‘Oh jeepers,’ Taylor said.
We both sighed. ‘It might not be a turtle at all, Billy,’ I called to him.
‘But it might!’ he called back gustily.
‘I guess a Faffle-Toed Turtle is a pretty rare thing,’ Taylor admitted.
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing its faffle toes,’ I said.
‘What are faffle toes?’
‘No idea. That’s why I want to see them.’
We ran to catch up with Billy.
The three of us tramped along chatting, but as we drew closer to the dark shadow, we slowed and grew quiet. There was definitely something in that hollow, and we didn’t want to scare it away.
‘It’s dead,’ Taylor whispered.
‘Sleeping,’ Billy whispered back.
The closer we got, the more we crept, until we were practically on tip-toe. Eventually we stopped, a little distance from the hole. We stood peering.
‘Is it a turtle?’ Billy murmured, doubtful, and suddenly all three of us rushed forward.
It was not a turtle. It was a boy. Curled up, bruised, bloodied, barefoot, clothing all torn and wet, hair all a-tangle with grass and twigs, eyes closed, face a bluish colour and streaked in rainwater.
‘He is dead!’ Taylor cried.
The boy opened his eyes. He looked up at us, blinking fast. ‘Not dead,’ he said, but his voice sounded as ragged as he looked.
I stared. I knew this boy.
‘I know you,’ I exclaimed.
‘You do not,’ Taylor scoffed.
But I did.
It was the boy with no shoes.
The boy was too bedraggled and broken to chat about the coincidence, so I didn’t mention it.
Taylor surprised us by being very soothing. ‘There now,’ she hummed to the boy. ‘It’s all right. You’re all right now.’
‘He’s not, though,’ Billy declared, looking across the vast, rugged moor and up at the rain, falling even more heavily now. ‘He needs a doctor, and pronto!’
‘Is there a hospital around?’ Taylor asked the boy. ‘There now. Hush. You’ll be all right.’ She stroked his hair. It was strange seeing her like this, and I found it hard not to giggle.
‘I don’t know,’ croaked the boy.
‘Well, we will take you to your parents. Do they live far from here?’
The boy shook his head. ‘No parents.’
‘All right then, your family. Your friends. The people who take care of you?’
Again he shook his head. ‘No people.’
‘Oh, jeepers,’ Taylor said, losing interest in her soothing tone. She straightened up. ‘Are you even from here?’
‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I came from the sea.’
‘You’re a water sprite!’
Now I shook my head. ‘He’s not a water sprite. He’s a regular boy.’
‘Oh.’ Taylor was disappointed. ‘Are you sure? I’ve never met a water sprite.’
‘I’ve only met two,’ I said, ‘They looked like regular people mostly, only they had webbed feet and look, he’s got regular feet.’
‘Yes, well,’ Billy said. ‘This is no time for chitchat. This lad needs our help! I say we help him back to the ship and have the ship’s doctor take care of him. She’s brilliant. She’s got any number of splinters out of my fingers since I’ve been aboard, and I scarcely felt a thing, what?’
‘And the ship could give him a ride home,’ Taylor agreed. ‘Where’s that anyhow?’
But the boy’s eyes had closed again, and he had sagged back into the hole.
We asked him if he could walk and he nodded, without opening his eyes. But once we got him on his feet, he crumpled straight back down again. There was something very wrong with him, I realised; his face was such a bluish-purple. None of us looked at each other. We crouched down and picked him up.
Between us, we carried him back to the ship, sometimes half-dragging, sometimes hoisting him quite high. He was silent, although I noticed him bite his lip and wince often. I was pleased each time I saw this because, even though it meant we were hurting him, it also meant he wasn’t dead.
People stared as we drew closer to the ship, and a crowd gathered as we carried him up the gangplank. We ignored all the questions—we couldn’t have spoken anyway, as we were out of breath from carrying him so far—and we took him straight to the infirmary. The ship’s doctor, who was reading a novel and eating a muffin, put both down at once, and hurried over to help, brushing her hands.
After that, we weren’t allowed to see the boy again.
The doctor told us to fetch the captains, and the captains went into the infirmary for a time. They came out looking grim.
‘Topnotch job rescuing him,’ Aunt Maya told us. ‘But you may have been too late, I’m sorry to say. The doctor will do what she can.’
They had to hurry away themselves then, as repairs were complete and it was time to set sail. Taylor, Billy and I went and sat on deck, talking about the boy and wondering how he had come to be on the moor all smashed up like that.
‘I wonder how he got all the way here from Livingston?’ I added, and they both said, ‘What?’ so I told them about the incident with the baby in the river.
‘That must have been a different boy,’ Taylor pronounced.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s the same one.’
‘Couldn’t be. He can’t have got this far. Also, too much of a coincidence.’
‘Well, I got this far,’ I argued. ‘So why shouldn’t he have? Plus, coincidences do happen.’
‘Let’s not fight, what?’ Billy said.
But Taylor and I ignored him, and carried on snapping at each other until Billy stood up and walked away. Eventually, Taylor and I also flounced off. To be honest, I think we were all a bit tired after a night pursued by pirates and shocked by having found a near-dead boy in a hole.
I was so cross that I had supper sent to my stateroom that night, and ate it sitting on my bed. I kept expecting Taylor or Billy to knock on my door, wanting to make peace, and I imagined how I would consider whether to accept their apologies or not. But they never did.
The next morning, I went to breakfast ready to make peace myself, but I could not see them in the dining room. I sat at the Captain’s Table as usual, and half-listened to Aunt Maya, who was addressing the room again.
‘As some of you might have noticed,’ I heard her say—but I only heard this vaguely as I was buttering a slice of toast—‘we made a brief stop at Hertfordshire at dawn this morning, to take on supplies and to allow some passengers to disembark.’
Hertfordshire.
I straightened up. Aunt Maya was still talking. She hoped people were not disappointed about missing out on seeing Hertfordshire—we were supposed to stay there for half a day, but skipping the stop meant we were now back on schedule.
‘Hertfordshire is actually two-peas-in-a-pod with our next stop along, Oxfordshire,’ Aunt Maya added, ‘so we could all just pretend we’re in Hertfordshire when we get to Oxfordshire, if we like.’
People laughed but I was still only half-listening. There was something important about Hertfordshire.
Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire.
And then I heard Billy’s voice speaking to me, the day I first met him and Taylor. ‘Hertfordshire is one of our ports of call, you see,’ he had said, ‘and Taylor plans to meet up with the Razdazzle Moonlight Circus there.’
My heart slipped sideways in my chest.
Taylor had not gone? Without saying goodbye? Surely she was still asleep in her stateroom?
At that moment, Aunt Lisbeth leaned across the table and touched my wrist. ‘I’m so sorry, Bronte,’ she murmured. ‘But Taylor had to disembark at Hertfordshire. The circus she wants to join was there. There was no time for her to wake you to say goodbye.’
‘Oh!’ I said. It was all I could think of to say.
‘There’s more,’ Aunt Lisbeth said. ‘Billy’s mother was coming through Hertfordshire herself, and wanted
to collect him.’
I stared. ‘Don’t tell me Billy’s gone, too?’
‘Billy’s gone, too,’ she nodded, and she gave me such a sympathetic look that I had to press my eyelids together hard to stop the tears.
You might think it foolish of me to be so sad about Taylor and Billy. After all, we had only known each other a week and a half. But when important things happen between new friends—winning a treasure hunt, getting in trouble for walking on railings, dreaming genie-bottle dreams, being chased by pirates, and stumbling across a boy dying on a moor—the friendship stretches and billows, and dives deep into your heart. On the Riddle and Popcorn Cruise Ship, the three of us had been a family. And now they were gone.
Both had scribbled notes for me. Taylor’s note said:
This was Billy’s note:
For a moment, Billy’s note made me warm and glad. We would meet again! He had bet a thousand silver coins!
But then it only made me more miserable. How could we meet again one day? We hadn’t even exchanged addresses! There was a vast world of Kingdoms and Empires out there, and we were three lost children wandering its ocean and lands. Also if we did not meet again one day, how would Billy ever pay me the thousand?
So I was glum and irritable for the last three days of my cruise. I hovered outside the infirmary quite a bit, hoping for good news about the boy, but the doctor said that his body had been so badly damaged that he had fallen into a coma. He might never wake up, she told me sorrowfully. Better not wait around out here.
Randwick tried to cheer me up by inviting me to join games in the Kids’ Club, and Aunt Maya and Aunt Lisbeth kept flying to my side, and making jokes or telling stories of adventures. I tried to be polite, but inside my head I was fed up.
On the final night, I sat in my stateroom and stared through the porthole. I was supposed to give Aunts Maya and Lisbeth their gift at dinner. ‘To Lisbeth and Maya,’ said the card. It seemed they would have to share a gift, just as they shared their Cruise Ship. I hoped they would not mind.
But instead of going to dinner, I was staring through the porthole.
I’d had enough of this journey. It was all very well for my parents to order me about, delivering little boxes of spices and other edible treats, but what exactly had they ever done for me?
I looked back at the treasure chest, still sitting open on my bed.
I made a decision.
I replaced Lisbeth and Maya’s gift, closed the chest, and picked it up. Out of my stateroom, down the corridor, and up the stairs I walked, the treasure chest under my arm.
On the deck, the wind blew my hair across my face. I wove around people playing quoits, or drinking sundowner cocktails on deckchairs.
I stopped at the ship railings. The sun was setting and the water was a deep, quiet blue. Directly below, it rushed by in frothy white.
I propped the treasure chest onto the railing.
The only aunt who had told me the truth was Aunt Nancy. Maybe unkind people recognised unkindness? ‘What have your parents done for you,’ she had said, ‘besides running off and then tying you up with Faery cross-stitch?’
My parents were not kind people.
I tipped the treasure chest forward. Thunk, thunk, went the gifts, tumbling forward inside.
In Gainsleigh, roads would crack, trees would be uprooted, bridges would fall, windows would shatter.
But that would be my parents’ fault, not mine.
I opened the treasure chest.
My hometown would be ripped apart like thread torn asunder, but that’s what my parents had done to my heart.
The gifts skidded towards the opening. One teetered at the edge. It tilted, paused—and fell.
The ship bell rang out for dinner.
I plucked the falling gift from the air, and jumped back from the railing with the chest.
Of course I wasn’t going to let Gainsleigh fall to pieces.
But that was for Gainsleigh. Not my parents.
Aunts Maya and Lisbeth did not mind sharing a gift in the slightest, they assured me.
They said, ‘One, two, three!’ and ripped it open.
It turned out to be a package of cranberries.
‘From Seacliff Mountain?’ Aunt Lisbeth asked.
‘Wait.’ Aunt Maya studied the label underneath. ‘Yes.’ They both shouted with laughter.
Then they told the whole Captain’s Table a story about my parents’ wedding. ‘Patrick and Lida had the maddest circle of friends,’ Lisbeth began.
‘Ripper bunch,’ Maya declared. ‘Topnotch eccentrics.’
‘You never had so much fun as when you went to a party at Patrick and Lida’s! I tell you, they were the duck’s quack. Artists, musicians, fire-eaters, and every one of them crackers.’
‘That means crazy,’ Randwick told me in an aside.
‘Anyhow, one of these friends,’ Maya continued, ‘was a chef by the name of Peng-Lee.’
‘Oh Peng-Lee,’ Lisbeth put in dreamily. ‘The feasts he threw together at the drop of a hat! Remember that spun-toffee pinwheel with meringue-strawberry crush, Maya, that he made while we were pumping up his bicycle tyres?’
‘Who could forget? Anyhow, he was the official wedding chef, of course, and he got it into his head that he’d make roast duck with cranberries and pistachios.’
‘But of course …’ Lisbeth reached for the wine and refilled the adults’ glasses. ‘He had to have the best cranberries. And those are—’
‘The cranberries of Seacliff Mountain,’ a man in a sherbet-orange suit pronounced.
‘Got it in one,’ Maya said. ‘Did you know that already, or make an educated guess?’
The man tried to look mysterious, and everyone laughed.
‘So anyhow,’ Maya went on, ‘Peng-Lee puts in an order at the local importer, and they promise, they guarantee, they’ll have the Seacliff Mountain cranberries in plenty of time.’
‘But do they?’ Lisbeth looked around the table.
We all shook our heads. ‘No?’
‘No!’ shouted both my aunts, and then Maya took up the story.
‘Shipment got detoured or derailed or eaten by rats—can’t remember what now—but two days before the wedding and Peng-Lee was in a whirl. The wedding is ruined, he said. The wedding cannot go on! And other such things.’
‘Bit of a nuisance for the bride and groom,’ Aunt Lisbeth pointed out. ‘Their wedding being cancelled by the chef.’
‘I would think so,’ many at the table agreed.
‘So anyhow, Patrick sent word to all his sisters, asking if anybody might have Seacliff Mountain cranberries lying about. Ha. Not likely. They’re super rare, those cranberries. However, Maya and I were at sea on our way back to Gainsleigh for the wedding. We wired Patrick and Lida. We were sailing right by Seacliff Mountain on our route, we said, and we would pick some up.’
‘Perfect,’ said the man in the sherbet-orange suit. ‘Problem solved. Easy.’
Aunt Lisbeth and Aunt Maya giggled.
‘That’s what we thought,’ they said. ‘Easy.’
‘Easy,’ Aunt Lisbeth repeated. ‘All we have to do is dock at the base of Seacliff Mountain and pick up the cranberries.’
‘Only we can’t,’ Aunt Maya declared. ‘Because guess what, it’s winter, and there’s been a snap freeze. Seacliff Mountain is locked in. Ice as thick as your head there, Bo.’
Bo was the man in the sherbet-orange suit. He was very cheerful to be called thick-headed by my aunt, and knocked on his own head as if to prove it.
We all turned back to the aunts.
‘Called in a favour from a friend with an ice-breaker,’ Lisbeth said.
‘He hightails it over, breaks the ice for us.’
‘So we dock. Where are the cranberries? we ask. Oh, up in the village, they tell us. The store is smack bang in the middle of town. You can’t miss it.’
‘So we look for the road to the village.’
‘Only that’s been wiped out in a mudsli
de. Now you have to scale a cliff to get to the village.’
Aunt Maya and Aunt Lisbeth grinned at each other.
‘So we called in a favour from a different friend. She hightails it over with climbing gear: boots, ropes, picks and so forth.’
‘We made it up the cliff,’ Aunt Maya says. ‘I scraped a heap of flesh off both knuckles. Lisbeth twisted an ankle. But we made it.’
‘Headed straight to the centre of town—me limping now—and there it is: Ashurst: Purveyors of Fine Local Cranberries.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Bo, heaping his fork with jasmine rice.
‘Only problem—’
Turned out the store had been flooded just the night before.’
Bo set his fork down again, the rice spilling back onto his plate. ‘No!’
‘Yes,’ my aunts nodded. ‘So what now?’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Well, we waded around the shop,’ Lisbeth said. ‘Knocked on windows and doors.’
‘People next door told us the Ashursts had gone to their cottage. Making a vacation out of the flood, it seemed.’
‘Oh, now, that’s madness,’ a woman in a fancy floral jumpsuit put in. She gestured with her bread roll. ‘Stay where you are and clean up after a flood.’
‘Agreed!’ Aunt Maya said. ‘Mop and bucket! Keep selling your cranberries!’
‘Turned out their cottage was the other side of a lake.’
‘Was it frozen?’ Bo enquired. ‘Like the sea?’
‘It was,’ Aunt Lisbeth told him, approvingly. ‘We thought, no trouble, we’ll skate across the lake.’
‘And so we did,’ Aunt Maya said.
‘Except that, middle of the lake, the ice was not so frozen as we’d thought.’
‘Fell right through, didn’t we? The pair of us.’
‘Darn near drowned.’
‘Oh, that water was cold! Still makes me shiver thinking of it.’
‘How did you get out?’ said an elderly lady with multiple strings of pearls. ‘Did you call in a favour from a friend?’ She grinned wickedly and everybody laughed.
‘You kick your legs, get horizontal, drag yourself out, roll yourself away from the hole. That’s what we did.’
The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone Page 19