The Binding (14 page)

He told us we should all be ashamed of ourselves, and I was ashamed, especially after it came to light what Jenson had actually done to get picked on in the first place. What he'd done was he had cried in the dinner line, which anyone would do if they had a really ill sister like he did.

Trying to shove that thought out of my head as I walked along was making me feel hungry, so as soon as I got back I went to the shed to have some of my secret cake. Tressa was there, waiting for me.

‘Where have you been?' she demanded. ‘Me and Milo got back from the bothy ages ago.'

‘Well I'm not going to sit around and mope, am I?' I said, though that was obviously what she thought
I'd be doing, just because I wasn't allowed at the meeting.

I broke off a bit of cake, and passed the Tupperware to Tressa.

‘So where were you?'

‘Exploring,' I said. ‘What did you do at the bothy?'

‘We had a fire and toasted marshmallows on sticks. Duncan got Elspeth to read from her pages about some of the feasts and celebrations they had before we came.'

‘That sounds good.'

‘It'll be even better tomorrow, when you're back.'

I finished my cake and picked a corner of icing off the bit that was left in the box.

‘What?' she said, when I didn't say anything.

‘I'm thinking of taking Duncan's challenge.'

She laughed and then, catching my eye, stopped laughing.

‘You can't be serious!'

‘Why not?'

‘Well for one thing, he's bigger and cleverer than you. You won't win.'

‘Thanks for your support.'

I put the lid back on the Tupperware and hid it again. Tressa said why should she support me? She
didn't want me to challenge Duncan. She liked the Binding. It was amazing, and we would never find anything like it anywhere else in the world.

‘You're going to ruin everything,' she said. ‘Not just for us, either. Think about that. We'll be going home at the end of the holidays, but Duncan, Hamish and Elspeth will still be here.'

‘Yes, well, that's the point.'

I told her what Elspeth had told me about how it used to be her and Fin, and Duncan and Hamish, two pairs of best friends, only now that Fin wasn't there any more, it was Hamish and Duncan, as thick as thieves.

‘What's this got to do with the Binding?' said Tressa.

‘Elspeth says the Binding was better when Fin was there because he stood up to Duncan, and they didn't do stealing from their parents and stuff. She doesn't want to do it, but she's scared. If she crosses Duncan, she thinks she'll be out on her own, and there's no-one else here for her to be friends with.'

Tressa frowned.

‘That's not our problem though, is it?'

I told Tressa about the house in the trees, how it had belonged to Elspeth's granny who died, and Elspeth
was really missing her. First she lost Fin and then she lost her granny, and she was really unhappy.

‘Imagine if our granny lived next door, and we could go back and forth to her house across the fields whenever we liked, and stay over if we wanted, and then one day, she dies and she's gone forever. No-one there. Just a cold empty house.'

Milo appeared in the doorway.

‘Are you talking?' he asked, suspiciously.

‘Of course not,' Tressa said. ‘That would be against the rules, right?'

‘I think you were talking,' Milo muttered.

Tressa got up and steered him out of the shed. ‘Why don't you give me a ride in your van?'

She didn't bring it up again. You could tell she was thinking I wouldn't do it anyway, what with having the backbone of a jellyfish and everything. I actually didn't think I'd do it either. I wasn't even certain that I wanted to.

I still didn't think I'd do it as we walked down to the bothy beach the following afternoon. It was sunny, the tide was right out and I had a tennis ball in my pocket. We could have a game after the meeting. We could have a brilliant time and then go home for tea, all talking to each other.

Duncan and the others were sitting on the grass outside the bothy. Milo did his solemn duty of opening the door for everyone, but Duncan told me to wait outside and then he shut the door on me himself. I just got a glimpse of the candles on the floor, the fish-box seats and the driftwood table.

I thought he was making a point, and in a few minutes he would send his Page to open the door and let me in. But he didn't, and I was left sitting there on my own, wondering what they could possibly be doing inside that was taking so long.

I couldn't go down the beach and skip stones in case they called me in, but I didn't want to sit around outside not doing anything for ages either. I was actually feeling quite tetchy by the time Milo opened the door.

He closed the door again behind me, shutting the darkness in.

‘Don't sit down,' Duncan said.

I stood behind my fish-box seat and they all looked up at me, their faces yellow in the candlelight.

‘Pretender, do you accept the rules of the Binding and do you accept me as your Lawmaker? Are you ready to give up the name Pretender and become the Joker again?'

I don't know! I need time! Don't push me!

Tressa gave me her best for-goodness-sake-get-on-with-it-and-stop-messing-around look. Milo and Hamish, on either side of Duncan, were trying to stare me down like him. Elspeth didn't meet my eye. She looked so small and sad.

‘No.'

There was a stunned silence. ‘Don't cross him,' Fin had said. Elspeth's granny said all his colours were dark. I thought,
What have I done?

Duncan had a face like thunder, and when he spoke his voice came out much louder than usual.

‘You will go away from here and not return. In the next few days, I will offer you a challenge, as we agreed. If you win, I will keep my word and close the Binding—but if you lose, the Binding will continue, and therefore you must agree to protect it in the meantime by honouring the rule of secrecy.'

He nodded to Milo, who jumped up and opened the door. As I walked out, I suddenly realised that whatever happened, I would never go back there again. Even if the Binding continued, I was excluded forever.

One little word, that was all I had said, and now it was over.

Chapter 5

Running in the mist

Obviously, Tressa really did stop talking to me after that. She was furious. But as luck would have it, we had a new family project to take our minds off things. We were learning to dance.

Every summer, there was a ceilidh in the hall which was the big event of the year. Everyone went, young and old, and people who had once lived on Morna came back to visit for the ceilidh weekend. Jean from next door went if she was on the island, along with several other bird-watchers from England and the
Scottish mainland who had houses there. All the hotel guests were invited too.

Mum said that if we were going to the ceilidh we had to at least know some of the dances, and she could teach us one or two such as the Gay Gordons that she'd learnt a thousand years ago when she was at school. We found some Scottish dance music on the laptop, so we were set.

By the evening of the ceilidh we knew three dances, but we soon discovered that dancing in a hall full of people who know what they're doing is nothing like pushing back the furniture and plodding through the steps at home.

They stamped and marched, leapt and skipped; they spun each other round so fast that if you weren't careful you got trampled on, even in the dances you could more or less keep up in. When it came to the reels, which none of us knew how to do at all, we got swept up and carried along by smiling strangers, steering us round and shouting instructions above the noise of the fiddles and the squeezebox.

It was hot and sweaty in the crowded little hall and no-one sat out except three really old ladies and a baby
asleep in its carry-cot. There was just time between dances to grab a glass of lemonade from the drinks table near the door if you were thirsty, and that's what I was doing when Duncan came up beside me and put a scrap of paper in my hand.

‘Bothy, 9 o'clock,' I read, before pushing it down into my pocket.

I thought it would be some kind of meeting and everyone would all know. They'd probably arranged it the last time they were at the bothy. So I planned to wait until the others left the ceilidh and follow them down. But it got nearer and nearer to nine o'clock, and they all still seemed to be there.

Except, I suddenly noticed, Duncan. He must have slipped out on his own when no-one was looking. Tressa was busy trying to explain about stripping the willow to Milo by telling him it was like cars weaving in and out on the motorway, but he still wasn't getting it. Hamish was dancing with one of his aunties and Elspeth was helping Meggie with her shoelaces.

None of them were meeting each other's eyes or looking out for a chance to slip away, and none of them were watching for me leaving. I realised it
wasn't going to be a meeting of the Binding at nine o'clock—it was just Duncan and me.

Of all the times he could have chosen, why now? I was enjoying the ceilidh and I didn't want to miss any of it.
Oh, I get it
, I thought.
That's why it has to be now.

I thought,
I'm not going
. But then, if I didn't, I might not have another chance. Duncan's challenge could be a one-time only offer. So I went to the drinks table and pretended I was looking for a clean glass. From there to the door was only a few steps, and nobody noticed me leave.

It was darker than it should have been at that time in the evening because a thick mist had come in during the afternoon, completely blocking out the sky. No sunset, no moonrise, no stars, just this soft eerie fog soaking up the lights from the hall like a sponge. Outside that halo of yellow light, I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me, so it was lucky I knew the way to the bothy like the back of my hand.

I made my way up the track, with sometimes a house suddenly looming up, or a barn or a garden wall. I had to keep telling myself that, as Mum and Matt had said, there wasn't any danger on a small
island like this; it was safe to be out and about on your own.

I didn't want to leave the track but I forced myself, following the fence down across the field to the shore, stumbling over dips and tussocks. By the time I got to the sea it was too late to turn back, and I picked my way along the coast to the bothy beach. So long as I stuck to the track, the fence, the shoreline, at least I couldn't get lost.

The fog was rolling and swirling across the sand. I couldn't see the water but I could hear the soft lapping of the waves. I was expecting to see flickering firelight or candlelight inside the bothy when I got close enough, but the windows were completely dark.

I was standing there wondering what to do next when a voice behind me said, ‘You're late.'

He was standing further up the beach, a dark featureless figure in the fog, like a ghost. I stayed rooted to the spot, and he came crunching across the stones towards me.

‘Are you ready for the challenge?'

Now he was close by, I could see his face and that hard bright shine in his eyes that he always got when he was excited about something. I nodded in a way
that I hoped looked calm and confident. I didn't say anything because I was sure my voice would give me away. Besides, my teeth seemed to be locked together, like when you're so cold you're past the chattering stage.

I
was
cold, too. The mist had soaked my hair, slicking it down onto my head and falling in big droplets onto the neck and shoulders of my sweatshirt. I wanted to say, ‘Let's forget about all this and go back to the dance.'

‘The challenge is a race,' Duncan said, ‘from here to the next beach, along the bottom of the cliffs.'

A race? Suddenly, things were looking up. When you're a footballer, you do a lot of training. Speed, stamina and agility, that's the name of the game. Duncan hardly even knew how to play football and he'd definitely never done any training. He was stocky to the point of overweight, and he didn't know how fit I was. He had chosen the wrong challenge. He had made a mistake!

‘All right,' I said. ‘Just to be clear, it's the beach with all the driftwood?'

He nodded. We'd explored all the way along this piece of coast so I knew exactly what it was like, mostly
low grassy banks above a sloping platform of rock, with little pebbly inlets and gullies. As I remembered it, the next beach wasn't very far.

‘Ready? Go!'

The rocks were wet and slippery, and we couldn't see far in front of us in the mist. Down onto the first patch of pebbles we went, with me keeping slightly ahead, easily holding the lead. Carefully now, on the smooth wet rock, then more pebbles, and then rock again, with the sea slapping against the hard rock and swooshing amongst the pebbles, invisible in the mist.

I could hear him puffing and panting behind me, then a sudden gasp as he slipped and fell down. I turned to see if he was hurt, but he got straight up again and I thought,
No, you're not catching me up!
I picked up my speed.

Rounding the headland, I was expecting to see the beach, but it was just more rocks and stones. It must be round the next one, I thought, not stopping, keeping it steady.

I couldn't hear Duncan any more; he must be miles behind. This was so easy! Towards the next headland the rocky ledge was narrower and I could see the water
lapping along the edge, higher than I had expected it to be. The tide must be coming in.

Instead of the beach, I came down onto another patch of pebbles, but I wasn't tired. I pushed on. It was like when you go up a hill and you keep thinking you're coming to the top, and when you get there, you see that the hill carries on.

Again and again, I thought I was going to see the beach round the next corner, only to find another stretch of rocks and stones. But then, all of a sudden, I was there! I ran down onto the sand, yelling in triumph.