Savage Island

by Bryony Pearce

  “You aren’t supposed to pick wildflowers, you know,” Grady commented.

  “We’re on holiday, Grady! Relax.” Carmen rolled her shoulders.

  “I can see other islands.” Lizzie shaded her eyes.

  “That’s Unst,” Will said.

  I stared. “Too far to swim.”

  Will nodded. “If it wasn’t for Grady, those currents would’ve taken us out to sea.”

  I shuddered. “Right.”

  We rounded the headland and Carmen gave a whoop. Beneath us six seals basked, undisturbed by her joyful cries. “I wish my camera hadn’t got wet. Do you think they would let us swim with them?” Her eyes were round.

  “I wouldn’t get in the water at all,” Grady reminded her.

  Carmen sighed wistfully. “I’ve just never seen a seal in real life. I’ve never been on a plane before today either. Even if we don’t win the money, it will have been worth the trip for me.”

  “I’ve never been on a plane before.” Carmen craned to see out of the window.

  “You never went to visit your family in Spain?” Lizzie asked.

  “They come to us. We were going to do a cheap flight at Christmas, but it didn’t work out with Papi’s shifts—” She gasped as the small plane banked sideways and then giggled at her own fear. “Is it always this rough when you fly?” Carmen caught her camera as it slid off her lap, then posed for a selfie with Lizzie.

  I shook my head as they laughed into the flash. “No, this is a small private plane. A big one wouldn’t be nearly so ba—” I choked on my own words as turbulence bumped us in our seats and Carmen laughed again.

  I focused on the back of the empty seat in front of me. A Gold Foundation logo was embroidered on the headrest.

  We were the only ones on the plane. As she had settled us in, the flight attendant had explained that teams were flying in from six airports across the country. We were the only ones from the southwest and so wouldn’t see them until we reached the island.

  The plane jumped again and I looked across the aisle at Will.

  “This is better than a rollercoaster.” He stretched out his long legs.

  The attendant had reminded us that we would land on one of the bigger islands and then hike over the estuary.

  “I don’t know why we can’t land directly on Aikenhead,” Carmen said.

  “It’s not big enough or flat enough.” Will pushed his map over to her. “See.”

  “Great.” Carmen rolled her eyes. “I won’t need to use the cross trainer again for weeks.”

  I leaned over Lizzie to look. “Are those caves?” I pointed.

  Will nodded. “The island’s riddled with them.”

  “We might not need to use our bivvies at all.” Grady grinned. “So, what do we do when we get to the island?”

  “Get to the starting point as fast as possible, get the coordinates and head to the first checkpoint.” Lizzie looked at him. “I want to complete at least one before we camp.”

  I nodded. “At least one.”

  “We’ll head out as early as we can tomorrow. If we keep to under six hours’ sleep a night, it should give us an edge against the other teams.”

  “You don’t think they’ll be doing the same thing?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” Lizzie shrugged. “You think we should go for even less?”

  “Dios, no.” Carmen shook her head.

  “It’s only three days, Car.” Lizzie laughed. “You can handle a bit of tiredness for a million pounds, can’t you?”

  “Well, when you put it that way.” Carmen nodded.

  “Should we be teaming up, you think?” Grady asked.

  “What?” I looked at him.

  “I mean with another team. Should we find another group to work with?”

  “Why would we need to?” Will tilted his head. “We’ve got all the skills we need. And this is a competition. You want an awkward scene at the end?” Will put his head back. “Get a nap in,” he said. “Sounds like we’ll need it.”

  We drew level with the seal colony, which shifted warily and slid one by one under the water. Carmen watched them go with sadness in her eyes.

  Next to the rocks a drunkenly tilted sign showed us where we should have arrived if we’d made it to the end of the crossing. It indicated a small jetty and a wooden building down the hill.

  Lizzie frowned as our eyes followed the arrow. “Where are the Gold Foundation people? I know they said we’d have to cross the estuary alone, but surely someone would be here to greet us.”

  “Maybe they’re inside.” I shrugged.

  “Let’s find out.” Lizzie took the lead and strode down the slope. The rest of us followed.

  The gradient made my strides longer and I had to stop myself from tumbling into a run. I gripped the straps of my rucksack.

  “What do you think the other teams will be like?” Carmen combed her fingers through her hair and slipped into step with me, Lizzie on my other side.

  “Like us, I suppose.” Lizzie smiled. “I doubt there’ll be many younger than Will.”

  “What are you talking about?” Grady shifted into a jog to join us, his rucksack clanking, face shining with sweat.

  “The other teams.” I lifted my own rucksack higher. “Just wondering what they’re like.”

  “They’re our competition,” Will called. “It’s not as if we’re going to sing campfire songs with them. What do you care?”

  The end of the marked path across the estuary was right in front of us now, the weathered sign sticking out from between two rocks, a lonely marker. The door was on the other side of the wooden building, but I could see through the windows. There were no signs of movement.

  “¡Hola!” Carmen called. “Is there anybody there?”

  Silence.

  “Where are you, handsome boys?”

  Lizzie glared at her.

  “I’m just having fun!” Carmen laughed. “Of course we have the most handsome boys right here.”

  “There really doesn’t seem to be anyone here.” I stepped on to the shingle with a crunch of gravel.

  “Have we missed everyone? I mean, we saw that team going the other way,” Grady said.

  “I hope not.” Lizzie seemed alarmed.

  “There should be someone waiting for us, right?” I peered around. “We haven’t got the next coordinates yet.” I rubbed my arms, chilled. “Maybe we’re in the wrong place. What does the sign say?”

  Lizzie squinted at the splintered wooden board. “It doesn’t say anything.” She spread her hands. “It’s an arrow and it points to the building.” She touched the sign and it moved on its axis, easily spinning a full 180 degrees. “Or back the way we came.” She sighed. “One of the other teams might have turned it to confuse us.”

  “Cheats!” Grady snapped. “That must be why we saw them going so quickly the other way.”

  “We should at least check inside before we go after them.” I started walking round, heading for the door just as the sun returned and lit the decking.

  “It could be pointing to something behind the building,” Carmen suggested.

  “Hey.” I reached the door. “There’s a notice.”

  Beside the door, a poster was fixed behind a perspex frame, protected against the weather.

  “I wonder what happened to Otto Warner?” Carmen touched his name.

  “What’s the time?” Lizzie gasped. “Quick, Ben.”

  I looked at my watch. My eyes widened. “One minute to three.”

  “We’ve only got a minute to find that box!”

  Lizzie, Carmen and I ran into the building. Will and Grady started to follow, but Lizzie held up a hand. “Search the area, you guys. We don’t need all of us to look inside.”

  “It’s not in here!” Carmen cried.

  “It has to be.” I scanned the room. Shafts of sunlit dust slanted from cracked windows. The peeling walls were bare and the floor was empty.

  “Will, any luck out there?” Lizzie yelled.
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  “Nothing,” he shouted back.

  “Everyone out.” Lizzie pushed Carmen towards the door. “Quick!”

  “Wait.” I tilted my head, but the girls had already gone. Still, there seemed to be something…

  I held my breath, looked at my watch and heard a very quiet click. It was three o’clock: somewhere in this room, the box had opened and would stay open for only two minutes.

  “It’s here!” I ran into the centre of the room, scanning frantically. I could feel the seconds ticking by on Grandad’s watch, vibrating on my wrist. Where was it? Then I saw it: a knothole in the floorboards and an odd pattern in the wood. I crouched, stuck my fingers in the hole and pulled. A whole section of the floor began to lift. I yelled as my shoulders took the strain, it was moving so slowly. Finally, I managed to get my back under it and shoved the trapdoor open. It slammed into the wooden floor. I held the edge and leaped inside the hold, which barely came up to my knees.

  Inside there was a row of nine boxes. The last in the line stood open, but there was no time to look in. I tipped the contents on to the floor. Seconds after I dropped the box, the lid snapped shut.

  Had any of the other teams been fooled by the trapdoor and missed their turn? If so, where were they? If it had been me, I’d have simply followed the next group out. Was a team watching right now, waiting for us to leave?

  I looked up. Will and Lizzie dropped to their knees behind me. Carmen and Grady clattered into the room as well.

  “Did you find it in time?” Grady called.

  I held up two folded pieces of paper.

  Carmen clapped. “That was close!”

  “Let’s go outside,” I said. “The light’s better and we’ve still got some drying-off to do.”

  We made for the door.

  “Hey, you know what this means?” Carmen called, almost skipping as she burst into the fresh air. “The times were staggered. We aren’t behind!”

  “We missed our chance to size up the other teams,” Grady muttered.

  “We already know the most important thing about the other teams,” Carmen winked at him.

  “They are not as good as us.”

  I put my hand on Will’s arm. “Here you go. You have the info.”

  We sat in a circle on the decking outside the wooden hut. A light breeze cooled my face and I stretched out my bruised leg. The sun warmed my damp clothes and birds cried overhead. A small boat with a white sail tacked across the horizon. Lizzie allowed her hand to fall next to mine and I smiled.

  “This is so exciting,” Lizzie whispered.

  “So far so good.” I grinned as Will opened one of the papers.

  “Riddles!” Carmen rubbed her hands. “Excellent. We have Will with his head full of brains!”

  “And no game has defeated me yet!” Grady cracked his knuckles delightedly.

  Will’s lip quirked upwards and he opened the second paper.

  “The coordinates and the riddle,” Will said. “The answer should activate the game on the next box. Let’s think about it as we walk.”

  He stared at the map of Aikenhead. His hair flopped into his eyes and he pushed it back impatiently. “The coordinates don’t make sense. They put us in the sea.”

  “Let me see.” Lizzie held out her hand and took the map.

  “He’s right,” Lizzie said eventually. “We walked over the spot they’re taking us to – there wasn’t anything there.”

  “Quicksand,” I reminded her.

  “But no box. This can’t be right.”

  “So … we have the wrong coordinates?” Grady got to his knees, as if he wanted to find someone to complain to.

  “We must be missing something. Some other instructions, or a clue.” I looked around, as though I expected the correct figures to fall from the sky.

  “Was there anything written in the box itself?” Will asked.

  I groaned. “I didn’t have time to check. If there was, there’s no getting it now.”

  Lizzie stood. “I’ll have another look at the box. Maybe there’s something under it, or on top of it.”

  Will pulled a pencil from his rucksack and started to scribble furiously. Carmen took off her jacket and lay on her back.

  “It could be a code of some kind. Why not try some variations?” Grady leaned towards Will, who glared at him.

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “I’m going to look at the room.” I stood, leaving my rucksack on the deck. “There could be a clue on the wall or floor.”

  “But it was empty.” Carmen lifted her head.

  I spread my hands. “We weren’t looking for clues. Don’t worry, this is just the start of the game. There’ll be something, somewhere to tell us what to do.”

  Lizzie stood behind the trapdoor, holding the box up to a shaft of light, turning it over and over. She hummed low in her throat. An Ella Fitzgerald song.

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a thing.” She put it back down. “This can’t be that hard. The other teams have already worked out the problem and gone.”

  “At least one team headed in the direction of the sea though.” I tilted my head towards the sound of waves. “We saw them.” I started to walk around the walls.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for patterns, a message – something like that.”

  “OK.” Lizzie sped to the other side of the room and started running her hands over the peeling walls. “Time’s slipping away.” She pulled off her cap and tugged at her short hair.

  “You don’t know how long it took the others,” I reminded her. “We probably just missed the last group.” I touched her hand. “Some of them likely raced off without checking the coordinates first. Better to get it right now than go speeding off in the wrong direction.”

  “I know.” Lizzie groaned. “It’s just there’s nothing here.”

  I scanned the walls, floor to ceiling. Tried counting boards, but nothing seemed to form a pattern, let alone a clue. Of course, this was Will’s area. If there was something here, he’d be the one to spot it, not me.

  We heard a sharp burst of Carmen’s laughter from outside.

  “Glad she’s having fun.” Lizzie’s shoulders slumped.

  “You’re not having fun?” I put shock into my voice. “I mean, we almost drowned, we climbed up a cliff, we’re soggy, all our electronics are ruined, we seem to have fallen off the earth to a place even the satellites don’t recognize, we can’t leave until the crossing is raised again and we have no idea where we’re going. Other than that, what’s not fun?”

  Then Carmen from outside again: “Come on out, you guys. I’ve worked it out.”

  Lizzie’s eyes met mine. “Carmen worked it out?”

  I shrugged.

  Carmen was standing by the old sign, spinning it first one way and then the other. She smirked like a cat. “Have you got it yet?”

  I frowned. “No.”

  She looked at Will. “Have you?”

  Will glowered at her. “Just tell us.”

  Carmen clapped her hands. “First, say I’m the cleverest.”

  “We don’t have time for this.” Grady folded his arms.

  Lizzie grinned and jammed her cap back on her head. “Just say it, guys.”

  Carmen pirouetted as we chorused the words. Her hair flew around her, lifted by the strengthening wind, pink tips like a swarm of butterflies.

  “I am, aren’t I?!”

  “Carmen, we need to get moving,” Lizzie reminded her.

  She pouted. “Fine.” She spun the sign again. “We didn’t need this arrow to tell us where the notice was.” Carmen looked at us expectantly.

  “So, it’s pointing at something else,” Grady said.

  Lizzie’s eyes widened. “It doesn’t point to anything – it spins.”

  “Uh-huh,” Carmen said. “But not all the way.”

  “One hundred and eighty degrees.” I hit my own forehead.

  Will was already scribbling o
n the paper, holding it close to stop the cold Atlantic wind from stealing it. He held it up for me to see: -01.56:62.34

  “You flipped it.”

  He nodded.

  “And does it make sense?”

  He put a finger in the middle of the map. “If we’re right, there’s the second checkpoint.”

  “Brilliant!” Lizzie threw her arms around Carmen and gave her a squeeze. “Can we get there before dark?”

  “No problem.” Will put the map in his pocket. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Five

  “Earthquake!” Carmen shouted.

  Grady looked at his feet.

  “She’s talking about the riddle, Grady.” Lizzie stifled a laugh as she hopped over a boulder that was half-blocking the path.

  “It can be felt, but not seen. It destroys, but you can’t destroy it.” Carmen nodded smugly. “I am on a roll.”

  Will hummed. “Not a bad suggestion, but we should keep thinking.” He paused and looked at the map. “We leave the coastal path here – we have to go this way.” He pointed towards the moorland.

  “At least it should get us out of this wind.” Lizzie shivered. “It’s freezing.”

  “The sun’s warm.” Grady turned his face to the sky. “We just need to get off the clifftop.”

  I pulled out my binoculars, wiped the wet lenses, and held them to my eyes. When I had adjusted the focus, an expanse of moorland came closer. A lake glimmered ahead. We would be walking alongside it in less than an hour. “I see another team.” I pointed at a cluster of trees.

  “Proves we’re going the right way.” Carmen grinned.

  “If that’s team eight, they’re more than twenty minutes ahead of us,” Grady said as he handed a bag of pear drops around. “We’re losing time already.”

  “If it’s team eight.” I put a sweet in my mouth. “For all we know, that’s team one and we’re catching up.”

  Lizzie nodded. “We just have to keep going – no second-guessing ourselves.”

  “For five million pounds, we could pick up the pace,” Carmen suggested.

  “OK.” Lizzie tightened her rucksack. “Who’s up for a run?”