by Megan Marple
Poe flew up to sit on my shoulder and behind me, I heard the boy gasp softly. I jutted my chin up and spun around on my heel, walking past him with Poe flapping quietly.
“Hey, wait! How did you get him to do that?”
Oh, now he wants to be nice, I thought as I stopped and rolled my eyes. “I told you already. He’s my friend.”
His big dumb feet kicked sand everywhere as he walked over to stand in front of me again. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just really bored . . . I’m supposed to be on vacation with my parents but sorry to say, Capers Cove isn’t as exciting as everyone makes it out to be.”
I snorted at him. “Well, duh. This isn’t exactly Disney World, Bigfoot.”
“Will you please stop calling me that? I told you I was sorry,” he said, raising a brow at me.
The corner of my mouth quirked up but I folded my arms across my chest anyway. “Probably not.”
For a few minutes there, I almost completely forgot about the map and my eventual destiny, and as soon as I thought about it again my chest felt as though something was pressing down on it. Usually it meant something else… But this time I felt like I was running out of time to find the treasure. It didn’t make any sense, especially since the map had been sitting there for God knows how long, there was no reason that I should be in a hurry.
“Where are you going?” Bigfoot asked me as I turned to walk away again.
I scowled as I look back at him, getting impatient. “If you must know . . . I’m searching for something.” Regretting the words as soon as they fell out, I quickly covered my mouth, my eyes wide. Yeah, that wasn’t going to be suspicious or anything…
“That sounds not at all weird,” he laughed, running his hand through his hair. “What about your bird?” He pointed to Poe who was still sitting on my shoulder, Poe’s eyes trained right on the boy, waiting for him to make the tiniest of wrong moves before Poe clawed the boy’s eyes out.
I shrugged. “He’s coming with me, of course.”
Poe let out a little croak next to my ear, and I could see in my head, him looking out at Bigfoot, feeling the need to protect me from him. Stranger, his voice echoed in my head. He needs to leave.
“Oh, Poe. There’s nothing to worry about. He’s not going to hurt me,” I whispered back to him, Bigfoot’s jaw-dropping as I did.
“What the heck?”
Poe flapped his wings threateningly at Bigfoot, who took a few startled steps backward, and I scowled at Poe. “Stop that right now!”
Looking as though he’d rather scratch out Bigfoot’s wide eyes more than listen to me, he screeched as he took off for my shoulder and flew ahead, probably going off to hide from me. I sighed, already missing him.
“Okay, that was super weird. It was like he could really understand you or something. . .” Bigfoot’s voice trailed off. Something caught his attention though, and his eyes darted down to the bit of parchment sticking up out of my pocket. “What’s that?”
Not wanting to really get into a discussion about my freaky abilities with this kid, I let him see the map. “I just found it this morning.”
Bigfoot took the map in his hands, twisting his mouth to the side as he looked over it. “This is pretty cool. What’s it a map of? Looks like an island or maybe a peninsula,” he added, looking slightly embarrassed for showing so much interest. “I mean . . . I don’t know what a peninsula is, but yeah.”
This sparked my interest. “You think it might be an island? What makes you think that?” I asked him, looking back down at the map too.
He traced his finger along the upper corner of the map right where it was torn away from the other part of it. “Right here? I think those might be more waves of water. So this land is surrounded by water when at least two sides I think . . . what’s this? Aperf . . . Oove?”
I shook my head. “I think it says Aperf Cove, but I don’t know what that is either. If I could just figure out where this place is . . .”
“. . . you could find where ‘x’ marks the spot! Holy smokes! Do you think there’s an actual treasure there? Could I come too?”
I really, really didn’t want to have to share this with anyone else, especially this kid. But… If I was being honest with myself, it would probably make sense to ask for some help. And maybe… Maybe it would even be fun having someone along for the search. Kicking at some of the sand at my feet, I sighed. “All right, all right. But,” I began, pointing directly at Bigfoot. “We’re not splitting this fifty-fifty when we find the treasure.”
The look on Bigfoot’s face soured immediately. “What do you mean? How would that be fair? Just what do you suggest, then?”
Tilting my head to the side, I thought about it before giving him an answer. “Let’s say . . . seventy-thirty. I’ll keep the seventy percent and you get the thirty percent. That’s the best I can do.”
Even though he rolled his eyes and was clearly not a fan of my suggestion, Bigfoot stuck his hand out and shook mine. “Deal.”
4
“Where should we start first?”
We’d been walking aimlessly for a little while, Bigfoot telling me about his boring stay so far, and how he had begged his parents to take him to Six Flags, back wherever he lived instead.
I swept a stray piece of hair from my face, the breeze picking up and offering us some relief from the hot sun. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I think I need to figure out where Aperf Cove is, then at least I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”
“So . . . what happens if you find out that this Aperf Cove is like, on the other side of the world, or something?”
Kicking at the gravel strewn across the sidewalk by the lawyer’s office, I had to admit that he had a point. But I wanted to pretend like that wasn’t an option. I just knew this map was going to lead me to treasure, and it wasn’t going to happen if the doggone thing was all the way across the planet! “Nah, it won’t be.”
Bigfoot paused, but I kept walking straight ahead. “But what if it is?”
If he wanted to succeed in plucking my nerves, he sure found the way to do it, all right. Turning around with my hand on my hip, I glared up at him. “It’s not! First of all, if it was from all the way across the world, the map would probably be in another language or something,” I said, holding up my pointer finger. “Second of all, the map would’ve been ruined by the time it got all the way over here, and the bottle would’ve broken. And third of all, if you don’t want to help me, go find someone else to bug.”
Bigfoot stood squinting down at me, but I could’ve sworn I saw him smile just a little bit. Ugh, boys are so annoying sometimes! I thought, wondering why exactly that was. On second thought, I didn’t really care.
“Is there a library or somethin’ around here?” he finally asked.
“Yeah. It’s on the next road over. Why?”
By the look he was giving me, I must have missed something. “Because . . . we might find help there. Like more maps, or we can search the web for Aperf Cove. I think you can look up maps and stuff on the web, too. My dad used directions from some website to get here.”
Feeling a little silly for not heading to the library sooner, I nodded. “Yeah, I was already thinking about that earlier. We could check it out there. Follow me.” Pretending to ignore the amused look on Bigfoot’s face, I waved him on.
I pulled the heavy wooden door open to the library, the smell of old, worn books hitting me immediately. Inhaling, I secretly smiled to myself as Bigfoot followed behind me. If there was anywhere on Capers Cove I could go to get away from it all, it was the library. It may not have been much to anyone else, but it was absolutely, hands-down my favorite place in the world.
“Okay, the computer is this way,” I said, pointing to a cozy little corner set back away from the main shelves.
Bigfoot pulled up an extra chair as I sat down in front of the computer, hovering the mouse cursor over the big AOL symbol. I drummed my fingers on the desk, waiting for the annoying dial tone to
finally connect to the Internet, my hands quickly typing in the words ‘Aperf Cove,’ just as soon as I could.
We both leaned in at the same time, our faces close to the computer monitor, as we waited for the search results the pop up. When the page finally finished loading my heart sank for the second time that day. “Nothing? Nothing at all? What the heck . . . this doesn’t make any sense!”
Bigfoot frowned. “Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore?” he offered, pulling out a stick of chewing gum from his pocket.
“But it has to! Even if it’s not a place anymore, it was at some point in time. So why can’t we find anything about it? I just don’t get it. Also, you probably shouldn’t do that in here,” I said, looking down at the gum wrapper in his hand.
But he just rolled his eyes, shrugging as if it was no big deal. “What’s gonna happen? Is the big bad librarian going to come and get me?” he said, a big dumb grin on his face.
Behind us, someone cleared their throat loudly and we both quickly turned to see Mrs. Johnson, my friend Shawn’s mother and one of the two librarians that worked at the library with her eyebrows raised as she looked at Bigfoot. “Um, young man? I’m going to have to ask you to spit that gum out.”
It was kind of funny watching his eyes widen and his neck look like he was getting whiplash from nodding his head so fast. His eyes searched around for the nearest trashcan and as soon as he got up, I grinned up at Mrs. Johnson who winked at me while he wasn’t paying attention.
“So, Miss Edie, what are you getting into today? And why are you stuck inside some dusty old library instead of outside on the beach somewhere?”
She was always getting on my case and making sure I got plenty of fresh air and sunshine as she put it, with the amount of time I spend in the library she was sure I was gonna get some kind of vitamin D deficiency.
“Actually . . . I’m doing a little bit of research.”
“Is that so? I didn’t think school started so soon,” she said, another grin on her face.
“Oh, it’s not for school. It’s for me. I found a map,” I said as I pulled it out to show her.
I watched as her dark brown eyes scanned over the map before she looked back up. “This is rather interesting. I see where it’s been ripped from what must be the rest of the map. Where did you find it, Edie?”
“Jammed between some rocks down by the lighthouse,” I answered, nervously reapplying my chapstick while she looked at the map some more. “Have you ever heard of Aperf Cove, Mrs. Johnson? I was just looking it up on the Internet and I didn’t see anything . . . nothing came up when I searched.”
Confused, Mrs. Johnson glanced at the computer monitor, her fingers tracing along the search bar where I had typed in Aperf Cove. “I’ve certainly never heard of it before. But . . . “ her voice trailed off as she looked back down at the map again. “That could be because it doesn’t actually exist. Not even on this map. This doesn’t say Aperf Cove, Edie. I believe that it’s supposed to read Capers Cove, but the ‘C’ in Capers is missing.”
I did a double take, squinting at the map again, trying to figure out how I missed something like that. “But what about the ‘F’ at the end?”
She shook her head and tapped her nail right where the word was. “That’s actually an ’S,’ believe it or not. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a copy of the Constitution or any old documents written like that, but that was just the style of the letter ’S’ back then. It looks like this is a map of the island.”
“What’s that?” Bigfoot asked as he sat back down again.
My eyes were as big as saucers and everything felt like it was finally coming together, we were so close to figuring out a puzzle. “It’s a map of the island!” I repeated for him. “It’s not Aperf Cove, it’s Capers Cove! Which means . . .”
“That we better go get our shovels?” he finished, a sly grin on his face.
“You know now that I come to think of it kids, there may have been an old legend about a treasure that was hidden here on Capers Cove hundreds of years ago. But like I said, it’s probably just a legend. You might be able to find something about it in the island history section, Edie,” Mrs. Johnson said, handing the map back to me.
Both me and Bigfoot eagerly hopped up out of the chairs, shoving them back under the wooden desk, and I clutched the map against my chest as I raced over to the small special section Mrs. Potts, the head librarian, had cleared out just for books by local authors and some that were about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina, where Capers Cove was located.
It only took us a couple of minutes before Bigfoot found something worth our while. “What about this one?” he asked, propping open a small hardback book. “Legends of the Lowcountry. That’s here, right?”
I nodded and took the book from him, thumbing through the table of contents to see what I could find. “Chapter twelve, the Island of Capers Cove,” I read aloud, flipping to the right page number and using my finger to follow the words as I read them to Bigfoot. “Capers Cove is a small island town with a population of roughly 1,203 and was founded in 1734, by English merchants. Yeah, yeah, get to the good stuff already,” I mumbled. “Here we go, here we go! It says here that Capers Cove was a very peaceful setting for the island’s inhabitants until the West Indie Trade and commerce done there led to pirates and in the wake of their path, violence and turmoil. It’s said that the island was a popular spot for several different pirate crews.”
“Pirates?” Bigfoot whispered. “Then maybe . . .”
I nodded, already way ahead of him. “The ‘x’ on the map . . . this might actually be a real pirate’s treasure! But . . . it doesn’t say much else here. Who wrote this book, anyway?” I wondered, flipping the book over until I looked down at the black and white photo of an older man with a scruffy beard, kneeling in front of what looked like a palmetto tree. “Douglas Palmer,” I said, seeing the author’s name underneath his picture. “Apparently, he’s a local historian who lives in Charleston. That close? Ugh! And I’m not even allowed to go over the bridge into downtown. Figures,” I muttered.
“Yeah, neither am I,” Bigfoot agreed. “So, what do we do now?”
I put the book back into its proper place and slowly turned around to face the rest of the library, wondering the exact same thing myself. “I dunno. I was hoping that maybe we could talk to this Douglas Palmer guy and find out if he knows any more information about where the other part of the map might be.” My stomach rumbled and I realized that it was probably time to head back to the tavern. “I think we’re back to square one for right now. And I need to eat some dinner.”
He nodded, shoving his hands deep into his hoodie pocket. “Yeah. I’m getting hungry too. I’m sure my parents are probably freaking right now, wondering where I went.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I folded my arms across my chest. “They don’t know where you are?”
He shrugged it off but I could tell that he was possibly worried about getting in trouble. “I’m sure they’ll be cool.”
“Uh-huh. Well, in that case, I better get going then. I’ll be back at it again first thing tomorrow though, so if you’re around . . .”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Bigfoot awkwardly nodded. “Yeah. I should be.”
“Okay, well maybe I’ll see you around then.”
He mumbled something that I was pretty sure sounded like “Later,” before shuffling off out of the library and leaving me there, sighing to myself.
Now I had to do was figure out how in the world to find a treasure with only half of the treasure map.
5
After much begging, I managed to get Nana and Granddaddy to give me another ride to the tavern the next morning, ready to get back to work on the treasure hunting. Even still, I had to make sure I chipped in and helped out in the kitchen before I went and did anything else.
When I finally made it back outside, I was happy to see that the sun was hidden behind a big group of fluffy white clouds, giving me a little br
eak from the heat. “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” I said out loud, lifting my head to the sky and smiling. I had already told myself that it was a new day. Nothing was going to get in the way of me looking for the Capers Cove treasure, not if I had anything to say about it.
While Nana and Granddaddy weren’t paying attention, I went out back to the patio that overlooked the ocean, searching inside our big storage supply box for what I hoped would help. And just my luck, there was the big, long shovel with a pointed head, and the smaller square-shaped shovel. “Perfect,” I whispered to myself before sneaking around back out front with both of them in hand.
I debated on whether or not I wanted to wait around for Bigfoot, wondering if he was even going to show up to begin with. We never really made a time to meet back up the next day, but the time did seem to go by a little bit faster when he was hanging around so maybe it wasn’t so bad having someone else helping out after all.
“Where’s the bird?”
Speak of the devil, I thought smugly. “I haven’t seen him yet today,” I said, sliding my sunglasses down over my face. “I’m sure he’ll turn up at some point.”
Since Poe came and went as he pleased, I never waited up for him. He’d been around forever as far as I could remember, and he certainly knew how to take care of himself—there was no need to worry over him.
Bigfoot, who was now wearing a black T-shirt with a pair of long camouflage cargo shorts, stopped about a few feet away from me, looking over my shoulder at the ocean. “Have you figured out where we should start looking first?”
I couldn’t help but wonder, did this kid like being too warm or something? “Is that all you do? Ask me questions?” I shot back, immediately feeling sorry, my face red as one of the tomatoes growing in Nana’s garden. “Sorry . . . I guess I’m just anxious to get a move on it. I did come up with a place to start though. Because of what we found out about the pirates and everything, I figured out that the best place to check would be where the pirates and other ships would’ve came in, which is about two miles down that way,” I said, pointing past him in the direction of The Island Club. “That’s where Fort Hunley is.”