Gruff stared at the small black walkie-talkie in his hand. Iolo’s words filled the room around him. The Sleepers are waking up.
With a finger that was suddenly trembling, Gruff pressed the ‘talk’ button. ‘Very funny, Iolo,’ he said. ‘Ha-ha.’
No reply.
Gruff crossed to the front window and peered out into the dusk half-light, trying to make out the dark shapes of the Sleepers. There they were, solid and still, just discernible against the slightly lighter sky. Aligned as they had been for time immemorial.
Gruff rolled his eyes. What had he expected: to see them wandering around on long stick-legs or slithering about like armour-plated snails?
Gruff pressed the button on the walkie-talkie again. ‘Hi, Iolo? You okay?’
No answer.
Now a different kind of worry took hold. Was Iolo ill? Was he seeing things? Was he even now collapsed in his tiny house with no one there to help?
Gruff clicked through the walkie-talkie channels and found Ffion’s. She lived next door to Iolo.
‘Ffion,’ he said. ‘It’s Gruff. Iolo just called and he sounded strange and now he’s not replying. Please could you check on him?’
There was a pause, then Ffion’s voice crackled into the living room. ‘Yeah, of course, boyo.’
Gruff took the walkie-talkie with him back to the kitchen, and this time he just walked straight in. Nain stopped mid-sentence and she and Dad exchanged guilty looks that a baby wouldn’t have missed.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Gruff said shortly. ‘Everything’s rubbish: we’re going to lose the farm and go mainland before next summer. I’m going to see Iolo. He’s not making sense.’
Dad opened and shut his mouth.
Nain recovered first. ‘What do you mean, he’s not making sense?’ she said.
Gruff put the walkie-talkie on the table. ‘He told me the Sleepers are waking up and now he’s not replying.’
A shadow of a smile flicked across Nain’s lips. ‘Story-smitten is our Iolo.’
Gruff tensed angrily. ‘You’re the one who’s told me stories about those stones, Nain.’
‘Here. It’s our day to cook for him anyway.’ Dad opened the oven and pulled out a dish of cottage pie. He spooned a portion into a bowl, covered it with a plate and handed it to Gruff, hardly able to meet his eyes. As Gruff left the kitchen Dad said, ‘Wait! We should talk about this properly…’
‘Yeah, well.’ Gruff pulled his wellingtons on in the hall, not wanting to bother with the laces on his trainers, keen to be gone. ‘You’ve not told me about it before. I’m sure you can bear a couple more hours of not telling me the truth.’
He half-ran through the dark farmyard and out onto the windy coast path. He ran as much to be away from his family as to get to Iolo. He felt a bit bad for snapping, but the more he thought about what he’d heard the angrier he got.
By the time he arrived at the Sleepers, the anger had been replaced by a complicated, intense sadness that ached in his bones.
Leaving the island would tear a part of his heart away.
Night was well fallen now. Gruff stopped and looked out to the deep, dark colours of the sandy beach and the increasingly choppy water around the jagged Sleepers. Though they had seemed to pull him earlier, he felt nothing from them now. The wind lifted his short hair and sucked greedily at the warmth of the bowl in his hands.
He should get on to Iolo. Nain hadn’t seemed concerned that Iolo was spouting nonsense about the Sleepers, but she hadn’t heard the catch in his voice. Besides, his tea was going cold.
And then – it was as though someone had thrown a lasso round his heart and pulled, hard, out to sea. Gruff took an unexpected giant jerking step forward, off the path, and tripped on one of the rocks in the sea bank at the head of the beach.
He fell forwards, hugging the bowl and plate to his chest. He tumbled down the stone sea bank, all elbows and knees, and thumped onto the firm sand of the beach.
He lay still, breathing shallowly and trying to work out what had happened. He had stepped forward, caused his own fall. Why on earth had he done that?
He was curled around the bowl and plate as though they contained a precious treasure rather than a portion of his Nain’s bog-standard cottage pie. His cheek pressed uncomfortably against the gritty sand, but he didn’t feel quite ready to move yet. He looked out to the Sleepers. The waves lapped and sucked, lapped and sucked, and in the wind the swell leapt a little higher, slapping and chopping.
With that rhythm came an urge to move. To stir himself and stand; to run to the Sleepers; to start the journey out to sea. Gruff got to his feet.
He saw a seventh stone.
On it stood a tall figure, dark and indistinct. The moon was hidden behind the gathering clouds. The figure had their back to him and wore a cloak that flapped and cracked in the wind.
Shock swept the lure of the Sleepers clean out of him. Gruff stood on trembling legs, the bowl raised like a weapon. He stared.
And blinked − and the figure and stone were gone.
Someone shouted behind him. A high, thin voice swept away on the wind. He turned and saw a small figure running along the path from the farm, stumbling on stones they could not see in the dark. Bouncing plaits gave Mat’s identity away.
‘Are you okay?’ she shouted as she got closer. ‘I came out to explore. I saw you fall…’
‘I’m okay,’ Gruff said. He felt unsteady, like he did when Dad woke him from a deep, vivid dream. But which was the dream and which real life? Mat seemed like an imagined sprite as she ran towards him, while the figure on the stone that was not there – they had been the most real thing he had ever known.
‘What’s that?’ Mat panted, clutching a stitch in her side.
Gruff realised he was still brandishing Iolo’s dinner. He grinned sheepishly and climbed one-handed up the sea bank. ‘It’s food,’ he said. ‘For Iolo.’
‘Yol-oh?’
‘He lives on his own and mostly seems to eat baked beans, so we take it in turns to cook for him.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Mm.’ Gruff winced and flexed his elbows and his knees. He hadn’t been aware before of the bumps he’d got when he’d fallen, but now he felt them all right. He looked out to the Sleepers, half-expecting to see the figure and the extra stone. Excitement licked around his fear. That had not been his imagination. And with Iolo saying stuff about the Sleepers, and Rosie acting so weirdly earlier – there was definitely something going on.
Beside him, Mat took a determined step forwards, straight off the edge of the rock bank.
Gruff’s arm shot out without his conscious brain telling it to. He grabbed a handful of her jacket and jerked her backwards; she stumbled and found solid footing on the path.
‘Thanks.’ She laughed uncertainly. ‘I guess I slipped…’
‘You did exactly what I did,’ Gruff said.
He turned to stare at the silent stones. Mat must have experienced that same sudden, lassoing energy that had made him step off the path.
Mat made as if to move forward again and Gruff stepped between her and the Sleepers. ‘Do you want to come to Iolo’s?’ he asked.
‘Oh,’ Mat said. She looked shy and pleased. ‘Yes. Thanks.’
Gruff realised he had been accidentally friendly. Maybe making friends with someone his own age wasn’t so difficult.
But really, the only thought in his head when he’d suggested she came with him had been to get her away from the Sleepers. He couldn’t leave Mat out here on her own, with six stones that thought they were seven, and a sea that even now leapt and grew with the strength of the wind.