by Orr, Wendy
‘She is a jewel,’ said Edmund.
LEONORA AND LANCE had headed off towards Frigate Bird Cliffs, just like they said. But they hadn’t said how far they were going, and they didn’t go very far at all. At the first hollow, they sat down to wait. Every few minutes one of them would lie on their stomach and peek over the rise to spy on the camp with Lance’s binoculars.
Because Leonora had been studying Nim ever since they arrived on the island, and she was sure that Nim was hiding something. Especially this morning when she’d heard bits of whispered words: fossil … amazing … cave.
So what they wanted to explore was whatever Nim didn’t want them to see.
They watched Selkie go down to the ocean and Nim and Edmund head across the grasslands.
‘The twins have stayed behind!’ Lance said in disgust. ‘That’s going to complicate things.’
‘They’re just kids,’ said Leonora. ‘We won’t have any trouble outsmarting them.’
They thought for a few minutes. ‘If it’s part of the cave we went to yesterday, we can go up the hill and around so the twins don’t see us.’
‘But we’ll be able to catch up so we can see exactly where Nim is going.’
Lance poked his binoculars over the lip of the hollow again. The camp appeared empty, but he glimpsed the back of a dark head as Tristan disappeared around a grassy hill.
‘Even better!’ he laughed. ‘One thing’s for sure, those twins stick together. If you see one, you know the other’s there too.’
‘And with five kids to follow, it’s going to be that much easier to spot one of them …’
‘ … and let them lead us to whatever it is they’ve found.’
They smiled smugly as they climbed out of their hollow. They couldn’t see the group but it didn’t matter now they’d guessed where they were heading. Once, when they pulled out their binoculars, they saw Nim starting to climb the Black Rocks. They waited out of sight in the rainforest until they guessed everyone was at the top.
By the time they’d climbed the rocks too, they were just in time to see Edmund’s legs sliding into a hole in the side of the cliff. ‘That was lucky!’ said Lance. ‘I told you,’ said Leonora. ‘I’ve got a very good feeling about this.’ They waited a few more minutes, and then crept carefully up the path to the cave. For a long, long time, they sat outside, taking turns to stick their heads through the door hole and listen.
Chapter 8
TIFFANY WAS BORED. She’d taken Ollie down to the water, and they’d waded and splashed. It was hot enough to swim, but Ollie couldn’t swim and Tiff couldn’t leave him alone while she swam. She didn’t find wading and splashing nearly as exciting as the three-year-old did.
When Ollie was tired they went back to the tent; Tiffany tucked her little brother into his sleeping sheet, and lay down on hers. There was nothing else to do. All the batteries were flat; she couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t send messages, couldn’t read.
Maybe she should have gone with Tris and the others, she thought. But she didn’t like caves, and she really was afraid of bats. She kept imagining them dropping off the ceiling in the darkness, landing on her head, tangling in her hair. She shuddered just thinking about it.
Finally she found a book her mum had been reading. It was about the life span of coral, and it was mostly charts and graphs. It was better than thinking about bats, but there were so many Latin words and the sentences were so long that Tiffany had to close her eyes between each paragraph. After a while it was too much trouble to open them again. Tiffany dropped the book and slept.
Through a dream, she heard voices, and the rustle of a tent flap.
‘It was lucky I spotted that bratty twin going with them,’ Lance was saying. ‘They might have got suspicious if they’d seen us heading off again with all our gear.’
Suddenly Tiffany was wide awake. She lay still as stone, hardly breathing. Her ears stretched and strained to catch every word.
‘We’d have just had to deal with them here,’ said Leonora. ‘If the kids are right about what they’ve got in that cave, this could be the find of the century!’
‘We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it’s yours,’ Lance agreed. ‘And if we can’t get the fossil out whole, we’ll have a big pile of opal to sell.’
‘As long as they know what they’re talking about … we should have gone all the way into the tunnel and seen it for ourselves. I’ll be very annoyed if we haul these tools all the way up there for nothing.’
‘It’s better this way. Kids get bored easily – they’re probably gone by now. If not, it’ll be much easier to deal with them when we’ve got our ropes.’
Tiffany’s body was still frozen, but her mind was racing. Deal with them? With ropes? She was suddenly very afraid. She didn’t care what Nim had found in that bat cave, she didn’t care what fossils or opals Leonora wanted, but she cared, more than she’d ever known she could, when someone threatened her brother.
Now she was even angrier than she was afraid.
As silently as she could, she got up from her mat. She put on her sneakers, shoved her mini torch into her pocket, her sunhat onto her head, and a water bottle into a pouch on her belt. Ollie was still sound asleep in his sheet. Tiffany slid her arms under it and very gently picked up her little brother.
‘What are we doing?’ Ollie murmured, without opening his eyes.
‘Shh,’ Tiffany whispered. ‘We’re playing a game. You’re the baby koala and I’m the mummy. You have to be sound asleep riding on my back.’
The noises from the other tent sounded as if Lance and Leonora were packing. There were thumps and rustles, and mutters of, ‘We’ll have to get away fast if we use it, but it’ll be worth it,’ and, ‘We’ll need the net to lower it off the cliff’.
Tiffany wiggled Ollie in his sheet around to her back. She knotted the bottom of the sheet around her waist, and the top around her shoulders. Even with the sling, Ollie was heavy.
‘Hang on, Baby Koala,’ she whispered.
She tiptoed to the tent door. Her heart was beating so loudly she was afraid that Lance and Leonora would hear it. Just stay here and hide, whispered a voice in her head. You’ll be safe here – and Tris will probably be all right.
But he might not be. That was the truth. If she didn’t warn him about the Bijous, her twin could be in terrible danger. She put her hand on the tent flap. The Bijous’ tent was facing away from hers, but that meant she couldn’t peek into it and run when they were facing the other way. Sticking her head out was going to be the most terrifying thing she’d ever done.
‘I can’t believe how easy they’re making this for us!’ Leonora laughed. ‘Anika and Ryan are just as sweet and stupid as Selina and Peter – and Jack’s so simple he’s left all his research in that cave. It’s as if he wants someone to destroy it!’
‘I’m happy to help out,’ Lance said grimly. ‘I’ve been a fuel engineer all my life and I’m not going to have algae ruin my plans!’
‘Opal fossils for me, no competition for you,’ Leonora gloated. ‘Coming here is working out even better than we’d hoped!’
There were no more choices.
Tiffany crouched, bounded out of the tent and started running. She raced right across the grasslands without stopping, her little brother bouncing on her back. By the time she reached the safety of the first trees she was gasping for breath. Ollie rolled out of the sling as she sank to her knees in the soft forest litter. He looked around, and squeezed his eyes tight shut again.
‘You can wake up now,’ Tiffany panted, looking anxiously over her shoulder for any sign of the Bijous. ‘We’ll play a different game.’
‘Aren’t I a baby koala anymore?’
‘Now you’re …’ Tiffany tried to think of the quietest, fastest animal she could. She didn’t want to start hopping like a rabbit or slithering like a snake. ‘We’re quiet little mice, and we’re going to go through the forest as fast as we can without anyone hearing us.’
‘Why?’ asked Ollie.
‘Because there’s a great big cat that wants to eat us up,’ said Tiffany. But it would be a lot easier if the mice knew where they were going!
She didn’t say that part out loud.
This morning she’d thought Nim was talking about a new cave, but Leonora and Lance seemed to be talking about the Emergency Cave. The problem was that Tiffany hadn’t paid much attention when they were there yesterday. She knew the cave was on top of the Black Rocks, but she couldn’t exactly remember how they’d got back from there.
All she knew for sure was that Tristan had disappeared in this direction. There was a bit of trail going up the hill. Please let it be the right one! Tiff thought to herself.
Ollie was crawling up it already. ‘This is how mice run!’
‘These mice run faster on their legs,’ said Tiffany.
The little boy obediently raced past her, running as hard as he could. Sticks snapped and branches twanged. A tree root caught his foot – but Tiffany leapt and scooped him up before he hit the ground.
‘That was fast like a horse!’ she whispered.
Ollie wrapped his arms around her neck and rested his face against hers. ‘You’re my nice horse sister,’ he said.
He sounded so surprised that Tiffany flushed. She staggered on carrying him, until her right foot stepped in a hole and her left foot skidded, and she sat down hard. Her bottom hurt and somehow she’d thumped her funny bone, which wasn’t funny at all. But at least she hadn’t twisted an ankle. She bit her lip and got back up.
‘Ready to walk quietly as a mouse?’ she whispered. ‘Look – this is my tail.’ She unknotted the top of the sling so that the sheet flowed out like a cape from her waist.
‘Where’s my tail?’ Ollie whined.
‘I’ll get you a good one later. Promise. But now the baby mouse holds onto the sister mouse’s tail.’
‘So it’s my tail too,’ Ollie said.
‘Okay,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just hold onto it. And remember the game – we don’t want the cat to hear us. So we can’t step on sticks, or fall down, or talk more.’
She started off again, walking fast. Ollie held the sheet and jogged behind her. The trail climbed steeply. They’d stopped and started so often that Tiffany had no idea how long they’d been walking, or if they were still going the right direction.
I don’t even know how I’m going to know! she thought despairingly. Whichever way she looked, the forest was the same: just trees and vines and ferns … and the bowerbird’s nest. The pile of sticks decorated with yellow flowers and berries, where Nim had glared at her just because she’d taken one little flower.
But today it was the bowerbird who’d stolen something new. Placed carefully in front of the bower was a scorpion, trapped forever in a big amber necklace.
Leonora and Lance went by here this morning! We’re going the right way.
Ollie darted ahead and grabbed the pendant. The bird stared fiercely from beside his bower.
‘Put it back!’ Tiffany hissed. ‘It’s not yours.’
‘You took the flower,’ Ollie reminded her.
‘That’s different!’
But Tiffany didn’t want to touch the necklace, and Ollie wouldn’t let it go.
‘It’s my mouse tail,’ he said, slipping the chain over his head with the scorpion at the back. It bounced along behind his bottom, just the right place for a tail.
For half a second, Tiffany forgot how afraid she was, and laughed. It felt good. She took her brother’s hand, and they hurried on.
A few minutes later, they smelled the rotten-egg stink of the Hissing Stones and saw the start of the Black Rocks.
Reaching the Black Rocks was good because it meant they were getting close to the cave, but bad because there was nowhere to hide. Once she and Ollie started to climb, the Bijous would be able to see them from nearly anywhere on this side of the island.
Tiffany stopped under the last tree of the rainforest and listened. There were bird sounds, ocean sounds and Hissing Stones sounds. There were no people sounds – but Lance and Leonora were smart enough to be quiet if they were following her. What if they’re right behind us and I just can’t hear them?
But she couldn’t turn around now, and she couldn’t let Ollie see how afraid she was.
‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘we’re going to be monkeys and climb up those rocks before a big gorilla catches us!’
TIFFANY WASN’T STRONG enough to climb the Black Rocks with Ollie on her back. They each needed both hands to climb, so they couldn’t hold hands and he couldn’t hold onto the end of the sheet. But Ollie was so little and the rocks were so big, that she was afraid to let him go by himself.
She unknotted the sleeping bag sheet from around her waist, and ripped the sides open into one long skinny strip. She knotted one end around Ollie’s middle and the other around hers.
They began to climb.
The boulders were round and rough, piled like stacks of marbles; sometimes Tiffany needed her hands to balance and sometimes she could scramble up without them. Sometimes she stopped and pulled Ollie right up beside her before she started again.
‘I like climbing rocks!’ said Ollie.
‘So do I,’ said Tiffany. It would have been true if she hadn’t been so terrified of who might be climbing behind them.
But she couldn’t stop and look till they reached the top. It seemed to take forever – and when she was finally standing on the cliff path, the breeze was blowing the trees too hard to see into the rainforest, and the surf was thundering too hard to hear. She still couldn’t know for sure that Lance and Leonora weren’t close behind.
But ahead, leading into the hillside, was the mouth of a cave.
Tiffany breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Tris is going to be so surprised to see us!’ she said, and they walked into the darkness.
There was no one there. Tiffany turned on her torch, and shone it all around. It lit up dark stone walls, a hard stone floor, shelves of test tubes and neat stacks of canned food. They walked right around it, touching the walls, just to make sure – but there were no secret passageways or tunnels. There weren’t even any bats.
This was the Emergency Cave she’d waited outside yesterday. The bats and the fossil were in a completely different cave.
‘Where’s Tris?’ Ollie demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tiff.
It was the saddest thing she’d ever said. She’d raced through the forest and climbed all the way up here with her little brother, and it was the wrong place.
‘Are we going to look for him?’ asked Ollie.
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘He can’t be far away.’
But Nim had lived on the island her whole life and she’d only found the fossil cave yesterday. Now Tiffany had to find it before the Bijous did. She stood at the cave entrance, her heart thumping.
The path above her was narrower; rainforest trees leaned over it and even dangled over the cliff. When they’d come down that way yesterday, she hadn’t seen anything that could possibly be the opening to a cave.
Maybe they’d already passed it.
She had to decide.
She leaned out over the cliff. Lance and Leonora were still nowhere in sight.
Holding Ollie tightly by the hand, Tiffany inched her way back down the way they had come. They looked into cracks that lizards couldn’t have slithered through. They poked into holes full of leaves and grit. They stared at the walls of the cliff and the mounds of boulders until their eyes watered. They went back up the path to where the trees began.
Now even the weather seemed to know her search was hopeless. The bright blue sky had turned dark; the sun was covered with threatening clouds.
Finally Tiffany went back to the Emergency Cave. There were still no mysterious tunnels; no hidden entrances to other caves. And no Tristan.
Tiffany hugged Ollie close as she slid down onto the cold stone floor. She couldn’t stop Lance and Leonora from steal
ing whatever they wanted to steal and hurting whoever got in their way. Her twin was in danger – and now she’d put her little brother in danger too. She tried not to cry, but once she started she couldn’t stop, no matter how much Ollie patted her face.
After a while Ollie started crying too.
SELKIE WAS IN the rocky cove below the Black Rocks. It wasn’t her favourite place for fishing, but she wasn’t there for fish. She was patrolling, watching the entrance to the cave and listening for Nim’s whistle.
A boat was coming. It was the boat that had come to the island yesterday – Nim and Jack had let it land, so Selkie knew that she had to leave it alone. But she didn’t like it. She didn’t like boats with motors, and she didn’t like that it was coming into this cove when Nim didn’t know. She dived as it anchored and poked her head up again just enough to watch Leonora and Lance unload the ropes and gear into the rubber dinghy.
They paddled in to shore and pulled the dinghy up onto the rocks. ‘If those brats have truly found something worthwhile, we’ll lower it down to here, and take off,’ said Lance.
‘But before we go,’ said Leonora, ‘it’ll be goodbye to Jack’s laboratory and all those algae!’
Lance strapped the pack onto his back, and they started up the cliff.
Chapter 9
NIM, EDMUND AND Tristan were still brushing and polishing the sea turtle fossil so the opal gleamed brighter and its fires leapt further. Fred was scrambling from one person’s shoulder to another, trying to catch glow-worms.
Suddenly Tristan froze. ‘I can hear something.’
They all stopped and listened. They could hear their own breathing; nothing else.
‘I’m going out to see,’ said Tristan.
‘I’m going on working,’ said Nim, and Edmund agreed. The turtle was so beautiful that they wanted it to be perfect, and every time they brushed one bit, another bit that needed brushing showed through.
Tristan crouched through the tunnel and crawled out the door hole. The sunshine was blinding after the hours of darkness; he leaned against the side of the hill as he waited for his eyes to work again, and listened.