by Lexi Rees
‘I cannot see where she is,’ Lisana continues. ‘Something is blocking my vision. Something powerful.’
‘We need to find her,’ Aria says, between sobs.
‘You will,’ Lisana says. ‘But not yet. We need to deal with this first.’
Aria reaches out to the pearl. ‘Don’t touch it,’ Lisana warns her. ‘The Sea-Tamer needs to unlock the secrets within.’
Still wearing the hideous gloves, I raise the pearl and peer into it. Images form on the swirling surface, but dissolve before I can make them out.
‘What do you see?’ Lisana asks.
‘I can’t see anything. It’s all blurry. Pictures kind of move over the pearl, but each time I think I can see what one is, it vanishes.’
‘Concentrate. You’ll see,’ Lisana says. ‘You just need to focus.’
‘Concentrating is not his strongest skill,’ Aria snorts, fully aware that I have very limited patience.
I look back down at the pearl in my hand. Images shift like quicksand. ‘It’s hopeless. I can’t make any sense of it. I will never see anything. It’s too difficult,’ I moan. Despite my protests, I keep trying.
A headache hammers at the back of my eyeballs, and I still have absolutely no idea what’s in the swirls. I’m convinced they’re pictures, but they move so quickly I can never quite see them properly. Sometimes I think it’s on a loop – that the scenes are repeating – but then again maybe not. Maybe I’m imagining that.
I can’t concentrate any longer because my head hurts so I play with the pearl, turning it over in my gloved hands, eavesdropping on Lisana and Aria.
‘We have much to do in preparation,’ Lisana says. From one of the cabinets, she lifts out an ornately carved stone cube. Her back is turned to me and her voice is low, but I catch a glimpse of her handing it to Aria. I strain to hear. ‘You must keep this with the relic,’ Lisana murmurs.
‘Keep what?’ I interrupt.
‘You’re supposed to be concentrating on the images, not eavesdropping on our conversation,’ Aria scolds.
‘My head hurts.’
‘Oh, sorry. I guess you need a break, and we need to talk. Come and look at this.’ Aria shows me the cube, turning it over and over in her hands.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Just a box. Doesn’t seem to do anything. Don’t get excited, it’s not one of the relics,’ Lisana garbles defensively. What isn’t she telling me?
‘Can I see it?’ I ask.
Aria passes it to me. I fiddle with the box, twisting it as if playing with a Rubik’s cube. It springs apart into a series of odd shaped compartments connected in a long chain like a centipede.
Lisana gasps, ‘I didn’t know it unfolded like that.’
‘Look, each compartment has a tiny keyhole,’ I say. I try wiggling the compartments, but each segment is firmly locked. I screw up my eyes and squint through one of the keyholes. ‘It’s too small, I can’t see anything.’
‘I wonder,’ Lisana says, rummaging in the collection of beads, strings and trinkets around her neck. She selects one and pulls it over her head. Dangling from the delicate silver chain is a small key. It swings hypnotically in front of me.
The key doesn’t fit the first lock, or the second. It doesn’t work. Nothing. Excitement turns to frustration. Then, just as I’m about to give up, a lid pops open.
TEN
Vision
We crowd round. Pure white silk lines the compartment, like a jewellery box.
‘It’s empty,’ Aria says, slumping with the disappointment.
The pearl lies next to the open cube. I pick it up and push it into a dip in the silk cushion.
A crystal-clear vision blinds me. An island. Cold, windswept, and rocky. Barren except for a few, hunched over trees, clinging to a thin stony soil. A ruined castle, perched on the edge of the cliffs, lashed by a steel grey sea.
In shock, I drop the cube. It lands with a thud. The pearl spills from it and rolls across the floor. As suddenly as it appeared, the image is gone.
Lisana springs after the pearl, scrabbling around on the floor to retrieve it and laying it carefully back on the cloth.
Stunned, I rub my eyes so hard they start to water.
‘What happened?’ Aria asks.
‘Well, I saw something. Just for a second, but this time it was crystal clear.’
‘What did you see?’
‘A ruined castle on an island. It looked cold so it must be in the far north.’
‘And? There must be more,’ Lisana says, frustration bubbling up in her voice. ‘Who was there? What else did you see?’
‘Nothing. That was it. Just a ruined castle. There weren’t any people there. It looked like it had been abandoned centuries ago.’
Lisana paces around the hut. ‘Was there anything happening there? Anything unusual about it?’
I close my eyes and scrunch up my face as I try to recreate the image in my mind. I simply can’t remember any other details. ‘I’m so sorry, Lisana, that’s all there was.’
Aria twirls her hair, deep in thought.
I pick up the pearl again, but there’s no clear image.
‘The cube. Give me the cube,’ I say. ‘It’s some kind of force field reader. I need to put the pearl in it and try again.’
‘That would explain why the elders gave it to me and told me to keep them together,’ Lisana says. ‘I can’t believe they didn’t think to mention that though.’ She continues muttering to herself, looking grumpy. ‘It would have been useful to know what the cube actually did.’
The room freezes as I take the cube. Will it work?
I place the pearl back into the hollow, holding my breath.
‘Yes,’ I cry. ‘The image is back.’ I scan it for details, for any clue I missed last time. ‘Got it. There’s a flag on the castle, I can see it now.’
‘What does it look like?’ Lisana asks.
‘It’s flying from one of the castle turrets. It’s dark blue with a white cross on it and a black circle like the pearl. There are the fins of a dolphin on the sides of the circle.’
I look at Lisana, ‘Do you know whose flag that is?’
‘Sorry,’ she shakes her head. ‘I don’t know that flag.’
Dejected, I remove the pearl from the cube and place it back in the middle of its battered wrappings.
Aria and Lisana move away and talk in low voices on the far side of the hut. From what I can hear, it doesn’t sound like Lisana knows anything more than what she has already told us. Her original briefing was to guard the relic – which she then lost, with vague instructions along the lines of, when the time is right you will know what to do – which clearly, she doesn’t.
Lisana’s voice rises, ‘We must take the relic to the elders. You cannot take it to New London.’
‘This is Dad’s delivery,’ Aria replies. ‘We don’t know who his customer is. Maybe he is taking it to the clan elders?’
‘Never in New London,’ Lisana snaps.
A worrying thought pops into my head. Could Dad be working for Sir Waldred?
I call over to them, ‘I still think Dad knows more about this parcel than he’s told us. It would explain why he’s been all mysterious about the delivery.’
‘We need to ask him,’ Aria says, standing up. ‘I’m going to get him. It’s late and he’ll be wondering where we are. Plus, I want to tell him Mum’s alive.’
‘Please don’t tell him about the pearl until you get back here,’ I say.
‘OK, I won’t,’ Aria agrees, ‘but I’m going to tell him about Mum.’ She dashes out of the hut and speeds down the hill towards the boat.
Where’s Aria? Why’s she taking so long? I should have gone with her.
Shadows creep and crawl over the walls in the candle light. Like a blind man, I stumble outside
.
Dusk settles, forcing last of the sun’s rays below the horizon.
Relief floods through me as an Aria shaped figure emerges from the murky twilight. Dad marches beside her. He doesn’t look happy.
‘Finn, what’s happened? Aria says you have something to tell me.’ He looks around. ‘How did you find this place? What are you doing? Whose hut is that?’
Not sure where to start with such a barrage of questions, especially since they are entirely the wrong questions, I pull aside the beaded curtain and step into the hut. Dad and Aria follow. I point guiltily to the cloth, lying discarded on the floor. Dad looks down and sees what I am looking at …
‘The parcel,’ he says. ‘Who opened it? You know you must never …’
‘Yes, we know the rule, Dad, but …’
‘No,’ he says, glaring at me. ‘No buts. You must never, ever, open a parcel. How many times do I have to say it?’
‘I had to, Dad. You knew there was something special about this parcel, and that it had something to do with me. Didn’t you?’
‘You still had no right to open it.’
‘Well I did. You were right. I am connected to it. It’s the Sea-Tamer relic …’
‘What? Who told you about the relics?’ Dad says, his voice shaking.
Until this point Lisana has been standing quietly in the darkest corner of the hut, her head down so her face is lost in shadow. Now, she draws a deep breath, pushes her hair back and softly steps forward into the candle light. Dad notices her for the first time. His jaw drops, speechless.
‘I did,’ Lisana says. ‘There’s more at stake than you can ever imagine.’
ELEVEN
Betrayed
Dad recovers from the shock. ‘Lisana? How is this possible? How did you find us? The elders will not be happy. They didn’t want you to find Finn. Why can’t you just leave us alone?’
‘I had to find the relic, but you seem to have found it for me.’ She points a thin, bony finger to the bundle of cloth on the floor. ‘Do you recognise that?’
‘No,’ Dad shakes his head. ‘It can’t be … It can’t be your relic. That’s impossible.’
Lisana shrugs, ‘It never ceases to amaze me how often the impossible turns out to be perfectly possible. And, yes, here it is. The question is, how did you find it?’
Dad’s eyes sink to the floor. ‘Customer order,’ he mumbles.
‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Of all the smugglers in the world, you get the order to deliver my relic?’
‘He is the best smuggler though,’ Aria says proudly.
‘Best or worst. It’s certainly not by chance that he has it. Ragnar, who is the customer?’
‘I … I can’t say,’ he stammers.
Lisana places her hands on his cheeks and Dad’s eyes glaze over. Lisana scowls. The flickering flames from the candles shoot straight up into the air, the earth shakes. After a few moments, she pulls her hands back and claps them together. He slumps onto the dirt floor. Aria runs to help him.
‘Traitor,’ Lisana spits. ‘How could you?’
Dad pulls himself shakily up onto his knees, leaning heavily on Aria. ‘I’m sorry. I had no choice.’
‘There is always a choice,’ Lisana snaps.
‘Not this time. They have Isolda,’ Dad says.
‘Who has Mum?’ Aria asks, the colour draining from her face.
‘Sir Waldred,’ Dad says, his eyes dropping to the floor. ‘That’s why I agreed to the job. I had to.’
Tears scratch at the back of my eyes. I blink them away.
‘They’re holding her hostage?’ Lisana asks.
‘Yes. They knew the relic was hidden in the cave but they couldn’t find it. They needed a Sea-Tamer, they needed Finn, to locate it. I would never have agreed, but they were going to kill Isolda. I must take it to Sir Waldred to save her. I’m sorry Lisana. There is no other option.’
‘No,’ Lisana says, planting her hands on her hips. ‘We can’t do that. We must take it to the elders.’
‘We have to save Mum,’ Aria says. ‘Dad’s right.’
‘But it doesn’t belong to Sir Waldred.’ Lisana’s voice rises. ‘And think of the consequences. The Sea-Tamer clan will be lost forever. The whole world will suffer. Could you live with being responsible for that?’
Dad paces up and down. He halts, stamping his foot like a big full stop. ‘I can’t sacrifice Isolda. She’s done nothing wrong. We must deliver it as planned.’
We can’t win. If we fail to make the delivery, Sir Waldred will kill Isolda. If we make the delivery, the Sea-Tamer’s are lost forever. And somewhere in the middle of this nightmare is Morgan. I can’t win.
Outside, cicadas chirp and birds sing, but inside a restless silence fills the hut.
‘Maybe we can do both,’ I say. ‘I have a plan, but it would be very dangerous. You won’t like it.’
‘Go on, tell us,’ Dad says.
‘We deliver a fake pearl to New London and take the real pearl to the elders.’
‘That’s too risky,’ Dad says. ‘They’ll spot it’s a fake and kill us all.’
‘But Sir Waldred has never seen the pearl before,’ I point out. ‘He doesn’t know what it should look like. We just need to make it look convincing. Right?’
‘True, he has never seen the relic,’ Lisana says. ‘But it’s very dangerous. If he spots it’s a fake, Ragnar is right. He’ll kill us all.’
We lapse back into silence, buried in our thoughts.
‘We have to try it,’ I say eventually. ‘It’s the only plan we have. Maybe it will work. Just maybe.’
With a flurry of activity, Aria and I search Lisana’s hut for a suitable fake pearl. Despite the myriad of objects crammed into the hut, there’s nothing remotely pearl-like.
I flop down onto a cushion. ‘It’s useless. How do you make a fake pearl?’
Aria scratches her head. ‘We’re looking in the wrong place,’ she says, her face brightening. ‘Do you remember a couple of years ago we were supposed to deliver those strange marbles, the antique Chinese baoding balls?’
‘Yeah, the owner never collected them. They’d be perfect to make a fake pearl.’
‘That’s what I thought. They should still be in one of the storage lockers.’ With that she’s up and out of the hut, sprinting back to the boat.
It’s pitch dark by the time she reappears, panting and sweaty, her breath ragged. ‘Look, I’ve got them. It took ages to find them, the boat is such a mess.’
‘Compared to your room, the whole world is a mess,’ I tease.
She gives me a withering look, and holds out a heavily embroidered, emerald green, satin box. Inside are two smooth black onyx balls.
‘They don’t look anything like the pearl,’ I say, my heart sinking. ‘It’s not going to work.’
Aria is not deterred. ‘I already thought of that. This is the clever bit.’
She tips her backpack upside down and a selection of nail polish bottles tumble onto the table. She picks a few colours and paints a swirly design on the first ball.
‘It’s OK, but not brilliant,’ I say.
She picks up the second ball. ‘Lisana, I need a tray, please.’
Lisana produces a silver tray. She grimaces as Aria pours nail polish over it, ruining it. Aria rolls the ball around in the pool of polish, allowing the swirls to evolve naturally.
‘What do you think? Will it work?’ Aria asks, waving the finished “pearl” in the air to dry.
‘It has to,’ I say.
‘Maybe,’ Dad says, shaking his head.
‘What’s the plan for the route?’ I ask Dad. ‘Should we go to New London or deliver the real one first?’
‘New London,’ Dad says. ‘We can’t be late with the delivery or they might suspect something is up.’
‘Delivery is to the Strand Station, part of the old underground tube network,’ Dad continues.
‘Lisana, where do we take the real one?’ Aria asks.
‘To the elders,’ Lisana says.
‘Yes, we know that, but where exactly? Do you know where headquarters is currently?’ Dad asks. ‘I guess they still move every few years for security reasons.’
‘I don’t know where HQ is now. They haven’t summoned me since I lost the relic,’ Lisana mumbles to the floor. ‘The elders never gave me instructions. They just said when the time was right, the pearl would show me the way.’
‘What is it with these elders that they can never give simple instructions?’ Aria says, clenching her fists.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘The pearl did show us the way. My vision. It wants to go to the castle.’
‘Well, that’s not very helpful, is it?’ Lisana says. ‘We don’t know which castle. It will take years to search all the ruined castles in the northern seas.’
‘We can work out where the castle is though,’ Aria says. ‘If we all work together.’
‘Don’t forget about the flag,’ I say. ‘That’ll help us too.’
‘There must be a clue somewhere in here,’ Aria says, pointing around the hut.
Lisana goes to a cabinet and pulls out a bundle of manuscripts. Blowing a thick layer of dust off, she shoves them in front of us. ‘Start looking. We don’t have any time to waste.’
At first, we make good progress, flying through the papers, confident the flag and castle will be there. Hours pass, and we still have no clues.
The floor of the hut is strewn with discarded papers, but the stack of ones that we have yet to look at is still way bigger.
Enthusiasm turns to frustration.
It’s almost morning by the time an exhausted Aria stabs her finger triumphantly at a picture on one of the pages. ‘I think I’ve found it. This is what you saw, right?’