The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor by Theodore Taylor Page A

that despite twenty-hour days and endless conversations with his colleagues all the way to Boston and across to London, he'd had no success.
    Mrs. Jeffers said, "Oh no, oh no."
    "However, there is one last hope before I have to open your skull, Jon. Two nights ago I spent an evening backstage at the Pagoda Theater with a very old Chinese magician named Shue Ming, which in English means 'speak bright' He knew all about Ling Wu but not how to contact him."
    Mrs. Jeffers said, with deep frustration, "Where
is
that man?"
    Dr. Buxtehede continued, "I took notes. Shue Ming believes there is a cure for what you have, Jon, that dates back five thousand years. He said you will have to swallow a mixture of scales from the Purple Carp, dust from the paws of the Horrible Bear, and a tear from the Great Idol of Kokmong."
    Aghast, Mrs. Jeffers asked, "Fish scales?"
    Bosun Jeffers asked, "Where are these things? We'll get them."
    Dr. Buxtehede held up a hand. "Wait!" He consulted his notes. "Two thousand years ago the sacred Purple Carp was removed from the Forbidden City pool because of threats that heathens would steal it."
    There's that word again,
Jon thought.
    "It is now believed to be in the cold depths of Sun Moon Lake, at the foot of the Thangla mountains, in Tibet."
    "And the Horrible Bear?" Jon asked.
    "He is in a mountain cave not far from Sun Moon Lake."
    "And the Great Idol of Kokmong?"
    Dr. Buxtehede took off his glasses. He had very warm brown eyes, like Jon's. "He is closer, in the South China Sea. On the island of Kokmong, of course."
    "How will we get the Purple Carp scales, the bear dust, and the tear from that Kokmong idol once we get there?" Mr. Jeffers asked.
    "Shue Ming said that only Ling Wu can obtain them," said the doctor.
    Jon's hopes vanished. He'd let the whole world know that Ling Wu existed. He had broken all the oaths except one. He deserved every terrible punishment that Ling Wu had threatened to use. The only thing he could do, if he could even summon the magician from wherever he was, was to ask Ling Wu to have mercy on him, the nine-year-old heathen who had the brains of an ant.
    "Thank you for all your help," he said to Dr. Buxtehede.
    The kindly neurosurgeon replied, "I hope you find him."
    "So do I," said Jon, with thoughts of carrying red-lead buckets or wearing lead-soled shoes as long as he lived filling his mind.
    After five days in San Francisco, the heavyhearted and sad-faced Jeffers, and Smacks, went to the Coast Guard landing and boarded the steam tug for the trip back to Clementine Lighthouse.
    There was a big bag of mail waiting on the tug. Every living relative of the Jeffers had written, some asking if they could come and spend time at the lighthouse. The bosun shouted, "Are they all craZy? Our table only sits four!"
    There were hundreds of letters to Jon. Everyone wanted to know how to body fly. There was even a letter from Eunice Jones:
You're famous! Just to think you're sleeping in my old room! You must have had help from those ghosts. I've got to talk to you.

TWENTY
    ON THE WAY BACK, THE BOAT GENTLY rising on the sparkling, cold blue sea, the Jeffers talked about Jon's problem.
    His mother said, uncomfortably, "Son, we know about your imagination—how big it is. Did you, did you..." She stopped and took a breath. "Did you invent Ling Wu and somehow teach yourself to fly?"
    Bosun Jeffers, with a grave face, tried to finish her thought. "Not being natural for humans, it somehow..."
    Jon shook his head. "Ling Wu is real, believe me."
    The Jeffers fell silent. Feeling defeated, they stared down at the deck. Their only son was ill physically—and maybe mentally, too.
    Before too long, the tug arrived at the dock. Wishing that it would steam on past Clementine, steam on forever, and not return him to his old lonely life, Jon untied the rope that attached him to his seat, picked up his buckets once again, and followed Smacks's leap to the dock.
    The memories of the night flight over