Peach rewarded the toad that had discovered the postage on the back of the note by giving him the day off. He squeaked with happiness at Peach's generosity before kissing her hand and rushing off to enjoy the rest of his day.
Peach, Perry, Toadsworth, Toadman, and Toadson headed down to the basement level of the castle, while Toadma stayed in the main hall to see if she could wrangle more interviews out of the recovering toads.
In the sub-level of the Mushroom Castle there was a dusty corridor lit by only a few half-broken light bulbs. Toadsworth made a note to replace them with new ones when he had the time.
At the end of the hallway was tall, steel door bearing an ancient plaque that said "Castle Library".
"Your great-grandfather was a bookworm," Toadsworth said, smiling as he pushed open the rusty door. "He had this library built for those who loved history and reading - two characteristics that sharply defined himself."
Inside was a huge, cavernous room with row after row of ten-foot tall bookcases, each holding at least two-hundred books each. In the middle of it all was a old abandoned secretary's desk with accompanied by an old-fashioned oil lamp and a box of catalog cards. As Toadsworth closed the door, dust rained from the ceiling. Peach brushed off her sleeves. The whole place was lit by a solitary light bulb that hung high from the ceiling, giving off little light.
Toadman wrinkled his nose as he contemplated box on the desk. "Ugh, card catalogue," he groaned. Peach could see why he was disappointed; both he and Toadson were most obviously from the technological age. "This is gonna be a nightmare."
"Is this place even organized by the Dewey Decimal System?" Toadson asked.
"More like the Decimal System of Randomness," Perry said.
"You lads are lucky we've got a guiding system at all," Toadsworth said as he hefted the card catalog box from the desk and onto the floor.
Though Peach didn't like the dusty, cramped, unorganized feel of the place, she did like how it was quiet and seemed to hold a power all its own - as if it had deemed itself sacred.
"Hey, I found some candles!" Toadson's head popped up from behind the secretary's desk. He held a bundle of candles. "Toadsworth, you got a match? If we could actually light this place up, this task might not seem so daunting."
Toadsworth produced a lighter and lit up about thirteen candles. He gave everyone one and then ran about to plant the rest in random places.
"All right, let's see what we can find about Vibe Island," Toadsworth said, adjusting his spectacles. "Get to work everyone. If anyone finds out where Vibe Island is, let's write it down and then compare answers in a couple of hours. All right? Go!"
Everyone split up. Before Peach could head down a random isle of bookcases, Perry jerked her backwards by hooking his handle into her cloth belt. "Hey, let's use the catalog," he said. "It'll get the job done faster. Come on." He led her back towards the secretary's desk, Peach holding out her candle for light. Perry glanced down into the box.
"Okay," he said. "What you need to do is look for the V cards. There may be one about Vibe Island on one."
"How do you know how to use a card catalog?" she asked him.
"Because I'm awesome," he said simply. "And awesome people know everything."
Peach rummaged through the box, flipping through the cards in alphabetical order until she came to the V's. Her heart leapt as she found one with the word "Vibe" on it. "Hey-! Oh, no this isn't one." She pulled out the whole card and it said Vibes of Fury - How to Control One's Inner Rage by Master Goomba "Grouchy" Griffin written in 1665. "Hmmm, okay here's - no, another false alarm." She'd pulled out the card for a book called Vibrations of Earth: Legends Surrounding Earthquakes. She looked through the rest of the V's, but there was not one book with the title or subtitle of "Vibe Island" on it.
"So there's not a book directly called Vibe Island," Perry murmured. "Don't give up Princess - it's still too early. If there's not a book about Vibe Island, then maybe there's a book about powerful places in the world that'll say something about Vibe Island."
Peach nodded, and went to work looking up certain books. She was successful in finding several atlases, world maps, and books about famous locations in the world. After they found the cards, Peach and Perry set out to finding the books. Several times, Peach found a ladder and had to lay it against the bookcase to reach the books they were so high up. About twenty minutes later of extensive searching, Peach loaded about twelve thick volumes onto a nearby reading table. Peach set down the candle, gave Perry one of the books, and they set to work.
After about ten minutes of extensive reading, Peach was already feeling her eyes water. She wasn't used to reading so much! But she forged on. Whether or not they found the location of Vibe Island might determine how quickly they got to Mario.
She started skimming through the books and table of contents instead of directly reading through the whole thing. If she did that, they wouldn't be done for days! She went to the index of 10 of the Most Sacred Places I've Ever Visited by Doctor Irwin Druggard. She actually found "Vibe Island" in the Vs and turned to page 556 (it was a pretty long book for only having 10 places). She scanned the page, but found in disappointment that it only said:
Besides Japan being a wonderful center of modern culture, its temples and sacred pillars dedicated to its ancient deities fill you with awe, very similar to Vibe Island. I also liked, however...
Peach stopped there. That was the only sentence on the entire page that had the words "Vibe Island" on it. She closed the book, causing an eruption of dust, and hefted the heavy volume aside.
She checked another huge book, titled Famous Places with Famous Poetry. She found a poem on page 173 about Vibe Island:
Vibe Island
Author Unknown
Vibe Island
A place of
Happiness
Anger
Sadness
Calamity
Peace
What a place
Of contradictions
The poem didn't relay anything that Peach didn't already know: Vibe Island held a great yet mysterious power. Peach didn't find any other poems in the book or of any authors that she could somehow contact. Irritated, she heaved the book aside and took up the next one.
The next book finally housed a clue. It was a book of myths that told the creation of different places of the world, titled How Everything Came to Be. Peach looked in the table of contents and, surprised, found a page titled "Vibe Island" all to itself. She hurriedly flipped to the page, her heart pounding, and found a short myth:
When Anger, Sadness, Happiness, and Peace came together, chaos erupted, sending the world to the verge of Armageddon - horrible earthquakes, savage thunderstorms, violent volcano eruptions plagued the planet. The world's leaders came together and sent their magicians out to calm the chaos. Many were killed, but a heroic few prevailed. They transformed the vibrating chaos into an island - Vibe Island. And that is why, today, Vibe Island exists, beautiful yet isolated, in the surging Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic Ocean! The Atlantic Ocean! So Vibe Island was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Peach took out a notepad and put down the clue. She was tempted to tell Perry, but he had buried his face into a book titled, The Old World - How Things Looked Then and How they Look Now. She decided not to disturb him and moved to the next book.
They sat together, reading, for over two hours, Peach writing down vague little notes when she came to something that might have been a clue. She also wrote down the emotions Happiness, Sadness, Anger, and Peace - the four were consistent in every available description that Peach found about Vibe Island.
It was almost three hours later that Peach finally gave up. She was getting really tired, and she'd read more than she had in her entire life. "Perry," she said wearily. "I'm going to gather up the others. We should compare notes now."
"Gotcha, Princess," Perry said, his nose buried in another book. "I'll join you in a little bit - I just need to read this a little bit more." He was reading a really old, hand-bound book titled Journal of My Adventures - Roland Toadstool. Peach's great-great-great-great grandfather.
"All right. Don't be too long. I'll leave the candle with you." The candle had melted almost all the way to the wick.
Peach walked around the library and found Toadsworth, Toadson, and Toadman. All three of them looked tired and sleepy and they were all buried in their own dusty volumes. Peach shook them out of their dazes.
"No, the chocolate ones!" Toadman blurted as Peach shook him awake. He scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he looked up at Peach. "Oh, sorry, Princess. Having a dream about chocolate is all."
They gathered around a table to discuss their notes.
"I really need some coffee," Toadson said as he yawned widely. "Decaf. But with extra mocha. Whipped cream on top."
"He's lost his wits," Toadsworth noted. "I doubt anyone would be sane enough to drink a beverage that toxic."
"Right after we compare notes, you can all go to bed," Peach said. "Toadson, Toadman, Toadma is probably waiting for you."
"Toadma's probably back at the station," Toadman snorted. "She doesn't like to wait around for us."
"You can call a cab," Peach said. "The castle will pay the fare."
The two nodded sleepily.
"So, anything?" Peach asked.
"Nothing much," Toadsworth said. "The information is sketchy. In several books, the words 'Vibe Island' were only contained in a single sentence."
"I found something that said that Vibe Island is in the Atlantic Ocean," Peach said.
"Really? That's one good clue," Toadson said with veiled sarcasm. "So we've only got four thousand miles of water to check."
"The legends also say that Vibe Island was created from emotions," Peach said, ignoring the jab. Toadson was lucky that she didn't take back the cab fare generosity.
"Yeah! I saw that a lot too," Toadman agreed. "Happiness, Anger, Sadness, Peace. Those are the four that created Vibe Island."
"Hard to swallow, but a clue is a clue," Toadson said.
"I don't quite understand how four emotions are supposed to help us get there," Toadsworth said.
"Has it occurred to you that three of those four moods are the ones that ailed those toads in the medical infirmary?" Toadson asked.
Toadsworth raised an eyebrow and glanced at Peach, who was nodding - she hadn't thought of that.
"There's some sort of connection there," Peach said. But what she didn't know.
Toadman nodded in agreement. "But nobody found any locations other than the Atlantic Ocean?"
They all shook their heads.
"Then we're stuck," Peach said, her stomach plummeting once again. "This is unbelievable. I can't believe that none of these books say anything about where Vibe Island is!"
"We should contact some cartographers," Toadsworth suggested. "They make maps - they may know something about Vibe Island."
Peach nodded, but felt anxious. This was taking too long! Mario could be in danger...
"Peach!"
Peach turned at her name and saw Perry floating towards their table, that old diary he'd been reading hooked into his handle. "Perry? What's going on?"
"Take a look at this!" Perry threw the book down in front of Peach and motioned down towards the dusty, torn pages. "Turn to page 83."
Everyone crowded around Peach as she turned the dusty pages to 83. There was a short entry made by her father in May 13, 1777-
May 13, 1777
We've got trouble. Our biggest political rivals are growing in power once again. Their leader, Kamek, is a power-crazy magician that is desperate for dominance the Mushroom Kingdom. He's gone to great lengths to make himself look almighty: he's gotten his hands on the Vibe Scepter.
When my advisors told me this news, I was alarmed. The Vibe Scepter, from the illusive Vibe Island, is one of the most powerful weapons in the land. Even I myself can't overpower it. In fact, the only match the Vibe Scepter is the Vibe Necklace, whose whereabouts are unknown.
Nonetheless, I set off with my men at once to go and retrieve the Vibe Necklace. First we had to find Vibe Island. It's fairly easily found with about three days of rowing if you leave off the westernmost tip of the Mushroom Kingdom. Once we reached Vibe Island, we searched for the Vibe Cave and found, with dismay, that it was sealed firmly shut with fallen rocks. We'll have to find another way to defeat Kamek...
Roland Toadstool
Peach almost cried with joy. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Grandfather Roland!" she cried.
Toadsworth excitedly turned to Perry. "My boy, I believe that congratulations are in order," he said to the umbrella. "You've found the clue that will lead us to Mario!"
Perry looked modest. "Aw shucks, gramps."
"What are we waiting for?" Peach asked. "Toadsworth, phone the General again - we're leaving at first light."