The sound was like a strong breeze blowing through the vines, transforming them into flora wind chimes. The strands that had been in Milton’s hands had yanked themselves away, joining the Truth-Will-Out Vine wall.
“It’s happening again!” Milton gasped.
Fig gasped too as she backed away from the writhing, wriggling mass of greenery. Then the vines rolled up exactly as they had behind Dr. Paradis’s house. But it wasn’t a box that these vines had been hiding.
It was a tree.
The tree was even taller than the gumbo-limbo, but much thinner, with a black-green trunk. It didn’t appear to have bark but was instead sort of shiny-waxy and covered in even blacker-green knots, like the skin of a toad. The branches had a few heart-shaped leaves here and there.
The real focal point of the tree, however, were the fruits that hung by the hundreds up and down the branches: oblong, olive green, and very puckery-looking.
“Is that the Sweet Pickle Tree?” Fig exclaimed. “The one the Incredible Symphonic Cicadas like?”
“I don’t see how it could possibly be anything else,” Milton said, sniffing the suddenly brine-pungent air.
Then there was another sound. Not a whooshing, not vine chimes, but a sort of rustling, clicking, shifting sound. A sound like teeny-tiny claws scraping and teeny-tiny legs skittering and teeny-tiny holes opening.
All around the Sweet Pickle Tree, the ground started to move.
Something was wriggling its way to the surface. Well, somethings. Hundreds of somethings actually.
Hundreds of bugs.
Each bug was about the size of an unnervingly large cockroach. Their bodies were shiny black, and their eyeballs and wings were white, and they were crawling out of the ground at an alarming rate.
Fig’s eyes were as huge as Milton had ever seen them. “It’s the Incredible Symphonic Cicadas,” she said. “They’re emerging.”
“I wish they wouldn’t,” Milton said with a shudder. “They do this every summer?”
“Yes, they live underground for most of the year, then come out to reproduce,” Fig said. “This is the third emerging my mother and I have been here for, but we’ve never actually seen the cicadas. They feed on the Truth-Will-Out Vine sap, remember? So they’re always hidden behind layers and layers of it. The Alvarezes have only been able to get their hands on two specimens.”
Even more of the black-and-white bugs were surfacing now, skittering over one another, swarming upward like they were in some kind of insect marathon and the gold medal was at the top of the Sweet Pickle Tree.
“This. Is. Gross,” Milton groaned, one hand on his stomach and one over his mouth. “Really gross. I might puke.”
“We’ve got to catch one,” Fig said. “We need all the proof we can get!”
Then there was yet another strange noise.
This time the noise came not from upward-burrowing or tree-climbing, but from contracting muscles and buckling membranes. The sound, like a violin string being plucked, was followed by more of the same, coming from random places on the tree. It seemed to Milton like the bugs were preparing to do something, and he was 99.99 percent sure he was not going to like whatever it was.
The sounds continued, here, then there, here, then there, and then suddenly—everywhere.
Not only from the Sweet Pickle Tree but from all over the interior of the island, where other cicadas must have been emerging. The noise was clearly made by insects; it had that scratchy, whiny, buggy sound. But somehow it was also … a song.
There was melody, high and sweet. There was harmony, low and slow. There were sudden interjections like percussion and moments where only one insect could be heard—a solo. The music swelled and expanded and intensified into an insectival crescendo as Milton listened.
“This is super beautiful,” he whispered to Fig (gross bugs or not, he didn’t want to interrupt a performance like this).
But Fig was busy unzipping a pocket on her utility belt. From inside, she produced a small plastic jar with a hole-poked lid.
She held it up for Milton to see and gave a nod that he assumed was supposed to be meaningful.
Then Fig dove for the Sweet Pickle Tree.
The music of the nearby cicadas faltered for a moment, but quickly got back on track. Fig, muddy-kneed and grinning, held up her container triumphantly.
There was a long, green, puckery fruit inside.
And latched on to it was a tuxedo-wearing Incredible Symphonic Cicada.
The proof was in the pickle.