Island of the Aunts

by Eva Ibbotson

  “Have you reached a verdict?” asked the judge, leaning down from his box.

  “We have, my lord,” replied the foreman in a solemn voice.

  “And do you find the defendants guilty or not guilty?”

  There had never been such silence. Not a breath was heard in the court; not a rustle…

  The foreman raised his head.

  “Not guilty.”

  Oddly it was not Minette but Fabio who burst into tears.

  Chapter 24

  The Island had never looked more beautiful. The sea sparkled and danced, the sun shone through the green crests on the waves; and on the hill the blossoming gorse was a mass of gold.

  The children had been allowed to come up for a week to say goodbye. Minette had to go back to her parents, but Fabio’s mother was taking him back to South America. She had read about the trial and about Fabio’s school and she no longer thought that her son needed to grow up as an English gentleman.

  So it should have been a really sad farewell, but it wasn’t because the aunts had called them into the dining room the day they came and shown them an important-looking document covered in red seals.

  “It’s our will,” they said.

  The children started to read it but they couldn’t make head nor tail of it and in the end Etta said: “What it says is that we have left you the Island. To both of you jointly. When we die the Island will be yours.”

  They had stood round them; all the aunts—Etta and Coral and Myrtle and Dorothy—and nodded in a pleased way.

  “We know that you will regard it as a Sacred Trust,” they said.

  The children could hardly believe it at first. It was too big to take in: the thought that the Island would one day be theirs, and they could live on it and care for it, and be together. It made the years in between seem unimportant. Minette was not so frightened now of her parents’ moods—and they were trying to behave better. Time would go quickly—very soon now she and Fabio would return and their real lives would begin.

  “Will you manage the work till we come back?” Fabio asked and they said, yes they would because Dorothy had decided to stay. She thought it was time to hang up her wok and she had decided to breed piranha fish in a tank so that if any more Sprotts came to the Island she could see them off.

  As for Herbert, he went on making himself useful as he had done ever since they escaped from the Hurricane. He polished the napkin rings and tidied Art’s cutlery drawer and ordered some bedroom slippers for the Sybil from a catalogue.

  But most of all he went on helping Myrtle. He showed her how to keep her hair tidy in a net, he stuck her loose sheet music together with Sellotape and every single morning and every single evening he saw that she put on Aunt Etta’s bloomers and her rubber ring and had her swimming lesson in the sea.

  All the same, Fabio and Minette, who had not seen him since before the trial, felt that Herbert had changed. He seemed to be working too hard, as though he was afraid of what might happen if he did not keep busy, and sometimes they caught him gazing out of the window with a strange look in his large brown eyes.

  “He’s homesick,” Myrtle whispered to the children. “He misses the sea.”

  The children were very upset. Herbert, after all, had saved their lives.

  “Isn’t there anything that can be done?” asked Fabio.

  Aunt Myrtle sighed. “He could be turned back into a seal,” she said slowly. “There is a way.”

  “Not a knife?” said Minette, horrified.

  “No. That might work but…” She shook her head. “The mermaids say that if one weeps seven tears over a selkie when the moon is rising…Seven human tears…”

  “But could you bear it?” asked Minette. “I mean, he’s your friend.”

  Myrtle looked down at her Wellington boots. “I could…bear it,” she said, biting her lip, “if it is the right thing to do. One can always bear what is right.”

  So they went to the other aunts and had a meeting and then they went to find Herbert who was cleaning the windows of the sitting room.

  “Herbert, we want you to tell us the truth,” said Aunt Etta. “Were you happier as a seal? Do you want to return?”

  Herbert spun round, the polishing cloth in his hand. There was no need for him to answer. They only had to look into his eyes.

  “He has reached the Rock of the Farnes,” Herbert said in a dreamy voice. “But he swims slowly. I could catch him up.”

  So then they realized that Herbert’s thoughts all this time had been with the great kraken and that he longed to swim with him and be his escort in the work of cleaning the sea.

  But when they told Herbert what the mermaids had said and that he could be turned into a seal again if someone wept seven human tears over him he shook his head.

  “Myrtle stayed by my side when my mother died; she played music to me in all weathers. I couldn’t leave her now.”

  So then Myrtle stepped forward and now she was not a vague and dippy woman whose hair fell down. She was a heroine.

  “If it is right for you to swim with the great kraken you must do so, Herbert,” she said and though there was a sob in her throat she held her head high.

  They decided to do the turning in the crystal cave and of course everyone wanted to come. The Captain couldn’t leave his bed but the stoorworm promised to tell him all about it and the mermaids insisted on being there, and the naak and even the boobries, though it wasn’t at all certain that they knew what was going on.

  They had to wait until the moon broke out of its covering of cloud—but when Herbert threw off his dressing gown and stood there only in Art’s boxer shorts, everyone sighed because it was all so dignified and beautiful, like a ceremony in ancient Greece.

  It was Myrtle of course who was to do the actual crying, and because the tears had to fall directly on his head, Herbert knelt before her…and then she began.

  She remembered all the good times—the music on Seal Point, the silent evenings beside her friend watching the sunset…

  One tear fell on Herbert’s head…then two…then three…four…five…six…

  Only one more.

  But just when everyone was clutching everyone else ready for the great moment, the tears stopped.

  It was most embarrassing. Myrtle sniffed. She blinked, she blushed. She had shed six tears; and she couldn’t shed a seventh.

  For the truth was (though she never told anyone) that at that moment she had suddenly realized that she need never again go into the cold sea in her chill-proof vest and her sister’s navy bloomers. She still minded terribly losing Herbert—but the relief had blocked her tear ducts as thoroughly as if they had been plugged with cement.

  It was a dreadful moment, but of course help was at hand. Minette only had to think of saying goodbye to the man who had saved her life and she was off.

  She took Myrtle’s place—and as the seventh tear fell on to Herbert’s head there was a flash of blinding jagged light.

  And when they looked again they knew they had done right. On the ledge of rock was a pair of crumpled boxer shorts—but streaking out of the cave into the open sea was a silver hunk of streamlined muscle which thrust through the waves like an arrow.

  The next morning was the children’s last on the Island and they got up early and walked along the strand as they had done on the first day when they woke up to find they had been kidnapped.

  “You will come back, won’t you?” Minette asked.

  “You won’t stay and become Prime Minister of Brazil?”

  She wanted to make him swear; to have a kind of ceremony—but then she saw his face as he looked out over the Island and saw that he loved it as she did, and she knew for certain that they would both be back. And the ache of parting became a different sort of ache—an ache of happiness—and then they turned and went back towards the house where the aunts were waiting.

  ter>