The Thorn Island Adventure

by Fleur Hitchcock

  The Black Diamond whipped forward, and George shot over the side into the water.

  “No!” yelled Aiden. Beneath him the water was glassy clear and still, and below that ridged sand caught in the fractured sunlight. It was so clear it was impossible to tell how deep it was. He threw off his glasses and plunged in, the bubbles racing past his ears. He didn’t wait for them to stop; instead he reached his arms out, hoping to find George’s legs.

  He burst through the surface, right behind George.

  “Help!” shouted George, spluttering and spitting. “Can’t swim!”

  Above him, the white blob of Bella raced along the Black Diamond, barking madly.

  “You’re OK – you’re wearing a life jacket,” said Aiden, pulling George’s collar and kicking out towards the boat.

  Ava had swung the Black Diamond so that it blocked them from the motorboat. Aiden knew they only had seconds before they were hit again and he pushed forward, grabbing the side and launching George over the top. It was all horribly blurry, but he saw George grab the oar and throw it over the prow of the Black Diamond.

  “No!” shouted Aiden, too late to stop George from losing their only oar.

  “Ow! You little—” shouted one of the men.

  “George!” yelled Ava. “Hold this, here.” She handed him the tiller and helped Aiden scale the side.

  The motorboat circled them, and Ava took the tiller back. Aiden fumbled about in the bottom of the boat for his glasses.

  “Hold tight,” she muttered, sending the Black Diamond straight towards the motorboat.

  “We’re gonna—” began Aiden.

  But at the last moment the motorboat swung sideways, turning far too fast and tipping.

  Aiden saw the red-vested man hit the water.

  Dalmatian Man stopped the boat and ran to the back.

  “Yay!” said Aiden as the Black Diamond cut gently out to sea, leaving them behind. “Let’s get some distance on them.”

  “We might just make it into shore, but the wind’s in the wrong direction,” Ava said. “And the tide’s going out – there might be nowhere to land.”

  “Could we go further out?”

  “I’m not supposed to, but…” Ava shrugged and pointed the Black Diamond out of the bay.

  Which is when the wind became a breeze.

  And the Black Diamond slowed.

  Ava tried pulling the sail in different directions, but it didn’t make any difference; they were going nowhere fast.

  They all watched as the red-vested man clambered back on Jake’s boat. They were only a hundred metres off.

  “We can’t do anything,” said Ava. “We’re helpless.”

  The power boat headed towards them.

  Ava watched as Aiden checked all the lockers, but all he found were some flags and a bucket.

  “They’re going to get us,” he muttered. “Sorry, George. We may have made things worse.”

  Using the little breeze that there was, Ava turned the boat. She was facing the long line of rocks at Gull Rock, and she had an idea.

  Somewhere here was a wreck. She’d seen it from the clifftop once. If she could just steer in…

  “Ava, you’re heading straight for those rocks,” Aiden said from beside her.

  “Yup,” she said, her tongue between her teeth, all her senses running on overdrive.

  “But we’ll hit them.”

  “No we won’t,” she said. “I know the tide’s going out but…”

  The Black Diamond slowed, but it didn’t stop completely.

  “Keep her level,” said Ava, not taking her eyes from the gap between the two largest rocks.

  George and Aiden moved into position, both of them gripping the side of the boat.

  Ava glanced back; the motorboat was following. It wasn’t going so fast this time, but it was definitely catching them. She could see a puzzled expression on Dalmatian Man’s face.

  The rocks were almost flanking them. “We’ll lift the centreboard,” muttered Ava.

  The Black Diamond now had only a few centimetres of hull below the waterline.

  “I can see a dead boat down there,” said George, looking over the side.

  “Exactly,” said Ava.

  They glided over the wreck, which was just below the surface and just below the bottom of the Black Diamond, then sped up as the wind whistling along the coast caught their sail.

  Ava leaned forward and dropped the centreboard again.

  The motorboat, which was deeper than the Black Diamond, followed, driving into the gap between the rocks. It juddered as it hit the wreck beneath the surface.

  And it stopped.

  Dalmatian Man stood up, peered over the side and did a face palm.

  “Yes,” said Aiden. “Yes. They’re stuck on the wreck! Genius!”

  Ava let the sail of the Black Diamond drop, and they drifted slowly away from the rocks, over a deep sandy pool that lay in the mouth of the bay.

  Exhausted, Aiden and Ava high-fived and sat back on the benches to watch.

  Jake’s boat was wedged, clearly stuck on the submerged wreck. They saw the red-vested man clamber out, swim between the rocks and climb up on to the shore. Dalmatian Man followed him.

  “Have we won?” asked George. “Have they given up?”

  “Well, they can’t get us here,” said Aiden.

  They watched the two men scale the small cliff and disappear off along the coastal path, heading back in the direction of the lighthouse.

  “No,” said Ava. “Unless they’ve got another boat, they can’t. Now would be a brilliant time to get George to the harbour. Oh! But … look at the tide.”

  The water had receded so much Thorn Island was emerging from the sea. Huge sandbanks had opened up and the island now seemed to fill most of the bay.

  “Can we go round the far side?” asked Aiden, noticing how long the shadows were and wondering how much daylight was left.

  “I think we’re going to have to, whether we like it or not,” said Ava, looking out to sea at the big tankers on the horizon. “The tide’s taking us. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

  “I’m hungry, I need a wee,” said George just as Aiden opened his mouth, “and I want to go home.”

  She tried not to, but Chloe had begun to imagine all sorts of terrible things. That Aiden and Ava had been shipwrecked, that the gang had got hold of them, that the wind had swept them out to sea – although there was no wind and Ava was a brilliant sailor.

  Everyone on the ferry had seen the boat chase, and Jake had alerted the coastguard. The motorboat had been found jammed on an old wreck but nobody had been arrested. Because nobody was there.

  And then it began to get dark.

  “But they’re kidnappers,” Chloe had said for the millionth time.

  “Yes, dear,” Pearl had said soothingly. “Well done for spotting Jake’s boat.”

  And so it went.

  The thing was, the other two still weren’t back, and there was absolutely no sign of them.

  Chloe thought about trying to tell the coastguard but Josh talked her out of it.

  “She’ll be fine – she’s my sister – and she’s got Aiden with her. They won’t do anything stupid. And Grandpa will be really cross about them sailing out of the bay.”

  So they trailed back to the farm, arguing the whole way. Chloe was eaten up by the idea that they should tell someone, and Josh was brushing aside each worry as she raised it.

  “Hello, hello!” Grandpa greeted them near the back door, clutching a torch. “Picking slugs out of the strawberries. Best done in the dark. Where have you all been then? I heard that there was a little excitement in the harbour.”

  “Yes,” said Chloe. “There was. And we’re worried. I’m worried.”

  “Shhh,” hissed Josh.

  “Tell me,” said Grandpa, pausing.

  “No, we are worried. I am,” Chloe almost shouted. This time Josh was not going to talk her out of it. “Aiden and
Ava took the Black Diamond out, and they haven’t come back.”

  “Oh,” said Grandpa. “Oh dear. Come inside.”

  They followed him in, Josh muttering something behind her.

  Chloe ignored him. She sat down at the kitchen table and Grandma and Grandpa sat opposite, paying attention.

  “So you all went out together?” Grandpa asked.

  “No,” said Chloe. “We went to the island on the ferry to—” She stopped. She couldn’t explain about the kidnapping again – anyway, she didn’t actually know if they’d rescued George. All she actually knew was that they’d somehow upset whoever it was that had stolen Jake’s boat. “Anyway, Aiden and Ava went over on the Black Diamond, and then they went further round the island, and Jake’s boat was following them and then Jake’s boat was found, but the Black Diamond wasn’t there.”

  Grandma looked at her sideways. She knew Grandma knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth and she didn’t know what to do about it. But she was telling them the important thing. She was telling them about the Black Diamond – about Aiden and Ava, and about not coming back.

  “Hmmm…” Grandpa sat back and thought. “So could they have gone out with the tide?” he said eventually.

  “S’pose so,” said Josh, sniffing the air. “S’pect they’re just fine.”

  Chloe felt enormously relieved to have told Grandpa, but she wasn’t sure what he could do about it.

  Grandpa rubbed his chin and then stood up and walked to the bottom of the stairs. Grandma Primrose took his elbow and said something to him that Chloe couldn’t hear.

  “Yes, I think I’ll call the coastguard from my study,” he said in the end. “I’ve just made a rather splendid vegetable curry and it would be a terrible shame to waste it. Why don’t you have some while I’m sorting this out?” He turned back towards the doorway.

  As if it had ears, Josh’s stomach groaned long and hard. Grandma smiled. “Come on then. I’ll boil some rice, and then at least two of you have had a hot dinner.”

  Feeling sick and hungry at the same time, Chloe pulled open the cutlery drawer and laid a couple of places at the table. The kitchen smelled divine, all spicy and sweet. Within minutes Josh had ploughed through two mountains of rice and thick delicious curry and chutney and poppadoms and naan, all washed down with delicate yoghurt drinks that Grandma had whizzed up in the blender.

  Chloe ate half of hers.

  “Thank you for that. Yummy,” said Josh, rubbing his stomach. “I feel like falling asleep now.”

  Grandma looked at him over her glasses. “’Fraid you can’t – I think we’ll be going out looking for your sister and the Black Diamond. With your keen eyes we’ll want you watching from the cliff s. The Black Diamond doesn’t have any lights, you see – it’s not supposed to be sailed at night.” She smiled. “Least of all by your sister.”

  Grandma’s smile slipped, and Chloe saw for a second just how worried she really was.

  Except for a slim moon it was almost completely dark as the Black Diamond finally slid into the shallow waters of Brandy Cove. It was eerily quiet. The caves in the cliff side seemed blacker than ever – dark mouths that Ava knew contained nothing more than dead seagulls. Off to the right the harbour looked cosy and warm, coloured lights hanging in strings over the pub and the glow of a barbecue outside on the quay. But the cove had seemed a better idea than trying to get into the harbour because of the black rocks that lay outside the harbour entrance. Ava wasn’t sure she’d be able to avoid them in the dark. But now they were at the cove she wondered if landing here was just madness. She watched as Aiden jumped down on to the shingle.

  He must be exhausted. He’d towed them past the island, the tide so low that at times the centreboard had scraped on the sand below. Sometimes he’d waded, sometimes he’d swam.

  “Can I go home now?” asked George. “I’m scared.”

  “It’ll be OK,” Aiden said.

  It was tricky in such poor light, but they managed to truss the sail and undo all the little cleats without losing any small bits. Finally they took out the mast and, ten minutes later, the Black Diamond had become a flat dark object that they pushed over the shingle into the largest of the caves.

  They cast around on the shore in search of seaweed to drape over the black shiny paint and soon even the torch on Aiden’s phone couldn’t spot her from the beach. The only thing that was really visible was Bella, who ran up and down like a white ghost dog, sniffing and sneezing, probably glad to be back on land.

  “Phew,” said Aiden. “Now we climb the cliff – if we go round by the lighthouse, we can get back to the farm and call the police from there.”

  “OK,” said Ava, feeling the beach for small round pebbles and finding lots.

  “What are you doing?” asked George.

  “Loading up my pockets,” said Ava. “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?” he asked, his eyes wide in the almost dark.

  “The enemy.”

  There was a quiet scrunch as Aiden scooped half the beach into his jeans.

  The path up the cliff was really quite possible by day, but much trickier by night. The tussocks of grass that acted as handholds seemed to have turned grey by moonlight and blended into the sandy footpath. Ava led the way, with George in the middle and Aiden at the back, and they moved very slowly.

  “Shhh,” said Ava, stopping when they were about three quarters of the way up.

  Aiden listened. He couldn’t hear anything.

  “Car,” whispered Ava. “That means they might be above us, up at the lighthouse,” said Ava.

  George was barely awake and very heavy to pull along. Aiden sighed – he was tired too, and the idea that the gang might be behind them on the island or above them at the lighthouse was exhausting. They waited, crouching in the dark, the sea breaking on the beach below them, the moon above.

  They began again, one step at a time, breaking through a small patch of something prickly at the top. This time Aiden saw headlights. The headlights swung across the bushes, briefly illuminating Ava’s face and then they stopped.

  “What?” asked George.

  “Van,” breathed Ava.

  “White?” asked Aiden.

  “Can’t see,” she replied.

  The headlights went off, and Aiden heard the door of the van slam. He crouched, listening to his heartbeat and George’s breathing.

  The light of the lighthouse swept past, skimming the top of Ava’s head.

  Then Aiden heard the footsteps. Close, crunching footsteps, a few metres away – in the direction of the lighthouse.

  He held his breath.

  George held his.

  Ava probably held hers.

  A woman’s voice came out of the dark. “You’re surrounded. Give us the boy.”

  George drew in a sharp breath, and Aiden heard legs wading through long grass or bushes.

  Bella sprang, a white ball in the darkness that bounded towards the woman, barking and growling.

  “Now,” shouted Ava, and she reared up in front of Aiden, delivering the first pebble.

  Aiden jumped up behind her and held George’s head down with one hand while flinging a handful of gravel with the other.

  “Ow!” screamed the woman.

  Aiden heard Ava crashing through the undergrowth somewhere to his right. “This way,” he yelled, grabbing George’s hand and setting off through the bushes to the left, away from the village and farm and away from anything useful, but towards the woods. He ducked and dived and zigzagged, trying to follow the path and not hit the tall spiky bushes that blocked it time and time again.

  George ran with him, keeping up surprisingly well.

  The lighthouse beam swept past them again, showing everything in their path. Ava shouted something behind him, which might have been “See you at the place”.

  Aiden speeded up as he remembered what Ava meant. “Come on, George,” he said.

  “Fast, fast,” George panted behind him. “I’m
going fast.”

  The two of them hurtled along the coastal path, Aiden with one trainer on and one socked foot, George in bare feet, until the bushes stopped on the left, giving way to open grass, which meant they were nearly at the woods.

  As they ran Aiden listened for Ava, but she definitely wasn’t behind them.

  “Stop,” he said, listening for footsteps. But there weren’t any. All he could hear was George, the sea and the sounds of the night. She’d definitely gone towards the village. And hopefully she’d taken the scary woman with her.

  The lighthouse beam bounced through the bushes, showing the cliff edge and the trees to the right.

  “Has she fallen in the sea?” asked George.

  “Shhh. No,” said Aiden, but below to their left the sea boiled in a huge sinkhole. The water slapped against the sides, booming and shaking the ground beneath their feet. It was a scary place by day, and potentially lethal by night.

  He knew that between their feet and the sinkhole lay a few metres of bunny-shaved grass and a thin strand of rusty wire. There was nothing else to stop them falling over. Above to the right was the coppice, and he could see the familiar silhouette of a tall beech tree against the faint light of the sky.

  “This is going to be an adventure,” he whispered to George, “but if we manage it, we’ll have you safely out of their reach and back with your mum and dad in no time.”

  George didn’t reply and Aiden wondered if the little boy was too terrified to speak.

  If he remembered rightly, there was a fence on the other side. They needed it if they were going to get past the next part of the path. Blindly he cast about to his right until his fingers fell on something at waist height. He ran his hand down the side to check. It had two strands of wire at the top and sheep fencing at the bottom and it crossed a bog. A seriously boggy bog, one that Josh had fallen into last summer and had been pulled out of with a rope that they had to get from the farm. He had been in there shouting for some time. It had been very funny. But that all seemed a million years ago now.

  “So, put your feet in the holes of the lower bit of fencing and hold the top bit to steady yourself. One step at a time.” He sent George first. It was hard to see, but he could feel the wires trembling, and hear the twang as George’s foot moved from one hole to the next. Aiden followed. Halfway across, the lighthouse beam swept the landscape again, this time showing their hands clutching the wire and the blackness at their feet. In silence they crossed the ten metres of bog.