Chapter 10
The Secrets Of The Island

The island grass was coarse and hot under their feet as they trudged up the hill. It was short, too: something had been eating it. Desert Wind nodded at some droppings by a hole. ‘Rabbits,’ she said. ‘Maybe we can snare some later, if we can’t get any fish.’

The hill seemed taller than it had looked from the shore. The sun shone white and lonely overhead. It was still strange for them to see the sky without its stars, with only one large bright light in the sky. The sweat trickled down their backs and wet their salty clothes. The air trembled and swam in the heat above the hill.

The music played hide-and-seek around them.

You couldn’t see the spire from this angle. Just the green ridge and the sky, so sharp they seemed to have been cut, a blue slice and a green. Desert Wind was limping badly. Mopoke took her arm. At last they reached the top, and stopped.

Possum held her breath. Desert Wind leant on Mopoke, staring at the scene below. Mopoke rubbed the sweat from his eyes.

The spire shimmered in the hot light from the sea. It had once been a tall building—a strange building, round and very high. Now the broken walls sheltered trees from the strong salt wind. The spire rose like a broken skeleton.

Next to the ruins was another building. It was smaller, as though it had been built from rubble round the spire. It was newer than the ruins, still mostly intact. Its blank windows gaped towards the sea.

The music sprang from all around them.

They started down the hill. It was not such a steep slope this side, and easier walking. The wind buffeted them, fresh and salt and strong.

The grass was short right up to the rubble walls, dotted with rabbit droppings, streaked with white from the gulls. The walls were higher than they had seemed from above, twice or three times the children’s height. Desert Wind stepped through a gap that might once have been a doorway. Possum followed, and Mopoke. The wind stopped abruptly in the shelter of the walls. Light trickled through the trees.

‘The music’s coming from over there,’ whispered Possum. She pointed to the building beyond the walls. ‘Do you think someone’s living there? Someone who’s playing the music?’

‘No,’ said Desert Wind. She put her hand on Possum’s shoulder. ‘That building’s deserted, Possum. No-one’s been here for many years. No-one except us.’

‘But the music,’ whispered Mopoke. ‘Someone has to play it.’

‘Not a person,’ said Desert Wind softly. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

They walked slowly towards the music, over the short tough grass, around the lichened trees and to the spire. Mopoke reached up and touched it. It left his fingers red with rust. Its top was buffeted clean and silver by the wind, as though it were a different metal from the base. ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘part of it’s fallen down. It’s made of iron. I bet that’s steel up there. I could make anything with this,’ he said. His eyes gleamed.

Desert Wind glanced up at the trees, then ran forward. ‘Fruit trees!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oranges!’ She picked three off, and threw a couple to Possum and Mopoke.

These oranges weren’t like the ones at home. These were thick skinned and slightly dry. But they tasted wonderful after the sea.

‘How could they have got here? When?’ whispered Possum, wiping the juice from her mouth. It seemed wrong to speak aloud here, in this eerie garden by the sea.

Desert Wind shrugged happily. ‘I don’t know. Maybe these are seedlings from some older trees.’ She ran over to the other trees.

‘More fruit trees!’ she cried. ‘Apples, maybe. I can’t tell. That’s an olive over there.’ She bent down. ‘Strawberries!’ she exclaimed. ‘Look, these are strawberries, underneath the trees. And over here! I don’t even know what these berries are. It’s what every Collector dreams of—finding species like this, a garden that’s survived!’

‘Why has it survived?’ asked Mopoke. ‘Is it just the wall?’

‘It must be. It shelters them from the sea, and gives them shade from the sun. I suppose it keeps them warm, too, and stops the wind. Who’d ever have thought of anything like this, so near the sea? We’ve always looked inland for lost gardens. We never thought of looking by the sea at all, with the wind and salt and glare.’

Desert Wind seemed entranced by the garden, too dazed to move. Possum touched her arm. ‘Come on. Please come on. Over there! That’s where the music’s coming from.’

They crossed the garden slowly. ‘That must be an elderberry,’ cried Desert Wind, pausing again. ‘What’s this thing here? I can’t wait to take pieces of all these back home.’

‘Come on!’ urged Possum. She took Desert Wind’s hand.

The wind hit them again as they left the garden, into the shelter of a smaller, newer wall. This had been a garden too. The music washed like water all around them.

‘A vegetable garden!’ exclaimed Desert Wind. ‘Those are wild potatoes. They don’t grow any more in the valley. The last ones died out a hundred years ago. I’ve only seen sketches … these must be specially hardy ones. Just imagine taking potatoes back … I wonder what those vines are? No Collector has ever found a haul like this …’

‘The music,’ insisted Possum. ‘You can look at these later. The music’s coming from over there.’ Mopoke had already gone ahead. Desert Wind followed reluctantly.

They were on the edge of the island now. The waves sucked and whispered on the rocks below. The horizon shone with its match of blue and blue.

The wall was joined to the building, a few metres from the cliff. It was a strange building, unlike any the children had ever seen. The walls appeared to be of stone, but of a kind not found around the valley: beneath the brown of lichen, the stone was as smooth as if it had been made.

There was a door at the end of the building. It had been thick wood once, with metal hinges. Now the wood was grey and splintery.

Mopoke prodded it. ‘It’s rotten,’ he said. ‘One good tap and it’ll collapse.’

‘What do you think is inside?’ whispered Possum.

‘Only one way to see,’ said Mopoke. He gave a push. The rusted hinges creaked and broke. The door groaned and fell back on the hard earth floor. A cloud of dust rose round them, smelling of damp and mouse droppings. Mopoke stepped over the door carefully.

‘Come on,’ he said.

It was dim inside the hut after the bright sunlight outside. Light fell through the darkness from two small windows, and from wide holes in the roof. It shone like searchlights on a broken bed, a weathered table and a chair, the remnants of a cupboard in a corner.

‘Someone once lived here,’ Desert Wind said. ‘But what could be making music now, after so long?’ The thought of ghosts clutched her; she thrust it away.

‘Outside!’ whispered Possum. ‘The music’s coming from outside.’

They crossed the room. There was another door. It opened, creaking, protesting all the way.

The wind and music swept inside, then gusted out again. They followed.

They were on the cliff-top, far above the sea. They could hear the waves crack and thunder on the rocks below. The sea shone like a bright blue torch; the sky was even brighter overhead. A seagull screamed above the structure on the cliff.

Possum was the first to move. She walked slowly, as though she didn’t quite believe it, and stretched out her hand. She touched the metal rods that clanged and dangled in the breeze.

‘Wind chimes,’ she breathed. ‘That’s the mystery! Wind chimes in the wind. They play when the music blows from the sea.’

‘Giant wind chimes,’ said Desert Wind, joining her. ‘I’ve never thought chimes could be so big. Or sound like that.’

‘It’s because they’re made of metal,’ said Mopoke, stroking a chime. ‘Ours at home are made of wood, or pottery. They clank, not sing. You never get a sound like this. No-one at Iron Fist would ever waste metal on music.’

‘It wouldn’t be a waste,’ said Possum softly.

‘No,’ agreed Mopoke. ‘Not if it sounded like this.’

The warm salt air waved round them, wild from the sea.

‘Who made them?’ Possum finally dared ask.

‘I wonder,’ said Desert Wind slowly. ‘Maybe the person who lived here, who made the garden. The person who planted the trees in the shelter of the walls.’

Mopoke was silent for a moment. ‘They used the metal from the spire,’ he said. ‘They gathered up the pieces, all different lengths and shapes, and hung them here in the wind. That’s what makes the notes, all the different pieces from the spire.’

‘From the lighthouse,’ said Desert Wind. The others looked at her. ‘That’s what it was,’ she said. ‘In the old days a lighthouse showed where the rocks and cliffs were. But the seas must have risen, and turned the headland into an island, cut off from the shore.’

‘But there were still people here,’ said Mopoke. ‘There must have been.’

‘Maybe,’ said Possum. ‘Maybe one person all alone. So she built the chimes for company, to hear a sound other than the sea and wind. Music she could hear all over the island, wherever she went. Music to keep her company.’

‘And she—or he—kept a garden,’ said Desert Wind. ‘Maybe it was a man. He planted a garden and lived on the fish from the sea.’

‘How long ago, do you think?’ whispered Possum.

‘I don’t know,’ said Desert Wind, her fingers rubbing the rust on the chimes. ‘I don’t think we can ever know. I don’t think it matters. Just that someone once made their life here, and built these.’