The Way to Impossible Island

by Sophie Kirtley

  Mothgirl gasped as the Big Water twisted and twirled the boat around and about. Faster than even the river in spring when the snow melted and came pouring down from the high peaks. The boat rocked and swayed as it turned. Mothgirl’s eyes widened; she had never seen waters like this: waters so wide and wild and dangerful.

  Daramurrum had two paddles, not one, and Mothgirl could tell he was pulling on them with all his strength, his teeth tight, his cheeks red. She shook her head – this foolish boy had it all wrong; she had paddled the river often with Hart and she knew the ways of water: as Hart always said, ‘Do not fight the water. The water will win all battles.’ Her heart panged at the memory of her brother, so vivid she could almost hear the edges of his voice in the wind. But the sunshine of slow-river days with Hart felt far far from the darkness here.

  Daramurrum heaved hard on the two strong paddles, but still the boat turned and spun; the wild waters pulling them hither and thither, like the leaf boats Eelgirl and Owlboy sent hurtling down the rapids. Perhaps the waters were pulling them the same way as they had pulled her wolf – she looked to the island. Soon she would be there with him and she would hold her dear, soft ByMySide tight as tight as tight.

  And Mothgirl’s heart froze – she could see the shape of Owl Rock, high on the island’s summit, but it was fast escaping them. The Big Water was dragging them out beyond the Island to where huge white waves roared, big as mountains, strong as aurochs. Panic fluttered in her chest.

  She touched the cut on her head. It was a small wound only; Mothgirl tried to pull her fighting strength up from the depths of herself, but she felt empty as a hollow nutshell without her brother, without her wolf. She breathed a big breath. Still some salt water tickled in the deeps of her. She coughed until her eyes watered.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Daramurrum had stopped paddling and was watching her, worry clouds in his eyes.

  She nodded, wiping her mouth on her hand. ‘Oak-ee!’ she declared gravely, echoing his word. And somehow, just speaking it, she felt her spirit strengthen. ‘I oak-ee,’ she murmured softly.

  He began rowing again, going nowhere with all his might. Daramurrum; he was a far-ice-lands boy and he was deep strange; he spoke strange words; he wore strange deerskins; he had washed away the Great Plain and made stars tumble from the sky, but … she listened in surprise to the rasping fastness of his breath. It reminded her of Pa, when his breath-sickness came. She bit her lip. ‘You oak-ee, Daramurrum?’ she whispered.

  Before he had time to answer, a huge smash shuddered through Mothgirl’s bones; something had struck the belly of the boat, something in the water. Daramurrum shouted and Mothgirl shouted too.

  ‘What is it?’ he cried.

  Mothgirl clutched the sides and peered over into the dark, writhing water.

  ‘I see no thing,’ she answered. Bad spirits, was what she was thinking.

  The boat was struck again, harder this time. Mothgirl’s mouth was dry. ‘Fast, Daramurrum!’ she cried. ‘We need leave this place!’

  Dara snorted like a boar. ‘I know!’ He heaved on the paddles, but the boat did not move any closer to the island.

  Then Mothgirl noticed a terrible thing. ‘Look!’ she said. Daramurrum turned his head and looked where she was pointing. They both stared, speechless, at the thin crack in the boat’s side; it oozed water like an arrow wound.

  Another splintering smash juddered the boat. This time Mothgirl saw what it was that had struck them. Not bad spirits; a tree. A long-ago-fallen, black-limbed tree that twisted and twirled, trapped as they were by the suck of the whirling waters.

  The huge underwater tree struck the boat hard as a boulder and Daramurrum called out as he was flung forward on to the floor. He still held tight to one of the paddles but the other had been wrenched clean out of his hand and was sliding out into the –

  Mothgirl dived for it; she was fast, pouncing like a lynx.

  But not fast enough.

  The paddle slipped into the waves.

  She leaned over, trying to grab it, but the Big Water was cruel – that much was clear – the waves snatched it from her fingers while the wind wheezed like old laughter. ‘Tttschhck,’ she swore, trying … and failing again to reach the paddle. Daramurrum, next to her now, tried too.

  They both gasped, watching the paddle as slowly slowly the cruel Big Water lifted it high upon a wave then hurled it down at the mighty black tree trunk. Mothgirl winced at the crunch as the paddle snapped in two.

  ‘At least we still have one oar,’ said Dara, but his voice trembled. He held on to the solitary oar and pulled and pushed and pulled again, but rowing one-sided only made the little boat spin ever faster in the dark swirling water of the Swathe.

  ‘Two sides!’ shouted Mothga. ‘Two sides go straight!’

  Dara knew what she meant; he’d seen people canoeing like that on adventure programmes, paddling on one side, then the other. Dara tried, but Peagreen was too wide, much wider than a TV canoe; by the time he’d lifted the oar out of the water and wrestled it over his head to the other side they were drifting backwards again.

  ‘It’s no good!’ he said, panting. He put his hand on his chest. ‘And you’re no good either,’ he muttered to his heart, biting his lip. He could tell his Pink Pill of Power would wear off soon and he couldn’t take another until morning.

  Maybe someone would come and rescue them – one of the fishing boats? But the twinkling lights of the harbour were just pinpricks now, further away than ever. The island was dark and distant too. Cold terror gripped him. He couldn’t deny it any longer: the currents in the Swathe were dragging them out to sea, and not just any sea either – for beyond Lathrin Island was the Sea of Moyle: the bleakest, most dangerous stretch of water there was – the sea where cursed swan children were banished in one of the True Legends of Lathrin Island; the sea where, even in real life, the jagged rocks had been snagging ships for centuries, dragging them under, never to be seen again.

  Dara stared at the crack in the side of the boat, where slowly, steadily, water trickled in; already there was a puddle rolling over his wellies. As the water seeped in, his hope seeped out. Dara swallowed. They were powerless. They were two kids with one oar in a holey boat in a deadly sea in the middle of the night. He felt his fast heartbeat quickening again. This was the absolute champion of not a good idea ideas. What had he been thinking? How had this happened? His doom-dark eyes met Mothga’s. It was impossible. They were done for.

  But her eyes flashed with determination. ‘We need cross the Big Water,’ she said through gritted teeth and, snake-quick, she snatched the oar out of his hands, before he could stop her.

  ‘Oi!’ he said.

  But she ignored him utterly. Instead she got to her feet, his raincoat billowing like a cape where she’d knotted it over one shoulder. She stood, holding the oar like a weapon, in the very middle of the rocking boat.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘Sit down, Mothga!’

  The boat wobbled precariously; she staggered forward, nearly tumbling over the edge. They both screamed. Another invisible sea-swirl yanked the boat and tipped her backwards again.

  ‘Mothga! Sit down! You’ll fall in! We’ll capsize!’

  But still she didn’t listen. She looked at him, her eyes sparking in the starlight. What on earth was she playing at? Had she gone totally bananas?

  Dara looked at her bare feet and wild hair and crazy animal-skin clothes. Suddenly a thought struck him: he’d found this girl hiding in the Old Boatshed in the dark; why was she there? And who was she anyway? Maybe she actually was totally bananas!

  ‘Sit down! Please!’ he shouted desperately and, clutching the little wooden bench with one hand, Dara snatched with his other at the oar, but Mothga dodged easily out of his reach.

  The boat lurched again. Dara yelled the worst word he knew. This crazy girl was going to kill them both!

  But then, giving him a sharp look, Mothga plunged the oar into the black water and she started to row.


  Two-sided. Standing up. Just like that!

  Dara’s mouth gaped open. She was fast, fast like … like a professional. He almost felt like laughing. She was like an Olympian or something as she whipped the oar from one side of the boat to the other, like she’d been doing it all her life.

  He could feel Peagreen starting to pull against the current, resisting the force that was dragging them out to sea. ‘You’re doing it!’ he shouted, grinning incredulously. ‘Wow, Mothga! Amazing!’ He took off a welly and used it like a bucket to bail out the water.

  And Mothga rowed, and rowed, and rowed. And suddenly they weren’t drifting away from Lathrin Island any more. They were heading across the Swathe towards it. ‘Keep going! We’re going to make it!’

  But Mothga didn’t answer; she was breathing hard, he could hear her puffing and panting even above the wind and the sea. Even if she was superhuman, she couldn’t keep going like that forever. They needed to break the hold of the Swathe … and fast. The problem was Dara couldn’t tell where the currents of the Swathe began or where they ended; the underwater world was subtle, unjudgeable, invisible to all but the fish.

  A big dark shape leaped from the water, dead ahead, ten metres off; it flipped in the air and disappeared beneath the waves with a pearly splash. Dara and Mothga gasped in unison – it was as big as they were!

  Another, further off, no, two this time, leaping together like shadow acrobats in the moonlight.

  ‘Porpoises!’ said Dara, awestruck. A pod of porpoises!

  Dad and Charlie had seen them too one time when they were fishing off Lathrin, and Dara’d got really upset because he’d always desperately wanted to see porpoises; even though he’d only been little then, he still remembered it clearly. Charlie had looked up porpoises in a book afterwards and read aloud to him, showed him pictures and everything, so that he could imagine he’d actually been there too.

  Only a few metres away, a porpoise rose to the surface, not jumping this time, only her shiny fin breaking through the star-sprinkled water, smooth and graceful. Dara gasped at how close she was.

  Then suddenly Dara remembered: ‘The Porpoise Road’! The porpoises in the story liked to play right on the fringes of the underwater currents … right on the border between the deadly waters and the steadier ones, balanced between worlds.

  ‘Mothga!’ yelled Dara.

  She looked at him, rowing slower now, her eyes weary but fierce. Then she stared to where he was pointing, to where dark shapes rose and arced and dived, gleaming moonbright in the sea spray. Her eyes widened. ‘Big fish!’ she breathed.

  Dara bailed faster. ‘Follow that porpoise!’ he yelled.

  Mothgirl dug her paddle deep into the dark waters and turned the boat around to face the big leaping fish. She pulled down and back hard, teeth tight, arms burning like they were aflame.

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Daramurrum. ‘That’s it! Brilliant!’ With his yellow foot deerskin he emptied the water that was fast filling the boat, grinning up at her.

  But she could feel her strength draining from her with every pull on the paddle, with every swing from one side of the boat to the other. Still the Big Water held them in its grasp. It was like doing battle with a creature who was mountain-big and mountain-strong. Her head began to spin and she felt her eyelids flicker, she staggered forward, dizzy. She could not do this. She could not! She was only Mothgirl; she felt pebble-small, petal-weak against the might of these waters. Her paddling arms softened; the waters were winning; she could not go on.

  ‘No! Mothga!’ It was Daramurrum, panic-eyed. ‘Keep going! Please! Don’t give up!’

  But her arms were like slack vines; her chest burned with every breath. She could feel the cruel waters tighten their grip around the boat once more.

  ‘Come on, Mothga!’ Daramurrum was afoot now too, standing behind her. ‘We’re so nearly there! You can do it!’ His hands closed over her hands. ‘We can do it!’

  She shook her head. The Big Water tugged.

  ‘Show me!’ shouted Daramurrum. ‘My arms are still strong; I’ve rested. You know how to do it and I can do all the heaving. Come on, Mothga, show me what to do and we can do it together! Like the porpoises, the big fish. They work together too! Just trust me! Try!’ She felt him take the weight of the paddle as it pushed against the current.

  Out of the edge of her eye, Mothgirl saw two of the big fish leap together out of the water, gleaming blue in the moonlight, perfectly matched like shadows of each other. ‘Porr-poss-iss!’ she whispered, tasting Daramurrum’s strange word on her tongue. Porr-poss-iss? What were these impossible creatures? She had never heard tell of porr-poss-iss … but maybe there was more to the world than what she already knew? Maybe there was more to the world than what Pa and Hart knew too?

  She felt Daramurrum’s hand tighten on her hand and she glanced over her shoulder at the strange lynx-haired boy. ‘You can!’ he said. His look was flint-sharp but not unkind.

  Mothgirl faced the impossible porpoises and with Daramurrum’s hands and her hands together they lifted the paddle high.

  They drove it down into the dark water, spear-smooth, and Daramurrum heaved, leaning back. They lifted together, and swung and heaved.

  Lifted together, and swung, and heaved.

  Lifted together, and swung, and heaved.

  The boat edged closer to the porr-poss-iss, so close Mothgirl could see their small small star-bright eyes watching them back and she could hear their puff-puff-puff noises.

  They lifted together, and swung, and heaved. Lifted together, and swung, and heaved.

  Suddenly the porr-poss-iss were all around them. Their dark shapes sweeping beneath the boat through the night waters, then soaring to the surface, and up up into the moonlit air in a shower of shimmering droplets like star-bright sparks. Mothgirl wished Eelgirl and Owlboy could see them – oh, how they would laugh and clap their hands in delight at these fish, bigger than they were, that flew in the sky like wet, wingless birds!

  They lifted together, and swung, and heaved. Lifted together, and swung, and heaved. Until Mothgirl felt Daramurrum’s grip loosen and she realised that the boat was no longer being twirled and twisted and flung by the Big Water. Instead, small white waves rocked them softly, like they were babies held in arms. Mothgirl and Daramurrum breathed hard and fast.

  ‘We make puff-puff noises,’ Mothgirl panted. ‘Like por-poss-iss!’ And she laughed.

  Daramurrum laughed too. All around them waves foamed white like boar spit and the boat rose and fell and rose and fell. Gentle.

  ‘The water not win all battles,’ said Mothgirl, half to herself. ‘Hart not know all things!’

  ‘Heart?’ asked Daramurrum, his hand on his chest.

  ‘Hart!’ she said, making an antler shape above her head. ‘Hart my big brother.’ She turned to face him. ‘First I find my wolf. Then I need find Hart.’

  Daramurrum nodded, but his eyes did not understand. ‘Where is he? Where is Hart?’

  ‘Hart,’ said Mothgirl. ‘Hart is …’ She gazed with glazed eyes all around her. ‘Hart is lost,’ she whispered. She hung her head.

  But just then the small boat rounded the headland.

  Mothgirl gasped. She pointed wordlessly at a big bright line of light that swept out across the darkness of the Big Water, steady and strong as a sunbeam, then vanishing into the night.

  Make light and I will find you.

  The line of light swung across the dark water again; Daramurrum pointed at it too. ‘Lighthouse.’

  ‘Not light owls, Daramurrum,’ said Mothgirl. ‘That Hart!’

  And Mothgirl laughed in fear and joy and disbelief. For this was proof of it. Proof! Vulture had been telling truth when he said he had seen Hart’s waymarker. Her brother was on Lathrin Island. It was Hart who was lost this time.

  And Mothgirl was the one who would find him.

  ‘Ow!’ said Dara, squirming his arm out of Mothga’s too-tight grip.

  He followed the line
of her pointing finger to where the beam from the East Lighthouse swept out like a searchlight across the dark waves.

  Why would Mothga’s brother be out there in the lighthouse on Lathrin Island? He couldn’t be the lighthouse keeper, there hadn’t been any lighthouse keepers at all since all the lighthouses were automated way back when. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘Are you sure your brother’s out there?’ asked Dara, giving Mothga a sideways glance. ‘Lathrin Island’s been uninhabited for about a hundred years.’

  ‘Hart lost,’ she said, with certainty. ‘Hart lost. I find Hart. I bring Hart home.’ She nodded, like a full stop. Then Mothga lifted the oar and began to paddle towards the island, steady and strong and sure.

  Dara sat on the boat bench and took careful little gasps of the wild sea air, but no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he could tell that the Pink Pill of Power’s power was gone now and his chest was starting to feel all locked and tight. He wriggled off his backpack, quickly found his inhaler. Then closed his eyes and took a puff. Better.

  He opened his eyes. Mothga was staring at him, curiously, her head on one side.

  ‘What?’ he said, embarrassed.

  ‘Breath-sick,’ she said with a sharp nod.

  ‘Thanks for the diagnosis, Doctor,’ said Dara, rolling his eyes.

  Mothga rolled her own eyes back dramatically, then turned to face the island once more. Silently Dara did his breathing exercises, relieved and pleased that his heart seemed to be OK again. For now anyway. He looked at his watch. He just needed to wait five hours and then he could take another pill – so long as he took it easy between now and the morning he’d be fine.

  Dara counted in his head and as he counted he gazed curiously at Mothga, at her black-nailed fingers, and at the five thin bracelets on her strong arms, and at the animal skins she was wearing, and at her bare feet, and at her wild hair. ‘Mothga,’ he asked softly, ‘where are you from? Where is … home?’