by Charlotte Lo
He shook his head. “I want to come with you and check my goat shelter. I made it out of some old bin bags and a fishing rod.”
The sky turned steely grey. “All right. Let’s try and get there and back before the storm hits.”
We sneaked out through the back door and ran across the clearing into the woods. Fabien’s goat shelter swayed in the wind. It was completely uninhabited. He crouched down and searched for tracks. There wasn’t a goat in sight.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“They’ve probably taken shelter somewhere else,” I replied. “Come on, we’ve got to get to the stables.”
Rain burst from the dark sky in a torrent. I grabbed Fabien’s and Margot’s hands, and we slipped across the muddy ground. Wind bit our faces. The unexpected chill caught my breath.
Ping.
Something ricocheted off my shoe.
“Is it snowing?” asked Fabien.
Ping.
Ping, ping, ping.
Hailstones poured from the sky. They struck my hands, face and neck like bullets. I winced from their sting. We were under attack.
The hailstones bounced off us and the trees, and piled up on the floor. Within seconds, everything turned a hard, sparkling white. The drumming was deafening.
“Quick, in here!” I said, throwing open the door to the first stable, which had been closed all along.
We took shelter beside the stage, and peered through a small hole in the wall. The hailstones had turned to heavy rain again. I listened to the sea crash against the rocks, and hoped the ice-cream van was OK. The waves sounded so close.
Crack!
A jagged lightning bolt fizzed through the sky and turned it purple. Fabien jumped and grabbed my hand. I squeezed his hand back, shaking.
“One, two, three, four…” counted Margot.
Rumble.
“Four,” I said. “Is that how many miles away the lightning is?”
“I think so,” replied Margot.
“Is it coming this way?” asked Fabien.
“Probably, but it’s nothing to worry about,” she said, although she looked terrified.
The rain was almost horizontal now. Leaves flew across the sky and the stable walls shook. Through the hole, I saw the trees bend almost in half. Their branches creaked menacingly. It was as if the storm wanted to break everything.
Crack!
A bolt of lightning tore through the clouds again. It split into a fork, and ripped the sky in two. I could actually hear the air sizzle.
“One, two, three…” counted Margot.
Rumble.
“Three miles,” I said.
Crack! Rumble.
Rain thudded against the roof.
Crack! Rumble.
“I really don’t like this,” said Fabien. “We shouldn’t have left the house.”
The storm was right on top of us now.
Crack! Rumble.
Bang!
I screamed as lightning struck the tree next to us with the loudest noise I’d ever heard. It lit the trunk a fiery orange, and split it in half. Shards of wood flew through the air, the size of javelins. Branches fell like confetti. I braced myself as half of the tree fell towards us.
The tree crashed straight through the stable’s roof and flattened the Lego Ferris wheel. I dived across Fabien to protect him. A huge branch crushed my foot, and pinned me to the ground. Pain pulsed through me, and I let out a cry.
“Luna! Are you OK?” yelled Fabien.
I tried to pull my foot free, but the pain got worse.
“Help me!” I yelled.
Margot rushed over to me. There was a gash above her eyebrow, and a huge splinter in her shoulder. She lifted the branch off me with a wince, and I tugged my foot free. Blood soaked the hem of my jeans. I took a deep breath and wriggled my ankle. The pain made me cry.
The roof creaked ominously above us. I closed my eyes and wished we were back in London, at our old flat, with our old boring lives. Suddenly, coming to the island felt like one big mistake.
Margot held a section of the stage above our heads, and we huddled beneath its armour. Eventually the thunder quietened, and the rain turned to drizzle. I rolled up the leg of my jeans with shaking hands, and inspected my ankle. It was red and swollen, with a big graze at the top. I couldn’t see any broken bones.
“I think it’s just sprained and badly bruised,” said Margot.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
She pulled the splinter out of her shoulder, and bit down on her lip. “Yes,” she croaked. “Yes, I think so.”
“What about the stage?” I asked.
Fabien inspected the piece we’d been sheltering under. There was a crack through the centre of it. I staggered to my feet and looked around. Lego bricks carpeted the floor, and my stable lay in tatters. Everything was ruined.
I leaned back against my pillow, and the doctor inspected my ankle. He’d come all the way from the mainland to check me over, but I still felt terrible. It would take ages to repair my stable. Worse than that, I’d have to tell Kai that his dad’s Ferris wheel was broken. Maybe the storm had been a sign that the donkey sanctuary and festival were bad ideas. Maybe I’d been fooling myself thinking they’d work.
“You’re very lucky. It could have been a lot worse,” said the doctor.
I didn’t feel lucky. In fact, I felt wretched. Kai’s dad must have spent ages building that wheel, and now it was in pieces. Kai had only just stopped hating me, but now he was going to start all over again.
“So you think Luna’s ankle is OK?” asked Mum, who was huddled at the top of my bed with Margot and Fabien. Dad stood in the doorway, even paler than usual.
“It just looks bruised,” said the doctor. “Keep applying ice and it should be fine in time for your festival.”
“What festival?” asked Mum.
I groaned and pulled the duvet over my head. Things couldn’t get any worse.
“The festival you’re holding here next week,” said the doctor. “I hope Kai’s been passing the money on to you.”
“What money?” asked Mum, and she whipped the duvet off my head. “What’s going on, Luna?”
The doctor rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out one of the tickets we’d made. He handed it to Mum, and her face turned red with embarrassment. “Didn’t you know about this?” he asked.
I watched Mum’s expression turn angry. “Please tell me you children haven’t been charging people for a pretend festival.”
“It’s not pretend!” exclaimed Fabien. “It’s a real festival. I’ve made bunting and everything. We even had a Ferris wheel, until the storm destroyed it.”
“A Ferris wheel…” croaked Dad.
“It was made out of Lego, but it really spun,” said Fabien.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Mum. “You can’t charge people ten pounds to come and see a heap of Lego.”
“But there’s bunting!” said Fabien.
“We thought the festival might make Dad feel better,” I said, deciding to leave out the part about my donkey sanctuary.
“Is this festival the reason you ran off in the storm?” asked Mum.
“We wanted to check the stage was OK,” I said.
Mum turned to Dad. “Do you see what you’ve done? Your daughter nearly broke her leg because of you.”
“It’s not Dad’s fault,” said Margot.
I sat up and leaned towards the doctor as everyone argued. “Can you make sad people feel better, or are you the wrong sort of doctor for that?”
“Who’s sad?” asked the doctor.
Dad cleared his throat above the racket. “I am.”
Everyone stopped talking and stared at him. It was the first time Dad had said it, at least aloud. I wanted to leap out of bed and hug him, but my ankle throbbed too hard.
Dad and the doctor went out into the hallway. Mum stared after them for a moment, and then busied herself by fluffing my pillow. I held my breath and wondered what she was thinking. She st
ill seemed angry.
“From now on, there’s to be no more nonsense about festivals,” she said.
“But, Mum––” I began.
“But nothing,” she said. “It’s nice that you were trying to help your dad, but the people who bought your tickets are expecting a real festival.”
“It is a real festival,” I said.
Mum shook her head. “I know you think it is, but you’re only ten. You can’t organise a proper festival.”
“But—” started Margot.
Mum raised her hand. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. And you’re all grounded for running out in the storm.”
I put my head back under my duvet. The festival was over, and with it my dream of opening a donkey sanctuary.
We were grounded. I stood at my window and stared out at the beach miserably. It was the day after the storm, and the island looked more battered and bruised than my ankle. I closed my eyes and thought about the festival. It was just a dream now.
My bedroom door swung open, and Margot flopped down on my bed dramatically. There were dark bags underneath her eyes. She buried her face in my pillow and huffed.
“We’re prisoners!” she mumbled.
Fabien sneaked in too, and perched beside Margot. “My goats must be starving. They’re used to me putting out food for them now.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure they’ll be happy eating all the fallen branches.”
“How long do you think they’ll keep us in here?” he asked.
Margot lifted her head from my pillow. “I don’t know, but Mum’s pretty mad at us for running off and for keeping the festival a secret. It could be years.”
Voices floated up through my bedroom window, and I looked outside again. A dozen or so people were marching towards the house, armed with brooms, and mops, and rubbish bags. I squinted and saw Kai at the front, followed by his mum, Doug, Daisy Gifford, the charity shop lady and some of the fishermen. For a second I wondered if they were a mirage.
Kai waved at me through the window. “All right, Luna?”
“What are you doing here?” I called to him.
“Doc Ted said the island had been hit badly by the storm, and you’d got hurt,” said Kai. “We’ve come to help fix everything and check you’re OK.”
“All of you?” I asked.
“That’s what friends are for,” said Daisy. “Plus, this will make an excellent cover story for next week’s paper.”
I couldn’t believe that all these people had come to help. They barely knew us. We were just the weird family who lived on the island. Seeing them made me feel all warm inside.
“Come down,” yelled Kai.
“We’re not allowed to leave our bedrooms,” I told him. “Mum’s grounded us.”
I heard the front door open, and Mum appeared on the doorstep. She wobbled with shock at the sight of everyone. Dad poked his head out of the window next to ours and looked just as surprised. His eyes sparkled as the mainlanders explained that they’d come to help.
“Don’t just sit there, kids. Come down and help everyone,” Mum yelled.
I hobbled down the stairs and staggered out into the sunlight. It had only been twenty-four hours, but being outside had never felt so good. Mum fetched me a chair from the living room, and I sat sorting through the bags of rubbish she’d collected earlier from the beach, making piles of anything that could be recycled.
Edna, one of the ladies who’d organised the Cakeathon, shimmied up a ladder behind me and began reattaching one of our drainpipes. I watched her in awe, and then ducked as Farmer McAndrew hosed off the wall behind me, almost soaking me in the process. I was only half convinced it was an accident.
“I told you the storm was going to be bad,” said Kai.
“Yeah, about that,” I said, and then broke the news to him about the stage and Ferris wheel.
“Oh,” he replied, quietly.
“I’m so sorry. I never would have put them in the stable if I’d known the roof was going to cave in,” I said.
“It’s not your fault,” replied Kai. “The chances of lightning hitting that tree must have been a million to one.”
“But they were your dad’s,” I replied.
I knew how upset I’d be if something had happened to one of the ornaments that Granny had left me.
“I can rebuild the Ferris wheel, and the stage can probably be fixed,” he said. “We’ve still got a week before the festival.”
“No, we haven’t,” I replied. “It’s off.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kai.
“Mum found out and she’s forbidden us from doing it. She thought it was a joke. Anyway, there’s no point now. It’ll take more money than we can raise to fix the stables. I’ll never get to open my donkey sanctuary.”
“So you’re just giving up?” asked Kai.
I sighed. “It’s all too much hassle.”
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t be friends after all, if you’re just going to quit,” he said and, with that, he marched away.
Kai’s words rang in my ears when I woke up the following morning.
I crept out of bed and hobbled across the corridor to Margot’s room. She was still asleep, buried under her duvet like a hedgehog in hibernation. I poked her through the quilt, and she groaned.
“It’s six o’clock, Luna,” she muttered, checking the time.
“I’ve got a plan to save the festival,” I said.
She poked her head a little further out of the covers. “Will you still have it in an hour?”
“We have to show Mum that the festival is real,” I replied. “We’ll patch up the stage, and decorate the beach, and show her how serious we are.”
“All right, but do we have to do it now?” asked Margot.
“Yes, we’ve got to do it before she wakes up. Otherwise who knows when we’ll get the chance to escape?” I said.
“All right, all right,” she mumbled.
Fabien was much easier to convince. He sprang out of bed at lightning speed and piled the decorations into our arms. There was even more bunting than before, and a few knitted cushions for people to sit on. I could barely hold them all as we made our way down to the north beach, over fallen branches and scattered flowers.
Margot and I carried the stage into place, piece by piece, and began to patch it.
“Lucky I’ve got my woodwork badge from Guides,” said Margot as she carefully nailed a section of the stage into place.
“Really?” I replied.
“I thought you knew. Don’t you remember the model plane I built out of plywood?” she asked.
“Oh, I thought it was a bus,” I said.
Margot waved her hammer at me. “A bus?”
I left her with the stage, and went to help Fabien with the decorations. We twisted fairy lights up beanpoles, dug them into the sand and strung bunting between them. Triangles of red, white, green, blue and yellow wool fluttered in the wind, next to the twinkling lights.
The stage wasn’t as badly damaged as I’d thought, and with a few nails it looked as good as new. We pieced it together on a flat bit of sand, out of the tide’s reach, and stood back to admire our work.
The beach twinkled magically. It really did look ready for a festival.
“Should I go and get Mum?” asked Fabien.
“Yes, I think it’s time,” I replied.
Mum surveyed the beach. “You did all this yourselves?”
“Yes, together,” replied Margot.
“It looks very pretty,” she said.
“So does that mean we can have the festival?” I asked, hopeful.
Mum twitched her lips side to side in thought. “Who are you going to get to play at this festival? Have you thought about food? Drinks? Who’s going to clean up afterwards?”
“We’ve got musicians, and we’re going to make ice cream, and hot dogs,” I said.
“If we can figure out how to keep them from exploding in the microwave,” added
Margot.
“And we’ll clean up afterwards,” said Fabien. “Promise.”
Mum prodded the stage, and seemed impressed that it didn’t topple over. “I don’t know whether to be cross that you’ve done this all in secret, or impressed by your creativity.”
“Impressed,” said Margot.
I nodded. “Yes, definitely impressed.”
“OK,” said Mum. “You can have the festival. But you’re not to argue if anybody asks for their money back.”
Fabien, Margot and I leapt into the air and screamed.
I was going to get my donkey sanctuary after all!
Kai dragged a hay bale across the north beach, and positioned it in front of the stage for seating. It was the morning of the festival, and we were busy setting things up. Thankfully my ankle was almost back to normal now, and just in the nick of time.
“Present from Farmer McAndrew,” he said. “There’re a few dozen more in the boat.”
“Really? Why would he give us those?” I asked.
“I told him The Rocking Pensioners are playing,” explained Kai. “He’s their biggest fan, so he donated the hay.”
“I thought Mike the mechanic was their biggest fan,” I said.
Kai shrugged. “Everyone loves them. I’ve brought the money from your ticket sales, by the way.”
He handed me a biscuit tin and I opened the lid. A pile of notes burst out of the top, and I stuffed them back in quickly. It was the most money I’d ever seen in my life! There had to be hundreds and hundreds of pounds inside.
“Have you counted it?” I asked.
“No, but it looks like a lot,” he said.
I handed Margot the money to deal with, and she nearly fell over in shock. “This’ll definitely help with the plane,” she said.
“And my sanctuary,” I told her.
Margot waved her hand at me. “Yes, yes, that too.”
I left her to stare at the cash, and went to fetch the other bales from the boat. It was barely light, but we still had so much to do. There was bread to butter for the hot dogs (Margot said we could save nine pence per customer if we didn’t use proper rolls), custard to make for the ice cream, and signs to put up so people wouldn’t get lost. Then one of us had to wait for the bands and guests to arrive. I’d found a money belt in Mum’s wardrobe, so we could sell extra tickets if someone hadn’t bought one.