“Will you do it?” Alice asked.
An uncomfortable lump was forming in Jesse’s throat. That they had plotted this for ages! That they had known, yesterday on the beach, and last night by the fire, and before going to sleep in the tent! Known, and kept it from him, and made a fool of him! You should be an explorer—that he should have felt so happy, when they were about to stab him in the back, knowing how much this Challenge meant to him, knowing how much their friendship . . .
“No,” he said. “I won’t.”
Fergus, who really was wondering about the plan, whooped silently, then sighed as Alice set her chin in a way he was beginning to recognize.
“Then we’ll just have to do it without you,” she said in a very small voice.
“Alice!” he whispered. “We can’t! Not without Jesse!”
“I’ll go alone if I have to.”
He tried to reason with her. “Think of the Consequences if Jesse gets back without us! School will know we split up—he’ll have to tell them!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Despite the chin, there was an unmistakable quaver in her voice. And Fergus knew that he could never let her go alone.
Silently, they washed their bowls, packed up their rucksacks, and dismantled the tent.
“You should take it,” Alice told Jesse. “It’s only fair.” She hesitated, then, standing on tiptoe, kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Good luck, Jesse. I’m sure you’ll win.”
“Please come with us, Jesse.” Fergus couldn’t believe this was happening. Now that they were separating, he realized how much it meant to him for them to all be together. Not because they might—would probably—get lost without Jesse, but because, astonishingly, he liked him.
And oh, thought Jesse, the swim and the stars and the bonfire and the fish! The seals, and the sound of the waves at night!
“I’m not coming,” he said. “And that’s that.”
“Alice!” begged Fergus. “Let’s talk about this!”
But Alice was already walking, and Jesse was looking away. Fergus sighed, swung his pack onto his back, and ran after her.
The beach was pristine again, all traces of their fire wiped clean by the tide. Jesse thought he saw a sleek black head in the water, but it was only driftwood, bobbing.
“I’m going to win this,” he said out loud. “I’ll show them!”
His words scattered on the wind.
Alice and Fergus were nearing an intersection on the path they had come down the day before. Jesse knew, without even looking at the map, that if they wanted to go north, they had to turn left. Whereas he had to go right. Right, and then inland, and then he would win, because no one was faster or better than him. Especially with no one to slow him down. He would win.
He would win!
Except—could he even win if he lost half his team?
His heart tightened. He had loved being part of their team. They had stopped now and were looking at the map.
“Left,” Jesse muttered. “It’s not difficult. LEFT!” They turned right. He waved. They didn’t see. He shouted. They didn’t hear. “Oh, come on,” he groaned. It was true—they couldn’t do it without him.
That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that he didn’t want them to. “WAIT!” he shouted again, and this time they looked back, and stopped, and grinned. “Wait for me!” he bellowed, and began to run. After all, Jesse had always longed for a real adventure. Here it was, just begging him to join in.
Twenty-Eight
The Mosquito Woman
Of course, there is still the question of the parcel at the bottom of Alice’s rucksack, which will shortly be making its full and dramatic entry into this story.
Pictures of the contents of that parcel have been splashed all over the internet, and all over newspapers all over the world. A lot of people want those contents: The police. Private detectives. Some dangerous criminals. Barney Mistlethwaite.
He’s the only one who knows Alice has it.
But—as you know—people are after him.
Which means they’re getting closer to her.
* * *
Jesse didn’t explain his change of heart, and Alice and Fergus didn’t ask, but none of them had stopped grinning since he’d joined them.
“I reckon I’ve saved two hours from the route you’d planned,” he informed them when they stopped for a meager lunch of tuna and oatcakes. “Even if you had been going in the right direction. Which you weren’t.”
“Go on, rub it in.” Fergus beamed. “Do not let an occasion pass without reminding us of your tremendous superiority.”
“He is superior,” Alice said affectionately. “He’s a positive marvel.”
“A marvel!” Jesse grunted to hide his smile, and went back to the map. “So we follow this path”—he traced a dotted line across the headland—“and we get to this village, where we catch the ferry that will take us to the town of Moraig, on Lumm.”
“An actual town?” asked Fergus. “With cars and people and potentially shops where we can buy actual food?”
“We have actual food,” Jesse said.
“I’m not sure we do,” said Fergus. “We have oatcakes, and tuna. I don’t believe those are food. Neither is porridge, for that matter. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life.”
“There’s a boat at two o’clock,” said Alice. “Can we make it? We need to get across Lumm this afternoon so that we can catch the boat to Nish tomorrow morning. It’s the only one, so we can’t miss it.”
“We can be at the ferry in an hour if we hurry,” said Jesse.
“Then let’s go! Fergus, you can eat while we walk!”
On they went over the undulating land, three friends, happy and carefree and rebellious, jogging on the downhills, striding across the flat, skipping on the uphills, blisters and aching muscles forgotten. Fergus, whistling tunelessly, reflected on how criminal master plans were even better when three people were involved. Jesse, feeling a little dazed that he was here, heading north instead of south, was being a knight on a quest. And Alice surprised herself by thinking how much she loved them both.
As they came down again to sea level, the air grew damp and claggy with salt. Mist rose from dips and hollows, clung in beads to blades of grass, hugged the ground like a shroud. The road, when they came to it, was narrow and potholed. Houses began to appear, looming out of the whiteness like ghosts. They stamped their feet as they walked—for warmth, Jesse said, but also for the comfort of noise in a muffled world.
They almost missed the turn. The bashed-up, rusty sign for the ferry, white with the black outline of a boat, was half hidden behind a holly tree. Jesse and Alice walked straight past it, and Fergus saw it only by chance, because he stopped to tie a shoelace.
They turned down an even narrower road.
“I thought somehow it would be . . .” Alice screwed up her face as she tried to find the right word.
“Bigger?” suggested Fergus. “Less like a road to absolutely nowhere?”
There were no shops, or even houses. The quay appeared to just be the bit where the road went into the water.
“Before you ask,” said Jesse, “this is definitely what the map says. Also, there was that sign.”
Doubtfully, they considered the quay, put down their rucksacks, and sat, huddled together on the road, with their hoods pulled up against the cold.
“It’s like the station at Castlehaig,” Jesse said, trying to be positive. “You think no one’s coming, but they do.”
“That’s true,” said Alice firmly. “They do.”
“They’ll have just finished lunch at school,” said Fergus. “It was shepherd’s pie today. I looked at the menu before I left. I love shepherd’s pie.”
“There’ll be shepherd’s pie again,” promised Alice. “When we get back. There’s always shepherd’s pie.”
“If we get back,” said Fergus darkly.
“Something’s coming,” Jesse said.<
br />
The boat loomed out of the mist like a monster, a flock of gulls swirling in its wake, and came to stop by the quay in a great churning of gray-brown water. A ramp came down. The three scrambled to their feet. A red-faced man in yellow oilskins signaled for them to stay back as a tractor lumbered off the ferry, followed by a small white car and a group of cyclists. The oilskin man waved them on.
“You lot escaped from a prison or something?” he asked, eyeing their orange jackets.
“Je ne comprends pas,” said Fergus, in his best Madame Gilbert French. “Trois enfants, s’il vous plaît.”
He held up three fingers, pointing to himself, Alice, and Jesse. The other two stared, astonished, as the oilskin man produced tickets.
“What did you do that for?” whispered Alice as they walked away.
“We’re on the run,” he whispered back. “We have to have a disguise! It doesn’t work otherwise.”
Laughing, they ran onto the passenger deck, where they lined up against a railing, facing the mainland. The sea was dark, sullen gray, with white crests blown back by a sharp wind. Farther out, a sailing yacht raced across the water, tilted at an impossible angle, and a cormorant was fishing. Lumm was only a few miles away—they could already see its dark mass ahead—but they felt like voyagers setting off on an uncharted journey, all the more exciting because no one in the world knew where they were.
The ferry blasted a horn, making them all jump. They waved goodbye to the mainland.
“Au revoir!” shouted Fergus, dizzy with linguistic success.
“Au revoir!” Alice repeated, while Jesse, feeling hilarious, shouted goodbye in English but with a mock French accent.
And here was danger now, very nearly upon them . . .
A red car was tearing down the road to the quay. It skidded to a halt by the water and two large men dressed in black spilled out, waving and shouting at the ferry. “Aspetti! Wait!”
“What’s that?” asked Jesse.
“Not French,” said Fergus. “I don’t think.”
“Italian?” said Alice. “Maybe?”
But the ramp was already up, the water churning again. The ferry didn’t wait. The men dropped their arms in defeat, turned back toward the car, and stood by the near-side rear door, heads respectfully bowed. The car door opened and a tiny woman stepped out, dressed simply in black leggings and a thick black parka, with long hair tucked into a knitted black cap, and a pair of enormous mosquito sunglasses. In her flat-soled boots, she barely reached the men’s shoulders, but there was no question who was in charge.
The mosquito woman raised her hand to the ferry and pointed.
Fergus laughed and waved, but Alice shivered.
She had the feeling the woman was pointing straight at her.
Twenty-Nine
Oyster!
Moraig was a pretty harbor, with houses all painted different colors tumbling down steep hills toward the water, and a parade of busy shops. Under blue skies, it would have been a cheerful scene. But the weather had worsened during the crossing. The sky had grown menacing with low, heavy clouds, and the air was pregnant with the anticipation of thunder. The shoppers had an urgency about them. No one dallied to browse or chat, but hurried home to prepare for the storm as soon as they had paid.
“I’ve been here before,” Fergus said suddenly as they walked from the ferry into town. He stopped at the top of a steep flight of steps leading to a little beach. “I think I came with my parents! Can we go down?”
Jesse peered fretfully at the clouds. “If we miss this bus, we’ll have to find somewhere to camp near here tonight. The next bus isn’t for another two hours, and we really need to get the tent up before the storm.”
“If we camp here, we’ll miss tomorrow’s boat to Nish. Also . . .” Alice glanced over her shoulder toward their ferry, which was already sailing back out of the harbor. Presumably, when it returned, it would be bringing the passengers left behind on the quayside, including the woman who had pointed at her. Alice had not shared her unease about the red-car people with Fergus and Jesse, and she couldn’t have explained why, but she didn’t want to be here when they arrived.
“We’ve got twenty minutes till the bus.” Fergus gazed longingly at the sand. “And it stops right here by the steps.”
“No way,” said Jesse. “What if the bus comes early, and you’re still on the beach, and it doesn’t wait? You can go on our way back from—”
“It’s fine,” Alice interrupted softly. “Go. We’ll shout if the bus comes.”
“I’ll be quick!” Fergus promised.
He scrambled down the steps and ran toward the water, then struck out along the sand toward the dark rocks at the far end of the beach.
“Why did you let him go?” complained Jesse. “It’s not even like it’s a nice beach. It smells of fish.” He wrinkled his nose. “And not in a good way.”
“He came with his parents,” murmured Alice. “So it matters.”
Jesse would have liked to ask her more about Fergus and his parents, and also about hers, but she had that faraway, dreamy look about her that he knew meant she wouldn’t talk.
The wind picked up, and the sky darkened. Boats came into the harbor on waves swollen by the rising tide. When the bus came, the driver did not want to wait, and Fergus, who had lingered at the far end of the beach, ran until he was red in the face. As the bus wound its way through the hills and valleys of the island, he grew paler and paler. By the time they reached their destination, he was ghost white, and sweating.
* * *
The bus left them near the quay in a medium-sized village. Unlike the quay on the mainland, this one had a car park, a proper dock, a long low building marked TICKETS and INFORMATION, and a harbor full of boats, all anchored offshore in preparation for the coming storm. Alice would have liked to linger, to ask which was the boat to Nish and whether she could see the island from here, but Jesse wouldn’t let her. The wind was blowing hard now, the air was damp with the promise of rain, and they still had a way to go before they could pitch their tent at the campsite Jesse had found on the map.
“We have to pitch the tent before the storm,” Jesse repeated, and led the others back along the road the bus had come in on, turning left a hundred meters after the village onto a narrow tree-lined track with open marshland on either side. After five hundred meters, they passed a solitary white stone house, set back from the track in an overgrown garden. Two hundred meters after that, they arrived at the campsite, which was small, empty, and basic, with just a trash can, a water tap, and a locked toilet, and only partly sheltered from the wind by a bank of trees and a stone wall. Beyond the campsite, hidden from view by the trees, was the sea, roaring with angry waves.
“Let’s get to work.” Jesse shrugged off his rucksack and began to pull out the tent.
Fergus wrapped his arms around himself and said, “I’m going to the beach.”
“Again?” Jesse was outraged. “Fergus, the tent! The rain! We have to be ready! Fergus!”
“Leave him.” Alice laid a hand on Jesse’s arm as Fergus left.
“But it’s not fair!”
“We’ll manage.”
Jesse, grumbling, let it go.
A squalling wind played havoc with their work. The canvas flapped wildly as they opened the tent, then refused to be stilled. By the time they had finished, there was not a straight edge or right angle to the tent.
“We need Fergus back now, before the rain starts,” said Jesse, looking at the sky. “Or it’ll be wet in there as well as wonky.”
“I’ll go and get him,” said Alice.
It was a smaller beach than the last one, a white cove almost completely submerged by battering waves. Alice pulled her hood up against the wind, and battled her way along the narrow sand to where Fergus sat just above the high-tide line, facing the water.
“Come back!” she shouted as she approached. “Jesse says we have to get inside before it rains!”
“I like i
t here!” he shouted back.
Alice flopped down beside him on the ground.
“Jesse really will go mad,” she said.
“I don’t care.”
In the weeks she had known him, Alice had never seen Fergus so dejected. She leaned back on her elbows and raised inquiring eyebrows.
“I was little,” Fergus said at last. “Probably six or seven. We did a tour of the Scottish islands. I think we stopped in Moraig for one night. I don’t really remember much, just that we were all together.”
Alice squeezed his arm.
“You know what, Alice? I hope we don’t make it back in time. I hope we get stuck on your dad’s island, and school sends out a massive search party, just like I always wanted, and my parents almost die of worry. Parents are useless, Alice. They just are.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” Fergus had gone very pale, and she worried that he might cry.
“It’s fine, Fer. Really. But we do have to go now because it’s going to rain soon. Come on. Come and help and have something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The rain started, a few fat drops, then stopped, as though the clouds were holding their breath. Alice stood up, pulling Fergus up after her. The line between the sea and the sky had disappeared. Both were the color of lead.
“I am not hungry,” Fergus repeated. “Because I have eaten an oyster.”
“An oyster!”
“It’s something Mum and Dad used to do on holidays. Eat oysters straight off the rocks. I picked one on the beach in Moraig. Alice, I think I’m going to be—”
As the heavens opened, he threw up in the sand.
Thirty
Darkly Lit Against the Sky
Alice and Fergus were drenched in seconds. Alice, struggling against the howling wind, dragging a green-faced Fergus, tried not to gag when he was sick again and his vomit splattered her arm.
The trees around the campsite were bent almost horizontal in the wind. Jesse, in full waterproof gear, was staggering toward the tent with his arms full of stones to make up for the missing tent pegs.
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