Chapter Three

Gran’s shack

It was two miles to the island. The sun started to drop from the sky at an amazing speed.

The sun sets in the west, Elen knew that, but she’d never thought it would sink so quickly. She almost forgot to be angry as she watched it. The colours of the sunset made it look as if the sun was burning the water. The boat sent water rubies and amber spray high into the air as it bounced against the waves.

Mr Evans, standing at the helm, pointed to the right. She turned and saw dolphins breaking the surface with their fins. Elen had seen a dolphin before in a zoo. It was very different to see them in the wild like this. Her heart almost leapt out of her chest as one of the dolphins broke the surface and seemed to fly through the air. It was all she could do not to yell with sudden happiness.

‘Bottlenose dolphins, Able Seaman Elen,’ he called, his beard alive in the wind like wriggling worms.

Elen guessed he wanted her to reply, ‘Aye, aye Captain.’ Or something equally childish. She nodded curtly and sat on her hands.

The sky turned from fiery red to burnt orange, to cerise pink, to indigo and eventually to violet. The island loomed up ahead of them, purple and monstrous in the growing darkness. She wasn’t going to be scared.

‘There she is, Able Seaman Elen. Waiting at the dock. The old boot,’ Mr Evans shouted. Elen looked. She could just make out an old woman bent over a stick, waiting. It was impossible to tell whether she was smiling or not from this distance. Her face was in shadow.

They pulled up alongside the jetty and Elen’s luggage was thrown off. People here didn’t care too much for expensive suitcases.

Elen climbed out of the boat gingerly. The motion of the waves was making her stomach roil.

The bent old woman stared at her suspiciously.

‘Hello Gran. I’m Elen. Very pleased to meet you.’ Elen wondered if she should curtsey or go for a firm handshake.

‘Just like your mother.’ The old woman raised her gnarled stick to point up a small lane, then turned and started hobbling along it.

‘Nice to see you, Mrs Thomas!’ Mr Evans called after her cheerily, if a little sarcastically. She made a ‘GRRRR’ noise at him, then carried on up the road.

I’ll carry my own bags then, shall I? Elen thought. Perhaps she couldn’t expect a woman with a walking stick to carry luggage for her and anyway she’d have to get used to doing things for herself here. She struggled to trundle her suitcase on wheels along the dark lane as it got narrower and more and more creepy.

At the end of the road was a shack so dark and unwelcoming, so dirty and scary, that Elen couldn’t begin to imagine who could live in it.

Gran pushed open the front door and walked in.

Elen stood outside and for a moment wondered if she could make herself a home out of sand on the beach, but then she took a deep breath and went in.

Inside, she wished she’d taken an even deeper breath, because the smell made it hard to breathe at all. A mix of mushy peas and ham with a bit of dog breath and cheesy sock thrown in. Elen fought the urge to make a disgusted noise. She followed her grandmother through to the kitchen. Candles lit the table and threw long dancing shadows against the walls.

‘I expect you’ll be hungry if you are anything like your mother,’ Gran said.

Elen took umbrage at this comment. Her mother may have gone off on holiday without her, but she was still her mother.

‘I am very much like my mother, but I am not hungry,’ she stated firmly, quaking in her shoes a little.

‘Of course you are hungry. Young people always are. They just forget about it because they are too busy doing things. Always up to something. Sit down.’

Elen looked at the pot on the kitchen hob which was bubbling and hissing with a loud flubble-ssssstttt-ping sound every few seconds.

She sat at the far side of the table as the old woman walked towards the pot with a ladle.

‘Do you want one scoop or two?’

Elen didn’t want to be rude but she didn’t think there was any way she could eat anything that smelled like that.

‘I think I’m probably allergic to it,’ she lied, feeling bad but silently promising to do something good in the future to make up for it.

Gran guffawed loudly. ‘Your face! You don’t think I’d actually make you eat this, do you!’

Elen laughed too. Maybe her grandmother wasn’t all that strange. She had a sense of humour at least.

‘What is it?’ Elen asked, glad to have something funny to talk about.

‘Liquid magic.’ Her grandmother’s face shone with joy and the steam spiralling up from the pot. ‘There are strange things on this island. Plants and animals so beautiful you wouldn’t find them anywhere else. We’ve had mermaids spotted off our shores and you can hear pirate ghosts digging for the treasure that they’ve buried years ago. Anything can happen here. Anything at all.’

It was difficult for Elen not to feel the excitement her grandmother felt for this place, but she just about managed it.

‘Of course you’ll just think I’m a lonely old woman spouting a complete load of claptrap!’ Gran guffawed again, then returned to stirring her spell.

Elen looked around. A box in the centre of the table caught her eye. It was carved with pictures of fairies in mid-flight and deer and rabbits. Its clasp was ornate and looked even older than her grandmother. There must be something very beautiful in it, Elen decided, her fingers creeping across the table.

‘And you can keep your dirty paws off that!’ Gran flew across the kitchen. She grabbed the box and grasped it tightly.

‘That’s enough for today. I’ve made you a cheese sandwich. Eat it and then go to bed,’ she said, then hobbled out of the kitchen shaking her head. A hand-held oil lamp lit the stairs. ‘Turn the lights off as you come. We like it dark here.’

‘What time is it exactly?’ Elen asked. Her bedtime was never this early, she was sure, and even though her legs felt tired and her arms were very heavy, there was no way she would let this woman make her go to bed earlier than she was allowed.

‘Time?’ her grandmother cackled. ‘The clock stopped working. Too much salt in the cogs. Time doesn’t matter in this house, does it, Blackbeard?’

Blackbeard? Elin was pretty sure her grandmother wasn’t talking to her, so she scanned the room for a dog or cat or a parrot. There was none.

Elen had done a project on pirates in school and Blackbeard had been dead for a very long time. Gran talked to dead people. Perhaps there were dead people in this house. Perhaps there was the ghost of a pirate right behind her. Elen swung around.

To her relief, there was nothing there.

Her grandmother shouted, ‘Just keep your nose out of my business and I’ll keep my nose out of yours. I expect you’ll find it boring here. Most young people do.’

Elen agreed. She decided she would eat her sandwich to keep her strength up in case she needed to swim back to the shore.

She could hear the crabbity old woman talking to herself upstairs then slamming a door. Elen put her cheese sandwich in her pocket and struggled past the salted clock and up the stairs with her wheelie suitcase, dreading what she would find at the top. There was only one door ajar. She peeked around it, then entered cautiously.

The room was lit by a small lamp and decorated in a deep blood red. Paintings of pirate galleons and famous pirates hung on the walls. A human skull balanced on a shelf just above the bed, with lots of books on pirate lore. It was odd but brilliant.

Elen took the skull down to examine it and plonked herself on the bed to eat her slightly squashed sandwich. She wasn’t sure what to make of anything. Her grandmother certainly had interesting taste and perhaps some people would call her quirky. She wondered what she kept in that box that was so important and secret. It could be pirate treasure maps. It could be an antique pearl necklace or an opal tiara she was keeping all to herself so that she wouldn’t have to give her family a share because she hated them so much.

Still feeling the ground shift and heave after her boat ride, Elen lay down on the quilt for a good hard think. She tugged at her fringe and fell fast asleep wondering about the contents of that box and how she was going to get her hands on it!