The Way to Impossible Island

by Sophie Kirtley

  Dara looked to the mainland. Tiny lights were already snaking along the main road to Mandel. Back at Carn Cottage, Mum and Dad would wake up soon; he bit his lip, picturing them whispering on the landing and then ignoring the Do Not Disturb sign and coming into his room and Dad opening the curtains and Mum whispering, ‘Wake up, sleepy socks,’ like she always did, and gently pulling back the covers … to find a bed full of scrunkled-up Lathrin legends … and no Dara at all.

  A wave of guilt prickled through him. He winced. What had he been thinking? Mum and Dad would be so so worried – they only ever wanted to keep him safe.

  He needed to go home too.

  He turned to Mothga. She was watching him with a look he didn’t understand; somewhere between curious and cross and pitying.

  ‘You lost, Daramurrum,’ she whispered, softly touching his arm. ‘You lost.’

  Dara blinked at her. How could he be lost? He knew exactly where he was.

  They both turned as from far across the misty sea came the low mournful groan of a foghorn. Dara watched the hazy lights of a freight ship move heavy along the horizon, following an invisible line from port to port across the sea. Always knowing exactly where it was going, always knowing what was coming next.

  ‘Maybe I am lost, Mothga,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting all my life to be … someone else. I’ve been waiting for the Big Op to change me and make me not just better, but better, you know?’

  She looked at him blankly.

  He searched for the words to make her understand. ‘I wanted to be better … bigger … stronger … like Hart … like Vulture … a big strong man.’

  She smiled, shaking her head. ‘You not big strong man.’

  He felt the stab of her words. ‘I know.’

  ‘I not big strong man!’ she said in her ‘big strong man’ voice.

  Dara couldn’t stop a little laugh.

  ‘ByMySide not big strong man.’ She paused and giggled at her own joke, but then her face grew serious. She cupped her hand and whispered to him through the early morning light, like she was sharing a secret.

  ‘Big strong man is not big strong man, Daramurrum.’ And she shook her head, as if, even as she spoke, she was almost surprising herself with her own thoughts. ‘Big strong man is not big strong man! Vulture is shrivelled, stinking untruth. Hart is sadness-small and broken. Pa is …’ She snorted. ‘Pa is too Pa.’

  They both laughed. ByMySide stirred in his sleep.

  ‘You not need change you,’ said Mothga softly. ‘You Daramurrum.’ And she shrugged. As if it was as simple as that.

  ‘But … I’m not,’ whispered Dara softly, feeling like a fake and a fraud and a liar. ‘I’m not who you think I am, Mothga. I don’t have whatever great powers you think I have. I’m not from Far Eyes Land. I don’t know how to get you home. I don’t even know how to get me home.’

  She shrugged again. Like nothing he could say would convince her. ‘You Daramurrum,’ she said again.

  And he felt the warrior rumble in the way she said his name; he gazed out over the sea and the sky grown golden, streaked with strands of amber and flame.

  ‘Look!’ gasped Mothga. ‘Porr-poss-iss!’ And she pointed to the waters near the sea stacks where a whole pod of porpoises leaped and played, flipping and splashing and gleaming in the waves.

  ‘Porr-poss-iss!’ he whispered, awestruck in the glow of it. A sudden thought hit Dara: porpoises didn’t know they were porpoises, did they? Porpoises didn’t know how amazing they were. They were just … themselves. Like Mothga didn’t even know she was from the Stone Age. And ByMySide didn’t know he was a wild wolf. Even the Golden Hare didn’t know she was rare or special or extraordinary. Perhaps Mothga really could see something in him that Dara didn’t even know was there.

  Dara stood and walked barefoot to the foot of the lighthouse. Away from the shelter of the gorse bush the wind had got up again; stretching his arms wide, he let it buffet and ruffle him, feeling the sting of salt spray on his cheeks. He opened his mouth and took a big fresh breath.

  Then he felt the tickly prickle of someone watching him.

  He glanced over at Mothga; her eyes were fixed on the porpoises as she knelt by the gorse bush, absently stroking snoozy ByMySide.

  A wild whoosh of wind made his torn hoody billow like a flag. He squinted towards where the cliff dropped away to a secret tunnel; the heather shivered in the gusts, glowing purple in the early light. Dara surveyed the coastline and the golden sea for miles around. No one was there.

  But still Dara could feel eyes upon him.

  Heartbeat quickening, he turned slowly inland. Down in the sheltered dip between here and the ruined village the tall pale stems of wheat and grasses swayed, bending and straightening in the breeze. Was someone hiding there, crouched low, watching him?

  Dara ran his eyes along the shifting waves of golden grass. He swallowed. The swish of the seed stalks. The whisperings of the wind. The crash of waves on the rocks below.

  A rustle from behind him.

  Dara spun around. And he gasped.

  A hare. A hare with pale gold fur stood on her rear legs only a few metres away. The hare watched Dara with blue eyes that looked almost … human.

  Slow as slow, Dara reached his hand towards the hare. It was the hare from his book – the Golden Hare from the story. The hare stood still, like a statue set in metal, so still that Dara jumped with surprise when she blinked.

  Dara stared at the blue-eyed hare and the hare stared at Dara. Time felt enormous. Eternal almost. Dara could feel the slow turning of the earth, and its heavy pull. He breathed in the air of the island, and as he blew out, the hare blinked once more, twitched her nose, turned tail and ran.

  ‘Wait …’ whispered Dara. But the hare had disappeared into the long grass as if she had never been there at all.

  And Dara heard a scrambling from the gorse bush and a shout. Spinning, he saw Mothga leap to her feet and grab at her wolf. But ByMySide slipped through her fingers and, still hobbling, ran into the long grass, chasing the Golden Hare with predator’s eyes.

  ‘No!’ yelled Dara. ‘Stop!’

  Mothgirl ran after ByMySide, calling his name. She charged fast as fast into the eat field and the long grass. Pathless she ran and until the stems were taller than she was and the light matched their colour, following the fuffle-crash of her fast-bounding wolf.

  ‘Stop!’ she cried. ‘Stop!’ That hare was a spirit creature, true as true; Mothgirl had glimpsed the flash of the hare’s blue-sky eyes.

  ‘ByMySide, stop!’ she yelled as she ran, but still she heard the rush and the whoosh of her wolf through the dazzle-bright grass and the sound filled her ears and became wave-crash and wind-roar and heart-thud and her whole self spun with it, dizzy as Big Water, breathless and noisy and bright as bright, and the smells of salt fish and na-nas and hawthorn and kelp rushed through her air and she gulped and she felt her feet slide from beneath her and she stumbled and fell out of the long grass and on to a mossy soft patch of clear earth.

  Mothgirl stopped still. On hands and on knees. Breathing sweet and dust-dry air.

  Then Mothgirl lifted her chin and looked up; she was kneeling at the foot of Owl Rock. She pressed her palms to its coolness and walked her hands up and up, until she stood, still panting, leaning on the rock for strength. Mothgirl shielded her eyes from the bright amber morning and looked out.

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped, her breath catching in her throat, her knees crumbling beneath her. ‘Oh!’

  She clung to Owl Rock and stared out over the Great Plain, dust bright in the morning light and bursting with yellow-thorn. Mothgirl lifted one foot out of Daramurrum’s yellow foot deerskin and she wriggled her toes on the mossy ground and she felt its softness, true as true beneath her.

  Laughing in amazement, she gazed down the craggy slope of Lathrin Mountain, to where, at its foot, a small herd of aurochs grazed and the wide river merged with the Big Water in swirlish patterns beneath th
e surface, blue and green and brown.

  She followed the river back with her eyes to Carn Hill and beyond; the water gleamed as it bent and twisted through deep green forest all the way to her own dear hill. Her own dear Spirit Stone. Her own dear home. Tears fell fast and hot down Mothgirl’s cheeks.

  Soft fur tickled the backs of her legs. ‘My wolf!’ she gasped. For he was with her, by her side.

  Wiping her eyes with her arm, Mothgirl bent down and ruffled ByMySide’s grey head. He stood on four paws; her heart soared. ‘You oak-ee!’ she whispered. ByMySide licked her nose.

  She got to her feet; she was still wearing Daramurrum’s red deerskin that crackled when she moved.

  ‘Daramurrum?’ she whispered. And she peered around her at the dip in the mountaintop and the rocky cliffs beyond it. Gone was the eat field and the sky-tall, bright-light hut. Gone was the stone-hut camp down below. Mothgirl bit hard on her lip.

  ‘Daramurrum?’ she called, her voice a small squeak, lost in the whirling wind.

  ‘Mothga!’ yelled Dara into the swirling long grass. ‘MOTHGAAAA! BYMYSIIIIDE! Where are you?’

  Suddenly the wild wind stilled again. Like someone somewhere had just flicked a switch. Dara turned around and around; he couldn’t see Mothga or ByMySide anywhere. He’d even lost their flattened trail in the grass.

  ‘Mothgaaa!’

  But the only answer was the roar of the waves at the foot of the cliffs and the squawk of the seabirds wheeling overhead.

  Dara walked and called and searched, worry cold and heavy in his belly. What if ByMySide had run right off a cliff? And what if Mothga had tried to climb down to save him? Or what if they’d fallen down a tunnel shaft? Or what if …

  Dara stepped out of the long grass and to his surprise he was standing in a little mossy clearing right up at Owl Rock.

  He climbed the small slope slowly. Biting his lip, he peered over the edge at the crashing waves down below, but to his relief all he saw was dark rocks and whooshing wild water. He opened his backpack and took out his binoculars. Leaning on Owl Rock, he searched the cliffs and the sea and the island for a glimpse of a red raincoat or a flash of grey fur.

  ‘Where are you, Mothga?’ he murmured. Real people didn’t just vanish into thin air. ‘Real people …’ he whispered aloud, lowering his binoculars slowly. Because most real people nowadays didn’t wear animal skins either … or have wolves for friends … or eat bananas skin and all. Dara bit his lip.

  He felt babyish and pathetic and embarrassed. Like he had that time at school in Year 4 when Steffan Baxter told him that the Golden Hare wasn’t real and was just made up and didn’t exist and was impossible. He winced.

  Everything that had happened had been impossible. He shook his head, like trying to shake water from your ears after a swim. Mothga was impossible. Had he just made Mothga up?

  Dara leaned on Owl Rock; he ran his fingers over its cold, rough, sturdy not-made-up-ness.

  Suddenly his fingertips stopped. Retraced their steps, felt the rock again.

  Nose to stone, Dara peered at the surface of Owl Rock up close.

  There was a shape etched there. It was ancient and faded but it was clear. He traced it again with his fingertip, softly.

  A triangle. And another triangle. Meeting each other at their narrowest points. Like a little bow almost. Or like a pair of wings. A butterfly even. Or … a moth.

  ‘Moth,’ he whispered. ‘Mothga!’ Could this be – what had she called it back in the cave? A waymarker. Could this be Mothga’s own waymarker? A sign to say that she had been here. A sign to stop her getting lost. A sign to help her find her way back home.

  And as he traced Mothga’s waymarker, a tingle passed from the rock to his fingertip and into his blood. A tingle like a pinch that showed he was not dreaming. That showed he was truly alive.

  ‘Thank you, Mothga,’ he said quietly, smiling warm and wide. He rested his palm over Mothga’s waymarker and looked out over the wild waking sea.

  He watched the squawking seabirds soar and swoop and bob and dive and bicker and settle. Who would ever have known how crazy-busy it actually was out here on deserted Lathrin Island at the crack of dawn? When he’d pictured it in his head it had all been still and quiet as a picture in a book, but in real life there was a puffin with sprats dangling from his beak like a silver moustache; in real life a gannet dropped into the sea with a dive so swift and smooth it took Dara’s breath away; in real life an enormous, ominous black-backed gull perched on a rock, eyes peeled for prey.

  In real life a Stone Age girl and a Stone Age wolf had walked upon this island, and he’d walked with them. It wasn’t possible. But it was true.

  Maybe there was more to real life than he ever could plan for. Maybe stuff he didn’t expect or even imagine was waiting around every corner. Good stuff. Bad stuff. Strange, amazing, scary stuff. No one ever knew. There was no map. There were no answers.

  ‘Lathrin Island,’ Dara whispered, and he looked out at the huge sky that was night and was day both at once, at the sea that was deadly-dark and shimmerish-beautiful; Dara thought about impossible things and possible things, and how really they were all just the same.

  Mothgirl slid her cutting stone back into her pouch. She pressed her hand to her waymarker. She closed her eyes. ‘I give thanks, Daramurrum,’ she whispered. For a moment the dark rock felt warm as touch and soft as skin beneath her palm.

  Mothgirl rested her other hand on ByMySide’s soft head. ‘Home,’ she murmured, opening her eyes, and she ran down the mountainside towards the river’s edge and the Great Plain and the endless trees beyond.

  As she ran she felt the extra weight of the water-poo-tosh bouncing in her pouch and she heard the soft rattle of the grains of eat; new ideas sparked and sparkled in her mind. Impossible ideas. Ideas that Pa and Hart and Vulture had never even imagined. Ideas that were simply not the way.

  The aurochs herd scattered at the sound of her running footsteps, so that when she reached the river all that was left were hoof prints in the mud. She dipped her hand into the river and was about to drink when she noticed the deer carcass.

  The bones were spread all across the wide shallow river, picked dry by other creatures so there was no meat left on them for ByMySide, let alone for her. Still, she thought it best to drink from upwater.

  As she drank she glanced at the deer skull. The jawbone had washed away but the antlers and the top-skull were all still there; she did a little shudder, looking at the empty eyeholes. Fearing the way they watched her back.

  Quick-walking, Mothgirl moved away through the fast shallow water. Mothgirl wore her yellow foot deerskins proudly – no river water touched her feet. It was like a strange spell; Eelgirl and Owlboy might even fear those yellow foot deerskins; fear them or want them, it would be one or the other.

  Mothgirl froze in the moving water. Fear.

  She glanced back at the deer skull, she stared down at her strange red Daramurrum deerskins; pulling up her hood, she gazed at her horrible, rippling, red reflection. These were things that Vulture had not seen before; impossible things. In her mind came the echo of Daramurrum’s words: We’re all a bit afraid of things we don’t know. Things we don’t understand.

  She remembered one of Pa’s old firestories – The Spirit Beast, it was called, and it had always filled her heart with dread and shivers. She still heard Pa’s firestory voice in her deep rememberings:

  … and if you are cruel of hand, eye or tongue,

  then in darkest of nights the Spirit Beast comes.

  Half creature, half woman, the Spirit Beast sings,

  And with strange silent song, hunted creatures she brings.

  Mothgirl shuddered.

  Then she smiled; another idea tap-tap-tapped inside her mind, like a chick trying to crack its way out of an egg.

  Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

  ‘There!’ Dara said aloud. He blew the stone dust off Owl Rock and gazed admiringly at where he’d carved his very own wa
ymarker, right next to Mothga’s one.

  A ‘D’ for Dara … and a shadow ‘D’ too for Daramurrum. The one a reflection of the other. Two halves of the same thing.

  He slipped his penknife into his backpack and ran his fingertip over the fresh-cut lines; maybe Mothga might come back to Lathrin Island one day, wondering if he was real. Dara smiled, imagining her seeing his waymarker and knowing that he had been here … and that he’d found his way.

  Dara squinted out over Lathrin Strait; he could just make out the dim outline of Carn Cottage, huddled and cosy on the little hill behind the sand dunes. It looked so small from here; he pictured himself – a tiny face in a tiny window in that tiny cottage on the edge of that tiny seaside town.

  Shutting his eyes, Dara imagined himself curled up cosy in his bed, with his head on his pillow, while his oxygen machine beeped and whirred comfortingly beside him. He imagined Mum stroking his hair and Dad calling him son-shine and Charlie perched cross-legged on the other bed reading The True Legends of Lathrin Island out loud to him for the thousandth time.

  He needed his family.

  He’d come out here to prove that he could do everything just fine on his own, thank you very much. But – Dara smiled – he’d actually proved totally the opposite: he needed other people. He needed people like Mothga – people who were kind and funny and not at all nor-mill. People who accepted him for who he was, and who needed him just as much as he needed them.

  People like Mum and Dad and Charlie and Tam.

  And he needed stories. Stories that were impossible … and true.

  He ran his fingertip over his waymarker. He needed to accept who he was and stop fighting it, stop wishing to be someone he wasn’t. Dara put his hand over his real-life heart. Mothga’s green gloop was all dry and flaky now; he picked a bit of it off with his fingernail. One day he would have his Big Op, but when he did, the world wouldn’t suddenly burst open, full of blossom and unicorns and shooting stars. After the Big Op he’d still be him; he’d still be himself always and forever – rubbish at some stuff, great at other stuff, just like everybody else. Everybody is kind of stuck with themselves really.