Neverland treasure map on upper back

The chart is back on the nail above the stove where you should have left it, and I have not yet decided whether I am angry. You took the last copy of Father's map when you went over the side at Harrow Quay, and I told the harbour clerk it had burned in the fire. It did not burn. It was folded inside your coat, and now it is somewhere in a stranger's cabin with the north point creased through.

Father drew every rock of it by candlelight. He would let no one else set the compass rose, and he always put the lagoon a little too far east because he said mermaids were shy of magistrates. Skull Rock he marked with a skull no bigger than a barleycorn, because he claimed a gull had once told him the sea was painting it a fresher white every spring. He never said which gull.

Here is what I need. Bring the chart back before the autumn tides, or send word of where it went. The Crocodile Creek mooring is silting up, and the men who buy our charts want the old soundings in Father's hand, not your sketches from the foredeck.

I have added something of my own in the margin, below the galleon, where the sea runs out past the edge of the paper. It is a small ship with its sails full and no name on its stern, so that whoever finds it can decide who is steering. If you come home, you may write your name there. If you do not, I shall leave the space empty and let the tide choose.

Marta