IN a four-door jeep bouncing over lava fields dotted with rain puddles, Max did not feel magically protected. Even with his talisman. He sat sunken into the backseat with his arms draped over the top of his head, next to Brandon the Pilot, who looked out of place without a cockpit. Max’s head had already hit the roof twenty-three times, and his seat belt was carving a diagonal stripe down his chest.
“So let me get this right . . . you’re going into the volcano because you think Stinky and his daughter are there,” said Brandon the Pilot. “And you think they’re following Jules Verne’s secret message, which has something to do with the miracle cure you guys found and they stole.”
“Yes,” Alex said, her hands clutching both armrests.
“And if you’re wrong?” Brandon said. “If the people they saw at the airport were just some rando rich guy and his daughter, and you’re going into a volcano for no reason?”
“Then we’ll come back up,” Kristin snapped. “But I believe we must commit ourselves to a decision. And that involves a certain amount of optimism and inner strength.”
“What she said,” Max echoed.
The wipers pounded against the rain but only managed to create greasy arcs across the windshield. Kristin was jerking the steering wheel to the right and left, squinting through the gaps. “Sorry. Visibility is very bad.”
Max sat back, fiddling with the Vegvísir medallion that hung around his neck. He fought off the smell of ammonia, which occurred when he thought someone was trying to trick him. Sometimes it happened when people said things he didn’t understand. Like Dr. Zax-Ericksson’s Or so they say. Was that a joke? Did he think the talisman was a dumb old story? Or did he hold out hope that it might be true?
And then there was Jules Verne. The previous night, he, Alex, and Kristin had stayed up way too late decoding one last section of Verne’s note. On the positive side, it turned out to be in the runic futhark alphabet.
On the negative side, it didn’t sound like it was written by Jules Verne.
He drummed his fingers on the armrest. They had bought good weatherproof winter gear in the morning, but Max hated long pants and these were lined. And itchy. To take his mind off it, Max pulled his copy of the note from his pocket and looked at it for what must have been the tenth time.
Pour entrer dans le noyau:
L’arc de mains en prière dans la plaine centrale
lèvera les yeux vers
Le chameau à trois bosses et aux oreilles tombantes
To enter the core:
the arc of praying hands at the central plain
will lift your eyes
to the lop-eared three-humped camel
“Are you sure you translated this thing right?” Max asked.
“I checked, double-checked, and whatever a-hundred-times-checked is called,” Alex replied.
“Sounds like a joke to me,” Brandon said.
Max nodded. “Maybe Gaston wrote it. We know he went bonkers late in life. And this is bonkers.”
“Bonkers?” Kristin said. “This is a place near New York City, no?”
“That’s the Bronx,” Brandon said. “Or Yonkers.”
“Bonkers is what you are when you decide to drive over lava on a wild-goose chase and your brains are about to fall out,” Max added.
Kristin slowed the jeep to a stop and let out a yawn. “I don’t know about that. But we are in the center of what I would consider the central plain. Which is good. Because this is where the note told us to go, and if you don’t mind, I must rest. I’m having trouble seeing.”
Before anyone could respond, the jeep’s engine coughed and sputtered. Then, with a wheeze, it went dead. Kristin turned the ignition key, but nothing happened. The only noise was the drumming of rain on the roof and a whistle of wind against the glass. “Guess it wants to rest too,” Max said.
“Is there a gas station nearby?” Alex squeaked, gazing out over the wet tundra.
Kristin sighed. “Sometimes it stalls out when you stop in the rain, but most times you can get it going again. Maybe if we wait a few minutes for the weather to clear a bit.”
“Sweaty feet . . .” Max pushed open his door and stepped out. “Sweaty feet!”
“Sorry,” Brandon said. “I used powder.”
“That’s claustrophobia,” Alex explained. “Max, what are you doing? It’s freezing and wet.”
Max took a deep breath. Despite the rain and cold, the air felt good. “Figured I’d take a stroll and look for camel noses to pick.”
“I don’t recommend walking on a’a,” Kristin said.
“On what?” Max asked.
“A’a,” Kristin repeated. “It is a Hawaiian word we borrow, for rough lava.”
“Hey, he wants to take a walk, why not?” Brandon said. “As long as he stays in sight. Me, I’m staying here to help get this thing working again.”
“My hero,” Alex said.
“Ew,” Max said, closing the door and pulling his hood over his head. Even with the wind and rain pelting his face, he felt better outside the car than in. The itchiness didn’t bother him so much.
Alex cracked open her window. “Just remember Greenland,” she said, “where we had to ‘look for the bump on the elephant’s forehead.’ That seemed crazy too.”
“Right. We thought we had to look for a real elephant, like maybe there was a circus in town,” Max said. “And then we saw that the elephant was an elephant-shaped ice formation.”
“Fascinating,” came Kristin’s voice, muffled through the closed window. “So maybe you’ll see something that looks like a three-humped camel.”
Max looked around. They were maybe a hundred yards from the base of Snaefellsjökull, which rose into the low, moving clouds. The summit was shrouded, but every few seconds a snow-capped summit peeked through. On it were dark rock crags that jutted upward like thick fingers. “What are those rocks at the top?” he yelled toward the car.
“They are lava plugs,” Kristin called out her window. “Left from millennia ago when the volcano was active.”
“They look like a convention of fire hydrants, not a camel,” Brandon called out.
Max nodded. “It’s all about the angle. I bet from one angle, we’ll see the camel. Give me a minute. I won’t leave your sight.”
He could hear Alex protesting. Kristin too. But they didn’t come after him, and neither did Brandon the Pilot. Max began treading carefully over the lava. Even with thick boots, he could feel the jutting rock through his soles.
“Ah!” he cried. “Ah!”
Which made him realize exactly why the Hawaiians gave it that name.
As he went on, he tried to focus on the rock formations. But the clouds were thick and mischievous, playing hide-and-seek with the summit. The wind was picking up too, tossing snow and powdery ice into his face. Unlike the anorak he had worn in Antarctica, this one’s hood did not have an outer fur lining around it.
He fumbled in his jacket pocket, where he knew he’d kept goggles, but they must have fallen out in the car. By now the jeep wasn’t much more than a gray dot. A gray, unlit dot, which meant Kristin hadn’t gotten it started yet.
So he kept walking, slowly, parallel to the base of the volcano. He could make out a hulking, humanlike shape in the snowy, rainy mix, not too far ahead of him.
He stopped, his heart pumping fast. “Hello?” he called out, but his voice was lost in the wind and precipitation.
Stepping closer, he noticed the shape was not moving. It was much taller than a human, and it did not have limbs. It was a rock. A lava plug, he guessed, from the smooth dark surface.
Curious, he kept going. The wind had blown any snow off the rock. It was slanted slightly away from him, lined vertically with four crevices extending from the middle to the top. Behind it, Max realized, was another formation. It was mirroring the first one, slanted toward it so the two met at the top. Like a tent.
It was a natural shelter. Perfect. If there was room to sneak underneath it, he might be protected from the weather.
“Max!” came Alex’s distant voice, carried on the wind.
Picking up his pace toward the two rocks, Max called over his shoulder, “I’m OK!”
He slipped underneath. Up close the two rocks were taller than he’d imagined, maybe fifteen feet high. The second rock was exactly like the first, four vertical crevices reaching upward, forming what looked like a thumb and four thick fingers. Like two hands touching.
No, not touching.
Praying.
The arc of praying hands at the central plain will lift your eyes . . .
Max gazed up at Snaefellsjökull. The peak was shrouded in ominous clouds. He kept his eyes glued until the obstruction cleared like a wave bouncing off a jetty.
At the summit, three identical lava plugs stood at equal distances. They were perfectly shaped like thick thumbs. Immediately to the left was a misshapen curved plug. It was angled at the top away from the others by ninety degrees and marked by a moon-shaped mark at its summit. A cave.
Max pulled out his phone and took a photo before the clouds could swallow it again. Staring at the image, he zoomed closer. At the top of the curved rock but below the cave was a curved horizontal crack.
Like an eye. And a smile.
Max dropped his phone into his pocket. With a whoop and a jump, he began running back to the jeep. He didn’t care how the a’a’ felt under his shoes.
“We have our ca-a-a-amel!” he screamed, his voice cutting through the wind.