The sail flapped and snapped and bellied out, and the wind pushed, and Gull slammed on in the now-bouncing waves of the strait.
Merlin shouted, and Becca could feel Gull pulling away, galloping out from under her cramped hands. And there were Jane’s fingers, stretching, stretching so that they had gone white and bloodless, because she could hardly hold onto Gull’s stern.
“I’m going to have to let go!” shouted Jane. “She’s going too fast!”
“Kick!” Becca yelled. “Let out the sheet! Spill the wind!”
“Sheet?” asked Merlin. “What sheet?”
Gull tore herself from Becca’s fingers. Becca swam frantically. The bulky life jacket dragged at her arms.
All Becca could see was Gull’s wake, the small turmoil of sea gurgling behind her. And Gull’s stern, speeding farther and farther away from Becca’s reaching arms.
Then, quite by accident, Merlin shifted the tiller. The sail emptied and Gull lost momentum.
“Get in,” Becca said, and she shoved Jane over the stern.
“Take my hand,” Merlin said, and in a moment, Becca was safe by the tiller.
“It happened so fast!” said Jane.
“We weren’t paying attention,” said Merlin.
“I wasn’t,” Becca said. And she should have been, she thought. She was the skipper.
She thought of the feel of her fingers, of Gull slipping away from them.
She thought of Jane’s hand hooked onto Gull by its fingertips. She thought of the great broad strait with its muscular flow.
It wasn’t even very windy. Just a little frisk, really, enough to get them to Jane’s point in time for dinner maybe.
But for a moment, Gull had been about to sail off without them.
What would be worse than wrecking Gull?
Becca and Jane, lost at sea.
* * *
“Muscles on them like Olympic swimmers!”
That was Mac’s greeting as Gull was hauled ashore by Gran, Mac, Jane’s mum, Jane’s dad and even Bill-and-Kay-next-door who happened to be standing on the point with their binoculars when Becca finally sailed Gull up to the sandstone.
“And who’s this?” asked Gran. “Merlin! Where’s your life jacket?”
“Why didn’t you row?” asked Mac.
“What were you doing out there?” Jane’s mum asked.
“What’s wrong with your foot?” asked Mac.
“You know better than to go to sea without a life jacket,” said Gran. “Don’t you?”
“They saved me,” Merlin said. “I didn’t mean to go to sea.”
“He was marooned,” Becca said.
“And wounded,” said Jane.
“We could barely spot you,” said Mac. “I had to get out the telescope.”
“Why were you overboard in the middle of the strait?” asked Jane’s dad.
“Don’t you realize Gull could have sailed off and left you?” Gran asked.
“We were becalmed,” said Becca.
“It wasn’t our fault,” said Jane.
But it was, Becca knew. She was the skipper and she forgot the oars, and then she didn’t stay close enough to shore to get home easily without them. And she took on a passenger she didn’t have a life jacket for, and she let Gull drift way out into the current. And then she jumped out of the boat and left it under the control of a person who didn’t know a thing about sailing.
She thought about that moment when Gull had been about to escape them.
Those are pearls that were his eyes, Merlin had sung. Full fathom five thy father lies.
At least it wasn’t us full fathom five, she thought.
“This is not good,” said Jane’s mum.
“Yes, it’s serious,” said Gran. “What an escapade! Becca, I think you’d better be beached for the time being unless you’re with an adult.”
“Merlin’s an adult!” Becca said.
“Yes, well, someone who knows something about boats. You did well in some ways, but you and Jane aren’t ready to sail on your own.”
So that was that. The first day of summer. Beached.
2. Night Visitors
“Beached!” Becca said. “We might as well have been wrecked!”
“We can always walk around the island,” said Jane.
“But we wanted to spend the summer at sea!”
It had been a tiny miscalculation, Becca thought. A little mistake. Not an “escapade.”
Even if Gull was sort of seaworthy, and even if some day they were allowed to go to sea again without an adult, they needed a better boat. Twice Gull had needed engines. Once last year with Auntie Meg and Uncle Martin when it had been too windy, and now with Jane because it hadn’t been windy enough.
They kept having to use arms and legs to get anywhere — rowing and kicking.
“It’s no good having a boat that’s so tricky,” she said.
She had carried her sleeping bag up to Jane’s cabin on the point. The atmosphere around Gran’s was rather prickly right now, what with no life jackets, forgotten oars and people overboard in the middle of the strait. A sleepover at Jane’s was only sensible.
“We’ll sleep on the beach,” said Jane. “Then there won’t be adults bossing us around.”
“We should earn money and buy our own boat,” Becca said. “But how?”
“I’m reading a book about kids who go to a dance school,” said Jane. “They get paid for performing.”
“Nobody’s going to hire me to dance,” Becca said. She hated dancing. She’d rather turn the compost for weeks than dance even for a minute.
“Here’s a good place.” Jane put her sleeping bag down in a hollow in the sandstone above the tide line. “It’s like a bedroom.”
The sandstone was dark there, and decorated with silver lichen. It curled up around a flat little floor of yellow grasses and it all made a cozy nook.
Becca lay down. There was just enough room for two mats and sleeping bags, and they’d be out of the wind. The tufty grasses were soft under her, and warm, too, as if they kept in their heads and stalks the sunshine that had dried them out.
“We could make bracelets and earrings to sell in the market,” she said.
“But I’m terrible at that doodad stuff.” Jane reached into her pillow case and tossed a bag of chips to Becca. “Salt and vinegar.”
Then she rooted in her sleeping bag.
“Ginger beer.”
“I wondered what the clanking was,” Becca said, and she swigged heartily while Jane tore open the chips.
“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of beer,” said Jane, and they clinked bottles.
“To a new ship,” toasted Becca.
On one side of the point, Midshipman Bay lay still and silvery, a couple of motor boats lying at anchor in its basin. Becca could see and hear the strait lapping at the shore on the other side of the point, still calm but alive somehow, with its silent current. The Inside Passage, it was called. The Salish Sea.
It was like being at sea without being at sea, having water on both sides of them.
The sunset bloomed pink and orange, and the grasses became dark silhouettes in the twilight. They drank the ginger beer and closed up half the chips for later.
It felt good to lie down after the long day.
And the thistles weren’t so much of a problem. They were spiky and tall but grew out of a crack off to the side.
“I always wanted to sleep with my face in a blackberry vine,” Jane said.
“My pillow’s in a wild rose bush,” said Becca.
“We won’t notice once we fall asleep.”
“And there won’t be slugs because we’re practically on the beach.”
The grass smelled sweet and healthy, and the lichen on the sandstone did, too. There was another smell B
ecca couldn’t identify, though it reminded her of something.
“We could mow lawns to make money,” she said. “We could catch fish.”
“Nobody has a lawn around here,” said Jane. “And why would they pay for fish they can catch themselves? What about babysitting?”
“Babysitting’s part of my chores,” Becca said.
Her sister, Pin, was too small to get into real trouble. She didn’t have escapades yet, but she crawled around a lot, put everything in her mouth and wanted to hold onto things so she could stand up.
“Would they pay you if you looked after her for a whole day?” Jane wondered.
“Maybe. But we need more than that to buy a boat. And anyway, Mum and Dad and Pin aren’t coming for weeks. Listen — it’s calm again. You can hardly hear the sea.”
They could hear the tiniest of waves stroking the beach. The sandpipers and killdeers whistled their goodnights. They made Becca think of sea songs.
“That was funny, hearing Merlin sing,” she said.
Merlin had a pretty good voice — a fabulous voice, really. And so did Jane.
“You sounded good together,” Becca told her.
“Maybe I could busk,” Jane said.
“Where could you busk on this island?”
“At the ferry slip?”
“But it could take years to earn enough!”
Even an old, cheap, tiny sailing dinghy would cost a few hundred dollars.
It was almost dark now. Becca looked up at the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia and wondered why she still hadn’t learned any more constellations. It was such a muddle up there.
She tried to find the North Star by using the lip of the Big Dipper. The North Star wasn’t bright, she knew, but it was the important one, the one that didn’t change. The rest wheeled around it every night.
It made her think of something Aunt Fifi had quoted once. “A star to every wandering bark,” she had said. Aunt Fifi had explained that bark was an old word for ship, and the star was the way the sailor figured out where his ship was.
There was a ship, and a star, and it was a poem about love. Shakespeare, of course. Something Merlin and Aunt Fifi liked to argue about.
“Look!” Jane said. “A shooting star!”
* * *
When Becca woke, the sky was white with stars. But starlight wasn’t what had woken her.
A noise had woken her. A noise so close, so real, that her heart shook her whole body with its terrified thumps.
Someone was there — or someones. She could hear them moving around, treading on the grasses and snapping sticks.
And they were talking!
She didn’t dare say a word. What if they heard her? Who were they?
“Becca?” whispered Jane.
Whoever it was stopped. There was silence, and only the sound of Becca’s own fear in her ears. She could feel Jane clutching her through the sleeping bag.
The someones moved again. They chattered, but they weren’t speaking English. It was some new language, a language that sounded partly like water burbling downhill, and partly like plates clattering in a river. There were snorts in it, and chewing noises.
Whoever they were, they were coming closer. They were coming right towards Becca and Jane, who were snuggled in their sleeping bags in the grass and the thistles and blackberry vines and wild rose bushes because with all those thorns and prickles, why would anyone disturb them?
They were sleeping there because the point was a good place, and if they needed adults, which was never likely, they could holler up to Jane’s cabin.
But now the night was full of the cold light of stars, and strangers were coming, and Becca had never felt less like hollering. Or in fact like making any noise whatsoever.
Could it be Lucy and Alicia, Becca’s trouble-making cousins? But they weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow.
Every moment the noisemakers got closer. And there were more of them. They seemed to be multiplying.
It definitely wasn’t Lucy and Alicia. It sounded like a whole party now and their talking was louder, full of churring and nose-clearing sounds, and consonants and vowels that were incomprehensible.
And they smelled of fish. They stank, really. The smell was a cloud hanging low in the night, weighing on Becca and forcing her head into her sleeping bag.
Whoever these fish-breathers were, they didn’t know Becca and Jane were there.
Maybe, just maybe, she and Jane could scare them away.
Slowly, slowly, Becca turned her head and whispered right into Jane’s ear. She reached down into her sleeping bag where she had hidden her headlamp, and then Jane whispered, “Now!”
They sat up and turned on their lights.
“Arf!” barked Jane. “Rrrruff rrrruff, arf-arf-arf, grrrrrrrr! Rrrruff!”
“Yip! Yip! Yip! Arp-arp! Grrrrrrr!” Becca growled.
Whiskery faces, dark eyes, round ears, wet fur sticking up all sporty and sharp — that’s what Becca saw in that instant.
And at the same time she knew what the smell reminded her of — the rich smells of Seal Rock, with its seal-leavings, fish bones and fur and all sorts of half-digested marine life.
And now here was a whole family of river otters — more than a family, with mum and dad and aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, sisters, brothers and babies all crowded around her and Jane.
Who’s sleeping in my bed? they seemed to be asking.
She and Jane shouldn’t be here, Becca thought. But they were, and what were the otters going to do next?
“Rrrruff! Rrruff!” Jane growled. “Arf-arf-arf!”
The otters didn’t say a word more. Their foreign speech went silent. In the light of the headlamps there was a quick writhing of long strong tails, of sleek short-legged bodies tumbling one over another.
They were gone.
“We stole their bedroom,” Becca said, her heart whacking inside her so she could hardly breathe.
“The deck,” squeaked Jane, hoarse from barking. “We don’t have to wake up mum and dad. We can move to the deck.”
* * *
They were back to looking for shooting stars.
“I wish I hadn’t dropped my pillow in a tidepool,” said Jane. “There’s one!”
“We shouldn’t have tried to carry everything at once,” Becca said. “And my arms are all scratched from getting out in the middle of that rose bush.”
“I’m hungry.”
“We left the chips down there.”
“I’m not going back to get them,” said Jane.
“Me neither,” Becca answered. “Anyway, the otters will like them. Fish and chips. What could be better?”
3. A Sickening Feeling
In the morning, Becca’s night thoughts were all mixed together — stars, poems, otters, sails, fish and chips, and ships on the beach.
Shakespeare.
“We’ll put on a play,” she said even before her eyes opened.
“And the play can be The Tempest!” said Jane. “There’s a magician who bosses everyone around, and a lot of storminess and shipwreck, and in the end they get their ship back. It’s about the sea and an island.”
“That makes it perfect for raising money for a boat,” Becca said. “And we won’t even have to make a set because we’re already on an island.”
“There’s a sprite and a monster-fish-man, and a magician who says, ‘our little lives are rounded with a sleep,’” said Jane.
With her upsticking hair, rumpled pajamas and sleep-crusty eyes, Becca thought Jane looked perfect for the line.
“Your cousins can be in it,” Jane said.
“Lucy and Alicia,” said Becca. “They’re coming today.”
But she didn’t think they cared about boats. And would they want to be in a play?
“It
was a lot of work when we did it in school,” said Jane. “But fun, too.”
“And anyway, we’re beached,” said Becca, “so we might as well do something.”
* * *
Lucy and Alicia arrived with Aunt Fifi.
“I told you not to pack a jar of marmalade with your clothes,” Alicia said, climbing out of Aunt Fifi’s sporty car.
“Well, I didn’t expect you to hurl my backpack onto the ferry deck,” said Lucy. “It’s awful! My favorite shirt!”
She picked a few pieces of orange peel out of her backpack and ate them.
“Did the jar break?” Becca asked. “Isn’t there glass in it?”
“The lid wasn’t screwed on properly,” Lucy told her. “Probably Alicia’s fault.”
“Not my fault! But definitely my fault the restaurant food spilled. And it was my favorite kind of chicken salad, too,” mourned Alicia. “Luckily we finished off most of it while we were waiting for the ferry.”
There must have been avocado in it, to make that green splodge on her shorts.
“My car will never forget it,” Aunt Fifi remarked. “And, no, Becca, I didn’t bring any Shakespeare this time. Maybe Merlin has a copy of The Tempest.”
Gran turned to Lucy and Alicia, then seemed to change her mind about hugging their marmalade and chicken salad stains. She gave them each a little kiss on the cheek instead.
“Shakespeare!” Alicia said. “What would you want to do that for? It’s school stuff. Ew.”
And she pounded off down the trail with Lucy at her heels.
Why couldn’t she and Lucy and Alicia be like mum and the aunts? Becca wondered. Whenever Mum and Aunt Fifi and Auntie Meg and Auntie Clare and Aunt Cat got together, they hugged each other and talked and talked and talked — as if they actually liked each other.
She picked up the wheelbarrow handles. An aunt, a gran and two cousins — and she still had to barrow the luggage herself.
* * *
After dinner Aunt Fifi went for a walk, or so she said. Whether she wanted to enjoy the scenery, look for Merlin or avoid Scrabble, Becca wasn’t sure.
Becca Fair and Foul Page 2