by Philip Reeve
He crawled out of a crack in the summit of the Thurlstone. The Water Mole and the other shipwrecks loomed over him. Monkey drums boomed, and stone xylophones clattered. The monkeys were having a wild old time, dancing around their fire, toasting sea anemones on sticks, and painting glasses and mustaches on the old stone heads. None of them noticed Oliver as he crept like a damp ghost between the trees.
Soon he reached the temple. Outside its great stone entrance was a pool, and on the pool the two glass globes that held his parents floated. Mr. and Mrs. Crisp were asleep, huddled in the bottoms of the globes, which clinked gently against each other from time to time, like wineglasses.
“Mom!” called Oliver softly. “Dad!”
They did not stir. Poor things, they were just as exhausted as Iris after all their adventures.
“Mom!” he shouted, wading into the pool and banging his fists against the globes.
Still his parents did not wake, although Dad rolled over and muttered something in his dreams. But someone had heard Oliver. A voice from behind him said, “Ha!”
He turned around.
There stood Stacey de Lacey, with his army of monkeys around him. Some of them were still beating their drums and banging their xylophones. One held a tray of biscuits, another a cool drink for Stacey, and two others fanned him with big peacock-feather fans. The rest were just bibbling about like mad windup toys, full of excitement at all the mischief that lay ahead.
“You!” said Stacey de Lacey, pointing rudely at Oliver. “So here you are, come to thieve and sneak and spoil my plans!”
“I just want my mom and dad back!” Oliver promised.
“Well, you can’t have them!” jeered Stacey. “The Thurlstone needs them. They are the finishing touches on his wig. They could make all the difference. They’re just the sort of thing that will make him stand out.”
“But why do you care so much about the Thurlstone winning?” Oliver asked miserably.
“Ah!” said Stacey de Lacey. “We’ve got a deal, me and the Thurlstone. If I help him win this seawig thing, then he’ll help me. Imagine the power I’ll have, with this great big giant at my command! And other Rambling Isles will follow the Thurlstone when they see his wonderful wig! The winner of Seawigs Night is a sort of king; they’ll have to do as he says. We’ll stomp New York, smash London, sit on Shanghai. The whole world will tremble before us! Nobody will dare say I’ve got a girly name then!”
“But you have got a girly name,” grumbled Oliver.
“MONKEYS!” howled Stacey de Lacey.
Oliver tried to fend the monkeys off, but soon he was pinned down under a gibbering heap of them. Meanwhile, some others had gone rushing into a side chamber of the temple and reappeared bowling a third glass globe. Some held it steady while the rest unscrewed its lid. Then Oliver was monkey handled into it, and the lid screwed shut behind him.
Stacey de Lacey grinned in at him, his leering face stretched out of shape by the thick glass. “Now the Thurlstone’s wig is finished!” he chortled. “Not just two stupid Crisps, but the whole set!”
Tittering with mischief, the monkeys rolled Oliver away. Mr. and Mrs. Crisp had been woken by the noise and were sitting up inside their globes, watching sadly as their son was trundled past them.
“I’m sorry!” mouthed Oliver.
A reef of dark rocks rose from the Hallowed Shallows, with the waves breaking whitely around it. Wet stone shone in the moonlight. The mermaids scrambled through the surf and up onto the reef’s rocky ledges. There they sat, each with her comb and her mirror and her long hair blown sideways on the breeze. Their plump choirmaster bobbed like a seal in the waves and clapped his hands to get the mermaids’ attention. “Just time for a quick practice, girls! Sing up!”
So they sang, and their voices blended with the voices of the sea and wind. All over the Hallowed Shallows the Rambling Isles forgot their nervousness and listened. Up on the Thurlstone’s head Oliver and his mom and dad heard that song, and it sent shivers down their spines. (They couldn’t listen for long, though. They were busy being rolled across the Thurlstone’s summit by those monkeys and dangled over its edge.)
“Stop, stop, stop!” the fat merman shouted, clapping his hands over his ears. The song of mermaids was meant to sound strange and unearthly, but not this strange and unearthly. “Someone’s singing flat!” he said accusingly, glaring at the rows of singers.
Iris knew it was her. She blushed deep red. The merman spotted her and pointed. “You! Sing for me!”
Iris drew a deep breath and sang as loudly and sweetly as she could. An awful, strangled note emerged, so piercing that the nearest mermaids’ mirrors cracked.
“Stop! Stop!” the merman shouted. “What a disgraceful racket! What were you thinking of, joining our choir with a voice like that! Be off with you!”
Iris started to explain that she hadn’t meant to join the choir at all, then decided that there wasn’t time and splashed back into the sea. She couldn’t imagine why she’d wanted to find her way home to all these silly merpeople. Her new friends were much more fun. All she cared about now was rescuing Oliver.
The Hallowed Shallows were crowded with Rambling Isles now, hundreds of them, some large, some small. They seemed to be waiting for something. Oliver waited too, dangling from the Thurlstone’s brow, his glass globe swinging to and fro in its creaking basket of ropes. When would the judging begin?
Stacey de Lacey was running about busily on the Thurlstone’s head, shouting orders at his monkeys while they did a bit of last-minute polishing and tidied scraps of seawig that had been blown skew-whiff by the wind.
At last, on the far horizon, a tiny speck appeared, drawing quickly closer. The islands all mumbled and muttered to each other, turning to look. Soon Oliver could see that the approaching thing was another Rambling Isle, striding purposefully through the waves. On either side of it the wave crests foamed, and the foam took on the form of galloping horses. It was the Chief Island, who had won the last Night of the Seawigs. The white horses of the sea formed an honor guard for her, and the mermaids on the Singing Rocks started to sing again, properly now that they didn’t have Iris helping. The Chief Island (her name was Dambulay) waded into the Shallows and stopped. On her summit towered a massive wig of trees and flowers and grasses, with rainbows knotted in it, and the prows of Viking longships jutting out like ornate hairpins. She looked at her fellow islands with pride and sadness, and then quickly shook her head, so that the old wig came apart, the rainbows drifting away, the rotten timbers of the ships tumbling down her sides into the sea.
“Ahhh!” said the Rambling Isles, and “Oooh!” Even the Thurlstone made a deep rumbling sound, out of respect for Dambulay’s wonderful wig.
“Never mind,” said Dambulay sadly. “It was a good wig, but it was old, and now I can start again and collect a whole new one. But first we must see who here has the finest seawig. Which of us has found the prettiest things on our wanderings? Who shall be the winner tonight, and Chief Island for the next seven years?”
The islands shifted a little. The ones whose wigs were really poor or had suffered in the wind slunk backwards into deeper water. Some eyed up the drifting bits of Dambulay’s wig that still bobbed upon the waves, wondering if they could make some last-minute changes without the others noticing. The prouder ones preened themselves, hoping to attract the votes of their neighbors. The island with the wig of drizzled sand drew many admiring looks. So did another, which had a crown of whalebones. But none could compare to the splendor of the Thurlstone, with its shipwrecks and those three glass globes, from which three captive humans gawked. One by one the islands turned until they were all gazing at it.
Oliver, trapped in his hanging globe, pounded his hands against the inside of the glass and shouted, “No! It’s not fair! The Thurlstone cheated!” But the mermaids were singing still, and their voices drowned out his protests. His parents waved and shouted too, but the Rambling Isles thought they were only pleading for the
ir freedom. Captive humans! How original! No island had worn captive humans for centuries!
“Thurlstone!” said one of the isles in a deep, rumbly voice.
“Thurlstone!” said another, softer.
“Thurlstone!” cried a third in a voice like the boom of surf in deserted coves.
Iris popped up beside the Thurlstone’s left knee, red-faced and breathless after her hasty swim from the reef. She pointed up at the isle and shouted, but there was no way she could make herself heard over the voices of the Rambling Isles.
“Thurlstone! Thurlstone! Thurlstone!” Even the one with the wig of whalebones, who had been hoping to win, saw which way the tide was turning and added his voice to those of the others: “Thurlstone! Let Thurlstone be the winner.”
Just then the song of the mermaids rose in a wild crescendo, and suddenly Iris saw how she might be able to save Oliver and his family, even if all else was lost. She took a deep breath and sang the same note she had sung for the merman choirmaster a few moments before. She sang louder this time, as loud and as shrill as she could. She sang until her face turned purple. Before, her voice had been enough to break the mermaids’ mirrors. This time it made the Rambling Isles clap their hands over their ears, and put the other mermaids off their song.
Oliver, swinging in his globe, saw a fine frost of cracks start to spread across the glass. Tisssh! Crasssh! Smasssh! The three globes shattered. Icefalls of glass cascaded down the Thurlstone’s cliffs. Into the sea dropped Mr. and Mrs. Crisp.
But what of Oliver? Iris peered about, trying not to be distracted by the hoots of the angry islands, who were all outraged that a mere mermaid had dared to interrupt that solemn moment.
Ah, there he was! Clinging to a root that jutted from the Thurlstone’s rocky forehead. But just as Iris saw him, a great smother of foam came down on her. The Thurlstone turned towards her, swirling the skirts of the sea.
Iris quickly darted out of the way as the Thurlstone’s huge foot tried to squash her.
She plunged down under it, almost to the silver sand of the seafloor, and then rose up on the other side. As she broke the surface there, Mr. Culpeper came flapping over her, squawking, “Here they are!” She saw Mr. and Mrs. Crisp, clinging together, tossed up and down like two corks on the waves that the angry island was creating. She seized each of them by a hand and swam with them to calmer water.
But Oliver knew nothing about any of this.
Clutching at roots and rocky pimples, he had heaved himself back up the Thurlstone’s steep face. There he saw sea monkeys running in every direction, while furious Stacey de Lacey kicked them about like furry green footballs.
“It’s all gone wrong!” Stacey raged. “We’ll be disqualified! Unless…”
“Gaaargh!” roared the Thurlstone. Other islands blundered away from it, scared of its rage and the way it lashed its clumsy stone fists about like massive hammers. Stacey de Lacey scrambled onto his viewing platform on the island’s brow and grabbed his megaphone. “The Thurlstone is still the winner!” he bellowed. “You chose him, and he won, fair and square! And now you’d better do what he says, or my monkeys will come and mess your wigs up!”
Sea monkeys spilled down the Thurlstone’s face like a river of snot. They spread across the ocean, gibbering with wild glee as the waves lifted them up and down. But above the shouting of Stacey de Lacey and the roars of the Thurlstone, the hoots of frightened isles and the squeals of the monkeys, a new voice boomed out.
“STOP!” it said.
The Rambling Isles looked around. The monkeys too. Even the Thurlstone stopped roaring and glanced over its huge stone shoulder.
Another Rambling Isle had arrived. A small and shabby isle, with nothing on its head but the sad remnants of a not-very-good wig, and a confused narwhal that it had just scooped up. At the sight of him, Iris jumped clean out of the water and turned a cartwheel above the Crisps’ bewildered heads.
Oliver, looking down from the Thurlstone’s brow, grinned a great grin and whispered, “Cliff!”
Cliff stood up as tall as he could, and the narwhal fell off his head. He shook a fist at the Thurlstone and shouted something about stolen ships and kidnappings, but the surf was bursting against him, and all that most of his listeners heard was “Blarrgle!”
Oliver, from his high vantage point, could see that the poor island’s knees were knocking together, but still Cliff stood his ground as the Thurlstone, with seabed-shaking stomps, strode angrily towards him.
Poor Cliff! All the way from the Sarcastic Sea he had kept telling himself that his fellow Rambling Isles would help him to teach the Thurlstone a lesson. Now he could see that they were all as scared of it as he was. As they edged nervously away, he realized that he was going to have to face it alone.
Which was very bad, because the Thurlstone was bigger and stronger and fiercer than Cliff, and up on its head Stacey de Lacey was yelling, “Smash him, Thurlstone! Bash him up! Stamp him down!”
“Leave him alone!” shouted Oliver, jumping up from his hiding place. A monkey drum rolled past him as the Thurlstone lurched towards Cliff, and Oliver snatched it and flung it at Stacey de Lacey. It missed, but it made Stacey look around, and he forgot about Cliff and charged angrily at Oliver instead.
Oliver ran away from him, zigzagging between the trees, looking for something he could use to defend himself. Near the pool by the temple he found one of the peacock-feather fans lying where a careless monkey had dropped it. It looked a flimsy, feather-dustery sort of thing, but he picked it up anyway.
That was when the idea came to him.
He could hear Stacey de Lacey panting through the trees behind him, spluttering threats and curses. The ground beneath him shivered as the Thurlstone let out another cry of rage. Oliver ran between the trees to where one of those fissures opened, the cracks that led down into the island’s hollow insides. He took a deep breath and jumped in. Dump—bump—crash, he went, bruising himself as he tumbled down through stony tubes and crannies.
—
He snatched at out-juttings of rock to slow himself, and the Thurlstone flinched just as it had before. How could something so big and stony-seeming be so ticklish? Oliver wondered. And what would happen when he really started tickling?
He found a foothold, raised his feather fan, and set to work.
The Thurlstone swung a huge fist at Cliff. Cliff ducked, and the blow missed by a whisker. The Thurlstone growled and rumbled, readying itself to strike again.
But suddenly it stopped. Something was moving inside it. Something that tickled….It writhed. A shipwreck dropped off its wig and splashed into the sea. “Arrrararaggaharauaaraga!” said the Thurlstone (or something along those lines). Another ship fell—the Water Mole this time. It landed near the spot where Mr. and Mrs. Crisp were treading water, and Iris hustled them aboard it.
“Stoppit!” howled the Thurlstone, but Oliver wouldn’t stop. Deep in the bad old isle’s insides, he tickled and he tickled, mercilessly jabbing his feather fan into all the cracks and fissures he could reach, wriggling and jiggling it there.
The Thurlstone clutched its sides and howled. It stumbled and staggered, throwing up sheets of spray, making waves that slapped against the faces of the other Rambling Isles and rocked the Water Mole and her passengers wildly up and down. A stone head tumbled off the Thurlstone’s summit. A few last sea monkeys jumped off the cliffs like rats abandoning a sinking ship, cannonballing into the water. The ancient temple quivered, cracked, crumbled. Bits and pieces of it cascaded past the Thurlstone’s face to smash into the water. Other bits of his wig came loose too, wreaths of seaweed, boulders, trees….
“You vandal!” Stacey de Lacey screamed, dodging a toppling stone head and shouting down the crack that Oliver had vanished into. “You spoilsport! You’re ruining everything!”
Down beneath his feet, Oliver just went on tickling and tickling….
Until, with a creak, a black crack opened, splitting the Thurlstone’s su
mmit in two.
Other, smaller cracks spread out from it. Stacey de Lacey watched in horror as they surrounded him. More creaks and groans and straining sounds filled the air. The Thurlstone had quaked and quivered and shuddered and shaken so much that it was coming completely to pieces. Down on the water, Iris and the Crisps watched cracks cover the Thurlstone’s stupid, startled face like a black net. Then, in a slither of shards and a cloud of dust and upflung spray, the Rambling Isle exploded.
For a moment they saw Stacey de Lacey clinging to the top of one great fragment, yelling as it toppled. For a moment they thought they saw Oliver, tumbling free with a big feather fan flapping like a wing above him. Then the spray hid everything.
Oliver hit the water hard as the Thurlstone came apart around him. He plunged deep enough to brush his fingers over the silver sand beneath, and came up gasping for air. He trod water and looked around, while the upflung spray fell upon the waves like rain.
There was no Thurlstone anymore, only a few scattered chunks, small islets whose heads barely poked above the water even here in the Shallows. One by one they opened little black beady eyes of their own and blinked. They were brand-new Rambling Isles, bashful in the presence of so many bigger ones.
Oliver laughed, swimming between them until ahead of him he saw the Water Mole, still just about afloat, with his mom and dad and Iris and Mr. Culpeper all waving at him from its upper deck.