"Not again," Hand said.

"I'm not, fucker."

"Don'twiththenewguyinthecar."

"I'm not."

Taavi said nothing.

The road bled into Parnu, a small city of red squat brick buildings, and in its center the spires of a squat burgundy municipal building. This was where he was getting off, Taavi said.

"Here, stop please," he said. We stopped at a gas station. Hand gave him his address, and Taavi said he'd send Hand a tape, and we all said goodbye. Taavi got out and walked briskly across the parking lot, heading to the bus stop across the street. I pulled all the German marks out of my sock and gave them to Hand.

"Good," said Hand. "I was hoping you'd do that."

He ran after Taavi.

He caught up with him in the road and handed him the bills, about $850. "For the band," he said, "but not for vodka!" Taavi laughed and thanked him and jogged across the street. Hand walked back and closed the door and turned up the heat.

"That was good," said Hand.

I pulled out of the lot. We passed him, as he waited at the bus stop, but didn't want him to see us anymore, so we didn't wave.

"You still want to?" Hand asked.

I did.

At this point, the kids were definitely out of school. It was almost four and in the fading light – just a drop of yellow in a shallow pool of white – we saw them everywhere, the small people. Hand was driving now, and we passed the residential area off the main road, between the railroad tracks and the ocean. We knew where the kids were; now we had to bury the treasure.

We had at best an hour of daylight. We left town and after a few miles pulled off at some sort of forest preserve. We drove down a winding road, then over a set of train tracks, and immediately hit a three-pronged fork in the road. Hand stopped the car.

"This is as good as any place."

I agreed.

We got out and surveyed. I found a crooked tree about fifty feet from the base of the fork. Behind it there was already a kind of hole-home for chipmunks or snakes. It would do. I took a roll of bills from my left sock. With his feet Hand started gauging the distance from the fork to the tree, heel to toe, slowly, as if measuring a room. He was counting, concentrating, so I got a funny idea. Something funny I would say.

"Four six twelve ten one two six -"

This was good.

"Stop it, fucker."

"Nine eighty twelve four."

So good.

"Did that work?"

"Yeah, stupid."

"Whoa."

"What?"

"Whoa did I just pull some psy ops on you!"

He started over and when he finished it was twenty-three steps. He stood at the hole. The forest was soundless and still.

"What are you putting the treasure in?" he asked, without looking up.

"I don't know. Do we have a treasure chest?"

"No. But we do need something. You still have that thing you bought in Morocco?"

"The bracelet-vessel thing?"

"Yeah."

"No, that's for my mom. We can't use it," I said, knowing we would.

The forest was quiet.

I clawed through my backpack and found it. We stuffed the money into the case, silver and crude, bejeweled with colored glass. The bills didn't fit. I removed half the bills and folded those remaining, twice, and squeezed them in, their bulk straining under the lid. Inside was about 2,000 kroon, though we wanted it to be more. We were having an increasingly hard time getting rid of this goddamn money.

Hand dug behind the tree. "We bury it a foot or so down, then stick a knife from where it's buried."

"What knife?"

"The one you bought in Marrakesh."

"No way. I was giving that to Mo and Thor."

"We need it. It won't look right without the knife."

I had to agree that it would look cooler with the knife handle sticking out. I retrieved the knife and he stabbed it, blade-down, into the dirt, just above the treasure. It looked good, that knife, cheap but elaborately engraved, in this frozen Estonian forest, so quiet.

"What's the story we tell on the map?" Hand asked.

"What?"

"We need a story. To explain why it's here. Like, some Moroccan sailors were on the run from thieves and decided Parnu was the safest place to hide their treasure."

After he said it, Hand decided that sounded just about right. "Yeah, that's the story," he said. I liked it, too. I would have loved it when I was nine. This would have sent my childhood in an entirely different direction. Real buried treasure. Even if the kid didn't believe in the Moroccan part, still it would be so expanding, would open their minds to such possibilities – this act alone could keep a child – and his or her friends, and theirs – from the grey low-slung sky of adolescence; whenever they would feel that they'd seen everything, or, conversely, that the extraordinary was not possible – and how funny that those two things, diametrically opposed, are always both found in the jaded brain – whenever that happened they'd remember the treasure, the Moroccans on the run, the fact that they'd found the money here, in this ragged forest by the tracks on the edge of their tiny town -

I wanted this so badly,when I was young. With this my ceiling would have been higher.

I covered the knife with a long light branch covered in needles. Then, around the tree, we laid three long branches, in a loose triangle in a way, one that would be noticed by the eventual map-bearer but not the average passerby. On cue, a couple in jogging suits ran past, quickly glancing our way. Hand pretended to be examining some flora. I waved.

In the car, with the heat on, we drew the map. I wanted it to look weathered and authentically Moroccan, but feared that the ball-point pen betrayed its youth. I wanted it to be mysterious, with a cryptic and ancient aura, without implying the occult.

"Then why are you drawing the shiv?" Hand asked.

"Is that scary?"

"Of course it's scary."

"Too late now."

"At least make the knife shiny. Shiny knives are less scary."

I made the shiv shiny. Hand did the Moroccan-style writing – though Hand is not such a skilled speller – and made up the rules.

"Turn up the heat," Hand said. It was getting even colder. "Do you think the graph paper blows the mood?"

"It's the only paper we have," I said.

"What if we burn the edges?"

"No. Come on. That's so corny."

"It'll work," Hand said. "They'll believe it. We have to."

"I refuse."

"What kind of treasure map is drawn on neat graph paper with the spiral holes all frayed like that? It'll look like some idiot did it."

"You have matches?"

"In the first-aid kit," he said, lunging into the backseat for his backpack. He found the matches. I wanted to do the edge-burning myself.

"Give me those," I said. I got out and lit a match and set it upon the paper. It burned its liquid flame into the paper and I blew it out. My hands were so cold they were almost useless. I touched the flame to another part of the page, and extinguished it again. It did look better. I had one match left and applied it to the right edge of the map, here, and there, and there. I blew out all three small fires and then tried to blow out the match. I couldn't. I couldn't find the wind. My mouth opened but there was no wind. My head was light. I dropped the match. The upper half of my vision started darkening. I opened the door and sat inside.

"Close the door!" Hand said. "It's freezing."

I couldn't. I couldn't feel my hands. There was a vibration all the way through me, like my whole body was asleep, like a foot would be asleep. It shook my ribs and tickled them. It seemed to move my organs, switching their places, removing them, leaving cold cavities, then replacing them.

The air was so clear! Our breath so clear!

"Close it!" he yelled.