkey swung effortlessly from branch to branch, the kids scrambled to keep up. Unfortunately, the ground was covered with roots and puddles and plenty of other less identifiable obstructions.
“I thought we were supposed to be more evolved than monkeys—I never realized walking was so slow and impractical,” complained Cass, breathing hard. “Maybe in the future we’ll go back to having monkey hands.”
“But then we’d lose our opposable thumbs,” said Max-Ernest. “That wouldn’t make sense, evolution-wise.”
“Yeah, but we’d have opposable tails like his—that would be cool!” She nodded to the white monkey hanging by his tail from a tree up ahead. He almost seemed to be lingering intentionally, as if he was waiting for them.
“They’re called prehensile tails,” said Max-Ernest. “And I don’t think monkeys can write with them.”
Yo-Yoji shook his head. “Don’t you guys ever not talk?”
When they reached the monkey, he screeched at them—and leaped to the next tree.
“He wants us to follow,” said Cass.
“That’s great—as long as he takes us somewhere we want to go,” said Yo-Yoji.
“Hey, is anybody paying attention in case we need to retrace our steps?” asked Max-Ernest.
But the others didn’t hear him; they were already following the monkey deeper into the rainforest.
After another twenty minutes or so, their way was blocked by a huge fallen tree—with a trunk as wide as the kids were tall.
Cass and Yo-Yoji each grasped onto the tree, trying to climb over it—but they both slipped immediately. The tree bark was covered with slimy green moss. There was no way to get a foothold.
“Oh great!” Cass grumbled. “Now what?”
“I dunno,” said Yo-Yoji, looking up. “And the monkey’s gone.”
Max-Ernest frowned in consternation. “What’s this tree doing here anyway?”
“Blocking our way—what’s it look like?” said Yo-Yoji.
“No, I mean—why is it here in the first place? It would have to be hundreds of years old to have such a big trunk. And they only built this rainforest like twenty years ago… how ’bout that?”
“So maybe it was here before,” said Cass. “Anyway, the point is it’s here now and we have to figure out a way to get over it.”
Yo-Yoji looked closer at the tree. “Hey, Cass—give me your knife for a second.”
“Why—you want to carve your initials?” she joked. “That’s like polluting, you know.…”
“Just give it to me.”
Cass dug into her backpack and handed him her Swiss army knife. Yo-Yoji dug into the bark of the tree with it.
“Here—see.” He stuck his finger in where he’d carved a hole, then showed it to his friends. It was covered with white powder. Plaster.
“The tree’s fake!” said Cass.
They all looked at each other, excitement on their faces.
“They must have put it here to stop people from getting through,” said Max-Ernest.
“Like to a secret chocolate plantation!” said Yo-Yoji.
“Come on—there has to be a way in somewhere,” said Cass. “A secret passage or something.”
But there wasn’t. Not that they could find anyway.
On either end of the tree was dense brush. When they pushed it aside they found a hidden stone wall—topped with the familiar spools of razor wire. The wall meant they were probably right about the plantation being on the other side, but they were no closer to getting in.
Just as they were beginning to despair, the monkey swung into view above them. (He, obviously, had no trouble getting over the wall.) He shook his head, as if in disgust at their inability to swing from trees.
“Thanks for nothing,” Yo-Yoji shouted to the monkey. “We thought you were our friend—”
Cass put her finger to her lip. “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t shout so loud—somebody could be on the other side of the wall.”
Yo-Yoji shrugged in annoyance, but he remained silent. Cass was right, of course.
“I think maybe he’s trying to tell us something,” said Max-Ernest, staring at the monkey.
Indeed, the monkey, no longer laughing, had swung down to a low branch and was pointing to the root ball of the fallen tree. That is, the fake root ball end of the fake fallen tree.
Max-Ernest was the first to make it to the tree roots, which were surprisingly large and elaborate. When you looked at them straight on, the twisting roots s
pread outward, creating the shape of a sun.
At the center of the roots was a large round door, and at the center of the door a large brass knob in the shape of a monkey’s head.
Max-Ernest gave the knob an experimental turn. “It’s locked.”
“Is there a way to enter a combination or something?” asked Yo-Yoji.
Max-Ernest shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Great. So there’s a key then,” said Cass in frustration. “How are we going to find the key?”
“Actually, I’m not even sure there’s a keyhole,” said Max-Ernest. “There’s just a… mouth.”
He pointed to the hole in the center of the brass monkey’s face; it was exactly where a mouth should be.
“Super. Now, we’re really not going to be able to open it… hey, cut that out!” said Cass angrily.
The monkey—the live monkey above them, that is—was throwing cacao seeds again. Cass’s shouting only seemed to encourage him to throw more. She shook her fist at him.
He shook his head disdainfully, then tossed a seed into his mouth.
“Wait,” said Yo-Yoji. “Here—”
He picked a cacao seed off the ground and handed it to Max-Ernest. “Put it in.”
Max-Ernest looked skeptical. Nonetheless, he carefully inserted the seed into the hole in the doorknob. It dropped like a coin in a slot.
“I think it worked—!”
He grasped the knob again. This time, it turned.
The door opened to reveal a narrow tunnel that ran the length of the tree. At the end was another round door, this one slightly ajar.
“Shh!” Cass put her fingers to her lips.
The others nodded. They didn’t know exactly what dangers awaited them on the other side of that door. But that there would be dangers, of that there was no doubt.
They saw them as soon as they walked through the door.
Standing straight up. Arms stuck out to the side. Row upon row upon row.
Cacao trees.
Planted between rows of other, taller trees. For shade. (Or possibly to hide them from a passing airplane.)
They were just as Max-Ernest had described.
With one difference:
“Are they… covered with snow?” Cass wondered aloud.
Indeed, it looked like snow had been accumulating on the trees for days, making big white mounds that weighed down the branches.
“That really wouldn’t make sense,” said Max-Ernest. “It’s summer and it’s pretty hot out.”
“Duh, I just meant it looked like it—”
“Plus, there’s none on the taller trees,” Max-Ernest couldn’t help adding. “Snow doesn’t usually stick to one kind of tree and not another.”
“It could be fake snow,” said Yo-Yoji. “I mean, there was a fake tree, right? Maybe they’re going to sell them at Christmas.”
The monkey screeched at them, perhaps to say good-bye, perhaps to tell them to stop arguing, then swung away into the cacao trees.
“C’mon,” said Cass. “Let’s keep going. But stay in the shade, under those taller trees. So nobody can see us.”
When they got closer, they saw that the white mounds on the cacao trees were moving. There wasn’t any snow at all, whether real or fake.
Rather, the trees were filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of the white monkeys.
They chattered noisily, tossing so many cacao seeds—and the odd cacao pod—onto the ground that it seemed to be raining.
Beneath each tree was a gleaming golden pail that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Like a pail that might contain a secret potion or magic coins. Like a pail Hansel and Gretel might carry. The whole scene had a magical look about it, as if the trees were enchanted or the monkeys bewitched.
Occasionally, one of the monkeys themselves would drop onto the ground. He then would hop over to the pail and—
“Why are they sitting on those pails?” asked Max-Ernest.
“I don’t know,” said Cass. “It kinda looks like—”
Yo-Yoji shook his head in disbelief. “Why would anybody want to save… that?”
“Maybe for fertilizer?” suggested Max-Ernest, aghast.
Cass tensed. “Hey, do you guys hear voices?”
Her friends shook their heads, but they stopped talking all the same. They knew from experience that Cass’s hearing was far more acute than theirs.
Quietly, they all crept farther into the shadows and flattened themselves behind the furrowed earth.
An icy voice carried in the breeze. “All our beans have been pre-digested by our specially bred capuchin monkeys. Our mochachin monkeys, as we like to call them.”
The three kids shivered at once. They all recognized the voice and it gave every one of them a chill.
“All these beans you see on the ground—they’re the discards. The mochachins are very fussy. They insist on eating only the best and richest beans.”
From their place in the shadows, the kids could see Ms. Mauvais leading a small group through the cacao orchard. She was covered head to toe in a white nun’s habit—the sort with a headpiece that spreads out to either side like gull wings—but her porcelain-doll face was unmistakable. Her feet invisible beneath her robe, she seemed almost to be gliding over the mud and muck, as if she were suspended on a wire from above.
With her were the Skelton Sisters, dressed for the occasion in pink and purple camouflage as if they were part of some very girlish military operation. Montana Skelton held a video camera in her hand, Romi Skelton a microphone. The sisters were making some sort of film. *
Bringing up the rear: Señor Hugo, inscrutable as ever in his dark glasses.
Watching from the shadows, Cass stared at him, seething. This was the man who’d kidnapped her mother. Who’d manipulated her and broken his promise. She’d never hated anyone so much.
Apparently, she was making some kind of sound under her breath because Max-Ernest soon poked her. “Stop growling like that,” he whispered. “They’ll hear you.”
Cass nodded, snapping out of it. There would be time for growling later. She had a job to do.
“When they’re excreted by the monkeys, these superior beans are left perfectly intact,” Ms. Mauvais continued, speaking into the camera. “But they’ve acquired a distinctive flavor unknown anywhere else.”
“So then the cocoa beans have to be, like… dug out?” asked Romi, making a face.
Something like a smile crossed Ms. Mauvais’s frosty lips. “You don’t imagine we do that ourselves! We leave it to our eager young initiates. Isn’t that right, Alexander?”
She nodded in the direction of a small, unhappy-looking boy walking by with a golden pail in each hand. He wore a hooded gray tunic with a black sun embroidered on it—the insignia of the Midnight Sun.
“Oh my gosh, he is so cute!” exclaimed Romi.
She ran over to Alexander and grabbed him by the ear, causing the contents of a pail to spill out onto his leg. “Can we take this one home, Ms. Mauvais?”
“Yes, can we? Please,” said Montana, grabbing the boy’s other ear with her free hand and causing the other pail to spill. “We’ll take very good care of him, we promise. We’ll walk him and everything.” She pointed the camera at her sister. “We’re very good with little children, aren’t we, sis?”
“Oh, yeah! We love animals,” said Romi, not completely following. “That’s why we’re making a documentary at the zoo!”
“You mean in Africa,” corrected her sister.
“Oh, right, Africa! It’s so hard to remember where you are when you’re on a rock tour!”
“Let the boy go, darlings!” said Ms. Mauvais through her teeth. “We’ll talk about it later.”
As soon as the Skelton Sisters released him, Alexander scurried over to a long trough and emptied what remained in his two pails.
More similarly uniformed—and similarly unhappy—children were bent over the trough, sifting through the monkey droppings. Whene
ver they extracted one of the precious cacao beans, they rinsed it clean and placed it in a special golden pail marked with the Midnight Sun insignia.
“See what diligent workers they are!” said Ms. Mauvais to the camera. “We call them our Pearl Divers because the cacao beans are like pearls—little, brown pearls.… Tell them about it, Señor Hugo. Señor Hugo is our master chocolatier.”
He bowed, unsmiling. “Yes, they’re the secret ingredient in my chocolate. One of the secret ingredients, I should say.”
He patted the pocket of his chef’s apron. As if it contained a world of secrets. Secrets he would never think of divulging to the present company.
“So all these kids in the gray dresses—well, some of them are boys but you have to admit they still look like they’re in dresses—they’re all orphans like from your orphanage?” asked Romi.
“Yes, but we don’t think of them as orphans,” said Ms. Mauvais, attempting to sound warm and kind for the camera. “They’re our family. This is their home now.”
Ms. Mauvais wiped her pale brow with her gloved hand; all the lying was apparently exhausting her. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think we’ll stop there… I trust you’ll remove that unfortunate mention of the zoo.”
“Then this charade is over? I may get back to work?” asked Señor Hugo, scowling.
Ms. Mauvais nodded. The chef strode away, hardly bothering to pretend he couldn’t see.
During the course of the interview another person had silently joined the group. An elegant and very elderly man in a top hat. He leaned on a cane, waiting for the filming to stop.
Cass thought she recognized him as someone she’d seen over a year ago at the Midnight Sun spa.
When Ms. Mauvais’s other companions had dispersed, he finally spoke up: “I’m sorry, but I don’t think a nun’s habit suits you, my dear. I’m used to seeing you in gold and diamonds.” His voice was a throaty whisper. Even Cass had to strain to hear his words.
“Now I know why nuns are so ill-tempered,” agreed Ms. Mauvais, leading him back into the shade. “Itamar, darling, you’re supposed to be resting.”
“I have three or four days of life left at best. Forgive me if I’d like to spend them on my feet.”