Rescue On Nim's Island (2 page)

I
N A PALM TREE
, on an island, in the middle of the wide blue sea, was a girl.

Nim’s hair was wild, her eyes were bright, and around her neck she wore three cords. One was for a spyglass, one for a whirly, whistling shell and the other a fat, red pocketknife in a sheath.

With the spyglass at her eye, she watched the boat chug closer. It was a wooden fishing boat with a green-painted cabin; it was solid enough to cross the deeper dark ocean but small enough to weave through the maze of reef protecting the island. The people on the deck were waving and pointing. Nim’s stomach tumbled like a coconut falling from a tree, and she didn’t know if it was excited-tumbling or scared, or maybe just not-quite-believing. For three days and three nights, strangers were going to be on the island. Seven strangers – and one friend.

She whistled her shell, three short, sharp notes that carried up to the lab in the rainforest where her father was working. Sometimes Jack was so busy studying his plankton or researching his algae that he forgot to listen. But he whistled back right away: one-two-three, and a moment later he was zipping down the hill on the flying fox.

He let go of the rope and skidded onto the sand below Nim’s tree.

‘Are you ready?’ he called.

‘No,’ Nim called back. In all those months she’d been waiting to see Edmund again, she hadn’t imagined meeting him in front of so many people.

But Selkie was lolloping across the beach, barking deep, anxious sea lion grunts about a new boat coming in to their island. Nim couldn’t let Selkie face the strangers alone.

‘Come on, Fred!’ she said.

Fred was an iguana, spiky as a dragon, with a cheerful snub nose. He clung tightly to Nim’s shoulder as she slid down the tree.

The motor’s chugging stopped. The boat rocked gently in the silence. A cheerful-looking man with dark skin and a red T-shirt was standing in the bow, at the very front of the boat. He bent to drop the anchor over the side, and Nim heard the rattle of the chain as it settled onto the sandy ocean floor.

Together, Nim and Fred, Jack and Selkie headed across the beach to meet their visitors.

E
DMUND WAS ON
the deck. He waved to Nim, but looked as if he didn’t know what to do next. Behind him were a tall, slim woman, pale as a lily, and an even taller, thinner and paler man. They stayed in the cockpit as the man in the red T-shirt returned to the stern of the boat, unclipped the rubber dinghy hanging on the back rail, and lowered it to the water.

He climbed in and picked up the oars. ‘Who’s first ashore?’

The tall couple stepped over the railing and down to the dinghy.

‘Go ahead, Edmund,’ a blonde woman called from the wheelhouse. ‘I’ve got to sign off the logbook.’

‘Thanks!’ said Edmund, and he said it again as the dinghy’s rubber bottom touched the sand a few minutes later. He was back in his favourite place in the world – he could hardly believe he was here.

He splashed in through the sparkling blue water. He had a pack on his back and his shoes in his hand, and he was looking all around him, drinking in every detail that he might have forgotten.

The tall couple took off their shoes and waded in after him, and the man in the red T-shirt rowed back to the boat for his family.

The blonde woman came out of the wheelhouse holding a toddler by the hand. The little boy squealed with excitement as she lowered him into his father’s waiting arms.

‘Tiffany and Tristan!’ she called. ‘Time to go ashore.’

A boy and girl came out from the cabin. They were the same height and had the same dark hair and wary expressions as they climbed down to the dinghy after their mother.

They’re twins!
thought Nim.
Like the naughty kids
Edmund babysits. Except they’re our age, and they’ll be nice.
Suddenly the scared part of her excitement evaporated into the clear blue sky. Her friend was here, and two new friends as well. She ran the rest of the way across the beach to meet them.

U
NTIL A YEAR
ago, Nim had never wanted any friends except Selkie, Fred and the other animals. She’d lived alone on the island with her father for as long as she could remember, until Alex Rover, the most famous adventure writer in the world, had come to rescue her when Jack was lost at sea. In the end Nim had to rescue Alex, but when Jack came home, Alex decided to stay. Now Alex was part of the family and Nim didn’t want her to ever leave again. But she’d still never thought she needed friends who were kids like her, and could talk with words instead of iguana sneezes and sea lion whuffles.

That was until the Troppo Tourist cruise ship had sealnapped Selkie. Nim had stowed away to steal her back again, and met Ben and Erin on the ship. When it was time to say goodbye, they were all so sad that Jack said her new friends could visit the next summer. Nim knew that they’d love the island and that she’d love showing it to them. But Erin and Ben hadn’t been able to come after all. Their parents had said that the family couldn’t afford to travel so far again.

For the first time in her life, Nim was lonely. She swam with Selkie and explored with Fred; she had school with Jack and read Alex’s books – but sometimes she wished she had someone else to do things with.

And then one day a boy had arrived. Edmund had been saving and scheming ever since he’d seen the island from the Troppo Tourist cruise ship. He’d run away from home, jumped off a fishing boat with his rubber dinghy, and rowed all the way to Shell Beach in the middle of the night. Nim had been suspicious at first but by the time Jack sailed Edmund home again, they’d had adventures, proved that the island was an international sanctuary for rare and endangered species, and turned into friends.

That was six months ago.

Now Edmund was back on the island, and part of Nim wanted to leap and shriek like an excited monkey. The other part couldn’t remember how to talk to real people who were outside the computer.

Edmund looked as if he couldn’t remember how either.

The tall couple could. They were both smooth and elegant, polished as sea glass. On a gold chain around her neck, the woman wore a chunk of gleaming yellow amber with a scorpion trapped inside.

The man shook Jack’s hand. ‘Dr Lance Bijou,’ he introduced himself, ‘and my wife Dr Leonora Bijou.’

Those aren’t the right names!
thought Nim.

‘Where are Dr Selina Ashburn and Professor Peter Hunterstone?’ Jack demanded.

‘Unfortunately,’ said Leonora, ‘they were both taken ill at the last minute.’

‘We expect them to recover next week,’ said Lance, ‘but for now, they are too sick to travel.’

‘That’s terrible!’ Jack exclaimed.

‘Sad,’ Lance agreed. ‘But as my wife is a biologist and I am a geologist, we volunteered to drop everything and take their places.’

‘And since they’d agreed to bring Edmund,’ said Leonora, ‘we felt we had to do that too.’

‘That was kind,’ said Jack.

Leonora nodded graciously.

Like a queen,
thought Nim. She looked across at Edmund. He was too busy hugging Selkie and scratching Fred’s spiky head to look back at her.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!
Nim thought. Maybe Alex was right to hide from everyone.‘I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,’ she’d said. Because even though Alex Rover was the most famous adventure writer in the world, she was still afraid of spiders, snakes, and meeting new people. That’s why only Jack and Nim were on the beach meeting the scientists.

T
HE DINGHY LANDED
and the family splashed out, the mother carrying the toddler. The twins didn’t look as if they wanted to be there. Their father pulled the dinghy up high on the beach and turned it upside down so it wouldn’t fill up with rain.

‘At least no one’s going to steal it here!’ he laughed.

The woman put the toddler down on the sand. ‘I’m Anika Lowe, the coral scientist. This is my husband Ryan, the climatologist, and Ollie, Tiffany and Tristan.’

‘You’re looking forward to this, aren’t you, Tiff-Tris?’ said Ryan.

The twins didn’t answer. They stared around as if they were wondering what was worth looking at, then put on their headphones and sat down, back to back on the sand.

Leonora caught Nim’s eye and smiled. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ she whispered. ‘I’m very excited about being on your beautiful island!’

I
N FACT,
N
IM’S
island was the most beautiful island in the whole world. It had white shell beaches, pale gold sand and tumbled black rocks where the spray threw rainbows into the sky. It had a fiery mountain with green rainforest on the slopes and grassland at the bottom. There was a pool of fresh water to drink and a slippery waterfall to slide down.

There used to be a hut in a hidden hollow of the grasslands, but when it blew away, they built a new house higher up the hill. It was tucked deep in the rainforest, close to the freshwater pool, and the corner of two walls joined the trunk of the most magnificent tree in the forest. The tree was so tall that no matter how far Nim tilted her head back to see the top, she couldn’t see where the tree ended and the sky began. Its oldest roots were solid grey walls higher than Nim, and its youngest roots were vines dangling from the trunk. Nim liked to sit in its branches and imagine the stories it could tell about the animals it had seen, from the tiniest creeping insect to Galileo the great-winged frigate bird skimming overhead.

Jack said the tree was so old it could have seen Chica’s great-great-grandmother laying her eggs on the beach. Chica was a sea turtle, and they can live for a hundred years, so it was a long time since her great-grandmother had hatched and crawled to the sea.

Alex thought it had even seen dinosaurs playing when it was young, but Alex was better at imagining than science.

Nim just knew that it was a tree full of stories, and soon it would have a new one about the people coming here for Jack’s conference. Maybe it would be a story that could save the world.

‘We need a new fuel that can run any kind of motor without polluting the earth or sky or sea. I think algae are the answer – and if we get different scientists together, with different ways of looking at the problem, maybe we’ll come up with the right question,’ Jack had said. ‘Sometimes the greatest discoveries in science are found by accident.’

Chapter 3

N
O ONE KNEW
what to do first. Tiffany and Tristan went on listening to music with their eyes closed. Edmund wandered down the beach. Ryan and Anika looked all around, smiling and swinging Ollie between them.

Leonora pulled a slim bottle out of her bag. ‘Coconut oil is very good for the skin,’ she said to Nim, smoothing a few drops into her hands. ‘Try some!’

Nim couldn’t say that Alex always said so too, and that was why she’d made coconut oil for Alex’s birthday last month. She held out her hands obediently.

Selkie humphed. Fred twined around Nim’s feet in a prickly hug.

‘Fred’s right,’ said Nim, ‘it’s time for lunch!’

The iguana skittered excitedly to her shoulder, spraying his cool salt-water sneeze against her neck.

‘Yuck!’ said the twins.

‘Sneeze on me too,’ Ollie begged.

Nim went back to the lookout palm and picked up two coconuts lying on the sand. With a rock and a spike, she punched a hole for the juice, and handed the first nut to Anika.

Anika drank from the shell, just like Nim and Jack. ‘Delicious!’ she said, trickling some juice into Ollie’s mouth. The little boy laughed, and grabbed the coconut for more.

‘Gross!’ said Tristan.

‘Don’t you have straws?’ asked Tiffany.

‘No,’ said Nim, starting to feel as prickly as Fred.

‘It’s much better like this,’ said Ryan, drinking the rest of the juice.

‘We only get things from the supply ship that we really need,’ said Jack. He opened the other coconut and handed it to Leonora. She drank neatly, without spilling a drop.

When they were finished, Nim cracked the shells and pried out the slippery flesh. Fred snatched a piece and gulped it down. (Marine iguanas don’t eat coconut, but no one had ever told Fred.)