The Explorers’ Gate Page 3

  “Hi, Nikki!” said Garrett. “This is my brother, Willem!”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Good evening, Nicolette. Thank you so much for joining us on our quest.”

  Willem was about three feet tall and the most well-spoken fourth-grader I had ever met.

  The dog, a slobbering Siberian Husky in an old-fashioned leather harness, drooled and panted happily.

  After shaking hands and petting the dog, I couldn’t help but stare at Garrett and Willem’s fuzzy red ski caps, the peaks of which were flopped sideways. Sure, it made them look kind of cool in a lumberjack/grunge rock sort of way, but come on, it was May!

  “Um, pardon me for asking guys, but what’s with the hats? Winter’s been over for a couple months.”

  “Ah, forgive me,” said Willem. He reached into his canvas knapsack. “Here, Nicolette, this is yours.”

  He handed me one of the red-knit numbers. Actually, it was kind of scarlet with spirals of darker red swirling up to its peak.

  “Thanks, but as awesome-looking as this is, I don’t really need a hat. My hair’s kind of long and …”

  “Everybody on our team needs a hat,” said Garrett.

  “Oh, this is like our uniform?”

  “Exactly! It’s our uniform.”

  The big guy sounded so sweet and sincere, I went ahead and tugged mine on.

  “How’s it look?”

  “Awesome!”

  “I cannot tell you how excited I was to hear that Garrett found you this morning at the Bandshell,” said Willem, showing me his piece of the park puzzle. “We three were always meant to be a team in the coming Crown Quest.”

  “Yeah, about that,” I said. “What exactly is a Crown Quest?”

  Willem rocked up on his tiny heels. Tapped his fingers together under his nose. For a second, I thought he might turn into a raccoon.

  “Did your mother ever mention it to you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I see. Well, it’s something the, how shall I put this, the true friends of Central Park sponsor every thirty or forty years.”

  “Really? I never heard or read—”

  “It’s kind of a secret,” said Garrett. “We’re not really supposed to talk about it to people outside the, you know, the club.”

  I nodded. If that were the case, my mother may not have told me about it. She definitely knew how to keep a secret.

  Like how sick she was right before she died.

  “So, tonight is like a practice run?” I asked.

  “Exactly!” said Willem. When he did, the big dog wagged his tail like a fluffy flag. “Grandfather Vanderdonk has hidden a crown somewhere in the park.”

  “He bought it at the Disney store,” added Garrett.

  “Good to know. But wouldn’t it be safer to do this during the day?”

  “Oh, the Crown Quest is always a nocturnal event,” said Willem.

  “Besides,” said Garrett, “we’ve got a guard dog.”

  The big dog barked.

  “Okay,” I said with a laugh. Any mugger who came after us would definitely end up with a Husky-sized bite mark in his butt.

  “We three must decipher clues,” said Willem, “and find the crown as quickly as we can!”

  “And then what? There’s like a big, secret contest to find a real crown studded with jewels and junk?”

  “Precisely,” said Willem.

  Okay. This was pretty neat. A high-stakes treasure hunt in Central Park. Sort of like that TV show The Amazing Race.

  “So when’s the real deal?” I asked.

  All of a sudden, Willem looked sad. His lips quivered. I thought he might burst into tears.

  “As soon as it is needed,” he said, kind of choking up.

  For a fourth grader, the odd little dude was extremely emotional. So I goosed up my perky quotient: “Well, I guess the three of us better quit standing around gabbing and start practicing, huh?”

  Willem smiled gratefully. “Indeed. Thank you, Nicolette.”

  “Please, call me Nikki.”

  “Very well, Nikki.”

  “Okay, where’s the starting line or whatever?”

  The huge Husky barked once and bolted down the hill. He was heading into the park—dragging little Willem behind him like a water skier behind a powerboat.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as Garret and I chased after Willem and the dog.

  “Wherever Balto leads us!” said Willem.

  “Balto? That is so cool. You guys named your Husky after the most famous Husky in Husky history.”

  The real Balto was a sled dog who led his team across Alaska’s frozen tundra in 1925 to deliver lifesaving diphtheria medicine to an isolated town.

  “Hey, did you guys know there’s a statue of the real Balto in the park? It’s the most popular statue in the whole place! That’s why its bronze back is as shiny as gold, because so many kids sit up on top of him to have their pictures taken.”

  Believe it or not, when I said all that, the dog glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me.

  Chapter 7

  Dashing down a steep hill, we came to a rustic footbridge with tree-branch railings.

  “You know,” I said, “everything in Central Park is man-made. All the lakes, this bridge, even those—”

  “Look!” said Garrett. “Balto’s found something!”

  The dog was nose down and snorting at a storm drain. Willem bent down to investigate.

  “Good boy! This was jammed into the grate!” He held up a small blue jar topped with a cork stopper. I could see a tiny parchment scroll rolled up inside. “It’s our first clue!”

  Willem pulled out the curled slip of paper and read what was written on it: “‘Time to discover what you truly know. Go to 7717 and look below.’”

  My mind started racing.

  “What say you, Nikki?” asked Willem. “Where do we go next?”

  “Yeah,” added Garrett, who was breathless with excitement. I think he might’ve been panting more than Balto.

  “Well, um, let me think a sec. We need to go to a …”

  And then it hit me.

  “… a lamppost!”

  “Huh?” said Garrett.

  “Care to elucidate?” said Willem.

  “Well every single lamppost in the park has a number on it, either an embossed metal strip or a number painted right on the pole. It’s like a serial number. Four digits. The first two correspond to the street closest to the pole.”

  “Wow, Nikki!” said Garrett. “You’re incredible!”

  That’s not something I hear every day, so I kind of blushed. “Thanks. We came into the park at West 77th Street, right? I think this clue is sending us to the lamp post with serial number 7717, which has to be somewhere around here—between 77th and 78th Street.”

  “Well done!” exclaimed Willem.

  I tugged down on my ski cap, and then gave ’em half a fist pump. “Goooooo Red Team!”

  We spread out. Garrett and Balto thundered back across the bridge to a lamppost over near the bridle path (this gritty cinder-and-dirt track where horses and humans like to run) while Willem and I dashed up the asphalt footpath to the next lamp north.

  “Eureka!” hollered Willem. “This is it! 7717!”

  “Look down below!” shouted Garrett as he dropped Balto’s leash and tore through the trees to join us.

  “Yes!” I said, checking out a storm drain very close to the pole. “There’s another message in a bottle!”

  Wow. I had actually figured out the clue. Crown Quest practice was fun.

  Well it was until Balto, his leash trailing behind him, galloped up the bridle path and disappeared into the darkness

  “Uh, you guys? Your dog? He’s running away?”

  Garrett laughed. “Balto’s not our dog, Nikki!”

  “Then why were you walking him?”

  “Um, you’ll have to ask Grandpa.”

  Okay. I’d put it on my list. One: Did you know my mother? Two: A
re you running a pet-sitting service? If so, you’re going to go out of business real soon if you keep letting your clients run away on you.

  Willem worked the cork stopper out of the second bottle.

  “I sense we will need your expertise once more, Nikki.” He handed me the second clue, which was rolled up into a tight little tube like those horoscopes in the gumball machines. I un-scrolled it and read it out loud:

  “‘Where grows the Bard’s mulberry tree, you will discover whom next to see. Call it what you may; the scent is sweet all day.’”

  “Ah-hah!” blurted Garrett. “We need to find a weasel!”

  “Huh?”

  “You know: ‘Round ’n’ ’round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel.’ There are monkeys in the Central Park Zoo. Maybe they have weasels, too.”

  “Okay,” I said, as gently as I could. “That’s pretty good. But, well, I think this clue is sending us someplace closer.” I pointed to the east. “On that hill behind the Swedish Cottage is the Shakespeare garden. William Shakespeare is sometimes called the Bard of Avon.”

  “Fascinating,” said Willem.

  I shrugged. “It was on my Language Arts midterm last year. Anyway, there’s a white mulberry tree in the lower part of the garden that, they say, was grown from a graft taken off a tree in Shakespeare’s mother’s garden back in England. Also, the second line?”

  “Yes?” Willem asked eagerly.

  “That’s a reference to Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. So I think we …”

  I stopped when I heard a roaring engine.

  I looked down the path and saw a very large lawn tractor gunning up the hill.

  It was aiming straight at us.

  And the driver?

  In the bright moonlight I could clearly see a tiny old man with a dingy beard, his mustache caked with globs of green slime that kept oozing out his nose holes.

  And booger man was wearing a red pointed hat!

  Chapter 8

  We were very close to a maintenance yard used to store heavy-duty landscaping equipment—tractors, backhoes, lawn mowers, giant chipper-shredders—but I had no idea what kind of maniac was manning the green beast careening up the path toward us.

  “Yooze tree are mincemeat!” the bearded thing snarled.

  Whoever he—or it—was, was standing in a bouncing bucket seat, hanging on to the steering wheel of one of the park’s ginormous lawn tractors—the kind that can chew through all fifty-five acres of grass on the Great Lawn in a single afternoon, with blades so sharp they can bite into a boulder and spit out gravel.

  “Not for nuttin’,” the hairy dwarf shouted over the roaring engine, “but Kroll’s a creep!”

  I had a funny feeling that, even though this guy wore a pointed red cap, he wasn’t on our Crown Quest team.

  I should also mention that the lawn tractor was equipped with three mammoth cutting decks—one at the front, one on each side. All three were currently raised and locked in the upright position to expose their whirling rotary blades. Picture six sideways ninja swords swirling in your face and you get the general idea.

  Willem looked petrified. I stood frozen with fear.

  Fortunately, our gallant giant, Garrett, sprang into action. “Stand back!” he hollered.

  Willem and I stood back and watched as Garrett snatched up a fallen tree limb.

  Then he waited until the absolute last second—until the spinning steel blades were only inches away from his face—and he tossed his baseball bat–sized log into the mower.

  The log became wedged between a blade and the sides of the deck.

  The lawn mower locked up. Fan belts kept churning but the blades wouldn’t budge. Overheated and spewing oily smoke, the engine click-click-clunk-thunked and died.

  “Crap!” cried the mini-maniac standing up in the driver’s seat. “Crap, crap, crap!”

  “Are you all right, Willem?” called a buttery voice behind us.

  We spun around.

  Another short guy in a pointy red cap came bounding up the bridle path on a miniature Shetland pony.

  “Good evening, cousin,” said Willem to our newest arrival, the words coming out measured and firm.

  “Sweet Willem! Were you injured?”

  “I am fine, Loki.” He gestured toward Garrett. “I have excellent protectors.”

  “For this, cousin, I give thanks!”

  The pony rider must’ve been a short ninth grader. He had long, flaming-red hair and sported a pointy red beard on his chin.

  “Will you excuse me?” Loki gestured toward the dirty thing still muttering, “crap, crap, crap,” on top of the smoke-belching lawn mower. “I need to have a word with Globbo.”

  The newcomer trotted up the trail.

  “Globbo?”

  “Hiya, Loki. Wazzup?”

  “Be gone from here!”

  “What? I’m just doin’ what Lorkus, may he rest in peace, woulda wanted me to do!”

  “Go!”

  Mumbling, grumbling, and, of course, slobbering, the hairy little man climbed off the tractor.

  Loki reared up on his pony. “Leave, Globbo! Now!”

  “All right, already. I’m leavin’! Sheesh.”

  Globbo, the hairball, whose long beard looked like cotton candy dipped in soot, wiped his rubbery snout, and waddled off into the darkness.

  “I sincerely apologize for Globbo’s reckless behavior,” said Loki astride his prancing pony.

  “He could’ve hurt somebody!” shouted Garrett.

  “Indeed so.” Loki kept cool. Studied his fingernails. He, like Willem, had a formal, overly precise way of speaking.

  “Your apology is accepted, cousin,” said Willem. “Now, if you don’t mind …”

  Loki wheeled his pony around so he could study me. “And whom have we here?”

  “A new friend.”

  “I see. Fascinating.” He gave me the creepiest smile I’d ever seen. “Tell me, dear—have we met before?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “More’s the pity. Well, I certainly hope we meet again. Soon. Farewell, cousin. I must dash up the trail to chat with one of my new friends. A fellow equestrian, actually. Seems he’s quite eager to move into his new home at the top of the hill.”

  “Kindly advise your ‘friend’ not to count his chickens before they have hatched!” said Willem.

  “My, what an interesting, if horribly cliché, expression. I must endeavor to remember it. Farewell, cousin! Farewell!”

  With a kick and a whinny, Loki and his pony took off up the bridle path.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who the heck was that?”

  “Cousin Loki,” said Willem.

  “He’s older, right?”

  “Slightly. Yes.”

  “Is he on the other team in the Crown Quest?”

  Willem nodded.

  “And what about Globbo? He has more hair on his back than most sheep dogs. What’s his story?”

  This time Willem said it: “You will have to ask Grandpa.”

  “But first,” said Garrett, “we need to finish tonight’s challenge. We have to find the crown!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I think I know where it is. Come on.”

  I figured the quickest way to get some actual answers was to find the practice crown and take it—along with all my questions—to Grandpa Vanderdonk.

  Chapter 9

  We darted across West Drive and wound our way around the Swedish Cottage, a replica of a nineteenth-century Swedish schoolhouse (or a very big cuckoo clock).

  Passing a couple bentwood benches, we reached the stone steps leading up to the Shakespeare garden.

  “We’re looking for a rose,” I said as we bounded up the steep hill.

  “How come?” asked Garrett.

  “The quote on the clue. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says: ‘That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

  “Brilliant!” excla
imed Willem. “Absolutely brilliant!”

  I shrugged. “I’ve read a ton of books about the park.”

  Garrett, who was in the lead, stopped when he reached a fork in the garden path.

  “So where exactly is the rose, Nikki?”

  “I’m not sure. Everything planted in this garden comes from Shakespeare’s plays and poems but he mentioned about two hundred trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and herbs. Roses, wormwood, quince, lark’s heel …”

  “I found a rosebush!” said Willem from the far side of a clump of shrubs.

  “Is there a plaque underneath?”

  “Yes!” Willem shouted. He brushed away some leaves near the root ball to read the plaque. “It’s the line you quoted plus a notation: ‘Romeo and Juliet. II, ii.’ What does that mean?”

  “I think it’s the part of the play the quote comes from. Act two, scene two.”

  “Is there another bottle?” asked Garrett.

  “No,” said Willem. “Just the plaque.”

  “Wahoo!” said Garrett. “This must be the end of the trail! Look for the crown, everybody!”

  The three of us were on our hands and knees, searching through the leaves and underbrush.

  “Did Grandpa Vanderdonk say every clue would be tucked inside a bottle?” I asked.

  Willem shook his head. “No. He simply encouraged us to use our wits.”

  I pondered the puzzle: “Two, two.”

  And then, the answer hit me.

  “Of course! Two, two! Duh. It’s so obvious!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Garrett.

  “Who’s the most famous twosome in all of literature?”

  “Um, Itchy and Scratchy? Marley and Me?”

  “No,” I said with a laugh. “Romeo and Juliet. And I know where to find ’em!”

  Garrett leapt to his feet. “They’re here? Where?”

  “Just down that hill! There’s a statue near the entrance to the Delacorte Theatre where they do Shakespeare in the Park. Come on, you guys!”

  We hurried down the trail, around the outdoor amphitheater, past the shuttered box office.

  “There it is!” I said, pointing to the moonlit profile of a gangly guy in tights (with a lame Justin Bieber bowl haircut) who was bending back his lanky girlfriend so they could smooch.