The Way to Impossible Island

by Sophie Kirtley

  Voleboy was watching closely; it was time to play upon his bone whistle, the strangest strongest song of all.

  Wolfsong.

  From the tree shadows stepped ByMySide, grey-furred, amber-eyed, magnificent. He stood between Mothgirl and Vulture.

  Then there came rustlings in the bracken and shiverings in the brambles and tremblings in the briars and from the trees all around there came wolves. Not wolves who followed the blood trail but wolves who followed the wolfsong. They gathered around Vulture in a circle which closed ever tighter.

  Mothgirl noticed his head turning from one to the other to the other, his eyes wide with panic now. ‘Oh, kind spirit,’ he said, thin-voiced. ‘Oh, kind spirit, I am a but a humble hunting man, do not close your wolf pack upon me. Have mercy.’

  From the hut Mothgirl saw the shadows of two painted men flee into the forest.

  Vulture fell upon his knees. Mothgirl knew what she had to do. She peered at him through the spirit mask and bored her staring eyes deep within his skin. She bored deep into his cruelty and dug at it, loosening it like a root. Then Mothgirl threw back her head and she howled. ByMySide howled with her, and one by one the wolves all around howled too until the forest dark was heavy and aching with howls that heaped the song of togetherness upon the greedy ears of one.

  ByMySide went to where Vulture lay trembling. With a short sharp tug, he tore the bearskin from him and tossed it aside.

  There was nowhere to hide now. Shrivelled, wizened as a crab apple, his blood paint streaked with sweat and tears, Vulture became his own truth at last. He was powerless; he was just a man.

  ‘Let me go,’ he whispered. ‘Let me leave this place alive, oh great Spirit Beast, and never shall my feet return. I promise you, upon my waking days and my spirit sleep.’

  Mothgirl raised her arms high, trying to hide their trembling. At her signal, Voleboy gave one last silent screech upon the bone whistle. It was the music that spoke Hunt! within all the creatures’ songs. So the owl and the eagle and the wolves whirled at Vulture as he ran in terror through the night. And was gone.

  Mothgirl ran as fast as she could beneath the weight of her mask. She swiped her cutting stone and swiftly released Pa, Owlboy and Eelgirl. The small ones sobbed and buried their eyes in terror within Pa’s deerskins.

  Pa hobbled forward and fell to his knees. Filthy and hungry and broken and bruised.

  Mothgirl’s heart panged to see him so; behind her antler mask her eyes were wet with tears.

  Pa offered the hand of peace to the Spirit Beast. ‘Good Spirit Beast, I give thanks. You have saved us. I wish I had gifts to give you: fine bone knives, deerskins, meat – but Vulture has taken all that we had. So take my words and know that I speak with true tongue. We shall sing of you in firestories, good Spirit Beast, until the sun sleeps without waking.’

  Mothgirl lowered her mask and laid the heavy antlers upon the earth. Pa staggered back a step, staring, wide-eyed, speechless.

  Then he opened his big arms as wide as the world and wrapped his daughter round. Mothgirl heard Eelgirl’s cry and Owlboy’s shout as they ran to join them, squashing their small bodies in alongside, like how cubs nuzzle into their pack. They stood like this for the longest while, all their faces soaked with tears.

  ‘Where you go, Mothgirl?’ asked Eelgirl. But Mothgirl would tell it in firestories all through the winter. Now was not the moment.

  ‘Who that?’ asked Owlboy, cowering behind Pa’s legs. He pointed at Voleboy, who lurked shyly on the edge of the trees.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mothgirl. ‘That Voleboy. He my friend. He come join our clan, Pa.’ She spoke it like it was not a question. Like it was simply the way. Pa looked at Mothgirl, long and strong. With a warm eye twinkle he nodded.

  Sometimes change was good.

  But sometimes change was not good also.

  ‘Hart?’ whispered Mothgirl, pale with the weight of her own wondering.

  Pa shook his head, sad and weary.

  Mothgirl’s heart crumbled. She looked to the pale stars and thought of her lost brother, her eyes all blurred with tears. Nothing ever stayed the same.

  They walked together to the river, to wash the stinking blood paint from their skin. Owlboy wore one of Mothgirl’s yellow foot deerskins and Eelgirl wore the other. Voleboy held them by their hands as they stood one-legged in the shallows and marvelled at their still-dry feet. Mothgirl told Pa of her plans for a hut of stone and a field of eat and an aurochs herd of their very own so that they could make this place a home all the year long. Pa was surprised. It was not a thing that was done … but he liked it.

  The forest birds began to sing and the first beams of gentle sun were tingeing the sky palest blue; the others left the riverside and climbed back to their camp. Mothgirl stopped with ByMySide while he drank; she thought, unforgetting, of Daramurrum; of leaping por-poss-iss and a sky-eyed hare; of sprinkled stars upon the earth and of deep dark waters on the plain; she thought of all the impossible things and marvelled at the truth of them.

  Mothgirl smiled; she knew that in the far-ice-lands Daramurrum would be awake and watching his own pale sun rising, remembering her too.

  Mothgirl closed her eyes and listened while her world awoke.

  From downstream Mothgirl heard a sound: the faint plash-plashing of oar in water. Her heart soared – could it be …?

  Mothgirl ran fast along the riverbank, through trailing leaves and morning mists, until she rounded the river bend and there, just beyond the stepping stones, was a canoe nosing towards her through the clear water.

  She let out a cry. A sun-sparkled cry of joy and wonder. For standing in the canoe was her very own dearest brother. Hart.

  When he saw Mothgirl, Hart roared with joy. He leaped from his boat and ran splashing through the water towards her.

  They stood in the fast, clear river, arms wrapped tight around one another, hearts bursting with firestories, impossible and true.

  Dara stood knee-deep in the frothy water and peered out over the wild grey sea to Lathrin Island. He listened hard, hoping to catch even the smallest hint of a howl looping through the whoosh of the wind.

  But no. Only ordinary noises, nor-mill noises: the calls of seabirds; the giggles of children; the distant moooo of a cow grazing in the dunes. And another sound: the crunch-crunch crunch-crunch of footsteps running towards him across the sand.

  Dara spun around.

  ‘It’s only me!’ said Charlie, splashing through the waves. ‘Just to warn you, Mum and Dad are still watching you from the window, so if you’re planning on swimming over to Lathrin Island like the Golden Hare, then right now is probably not a very good idea. Maybe wait till after your Big Op this time.’

  ‘Hi, Charlie.’ Dara laughed. He waved up at Mum and Dad. ‘They’ve been hovering over me like hawks ever since I got out of hospital,’ he sighed, and he took a puff of his inhaler.

  ‘Can’t say I blame them, you nutball,’ said Charlie, with a grin. ‘When I heard what happened I ran out of work so fast my trainers were practically on fire – you ran off to a deserted island in the middle of the night! Who knows what you’re capable of next?’

  Dara nudged Charlie in the ribs.

  ‘Oi!’ said Charlie, dodging away. ‘Seriously though, Dara, what were you doing out there?’

  Dara let his eyes drift to where Charlie was pointing, across the grey water to Lathrin Island. What had he been doing out there?

  When he’d first woken up in Mandel Hospital, he’d been so confused and groggy he’d thought he’d dreamed the whole thing. It all felt made up and ridiculous like a story. But now that he was back here by the swirling wild mysterious sea, Dara didn’t feel so sure any more.

  He bit his lip. Fingers of golden sunshine stretched through the cloud, making the gorse on the island glow yellow and the heather thrum violet. Dara thought about the lines, thin as mist, between possible and impossible, between real and not real, between here and now and there and then.

  He
closed his eyes, and in his own dark he saw leaping porpoises and sleeping seals, a hidden tunnel and a golden squawking daybreak. And he saw a girl dressed in deerskins and an amber-eyed wolf.

  Dara peeped at Charlie out of the corner of his eye. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!’

  ‘I might,’ said Charlie with a little smile. ‘I’ve got some pretty unbelievable true stories of my own, you know.’

  Dara smiled back, and they walked together along the fringe of the sea, telling each other impossible things.

  When they reached the end of the strand, Charlie slipped into the sea to swim and Dara sat on the rickety jetty, letting his legs swing over the water, looking back at their footprints in a trail along the sand: his own, and Charlie’s, and deep deep beneath them, he knew there were Mothga’s footprints in his yellow wellies, and ByMySide’s paw prints too.

  Dara squinted over at the Old Boatshed; the door was firmly shut and the only sign of life was a grumpy-looking gull perched on the roof.

  So Dara turned away and, opening his backback, he took out a book; the dark blue cover was a swirl of stars, and within it was a sellotaped wodge of the once-crumpled pages he’d smoothed flat again and stuck back together. Dara traced his fingers over the silver loops of the letters, as if they were waymarkers carved into stone.

  ‘The True Legends of Lathrin Island,’ whispered Dara. He opened the cover and gazed at the map – ragged and weather-worn and still smelling faintly of woodsmoke. He turned the pages carefully, smiling at the stories like they were old friends: ‘The Secret Smuggler’, ‘The Owl Rock’, ‘The Golden Hare’ … until he reached the very back of the book.

  Dara ran his hand across the first of the empty pages that he’d stuck in there too; he was ready.

  The Way to Impossible Island, wrote Dara at the top of the smooth blank page.

  And he began his own story.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  No book is an island, and this one would have been an impossibility without a whole causeway of extraordinary people who have supported, guided and inspired me. As Mothgirl would say, I give thanks …

  To my kind, wise and utterly wonderful editor, Lucy Mackay-Sim, who, like a lighthouse, has calmly and patiently led this story through mists of befuddlement and stormy seas. Lucy – you are a beacon of hope and loveliness!

  To everyone in the Bloomsbury constellation – the shining stars who have guided this book on its way, most especially: glittering Bea Cross, sparkling Jade Westwood, glimmering Fliss Stevens, twinkling Jessica White, shimmering Sarah Baldwin, gleaming Nick de Somogyi, and a particularly enormous thank you to brilliant Cerrie Burnell for such a thoughtful, nuanced sensitivity read and for making my heart sing with kind comments.

  To Ben Mantle for the impossibly beautiful cover art and to Patrick Knowles for the wild, windswept lettering and chapter-heading illustrations. You’ve both captured the spirit of Lathrin Island so perfectly.

  To my agent, Nancy Miles, who is always there in sunshine or storm and who I absolutely treasure.

  To all those who build bridges between books and readers: booksellers, librarians, literacy charities, teachers, bloggers, reviewers. The extraordinary tide of support you’ve given me in my first year as a published author really has meant so very much – thank you for planting wild green Stone Age forests in your bookshops, websites, classrooms and libraries.

  To all the authors who have supported me in my debut year and welcomed me aboard. Particular thanks to my trusty crew of Bath Spa pals, my Scoobie shipmates and those wonderfully raucous Swaggers – I simply couldn’t row, row, row this boat without you all!

  To the real-life wolf pack at the Wild Place Project in Bristol: Forty, Socks, Faolin and Loki – I learned so much through watching you. Thank you also to your amazingly knowledgeable human, Zoe Greenhill, for answering even my most ridiculous questions, and to Jenny Stoves for arranging my visit. ByMySide became himself thanks to you.

  To my friends and family for all the adventures we share – past, present and future. Thanks for the different shoes, the moonlight swims, the crumpled cottages, the waterfall giggles, the surprising daffodils, the unclosed gates, the birthday days, the mouse in the snow, the key in the mud, the alphabet of pebbles and the fox in the night. Thank you for letting me explore the world with you, and for all your endless support and love.

  To Mum, for raising me on stories, flowers, kindness, creativity, laughter and tolerance.

  To Dad and Anna, for taking us to real-life Lathrin Island and for all the joys of a sea-swept, storyful childhood.

  To Amy, Alice and Niall for the wave-leaping, rock-pooling, sand-dune-rolling and general carrying on – thanks for all the stories we share.

  To Sylvia and Peter for the ‘writing retreats’ by the sea; so much of this book was written at your lovely house and I’m very grateful indeed for your hospitality, kindness and company.

  To my own wolf pack – Andrew, Lyla, Arlo and Flora – sharing a den and a life with you is the most wild and wonderful delight. Thanks for letting me sail off to impossible islands and for welcoming me home. Thanks for being dreamers and adventurers. Thanks for being by my side. I love you always.

  And finally, dear reader, to you. When you read, you’re part of the story; thank you with all my heart for being part of mine.

  HAVE YOU READ

  An unforgettable adventure about courage, hope, family and finding your way

  AVAILABLE NOW

  Read on for a sneak peek …

  I hide on the mossy branch of the hazel tree, my legs dangling into nothing. I wait. The wind rustles the leaves; a wood pigeon coos; the forest creaks and cracks like old bones.

  A wordless shout. From the direction of Deadman’s Cave. The Hunters are coming.

  I squint into the hazy sunlight; I can see a ripple of trembling trees where they carve and smash through the forest. The crack-thump-rip of sticks grows louder as they tear their way closer and closer to my hiding place.

  The Hunters hack through the bracken and out into the patch of sunshine, right at the foot of my tree.

  It’s them.

  Lamont. Beaky. Nero.

  I don’t dare breathe.

  Lamont stands, hand on hip, and peers into the forest. Beaky circles the tree, jabbing at rabbit holes, prodding the undergrowth with a long, sharp stick. Nero growls, black ears pricked, hackles raised, nose to the ground.

  My heart thuds hard and loud.

  Nero stops. He sniffs and lifts his nose towards me.

  Then Nero turns his head sharply away. He can hear something, something else. Then I hear it too: there’s rustling in the bracken.

  Nero looks to Lamont. Lamont lifts a finger to his thin lips. Beaky nods.

  They think the noise is me.

  The thing in the undergrowth rustles again.

  Lamont signals a countdown with his fingers:

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  The Hunters charge into the bushes, yelling, their sticks raised high.

  A young deer bounds out on the opposite side, tail pale amongst the tree shadows. It springs away and is gone.

  Nero chases after the deer, barking.

  ‘NERO!’ yell Lamont and Beaky, waist-deep in a tangle of brambles.

  I see my chance.

  I touch wood, just for luck, then I scramble from my tree and I run.

  Beaky shouts, ‘It’s Charlie!’

  But I don’t look back. Down the hill, through the forest, towards the river. My feet pound the ground and my fists pummel the air. I charge over the wooden bridge, and up the steep gravel path on the other side. Each breath is heavy. My chest hurts. At Druid’s Well, I swerve off the path and run straight up through the bracken. I know exactly where I’m going.

  I hear the thump of the Hunters running across the bridge. They’re gaining on me.

  I pass the rope swing and run through the patch of wild mint until I reach the edge of the clearing. Panti
ng, I look back over my shoulder: all clear. I run out of the tree cover and up the mound, tugging on tufts of grass to heave myself right up to the top.

  I reach the Spirit Stone and I lean with my forehead pressed on to the cool grey rock.

  ‘Home!’ I say, high-fiving the Spirit Stone.

  Slumping down on to the grass, I close my eyes and gasp air into my aching lungs.

  I won the game.

  Nero reaches the Spirit Stone next. He just stands there panting. Lamont and Beaky don’t bother running the last bit, not once they know I’ve beaten them. Lamont clambers up the mound and flops down next to me.

  ‘Close one, Charlie,’ he says. ‘That deer put us off.’

  ‘Just you blame the deer,’ I say. Lamont does a little half-laugh and pokes me in the side. Nero comes over, long tail wagging, his eyes on the stick in his owner’s hand.

  ‘Go get it, Nero.’ Lamont tosses the stick into the clearing. Nero charges all the way back down the hill again.

  ‘Oi!’ yells Beaky, still staggering up the mound. ‘You nearly got me with that stick, Lamont!’ When Beaky finally reaches the Spirit Stone she collapses beside us, breathing hard. ‘Next time,’ she pants, ‘there’s absolutely – no – way – I’m being – a Hunter – that forest is far – far –’ she swallows – ‘far too big – to find – anyone – in.’

  ‘Just you blame the forest, Beaky,’ I say. We all laugh, even Beaky.

  We sit there, saying nothing, gazing out over our forest. I look at the gleaming river; I follow its twists and bends all the way through the forest, right out to where it widens and becomes the distant silver haze of the sea. I look at the far-off farmland cut neatly into green rectangles of fields, like slices of cake. I look at the town, how it spreads greyly up from the riverbanks, surrounding our forest, which surrounds this clearing, which surrounds this mound, which surrounds the Spirit Stone. Home. If I stretch my neck, I can just about see the roof of my actual home, where Dad is probably making tea for poor Mum, still stuck in bed waiting for the baby who’ll be born soon.