Magnus Fin and the Moonlight Mission (14 page)

Tarkin couldn’t believe his luck. Everything was going according to plan. The rudder was easy to tilt and the engine was puttering away bravely. He was approaching the harbour on course, and apart from a little ripple on the sea, conditions were good.

“Right, Tark,” he said to himself, bringing the boat level with the mouth of the harbour, “you’ve got to cut the engine and let her come in slowly. Easy does it. Don’t forget the buoys. Don’t forget the ropes. Um – what else? Phone the police. What about the anchor? Did Frank drop an anchor in the harbour last night? I can’t remember. OK – might as well drop the anchor too. Um – what else? Do I go in backwards or forwards?”

Tarkin was beginning to panic. There was so much to remember. He didn’t want to mess up after doing so well. Did it matter which way the boat was facing? The tide hadn’t been so far out the night before. Tarkin gasped, seeing, under the orange street lamps that lit up the harbour, how the few boats in the water were tipping over onto their sides. There wasn’t enough water to keep them up.

Just then something bumped and threw Tarkin forward. “What’s that? Help! Oh, help!” The bottom of
the boat was scraping against the stones and sand of the seabed. A black cat meowed at him from a bollard. An owl hooted. And a door in the village hall swung open.

Tarkin had been wrong about the circle of pine trees around the village hall. It was more of a horseshoe than a circle, with a gap to the sea. It was through this gap that Frank was now staring. He’d come out for fresh air. Ceilidh dancing was great fun, but hot work. He was taken by the way the moon lit up the slate roofs and glinted on the sea. And the way an owl landed on a branch and called its deep “tu-whoo!”

Frank wiped his brow and watched the owl fly off, down towards the harbour. Following the flight of the owl, Frank saw his boat. He knew instantly it was his boat. The moon sat on it, illuminating the hull, the stern, and the silhouette of Tarkin, all keeling over to the side.

Something snapped in Frank then. He’d had it with being Mr Nice Guy. He’d had it with trying to bend over backwards to be pleasant to his girlfriend’s son. He might have known Tarkin’s sudden friendliness concealed some other motive. It also didn’t take much looking to work out that the boy and the boat were in trouble.

Frank ran back into the hall. He threaded his way through the dancers, the noise and the music. Keith was trying to teach Martha a quickstep. “I’ll not be long. Just going to check on Tarkin.”

Then he was off, running down the street and along to the harbour. Frank tore off items of clothing as he ran. A green waistcoat flew through the air. On the harbour wall now he kicked off his shoes. As he ran he judged the depth – too shallow to dive headlong into.
In his tartan trousers and bright yellow shirt Frank ran down the stone harbour steps then jumped into the sea.

After the shock of the freezing water, Frank, gasping, ploughed on. The water came up to his waist. Frank dragged his body through the water, half walking, half swimming. He drew close to his boat. The freezing water took his breath away. He couldn’t shout and swim at the same time, so Tarkin was just going to have to get the fright of his life. And, thought Frank, heaving himself towards the keeling boat, it would serve him right.

Tarkin had found an oar. He was just about to lower it to try and free the boat from the shallow water when suddenly the boat rocked wildly. Tarkin was flung forward as the stern of the boat tipped and lurched. In terror he shot a glance over his shoulder – and, Frank was right, Tarkin got the fright of his life. “HELP!” he screamed. “HELP!”

Frank fell into the boat, panting and gasping. The water ran in sheets off him. “What in the name of God,” he spluttered, “do you think you’re doing?” Frank’s eyes blazed. “You’ve taken me for a mug, Tarkin – and I’m through with it. No one could have done more than I’ve done.”

Tarkin shook his head. He didn’t know what to say. Tears rolled down his face. His knees buckled and he sank onto the sloping bench. Frank wasn’t done yet.

“I’m here for you!” He planted himself down on the bench opposite. “Can’t you see that? I’m here.” Frank hit his own chest as he spoke, seawater spraying off him. “I know it ain’t easy for you, Tark. Do you think I don’t know that? But I ain’t Mr Nice Guy no more, get that?”

Tarkin felt his heart fit to burst. Clinging to the side of the tipping boat he nodded. He rubbed his tears with his sleeve. And through it all he felt relieved. The boat wouldn’t sink now Frank was here.

“Sorry,” he blurted out.

Frank nodded. “So, Tarkin – out for a bit of mermaid spotting?”

Tarkin flashed a look at Frank, but the anger had gone and there was a smile on his face now. Deep down Frank was a good person, Tarkin could see that now, and it was true, this man had bent over backwards to be nice to him.

“I was – on a mission, Frank. Really! I have to call the police. There are loads of poisonous fridges and stuff down in the sea. But the boat’s stuck, Frank.”

In a flash Frank plunged the oar down and like a gondolier pushed the boat loose of its bed of sand and stones. “Turn the engine now, Tarkin,” he shouted.

Tarkin, amazed to be trusted, did as he was told.

Frank took hold of the rudder and in seconds the boat was free and heading out again to the deeper water at the harbour mouth. “At low tide she has to berth further up,” Frank shouted, as though he was the sailor and Tarkin his trusty first-mate. “There she goes, that’s better. We’ll soon have her home. So – sea cleaning, eh, Tarkin?”

“Yeah. Honest, Frank. I winched up a – um, a thing! Magnus Fin needed me, and – um – I needed the boat. There are leaking storage tanks and fridges and freezers and car batteries out there. Honest. Loads. And I have to phone the police.”

By this time Frank had secured the boat at the wall of the harbour. He flung a rope round a bollard. “You are
one adventurer. Hey, you know your knots, Tark? Run up the steps, buddy. Put two half hitches into that rope and we’ll have her moored safe and sound.”

Tarkin didn’t know his knots. Tarkin didn’t like saying he didn’t know things. But he wouldn’t know two half hitches if they marched up and shook hands with him. He looked at Frank and shook his head. “No. Sorry, Frank. I don’t know that one.”

“No worries, buddy. I’ll show you. Then maybe later you could show me how to dance. Deal?”

Tarkin grinned and nodded his head.

“Glad the throat’s better,” Frank said as the two of them clambered out of the boat, both of them soaking, and both of them smiling from ear to ear. “Now then – good thing they still have a phone box in this village. Number’s 999, buddy. Go on. It’s that cute red tardis thing over there. I’ll be waiting right here.”

The fire in the cave burned brightly. Shadows danced on the walls.

“A whole hour must have passed since I jumped off the black rock.” Magnus Fin was staring out of the cave to the sea. “Look, Aquella – the moon’s gone all that way. Mum and Dad are going to get worried. And we have to tell the police about the dump. I need to make a phone call, then get to the ceilidh.”

“Ragnor knows where you are, Fin. Don’t worry. And he says they’re having a great old knees-up at the ceilidh. Soon as we’re done, he says, we should get ourselves down there and dance.”

Just then a dark shadow flitted across the mouth of the cave. Magnus Fin gasped but Aquella put her hand on his arm. “It’s all right, Fin. It’s our friend, the winkle picker.”

The man stood framed in the entrance, the firelight glowing in his weather-beaten face. “They do their dirty fly-tipping when the moon’s bright,” he said in a hushed, gravelly voice, “so’s they don’t have to use headlights. So’s no one’ll see them. Dirty tippers.”

“Where?” Aquella asked.

“They goes through the farm by the old graveyard.” Then he was gone, hurrying off with his pail back down
to the skerries. A pile of whelks lay on a flat stone at the mouth of the cave.

“They’re for Ronan,” Aquella said, seeing Fin’s look of astonishment. “They’re good for him. Do you mind if he borrows your seal skin for a pillow?”

She gathered up the seal skin and the whelks, and went around the fire to the back of the cave. In moments she was back, and ready.

“Well, Fin?” she asked, hands on her hips and her face glowing, “what are you waiting for?”

“Um … the farm beside the old graveyard?”

“That’s it. Let’s go.”

Fin scrambled to his feet. It had been cosy in the cave. It was his father’s cave; the place where he had sat and listened to many stories of the sea. But dirty tippers dumping fridges and toxic waste into the sea had never been part of his tales. These people had killed many of his kind and threatened the selkies’ very existence. He ran to the mouth of the cave. “Wait for me!”

Aquella was already running up the beach towards the hillside. She ran with bare feet. So did Fin. Their webbed feet pounded down over the grass and over the broken bracken, all brown with autumn. Puffing and panting, they clambered up the heathery hillside sending pheasants squawking and mice scurrying. They knew where the farm was. They knew the old graveyard. What they didn’t know was how two children were going to stop the dirty tippers from dumping waste into the sea.

When they reached the farm up by the cliffs they dived in behind prickly whin bushes. “There’s folk in the farmhouse,” Fin whispered, panting after the climb.
“The curtains are open. I can see them. They’re watching TV.” The bluish light from a television flickered in the living room.

“They might spot us, Fin. The moon’s so bright. We’ll have to go the long way round. Come on.”

So, instead of dashing straight past the front of the farmhouse, they darted from bush to bush – Aquella, in her new green dress, like a sprite; Magnus Fin, in his wetsuit and mop of black hair, like a sea elf.

“It’s not far now,” Aquella whispered, with bits of bush in her hair and scratches across her arms. “I can see the gravestones. Hurry, Fin.”

Adventures under the sea were one thing. Hanging about in graveyards at night with a full moon looming above was something else. Fin grabbed Aquella by the arm. “Um, Aquella? Look. Do you think this is a good idea? I mean – we’re just kids!”

“What do you mean – just kids? Kids are powerful and magical – and anyway, you’re half selkie!”

She was right. That was the thing about Aquella. She was always right.

At that moment Fin heard the dim purring of an engine. He glanced down to the sea way below, but there were no boats out that he could see.

“It’s the dirty tippers; they’re coming down the track,” he said. “It’s too late to go back. OK, quick, run to the graveyard.”

They ran. In moments they reached they old stone wall of the graveyard and clambered over. Fin hunched down behind an ancient crumbling gravestone. Aquella hid behind the marble statue of an angel. Magnus Fin’s heart thumped in his chest. To keep in the shadows he
pressed his face against the gravestone. His fingers traced the words etched in the stone: DEARLY BELOVED WITH US STILL. 1859. He gulped. He looked down, imagining a skeleton lying just under his feet. The noise of the engine grew louder.

“They’re coming,” Aquella whispered. “What are we going to do?”

Fin felt goose bumps all over him. “I don’t know.”

“Think of something, Fin. Quick!”

The dearly-beloved skeleton beneath Fin gave him the idea. “Let’s give them the fright of their lives!”

The lorry reversed down a rutted track. The track skirted the graveyard and came to an abrupt end at the cliff edge where an old fence had been wrenched away. As the lorry neared the cliff it slowed down.

Fin was still pressed up against the old gravestone. The crinkly lichen which grew on the stone dug into Fin’s cheek. He shot a glance at the angel. Aquella was crouched down and hiding behind its marble base. They had to act quickly to stop yet more toxic junk being dumped into the sea and getting trapped in the underwater crater. Now Fin could hear the tinny crackling sound of a radio coming from inside the van. He moved to the very edge of his gravestone and peered out. The winkle picker had been right. The dirty tippers were driving without lights on.

Mess your hair up,
Fin called. They switched to
selkie-speech
now. The lorry was hardly a stone’s throw away at the other side of the wall. Fin bent down and scooped up a few faded carnations that lay in a jar beside the gravestone. “Sorry skeleton,” he whispered, stuffing the flowers into his hair. He heard voices. A door creaked open. The radio crackled low.

“Ye’ve got three feet. Then we’ll get shot o’ this lot.”

“Dinnae pit me ower the edge mind,” the other voice
said. “Cos I wudnae pit it past yea.”

Fin shot a glance at Aquella. She’d made her hair wild with grass and twigs. She looked like her brother. Fin clutched at his moon-stone.
Right cousin. Let’s give them a ghost show.

He ran his nails up and down the gravestone. A grating noise rose into the air. Aquella did the same, scraping her nails up and down the smooth marble. Then Fin began to moan. Aquella joined in. With her selkie voice she could moan and howl in a pitiful, unearthly way. Then Fin stretched his fingers up above the gravestone and shook them, the way dead man’s fingers had waved to him deep under the sea.

Magnus Fin didn’t dare peer out. He could hear their choked voices, just feet away:

“What the hell’s that?” one of them said.

“Cut it out, Rab.”

“You cut it out. I’m doin’ nothing.”

“I said cut it out or it’s you going over the edge. I mean it.”

“Oh God! See over that wall! Something’s coming out that grave. Look! Oh for God’s sake! What the hell’s that? Help!”

Fin heard a door bang. He heard a terrified voice cry, “Get out o’ here! Oh Mum!”

But Magnus Fin and Aquella weren’t finished.
OK, Fin – on with the show!

They ran from their hiding places and clambered over the wall, wailing like banshees. With their arms waving about they danced in front of the lorry. Aquella, her hair like black fire, green dress twirling, put her hands to her neck and made horrible choking noises. “It’s the
poison in the tanks,” she screeched. “Agh! That’s what killed me!”

On cue, Fin jerked up and down in his wetsuit like a frenzied break-dancer, his hair sprouting carnations and his green eye and brown eye staring wildly at the two men who sat shuddering in the front of the lorry, clutching each other. Fin made a great show of retching and choking. “Look spirit,” he cried in a high-pitched strangled voice, “our killers.” Fin and Aquella pointed towards the two men. “The dirty tippers!”

“Help! Get out o’ here. Oh Mum! I’m sorry – for everything I did.”

“I never wanted to get mixed up in this sordid stuff. They’re going to get us. I told the boss. Didn’t I tell him? This was never my idea.”

“Just ram your foot down, man. Just go!”

Fin and Aquella leapt back over the graveyard wall and crouched down out of sight. They listened while the men shouted and swore and finally rammed the lorry into gear and took off.

Fin stood up. “After them! Quick, Aquella. We have to find out where all the fridges and stuff are coming from.”

They leapt back over the wall and sped after the lorry. The track was rough and pitted with holes. In moments Fin and Aquella caught up with them. Unnoticed, they jumped on the back of the lorry, grabbed hold of a handle and balanced tiptoe on a small metal step.

The drive was more bumpy and juddery than any waltzer at the funfair. “Tarkin would love this,” Fin whispered, wondering suddenly where Tarkin was.

But there was no time for wondering. By this time the lorry had left the farm track and joined the road.
The lights came on. The radio blared. The men seemed to have stopped arguing. The lorry turned up a narrow winding lane and slowed down.

“Soon as it stops, jump off and hide underneath,” Fin said.

But that wasn’t necessary. As soon as the lorry stopped, the men jumped out and slammed the doors. One of them threw the keys into a drain then they both ran off. They jumped into an old car, revved it and zoomed away.

Fin and Aquella held on for a while longer then, sure the coast was clear, jumped off their perch.

“Well, well, well,” said Fin, gazing up at a huge neon sign above a large metal gate. “Look at this: SAFE SOLUTIONS. YOUR ECO-FRIENDLY DISPOSAL EXPERTS. Jeepers! If that’s friendly, I’d hate to meet unfriendly.”

On the other side of the barbed-wire fence a few hundred fridges, freezers and battered tanks in all shapes and sizes were piled high. “Taking a few toxic short cuts, I’d say.” Aquella couldn’t believe her eyes. “How many did you find in that dump in the bay, Fin?”

“Loads.” A shiver ran down his spine. “I don’t like it here. It gives me the creeps. Let’s get out of here.”

“Poor Ronan,” Aquella said, shaking her head and staring at the mound of junk.

Fin pulled at the sleeve of her dress. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Magnus Fin and Aquella took the quick way back through a field of sheep. As they ran, flowers and moss and twigs dislodged from their hair. Approaching the village they could hear the sound of a foot-stomping jig coming from the village hall.

“We’ll catch the end of it,” Aquella said. “It’s my first ceilidh. I don’t want to miss it. And I’ve been ready all evening.” Her new green dress was now looking a bit dirty in places but Fin didn’t want to mention that.

“What about Ronan?”

“He’ll be fine. It’s sleep he needs. And Davie said he’d keep an eye on him.”

“Davie? Who’s Davie?” By this time they had reached the cottage by the shore.

Aquella beamed at her cousin as she pulled the last twig out of her hair and opened the front door. “The winkle picker, of course. He’s a pal of your dad’s.”

Fin nodded as he stepped into the house. It made sense that Ragnor would befriend winkle pickers, the hours he had spent down by the shore. And Magnus Fin was still nodding a minute later when he picked up the phone. “Yes, fridges and freezers and tanks full of some kind of toxic waste – honestly – loads and loads of them – all dumped and poisoning the sea.”

“Well, now that’s reported, you’d better go and put your new kilt on,” Aquella said.

“Tarkin already told them. The salvage operation – it’s already on its way. Good old Tark.” Laughing, Fin kicked his heels and five minutes later appeared with his face scrubbed, hair brushed and kilt on.

Aquella whistled. “Wow! You look just like a Scotsman.”

“That’s cos I am.”

“A selkie Scotsman,” she added, winking, “and pretty handsome if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Magnus Fin grinned, then blushed, then ran for the door. “Come on then, selkie – let’s dance!”