PathFinder (2 page)

“These people were different from those they left behind. Because in order for the
PathFinder
ship to travel fast enough to reach the stars, at first the people had to live in fluid to protect them from the terrible forces of acceleration. This is where our beautiful sign language comes from, for it is not possible to speak in fluid. And neither is it possible to breathe. So in here –” Dan placed his fingers on either side of the bridge of his nose – “they had the things that fishes have. Gills. This was a deliberate change to the very essence of a human being, something that would be passed on to the next generation. This is why even now, many thousands of years away from our ancestors, some of us still have these gills.”

Tod stared up at her father in astonishment – so
many
secrets. She tried to imagine what it would be like to immerse herself in fluid, what the first gulp would feel like. Even if she had gills, would she choke? Would she feel as though she were drowning? Tod told herself she was never going to find out. Because her mother had not been a PathFinder, she was very unlikely to have gills. But even so, Tod had to fight hard to suppress a shudder. Like many fishermen’s children, she had a horror of drowning.

Looking down directly at the first-timers, Dan said, “This is a dangerous secret that we keep from the younger ones for their own safety. As part of the Circle, you, too, will now keep the secret.”

Tod and her two companions nodded solemnly.

“I know,” Dan said, looking around the Circle, “that some of you will want to find out for yourselves whether you have these gills. And I know it is no good, my telling you not to do something, so I won’t. But I will tell you that the only way to find out if you possess gills is –” Dan paused not only for dramatic effect, but also to make sure they remembered –
“to be prepared to drown!”

A gratifying gasp came from the first-timers.

Well on form now, Dan continued. “And I will tell you why you must be prepared to drown. Because human gills do not activate until you breathe in a full, deep draught of water through your nose. If you do this and you are without gills, there is no way back.
You will drown
. And your chances of drowning are extremely high. We do not think that more than one in ten of us have gills now.”

Dan looked around the group. He smiled. As usual, the first-timers were surreptitiously sniffing, wondering if they could tell. “And before you ask, no, I do not know if I possess human gills or not. And I do not want to have to find out.”

Dan sneaked a quick look at his timepiece. He was going to have to speed up. “Our ancestors found the hidden Ways to the stars. For generations they travelled through distant galaxies, looking for worlds like ours. They danced with moons and flew with comets. They visited countless planets. On one they found an ancient civilisation long dead; on another they found the stirrings of intelligent life but never, ever, did they find any creatures like us.”

Dan surveyed his audience, who were gazing at him in rapt attention, the first-timers open-mouthed with amazement. “At last their expedition drew to a close and the
PathFinder
returned home. She landed on the very spot from which she had left, now marked by our PathFinder bell.”

Dan paused, and right on cue the sound of the bell drifted over the dunes. Tod felt a swathe of goosebumps run over her.

Dan waited until the last echoes of the bell had faded. “When the crew emerged, they found nothing but windswept dunes and a hostile crowd from the Trading Post who had seen a ball of fire drop from the sky and had come to investigate. Thousands of years on Earth had passed, compared with a few hundred on board the ship – the
PathFinder
and her crew had been forgotten. The Trading Post people thought they were strange alien creatures and imprisoned them in a fortress in the Far.” Dan waved his hand in the direction of the forest that bordered the village. “This is why we do not venture deep into the Far. It is not a good place for PathFinders.

“After many long years, the Trading Post jailers lost interest and they at last set our people free. The PathFinders returned here, built our village and lived peacefully. But the old mistrust between us remains to this day. They are a hostile people, quick to anger, and neither the Trading Post nor the OutPost is a safe place for a PathFinder to be.

“But enough of that!” Dan broke the sober atmosphere with a sudden smile. “Now, it is story time. The PathFinders brought back many tales of the unbelievable places they had seen. At each Circle I tell a different one using our own sign language, which they passed down to us, their children’s children. And tonight, Circle, I am going to tell you about the planet of the giant trees.”

Dan placed the tip of his left index finger on the tip of his left thumb to make an O: the PathFinder sign for “OK” when used as a question. In reply, all in the Circle made the same sign with their right hands:
OK
, used to show agreement or that all is well. And so Dan began.

Tod sat entranced as her father wove his story with fluid hand movements, dancing around the circle on his long legs, taking them with him to the stars. She wished it would go on for ever, but when his hands began to slow and his elegant fingers fluttered less fast, Tod knew he was drawing to a close.

Now Dan began to speak as well as sign, slow and low. “And so, we PathFinders have travelled to the Great Beyond. We have seen many worlds, but we have seen none as beautiful as ours; we have seen many suns, but we have seen none as perfect as …” Dan turned around and pointed out to the sea. Exactly on schedule, a fingernail tip of orange broke the horizon, pushing its way up from the sea. “This! This is
our
sun. This is our Earth. This is where we belong.”

A shiver ran around the MidSummer Circle. Dan Moon grinned. He had done it.

Enjoying their sense of being special, of belonging, the Circle watched in awe as the brilliant ball of light rose from the water; they saw the sky grow bright and the morning star fade away. It was, as Dan Moon had said, perfect.

Suddenly, Tod spotted a flash of gold in the sky. She looked up, shielding her eyes. There was another flash, green this time, and Tod’s heart jumped in recognition. This was something she had seen long ago. Something she had dreamed about for many years, and something that no one, not even her father, believed she had seen.

“It’s the Dragon Boat!” Tod shouted, leaping to her feet. “The Dragon Boat!” Everyone looked at her disapprovingly, particularly Dan. This was not how you behaved in the Circle. But now everyone was looking at the sky, and some were standing up to get a better view. The MidSummer Circle was broken.

The flash of gold and green moved ever nearer, and now they began to see what Tod already knew it to be – a beautiful green dragon that was also a golden boat. Or was it a beautiful golden boat that was also a green dragon?

The Dragon Boat approached steadily, her huge wings beating
up-and-down, up-and-down
, and soon she was near enough for everyone to see the dragon’s neck stretched forward, her iridescent scales shining in the sunlight. They saw her tail arched high, the golden barb on the end glinting. And then her sleek golden hull was overhead; everyone was waving madly – and two figures at the helm, one in purple, one in red, returning their waves.

Dan Moon knew he had been upstaged, but he didn’t mind. He was as excited as anyone to have seen such an amazing sight. He swept his daughter up into a hug and said, “So, Alice TodHunter Moon, you really
did
see that Dragon Boat.”

“Put me down, Dad,” Tod muttered. “Everyone’s looking.”

The Dragon Boat

The pilot of the Dragon Boat
– a young man with curly straw-coloured hair and green eyes so bright that you might expect them to shine in the dark – looked down at the first landfall since they had left their island.

“Hey, Jen,” he said, pointing down to the beach. “There’s that circle of lights again. That’s another MidSummer tradition going on down there, I suppose.”

Jenna Heap, a young woman wearing a fine cloak of red silk lined with white fur, her long dark hair kept in place by a circlet of gold, peered over the side of the Dragon Boat. “They’ve seen us,” she said, returning the waves of the excited onlookers below. “It’s already light. We must be later than usual.”

The young man, Septimus Heap – Jenna Heap’s adoptive brother – smiled. “I seem to remember someone was fussing about whether we had enough food.” He pointed at two large picnic baskets strapped to the deck.

Jenna resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at Septimus. She was twenty-one now, she told herself sternly, she was the Castle Queen and it
would not do
. Particularly now, she thought, as she looked at Septimus’s purple wool cloak lined with indigo fur and the thick gold-and-platinum belt he wore around his purple tunic, that he was the Castle’s ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Which Jenna – and even Septimus himself – still found hard to believe.

Like those in the Circle on the beach below, Jenna was performing a MidSummer tradition. Every MidSummer Day for many thousands of years, Castle Queens had visited the Dragon Boat where she had lain in an ancient temple beneath the ground, hidden there by the Castle’s first ever ExtraOrdin­­ary Wizard, Hotep-Ra. And now that Jenna was herself Queen, every MidSummer Day she and Septimus took the Dragon Boat to see her old master, Hotep-Ra, in the House of Foryx. It was a time both Jenna and Septimus looked forward to, a precious space where they could be themselves once more – just brother and sister, plain Jenna and Septimus Heap.

This year was even more precious. Because Septimus was now ExtraOrdinary Wizard, he had been reluctant to go. But now, as the orange ball of the sun turned the sky a luminous pink and a flight of ducks flew quacking across their path, Septimus laughed out loud. He was
so
pleased that Jenna had insisted.

Discovered

Later, as Tod and Dan
were wandering home along the beach, watching the early morning sparkle of sunlight glancing off the MidSummer waves, Tod said, “Dad, why do you suppose Aunt Mitza was hiding in the dunes while we had our Circle?”

“Was she?” Dan Moon looked at Tod uneasily.

Tod nodded. “Yes. When everyone was waving at the Dragon Boat, I saw her get up and scurry away. And I know it was her, because she waddles like a duck. Like this.” Tod did an accurate impression of Aunt Mitza’s flat-footed walk, but Dan Moon was not amused.

“You must respect your elders, Tod.”

“But I don’t like her, Dad. And neither do you.”

Dan Moon did not deny it. “Even so, Tod, you must give your mother’s stepsister respect. We must both show her hospitality.”

Tod fell quiet. Her mother had died when she was only five and Tod knew that anything relating to her mother was precious to Dan – as it was to her, too. She knew that was the only reason that Dan had made Aunt Mitza welcome when she had turned up on the doorstep the previous week, expressing a wish to meet “her darling little step-niece” after all these years. But Aunt Mitza’s sharp-eyed looks when Dan was not around had not endeared her to Tod. Unlike Dan, she drew the line at Aunt Mitza. Tod could not believe her mother had ever liked her stepsister, and she was sure that her mother would not have tolerated Aunt Mitza eavesdropping on their secrets.

“But Aunt Mitza was listening in on our Circle, Dad,” said Tod. “She heard our secret – the one we all promised never to tell. That’s not respecting
us
, is it? Or our hospitality. Or Mum.”

Dan Moon frowned. “What’s heard is heard. It can’t be undone. But you are right, Tod. She has not respected your mother. Tomorrow I will ask her to leave.”

But it wasn’t Mitza who left the next day. It was Dan.

The House of Foryx

The Dragon Boat flew steadily
eastwards. She knew the way perfectly, and all Jenna and Septimus needed to do was to watch the world going by and eat their way through the first picnic basket. It was late morning when they saw the grim fortress where Hotep-Ra lived. The octagonal granite towers of the House of Foryx, dark against the perpetual snow that surrounded them, reared up from a pillar of rock surrounded by an abyss. Both Jenna and Septimus shivered – it was an eerie place.

The Dragon Boat flew lower. She circled the House of Foryx once, then her long neck dipped down and she went in to land. Jenna shut her eyes – this part always scared her. The Dragon Boat was heading for a wide, white terrace of marble, and even though Jenna knew it would be all right, it felt as if they were about to crash into solid stone. But as the Dragon Boat’s keel touched down, the marble changed into a milky liquid and they landed softly with a long, low
shishhhh
.