Rescue On Nim's Island

by Orr, Wendy

  ‘Can’t you get your foot out of your shoe?’ Edmund shouted.

  ‘I’ve tried!’

  TRISTAN WAS STUDYING the best way to get off the cliff.

  ‘Don’t move!’ he ordered Ollie. He lay on his stomach and wiggled further out onto the rock bridge. Through the pouring rain, he could see the creek that Nim had told him to follow.

  There was only one possible way to get there.

  ‘You want to help get Tiff out of the hole?’ he asked Ollie.

  The little boy sniffed and nodded.

  ‘We’re going to crawl over this bridge.’

  ‘Crawl like puppies?’

  ‘Like snakes,’ said Tristan. ‘Flat on our tummies. You go in front.’

  ‘’Cause I’m the fastest,’ said Ollie.

  So I can grab you if you slip! ‘Yes,’ said Tris.

  Ollie was right, though: it wasn’t as long since he’d been crawling for real, and he was very good at it.

  Tristan hated it. It hurt, it was scary, and it was very, very slow.

  The bridge was quite flat on the top, and Tristan thought that on a sunny day it would be good to sit there and watch the waterfall splash past. But the rain was beating at their backs and pooling on the bridge so that sometimes it felt more like swimming than crawling, and the waterfall sent up plumes of spray that splashed into their eyes. Wriggle by wriggle, they slithered across.

  Then: ‘Hang on!’ Tristan started to shout, but before he could finish the rain whooshed them down the other side of the arch, and they were rolling on the soft, soggy bank of the creek.

  Tristan jumped to his feet. Ollie was still lying on the ground, looking as if he didn’t know whether or not to cry.

  ‘That was fun!’ Tristan told him.

  ‘Fun,’ Ollie repeated, not sounding too sure.

  ‘Want a piggy back?’ Tristan picked his brother up, and started down the creek.

  He’d never have believed how fast he could run around rocks, through pouring rain and slippery mud, with a three-year-old on his back. He could hear himself puffing; he could see blood from the scratches on his arms, but he couldn’t feel the pain, the rain, or his heaving chest. All he saw was the best possible path in front of him, and all he heard was the chant in his head, Follow the creek, follow the creek to the house, follow the creek to rescue Tiff.

  NIM HAD BEEN afraid many times in her life. She’d been nervous when she rode Selkie out to sea to rescue Alex Rover. She’d been scared when she dived off the cliff to rescue Selkie. But she’d never been terrified like this.

  She grabbed her whistle from her pocket and blew three loud blasts under the sleeping bats. The air filled instantly with a chirping, flapping cloud. But instead of heading towards the door hole, the bats were disappearing down the long tunnel, the way Nim had just come. They were flying fast.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Nim groaned, ‘I’ve confused them!’

  Or maybe they were going out the way they always did. At the back of Nim’s mind things started to fall into place: why she’d never seen any bat poo outside the door hole on the Black Rocks, and why the tunnel had smelled of bats all the way down.

  Now she had to make sure they had a nursery to come home to again.

  She picked up the bundle of dynamite. It was heavier than it looked, but the hardest thing was making sure she didn’t trip on its snaking fuse. She wanted to run, but she didn’t want to fall.

  ‘Get down and get out!’ she ordered Fred. ‘What if I’ve worked out the time wrong?’

  Fred dug his claws in deeper. He never liked Nim telling him what to do, especially if it meant leaving her. And most especially if it meant leaving her in danger.

  Nim didn’t have time to argue. She rushed down the side tunnel to the turtle fossil. As gently as if were a clutch of newly laid eggs, she laid the dynamite at the bottom of the wall, under the gleaming fossil of Chica’s millions-of-great-great-grandmother.

  The fossil was beautiful; it told a fascinating story of history and geology – but the turtle had died a long time ago. Tiffany and the bats were alive now.

  Sacrificing the fossil was the only possible way to save them both.

  Nim raced back out, around the stalagmite, through the entrance passage, and slid out the opening into a deluge of rain.

  Fred leapt off her shoulder and somersaulted with her down the hill. They were still rolling when they heard the boom. Nim pressed her hands over her ears so tightly her jaws hurt, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching.

  A spray of fiery, glistening opals shot out over the cliff. Like a rainbow cloud in the rain, it hung in the air for a moment before disappearing down to the sea.

  CAUTIOUSLY, NIM LOOSENED her hands from her ears. Fred pulled his head out from under her arm. They heard the thump of one last rock and the drumming of rain … and then a desperate, raging howl from somewhere below.

  ‘My fossil!’ Leonora roared. ‘My opals! You set the dynamite in the wrong place!’

  ‘No, I didn’t!’ Lance bellowed back.

  Nim hated even hearing their voices. She hated the thought of ever seeing them again. But she had to give it one more try.

  ‘Leonora,’ she called. ‘Lance! HELP!’

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she heard Lance shout.

  There were crashes of panicky skidding and loose stones bouncing down the Black Rocks, then even that noise was swallowed by the pouring rain.

  Nim couldn’t waste time chasing them. She couldn’t waste energy being angry. She needed all the time and energy she had to rescue Tiffany.

  Fred scuttled to her shoulder as she raced back up the hill. ‘We don’t need them,’ she told him. ‘If we get some tools we can do it ourselves.’

  She said it again and it sounded a bit better. She was almost ready to believe it by the time she reached the tree that had hidden the cave’s entrance for so many years.

  The tree was lying across the path, its top branches dangling over the cliff, its roots in the air. Nim felt smaller than pond algae. ‘Sorry, tree,’ she said.

  But then she looked at where the door hole used to be, and felt as if she could soar higher than a frigate bird. There was no door, no hole at all, just a solid wall of rocks. Her plan had worked: the rock wall was stopping the rain from running through the cave into Tiffany’s tunnel.

  Now they just needed to get her out.

  Nim rushed back down to the Emergency Cave. Lance and Leonora’s tool bag was in the doorway, with a coil of rope on top. Nim strapped the bag to her back, slung the rope over the shoulder that Fred wasn’t sitting on, and started the long way round to the waterfall.

  She whistled for Selkie as she ran. She didn’t know where Selkie was or what a sea lion could do to help. But Selkie was very strong, and smart in a different way to people-smart – and Nim was going to need all the help she could get.

  SELKIE HAD WAITED a long time after Lance and Leonora disappeared up the cliff. She tried fishing for a while and she dozed for a bit, but whatever she did she listened for Nim. She was getting anxious, and she was getting bored.

  The more bored she was, the more interesting the rubber dinghy seemed. Selkie had never seen a rubber dinghy on the Black Rocks before. As the rain started, she flopped up the rocks and into the dinghy. With a little shove of her tail and a wiggle of her body, she rode it like a toboggan, all the way down to the water.

  For a few minutes, she rode the dinghy around the cove, barking happily. If Leonora and Lance had known anything about sea lions, they would have come running. But they didn’t, and so they didn’t see the sad end to Ryan and Anika’s rubber dinghy.

  Because rubber dinghies aren’t toboggans. They’re not supposed to be ridden over sharp rocks by sea lions that weigh as much as two men. So the air hissed slowly out of the cuts in the rubber dinghy’s bottom, and Selkie floated around going slowly deeper and deeper until she disappeared right under the water.

  The sea lion bobbed back up from the cove’s stony f
loor, but the dinghy didn’t.

  Selkie honked in a way that might have been a bad word if she’d been a person. It had been fun having her own boat.

  The fishing boat was still there, bobbing on its anchor. She was just circling it, searching for the easiest way up, when the world shook with a terrible boom!

  Selkie bounced out of the water, straight onto the boat. She was still shaking her head to get the noise out when Leonora and Lance came skidding down the rocks.

  ‘Where’s the dinghy?’ Leonora shrieked. ‘We’ve got to get out of here before Jack gets back!’

  ‘We’ll have to swim,’ said Lance.

  Selkie didn’t care anymore that Nim and Jack had let these people onto the island. The world wasn’t supposed to boom! and people weren’t supposed to shout. She barked a warning.

  Lance dived off the rocks.

  Selkie dived off the boat.

  They met nose to nose under the water. Selkie’s nose was bigger, and so were her teeth. Lance shot out of the water – but he still wasn’t safe. Barking and honking, Selkie chased Leonora and Lance up off the rocks and deep into the rainforest, as far from the camp as she could push them. They were soaked to the skin, too exhausted to run any further, and too afraid to understand that the terrifying sea lion had gone on past and left them alone. When they did get brave enough to make their way back out into the pouring rain and jungle mud, they were absolutely, completely, spun-around-in-circles lost.

  Chapter 13

  THE BOOM! ECHOED deep into the heart of the mountain. Edmund felt the tunnel floor tremble.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he called.

  ‘What was that?’ Tiff shouted at the same time.

  Then the air filled with strange, clicking chirps and a scent of musk, and a long thin cloud of bats flew down the tunnel. They flew over Edmund’s head, over Tiffany in the shaft, and out to the world on the other side.

  Tiffany’s going to freak out for sure, Edmund thought. And I don’t blame her!

  ‘Are you okay?’ he called again.

  ‘That was beautiful!’ Tiff called back. She sounded stronger than she had since Tris and Ollie had left. ‘If they can get out, I can too.’

  NIM LOVED THE rainforest on sunny days. It stayed cool and shady no matter how hot it was everywhere else. Vines trailed from branches, and trees with great walls of roots made secret nooks and grottos. Invisible birds sang among the leaves, and then flew past in explosions of colour. There were tiny green tree frogs, colour-changing lizards and whole universes of insects.

  She loved the rain too, because nothing could live without it, but she loved rain a whole lot more when she wasn’t in it. Her squelching shoes were getting heavier with each muddy step, and water was blurring her eyes. Her foot was skidding on a slippery root and a loop of vine was catching her leg …

  Nim crashed face first into the mud.

  ‘OW!’ she screamed, and then, ‘Fred?’

  Fred scuttled up to her. He had leapt off her shoulder just in time.

  ‘Sorry, Fred,’ said Nim, kissing the top of his spiny head. She put him back on her shoulder; Fred was too chilled to run by himself now. ‘I’ll be more careful,’ she promised. Her left knee throbbed and she rubbed it till it felt good enough to stand on. She thought the other knee was bleeding, but there was too much mud to be sure.

  She didn’t care about falling in the mud, but she did care about hurting Fred. And if she sprained her ankle or smashed her knee she wouldn’t be able to rescue anyone.

  TIFFANY COULDN’T FEEL her left foot anymore. She knew it must still be there, stuck through the crack, but it was completely numb. Worse, her arms and right leg were shaking with strain. She didn’t know how long she could keep on pressing against the walls to hold herself up.

  ‘Talk to me!’ she called.

  ‘No more water’s coming down the tunnel,’ said Edmund, but it was the fifth time he’d told her that, and it didn’t sound as hopeful as it had at first.

  He started going through the daypacks again, just in case he’d missed something that could possibly help. It was better than doing nothing. He knew he couldn’t do anything without the ropes and climbing gear – but he didn’t know how long he could just sit and wait for them.

  ‘Do you remember the story in Winnie the Pooh?’ he asked. ‘When Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s door and Rabbit reads him stories till he’s thin enough to get out?’

  Tiffany made a strange sort of sound. Edmund couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

  ‘I’m going to see if anyone’s coming yet,’ he called. ‘Don’t go away! I mean … I’ll be right back!’

  Scuttling down the dark tunnel like a skater bug, he skidded around the curve towards the pale light of the outside world. He slid faster until one leg shot into nothing, and caught himself just before he whooshed right down the hill.

  He peered out into the rain like a turtle poking its head out of its shell. Below the muddy hill, he could see the cliffs he’d fallen off last time, and the pond he’d landed in. There was the rock bridge too, but some of it was narrow and all of it was high and he didn’t know how Tristan could have crossed it with Ollie. Edmund shuddered and peered out further.

  All he could see was green: trees and bushes and whatever else was hiding in the rainforest. ‘Nim!’ Edmund shouted. ‘NIM!’

  His voice was puny against the thunder of the waterfall and rain. There was no answer.

  He slid back into the tunnel and the darkness. ‘They’ll be coming soon, Tiffany,’ he called as he came back around the bend.

  There was no answer here either.

  Edmund rushed to the edge of the hole. ‘Tiff!’ he shouted. ‘Are you okay?’

  He knew it was a silly question, but he needed to hear her say something. Anything – even if it was just to tell him he was being stupid.

  When she still didn’t answer he knew that now she was really not okay.

  SOMEONE WAS CRASHING through the forest below Nim.

  I hope it’s not Leonora and Lance! she thought.

  The crashing came closer – and Selkie galumphed out from the trees. For a long moment, Nim hugged Selkie and Selkie whuffled over Nim – and right in the middle of that hugging, whuffling moment, the rain stopped. The sun came out and sparkled diamonds on the wet leaves and dripped hope through the branches. Nim shook out her wet hair, picked up the heavy coil of rope that had slipped off her shoulder, and they started off again, as fast as they could through the mud.

  Five minutes later they reached the pond at the bottom of Waterfall Cliffs. Nim stared across at the great rock bridge arching over it to the cliff.

  ‘What if we get all the way up there and we’re in the wrong place?’ she said.

  Selkie nuzzled her, telling her that everything would be all right. Sometimes Selkie forgot that Nim wasn’t a little sea lion pup whose problems could be fixed with nuzzles and love. She didn’t know that the only thing that mattered was getting to Tiffany in time, and they couldn’t do that if they couldn’t find the tunnel.

  Nim looked up, but they were too close under the cliffs to see to the top. She hurried on around the edge of the pond, past the main bats’ cave. A few bats were flying confusedly in front of the entrance as if they were trying to decide whether or not to go in. When Nim looked more carefully, she could see the baby bats clinging to their mothers.

  ‘They got out in time!’

  Except that there weren’t very many bats here, and there’d been more than she could count in the nursery cave.

  ‘Maybe they’ve already settled further into this cave. Selkie, you go in and check – it might go deeper than we realised. I’m going over the bridge.’

  Selkie honked crossly.

  ‘I’ll be right above you once I find the tunnel,’ said Nim. ‘We’ll just have mountain in between us.’

  ‘HMPHH!’ Selkie snorted, even more crossly, but she knew she couldn’t climb the great rock arch. She lolloped slowly into the cave as Nim
started around the pond.

  FROM THE BASE of the bridge, Nim could see to the top of Waterfall Cliffs. Water was trickling from every hole and crack in the rock so that the whole cliff face was sparkling in the sun. It would have been beautiful if she hadn’t known that all that water had run deep through mountain tunnels to get there.

  She stared up higher, past where the bridge met the wall, past the waterfall and up to the muddy hill above it, wet and shining in the sun. She could see the hole where the extra waterfall sometimes flowed, but there was no water coming out of it now.

  Instead, a cloud of bats was going in.

  ‘That is the tunnel! Nim exclaimed, and danced Fred in the air till he sneezed.

  In the time since Nim had left Tiffany, she’d trekked the long way back through the tunnel, been as terrified as anyone could be, moved a bundle of dynamite, rolled down a hill, climbed back up the Black Rocks and carried a heavy pack and rope around another hill through the rainforest. A second ago she’d been so tired she didn’t know how she could climb to the top of the bridge.

  Now she was as full of energy as Fred eating coconut on a hot day. She tightened the straps on Lance’s pack, told Fred to hold tight, and started up the arch.

  On one side was the thundering waterfall; on the left she could see the creek meandering through the trees. But now she was imagining Tristan trying to carry his little brother along it, and the creek had never seemed so rushing, or the rocks so big. Tristan mightn’t have found Alex yet. She didn’t even know if he and Ollie had got out of the tunnel safely.

  EDMUND STARED DOWN into the pit. Tiffany was still straddled across it, but her head was hanging as if she was asleep. Edmund called to her, quietly at first and then louder.

  Tiffany didn’t move.

  Edmund stuffed the sheet and Nim’s pack inside his own, and slipped it on his back. He knew that every single rock-climbing guide in the world would say that without a rope or climbing gear, he shouldn’t do what he was going to do.

  He had to do it.

  He slid his legs down into the shaft, then his body, and finally he was clinging to the top with just his hands. Letting go was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but one foot found a crack to hang onto and the other a bump to step on … and he was propped against the walls the same way as Tiffany, except that both his feet were free to slide down to the next bump and crack.