Kaya Stormchild

by Lael Whitehead

  “My dear, how delightful!” said the old woman in a crisp English accent. She held out her arms, smiling with pleasure.

  Kaya hugged the old woman and handed her a bundle of greens, which had been tied carefully with twine.

  “I brought you some fresh dock leaves. I just picked them this morning, and they’re young and tender. I think you’ll like them. They taste lemony. You said you’d been feeling tired lately. These will give you energy.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said the Duchess, smiling. “Just what I need! I’ll put some in my salad for supper.”

  She caught sight of Tike. “You’ve brought a friend with you. Please introduce us.”

  The Duchess bent to examine the otter. She looked him in the eye, with a steady and penetrating gaze, which disconcerted Tike greatly. He resolved not to make a fool of himself again and remained stonily silent.

  “Duchess, this is Tike, the otter I told you about. He lives next door to me on Tangle,” said Kaya. “This is his first time in town. I don’t think he likes it much so far. Too noisy.”

  “And people here don’t know the difference between an otter and a dog,” muttered Tike sullenly.

  “Really?” said the Duchess. “I would never think you were a dog. You’re much too, well, gentlemanly.”

  Both Kaya and Tike stared at the old woman.

  “You - you can understand him?” breathed Kaya.

  “Of course I can. He speaks quite clearly, “ said the Duchess. “Very pleased to meet you, Tike.”

  She gave the otter’s small front paw a gentle shake. Then she turned to Kaya and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t be surprised, my dear, if you are not the only one with the Speech. I used to think that about myself, and it felt rather lonely. But there are a few of us about. Though not so many in recent years.”

  The Duchess paused for a moment, her eyes soft and distant. Then with a quick smile she said, “But come! I’ll just go in back and make us a cup of tea. I think I have a tin of sardines that will please Mr. Tike. You two mind the store for me until tea is ready.”

  The Duchess lived in the rear of the old house. When she had left the room, Kaya and Tike exchanged astonished looks.

  “I never knew, all this time!” said Kaya excitedly. “ I should have guessed, the way the cats all love her. She rescues all the strays, and can coax even the wildest cats to come to the vet for treatment if they are hurt.”

  Kaya gazed out the window smiling. “She’s right. I always just assume no one else is like me. But I’m so glad she is!”

  Tike opened his mouth to reply, but just then the front door to the shop burst open and a thin, wiry, man entered. He stood on the threshold for a moment, his eyes darting nervously around the shop.

  Kaya didn’t like the look of him. He had a gaunt, poorly-shaven face, and a mouth that twitched restlessly. His clothes were greasy and stained. A shiver of shocked surprise shook Kaya as she noticed the object hanging from a thin leather cord around the man’s throat: it was an eagle’s talon.

  The stranger stood for a moment scowling around the room. Then he noticed Kaya.

  “Got any coats?” he barked. Kaya nodded and pointed out the rack of jackets and overcoats hanging on the far side of the window.

  Lunging at the rack of coats, the stranger pawed through them rapidly, muttering under his breath. Then with a low cry, he pulled a long, shabby black duffel coat from its hanger. He plunged his hands first into one deep pocket, then another.

  “What the -?” he growled. He groped in the pocket again. “Where is it?! Dammit! This is the coat. So where is it?”

  The man dropped the coat to the floor. His eyes searched the room for a moment with a wild and desperate look. Suddenly he lunged at Kaya, grabbing the neck of her T-shirt.

  “Did you empty the pockets? Where is it? It was in the pocket!”

  “I don’t know anything about that coat,” gasped Kaya. “Let me go!”

  “You lying brat!” seethed the man. “I’ll - aah!”

  Tike had sunk his teeth into the man’s ankle.

  “Ow! Ow! Get off me you filthy little cur! Help!” the man screeched. He had let go of Kaya and was now leaping and lurching around the shop with Tike attached to his pant leg.

  With a final kick, the stranger freed himself from Tike’s jaws. His pants were torn and bloody at the ankle. The man stared in horror at his leg for a moment. Then, with a curse, he ran from the shop. Kaya rushed to the window to see his gaunt figure limping quickly off down the street towards the dock.

  “Whatever is going on?” asked the Duchess. She was standing in the doorway, wearing an apron and holding a teapot in one hand.

  Everyone in the room began to talk at once.

  The parrot babbled incoherently.

  The cats, disturbed from their mid-day siestas, circled the Duchess’s legs complaining of the intrusion in high-pitched, indignant voices.

  Kaya and Tike shouted the loudest.

  “He grabbed her!”

  “Tike bit his leg!”

  “He was trying to find something in one of the coats!”

  “What a creepy, nasty man!”

  The Duchess went to the front door of the shop, locked the door, and turned the sign outside to read “CLOSED.”

  “Why don’t you keep watch, Jeremiah?” she said to the parrot, who immediately flew to perch on the front windowsill. “And, you my dears,” the Duchess continued, stooping to stroke each of the cats, “you can stop fretting. He’s gone now.“

  The Duchess gently steered Kaya through the back of the shop into the brightly lit kitchen that lay beyond it. Tike followed close at their heels. Kaya sat down at the kitchen table and quickly described what had happened. Once she heard the story, the Duchess went back into the shop, found the duffel coat and returned with it, her expression puzzled.

  “This just came in yesterday. Mr. Janson said he spotted it on one of the smaller islands, Heron, I think he said, while he was out fishing. It was just lying on the beach, apparently. Which is odd, because no one lives there at this time of year. I remember checking in the pockets to see if I could find some identification. But they were empty. Whatever could that man be looking for?”

  “Whatever it was, he wanted it awfully badly,” said Tike, rubbing his jaw. “If he hadn’t called me a filthy cur, I would have let go sooner. But he deserved what he got!”

  Kaya looked at the little otter and her face began to twitch. Suddenly she burst out laughing.

  “That was just about the funniest thing I ever saw, Tike! You stuck to his leg like a barnacle while he hopped about yelping!”

  Tike began to laugh, too. But the Duchess was worried.

  “I get a very odd feeling about that man, my dear,” she said shaking her head. “One thing about having the Speech, as you may have found, Kaya, is that sometimes you can know people’s thoughts. I hardly caught a glimpse of him, but I sense that he is dangerous. I think we have to find out what he is up to.”

  “And did you see what he was wearing around his neck, Tike?” said Kaya, suddenly remembering. “It was an eagle’s talon,” she turned, explaining to the Duchess. “It was a real one. Big too!”

  The Duchess pursed her lips, thinking hard for a moment.

  “That’s disturbing,” she said at last. “A raven friend of mine told me some strange news the other day. Eagles have been disappearing mysteriously during the past two weeks. One young fledgling returned to his nest over at Horton cove recently complaining that he’d been shot at by men on a boat.”

  “But eagles are protected aren’t they? It’s illegal to hunt them!” said Kaya, aghast. She thought of someone aiming a gun at Grandmother and her heart tightened in her chest.

  “Yes it is, my dear,” said the old woman grimly. “But that doesn’t stop bad people from breaking the law.”

  The Duchess served herself and Kaya tea and cookies. For Tike she placed on the floor a bowl of water and a china plate upon which
five sardines were elegantly arrayed. They ate in silence for a moment, worried expressions on all their faces. Then Kaya got to her feet.

  “If we need to know what he’s up to, Tike and I had better get going. Tike, your good nose will show us which way he went. Let’s try and follow him!”

  “Do be careful, my dears,” said the Duchess anxiously. “And come and let me know whatever you discover. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open here in the meantime.”

  Chapter 3: Rex and Spencer

  They said goodbye. Kaya and Tike hurried down the street towards the dock. Tike paused every now and then to scent the air.

  "He headed this way," said the otter as they paused in the trees at the top of the stairs above the public dock.

  "Look! That's him down there. See those two men in that boat tied up next to our canoe? One of them is the guy from the store!”

  "Go quickly, Tike!" urged Kaya. "He won't notice you. Find out what they're saying. I'll wait here where they won't see me."

  Kaya stood among the trees at the edge of the road and watched as Tike crept down the dock and slipped into the water. Otters are such graceful swimmers they barely make a ripple as they move. Kaya lost sight of Tike for a few minutes, but then she spied his small black head next to the boat in which the two men were standing, facing each other.

  It was an old wooden boat, not much longer than the canoe, painted a dirty white and bearing several deep scratches in the hull. Kaya could hear even from this distance the muffled sound of the men’s voices. They were arguing. She could see the thinner man gesturing angrily towards his companion, who was taller and very fat. The bigger man stood with his arms folded and a sneering expression on his red, pudgy face.

  At last, the bigger man turned his back and began pulling at the rip chord on the small outboard motor. The motor started, then sputtered and died. Kaya watched the man attempt to start the engine several more times. At last, with a curse, he gave the motor a kick before he pulled the chord. It started up with a roar and a sudden lurch that threw the thinner man backwards against the side of the boat. Tike got out of the way just in time as the boat jerked away from the dock and headed out to sea.

  Kaya ran down the stairs. “Well, Tike? What were they fighting about?” she asked eagerly.

  “What a horrible pair!” said Tike with disgust. “They said the nastiest things to each other. The big one even told the skinny one that he would kill him if he couldn’t find it, this thing they’re looking for. Sounds like the skinny guy left his coat somewhere and it was in the pocket. The big guy is the boss, I think. And the little guy is scared of him, though he shouts a lot. They talked about going back to their camp and looking again.”

  “Let’s follow them and see which direction they’re headed in. Maybe we can find out where their camp is,” said Kaya.

  Just as she was untying the canoe, she heard a shout.

  “Look, Tike, it’s Josh.”

  Josh came running down the dock. “What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming back over this weekend.”

  “Josh,” said Kaya quickly, “I have so much to tell you. There was a creepy guy in the Duchess’s store this morning, and he and his partner are up to something really bad. He was wearing an eagle’s talon around his neck! We’ve got to follow them and see which way they are headed. Hop in. I’ll tell you everything, but hurry!”

  Kaya handed him the spare paddle she always kept in the bow of the canoe. Josh’s eyes lit up with excitement as he settled in the front of the canoe. “I was hoping something interesting would happen today!”

  They kept the boat in view as it left Campbell Harbour. It headed southwards, towards Heron Island. Heron was part of a chain of small uninhabited islands which lay off the south east coast of Henby.

  “The Duchess said that coat was found on Heron, remember?” said Kaya, panting with the effort of paddling. “I’ll bet that’s where they’re headed.”

  The Boy Scouts of Canada operated a summer camp on Heron Island. On the western end of the island a few cabins, all painted green with white trim, lined a narrow bay. The entire southern end of Heron was densely forested. In the summer, the sounds of boys’ voices rang out over the water, but from September to June, the island lay empty and silent.

  “I’ll bet they’re staying there, in the camp. They probably broke into one of the cabins,” said Kaya.

  Sure enough, they could see the white glint of the boat far in the distance. It disappeared from view around the northwestern tip of the island.

  They leaned hard on their paddles. Tike cheered them on from his perch in the bottom of the canoe. After nearly forty minutes, the canoe had rounded the tip of Heron Island and had come in sight of the little bay with its cluster of camp buildings just beyond the beach. Kaya and Josh slumped in their seats, panting hard, sweat beading their foreheads.

  “Better be really quiet,” said Josh, when he had caught his breath. “Let’s tie up here, otherwise they’ll see us. We can sneak up on them through the trees.”

  They nosed the canoe in amongst some large rocks at the head of the inlet and tied it to a thick overhanging alder branch. Then, with Tike at their heels, they began carefully to penetrate the forest, picking their way through the undergrowth.

  Once they were deep into the trees, the broom and salal that grew thick along the shore disappeared. They found they could walk fairly easily on the spongy floor, which was littered with decomposing cedar and fir needles, climbing over or under fallen trees as they went. At times, Kaya had to stoop and lift Tike over a particularly high log, but generally the little otter was able to travel more quickly than his companions.

  After a few minutes, they stumbled upon one of the narrow hiking trails that led out into the forest from the camp. With fingers pressed to their lips, they nodded to one another, and stepped as silently as possible out onto the trail.

  It wasn’t long before they heard two voices echoing through the trees up ahead. Men’s voices. One was low and growling, rising every now and then into an angry, whining bark. The other voice was high-pitched and strangely monotonous. They were arguing so loudly the children were able to creep close without being heard.

  The two men stood in the cleared space at the end of the bay. In a semi-circle behind them the eight small green and white cabins that formed the boy scout camp. The nearest had a litter of garbage strewn across its little front porch, and its door stood ajar, hanging crookedly on its hinges as if it had been forced open. At the centre of the semi-circle was a fire pit, with logs placed on either side for campfire sing-alongs.

  The smaller of the two men turned and squatted by the fire pit, blowing on a smoldering pile of twigs. One of his pant legs was rolled up at the bottom, revealing a dirty bandage tied around his ankle. He poked at the fire for a minute, but at a word from his companion he leapt to his feet again, ready to continue the dispute. Kaya recognized the lean, scowling man from the Thrift Store.

  While the men in the clearing snarled at each other, the three spies slowly inched closer. Josh spotted a giant arbutus tree growing nearby and noiselessly hoisted himself up its trunk and out on a long, twisting branch. Kaya crouched low and crept to the back of the nearest cabin. One small dusty window faced away from the water, towards the trees. Kaya paused and peered inside.

  A gasp of horror almost escaped her lips. She pressed her hand to her mouth, staring. The tiny room was filled with parts of animals. On the long cracked table opposite the window were spread out the feathers, talons, and sawed-off beaks of eagles. The bodies of several entire birds lay arranged on the lower of the two bunk beds. Kaya felt a wave of nausea clutch at her stomach. On the floor nearer the window she glimpsed more horrors: large white Orca teeth lay in a jumbled pile next to a basket filled with giant white bones and a cardboard box containing two silvery fins. Two well-polished rifles were propped against the far wall.

  “Dolphin fins!” whispered Kaya.

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. How cou
ld anyone do such things to her beloved friends? It was so horrible, so beyond anything she had every seen or imagined that her knees grew weak and she sank to a crouch outside the cabin.

  For a moment her sight darkened and she thought she might faint. But the sound of distant shouting revived her. She took a deep breath and slowly began to crawl towards the corner of the cabin. She peered cautiously around the edge until she had a full view of the clearing. To the right of her hiding place, she could see Josh high in the arbutus tree, perched precariously on a slender branch. In the centre of the clearing, just fifty meters away, the two men circled each other angrily.

  The larger of the two was unusually pale, with puffy white cheeks and small, watery eyes. His huge belly protruded from his dirty T-shirt, and his hands were chapped and swollen. He was half a head taller than his companion. He stood with his lip slightly curled, surveying the smaller man with disdain.

  “Spencer you’re a complete fool! You can’t keep track of your own head, let alone anything important.” The fat man’s voice seemed not to belong to his large, swollen body. It was high-pitched, yet flat and toneless, as if drained of feeling.

  “Let’s try to think, shall we?” he said, sighing dramatically. “Think. Think. Are you sure you put it in the pocket of that coat?”

  “Of course I’m sure, Rex! I told you already!!”

  “Calm down. We’re thinking, remember? I know it’s a rare activity for you to engage in, but if you try real hard you just might manage it. Now then, when did you last have the coat on?”

  The man named Spencer groaned and nervously twisted the eagle talon hanging around his neck.

  “I can’t remember! It was a warm day, you know? We stopped at that island to pick up the money we hid, remember? The little one? Yeah, and then we went to Campbell Harbour. And then we came back here. I don’t know! It was too damned warm. I shouldn’t have brought the stupid coat in the first place. All I know is the coat was in that store, and the pockets were empty!”