The Way to Impossible Island

by Sophie Kirtley

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Daramurrum.

  But Mothgirl just closed her eyes. It was time. She did not want her dear ByMySide’s spirit to roam, restless. And it was up to her to loosen her hold and let him go free into spirit sleep.

  She spread her arms full wide, Daramurrum’s deerskin flapping noisily about her, and Mothgirl sang softly for her lost wolf, remembering him in all his waking days.

  She sang of a girl, four summers old, who heard a small small noise in the dark of a cave, and of how she crawled unafraid into the dark, following the noise, until she came upon a wolf den, cold and abandoned.

  She sang with a smile of how the girl found one smallest wolf pup in the den and wrapped him snug in her deerskin, and brought him all the way to her home.

  She sang of how when the girl’s pa saw the smallest wolf pup he said, ‘No! Return him to his empty den! We cannot raise a wolf pup here. Some things are done. And some things are simply not the way.’

  And she sang of how the girl, who was small, was also determined, and of how she battled with words and tears and promises until her pa’s heart turned.

  And Mothgirl smiled through her tears as she sang of how from then on, day upon day, the girl fed her pup with milk flowers and blood beetles until he grew big and wolfish enough to hunt his own prey.

  And she sang of how for always the wolf stayed by the girl’s side, watching over her with his amber eyes, sniffing the breeze for the coming of harm or of goodness.

  And Mothgirl sang of his dig-finds. And of hunts. And of wolfsong. And of yellow-thorn. And of sandhills. And of the cold dark water.

  She sang of ByMySide and his waking days. And she cried. And she smiled. And she laughed. And she sobbed. Remembering her wolf.

  ‘I give thanks,’ Mothgirl whispered to the wind and the waves, hoping that her words would find their way to her wolf’s long soft grey ears, and that even in spirit sleep he would hear her voice and know that she was with him always.

  Dara bit his lip; he hadn’t understood all the words of Mothga’s song, but he could hear that she’d sung with her whole heart and every scrap of her soul, like the song was all that mattered. Like the wolf was all that mattered. And he ached with her sadness.

  He gazed out into the black water, wiping his cheeks with his hand. ‘I give thanks,’ he whispered, like an echo.

  Mothga gave him a small, sad nod. Then closed her eyes. Dara closed his eyes too and felt the impossible weight of the dark air, thick with unspoken words and thoughts as big as they were, bigger even, bigger than all the world. He thought of the wolf who had brought them here but not made it himself. They had made it because of him. He opened his eyes. And they HAD made it. Against all odds.

  The moonlight danced on the waves. The seals snored softly. Far off across the strait the lights of the harbour twinkled. ‘Lathrin Island,’ he whispered in disbelief.

  ‘Lathrin Island,’ whispered Mothga quieter than wind. He looked at her and she looked at him, her eyes were dark as the night sky.

  ‘You cold, Daramurrum!’ she said.

  Dara suddenly noticed the noisy chatter-clatter of his teeth and the trembly-ness of Mothga’s hands as she pulled his bedraggled raincoat tight around her own shoulders.

  ‘You’re cold too, Mothga!’ he said with a small shivery smile. ‘We’d better move, we’d better keep going.’

  ‘Where we go?’ whispered Mothga, looking beyond the sleeping shapes of the seals.

  They stood upon a slim moon of sand; before them roared the vast darkness of the sea; behind them loomed a cliff, sheer and tall and gleaming. Dara peered desperately for some steps or a path or any way out of the bay. But there was nothing. They were trapped.

  Beside her Mothgirl felt Daramurrum tremble, his breathing too rough, too fast. Sidelong she peeked at his pale pale face.

  ‘Come,’ she said, pulling Daramurrum’s wet sleeve. ‘We need make fire.’

  Daramurrum made a small smile through chatter-clatter teeth. ‘Good plan,’ he whispered, and he pointed a shaky finger towards the tall cliff. ‘It might be less windy over there.’

  So together they stumbled, wobblish and shivering, over the sand and stones, gathering sticks and branches as they went. Warmer just from walking, they reached the dark cliff and Daramurrum opened his back bag with fumbling fingers.

  ‘Oh no!’ he said, thin-voiced, as he held up a small wet bundle. ‘My matches are soaked!’

  Mothgirl looked at him blankly and shrugged. She gathered a small nest of dry wispy weed and laid it on a rock. Then she opened her pouch and took out her fire stones. She felt him watching her like Owlboy and Eelgirl used to do, with curious learning eyes; she knelt and struck and struck and struck the stones together.

  A small small spark leaped from flint to tinder and a fine wisp of smoke snaked up into the dark.

  ‘Wow!’ said Daramurrum quietly.

  Mothgirl grinned and picked up the weed-wisp bundle, blowing on it softly until a small flame flickered.

  ‘Wow! Wow!’ said Daramurrum.

  ‘You not know fire, Daramurrum?’ She laughed as she laid the burning bundle on the rock once more and fed it with small twigs.

  ‘Not fire like that, Mothga!’ She could hear the wonder in his voice. This Daramurrum from the far-ice-lands with his foot deerskins and his lynx-short hair and his land all bright with lights, he knew many things, but perhaps he did not know all the things she knew.

  She puffed up proud inside and showed him how to gently lay small sticks upon the flames until the fire danced golden and bright. They huddled close to it, warming their blood and their bones and their hearts.

  But Mothgirl’s belly was not warm; it growled emptily. ‘I hungry,’ said Mothgirl, eyeing the sleepy grey land-fish and wishing she had not lost Voleboy’s spear to the Big Water.

  Daramurrum followed her gaze. ‘You can’t eat seals, Mothga!’ he said, eyes wide. He reached into his bag and pulled out two yellowish, moon-shaped somethings. ‘Here,’ he said, handing one to Mothgirl.

  She sniffed it. It smelt between blossom and leaf rot. ‘What this?’ she said, tapping the moon-shaped something on a rock.

  ‘Banana,’ said Daramurrum. ‘You eat it.’

  Mothgirl nodded. ‘Eat it!’ she said joyfully, and she took a big bite.

  The skin was tough-chewing but the inside was soft and sweet as sun fruit. ‘Na-na good!’ she said, taking another bite.

  Daramurrum laughed a big laugh. He watched her chew, then he too bit boldly through the skin. ‘Na-na … good!’ he agreed, his eyes wide with surprise.

  So they chewed their na-nas until only the too-hard stalks were left; they threw those on the fire, where they hissed and sizzled.

  Daramurrum took off his big puffed-up-chest deerskin and hung it to dry upon a rock. Beneath it he wore another deerskin – it glowed red in the firelight, steam rising from its dampness into the night air as it warmed and dried. Mothgirl made a long, wide-mouth yawn. Daramurrum caught it and long-yawned too.

  ‘Snap!’ he said, sleepishly.

  Mothgirl snapped her teeth. Daramurrum did a snort of laughter.

  ‘You sound like small boar,’ said Mothgirl, laughing too.

  As their laughter faded, Mothgirl put more dry sticks on the fire and looked at Daramurrum with side-eyes. ‘Why you come here?’ she asked him quietly.

  He looked back at her, a look that was long and deep and gentle and afraid, like the look a deer gives when your spear is raised and she is too close to flee.

  Then he stared into the dancing flames. ‘I had it all planned, Mothga,’ said Daramurrum dreamily. ‘I used to lie in bed, plugged into my breathing machine, and think about this island, and work it out; every stage of getting here, I had it all clear, I had it all exactly right in my head – exactly how it was meant to be.’ He laughed, but his laugh was not happy, it was sharp and bitter like leaf milk. ‘And this wasn’t it, Mothga.’ His voice was choked and wheezy now. ‘I was meant to row ou
t here, by myself. The proper way. The right way. Between the buoys. I was meant to land in the harbour. And run up to Owl Rock. And see the …’

  Mothgirl saw a tear roll down his cheek, amber in the firelight. She touched his arm. Warm and soft as hers. He gave her a smallest-small smile.

  ‘It should’ve been possible. Everybody said I’d’ve had my Big Op by the time I turned twelve. I was meant to be better by now, Mothga. I was meant to be like everybody else. I was meant to be … normal.’

  ‘What norm-ill?’ asked Mothgirl gently.

  Daramurrum’s smallest-small smile grew a little bigger. ‘I don’t even know, you know? I’m not norm-ill, that’s for sure!’

  Mothgirl’s eyes grew wide in horror. ‘I norm-ill?’ she asked, fear-voiced.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Daramurrum, patting her hand. ‘You’re not norm-ill either, Mothga. Norm-ill is – like – like everybody thinks everybody should be.’

  Mothgirl nodded, thinking of Pa. ‘Some things are done and some things are not the way!’ she said in a big deep Pa voice.

  Daramurrum laughed. ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Zak-ly!’ laughed Mothgirl back. ‘I not norm-ill, Daramurrum! You not norm-ill! Norm-ill is not the way!’ She clapped his back proudly.

  ‘Nor-mill is not the way …’ murmured Daramurrum, watching the flames, quiet now with his thinkings.

  Dara heard the rain before he felt it. Fat drops falling in small splats upon the sand, in little hissing sizzles on the fire. He held out his hand. ‘As soon as we get dry it starts to rain,’ he said, looking up at the dark sky. Automatically he went to put on his raincoat, but then he remembered that Mothga was wearing it, tied like a sash around her body, under one arm and over one shoulder.

  The fire fizzled and flickered; the rain was getting heavier. ‘You should put that on properly, Mothga,’ he said, giving the red raincoat a little tug.

  She scrunched her brow in confusion. Snatching the raincoat back from him.

  ‘I’m not trying to take it away,’ said Dara. ‘Look – I’ll show you.’

  Suspiciously Mothga untied the raincoat sash and Dara helped her put her arms in the sleeves and do up the front. Finally he pulled up her hood. ‘There!’ he said.

  ‘There?’ said Mothga, looking down at herself, her arms still held awkwardly away from her sides, stiff as a scarecrow.

  Dara laughed. ‘Move around, Mothga. You’ll be dry in there.’

  The rain fell even faster now. ‘I dry in here!’ said Mothga, grinning gleefully from beneath her red hood.

  ‘Well, I’m not!’ laughed Dara. ‘Come over here, let’s try to shelter while the rain passes.’ He hopped across the rocks to nearer the cliff edge, where a little overhang protected them from the rain. Dara caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass-still surface of a sheltered rock pool – he looked different; tousled and dirty and tired and definitely not norm-ill, but happy. ‘You’re on Lathrin Island, Daramurrum,’ he whispered to his moon-blue rock-pool reflection with a little smile; maybe Mothga was right; maybe norm-ill was not the way; maybe there were lots of ways, hidden like currents underwater.

  Mothga peered over into the still rock pool too. ‘TSSHCCKK!’ she said, drawing back quickly with fear in her eyes as she made that little circle shape with her fingers.

  ‘What?’ asked Dara. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Mothga peeked again. This time she laughed. ‘I not know me!’ she giggled, pointing at her red-hooded reflection. ‘I think who that red red spirit girl?’

  Dara giggled too. ‘Who actually are you though, Mothga?’

  And Mothga laughed like it was a great joke, but really Dara was kind of serious. What was a girl from the Stone Age doing … here … now? What had she come here for? What if her big brother really was lost on this island? Dara thought about the pictures of hairy scary Stone Age men with spears that he’d seen in books at school and he shuddered; they certainly didn’t look very friendly.

  He jumped. What was that noise? Far off in the water. Was it a voice? He peered out into the night through the lines of rain, listening.

  But he heard nothing, just waves and wind and snoring seals. He saw nothing, only the darkness and the moon-glimmered sea and far away the lights of other people.

  Far, far, far away.

  Dara thought of Mum and Dad then; they’d be sound asleep by now, cosy and warm and safe in bed, back at Carn Cottage. He felt a twist of longing deep in his belly as he stared into the empty night.

  No one knew he was here.

  He shivered, eyeing the smoking embers of their dying fire over there on the rocks. How was he ever going to get home?

  ‘Come! Daramurrum! Come quick!’ called Mothgirl. She was perched on a ledge, one-man high on the cliffside. ‘Look!’

  Next to the ledge there was a small opening in the rock. Daramurrum scrambled up. Mothgirl squeezed through the gap.

  Deep dark.

  Mothgirl gave the air a sniff: nothing but the tang of old fish bones and salt weed; she thought of ByMySide then, remembering his clever nose that could always be trusted to smell danger approaching. Mothgirl’s heart panged deep, aching for her lost wolf. She blinked back her fresh eyeful of tears as she heard the sound of Daramurrum’s breathing in the cave behind her.

  Mothgirl stared into the dripping darkness, her night eyes quick to find their way in the moonlight that shone in beams from rock cracks here and there, turning the walls of the cave black and gleaming, up and up and up. ‘Big cave!’ she whispered admiringly.

  ‘ECHO!’ called Daramurrum behind her into the blackness, and the ringing loops of his voice told her that she was right – big cave – tall as her seeking-tree and wide as her whole camp.

  She searched the walls of the cave with her fingertips for the carved markings of clans who had been this way before.

  Suddenly the cave burst brilliant with light. Mothgirl screamed and covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s only me,’ said Daramurrum’s voice. She peeped at him between her fingers. He held a small fat stick and from it shone light, bright as a sunbeam in the cave dark. Blinking, Mothgirl lowered her hands.

  ‘It’s a torch,’ he said. ‘A waterproof torch.’

  ‘Water-poo-tosh!’ breathed Mothgirl admiringly.

  Daramurrum’s laugh echoed and his white-light circle danced on the cave wall. He held the water-poo-tosh towards Mothgirl. ‘Do you want a go?’

  ‘I go where?’ asked Mothgirl, drawing back, fearful that this water-poo-tosh might have strange power to carry her away from this cave and bring her to other places.

  ‘No.’ Daramurrum laughed again. ‘I mean do you want to try it? Take it?’ He held the water-poo-tosh towards her again.

  Mothgirl bit her lip. ‘Hot?’ she murmured.

  Daramurrum shook his head.

  So she held out her hand warily and she took the water-poo-tosh from him. Gripping the light maker like a spear, Mothgirl laughed aloud as she swung the beam around the tallest heights of the cave.

  ‘Stop!’ said Daramurrum.

  Eyes wide and fearful, Mothgirl stilled the water-poo-tosh. The circle of light settled high above them.

  ‘Look,’ said Daramurrum, pointing. ‘There’s – there’s something up there!’

  Mothga held the torch beam steady. High up in the cavern was a little stone ledge jutting out, like a shelf almost. Dara squinted up at it. It didn’t look natural, not like the stalactites beside it. It looked human made, deliberate; what was it?

  He swallowed; taking the torch back from Mothga, he shone it slowly along the highest cave wall. There wasn’t just one ledge; there were loads of ledges and shelves and nooks up there in the dark. He swung the beam down the cave wall; beneath the ledges there was a series of shallow little hollows, like tiny toehold steps almost, worn smooth and unpassable by time or by the sea.

  Dara suddenly realised where they were, where they’d washed up; this little cove must be Smugglers’ Bay.
There was a story called ‘The Secret Smuggler’ in The True Legends of Lathrin Island; it was about a tiny, sweet old lady called Gentle Bess who ran the island’s bakery, way back hundreds of years ago when people actually lived out here, and who, unknown to everybody, was actually a total bandit. In the story she stashed all her ill-gotten gains – whisky and gunpowder and jewels – in a hidden cavern at Smugglers’ Bay.

  But Dara had never actually thought Gentle Bess was real or that Smugglers’ Bay was a real place. He grinned. Maybe there was even actual loot in this cavern! Dara laughed an echoing laugh and craned his neck, wondering if, hidden at the very back of one of those high little ledges, there was still some of Gentle Bess’s stolen jewels, forgotten or abandoned.

  Then an idea struck him. Better and brighter than loot. In the story, Gentle Bess never got caught because she hid her loot at Smugglers’ Bay in the dead of night, then sneaked back to her cottage through …

  ‘… a secret tunnel,’ breathed Dara.

  ‘… seek it tunnel!’ echoed Mothga.

  Dara shone his torch along the ledges which stretched back and back into the bowels of the cliff, where the cavern narrowed to a cave and then to what looked like …

  ‘YES!’ shouted Dara.

  The tunnel! Gentle Bess’s tunnel!

  If the story was true, that tunnel would lead them out of the cave and all the way to her cottage in the ruined village near the harbour. Maybe they weren’t trapped here after all.

  ‘Come on!’ said Dara, and he beckoned Mothga to follow him into the darkness at the back of the cavern.

  ‘No!’ said Mothgirl. ‘Stop!’

  Mothgirl ran her fingers over the cave wall again, just to be sure. Her heart pounded. ‘Give water-poo-tosh, Daramurrum!’ she commanded.

  Daramurrum’s circle of light shifted from the far cave tunnels to where she stood; she heard his soft footfalls approaching. ‘What is it, Mothga?’ he whispered, handing her the water-poo-tosh.

  She shone the light circle upon the cave wall. And she gasped. There was no doubt now.