Read Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon for Free Online

closer to the riverbank. We both hung there, catching our breaths. “How’s your grip, Brother Jack? Steady?”
    I tightened my grip. “I think . . . I can make my way to the shore!”
    â€œGood—see you there!” Marco swung up onto the wood, stood carefully, and scampered toward the shore like an Olympic gymnast. Jumping onto the bank, he began calling for Aly and Cass.
    I yanked myself onto the fallen tree. Lying there, I felt my chest beating against the slippery wood. I didn’t dare try to stand. Slowly I reached out toward the shore, gripping farther along the branch. In this way I managed to shimmy along at a snail’s pace until I finally reached the bank and flopped onto the mud.
    Farther upstream, Aly had made it to solid ground. Marco was back in the river, helping Cass out of the water. I struggled to my feet. My legs ached and rain pelted my face, but I hobbled toward them as fast as I could in the soggy soil.
    That was when I began thinking about the rain. About the fact that moments ago the air was hot and dry. That the weather had changed drastically from the time it took to swim from one side of the river to the other.
    What was going on here?
    â€œJack!” Aly threw her arms around me as I arrived. Her face was warm against my neck. I think she was crying.
    â€œBehave, you two,” Marco said.
    I pulled away, feeling the blood rush to my face. “What just happened?” I said.
    Cass was staring across the river, looked dazed. “Okay, we jumped into the river. We hit a rough patch. We came out the other end. So . . . we should be staring across the river, at the place we left from, right?”
    â€œLeft,” Marco said. “Right.”
    â€œSo where is everything?” he asked. “Where are our peeps—Torquin, Bhegad, Nirvana? They should have made it down here by now.”
    Aly and I followed Cass’s glance. “Looks like we were carried pretty far downstream,” Aly said.
    â€œYeah, like a zillion miles away,” I said.
    â€œThat,” Cass said, “would be geographically elbissopmi.”
    A dense cloud cover made it hard to see north and south, but I could see no sign of human life—no settlements, no Babylonian ruins, no KI people. Just swollen river in either direction.
    â€œWe can’t waste time—come on!” Marco was already heading up the slope into a thick pine grove.
    Cass, Aly, and I shared a wary glance. “Marco, you’re not telling us something,” I said. “What just happened?”
    Marco scampered through the trees without an answer, as if our near drowning, our battering against the rocks, had never happened. Cass looked at him in disbelief. “He must be kidding.”
    â€œChill is not in that boy’s vocabulary,” Aly said.
    We followed behind as fast as we could. My legs were bruised and my head bloody. My arms felt as if I’d been bench-pressing a rhinoceros. The slope wasn’t too steep, really, but in our condition it felt like Mount Everest. We caught up with Marco at the edge of the pine trees. Here, everything seemed a little more familiar. Just beyond the grove I could see a vast plain of dirt to the horizon. The clouds were lifting, the water-soaked ground quickly drying. Scrubby bushes dotted the landscape, which was crisscrossed by a network of wide paths cut through the plain.
    â€œCheck it out,” Marco said, gesturing to the left.
    A giant rainbow arched through the sky, sloping downward into a city of low, square, yellow-brown buildings—thousands of them, most with crown-like sandcastle roofs. The city rose on a gentle hill, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I could see another wall deeper inside the city. The outer wall contained a mammoth arched gate of cobalt-blue tiles. In the center of the city was a towering building shaped like a layer cake. Its sides were ornately carved, its windows spiraling up