At the bottom of Cleo's grandparents' garden stood a very old maple tree, so wide that three children holding hands could not reach all the way around it.
Cleo loved that tree. She had climbed it every summer since she was four. But on this particular evening, as the sun went down, she noticed something she had never seen before. Low on the trunk, where the bark was rough and dark, there was a small hollow, and inside the hollow was a glint of something.
She reached in. Her fingers closed around a little tin, rusty at the edges. Inside the tin was a folded square of yellowed paper.
Cleo unfolded it carefully. It was a map, drawn in faded brown ink. At the bottom, in curly writing, it said: For whoever is patient enough to follow.
There was a tiny drawing of the maple tree. A dotted line led away from it, past a rock shaped like a sleeping turtle, over a stream, and up to a small X beside a cluster of spruce trees.
"Grandpa," said Cleo, running up the garden, "there is a map!"
Grandpa looked at it for a long time. His eyes twinkled behind his glasses. "Well, well," he said. "I wonder who made that."
"Can we follow it?"
"Of course. But the writing says patient, Cleo. So we will go slowly."
They took a flashlight, though it was still a soft blue dusk, and they set out. The garden gate creaked. The path was lined with ferns, cool and dim.
First, they found the turtle rock. It was big and round and covered in green moss. Cleo patted it. "Hello, turtle," she said.
Next, the stream. It was narrow and clear, and it chuckled over the stones. They crossed on a row of flat rocks, one hop at a time, and Grandpa held Cleo's hand.
Then they climbed a gentle slope, through the whisper of the pine needles. It was very quiet. An owl called, a long way off, hoo, hoo. The sky between the branches was deep violet, with the first few stars shining.
At the spruce trees, the map said X.
Cleo looked around. There was nothing to see. Only a patch of soft moss between the roots.
"Oh," she said. She felt, for a moment, a little disappointed.
"Look up," said Grandpa.
She looked up. The branches parted, and there, in a perfect circle between the treetops, was the whole sky, sprinkled with stars, so many that she could not count them. It was the best view of the stars in the entire forest.
"That's the treasure," said Grandpa softly. "Somebody wanted to show it to you."
"Who?"
"I made that map when your mother was small," said Grandpa. "I hid it in the tree for her to find. She never did. She grew up and moved away. I forgot about it, until tonight."
Cleo took his hand. "I found it," she said.
"You did," he said. "Thank you."
They lay down side by side on the moss, and counted stars until they lost count, and began again. Cleo felt her eyelids growing heavy.
Grandpa carried her home through the dark, over the stream, past the sleeping turtle rock, and put her to bed with the tin on her bedside table.
In the morning, it was still there. And on the back of the map, in tiny curly writing she had not noticed before, were four more words: Thank you for coming.