The Mystery in the Forbidden City Read online

  Ethan noticed a whole row of bird statues. One of the birds looked like a hawk. He dug through his pockets for the gold coin that Grandpa Harry had given him. The coin had an image of a hawk on it.

  “Hey, Ella? Didn’t we learn something about hawks in Venice?” he asked.

  “Hmm, that does sound familiar.” Ella turned to the beginning of her notebook. “Here it is! ‘Hawks are messengers of the sky. They also symbolize nobility,’ ” she read. “If you’re noble, that means you come from a very important and powerful family,” she added.

  “Well, the emperor’s family is pretty important and powerful,” Ethan said.

  “Speaking of families . . .” Ella pressed her ear against the door. “We should keep looking for Mom and Dad. I don’t hear those people anymore.”

  The twins exited the tiny red house. There was no one on the path except for a brown rabbit. It twitched its nose at Ella and Ethan and hopped away into the bushes.

  Ella’s face lit up. “Hey! Rabbits equal hope!”

  “Well, then . . . I hope we get to the Imperial Garden soon. I hope the dragons give us lots of good luck. And I hope Mom and Dad aren’t supermad at us,” Ethan said.

  The rabbit hopped to a tall red gate and disappeared through an opening. Curious, the twins followed it through the gate.

  On the other side was a beautiful park. Flowers bloomed everywhere. There were temples and pavilions, too.

  “Hey, this looks like the Imperial Garden!” Ethan exclaimed.

  The twins exchanged high fives.

  Chapter 7

  The Dragons

  Ella and Ethan were excited to find the Imperial Garden at last. Now all they had to do was find the old pine tree . . . and the path with the dragons . . . and, most important, their parents!

  Ethan spotted a tour group standing outside a small temple. The tour guide was holding a little British flag. Maybe he speaks English, Ethan thought.

  “Follow me,” Ethan told Ella.

  “Where?”

  “That tour guide. He might be able to help us!”

  They rushed over to the group. “Only the emperor and his family were allowed to spend time in the Imperial Garden,” the tour guide was saying. “They sipped tea, played chess, and practiced meditation on these grounds.”

  The tour guide paused to take questions from the group. Ethan raised his hand. “Excuse me! Is there an old pine tree near here?” he asked.

  “Do you mean the four-hundred-year-old pine tree? Just follow this path until you get to a red building called the Hall of Imperial Peace,” the tour guide explained. “The tree is right in front. It is known as the Consort Pine, and it symbolizes harmony between the emperor and empress,” he added.

  The twins thanked the guide and hurried away. They soon reached the path.

  “Look!” Ella cried out.

  The path was decorated with statues of different kinds of animals. They were exactly as Grandpa Harry had described!

  Ella admired a sculpture of fish swimming in blue waves. It reminded her of the glass mosaic that she and Ethan had found in Venice. Ethan liked the statue of the galloping horses best. There were other animals too.

  Now all they had to do was find the three dragons.

  A few minutes later, they came upon the Hall of Imperial Peace.

  There was the old pine tree!

  Ella had expected it to be tall and straight, like the pine trees they had back home. Instead, the Consort Pine looked like two curvy trees twisting and joining together.

  Ethan circled around it. “Here’s the path with the dragons!” he announced gleefully.

  He and Ella looked up at the sculpture. Three stone dragons—one red, one green, and one purple—breathed fire at one another. Their eyes glowed orange.

  “Isn’t this awesome?” Ethan said excitedly.

  “It’s superawesome,” Ella agreed. “What happens next?”

  “I guess we wait for the good luck to happen,” Ethan replied.

  The twins sat down on a nearby bench. Five minutes passed. Then another five minutes.

  Ella tipped her face to the sky. “Good luck, where are you?” she called out.

  Puffy white clouds drifted by. Birds soared through the air.

  But nothing happened. Good luck didn’t rain down from above. Mr. and Mrs. Briar didn’t suddenly appear.

  Ella tried to hide her disappointment. “Maybe the dragons don’t work anymore.”

  “Maybe.” Ethan seemed pretty disappointed too.

  The twins stood up. Ella pointed to the crinkly old map. “I guess we should head back to the Hall of Supreme Harmony,” she said slowly. She didn’t know what else to do.

  “Qĭngwèn! Qĭngwèn!”

  Ella turned around. A woman rushed up to them, yelling in Chinese.

  The woman reached out to grab the map from Ella’s hands!

  Chapter 8

  Found!

  “Wait!” Ethan shouted as the woman reached for the map.

  The woman hesitated. “Oh, you speak English?”

  Ethan frowned. Why was the woman trying to steal the map asking them if they spoke English?

  “My name is Li Mei. I work at the palace,” the woman explained. “Where did you get that map?”

  “We . . . um . . . we found it in the Hall of Supreme Harmony,” Ella admitted.

  “It was stuck to a man’s shoe,” Ethan added.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” Li Mei cried out. “This is a very important ancient map of the Forbidden City. A famous archaeologist discovered it just recently.”

  “An important ancient map?” Ethan said, surprised.

  “A famous archaeologist?” Ella said at the same time.

  Li Mei nodded. “Yes. There is a special ceremony for it this afternoon. After the ceremony, the map is going into a display in one of our palace museums.”

  The twins stared at each other and then at the map. They hadn’t realized that it was so valuable!

  “I wasn’t paying attention this morning,” Li Mei went on. “All of a sudden, I noticed that the map was gone. I thought someone had stolen it. But it must have been carried off by the wind.”

  “I’m glad we found it, then!” Ella said. She handed Li Mei the map.

  “Thank you so much! You are quite the detectives!” Li Mei said gratefully. “But are you here by yourselves?” she asked with a concerned look.

  Ella shook her head. “We came here with our parents. Our mom’s a travel writer. We were supposed to spend today in the Forbidden City as a family. Except . . .”

  “We lost them,” Ethan finished. “We’ve been searching for them everywhere.”

  “Oh dear. I am so sorry. What do they look like?” Li Mei asked.

  Ella described her parents.

  “Oh! I just saw them in the Palace of Tranquil Peace!” Li Mei said, nodding. “I remember your father’s T-shirt,” she said with a laugh.

  “Can you take us there?” Ethan begged.

  “Of course! It is the least I can do for my young detectives who saved the day!”

  Li Mei led the twins out of the Imperial Garden. Along the way, they passed the tiny red house from before.

  “Hey, Ella! It’s the place with the cool gold statues!” Ethan said excitedly.

  Ella glared at him.

  “What?” Ethan asked, confused.

  “We weren’t supposed to go inside, remember?” Ella whispered.

  “Oh!” Ethan felt his cheeks grow hot.

  Li Mei smiled. She didn’t seem mad at all. “Those little gold statues belonged to a long-ago emperor. It was his private collection. That is why they are here instead of in one of palace museums,” she explained.

  “I have a private collection too!” Ella told Li Mei. “Except I collect shark teeth and seashells.”

  “How wonderful!” Li Mei said, beaming.

  A few minutes later, the three of them reached the Palace of Tranquil Peace. Inside, they saw a big tour group coming out of one
of the rooms. The twins recognized their tour guide from before.

  And just behind the tour guide were Mr. and Mrs. Briar!

  Chapter 9

  A Secret Revealed?

  Ella and Ethan thanked Li Mei quickly and then slipped quietly to the back of the group.

  “How much trouble do you think we’re in?” Ethan asked Ella in a low voice.

  “I don’t know. Probably a lot,” Ella said worriedly.

  Mrs. Briar waved to them just then. She and Mr. Briar joined them.

  “Isn’t this a fabulous tour?” Mrs. Briar gushed. “I took so many photos for my column!”

  “I’m glad you guys made some new friends,” Mr. Briar added.

  The twins stared at each other. Friends?

  Ella glanced around. She saw that they were standing next to a dozen school children in uniforms.

  Mr. and Mrs. Briar must have thought the twins had been with the school children all along!

  “The tour’s almost over. You two must be tired and hungry,” Mrs. Briar said.

  Ethan grinned at Ella, who grinned back at him. They weren’t in trouble after all!

  The tour group moved outside. Li Mei stood in the courtyard. She waved to the Briars and rushed up to them.

  Ella gulped. Was Li Mei going to give away their secret to their parents?

  “Hello!” Li Mei said to Mrs. Briar. “My name is Li Mei, and I work here at the palace. We are having a special ceremony later for a very old map that was recently discovered. I wanted to invite you and your family to the ceremony. I heard that you are a travel writer, and I thought you might find the ceremony interesting.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Briar looked pleased and surprised. “I didn’t realize people here knew who I was. We’d love to come to the ceremony. Wouldn’t we, gang?”

  “Yes!” Ella, Ethan, and Mr. Briar said at the same time.

  Li Mei winked at the twins.

  Chapter 10

  Some Good Luck, After All!

  The Briars attended the ceremony that afternoon. A lot of important-looking people gave speeches. Tea with jasmine blossoms was served along with delicious almond cookies. The map the twins had found was displayed in a glass case.

  “Well, that was great!” Mr. Briar said after the ceremony was over. They had stopped at a café before leaving the Forbidden City.

  “It was very nice of Li Mei to invite us. I still can’t believe she knew that I was a travel writer,” Mrs. Briar added.

  “Yeah,” Ella said, nudging Ethan. Ethan nudged her back.

  “We’d better get back to our hotel and rest up,” Mr. Briar said. “We have a big day tomorrow. We’re going to visit the Great Wall. It’s more than five thousand miles long! Oh, and tonight for dinner, I thought we could try some fried scorpion.”

  Fried scorpion? The twins stared at each other in horror.

  Li Mei came up to the Briars. “I almost forgot. Here are some souvenirs for your children, from the gift shop,” she said, handing Ella and Ethan two white paper bags.

  Ella opened her bag. Inside was a little gold statue of a rabbit. Ethan’s bag contained a little gold statue of a bird.

  “These are copies of statues that a long-ago emperor had in his private collection,” Li Mei explained. She winked at the twins again.

  “Thank you!” Ella and Ethan said in unison.

  “Wow, you kids are pretty lucky!” Mr. Briar remarked.

  The twins smiled. Grandpa Harry had been right after all. The dragons had brought them a whole lot of luck!

  GLOSSARY

  Huānyíng lai Beijing = Welcome to Beijing

  Qĭngwèn = Excuse me

  Xièxie = Thank you

  *All words are in Chinese.

  Squaaawk!

  Ethan Briar woke up to a strange noise and glanced around, confused. Where was he? This wasn’t his room. The bed was covered with a gauzy gold canopy, not soccer-ball sheets. He didn’t recognize the tree growing in the middle of the room or the lantern by his bed either.

  His gaze fell on the window. A giant bird perched on the sill opened its long, thin beak.

  Squaaawk!

  Ethan let out a yell. He’d never seen such an enormous bird before—at least not up close!

  “What’s wrong?” Andrew Briar called out from the other bed. He fumbled around for his glasses.

  “Dad! There’s a pterodactyl in our window!” Ethan exclaimed.

  Mr. Briar slipped on his glasses. “Wow, it’s big! No wonder you thought it was from the age of the dinosaurs. I’m guessing it might be a hammerheaded stork. Or a sacred ibis. Wait. Let me look.”

  He reached over to the tall pile of books on his nightstand. “Okay, here we go. Birds of Africa.”

  Africa! Ethan nodded to himself, remembering. They were in a lodge in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, which was in Kenya. They had arrived last night along with Ethan’s twin sister, Ella, and their mom, Josephine.

  HARPER PARIS

  loves to travel. Her favorite cities in the world are Paris (like her name!) and New York City. She has collected many souvenirs on her travels, including a good-luck coin from Japan and a reindeer-horn pendant from Sweden. She also loves mysteries. When she was a kid, she read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books after bedtime with a flashlight. She now lives with her family (including two cats and a bunny, who are not good travelers) in Ithaca, New York.

  MARCOS CALO

  has worked as a professional artist for more than fourteen years. He has worked in different fields: illustration, animation, and comic books. He lives with his wife and daughter in A Coruña, a small Spanish town by the seaside.

  Little Simon

  Simon & Schuster • New York

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Harper-Paris

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Marcos-Calo

  GreetingsfromSomewhereBooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LITTLE SIMON

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division • 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com • First Little Simon edition August 2014 • Copyright © 2014 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. LITTLE SIMON is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and associated colophon is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by John Daly.

  Jacket design by John Daly

  Jacket illustrations by Marcos Calo

  Jacket illustrations copyright © 2014 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  The text of this book was set in ITC Stone Informal.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Paris, Harper. The mystery in the Forbidden City / by Harper Paris ; illustrated by Marcos Calo. pages cm. — (Greetings from somewhere ; #4) Summary: Separated from their parents in Beijing, China’s Forbidden City, second-grade twins Ethan and Ella luckily find an ancient map that helps them find their way. [1. Lost children—Fiction. 2. Forbidden City (Beijing, China)— Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Twins—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories. 6. China—Fiction.] I. Calo, Marcos, illustrator. II. Title. PZ7.P21748Mxf 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013034593

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0300-9 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0299-6 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0301-6 (eBook)