Wild Song (9 page)

But I forgot about nicking reading material when my eyes fell on a pretty smart-looking green fishing rod. It was propped up against the wall, beside the bed. What else did a castaway need? I had it all: fire, knife, fishing rod, shirt. I grabbed the rod.

The door creaked again, louder this time, and a shiver shot up my spine. I dropped the book, jumped over the pile of magazines, kicked a mound of earth and dashed out. What a relief to be outside! The stink had gone. The dark creepy mood had gone. I hurried away, wearing my new brown shirt and grasping a fishing rod. If the seal was only going to fling me one fish a day I was going to have to fend for myself.

I made for the shore. I was still hungry. And I had the taste for  barbecued fish now. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t clued up on fishing – I thought you just stuck a worm on the hook, dipped it in the water and miraculously it would catch fish.

I fell to the ground and dug with my bare hands in the earth, searching for worms. I found two that way. Then I copied what the gulls did. I drummed my fingers on the ground, like I was rain, and amazingly three fat worms fell for that trick and appeared. I shoved four of the pink wriggling worms in my pocket and hooked one for bait. I felt pretty squeamish doing that, but when you’ve got this deep gnawing hunger growling away inside you, there’s one thing you do know. You
have
to eat.

Somehow, if you are going to survive, you have to eat.

The sun was high in the sky. I had lost track of time. Maybe it was late afternoon on the second day. I planned to try my hand at fishing off the rocks, but before setting off for the shore I headed up the hill. This was going to be my lookout point and I would need to scan the horizon every hour or so. It felt good to have a plan.

Once I got up there I did a three hundred and sixty degree turn, hand above my eyes like I was some sea captain. Way in the distance I saw tiny white dots, like doll’s handkerchiefs. They were yachts. From where I was they looked like toys. Probably holidaymakers. People having fun with nothing to worry about. Happy people sailing around with plenty of food stored away, and drink, and cigarettes. I turned my back on them. They weren’t coming to get me.

I scanned the skies for helicopters, rescue planes. All I could see was a wheeling white gull. Was I so unimportant that they hadn’t even called out a search party? I kicked
at a clump of tufted grass as hot tears pricked at my eyes. With bare feet, even kicking grass hurt. Feeling totally sorry for myself I headed down the hill.

A good while later I felt even sorrier – and I wanted to fling the stupid useless fishing rod into the sea. A hundred times I had dipped it into the water and brought it up empty a hundred times. I’d used up all the disgusting worms and I couldn’t stomach getting more. My arm was aching. There were fish in the bay, I knew there were. The lazy fat seal slept on. I don’t know how many times I burst into tears. I hadn’t cried for years. Since landing on this island two days ago I had been in tears at least ten times. I shouted. I swore. I punched myself. I wanted to
karate-chop
the ancient fishing rod, but instead I clutched onto it like it was my lifeline.

I did have a lifeline, but it wasn’t the fishing rod. It was that black sleeping seal over on the rock. I must have cried myself to sleep. A castaway learns fast – sleeping conserves energy, so when you can’t eat you might as well sleep. Maybe that was why the seal spent most of the day asleep. The sun was sinking down the sky when I woke. Before I even opened my eyes I sniffed. Like an animal I sniffed again. There was something wafting in my nostrils that reminded me of the stalls in the market. I turned my head, opened my eyes, and there it was: a plump little gift. In fact, two little gifts. Two fish, lined up next to me.

The seal was gone.

Using the lighter was much easier than trying to get a spark from the sun, especially as the sun was setting. I cooked myself a great supper. What a feast! And the brown shirt I now had on kept the chill away. I half considered sleeping in the creepy hut, but I was too full of food and too tired to move. And it didn’t look like it was going to rain. The mammoth swim must have really zapped my energy as I seemed to be doing nothing but sleeping, and if I wasn’t sleeping I was eating, or thinking about eating. Life was suddenly very simple.

I lay down in the heather and gazed up at the reddening sky. I thought vaguely how I should have some kind of plan. I mean, I couldn’t stay on this island for ever, could I? What about somehow stowing away on a ferry bound for Sweden? I remembered the street performer and his hat of coins. The world, I thought, was my oyster. Wasn’t that what people said when they meant you could do whatever you liked, go wherever you liked. Then I yawned. Even
thinking was too much like hard work. I yawned again, closed my eyes, rolled over on the heather and slept.

The drowning dream came again. Maybe it was the constant hum of the sea. Maybe it was the after-effects of having swum for a whole day in the sea. But it was the same hand, the same bleak terror, the same feeling of my throat clamped up, water swirling and the hand vanishing. The same child I had seen when I stared at the seal. The same boat. The same man. Maybe I called out in my sleep? Maybe I thrashed my arms up and down in the heather, because when I woke at dawn I wasn’t alone.

The black seal was close by, and watching me. Its huge yellow eyes stared at me and I stared back. It was about ten metres away and I could smell it, though it didn’t smell bad, more like seaweed. I could see each long whisker and how the animal had black nostrils and folds of skin over its eyes and a kind, almost human expression. I felt like I should be terrified, but I just lay there, gazing at it.

I wasn’t scared, even though I had never been this close to a wild animal – even in the zoo you couldn’t get that near. I told myself I should be worried, but I just lay there, on my side, looking at the seal. I stared into its huge yellow eyes and it was like I could see all kinds of things reflected in those eyes: mountains, huge ice-cold lakes, snow, bears, fires. It was like I could see myself, and Hannu, and the sea, and the moon and stars and the aurora borealis. I even saw my mum. I saw a man with her, and a young boy. He looked like me. Then I saw the man and boy sink
under the sea, like in my nightmare. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. Just really sad.

The seal rocked over the heather towards me and, although I could feel my heart thud as it came closer, I didn’t move. Even if I wanted to move I don’t know if I could have. All the time it kept gazing at me and I remembered the words Hannu said – how everything was going to be all right. It was like the seal was saying it too. And I remember Hannu saying I needed to find my story. I had the sudden mad thought that this seal was my storyteller. It was giving me my lost story. I can’t remember anything ever before looking at me like that. So loving. That’s the only word for it. And the seal was so close I could reach out  and touch it …

They were buried holding hands – that’s what Hannu said. And how it was a true story. Slowly I stretched my arm forward. The seal didn’t flinch. Moving with great stillness I pushed myself towards the animal. The way it looked at me felt like the seal was saying –
yes, come
. So I reached out and gently touched its flipper. I thought its flipper would feel slimy but it didn’t. It felt warm, so alive, just like thick strong skin. I lay my hand over its hand, and it let me.

That’s when I started to believe in animal magic. That’s when I stopped doing the hate-stare. That’s when I knew something wonderful and mysterious was looking after me. It felt like a mother soothing a child from a nightmare. Its eyes seemed to see right inside me – it seemed to have such
a human face – and I saw it had five fingers. We were the same, this animal of the sea and me. I suddenly had this weird sensation that me and the seal were brothers. I felt peaceful. I felt like I wasn’t thirteen years old any longer, but hundreds of years old. I didn’t know what was happening to me but I didn’t fight it. The seal nodded its head. I nodded my head, and my eyelids drooped.

I must have fallen asleep again. When I woke it was daylight and the seal was gone. Maybe that had been a dream too – the black seal lying close to me, letting me touch its hand – but it had felt real. It felt more real than anything else. And inside me I had what felt like a page of my story. Call it magic. Call me weird. But the seal knew something I didn’t know, and it was trying to tell me. From way out at sea I heard a deep and haunting call. I sat up and waved. It was the seal. I was convinced now, more than ever, that this creature was watching over me.

It was now my third or fourth day as a castaway. There were a few clouds in the sky, but the weather was still warm. For something to do I walked round the island a few times and started noticing little things I hadn’t noticed before: tiny little pink and yellow flowers and sloping flat rocks. It was on one of my walks round my island that I discovered a tiny beach. It was hidden round the back of the island and the sand there was white. You could believe no human had set foot on this pure beach. In front of the beach was a small bay fringed with smooth rocks. There wasn’t a ripple on the water.

I was gazing out to sea, doing my usual scanning the horizon thing and thinking how I would call this place Horseshoe Bay, when suddenly I heard this
plop
sound. That gave me a jolt. Next thing, I saw a big fish jump out of the water and slap back in again –
plop
! Then another. Horseshoe Bay was teeming with fish, and not just little fish: they were huge. Okay, so the fishing rod was useless – didn’t mean I was. I was pretty skilled in picking things, wasn’t I?

So I waded silently into the water. Seaweed swirled around my legs but it didn’t bother me. By the time I was waist-deep I could see them – big fat silver fish. I guessed they weren’t used to people as one even brushed my leg. I stood as still as a statue, my hands ready just above the surface. I waited for a fish, and didn’t have to wait long. I saw one swim right towards me and I waited till the fish was right next to me, then shot my hands down through the water, cupped round the fish, squeezed and brought it up. What a beauty! I held on tight and waded fast out of the water, the thing twitching in my hands. By the time I reached the beach the fish had gone limp. Behind me I heard another deep
plop
sound. I swung round to see the seal. ‘I did it,’ I yelled, lifting up my catch. ‘I caught it with my hands!’

I cooked it too. ‘Thanks, fish,’ I said to the last tasty piece of barbecued fish. ‘You were delicious – thanks!’

By the time the sun was sinking in the sky that day I was hungry again. I went back to the bay, but all the fish
had gone. So I wandered around a bit, picked a few tiny raspberries then went off to visit the hut.

I read three romantic stories from the old magazines and a chapter of
Moominland Midwinter
. On the jacket of the book it said that Tove Jansson had lived on a tiny island. I got this shiver up my spine, as if maybe this had been her island? She was a famous writer, the book said, and she was dead now. I liked the idea that she had lived on this island, writing books. Maybe she wrote the Moomins series in this hut? And maybe this had been her tomato soup? I kept thinking about the soup, wondering what it would taste like. I couldn’t believe I was hungry again. It seemed like I was always hungry.

I checked again when she died and worked out it can’t have been Tove Jansson’s soup. Whoever’s soup it was, I spent ages hacking away trying to open a tin of it. Finally I managed to pierce the tin with the knife. I tried to forget it was two years out of date as I poured the red, cold and pretty revolting soup down my throat. Soon as I’d eaten it I wished I hadn’t. It tasted metallic, and definitely off. But it did dull the raging hunger, a bit. Then I climbed to the lookout point.

I told myself I was looking for boats, but really I was looking for the seal. When I couldn’t find the seal I roamed the island, gorging myself on berries. I tried to ignore the gripping feeling in my stomach, tried not to think about the tomato soup – two years out of date.

I ran back to the lookout. I didn’t see boats, or the seal,
but I did see heavy clouds coming in. It had been sunny for days. Okay, there had been a cool breeze sometimes, but this felt different. I looked down to the ring of trees and saw how the birch branches bent with the wind. It felt like a storm was coming. The weather didn’t take long to break. The clouds rolled in, dark and fat, and let loose fat drops of rain. The clouds brought a gloomy darkness with them, and I was beginning to feel sick. I was cold and miserable. Why didn’t the seal come and comfort me? Why did people, and creatures, get close to me, then disappear? Maybe I really was a monster? I remembered my dad’s words – ‘
It’s like living with a monster in the house
.’ What was wrong with me?

‘What’s wrong?’ I shouted. But there was no one to rage at. So I shouted again. To the rain. To the dark clouds. To the choppy sea.

I got soaked. And the rain didn’t stop. It got heavier. Huge splatting drops the size of eyeballs. I tried to shelter under a tree. That didn’t work. I tried to push myself in against the side of a rock. That didn’t work either. I was drenched, totally miserable and shivering. My hair was plastered against my face and the smelly brown shirt was soaked and sticking to me. I couldn’t stop shaking.

There was nothing else for it. That night I went to the hut.

I pushed open the creaky door of the hut, my heart pounding. The rain was lashing at my back. In front of me the eerie hut was gloomy and smelly. But I had to find shelter so I stepped inside. It was pretty dark in there, which was just as well. Meant I couldn’t see all the cobwebs, dead mice and bird poo. There was even something comforting about the little hut. Even though rain dripped through a corner of the roof, it was more or less dry. It was a shelter, and by this stage I wasn’t fussy. It was too gross to sleep on the mattress, but there were two scabby moth-eaten blankets and a bit of dry floor, and I was used to sleeping on hard floors.

I found a wooden box with old newspapers inside. I dragged the box across the floor and hunched down in the one dry corner, between the wall and the box. The floorboards creaked under me as I rolled myself up in the blankets. I still felt wet through, but what could I do? I lay there, shivering and trying to sleep. Lightning suddenly
flashed and for a split-second the hut dazzled bright white and electric blue. I saw the stained mattress, the hanging door at the cupboard, the skeleton of a bird, all lit up.

Then I was plunged back into the gloom. Shuddering, I wrapped myself tighter. It felt like summer was over. It had been light for so long, but now I lay trembling in the dark, and I was so cold I was shaking. I blew into my hands, wrapped my arms tight around me, but my teeth still wouldn’t stop chattering. I had piled a few magazines up for a pillow so I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. If my bed wasn’t so uncomfortable and the stink of the place so terrible, I might have found the whole scene funny. I thought about the rubbishy romantic stories under my cheek and the housewives fifty years ago desperate to make feather-light sponge cakes, to run off in the moonlight with tall dark strangers on horseback, and knit terrible chunky sweaters to keep warm in – I wished I had one now!

Rain fell through the roof but my corner stayed dry. The splatting rain almost felt like company, like I’d switched on some drumbeat music.
Splat-splat – splatsplatsplat
. I wondered where the seal was.
Splat-splat
. Eventually I stopped shaking and felt a wave of sleepiness wash over me. I pulled the blanket up over my face, to get away from the stink, and to be hidden in case the old fisherman suddenly turned up, searching for his tomato soup. I tried to forget I had rancid soup inside me – it was probably rotting my gut, probably slowly killing me, and after surviving this far it would be a shame to die of tomato
soup …
Splatsplatsplat
. Sleep tugged me under. I didn’t know if it was night or morning. The rain still drummed on the roof. My last thought was that I hoped I wouldn’t have the drowning dream again.

I thought I was dreaming. I thought someone was running towards me, footsteps crunching over pebbles and twigs, crushing shells. But my eyes were open and I was staring into the blanket – it smelt damp. My neck was stiff. But I was awake. My heart raced. I thought I could hear footsteps outside. This was no dream. Maybe it was the seal? But it didn’t sound like the seal.

The footsteps were coming closer … somebody was outside – I was sure of it. I heard a twig snap and I froze, my heart banging. I heard a tapping at the door. Then I heard a voice. ‘Niilo?’

It had to be a dream. I was hallucinating. I imagined Hannu’s voice again, calling me: ‘
Niilo?
’ Part of the blanket fell into my mouth and I felt like gagging. But I was scared to move.

‘Are you in there?’

My head spun. What if this was real? I wanted to say something, but the sound stuck in my throat. Then I heard the hut door squeak open. I pulled the blanket down and opened my eyes. It was still gloomy, but a pale shadowed light strayed into the hut. The footsteps creaked on the floorboards … I didn’t know what to do.

He spoke again. His voice sounded hopeless. ‘Niilo?’ Like he’d said it a thousand times. Like the last thing he
expected was an answer. It was Hannu – I would know his voice anywhere. His voice, now, came out twisted with pain. Then I heard him mutter to himself, ‘Give it up, Hannu. He’s drowned. Like they said. Accept it.’ Then I heard him kick out at something – the cupboard door, I think. ‘Why did I teach him to swim? Why?
Why?
I killed him.’

I lay frozen, staring up at the cobwebby ceiling as I heard him drag his feet. Even his feet sounded exhausted. Suddenly I panicked. I was so well hidden behind this box he hadn’t seen me. He was going away. He was going to leave the island and I would be alone again. I heard him push the door. I pulled the blanket right down, and the words came out before I thought about it.

‘I’m here!’

I heard him gasp. ‘Niilo?’ I heard his footsteps hurry over the floor. They were coming closer. ‘Niilo?’ he said again. I heard the flick of a torch, saw the glare of white light. Silvery light beamed over my face, blinding me. ‘Oh, my dear God!’ That was Hannu.

I blinked up at him, shielding my eyes as he pushed the box aside and fell to his knees. The torchlight swung off and I heard the torch thud on the floor. Then I could see Hannu, his outline dark and shadowy. He was standing over me, his mouth wide open. A pale sliver of light fell on his face. He looked like he was seeing a ghost, or a blessed angel. He looked like he might faint.

‘Hi,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.

‘Niilo? Oh God, Niilo. Is it really you?’ Hannu stretched out a hand and touched me on the arm. I felt his wet fingers press into me, as if he was checking I was real. ‘It is. It’s you. You’re alive. Oh dear God, you’re
alive
!’