Despite their progress across the ocean, Lorelei’s mood remained gloomy. Her pale, frowning face reminded Homer of Zelda, who was always draped in sadness. It’s a well-known fact that if you spend too much time with someone who is sad, you start to feel sad, too. The sadness floats around and gets in your hair and on your face. Then it seeps into your thoughts. So Homer tried to keep his brain busy by studying the console’s buttons and gadgets. At least his toxic rash was all better.

It was Lorelei’s turn to sleep, so Homer took watch in the pilot’s seat. The problem with traveling at hyper-speed was that sightseeing was difficult, even with the headlight beams on high. The submarine zipped through the water so fast, Homer couldn’t get a good look at ocean life. And just like a car traveling down the highway, collecting bugs on its windshield, the sub’s observation window collected jellyfish. Poor jellies. Unlike fish, they couldn’t swim out of the way. Splat!

“Ooooh, there’s another one,” Homer said as the tentacled creature slid down the glass. “Too bad this thing isn’t powered by jellyfish guts.”

Hercules sat next to Homer in a copilot’s seat, with Rumpold’s map draped across his lap. “This riddle still doesn’t make much sense. ‘Twins of flame above and below. An endless mirror between. In heavenly eyes the stars do shine. Behind saliva hides what you seek.’ ”

“Some of it makes sense,” Homer said. “We know it’s the Draco constellation, so the dragon has heavenly eyes, right? ‘In heavenly eyes the stars do shine.’ We’ve figured out that line.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

Homer cringed as another jellyfish hit the windshield, leaving a gooey smudge the size of a pillow. “Wow! That was the biggest one yet. I never knew they could get that big.”

“What about the other lines?” Hercules asked, his gaze focused on the map. “What about the first line, ‘twins of flame’?”

“Well…” Homer paused. He’d never had much luck with games involving wordplay. On stormy nights back on the goat farm, when the power went out, the Scrabble board usually made an appearance. His sister, Gwendolyn, always won because she used mysterious scientific words. If anyone challenged and said, “Gwendolyn, nurftle isn’t a word,” Gwendolyn would say, “Of course it’s a word. It’s a word all taxidermists know.” And then she’d end up on a triple-word square and her score would soar.

Just once, Homer had tried to cheat. “Ybkzurp is a word all mapmakers know.” But Gwendolyn had a hissy fit, and Homer had to change his word to burp. Gwendolyn won.

Homer read the riddle again. “Well, dragons breathe fire, so that might be the flame part. ‘Twins of flame above and below.’ So we know that there is a dragon in the sky, and if the dragon has a twin, then it must be a… dragon on land.”

“Well, it can’t be a real dragon,” Hercules said. “Dragons are mythological creatures. So it must be something like a dragon statue. Or maybe something shaped like a dragon.”

“We won’t know until we get there,” Lorelei mumbled sleepily. How long had she been awake?

“Ur.” Dog rolled over and stuck his legs in the air, presenting his belly for scratching. Lorelei, who was lying next to Dog, ignored him. Dog got to his feet and nudged Lorelei with his nose, but still she ignored him. “Ur?”

The boys shared a long helpless look. Was Lorelei going to be in this sad mood for the entire quest?

Hercules folded the map and set it on the console. “I have an idea,” he said. “Maybe we could have a funeral for Daisy.” It was the first time anyone had mentioned the rat by name since Homer had delivered the bad news.

“Really?” Lorelei pushed her bangs from her swollen eyes and looked up at the boys.

“Sure,” Hercules said with a shrug. “Why not? It might make you feel better if we do something like that.”

Would a funeral make Lorelei feel better? Homer wasn’t sure. Lord Mockingbird’s had been pretty weird, but it was also the only funeral Homer had ever attended. At this point, he’d do nearly anything to get Lorelei to stop moping. They needed her help with the riddle.

“But she’s not here,” Lorelei said. “We can’t bury her.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Hercules said. “We can use the funeral to remember Daisy.”

Homer checked the autopilot setting. According to the blinking black dot, they’d crossed the halfway point and were still on course. Splat! A yellow jellyfish hit the windshield. Homer wanted to holler, “Look at that one!” because it was the size of two pillows. But given that they were about to hold a funeral, he thought it best to restrain his amazement.

Everyone, including Dog, sat in a circle on the submarine’s cold floor.

“What do we do now?” Homer asked.

“Well, maybe Lorelei could tell us how she met Daisy,” Hercules said.

“Okay.” A little sparkle lit up in Lorelei’s eyes as the memory drifted to the surface. “I was living behind the utility closet at the soup warehouse. Lots of people used to dump their garbage out in the alley, and sometimes it was pretty good stuff. I had my eye on a sofa cushion, but when I went to get it, I found a family of rats living in it. A mom and her five new babies. They were so cute.”

Homer shuddered. He’d seen newborn rats back on the farm—pink, hairless, and squirmy like overfed maggots. Cute wasn’t the word he’d choose.

“I left the couch cushion in the alley so the mother rat could take care of her babies. But a week later, someone came and took the cushion away. I felt so sad wondering what had happened to the rat family. Then I saw something moving in the shadows. One of the baby rats lay on the bricks, shivering. She must have fallen out of the cushion. I carried her inside and fed her some soup. She became my rat.”

“Why’d you name her Daisy?” Hercules asked.

“Because most people think rats are ugly. But I thought she was beautiful. Like a flower.”

“That’s a misnomer,” Hercules said. “A misnomer is when you call something the opposite of what it is. Like when you name a pig Perfume. Or when you name a turtle Speedy.”

“Daisy wasn’t a misnomer,” Lorelei said with a pout. “She was beautiful.”

“Your turn,” Hercules told Homer.

Homer frowned. What was he supposed to say? “Uh, well, I remember when I first met Daisy at the soup warehouse.” What else could he say? The rat had stared at Homer with her beady eyes, black nose, and twitchy whiskers. Honestly, she’d given him the creeps. “She was… uh… she was a nice rat.”

Hercules elbowed Homer. “Keep talking,” he whispered. Lorelei flared her nostrils and looked at Homer, waiting for some sort of story.

Homer cleared his throat. “I remember how she stole my Galileo Compass when I was trying to sneak into the lair. And how she stole that silver spoon from Ajitabh’s cook when we were at his tower.” He wasn’t sure if this was the kind of story Lorelei wanted to hear, but she suddenly smiled. So he kept going. “And how she got into the cave on Mushroom Island and stole those harmonic crystals.”

“She was a brilliant thief,” Lorelei said like a proud mother. “I didn’t need to teach her anything. She was a natural.”

Feeling like he’d done his job, Homer elbowed Hercules. “Your turn.”

“Well, I didn’t spend much time with Daisy,” Hercules said. “But I do know that the word rat comes from raet, which is Old English. And the word rodent comes from rodere, which in Latin means ‘to gnaw.’ ”

“She was good at gnawing,” Lorelei said.

“Funerals usually end with someone saying something, like ‘rest in peace,’ ” Hercules said. So they all said it together. “Rest in peace.” And that’s all it took, just a bit of talking, to cheer Lorelei up.

“I still miss her, but I do feel a little better.” She gave Dog a hug.

And so they sat for a while, the hum of the battery the only sound. Dog stayed close to Lorelei, as if he sensed that she needed something warm and furry to hold on to. But then the mood was broken by a loud splat.

Gigantic yellow globs bombarded the window. “Yuck,” Lorelei said. “It looks like it’s raining boogers.” The next jellyfish to hit was a whopper, and the impact sent a vibration throughout the sub. The gold name plaque trembled, then slid down the wall and landed on the floor at Homer’s feet. He grabbed it.

“I hate that this is called La Madame,” Homer said. “Madame used this submarine to double-cross my uncle. And then she stole it from him. She doesn’t deserve to have it named after her.”

“I remember reading the report,” Hercules said. “When I became the official records keeper for L.O.S.T., I had to put all the files in order. The last records keeper never alphabetized anything. He simply shoved the documents in wherever there was room. It was a total disaster. I created a system based not only on the alphabet, but also on Latin prefixes. For instance—”

“Never mind all that,” Lorelei interrupted. “Tell us about the report.”

“Oh. Right.” Hercules screwed up his face for a moment, deep in thought. “Let’s see if I can remember. The report was called ‘The Unforgivable Treacheries of Madame la Directeur.’ I didn’t file it under ‘t’ for ‘the,’ because I think it best not to do that. So many things begin with ‘the’ and the ‘t’ file was bulging. So I filed it under ‘un,’ since that is the prefix for ‘unforgivable,’ and—”

“You’re going to drive me crazy,” Lorelei blurted out, her sadness dissolving by the moment. “We don’t care about the filing system. Just tell us about the report.”

So Hercules did. He remembered it as best as he could. And here’s what it said:

The Unforgivable Treacheries of Madame la Directeur

Submitted by Lord Mockingbird XVIII following an interview with Drake Horatio Pudding, witness to the horrid event.

Let it be known that Madame la Directeur did break the solemn vow she made to the Society of Legends, Objects, Secrets, and Treasures by stealing treasure for personal gain. The dastardly deed occurred as follows:

Madame la Directeur accepted a position as questing partner alongside Drake Horatio Pudding in a L.O.S.T.-sponsored quest to find the sunken remains of the HMS Bombastic. Drake offered the use of his brand-spanking-new submarine, La Madame. Upon finding the Bombastic’s remains, Madame manned the submarine while Drake explored the wreckage. At great risk to his life, Drake searched the ship’s quarters, including the captain’s, where he discovered the captain’s chest. Take heed, for what follows is undeniably dastardly.

As Drake carried the chest back to the submarine, Madame attacked him with the submarine’s robotic arms. Drake fought valiantly but was no match for the metal demons. The captain’s chest was ripped from his grip. His oxygen tank nearly empty, he watched in agony as the robotic arms and the captain’s chest disappeared into the submarine. Madame la Directeur piloted the submarine to an unknown location, leaving Drake to drown. She later sold the chest’s contents on the black market.

“That’s how I remember it,” Hercules said. “You’ve got to have a good memory to be a World’s Spelling Bee champion.”

“Robotic arms?” Lorelei asked. “This submarine has robotic arms?”

While Homer was also interested in learning more about the robotic arms, he couldn’t shake the image of his brave uncle floating in the middle of the ocean while Madame drove away.

“I wonder what was in the captain’s chest,” Hercules said.

“Some people thought the captain’s chest contained Rumpold Smeller’s treasure,” Homer answered. He knew all these details from reading The Biography of Rumpold Smeller. “The owner of the chest was Captain Ignatius Conrad. He was the last person to see Rumpold alive. He made Rumpold walk the plank—”

“—and then Rumpold drowned,” Lorelei interrupted. “Or got eaten by sharks. Or maybe both. No one actually knows.”

“Well, I’m going to rename the sub,” Homer said. “I’m going to call it The Drake.”

“You can’t do that,” Lorelei said. “It’s mine now. Everything from the lair belongs to me. Finders keepers.”

“But—”

The submarine shuddered, and the battery began to whine like an angry housefly. The whining rose an octave, and Dog started to howl.

“What’s going on?” Lorelei asked.

Homer and Hercules scrambled to their feet and rushed to the console. The battery light blinked red. “We’ve stopped,” Homer said, pointing to the autopilot screen, where the black dot had stopped moving.

“How come we’ve stopped?” Hercules asked.

“Howoooo!” Dog cried, throwing his head back as the battery’s whine continued to climb the musical scale. Lorelei covered Dog’s ears.

“I think it’s the jellyfish!” Homer shouted above the noise. “There are too many of them. They’re pushing against us.” Gelatinous yellow and white blobs now covered the entire window. “It’s like we’re trying to drive through a bowl of Jell-O. The propeller isn’t strong enough.”

Then the battery went silent. The submarine shuddered to a stop. The headlights dimmed and everything went dark.

“Ur?”