The Lost Gold by Paula Harrison

Author:Paula Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

The princesses ran through the front gate, only slowing down once they reached the trees. A brown shape came bounding across the palace garden to join them.

Isabella called to the little monkey. “Petro! You were such a star, you kept us from being caught!”

“What is he holding?” asked Lottie.

Petro swung over the palace gate and jumped down to the ground. Something blue and sparkly gleamed in his hand.

“Come here, Petro.” Isabella knelt and beckoned him closer. He bounced over to her and she took a butterfly hair clip from his grasp. It was the one with the sapphire wings that he had been playing with the day before.

“Oh, dear! You shouldn’t have taken this,” Isabella told him. “It’s not yours.”

“Who does it belong to?” asked Rosalind.

“It’s from my mom’s jewelry box, and it’s very special.” Isabella held the butterfly-shaped hair clip out to show them. The sapphire jewels on its wings shone a beautiful deep blue. “We’ll have to return it, but let’s find the treasure first; there’s no time to lose.” She handed the hair clip to Lottie, who put it away safely in the backpack on her shoulder.

The princesses ran into the rain forest. Isabella led the way along the paths she knew so well. Lottie, Amina, and Rosalind followed her, staring in amazement at the brightly colored parrots and the toucans with their golden beaks.

“Wow!” said Lottie. “Look at that red frog; I’ve never seen one as bright as that before.”

“And look! Aren’t they cute?” Rosalind pointed at a troop of small monkeys swinging through the trees at top speed. One was carrying a tiny baby on its back.

“They look as if something scared them.” Isabella bit her lip. “I bet they’re running away from the treasure hunters with their axes and saws.” She unrolled the scroll. “Horrible men! We must figure out where the gold is before they do.”

The girls crowded around the paper, which had rough edges and cracks running across it. The writing was squiggly and the ink was faded, but as they stared at it they began to make out what it said.

“Look! Here are the symbols for north, south, east, and west,” said Amina.

“And the picture in the middle shows us where the river is.” Isabella pointed at a curved line running across the small picture. “The palace isn’t on here, but I guess that’s because this scroll was written before the palace was even built.”

“Where’s the hidden treasure, though?” said Rosalind.

Isabella squinted at the letters. They were long and curly, which made them hard to read, and splotches and cracks covered parts of some of the letters. “‘I live in the … forest.’” She read the first line haltingly. “Ooh, how funny! They made the dot on top of the letter I into a monkey’s face!”

“There’s a monkey’s face on every line — look!” Lottie pointed to the little monkey faces. “It looks like they’re above certain letters.”

“What do the other lines say?” demanded Rosalind.

“Just a minute, some of the words are hard to see because the paper is so old.

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