The porcupine sat on the blanket with them, contentedly gnawing a carrot. The baby pangolin bumbled around, playing games in the sand. He’d gotten much more active lately, sniffing and exploring everything with his startlingly long tongue. He had four legs but toddled around mostly on two, stooped over like a tiny scaly old man.

“I wonder how long this is going to last,” Kate said.

“What, the picnic?”

“This whole thing. The train, the animals, the adventure. It feels like it’s been weeks. I mean, I love it, but I miss Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah, I do too,” Tom said.

“I know we have to get the animals where they’re going, but surely some of them could do it the old-fashioned way. You know. Like geese do.”

Kate let her mind drift.

“I wonder if this island has a name,” she said sleepily.

“Of course it does,” said Tom. “It’s the Wise Island.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“The train told me.”

“Oh,” Kate said. “What’s so wise about it?”

“Well, you can dig for treasure.”

Kate liked the sound of that. Though she still didn’t see where wisdom came into it. And she was skeptical, as ever, about anything free.

“You can dig for treasure anywhere,” she said. “Nobody ever finds any.”

“That’s the thing! You know how everybody always digs in the sand at the beach but never finds anything? Here, if you dig, you find something!”

“What, automatically?”

He nodded. “Everybody finds one thing.”

“Like gold and silver?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “I don’t think it’s that kind of treasure. But the train said it’s different for everybody.”

They didn’t dig right away. First they walked up and down the beach a couple of times, surveying the area, sometimes skipping away from the waves that slid up the sand, sometimes letting them wash over their bare feet. They found some shells, beautiful candy-striped pink-and-white cones. The water was warm and as clear as glass—you could see fish darting around in it, just out of reach.

Kate and Tom debated where they should dig. They weren’t sure whether the location mattered, if you automatically found something anyway, but you never knew. Kate wondered what kind of treasure could possibly be there in the absolute middle of nowhere. Eventually Tom chose a spot well up the beach, above the tidemarks, near where the dunes started. Kate ended up walking all the way back to where they’d first sat down, where the mamba was still sunning himself blissfully in the powdery sand. She plopped down on the picnic blanket and started scooping out a hole with her hands right next to it.