From downriver, Rafi and Gabe came squelching over at top speed.
“Wowzers!” Gabe shouted, throwing himself down next to Milton. “You almost got sucked up and spewed out.”
Rafi stood over them, wide eyes flicking from Sea Hawk to Fig and back like he couldn’t believe they were still in one piece. “You’re okay?” he said. “You’re both really okay?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I froze up like that.”
“It’s quite all right,” said Milton, still flat on his back. “I mean, we’re quite all right. A tad winded, perhaps.”
Fig struggled to sit up. “I have to tell you all something,” she said.
Her usually strong and steady voice was wobbly, and when Milton propped himself up on his elbows, he saw that her eyes were now gleaming and unblinking. He had never seen her look like that, not even when she talked about her father.
“Fig,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
Fig took a shaky breath. “I—I lost my backpack,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t swim to shore. I was trying to find it in the water. The samples are gone. And the”—her voice cracked—“the complete field guide is gone.”
Rafi jumped up and started splashing into the water. “We’ll find it!” he said.
As if in reply, a tentacle came snaking out of the water and spewed a fountain toward the riverbank.
“It’s not safe,” Fig said as Rafi yelped and leaped back. “And we won’t make it home by nightfall if we don’t get moving now, and if we don’t make it home then Dr. Greene might sign those papers giving up the island.” Fig wrapped her arms around her legs and let her face fall onto her knees. “Not that it matters anyway since I lost the treasure. I ruined everything.”
Fig started to cry.
Milton lowered his head back onto the mud. The glorious blue of the sky above during this dark and dismal moment seemed as discordant as the song of a Tone-Deaf Warbler. They had traveled so far. They had risked so much. They had come out to meet the island, and the island had come out to meet them. And now the treasure was river detritus, floating downstream toward the great, swallowing deep.
They weren’t going to save the island. It was over.
Milton started to cry too.
He lay in the mud on the shores of a river halfway around the world from his home, and he cried. He cried because it had been a rotten year, the worst he’d ever had. He cried because he’d thought the rottenness was over but … it wasn’t.
Maybe no matter what he did—change his name, move to a practically deserted island, unearth hidden treasure—maybe spectaculousness was always going to be out of reach for him. Maybe he was going to have the Most Totally, Terribly, Horribly, Heinously Rotten Life of All Time.
But then Milton turned his head, and he saw Fig’s shoulders shaking, and he heard her gasping sobs, and his heart felt like it was being squeezed and wrung out, but then filled back up again. Over and over.
The year had been rotten. Losing the field guide was rotten.
But the spectaculous had happened, nonetheless.
Fig had happened.
And this island had happened. This island, with its truth-detecting vines and knowledge-giving trees and super-alive-right-here feeling.
Maybe on one hand, it didn’t seem like much had really changed for Milton P. Greene. He was sprawled out in the muck, and he had failed once again. But on the other hand, Milton P. Greene himself had changed. He knew he had.
He didn’t feel like Sea Hawk. He didn’t feel like Bird Brain. He felt somewhere in between, and that somewhere-in-between Milton wasn’t going to give up.
“We can still do it,” he said quietly. “We can still save the island.”
Fig inhaled shakily and rubbed her eyes on her sleeves. “What do you mean?” she said. “No, we can’t.”
“We can,” Milton said, struggling to sit up. “We can tell Uncle Evan about Lord Snarlsy and everything we saw. We can convince him to ask the courts for more time.”
“I can show him this hairball one of those wacky monkey cats gave me,” Gabe offered. He held up a wet clump of yellow-blue-green fur.
“Indeed, you can,” Milton said. “We’ve made it this far, and I, for one, am not going to abandon this expedition when we’re so close to the end.”
He rose to his feet, puffed out his vest-covered chest, adjusted his sopping wet peacock feather, and pointed one sludge-covered finger up to that glorious blue sky.
“The adventure isn’t over! The adventure is now!”