The Shiver Stone

by Sharon Tregenza

  I was laughing so hard I almost fell in myself.

  The second time he surfaced, coughing and choking, I stopped laughing.

  ‘Can’t swim,’ he gasped.

  In a flash I was in the water beside him, but he was struggling and fighting in panic.

  He went under again and I felt the same panic tighten my chest.

  ‘Get to the rocks.’

  I tried pushing him, but his flailing arms hit me in the face. He was stronger and taller and wild with fear. I managed to steer him to the cliff edge but a wave washed over us and I saw the terror in his eyes.

  Again and again he grabbed at the rocks, but they were slippery with seaweed and sharp with limpet shells. The struggling and thrashing was making him weak.

  Panicking, I screamed at him, ‘Grab on and pull yourself up, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I can’t! I can’t!’

  Another wave crashed in and his face disappeared in a wild spray of froth and foam. I heard him splutter and, when he came up again, he had drifted further away.

  I started shouting. ‘Help! Help!’ But in my heart I knew that even if someone heard me it would take too long to climb over the headland and down to the tiny inlet where the waves were growing stronger as Jago grew weaker.

  CHAPTER

  7

  A wave swelled behind Jago and I saw, with a thudding heart, that it would carry him towards the mouth of the cave. If I could get out and…

  I scrambled onto dry land. Every inch of my body trembled with exertion and fright. What if he drowns? What if he drowns? The thought pounded in my head. In seconds I was at the cave entrance.

  I splashed desperately through the water searching for Jago. I saw a flash of red swimming trucks. Grabbing his thrashing arm, I clung on tight. He tried to pull himself out, but the pebbles under his feet were rolling and shifting with the underwater current – he couldn’t stand. It was like a tug of war between the sea and us as the force of the tide tried to drag him back out. A tug of war we were losing. Jago’s hair was slicked dark against his white face. He was spitting out water, retching and coughing.

  I felt him slip away from me. I gritted my teeth, heaving backwards with all my strength.

  From nowhere, a hand stretched down and grasped him by the hair. ‘Quick! Now pull!’

  Together we dragged him out and he crumpled, trembling, on the rocks.

  I collapsed beside him and we lay flat out on our backs, panting, gasping and shuddering.

  At last Jago raised himself on his elbows. ‘You pushed me in.’ He was furious.

  ‘How was I to know you can’t swim! You said earlier that you weren’t much of a swimmer. You didn’t say you couldn’t swim at all. I don’t know anyone who can’t swim. It’s like saying you can’t breathe!’

  ‘You should have checked before you pushed me in!’

  ‘I pulled you out!’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had to pull me out if you hadn’t PUSHED ME IN!’

  We were both shouting so loud it was a surprise when a quiet voice behind us said, ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay now. Everything’s okay, no harm done.’

  We turned and saw the woman leaning against a boulder. She looked strangely familiar.

  ‘Yeah, well, no thanks to her. If you hadn’t been here…’ Jago was too mad to even finish what he was saying.

  ‘It’s just lucky I happened to be passing,’ she said.

  He scraped his long hair out of his eyes, twisting it and wringing the water out with his hands. ‘But you weren’t.’ Jago was staring at her.

  She was drying off her shorts with a towel and stopped to look up.

  ‘What?’

  He narrowed his eyes against the sun. ‘You weren’t just passing. You were up there watching us with binoculars.’

  The woman’s face blushed deep red right up to the roots of her short black hair.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I was bird-watching when I heard you shouting and … and…’

  ‘Lucky for us you were,’ I said.

  Jago suddenly went into a coughing fit.

  ‘I’ve got a drink here,’ the woman said.

  She took a bottle of water from a bag and handed it to Jago. He nodded his thanks and drank quickly, swallowing hard.

  ‘That’s the salt water I expect,’ she said. ‘It’ll make your throat sore for a while.’

  As she turned around we both saw it.

  She wore only a bikini top and shorts and it ran deep and red and ugly down her spine like a snake. It was a shock against her white skin. A scar – a scar as thick as my finger running from her neck all the way down her back.

  When she saw us staring, I looked away, embarrassed.

  Jago didn’t.

  ‘What happened to your back?’ His voice was croaky and he coughed to clear his throat.

  ‘An accident,’ she said, ‘a long time ago when I was a kid. I needed a lot of surgery. Couldn’t walk for a while.’

  She pulled a t-shirt out from her bag and hastily put it on, covering the scar.

  She didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. She brought out a packet of Oreos. I was suddenly hungry and took three.

  Jago shook his head. ‘Throat still sore,’ he said.

  He went to hand the water back to her, but she said, ‘Keep it.’

  And that’s when I recognised her. She’d been wearing different clothes and glasses I think, but it was her all right.

  ‘You’re the woman in the Troll Hole.’ The Troll Hole bit came out by accident. I quickly changed my words. ‘The tunnel, I mean. It was you who found Tia this morning, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Tia?’

  ‘Our dog, well, his dad’s dog.’

  For a minute I thought she was going to deny it. She hesitated and then gave an odd laugh.

  ‘Oh was that your little dog? How strange we should meet again. And where is the dear little thing now?’

  ‘At home in the shed with Dad.’

  ‘A shed doesn’t seem like a safe place to keep a dog who likes to run away.’

  ‘If he has to leave her for a minute or two he’ll make sure she’s tied with her lead but, like I said, she doesn’t usually run off. We can’t have her in the flat. No dogs allowed. We sneak her in at night though. She’s safe on my bed then.’ I thought for a minute. ‘You rescued Tia and Jago today.’

  ‘Didn’t need rescuing,’ Jago mumbled.

  I was going to have something to say about that, but just then a shower of stones tumbled down from above.

  We all looked up to see a group of people leaning over the cliff edge near the Shiver Stone.

  ‘They need to get back from there. It’s really dangerous,’ I said.

  ‘I saw you dive from not that far below,’ the woman answered, still looking up at the top of the cliff.

  ‘My dad dived off the top, off Shiver Stone ridge, when he was only thirteen. The youngest kid in the village to do it, ever. Not many adults have managed it. One guy, a tourist, tried a few years back and ended up paralysed. It’s too scary for me.’

  ‘The Shiver Stone, is that its name? It’s an impressive rock. There’s something spiritual in these stones. I live near the stone circles of Avebury. They’re quite magical. If I’m frightened or worried I speak to the stones – they always help me. They’re my friends.’

  She was staring up at the Shiver Stone and it was like she’d forgotten we were there. Her voice went all floaty. ‘The stones are places of death and sacrifice,’ she said, ‘timeless, motionless…’

  She was starting to creep me out and, when I looked at Jago, he rolled his eyes at me.

  ‘Um, guess we’d better be going now. Thank you for – you know, for all the rescuing and stuff,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ She shivered, as if waking up out of a dream. ‘Oh, it was nothing. I’d better be off too. Back to my birdwatching.’

  She slung a pair of binoculars around her neck and started the climb up over the headland. Before she was out of sight she turn
ed and gave a short wave.

  We waved back.

  ‘Freeeeaky,’ I said.

  ‘I’m cold now and I want to go home,’ Jago moaned. We crawled over the rocks to the other side where our clothes and things were scattered across a boulder. Jago grabbed his jeans and t-shirt and pulled them on roughly before packing his geology stuff away.

  ‘Lucky she was here though,’ he finally admitted. He dragged his wet hair back into a ponytail. It made him look different.

  I inspected a graze on my knee. Then got dressed too.

  ‘That woman, there’s something…’ I didn’t get to finish my sentence. My mobile gave its message ping. I picked it up and peered at the screen. There were five missed calls from Dad and three texts:

  Carys & Jago, come home right away!

  Carys & Jago, come home now!

  COME HOME!

  CHAPTER

  8

  We were up and over the rocks in no time. It was about five in the afternoon so there were fewer people on the beach. It still felt like a crowd though as we raced across the sand, skirting windbreaks, sandcastles and families huddled in groups.

  I was amazed at how quickly Jago had recovered. ‘It could be Tia,’ I shouted to him. ‘Maybe she’s missing again!’

  ‘It’s not Tia. It’s my mum. Something’s happened to my mum. I know it has.’ Jago’s face was grim, almost angry. There was no point arguing with him.

  I thought I was pretty fast, but Jago was ahead of me, his long legs pumping. We twisted in and out of traffic and hurtled along the pavement ignoring angry comments from idling holiday-makers.

  Dad was waiting for us at the gate. ‘It’s your mum, Jago. She’s had a relapse. Let’s get you to the hospital.’

  I sat in the waiting room with Dad while Jago went into his mother.

  ‘Dylan called from the hospital. He said she was having problems breathing. It can happen sometimes after anaphylactic shock apparently. Poor woman, she’s really going through it.’ Dad was whispering, which made it seem more frightening, more serious.

  Jago is going through it as well, I thought. I decided now wasn’t a good time to tell Dad I’d almost drowned him.

  There were only three other people in the waiting room. We sat on orange plastic chairs arranged in two lines, facing each other. A phone rang somewhere in another room.

  A nurse called out a name and a man left, leaving an eerie quiet. Someone dropped a magazine. My bathing costume was still damp under my clothes, and so uncomfortable it made me wriggle.

  Feeling thirsty, I got up and helped myself to a paper cup. The gurgling the water cooler made sounded so loud I said sorry to no one in particular.

  We waited for what seemed like ages but was probably only twenty minutes or so. At last the doctor, Dad’s friend, came out to speak to us.

  He was smiling. I blew out my breath in relief.

  ‘She’s okay now. We had some quite serious breathing problems for a while there. How are you fixed for looking after her son for another night or so, Dai?’

  ‘No problem,’ Dad said. ‘Isn’t there someone we should be contacting, though – family, friends?’

  ‘The boy says not. Says he and his mother are on their own mostly. What about the boy’s father – no sign of him yet?’

  Dad shook his head.

  ‘Someone’s been calling several times a day to find out how Polly is, a woman. She won’t leave her name but sounds local. Any ideas who that could be?’

  Dad looked puzzled. ‘No,’ he said.

  Dr Dylan spoke quietly to Dad. ‘This whole thing is becoming a bit of a mystery. What do you think is going on?’

  Dad rubbed his bald patch. ‘Beats me,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm. You two can go and see her now if you want,’ Dr Dylan said.

  Walking into her room, I thought Polly would be angry with me. Jago must have told her I pushed him into the sea.

  I felt my face burn. I was wrong, though, because she tried to smile.

  At some point during the day she’d drawn her eyebrows back on, but drawn them crookedly. One of them had to avoid the stitches so it was a different shape. It gave her an odd look. While her mouth was smiling, her forehead was frowning. Very weird.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Linette says she’ll pop round later, after work, with some shampoo and stuff,’ Dad said. He looked and sounded awkward, standing at the bottom of the bed rubbing his big fisherman’s hands together. ‘Your boy is more than welcome to stay with us for a bit longer. As long as you need, in fact,’ he added, quickly.

  Jago was sitting by the bed holding his mother’s hand. He didn’t look up. The salt water had dried in his hair and it looked like a bird’s nest. I realised my brown, tangled frizz probably looked ten times worse.

  Polly nodded weakly. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Dai, and you too, Carys – and Linette, of course. You’ve all been so kind.’ She started to cry. ‘Oh, and thank you for the flowers, too.’

  Dad looked really embarrassed. ‘Flowers? Not from us, I’m afraid. Right. Well, if there’s nothing we can do for the minute, I’ll get Carys home. Jago, do you want to stay with your mum for a bit longer? Linette can pick you up later when she drops in the stuff.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jago’s voice sounded strange and I realized he was trying not to cry. He didn’t look at me.

  Dad hates hospitals, they make him nervous, so we left as soon as we could. As we crossed the car park I thought I saw a figure dart quickly behind the wall. It was an odd thing for someone to do – suspicious.

  While Dad was searching for his car keys I wandered down to where the ambulance was parked and leaned over the hedge, trying to see around the trees. There was no one there. I wondered if whoever was hiding from us knew where Tristan was and why he’d disappeared.

  While Dad made his famous fishfinger and ketchup sandwiches, I took Tia for a walk along the road. People kept stopping me to make a fuss of her and say how cute she was, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk. Not even about Tia. I had a lot on my mind.

  So much had happened in the last couple of days. Tristan running away, Polly’s bee sting, Hug Howells screaming at me, Jago nearly drowning. Then there was Kemble Sykes. What was he after? Why was he so desperate to find Tristan? And most importantly – where was Tristan?

  Dad was fishing again that night, so Linette was staying at our flat. She’d brought Jago back from the hospital.

  ‘Pizza or fish cakes?’

  ‘Chicken pie,’ I said. Linette frowned at me but took three pies out of the freezer.

  ‘Peas or sweetcorn?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, right. We’re in one of those moods, are we, Madam?’

  ‘I’m not. I don’t know about you.’ I turned the telly up.

  Jago was sitting on the sofa with Tia on his lap. ‘How did you get her into the flat without Mrs Jenkins seeing?’ I asked.

  ‘Hid her in my geology bag.’

  We both laughed. I was glad he wasn’t still mad at me for nearly drowning him.

  Telly was boring, so after dinner Jago and I watched a DVD – the DVD was boring too.

  We took Tia out onto the balcony, where she promptly peed on the new pot plant Linette had brought round. I didn’t stop her.

  About ten o’clock, Linette said she was going to bed and for us to remember to put the lights out.

  It was cool on the balcony. Lights from the flats along the beachfront shone in squares on the sand. A group of people had lit a fire on the beach and we could hear their laughter and smell sausages frying. The sea swooshed gently. Waves left a fringe of foam on the sand.

  Now that we were on our own I felt awkward. ‘So what does your mum do?’ I said, to make conversation.

  ‘She’s a Kirlian photographer.’

  ‘What’s a Kir … Kir…?’

  ‘Kirlian photographer. She takes pictures of people’s auras.’

  ‘Auras? Like a kind of light glowing around you?
My friend Becca is into that. She says good people have nice-coloured auras and horrible people have grotty ones.’

  ‘Yeah. If you have the right equipment you can take pictures. There are auras around rocks and trees and stuff too.’

  A sudden cheer from below made Jago stand and look over the balcony to see what the people on the beach were doing. I thought again how much he looked like his father with that long silver-blond hair down over his shoulders.

  He sat back down and carried on talking. ‘We go to music festivals. You know Glastonbury, places like that.’

  ‘How does she take pictures of auras?’

  ‘Special camera, something to do with electricity, then Mum reads them. She can tell what that person is like, or how they’re feeling, by the mix of colours and where they are on the body.’

  I thought about that for a minute.

  Jago nodded towards the Shiver Stone. ‘I want to go there tomorrow, for sure. Think I’ve had enough swimming to last me a while.’

  I changed the subject quickly in case we were heading for the ‘You pushed me in’ argument again. ‘Do you know the story of the Shiver Stone?’ I asked him.

  ‘I think that, probably, like Stonehenge, the Stones were…’

  ‘Nooooo. I mean the story, the legend, the myth. Do you want to hear it?’

  ‘Yeah. But first, have you got any crisps or anything? The smell of those sausages cooking is making me hungry.’

  I went to the kitchen, filled a bowl with salted peanuts and grabbed two bags of cheesy Wotsits. I brought two cans of coke too.

  He’d collected cushions to sit on and the duvet off the sofa bed which we folded over our knees. Tia immediately snuggled into my lap.

  There was a click, fizz as Jago tugged the ring pull. He took a big slurp of coke, staring out over the sea.

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  I dropped a cheesy Wotsit onto my lap in front of Tia’s nose. She sniffed it and then licked at it gently.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘A long, long time ago lived a…’

  Jago snorted with laughter and coke came out of his nose. He coughed and brushed at his t-shirt.