Shoulders are like generals, battling between freedom of movement and safety of formation.—Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 7

“I bet it has rats,” said Pandora, examining their quarry. “Huts like that always have rats.”

“They gave it their best,” said Jenny, feeling a spot of tenderness for the heap in front of them.

Doc Magee’s hut was a ramshackle affair surviving on orneriness. The bulk of it was built with flat river schist, with walls stacked a mite higher than a man’s top hat. One side was a chimney pipe, supported by a fat wad of rocks. The other side was simply a higgle and piggle of stone. Two slabs of corrugated iron met in a peak above the weathered wood door. You’d find more beauty in a wart.

“It must have been a haul bringing in the roof. And it’s got a veranda.” Jenny patted one of the sapling poles that supported the edge of an overhang. The roof shivered in protest. “Though I think it wants keeping up.”

Pandora picked up a stick and made for the entrance. “It’s okay. Mum says I’m pretty good at killing rats.”

That was assuming the rats had something to live on. Jenny didn’t expect the inside to be much better than the outside, but she was still sorry to see how stark the interior appeared. This was hardly a room crammed with clues. It was hardly a room at all.

“Silent Jack must have been a very patient man,” said Pandora, groping her way through the gloom. There was only one window to the hut, and it was an inch thick in grime. “Or deaf.”

“Why?” asked Jenny.

“Because I wouldn’t like to sleep this close to someone who snored,” she said, poking her stick under one of the two cots in the corner. A table by the window and a piece of calico balled up over a curtain rod were the most that could be said for the rest of the furniture.

Jenny sighed. “Do you see anything that resembles a key or a shovel?”

“No. But I doubt they’d be lying around in plain sight.” Pandora jabbed her stick at the ashes in the fireplace. “There’s probably a hint in the letter. The writer wouldn’t have left us without directions.”

Into her pocket Jenny went. Out on the table fell a ball of twine, an apple core, two nails, and the scrunched-up skeleton map. Into her pocket she went again—and came up clutching gullyfluff.

“I don’t have it!” cried Jenny. Panic was none too fine a word for her feelings at that moment.

“What do you mean?” asked Pandora.

“The letter is supposed to be with the skeleton map,” said Jenny, clawing at lint balls. “But it’s not!”

Pandora poked her stick at the contents of Jenny’s pocket. “Did you leave it at home?” she asked.

“No. I haven’t changed since Thursday.”

“Well, that explains the smell,” said Pandora. Before Jenny could react to the insult to her hygiene, her friend began pacing. She took two steps forward, stopped, and stepped back.

“It’s okay. Mr. Grimsby will have it.”

“What?” screeched Jenny.

“You took the letter out in the schoolroom. That was the last place you had it. You must have left it on the desk.”

“This is a disaster!”

Pandora cocked her head to the left. “Why?”

“Because now he knows where we’ve been!” cried Jenny. “He’ll spoil everything.”

It was one of Pandora’s quirks to stick out her tongue when she wanted to express an objection. She had many a scar from the schoolyard to prove that it worked.

“What’s the tongue for?” demanded Jenny.

“A disaster is the town burning down and my mum chucking me through the window to save me and rams stampeding through the street and bashing out my brains.”

“So?”

“So this is a problem,” explained Pandora. “Mr. Grimsby has Dr. Galen’s letter, but he doesn’t know what it means. He may make a guess about Moonlight Creek, but he probably doesn’t realize what we’re after. We’ll just have to be careful that he doesn’t see where we’re going.”

Jenny breathed a deep breath. Somehow she expected a treasure hunt to be more daring and less debate. “So what do we do now?” she asked.

“First, you should give me the skeleton map,” said Pandora, “so you don’t lose that, too.” With a hitch of reluctance, Jenny handed it over. “And then I guess we need to search everything in the hut and see if a key appears.”

“And if it doesn’t?” demanded Jenny.

“Then we might have to give up.”

At that time, with her stomach growling, this was not a conclusion Jenny was willing to allow. Her dander was up, and when Jenny’s dander is up, it’s best to keep your head down and your netherparts covered. “Fine. I’ll start near the cots.” She stomped into a corner.

“Okay. Then I’ll start near the table,” said Pandora, oblivious to the fury that was rampaging through the room.

Sitting down with a thump on the cot by the wall, Jenny began running her hands along the stones. The only other place someone might consider hiding a key was under the earth floor, and she wasn’t keen on grubbing around in the dirt.

After she’d covered a good portion of the wall, a sticky mass of gunk was Jenny’s sole reward. She was about to succumb and shove her head under the cots when her fingers caught on something in a crook of the corner. She eyed Pandora across the room, and when she saw that her friend had her back to her, she pulled it out.

It was a small metal box wrapped in an oilcloth. Catching her breath between her teeth, Jenny carefully slipped the box from its covering, removed the lid, and examined the contents.

Her heart dropped. It was nothing. Or next to nothing. A lot of tintypes of women in their undergarments. Jenny could never figure why men liked to collect such things. You’d do better to spend your money on a haircut and a shave. Then you might stand a chance at getting near to the reality. But each to his own, or so Hapless would say.

Puzzling a little at her impulse to hide her discovery from Pandora, Jenny pulled the box farther into the light. She was on the verge of showing her best friend what she had found when she spotted a familiar face amongst the tintypes. Studying the picture in question, Jenny realized that there was only one person in Eden it resembled.

Mrs. Quinn?!

“What did you find?” asked Pandora.

“Nothing,” said Jenny, shoving the tintype of Pandora’s mother into a crack in the wall. Some family secrets are best left to cobwebs. “Pictures of girls dancing around in their bloomers.” Jenny rattled the box for proof.

“That’s an uncomfortable thing to do in your underwear.”

“Have you got anything on your side?” asked Jenny.

“Not much. A few unopened cans. I was hoping to find food bins, but there aren’t any.”

The idea of chowing down on twelve-year-old camp bread garnished with moth maggots drove Jenny’s hunger far into the hills. “Yick and yuck. Do you really think any food lying around would be worth eating?”

“No, but Dr. Galen wrote to Doc Magee about drinking coffee.” Pandora frowned at the dead flies on the table. “Which makes me wonder if that was a clue.”

For once in her short and eventful life, Jenny was a step ahead of her friend’s observational powers. “Pandora, that’s what I forgot about! The coffee!” Dashing to the fireplace, Jenny rammed her skull into the deep and the dark. She emerged with her head covered in ash and her hand clutching a black pot.

“How come I didn’t see that?” asked Pandora.

“It was up on a shelf on the side.” Jenny tried her best to keep from crowing. “You chuck your coffee grounds in the pot, boil off the water, and let the stuff settle at the bottom. I’ve seen some of the roustabouts make it.”

The lid of the pot was almost rusted shut, but with a great deal of twisting and banging, the two friends finally succeeded in wrestling it off.

Inside, rolled up neat in a tight wad of paper, was a clavicle bone.

“We found it! We found it!” screeched Jenny. She took a running leap off the wall, as if she was going to dance a two-step on the ceiling. “I was right! It is a treasure hunt! Lordy, lordy, Pandora, we’re going to be richer than Egypt!”

Ducking her head to avoid being clonked by her flying friend, Pandora fully unwrapped the paper and spread it out on the table. A faint odor of stale coffee clung to the print. The bone wasn’t the only clue in the pot. For there was writing on the paper as well.

MOLDY PEAS

Lying by the campfire, propped up on my fleas,

Dreaming of my sweetheart, eating moldy peas.

When I turned a soldier, I could lift a barn,

Now I need a pulley just to raise my arm.

Peas, peas, peas! Eating moldy peas!

Goodness, how nutritious, eating moldy peas!

Marching is a puzzle, as you muddle through,

First you turn in circles, then you split in two.

Oh, to find a general pointing to the fore,

Then I’d hide behind him, safe forevermore.

Peas, peas, peas! Eating moldy peas!

Goodness, how nutritious, eating moldy peas!

“Garters and guts,” said Jenny.

“It’s a song, right?” asked Pandora.

“Yep. From one of those wars they keep fighting. Dad hums it when he’s docking lambs.” Jenny warbled a few off-key bars. “The words aren’t quite the same.”

“You shouldn’t really sing unless you have to,” said Pandora. “But,” she added, civil-like, “I did ask the question.”

Taking the apology with the intent that was meant, Jenny studied the lyrics. For a few moments there was silence. The echo of a woodpecker came riffling down the chimney.

“Pandora, do you think . . . ?”

“I’m always thinking. Otherwise I’d be dead.”

“No, I mean, do you think this song is supposed to lead us somewhere else? Like the letter from Dr. Galen that brought us to the hut?”

Pandora yanked on her plait. “I guess that would make sense.”

“So instead of finding a real key . . . ,” began Jenny.

“. . . the clavicle and song are the key to the map,” finished Pandora.

“See this part?” said Jenny, pointing to the lines of the song.

“About lifting?” asked Pandora.

“And this bit . . .”

“About the circle?”

“It’s all the bones in the arm!” shouted Jenny.

Pandora laid the skeleton map alongside the “Moldy Peas” lyrics. “The radius or the ray—that must be the part about the circle.”

“And see how the arm splits into two bones in the lower half?” Jenny pointed to the skeleton. “Plus you have to use your arms to haul things, and your elbows to prop yourself up!”

Pandora nodded. “It’s pretty simple when you look at it.”

Jenny let out a peculiar sound.

“Do you need to visit the outhouse?” asked Pandora. “’Cause I don’t think they have one.”

“No,” said Jenny. “But I just realized where we’re standing.”

Pandora glanced at the packed earth and back at Jenny. Heavy weather was riding across her brow.

“We’re at the dip that leads to the top of the ridge,” Jenny exclaimed. “We’re on the shoulder of the Sleeping Girl!”

In the split of an instant, the clouds of confusion turned to sunshine. “Oh, I understand,” said Pandora. “It’s . . . it’s a bit like when you were talking to me about lying on the ground and becoming part of the hills. The bones of a skeleton are supposed to be like the rocks in the hills. That means to follow the “Moldy Peas” song, we need to start at the shoulder of the Sleeping Girl—which is one of the biggest mountains around town—and go down the ridgeline of her right arm toward Eden.”

Jenny slapped her hand on the table. A plume of insect parts scattered to the four winds. “Gimcrack, what I wouldn’t say to Doc Magee if I had him here! Hauling us all the way up to this stink hole. We could have climbed the ridgeline straight from town.”

“A treasure hunt isn’t supposed to be easy,” said Pandora. “Otherwise you’d call it a treasure find.” She studied the skeleton map. “What’s at the end of the Sleeping Girl’s arm?”

“Brush and rabbits, as far as I know.”

“That makes no sense—there must be something to do with the song or the phalanges and the finger bones. But I suppose we’ll have to figure it out when we get there.” Prudent as pennies, Pandora refolded the map and tucked it into the bottom of her shoe. Then she picked up a ratty woolen blanket from one of the cots and laid it on the floor.

“What are you doing?” asked Jenny.

“Packing our lunch,” Pandora replied, placing the unopened food cans in the center of the blanket and gathering the corners into a makeshift bag. “I’ve got a couple of biscuits, but you didn’t bring anything. Unless you want to eat your apple core.” She handed Jenny the sack. “It will take most of the afternoon to walk the ridgeline. And we can use the two nails from your pocket to punch the tops of the cans.”

“How come I have to carry everything?”

“You’re stronger.”

It was a rational enough reason, if not exactly fair. Jenny had slung on the bag and was on her way out the door when Pandora paused.

“What’s wrong now?” asked Jenny.

“We’re forgetting about the shoulder bone.”

“I told you,” said Jenny. “We’re on the shoulder bone.”

“No, I mean the scapula. The shovel in the skeleton map.”

“Oh, that old thing,” said Jenny, her impatience getting the better of her sense. “I’d imagine it’s outside. We’ll have a search around the lean-to.”

SQUEAK!

“What did you say?” asked Pandora.

“I didn’t say anything,” said Jenny.

SQUEAK!

“That’s very interesting. Your blanket is moving,” said Pandora.

Jenny held the bag out in front of her. The cans inside had every appearance of writhing. “Oh, my—”

“Don’t drop the—”

But Pandora’s warning arrived a hair too late. The sack hit the ground with a bump and a colossal brown creature came streaking out of the center.

“Get it, Pandora, get it!” screamed Jenny, breaking for the safety of the cot.

“I can’t find my stick!” said Pandora, scrambling for the table.

Furious at having his day of rest disturbed, the rat was ricocheting around the hut’s interior, baring his pointed teeth and hissing blue bloody murder.

“Holy son of a rodent—he must be two feet long!”

“I wonder what he eats,” speculated Pandora. “He’s much bigger than most of the ones in town. Carcasses, maybe?”

“Pandora!”

“What?”

“He’s climbing the cot!”

There are times in a young woman’s life when the forces of instinct overpower any qualms of character. Even now, when she’s grown, Pandora still talks about her act of heroism that day.

Seizing hold of the calico, she ripped the curtain rod from the wall and grabbed one end. Like a soldier waving a flag for glory, she let off an earsplitting yell, leaped off the table, and brought the rod down hard upon the edge of the cot. The rat screeched in terror and raced toward her toes.

WHAM! went the rod.

SCREECH! went the rat.

WHAM! SCREECH! WHAM!

Finally, after one last thump of the rod, the rat streaked through the open door and into the woods.

Jenny stepped down off the cot.

“Thanks, Pandora. I don’t think Still Hope could have done it any better—you were very brave.”

“Yes,” said Pandora, in a wondering kind of way. “I was, wasn’t I?”

She bent to pick up the curtain rod. Spotting the shine of metal, Jenny seized her arm. “Look!”

And there, half buried beneath the calico folds, etched with a poppy flower, was the small blade of a shovel.