Magnus Fin and the Moonlight Mission (16 page)

That Sunday morning Magnus Fin woke early. It was still dark outside. The clunking and banging noises that had gone on all day yesterday and late into the evening had stopped now. Every fridge and freezer and all the other junk had been lifted. The only sounds in the cottage that early December morning were the crashing of the waves as they broke over the pebbles and the low hum of the boiler.

Lying in his boat-bed, listening to the swish and roll of the waves outside, Fin felt himself nod back to sleep. Dreamily he thought of Ronan and how he had slipped into the sea late last night, yelping happily. Fin rubbed his eyes. Wouldn’t it be lovely to stay in his warm bed and go lazily over and over in his head everything that had happened since finding the writing on the rocks? But he had an appointment.

Magnus Fin swung his legs over the side of his bed, hearing the soft padding sounds of Aquella in her attic room above. Fin got dressed in the dark, fumbling for his old trainers and his jeans and fleecy top. He patted his moon-stone that hung around his neck and shook his hair, which was now so long it was forever flopping in his eyes. Tarkin said he should gel it and spike it up, maybe even dye it pink! Fin ran his fingers through his
hair, by way of combing, and wondered if Tarkin was up yet.

He opened his top drawer, pulled his penny whistle out of a sock and stuck it in his jeans pocket. He heard Aquella tiptoe down the stairs. “Psst!” she called, tapping softly at his bedroom door. “Magnus Fin, are you up?”

“Course I’m up.” He opened his door an inch and peeped through the gap with his green eye. “I’ve been up for ages.” They spoke in whispers. This was Sunday morning. Ragnor and Barbara always had a long lie on a Sunday morning.

“Do you want jam or cheese?” she asked.

Fin thought for a second. “Both.”

By the time Magnus Fin and Aquella had made and packed their breakfast picnic, the first glimmers of colour were seeping over the rim of the sea.

“Do you think Tarkin will come?” Aquella asked as she closed the cottage door and they stepped out into the chill of the early morning.

“Course Tarkin will come. Knowing Tarkin, he’s probably there already.”

They set off along the beach path, singing as they went. They hadn’t gone far when the flash, flash from a torch blinked out of the half-darkness.

“See! What did I tell you? Good old Tarkin.” Fin sped off across the sand and on to the skerries. Aquella ran behind, awkwardly on account of the welly boots Fin insisted she wear.

Then it was high-fives on the rocks. “I’ve been here ages, man. I got hot chocolate and something called tablet, and peanut butter on a bagel.” Tarkin grinned
and thumped Fin on the back. “Mission accomplished, dontcha think?”

Fin smiled and nodded, glancing first at Tarkin, then at Aquella, then out to sea. The salvage operation was complete and the Environment Protection vessels had gone. All was still out at sea. Fin saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain – mission accomplished!”

Tarkin turned round to a flat ledge behind him and spread out their breakfast as if it were a table. “And you said they like music, so I brought my guitar.”

“Wow, Tarkin! You look like you’ve moved in!” Fin laughed and perched on the black rock beside him, noticing, with the help of Tarkin’s torch, that there were no M Fs to be seen. The writing on the rocks had well and truly gone – washed away by the tide.

The three of them ate their breakfast picnic perched high on the black rock. They munched noisily, watching the eastern sky turn from a pale green to a deep red.

“What a show!” said Tarkin, his cheeks full with tablet. “Oh man, this is awesome, and to think I sleep through it every morning.”

“If we’re lucky we might get a bit of sound to go with the colour,” Aquella said, licking a crumb of tablet from her lips.

Magnus Fin spotted them first. Tarkin was tuning his guitar. Aquella was going for her fifth piece of tablet. Fin was scanning the ocean. As he watched, a sleek black head lifted slowly from the water. The dark kind eyes of a seal looked straight at him. Fin gasped. Then another seal lifted its head from the water. The sea was glittering now as the sun rose and more and more seals broke the surface.

“Stand up,” Fin whispered, his voice choked with emotion, “Tarkin, Aquella, quick! Stand up. They’re here!”

The three children rose hurriedly to their feet, all of them balanced on the high black rock. Tarkin strummed his guitar. Magnus Fin whipped out his penny whistle and played his tune. Aquella sang. The clear and sparkling sea lapped gently against the rocks as fifty or more seals lifted their shining heads out of the water and sang back.

As Fin played he felt his heart fit to burst. In the throng of singing seals he could see Ronan, and beside him Shuna. Next to Shuna, big, black and handsome, if Magnus Fin was not mistaken, was his great-uncle Loren.

Fin stopped playing and waved at the seals. He laughed then looked up and gasped. Right in front of him, lifting her silvery head from the shimmering water and gazing at him with her shining eyes, was his grandmother Miranda, the bright one of the sea.

Magnus Fin and the Ocean Quest

There has always been something unusual about Magnus Fin, a school misfit. On his eleventh birthday Magnus throws a message in a bottle out to sea, wishing for a best friend and to be more brave – and he gets a lot more than he bargained for. Magnus discovers that he is half selkie – part seal, part human – and his selkie family urgently need his help.

Can Magnus save his new-found family from the evil force threatening all the ocean’s creatures? And will he find the friend he has always dreamed of?

Magnus Fin and the Selkie Secret

When a rusty metal chest is flung ashore in a storm, Magnus Fin’s problems are just beginning. He injures his hand on the strange box and his sealskin starts to show through. Soon rumours start to spread.

Deep in the ocean, the great sea god Neptune has problems of his own. His treasures of wisdom have been stolen, and his memory and powers are fading fast. Can Magnus Fin restore order under the sea and keep his family’s selkie secret?

The third thrilling underwater adventure in the
Magnus Fin
series.