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- Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
It was always at sundown they were seen. In that twilight hour, when the walls between the worlds grew thin, strange things might slip through the cracks. Sometimes then, so the stories went, enchanted islands would appear in the empty ocean to the west of Wildsea.When Utterly Dark was a baby, she was washed up on the shores of the Autumn Isles and taken in by the Watcher of Wildsea. But everything changes when her guardian suddenly drowns. Now who will keep the Watch, and make sure Wildsea stays safe from the strange forces teeming in the deep ocean around them?A magical new story from the bestselling and prize-winning author of Mortal Engines.
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Seitenzahl: 316
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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For my mother, Jean Rosemary Reeve, and her mother, Lilian Whittle, because they loved the sea.
CONTENTS
1
AT SUNDOWN WATCH
Utterly Dark lay dreaming of the sea. She dreamed she rode the night wind like a gull, gliding out over the cliff’s edge, out over the breaking surf in the cove, and far, far out across the western deeps where all the world was water. The huge waves rolled unbroken for thousands of miles, and the moonlight danced along their crests. It was very quiet, except that the waves rustled a little sometimes when one rose too high and its top broke briefly into foam.
‘Utterly,’ the waves were whispering. ‘Utterly …’
A rush of white caught her dreaming eye, and she saw that the waves were starting to part around a rock or reef which lay just beneath the surface. The sea grew troubled. It ceased its whispering and began to roar. 2‘Utterly! Utterly Dark!’ Fountains of spray smashed upwards; shattered waves were dragged back like sheets of liquid marble from some vast darkness rising slowly, slowly from the depths …
Utterly woke with a start. The memory of her dream was already fading, but she could still hear the sea rolling like soft thunder in the cove. She climbed out of bed and felt her way past the washstand and across the room to the window. When she opened the shutters she saw it was still nearly dark outside. A few last stars were lingering above the crown of ancient standing stones on the headland. Yet strangely, although it was so early, she could hear voices. Something had happened to upset the unvarying rhythms of the house, and Utterly sensed that it was something bad.
Perhaps that was what the sea had been trying to tell her …
She dressed without bothering to wash, and went padding barefoot along the passage towards the sound of the voices.
Mr and Mrs Skraeveling were both in the kitchen, talking to some men who had come up from Marazea. The men were not used to being in such a grand old house as Sundown Watch. They held their shapeless hats in front of them in rough, red hands, and spoke shyly in low voices. When Utterly came in, they stopped and stood staring at her in a wary, watchful way, like deer poised to run. 3
Mrs Skraeveling came over and hugged Utterly. It was a consoling sort of hug, but Utterly did not yet know what she was being consoled for. ‘You come along with me, little kitten,’ said Mrs Skraeveling, leading her out of the kitchen and into the drawing room. There she broke the news which the men had brought from Marazea.
Mr Andrewe Dark, the Watcher on Wildsea, had been drowned.
Utterly was not sure how to feel. Mr Dark was the kind gentleman who had found her washed up on the shore when she was only a baby, and taken her into his home. She could not exactly claim that she had loved him, for he had been rather too stiff and sombre and reserved to love. For love she had always turned to Mr and Mrs Skraeveling, who gave it freely, glad of a new child about the place now that all their own had grown and moved away.
But Mr Dark had always been there, one of the three pillars of her life. Each day had begun with him sitting down opposite Utterly in the breakfast room, taking the top off his boiled egg, and saying, ‘Good morning, Utterly, I trust you slept well?’ Each day had ended with him stomping up the steep stairs of the Tower to make his observations, and then stomping back down an hour 4later to read in his study. In wintertime, Utterly would look in on him there to say goodnight before she went to bed. In summer, when the Watch was later, he would generally say goodnight before he climbed the Tower. Then Utterly would lie in bed and think of him up there in the Watcher’s Loft, and wonder what he was seeing through his telescope …
She had never particularly liked those things, or disliked them, or even thought about them at all; they had just been part of the settled, comfortable routine of life at Sundown Watch. Now they would never happen again: the morning egg, Mr Dark’s footsteps on the Tower stairs, his gruff goodnight, they all belonged to the past, and Utterly’s future seemed suddenly uncertain.
The little church behind the dunes at Marazea was as busy as Christmas for the funeral. Everyone wore their Sunday best, and Mrs Skraeveling had tacked a black taffeta veil to her hat. People had come all the way from Stack and Trollbridge to pay their respects to the Watcher, for it was not every day a Watcher died, and none in living memory had drowned. During Reverend Dearlove’s sermon, the women in the pew behind Utterly’s discussed the affair in scandalized whispers.
‘He was beachcombing, they do say, and no good did 5ever come of that. The Gorm saw him there, and the sea reached out for him and swallowed him up.’
‘Yet he had walked the beaches often enough. You would think he’d be wave-wise, being Watcher and all. And they found the body cast up upon the shore, which proves the Gorm did not want him. If the Gorm decides it wants you, it takes you down into its deeps and there is no body to bury, just a memorial service and the less said the better.’
Then the first woman lowered her voice to an even quieter whisper, so soft that Utterly could barely hear it. ‘They say the pockets of his coat were full of stones …’
Utterly did not see what that had to do with anything. Mr Dark had often filled his pockets with little stones and shells and old corks and all the other curious things he found upon the shore. Sometimes when she was little he had let Utterly go beachcombing with him, and while he picked his way along the tidelines she had amused herself by peeking into the rock pools, where anemones waved their pink arms, and the billowy weeds parted sometimes like curtains of mermaid hair to reveal tiny crabs, or limpets out for a walk, or transparent shrimp, almost too small for even Utterly’s sharp eyes to see. It was beautiful in those underwater worlds. Once, Utterly had grown so fascinated that after she had been watching for ages and ages she realized that she had pushed her face down through the pool’s surface and 6was breathing underwater quite contentedly, just like a mermaid.
If only she could have taught Mr Dark that trick, she thought, he would never have been drowned. But Mr Dark had not believed her when she told him about it, and now he lay at the front of the church inside a wooden coffin with brass handles. Utterly had placed a bunch of sea-pinks on the lid. She did not know if Mr Dark had liked sea-pinks, but they grew all over the cliffs around Sundown Watch and she had never heard him say he disliked them.
She kept looking at the coffin all through the service, trying to believe that Mr Dark was really in there. It looked too small somehow. But after the last hymn, when Mr Skraeveling and some of the village men lifted it up onto their shoulders to carry it outside, you could see how heavy it was, and that made her realize that poor Mr Dark really was inside it, and that he really was dead.
Outside, a sea wind was blowing clouds across the sky. The graveyard was plunged into shadow each time one passed across the sun. The grass between the gravestones leaned over in the wind, and so did the pink and white daisies that grew in the cracks of the churchyard wall, and the tall, sinister foxgloves which stood sentry upon the top of it. Utterly’s long black hair streamed out sideways, for the busy fingers of the wind had undone the ribbon she had tied it with. The white bands of Reverend Dearlove’s 7collar fluttered wildly as he read the funeral service. Mrs Skraeveling held her hat on and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. The other mourners cast sidelong glances at the dunes, as if they half expected the sea to come rushing over them, filling the grave with water before the sexton could fill it with earth.
Everyone Utterly knew was frightened of the sea. That was why there were no harbours on the western shores of Wildsea, no fishing fleet to be seen in Gorm’s Bite or Belfriars Bay, and no one throwing in lines or crab pots to catch the crabs and lobsters which thronged there. That was why people lowered their voices when they talked about the sea. That was why none of the cottages in Marazea had windows on the seaward side. That was why you seldom saw anyone strolling on the beach. Most people tried not even to look at the sea, and when they did they just cast nervous glances at it, as though it were a big, fierce animal which might pounce on them at any moment.
And they were right, thought Utterly. The sea was a big, fierce animal – but big, fierce animals could be beautiful, couldn’t they? She loved the way the great waves moved under the surface of the sea like muscles flexing beneath its chameleon skin. She loved the way it twinkled so 8merrily on sunny days, and raged so furiously on winter ones. Sometimes she thought she could remember how the sea had gently rocked her up and down in the little boat that had carried her to Wildsea’s shores before Mr Dark had found her. She thought the sea remembered that too, because she sometimes sensed it watching her, and sometimes if she woke at night she would lie in bed and listen to the waves whispering hush, hush, hush against the shore, and let her own breathing fall into the rhythm of it, until the sea sang her back to sleep.
She wished she could explain those things to the grown-ups. She thought it sad they were so fearful of the sea. If they could not even bring themselves to look at it, then who would take over Mr Dark’s duties? Because now that Mr Dark was dead someone would have to take his place. Someone had to be the Watcher on Wildsea.
2
THE WATCHER ON WILDSEA
After the funeral, when Utterly had shaken a great many hands, and made a great many curtseys, and played chase with the Dearlove children behind the church until Mrs Dearlove told them it was not respectful, she decided it was time to broach the subject of the new Watcher with Mr and Mrs Skraeveling. They walked home together up the steep track to Sundown Watch while the western wind blew little glittering showers over them and the stunted trees leaned away from the sea as if appalled.
‘What will happen now?’ asked Utterly. ‘Who will keep the Watch now Mr Dark is dead?’
Mr Skraeveling looked at Mrs Skraeveling, and Mrs Skraeveling looked at Mr Skraeveling. They were a short, 10sturdy, kindly pair, and they had been married for so long that they had come to resemble each other like matching salt and pepper pots, or one of those couples who wobble out each hour to strike a silver bell on fancy clocks. They had been servants at Sundown Watch all their lives, since before even Mr Dark was born, so Utterly knew the question of who the next Watcher should be must weigh heavily on them. But it seemed they had not found an answer to it yet.
‘Maybe Mr Skraeveling could do it?’ she suggested.
‘Nay, kitten, not I!’ said Mr Skraeveling. He pulled off his hat and scratched his round, bald head, troubled at the very idea. ‘’Twouldn’t be proper,’ he said. ‘An’ besides, I haven’t enough learning to write the observations in the Log-book every night.’
‘Skraeveling can write his own name very neat,’ said Mrs Skraeveling loyally. ‘But not much more.’
‘Anyway,’ said Mr Skraeveling, ‘Watching is a job for a Dark, and a Dark alone. Always has been, an’ always will be. Nay, there is naught else for it: Reverend Dearlove must send word to your uncle William, Mr Dark’s younger brother.’
‘The one who went away?’ asked Utterly.
‘That’s right, kitten,’ said Mrs Skraeveling. ‘Master Will went off to school in England the summer before you came to us, when he was no older than you are now. The last we heard of him, he was living in London Town.’ 11
Utterly knew that London was the capital city of England, and since the King of England was also king of all the Autumn Isles, she supposed it was the capital of Wildsea too. There was a coloured print of it on one of the landings at Sundown Watch, and Utterly had often looked at that print and wondered what it must be like to live in a place where there were so many houses and so many people, hundreds and hundreds of people, and all packed in so tightly.
‘What does my uncle William do there?’ she wondered.
‘I am not certain,’ said Mrs Skraeveling. ‘It is that long since we had any word from him. Master Will never did have much liking for Wildsea, nor Sundown Watch, nor the ancient calling of his family. Still, he will have to come back and take up his duties now, whether he likes it or no. Wildsea cannot be without a Watcher.’
‘But it will take weeks for the letter to reach London, and weeks more for Master Will to reach Wildsea,’ said Mr Skraeveling. He shook his head. ‘I reckon it might be autumn afore there is a Watcher in the Tower again. I’ve never heard tell of the Watch going un-kept for that long before.’
‘Then I will do it myself,’ Utterly said.
‘You?’ said both the Skraevelings, and Mrs Skraeveling added, ‘’Tis not a fit task for a child, Utterly.’
‘I’m not a baby any more,’ Utterly reminded her patiently. ‘I’m eleven years old, and I can read and write very well. And I am a Dark.’ 12
‘That’s true,’ admitted Mr Skraeveling. He looked at his wife. ‘’Tis true, Carrie. Poor Mr Andrewe had a lawyer over from Hoyt to fill out the papers all proper like. “Miss Utterly Dark, the Legal Ward of Mr Andrewe Dark of Sundown Watch on the Island of Wildsea.” I witnessed it myself,’ he added proudly. ‘In red ink.’
‘But the Watcher ought to be a man,’ said Mrs Skraeveling doubtfully.
‘I will not be Watcher,’ Utterly explained. ‘I shall just be keeping the Watch until Uncle William can get here. I bet I shall be very good at it, too.’
Mr Skraeveling seemed ready to agree with her. Mrs Skraeveling looked more doubtful than ever, but she did not say any more about it, for they had reached the top of the track, where a broad ditch and a high grey wall stretched right across the brow of the cliff. Beyond the wall rose the roofs and chimneys of Sundown Watch, with the wooden arms of the old semaphore system on top of the Tower stirring fretfully in the wind.
The ditch and wall had been built to stop sea-witches going out onto St Chyan’s Head and lighting their fires among the old stones there, and although there was only one sea-witch left on Wildsea, and she was too old to stir far from her hovel, the gate in the wall was always kept locked. Utterly was about to ask Mr Skraeveling for his key so that she might run ahead and open it, when an extra-strong gust of wind came howling in off the sea 13and Mrs Skraeveling’s hat took flight. ‘Botheration!’ she cried, as it went soaring away on its black taffeta wings like a bird of ill omen.
Utterly ran after the hat, off the track and onto the rough pasture beyond, but it was flying too high and too fast for her to have much hope of catching it. Then, suddenly, someone who had been sitting as still and silent as a stone in the knee-deep grass rose up right in front of her and plucked the hat from the air as it blew by.
Utterly stopped with a shriek. The stranger held the hat out to her, but Utterly was too nervous to go and take it. The stranger was a woman, very tall and broad, wearing a long cloak which the wind blew out behind her with loud snapping, flapping sounds. Her mane of dark red hair was wind-blown too, and from its thick curls sprouted the wide, five-pointed antlers of a stag.
3
THE TROLL WITCH
‘Now what’s all this?’ demanded Mr Skraeveling, striding over to stand beside Utterly. Mrs Skraeveling followed him, hitching her skirts up as she waded through the wet grass.
The strange woman watched them, still holding Mrs Skraeveling’s hat. Her antlers were a sort of hat too, Utterly realized. Now that she had got over the first shock of them she could see the wires to which they were attached shining in the woman’s russet hair. It was a peculiar sort of a hat, but then she was a peculiar sort of person altogether. She was one of the troll-people who lived at the north end of Wildsea in the rocky wooded region called the Dizzard. Reverend Dearlove said that it was rude to call them trolls, but Utterly could see why 15people did, for the woman with the antlers was quite ugly. All the features of her face were too big and too definite, and her thick eyebrows met above her nose. Her eyes were large and deep-set: dark brown eyes with flecks of gold in them.
‘I have come to pay my respects to the Watcher,’ the woman said. ‘I heard the sea had taken him.’
Mrs Skraeveling took back her hat and inspected it suspiciously. Mr Skraeveling said, ‘Mr Dark slipped on the rocks down in Blanchmane’s Cove a few nights ago and was drowned.’
‘I am sorry for it,’ said the troll-woman. A flag of old velvet hung from one of her antlers, attached by a thread and fluttering in the wind. ‘I saw him often on the beaches,’ she said. ‘I heard him sometimes, talking to the sea. I never heard it answer him though. I am sorry he is dead.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Skraeveling.
The woman looked past them at the house which crouched on the clifftop beyond the wall. ‘So who will be your Watcher now?’ she asked.
‘I will,’ Utterly told her.
‘Now, that’s not been decided,’ said Mrs Skraeveling.
The troll-woman took one step forward and went down on her haunches to peer more closely into Utterly’s face. Around her neck, on cords and strings, hung a collection of curious objects: holed stones, birds’ bones, pine cones, 16the paw of a fox, and many small leather purses and pouches. A smell came from her, not unpleasant, but rich and earthy and very strong. She looked carefully at Utterly. ‘You are the child the sea gave to Andrewe Dark,’ she said.
‘Mr Dark found me on the shore when I was a baby,’ Utterly explained. ‘I was washed up in a small sort of boat and he took me in so that Mr and Mrs Skraeveling could look after me.’
‘Did he now?’ said the woman, seeming very interested.
‘The child’s parents must have been aboard a ship that foundered out in the western deeps,’ said Mrs Skraeveling. ‘From her looks we think they must have come from China, or Siam, or one of those other places you see pictures of on tea caddies. Perhaps they did not know about the dangers of these seas, poor souls. We thank God they were able to set our little Utterly afloat before their ship went down.’
The antlered woman ignored her and studied Utterly’s face again. ‘Yes, there is something of the sea about you,’ she said, ‘but there is something of the land too. That’s curious. Most people are either land people or sea people. I am of the land myself, and my name is Aish.’
Aish. It was the sound spent waves made, retreating down a shingle shore, thought Utterly. Or maybe, since Aish was a land person, it was the sound the west wind made as it rushed through the boughs of deep oak woods. 17
‘I’m Utterly Dark,’ she said.
Some people laughed when they first heard Utterly’s name, but Aish did not seem to think it strange at all, and she went on looking very serious. ‘Well, Utterly Dark. My people watched the western sea long before your Tower was built. So you come and find me if you see things stirring there you cannot name. Just call for me in the Dizzard woods, and I will hear.’
Utterly nodded to show she understood. Aish’s deep eyes regarded her for a moment longer. Then she snorted like an animal, stood up, bowed her antlers in a dignified way at the Skraevelings, and strode off down the cliff track with her cloak flowing behind her on the wind.
‘Well I declare,’ said Mrs Skraeveling. ‘It is not often we see her kind in this part of the island.’
‘’Tis a half-day’s walk to the Dizzard,’ said Mr Skraeveling. ‘’Twas good of her to come and pay her respects.’
‘I have never seen a troll up close before,’ said Utterly. ‘She had a funny face. She was funny altogether. If she wanted to pay her respects she could just have come to the funeral, couldn’t she, instead of waiting here for us? What did she mean about Mr Dark talking to the sea?’
‘Perhaps that was just a yarn she was spinning us,’ said Mrs Skraeveling. ‘I reckon she had crept up here hoping to climb over the wall while we were all in church and go 18and cast her spells out on the headland among the old stones.’
‘Nay,’ said Mr Skraeveling. ‘Everyone knows the wall is too high to climb without a ladder, which she did not have. Anyway, Dizzard-folk don’t hold with sea magic any more than we do.’
‘How do we know what they hold with? Wild-wood mad they are, and they live in holes in the ground up in those nasty woods of theirs.’
‘But they are gentle enough,’ said Mr Skraeveling, who never spoke ill of anyone. ‘They are good neighbours, and good farmers, and they make the best cider on the island. They are nothing you need be frightened of, Utterly.’
‘I was not frightened,’ said Utterly, but she had been, a little, because the troll-woman had seemed so wild, and looked so strangely at her.
Mr Skraeveling gave her his key and she ran to open the heavy gate. In the gardens, wet hydrangea bushes shook themselves like dogs. The showers had pasted leaves to the flagstones of the path leading to the house: the dear old grey house, with patches of orange lichen on its steep slate roofs, and smoke curling out of its tall chimneys. Atte Sundowne Watch said the letters on the granite lintel above the big front door, carved there so long ago that it was before people had worked out how to spell properly. And if you looked very closely, as Utterly sometimes did, you could see that there was a little 19tadpole-shaped comma carved there too, so that the words weren’t really saying just the name of the house, they were giving a command: At Sundown, Watch.
4
THE TOWER
That evening, as soon as they had eaten dinner, Utterly followed Mr Skraeveling upstairs, taking care to stroke the head of the carved tortoise on the landing newel post as she passed. They went along the corridor past Mr Dark’s bedroom and his study, then through the narrow little door which led into the Tower.
The Tower was by far the oldest part of Sundown Watch. It had stood apart from the rest of the house once, until it had been joined to the main building by Mr Dark’s grandfather, who had been a great one for making improvements. He had invented the Tower’s semaphore system too, which he had used to send messages across the island to Merriport, but you had to climb the hill behind Merriport to see it, and no one 21bothered any more, so the semaphore arms had not been used for years.
The narrow door opened onto an equally narrow passageway, which led in turn to the narrow stone stair that spiralled up inside the Tower’s thick wall. You’d think you were in a lighthouse, Utterly thought as she climbed, but this Tower was for seeing from, not for being seen. At the top of the stairs she scrambled up into the Watcher’s Loft and a blur of sea light from the six big windows. The ropes that worked the semaphore arms came down through holes in the ceiling and were wrapped in neat figure-of-eights around brass pegs on the walls. Mr Dark’s telescope perched on its tripod as if it was still expecting him to return. The current volume of the Log lay open on the desk beside it.
This was not the first time Utterly had been in the Loft. She had sometimes brought Mr Dark a cup of coffee here on cold nights. ‘Thank you, Utterly,’ he had always said when she set it down, never taking his eye from the telescope. Utterly had sometimes stood awhile beside his chair, dreading and hoping that tonight might be the night he saw something.
The leather seat of the chair still held the dent his bottom had made, or perhaps his father’s bottom, and his grandfather’s, and a whole line of earlier bottoms stretching back into the mists of time. Perhaps the Watchers’ bottoms shaped themselves to the dent in 22the chair-seat, rather than the other way about, thought Utterly. But it was far too big a dent for her small behind, and the chair was much too low for her. Mr Skraeveling had brought up a cushion but even so she had to kneel rather than sit on it before she could bring her eye to the eyepiece of the telescope.
‘Are you going to be all right up here all on your lonesome?’ Mr Skraeveling asked.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Utterly told him.
‘You won’t be scared now?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Nor fall asleep?’
‘I have a very important job to do.’
‘I’ll go down and help Mrs S with the dishes then,’ said Mr Skraeveling. ‘But if you need anything, kitten, just you shout.’
‘I will! Thank you!’
‘And you take care on these wicked old stairs when you come down,’ he added, from halfway down them.
‘I will!’ called Utterly. She was keen for him to be gone. It was rather exciting to be up here all on her own, in the highest point on the whole western side of Wildsea.
The Tower commanded a view of the sea from due south to north-north-east. Looking out from its windows was like looking at a map, or a landscape done in miniature. When she looked to her left Utterly could see the coastline reaching away in cliffs and headlands 23and deep-shadowed inlets, all the way to Gull Point at the southern end of the island. Directly ahead of her, the clifftop on which the house and the Tower stood narrowed to a stony neck which led out onto the promontory of St Chyan’s Head and the old stone circle. Turning to her right, she could see the cliff track curving down to where the church, the vicarage, and the low turf-roofed cottages of Marazea dotted the land behind the wide bay called the Gorm’s Bite. Beyond that, about seven miles away at the northern end of Wildsea, the rough crags of the Dizzard rose, with twilight already gathering under the trees that clad them, and the blue line of the northern sea just peeking over their rocky summits. Only in the east was the sea hidden to her, blocked by the high hills of Wildsea’s interior.
But the east was not the Watcher’s concern.
She looked down at the open Log-book, and saw Mr Dark’s final entry written there. It was dated the 23rd June, four days ago. Clear skies, visibility good, the horizon empty. It was strange to think that, having written those seven words, Mr Dark had gone downstairs, put on his coat, walked out of the house and down onto the shore, and the sea had reached out and taken him. Trying to imagine it, Utterly suddenly recalled what the ladies at the funeral had said. His pockets were full of stones.
She leafed back through the book. Mr Dark had once told her that each volume of the Log held ten years’ worth 24of observations. This one was roughly halfway filled, so he must have started it when Utterly was just six and a half. His handwriting was very neat, and not at all difficult to read once you got used to it. Entry after entry, night after night, mostly just a single word or phrase – Nothing. Nothing. Nothing to be seen. All clear. Sometimes he had added observations that seemed to have no bearing on his duties – 1st Oct, the geese are flighting, long wavering Vs and Ws of them heading south. 3rd March, the Sea-witch has lit another of her bonfires tonight, down on the Undercliff. The evening star is very bright, close to the crescent of the new moon.
Utterly turned to the entry for last Christmas to see if Mr Dark had made any note about the new socks she had given him. He had not, which saddened her, for she had spent ages knitting those socks. But a few days later, on the 29th December, she noticed an entry that seemed different from the rest. Even the writing was different, as if Mr Dark’s hand had been trembling when he wrote it.
A possible sighting? Rain showers on the horizon but something else behind them – it looked too solid to be cloud.
A few days later, on the first day of the New Year, he had written, 1st January, a light in the west just after sunset, I am very sure of it.
Utterly turned the pages, scanning the entries. She had a feeling now that she was doing wrong and should stop, as if she were peeking into someone’s private diary. 25But she kept reading anyway, skimming forward through last winter and into the spring just gone.
18th January. Again, in the last of the light, three islands, or is it one with three hills? A light on the shore, perhaps a pale fire burning.
Is it a signal?
Am I expected to answer?
The entries grew more detailed, the pages heavy with ink. Mr Dark had kept writing things and crossing them out, as if what he was seeing – or thought he was seeing – could not easily be explained in words.
16th April. I dreamed she had returned, but the beach was empty.
18th May. We watch and watch and see nothing, or else see things we do not understand. But something out there is watching us, and it sees everything. (This entry had been crossed out, then rewritten and heavily underlined.)
2nd June. The sea speaks to me. She wants back what she has given. Would she accept a substitute—?
The next few entries trailed off in unfinished sentences and violent crossings-out. On the 21st of June, Mr Dark had written, What does she want? and underlined it three times. Then on the 22nd and 23rd the observations were perfectly normal again – Nothing: clear skies, visibility good, all clear, all well …
Utterly wished she had not been quite so eager to let Mr Skraeveling go back downstairs. It was unsettling to 26think of her guardian, who had always been such a gentlemanly, polite, collected sort of person, writing such odd, feverish things while he was up here alone. It was awfully quiet in the Watcher’s Loft, except for the soft sounds of the wind blowing around it, trying the catches on the windows. The rest of the house felt a long way away. Perhaps, she thought, the solitude had disordered Mr Dark’s mind. Or perhaps – an even more frightening thought – he really had seen the Hidden Lands.
For a moment Utterly felt very afraid, and almost ready to run back downstairs to the cosy warmth of the Skraevelings’ little parlour. But she reminded herself firmly that she was almost eleven and a half years old, and that she had a job to do. The sun was sinking low in the west. It was time for the Watcher to make the evening observation. She did not want to give up before she started, and make Mr and Mrs S think she was a baby or a coward.
So she reached for Mr Dark’s inkwell, unscrewed the stopper, picked up his pen and dipped it in the ink, then drew a line right across the page of the Log beneath his final entry. Underneath the line, in her very best hand, she wrote: 27th June. Mr Andrewe Dark, the Watcher on Wildsea Island, was found Most Tragickly Drowned 4 days ago. I, Utterly Dark, aged 11 Years & 4 Months, being his Ward, do promise to mantane this Log & Journal until Such Time as the new Watcher arrives.
5
THE HIDDEN LANDS
It was always at sundown they were seen. In that twilight hour, when the walls between the worlds grew thin, strange things might slip through the cracks. Sometimes then, so the stories went, enchanted islands would appear in the empty ocean to the west of Wildsea. What they were, nobody knew. No ship that tried to sail to them had ever returned. But once, long ago, a sea-witch had lit a fire among the standing stones on St Chyan’s Head, and something that dwelled in the Hidden Lands had come raging across the waves to Wildsea: the Gorm – a monster so dreadful that it had been decided a Watcher must be stationed on Wildsea ever after.
It was only a legend. At least, that’s what people thought in England, and on more civilized islands like 28Finnery and Lamontane. But this was Wildsea, on the wind-wracked western edge of the world, where trolls lived in the Dizzard woods and a real live sea-witch still sang her spells down on the Undercliff. On Wildsea it was possible to believe in almost anything.
So Utterly kept her eye to the telescope for an hour each evening, watching the western horizon until it was too dark to see anything at all. She did not see any islands, but nor did she shake off the uneasy feeling that the islands might be there. Again and again she went back to Mr Dark’s last entries in the Log, wondering what they could mean. If the Hidden Lands had shown themselves to him, why not to Utterly?
She almost longed for them to appear, but she was not sure what she would do if they did. And what if their appearance heralded the return of the Gorm? The painting of it in the dining room had haunted Utterly’s nightmares since she was small, that great scaly roaring monster lumbering out of the surf. Beside the painting hung the antique sword which the first Watcher had used to drive the brute back into the deep. But the sword was longer than Utterly was tall, and looked very heavy. She doubted she could even lift it, let alone use it to save Wildsea if the Gorm came.
