Читать книгу Worlds Explode - Shane Hegarty, Shane Hegarty - Страница 21

Finn shaded his phone’s screen from the morning sunshine, covering it with the palm of his hand to better see the picture of the map on it. He zoomed in, moved the image around, then lifted his head again to scan the grassy cliff he and Emmie were standing on. Ahead was spread out a glistening green sea. Away to their left, the buildings and walls of Darkmouth huddled up against each other as if afraid. And, below their feet, lush but uneven ground.

Nothing else.

“There should be something here,” said Finn, disappointment tightening his voice. “The X says it’s in the centre of this area somewhere. See?” He pointed at the picture.

Emmie squinted at it. “No. Sorry.”

Since finding the clue hardly an hour ago, Finn had feared another dead end. They had been wrong so many times already. So, they had agreed they should check this clue out alone, to say they were off to school as always, an illusion of normality even when their world had been turned upside down. No worrying Finn’s mother. No raised hopes. No drama. No Assessor. No Steve. No one to disappoint but themselves.

The two searched again, Finn’s bag jolting on his back, the clatter and clash of the fighting suit stuffed inside, as he marched through clumps of grass, pushed aside weeds with his feet, carefully lifted knots of thorns.

They criss-crossed the cliff, looking for something, anything.

“Anything?” Finn shouted to Emmie.

“Nothing!” she shouted back.

The table in the painting had featured some objects that had seemed relevant and a few that didn’t. There was the mirror and its map obviously. There was also a compass pointing south-east, which happened to be the direction from the house to this crest of cliff. There were two books without titles, but one looked quite like the thin notebook Finn had found which had Niall Blacktongue’s initials on it. He had brought that notebook with him this morning, just in case it helped.

But there were other things in the painting. A magnifying glass, some coins, a feather in an ink pot. They could have meant anything or everything. Or nothing at all.

Yet the map itself, while spare in details, seemed clear. This was where they were supposed to be. Maybe.

On the cliff edge was a crumbling stone hut, which locals called the Look-out Post, but only because “Look out!” were someone’s last words before being grabbed by a Legend here a hundred years ago.

Emmie joined him, wincing at the stench of wee in the hut. Finn looked inside the simple old shelter, then outside it, where an orange life jacket and a solid buoyancy ring were placed in case someone fell into the sea.

“You sure this is the right place?” Emmie asked.

Finn wasn’t sure at all. “Yes,” he said.

Heads down, they made another sweep of the terrain. Finn could feel his breath growing laboured with stress, the nagging sense of anger that he’d fooled himself into believing this was it. He stopped at a patch of grass and weeds, darkened as if from some old campfire or splash of poison. Poking at it with his fingers, he caught himself on a thorn which scratched his right wrist and tore free a coloured rope wristband he’d once made for himself when he was supposed to be doing his homework.

He was licking at the scratch as he met up with Emmie again.

She put her hands in her pockets, glanced around so she didn’t have to catch his eye. “We could always—”

“We’re not telling your dad, Emmie.”

“OK. Then maybe—”

“Or my mam. Definitely not my mam.”

They remained on the same spot, Finn half hoping something would just come to him.

“Maybe it’s hidden,” said Emmie. “Or buried and grown over.”

“If it is, the map isn’t very precise,” said Finn, kicking at the hard ground with his heel. “We’d probably dig up half this cliff before we found anything.”

A sound drifted across the breeze and reached their ears.

Yap.

It was coming from some distance away.

Yap. Yap.

It was coming from below them.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

“Do you hear that dog?” Finn said to Emmie as he marched off towards the edge of the cliff.

He jogged to where the grass began to rise up to meet the plunging edge, then dropped on to his belly and peered over the cliff at the crescent of rock-strewn beach at its base. Emmie flopped on the grass beside him. Finn pointed at a mound of rubble. A buckle in the cliff. The glimpse of a large hole crumpling under the weight it shouldered. And a basset hound peeing at the entrance.

“That’s Yappy, the dog with the teeth,” Finn said.

“That’s why he was covered in salty water and bits of sand,” said Emmie.

The giddiness of hope rose inside Finn again. “That’s it. Whatever we’re supposed to find, it’s in there.”