Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
After days for me, but years for Hunter, of battling these numbers, at last we had our message. Or, in our case, four riddles.
Strong but hollow alive but dead inside
In natures fortress wade into deep before you seek
When the ocean bows low it exposes Achilles fatal flaw
When you face to face with death you are in the right place
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked, securing a messy bun on my head with a pencil.
Hunter dragged his hand over his face. “Riddles.”
“I know they are riddles.” I rolled my eyes. None of the sentences made sense, but it wasn’t a surprise that a pirate made it extra hard. I scratched my ankle where the snakes bit. “This is confusing as fuck.”
“Indeed.”
We stared at the written messages in silence. What bothered me the most was the last one that mentioned facing death. Did Captain William Thompson mean metaphorically, or did he hide it somewhere we would literally have to risk death to reach?
“Are these four different locations,” Hunter said, “or steps that lead to the location?”
“That’s an excellent question.” I tilted my head, thinking. “What do you think?”
Hunter hummed, pressing his lips together and puffing his cheeks. After a deep exhale, he said, “If it was me, I would separate my loot.” I had the same thought. Not the best idea to put all your eggs into one basket.
“Then we should treat them as separate entities.” I pushed loose hairs out of my eyes. “Okay, which one sounds like a place we know about and could easily crack? ‘Wade into deep’ obviously means water, and ‘fortress’ probably is the island. So what do we have here that matches this description?”
“The lake with the waterfall is deep. The pond by the giant tree is only waist deep and too small to hide anything in.”
“Okay, what else?”
“Bow could mean a curve,” Hunter said, pulling a map of the island from under the pile of papers and spreading it on the table.
With the pencil, he circled several places where the island’s shoreline bent.
“These would be easy for us to explore on foot, but these four,” he pointed at the northern side, “are impossible to reach without a boat.”
“It says ‘ocean bows low.’ Maybe it means it’s on the southern side of the island, so we could ignore these locations.
Okay. We have several potential places to explore.
” I reread the other two riddles, which both had hostile words.
“What do we know of that could kill us or is already dead, but apparently is also a zombie because it’s still alive? ”
Hunter chuckled. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
I was smarter than this. I could crack this.
I got up and walked around the room, playing with words.
Strong meant powerful or forceful. But it also had to be hollow, which could be empty or soulless.
“I think I got it. The hill on the island is made of a rock. It’s lifeless, it’s dead.
But the jungle represents a breathing, living organism. ”
Hunter’s mouth quirked. “Are you saying it means the treasure is hidden somewhere on this island?”
My shoulders slumped. With a sigh, I dropped onto my chair.
“How about we continue brainstorming as we check out a few potential locations while it’s still bright outside?” Hunter said.
“Where do you want to go first?”
“The easiest one would be the lake.”
I groaned. After the warm shower I’d taken, my hope was never to set a foot into that icy pool again. “I was afraid you’d suggest that.”
We gathered Hunter’s snorkeling gear and strolled to the waterfall.
First, we examined the area behind it (a sheer rock wall), and then we identified several suspicious boulders deep in the water before diving in.
The lake was crystal clear, and from the shore, the bottom appeared much closer than it was.
Hunter swam with ease to the deeper area, whereas I had to surf up and gulp (yelping and cursing at the same time) more air since the shock of cold water knocked my breath away.
It took me several tries before I reached the bottom, just long enough to explore for a few seconds before I had to go back up.
Winded, I crawled out of the water and lay flat on my back, my goosebump-covered skin sucking up warmth from the rock that had baked all day in the sun. I trembled after spending close to an hour in Lake Baikal junior. It would be a shocker if I didn’t get hypothermia after today.
Hunter dropped next to me, his cold shoulder touching mine. He released a deep breath.
“I have permanent brain freeze,” I said, my teeth chattering.
He faced me, lips blue, cheeks red, and wet hair sticking up in different directions after he’d removed his mask. The corners of his mouth turned upward. “This lake is so damn cold ‘blue balls’ is taking on a whole new meaning to me.”
I let out a breath of surprise and then a guffaw erupted from me.
Hunter was full-on laughing, too. For a long minute, we were two idiots, shivering and cackling.
Once the funny bug left us, I was exhausted.
And ravenous, so damn hungry I could eat a cow.
We ventured back to the hut, where Hunter and I swapped wet clothes for dry and he disappeared to start making dinner, while I stayed to ponder more about the riddles.
Monday jumped on the table as soon as Hunter left, and I didn’t bother to shoo him away or set him back on the floor. He would only jump up again.
One of the other options for the second riddle was the fishing lagoon.
Though I wasn’t sure if the surrounding area counted as a fortress if a considerable part of it was a low barrier made of a reef.
I moved to the next line. Achilles. Why him?
My eyes searched the bookshelf until they came across D’Aulaires’s Book of Greek Myths.
I pulled it out, opened it to the table of contents, and ran my finger down, finding nothing.
Then I turned to the index at the end of the book and looked up “Achilles 106, 180, 184.”
I flipped pages, my eyes scanning the words, reading about the greatest Greek warrior, raised by the wise centaur after his mother, Thetis, went to the sea and never returned. The reason for his weak spot was how she held him over a sacred fire while making him almost immortal—by his heel.
Because she held him over fire, the riddle could mean we had to walk on something hot. Sand was hot during the day, but there was much of it. The rocks got hot, too, and again, there was a lot of space with bare stone.
Monday rubbed his nose on the tip of the pencil in my hand then gingerly tried to bite it. “No.” I booped him on his nose. “That’s not food.”
My stomach growled.
“Is there a cat on the table?” Hunter pressed his shoulder into the doorway, arms crossed.
I smiled innocently. “Nope.”
“Oh, okay. Do want to take a break and join me in the kitchen?” He wiggled his eyebrows, his face conveying peculiar excitement. “I have a surprise for you.”
A dead chicken—that was his surprise. Not sure what I was expecting: a bottle of wine, a pair of sunglasses, a comfortable pillow—ideally faux goose down—but the lifeless bird wasn’t it.
“Oh, dear.” I grimaced at the sight. “Did you kill it?”
“I thought you’d like something besides fish.”
It would be a nice change from our daily meal of fruit, avocado, fish, sticky rice, or undercooked beans.
I wanted to suggest to Hunter that he soak beans overnight to soften them like my mother used to, but it wasn’t my place to tell him what to do.
He was kind enough to host me, so I appreciated any food he served.
“I’ll be honest with you.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust and gestured at the lifeless bird. “I don’t know how to pluck or gut that.”
“No worries, I’ll do it,” Hunter said. “Tonight, for dinner, we’ll have grilled chicken.”
My mother was against waste, so she found ways to get the most out of everything. I might have never helped, but I’d had the privilege of watching her cook while I did my homework in the kitchen.
“Why don’t we cut off bigger pieces, grill them, and use the rest to make a soup?
” My eyes landed on a gigantic carrot on the picnic table, covered with dirt.
I palmed the enormous root, testing its weight and feel.
“Wow, that is huge! My fingers don’t fully wrap around …
er … what do you call it? Its root? Shaft? ”
Hunter threw a look at me over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised.
“I don’t think carrots have shafts, but I’ve held larger things in my hand,” he deadpanned, but then a slight smile curved his lips into a full-on smirk.
I shook my head, and my entire body burned with embarrassment because my mind couldn’t undo the image of Hunter holding his dick.
“Why are you blushing?” he said. “I was talking about an eggplant. What did you think?”
Laughing, I left the vegetable alone and smoothed loose hairs off my forehead. Hunter reached for my face and lightly brushed his knuckles over my cheek. All my nerve endings telescoped to the one spot he touched.
“You have pen ink everywhere,” he said.
“Oh good.” I stepped to the mirror on the tree and gasped at my reflection.
Blue streaks covered my face as if I was back in tenth grade writing a five-thousand-word essay on why physical education shouldn’t be part of the standard high school curriculum.
I groaned and rubbed spots with my finger.
“You should have told me I looked like this.”
“I didn’t notice it until now.” Hunter took a sharpening stone and moistened the top with water. He angled a knife and slowly drew the blade down and across the stone in a smooth motion.
“Phill would’ve pointed that out right away,” I said. Phill’s only talent was to find everything negative before he saw anything positive. I braced for the old anger to bubble up as it used to, but it didn’t.
“The good news is I am not Phill.”