After walking for two hours, following a blurry, torn map that a whistling Unagami had produced from his backpack, he and Jay were back in the exact same spot where Unagami had rescued the former Master of Lightning. At least, that’s what it looked like to Jay, who had had enough and stopped in his tracks.

“Okay, I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m itchy, and I’m sweaty,” he told Unagami. “And you’ve been whistling the same song over and over!”

“I know,” Unagami replied happily. “Isn’t it awesome?”

A coconut fell from a tree somewhere above, thudding heavily at Jay’s feet, narrowly missing his head. Jay retrieved the coconut and held it up for Unagami to see.

“And I’ve almost been beaned by sixteen coconuts!” He was also tired of reliving in his mind how he’d lost his powers, or how he’d learned that his birth mother had given him up for adoption, though Jay didn’t mention any of that. Oh, and Unagami had made three more phone calls to Milton Dyer, “just to say hello.”

“Are we getting any closer to this ‘lost city’ of yours?” Jay asked crankily. “My feet feel like we’ve already walked a million miles.”

“The coconut might help with your hunger issues, and we’ve actually traveled a mile and a half from where we started,” Unagami informed him, looking at his digital watch. “And the journey can be as fun as the discovery!”

“Aw, you’re just a kid,” Jay muttered. “What do you know?”

“I’m a kid with an IQ in the tens of thousands,” Unagami pointed out. Then he asked, out of genuine curiosity “Do you know what yours is?”

Jay, who did know his IQ, which was several tens of thousands lower than Unagami’s, changed the subject quickly.

“Let’s keep going,” he said, “and see if this journey gets any more fun.”

Unagami startled Jay by leaping toward him and bouncing his chest against Jay’s. “Yes! That’s the spirit! Wow, I’m sure having an awesome time hanging out with you!”

“Yeah, awesome…,” Jay said in response. But he couldn’t help but smile as they started walking again. Unagami was a pesky and annoying know-it-all, but Jay found himself starting to like the kid nonetheless. It was hard to think of him as the terrible enemy he’d been not long before. Then, Unagami had been terribly unhappy, and was taking that unhappiness out on everyone and everything around him. But now he seemed positive and optimistic. Something inside him really had changed, and apparently for good.

Unagami turned the map in his hand and peered at it. “According to our map, the last landmark we need to see before finding the lost city is an unusual rock formation.” He showed Jay the map, and the sketch on it of a stone shaped like a lightning bolt—a sharp diagonal interrupted by a horizontal middle. It appeared covered with greenery. Jay had never seen anything like it before.

“Well, something like that shouldn’t be too hard to spot,” he said, looking up, trying to see a break in the trees above. “There’ve gotta be some big mountains on this island with huge boulders, right? Where can we get a better view?”

Keeping his eyes trained on the jungle canopy, Jay started to walk back into the overgrowth.

“Be careful,” Unagami urged, hurrying to keep up with him. “The jungle can be dangerous!”

“Aw, what do you know? You’re just a kid,” Jay repeated, then tripped over a vine and fell hard on his face.

“Jay! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he muttered. “Just wondering why lost cities are always in jungles and not in places I’m familiar with, like city parks.”

Unagami tapped his chin, thinking. “I guess it would be because a lost city would likely be discovered if it were in a developed area, like a—”

“Lightning bolt!” Jay exclaimed suddenly.

“No, lightning bolts aren’t developed, Jay,” Unagami said patiently. “I think that’s a pretty obvious—”

“Lightning bolt! Look!”

Unagami looked down and saw Jay staring at a rock the size of a shoe. It was a diagonal rock jammed into the dirt at its narrowest point, but a horizontal plane interrupted it halfway down, just like in the sketch on Unagami’s map.

“Yes! You found it, Jay!” Unagami enthused, slapping him on the back and sending him sprawling face-first into the dirt once more. Unagami looked the rock over, and noticed that the half of it that caught any sunlight at all was greenish in hue.

Unagami gasped. “And look! It’s covered in moss!”

“Huh,” Jay said as he sat up, rubbing his chin. “Well, now that we found it, what next?”

Unagami turned the map over, but it was blank on the other side. “I don’t know. This was the last of my reference material on the hidden city’s location. Maybe we could walk in the direction it’s pointing?”

The boy started walking the way the top of the rock was indicating, but Jay stopped him.

“Hang on, I bet you’re going to want this as a souvenir,” he said, yanking the rock out of the ground. As soon as he did, there was a loud rumbling noise, and the ground began to shake!

“What is it?” he shrieked. “A tidal wave? A tsunami?”

“No,” Unagami shouted in response, “and those are the same thing! Look!”

He pointed at the ground. At the precise spot where the point of the rock had been, a long, straight crack formed in the earth, and then the ground pulled back just wide enough that they could see stone stairs descending into darkness! When it was fully open, the rumbling and shaking ceased.

“You were right again, Jay! The rock was pointing to the hidden city! Only it was pointing down, not up!”

Jay smiled in wonder. “That’s twice I’ve been looking at the sky when I should have been paying attention to what was right in front of me,” he said. “I think there’s probably a lesson in that.”

But he was talking to empty air. Unagami was already headed down the stairs. Still clutching the lightning bolt rock, Jay followed him.