“See! I told you!” cried Annie. “Whale sharks don’t harm people. This is the miracle Heart-of-the-Wind wanted to give us!”
Holding the raft on his back, the giant shark kept swimming across the Caribbean, heading into the light of the sunrise.
Overhead, seagulls, terns, and pelicans careened and cawed raucously. They seemed to be laughing at the shark swimming with the raft on his back. Jack began to relax and enjoy himself. The nutty seabirds, the salty air, and the giant shark’s speedy rolling motion through the water, rising and falling with the waves, made the ride extra spectacular. Jack wanted it to last forever.
“Land ho!” Annie shouted.
Jack shaded his eyes and squinted at the horizon. In the distance he could see Cozumel—the sugary-white sand, the stone pyramid, and the palm trees.
When they drew close to shore, the shark dipped lower in the water, leaving the raft floating on the surface for a moment. Then the raft began skimming across the sea on its own, heading for the beach, until finally it came to rest on the hard, wet sand.
Jack and Annie jumped off and looked back at the water. They saw the huge fin moving out to sea.
“Bye! Thanks!” Annie shouted, waving.
The whale shark’s fin vanished into the sparkling horizon.
Neither Jack nor Annie spoke for a moment. Then Jack heaved a sigh. Exhausted, sunburned, and salty from sea spray, he put the damp travel guide into the bag. He handed Annie her flip-flops, and he put his on, too. Then he slung the bag over his shoulder. “Ready?”
“Ready,” said Annie.
They walked through the warm sand to the palm tree with the rope ladder. Annie climbed up first, and Jack followed.
Inside the tree house, a breeze rustled the palm leaves. Jack picked up the Pennsylvania book. “Ready?” he said again.
Annie stood at the window, looking out at the turquoise-blue sea. She turned to Jack with a big grin. “That was some vacation,” she said.
“Yep. Some vacation,” Jack agreed. He shook his head in wonder and then pointed at a picture of the Frog Creek woods. “I wish we could go there.”
The wind started to blow.
The tree house started to spin.
It spun faster and faster.
Then everything was still.
Absolutely still.
A breeze blew into the tree house. Jack smelled summer leaves and pine needles. “Ah, home,” he said.
“Home,” said Annie, smiling. “It’s always nice to come home after a vacation.”
“But did you have a good time?” said a voice from nearby.
“Teddy!” Jack and Annie said together.
“I thought I’d come back to welcome you home.” The young sorcerer was sitting on a limb of the oak tree. Holding on to the branch, he climbed nimbly through the tree house window. “So. Did you? Have a good time?” he said.
“Yes!” said Annie. “The best!”
“Even though it wasn’t exactly what we expected,” said Jack.
“What happened? Did your snorkel equipment not work properly?” said Teddy.
“No, our gear was fine. What surprised us was the shark attack,” said Jack.
“And being captured by ancient Mayan warriors,” said Annie.
“And escaping through a swampy forest,” said Jack.
“And then traveling through the Underworld, where the ancestor spirits live,” said Annie.
“And almost becoming the next Great Sun of Palenque,” said Jack.
“I see…,” said Teddy. “But other than that, you had fun?”
Jack and Annie laughed.
“Seriously, what happened?” asked Teddy.
“Seriously, what we just said is exactly what happened,” said Annie.
“Let me explain,” said Jack. He unzipped their swim bag, pulled out their travel guide, and pointed to the illustration of the pyramid on the cover. “By pointing to this picture, we went back to ancient Mexico—like Mexico more than a thousand years ago.”
“Ah, I see…,” said Teddy. “So no luxury spa hotels?”
“Nope,” said Jack.
“But with help from your magic coins, everything worked out fine,” said Annie. “We actually had a really great time, and we think we might have helped a Mayan girl become the ruler of her people.”
“Really?” said Teddy.
“Really. And we hitched a ride on the back of the biggest shark on the planet,” said Jack.
“Literally,” said Annie. “We used all your coins to have fun.”
“Speaking of that, you can have your coin purse back,” said Jack. He reached again into the swim bag and took out the small velvet purse. Before he handed it to Teddy, he opened it. All the fifty-dollar bills were gone. “It’s empty!” he said.
Annie shrugged. “I guess the money was only meant for our vacation, and it turns out we didn’t need money at all.”
Jack laughed. “Easy come, easy go,” he said. He gave the coin purse to Teddy, and Annie handed over the travel guide.
“You must tell me more of the story sometime,” said Teddy.
“We will. But right now we should head home,” said Jack. He felt a little homesick. It was probably because they had talked to Heart-of-the-Wind about missing their parents.
“Please thank Morgan and Merlin for our dream vacation,” said Annie.
“Indeed,” said Teddy. “Perhaps they will send you on another one soon.”
“Not too soon, I hope,” said Annie. “We need to recover from this one first.”
“Yeah, we need a vacation from our vacation,” said Jack.
Teddy laughed.
Jack picked up their swim bag and started down the rope ladder. Annie followed. Teddy was looking out the window when they reached the ground. “Good-bye!” he called. “I hope to see you again in these woods!”
A blinding light swirled upward around the trunk of the oak—and in a flash, the magic tree house was gone.
“Good-bye,” Annie said softly.
“Home,” said Jack. He strapped the bag onto his bike rack. Then he and Annie climbed on their bicycles and headed down the rough path between the trees. They bumped over roots and fallen bark and pine needles, until they came out of the Frog Creek woods and onto their street. Then they pedaled to their house.
Jack and Annie parked their bikes in the garage and headed up to their porch.
“Mom! Dad!” Annie shouted as they went through the front door. “We’re back from snorkeling!”
“Come tell us all about it!” their dad called from the kitchen.
“And have some pizza!” said their mom. “It just came out of the oven.”
“Thanks! Be right there!” said Jack. “We have to check something real fast.”
“What are we checking?” Annie asked as she followed him into the living room.
“Something online,” said Jack. He sat down at the computer and typed the search words Mayan ruler, Heart-of-the-Wind.
An entry popped up immediately. Jack clicked on it, then read aloud:
Yohl Ik’nal was the ruler of the Mayan city of Palenque from 583 to 604. Her name means “Heart of the Wind.”
“Ohhh! YAY!” said Annie.
“Wait,” said Jack. He read on:
She became queen after the death of her father, the Great Sun of Palenque. She was the first female ruler in recorded Mayan history. She must have come to the throne due to extremely unusual circumstances, the details of which have not survived.
Jack and Annie looked at each other. “That is so cool,” Annie whispered with awe.
“I guess a cell phone message from a kid more than a thousand years in the future could be considered an unusual circumstance,” said Jack.
“Yep. Extremely,” said Annie.
Jack smiled and shut down the computer. “I’m starving,” he said. “Let’s get some pizza.”
Turn the page for a sneak peek at Magic Tree House Fact Tracker:
Sharks and Other P
redators
Excerpt copyright © 2015 by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce.
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Sal Murdocca.
Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Scientists usually learn about early animals by studying fossils of their skeletons. Shark cartilage often dissolves before the skeletons can become fossils. Sharks’ teeth are made from a hard mineral, not cartilage. The best fossils of ancient sharks are their teeth.
Some of these teeth are more than twice as big as a great white’s! They belonged to a gigantic shark called Megalodon (MEG-uh-luh-don), which lived millions of years ago. These gigantic creatures were probably over sixty feet long with mouths seven feet wide. That’s one big old predator!
Megalodons were large enough to eat whales. They might have eaten about 2,500 pounds of food a day! And these sharks were everywhere, in oceans around the world.
In 2003, scientists in Australia tagged a nine-foot great white shark. The tag was to record how deep it swam and what its temperature was.
Sometime later, the tag without the shark washed up on an Australian beach. It showed that the shark had been 1,900 feet down in the ocean. It also said that the temperature had been forty-six degrees. But then it suddenly shot up to seventy-eight degrees. It stayed that way for eight days.
Scientists now think that a larger animal dragged the shark down in the cold deep ocean. The high temperature was from inside its attacker’s stomach.
What animal is big enough to eat a nine-foot shark? What animal’s stomach is around seventy-eight degrees? Experts are pretty sure the predator was a killer whale!
Mary Pope Osborne
is the author of many novels, picture books, story collections, and nonfiction books. Her New York Times number one bestselling Magic Tree House series has been translated into numerous languages around the world. Highly recommended by parents and educators everywhere, the series introduces young readers to different cultures and times in history, as well as to the world’s legacy of ancient myth and storytelling. She and her husband, writer Will Osborne (author of Magic Tree House: The Musical), live in northwestern Connecticut with their three dogs. Ms. Osborne is coauthor of the companion Magic Tree House Fact Trackers with Will and with her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce.
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