by Nette Hilton
Gradually the water began to cool. Sneaky longer fingers of cold water mingled with the lovely warmth of the pool and Pyro glanced up to see a white wash of waves breaking happily across the little rock ledge.
Mor had noticed it too and bobbed over to him. She took her mask off. ‘Time to go in,’ she said, and gave Mr Stig, who was still face down, a shove in the direction of the little sandy beach. ‘Tide’s coming in.’
Pyro couldn’t believe what he’d done. His skin prickled with salt and his mouth felt like it was stretched four sizes too big. His nose wasn’t quite right yet, but … he’d been out there with a wobbegong and an octopus.
‘We didn’t see the wobbegong,’ he announced. ‘Probably not even there.’
Auntie Mor grinned. ‘Probably not, but the ocky is.’
Pyro looked around. He half expected to find it sucking onto his boardies from the way Mor was pointing. ‘What?’ he said.
‘There.’ A big patch of black inky wash was splashed across the pale blue shorts. ‘Octopus ink. You got close to it.’
Mr Stig nearly turned himself inside out trying to make sure the octopus hadn’t got too close to him. ‘Glad it was you and not me!’ He laughed. ‘I think I’d have a heart attack if an octopus got that close.’
Pyro was nearly having a heart attack anyway. He was all quivery and then, because the octopus was out there and not up here, he giggled. ‘It must have been pretty close, eh?’
‘I reckon.’ Auntie Mor loaded everything into the backpack. ‘But I reckon you were pretty good out there.’ She slapped Mr Stig on the back. ‘Both of you.’
As they hiked back up the path to the top of the cliff Pyro took a moment to look back at the rock pool. From here it was exactly like a giant bath, only now it looked more like someone had left the tap running as waves slopped and gurgled cheerfully over the rocky sides.
The edges still looked aqua and yellow and sandy white. It was the edges that made Pyro quiver.
‘Bit of a shame the tide turned so fast,’ Auntie Mor said as she gazed back on the pool. ‘Never mind, we’ll come again tomorrow. It’ll have to be a bit later though.’
Pyro was already planning to spend all of his time tomorrow on the sandy strip right at the front edge where the waves slapped quietly. No more octopus ink for him. He glanced at the drying patch of dark blue on his side.
It was something to tell Geezer though. It would serve him right if Pyro had had a special adventure while Geezer was letting Jenna do the crow’s nest. The thought, forgotten till now, loomed back and filled all the nice sunny places that had been full of small bright fish and snorkelling sounds. It was as if someone had pulled a grey cloud over his head and tucked it neatly around his feet.
Surely Geezer wouldn’t let Jenna take over his part in the project.
It was a worry he didn’t need, especially as he could now see the other worries, the real ones, sitting at the table at the edge of the camping ground.
Auntie Mor and Stig were nattering away about things to eat for lunch and how it was only fair if Maureen was teaching Stig to swim that she should let Stig teach her to draw, because that was obviously something she wanted to do. They didn’t take any notice of the two boys flicking pellets across the table.
Nor did they take any notice when Pyro scurried a few steps to put himself on the far side of the pellets that were now being missiled out with quick overarm throws. They were heavy enough to sting when they connected with salty, sun-dried skin.
‘Don’t you reckon they should be at school?’ Pyro said.
Mor was always going on about behaviour and the right things to do and how children were starting to get away with all sorts of things that would have been put right when she was a girl.
This time, however, she simply glanced behind and muttered that they were probably on holiday from somewhere else, school holidays always being all over the shop, and she went right back to talking about learning to draw. Or the impossibility of her learning to draw.
‘Why bother?’ she was saying. ‘It’s not like I’ll ever be any good.’
‘It’s not like we’re going to be Olympic swim stars, either.’ Stig grinned at Pyro. ‘But we’re enjoying it …’
Pyro glanced up. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to … Mr Stig said it for him. ‘Sort of …’ he mouthed silently.
The dark cloud stayed put. It hovered around filling Pyro with soggy thoughts and damp, clammy sighs. Auntie Mor and Mr Stig were over talking to some other old people who were travelling around Australia and had seen just about everything. Pyro wondered why they were bothering to keep going. It didn’t matter what place Mor or Stig mentioned, the other olds had been there, done that and loved it. Pyro could hear their oohs and aahs and merry shrieking from his spot under the annex.
He’d rounded up the drawing book and pencils. So far Mor hadn’t noticed the torn pages and Pyro kept the book itself in the folded cloth bag. She wouldn’t have been happy to think he’d let it get destroyed the very first time he’d taken it out. She’d probably think he was pretty useless after the way he went on about swimming and all. Truth was, he felt a bit useless here in this camping ground.
His mother would have noticed that he wasn’t happy and probably helped out by going with him over to the picnic table, to work on his map. But he could hardly go alone now that the two real worries had disappeared and Pyro was pretty sure they’d turn up when he least expected them.
And do more damage most likely.
Anyway, what was the point of making a map? What would he bury? And how much fun would it be to go find something with a map you’d made and didn’t even need?
He tried reading but the treasure map in his newest pirate book mocked him. He wondered about San Simeon and the hours he spent in the cove waiting for the tide to be right and pirates who needed capturing to pass by.
‘We got nuffing to do!’ The crew of the fair ship Olga lazed about on the beach. They’d cleaned her sides and swabbed her decks and the dishes were done. ‘We’re sick of swimming …’
‘Build sandcastles,’ said the good captain. He was never bored. He kept his head full of puzzles and extras for times when the sun was high and spirits low. ‘I’m busy dreaming a dream.’
‘How d’you do that then?’ asked fat Bob Blowfish. ‘Dream a dream?’
Just then the fair Calamity waltzed across the beach. Her lovely skirt was caught at her waist with blossoms gathered from the jungle floor and petals were laced through her hair. She smiled at Simeon as she wandered to the campfire and gracefully sank onto the braided rug that he’d brought her from a recent Turkish bazaar. Her fingers trailed along the satin ribbon she kept tied at her waist. The same ribbon, Simeon now knew, that kept the treasure map on her tum secret and safe.
‘Well,’ said Bob Blowfish, ‘I reckon I know the dreams you’re dreamin’.’ He chuckled. The crew was happy that Calamity had joined them. They were even happier that their good captain was so taken with her. ‘It’s a weddin’ we’ll be plannin’ next!’
Calamity blushed a lovely rosy blush and Simeon stood and stretched. ‘I’m dreaming …’ he said, ‘of treasure maps and the pirates who might come a-plundering across these shores to steal ours away.’
The crew blanched. Their mouths formed tight ‘O’ shapes and their eyebrows shot heavenwards.
‘They’d never!’ they cried.
‘They wouldn’t dare!’ they roared.
‘They better not!’ one brave lad declared.
‘Then we’d better shore up our defences!’ Simeon was already striding towards the jungle.
The crew hadn’t moved. ‘Shore up our defences?’ Bob Blowfish asked. ‘Wot?’
‘We’re not knowing what you mean,’ said Derrick the Cook. ‘Whatever’s that mean, shoring up them defency things? We haven’t even got a fence.’
Simeon sighed and Calamity, who was watching closely from her sweetly posed seat, smiled. ‘You don’t need a fence, you silly-b
illy.’
She stood up and wandered close enough to the row of sailors for them to smell the blossoms in her hair. It was their turn to blush and curl their toes in the sand.
‘It means …’ and here she tweaked the nose of the youngest crew member, whose toes curled up so tightly he suffered cramps for days ‘… we have to go and find our weapons and we have to be ready to surprise any sneaky pirates who might come calling.’
The crew nodded, but they didn’t move. ‘So we don’t need a fence then?’
Simeon was thinking. His hand scratched across the line of his jaw. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve given me a very good idea.’
The crew slapped the back of whoever was closest. They were pretty darn clever if they were left to their own devices … that’s what Simeon had said. Nobody was too sure about what a device was exactly, but it was obviously something that happened when nothing else did.
‘We’ve been left to our own devices again, eh Cap’n!’ said Bruiser Bill, the ship’s lookout.
‘Works every time!’ said San Simeon.
And without another word he strode off to the jungle that lined the beachfront. ‘Collect up all those branches, boys. We’re about to make a fence!’
‘We going to make de-fence!’ sang the crew. ‘We’re shoring up de-fence!’
Simeon was already hauling logs and long branches over the small rise that separated the beach from the jungle. From the shore where small waves slurped across the sand it would be invisible.
Sweet Calamity hurried to lend a hand and, as she did, her satin-ribboned waistband lifted, revealing blue lines crisscrossed in a mappy sort of pattern on her lily-white tum.
Simeon saw it and quickly looked away, but not before he’d wrapped his pirate-fighter’s vest around her shoulders and buttoned it snugly closed.
A frown creased his noble brow as he hurried back to work. If there was a traitor already in his crew, if there was another who’d seen those blue mapped lines, he was in trouble.
It was a worry that he didn’t want and he certainly didn’t need it.
But worries are worries, and a crew member who was also a friend who might be going to Let The Team Down was one of the worst. It lurked about behind the real worry of getting ready to shore up defences against the enemy that was definitely out to get him.
And the treasure map!
‘Are you making your map, then?’
‘I am,’ Pyro said. He was surprised. His hand had been drawing away and he wasn’t even thinking about it. Already he could see the line he’d imagined yesterday, the coastline, and the opening that was going to be the inlet. And there, he drew in a crescent shape, that was where the muddy shortcut would be.
But he’d been looking elsewhere when Mr Stig had come back. He looked up again at the line of stumpy trees that leaned forever to the mountains behind as if they longed for the colder, sharper air of their gum-leafed cousins.
‘It’s pretty good.’ Mr Stig traced the lines with his finger. ‘If you go down there you could mark in that tree where we were yesterday. You know, the one with the rope.’
Pyro dragged his eyes back from the trees. A defence line. That’d be fun to build. All he had to do was find a place where he could stack up some branches. There were pine cones further over near the office too. They even looked like cannonballs. And then he could make a cannon … well, a slingshot anyway …
‘I don’t know how to put trees on a map,’ Pyro said.
‘You could put a cross and then make a key at the bottom of your map.’ Mr Stig was searching around looking for a green pencil. He found half of one and looked at it. He held it up and his eyebrows were raised in such a way that Pyro knew he was wondering how a brand new pencil that Pyro had really liked yesterday had become half a pencil with a very badly broken end today.
Pyro said nothing. He didn’t even want to think about yesterday but he couldn’t help glancing over to that table where the Two Worries had been.
‘I could show you how to draw trees for a map, if you like. And buildings. It’s part of my job.’
The Two Worries weren’t there and it would have been a good time to set off and try to find a good defence place but the sun was warm and Auntie Mor had gone to mail their postcards and to get scones and jam for afternoon tea and would soon be back.
And a job that meant making maps and drawing trees and houses and buildings and perhaps mountains – they were always very tricky – was sounding pretty interesting.
‘Yeah,’ Pyro said. ‘I’d like that.’
It’d make waiting for Dad a lot easier too. By the time he arrived Pyro could have a wonderful map all made and be ready to show Geezer how to get things right on the map they were doing for the project in the library.
‘Can you show me how to do mountains as well?’
Pyro hadn’t noticed the day grow cooler or the shadows lengthen. Mr Stig had kept him so busy making up keys for his map and drawing aerial views of mountain ranges that they’d only taken time out to eat scones and jam and cream. Auntie Mor joined in and began drawing birds who might live in the mountains, even though Mr Stig’s explanation about scale meant that the birds on this map would have to be drawn as big as fleas.
‘Don’t be such a party-pooper,’ Mor said as she settled in to draw more magpies. Her parrots were having beak trouble. ‘They could sit around the edges like a border.’
‘They could indeed,’ agreed Stig, winking at Pyro. ‘What d’you think? Want borders?’
Pyro didn’t really and was trying hard to think of a polite way to suggest that Auntie Mor make her own map or recipe or something, when a wet nose, followed by a sudden pair of feet and a sharp bark, interrupted him.
The boy from yesterday stood a little further out while Becks leapt and bobbed around the table.
‘Get back here!’ the boy growled in his roughest voice.
Becks didn’t take any notice at all.
‘I think she wants to stay here.’ Pyro clicked his fingers and slapped his hands at his knees the way he’d seen other dog owners do. Becks was too busy enjoying a pat from Mr Stig to take any notice.
‘Do it this way,’ the boy said as he wandered closer. He clicked his fingers loudly and, as soon as Becks looked around, bent over and slapped his hands at his legs. ‘Come on, girl. Come on!’
And Becks did.
‘You’re pretty good at that,’ Pyro said.
‘It’s what my grandma does. She’s good with dogs.’
‘So’s my grandma.’ It was incredible, fancy Min having a grandma just like his. ‘Do you know what she does?’
Min shook his head. He’d ambled right over and even though his head was pointed the right way his eyes were lingering over the map on the table.
‘Well, when she wants to bath Toddy, her old black dog, she has to get her swimmers on and stand in the shower with him!’
‘My gran baths Becks in the sink. She reckons it’s okay because she washes my socks in there as well sometimes and Becks isn’t as grubby as them.’
Auntie Mor had looked up from her magpie. ‘Old Toddy, eh. Crikey. I’d forgotten all about him.’ She laughed really loudly. ‘Remember Snort?’
They remembered tales of old Snort and then reminded each other about Snooze who was Snort’s mother and off they went again. There were lots of bits to make them all laugh, and Min had his own funny stories to tell.
And then a gap opened up and, just for a few seconds, everyone stopped talking and laughing.
‘She’s pretty sick, you know,’ Auntie Mor said quietly. ‘Your nan.’ She stretched and looked out over the sea. ‘She’s a tough old bird though …’
Pyro wasn’t sure that Nan was tough but she certainly was old. And cranky too, sometimes. It was hard to imagine her being sick and having to stay in bed.
‘Just as well your mum’s over there.’ Auntie Mor straightened up. She seemed to have forgotten them. ‘Lordy, lordy,’ she said when she noticed them again.
‘It’s getting late. Becks is still waiting for her walk. Off you go, you two.’
Pyro began to collect up his pencils but Mr Stig waved him off. ‘We’ll carry on doing some bird drawings. Don’t you worry …’
Pyro was finding it hard not to worry. Auntie Mor was never quiet and there she was, sitting there looking out at the ocean again. And all because of Nan.
‘My gran was sick,’ Min said suddenly. ‘She got better though. She’s still not good enough to take old Becks out every day but she’s getting there.’
Becks panted along happily leading the way. She seemed to know that they were to go down the cliff path and then back around the inlet, but not across the mud flats. She didn’t even check that the boys were still behind her.
It was when they’d circled the entire camping ground and were on their way back again that Min asked Pyro about his map.
‘It’s for school,’ Pyro lied. He wasn’t sure that Min would understand that he just liked drawing things. ‘You know, pirate’s maps and stuff like that.’
Min stopped. ‘Did you see Pirate Movie?’
‘Did I ever. I saw it four times. I loved the bit when he got that long rope and tried to sail off over the cliff …’
‘And that other bit when he almost fell overboard.’ Min was bent over laughing. ‘I’ve got the DVD at home. It’s my favourite. I love the way they had all those hiding places …’
‘Yeah, and they kept tricking everyone into getting close enough to bomb them. It was so funny.’
‘You can say that again!’
‘It was so funny!’ Min burst out laughing. ‘Do you get it? You said “you can say that again” and so I did! Pretty good, don’t you reckon?’
Pyro grinned. ‘You can say that again,’ he said.
So Min did. And that sent them off into howls and squeals of laughter. Becks joined in, leaping and barking and making such a fuss that the old couple who travelled all over Australia came out and ticked them both off.
‘They’re grumpy old grots!’ Min hissed as they scarpered back across the campground.