The Wind of Southmore (17 page)

“
I know,” Robbie shouted through the rising gale, “but I
thought maybe I could see you home. We’ve got to get out of this
anyway.”

Both
girls were silent. Neither of them really wanted to go back to the
castle and face Aunt Maud and her strange behaviour. Arlen was
desperately trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t
arouse his suspicions. The cave was gone now, and she certainly
wouldn’t want to go back to the ship. From the corner of her eye
she could see Alice shrugging and shaking, a hopeless, questioning
look on her face.

“
I – ” she began, not knowing how to finish. But she was saved
from ending the sentence anyway, as a torrential sweep of gurgling
black water came rushing towards them, drowning road, beach and
rocks in its wake, bubbling from the small mouths gaping between
the rocks now blocking the tunnel and speeding, curling and
merciless, on towards them.

“
No way,” said Robbie, determined.

“
It’s flooded,” Alice gasped, as the heavy raindrops spat
against her face. “We’d never make it!”

“
We could go back to Mac’s,” Robbie suggested. “At least it’s
dry there.”

“
Where’s Arlen?” Alice asked, looking around
suddenly.

Faced
with little choice, Arlen had been ready to follow the others, when
a bright object sucking in the water like a drowning star caught
her eye. Drawn, she approached it and picked it up.

It was
another pearl, white and shining and slimy with foam, and rolling
within a piece of dark cloth. How strange, she thought, holding it,
her dark legacy warm in her pocket. Another one.

“
Arlen, come on!” Alice startled her out of her dream, and she
quickly slipped the find into her other pocket and scrambled back
up the beach, ahead of the advancing flood, to join the
others.

Chapter Nine

“
Wow,” Alice came in from the balcony after having thoroughly
examined the large telescope. Not even Arlen, although great
friends with Mr MacKenzie, had actually been in his home before. It
was a small and curious place, whose architect must have been a
drunkard. Yet somehow everything seemed to fit. The tiny sitting
room was filled with curiosities from abroad – Persian rugs, jade
monkeys, sea paintings, carved zebras, and a large ship in a bottle
on the mantlepiece, above which hung a large picture in a simple
wooden frame. The similarity between this painting and the picture
of the alchemist’s ship in the book struck Alice immediately. The
form, the style, the colour – even the design of the ship and the
roar and lurch of the waves appeared to closely resemble each
other. She shuddered suddenly.

An odd,
twisted, rickety staircase, made of mismatched wood and uneven
planks, drifted off into the wall, opening halfway up onto a tiny
balcony, where sat a large and ornate brass telescope. Its vision
was extremely powerful, as the girls had discovered after braving
the elements for a peep.

“
So that explains it,” Arlen was almost speaking to herself as
she drifted down the stairs, shaking raindrops from her hair in a
fine sprinkle of mist. The oppressive heaviness had lifted, and she
felt strangely and keenly alert, every nerve seeming to vibrate and
quiver with an anticipation she could not explain.

“
What?” Robbie looked up from where he was rearranging his
grandfather’s strange, dragonlike chess pieces onto the
gameboard.

“
A glint,” Arlen replied, musingly, to herself. “I used to see
it from somewhere up here. It must have been the reflection from
the glass of the telescope.”

It wasn’t
until later that she thought how odd it was that the telescope
should be trained on the castle.

“
Yeah, well, Grandad spends a lot of his time birdwatching,”
Robbie explained. “That thing’s usually focused on the seabirds,
especially the gulls.” He paused from replacing the rooks in their
rightful positions as guardians on the edges of the chessboard, and
looked up. “It’s funny, but here the birds do seem to have a
language all their own, don’t they? I mean, it’s like they’re
trained or something.”

“
Yes, I noticed that too,” Alice sank down onto the couch arm.
“Like when I first arrived here I could have sworn there was
somebody watching me, but when I looked around, all that was there
was a lone seagull. It followed me all the way to the castle.” She
turned to her sister. “And then there was the bird that tried to
attack us on the Beach Road, remember? It even tried to get into
the house.”

“
Well, Grandad always says that there’s a million things to be
learned from the birds,” Robbie poked up the fire. “He says that
all you have to do is wait for a sign. It’s almost like a secret
code sometimes, he says.”

“
Where is your grandfather?” Arlen asked suddenly. “I haven’t
seen him for a while.”

“
I’m not sure,” Robbie gazed around him, as if anticipating the
appearance of the old man at any minute. “I was sure he was going
to be here. We had the board all set up for a game.” He stopped,
and the three suddenly uncomfortably remembered how the door had
been swinging wide open upon their arrival, the small front room
cold and damp with the sea wind, and the chess pieces, which Robbie
had so carefully rearranged on the board, indignantly spilt in the
grate and covered in grey ashes. Robbie shrugged, a worried
expression crossing his face. “I don’t know where he
is.”

“
What’s that?” Arlen asked then, quickly. The others followed
her gaze to the front room curtain, where a scanty piece of net
beckoned from between the thick drapes. There was something there.
They could hear a dragging, tearing sound from behind the material,
as if in tune with the fierce gusts of air.

“
Well, there’s one way to find out,” Robbie strode over to the
curtain and pulled it back with a firm yank. Behind it the sea wind
raged and whined its call into the room as the net billowed in fat,
shapeless form, snagged halfway down by several shattered, jagged
pieces of glass where the window had been broken. Clinging to the
toothlike edges were a few fine, white hairs and several grey and
white feathers, stained brightly with blood.

“
One thing’s for sure. It was a bird that did it,” Arlen
remarked firmly, as she arranged her pillows. Robbie had insisted
they take the small attic room where he had been sleeping. He was
going to bunk in the front room to wait for his grandfather, and he
wanted to leave Mac’s room clear in case he was hurt. None of them
had liked the look of that window.

They had
searched the outside of the house but there was no sign of the old
man, and the strength of the storm had grown, the harsh bullets of
rain blinding their vision and the wind swelling in a fierce roar
against them, almost as if it were herding them back to the house.
They could do nothing but wait.

“
But you don’t think a seagull – well, I mean,” Alice stopped
for a moment, as if in disbelief, “
dragged
him through the window
?”

“
I don’t know what to think,” Arlen stopped by a small round
porthole and sighed as she gazed out to sea, the wind of Southmore
harping her elflocks around her face. She frowned. “Something
doesn’t quite add up here.
Why
would old Mac have his telescope trained on our
castle? And it was. And why would he devotedly be following the
antics of the birds? He’s never appeared to be all that keen on
birds to me.”

“
Not unless –
he was waiting for a
signal from them
,” Alice turned to face her
sister, her voice rising to a squeak.

“
And if that’s the case,” Arlen finished, “it makes me wonder
just whose side old Mac is actually on.”

Arlen
twisted onto her left side again. Surely it was nearly morning. As
if in answer, a large clock struck two hours in a booming voice
from somewhere downstairs.

“
Ohhh,” Arlen threw herself onto her front and pulled the
pillow over her head in an effort to drown out the noise and
hopefully suffocate herself to sleep. No matter how hard she tried,
she just couldn’t find a comfortable position. A hard lump digging
into her side wasn’t helping, and, rolling over again, she felt
curiously through the bedclothes. Her fingers rested on something
round and rough and very cold, which shone, pale and luminous, in
her palm. It was the pearl she had found on the beach, still half
wrapped in its dark, damp covering. It must have fallen out of her
jeans pocket when she was preparing for bed. She had forgotten
about it, and now, in the dusky moonlight weaving through the
porthole, she examined the small object carefully.

The
wrapping was made of a thick, rich material, although it was wet
and crusty from the salt of the sea. Midnight blue and raven black,
and a strange interlacing pattern of coils and swirls in silver
thread. She knew it – she just couldn’t remember where. Running her
fingers lightly over it, the subtle pattern was suddenly disturbed
by a jagged, uneven break in the woof. She shuddered suddenly, and
turned her attention to the gem.

It looked
like a normal pearl. Quite large, but nothing unusual. Not like the
alchemist’s pair, which lay wrapped together in Alice’s pullover,
resting on the book by her pillow. And yet there was something
strange about it. A fierce dent, so savage that it had punctured
the smooth, round surface and left it craggy and rough. Arlen
traced her fingers carefully over the harsh marks. They were
strange – almost like teeth marks, she thought, shivering, as the
fragment of silvery threads seemed to turn to ice in her hand,
painful to the touch, and she was suddenly gripped with a fierce
intensity of vision, her body so cold and alert that she was
shaking. Waves of images flooded through her like a sea, until she
felt like a doll hurtled through the cruel roar of the ocean.
Memories submerged her, the woven cloak flapping in the gale, hair
streaming around her face in stinging lashes. The rage tore through
her like an iron lance, and she felt as though her heart had been
sliced in two, drowning in its own blood.

He was
there, his iron grey eyes steely in the dawn as she faced him, the
wind rising above them like walls, his greed resting on his
lips.

Anguish
seemed to pour from her, every breath she took screaming pain, and
the hand which held the charm firmly around her neck trembled
slightly. She would not succumb. She would not yield. Her cloak
billowed about her, mingling with the dark strands of hair, and its
silver pattern seemed to lift and meet the stars like a cold flash
of fire. She could see the image – it was so familiar – but she
couldn’t distinguish it. Her eyes smarted, and she blinked them
furiously. From somewhere outside of herself she could see her
twin, standing on the edge of the cliff behind her, and the pain of
the separation tore through her. But she had no choice. It was the
only way.

Almost
unaware of what she was doing, Arlen climbed out of bed, and made
her way downstairs. From the hallway she could see the dim figure
of Robbie by the window, and the pain was so severe that she
thought she might faint. But she passed on, and out of the door,
across the narrow, creaking pier, and onto the sand.

The storm
had stilled, and the place looked devastated. Mounds of rocks and
rubble lined the beach, black water lapping possessively around
them. The shipwreck had almost been demolished, and she could not
bring herself to look up towards the bare, white cliff. The wind of
Southmore sang softly as she picked her way through the debris. She
could not tell what she was looking for, or what strange memory
channelled her forwards, but the pain was too great to ignore. She
felt a stabbing in her calf, and vaguely remembered the earlier
events of the day.