Joaquim is a freckled boy of 11 who is not content with being a normal child and, in the company of his best friend, Eduardo, gets to investigate strange, mysterious and dangerous events.
Magic wand? Nah, he doesn’t need it.
Can fly? Only when kicked real bad in the ass.
Special weapons? Yeah! Super-annihilating-fart-smelling-bomb.
Magic powers? His mom gave a kit to him, as a birthday present, but he kinda messed up.
Special clothes? Only his school uniform.
Is part of a superhero league? Well, has his school friends.
Fighting what kind of criminals? Martians, of course! They are disguised as humans and are among us. They want to conquer Earth, but he will not allow them. Along with his best friend, Eduardo, will give a good kick in the asses of the invaders, with no mercy!
Excerpt
My name is Joaquim, I’m 11 years old and the story I’m about to tell you is true. It happened last Sunday.
I had nothing to do, so I decided to go to the lake that rests close to the boarding school where I study. My friends and I always meet there on weekends, I mean, when it’s not very cold or raining. We usually swim for hours and hours and when we get tired, we go explore the jungle that is opposite to our margin and expands through the hillside of the mountain. At this time of the year, the place becomes practically empty and people only show up for picnics, hang out or simply walk from one side to the other. Getting into the cold water is like asking to become an ice cream. I confess that, sometimes, I even enjoy throwing myself in the lake only for fun to feel the whole body almost freeze and then get out and cry like mad! But, then, I will have serious problems in case my mother discovers my boyish trick and, believe me, she has a sixth, a seventh and an eighth senses to know that I lied or played some trick. You will catch a cold, she says. If this happens, you will be punished. Argh! Since when cold water makes us get cold, uh? The adults have so odd stories! Anyway, on that day, I had no intention to wet not even my ankles. To get rid of the boredom, a simple round walk to the lake would be enough. I felt like meeting some friend who, like me, was in vain there. We could play football, tag, or hide-and-seek.
I waited. Nobody showed up.
The fools must have been shrunk in their beds, covered up to the neck, trembling of cold! Bad lucky of them, I will play alone!
After running from one side to the other, looking for treasuries lost under the stones and digging trenches to defend myself from pirates, I got tired and leaned on a tree to read again “A Captain at fifteen”, one of my favourite books of Jules Verne. Despite I already know how the story ends, I always have fun with the adventures of Dick Sand, who, aged only fifteen, was obliged to command a ship called Pilgrim, after the captain died.
I was about to finish the book, when I heard a strange noise, a continuous buzz, followed of a bump. I went out of my refuge and looked around, trying to find the source of that sound, when I noticed a reddish light in the middle of the jungle. Immediately I caught my backpack and ran to the other side of the margin. After that, I walked some 100 metres up to find a clearing in the woods, right in the middle of the path that leads to the hillside of the mountain. This place is largely used by groups of youngsters who come for camping and I imagined an accident had happened, like a gas container that exploded and stuff like that, that would explain the sound and the intense light. There was nobody, my theory failed.
I thought and thought and thought a bit more… Then I found an explanation: a single-motor airplane out of route.
That’s it! The dense mist that forms in this time of the year has misled the pilot who turned and turned, ended up without fuel and need to make an emergency landing. Therefore, it’s better to make a search, find the scraps and help the survivors, I decided.
I crossed the glade up to the other part of the jungle and walked some 30 or 40 metres more, when I felt that someone would observe me.
I stopped, looked around and shivered when I heard the steps.
— Who is there? — I asked, hoping no one answers.
Silence.
My reaction was a mix of relief and apprehension. Not having obtained a reply didn’t necessarily mean I was alone, right? If I was the pilot of the plane crashed, I would certainly nod, in the other hand, a beast waiting for its prey wouldn’t!
Brrrrr!
I’m not a coward, then, I advanced. I had already walked so much that would be no difference to follow some more and find what had caused those so strange sound and light.
It was worth being insistent. When I was close to the hillside, I sought three men in suspicious attitude. When I approached, I noted they carried a metallic object, a shiny cylinder with more than one metre length. They were standing in front of the hillside and, unless they had no intention to climb, they had nowhere to go. I hid myself behind a shrub, in case they returned to the glade path. But it was not what they did. One of them, white-haired, went to a very large and round stone and stirred up in something that made a hole to be opened from the wall, quite in front of him. So they took the cylinder into the mountain. Moved by curiosity, I kept after them. In spite the tunnel was narrow and dark, I decided not to use my flashlight to prevent from drawing attention, therefore, I needed to be very careful not to slide and hurt myself, get lost in some labyrinth or something worse… Step on some roach. I hate them roaches! They are made of a peel formed of nasty strangles that spread about the ground when…
Irgh…
You step them.
Irgh! Irgh! Irgh!
I didn’t see any, it’s true, but only thinking of the chance of one of them getting up through my leg, irgh! So I decided to go ahead using the tactics of walking through dark places where there could be roaches at each step, with the leg highly raised, then the other and so on, as if I was a Russian soldier marching. Well, it made me almost lose sight of them, but then I doubled my pace and managed to reach the men. If ever so little they had taken me: when I crossed the curve, I was faced with the trio… By the way, at the back of them. They didn’t only see me because they examined a stone wall that closed the way. It was a dead end. When I thought they would give up, the white-haired man took off a small black object from his jacket pocket and set it into an opening of the wall. In the twinkle of an eye, a new passage was opened and they went on. I let them get away and got through the opening that led to a cave. While I looked for a safe place to hide, the three of them took the cylinder up to the granite platform and put it on it. Then, they opened a suitcase and pulled from it several coloured wires. They stretched and connected one by one, into the object. As my eyes got used with the weak light, my attention turned to the incredible place in which I found myself. I got amazed by the big statues displayed through the walls, forming a semicircle around the platform where the men worked.
Brrrrr!
One more shiver throughout my body. The eyes of those stone giants were all turned to the centre, as if they watched the place and knew all that happened around. A fixed and frightening look. Their clothes were similar to those used by Priests I had seen in illustrations of History books. Were they Phoenicians? Our teacher had told us they had been in the region many, many… many years ago. Here could be one of their Temples, I thought.
Then, I had a bad feeling…
Aren’t those who profane a sacred place punished for this? I’d read that many explorers died mysteriously after invading the Pyramids and the tombs of the pharaohs. What if by opening the passage some mortal virus was released and we were convicted to die slowly? That’s all I needed: get poisoned for my own curiosity! Damn it, I was already imagining the scolding I was going to take from my mother, in case I got sick! How to explain that it was not my fault but theirs? I was only spying.
It took a little while to remove this thinking from my head and concentrate in the mission: investigate what those individuals were plotting. While the other two stirred up in the instruments they connected to the wires they had just linked to the cylinder, the white-haired man took a book with a shiny cover and opened it. But what the hell is this book about? I thought instead of paper it had an illuminated surface on one of the sides and keys on the other? I’m not stupid, I soon realised it was a beautiful and modern typing machine. As he wrote, several texts, symbols and coloured drawings appeared in the glass. If only I could have one of these! Remington, Hermes or Royal, which of these companies would have adopted an apple as a symbol?
When the man finished using the machine, wrote down in a notebook, than he kept everything inside the suitcase and signalised to the others. In a few seconds, they were ready to go away. I abandoned my hiding-place slowly before they saw me. I got out of the cave, followed through the dark tunnel and when I was already outside I ran to the shrub where I had waited for the three to show up. Once again the white-haired one surrounded the stone and activated the mechanism he had done for the secret passage to close. Right after this, they abandoned the place.
I waited a little, to be sure they wouldn’t return and then I ran to the stone to look for the button or whatever he had used.
Nothing, Damn it! How did he do that?
The only thing I found was a lot of cockroaches.
Argh!
I felt so much like exploring that amazing place, but how? I even tried to use a branch to make a lever, but there were no openings in the wall.
Nothing whatsoever!
I thought and thought…
Damn it, a thousand times, damn it!
That cylinder didn’t get out of my head. It was heavy, this was for sure! I saw the effort they did to carry it. Would there be a treasure inside it? Silver, gold, jewels! If it was the case, why didn’t they simply open it? Only if… How didn’t I think of this before?
A bomb! Would they have found a bomb of the World War II and tried to disarm it?
Or…
Intended to activate it to destroy some secret base in the City of Colombo?
Secret base, no way! Here there was nothing to destroy, only the boarding school.
Aaaah!
They wouldn’t be so idiot. They were interested in what there was inside that silver object, this was for sure.
But what?
I thought and thought and thought…
I needed to get answers, but it was beginning to grow night and there are things about which even a fearless explorer like me has to worry: getting late for dinner is one of them. If this happened, the school beadle would snitch me to the principal, who would call my mother that in the first opportunity would give me a good punishment!
Grrrr!
Doesn’t anybody understand that the mysteries hunters cannot have a so stringent time? We have rights!
Hummm…
I remember the school report. Maybe it was better to forget the rights of the great grubbers, for a while. This was not a month in which I can be proud of, because of that…
Those two… three little red marks!
Argh, school report!
Nothing else could be done, I turned around.
In the middle of the way, one more time I had the feeling that someone was following me. For a moment I thought the men had returned, but when I heard the snarling, I discarded the possibility.
The third shiver today!
Calm down, Joaquim. You need to slow the pace and breathe in peace, I tried to convince myself. I read somewhere that the predators are attracted by the smell of the fear of their preys and when this happens, they know it is time to attack! I don’t know if this actually has a smell, but in my case they would feel a stinking fear!
One step after another. Take it easy… Slow breathe… Slowly… Slowly… Very soft without fear, without…
The bellow of the bloody animal made me run like crazy.
No peace, no way!
At the moment of danger, nothing that is written in the books or what people say… The thing is running fast and not looking behind!
When I finally got to the edge of the lake, I stopped to take a breath. It was when the most fearful, horrible and nasty creature that I had never seen in my whole life appeared from the woods! It was not an ocelot nor a jaguar, it also didn’t seem like any animal known in this region. It had the human form, but its body was dark, the skin greenish with scales and covered with a yellow secretion like catarrh! The eyes were red and the teeth were so big that they appeared out of the jaw. My heart discharged and my legs got tremulous, but I know I needed to gather strength and courage to run or I would turn into pieces.
I drew back.
I took two steps behind. It advanced in the same proportion. I looked aside, searching an escape route, but, before I tried anything, it jumped in front of me and cut my way. I understood it was playing with me, showing I was an easy prey and that whenever it wanted, it would kill me! Then, the most incredible happened: he smiled and made a nod with the finger for me to approach.
You can call me nuts, but the way he looked at me, it was as though as he knew me! Then he opened his mouth and roared… One, two, three times! I swear I heard my name, Joaquim. I screamed like mad and ran as fast as I could. I took the little road of earth and only stopped running when I got to the school, at the top of the mountain.
You can call me coward, but it’s going to take time until I have courage to go back to the lake alone!
Book Three of The Jade Owl Legacy Series: The China Hands a beset with new troubles and challenges as they search for the source of the Jade Owl's power.
Swamp Alley is a portal between this side and the other side. The Wizard is destined to save the land from the Ugly Babies in the Land of Lack Luster on the other side. With the help of Madame Plume and her magic wand, can they save the magical doll
Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World is a novel in which nothing is quite what it seems and everything is loaded with shadowy dreams of the past and nightmares set to soul-pounding music of the future.
