Lightning Chase Me Home

by Amber Lee Dodd

  Amelia lives on a windblown island, in a creaky old house right beneath the North Star. Her dad is sad and silent since her mum left them, and her absent-minded grandpa suddenly seems convinced something strange is about to happen to her.

  She’s struggling at her new school – with finding the right words, with finding new friends – but when she makes a birthday wish to be reunited with her missing mum, a wild magic is stirred from the sea.

  Also by Amber Lee Dodd

  We Are Giants

  For my parents, who taught me to read.

  And for you, dear reader, whose adventures are only just beginning.

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Amber Lee Dodd

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Early on the morning of my eleventh birthday I was standing in the harbour wearing mismatched shoes and holding a lobster. This is not how birthdays should start. If Mum was still here, we would be in our pyjamas eating pancakes. Or if I lived anywhere else in the world but Dark Muir Island, I would still be in bed sound asleep at six in the morning. Instead, I was standing under a starry sky, unpacking Da’s fishing boat.

  “But why do we have to go out on the boat?” I asked Da as we clambered aboard. It smelled of lobster pots that had been left out in the sun too long. This is not something you ever want to smell, especially first thing in the morning.

  “Because it’s tradition, Amelia. Every islander has to go and touch the rock when they turn eleven. I did it, your grandpa did it, your great grandpa did it,” Da said, passing me our dog Pipi.

  “Did Mum do it?” I interrupted.

  “No, she wasn’t an islander,” Da said quietly. “This is something special, just for us folk.” He still didn’t like me talking about Mum, even if it had been nearly two years since she left.

  Da started the engine and turned the wheel with his big weather-worn hands.

  But it didn’t feel very special. In fact, it felt terrifying. For a start, I hated being out on the choppy waves because I always got seasick. And secondly, I was a bit scared of where we were going.

  Just off the harbour of Dark Muir Island is a glistening black rock called the Serpent’s Tooth. It’s said that a great snake stirred the seas and made all the Scottish islands rise up here. But when the snake had finished it was so tired that it laid down on the sea floor and died. Now all that’s left of it is one giant black tooth, which pokes out of the sea even in the highest tides. Whenever any islander turns eleven they’re meant to swim out and touch it. But I’m a rubbish swimmer and only half an islander, as all the other kids like to remind me. I don’t even look like an islander. I’m not pale and redheaded like my da. I look exactly like my mum: dark, curly-haired and freckled all over. The only thing about me that’s different to her is my eyes. I have my da’s eyes. Not blue, or brown or green, but some colour in the middle, and changeable with the weather. On a clear, cold summer’s day they look blue, and out on the boat in the early morning light they look green. But most of the time they look grey. The kind of grey the sky turns just before a big storm.

  My eyes were grey that day. Even though it was the middle of August, even though the sea was calm and I could hear Da whistling over the thrum of the engine, I could feel something in the air. On Dark Muir Island there is always a storm just over the horizon. There are autumn storms when the wind is so strong that the trees grow bent the following year. And the winter storms, when the boats in the harbour shudder and shake and threaten to break free from their moorings. Then there are spring storms when the thunder and lightning chase you home. And finally there are even summer storms, when the rain is hot and hard. The closer we got to the rock the more I could feel something brewing. And it wasn’t like any storm I had felt before.

  “We’re here, hen,” Da said as he cut the engine. The boat rocked back and forth unsteadily on the choppy sea.

  Ar row row, Pipi barked at the waves as if she could get them to still. In her head Pipi believes she’s a great big dog even though she’s a funny sort of tiny mixed-up terrier, with ears too big for her head and legs too short for her body. Pipi finally fell quiet as the boat settled under the huge shadow of Serpent’s Tooth Rock. Da looked at me expectantly like I was meant to know what to do next.

  “Well, go on and touch it then,” he said.

  I looked down at the water. It was so dark I couldn’t see my own reflection. Grandpa had told me the deepest part of the ocean is over seven miles away. And down there it’s so dark that the fish don’t need eyes. Just thinking about it made me shiver.

  “You just have to lean over and touch it. You don’t have to go in the water,” Da told me.

  I shook my head.

  “All the other bairns have done it. Don’t you want to be like your friends?” Da said, pulling at his big red beard.

  I couldn’t tell Da that being the weird home-schooled kid made it impossible to make friends. But I didn’t want to let him down. So I took a deep breath, tried not to think about fish with no eyes, and leant over the side. My fingertips wouldn’t quite reach, however far I stretched. Pipi kept barking and spinning around in little circles. She wasn’t the only one who knew this wasn’t a good idea.

  “I’ve got you,” Da said, grabbing me by the waist and hoisting me forward until my feet were in the air and I was dangling over the sea. I squeezed my eyes shut, stretched out my arm and laid the palm of my hand flat on the stone. It wasn’t cold like I was expecting; it was warm, like it was alive.

  “Make a wish,” Da said.

  But I didn’t know what to ask for. I knew what Da wished: that I would do well at my new school. Mum had home-schooled me since I was seven, after my teacher Mrs Stokes labelled me “unteachable”. Then when Mum left, Da and Grandpa had tried to continue the lessons, but they were too impatient (Da) and distracted (Grandpa) and I learned about as little as I had with Mrs Stokes. So Da had signed me up for Bridlebaine Academy, the fancy school on the neighbouring island that he went to when he was a kid, and hadn’t stopped talking about all summer: about how much I would learn, and all the clubs I could join, and how many new friends I would make. I wanted to believe everything Da was saying: that I’d get to join the drama class and be popular with everyone. But as much as I was looking forward to starting school, a part of me ached for things to go back to the way they’d been before, with me taking lessons with Mum. But she was gone and it had now been nearly a year since she last called on the phone to speak to me. The worst part was I didn’t even know where in the world she was. So I had to use my imagination. Sometimes I pictured Mum charting her way through th
e Amazon, or riding camels through the desert. Sometimes I even imagined her in not so nice places like the freezing North Pole, so I wouldn’t wish I was with her so much. But birthdays were hard. I would have given all of my presents just to be with Mum, even if it meant living on an iceberg in the middle of the Antarctic.

  “Come on, Amelia, hurry up and make a wish,” Da said, his arms beginning to shake.

  I leaned forward and touched the rock again.

  “I wish I could be with Mum,” I whispered, and it could have just been my imagination but I swear I felt the rock move.

  Da pulled me back on to the deck of the boat and slapped my shoulders.

  “Your nana would have been so proud,” he said, his eyes shining. “Now you’re a real islander, Amelia, and not just part of my family, but of this whole island. Which is something very special, because it means you will never be alone now.” Da hugged me and pulled me into his very best soft flannel shirt. I realized that he was making a big effort to make my birthday special and I felt a pang of guilt about my wish.

  Then Da pulled two badly wrapped packages from his bag.

  “I hope you like them,” he said nervously.

  I tore through the bubble wrap and gaffer tape he had used to cover both my birthday presents. Inside the first one was the most hideous pair of shoes I had ever seen: pink with daisy buckles. I slipped them on just to make Da happy. I knew later I would be burying them deep in the garden, where even Pipi couldn’t find them. But the next present was much better. It was a huge hardback book about explorers.

  “I popped into Mr Sinclair’s bookshop and saw this. I thought we could replace that old tatty one with something a bit more grown up.”

  Da meant the picture book of women adventurers I kept under my pillow. But even though this new birthday book was beautiful and full of real photos of famous explorers, I knew it couldn’t replace my one at home. It’s not like it was anything special. It was just a little yellow picture book. And it was pretty old, so the spine was crumbling apart, the pages were all dog-eared and it still smelled like the banana milkshake that I’d spilled on it once. But I could never get rid of it because it was mine and Mum’s book, filled with the stories she had told me when I was little, about brave and wonderful women adventuring down the Amazon and escaping from cannibals.

  Mum was sort of an adventurer too. Before she moved to Dark Muir she travelled around the world filming wildlife. Once she even worked for David Attenborough on one of his documentaries. She always said how much she loved doing it, how she loved filming and sleeping under the trees in tropical rainforests. Which is why, when I closed my eyes and thought of Mum, I always saw her on some grand adventure, just like the women in my book.

  “There’s one more present. And this one’s special,” Da said. He smiled and produced another parcel from his pocket: a little red box wrapped in ribbon. He passed it to me, and it felt heavy in my hands.

  “On your eleventh birthday it’s tradition to pass on a family heirloom,” Da said, turning around and starting the boat back up.

  Inside the box was the small gold compass Nana had given to Mum on the day I was born. I gasped. Where had Da got this from? Had Mum left it behind? I looked up at Da, expecting him to explain. But his face was doing that weird expression it does when he’s tired, or hungry, or in a bad mood. So I bit my lip and stared down at the compass. I watched the needle point the way back home. To the house that lay just under the big, bright North Star.

  By the time we moored the boat and made our way up the steep cliff steps, it was just getting light. Light enough for me to see Grandpa through the kitchen window, pottering about slowly. When we got in we saw that he’d taken all the knives and forks out of the drawers.

  “Everything’s in the wrong place again,” Grandpa muttered as he started moving all the pans around.

  “Now, now, Da, none of your silliness today,” my da replied, pulling a chair out and sitting Grandpa down.

  Sometimes Grandpa forgets things. Like which drawer the forks are or that Nana’s dead. Sometimes we try to remind him, sometimes we don’t, but most of the time we end up putting the kitchen back together. After we had tidied up, Da went to the fridge and pulled out the biggest, messiest cake I had ever seen. It was about two feet tall, had purple and green icing, and leaned to one side.

  “I made it myself,” Da said proudly.

  “Well it’s very, it’s very…” I said, searching for the right word.

  “That is one ugly cake,” Grandpa pointed out, as if he was reading my mind.

  “Tell us what you really think,” Da said huffily, before putting the cake on the table and cutting up big slices, passing them out. Grandpa just stared at his.

  “I took Amelia out to Serpent’s Tooth Rock today to make her wish,” Da continued.

  Grandpa dropped his fork. It clattered loudly on to the floor as he reached across the table and wrapped his bony hands around mine.

  “It chose you, didn’t it?” he demanded, his eyes dark.

  “What do you mean?” I said, remembering with a shiver how I thought I had felt Serpent’s Tooth Rock move when I made my wish.

  “Oh, Amelia, that rock’s dangerous – it grants wishes at a terrible price,” Grandpa said, and his hands began to shake.

  “Now, Da, don’t you go scaring Amelia with one of your old wives’ tales,” Da said, rolling his eyes.

  Grandpa’s face clouded over again, and he dropped my hands and went back to eating his cake as if nothing had happened.

  “You enjoy your birthday cake,” Da told me, but the room felt tight and tense, like the air before a summer storm.

  I let Pipi lick the frosting off my fingers under the table and tried to forget about Grandpa’s outburst. He was always coming up with odd things. But the hand that had touched the Serpent’s Tooth felt oddly hot as I ate the rest of my birthday cake.

  Chapter 2

  In bed that night I got out The Little Book of Lady Adventurers. I flipped open the cover and read the writing on the inside of the book for the millionth time.

  To Amelia Hester McLeod. Remember your name. Anything is possible.

  My mum had named me after her two favourite explorers, Amelia Earhart and Lady Hester Stanhope. Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She vanished while attempting to fly across the world. Lady Hester Stanhope was known as “Queen of the desert”. She travelled across the Middle East on an Arab stallion, disguised as a man with a cutlass searching for treasure, before she went very mad. I think Mum thought naming me after them would mean I’d grow up to be a brave adventurer. But I’m not very brave and I’ve never come close to having an adventure. I’ve never even left the islands! And they are possibly the most boring place in the world. So boring that most maps leave them off. If you were to look for them you’d have to trace your finger up from the pointy tip of Scotland, past Shetland and the North Sea. And there, right at the top, just as the map is about to disappear, are my islands. There are three of them: Dark Muir, where I live, Sometimes Island, which is technically only an island at high tide, and Stony Isle, which is the biggest of the three. That’s where my new school is.

  I was trying to picture my new school. I’d only visited it once, and me and Da were running late to meet the head teacher so I didn’t actually get to look round beforehand. Then I had to do a test and I felt so miserable afterwards that I just wanted to go straight home. I was pretty sure I had failed, because no matter how hard I tried, all the questions got jumbled up in my head. I’ve got this problem with words. They never seem to stay still. They’re always jiggling about, or sliding off the page. It takes me for ever to read anything and even then I have to skip out all the words I don’t recognize. Even Mum struggled to get me reading. I had to read over The Little Book of Lady Adventurers so many times with her, that I learned it off by heart. I still can’t read it in my head though; I have to read it out loud when I’m on my own. So I pretend
I’m reading it to Pipi, who is actually a great audience and barks at the exciting bits. Mum didn’t seem to mind that I was slow at some things, not like Da and Grandpa. When they tried to teach me there was a lot of yelling.

  Amelia Hester McLeod, your handwriting is unreadable.

  Amelia Hester McLeod, your reading assignment is woeful.

  Amelia Hester McLeod, none of these maths problems are correct.

  Amelia Hester McLeod, why have you stuck all the pages of your workbook together?

  I had got so sick of hearing my full name that I stopped paying attention and started listening to the funny ideas in my head. The ones that whisper halfway through a maths test to fill in all the answers with the same number, or to put sticky notes all over your face, or to paint everything with Tippex until you get dizzy. In the end Da couldn’t stand it any more. And poor Grandpa had become more and more forgetful. Once, halfway through a maths lesson, he decided we needed to paint the living room. We painted the whole room bright yellow and brown until it looked like a bee’s belly. Da was really cross with Grandpa for a whole week afterwards. So it was a bit of a relief to be starting school. I was finally going to be like all the other kids on the island. Maybe I would become massively popular and start getting invited to other people’s birthday parties. Or I would discover new talents like being an expert gymnast/rope climber. And then one day soon Mum would walk back through the door, ready to teach me about all the amazing places she had been.

  I buried myself under the covers with Mum’s compass and wondered where in the world she could be on my birthday. Then I made a list in the new notebook Grandpa had given me.

  Places where Mum could be on my birthday and reasons why she can’t make it home.

  •Brazil: Mum is lost in the Amazon rainforest. A search party of six strong men and five cunning dogs have been sent out to look for her.

  •Tanzania: she’s currently halfway up Mount Kilimanjaro. She intended to finish climbing it before my birthday, but her guide, Mwamba, broke his leg and she’s had to carry him.