Some people are good at jigsaw puzzles. They buy those fat boxes, the ones with more than twenty thousand pieces. Days drift by, maybe weeks, as the puzzle takes shape. When it’s done, they frame the puzzle and put it on the wall so whenever a guest comes over, they can say, “Look at that puzzle. It took two whole years. Aren’t you impressed?”

Other people, however, prefer puzzles with, say, ten or twenty pieces at most, because after a few minutes of puzzling, boredom sets in and the swimming pool calls, or that shady spot beneath the willow tree, or the movie theater. Lorelei was that kind of person.

“Why is this taking so long?” she complained for the hundredth time. “This is soooo boring.”

Homer, Hercules, and Lorelei lay on their stomachs on a pink carpet. They had cut out all the map pieces from the reptile book and had spread them out.

“Boring?” Homer held one of the squares. Like most of the other pieces, it was plain white with little black dots sprinkled in no apparent order. A bunch of pieces had words on them. Hercules was working on those. “This is Rumpold Smeller’s map, the most important map in pirating history, and you say it’s boring?”

“The map isn’t boring. But putting it together is. Can’t you go faster?”

“It’s not that easy,” Homer grumbled.

A spray of water hit Homer. Speckles the whale shark swam along the edge of the pool. Luckily the water hadn’t hit the map pieces—though the map had already been inside the belly of a mutant tortoise, so a little water probably wouldn’t hurt it.

“Hey!” Homer cried again as another spray of water hit his face. The whale shark’s eye peeked over the pool’s edge. “I think he’s doing that on purpose.”

“He wants to play,” Lorelei explained. She stomped over to a toy chest and grabbed a red beach ball. “Fetch,” she called as she tossed the ball into the pool. Speckles swam after it and caught it in his enormous mouth. Then he swam back to the side of the pool and spat out the ball at Lorelei. Dog, who’d kept a cautious distance between himself and the lair’s pool, took a few wary steps forward. “Fetch,” Lorelei called again as she threw the ball. As the shark went after it, Dog wagged his tail.

While it was odd, indeed, that a whale shark wanted to play fetch, Homer had only one thing on his mind. “Lorelei, will you please stop making so much noise? We’re trying to concentrate.”

In truth, Lorelei wasn’t the source of Homer’s frustration. The map was proving to be very confusing. There were no lines indicating mountains or rivers or roads. But there was a date in the bottom corner and a little directional key in the upper corner. Other than the words, everything else was just black dots.

Hercules sat up. “I’ve pieced the words together.”

“What does it say?” Lorelei asked as she ran over.

Hercules read:

Flammae geminate supra et infra

Speculum infinitum inter eas

In oculis caelestibus stellae lucent

Post salivam quod quaeritis latet

“Huh?” Lorelei and Homer said.

“It’s Latin.”

“Can you translate?” Homer asked.

“Sure. I’m the spelling bee champion of the world. But it might take a while.” He began to scribble in a spiral notebook.

Lorelei sighed and stomped back to the side of the pool, where she grabbed the red ball and returned to her game of whale shark fetch. Homer furrowed his brow and glared at her. “We’ve got serious business over here, Lorelei. We could use your help figuring this out.”

“You’re the map reader,” she said. A spray of water hit Homer’s sleeve as Speckles spat out the ball.

I’m the map reader, Homer thought. And so he was. That’s why it would be very difficult for him to admit that this map didn’t make sense.

Hercules stared at the Latin words, deep in thought, mumbling to himself. Homer, on the other hand, was a bit worried about how close Dog was standing to the edge of the pool. “That shark’s got a really big mouth,” he said to Lorelei. “Aren’t you afraid he might eat you?”

“Speckles would never eat me,” Lorelei said. “He doesn’t eat mammals. Fetch!”

As she threw the ball into the pool, Dog jumped in after it. He paddled up to the ball and sank his teeth into the red plastic. That’s when Speckles opened his enormous mouth. Dog didn’t stand a chance. Even if Dog had been an athletic sort of creature, even if he’d had flippers and a mermaid tail, he would not have been able to escape the suction of that mouth. In an instant, Dog and the red ball disappeared into the black hole. The whale shark’s mouth snapped close.

“Bad Speckles!” Lorelei cried.

Homer’s heart got confused for a moment and tripled its beat. No words came. Pure agony shot through his body like a bolt of lightning. What had just happened? Had his beloved dog been eaten by a shark? No survival training could have prepared Homer for this. The only word he managed to utter was “Dog?”

Lorelei, however, was quick to react. She leaped onto the whale shark’s back. “Open up!” she ordered, kneeling on the creature. “Come on, open up!” She rapped her knuckles on his head.

Angry tears filled Homer’s eyes. “He ate Dog!”

“He didn’t eat him,” Lorelei said. “He’s playing hide-and-seek.”

Homer ran to the side of the pool as Lorelei and the shark took a lap. “He ate Dog. I saw him eat Dog!”

“Homer, don’t worry. I have an idea.” Lorelei pointed to the vending machine. “Get a bag of brine shrimp. He can’t resist.”

Homer ran to the machine, got a bag, and ripped it open. Then he knelt at the pool’s edge and held out the bag with a trembling hand. The whale shark swam up and opened his mouth. A spray of spit coated Homer’s face as Dog was ejected. Dog flew through the air, the red ball still in his mouth, and landed right next to Hercules. Hercules looked up from his word puzzle and said, “Oh, hi, Dog.”

Homer tossed the bag of shrimp into the shark’s mouth. Just before the shark submerged with his treat, Lorelei jumped back onto land. Homer threw his arms around Dog. “Are you okay?” “Urrrr.” Dog shook shark spit from his ears. Homer didn’t know whether he should yell at Lorelei or thank her. But that was nothing new.

“Hey, you guys, I’ve got it. Do you want to hear the translation?” Hercules asked. And this is what he read:

Twins of flame above and below

An endless mirror between

In heavenly eyes the stars do shine

Behind saliva hides what you seek

“Saliva?” Lorelei said. “The treasure’s hidden behind saliva? That’s disgusting.” She sat between Homer and Hercules. “So? What does it mean? Where are we going?”

“I’m not sure,” Homer said, his heart settling back to its normal rhythm.

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?” She folded her arms. “You’re supposed to be a map expert.”

“The only thing I can figure out is that it’s a celestial map. That makes sense, since Rumpold spent so much time at sea and he’d navigate using the stars.”

“Can you read a celestial map?” Hercules asked.

This was no time to be embarrassed. He had to admit the truth. “No. I can’t read it. We’re going to need help. But I know just the place to go.”