When the tree canopy finally thinned to reveal a pale gray sky, the Lost Souls collapsed on the dirt, wheezing. They’d reached the ridge.
“Where’s . . . where’s the spyglass?” Jem gasped. Smitty drew it out of his sleeve and handed it over. Jem pointed the tube down the hill and squinted into it. After a moment, he lowered the instrument.
“They’re still coming. But we’ve put some distance between us.”
“Let me see.” Scarlet stood and reached for the tube. At first she saw nothing but jungle, but soon she caught several movements among the trees. The giant Thomas marched in front, holding his cutlass like a shield before him. Next came Lucas’s dirty nest of brown hair, his face buried in the map. Captain Wallace followed, windmilling his arms at every insect he saw. Last came Iron “Pete” Morgan, looking exasperated with the whole mission.
“How can we lose them?” Liam asked.
Scarlet lowered the spyglass and bit her lip. She didn’t have an answer, except, “Let’s just keep going as fast as we can.”
Then she remembered that this was the place that called for Jem’s plant identification skills. Apparently he remembered, too, for he suddenly looked nervous.
“‘Left at the Abicatus florificus,’” he recited. Mouth set in a hard line, he began to search every inch of the ground.
Scarlet looked over her shoulder now and then, tempted to ask Jem politely if he could hurry it up. But she kept her mouth shut. They couldn’t afford a wrong turn again.
Finally, Jem settled on the same fuzzy stalk with the bushy, pink head he’d pointed out the first time. He stared at it for a while as if that might make the plant wake up and say, “Oh, dear me, yes, it’s this way.” But nothing happened, and Jem shrugged. “I’m fairly positive this is it. Maybe eighty-five percent certain this time. All right, eighty-two.”
Scarlet nodded. “Then let’s go. Come on, crew. You remember the way down.”
They did. Smitty led the way, sliding down the hillside on the mat of ferns he’d worn only moments before. The others followed suit, and though the ride was just as exciting as the time before, albeit a little less muddy, the urgency of the chase kept them from shouting in glee as they hurtled down, down, down the slope.
Scarlet, however, found her own ride much less pleasant this time thanks to the voice that, despite her chanting, simply refused to shut up. By the time the Lost Souls had picked themselves up off the grass at the foot of the slope and began running through the Valley of Simmering Streams, she didn’t know if she could take it anymore. The moans and drones would drive her crazy if she didn’t do something about them.
“Stop!” she yelled finally, and the group came to a surprised halt near a little river that bubbled like clam chowder on the fire.
“Right,” Jem said. “We’ve got to decide which way to go. We took a wrong turn somewhere around here last time.”
“It’s not just that,” Scarlet said miserably. “I’m hearing a voice.”
“A voice? What kind of voice?” Tim said.
“I don’t hear anything.” Ronagh wrinkled her nose.
“That’s just it,” Scarlet wailed. “No one else hears it. It’s plagued me ever since I first set foot on this island, moaning and whispering like nothing I’ve ever heard, and I can’t take it anymore. What do you do with a voice that just won’t shut up?”
“Um . . . listen to it?” Smitty suggested with a nervous smile. “Maybe it’s got something to say.”
Scarlet stopped and looked at him.
“Sorry. Weak attempt at humor.” Smitty hung his head. “It’s not the time or place, I know.”
Suddenly, Scarlet heard another voice in her head: You’ve just got to listen, Ben had said. Listen to the people around you, but more importantly listen to yourself. All the answers you need are there.
And so, as the others looked on, Scarlet sank to her knees on the earth and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Um, Captain, now might not be the best time for a rest,” she heard Smitty say. Someone shushed him. Scarlet tuned them out and tuned in to the voice—its undulating moans, its urgent whispers. I might have all the answers I need to understand this, she thought, but I’m going to have to dig deep for them.
She tuned into herself, searching for a place deep inside where answers might exist. She scanned the dustiest shelves of her brain and perused the darkest corners of her memory. She searched deeper, until she felt like she had reached her core, where the essence of Scarlet flickered as it had since the day she was born. She knew this was the place, for she felt completely at home.
Scarlet opened her eyes.
The scene before her looked different somehow. Vapor still rose from the simmering streams, the sky overhead was still the same pale gray, and the Lost Souls still stared at her as if she’d grown another nose, but somehow, everything looked a little more familiar. A little more clear. Or maybe it was just her, feeling a little more . . . herself.
She looked to her left, toward a patch of trees that wavered like a mirage. A ribbon of red wove through them—an ara, Scarlet was certain. She stared harder at the trees until she saw a path materialize between them: a narrow but well-worn path she’d never seen before.
“It’s that way.” She pointed for her friends, who looked bewildered.
“How do you know? I don’t even see a trail.” Smitty squinted in the direction she pointed.
“I just know.” Scarlet clambered to her feet. “You were right. I listened, first to the voice, then to myself. I found the answers.”
Now the Lost Souls looked certain she’d gone off the deep end.
“Scarlet, are you—” Ronagh began in a whisper.
“Oh no. Look.” Jem pointed up the hill, where Lucas was preparing to barrel down on his rear end while the other pirates exchanged dubious looks.
“You’ve just got to trust me,” Scarlet said to her friends. “Please. I won’t let you down. I know this is the way.”
Lucas was now tumbling at top speed toward them. “I’m in,” Liam said. “Let’s go.” The others nodded.
“Wait,” said Tim. “We can’t all go. If the pirates see us all heading that way, they’ll just follow. But if we split up, if several of us go the wrong way, we could head them off then catch up later.”
The Lost Souls looked at one another and nodded again, just as Lucas’s cry soared over the steam: “I see them! Hurry up! We have to catch them!”
“You and Jem go on ahead,” Tim ordered. “The rest of us’ll take ’em on a wild chase. We’ll catch you later.”
Scarlet began to protest—what if the path didn’t appear for her friends? But something deep inside told her that it would. And she trusted it.
“Good luck.” She grabbed Jem’s arm and started running toward the patch of trees, where the path still shimmered before her, inviting them in.
“Fitz,” she puffed as they hurried along the twisting dirt trail.
“Hmm.” He hadn’t said much since she’d pulled him into the trees and the jungle closed behind them like a door. But then, what could she expect? Even she had to admit that mysterious voices, magical paths, and pirates in hot pursuit could overwhelm a person unused to such things.
“You never told me what your uncle thought the treasure is.”
Jem nodded. “You’re right. After all this time.”
“Well?” Scarlet stopped, glanced behind her to make sure no one was following them, then looked at Jem.
“Well, have you ever heard of a bromeliad?”
Scarlet shook her head.
“A bromeliad’s a type of plant. They’re . . . um . . . epiphytic. That means they grow attached to other plants, but don’t harm them.” He looked proud to have remembered that knowledge. “Uncle Finn spent years researching bromeliads here on the islands.
Dead, boring stuff, if you ask me, but somewhere along the way, he decided that the treasure is actually a bromeliad with healing powers. Kind of like Liam’s salve, I suppose.”
Scarlet was quiet for a minute, trying to picture this and wondering how it fit with her own theory. Then she started to laugh.
“What?” Jem immediately turned defensive. “Oh, and I suppose a magic bromeliad is so much funnier than a magic spice?”
“It’s not that.” Scarlet giggled. “It’s that . . . just think how mad Lucas would be if he knew he was on the trail of some old plant rather than a chest full of jewels. Can you imagine his face?”
Jem’s own face broke into a grin, and he let out a hoot. “You’re right. He’s in for a surprise. If Uncle Finn’s theory is correct, that is. To be honest, though, I can’t help but hope it’s something more exciting than a plant. Smitty’s golden conch—now that sounds jolly.”
“Come on. Let’s keep going.” Scarlet started off again down the path with Jem close behind. “There’re so many theories,” she said as they hurried along, “and really, any one of them could be right.” The suspense was practically killing her. She picked up the pace around the next bend in the path. “Is it just me, or is it getting ridiculously hot?”
Suddenly, the trees parted, and Scarlet and Jem found themselves looking down into a lake. A great, big, steamy crater lake the milky, blue-green color of the sea where it met the sand. They stopped, then turned to each other with wide eyes.
“The boiling lake!”
“The real thing this time!” Without thinking, Scarlet threw her arms around Jem’s neck. Then, realizing how positively uncaptainly that was, she took a hasty step back. Jem looked a little flushed, but it could have been the temperature. His shirt was soaked with sweat underneath his leafy overcoat.
They paused for a few moments, sweating and staring down the clifflike walls surrounding the boiling water, wondering how the lake had ever come to be. Then Jem wiped his forehead and shrugged. “Well. We’re on the right path. No sense stopping here.”
On they marched, following the trail as it twisted to the right, away from the lake and into a much cooler and shadier forest.
“Can you picture the map in your head, Fitz?” Scarlet asked as they walked.
“A little. I wish I’d studied it closer when Uncle Finn and I were traveling. I always figured I’d have him to guide me, or at least the map itself.”
“I don’t remember much, either. Something tells me we’re approaching one of those landmarks, though.”
The forest seemed to grow darker the farther they went. By Scarlet’s calculations, it couldn’t be later than midday; surely the sun wasn’t setting yet. But it was getting more difficult to distinguish shapes from shadows, and the trees seemed to be closing in, making the path even narrower and the jungle even more impenetrable.
Suddenly, the ground dropped off right in front of them, and Scarlet stumbled backward, treading on Jem’s toes as she scrambled away from the edge.
“It’s . . . it’s a pit of some sort,” Jem said, peering down. “I can see the path climbing out of it on the other side. It’s no more than four or five yards across.”
Scarlet didn’t feel reassured. She had no desire to climb into a deep, dark pit inhabited by who knew what, even if the path did continue on the other side. Recalling the stories of men who’d ventured into the jungle never to be seen again, Scarlet rejected the idea of straying off the path, especially since it seemed to want to show her the way. If only they could consult the map to—
“Wait. Fitz, didn’t the map say something about an o . . . ophid . . . oh, what was that word?”
“An ophidian aggregation!” Jem exclaimed. “Scarlet, that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“That’s the word I was looking for days ago. The one that describes a . . . oh no.”
“Seriously, Jem, these ‘oh nos’ are getting a little tiresome. What’s an ophid . . . you know?”
“A . . . a writhing mass of snakes.”
Scarlet’s lower lip sagged. “You mean like . . .”
“The one that killed Cutthroat MacPhee.”
“Oh NO.”
They peered into the pit again, and sure enough, even in the dimmest light, Scarlet could see something wriggle. Then something else. Yes, the entire pit was slowly moving with lithe, scaly bodies. She took a step back. “I can’t.”
“Wait.” Jem put a hand on her arm. “Remember Tim’s story. The snakes had no intention of killing Cutthroat MacPhee. He died of fright.”
“Who can judge a snake’s intentions?” Scarlet wailed, more for the sake of stalling than argument. “And, anyway, if the world’s most bloodthirsty pirate fell victim to an ophidiwhatsit, then how can we expect to get by? We’re just children.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Scarlet wanted to kick herself. The Lost Souls would be so disappointed in her.
Jem shook his head. “I won’t tell anyone you said that if you cross this pit right now.”
Scarlet drew a breath. She’d go barefoot through the pit if it would erase the uncaptainly thing she’d just said. “Let’s go.” Without another moment’s hesitation, she stepped off the edge and let the crumbling earth carry her down into the pit.
The first step was the worst. The snakes shuddered and wound themselves around her boots, then climbed up her calves. There were hundreds, even thousands of them piled on top of one another, and Scarlet was glad for the dim light that kept Jem from identifying their species and telling her how deadly they were.
The second step was almost as bad. One damp, cool body slipped inside her boot and wrapped itself around her ankle. Another climbed farther, to the soft spot behind her knee. Their hissing grew louder, like a chorus in her ears. Their bodies rippled and swelled like waves—a sea of dark, clammy, wriggling . . .
She closed her eyes and searched for an answer to the question: Is this really necessary?
Something deep inside told her that she’d pass unharmed. Scarlet sighed. She supposed she could take a little trauma. Maybe she even deserved it after what she’d said about them being “only children.”
They waded through what seemed like miles of squirming bodies but was really only a few yards before the trail began to climb out of the pit. The snakes loosened their hold on Scarlet’s legs and let her scramble, unscarred, up onto the ledge.
She pulled a straggler out of her boot, tossed it into the pit, and turned to Jem. “That was disgusting.”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to tell you back there, but we just waded through a pit of deadly striped vipers, some of the most venomous snakes around.”
Feeling ill, Scarlet glanced back at the pit. “This had better be one good treasure.”
Once they’d passed the snake pit, the tree canopy began to thin, and a bit of sunlight streamed in through the cracks. Scarlet and Jem began to chant one of Smitty’s chanteys to keep themselves moving.
There may be snakes in every tree
And spiders on the ground,
But how could we stay home when there’s
A treasure to be found?
March, two, three, four.
March, two, three, four.
Although they were still far from safe, Scarlet was feeling more relaxed now that the deadly striped vipers were behind them. She could tell that Jem felt it, too, and was about to teach him a new, crusty pirate tune when she smelled it.
“Scurvy. What is that?” she asked, pinching her nose.
“Well, you know what they say, Cap’n,” Jem replied. “He who smelt it, dealt it.”
“Shut up, Fitz. I’m serious. That is rank.”
Then they heard it: first one rustle in the bushes, then another, and another. Followed by a soft click-clack, like small hooves o
n pebbles.
Rustle click, rustle clack.
Then they saw it: an army of dark beasts slipping out of the trees and onto the trail. No taller than dogs, but round like rum barrels, the creatures pressed their snouts into the amber earth and fixed their glinting eyes on the two Lost Souls.
“Scarlet,” Jem whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell me those aren’t what I think they are.”
But Scarlet could think of no other island inhabitants that could be mistaken for smelly wild pigs.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Maybe if you listened again,” Jem said as they slowly backed away from the snorting hogs, “you’d find the answer to: What on earth do we do now?”
“Maybe,” Scarlet replied without taking her eyes off the pigs. “But I think it’d take some concentration. I might have to close my eyes and even sit down.”
“And it’s really not the best time for that, is it?” Jem snapped. Against his better judgment, he’d trusted in Scarlet’s mysterious knowledge of the island. But where was that knowledge now that they were staring down the ugliest, smelliest creatures he’d ever come across? The pigs reeked like some combination of onions, dog breath, sweaty socks, and old cheese. Except worse—much, much worse. They had mottled, gray skin and were bald except for a few long, black hairs on their snouts and between their eyes. They lumbered rather than walked, with a side to side swagger reminiscent of drunken pirates in port, and their teeth poked out of the corners of their mouths, glinting like tiny daggers.
This adventure had just reached new heights of absurdity—not ten minutes after crossing a pit of venomous vipers, here they were being stared down by a pack of putrid pigs that wanted to rip them limb from limb. And all for a treasure that may well turn out to be a plant? It didn’t make a speck of sense. Desperate for logic, Jem resorted to asking himself, “What would Master Davis—”
But before he could even finish the question, one of the larger boars seemed to decide enough was enough and charged straight for them. With his snout in the dust and his tusks aimed right at Jem’s knees, the boar galumped forth, full speed, then came to a grunting halt a hair’s width from Jem’s trousers.
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