The Way to Impossible Island

by Sophie Kirtley

  ‘Get up! Fast fast, Daramurrum!’ Mothga’s urgent whisper hissed in his ear. And from behind her in the tunnel he heard Vulture’s footsteps quicken.

  Eyes flickering, he rolled on to his knees and Mothga heaved him by one arm to his feet. He leaned on the wall and felt himself sway as he looked up through the open circle of dark light above him.

  ‘Climb!’ hissed Mothga. He heard the sharpness of panic in her voice.

  ‘I can’t,’ he whispered, with his ghost-pale voice. It was impossibly high. He was too weak. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You CAN, Daramurrum!’

  And he felt her try to lift him, and he raised his heavy arms and held the edge of the gap, but he didn’t have the strength to pull himself up and his fingers lost their grip and he slid back to the ground again.

  ‘I can’t!’ he wheezed. ‘You go, Mothga.’

  Without even a pause or a hesitation Mothga scrambled up and vanished through the trapdoor and into the grey-blue night. Her words from earlier played themselves over in Dara’s ears: You not big. You not strong. You cannot fight Vulture. You cannot help me.

  She had abandoned him. Discarded him like rubbish.

  Dara lay on his back, letting the rain fall on his face. Powerless, exhausted and empty, he closed his eyes and waited for Vulture’s shadow to pass across his face, and for the sharp point of Vulture’s triumphant spear to press down upon his chest.

  ‘Move!’ whispered Mothgirl through the moon hole. ‘Move! Now!’

  She heard the scramble below as Daramurrum rolled himself over, as she heaved the big big stone with both hands until it teetered right on the rim of the hole. With her back she gave it one last big push and it crashed down into the tunnel below.

  A cloud of dust rose up through the gap.

  ‘Daramurrum?’ she hissed, biting her lip and peering into the moon hole.

  ‘Yes?’ Daramurrum coughed and wheezed. Mothgirl’s heart soared.

  But there was no time for coughing and breathlessness. Vulture’s footsteps were only a spear throw away now. ‘Get up, Daramurrum!’ she hissed. ‘Climb up fast, I pull you!’

  Daramurrum wobbled to his feet and climbed on to the rock, unsteady as a toddle-child. She stretched down her arms and she grabbed Daramurrum’s arms and she pulled and she heaved and she tugged with all her might. And up he came, sliding out of the tunnel and up through the moon hole on his belly. And he rolled away from the gap.

  Mothgirl panted as she lifted the wooden circle that had blocked the moon hole and slammed it back down into the gap, piling so many rocks upon it that Vulture would never be able to lift it even if he was the strongest man in all the lands.

  ‘Ha!’ she declared. And she pressed her ear to the floor, waiting to hear a cry of fury and disappointment when the hunter arrived only to find that his prey had vanished. But no cry came.

  She tossed her head and turned her thoughts to poor Daramurrum, so weak now he had not even been able to use his great far-ice-lands powers to lift himself out of the tunnel and into the light. Mothgirl crept to his side; his eyes were closed again, and even in the pale moonlight she could see the sharp short pull of his breath, the blueness of his lips.

  Breath-sickness.

  She ought to take him out of this rain. They were in what seemed to Mothgirl a broken hut, made from tumbled stones with no skins upon the roof for shelter, but over by the far wall there was a high jutted ledge and beneath that the ground was dry.

  Mothgirl gently pulled Daramurrum to the sheltered place and she took off his deerskin to cover him with. A hoo-hooot above made Mothgirl jump; she turned and watched as a white wide-wing owl swooped in the dark sky and found perch upon a hawthorn tree. An idea tumbled into Mothgirl’s mind.

  Hawthorn leaf! She would make a hawthorn-leaf poultice, just like she did for Pa when his breath was short. She went to the owl tree and gathered hawthorn leaves aplenty. Then she found a flat rock and spread the leaves upon it, before she pounded and pounded at them with a rounded stone. When she’d had enough she scooped up the green leaf paste with an empty shell and approached Daramurrum.

  Daramurrum still lay sleeping; he breathed light and fast like the breath of a mouse or a vole. Mothgirl opened her pouch, took out her slicing stone and cut away his top deerskins. She was about to splat the poultice on to Daramurrum’s bare chest when she saw the wound he had there, pale and curved like a new moon. She traced it gently with her fingertip. It was an old wound; clean-healed. Mothgirl stared curiously, chewing her lip.

  Mothgirl applied the poultice and gently pulled Daramurrum’s soft red deerskin closed again.

  Daramurrum lay unmoving. She put her ear close by him a moment and listened; if the poultice worked, Daramurrum’s rough breath would soon change. She covered him in the crinkly deerskin once more, pulled her own deerskins tight, and she waited, watching the rise and the fall of his moonmarked chest.

  ‘Who you, Daramurrum?’ she whispered.

  He was not like her. He was not of her clan. He was a far-ice-lands boy who had spirited her whole world to strangeness. Why then had she gone back to him? Why had she saved him from Vulture? And why had he saved her from the Big Water? There were many many questions. None of it made sense; clans don’t help other clans – it was simply not the way.

  Mothgirl sighed and shivered; the rain had stopped but the night air was cool; fast thin clouds swept across the full moon. She wished she could do what she always did when her mind was full of questions: climb high in her seeking tree. But here, in this wind-whipped place, no tall trees grew, so Mothgirl climbed to the top of the stone wall and looked out. No trees grew, but in a hollow between the camp and the craggy island edges there was a wide swathe of stems and grasses, pale in the moonlight.

  ‘Who you … Mothga?’ she breathed into the night. Only the grasses whispered in wordless answer.

  But she was not Mothga, was she?

  She was Mothgirl, daughter of Eagle, sister of Hart. She ran fast in her forest. She was a fine fine hunter. Here in this place she was … she was … strange to herself. Changed as a bramble from bud to fruit.

  If Pa was here, what would he say? Would he know her still? Would he call her My Mothgirl and rest his big hand upon her head? Mothgirl’s eyes filled with tears that made the moon ripple. Would Pa be proud of her that she had crossed the Big Water and reached Lathrin Mountain and saved this breathless boy? Or had she already shamed him too deep?

  ‘Trouble girl,’ she muttered; perhaps that was what Pa called her now.

  A horrible vision crawled like smoke into her mind. Vulture. How did he know to find her here? Perhaps her own dear pa was so shamed of her he himself had sent Vulture here to capture her and squash her like clay and make her do things the way things had always been done.

  If only she could show Pa that there was more … more than … what was that strange far-ice-lands word Daramurrum had spoken? Nor-mill! If only she could show Pa that there was more than nor-mill. But, Mothgirl sighed, even if she turned around now and returned home, telling Pa of all that she had seen and done and felt, even then she knew he would not listen. ‘Firestories!’ he would say, as if all this was simply an imagining. No, Mothgirl was just a girl, a twelve-summers-old girl. She needed Hart to make herself be heard.

  And Hart needed her – out on the Big Water she had seen the light he made, calling her to find him. But if he was here on this island, why then had his light stopped shining? She bit her lip and thought of the waymarkers on the cave wall. Hart’s waymarker eclipsed by Vulture’s waymarker. What if Vulture …?

  In sudden horror Mothgirl replayed a remembering in her mind: Vulture’s strange fireside promise; his words echoed coldly in her head. ‘Vulture will help you find dear lost Hart … Vulture will bring your son to you,’ she whispered. And she remembered the sidelong glances of Vulture’s men and their quiet, under-breath ack-ack-ack laughter. They had not been laughing at her; they had been laughing at her brother and at the fate that awai
ted him at Vulture’s cruel hand.

  She sat up on her elbows and eyed the moon hole, covered and piled high with heavy rocks. Vulture was down there in the tunnel, but he would not be trapped there for long. Soon he would find a way out; he was slippery, greasy; he knew tricks and untruths like they were old friends. He helped no one and harmed many, in spite of all his ‘kind’ words and false promises. Was she already too late to help her brother?

  ‘Oh, Hart!’ she breathed, and Mothgirl gazed up into the darkness. ‘Make light!’ she pleaded. ‘Make light, Hart, and I will find you!’

  At the very edge of her eyes a flash flashed.

  Mothgirl leaped to her feet and scrambled up to the top of the tumbled rock walls of the old hut. She watched the darkness, pale-fringed now, way out where the Big Water met the sky.

  Sudden. Blink sudden, the light flashed again. The edge of a beam.

  She scrunched her eyes, and glimpsed the beam as it swung low across the Big Water; it was coming from somewhere right on the other side of the island.

  ‘Hart!’ she squeaked in hopeful joy. Vulture must not find her brother before she did!

  And Mothgirl leaped from the wall in a scurry of loose pebbles, landing by Daramurrum, who lay where she had left him; still as still. Mothgirl watched him breathe. Did his breaths come easier now? Gentler? She could not yet tell. But she knew it was best to let him sleep.

  So she grabbed a stick and drew a circle in the mud around him. ‘Make safe,’ she said quietly. ‘I will return to you, Daramurrum. I will return with my brother.’

  A night bird shrieked, sudden and shrill. Mothgirl ran into the dark.

  In his dream Dara heard a whisper, a bird cry, running feet. His eyes shot open.

  He sat bolt upright. His red raincoat slid off him on to the muddy floor of – he looked around – the floor of a little tumbledown house, with no roof, that smelt faintly of mushrooms and of sheep and – he sniffed – of something else. Why was he lying, sleeping on the floor of a ruin?

  He tried to remember what had happened but his brain felt all muddled and fuzzy. He’d been running … in the dark … in a tunnel … and his heart had …

  He put his hand on his chest, just to check his heart was still beating, and – ‘Eeewww!’ he said aloud.

  Sitting up, he peeped beneath his top; his chest was covered in dark green gloop and his hoody had been all ripped open. He cautiously dabbed a finger in the gloop and sniffed it – the goo smelt leafy, earthy, like the potions he used to make with Tam in the garden when they were little. What was going on? Why on earth was he covered in stinky green gunk? Who had …?

  Suddenly everything fell into place in his head: Mothga. Lathrin Island. Smugglers’ Bay. Vulture.

  ‘Mothga?’ he whispered into the night. She’d pulled him out of that tunnel. It must’ve been her who’d put this gunk on his chest. He took a big deep breath; the gloop seemed to be helping too, really helping; he could breathe easier than ever before. She’d saved his life. ‘Mothga? Where are you?’

  But she was nowhere. ‘Mothga?’ called Dara softly into the darkness as dread crept beneath his skin. Vulture? Had Vulture taken her?

  Cautiously he went over to the tunnel entrance. And sighed with relief: the round wooden door was still firmly closed and a huge heap of rocks were piled up on top of it – Vulture certainly wasn’t getting out of that tunnel!

  Shakily Dara walked out of the ruins of Gentle Bess’s cottage. The moon was high and full and everything was painted strangely silver; he wandered through the roofless remains of what once had been a little village where real people had eaten and worked and chatted and played.

  ‘Mothga?’ he whispered. ‘Are you here? Are you hiding?’

  But all was still. Weirdly windless. The long grey grass on the moon-drenched field only trembled so very slightly. Dara swallowed.

  Nothing to be afraid of, he told himself, trying not to imagine stupid, impossible, ridiculous things – banshees and wraiths and cruel laughing men.

  He turned away from the village and gazed out to the wide dark ocean. Far away in the east, he could see the very edges of dawn just thinking about breaking; a subtle line of butter yellow where the sea met the sky. Morning would come soon. Maybe as the sun rose all this strangeness would melt clean away and all would be normal again. ‘Nor-mill,’ he whispered to himself with a little smile.

  Dara blinked into the slow glow of dawn. Was nor-mill really what he wanted? A strange realisation tingled in the hairs on his arms and in his wriggly bare toes. Something was … changing. Perhaps something had already changed.

  He had always liked to know what was what. He liked calendars and plans and predictions. He liked knowing what was around the next corner, and the corner after that. But here he was, on Lathrin Island at dawn, and nothing was at all like he’d planned it. Dara hadn’t found the Golden Hare, but he had found a girl from the Stone Age … or maybe she’d found him. Sometimes it was hard to tell. And sometimes things didn’t turn out how you expected them to.

  But one thing he did know: Mothga had vanished. And Dara needed to find her again before cruel Vulture found his way out of those tunnels.

  Dara returned to Gentle Bess’s ruined cottage and crouched down next to the heap of rocks that covered the trapdoor. He listened. No noise came from down there. So where would Vulture have gone? And Mothga? Why would she save Dara’s life and then just run off by herself?

  He picked up his mud-splashed, gloop-splattered raincoat from the ground and noticed the circle drawn in the mud; it was right around where he’d been lying conked out on the ground. Mothga must’ve drawn it. Why?

  Maybe it was her … what did she call it? Her waymarker. Suddenly Dara realised where Mothga was.

  Her brother. His waymarker. Make light!

  ‘The lighthouse!’ Dara said aloud, looking into the still-dark sky. Out at sea, Mothga had thought that Hart was signalling to her. If he stood on tiptoe he could just make out the lighthouse’s swinging glow. He started to run but then thought better of it – some things could be predicted pretty accurately, and running was clearly and definitely not what his heart wanted him to do.

  So Dara slowed his pace and began walking purposefully towards the growing gleam. But something … something niggled him. Like an itch. Something wasn’t right. He glanced over his shoulder at the ruined village, and up at Owl Rock at the headland beyond it. Had he left something behind? He fiddled with his dangling backpack straps; everything was in his bag or in his pockets. Suddenly Dara realised; he pulled the map out of his pocket and, unfolding it, he shone his torch on the paper.

  And his belly lurched with fear and horror.

  The secret tunnel. The tunnel led from Smugglers’ Cave … and then it forked. The fork on the right led to Gentle Bess’s cottage; the fork on the left led straight to the lighthouse.

  Dara felt sick. Vulture was down there in that tunnel, and there was only one place he could be headed.

  Mothgirl stood at the foot of the huge, sky-tall hut. She stared up up up to where at the very top of its tallness a ferocious beam of brightest light flashed far out over the black water. This sky-tall hut made her dizzy. Made her belly-sick. It was simply not possible – spirit-touched for sure … Mothgirl trembled deep-afraid.

  But if Hart was there, trapped within its tall stone walls, waiting for her, then Mothgirl would swallow her fear like bitter-leaf tincture and she would go to her brother. Make him safe.

  On the outside of the hut was a climbing ladder, like the ones she had made out of sticks and strong-vine for Eelgirl and Owlboy to play on in the forest at home. But this climbing ladder did not sway in the breeze – it was fixed strong to the sky-tall hut and when Mothgirl touched it, it was colder than stone and smooth as ice.

  She held on tight and began to climb. If the bright light came from up at the top, then that must be where Hart was trapped. She scrambled, chipmunk-quick, up the ladder, up and up and up until the wind blew stronger, whip
ping her hair around her head like dancing snakes, like fire flames. And still she climbed.

  And as she climbed she thought about her brother. Hart. He had always made her safe. He had cared for her from the day she was born until the day he left their camp. But since dear Mole had fallen to spirit sleep last winter her brother had been … different … changed. Sadness had changed him. He had grown quieter and quieter until one day he simply was not there at all.

  Mothgirl climbed up and up. Her hands cold now with the touch of the ladder and the chill of the wind. Down below, the island had grown as small as the pebble worlds Owlboy made on the river beach. Mothgirl looked up. And she climbed.

  She had tried. All through that long long winter she had tried and tried, day upon day, night upon night, to bring joy to Hart’s heart. She had hunted fine boar and sung fine firestories and told jokes that made Pa laugh until his belly wobbled. But Hart … Hart had stared into the flames. Silent and solemn. Full of his own sadness. Lost.

  ‘Ha!’ she said to herself. Her brother would not remain lost. She would find him. She would make him safe. She did not care if Pa said that she was too young and that she was but a girl and that she needed to learn woman ways and make the nutcakes and scrape the deerskins and knap the flints. She would prove Pa wrong; she would be the one to find Hart and bring him home and save them all from cruel Vulture.

  Mothgirl glanced down at the dark island in the darker sea. Vulture was out there in all that darkness. He had wanted to find Hart too but … ‘Ha!’ she said again. She was nearly at the top now, at Hart’s bright bright light. Ha! Vulture had been too late and too foolish; for here was Hart, making light in the sky-tall hut, and here was she, Mothgirl, going to him to bring him home.

  Suddenly she heard a voice.

  She looked down down down. A small light danced like a slow firefly on the hillside. ‘Water-poo-tosh!’ she whispered. ‘Daramurrum!’ His breath-sickness was true healed! Perhaps he too would return with them to camp. She imagined Pa’s face when he saw Daramurrum’s lynx-short hair and his soft red deerskins. ‘Not … the … way!’ she puffed in her Pa voice.