Praise for The Storm Keeper’s Island
WINNER OF THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG YOUNG READERS AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR
NOMINATED FOR THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL
‘The Storm Keeper’s Island will blow you away. Magical in every way … Wise, warm and wonderful’
Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series
‘Doyle has taken an ancient story and found something new and bold and wild in it … Only real bone-deep writers and storytellers do that’
Katherine Rundell, author of The Explorer
‘Funny, dark and blazingly beautiful, The Storm Keeper’s Island is a thrillingly inventive adventure’
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink & Stars
‘Flickers with a rare and wonderful magic … An unforgettable story’
Abi Elphinstone, author of Sky Song
‘Gripping, poignant and beautifully written … Destined to become a modern classic’
Louise O’Neill, author of The Surface Breaks
‘A book of storms and heart and magical islands that sing your name through the rain and beckon you through layers of time … A stunning story of courage and hope’
Cerrie Burnell, author of Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella
‘Deep and lyrical … Love and hope communicated is perhaps the greatest magic of all, and that’s what Catherine achieved in this book’
Hilary McKay, author of The Casson Family series
‘An incredibly special and magical book! I was spellbound’
Katherine Woodfine, author of The Sinclair’s Mysteries series
‘The Storm Keeper’s Island is unforgettable – the kind of story that will grab you by the heart and not let go’
Katie Tsang, co-author of Sam Wu Is NOT Afraid of Ghosts
‘Funny, heartrending, terrifying … I’m on tenterhooks for the next book’
Lauren James, author of The Loneliest Girl in the Universe
‘A magical rush of an adventure story about family, bravery, and harnessing the storm within’
Anna James, author of Pages & Co.
For Jess
Books by Catherine Doyle
The Storm Keeper’s Island
The Lost Tide Warriors
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One: The Ticking Clock
Chapter Two: The Rotten Wave
Chapter Three: The Sorcerer’s Shell
Chapter Four: The Beached Whale
Chapter Five: The Broken Memory
Chapter Six: The Warrior’s Heart
Chapter Seven: The Poet’s Tale
Chapter Eight: The Temporary Tornado
Chapter Nine: The Freedom Memory
Chapter Ten: The Third Musketeer
Chapter Eleven: The Grinning Pirate
Chapter Twelve: The Tide Summoner
Chapter Thirteen: The Soulstalker’s Return
Chapter Fourteen: The Burning Boats
Chapter Fifteen: The Makeshift Prison
Chapter Sixteen: Escape by Candlelight
Chapter Seventeen: The Empty Tomb
Chapter Eighteen: The Spinning Wheel
Chapter Nineteen: The Laughing Thief
Chapter Twenty: The End of Time
Chapter Twenty-One: The Lost Vision
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Beasley Boat
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Cursed Cauldron
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Sinking Soulstalker
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Storm Keeper’s Sacrifice
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Raven Queen
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Ninth Wave
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Aurora Borealis
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Merrow’s Pledge
Chapter Thirty: Forget-Me-Not
Epilogue
About the Author
PROLOGUE
On a frosty winter morning, in the waters of a half-forgotten island, a merrow was swimming far from her home. Mist hung like a veil over the sea, clinging to her skin as she broke the surface: first a crown of coral and bone, then yellow eyes as wide as moons. A pale scar traced the curve of her jaw.
She stilled in the water.
There was a boy standing at the edge of the ocean. She could smell the sea-salt in his blood.
She licked her lips.
Storm Keeper.
She remembered him.
The boy’s eyes were shut, his breath puffing from him in a trail of clouds. He stuck his hand out and wriggled his fingers above the water. For a moment he stood completely frozen. Then his body hiccoughed violently, as though something inside was trying to punch its way out. He snapped his eyes open, fear threading itself into his frown.
Magic.
The merrow drifted closer. The sun was climbing into an ivory sky, and soon the island would be full of people bustling along the strand, cars sputtering into life as shop windows lit up like lanterns. She shouldn’t be here, by the shore … so near the voice that had been whispering to her from its depths. But she had come anyway – to gaze upon the boy who had stirred Morrigan from her endless sleep.
After all these years, he had finally come.
The boy groaned as a spark jolted from his fingertips. ‘Come on!’ He kicked a clump of seaweed into the water. ‘Come on, you stupid thing!’
Trapped magic.
The merrow frowned. Time was wearing thin. She could sense darkness moving beneath the horizon, swelling like a sea of its own as it made its way across the world. Towards the island. Towards the boy. This boy.
Foolish Dagda. He will lead us all to ruin.
The boy picked up a rock and flung it into the air. The merrow followed its arc, her lips twisting as it landed with a plop! right beside her head.
One heartbeat – two heartbeats – and then he spluttered into life. He charged towards her, the water sloshing around his ankles and then his knees and then his hips.
The merrow hesitated for the briefest moment, before her senses reclaimed her. She dipped under the next wave, her tail disappearing in a sheen of burnt silver.
Not now, she thought, as she speared her way back to the undersea. Not yet.
Her warriors were bound to another.
They would have to wait. For ruin, or the Tide Summoner.
Whichever came first.
Chapter One
THE TICKING CLOCK
Fionn Boyle lay sprawled on an old, threadbare couch and tried to scream himself awake. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t open his eyes. He could only listen to the crooning voice that had made a home inside his head. It was hissing like a snake, burrowing deeper into his brain.
Tick-tock, the voice whispered. Can you hear me, little Boyle?
Fionn could see Morrigan in his mind’s eye – her leering grin, too wide in her angular face.
Tick-tock, crumbling rock.
Three days, watch the clock.
She cackled, and a shadow came skittering towards him, its fingers reaching through the blackness of his mind. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock … The words grew frenzied, the pitch climbing until it was no longer a laugh but a scream. TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK.
Get away from me! Fionn tried to yell, but the words bubbled in his throat.
His body was spinning like a tornado, his arms thrashing blindly as he tried to pull himself back to consciousness. The couch groaned underneath him, the rusted springs heaving from the effort. Help me! She’s going to claw my eyes out! Please –
There was a loud splat!
Fionn jerked awake as something cold and slimy slid down his nose.
He sniffed. Was that �
��?
‘Ham,’ came a familiar voice. ‘It’s crumbed.’
Fionn peeled the slice from his face.
His grandfather peered over him, his blue eyes twinkling in the dawn light. ‘I’m afraid you were cycloning again.’ In one hand he held an open packet of sliced ham, and in the other a bright orange block of cheese. ‘I thought the ham might be more humane.’
Fionn pushed the matted hair from his eyes. A familiar fist of heat was blazing in his chest, the knuckles of it rolling against his ribcage as if saying hello. The Storm Keeper’s magic awake, just as he was.
Fionn sighed. ‘Couldn’t you have called my name, like a normal person?’
‘When have you ever known me to be normal?’ said his grandfather, nibbling a corner off the block of cheese. ‘But besides that, I called your name eight times. I poked you three times and I shook you by the shoulders exactly once. The next logical step –’
‘– was ham,’ said Fionn, dragging himself into a sitting position and laying the offending slice on the armrest.
‘I’m afraid so, lad.’ His grandfather was watching him too closely, his brows raised above the tip of his horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘Was it the same again?’
‘Tick-tock,’ said Fionn, with a grim nod. ‘The countdown continues.’
Morrigan had been living in his head for many months, but two weeks ago his dreams had taken on a new sense of urgency. The voice, once disembodied and distant, now came with a countdown, grasping hands and clawing fingers, bloodless lips held too close to his ear. She was growing stronger, giddier.
‘The countdown,’ said his grandfather now, ‘is somewhat concerning.’
A breeze slipped underneath the window and wreathed the couch. Fionn pulled the blanket close around him. Last month, winter had crept over the island, sewing itself inside the wind and howling through the cracks in the walls. There were ice crystals webbing the windowpanes, and sometimes in the night, when Fionn woke gasping, he could see his breath hovering like clouds in the darkness.
‘Why don’t you go and lie down in my room, lad?’ suggested his grandfather. ‘The energy in there is very benevolent and handsome. And there’s a nice storage heater that’ll blow the socks off you.’
‘I’m awake now anyway,’ said Fionn, stretching his arms above his head and rolling his neck around until it clicked. Back in the summertime, he had surrendered his twin bed to his mother, insisting instead on taking up residence on Donal the shopkeeper’s donated couch, which looked like it had been exhumed from a haunted house, and smelled not unlike abiding despair. It creaked awfully in the night and made the little sitting room seem even smaller than it was, but Fionn knew it wouldn’t matter where he slept – Morrigan would still find him.
He rolled on to his feet. ‘What time is it?’
‘Time?’ His grandfather was pottering back into the kitchen. ‘You know very well I don’t adhere to such arbitrary concepts.’
Time.
Fionn drifted towards the candle flickering on the mantelpiece, the only lit flame in a room full of candles. The wax was growing shallower – less a candle now, and more a milky blue puddle. Of course, it wasn’t just a candle to begin with. It was his grandfather’s essence, all of his memories gathered up in one magical concoction, borne of blood and sea, burning all day and all night, racing towards its end.
Time. His grandfather had borrowed an awful lot of it.
The reminder made Fionn queasy. Lately, it felt like everything was out of his control. As the nights ticked by and Morrigan crept closer to his days, he couldn’t help imagining himself as the controller of a runaway train. He felt the darkness seeping in around the edges of him, the sorceress’s countdown ticking in time with his pulse. Something was going to happen. Soon.
She will wake when the boy returns, Ivan had told him once, all too gleefully. She will rise when the Storm Keeper bleeds for her.
Fionn had not bled for Morrigan since the day she had awoken, but he had not succeeded in putting her back to sleep either. His journey to the Sea Cave during the summer still haunted him. He had come so close to losing his sister, and then to drowning all alone in that endless darkness, with Morrigan laughing in his ear. The memory had grown hard and spiky, and often, when his thoughts wandered, he would find it digging into his ribs.
‘Sandwich?’ called his grandfather from inside the kitchen. ‘I’ll share the ham but the last of the mustard is all mine, I’m afraid. It’s wholegrain. And French. Très expensive.’
‘No thanks.’ Fionn stared at the little flame on the mantelpiece. The magic inside him flared in recognition. He stuck his hand out above the glass trough, willing the flame to dance for him.
Come on … Come on …
Fionn was the Storm Keeper, the one the island had chosen to wield the elements in Dagda’s name, for as long as his mind and body could bear it. The one to command earth, wind, air and fire, at little more than a simple thought.
It was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be seamless.
He ground his jaw, wriggling his fingers the way his grandfather had taught him to. Come on.
The flame ignored him.
His face started to prickle.
Grow, he willed it. Dance.
His magic hiccoughed in his chest, nearly toppling him over.
Fionn dropped his hand with a sigh.
The sitting room filtered back into focus and he found his grandfather hovering beside him. ‘It will come, lad.’
‘It’s been five months.’
‘Maybe it will take one more.’
‘I don’t have one more!’
‘For all we know, Morrigan is bluffing,’ said his grandfather unconvincingly. ‘Spooking you, for her own amusement. Trying to get in your head.’
‘She’s already in my head, Grandad. I need to figure out my magic. Now.’
His grandfather frowned at his sandwich. ‘It wasn’t like this for me … It didn’t require much concentration, really …’ He moved his gaze to the candles filling the shelves around them – the Storm Keeper’s magic – years of it, brewed and bottled. The same magic that now ran in Fionn’s veins. ‘You could always try burning one …’ He trailed off at Fionn’s expression.
‘The last time I used candle magic, I vomited and passed out,’ Fionn reminded him. ‘I’m already full of magic. I just have no idea how to get it out of –’
Fionn’s attention snagged on the bookcase over his grandfather’s shoulder – the one he had pored over last night, restlessly counting the columns of wax, name by name, wick by wick, until he fell into a fitful slumber. Every night he studied them meticulously, like a general cataloguing his arsenal, while his own weapon chugged and sputtered in his veins.
There was something not quite right about it now.
Halfway down the case, where the usual array of blizzards and snowstorms jostled for space between sunsets and sunrises, there was an almost imperceptible gap. Between Saoirse, which meant ‘freedom’, and Suaimhneas, which meant ‘peace’, Spring Showers 2008 was missing.
Fionn crossed the room in three strides, jamming his feet into his trainers without stopping to untie the laces first.
His grandfather peered after him, chomping on his sandwich. ‘Where are you off to in such a rush?’
Fionn shrugged his coat on and pulled his woolly hat over his ears. ‘There’s been a theft!’
‘Good grief. Of what sort?’
Fionn narrowed his eyes at his grandfather. ‘I think you know exactly what sort of theft I’m talking about. And thief too, come to think of it.’
His grandfather smushed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth all at once until his cheeks swelled up like a blowfish and crumbs tumbled over his lips, then he pointed at his own face as if to say, I can’t talk right now, my mouth is suddenly very full.
Fionn swung the front door open, and winter gusted right through it, curling the dark strands peeking out from underneath his hat. ‘We’re supposed to save t
hem!’ he said angrily, before slamming the door behind him and taking off down the garden path.
The gate swung open for him, and the shrubs, skeletal without their summer foliage, click-clacked a goodbye. Outside, a canopy of clouds smothered the rising sun. Fionn could see the usual flock of ravens patrolling the headland, chasing the seagulls back out to sea. The icy wind whistled alongside him, drowning out their faraway shrieks. It cleared stones from the roadway and tipped the flowers in reverie as he wound down the headland towards the strand.
He saw the whirlpool first. There, in plain sight of anyone who bothered to look, was the Storm Keeper’s magic, skipping and dancing along the shoreline. Water twisted round and round, seafoam flying from its edges like cream from a mixing bowl. The longer Fionn watched it, the taller it became.
He swung his legs over the wall and stalked across the sand. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Stop that!’
Across the beach, his sister turned to face him. She kept one hand outstretched towards the whirlpool, the other clenched around a turquoise candle that was burning upside down, devouring itself from the inside out. ‘Hey, loser,’ she said, through a wide grin. ‘What are you doing down here?’
Fionn marched towards her. ‘I told you a thousand times, you’re not supposed to waste the candles!’
‘I’m practising,’ she said, turning back to the ocean. Her ponytail whipped through the air behind her, the ends of her winter coat flapping in the wind. ‘Grandad said I could have it, so just take a chill pill.’
‘It’s not up to Grandad, it’s up to me!’ Fionn yelled. ‘Blow it out!’
Tara’s laughter soared into the air. ‘You’re so dramatic!’
‘Coming from the girl who held a candlelit vigil the night Bartley Beasley went back to the mainland!’
She threw him a withering glance. ‘I told you I’m not ready to talk about that yet!’
Fionn yanked her by the arm.
The whirlpool faltered.
‘Get off me!’ Tara barked, shaking him off. ‘I’m concentrating!’
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