The Explorer's Code, page 20
“There’s the statue in Rome, and the penguin,” Emily said. “Any others we know about?”
“An ink painting from China,” Anna said, grinning.
The three spent the rest of the day hunting. The adults had finally been briefed on the events of the day, so they seemed happy to let the kids search for the great explorer’s hidden treasures.
The elderly women oohed and aahed over the pair of alabaster sphinxes left in the Egypt suite.
A set of carved wooden animals in the Serengeti suite pleased the Sunglasses Couple, but only after the woman chatted with the kids in the sitting room for several minutes before the husband showed up and told them they could look in every room but the bathroom, which needed to stay closed.
Macaw feathers in the Amazon room, and Book Lady had been using one as a bookmark.
A tartan cloth draped on a wall in the ballroom.
On, and on, and on, until everything Virginia had named in her journal had been found. And with each treasure came a story. The carved animals were actually Virginia’s own handiwork—a man in Hwange had taught her. The macaw feathers came from a bird eaten in the deep jungle when all hope seemed lost for rescue—and then, it came the next day. The tartan was a replica of an ancient, damaged cloth Virginia had found in a hidden room in a Scotland castle and wanted to preserve in some way.
Eventually, they ran out of places to search and went back to the grounds to rest in the grass.
The girls were talking quietly, sharing the journal and its stories. Charlie, on the other hand, was looking up at the tower. He thought of Virginia up there, examining new treasures and remembering the people she’d met, the places she’d learned about, and smiling.
Did she ever get scared out there, alone? Was that why she felt such a connection with the people in the lands she visited? With her treasures all around her, did she feel like, in some way, those people had come home with her?
“Hey, anyone want to see if we can have dinner outside tonight?” Charlie asked.
The girls looked up. Emily shrugged. “I guess. It would be a nice way to end the trip. Let’s go see if we can grab a picnic basket or something.”
Anna stood up. “I know a great rock we can sit on,” she said, grinning at Charlie.
Charlie sighed and followed them back into the house. Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested a picnic. If Anna got her way, he’d have to climb back up that big rock in the woods.
Then again, Charlie thought, looking back up at the tower, if he did, that was going to be one more amazing thing he did while at Idlewood. Maybe he could bring a pebble back with him, to remember it by.
20
IT WAS MONDAY, and Anna felt like she was leaving home. She never thought she’d care so much about Idlewood, but before Friday, she never knew that Virginia Maines had also once called this place home.
She and Charlie and Emily had gotten permission to pack a picnic dinner the night before and take it out to the grounds. If the rock was slightly off the grounds, no one seemed to care. Charlie had climbed up all by himself, no guidance needed, though Anna had noticed he was gritting his teeth the whole way up.
They had eaten their sandwiches and talked about Idlewood and the mystery they’d solved until it got dark. Emily told stories about the house in its heyday, and Anna read entries from Ginny’s journal, as they would soon have to release it to Mr. Llewellyn and the Shaughnessys. They played games and exchanged contact information, and considered sleeping out there under the stars (Charlie’s idea, believe it or not) before that was quickly shot down by the Henderson parents when they came to retrieve their offspring.
Anna had found it hard to sleep back in her room, under the calligraphy painting that was one of Ginny’s treasures (though, now, perhaps all the guests felt that way). Idlewood had been the world for one weekend, and now it was time to leave that world and return to the real one. Anna had a feeling that somehow nothing would be the same ever again, that this small world could change the larger one.
As the Hendersons ate breakfast, Anna and Charlie spent the meal chatting about the house and plans for next weekend. Charlie thought he could come up with a code more elaborate than Elaine Gardner’s, and he wanted Anna to try to solve it. He promised it would be worth her time but wouldn’t say anything else.
“You’re smart,” he’d said. “I’ll have to make it really challenging.” Which made Anna smile.
Anna, on the other hand, had some forest trails she thought Charlie would like. One led to an old millhouse. Not really Idlewood, but at least there would be no climbing. Charlie should like that.
After breakfast it was checkout time. Anna packed up her things quickly, and while her parents took their sweet time loading their toothbrushes back into the toiletry bags, and Charlie went to visit Emily before the Shaughnessys left (Emily’s parents were planning to write another book, this time about Virginia Maines and Idlewood), Anna snuck up through the bookcase door to say goodbye to Ginny.
“You know, we never did figure out why this door locked itself sometimes,” she muttered as she went up to the dusty third floor.
There were so many things they hadn’t figured out. Sure, they cleared Ginny’s name. Sure, Charlie found the treasure, scattered throughout Idlewood.
But as Anna climbed into the tower room, she bristled over the loose ends. “What are you for?” she asked, pulling the black key out of her pocket and running her thumb over its palm tree design. “What happened to Virginia?”
Had Everett Gardner killed her to protect his secret? Anna doubted it. Virginia Maines was a legend. Some rich guy who couldn’t win against a mountain lion wouldn’t be able to take her out when a pride of actual lions couldn’t.
No. Faced with false accusation, with the threat of being locked away from the big, beautiful world she loved, Ginny had fled. Anna was sure of it. It was what she would have done. It was what Anna had done when accused of theft.
The tower room was still and silent. Sunlight streamed through the dingy window, illuminating the scattered charts, clothes, and books. But now, dust had been wiped from the desk. Footprints had turned the floor into the map of an energetic dance.
And on the bed was the coverless copy of Treasure Island, right where Charlie had left it before climbing down the tower.
Anna carried the book back over to the desk and sat down. She set the black key on the desk. It didn’t belong to her, after all. Even though she’d found it in the woods, it seemed like it belonged here, with all the other mysteries. Then she opened the book and idly turned the pages. For now, she just wanted to bask in the tower room and the feeling of history that hung around here.
Down below, the guests were leaving. The tour group had already gone. The Shaughnessys were talking with Mr. Llewellyn. Suitcase Man and Book Lady approached each other, then closed in a passionate kiss that made Anna blush and look away, to where the Sunglasses Couple carried a bundle back to their car. As Anna watched, a little dog’s head emerged from the cloth.
Anna laughed. That explained a lot. The howl Charlie had heard! The off-limits bathroom! And those “cookies” the T-shirt kids kept going after must have been dog biscuits.
The sea of trees outside the window danced in the breeze. Huh. She never had gotten around to checking out that other building. The wooden roof really did look like a raft out there. Like Ginny’s raft.
Anna frowned and stared out the window, a brittle page between two fingers. Why had Elaine left the cover of this book down there with the ledger? Her frown deepened into a scowl as she turned pages absentmindedly. It was like the third-floor windows; Anna could feel an answer waiting, but she couldn’t reach it! Emily might have been right with her “some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved” spiel, but Anna didn’t want to accept it. There was too much that didn’t add up, like the way the Rome suite used a Caesar cipher, the same kind of code Elaine praised in her letters to Ginny, and the code word of the Caesar cipher was dragon, Ginny’s childhood nickname, and the portrait changes would only stick out to someone who knew the house before it was altered. It was almost like the whole code was meant for one person, and that person was—
Anna froze, looking at the book in front of her. Treasure Island. They’d found its cover, with its childish scribble of a tree house, hidden with the ledger.
She sat, thinking, and then searched through the letters until she found the one she was looking for. “Perhaps one day,” Elaine had written, “we will build one, just you and me, and we can model it after the one you, in your frustration, drew on the cover of Treasure Island, just so the book would have at least one tree house!”
It had to be the same book cover, and the same doodle. Ginny had drawn that picture because she’d been so upset that the story didn’t have … “No way,” Anna breathed.
She looked up through the window, her eyes resting on the wooden roof. The roof of a building so high up that no one could see it except from a tower window.
Standing up so fast her chair wobbled, Anna grabbed the key and bolted down the tower, through the third floor, and back into the main Idlewood house. All the while, her mind played the events of the past like a movie.
Elaine finds the real ledger and realizes her sister is innocent, but it’s too late and Ginny has already vanished. Feeling guilty and wanting to make amends but unable to keep Idlewood, Elaine oversees the renovation of the house into a hotel, turning it not only into a friendly lodge for travelers but also a nest of clues that would be recognized by someone who knows Idlewood, someone who understands codes, and someone who loves exploration as much as she loves her family. Just in case she came back before Elaine got a chance to return to Idlewood herself.
At the end of that line of clues? An apology. The truth. One sister telling another that she loved her, to please come home.
But had Virginia ever returned to Idlewood? Ever seen Elaine’s message?
Racing across the grounds, Anna had her own ideas on the subject. Elaine hadn’t left the cover of Treasure Island in that box. She had no reason to. But someone else did.
“Anna!” Charlie was calling, his backpack in his hand. Emily was standing beside him. “Where have you been? Mom and Dad are packing up the car. We’re about to leave.”
“Charlie. I—I just need a few minutes. Stall them, please? There’s something I need to do. Alone.”
Charlie and Emily looked from her flushed face to the key in her hand. Anna could practically see their mental math calculating, determining that she has found something.
He nodded. “Do what you have to do.”
“But tell us everything!” Emily added.
Anna smiled and raced off into the forest, not stopping until, breathless, she came to a halt beneath a big tree. A tree that used to have an old key buried beneath it.
This was a rainy area. Water and mud could have carried the key downhill, wedged it up against another tree’s root, and covered it with debris. If Anna turned and walked uphill, she might find—
Another tree, older than the first. Boards were nailed to it, making a ladder to the top. And up above, she knew a tree house waited.
A tree house that, even in a world of GPS and satellite images, had been missed, kept secret, saved. Its key, lost. Until Anna had found it.
The boards were old, probably rotten. But Anna didn’t let that stop her. She tested the first board, and when it held her weight, she moved to the next. A few of the boards had worn down to little more than sticks, but they worked fine until Anna was high enough to use branches instead.
Soon, she was at the top. A small porch jutted out from a square shack, and Anna pulled herself up to it. A door with a silver lock, tarnished black, barred her way.
Anna slid the black key she’d found a whole weekend ago, with its palm tree design, into the lock. It fit beautifully, and after a little work, the door clicked open.
She stepped inside, leaving the key behind in the lock. A bare wooden room met her—no shelves, no furniture except for one wooden table in front of a window. It looked just like the hidden room where the ledger had been stored.
Anna laughed. “Nice one.” She dropped to the floor and slid under the table, just as she had in the hidden room. The floor smelled like mildew and pine sap.
And under the table, fastened to the underside, was a small, cloth-wrapped package. Anna pried it free and crawled out. Fingers trembling, she undid the cloth.
Inside was a metal picture frame, nothing else. But the black-and-white picture was of a family: husband, wife, two kids. They stood on a dock somewhere with palm trees, a boat behind them.
The man, fair-haired, held the younger child in one arm. The other arm was wrapped around his wife’s waist. She was laughing, holding on to the older child’s shoulder with one hand and resting the other on a pile of crates. Her dark, curly hair flew in the wind. A dragon-shaped brooch was fastened near her throat.
“Hello, Ginny,” Anna said, touching the picture. She smiled at Virginia, and then at the child the great explorer was touching. The girl had inherited her father’s light hair but also Ginny’s curls.
Anna carefully pulled the picture out of the frame. Turning it over, she read, “The Taylor family.”
After all the years and questions, here was the answer. Ginny had left, chased away from Idlewood by false accusations. And she’d come back, hoping to find her sister, but instead just found the clues Elaine had left for her.
And the tree house? Elaine had loved Idlewood and Virginia knew that. Virginia must have known that sooner or later, her sister would come back, perhaps to stay in Idlewood again, but if not, at least to check on her own code, and would have the chance to find the tree house, the one thing Virginia had wanted but never got. So she built it herself, and left her own clues in the form of the book cover and the key so Elaine would recognize the tree house for what it was and be able to enter it as she wanted to.
It had been so long.
Had Elaine ever found this tree house before she died? How did that key end up buried beneath a tree? Had Virginia carelessly left it on the tree-house porch, where rain and wind could knock it free, sending it tumbling into the mud? Or had another hand brought the key here, carried it from a hidden box where it rested beside an old, scribbled-on book cover? Could Elaine have come back to check on her message and found a response that told her that Ginny was alive and well?
Anna knew what she believed had happened. After all, Ginny was many things, but careless was not one of them.
“Anna! Where are you?”
Anna started. Her family.
She slid the photo back into the frame and set the picture up on the table. Then she left, locking the door behind her.
Anna climbed down and returned to her family on Idlewood’s grounds. She smiled at them and said, “Just saying goodbye to the forest” before following them back to their car.
Emily was there waiting, and she and Charlie pulled Anna aside.
“What did you find?” Charlie asked.
“Tell you later,” she whispered to them. Her parents were too close. “Emily, watch for my email.”
Later, she would tell them what she’d found. But only Charlie and Emily. Ginny had kept her secret all her life, so Anna would keep it, too.
But she had left the black key on the porch, right next to the tree-house door, because maybe someday, another explorer could follow the clues preserved in Idlewood, the codes and messages, and find this tree house before the Shenandoah forests reclaimed it. That person might climb the ladder to the tree house, searching it out for no other reason than to know. To find a place untouched, unexplored. They might one day find the picture and learn the truth of what happened to Ginny Maines. And if they came, they’d need the key.
As the Hendersons drove away, Anna rolled down the window and looked back. Idlewood glowed in the morning sun like a golden temple, and the wind tousled Anna’s curls like an ocean breeze.
She blew a kiss at Idlewood and sank back into the car. There were still questions and mysteries left to solve, hidden areas to explore, and Anna itched to find every answer, every cranny. She would reach horizons over mountains, seas, deserts, maybe even outer space! She’d find her place among those who needed to know what lay beyond.
As Idlewood shrank into its cover of forest, having given up its counsel to a bunch of kids, the “normal” world would be an adventure of its own. Anna couldn’t wait to get started.
THE EXPLORER’S CODES (AND PUZZLES)
Hello, reader!
This book uses a variety of codes and puzzles, like the Atbash cipher, the keyed Caesar, and the book code. Although, in this story, the codes are used by fictional characters, they are all very real and have been used for centuries by people wanting to keep their messages secret.
You can try it yourself! Try using one of the codes in this book to write a secret message to a family member or a friend. It’s a fun way to share a secret, or just say “hello” with a different flair. SZEV UFM! (Atbash for “Have fun!”)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book requires a team of people with wonderful, different skills to make it happen. So, I would be a rude and ungrateful writer if I didn’t thank the people who helped this story go from being a dream to a reality. Thank you, Lauren E. Abramo, my agent and friend, who encouraged me to continue writing this story and for helping me find the best place to send it.
And on that note, thanks also goes to John Morgan, my editor at Imprint, for believing in the story and for being such a fun, friendly editor to work with as we polished The Explorer’s Code for final publication. I’ve enjoyed it.
I’d also like to thank Imprint’s publisher, Erin Stein, creative director Natalie C. Sousa, managing editor Dawn Ryan, and production manager Raymond Ernesto Colón, as well as Carolyn Bull for my cover. Making a book is such a team effort, and I have a great team.
Thanks to my writing group who read this story and gave me my first round of revisions to complete. You make me better, and I hope to one day be half the writers you all already are.
