The Missing Link (23 page)

For a mile or so the road went inland again. I was relieved to be leaving the coast, though I couldn’t have told anyone why. But then Maggie swung sharply left, on to a narrow, crumbling road which ended up, a few minutes later, beside a tiny, stone pier.

She drove right on to it and turned off the engine. A couple of ruined cottages overlooked the sea, and an ancient fishing boat sat on its bare ribs on the stony shore. The place had a desolate, abandoned air that gave me the creeps, and from their motionless silence I suspected that the others felt the same way. Even Maggie seemed daunted, but she drove herself into action and opened her door.

‘Out,’ she ordered. ‘Everyone out!’

We spilt out of the back, but Danny was frozen to the spot. Maggie came round to his side and, with a trusting expression that sent a pang of apprehension through my diaphragm, he allowed her to lead him out.

‘Why don’t you let him stay in the car?’ I said. ‘He’s got no shoes.’

Maggie didn’t answer. I said it again.

‘He’s got no shoes! Where are you going with him?’ I ran around in front of them, trying to bar their way. ‘Why have you brought us here?’

‘Trust me,’ said Maggie. ‘This isn’t for you, or for me. This is for Danny.’

I didn’t trust her. Not for a moment. But I didn’t know what to do. Sandy was right beside me. If I tried to stop them with force, she would have knocked me flat in a split second. It was
like
the beginning of the journey all over again. I didn’t want this to happen, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was helpless.

Maggie and Danny stopped at the edge of the pier. Danny stood like a statue, except that I could see the tension; the tiny tremor of emotion that affected every fibre of his being. To my relief, Maggie stepped away from him and stood at a short distance, watching him intently.

A mild swell was breaking against the pier. Danny watched it.

‘What’s going on?’ said Tina. There was a hint of irritation in her voice. It was cold, and she was trying to keep the whimpering pup out of the brisk breeze which snatched this way and that. I remembered that Danny’s jacket was in the car, and was about to go and get it when, without warning, he jumped.

I sprang to the edge of the pier. His head was still above the water, and he had a wild, faraway look in his eyes.

And then he went under.

For a long moment we all stood still, rooted to the stones where we stood. Then Tina stepped forward and we both yelled at the same time.

‘Danny!’

Oggy plunged in and, a second later, Itchy followed. They swam out to where he had been and circled in the water, but it was clear that they could see nothing of him. I turned to Maggie.

‘Help him!’ I shouted. ‘Get him out of there!’ But there was a small, secret smile on her face, and she shook her head.

How could I have let it happen? Even when I had been warned; when I knew she had tried it before. I ran up and down the edge of the stones, peering into the dark water, willing him to come up again and get a grip on the wall. The dogs were swimming further from the pier now, ducking their heads under the surface to look beneath the water. Above them, Darling darted and hovered, darted and hovered, covering large areas of the harbour in her aeriel search. But none of them were finding any sign of Danny. He must have gone down like a lump of concrete.

Suddenly Tina was beside me. She thrust the frightened puppy into my hands, shrugged off her jacket and began to wrestle with the laces of her beloved Doc’s. Wherever her courage had gone to on the night the intruders came to Fourth World, it had returned in no small measure.

The things she had said about us along the way were forgotten; negated by her actions. She wasn’t going to let Danny drown. She was going in after him.

But she never touched the water. In a single, impossible jump, Sandy was at her side.

‘Don’t get yourself wet,’ she said. ‘There’s no point.’

Tina shoved her away, but Sandy bounced back again and grabbed her by the wrists. Tina thrashed and wriggled, but she was no match for Sandy’s frog strength. I was about to go and
help
, when Maggie put a restraining hand on my arm.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Danny isn’t drowning.’

‘Not drowning?’ I snapped, my terror raising the pitch of my voice by at least an octave. ‘Where is he, then? Where is he?’

I turned to face her and she gripped me with her gaze; strong and steady. And totally, utterly trustworthy. Like a holy shiver which began in my spine, the truth began to dawn. About Danny, and why he looked so weird, and why he could hold his breath for so long.

8

AND AS THOUGH
my thoughts needed another shove, he emerged at that moment. He didn’t just surface; he launched himself up and above the waves, doubled in the air, and plunged back in again, back down to the depths.

Tina saw it as well, and her sharp mind grasped for meaning.

‘Fish genes,’ she said. ‘You gave him fish genes.’

She was nearly right, but not quite.

He appeared again beside us, holding on to the uneven wall, splattering us with cold drops as he shook the water from his hair. He was laughing and crying, wild with excitement and joy. It wasn’t his fear of the water that had upset him so much when he saw the sea. It was his desire for it. And Maggie hadn’t tried to drown him, either. She had tried to prove that the experiment had worked.

Tina helped Oggy and Itchy up on to the pier. Danny headed for deeper water, leaping and diving, gliding through the waves with a grace he would never have on land. I remembered what he had said, standing on the shore outside Inverness.

‘The big sea, Christie. People can’t live in it.’

I thought it had been his way of communicating his fear, but I was wrong. He had been repeating what Maurice must have told him, again and again, whenever he had expressed his instinctive yearning for the ocean. If it hadn’t been for Mom persuading Maurice to contact Maggie, and if it hadn’t been for Darling and Oggy coming to collect us, Danny would have lived his whole life without ever knowing what he was.

Because Maurice hadn’t trusted in what he had helped to create. He had chickened out; kept him hidden for all those years; denied him the chance to use his phenomenal lungs for their innate purpose.

But Maggie had believed in him. She had promised to show him what he was, and now she had. Not disabled. Not a gardener. Not a mistake, either. It was on the tip of my tongue when Maggie spoke.

‘My dolphin boy,’ she said. ‘Thank you for bringing him home.’

My thanks to Martha and Morten and to Fundación

About the Author

Kate Thompson is one of the most exciting authors writing for young people today for she is a born storyteller, highly original and thought provoking in her ideas. She has travelled widely in the USA and India and studied law in London. After living in County Clare, she moved to Kinvara in County Galway and there, three years ago, she discovered her passion for playing the fiddle. She is now an accomplished player and also has a great interest in restoring instruments.

Kate is the only author to win the Children’s Books Ireland Bisto Book of the Year award four times – in 2002 for
The Beguilers
, in 2003 for
The Alchemist’s Apprentice
, in 2004 for Annan Water and in 2006 for The New Policeman.

The New Policeman also won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2005, the Whitbread Book Award Children’s category 2005, the Children’s Book of the Year in the Irish Book Awards in March 2006 and has been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Also by Kate Thompson

Switchers

Midnight’s Choice

Wild Blood

The Beguilers

THE MISSING LINK
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17277 1

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
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This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © Kate Thompson 2012

First Published in Great Britain

Red Fox 2012

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