The wishbone of a bird is formed by the fusion of two clavicles.

—Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 6

“Are you done?”

“Give me half a breath, Pandora!”

To Jenny’s discerning nose, the school’s Latin dictionary smelled a lot like Mr. Grimsby—sickly and sweet, wormy and worrisome. But it was only by dint of shoving her face in the pages that she could see clear enough to make out the definitions of the words in the skeleton diagram. The schoolroom at dusk was rarely a place of illumination.

“Is anybody coming?” asked Jenny.

“No. I said I’d tell you.”

Jenny redoubled her efforts to decipher the names of the bones. On a normal Saturday, she and Pandora would have been in there hours ago. But an endless church meeting and the rites of Eden’s sewing circle had prevented their entry. It was lucky they could snatch an hour before dark. And what torture that long afternoon had been. Knowing they had the clues to a treasure hunt, and not knowing what they meant!

“How do you think Dr. Galen came up with the idea of using a skeleton as a map for the valley?” asked Jenny.

“Dr. Galen was only a clue to finding the title of the book where the skeleton was located,” corrected Pandora. “We don’t know who labeled the diagram. But it’s very clever,” she added. “Most people wouldn’t think of connecting parts of the body with natural features like mountains and streams.”

“We have to start with the clavicle,” said Jenny. “That has to be the first clue. The missing bone. I bet the ribs are all the roads crossing Main Street. And maybe the head is Kam’s garden. Which part of Eden do you think is the shoulder?”

“Dunno. But first we need to understand what the scientific names mean in English. Then we’ll know a lot more.”

This was the hope at noon, but hopes at noon often give way to sorrows in the evening. Latin can be a troublesome language, and Jenny was busting her brain cells trying to make sense of the medical.

“Pandora, psssst! I need your help.”

“I’m watching.”

“Please?”

In came Pandora, trailing a cloud of righteousness. It had been her idea to stand guard at the schoolroom door. Being caught twice by snoops was twice more than she enjoyed.

“What?” asked Pandora.

“I think I’ve got definitions for most of the others, but I’m stuck on the meaning of clavicle. Do you think this could be it?”

Clavus: A nail, a rudder, a spike, a purple stripe. Cognate with Ancient Greek κλεiς

Pandora swung her plait around to the front and began to chew on the end. “Why would you start a treasure hunt with a nail?”

“Maybe we begin at a spike,” hazarded Jenny, “like a spike in the ground?”

“What does ‘cognate’ mean?” asked Pandora.

“Hang on a tick, let me check the other word,” said Jenny, catching hold of the Greek dictionary. “It’s a lovely sort of writing, isn’t it? Like Kam’s.”

“Kam fancies you,” said Pandora.

Now, you may think you’ve seen red before—blood from a cut, the juice of a cherry, a stain left by rust. But I’ll tell you for certain that naught could compare to the blush that fired on Jenny’s cheeks.

“He does not!”

“He does.” Like sarcasm, teasing was absent from Pandora’s philosophy. This was a pure statement of fact. “He calls you ‘Jenny Girl’ and watches you walk away and always smiles when you talk. That’s what happens when a boy fancies someone. Did you find it?”

Jenny ducked her head to try to suck dull thoughts from the dictionary. “It says . . .” She stopped.

“What?”

Words having failed her, Jenny pointed to the definition:

κλεiς: kleís: something used to lock and unlock; a key.

But that wasn’t the most important part. No, the most important part, if you were searching carefully enough, was a tiny drawing scratched out in pencil to the left of the κ.

Which looked precisely like a poppy in bloom.

“Oh,” said Pandora. “You know, that definition makes sense.”

“Of course it does!” Jenny leaped off the schoolmaster’s chair. “Remember that Mr. Grimsby said these dictionaries were donated to the school? Someone in Eden is trying to tell us where to begin! Look.” She pulled Dr. Galen’s letter from her pocket. “See this bit about drinking the poppies and making coffee up at Moonlight Creek?”

“Yes.”

“I bet that’s where we’ll find a key! At Mad Doc’s hut. Remember what Dad told me? Moonlight Creek is where Magee discovered the nugget.”

“But a key to what?” asked Pandora.

“The buried box with the gold inside,” said Jenny.

“How do you know there’s a buried box?”

With a touch of dramatics, Jenny slid the diagram under Pandora’s troubled eyes. “Guess what’s next to the clavicle in a skeleton?”

Pandora squinted at the scrawl.

“Your handwriting’s crap.”

“Pandora!”

Pandora studied the words.

“Scapula means shovel and clavicle means key, and we’re going to Magee’s hut at the creek,” burbled Jenny, dancing a jig. “It’s a perfect place for starting a hunt!”

Pandora switched her plait from left to right, right to left, and back again.

“I s’pose it makes sense. But I . . .”

“Avaunt, villain!” came a voice from outside. “Be-gone from my abused sight.”

Jenny hit the floor harder than horseshoes. “Oh, God,” she hissed, cantilevering herself under the desk.

“You see?” said Pandora, gathering the dictionaries and skeleton map in her arms. “This is why I was standing at the door . . .”

“Yes, yes,” whispered Jenny, hauling Pandora in after her, “I’m wrong, you’re right, now shhhhh!”

Luckily, Mr. Grimsby’s stage voice had the full support of his diaphragm. He must have been haranguing the hills, for it took him five minutes to reach the door of the schoolroom. By that time, Jenny and Pandora were firmly wedged in the dark.

“Oh, what a peasant slave am I, to labor for the unwashed masses. Deny me not my birthright, capricious gods! Make me not mad, ye heavens, not mad!”

Leaning forward, Jenny risked a peek at the speaker. He was bent double over the side of a school pew, pounding his fist on the back of the wood. Acting, it seemed, involved a fair bit of force.

“No,” said Mr. Grimsby, straightening up. “Too soon. In all good drama, one must hint and withhold.” He turned toward the end of the room, and Jenny attempted to imitate a pancake. “Now, where did I leave my spectacles?”

Fortune was smiling on youth that afternoon. Mr. Grimsby was almost blind without his glasses. Slicker than oil, Jenny reached around the lip of the desk and slipped the schoolmaster’s specs into Pandora’s hands.

“Alas, I am but a poor fool,” said Mr. Grimsby, rummaging through the papers. He was so close to the girls that Jenny could have drooled on his shoes. “Whither shall I wander when I am old and addled?”

The Arctic would be nice, thought Jenny.

“Blast this cursed country and all the people in it. A switch, a switch, my kingdom for a switch! Toil and trouble, where are my spectacles?”

With a petulant sniff, Mr. Grimsby took his documents in hand and stumbled out of the schoolroom. A rush of air swept through the aisle and caught itself in an eddy near Jenny’s feet. The door slammed shut.

For safety’s sake, the pair of them waited until the first stars were beginning to puncture the sky. After untying herself from a knot of limbs, Pandora rose to her feet and placed the spectacles on the desk.

“That,” said Pandora, “was very annoying.”

“Let’s filch his specs!” said Jenny. “Then he won’t be able to see anything.”

Pandora shook her head. “Then he would know someone had been here.” With care and intent, she put each dictionary back in its place. “Now he’ll never be wise.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Jenny. Mr. Grimsby was already alert to their alliance. The less attention they brought to themselves, the better. “Anyway, it’s too dark to go tonight. Can you meet me tomorrow after breakfast? Around eight?”

Pandora nodded.

“Tomorrow morning, then. At the foot of Moonlight Creek.”

Conventional wisdom decreed that Moonlight Creek was named for the dappled rays that fell on its waters. From its head at the peak of the Sleeping Girl to its end, where it joined Lake Snow, the stream was dotted with pools and waterfalls.

That was the official line. But according to old-timers like me, the creek got its moniker from a miner called Pete “Moonlight” Shay. He was so smitten with nights in the sylvan woods that he took to running up and down the rindle with his bum as bare as a newborn babe’s.

When the gold ran out, the creek lost its luster. Pete sailed away on a ship bound for wrecking, men vanished into the ether, and the warblers returned to their nests. The sounds of swearing and sluicing were replaced by a gurgling calm.

Taken together, it was a good place to be walking on a Sunday morning. For Jenny, the quiet felt like a gift from above. There had been so much happening in the past two days—so many discoveries and uncoverings—that she’d barely been able to sleep. The mystery of Doc Magee’s nugget seemed to have more pieces than a vulture’s insides. She was glad for the opportunity to think things out.

At times like these, a girl like Pandora was a comforting person to have around. She didn’t fuss with her blisters or clutter her talk with guff about the weather. Sure, she was slow-moving, but she always looked a challenge square in the eye and set her feet to conquer it.

They were on the right track, Jenny was certain. The missing bone and the skeleton and the letter and the poppy drawing next to the definition all pointed to a plan. Someone had staged the office with a whole lot of thought. But who?

To avoid the sin of making no sense, Jenny attempted to work it through in her mind. Doc Magee was a medical man. So he was probably the one who came up with the idea of a skeleton map. But why would he do that? You don’t discover a gold nugget and then create a convoluted way to find it.

Unless, she thought, Magee was in deadly danger. Maybe he was so nervy about being murdered by thieves that he buried the nugget and ran away across the sea. Then he created the treasure hunt as a sneaky way of remembering where he’d put it. Something only he would be able to work out.

If that was true, Jenny reasoned, then Doc Magee still had enemies living in local parts. Maybe that was it! Maybe someone in Eden was waiting to wring his neck for the secret of where the nugget was buried. There were a number of dodgy characters who hadn’t left town after the Rush. Maybe that was why Magee had stayed away so long.

Jenny was just congratulating herself on solving the puzzle when another thought came to her. What if the nugget had already been found? What if a practical joker had knocked off Doc Magee, pocketed the gold, and dreamed up the hunt as a nasty prank? He—or she—could have snuck into the office and set up the skeleton. So maybe those bones really were Magee after all!

“It’s not Doc Magee,” said Pandora.

“What?”

“The skeleton. It’s not Doc Magee.”

“How did you know I was pondering that?” demanded Jenny.

“I didn’t. I was working it through in my mind.” Pandora employed her trademark brand of logic. “King Louis said Magee didn’t have a big head. The skeleton has a really big head. So it’s not Doc Magee.”

Jenny sighed. Syllogisms can be awful hard to beat. “Then who else could it be?” she asked.

“Anyone who’s been dead for a long time,” answered Pandora. “But that’s not important right now. What’s important is reaching Moonlight Creek and finding a key and figuring out the next step on the skeleton map before it gets hotter. I’m sweaty.”

After an hour or so of hill climbing, the pair hit the remains of an old mining camp. Dented pots and pitted knives, blackened campfire stones, and rusty spoons—the site was a rubbish pit.

Jenny might have pardoned laziness, but the miners had also chopped down scores of mountain beeches to make the clearing. In a place where native trees were rare, this was sacrilege.

“Men are idiots,” said Pandora.

“You said it.”

Jenny kicked over one of the pots.

“Pandora, will you be mad at me for asking another question?”

“No.”

“Do you think Doc Magee was the one who created this hunt?”

“Probably,” her best friend answered. “He’s the only medical man I can think of.”

“So if he’s alive, he’s bound to come back for the nugget.”

“Maybe,” said Pandora. “Or maybe he wants one of his mates to find it instead.”

Altruism was a factor that Jenny had never thought to consider. Sure, Louis had mentioned that Magee was good at forging friendships. And a trained doctor had the benefit of a steady and well-paying profession. But could any man from the Rush be unselfish enough to give up a fortune?

It was what the bookish among us might call a conundrum, and it puzzled our heroine for quite some time. Jenny slurped at water from the creek. She patted a severed stump. She leaped rocks, enlarging the minutes. And she kept right on thinking.

“Pandora?”

“I’m next to you.”

“What would you do with the gold nugget? I mean, if you had it all to yourself?”

For once in a blue moon, Pandora was flummoxed. Instead of barging forward, she sat plumb on a stone and stared at the water. She sat there for some seconds.

“Pandora, are you okay?”

“I’m considering.”

Jenny found a perch beside her friend and attempted to snag a glimpse of the valley through the leaves. By her calculating, they must be a mile below the head of the Sleeping Girl and far above Lake Snow. This was higher than she had ever come up Moonlight Creek, and she was furious at what the drought had done. Falls were now dribbles and pools were bare puddles. Her whole world was drying up faster than a dewdrop in a desert.

“I guess I’d pay for Mum to go to a fancy clinic,” said Pandora finally. “And then I’d buy a zebra.”

“A zebra?”

“Zebras sleep on their feet,” stated Pandora.

“Did your mum tell you that?”

“Yes. She wanted to be an animal doctor before she came here.”

Jenny rested her chin on her palm and pondered the image of Mrs. Quinn shoving her hand up a cow’s bum. Adults were a funny bunch. You’d expect a person to pick a goal and stick to it. Instead, everyone she knew over the age of twenty appeared to be blundering in six different directions. Only Gentle Annie looked like she knew which way was north.

“Is she really bad enough to need a clinic?” asked Jenny.

“Yes. She’ll probably be dead before New Year.”

Now, before you get to judging Pandora’s bluntness, you have to remember the way of the time. These days, we’ve got potions and procedures and nurses all starched. You can’t sneeze without someone trying to microscope your hankie. That wasn’t the case right after the Rush. Back then, the undertaker was a very busy man. Drinking, eating, coughing, sleeping—you took your life in your hands just getting out of bed. Not a day passed without an acquaintance falling by the wayside. Get a good epidemic raging and you might lose half the territory.

So you’ll understand why Pandora, who lived her loves in the moment, would take a practical approach to Mrs. Quinn’s prognosis.

“Even if she dies there, I think they’ll have cherry pie. Mum loves cherry pie.”

Jenny nodded. “They will probably have lemonade, too.”

“Yes,” said Pandora, “at the fancy ones.”

Lemonade, cherry pie, and a zebra, thought Jenny. There were worse things to wish for in a fortune.

“C’mon,” she said, tugging at her friend. “We must be almost there.”