In ancient times, men played tunes on the tibia.

—Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 21

“Double fives,” said Lok. “Plum flower.”

Pandora threw two ones.

“Earth. I win.”

It may have been a sunny morning in the hut of Ah Lum, but Jenny was grumpy as grief. Thanks to Pandora’s worrying, she had spent most of the night on the floor, squashed beside her best friend and the door to the schoolmaster’s bunkroom. She had bruises in places where light seldom shone.

“Would you two stop fooling around?” griped Jenny. “We’re supposed to be looking for a nugget. See? Mr. Grimsby’s already got his boots laced.”

The schoolmaster clicked his heels in a modest reply. Jenny sighed. She had spent most of breakfast trying to persuade Kam to help with the search, and he still hadn’t agreed. Mr. Grimsby—clean as a proverbial whistle and very well rested—was the only one who seemed keen to start.

“I don’t want to look for a nugget now,” said Pandora. “I want to play the game.”

“Pandora! We’ve got the whole of Gam Saan to comb.”

“Don’t care,” said Pandora. Lok sniggered.

“What are you laughing at? You’re doing a fat lot of good sitting on your duff,” scolded Jenny.

“In my opinion,” said Lok, shaking his hands, “girls from Eden spend too much time chasing after dreams.”

He let the cubes of ivory fly. Perhaps it was the angle of a sunbeam, or a trick of the whirl, but as Lok released the dice, Jenny caught a prism of colors. Curious, she reached over and picked up a playing piece.

“Hey!” said Lok. “That was a six!”

Jenny rolled the large die in her palm. “Lok, did you bring these with you from Little Eden?”

“No. I found them here,” said Lok.

“Found them where?” demanded Jenny. Everyone in the room heard the extra thump of her heart.

“What is it?” asked Pandora.

“It’s been glued,” said Jenny, showing Pandora the clear layer of paste on the bone-white object. “Now does that make any sense to you?”

“No.” Pandora took the die and paused. Then she began to pace. Back and forth, back and forth. Then she stopped. Then she stared. “Because we forgot the finish.” Pandora lifted her foot.

“The talus on the skeleton map!” cried Jenny.

“What’s a talus?” asked Lok.

“It’s the heel bone,” said the schoolmaster, smooth as corn silk. “In Latin, it means a playing piece.” He lifted the second die and rolled it in his palm. “So you two have a skeleton map? How very interesting.”

“If they have a map, it is theirs to keep,” warned Kam, standing tall behind the schoolmaster’s shoulder.

“Naturally, naturally,” said Mr. Grimsby, handing Pandora the die.

Lok was watching this tableau with amusement. When he felt the fun was done, he stepped to the mantel of the fireplace, which was carved with a series of crescent moons, and took down a convex object from a hook above it.

“I found them in this.”

He placed a weather-beaten pan on the table. Glued to the interior, in the curve of a semicircle, were six more dice.

“It’s a number code—it’s got to be!” said Jenny, grabbing the two dice off Pandora and trying to shove them back in their spaces.

“But which one came first?” asked the schoolmaster.

“Four,” said Lok. “Four for friends.”

“An unlucky number,” said Kam.

“Forget luck,” said Jenny, matching the sheen of glue to the bottom of the dish. “We have brains. Here. This is what we’ve got.”

“Four, two, one, five, two, five, one, one,” said Mr. Grimsby. “Well, the numbers cannot correspond to letters in the alphabet, because four would be d, two would be b . . .”

“Dice come in pairs,” pointed out Pandora. “Maybe two numbers go together.”

“Forty-two, fifteen, twenty-five, eleven,” said Jenny.

“But there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet,” said the schoolmaster. “What would be the meaning of forty-two?”

“Only four,” countered Lok.

“What?”

“One, two, four, and five,” said Lok, touching each of the dice in turn. “I don’t see the numbers three or six.”

“He’s right,” said Jenny.

“Oh my heavens, oh my spheres,” exclaimed the schoolmaster, dancing on his toes. “Not forty-two, not forty-two at all!” He pirouetted. “Twenty-five!”

“You look really silly doing that,” said Pandora.

“Is this another one of your impressions, Mr. Grimsby?” asked Jenny.

“I used to peruse a variety of private detective stories,” said the schoolmaster, dropping to the ground, “on my sea voyages. And there was one tale about a mathematically minded villain who devised a fiendish code.”

He sketched out a grid in the dirt:

“You see? You marry the y and the z to create an alphabet of twenty-five. Then you take the square root to create the rows and columns.”

“Two fives,” said Lok. “Plum flower.”

“So to solve the code . . . ,” said Jenny.

“You go along the row and down the column,” chirped the schoolmaster, examining the dice. “Forty-two equals i, fifteen equals u, twenty-five equals v, and eleven equals a.”

“IUVA?” asked Jenny.

“Latin again?” queried the schoolmaster. “A conjugation of juvare, to help?”

“I think you are wrong,” said Kam. It was his first comment in the debate, and his words held the ring of authority.

“How do you mean?” asked the schoolmaster.

“We are not in a country with Latin, we are in Gam Saan,” said Kam. “And in my father’s language, words are read top to bottom, and right to left. You must marry two hemispheres: a Western alphabet and an Eastern practice.”

Kam knelt down beside Mr. Grimsby and redrew the numbers:

“Then forty-two, fifteen, twenty-five, eleven would mean . . .”

“SAFE,” said Lok.

“Pandora!” cried Jenny, leapfrogging off the floor and sending man and boys sprawling. “Remember the christening of King Louis? Remember what he said about being friends with Doc Magee? He said they liked to hang out . . .”

“. . . in his back room at the saloon,” finished Pandora.

“Where would you find a place that has a safe and chalk and men playing games with dice?”

“A gambling den,” said Pandora. She nodded. “I like that. It’s clever.”

“The nugget is in the Last Chance Saloon!” yelled Jenny. “That ruddy map is leading us right back to where we started. And you know what else?” She pounded her fist on the table. “I bet King Louis isn’t a murderer. He’s an accomplice!”

“Louis is the one who planted the clues and put together the skeleton that Magee sent from overseas,” continued Jenny. “That’s why he was hanging around the office! No wonder he didn’t care about us keeping hold of the rosewood box. He always knew we would end up back at his door!”

“Why would Louis agree to plant the clues?” asked Pandora.

“Because he and Magee loved playing practical jokes. Can you imagine? He’s been laughing at us since the beginning.”

Pandora frowned. “I don’t like people laughing at me.”

“But if he hasn’t already sold the nugget . . . ,” began the schoolmaster.

“I’m sure he hasn’t,” said Jenny, spurred by the spike of her fever into overconfidence. “That would spoil the punch line to Magee’s joke. Besides, everyone in the territory knows who King Louis is. He’s bound to be recognized if he tried to exchange a rock like that at a bank, and he sure wouldn’t trust anyone else to sell it for him. I bet he’s sitting on it until he receives instructions.”

“. . . how are you going to get it off him?” finished Mr. Grimsby.

“Oh, I’ve got ways,” said Jenny, remembering her snake-charming efforts with King Louis on Poplar Street. In her mind, she was already devising a cunning way to play on his one major weakness. All it would take was a sentence or two.

“If he’s still alive, Magee might want his property back,” Pandora pointed out.

“Stuff Magee. As far as I’m concerned,” said Jenny, “the nugget now belongs to the person who wants it most.”

Perhaps it was the ruthless curl in Jenny’s voice. Perhaps it was the line of the schoolmaster’s shadow on her cheek. Whatever it was, her old friend wasn’t happy about it.

“You cannot be alone. We will go with you,” said Kam, hauling his brother to his feet.

“I’m perfectly happy here,” said Lok, trying to wriggle out of his brother’s grasp.

“Ask me if I give a toss,” answered Kam.

“Oh, fine,” said Lok, shaking himself free.

“When do you think we’ll get to Eden?” asked Jenny, cramming herself into her coat. Pandora was busy ushering carrots into her satchel.

“Under clear and sunny climes?” asked the schoolmaster, craning his head past the door.

“Nightfall,” completed Kam.

It’s a well-known saying in Eden that the last leg of a journey takes a hundred percent of the grunt. It had been a long week of hiking for the girls, and they still had a little left to go. Jenny was willing to run the river that Saturday—she could have covered a continent with her tracks—but she had to obey the law of averages. The pace of the group was stuck at a slog.

Rather than fight the inevitable, she chose to lead the pack. Kam had a watch on the schoolmaster, and Lok had a companion in Pandora. No one was clamoring for her company. She was free to concentrate on things of importance.

You might imagine that would be her entrance to the saloon. And, to be sure, that was true for the first quarter of an hour or so. But there’s only so much you can ponder a challenge before you encounter it. After shaping and perfecting her opening line, Jenny found her mind moving toward the Longshank and its inhabitants.

As she figured it, most adults in the world made the mistake of behaving like fish. Take Mrs. Quinn. Instead of sticking to her goals of becoming an animal doctor, instead of looking forward and not sideways, she had let the current drag her into whirlpools and rocks. She was doomed before she began.

This wasn’t going to be Jenny’s fate. No, the trick in life was to act like the river itself—strong and fast and rough. That was the way you got ahead in this world. After she had wrested the nugget away from Louis, Jenny was determined to keep charging ahead. Nothing and nobody would slow her down.

“Wait!” called Lok, running to catch up. “We should stop for the pipe.”

“You want a smoke?”

“No,” said Lok, veering off the path and pushing back the brush. “The pipe.”

He stood aside. Under his hand was the trunk of a large, hollow tree. Around and about the wood, someone had bored scores of holes into the surface. Picture a flute dropped from a pocket of a giant and you’ll have an idea of the sight Jenny was seeing.

“What is it?” asked Jenny, her curiosity getting the better of her drive.

“It’s a carving,” said Kam, “like an organ. To make music.”

“How does it work?” asked Pandora.

Lok stepped up to the nearest hole and puffed. A mournful note, like the low of a calf, rose from the center.

“Let me have a go,” said Jenny, kissing her lips to the wood. A higher note, like the call of a bellbird, created a counterpoint.

Pandora had a try, and the peel of a diving hawk provided the harmony.

“Your turn, Mr. Grimsby!” said Jenny, forgetting herself.

“No, thank you,” said the schoolmaster. “I’d much rather listen.” As Mr. Grimsby stepped back, so too did Kam.

“It’s been worked on a lot,” said Pandora, shoving her forefinger into one of the holes. “This one slants up.”

“And this one slants down,” said Jenny.

“I like it. Who made it?” asked Pandora, craning her head to examine the whole.

“Still Hope,” said Kam. “He used to reside in these parts.”

“I thought he had a job near Lake Snow,” countered Jenny.

“He did in the few years before he died,” explained Kam. “But my father said that the Longshank was his favorite river. It’s where he discovered gold.”

Once again, Jenny felt an eerie sense of kinship with Eden’s most famous inhabitant. Still Hope was the first of the finders, and she would be the last.

“Hope of the Longshank,” said Jenny, thinking of how her own epitaph might read. “Brave and mighty and wise.”

“Hope of the Longshank,” repeated Mr. Grimsby. “A sot and a rube and a waste.” Jenny wheeled on him. The schoolmaster presented his palms. “I’m sorry, Miss Burns, I know I have vowed to be a more tolerant being, but Still Hope was no hero.”

Jenny turned to Kam. “Is that true?”

Kam shrugged. “My father said Hope could get pretty fired up.”

“Fired up? The first day I met him, he was three sheets to the wind and cursing me!” said the schoolmaster, enraged by the memory. “He said I was doomed to become a fleshless spirit, ever thirsty, ever cold, tormented by animals without eyes, haunted by the dead of caves.”

“He said it like that?” asked Pandora skeptically.

“Well, near enough,” conceded the schoolmaster.

“What did you do to deserve that kind of scolding?” Jenny waited for an account of a switching or a dark deed in the night.

“I criticized his art,” said Mr. Grimsby.

Jenny waited for the rest, but there was none. “That’s it?”

“He said he didn’t fancy my tone,” huffed the schoolmaster. “He said I could not see the beauty in growth or the grace in nature. He said men like me were the reason that beautiful countries were going to the dogs. Then he nicked my bottle.”

Here was a reversal! All of Jenny’s life, the people of Eden had spun her a story of Hope’s unspoiled virtue and patience in trial. Now she was learning he was a cuss and a boozer? Jenny was pleased that her hero had possessed an artistic temper, but becoming a bitter drunk? She could do without that part of the story.

“Can we depart now?” pleaded the schoolmaster, grabbing feebly at his torn trousers. “My shins are shivering.”

“In a minute,” said Jenny, giving the pipe another long look. Pausing midstream and hearing about Hope’s personality was causing her to think deeper about humanity than she was accustomed to.

All in all, Jenny reckoned, Pandora had a point about men being idiots. Wherever they planted their feet, folks dug and they mucked and they ruined. Even blokes who believed in emptiness and silence felt the need to make noise.

But how can anyone exist without contradictions? Jenny asked herself. Survival is cruel by design. The fish eat the flies, the flesh eat the fish, and the flies eat the flesh. We’re always going where we shouldn’t and arriving where we’re not welcome. You can’t help but intrude on the earth.

So if you’re born to trouble, what choice do you make about living? Do you stay and cheat and connive? Or do you run and hide and fossilize? In a cold and forbidding land, should you choose the life of Louis or the life of Jack?

These are critical questions for any breathing soul. Yet as much as I’d like to tell you that Jenny was blessed with enlightenment that day, I can’t. With no immediate answers to the problem, these interesting ideas didn’t have a chance to linger long. Tweaked by her fever, our heroine gave up on being a philosopher and decided to be a millionaire instead.

Truth be told, Jenny was off down the path before she had finished her thoughts. A trail of gold was streaking across the sky, the river was veering left, and she had a hunch that the turn for Eden was close.

“My poor, poor trousers,” lamented the schoolmaster, trying to keep pace.

“Annie has some safety pins,” puffed Pandora. “If you promise to be quiet, I’ll ask her for one.”

“You can do that later,” retorted Jenny. “I’ve got a bone to pick with King Louis first.”