Changeling's Island - eARC (5 page)

“She’s afraid of the others. The old ones.”

Áed had sensed them, caught the shimmer of them. But they had kept their distance. “What does she want here?” he asked. If the fenodree could live with these others, so could he.

The fenodree shrugged. “The boy. The key.”

“What key?” asked Áed. The word in the old tongue they spoke had many meanings.

The fenodree shrugged again. “I do not know. She has looked for it for a long time. She is from Finvarra.”

That was enough to frighten Áed even more. Finvarra was a king of the Shee and a great power still, in the hollow hills.

Áed would have to guard his master carefully.

* * *

Alicia Symons drove home slowly, thinking about the youngster they’d picked up. She’d not, at first glance, been too impressed. Actually she felt sorry for him. He was small and looked defeated and rather lost walking along the road with a lunchbox.

And then he’d smiled and confused her daughter. And it seemed Molly’s dog had caught that confusion. It was something for a mother to think about!

She drove down through the she-oaks toward the house on the promontory. Not, for once, looking at the view from their hill and losing herself in the rapture of it. From the minute they’d seen the view, she and Michael had loved the place. They’d known they couldn’t really afford it, and had gone ahead and done it anyway, because they couldn’t bear to lose their chance. They should have looked at the school issues first. It wasn’t that the school wasn’t trying. It was just dying for lack of children. She should have been delighted that there was another child. But…well. Perhaps she was being overprotective.

Her husband was out working on the turbine. It was all very well being self-sufficient, and saying there was lots of wind for power, except the wild wind here was forever breaking something.

“We picked up a boy on the road today,” she said, looking up at him.

“Ah. Molly picked up one yesterday, on the plane,” he said, coming down and wiping his hands on his jeans. “Remember, I told you last night. She’s growing up.”

“It’s the same one. He was on his way to school.”

He knew her well enough to need no further explanation. “I’ll phone a few people. This is Flinders. Everyone knows everything in twenty-four hours.”

A few minutes later he came back. “Seems his parents have got divorced. He’s staying with his grandmother. She’s apparently an old tartar. They’re ‘real islanders.’ Old family.”

She smiled at the “real islanders”—you had to be here for fifty years to get considered more than temporary flotsam by some of the islanders. “That…might explain the look. Poor kid.”

“The look?”

“He looked like the whole world was on his shoulders. And Bunce growled at him.”

“Good grief. Well, if he gives Molly any trouble I’ll growl at him too.”

CHAPTER 5

Tim had been…well, terrified, when he went to the headmistress’s office. Almost inevitably, just as he went in, a whole pile of paper sprayed across the room, and the lightbulb exploded with a loud pop.

“Goodness! What an entrance.” The woman shifted her glasses back on her nose, and smiled at him. She didn’t blame him! That was different. “You must be Timothy Ryan. I’m so glad to see you. Give me a hand to pick these up, will you?”

It was said in such a calm, easygoing way, and she really did seem happy to have him here. She talked while they picked up papers. She spoke so quickly that it was hard to get a word in edgeways, but she was also very good at asking the right sort of questions. And she wasn’t in the least troubled by his lack of uniform. “I’ll get you a shirt from the lost property box for now. Come to me at break and I’ll take you down to town.

She never mentioned knowing anything about why he’d come. Neither did anyone else. The day, like any first day, rushed around him in a confused welter of newness. He was introduced to a lot of people. He couldn’t remember any of them. He was ahead in some areas, far behind in others. As for the place, he felt as if everything was moving around him, just as soon as he got his bearings. He was whisked away to a small shop in the little town, and paid over his grandmother’s money, and left with a carrier bag and what passed for a uniform here. St. Dominic’s would have sneered, but then he’d hated those clothes anyway.

And no one said, right out to his face, “Why are you here?”

Somebody had to know. Someone had to tell. And then…yeah, well. Shoplifting wasn’t that big a deal, was it? But he’d worked out pretty quickly that here it probably was a very big deal. The kids had left lunchboxes, some transparent with chocolates visible sticking out of their bags. You couldn’t have done that at his junior school back in Melbourne without someone nicking something. St. Dominic’s had been, if anything, worse. Here…they didn’t even lock their cars. Or have burglar bars or security guys at the shop. Someone told a story in class about some stupid visitor locking a guest cottage, and the owner having to break a window to get in because of it. Tim had asked if the owner had lost his key. He’d got one of those looks, a look that said “gee, you’re dumb.” “No one’s keys. We don’t lock things up here. Why would you?”

Tim knew why. And from that he could figure exactly how they’d feel about a thief. He’d been in a school where he’d been the kicking-boy before. He didn’t want to be there again, even if these country hicks weren’t his kind of people.

Tim’s mother had often used the expression “waiting for the other shoe to drop” and never quite explained why one was waiting, or just what shoes had to do with it. When he was much younger, he’d asked why you didn’t just run away when you heard the first shoe.

“Because you can’t. And you don’t know if it will.”

Tim’s understood the feeling now. His stomach was in a bit of a knot all day, just waiting. And he couldn’t run away. He was stuck out on an island with no way off that didn’t cost a lot. And he had no money, nothing, not even a working phone. It was just like a prison, really. He might as well have been charged and been sent to jail, as to this place. It would take hours and hours to walk to this town from his grandmother’s house, if you could call the town a “town.” It was more like a pub, a little supermarket, and a post office, and a few houses. No mall. No movies, no…no nothing. Nothing for a guy to do. No place to hang out.

Just a granite mountain that seemed to be looking at him.

* * *

Áed liked the school-place. He liked laughter and noise, and he liked the opportunity the place gave him to serve. He liked to work with things like wood and paper, rather than metals, and there was plenty of that here.

There were little twists of hot air rising above the road, and Áed swirled with one. He was not strong enough to make it into a true whirlwind, to tear roofs and break walls, but he could spin it faster and direct it. His master was upset and worried about these humans. Best to distract them from him. Give them something else to think about. He headed the spinning vortex of air toward a group of children who were talking about his master.

* * *

“Look!” yelled someone as Tim mooched along towards the bus, thinking. Trying to ignore everyone. Look like he wasn’t there. They were talking about him, he was sure.

He looked up as a column of dust whirled towards the other kids. He was not in its way…

Not again! It would be his fault. It always ended up being his fault.

This time he got angry. He just had half a chance to start again, even in this dump! Instead of running away like the rest of the kids, Tim turned and faced down the willy-willy. “Stop it, now. I don’t need any more of this here!” he screamed at it.

“Tim!” shouted someone. “Come away. You can’t just yell at a whirlwind.”

The air was full of grit, dust, sticks and leaves. The wind raged, lifting his hair.

“I won’t give you any beer!” Tim had no idea why he said that. Just his crazy grandmother and her beer story last night had been playing with his mind all day.

“Tim!” Two of the others had reached him. Grabbing his arms…It was Molly and the big, rather slow-seeming Henry. “Come…”

“It’s stopping.” Henry said, as the dust tower turned abruptly and collapsed, bits of leaf and stick falling. Seconds later it was gone, and there was just a little dust in the warm spring air.

“That was lucky!” said Molly.

“It listened to him, see,” said Henry, cheerfully. “Next time Dad wants to set cray pots and it’s blowing, I’m going to tell him to offer the Beastly-Easterly wind a beer to make it go away, instead of drinking it himself.” Quite a few of the kids laughed.

“Where did you get that idea from, Tim?” asked someone.

“Um. Something my nan said.”

“My nan only ever says ‘have you washed yer hands?’” said someone else.

“Come on,” said Molly. “Killikrankie bus has to go. That’s us, Tim.”

Tim found he’d accidentally broken a few of the rules that morning. The older ones were supposed to sit at the back, and there were a few extra littlies for the trip back who told him so. Not very politely, in the case of one little boy.

“Oh, shut up, Troy. He’s new. He doesn’t know yet,” said Molly.

Several people asked how his first day had been. Tim didn’t say anything about being trapped with zombies on the island of the living dead, but made polite “yeah, great” noises.

They all seemed to be happy with that, and he had survived all the way out to the lonely turnoff. Only it wasn’t so lonely now. A new Subaru whisked two of the kids away—Troy and a younger one who had to be his sister—in a spurt of gravel and cloud of dust. The elderly Nissan SUV didn’t have a dog with a moustache, but did have a smiling man with a retreating hairline and a ponytail leaning on it.

“Would you like a lift?” asked Molly’s father. He couldn’t be anyone else. He looked just like her when he held his head like that and had that half-smile on his face.

“Thank you, but I’d like to walk,” said Tim, lying, but embarrassed. “It’s not far, and, um, I need the exercise.” It was better than facing any more curiosity.

“Well, we’re going past,” said Molly’s father.

“No, really,” said Tim digging deep in memories of things people said about the country. “It’s…it’s just nice to enjoy the fresh air. And, um, the sounds of nature.”

His parroting of this load of bull seemed to go down well with the guy though. “Exactly what I’d do on a day like today. Too nice to be stuck in a car. Come on, Molly…Unless you want to walk too?”

“It’s about five kays along the road, Daddy. And I’ve got a ton of homework to do,” said Molly, shaking her head at him. “See you tomorrow, Tim.”

And with that, she got into the car, and they left, and Tim looked into the dust-trail at the walk ahead of him for a while. Well. He couldn’t just stand here, so he started walking. It was a lot farther on foot than it was by car, and the “fresh air” was hot and the “sounds of nature” could have been made a lot better with an iPod. It was hot and still and the only sounds were the flies. The roadkill was buzzing with it.

He trudged on. A car came past. It was Hailey’s father, but he didn’t stop. Probably heard all about me, thought Tim, gloomily. He wondered what Hailey had said. “Loser,” probably. It still hurt, thinking about her.

He was so deep in thought about this, so hot, and tired of walking, that he didn’t actually notice the white Land Rover ute with the inflatable boat on a trailer behind it. The pickup truck’s bonnet was up, and it was parked at the side of the road as he walked around the corner. It took the man working on it to swear before Tim suddenly became aware of it.

The guy under the bonnet must have heard something, because he turned. He was a lean, suntanned-to-old-leather-faced guy, with a neat little clipped beard, no moustache, and very blue eyes. “g’day,” he said, like he hadn’t been swearing ten seconds before.

“Hi. Can I help?” said Tim, knowing he couldn’t. He didn’t know much about cars, and didn’t even have a working mobile. That still galled him. How could the place be so…basic?

The stranger looked Tim up and down, thoughtfully. And nodded. “Maybe you can, sonny. My hands just don’t fit down there. It’s pretty hot though. I just burned myself.”

“I could try, I suppose,” said Tim, looking at the gap that the man was pointing down into.

“That pipe there has to go onto that flange on the other side. But be careful, it’s hot.”

Gingerly, because he could feel the heat, Tim reached down, trying not to touch anything, and got hold of the pipe. The problem was there was just no space. While trying to be careful not to touch anything, it was very hard to push sideways at near-full stretch. It was the sort of job someone with strong hands and arms could do in ten seconds…if the engine was cool.

“I just, ouch, can’t push it on,” admitted Tim after a minute or two.

* * *

Heat meant little to Áed as he clambered down his master’s sleeve to avoid the nasty iron in the steel. That could and would burn him in a different way. He was quite strong, and, once the Master let go, it took all the time of the blinking of an eye to push the rubber pipe in place and slip the clip back on.

* * *

“Oh, well. Don’t burn yourself trying. I’ll walk up the road and see if I get mobile reception,” said the man in a resigned tone of voice. “I’ve got a load of fish and it won’t do them any good sitting in this heat. Hello…” he said, looking down and then having a closer look. “You’ve done it, youngster! Well done. You even got the circlip on. Good lad!”

Tim looked down into the heat of the engine. The pipe was on, and a little brass clip around it. He’d swear he hadn’t done that. “I didn’t think I had gotten it on,” he said, doubtfully.

“It looks pretty solidly on to me,” said the man, looking at it, then grinning at Tim. He wiped his oily hand on his jeans and stuck out the hand. “Didn’t introduce myself. I’m Jonno. Jon McKay. One of the local ab divers. You must be the new kid at the school. Ryan, I think.”

“Uh. Yes, I’m Tim Ryan. How do you know who I am?” he blurted out.

The diver laughed. “This is Flinders, mate. Get used to it. You can’t keep anything a secret here. My deckie’s girlfriend works up at the school. The headmistress was celebrating having a new student. Now, can I give you a lift? It’s a scorcher for walking, and old Mary Ryan’s place is a good couple of kilometers still. I imagine that’s where you’re going.”

“I’ll be fine. Really,” said Tim, wondering just how much of his past had already not been kept secret.

Obviously his voice betrayed him. “Don’t be such a martyr,” said McKay. “It won’t take me five minutes, and you just saved me a long walk, and my fish from getting too hot. I owe you.”

“It’s not the way you’re going.”

“Even towing a boat, I can turn around,” said McKay cheerfully. “Get in, will you? I’ll go up to the corner and turn around. It’ll be easier.”

So Tim got into the truck with him. It was obviously a working ute, with the foot-well full of spare parts and jumper cables. More to make conversation than anything else, because he knew nothing about boats or fish, Tim asked, “So what kind of fish have you been catching?”

McKay chuckled again. “Muttonfish. Or that’s what they call them here. I dive for abalone. Have you ever dived?”

“No. I’ve never actually been into the sea.”

The diver looked at him, his mouth open, and then hastily back at the road as the tires bit the soft gravel on the road margin. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No. I guess…my dad didn’t like the beach. He hated the sea, I remember him telling me when I asked him to take me.”

“But you were in Melbourne. Didn’t your mother like it either, then?”

“I think my mom only likes shopping malls and theaters and stuff. She used to take me to the pool quite often. I can swim pretty well, just not in the sea. I might have gone to the beach to play in the sand when I was, like, really little, I think. I suppose we were quite close to the sea really, but, well, we never went. But I used to go swimming quite a lot. I can swim well,” he said defensively, feeling, somehow, that he’d moved down in McKay’s estimation of him.

“I suppose you’ve never been on a boat either?” asked the man, a smile twitching his lips.

“No, I haven’t,” admitted Tim, feeling like he was saying he hadn’t done his homework, and thinking just how unfair that was. Something about this man made Tim want to be liked by him, want to be respected.

“Hmm. I’ll take you out sometime. We’ll go and catch a few flathead. It’s a part of your heritage. I reckon you’ll see enough of the beach here. You can get down to Marshall Bay from Mary Ryan’s place. There’s a track through the scrub.”

They’d arrived at the old gate. “I can walk from here. Really. It’s not far.”

“Hop out and open it. It’ll be easier for me to turn around down at the house, if I remember it right. I came down with my uncle Giles when I was about your age to go netting off the beach.”

So Tim did as he was told. Letting the ute and the boat go past before he closed the gate, Tim got a really good look at the boat on the trailer for the first time. It was obviously rugged and cool looking, metal underneath, with long, sleek blown-up pontoons on the sides.