CHAPTER EIGHT
The Whispering Willows
Nobody said a word as they made their way towards the golden willows. Lorraine seemed too preoccupied with her thoughts, but on a whim, she took off and raced ahead. Larry, however, appeared too irritated to utter a single word to any of them and sweated buckets, dragging his heels and occasionally stopping to make sure his nose was still there.
Rachel licked her lips. Her idle thoughts conjured up all manner of drinks that would satisfy her insatiable thirst, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the train of golden willows smothered her in leafy shadows.
‘WE’LL BE IN THE SHADE FOR A BIT,’ shouted Lorraine, hitting her heel against the thickest trunk, trying to get bits of bark out of her shoe.
‘I bet my sandwiches have curled up at the ends by now,’ trilled Larry irritably, mopping his clammy brow with Lorraine’s flora handkerchief.
Rachel glanced over Larry’s shoulder, but the signpost wasn’t there.
As he coughed and spluttered his way towards her, she just realised what had been nagging her all along: the five-fingered sign hadn’t displayed the number of miles to the lighthouse – she was sure of it!
With little enthusiasm, Rachel and Larry followed Lorraine along the tightly packed avenue of golden willows. After a couple of hundred steps, the meandering avenue gradually closed ranks and hemmed them in. They were out of the sun, but the stifling air still sapped their strength (and even Lorraine couldn’t muster her long determined strides).
The leaves swished to and thro, but no welcoming breeze came their way. Rachel found the incessant noise disturbing: she couldn’t get it out of her head the golden willows were whispering amongst themselves.
‘Look, what’s that up ahead?’ she asked, and but she soon recognised the long winding wooden staircase that loomed out of the gloom.
The golden willows petered out, and their claustrophobic walk ended as they reached the snaking staircase that hugged the chalk cliff face.
They plonked themselves down on the bottom rung of the wooden stairs and huddled under the humongous heart-shaped leaves that cast a welcoming shadow over them as they sat in silence and cooled down.
Lorraine turned and faced them. ‘C’mon – we’ve had enough rest,’ she said wearily. ‘We’ll never get to the lighthouse at this rate.’
Their backs protested, and their knees groaned as they got up.
Rachel had barely taken a step up the flight of stairs when she winced and grabbed the stair rail with her hand. Hopping on one foot, she said, ‘Mum – I’ll catch you up as soon as I get this splinter out of my foot.’
‘Don’t be too long,’ Lorraine replied. ‘We’ve still a hike ahead of us.’
With her shoe unbuckled and her sock removed, Rachel inspected her injured foot and pulled the offending sliver of wood from her big toe. Putting her sock and shoe back on, she tentatively put her weight on it and immediately felt an odd tingling sensation through her sole: it felt like someone was tickling her throbbing toe with a feather.
The tingling grew even more persistence as faint rhythmic vibrations rumbled up and down the stairs like a rolling wave.
Rachel brushed her hair aside and put her ear against the stair rail –
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
Startled, she jumped back from the stair rail in shock.
The knocking noise intensified, sounding frantic in its pacing, but an anguished cry of despair rang out above her.
‘My, God – what has he done?’ Lorraine shrieked.
Rachel hobbled up the staircase as fast as she could, leaving the strange knocking far behind. She found Lorraine and Larry with furious faces as they overlooked the three deep ruts in the staircase.
Lorraine’s face took on a look of horror and disbelief. Bending down on one knee, her hand trembled as she picked up a jagged piece of glass. With a sharp intake of breath, she shot to her feet in temper, almost cutting herself on the glinting shard of glass in her palm. She turned on her heels and rushed up the stairs, bellowing, ‘MADELEINE’S MIRRORS!’
Larry beckoned Rachel to follow him, and with his face awash with anger, he said, ‘C’mon, Rachel – we’ve got to get to the lighthouse.’
Rachel reached the last rung of the staircase with a pounding heart.
Lorraine stood motionless beside a gigantic siege gun. Home to a few malnourished mice, the gun’s wooden wheels had sunk into the chalky soil along the wheel’s iron banding that had long since corroded away.
In an icy temper, Lorraine hammered the barrel with a clenched fist, scattering the frightened mice to the four winds. ‘What daemon drove Henry to do this?’ she spat venomously.
Rachel ambled towards her mother, weaving around the hundreds of sagging holes that devastated the rutted plateau. As she approached her mother, she looked far beyond the gun’s barrel and at the horizon that harboured the shadowy outline of a town.
Larry looked ill at ease as he took in the devastation. ‘I – I saw the flashes of light and heard the rumbles of thunder,’ Larry told Lorraine shamefully, ‘but if I knew what Henry was after I would have –’
‘– you would’ve ended up in jail again,’ interrupted Lorraine gravely, her lips quivering. ‘Henry would be your judge, jury and executioner.’
‘Lucky for us he’s only a judge now,’ said Larry darkly.
‘Once a judge – always a judge. It’s in his blood to rise above us all,’ seethed Lorraine in bitter contempt, as if she had bitten into a rather tart gooseberry. ‘He’s laid waste to what we all knew and loved.’
Larry threw open his leather-bound satchel and pulled out a battered brass spyglass. ‘I can just make out the lighthouse –’ he began, but he let out a stilted cry of rage, still not quite believing what his eyes already knew. ‘The mirrors – they’re – they’re all gone!’
Lorraine faced Larry with a look of utter despair. ‘As soon as I stepped foot on the island, I knew something was wrong,’ she told him soulfully.
‘That town over there – what’s it called?’ asked Rachel inquisitively.
‘It’s the town of Little Inkling,’ said Lorraine with a faraway look.
Dark brooding clouds rolled in from all points of the compass. To Rachel’s relief, they blotted out the blue sky and the incessant sun.
‘The sooner we get into town, the better,’ said Larry bleakly. ‘Looks like the weather’s on the turn,’ he added, and as if on cue, the weather went from slightly moody to downright miserable in a matter of minutes.
Lorraine reached into her handbag and handed out plastic ponchos.
Rachel wished she had her sou’wester hat, as the buffeting wind blew so hard it messed up her impeccable blunt haircut. With her head held down, she struggled against the elements and the soggy footpath…
✽✽✽
‘DON’T WALK ANOTHER STEP,’ Larry bellowed.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rachel, her left leg left hovering.
‘Look down,’ Larry answered.
Rachel carefully lowered her left leg and stepped back from the brown sludge in front of her. As the wind veered once more, her nose wrinkled in disgust. The overwhelming aroma of rancid decay and salt flooded her senses. The pelting rain soon dwindled down to an irritating drizzle.
Off into the middle distance, she could see the town’s silhouette quite clearly beyond the vast open pits that littered the landscape.
Piles of mining equipment lay abandoned and rusting.
‘Looks like Henry’s roped in Bert Burrows to do his dirty work,’ said Larry sneeringly, casting his tempestuous gaze over the mountainous mounds of earth and rock. ‘He must have known what Henry was up to.’
‘The recriminations can wait,’ Lorraine said. ‘Henry’s got some hold over Bert. He’s no traitor – not after all we’ve been through.’
‘I don’t know which Silverback’s the worst,’ Larry snapped. ‘Wilfred has the brains – but Henry has power, money and oodles of cunning wit.’
Much to her chagrin, Rachel knew Henry Silverback all too well, as she had an unfortunate encounter with him at Plums.
In a desperate attempt to get to her Latin class on time, she had sped down the red-bricked archway and smacked into him so hard, it had rumpled his tweed jacket and knocked his tartan sporran out of sorts. Her pencil case had careered towards the vaulted ceiling, but it had come down twice as hard and hit Henry in the head, messing up the perfect parting in his slick jet-black hair.
Rachel’s pencil case had dropped right in front of his feet.
‘One should always keep good care of their possessions,’ Henry had told her, but his disdain had quickly dissolved into one of malice as he slowly crushed her pencil case with his brown brogue. With nothing but a cruel sneer, he had marched towards a shining silver Phantom Rolls Royce.
Rachel brushed the thought of that day aside. Her crushed pencil case seemed petty compared to Henry’s pernicious actions that lay before her.
‘Those cannonballs have done a right number on the lighthouse and the church’s spire,’ Larry scowled, seething as he put his spyglass away.
‘What drove Thomas to leave the island to Henry?’ snarled Lorraine.
Larry sighed. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said. ‘Let’s get moving, eh?’
Lorraine shrugged her shoulders but nodded in agreement.
In single file, they weaved in between the myriad of overflowing pits that smelt of rotten cabbages, smelly feet and just a hint of sour milk.
Rachel couldn’t take it anymore and almost suffocated herself with her handkerchief to lessen the awful smell wafting up her nostrils. With the odious pits behind them, they stood in front of a gigantic wooden gate that floundered precariously on its rusty hinges, and as far as the eye could see, enormous black boulders surrounded the town on all sides.
The town resembles a fortress, Rachel thought as her eyes scoured the murky scene. All it needed was a massive moat to complete the picture.