They walked down the gray stone staircase, which led them into a magnificent courtyard. The walls were lined with shiny, intricate tiles. A gurgling fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with a statue of a frog spitting water in the center. Marble statues lined the walls.
The four children gathered around the fountain and washed their sticky mango hands in the water. Tiny golden fish swam around in the bottom of the fountain’s pool.
They walked around to see what else the castle had to offer. At the far end of the courtyard was another big door. It was smaller than the castle wall door, but it was still twice as tall as any of them. They grabbed the big iron rings that worked like door handles and pulled the doors open with a creak.
On the other side of the doors lay a welcoming grand entry room. Colorful tapestries covered the walls and a big, iron chandelier full of candles hung from the high ceiling. Spark zipped around the big chandelier and lit every candle illuminating the room. The entry room was even more spectacular with the lights on, and they could now see that there were several doorways and hallways leading off the entry room every which way.
Since they had come all of this way to explore the castle, they decided to do just that. They went exploring through every doorway and hallway they could see. They found a big dining room and a little dining room, but there was no food in either of them. They found a dance hall where they decided to dance. There was a kitchen, which also did not have any food. There were also many rooms that were just rooms. They were quite spacious, but had no apparent purpose.
One of the rooms led to another hallway that had a sign over the archway that said, “DUNGEON” on it. Two suits of armor guarded either side of the hallway. One suit of armor was very shiny and glistened like a mirror. The other had more of a dull, tarnished look, like no one had polished it in a while. They both had swords pointed down between their feet. The kids inspected the suits of armor, but they soon got distracted by all of the other amazing things that were there in the castle.
After exploring all the rooms, they decided that it was time to start searching for the treasure. They walked down one last long hallway—not the one that led to the dungeon, but another one that looked like it led to treasure.
If you had asked the children why that hallway looked like it led to treasure, they would have told you that it just did. I don’t really know why it looked like it led to treasure. Maybe it was the way the stone flooring was a different color, or the way the hallway looked just a little darker, just daring someone to come explore it. Rob said she just had a hunch.
At the end, the hall turned into a T, one way went to the left and the other went to the right. A wooden sign hung on the wall with an arrow pointing to the right and these words written on it:
“ONE WAY TO EXTRAORDINARY TREASURE”
What do you think? Which way should they go? To the left? Or the right? If you are thinking that going to the right is the obvious choice, you are correct, it is. And they almost turned right. Actually, Finn did start walking that way, when Woggy called him back.
“This is extraordinary treasure,” said Woggy. “If we were looking for ordinary treasure, then I would think that we should follow the sign. But this is not ordinary treasure; it is extraordinary treasure. So, I think we should go the way that the sign is not pointing. The wrong way.”
Finn nodded, remembering how Woggy had started his adventure, and what that book had said about being ordinary.
“Wait, what?” asked Rob, who was less familiar with Woggy’s story.
“Woggy started this whole extraordinary adventure by accidentally going the opposite way on a ONE-WAY Street,” explained Sara. “That is how he ended up in Land of Sand with Finn.”
“So, it’s good to disobey signs?” asked Rob.
“Not usually,” said Woggy, who was finally understanding that being ordinary was not something that he wanted to be. “Most of the time signs are super helpful and keep us safe, but sometimes it's good to let curiosity take you off of the normal path and explore the ways that are not so ordinary. That is the only way to truly find something unique, and extraordinary.”
Rob wondered about all of this. She was a deep thinker. How can I know when to follow and when to do something different? And personally, I think this is one of the greatest questions we must all ask ourselves. And we must ask it often because there is no real answer. Each situation brings complex decisions, and each decision will lead us somewhere.
Finally, Rob agreed with Woggy, and they all went to the left, which was right— I mean correct. I often wonder what would have happened if they had gone right, but that is something we can never know because it never happened.
The left hall quickly took them to a big art room. Not the sort of room where you make art, but the sort of room where you display art. Spark dashed up to the three chandeliers that hung from the ceiling and lit them up. The walls were full of paintings and pictures. Sara spun around, mesmerized. The room looked like a museum— the kind with art, and not very many cows.
Sara walked around the room with her hands behind her back because that is what her mom had told her to do the one time she had gone to an art museum. She could not help but smile at everything she looked at. Everyone else explored the room, too, but they all got bored rather quickly. Sara, however, had only studied five of the paintings, and it appeared that she could stay there all day.
Rob started practicing her flying again. She wanted to see how fast she could fly through the gap between the lights on the chandelier. Finn and Woggy had a foot race from one end of the room to the other, with their feet echoing with each step. (Finn won, but just barely.)
“Let’s look for more clues that will lead us to the treasure,” suggested Rob to Finn and Woggy. So, the three of them ran around looking at each picture as intently as Sara was, but they were looking for clues to treasure, while Sara felt like the art itself was a treasure.
Finally, Finn noticed that the other side of the room, the one where the race ended, had an interesting piece of art hanging on the wall.
There was a big, golden frame around a white canvas with only words on it. These were the words:
What is always going where it has been?
Twists and turns like a snake?
And gives life?
“What does it say?” asked Finn.
Woggy read it aloud.
“That is weird,” Finn said.
“I think it’s a riddle,'' said Woggy.
Rob landed beside them. “What did you find?”
“A riddle,” said Finn.
Sara noticed that her three friends were intently looking at a piece of art, so she walked over to see what it was. She read it, and looked at it puzzlingly. “This doesn’t look like the other art,” she said.
“What do you think the answer is?” asked Woggy.
They all just stood around for a while trying to think of what the answer could be. What was always going where it has been? Twists and turns like a snake? And gives life?
“Is it a snake?” asked Finn.
“No, snakes don’t give life.”
“What about when they lay eggs? They give life then.”
“What about the first part, though?” Sara asked. “They aren’t always going where they have been.” They all decided that a snake was probably not the answer.
“What if we read it in reverse?” asked Finn.
“That’s it!” said Woggy.
“Reverse?”
“No, rivers! Rivers are always going where they have been, they twist and turn like a snake, and they give life to all of the plants on their river banks.”
“I saw a picture of a river over there,” said Rob, pointing to her left.
They all ran to the picture, following the clue.
They stood around the picture of the river, staring at it thoughtfully, wondering what the next clue was.
“What do you think it means?” asked Rob. “Do you think it is really a clue to get to the treasure?”
“Maybe, but what do we do now?”
Finn, who was always impulsive, reached his hand out to the painting to touch it. Sara gasped because she knew from what her mom had said that you are not supposed to touch fancy pieces of art. She was right, of course, but things are different in A-Dream.
Finn touched the painting, and it was wet. Not wet with paint, wet with water— river water. And when they were all, very quiet, they could hear what sounded like running water behind the wall.
Finn stepped back and then dove right into the water. Which meant, of course, that he dove into the picture, which had seemed like a good idea, but he just bumped his forehead on the stone wall behind the picture, and landed on the ground with damp hair and a hurt head.
“Maybe it's a door that opens or something,” Woggy suggested.
Finn nodded his bruised head. “Let’s try that.”
Woggy reached around in the painting for a while, and finally found one of the stones in the river and felt it move, so he turned it, and pulled the painting towards him like a door. It was, indeed, a door. And once the door opened there was an opening, an opening that looked an awful lot like it could lead to treasure.
They stepped through the door behind the painting onto a narrow, stone walkway. It was only wide enough for one of them at a time and it dropped down on both sides. The room itself was quite wide and water rushed away from them on both sides of the walkway, splashing and gurgling down the hall. The water was dark. They followed the flow of the water into the darkness, being careful to stay on the stone path. Spark lit their torch again so they could see each step and not fall into the rushing water beside them. 1
They walked for a while in the dark room on the narrow path until they ended up in a room. The walkway widened into a floor in an open room, that they could all stand on together. Water rushed under the floor. The wall in front of them had a strong wooden door that was pointed at the top. Carved into the stone above the door were the words: “Treasure Room.” The door had a big iron door handle and a keyhole, and based on the way the door did not move at all when they tried to open it, there was also a big iron lock that kept the extraordinary treasure safe.
“What is this?” asked Sara, as she peered through a hole in the wall on their left.
The hole in the wall was just big enough to see into and fit one arm through. They each took a turn looking into the hole, and they could barely see that about three arm lengths away an iron key hung on an iron hook. They each tried reaching through the hole to see if they could grab the keys and each one thought they had longer arms than the person before them. But, alas, all of their arms were too short, and the key was still two arm lengths too far away. Just out of reach.
All that stood between them, and the treasure now was a strong door, a strong locked door, and no way to get the key to open it.
After Sara—who was the last one to try to reach the key—pulled her arm out, Woggy remembered his ‘remote-getter.’ He excitedly opened his backpack and there it was, but the stick that the sticky part attached to was broken into four pieces.2
Woggy looked down and hung his head sadly. “I really thought this was going to work,” he said feeling just as broken and defeated as his invention.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked over, but no one was beside him. Instead, Rob stood about three arm lengths away holding a spear.
“I found this hanging on the wall,” she said. “Will it help?”
“Yes, that is perfect!” said Woggy, feeling a new burst of hope.
He immediately got to work tying the ‘remote-getter’ to the spear. “Spark, can you fly in there to give me light so I can see the key better?” he asked. Spark happily complied, and dashed into the darkness, transforming it into non-darkness.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Finn.
“I don’t know but he seems excited about it.” answered Sara.
Woggy held the spear up with the ‘remote-getter’ tied to the end of it and looked triumphant. He jabbed the spear through the hole, and it was just long enough to get to the key. But the spear was heavy and hard to maneuver so far away. Finn grabbed the back end and Woggy aimed it. Together they were able to stick the key and pull it off of the hook.
“We got it!” said Woggy with a grin. They started pulling the key back, and then they all heard the sound of an iron key clanging onto the stone ground. And all of their hopes of treasure fell with it.
Woggy looked through the hole and could see his ‘remote-getter’ laying on the ground with the key still on it. The string he had used to tie the ‘remote-getter’ to the spear laid frayed on the floor next to the key. And all of this had landed just half an arm length too far away for any of them to reach.
“What do we do now?” asked Sara.
“Maybe we should just give up and go explore the rest of the castle,” said Finn.
Woggy shrugged, thinking that it seemed like a good idea. He didn’t have any more ideas about how to get the key, and his invention had failed him. Failure can often lead to giving up.
“No, we can’t give up now,” said Rob. “We are so close.” Then she remembered something that they had used earlier to grab something. The grappling hook! If it could hook a wall, certainly it could hook a key.
Rob grabbed the grappling hook out of Woggy’s backpack and holding the rope in one hand and the hook in the other she slowly tossed the hook down to the ground just above the key. The hook was just an inch away, but the hook was not cooperative, and the hooky part did not meet the circley part of the key. She pulled the rope up. Tossed the hook again. No luck.
Spark flew through the dark air and spun around the rope. “Spark, can you pick up the key?” Rob asked Spark. He flew down to the key and tried to move it, but the key did not move. He flew back up to Rob and dashed back and forth horizontally, which she interpreted to mean no. “Thanks for trying,” she said gratefully.
Rob dropped the hook down again and lost her grip on the rope, but just barely. The rope slipped in her hand and the hook fell beside the key with a ‘CLANG.’ She quickly pulled the rope again and looked down.
The key was hooked! She carefully pulled up the hook and key. She reached for the key making sure that it would not fall in the hole again. She thrust it into the air like a victory trophy. Sara, Finn, and Woggy all cheered with excitement.
“I really hope this key works on this lock,” she said.
“Give it a try,” said Woggy.
The key fit, and when Rob turned it, the lock gave a very gratifying click. She grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.
>1 The torch snuffed right out when they jumped through the waterfall at the cave.↩>2 It probably broke from landing on the trampoline when they launched over the canyon.↩