Field guide in hand, Fig led Milton to her cottage. Her mother was at the research station, so they had the place to themselves.
Even though the cottage looked exactly like Uncle Evan’s from the outside (except for the sunshine door), the inside was another story altogether. The Morris house was cozy and bright. There were comfy rugs on the floors, bookshelves full of books and knickknacks, sea-glass wind chimes in the windows, and two colorful, swirly paintings on the walls.
“My dad painted those,” Fig said, when she saw Milton squinting at them.
“He’s good,” Milton replied, although he didn’t know much about art. He had tried to illustrate his field notes a few times during his Nature Phase, but everything he drew looked like an amoeba on toothpick legs. “Very good.”
“He was very good,” Fig said quietly.
Milton spun away from the paintings. “Fig, I didn’t—you never said—” He felt like he had one foot in Things You Do Not Say territory and the other in Things You Should Absolutely Say (But Maybe Don’t Know Exactly How To) territory.
Fig shook her head and took a seat on the cushy red couch. “Never mind, Sea Hawk,” she said firmly. “It happened a long time ago, and it doesn’t bother me. Let’s talk about this.” She held up the guide.
“Whatever you say, Fig,” Milton said, hurrying to plop down beside her.
Fig set the guide between the two of them and turned to the page after Dr. Paradis’s letter, which was a table of contents. It read:
Then Fig moved on to the entries, one after another. Milton tried to read along, but she read a lot faster than he did.
When she reached the end of the final entry, the Yes-No-Maybe-So Tree, Fig stared at the illustration of the paper-and-pen-covered tree for a long time. Then she cried, “But this is ridiculous!”
“I think you mean spectaculous,” Milton corrected.
Fig shook her head. “We already know about the Truth-Will-Out Vine and the Incredible Symphonic Cicada, but the rest of these—they can’t possibly be real.”
“Why not?” protested Milton, who had never once considered this possibility. “Think of all the magnificent creatures in nature—lizards that walk on water, chimps that know sign language, goats that climb up practically vertical cliff faces.”
“That may be true,” Fig half allowed. “I once read that we’ve only discovered twenty percent of Earth’s species so far. Way less if you count bacteria. But even if these creatures do exist, what’s all this about treasure and protecting the island?”
“I don’t know what the danger is exactly,” Milton said, “or what the treasure could be, but I think the field guide is like an actual guide. If we follow the clues in it, we’ll find whatever it is Dr. Paradis wants us to find.”
Fig turned the guide’s pages slowly again, pausing here and there. “I guess I see some clues. Dr. Paradis mentions canoeing here in the Push-Pull Centopus entry … and camping under a Starlight Starbright Tree on the Astari Night Avis page … and listen to this: Yes, Little SmooshieFace knows it all.” She tapped on these words under the image of the pointy-eared, bushy-tailed Beautimous Lemallaby. “Does that mean we’re supposed to ask this flower-bootied lemur-wallaby for help? And then what? It’s going to answer?” She flipped back to the beginning of the guide with a shrug.
Milton gasped as a vision of a miniature green-eyed bobcat meowing in a language only Sea Hawk could understand came to him. How had he not realized this before? “Little SmooshieFace shall be my Dear Lady DeeDee,” he whispered.
Luckily, Fig didn’t hear him. She had half jumped to her feet and was now sinking back down, the guide in her hands opened to the Truth-Will-Out Vine entry.
“Sea Hawk, listen to this,” she said. “Where else could you start but at the Truth-Will-Out Vine? The path to the treasure must start at the vine!”
“Brilliant!” Milton cried. “It makes sense too. I found the guide beneath the vine behind Dr. Paradis’s house. And I only saw it because the vines rolled themselves up.”
Fig tipped her head in confusion. “Well, the vine is an epiphyte,” she said slowly. “It doesn’t have roots, so it blows around easily. That’s probably what happened.” She went back to Dr. Paradis’s letter, running her fingers over each line. “The misspelled words have to be clues too, right?”
Milton knew that Sea Hawk took diligent, detailed notes. He knew that Fig could probably spend the rest of the day reading the field guide over and over (up in a tree, no doubt), and that really was probably the wisest course of action.
But Milton was not interested in the wisest course of action right now. His sensitive stomach was flipping over and over like someone was cooking pancakes in his belly. Chocolate-chip-and-awesomeness pancakes. “Perhaps,” he told Fig. “Probably. There are lots of clues, right? And we can figure out all of them along the way. Let’s go find some treasure!”
Milton was sure Fig would protest. He was pleasantly surprised when instead she said, “All right, let’s do it,” with the start of a smile.
He bounced on the couch in excitement. “Yes!” he yelled. “Sea Hawk and Fig, Naturalists and Explorers Extraordinaire!”
Fig didn’t cheer along with him. Her smile had disappeared already.
“Sea Hawk,” she said.
Milton kept bouncing. And yelling.
“Sea Hawk!”
Milton shut his mouth. But he kept bouncing.
“You know we have to show this to your uncle and my mother, right? And the Drs. Alvarez?”
Milton stopped bouncing.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Eventually. After we find the treasure, right?”
Fig crossed her arms and frowned at him.
“My uncle actually knows about some of these creatures already,” Milton told her hastily. “He told me about them forever ago.”
“I guess that does make a difference,” Fig said. “But studying the Lone Island is literally my mother’s job. And this island—covered in that vine and with the hidden cicadas—it’s almost like it doesn’t want to be studied. My mother always says the island is worth getting to know, no matter how long it takes, but she also says your uncle has been getting more and more discouraged with their research.”
Milton thought of his uncle—his tiny smiles and his sad eyes that reminded Milton of his own father’s this past year. He hadn’t been like that when he’d visited seven years ago; seven years ago, Uncle Evan had been brimming with energy, overflowing with stories, certain that he was about to find the creatures in this very field guide and more. “Mighty moles and voles.” Milton sighed. “You’re right. We’ll show them. But let’s try to do something ourselves first. I’d like—I’d like to have an adventure for once.”
Fig studied him for a moment. “I might be ready for one too,” she said finally.
If Fig had really wanted to show the field guide to Uncle Evan and her mother right then, Milton knew they would be heading to the research station, no matter what he said.
But they didn’t.
They went back outside and headed toward the Truth-Will-Out Vine, ready to start.