So heavy were her feet by the time she climbed up the first rock that she could scarcely go any farther, and the winds blew cold now against her. Shivering, the princess tucked herself into a cleft of the rock and cried for her lost friends.

Still, the voices sang. “Look to the birds,” they chanted over and again. “Look to the birds, Lizza.” The princess tilted back her head and watched an eagle soar overhead. But no help came for her from his widespread wings.

The story was linked to this as much as the poems had been, she was certain. Her current guess was that it included the items from the manifests that she’d been tasked with finding. “Trees with fragrant bark peeling in fairy-wing curls”—that could be cinnamon, a popular spice to be imported. The others could be saffron and turmeric. Saffron came from crocuses. And turmeric was gotten from the root of a plant that was topped with a spiky purple flower.

But parts of it she still hadn’t been able to decipher. And there was no time like the present to clear up the mystery. “Beth? The notes you had in Treasure Island . . .”

Beth’s cheeks went pink as she darted a glance at her brother. “Yes?”

“What was the fairy tale?”

Sheridan spun, eyes gleaming. “Oh, are the fairies involved too? Piping from the cave, perhaps? Yes?”

Beth tried turning the map upside down. “It was just a story I made up to catalogue my findings. A princess—me—who lived on an island of rock and bones. The rocks of Tresco—and the bones of the Jolly Roger. Mucknell.”

As she’d imagined. “So, the journey in the story was the treasure hunt. The piping and songs represent Piper’s Hole. And each of the things the princess finds are symbols of what you were searching for. But what was the bit at the end? The song about looking toward the birds?”

“Oh.” Beth frowned. “That was just something from those letters. Didn’t you notice? He’d concluded them all with ‘Look to the birds, Lizza.’”

No wonder the fairy tale had been haunting her! How had she not made the connection immediately? “Look to the birds.” Libby met Oliver’s gaze, brows up. And then, together, they turned to the east. Toward St. Martin’s and the birds that flocked there. Had always flocked there, most likely. Because two hundred fifty years wasn’t enough to change the migratory and nesting patterns, not on an island that hadn’t otherwise changed, where the few residents still lived now as they had then. “This is your north.”

Beth didn’t seem to follow their reasoning, given the question in her eyes, but she turned too, and held up the map again. She made an interested-sounding hum. “You know, that squiggle almost looks like a bird. It doesn’t align north to the top of the paper though.”