by Eva Ibbotson
They had started to repair the house, and planted a garden, and then one day they had found an oiled seabird washed up on a rock . . . Only it turned out not to be an oiled seabird. It was oiled all right, but it was something quite different – and after that they realized that they had been called to the Island by a Higher Power and that they had found their life’s work.
But one of the sisters, Betty, had not cared for the Island. She hated the wind and the rain and the fish scales in her tea and the eider ducklings nesting in her bedroom slippers and she had gone away and got married to a tax inspector in Newcastle upon Tyne and now she lived in a house with three kinds of toilet freshener in the loo, and sprays to make her armpits smell nice, and not a fish scale in sight.
But the point was that she had two children. They were horrible, but they were children. She called the boy Boo-Boo and the girl Little One (though they had proper names of course). But horrible though they were, they were children and because of this her sisters had become aunts since all you have to do to become an aunt is have nephews and nieces.
Which is why now the sisters looked so surprised and said: ‘But we are aunts.’
‘Not that kind,’ said Etta impatiently. ‘I mean the kind that live in an office or an agency and call themselves things like Useful Aunts or Universal Aunts or Aunts Inc. – the kind that parents pay to take their children to school and to the dentist, or to sit with them when they are ill.’
‘Why don’t the parents do it themselves?’ asked Myrtle.
‘Because they’re too busy. People used to have real aunts and grandmothers and cousins to do it all, but now families are too small and real aunts go to dances and have boyfriends,’ said Etta, snorting.
Coral nodded her head. She was the arty one, a large plump person who fed the chickens in a feather boa and interesting jewellery, and at night by the light of the moon she danced the tango.
‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘You would be able to pick and choose the children – you don’t want to end up with a Boo-Boo or a Little One.’
‘Yes, but if the parents are truly fond of the children we shouldn’t do it,’ said Myrtle, pushing back her long grey hair.
‘Well of course not,’ said Etta. ‘We don’t want a hue and cry.’
‘But if the children are nice the parents would be fond of them,’ said Myrtle. ‘And if they aren’t we don’t want them either.’
Etta sniffed. ‘You’d be surprised. There are children all over the place whose parents don’t know how lucky they are.’
They went on talking for a long time but no one could think of anything better than Etta’s plan – not if the position of the Island was to be kept secret, and there was nothing more important than that.
There was one more aunt who would have been useful – not the one with the three kinds of toilet freshener, who was no use for anything – but Aunt Dorothy, who was next in age to Etta and would have been just the sort of person to have on a kidnapping expedition. But Dorothy was in prison in Hong Kong. She had gone out there to stop a restaurant owner from serving pangolin steaks – pangolins are beautiful creatures and are getting rare and should never be eaten – and Dorothy had got annoyed and hit the restaurant owner on the head with his own wok, and they had put her in prison. She was due out in a month but in the meantime only the three of them could go on the mission and they weren’t at all sure about Myrtle because she was not very good out in the world and when she was away she always pined for Herbert.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay behind, Myrtle?’ said Coral now. But Myrtle had decided to be brave and said she thought that she should come along and do her bit.
‘Only we won’t say anything to Daddy,’ said Etta. ‘After all, kidnapping is a crime and he might worry.’
Captain Harper lived upstairs in a big bed with a telescope, looking out to sea. They had mostly given up telling him things. For one thing, he was stone deaf so that explaining anything took a very long time, and for another, as soon as he saw anybody he started telling them stories about what life had been like when he was a boy. They were good stories but every single aunt had heard them about three hundred times so they didn’t hang around if they could help it.
But they did go and tell the Sybil. She was the old cousin who had come to the Island soon after them. Sybil was bookish and one day she had read a book about Greek mythology and about a person called the Sybil (not just Sybil) who was a prophetess and could foretell the future. So she had started prophesying about the weather, mumbling on about depressions over Iceland and the wind-chill factor and really she didn’t get it wrong much more often than the weathermen on the telly. Then she had gone on to other things, and had gone to live in a cave with bats because that was where prophetesses were supposed to live, and had stopped washing because she said washing would weaken her powers, so that she was another person one did not visit for too long.
When the aunts told her that they were going to the mainland to kidnap some children the Sybil got quite excited. Her face turned blue and her hair began to stand on end and for a moment they hoped that she was going to tell them something important about the journey.
But it turned out that what she was foreseeing was squally showers, and what she said was ‘take seasick pills’, which they had decided to do anyway for the boat.
They still had to make sure that their cook, who was called Art, knew exactly what to do while they were away on their mission. Art was an escaped convict who had been washed up in a rowing boat on their shore. He had killed a man when he was young, and now he wouldn’t kill anything with arms or legs or eyes – not even a shrimp – but he made excellent porridge. Then they gathered together all the things they would need: chloroform and sleeping powders and anaesthetizing darts which they used for stunning animals that were injured so that they could set their limbs. All of them had things to carry the children away in: Aunt Etta had a canvas holdall and Aunt Coral had a tin trunk with holes bored into it and Aunt Myrtle had her cello case. As they waited for the wind to change so that they could sail the Peggoty to the next island and catch the steamer, they were terribly excited.
It was a long and difficult journey – many years ago the army had tried to use the Island for experiments in radio signals and so as to keep its position secret they had changed the maps and forbidden boats to come near it. In the end they hadn’t used it after all but it was still a forgotten place and the aunts meant to see that it stayed that way.
‘Of course it won’t be a real kidnap because we shan’t ask the parents for a ransom,’ said Etta.
‘It’ll be more of a child snatch,’ Coral agreed.
But whether it was a kidnap or a child snatch, it was still dangerous and wicked, and as they waved goodbye to the Island their hearts were beating very fast.
Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, but when the Nazis came to power her family fled to England and she was sent to boarding school. She became a writer while bringing up her four children, and her bestselling novels have been published around the world. Her books have also won and been shortlisted for many prizes. Journey to the River Sea won the Nestlé Gold Award and was runner-up for the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. The Star of Kazan won the Nestlé Silver Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. The Secret of Platform 13 was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize, and Which Witch? was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. The Ogre of Oglefort was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. Eva Ibbotson died peacefully in October 2010 at the age of eighty-five.
Books by Eva Ibbotson
Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie . . . and Other Cautionary Tales
Dial A Ghost
Monster Mission
Not Just a Witch
The Beasts of Clawstone Castle
The Great Ghost Rescue
The Haunting of Hiram
The Ogre of Oglefort
The Secr
et of Platform 13
Which Witch?
Journey to the River Sea
The Dragonfly Pool
The Star of Kazan
For older readers
A Company of Swans
A Song for Summer
Magic Flutes
The Morning Gift
The Secret Countess
Praise for the writing of Eva Ibbotson:
‘Eva Ibbotson’s eccentric witches, endangered monsters and friendly ghosts are one of the greatest joys of children’s fiction. Funny, gripping, charming and completely irresistible they are perfect for curling up with at any age’ Amanda Craig
‘Eva Ibbotson has assumed the mantle of Roald Dahl in her understanding of child appeal’ School Librarian
‘A new book by Eva always lifts the spirits. She understands how children might be inspired and nourished, and she delights in nature, friendship, honesty and liberty’ Sunday Times – on The Dragonfly Pool
‘Sparky and humorous . . . Ibbotson is dexterous with pace and suspense, accessible, always amusing and a treat to read aloud’ Sunday Times – on The Beasts of Clawstone Castle
‘Any reader presented with this book will be enriched for life’ Anne Fine, Children’s Laureate 2001–2003 – on Journey to the River Sea
‘A bubbly and fantastical adventure . . . Driven by humour and warmth, Journey to the River Sea has an irresistible charm’ Guardian
First published 1983 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com/childrenshome
ISBN 978-1-4472-0588-3 EPUB
Text copyright © Eva Ibbotson 1983
Illustrations copyright © Sarah Horne 2012
The right of Eva Ibbotson and Sarah Horne to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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