Читать книгу Dark of the Moon - Siobhan Curham - Страница 11

As the boat pulls away from the shore I start shivering uncontrollably. This is it. If Hortense is going to pull a stunt to get us to stay she’s going to have to do it now. My throat feels so tight I can barely breathe. I close my eyes and think of Mom. Before Dad left and Mom’s life collapsed in on itself like a burst balloon, she was a total yoga nut. One time, when I was freaking out about my mid-term math paper, she taught me how focusing on my breathing could help me stay calm. I imagine her thick southern drawl now, reminding me what to do: ‘In through the nose, honey, out through the mouth. In through the nose, and out through the mouth .’

I keep on doing this as Dan and Cruz hoist the sail. A sudden breeze causes the faded fabric to billow and the boat picks up speed. It’s not until we’ve been going for a few minutes that I allow myself to look back. The sunrise is making the peak of the volcano glow so red it looks like it’s about to erupt. I look down at the beach. The pale sand is scarred with the scorched remains of our fires and, right in the middle, our HELP sign made of sticks. I think back to when we first arrived, and how beautiful and inviting the island had seemed after the terror of the storm. If only we’d known. I turn away and look out to sea. My heart is thumping like a bass drum. Please, please let us get away, I silently pray. At the other end of the boat, Cruz looks at me and smiles. But his eyes look anxious and I can tell he’s thinking the same as me – is it really going to be this simple?

A sudden breeze spins the sail round and we all duck as it narrowly misses our heads.

‘Shit!’ Cruz grabs hold of the sail and tries to steer the boat back on course, but the wind is too strong.

‘What is it? What’s happening?’ Belle asks.

‘It’s just getting a little breezy. No need to worry,’ the Flea says, but his voice is tight.

‘Help me,’ Cruz calls.

All of us, apart from Belle, grab hold of the sail, but even four of us aren’t strong enough to beat the force of the wind.

I look up at the sky, expecting to see storm clouds building, but it’s vivid blue.

‘At least we’re not being blown back to the island,’ the

Flea says.

Cruz frowns as he continues to battle with the sail. ‘We’re not getting away from it either, though.’

We’re speeding parallel to the island now, past the beach and the cove and on past a craggy wall of rainforest. It goes on and on. The island is way bigger than I’d imagined.

We all lean our weight into the sail, but it’s no good. The wind is like a force field locking it into place. Then it suddenly changes direction. The sail swings round until the boat is facing the island.

‘Oh no,’ the Flea says.

‘What is it?’ Belle asks.

‘Nothing,’ the Flea and I chorus, exchanging worried glances.

‘Come on!’ Cruz yells and once again we try shifting the sail.

‘Why’s it so windy? Is there a storm coming?’ Belle looks around blindly.

‘No, honey, it’s just a bit breezy now we’re further out,’ the Flea says. He turns to me and mouths the words, ‘What the hell?’

I shrug. Fear takes root in the pit of my stomach.

The boat is cutting across the water like a speedboat now as it’s sucked back in toward the island. But this time, there’s no wide beach to land on. All I can see is a forbidding wall of rainforest.

‘Shit. You think there’s gonna be rocks up ahead?’ Dan asks Cruz.

‘I don’t know,’ Cruz replies.

‘What are we going to do?’ the Flea says.

‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ Belle sounds close to tears. I go sit down next to her.

‘The wind is blowing us back inland,’ I tell her.

‘Back to the beach?’ Belle’s eyes dart from side to side. She looks terrified.

‘No, we’ve come round to the other side of the island.’

‘Hey, take a look at that,’ Dan shouts, pointing straight ahead. He’s pointing to a small chink in the wall of green. As we get closer, the chink gets a little bigger.

‘It’s an inlet,’ Cruz cries.‘Okay, we have to try and steer the boat toward it.’

But we don’t have to steer at all. The boat is drawn to the narrow gap like a pea being sucked up by a straw. We all sigh with relief as we sail past jagged outcrops of rocks and into the opening.

‘Holy moley!’ the Flea exclaims. The inlet is so narrow the trees on either side meet overhead, forming a tunnel of green. A noisy chorus of squawks and screeches rings out around us, like a drunken band trumpeting our arrival. I look up and see two blood-red parrots watching us with beady black eyes. Their gnarled beaks are huge.

‘What’s happening now?’ Belle whispers.

‘We’re going down the inlet,’ I say.

Belle sighs and closes her eyes.

Dan takes his baseball cap off and gazes around. The Flea looks equally awestruck. Cruz stands at the prow of the boat, his shoulders broad and his back arrow-straight, as if he’s preparing for battle.

My stomach churns as I wonder what might be waiting for us at the other end of the tunnel. I think of Hortense and how she looked when we came across her in the forest – her wizened skin and claw-like fingers, and the horrific rasping noise she’d made when she chased us.

‘Look,’ Cruz says, pointing ahead.

In the distance I can see a glimmer of light. The boat carries on sailing toward it. I look around at the others and a terrible thought enters my mind. What if we’re sailing towards our death?

When we finally reach the end of the tunnel the inlet spills out into a huge lagoon. The water is bright turquoise, surrounded by a high wall of rainforest. It’s like floating inside a huge green bowl and it’s so breathtakingly beautiful that for a second I forget to be scared. I figure the others must be feeling the same, as they’re all gazing around, open-mouthed. Only Belle still looks tense.

‘Where are we?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know, but it looks uncannily like paradise!’ the Flea exclaims.

‘We’re in some kind of lagoon,’ I tell Belle. I start looking round for signs of anything sinister. As the boat drifts toward the far side of the lagoon I notice something moving on the rocks at the water’s edge.

‘Look, there’s someone there,’ I whisper.

‘Who is it?’ Belle hisses.

‘I’m not sure,’ the Flea says, squinting toward the shore.

We all sit in silence as the boat glides closer and closer to the land. Whoever it is they are sitting cross-legged on the rocks, facing away from us. All I can make out is that they’ve got cropped white-blond hair and deeply tanned skin.

Dan looks at us. ‘Should we call out to them?’

We all shrug, unsure what to do.

‘Well, they’re gonna see us soon enough,’ the Flea says, ‘so I guess it makes no difference.’ He carefully gets to his feet. ‘Hello!’

The figure jumps up and turns to face us. It’s a girl. She’s wearing a bright coral sundress.

The girl shields her eyes with a tanned hand and looks straight at us.

‘Oh my freakin’ God! I can’t believe there’s someone here!’ the Flea exclaims, looking back at us.

‘Yeah, and someone who doesn’t look like they’ve just escaped from the set of Dawn of the Dead,’ Dan says with a wry chuckle.

The girl starts running across the rocks toward us.

‘Who do you think she is?’ the Flea whispers.

‘How the hell should we know?’ Dan says, raising his eyebrows.

I look at Cruz. He shrugs.

‘Hello!’ the girl calls out as she reaches the water’s edge.

‘Hey!’ the Flea cries excitedly. He turns back to us, his eyes wide. ‘She speaks English!’

‘Who are you?’ the girl says in a clipped British accent. Then she starts to laugh. ‘I’m sorry – that sounds really rude. But – where have you come from?’

‘She doesn’t just speak English – she is English!’ the Flea whispers excitedly.

The girl starts wading through the water toward us. Her face is a perfect heart shape and she has the kind of welcoming eyes and wide smile that make you instantly feel at ease. As she gets closer I see a tiny silver nose stud glinting against her golden brown skin and a bright-blue butterfly tattooed on her wrist.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks, her eyes widening with concern as she gets closer to the boat.

‘Yes, we’re fine, thank you. Positively brilliant. Well, we are now we’ve found you!’ the Flea exclaims in his best British accent. ‘I’m Jimmy Patterson, but you can call me the Flea – everyone else does – and it is very nice to meet you!’ He extends his thin arm over the side of the boat to shake her hand.

The girl laughs heartily as she takes it. ‘I’m Lola. Very nice to meet you too.’

She grins at the rest of us. ‘This is so cool!’

The way she says it, so excited and carefree, makes me want to cry. It feels so long since we experienced this kind of normality, I’m not exactly sure how to react.

Cruz nods at Lola, then he jumps down into the water and starts guiding the boat toward the sand. Dan quickly joins him.

Lola grabs hold of the side of the boat to help them. She looks at me and smiles. ‘How did you guys get here?’

‘Very long story,’ I say.

‘We were shipwrecked a few days ago,’ the Flea explains. ‘Over on the other side of the island.’

Lola shakes her head in disbelief. ‘No way!’

The Flea nods proudly. ‘Yes indeedy!’

‘My name’s Grace,’ I say, climbing down into the water next to Lola. She takes hold of my arm to steady me. She’s grinning like a Cheshire cat.

‘This is brilliant. I mean, obviously it isn’t brilliant that you’ve been shipwrecked, but it’s so cool that you’ve turned up today. Ruby’s last lot of guests have just left and I was thinking that it was going to be so boring until the next lot arrive.’

‘Who’s Ruby?’ the Flea and Dan ask in unison.

Lola smiles at them. ‘She runs the retreat.’

‘The retreat?’ Dan turns back to me and raises his eyebrows.

Lola nods. ‘Yeah. It’s where I’m staying. She set it up a couple of years ago, when she got sick of city life. Wait till you meet her. She’s so calm and serene. She’s like a walking advert for island living.’

The Flea leans close to me. ‘Okay, tell me, am I dreaming right now?’ he whispers.

‘What’s that?’ Lola asks.

‘Nothing,’ the Flea says quickly. ‘It just seems very different on this side of the island.’

‘No kidding,’ Dan mutters.

Lola stares at him, puzzled. Then she turns to look at Belle, who’s still in the boat and staring ahead of her blankly. ‘Is your friend okay?’ she whispers to me.

‘Yes, well, no – not exactly. She just lost her sight.’

Lola’s huge eyes widen. ‘That’s terrible! What happened?’

‘It’s a very long story.’

‘But how?’

I look at Lola and shake my head. If Belle hears us talking about her it’ll only make her feel a million times worse.

Thankfully, Lola gets what I’m trying to say and nods. ‘Okay, well let me take you guys up to the retreat. You look exhausted.’

The Flea and I help Belle from the boat.

‘It’s okay, Belle,’ I whisper in her ear,‘she seems really nice.’

Belle nods and gives a tight little smile.

‘Follow me,’ Lola calls, before bounding across the rocks. We trail after her, the Flea arm in arm with Belle, and Dan right behind them. Cruz drops back and takes my hand.

‘What do you reckon about all this?’ I whisper.

He shrugs his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t believe we’re back on the island.’

Cruz nods.

‘Do you think it was Hortense?’ I hardly dare look at him.

‘I don’t know. Sometimes you do get freak winds like that but . . .’

He doesn’t need to continue. I know exactly what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too – Hortense was never going to let us get away that easily.

Once we get to the end of the rocks, Lola leads us through a cluster of trees. But it isn’t like the rainforest on the other side of the island that’s claustrophobically dense and seems to go on forever. These trees are a lot more spaced out and within a half a minute we’ve reached another huge clearing. It’s cut through by a wide, green river, covered with plate-sized lily pads. A rickety wooden footbridge snakes across the water. ‘We’re almost there,’ Lola calls back to us. ‘Ruby isn’t at the retreat right now. She went to the bay to see the last guests off.’

We all exchange glances again. After all this time feeling trapped on the island it’s kind of freaky hearing her talk so casually about people leaving. Freaky, but unbelievably good. Maybe all isn’t lost after all. Maybe we’ll still be able to get out of here.

We make our way across the bridge. As it starts swaying wildly I’m too exhausted to even worry about what could be lurking in the water beneath. Once we’re on the other side, Lola leads us through some more trees and then out into another huge clearing.

‘Wowsers!’ the Flea exclaims.

Several long cabins made from bamboo line the edges of the clearing. But my eyes are instantly drawn to the centre. There, looming above the cabins, is the strangest house I’ve ever seen. It’s three storeys high and perched on wooden stilts so tall it’s impossible to see inside from down on the ground. The walls are a light-and-dark patchwork of bamboo and logs, topped with a slightly lop-sided roof made from sheets of corrugated metal.

Lola sees us staring at it and starts to laugh. ‘That’s where Ruby lives. It’s cool, isn’t it? The retreat guests all stay in the cabins,’ Lola points to one of them. ‘There’s plenty of room. Now the others have gone there’s only me and Michael – my boyf— . . . ex-boyfriend, and Ruby here. The next guests are arriving in a few days – for the party.’ She starts to grin.‘You’ll be here for the party!’

‘What party?’ Dan asks, looking slightly shell-shocked.

‘We can’t stay for any party,’ the Flea whispers.‘We need to get Belle to hospital.’

But before Lola can reply a guy comes out of one of the cabins, rubbing his eyes like he just woke up. He’s broad-shouldered and pale skinned, with copper-coloured wavy hair that almost reaches his shoulders. He’s wearing long swimming shorts and has an elaborate tattoo of a dragon across one half of his chest.

When he sees Lola he starts to glare. ‘Where have you been?’ he asks. His accent is British too. Then he notices us. ‘Who are these people?’

‘This is Michael,’ Lola says to us, her voice suddenly flat.

‘Who are they?’ Michael hisses at her. I take an instant dislike to him.

‘I found them down at the lagoon,’ Lola explains. ‘They’ve been shipwrecked and they were –’

‘And you brought them here?’ Michael scowls at her.

‘Well, yes. Obviously.’

‘But what about Ruby?’

Lola stares at him. ‘They’ve been shipwrecked!’

Ever the optimist, the Flea walks over to Michael, holding out his hand.‘I’m Jimmy the Flea, pleased to meet you,’ he says cheerily. But Michael completely blanks him and continues staring at Lola.

‘I’m sure Ruby won’t mind,’ Lola says, her cheeks flushing. ‘I couldn’t exactly leave them there.’

Michael gives a sarcastic laugh. ‘How compassionate of you.’

I feel my hackles rising. What the hell is this guy’s problem? ‘We’ve been shipwrecked,’ I say. ‘We need help getting back home.’

Michael looks at me blankly before turning back to Lola. ‘Yeah well, it’s your funeral.’Then he stomps back into the cabin.