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wasn't alive in the way I was. Maybe his understanding was different.
    I finished writing out the instructions and handed them to the captain. He didn't say anything about the great treasure lives , only nodded like he was satisfied. He folded up the instructions and slipped them into the pocket of his jacket.
    “These better guide us true.” His gray eyes leered at me. “If they don't, I will kill that creature and then I will kill you.”
    I couldn't move. My body felt cold.
    “You tell it what I just said.” He gestured at Safin and turned away. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and then relayed the message to Safin.
    “Kill!” he said. “Oh no.”
    “You didn't lie to me, did you?”
    “Of course not! I want to see the great treasure!”
    “We're fine, then.” I pressed my hand against my forehead. “We're fine.”
    But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
     
    We took four boats total, a quarter of the crew. The full moon was a shining silver disk that lit the ocean with streaks of light. I rode in the head boat, with the captain and Rafi and Safin. Hafsa led the second boat, shouting orders as we bounced through the choppy waves.
    “We can enter there,” Safin said, and pointed. He was wrapped around my shoulders, close enough that I could hear his gears clicking.
    I looked to where he pointed. The river mouth was narrow, flanked on either side by a pair of cypress trees with branches tangled overhead, forming an arch. The ocean was bright in the moonlight, but past that arch everything was dark.
    “We can enter there,” I said to the captain.
    “I saw.” He held my written instructions in his hand, and they rippled in the wind.
    We passed through the cypress arch and the world went dark. No moonlight filtered through the thick vegetation of the swamp. The touched crewman scrambled to ignite lanterns, sending them up to drift alongside our boat. They cast small spheres of greenish light, hardly enough to see by. The air thickened with humidity. I stroked Safin's tail without thinking, and a noise rattled deep inside his chest, like a cat's purr.
    We continued on. I relieved Rafi from rowing duty, and the rhythmic thump of the oars against the water soothed my nerves. No one spoke. We all seemed to be holding our breaths.
    We came to a knot of white trees, twisting out of the swampy muck.
    “The bone trees,” Safin said.
    I'd seen pictures of them in my illustrated history, but I'd always thought the pictures were an exaggeration. Here in the darkness I saw they weren't. The bone trees looked like hands, with long thin fingers grasping the air. I knew from my book that if you cut them, they do not bleed sap, but dry white dust.
    The captain's shoulders tensed as we slid past, and he kept his eyes on the bone trees, his hand on his pistol. Rafi laid a hand on the captain's upper arm, and for a moment the captain seemed to calm. Rafi dropped his hand, but I still saw it, that flicker of intimacy.
    We passed the trees without incident.
    “Now for the baelfires,” the captain said.
    “And then the treasure,” I added.
    “For your sake I certainly hope so.”
    I'd read about the baelfires too, and I knew they were spots of light that lured weary travelers into the darkness. We rowed along, and the air shifted. My skin prickled, and Safin pressed closer to me.
    A light blinked out in the trees.
    “Concentrate,” the captain said sharply. “Stay in the boat.”
    “Stay in the boats!” Rafi shouted, cupping his hand around his mouth. “Pass word along, Hafsa! Stay in the boats!”
    Hafsa's voice echoed through the swamp, and then the next boat leader's, and the next. There were more baelfires now, bobbing out of the woods and over the water. They were lights, no different from our lanterns, but I wanted nothing more than to leap out of the boat and chase after one. I wanted to capture it and hold it in my hand. It would lead me to her , I knew it—it would lead me away from