Alfred opened one eye.
It was warm. Comfortably warm, even though a polar night lay beyond the thin icy wall of the igloo. A small olive lamp cast a golden glow across the snowy walls. Alfred was tucked under three blankets and felt wonderfully cozy.
He sat up, moved the block of ice that served as a door, and peered outside.
Darkness. The northern lights danced across the sky in green and violet streaks. Ahead of him stretched a frozen ice floe, and on it stood two penguins. They were completely still, watching him with such serious faces it looked as if they were waiting for an important meeting.
Behind the floe, in the black water, a polar bear swam calmly by.
Alfred stood in the igloo doorway for a moment.
Then he scratched his nose.
Wait a minute, he thought. What is an anteater doing in the Arctic? That alone is suspicious. But more important—what are penguins doing here?
Every child knows—and if they don’t, they’ll know now—that penguins live in Antarctica. That is the southern pole of the Earth, the coldest place in the world, surrounded by the Southern Ocean. Polar bears live in the Arctic—at the northern pole, beyond the Arctic Circle, among ice and fjords. Those two places are on opposite sides of the globe. A penguin and a polar bear could never meet.
And yet here they were, together, looking at him.
So…
Alfred narrowed his eyes.
Was this a dream?
“Dad,” said a voice.
Alfred blinked.
“Dad, but this was supposed to be Kuba’s dream.”
Dad cleared his throat.
“Oh yes,” he said. “You’re right, Ola. We’ve gotten a little mixed up. Sorry, Alfred.”
From beneath the blanket came a calm voice.
“That’s all right.”
“We’re going back to Kuba’s dream,” said Dad. “To the pirate adventure on Wild Pig Island. We’ll start exactly where we left off…”
The bushes stood still.
Five seconds. Ten.
Kuba straightened up, took a deep breath, and with one determined movement pushed the branches aside.
No one was hiding behind them.
He turned to the group. A smile appeared on his face—part relief, part pride.
“Probably just the wind,” he said.
But Ruda Panda stood motionless with her eyes half-closed and her nose lifted high. She breathed in slowly, methodically, layer by layer.
“There is a scent,” she said quietly. “Strange. Someone was here.”
Ala circled above the bushes, making small loops.
“I saw it,” she said calmly, descending a little. “The bushes moved, then something went between the trees. I didn’t manage to see what.”
Patrycja was already kneeling by the bushes with a magnifying glass near her eye. She moved it centimeter by centimeter along the ground.
“Tracks,” she muttered. “Small, light ones. The depth of the print tells us weight—whoever it was wasn’t big. The spacing between steps—slow and careful, not running.” She straightened and pointed the magnifying glass at the shrub. “And this.”
On a thorny branch hung two threads. Thin, dark brown ones.
“A piece of clothing,” said Patrycja, pulling out her notebook. “Someone pushed through the bushes and left a trace behind.”
“Dark brown, thick fabric,” she added. “Let’s remember that. When we find someone wearing dark brown clothes, we’ll know it’s them.”
“So someone was following us,” said Kuba.
“Deliberately and carefully,” Patrycja confirmed.
Kuba looked into the thick jungle. The trees stood dense and silent.
“Let’s follow the trail,” he said.
Ruda Panda went first, nose to the ground, tail raised high like a little flag. Every few steps she stopped, sniffed a leaf or a patch of soil, and silently pointed the way with her paw.
Behind her came Kuba, Patrycja, and Zofia. Tuptuś trotted at the end, stubbornly trying to keep up, though his backpack pulled him backward at every step like an anchor.
The path led downhill through thicker and thicker undergrowth. The leaves were as large as umbrellas, and tree roots poked from the ground like the fingers of a giant.
After a few minutes, Ruda Panda stopped by a wet, muddy area.
“This way,” she muttered.
Ala flew over the swamp and came back.
“There’s a way out to the left,” she said. “From above, you can see a dry path. But it’s longer.”
“We go through the middle,” Kuba decided.
Ala nodded as if she had known that would be his answer.
They crossed one by one, carefully choosing dry spots. Kuba made it across. Patrycja made it across. Zofia crossed with admirable grace, as if she did it every day. Tuptuś took two careful steps, then a third—and his left paw sank into the mud with a loud:
Splash.
Everyone turned around.
Tuptuś stood with one paw in the mud and a philosophical expression on his face.
“I have left my own trace,” he said calmly.
“A very clear one,” Patrycja admitted, writing it down.
Kuba looked at him for a moment and cleared his throat.
“Maybe I should carry the backpack,” he offered.
Tuptuś stopped and straightened, looking deeply offended.
“I carry it myself,” he said shortly.
“It’s heavy,” Kuba observed.
“I know.”
“Did Great-Grandmother say so?” Kuba asked.
Tuptuś adjusted his glasses.
“That’s exactly right,” he said, and marched on with renewed determination.
A few minutes later Ruda Panda stopped abruptly beside a large gray boulder.
She sniffed it from every side. Shook her head.
“The scent is fading,” she said with clear frustration. “The wind changed direction.”
Everyone stopped. Kuba looked around helplessly. The boulder was large, and the path on both sides looked exactly the same.
Then Tuptuś slowly raised a paw.
“Excuse me,” he said. “But over there, on the right side of the boulder, there are broken twigs. At the same height as the threads on that bush.”
Everyone looked.
And indeed there were. Three thin branches, snapped cleanly, at the height of a small animal.
“How did you know to look for that?” Kuba asked.
Tuptuś pushed up his glasses.
“I read about it,” he said. “In the third or maybe fourth book. I don’t remember which exactly, because I had both in my backpack at the same time and they got mixed up a little.”
“Good work, Tuptuś,” said Patrycja, jotting something into her notebook.
Tuptuś straightened so proudly that the backpack nearly tipped him backward.
They followed the broken branches and barely visible paw prints.
Until they reached a stream.
Ruda Panda stood on the bank. She inhaled. Once, twice, three times. Then she slowly lowered her nose and shook her head.
“That’s the end,” she said. “The scent stops at the water.”
Patrycja crouched down and examined the stony bottom of the stream.
“Someone went into the water,” she said. “That’s an old trick—water washes away tracks and scents better than anything else. Detectives have known that for centuries, and clever fugitives know it too.” She stood and brushed off her paws. “We need to check both banks. If they entered here, they had to come out somewhere.”
They split up. Kuba and Tuptuś checked the right bank, Patrycja and Zofia the left. Ruda Panda walked along the water’s edge, stopping every so often.
After a few minutes they returned to the same spot.
Nothing.
Kuba narrowed his eyes and stared at the water.
“Clever,” he said at last. There was just as much annoyance in his voice as respect.
Patrycja spread the map on a flat rock by the stream. Tuptuś crouched beside her, adjusting his glasses and immediately looking like someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
“The map is encrypted,” he said. “The numbers beside each place show the order. The small symbols by the paths are directions—this sign means east, this one north.”
Patrycja moved her magnifying glass over the center of the map.
“There’s an X here,” she said. “And a note: ‘Three steps east of the stone heart, two north of the place where the trees grow together.’”
For a moment everyone stared at the map.
“The stone heart,” Ruda Panda said slowly. “The heart-shaped boulder. I saw one near the stream while we were looking for tracks.”
“Excellent,” said Patrycja. “But before we go back to the boulder—how do we know where east and north are?”
Ruda Panda suddenly lifted a paw.
“Wait,” she said. “The map says ‘east’ and ‘north.’ But we can’t see the sun. The trees block everything. Shouldn’t we use a compass instead of guessing?”
Patrycja nodded approvingly.
“We do have a compass and we’ll use it,” she said. “But a good detective should be able to find direction without one. Because a compass can be lost. Or broken. Nature is always nearby. In Europe, you can observe moss—it grows mainly on the north side of stones and trees, because that side is cooler and wetter. But in the jungle moss grows everywhere, so you need other clues.”
Zofia, who had been studying the treetops for some time, said quietly, “The treetops. Jungle trees reach toward the light. Here, in the Caribbean—north of the equator—the sun is on the south side. So the crowns are denser on the south, and thinner on the north.” She pointed to the tree above them. “That’s south. That side there—that’s north.”
Everyone looked up. The difference was subtle, but once you knew what to look for, it was clear.
“And hollows and dips in the ground,” Patrycja continued, “are cooler and wetter on the north side, so the vegetation there is darker and denser.”
Alfred once mentioned anthills too—we’ll ask him when we get back to the ship, Kuba added.
Kuba looked around the jungle. At the treetops. At the hollow near the stream—darker and denser on one side. At an old stone by the path, with a thick anthill growing on one side.
“There,” he said, pointing confidently.
Ruda Panda sniffed the air and nodded.
“That’s right,” she said. “I can feel the cooler air from that direction too.”
Tuptuś watched them in admiration and quickly wrote something in a small notebook pulled from the side pocket of his backpack.
“I’m writing it down,” he muttered. “Just in case.”
They returned to the heart-shaped boulder.
It stood by the stream, gray and mossy, irregular—but when viewed from the right angle, its shape was clear. Rounded at the top, narrowing at the bottom.
“Three steps east,” said Patrycja.
Kuba counted three steps.
“Two north.”
Kuba took two steps. He stopped and looked down.
Ruda Panda approached, crouched, and began sniffing the ground in tiny circles, smaller and smaller, slower and slower.
“Here,” she said at last, placing her paw on the ground.
Kuba crouched and began digging with his hands. The soil was soft, as if someone had already loosened it before.
After a moment his paws hit wood.
The box was old. Very old. The wood dark and damp, the iron fittings rusty, the lock long crumbled away. Kuba carefully lifted it out and placed it on the stone.
Everyone stood around it.
Kuba looked at Patrycja. Patrycja nodded.
Kuba opened the lid.
Empty.
Silence.
Tuptuś let out such a deep sigh that the backpack tipped him slightly forward.
But Patrycja was already leaning over the box with her magnifying glass, not at the inside—at the lid. On the inside surface, carved with a sharp tool, was a drawing. A simple sketch of a hill with three distinctive rocks on top. And a small circle marked near the base of the hill, on the left side.
“A clue,” Patrycja said softly.
“Someone was here before us,” said Kuba.
Patrycja shone her magnifying glass over the drawing and leaned closer.
“These marks,” she said slowly, “are newer than the box. The wood around them is lighter, the carving is sharp, with no signs of moisture. The box is at least several decades old. This drawing—maybe a few weeks old.”
Everyone was silent.
“Someone found this box before us,” Tuptuś said quietly. “And left a clue.”
“Or,” said Kuba, “someone wants us to keep going. In the right direction.”
“Or into a trap,” Zofia murmured calmly.
No one answered, because everyone was thinking the same thing.
Ala sat on the edge of the box and tilted her head left, then right.
“I saw that hill,” she said. “From the air. The three rocks are on its eastern side.” She flapped her wings. “And something glitters there.”
Kuba slowly lifted his gaze to the hill visible above the treetops. Three dark rocks stood on the summit like fingers.
Somewhere there—between the trees on the slope—something flashed again.
Quickly and briefly, as if glass had caught the light.
A telescope.
Kuba stared at that spot a little longer. But the glint did not appear again.
Szakal Szymon tucked away his telescope and smiled.
Kuba took a step toward the hill…
…and felt something cold on his nose.
Then another. And another.
Raindrops.
Kuba opened his eyes.
Palm leaves swayed above the hammock. From the sky came a fine, warm, May rain. Drops drummed on the broad banana leaves by the house and ran in tiny streams down to the ground.
“No!!!” Kuba said to the sky.
The sky did not answer. But the rain clearly quickened.
Alfred stood at the entrance to the terrace with an umbrella calmly open above his head and the expression of someone who had known about this for a long time.
“I said this morning that it would rain,” he said.
“You didn’t say that,” Kuba replied, stepping onto the terrace and shaking drops from his hat.
“I said it to myself,” Alfred admitted. “But I said it.”
Kuba sat on the terrace steps and watched the rain drumming on the jungle leaves. Patrycja came out of the house with a cup of hot tea and silently set it beside Kuba. Zofia returned to her book. Ala curled up under the roof eaves and pretended not to hear the rain.
Alfred sat down beside Kuba.
After a moment of silence he asked calmly, “Did you have that dream again?”
“Yes,” said Kuba.
“And what happened this time?”
Kuba held the cup in both paws and watched the drops sliding down the banana leaves.
“We were close,” he said at last. “Someone had been on the island before us. They left a clue in an empty box. And they were watching us from afar.”
Alfred nodded slowly, as if that did not surprise him.
“And now what?” he asked.
“We’ll go back,” said Kuba. “Next time we’ll reach the hill.”
The warm rain fell.
And Kuba could already hardly wait for the next nap.