by Janis Mackay
Ronan lifted his head to stare at his cousin but if he did recognise Magnus Fin he didn’t show it. He managed a faint smile. Then his hand moved. Slowly he lifted his arm, free now from barnacles and seaweed. He held up Fin’s seal skin.
“Take it, Fin,” Aquella urged him. “Go on, he’s giving it to you.”
Fin stepped forward and took it. “Thanks. Hey, thanks very much, Ronan.”
“And now,” said Aquella, kneeling beside her brother again, “we’d better try and find out where you left your seal skin, Ronan. Can you remember yet?”
Ronan closed his eyes and appeared to concentrate. “He thinks it’s in here somewhere,” Aquella said to Fin, “but I’ve searched everywhere and I can’t find it.” Just then Ronan’s eyes flashed and he seemed excited. “Where is it, Ronan? Where’s your seal skin?”
Ronan tilted his head and gazed up at the ceiling. With his free hand he pointed to a high ledge. “Away up there?” Aquella gasped. “Are you sure?”
Ronan nodded. He tried to stagger to his feet but fell back. “It’s OK, Ronan. Your strength will come back. But now you have to take it easy.” She looked up at Magnus Fin. “Um – Fin?”
Magnus Fin knew what was coming. He looked up at the high ledge. “You want me to climb up there?” She nodded. “Right to the top?” She nodded again. So did Ronan. Fin groaned. “It’s really high.”
“But it’s got foot ledges. You’ll manage. I know you will. Please, Fin?”
It was high. Some of the foot ledges were hardly two inches thick. Fin, though, had had a lot of practice on the school climbing frame, so scaling the cave wall wasn’t half as hard as he thought it might be. He had almost reached the high dusty ledge when a bat, disturbed from its daytime slumbers, brushed Fin’s hair then flew out of the cave.
“Wow!” Fin called out, gripping the ledge, and with his free hand feeling along the rocky shelf. “Bat attack! Hey! I can feel a seal skin. It’s been a bat’s bed!”
“Throw it down, Fin.”
He did, wondering as it fell what the bat was going to do for a bed now. He didn’t wonder for long. “Hey, Aquella!” he shouted down. “Throw my seal skin up here. It’s a good hiding place. No one will ever find it here.” Except a bat that is, he thought, grinning. Magnus Fin liked bats. He liked the idea of a bat using his seal skin for a bed. And his seal skin would feel safe in his father’s cave.
By the time Fin was down, Ronan was asleep again, this time with his own seal skin as a blanket, and Aquella was tending to the fire.
“When will he go back to the sea?” Fin asked.
“When the sea is clean, and when he’s better. Tonight maybe?” Aquella put some wood on the fire then stood up. “You know, Fin, when I was on the beach last night, I’m sure I saw a lot of pottery bits and blue sand glass, and – I’m pretty sure I saw a shark’s tooth.” By this time she was at the mouth of the cave. “Race you down to the tideline!”
And she was gone, her bare feet gliding over the sand, her long black hair flapping in the wind. Fin glanced back at Ronan, then up at the high shelf where his seal skin was hidden. The fire crackled – and for a fleeting moment he remembered words from an old story his father used to tell him in this very cave …
Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful seal… Her eyes, folk said, were human eyes. So beautiful was she that many tried to hunt her. But they never could. She was known as the bright one …
Then Magnus Fin ran from the cave, feeling a wave of joy and happiness ripple through him. “Hey! Wait for me!”
Chapter 42
That Sunday morning Magnus Fin woke early. It was still dark outside. The clunking and banging noises that had gone on all day yesterday and late into the evening had stopped now. Every fridge and freezer and all the other junk had been lifted. The only sounds in the cottage that early December morning were the crashing of the waves as they broke over the pebbles and the low hum of the boiler.
Lying in his boat-bed, listening to the swish and roll of the waves outside, Fin felt himself nod back to sleep. Dreamily he thought of Ronan and how he had slipped into the sea late last night, yelping happily. Fin rubbed his eyes. Wouldn’t it be lovely to stay in his warm bed and go lazily over and over in his head everything that had happened since finding the writing on the rocks? But he had an appointment.
Magnus Fin swung his legs over the side of his bed, hearing the soft padding sounds of Aquella in her attic room above. Fin got dressed in the dark, fumbling for his old trainers and his jeans and fleecy top. He patted his moon-stone that hung around his neck and shook his hair, which was now so long it was forever flopping in his eyes. Tarkin said he should gel it and spike it up, maybe even dye it pink! Fin ran his fingers through his hair, by way of combing, and wondered if Tarkin was up yet.
He opened his top drawer, pulled his penny whistle out of a sock and stuck it in his jeans pocket. He heard Aquella tiptoe down the stairs. “Psst!” she called, tapping softly at his bedroom door. “Magnus Fin, are you up?”
“Course I’m up.” He opened his door an inch and peeped through the gap with his green eye. “I’ve been up for ages.” They spoke in whispers. This was Sunday morning. Ragnor and Barbara always had a long lie on a Sunday morning.
“Do you want jam or cheese?” she asked.
Fin thought for a second. “Both.”
By the time Magnus Fin and Aquella had made and packed their breakfast picnic, the first glimmers of colour were seeping over the rim of the sea.
“Do you think Tarkin will come?” Aquella asked as she closed the cottage door and they stepped out into the chill of the early morning.
“Course Tarkin will come. Knowing Tarkin, he’s probably there already.”
They set off along the beach path, singing as they went. They hadn’t gone far when the flash, flash from a torch blinked out of the half-darkness.
“See! What did I tell you? Good old Tarkin.” Fin sped off across the sand and on to the skerries. Aquella ran behind, awkwardly on account of the welly boots Fin insisted she wear.
Then it was high-fives on the rocks. “I’ve been here ages, man. I got hot chocolate and something called tablet, and peanut butter on a bagel.” Tarkin grinned and thumped Fin on the back. “Mission accomplished, dontcha think?”
Fin smiled and nodded, glancing first at Tarkin, then at Aquella, then out to sea. The salvage operation was complete and the Environment Protection vessels had gone. All was still out at sea. Fin saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain – mission accomplished!”
Tarkin turned round to a flat ledge behind him and spread out their breakfast as if it were a table. “And you said they like music, so I brought my guitar.”
“Wow, Tarkin! You look like you’ve moved in!” Fin laughed and perched on the black rock beside him, noticing, with the help of Tarkin’s torch, that there were no M Fs to be seen. The writing on the rocks had well and truly gone – washed away by the tide.
The three of them ate their breakfast picnic perched high on the black rock. They munched noisily, watching the eastern sky turn from a pale green to a deep red.
“What a show!” said Tarkin, his cheeks full with tablet. “Oh man, this is awesome, and to think I sleep through it every morning.”
“If we’re lucky we might get a bit of sound to go with the colour,” Aquella said, licking a crumb of tablet from her lips.
Magnus Fin spotted them first. Tarkin was tuning his guitar. Aquella was going for her fifth piece of tablet. Fin was scanning the ocean. As he watched, a sleek black head lifted slowly from the water. The dark kind eyes of a seal looked straight at him. Fin gasped. Then another seal lifted its head from the water. The sea was glittering now as the sun rose and more and more seals broke the surface.
“Stand up,” Fin whispered, his voice choked with emotion, “Tarkin, Aquella, quick! Stand up. They’re here!”
The three children rose hurriedly to their feet, all of them balanced on the high black rock. Tarkin strummed his guitar. Magnus
Fin whipped out his penny whistle and played his tune. Aquella sang. The clear and sparkling sea lapped gently against the rocks as fifty or more seals lifted their shining heads out of the water and sang back.
As Fin played he felt his heart fit to burst. In the throng of singing seals he could see Ronan, and beside him Shuna. Next to Shuna, big, black and handsome, if Magnus Fin was not mistaken, was his great-uncle Loren.
Fin stopped playing and waved at the seals. He laughed then looked up and gasped. Right in front of him, lifting her silvery head from the shimmering water and gazing at him with her shining eyes, was his grandmother Miranda, the bright one of the sea.
Also by Janis Mackay
(available in paperback and eBook)
Magnus Fin and the Ocean Quest
There has always been something unusual about Magnus Fin, a school misfit. On his eleventh birthday Magnus throws a message in a bottle out to sea, wishing for a best friend and to be more brave – and he gets a lot more than he bargained for. Magnus discovers that he is half selkie – part seal, part human – and his selkie family urgently need his help.
Can Magnus save his new-found family from the evil force threatening all the ocean’s creatures? And will he find the friend he has always dreamed of?
Magnus Fin and the Selkie Secret
When a rusty metal chest is flung ashore in a storm, Magnus Fin’s problems are just beginning. He injures his hand on the strange box and his sealskin starts to show through. Soon rumours start to spread.
Deep in the ocean, the great sea god Neptune has problems of his own. His treasures of wisdom have been stolen, and his memory and powers are fading fast. Can Magnus Fin restore order under the sea and keep his family’s selkie secret?
The third thrilling underwater adventure in the Magnus Fin series.
Copyright
Kelpies is an imprint of Floris Books
First published in 2011 by Floris Books
© 2011 Janis Mackay
Janis Mackay has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the prior permission of Floris Books, 15 Harrison Gardens, Edinburgh www.florisbooks.co.uk
British Library CIP Data available
ISBN 978–086315–891–9
