The Way to Impossible Island

by Sophie Kirtley

  Dara glanced back at Carn Cottage – its cosy glow so warm and welcoming, calling him in from the dimness and the shadows of the rolling empty dunes.

  No. He would not turn back. All his life he’d planned this, and now he’d finally realised that it was up to him and him alone to actually make it happen.

  Over there on the other side of the sunset-streaked waters of the strait, Lathrin Island waited patiently for him, bruise-dark and brooding.

  Dara turned and made his way towards the harbour. He took the far path through the dunes, the one that ran nearer the field than the strand; Charlie had called this the Wayward Way because it was the sneaky path that Mum and Dad couldn’t see from the cottage. Dara didn’t take sneaky paths; Dara always told Mum and Dad everything; Dara was always careful. Sensible. Well … until now.

  As he trudged through the dunes, Dara played today over and over in his mind. A wolf? What had he been thinking? And what was Dr Da Silva thinking anyway? Cancelling his whole operation just because of one stupid heart flurry! One stupid mistake! He felt the lava-heat of anger bubble in the pit of his belly once more. He’d show them.

  Suddenly Dara stopped, blinded by a flash of realisation. He would show them. He’d show them he was perfectly well enough for the Big Op.

  He’d get to Lathrin Island. All by himself. He’d get home. All by himself. And he’d be totally fine. He’d do it his way. And he would prove them all wrong.

  He grinned and walked on, imagining how Dr Da Silva would phone them back and say she’d made a mistake and actually Dara could have the Big Op after all and she’d say how sorry she was and everything. ‘My apologies, Dara,’ he murmured half under his breath, in his most purrish Dr Da Silva voice. Then he giggled. Everything was going to be fine.

  Suddenly his giggle froze.

  What was that noise?

  It stopped almost as soon as it started. A low moan, like someone in pain.

  Dara peered out over the darkening dunes, thinking of the stupid wolf howl that he definitely did not hear earlier. ‘Hello?’ he called.

  Silence listened.

  ‘Is there – is somebody there?’

  But nobody answered. Just the whisperings of dune grass and the distant swoosh of waves breaking on the beach. Dara swallowed. His mouth had gone all dry. He was being ridiculous; it was just … the wind … or a …

  The rustle and crack of someone moving through the grass. Footsteps. Coming closer.

  Dara staggered away, off the path; his foot sank into a rabbit hole. He lost his balance and he fell back with a thud into the hard sand. He breathed deep; his nostrils filled with a smell, strange but familiar, sweet but rotten too, like fields and zoos.

  Coming towards him through the dunes loomed a shadow. Dara scrambled to his feet and faced it.

  Mothgirl had to escape the stampede. Her bare feet pounded the dust as the thick, warm smell of aurochs began to overtake her, bitter like leaf milk, sweet as deer droppings. Mothgirl coughed as she ran towards the spirit hare, thickening dust tickling her nose, filling her mouth, stinging her eyes. The thundering of hooves grew noisier and noisier still, until she could not hear her own fast breath. Mothgirl looked up and saw the sky was vanished in the cloud of red dust; her feet were gone from beneath her, and ByMySide was …

  ByMySide!

  Mothgirl’s pounding heart jolted. She skidded to a halt. Where was he? Where was her wolf? Panic rising, she rubbed at her streaming, scratching eyes with her fists, sightless in the deafening dust.

  ‘BYMYSIDE!’ she screamed. ‘BYMYSIDE!’ But her desperate voice was lost amidst the thunder of hooves and snortings and bellowings.

  The earth shook beneath her feet: the aurochs were close; they were many! Flame-fast terror rose in her: she was so small; so small, so alone, so foolish!

  Mothgirl ran again, unseeing, choking with dust-breath, but in her panic she did not know if she ran towards the rampage or away. She turned, she saw a flash, a blink of star-blue, spirit-bright eyes, she changed direction, ran towards them. She could feel her voice screaming but no sound came out, only the crashing roar of aurochs.

  Something heavy and fast struck her hip; ByMySide! He hurtled into her with such force that her legs crumpled beneath her and her whole body thudded to the ground. She rolled through dust and sharp tearing branches. And ByMySide rolled with her; she smelt his smell and felt his fur on her skin.

  In a whoosh of stink-thick air the herd were there. Mothgirl curled her body tight around ByMySide, together in a ball, while all around them hooves stampeded in the choking red dust.

  Mothgirl pressed her face tight to his fur, covering her head with her hands. The stampeding storm of aurochs’ hooves was everywhere, she felt their wiry hairs scratch her arms and the damp warmth of their bellowing breath. But she did not look up. At any moment a hard black hoof could crash down upon them and crumble their bones like nutshells. She shook with sobs as the trembled ground rumbled beneath her.

  She heard the deep-fear growl ByMySide made in his belly and she clutched her deertooth necklet; she tried to sing spirit song to make safe but Mothgirl was choking, breathless in the dust-thick air.

  And through the din came Pa’s voice whispering from a firestory told in the depths of her rememberings. One day our waking days will end … one day spirit sleep will come and take us all …

  ‘No, Pa!’ she sobbed. She did not want her waking days to end. That was not the way!

  She lay curled tight as a bud with her trembling wolf and tears streamed hot from the darkness of Mothgirl’s closed eyes. Her sobs lost against the mighty racket of the aurochs, who huffed and snorted to one another as they rampaged, shaking the earth and the air all around.

  Breathless with fear, Dara squinted at the looming shape in the dusk. The shadow approached. Massive. A beast.

  He felt his chest tighten. He tried to stay calm. He did the breathing exercises Dr Da Silva had taught him.

  In; two … three … four …

  Out; six … seven … eight …

  Then the shadow made the noise again, the long low moan.

  And suddenly Dara started to giggle, his fear lifting like birds from a branch. The shadow was … mooing!

  It was a cow! Only a cow.

  He knew that the farmer often let the herd graze on the dunes down by the East Strand; one of them must’ve wandered right up here. Dara grinned in relief as he watched the shadow cow bend her big head to nibble at something delicious in the dune grass, then amble onward, slow and placid.

  Dara put his hand on his chest; his heart was not slow and placid. He felt a pinch of shame – imagine getting so afraid of a big old cow! He sat down on the grass and had a puff on his puffer. He felt better for all of five seconds, but then the tightness clasped his chest again. Dara eyed the cosy glow from Carn Cottage – he couldn’t exactly turn back now after a sunset stroll through the sand dunes and a close encounter with a cow.

  He turned the packet of new pills over in his hands. ‘The Pink Pills of Power,’ he murmured, rolling his eyes. Mum had said to take one at bedtime and one in the morning. Maybe if he took one now it’d be enough to stop his heart from going bananas as he rowed across Lathrin Strait? Dara whooshed his pill down with a gulp of water, then put everything back into his backpack.

  Everything except his little lucky brass hare, which had rolled and fallen, unseen, on to the sand beneath a yellow-bloomed gorse bush … and lay there still. Poised and ready. Alert and listening. Forgotten in the coming dark.

  Mothgirl lay curled in the dust, one hand buried tight in ByMySide’s fur, the other clinging to Voleboy’s spear.

  Ears ringing, head spinning, Mothgirl chanted spirit song while visions of all that she loved swirled through her mind like a night story – Hart and the moonmoss, Pa by the fireside, Eelgirl in the tree, Owlboy and his jump-stones. ‘No!’ and ‘No!’ and ‘NO!’ she whispered hoarsely, spitting dust from her mouth. She would NOT let spirit sleep take her; she needed to find
Hart; she needed to fight Vulture; she needed to return to her family. Mothgirl tightened her body and gritted her teeth.

  She felt ByMySide wriggling; he made a noise like he was arrow-struck. Mothgirl cried out too and she gripped him harder. A wild stinging wind whooshed fast around her, and suddenly the air was thick with smells, new smells, like water weed and salt fish. And through the ringing of her ears Mothgirl heard new sounds also. Not the thundering of hooves and the snorting of aurochs but small quieter sounds – the crikk-crrrik call of a night creature and the soft rustle of wind in reed-grass.

  She felt ByMySide’s muscles soften in her loosening arms. Mothgirl rubbed the sand from her eyes and, opening them, she lifted her chin and stared up into the pale blue sky of early night which glowed through a web of thin branches above them.

  Mothgirl squeezed herself from beneath the scratchy twigs and crouched, coughing, on the sandy ground. Mothgirl looked back at the place she had crawled from, where ByMySide still hid; a small hollow at the base of a yellow-thorn bush – here they had lain, safe from the stampede, sheltered amongst the prickle-tangle of branches. ‘I give thanks,’ she whispered hoarsely to the yellow-thorn bush.

  And lowering her face to peek into the hollow, she reached out her hand to her trembling wolf. ‘Oh, ByMySide,’ she breathed. ‘I give thanks to YOU, my wolf.’ For he had saved her; his clever nose had found her in the whirling dust and sent her tumbling into the shelter of that yellow-thorn hollow! She reached in her arm and rubbed his fur and sang to him softly until his fearful shiverings eased.

  Her wolf crawled out then too. His ears flat and frightened, his tail tip twitching, his amber eyes darting, firefly fast. He pressed himself to her, leaning so strong and heavy that Mothgirl near toppled once more.

  ByMySide opened his jaw and dropped something on to her lap. He softly made his dig-find noise. Look! Look this! He fixed his girl with wide amber eyes.

  ‘What you find, ByMySide?’ whispered Mothgirl as she lifted the dig-find from her lap, still warm and wet, walnut-small and pebble-hard. She held it high to catch the last of the light.

  And she gasped, in horror and in awe.

  For it was a small small hare, cut from a stone so strange and cold and gleaming it made Mothgirl shiver just to look on it. Impossibly perfect, a honey-pale ‘Spirit hare?’ breathed Mothgirl, her voice catching, for she was sudden afraid.

  She turned the gleam-stone hare over and over in her hand and she shivered deeper, thinking of those bright blue, other-world eyes. How? How could it be? Mothgirl could knap a fine flint spearhead, she could draw the line of a fast fast deer on the cave wall, but no man, no woman, could ever make stone take the shape of a creature, so small and so perfect. Her mouth was dry with fear. No – it was impossible. It was too strange. Spirit-strange.

  So with her spear-strong arm Mothgirl flung that small small impossible spirit hare from her, up and over the grey grasses, furthest far away.

  Mothgirl reached for her wolf, but ByMySide sprang from her in a cloud of pale dust, chasing his dig-find far into the night.

  Mothgirl ran blindly after, calling out his name, her voice drowned by that harsh crikk-crrrik of a bird she had never heard before.

  Crrrriikk … crrrikkk! came the raw lonesome cry of a corncrake. Dara stood still a moment; on tiptoes he squinted in the dusky light to where the bird was calling, over in the long grass beyond the dunes.

  The Wayward Way dipped down past the Old Boatshed. He and Charlie used to sit in here and read on rainy holiday days. Dara ran his hand along the flaking paintwork. He kind of felt sorry for the Old Boatshed; now that the New Boatshed had been built on the other side of the harbour, hardly anyone kept their boat here any more; it was all just abandoned and uncared for. Dara glanced out at the seaweed-strewn slipway and the poor old sea-battered jetty. Dara rounded the side of the boatshed; out-of-date posters for craft fairs and sandcastle competitions were pinned to the closed door and billowing in the breeze. Dara lifted the padlock and, biting his lip, he tried last year’s code: 4242 – the lock clicked open. ‘Yes!’ he hissed under his breath. He drew back the bolt and pushed open the squeaky door.

  Inside, the air was salty and stale, like it hadn’t been breathed for a long, long time. In the dim light, Dara could make out the shape of a wonky-looking old boat perched on a stand to get fixed; all around the shadowy walls was a jumble of boxes and heaps and piles and dangly bits of who-knows-what.

  Dara swallowed, trying not to imagine eyes watching him from the darkness or voices in the wind that whizzled through the cracks. He stepped into the Old Boatshed, fumbling in his backpack for his torch.

  From the dark above his head came a rustle-kerfuffle and a whoosh of movement, and Dara screamed and ducked and stared after the shape of a pale white barn owl who flew off into the darkening sky. Dara steadied himself. Only an owl. Only an owl. ‘Sorry, Owl,’ he whispered.

  His circle of light danced through the shadows until it landed on the orangey warmth of a heap of life jackets, stacked in a crate by the cobweb-thick window. He went to them and rummaged through the cool, clammy pile until he found a Dara-sized life jacket; he put it on and was turning to go when he heard a bark somewhere beyond the boatshed.

  Dara spun around and peered through the salt-fogged glass – there, at the top of the tallest dune, silhouetted by the rising moon, stood a huge shadowy dog. Dara squinted across the smooth vastness of the silvery strand; where was its owner?

  The beach was empty.

  Dara looked back and blinked at only the moon. The dog was gone.

  Or perhaps it was never there at all. A tingle tiptoed between his shoulder blades. The door squeaked in the wind.

  He hurried out of the Old Boatshed, closing the door behind him with a bang that scattered a whole flock of dune birds.

  He found the path once more and climbed slowly up the final sand dune to where the Wayward Way met the viewpoint. Dara stood, catching his breath, and looked out to where a huge full moon was rising above the dark water. ‘The Banshee Moon,’ he whispered under his breath. ‘The Banshee Moon’ was one of the spookiest Lathrin legends – when he was little he used to have to sleep with the lights on and his fingers in his ears after Charlie read it to him, because in the story it was hearing the banshee’s wails and sobs that had the power to trap you underground forever. Dara shuddered, in spite of himself.

  ‘Just a stupid story,’ he muttered crossly, and he turned away from the stupid Banshee Moon to face the bright hustle-bustle of the harbour.

  A fishing boat was coming in; Dara watched as the crew tossed big ropes to the shore men, calling out to each other over the raucous cries of the circling gulls. There was a queue at the fish and chip shop and he could hear laughter and music spilling out from the open doors of the pub. Some older kids were kicking a ball on the little patch of grass by the car park; just noisy shadows, and swathes of fairy lights twinkled around the ice cream kiosk where two up-late little ones ran round and round a lobster pot in small gigglish circles.

  Dara eyed the empty boats bobbing in the harbour. Then he looked at all the people milling around, and laughing and eating and playing. He’d never thought it would be so … busy. Suddenly in the harshness of the bright lights and busy-ness and the music his head started to spin and his plan started to crumble.

  What had he been thinking? Just borrow a boat from the harbour. What a stupid plan!

  He’d never even rowed a boat for more than a few strokes! He’d sat with Dad in little dinghy over at Horseshoe Bay last summer, watching Mum and Charlie jump off the high rocks; Dad had explained how to row and even let him have a tiny turn. But …

  Dara looked out at the moon-dappled path between the buoys that led through the waves all the way to Lathrin Island. Other people would be able to row all the way to the island. ‘Other people,’ he whispered bitterly, looking down at the footballing teenagers and the round-and-round toddlers. But not him.

  When he was little he’d
believed in everything: all Charlie’s stories; all the true legends; all the impossible dreams.

  Dara laughed a tight, bitter laugh. He remembered saying that he’d sail around the world one day, single-handed. That he’d climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. That he’d make a raft and go down the Amazon River.

  ‘One day,’ Mum had said. One day.

  Then Dara had started shrinking his hopes. Maybe he’d climb up to the top of Ben Nevis. Or he’d sail across the English Channel. He’d take his raft down the River Bann.

  One day. One day. After the Big Op, Dara.

  He remembered telling Tam in school that one day he’d row right across to Lathrin Island and see the Golden Hare, and Steffan Baxter had overheard and said he bet a million pounds that Dara never would because the Golden Hare didn’t even exist and everyone knew Dara Merriam had a jelly heart. And Steffan Baxter got in big trouble and had to apologise. But he didn’t mean that apology; Dara remembered seeing him cross his fingers behind his back.

  Suddenly Dara felt all alone in the world. He looked down at himself in his stupid yellow wellies and his stinky old life jacket, with his ridiculous backpack, packed with pointless things. What had he been thinking? Perhaps this wasn’t the way things were supposed to be after all. Perhaps he was wrong and Mum and Dad and Dr Da Silva were right. Perhaps even horrible Steffan Baxter was right. And facts were facts. There was no Golden Hare. And Dara Merriam couldn’t row across to Lathrin Island.

  Beneath the ominous brightness of the big low moon, Dara sighed. And far, far below him, the dark waves sighed too.

  Mothgirl followed ByMySide’s paw prints through the moonlit sandhills. Sighing winds breathed around her. Whisper and hiss. Whisper and hiss. She climbed higher, looking low, and suddenly her eyes narrowed.

  Here at the top of the sandhill another track crossed ByMySide’s trail. A strange track. Almost like man prints. But without toes. She knelt on the cool sand and ran her fingers over the prints. She shook her head. ‘Foot deerskins?’ she murmured. Mothgirl had heard tell of foot deerskins worn by clans from the far-ice-lands, but she had not believed that could be truth. Yet here were the markings, clear as the paw prints of her very own wolf.