Nim's Island

by Orr, Wendy

  Nim was still scared, but there wasn’t enough time to think. She crawled back into the cave and tore a sheet from her notebook.

  Dear Jack,

  I’ve gone to rescue Alex Rover.

  Love, Nim

  Selkie was waiting; Fred was starting to slide down to the sea.

  ‘Wait!’ Nim shouted. ‘You can’t swim out there by yourself!’

  But Fred wasn’t by himself. Chica had heard Nim’s whistle, a storm-while ago, and had been resting on the seabed as close as she could get to her friends in the cave. Fred scrambled onto her back and hooked his claws to the edge of her shell, staring out over her head.

  Nim hugged hard around Selkie’s neck and they slid into the water.

  It was hard swimming, even for a brave and determined lion of the sea. The waves slammed against them, so hard and so high that sometimes they threw Selkie backwards and under the water—which is where sea lions like to swim, but not when they’re carrying girls on their backs.

  Nim’s hair whipped like long, wet ropes, and she gulped salt water with every breath, but she clung as tight as she ever could.

  The seventh wave came; a swamping, dumping wave, stronger than Selkie, forcing her down deep below the water; stronger than Nim, ripping her arms away from Selkie’s neck and pushing her deeper still, so there was nothing but swirling blue and she didn’t know which way was up to the air and which was down to the bottom.

  She was whirling . . . struggling . . . sinking . . . but Selkie somersaulted backwards and pushed her up through the water till she was spluttering . . . coughing . . . breathing again.

  Then the waves weren’t quite so wild; they could ride up them and slide down without going deep under the water. When they were in the valleys they couldn’t see anything but blue, but when they were on the top they could look around. They saw Chica and Fred, but never Alex.

  They went on looking. Looking and looking. On and on.

  Now Selkie was too tired to leap across the waves and pretend it was fun, but when Nim tried to be helpful and swim, Selkie honked a cross ‘NO!’, so Nim stayed on. She didn’t know if she could have swum in those waves anyway.

  She started to worry about what she was going to do if she didn’t find Alex.

  She started to worry about how big the waves were where Jack was, and how far away they were taking him.

  She started to worry about Chica and Fred.

  She started to worry about how she’d know when it was time to turn back—and that was the hardest thought of all, because it was the only one she could do something about.

  She was worrying so hard that she nearly fell off when Selkie barked again.

  Then Selkie didn’t seem tired and Nim didn’t feel worried; she blew her whistle as hard as she could and they charged across the waves to the small sinking boat.

  THE WATER WAS up to Alex’s waist, then her chest, and up to her neck; she was spluttering and ducking, and still struggling with the knots under the water.

  She tried to think what a Hero would do now, but all she could think was that a Hero would have known how to untie the knot, and that was no help to her at all. She took a deep breath and wondered if it was the last air she’d taste.

  A whistle shrilled—and there was the strangest, most wonderful thing she’d ever seen: a wild-haired girl blowing a shell and riding a sea lion across the waves.

  ‘Ni—’ Alex shouted, and then her mouth was under water, too.

  Nim remembered the scene in Mountain Madness where the Hero was snagged by the rope around his waist as he climbed down a cliff. She grabbed her knife from its pouch and, as Selkie ducked under the water, Nim cut the rope.

  Alex bobbed straight up to the surface.

  ‘Nim Rusoe, I presume?’

  The boat gurgled rudely and sank.

  They looked at each other and started to giggle, choking with laughter and seawater and Selkie had to bark twice to remind them that treading water with one arm and holding onto a sea lion with the other, in the middle of a stormy ocean, is not the time to giggle. But when Alex heard Selkie bark, she said, ‘So you’re not a Saint Bernard! But you are a saviour!’ and they laughed a bit more.

  And then they turned back towards the island.

  It should have been easier now they were going the same way as the waves, except that the waves were smashing onto the Black Rocks and they didn’t want to do that, so they decided to curve around the reef and come in on the gentle slopes of Shell Beach. And Selkie couldn’t carry them both.

  ‘We could take turns swimming and riding,’ said Nim.

  But even going with the waves, Nim couldn’t swim as fast as Selkie, so Selkie kept having to turn around, and Alex wasn’t very good at riding, so she fell off every time Selkie turned around.

  ‘I wish I’d gone to swimming lessons instead of writing stories about fish!’ Alex muttered, and Nim started worrying again. She was getting tired, too, and so the next time Selkie circled back and Alex fell off, they both hung on to Selkie with one arm and swam with the other—but the island didn’t seem to be getting much closer.

  Suddenly there was a tickle under Nim’s arm, and a sweet spiny head with a grinning dragon face.

  ‘Fred!’ she cried—and Alex, who had never seen anything quite as ugly and wonderful as a marine iguana, said, ‘I’m sorry I called you a poodle.’

  Following Fred was something that looked like a big bag with something else behind it—and that something began to look like a smug green turtle.

  Chica had found one of the coconut rafts.

  She moved steadily towards them, pushing the raft, disappearing as each wave rolled over her and popping up when it cleared.

  Nothing ever upset Chica.

  Selkie kept pushing Alex and Nim towards the island; Chica kept coming closer . . . and finally they met. Alex slid across from Selkie and climbed onto the coconut raft. She lay down and kicked her legs, but kicking Chica in the head didn’t seem a good way to thank her, so she crouched forward and paddled with her hands. It didn’t make the raft go much faster, but Alex felt better doing something.

  Nim got back onto Selkie and Fred climbed onto her shoulders.

  A few minutes later they tumbled onto Shell Beach, below where the hut used to be.

  THE HUT WAS GONE, and Nim was too tired to start looking for what was left of it.

  The last of the storm clouds disappeared from the sky; the sun sank gold and low, and Nim and Alex were still lying on the beach talking.

  Selkie slipped back into the water to fish for her supper. Fred found some seaweed left on the beach by angry waves.

  Chica gave them a long look and dragged herself towards the water.

  Nim hugged her, as tight as you can hug a large green turtle. ‘Goodbye till next year!’

  ‘Thank you for rescuing me,’ Alex said, and kissed the top of Chica’s wrinkled head. Chica looked up at her and blinked.

  It was always hard to tell what Chica was thinking.

  ‘We need to go to the Emergency Cave before the sun goes down,’ Nim said. She had a feeling Alex mightn’t be very good at rock-climbing in the dark. ‘We can have an Emergency Can for dinner.’

  ‘And a coconut from the raft!’

  ‘I wonder where the other raft went,’ said Nim, but she was wondering even more where Jack was.

  THE OTHER RAFT had been tossed out of Keyhole Cove when the sea went crazy, but it had bounced clear of the swirling reef waters and been caught by the monster waves raging out to the west.

  And grabbed by an exhausted man with a scar on his forehead and a two-week-old beard.

  ALEX WASN’T ANY better at rock-climbing than Nim had thought she’d be, but she loved the cave. ‘Like Ali Baba’s!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I cleaned the hut so nicely!’ Nim said gloomily. ‘I even made you a new sleeping mat!’

  Alex hugged her, and it wasn’t quite the same as hugging Jack and not quite the same as snuggling in to Selkie, but it made her
believe that the world might get better again.

  NIM WOKE TO see Alex sitting at the door of the cave, watching the sun rise over Fire Mountain. ‘And look at the sea!’ said Alex.

  The waves rolled gently, washed-clean and blue. Birds soared and swooped, screeched and fished; iguanas and lizards scrabbled; sea lions lazed and their king’s honk! echoed across the water.

  Selkie whuffled good morning. But when Nim had hugged her and rubbed noses, Selkie slid down the rocks, and a moment later her brown head popped up at Sea Lion Point, beside the king’s.

  Fred grazed for seaweed in the tidal pools. He didn’t quite trust this ocean yet.

  Nim and Alex had a coconut and Emergency Rice Pudding for breakfast, set up the satellite dish and the solar panel on a flat rock above the cave; plugged the torch, computer and phone in to charge, and went out to explore.

  They went to Turtle Beach, Sea Lion Point, the Hissing Stones and Keyhole Cove—‘Where it all began!’ said Alex.

  ‘Because if I hadn’t done the experiment . . .’

  ‘. . . I wouldn’t have been able to write back again . . .’

  ‘. . . and you would never have come!’

  Already that seemed impossible.

  They went on exploring. Nim’s beautiful island was shredded and messy with bits of hut, pieces of shirts and desk, coconuts, palm branches, broken trees and lying-down bushes.

  ‘As if a giant had a tantrum!’ Alex exclaimed.

  The garden was worse. It looked as if Selkie had taken her sea lion family up for a party. Pea plants were mashed, avocados were mushed and tomatoes were soup. Some plants had so few leaves it was hard to remember what they used to be.

  The garden shed, with the bananas still on their hook, had been lifted right over the wall and dropped neatly in the middle of the bamboo grove.

  Nim and Alex collected three green pineapples, a few mashed strawberries and scattered pea-pods. They hauled broken bits out of the pool and into the compost heap, and saved two avocados, a tomato and ten more strawberries.

  ‘And the sweet potatoes will be safe,’ Nim said, ‘when we feel like digging them.’

  They chucked broken plants off the garden and propped up the living ones, and when they were worn out Nim taught Alex how to slide down the waterfall into the pool, and then Alex told her stories till they were ready to work again.

  She told her more stories that night while they tried to sleep on the hard cave floor.

  The stories were funny and made Nim laugh; exciting, so she had to hold her breath; and something else that made her feel soft and warm and happy-sad, so she wanted to hug Selkie, except that Selkie had decided it was too hard to go all the way up to the cave for the night and was sleeping with the sea lions.

  The next day they started clearing the grasslands and beaches, dragging branches into piles for bonfires, and coconuts into heaps for eating, and sorting out anything else that might have come from the hut or could be useful to build a new one.

  And all the time that they heaved and carried and sorted, Nim worried about when Jack would get home and when Alex would leave. She hated the stories Alex told about her home in the city, because she wanted to pretend that Alex could stay on the island for ever and ever.

  They took a different path to the garden and found Nim’s favourite blue glass bottle, her comb, a good piece of rope under a dead jellyfish, and her wagon, hooked on a branch at the top of a tree.

  The tree wasn’t hard to climb, but it was a long stretch from the last safe branch, and when the wagon tumbled to the ground, so did Nim.

  The scab rubbed off her knee, and it began to bleed again. Nim didn’t cry, but Alex did.

  ‘I had bandages, cream . . . a whole first-aid box for you!’ she sobbed.

  But she helped Nim clean the sand out with fresh coconut juice, and then Fred hinted that they ought to eat the coconut now they’d opened it, so they had it for lunch with bananas. And since they were at the pool and had a comb, they washed their hair and combed out two days of tangles, which hurt more than the skinned knee.

  Alex looked so pretty, tugging the knots out of her long gold hair, and she was still so sad about Nim’s knee. ‘Wait here!’ Nim ordered, and ran all the way to the cave and back again without even stopping to look out to sea.

  ‘Close your eyes!’ she said, and dropped the coconut pearl into Alex’s hands. ‘I was going to give it to you if you went away, but it seems like you need it now.’

  ‘Oh, Nim!’ said Alex. ‘I can’t take this!’

  ‘I had it in front of my mother’s picture,’ Nim said. ‘But a picture can’t really see, so I want you to have it.’

  Alex got soggy again.

  ‘If I could have a daughter,’ she said when she could talk, ‘I’d want her to be exactly like you.’

  Suddenly, the honking from the sea lions was too loud to hear anything else. Nim flew down the hill as Selkie led the whole herd into the water, splashing and barking at the strange shape drifting in through the reef.

  And Jack staggered off the bag of coconuts and waded onto the sand.

  Then he and Nim did a wild ‘What happened? You’re okay?’ laughing, hugging dance, but Jack went pale as he stared at where the hut used to be.

  ‘The science stuff is safe,’ Nim said, but her father didn’t seem to care as much she’d thought he would.

  ‘I’m never leaving you alone a—’ and then he stopped, and couldn’t say anything more.

  Alex was coming down the hill.

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ said Nim.

  ALEX KNEW IT was unfair, but she hated Jack. She knew he hadn’t meant to leave Nim alone for so long—but he had. She knew he hadn’t wanted Nim to be lonely, worried and frightened—but she had been.

  She’d lain awake for an hour the night before, thinking of all the things she was going to say when she met him.

  Then this lonely, exhausted man staggered in, looking beaten as a Jack Russell who’d picked a fight with a Rottweiler. He sat and stared at his daughter, and Alex knew there was nothing she could say that was half as nasty as what he was saying to himself.

  And when some of the shock had gone from his face, he looked too much like Nim for Alex to hate him.

  ‘Who?’ he said finally. ‘And how?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Nim. ‘Tell us yours first: did the storm hit you?’

  ‘Not the way it hit the island,’ Jack said, staring at the tumbles of shattered trees, ‘but fast enough that I hadn’t put my life-jacket and lifeline on yet, and strong enough to blow me overboard. The boat raced ahead; there was no land in sight . . . but floating in the current just ahead of me was a raft made of coconuts! What’s so funny?’

  Nim and Alex couldn’t answer. They were laughing so hard that they fell over and rolled around on the ground like sea lion pups. ‘That’s Alex’s story!’ Nim finally choked, and then they started from the beginning.

  ALL THE NEXT WEEK, the three of them worked together: cleaning up the island, fishing and digging clams, collecting coconuts and saving the garden. Every night they built a bonfire with the broken branches they’d cleaned up during the day, and Alex told them stories.

  Nim listened hard so that she could remember the stories forever, after Alex left, and tried not to think about when that would happen.

  But it wasn’t Alex who talked first about leaving.

  ‘When are we going to build a new hut?’ Nim asked one morning, when the island was starting to look like her home again, just with not so many trees.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t,’ Jack said. ‘It’s time I stopped being so selfish. Maybe we should go back to civilisation so you can have a normal life.’

  ‘This is my normal life!’ Nim shouted. ‘It’s the one I want!’

  She ran down the hill to Selkie, who left the king and snuggled comfortingly around her. Fred curled across her shoulders.

  Alex and Jack went for a walk in the other direction, arou
nd the point to Turtle Beach.

  ‘They’re talking about what’s going to happen,’ Nim told her friends. ‘But if Jack makes me leave the island, I’ll run away and live here with you like I did before!

  ‘Jack only wants to go because he thinks that’s what a good father should do, but I don’t want a good father—I just want Jack, and I know he wants to stay on the island as much as I do!’

  She wasn’t even going to wish the other part because it was too much to hope for.

  The morning changed to noon; the rock got hot; Selkie, Nim and Fred went for a swim, climbed out to dry and went for a quicker swim; and still Alex and Jack hadn’t come back. Nim was hungry but the knots in her stomach were too tight for food.

  The king barked for Selkie. Selkie looked miserable, and then she looked confused.

  ‘You can go,’ Nim said. ‘I’m okay.’

  Selkie snuggled beside her a moment longer, but when the king barked again, she slid off the rock and into the sea.

  Fred scuttled off to find some seaweed.

  Alex and Jack came around the point and waded in the shallow water across to Nim.

  They were smiling.

  From: jack.rusoe@explorer.net

  To: delia.defoe@papyrus.publishing.com

  Date: Wednesday 21 April, 15:00

  Subject: Really, this is Alex Rover

  Dear Delia

  I have a small favour to ask you.

  All right, it’s small like a giant squid, and you might think it’s about as easy to handle, but when I tell you the whole story and why I’m writing it on a borrowed internet address (on a borrowed computer, wearing my new banana-leaf dress), you’ll not only understand why I need a favour, you’ll have a brand-new book. I promise you’ll love it.

  So . . . could you please go to my flat and pack up all my clothes, books, papers and anything else you think would be useful on a small tropical island?