Rescue On Nim's Island (13 page)

The fossil was beautiful; it told a fascinating story of history and geology – but the turtle had died a long time ago. Tiffany and the bats were alive now.

Sacrificing the fossil was the only possible way to save them both.

Nim raced back out, around the stalagmite, through the entrance passage, and slid out the opening into a deluge of rain.

Fred leapt off her shoulder and somersaulted with her down the hill. They were still rolling when they heard the boom. Nim pressed her hands over her ears so tightly her jaws hurt, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching.

A spray of fiery, glistening opals shot out over the cliff. Like a rainbow cloud in the rain, it hung in the air for a moment before disappearing down to the sea.

C
AUTIOUSLY,
N
IM LOOSENED
her hands from her ears. Fred pulled his head out from under her arm. They heard the thump of one last rock and the drumming of rain … and then a desperate, raging howl from somewhere below.

‘My fossil!’ Leonora roared. ‘My opals! You set the dynamite in the wrong place!’

‘No, I didn’t!’ Lance bellowed back.

Nim hated even hearing their voices. She hated the thought of ever seeing them again. But she had to give it one more try.

‘Leonora,’ she called. ‘Lance! HELP!’

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she heard Lance shout.

There were crashes of panicky skidding and loose stones bouncing down the Black Rocks, then even that noise was swallowed by the pouring rain.

Nim couldn’t waste time chasing them. She couldn’t waste energy being angry. She needed all the time and energy she had to rescue Tiffany.

Fred scuttled to her shoulder as she raced back up the hill. ‘We don’t need them,’ she told him. ‘If we get some tools we can do it ourselves.’

She said it again and it sounded a bit better. She was almost ready to believe it by the time she reached the tree that had hidden the cave’s entrance for so many years.

The tree was lying across the path, its top branches dangling over the cliff, its roots in the air. Nim felt smaller than pond algae. ‘Sorry, tree,’ she said.

But then she looked at where the door hole used to be, and felt as if she could soar higher than a frigate bird. There was no door, no hole at all, just a solid wall of rocks. Her plan had worked: the rock wall was stopping the rain from running through the cave into Tiffany’s tunnel.

Now they just needed to get her out.

Nim rushed back down to the Emergency Cave. Lance and Leonora’s tool bag was in the doorway, with a coil of rope on top. Nim strapped the bag to her back, slung the rope over the shoulder that Fred wasn’t sitting on, and started the long way round to the waterfall.

She whistled for Selkie as she ran. She didn’t know where Selkie was or what a sea lion could do to help. But Selkie was very strong, and smart in a different way to people-smart – and Nim was going to need all the help she could get.

S
ELKIE HAD WAITED
a long time after Lance and Leonora disappeared up the cliff. She tried fishing for a while and she dozed for a bit, but whatever she did she listened for Nim. She was getting anxious, and she was getting bored.

The more bored she was, the more interesting the rubber dinghy seemed. Selkie had never seen a rubber dinghy on the Black Rocks before. As the rain started, she flopped up the rocks and into the dinghy. With a little shove of her tail and a wiggle of her body, she rode it like a toboggan, all the way down to the water.

For a few minutes, she rode the dinghy around the cove, barking happily. If Leonora and Lance had known anything about sea lions, they would have come running. But they didn’t, and so they didn’t see the sad end to Ryan and Anika’s rubber dinghy.

Because rubber dinghies aren’t toboggans. They’re not supposed to be ridden over sharp rocks by sea lions that weigh as much as two men. So the air hissed slowly out of the cuts in the rubber dinghy’s bottom, and Selkie floated around going slowly deeper and deeper until she disappeared right under the water.

The sea lion bobbed back up from the cove’s stony floor, but the dinghy didn’t.

Selkie honked in a way that might have been a bad word if she’d been a person. It had been fun having her own boat.

The fishing boat was still there, bobbing on its anchor. She was just circling it, searching for the easiest way up, when the world shook with a terrible
boom!

Selkie bounced out of the water, straight onto the boat. She was still shaking her head to get the noise out when Leonora and Lance came skidding down the rocks.

‘Where’s the dinghy?’ Leonora shrieked. ‘We’ve got to get out of here before Jack gets back!’

‘We’ll have to swim,’ said Lance.

Selkie didn’t care anymore that Nim and Jack had let these people onto the island. The world wasn’t supposed to
boom!
and people weren’t supposed to shout. She barked a warning.

Lance dived off the rocks.

Selkie dived off the boat.

They met nose to nose under the water. Selkie’s nose was bigger, and so were her teeth. Lance shot out of the water – but he still wasn’t safe. Barking and honking, Selkie chased Leonora and Lance up off the rocks and deep into the rainforest, as far from the camp as she could push them. They were soaked to the skin, too exhausted to run any further, and too afraid to understand that the terrifying sea lion had gone on past and left them alone. When they did get brave enough to make their way back out into the pouring rain and jungle mud, they were absolutely, completely, spun-around-in-circles lost.

Chapter 13

T
HE
BOOM!
ECHOED
deep into the heart of the mountain. Edmund felt the tunnel floor tremble.

‘Are you okay?’ he called.

‘What was that?’ Tiff shouted at the same time.

Then the air filled with strange, clicking chirps and a scent of musk, and a long thin cloud of bats flew down the tunnel. They flew over Edmund’s head, over Tiffany in the shaft, and out to the world on the other side.

Tiffany’s going to freak out for sure
, Edmund thought.
And I don’t blame her!

‘Are you okay?’ he called again.

‘That was beautiful!’ Tiff called back. She sounded stronger than she had since Tris and Ollie had left. ‘If they can get out, I can too.’

N
IM LOVED THE
rainforest on sunny days. It stayed cool and shady no matter how hot it was everywhere else. Vines trailed from branches, and trees with great walls of roots made secret nooks and grottos. Invisible birds sang among the leaves, and then flew past in explosions of colour. There were tiny green tree frogs, colour-changing lizards and whole universes of insects.

She loved the rain too, because nothing could live without it, but she loved rain a whole lot more when she wasn’t in it. Her squelching shoes were getting heavier with each muddy step, and water was blurring her eyes. Her foot was skidding on a slippery root and a loop of vine was catching her leg …

Nim crashed face first into the mud.

‘OW!’ she screamed, and then, ‘Fred?’

Fred scuttled up to her. He had leapt off her shoulder just in time.

‘Sorry, Fred,’ said Nim, kissing the top of his spiny head. She put him back on her shoulder; Fred was too chilled to run by himself now. ‘I’ll be more careful,’ she promised. Her left knee throbbed and she rubbed it till it felt good enough to stand on. She thought the other knee was bleeding, but there was too much mud to be sure.

She didn’t care about falling in the mud, but she did care about hurting Fred. And if she sprained her ankle or smashed her knee she wouldn’t be able to rescue anyone.

T
IFFANY COULDN’T FEEL
her left foot anymore. She knew it must still be there, stuck through the crack, but it was completely numb. Worse, her arms and right leg were shaking with strain. She didn’t know how long she could keep on pressing against the walls to hold herself up.

‘Talk to me!’ she called.

‘No more water’s coming down the tunnel,’ said Edmund, but it was the fifth time he’d told her that, and it didn’t sound as hopeful as it had at first.

He started going through the daypacks again, just in case he’d missed something that could possibly help. It was better than doing nothing. He knew he couldn’t do anything without the ropes and climbing gear – but he didn’t know how long he could just sit and wait for them.

‘Do you remember the story in
Winnie the Pooh
?’ he asked. ‘When Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s door and Rabbit reads him stories till he’s thin enough to get out?’

Tiffany made a strange sort of sound. Edmund couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

‘I’m going to see if anyone’s coming yet,’ he called. ‘Don’t go away! I mean … I’ll be right back!’

Scuttling down the dark tunnel like a skater bug, he skidded around the curve towards the pale light of the outside world. He slid faster until one leg shot into nothing, and caught himself just before he whooshed right down the hill.

He peered out into the rain like a turtle poking its head out of its shell. Below the muddy hill, he could see the cliffs he’d fallen off last time, and the pond he’d landed in. There was the rock bridge too, but some of it was narrow and all of it was high and he didn’t know how Tristan could have crossed it with Ollie. Edmund shuddered and peered out further.

All he could see was green: trees and bushes and whatever else was hiding in the rainforest. ‘Nim!’ Edmund shouted. ‘NIM!’

His voice was puny against the thunder of the waterfall and rain. There was no answer.

He slid back into the tunnel and the darkness. ‘They’ll be coming soon, Tiffany,’ he called as he came back around the bend.

There was no answer here either.

Edmund rushed to the edge of the hole. ‘Tiff!’ he shouted. ‘Are you okay?’

He knew it was a silly question, but he needed to hear her say something. Anything – even if it was just to tell him he was being stupid.

When she still didn’t answer he knew that now she was really not okay.

S
OMEONE WAS CRASHING
through the forest below Nim.