Max sat back, fiddling with the Vegvísir medallion that hung around his neck. He fought off the smell of ammonia, which occurred when he thought someone was trying to trick him. Sometimes it happened when people said things he didn’t understand. Like Dr. Zax-Ericksson’s Or so they say. Was that a joke? Did he think the talisman was a dumb old story? Or did he hold out hope that it might be true?
And then there was Jules Verne. The previous night, he, Alex, and Kristin had stayed up way too late decoding one last section of Verne’s note. On the positive side, it turned out to be in the runic futhark alphabet.
On the negative side, it didn’t sound like it was written by Jules Verne.
He drummed his fingers on the armrest. They had bought good weatherproof winter gear in the morning, but Max hated long pants and these were lined. And itchy. To take his mind off it, Max pulled his copy of the note from his pocket and looked at it for what must have been the tenth time.
Pour entrer dans le noyau:
L’arc de mains en prière dans la plaine centrale
lèvera les yeux vers
Le chameau à trois bosses et aux oreilles tombantes
To enter the core:
the arc of praying hands at the central plain
will lift your eyes
to the lop-eared three-humped camel
“Are you sure you translated this thing right?” Max asked.
“I checked, double-checked, and whatever a-hundred-times-checked is called,” Alex replied.
“Sounds like a joke to me,” Brandon said.
Max nodded. “Maybe Gaston wrote it. We know he went bonkers late in life. And this is bonkers.”
“Bonkers?” Kristin said. “This is a place near New York City, no?”
“That’s the Bronx,” Brandon said. “Or Yonkers.”
“Bonkers is what you are when you decide to drive over lava on a wild-goose chase and your brains are about to fall out,” Max added.
Kristin slowed the jeep to a stop and let out a yawn. “I don’t know about that. But we are in the center of what I would consider the central plain. Which is good. Because this is where the note told us to go, and if you don’t mind, I must rest. I’m having trouble seeing.”
Before anyone could respond, the jeep’s engine coughed and sputtered. Then, with a wheeze, it went dead. Kristin turned the ignition key, but nothing happened. The only noise was the drumming of rain on the roof and a whistle of wind against the glass. “Guess it wants to rest too,” Max said.
“Is there a gas station nearby?” Alex squeaked, gazing out over the wet tundra.
Kristin sighed. “Sometimes it stalls out when you stop in the rain, but most times you can get it going again. Maybe if we wait a few minutes for the weather to clear a bit.”
“Sweaty feet . . .” Max pushed open his door and stepped out. “Sweaty feet!”
“Sorry,” Brandon said. “I used powder.”
“That’s claustrophobia,” Alex explained. “Max, what are you doing? It’s freezing and wet.”
Max took a deep breath. Despite the rain and cold, the air felt good. “Figured I’d take a stroll and look for camel noses to pick.”
“I don’t recommend walking on a’a,” Kristin said.
“On what?” Max asked.
“A’a,” Kristin repeated. “It is a Hawaiian word we borrow, for rough lava.”
“Hey, he wants to take a walk, why not?” Brandon said. “As long as he stays in sight. Me, I’m staying here to help get this thing working again.”
“My hero,” Alex said.
“Ew,” Max said, closing the door and pulling his hood over his head. Even with the wind and rain pelting his face, he felt better outside the car than in. The itchiness didn’t bother him so much.
Alex cracked open her window. “Just remember Greenland,” she said, “where we had to ‘look for the bump on the elephant’s forehead.’ That seemed crazy too.”
“Right. We thought we had to look for a real elephant, like maybe there was a circus in town,” Max said. “And then we saw that the elephant was an elephant-shaped ice formation.”
“Fascinating,” came Kristin’s voice, muffled through the closed window. “So maybe you’ll see something that looks like a three-humped camel.”
Max looked around. They were maybe a hundred yards from the base of Snaefellsjökull, which rose into the low, moving clouds. The summit was shrouded, but every few seconds a snow-capped summit peeked through. On it were dark rock crags that jutted upward like thick fingers. “What are those rocks at the top?” he yelled toward the car.
“They are lava plugs,” Kristin called out her window. “Left from millennia ago when the volcano was active.”
“They look like a convention of fire hydrants, not a camel,” Brandon called out.
Max nodded. “It’s all about the angle. I bet from one angle, we’ll see the camel. Give me a minute. I won’t leave your sight.”
He could hear Alex protesting. Kristin too. But they didn’t come after him, and neither did Brandon the Pilot. Max began treading carefully over the lava. Even with thick boots, he could feel the jutting rock through his soles.
“Ah!” he cried. “Ah!”
Which made him realize exactly why the Hawaiians gave it that name.
As he went on, he tried to focus on the rock formations. But the clouds were thick and mischievous, playing hide-and-seek with the summit. The wind was picking up too, tossing snow and powdery ice into his face. Unlike the anorak he had worn in Antarctica, this one’s hood did not have an outer fur lining around it.
He fumbled in his jacket pocket, where he knew he’d kept goggles, but they must have fallen out in the car. By now the jeep wasn’t much more than a gray dot. A gray, unlit dot, which meant Kristin hadn’t gotten it started yet.
So he kept walking, slowly, parallel to the base of the volcano. He could make out a hulking, humanlike shape in the snowy, rainy mix, not too far ahead of him.
He stopped, his heart pumping fast. “Hello?” he called out, but his voice was lost in the wind and precipitation.
Stepping closer, he noticed the shape was not moving. It was much taller than a human, and it did not have limbs. It was a rock. A lava plug, he guessed, from the smooth dark surface.
Curious, he kept going. The wind had blown any snow off the rock. It was slanted slightly away from him, lined vertically with four crevices extending from the middle to the top. Behind it, Max realized, was another formation. It was mirroring the first one, slanted toward it so the two met at the top. Like a tent.
It was a natural shelter. Perfect. If there was room to sneak underneath it, he might be protected from the weather.
“Max!” came Alex’s distant voice, carried on the wind.
Picking up his pace toward the two rocks, Max called over his shoulder, “I’m OK!”
He slipped underneath. Up close the two rocks were taller than he’d imagined, maybe fifteen feet high. The second rock was exactly like the first, four vertical crevices reaching upward, forming what looked like a thumb and four thick fingers. Like two hands touching.
No, not touching.
Praying.
The arc of praying hands at the central plain will lift your eyes . . .
Max gazed up at Snaefellsjökull. The peak was shrouded in ominous clouds. He kept his eyes glued until the obstruction cleared like a wave bouncing off a jetty.
At the summit, three identical lava plugs stood at equal distances. They were perfectly shaped like thick thumbs. Immediately to the left was a misshapen curved plug. It was angled at the top away from the others by ninety degrees and marked by a moon-shaped mark at its summit. A cave.
Max pulled out his phone and took a photo before the clouds could swallow it again. Staring at the image, he zoomed closer. At the top of the curved rock but below the cave was a curved horizontal crack.
Like an eye. And a smile.
Max dropped his phone into his pocket. With a whoop and a jump,
he began running back to the jeep. He didn’t care how the a’a’ felt under his shoes.
“We have our ca-a-a-amel!” he screamed, his voice cutting through the wind.
16
PUSHING a jeep over a bed of a’a’ was not easy, but it helped to have Brandon the Pilot by your side. “I feel like . . . Ernest Shackleton,” Max said, grunting with the effort.
“Who?” Brandon grunted back.
“You know, the guy whose ship got stuck in the ice . . . in Antarctica?” Max said, pausing to take a breath. “And he had his crew drag all their stuff across the ice and snow for miles and miles . . . to a cave near the sea? And then he and five others sailed in a small boat across the Drake Passage with no navigational tools . . . only to land on the wrong end of a snow-covered uncharted island, so he had to walk across it blindly and managed to find a whaling station and then sailed back and rescued everyone? That guy?”
“You know, you are one weird kid,” Brandon said with a laugh.
“Thank you,” Max said.
The jeep gave an abrupt jolt, and the stalled engine kicked back to life. “We’re good!” Kristin shouted out her window.
“Woo-hoo!” Brandon smiled at Max. “You’re my talisman, little brah! You hired me, but I should hire you to be my history teacher and travel buddy.”
“Put it in futhark, and I’ll think about it,” Max said.
They scrambled back into the jeep, and Kristin drove slowly over the lava. “Will someone guide me?” she asked.
Max glanced back to the twin slanted rocks. “OK, so the praying hands point the direction for us. If you go left . . . now, you’ll be in line.”
“I see them,” Kristin said, looking in the rearview mirror. “I’ll keep them in my sight.”
The rain had subsided a bit, and the clouds were now thinning over the crest of Snaefellsjökull.
“Wowzer,” Brandon said, gazing out the window. “I see the camel—up at the top!”
“Good eye.” With a smile, Alex reached behind her and patted Brandon’s hand.
“He’s not a pet,” Max grumbled.
The surface seemed to soften as Kristin steered the jeep closer to the volcano. Max kept his eye on the summit until it disappeared from view. “Is there a path up to the camel?”
“I don’t think so,” Kristin replied. “This is not a commonly traveled area. We may have to wing it. I prepared packs for everyone, with crampons, snowshoes, ice picks, and some food. It’s not supersteep, but it will be slippery, so we must stay together. I also packed us some archaeological tools—brushes, compressed air, what have you—just in case.”
As Kristin stopped at the base of the volcano, they all scrambled out of the jeep and around to the back. Kristin pulled open the hatch, revealing four sturdy framed backpacks. Each was crammed full of climbing equipment, and next to them was a pile of collapsible climbing poles. “Don’t think I’ll be needing the poles,” Brandon said, strapping on a pack.
“They are crucial,” Kristin said. “Do not even think of not taking a pair.”
Hooking on his pack, Max peered back at the praying hands. “I can see the lines of the fingers on the right one,” he said. “That means we’re a little off target. Follow me.”
He trudged along the circumference of the volcano, eyeing the hands in the distance. When they were just about lined up, he stopped. “Here,” he said.
Alex, Brandon, and Kristin looked up. The slope was rocky but not too steep. “Looks like every other place on the mountain,” Brandon remarked. “Except there are some real pathy-looking paths about a mile back. I say we go back. If the point is to reach the camel, what difference does it make where we go up?”
“Good point,” Alex said.
“It’s not a good point,” Max shot back. “It’s a bad point. We have to follow directions. And there’s no such word as pathy.”
He began walking up the slope of Snaefellsjökull. The ground was wet and rocky. Max realized Brandon was right about one thing. It didn’t look like anyone had walked here in years. He slipped on a rock and caught himself.
“Max?” Alex said. “Don’t you think it would be easier if we followed a path someone else has left?”
“I’ll race ya?” Brandon said, turning back where he’d indicated.
“It’s not a race.” Max turned. “We got rich by following Jules Verne. We saved my mom’s life and Evelyn’s life by following Jules Verne. If Jules Verne says to go up here, we go up here, not any other place. We do switchbacks, we walk carefully, whatever it takes. If you guys want to go all Brandon on me, OK. I will meet you at the top.”
Max jammed his pole into the ground for emphasis.
It clanked.
“What was that?” Kristin asked.
Max jammed it again and looked down. “A’a?” he said.
“It sounds like metal,” Kristin offered.
“Did we strike gold?” Alex asked.
“An alien ship!” Brandon exclaimed.
“Or a manhole cover,” Max said.
“There are no sewers into the volcanoes,” Kristin said.
Max dropped to his knees. With the tip of his pole, he began scraping away a thin layer of soil and scrub grass.
Alex joined him, and then Kristin and Brandon. Below the surface was a squarish metal plate. When they scraped out to its edges, Kristin reached into her pack and pulled out a flat box. Laying it on the ground, she opened it to reveal a compact set of tools, including a brush.
As she brushed the soil from the surface of the plate, Max could see raised markings. “Step back!” Brandon said.
He blasted the plate with a tiny compressed air gun, which cleared away a lot of pebbles and soil.
Max sat back, his heart thumping. The square plate was chiseled carefully with tiny characters.
“Futhark,” he said, staring in awe.
17
Curez le nez et mettez-vous à l’abri dans la vallée souriante.
Pick the nose and take shelter in the smiling valley.
THEY all stared in silence.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Alex said softly. “But that’s what it says.”
Max sighed. “Well, Verne never tells us exactly what he means. Sometimes you have to find out for yourselves.”
“Personally, I’m not into picking noses in public,” Brandon said.
“You can stay here, and we’ll save you a booger.” Max glanced upward. For most of the volcano’s height, the slope was a gradual climb of soil, grass, and exposed rock. The snow cover began about three-quarters of the way up. The smooth white carpet was pimpled and bumped in places, as if a trapped monster had tried punching its way out from inside. At the summit, the camel-rock formations still danced in and out of sight through the clouds. “Think we can make it in a day?”
“If we start now and don’t waste time,” Kristin said. “But we must also be careful and stay together. There are no paths here, so we will be making our own. It will be slippery. I recommend zigzagging in a switchback pattern. Even if that takes longer than going straight up, it will give us better traction. Also, the angle of climbing will not be so steep.”
“That’ll take forever.” Brandon took a few steps directly up the slope. “Dude, these boots have awesome traction. We can get up there in a couple of hours, tops. Last one to the camel is a rotten nostril.”
He began striding fast, pumping his arms.
“What are you doing?” Alex cried out.
“Trail running!” Brandon called back. “The best exercise ever!”
Max shook his head. “Did we have to invite him?”
“I’m with Kristin,” Alex said, hooking her pack over her shoulder. “We can meet him at the top.”
“I promise I won’t be slow,” Kristin said with a smile. “Now, you may not be used to the altitude, so let me know when you want to stop.”
She took the lead, followed by Max, then Alex. Even though she took a good quick pace, zigging right and zagg
ing left, Brandon quickly became a dot in the distance.
Max hurried to keep up. His boots squished into a wet green growth that was something between moss and grass. The rock beneath was uneven and sharp. He tried to tread lightly, but his left ankle jammed into a rocky rut and twisted violently.
It hurt, but he tried not to let it show.
“You’re limping,” Alex called out from behind him.
“It’s only a flesh wound,” Max called back through gritted teeth.
As they trudged onward, the rain stopped and the sun began burning away the cloud cover. About halfway up, Kristin pivoted away from a large, flat rock. Max stopped there, catching his breath.
He looked at his watch. They’d started at 7:30 a.m., and it was now 9:08. Glancing down, Max could barely see their car.
“Are we there yet?” Alex called out from behind him.
“No, but look below,” Max answered. “We’ve come a long way.”
“Yeah, well, not if you look up,” Alex said, pulling up beside him. “Seems like the top half of the mountain stretched, just to annoy us.”
Max shifted his glance to the summit. The camel rocks seemed to be about the same size as they had before. “That has to be an optical illusion.”
“Can we stop at this rest area?” Alex called out to Kristin. “I need a gorp break.”
“Five minutes,” Kristin replied.
Alex flopped down onto the flat rock and pulled a bag of trail mix from her backpack. She offered some to Max. He had his own mix, but the sight of it made him salivate, so he cupped both his palms. “Nom, nom.”
As Alex unzipped the bag, her eyes were trained over Max’s head, up the slope. “Do you see Iron Man Brandon?”
“Nom, nom,” Max repeated. “Feed me and I will answer.”
She poured some mix into Max’s hands a little too fast and a few grains tumbled onto the ground. Max dipped his face into his palms and took a big mouthful. “I didn’t see him,” he said.
Transferring the rest of the mix into his right hand, he reached down with his left to pick up the stuff that had fallen.
Enter the Core Page 8