Smells Like Pirates

by Suzanne Selfors

  “What coins?” Lorelei asked.

  “Ah dinna care nothin’ aboot coins,” Angus said. He stuffed some shoes into the suitcase. “Ah study the sky. Ah watch the stars. That’s what ah care aboot. But one day ah was digging a hole tae bury ma dead cat and ah found the coins. Ma whole life changed. Ah became famous. Ma yard was filled wi’ folk. Kin ah’d never met came askin’ for money. A strange man flew a cloud to ma cottage and invited me tae join Mockingbird’s club.”

  “That’s Ajitabh,” Homer said.

  “Aye. He told me that L.O.S.T. would take the coins and donate them tae a museum. Ah told him he could have the coins but he had to gie me a secret place to live, where no one would bother me. A secret place where ma greedy kin couldna find me.”

  “So that’s why you live here,” Lorelei said. “You’re hiding.”

  “Ah was hidin’. Now ah have tae find a new place.” He zipped his suitcase. “Ye can tell L.O.S.T. tae leave me alone. I did whit they asked. I gave them the coins.” He reached down and patted Dog’s head. “Good-bye wee beastie.”

  Dog, who’d been napping, raised his head off the pillow and grunted.

  Angus hurried up the stepladder and collected his telescope. With the telescope tucked under his arm and suitcase in hand, he hurried to the door.

  “Wait,” Homer called. “I won’t tell anyone you’re here.” But Homer couldn’t make promises on Lorelei’s behalf. Knowing her, she’d probably hold a press conference and tell the world.

  Without another word, the man darted into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind him. The instruments on the blackboard table trembled.

  “That guy’s weird,” Lorelei said.

  “He’s not weird. He suffers from a very serious phobia,” Hercules said. “He doesn’t like people. Maybe we should apologize for disturbing him.” He walked to the door and tried to open it. Turning the knob, he pulled, then pulled again. “I think it’s locked.”

  Panic spread across Lorelei’s face, and she ran to the door. She pushed Hercules aside and yanked on the knob. “He locked us in!” she cried. With a grunt, she threw her body against the door, but it didn’t budge. “Let us out!”

  “It’s just jammed,” Homer said as he tried the knob. “Why would he lock us in?”

  “Because he thinks we’re spying on him, remember?” Lorelei pointed at Hercules. “Use your superstrength. Bust it open.”

  “It’s not superstrength. I’m not a superhero. I’m just stronger than I look.” Hercules put his shoulders into the attempt, pushing with all his might. But the door, which was made of some kind of metal, did nothing but give him bruises. “I’m going to need an ice pack,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Look for another way out,” Lorelei said. She ran around the room. “There’s got to be a way out.”

  Homer searched around the knob. Maybe there was a slot for his membership coin. But he found nothing.

  “There’s no other way out!” Lorelei cried.

  “Don’t panic,” Hercules said, still rubbing his shoulder. “If you start to panic, then I’ll start to panic. I’m very susceptible to suggestion.”

  “Yeah, we shouldn’t panic,” Homer said, though his stomach was tightening as he spoke. “The building opens in the morning. One of the workers will let us out.”

  “Only a L.O.S.T. membership coin will let someone open the elevator door,” Lorelei reminded him. “And none of the L.O.S.T. members know we’re here. Except for Angus MacDoodle, and he’s run off to hide.” She grabbed Homer’s arm and yanked. “This is bad. Really bad.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he tried to assure her, though he had no idea how it was going to be okay.

  “Don’t you get it, Homer?” Lorelei threw her hands in the air. “If we don’t find a way out, we could be trapped here… forever.”

  It was way, way, way past bedtime, but The City still twinkled all around. Far below, a river of light flowed as taxis and buses made their nightly rounds down shop-lined boulevards. Victorian lampposts highlighted the edge of City Lake, where Lorelei’s speedboat waited. All this could be seen through the glass dome on the topmost floor of the Map of the Month Club building.

  It was a terrible feeling being locked beneath that dome. Lorelei’s warning of forever echoed in Homer’s mind. He stood on the stepladder, sticking his nose through one of the portholes for fresh air like a dog in an open car window. On the other side, people had choices about where to go. If he was locked in this place forever, he’d never be able to say, I’m going to walk down my driveway, or, I’m going to sit under that tree just because I feel like sitting under that tree.

  Is this what it felt like to be a hamster in a cage? Mrs. Peepgrass, the Milkydale schoolteacher, kept Poof the hamster at the back of the classroom. The cage was made of clear plastic, and even though it had all sorts of plastic tubes that wound in and out so the hamster could take a stroll and stretch his little legs, Poof spent most days sleeping in a pile of chewed-up toilet paper. What did the poor thing have to live for? But at least he had a bowl of food and a water dispenser. Homer’s stomach growled. A packet of freeze-dried brine shrimp from Lorelei’s vending machine was starting to sound delicious.

  Homer tried to fight the feelings of doom. The Unpolluter could probably find them. But he’d told her that he didn’t need her help. He’d told her he would “clean up the mess” himself.

  “We’re trapped,” he said, his low blood sugar souring his mood.

  “We’re not trapped,” Lorelei snarled. “No one traps me. No one!”

  She lay on Angus MacDoodle’s cot, staring up at the top of the dome, where the giant globe perched. She’d exhausted herself trying to find a way out, searching every nook and cranny, crawling on hands and knees, prodding and poking for possible secret escape hatches. But the only door they’d found had a sign that read CLEANING CREW ONLY. The door opened to a narrow balcony, where a window washer’s scaffold hung, suspended from the top of the dome. As evidenced by the streaks of bird poop on the dome and the dust all over the office floor, no cleaning crew had visited in a very long time.

  “Why aren’t you two helping me figure this out?” Lorelei complained. “Why must I do everything?”

  “Urrrr.”

  Homer nearly toppled off the ladder as he spun around and pointed a frustrated finger at Lorelei, about to tell her that they wouldn’t be in this mess if she hadn’t stolen his map. But his arm fell to his side as he glowered at Dog, who lay beside Lorelei on the cot, his long body stretched against hers. “Dog?” Homer was in no mood for disloyalty. “Why are you cuddling with her? She kidnapped you twice, remember?”

  “I think dognapped is a better description,” Hercules said.

  “Dognapped. Kidnapped. Whatever,” Homer said crossly. “The point is, she took him—twice!”

  Dog raised his head, then let it fall back onto the pillow. His tail thwapped Lorelei’s leg. Even though it was simply a matter of laziness, and even though Homer knew this, it still hurt Homer’s feelings. “Traitor,” he grumbled. Then he stuck his nose out the window again. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Don’t even think about jumping,” Hercules said. He’d wiped all the dust from a spot on the floor and was lying on his back, reading one of Angus’s books. “We’d get flattened like pancakes. I’m too young to get flattened like a pancake.”

  “You jumped from an airplane,” Homer pointed out.

  “Yes, well, that was a moment of insanity. Besides, I had a parachute.”

  Homer took a quick breath. “Oh, I’ve got it. We could write HELP all over the windows. Someone will see it and send a rescue team.”

  “We can’t do that,” Lorelei said. “Think about it. If the wrong sort of person rescued us, we could get arrested for trespassing. And you two would be sent home early and I’d be sent to an orphanage, and we’d have to stop our quest.”

  Homer narrowed his eyes. Sending Lorelei to an orphanage might be the best thing to h
appen to the treasure-hunting community since the invention of the handheld metal detector. But she was right. Rescue would undoubtedly lead to an end to their quest. Mr. Pudding would have a fit if he learned that Homer had been treasure hunting when he was supposed to be on a VIP tour of the map club. Mr. Pudding was extra-aware of the dangers of treasure hunting, since his only brother had been killed in the pursuit of treasure—Rumpold Smeller’s treasure, to be exact. So Mr. Pudding made certain that he told Homer at least once a day about the stupidity of treasure hunting and about the benefits of goat farming—a safe and family-friendly career.

  They fell into silent frustration. Homer had no more ideas. Not a brilliant plan. Not even a dim-witted plan came to mind.

  “Poor Daisy,” Lorelei said. “She’ll be so sad if I don’t come back to the lair. I hope she’s not worried about me.”

  Homer doubted that a rat would worry about such things.

  Lorelei rolled onto her side and glared at Hercules. “Why are you reading? Why aren’t you thinking about escape?”

  “For your information, Lorelei, I am thinking about escape. In fact, I’m thinking about nothing else.” Hercules held up a book titled History of the Map of the Month Club. “There’s a section in here all about this very building. I’m reading about its construction in case there’s a hidden escape hatch or something.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s actually a good idea.” Her stomach growled, and she screwed up her face. “If we don’t get out of here, I’ll starve to death. And then I might have to turn to cannibalism.”

  More than a few treasure-hunting quests had ended in cannibalism. Homer knew this fact from his book The Worst Ways to End a Treasure Hunt.

  “No one’s eating me,” Hercules said. “And I’m not eating Dog, no matter how hungry I get.”

  “Urrrr?”

  “No one’s eating Dog,” Homer grumbled. Though he was a meaty sort of dog…

  A hazy patch of clouds floated across the night sky. Homer’s thoughts turned to Ajitabh and Zelda and how they were probably trying to find him. Anger bubbled to the surface. “This is all your fault!” he hollered.

  “Are you yelling at me?” Lorelei asked.

  Homer glared over his shoulder. “You stole my map. You threatened to tell the world about L.O.S.T. I hope we do get rescued because then they’ll send you to an orphanage and you won’t have your lair anymore. And then someone will adopt you, and you’ll have to go to school and you’ll have to be a regular kid, just like everyone else.”

  Lorelei’s face went red. “That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Maybe it was, but at that moment, Homer didn’t care. Maybe he should have let The Unpolluter clean things up. Maybe he should have let The Unpolluter “get rid” of her.

  Then he turned away, ashamed by that thought. No one was getting rid of anyone, no matter how annoying that anyone was. Not on his watch.

  Frustration and blame were getting them nowhere. With a sigh, Homer climbed down the stepladder and walked over to the bookcase. He ran his fingers along the dusty spines, searching until he found a world atlas. Then he set it on the blackboard table, right next to the coordinates that Angus MacDoodle had calculated.

  Lorelei sat up. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to see where these lead,” he said.

  The first coordinate, the latitude line, was N 60. Homer already knew the treasure was in the northern hemisphere because the dragon constellation revolved around the North Pole. He opened the atlas to a map of the Arctic Ocean. Then he ran a finger down from the North Pole, past eighty degrees, past seventy degrees, until he came to sixty degrees latitude.

  Lorelei peered over Homer’s shoulder as he read the next coordinate, the longitude line: W 044. West. They were already in the west, so that meant they wouldn’t have to travel all the way around the world. Homer ran his finger to the left, along the sixty-degree latitude line, passing twenty degrees longitude, passing forty degrees longitude, and stopping at forty-four.

  “Greenland,” Lorelei said.

  “The southernmost tip of Greenland,” Homer corrected. Here was the answer so many had yearned for—the location of the greatest pirate treasure ever. A shiver danced up Homer’s neck. This moment would go down in history. This moment would change everything. It would be the greatest quest the world had ever known!

  But then Hercules had to go and ruin the thrill by pointing out a wee problem. “How are we going to get there?” he asked.

  Homer’s and Lorelei’s smiles collapsed. A long moment of silence followed as the three adventurers fell into deep thought. Dog, who was still stretched out on the cot, also appeared to be in deep thought, his eyelids trembling, his back leg twitching. But his thoughts were most likely about rabbit-chasing or paper-eating—not about how he’d get himself to Greenland.

  “I can steal a cloudcopter,” Lorelei said. “I did it before, I can do it again.”

  “No way,” Homer said. “You’re not stealing anything from Ajitabh.”

  “Well, I’m not going to ask for a cloudcopter, that’s for sure.” Lorelei scrunched up her face. “If Ajitabh and Zelda find out about this, they’ll want to come along. I’m not sharing the glory with them.”

  Homer strummed his fingers on the table. How could they get to Greenland if not by cloudcopter? Air travel would be fastest. Lorelei had lots of money, so they could buy plane tickets, but no airlines landed on Greenland’s southernmost tip. They could buy tickets on a ship, but there was no major port, either. Perhaps a private boat could be hired, something that traveled at high speeds.

  “I’ve got it!” Homer cried. Dog raised his head. Hercules and Lorelei leaned forward. “We can use the submarine. The one in the lair.”

  “Brilliant,” Lorelei said, smacking her hand on the table. “Absolutely brilliant.”

  “The submarine?” Hercules swallowed hard. “You want to travel underwater?”

  “Why not? Ajitabh designed the submarine for treasure-hunting quests.”

  “And we won’t be stealing it, because it belongs to me,” Lorelei said. “Finders keepers.”

  Whether or not the submarine actually belonged to Lorelei was up for debate. But Homer did not want to argue about it. They had a quest to get to. And the fact was, finders keepers was a claim honored by most treasure hunters.

  “Underwater?” Hercules asked again. Sweat broke out on his nose. “Under? Water?”

  “Obviously underwater,” Lorelei said. “Submarines don’t fly.” She raised an eyebrow and glanced at Homer. “This one doesn’t fly, does it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Homer said. His uncle had never mentioned anything about a flying submarine.

  “Well, we can’t do anything unless we get out of here,” Lorelei said with a stomp of her foot. “There’s got to be a way.”

  “Actually, I think I might have found a way,” Hercules said. “Look at this page.” He folded his legs and set the open book in his lap. “There are a couple of paragraphs about the giant globe.”

  “Who cares about the globe?” Lorelei said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s sitting on the top of the building. We want to get to the bottom of the building.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Hercules said. “It says here that the globe belonged to a woman named Lulu Bell and that she donated it to the map club. It says that she flew it to the top of the building, where it’s been ever since.”

  Homer knew the name Lulu Bell. It was written on one of his ceiling maps back home—the one of Cutthroat Canyon. “She was a mapmaker who specialized in the topography of canyons,” he said. “She used a hot air balloon to move up and down canyon walls. She could explore the deepest crevasses much quicker than having to hike in and…” He stopped talking, his gaze colliding with Lorelei’s. Their irises expanded at the exact same time as the exact same thought popped into their heads.

  “Hot air balloon!” they cried.

  Lorelei and H
omer dashed to the door that read CLEANING CREW ONLY. Even though she’d stopped to grab the map and shove it into her jumpsuit pocket, Lorelei was faster. Cool night air rushed in as she yanked the door open.

  “Be careful,” Hercules said, setting the book aside. “It’s dangerous out there!”

  It was a tight squeeze on the balcony. Lorelei reached up and pulled on a rope, lowering the window washer’s scaffolding. The scaffolding rocked from side to side as she climbed on. “You stay here,” she told Homer.

  “Wait,” Homer said, grabbing the rope. She knew the coordinates. She knew the riddle. What was to keep her from floating away on the hot air balloon, leaving her number one competitor to starve to death on the topmost floor?

  “What?” Lorelei asked innocently.

  Dog waddled onto the balcony and squeezed his big head between Homer’s shins.

  “Nothing,” Homer said, letting go. She wouldn’t dare leave without Dog.

  The rigging squeaked as Lorelei pulled on the rope, raising the scaffold foot by foot. Her pink jumpsuit shone bright against the night sky. Hercules joined Homer and Dog on the balcony. They craned their necks, watching as the scaffold rose higher and higher until it came to a stop at the edge of the globe’s platform. In a blur of pink, Lorelei pulled herself onto the platform, then disappeared from view.

  After a nerve-racking couple of minutes, the squeaking resumed and Lorelei lowered herself back down the side of the glass dome. When she reached the balcony, Homer knew, from the smile on her face, that she’d found what she was looking for. She handed Homer a small brass plaque. He held it up so that the twinkling city lights shone on its surface.

  “There’s a fan under the balloon—that’s why it’s fully inflated. And the balloon is still attached to its basket,” Lorelei reported. “Let’s go. We can’t lose any more time.”

  “Have either of you ever flown a hot air balloon?” Hercules asked.

  “I’ve flown a cloudcopter,” Lorelei said.