Nim's Island (4 page)
Authors: Wendy Orr
What does Keyhole Cove look like?
I picture a ring of black rocks jutting out from the shore, stark against the blue sea—and bobbing ridiculously around in this idyllic pool, twenty coconuts waiting to be a raft.
The Coconuts of Keyhole Cove—sounds like a title! Hmm . . .
With a thousand thanks, Alex
Nim read the letter three times. It made her feel warm and smiley, like finishing
Mountain Madness
—and when Alex Rover described Keyhole Cove, it was as if he knew the island, and Nim too.
N
IM STOOD IN
the doorway, looking out to sea one last time before the sun set, just in case Jack got home faster than he thought, because no matter how much she liked reading letters from Alex Rover, she’d like to see Jack’s sails even more.
Through the shadows she could see, not a boat, but a browny-green dot floating in on the waves.
‘Chica’s coming!’ Nim shouted, but Selkie and Fred had settled down for the night; Selkie grumble-barked but neither of them moved.
In a few minutes it would be completely dark. Nim pulled on her jumper and grabbed the torch.
Its light shone pale in the dusk as she jumped down the rocks to Turtle Beach. Walking slowly on the cold night sand, she turned off the torch and waited.
The turtle paddled steadily towards her, a hump of shell glooming dark in the grey waves, and heaved herself onto the sand.
Nim crept closer. ‘Welcome home, Chica!’
Chica was too busy to answer. She dragged her huge
body up above the reach of the highest tide, and started scooping out sand with her strong front flippers. It was hard, grunting work.
Nim squatted beside her, watching quietly in the darkness and wiping away sand from the turtle’s watery eyes, until the hole was just as deep and wide as it needed to be.
The stars scattered brightly and were mirrored in the sea; a fat crescent moon rose amongst them; and egg after round white egg rolled into the bottom of the nest.
‘Ninety-nine!’ Nim whispered as Chica pushed sand back into the hole, rocking her heavy body back and forth till the sand was thumped hard and smooth. She didn’t want anyone else to know where her precious babies were hidden.
‘Maybe in a few years,’ Nim told her, ‘ninety-nine turtles will come back and lay their eggs here too!’
For as long as she could remember, Chica had been the only turtle to swim out of the sea, back to this beach where she was hatched, to lay her own eggs.
‘But maybe this year some of your daughters will be old enough.’ She tickled Chica’s wrinkly chin till her wise turtle eyes blinked with happiness. ‘You can meet them when they come to lay their eggs—and then their daughters will come back, and then their daughters, and there’ll be lots of turtles again!’
Chica blinked again, sleepily this time.
Nim kissed the top of her leathery head and followed the torch-light back to her own bed.
J
ACK DIDN’T KNOW
why Chica liked to stay instead of leaving as soon as her eggs were laid, the way sea turtles were supposed to. Nim knew. Chica liked visiting her friends.
She showed it in the way she rubbed her throat across Fred’s spiky back, let Selkie sniff her nose and Nim tickle her chin. She showed it in the way she nodded and blinked as Nim wondered about the places she’d been and what she’d seen, and told her what they’d been doing, and about Jack’s broken rudder and Alex Rover’s letters. Chica wasn’t cuddly, but she was a good listener.
As the morning got hotter, they lazed in the calm shallows off Turtle Beach. Chica was tired because she’d swum hundreds of kilometres and laid ninety-nine eggs. Nim was tired because she’d stayed up so late watching Chica lay eggs. Selkie was tired because she’d worried about Nim staying up so late. Fred wasn’t tired but he didn’t mind being lazy if everyone else was.
Just before sunset Nim raced up to the vegetable garden to see what was ripe. She picked a lettuce and a tomato for a salad and dug up a sweet potato to bake in a celebration bonfire, with fresh limpets from the rocks and coconut for dessert.
From: [email protected]
Date: Friday 2 April, 18:25
Dear Alex Rover
I didn’t check the Coconut Experiment today
because last night Chica came onto Turtle Beach to lay her eggs, and she likes me to sit with her while she does it. Chica is a green turtle, and she likes Selkie and Fred too, so we spent nearly the whole day with her.
Jack will be home soon too and he can check if I’m doing the Experiment the right way.
From Nim
P.S. Keyhole Cove is just like you described it!
From: [email protected]
Date: Friday 2 April, 13:30
Dear Nim
I think the right way to do the Experiment is any way my Chief Experimenter wants to!
Now I’m imagining Turtle Beach: pale-gold sands marked by the flipper-prints of a very special turtle! And your footprints beside her prints . . .
I’m turtle-green with envy!
Yours, Alex
A
LEX ROVER SAT
and stared at her computer. It wasn’t easy to see, because the desk was stacked with books about oceans and islands, magazines about boats and rafts, videos about seabirds and animals.
The walls were covered by a map of the world, charts of the moon and stars; paintings of the sea: calm and blue, wild and grey, and every other mood between; pictures of sandy beaches, rocky cliffs, coconut trees, tropical islands, coral reefs, seagulls and frigate-birds.
But Alex was thinking about Nim, and wondering whether Selkie and Fred were her sister and brother, or pets.
N
IM WOKE UP
thinking about Alex Rover’s raft.
You can’t hammer two coconuts together, she decided, but if I had a thin piece of board . . . and lined the coconuts in rows . . . I could hammer a nail through the board and into the coconuts.
But coconuts are hard to hold still while you hammer. They roll around so that sometimes you hit the wrong thing . . . ‘Ouch!’ Nim yelled—so loud and so often that Fred went to sulk in his cave in case it was his fault.
After two hours she had a black-and-blue thumb and a pile of coconut for lunch. And one unsmashed coconut. ‘Let’s go and see Chica!’ said Nim.
Chica was resting on the damp sand watching the tide go out. She blinked happily when she saw what her friends were carrying.
Chica’s favourite game was coconut soccer.
That was what Nim called it, because soccer was the only ball game she’d seen a picture of—and because nobody else has ever thought of a name for a game with a girl, a sea lion, a turtle and an iguana all trying to be the first to get a floating coconut to shore. There were no rules
except that Selkie wasn’t supposed to pull Fred’s tail and Chica wasn’t supposed to sit on the coconut underwater.
Selkie cheated a lot; Chica didn’t cheat much but when she did she was very good at it.
So Nim threw the coconut into the water, and Fred dashed at it because he was the fastest and best at guessing where it would land, and Selkie sneaked under him and splashed the nut across the sea. Then she tried to throw Fred across the sea, too, but Nim saw her and shouted, and while Selkie was trying to look innocent, Chica grabbed the coconut.
She tucked it tight under her strong turtle chin and didn’t even notice everyone tickling and pulling, wrestling and shoving. She towed them all towards the beach, and when she got to the edge of the water, she sank to the bottom with the coconut under her, and wouldn’t move. And since no one could move Chica if she didn’t want them to, that was the end of the game.
‘It’s a tie,’ said Nim. ‘Chica can’t say she’s won if the coconut’s still in the water, so it’s zero-all.’
Chica looked as smug as a green turtle can look, and didn’t seem to mind at all.
L
ATE IN THE
afternoon Nim walked around to Keyhole Cove to check the coconuts. All twenty were still bobbing cheerfully around the cove, bumping and floating, loose and free . . .
‘I’ve got it!’ Nim shouted.
From: [email protected]
Date: Saturday 3 April, 18:20
Dear Alex Rover
I’ve been thinking about how you would make a raft.
Hammering coconuts onto a board doesn’t work because the shell breaks, and if it didn’t break right away I think bits of it would fall off later and then the raft might sink.
What if you put the coconuts in a sort of bag? How would you make the bag?
Where are you going on your raft?
From Nim
From: [email protected]
Date: Saturday 3 April, 13:23
Dear Nim
I feel like a Queen Bee, lazing while you buzz!
A bag-raft sounds perfect. Now I just need a reason for Hero to find a large sack on a deserted tropical island! Or maybe the Bad Guys stick him in a sack when they throw him overboard! As long as they don’t tie it up too well.
My Hero’s going to a tiny Pacific Island, where, faster than a shopper at a half-price sale, he’ll set off again to rescue the Lady Hero. (I’ll be sitting at home, snug as a snail in its shell!)
I’ve attached a map I’ve drawn for the story—click on the paper-clip icon.
With best wishes, Alex
Nim clicked.
Her stomach somersaulted.
She stared at the map on the wall and the map on the screen and the map on the wall again.
Jack liked maps; he drew maps of their island, the currents around it and the places where they’d sailed. And because their island wasn’t on the big map of the world, he’d drawn it on that too, near the crossing of two lines—the one going around the world’s middle like a belt, and an up-and-down line curving with the shape of the earth.
‘This
is the Hero’s island,’ Nim whispered. And that must mean . . .
‘Selkie! Fred!’ she shouted. ‘Alex Rover’s been to our island!’
‘I think,’ she added, a little while later.
It took a long time to go to sleep that night.
N
EXT MORNING
Nim sang her way through the weeding, the digging and picking. She hummed as she measured and marked her charts, and she sang so loudly when she climbed Look-out Palm to check for sails that a seagull dropped his fish.
‘That’s what we’ll do today!’ said Nim, and slid down the tree.
She got her fishing rod and met Fred and Selkie at Turtle Beach. Chica was grazing the seaweed just where the water started to get deep. Selkie didn’t like Nim to swim out deep, but she let her dive and visit for just a minute.
Fred stayed with Chica to see if she’d find an interesting sea-plant he’d never eaten before; Selkie chased Nim back and went out deeper to fish, and Nim climbed up the rocks where she’d left her rod.
The rod was bamboo, strong and springy. Jack had made it for her birthday and taught her to cast the line in a whistling arc—the best part of fishing, Nim thought.
That was why she hated getting a fish first go: it was like finishing a ball game after one catch. Seven tries this time and then a fish dancing silver on the end of her line. It was a good one to eat, the right size . . . ‘Sorry, Fish,’ said Nim, and killed it quickly. That was the part she didn’t like.
Selkie did, though. No matter how far away or how deep she was swimming, she always knew the instant that Nim had caught something.
‘Wait!’ Nim ordered, but it was hard for Selkie to be patient when fish were being cleaned and she was waiting for the guts and bits that Nim didn’t want.
When the fish was cleaned and Selkie had stopped barking for more, Nim wrapped it in leaves and built a bonfire on the beach.
She dragged some fallen-down branches and driftwood into a pile, and used dried palm leaves for kindling.
When Nim and Jack had a fire at night they used matches, but matches were precious because they came on the supply ship, so in the daytime they used glass and the sun’s own fire.
She unscrewed the lens from her spyglass. She pointed it so that the sun shone a bright beam on her kindling. A brown patch grew and glowed, and a small flame sparkled on the dry palm fronds, caught the small branches and began to roar.
Then she dropped a sweet potato into the hot coals and toasted her fish on a long stick.
After lunch they all lay on the edge of the beach. The tide rippled over them, and when it started to float them away they moved further up. Nim got a book and read with her legs in the water and the rest of her on the sand.