Rescue On Nim's Island (8 page)

By the time they’d climbed the rocks too, they were just in time to see Edmund’s legs sliding into a hole in the side of the cliff. ‘That was lucky!’ said Lance. ‘I told you,’ said Leonora. ‘I’ve got a very good feeling about this.’ They waited a few more minutes, and then crept carefully up the path to the cave. For a long, long time, they sat outside, taking turns to stick their heads through the door hole and listen.

Chapter 8

T
IFFANY WAS BORED.
She’d taken Ollie down to the water, and they’d waded and splashed. It was hot enough to swim, but Ollie couldn’t swim and Tiff couldn’t leave him alone while she swam. She didn’t find wading and splashing nearly as exciting as the three-year-old did.

When Ollie was tired they went back to the tent; Tiffany tucked her little brother into his sleeping sheet, and lay down on hers. There was nothing else to do. All the batteries were flat; she couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t send messages, couldn’t read.

Maybe she should have gone with Tris and the others, she thought. But she didn’t like caves, and she really was afraid of bats. She kept imagining them dropping off the ceiling in the darkness, landing on her head, tangling in her hair. She shuddered just thinking about it.

Finally she found a book her mum had been reading. It was about the life span of coral, and it was mostly charts and graphs. It was better than thinking about bats, but there were so many Latin words and the sentences were so long that Tiffany had to close her eyes between each paragraph. After a while it was too much trouble to open them again. Tiffany dropped the book and slept.

Through a dream, she heard voices, and the rustle of a tent flap.

‘It was lucky I spotted that bratty twin going with them,’ Lance was saying. ‘They might have got suspicious if they’d seen us heading off again with all our gear.’

Suddenly Tiffany was wide awake. She lay still as stone, hardly breathing. Her ears stretched and strained to catch every word.

‘We’d have just had to deal with them here,’ said Leonora. ‘If the kids are right about what they’ve got in that cave, this could be the find of the century!’

‘We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it’s yours,’ Lance agreed. ‘And if we can’t get the fossil out whole, we’ll have a big pile of opal to sell.’

‘As long as they know what they’re talking about … we should have gone all the way into the tunnel and seen it for ourselves. I’ll be very annoyed if we haul these tools all the way up there for nothing.’

‘It’s better this way. Kids get bored easily – they’re probably gone by now. If not, it’ll be much easier to deal with them when we’ve got our ropes.’

Tiffany’s body was still frozen, but her mind was racing.
Deal with them? With ropes?
She was suddenly very afraid. She didn’t care what Nim had found in that bat cave, she didn’t care what fossils or opals Leonora wanted, but she cared, more than she’d ever known she could, when someone threatened her brother.

Now she was even angrier than she was afraid.

As silently as she could, she got up from her mat. She put on her sneakers, shoved her mini torch into her pocket, her sunhat onto her head, and a water bottle into a pouch on her belt. Ollie was still sound asleep in his sheet. Tiffany slid her arms under it and very gently picked up her little brother.

‘What are we doing?’ Ollie murmured, without opening his eyes.

‘Shh,’ Tiffany whispered. ‘We’re playing a game. You’re the baby koala and I’m the mummy. You have to be sound asleep riding on my back.’

The noises from the other tent sounded as if Lance and Leonora were packing. There were thumps and rustles, and mutters of, ‘We’ll have to get away fast if we use it, but it’ll be worth it,’ and, ‘We’ll need the net to lower it off the cliff’.

Tiffany wiggled Ollie in his sheet around to her back. She knotted the bottom of the sheet around her waist, and the top around her shoulders. Even with the sling, Ollie was heavy.

‘Hang on, Baby Koala,’ she whispered.

She tiptoed to the tent door. Her heart was beating so loudly she was afraid that Lance and Leonora would hear it.
Just stay here and hide
, whispered a voice in her head.
You’ll be safe here – and Tris will probably be all right
.

But he might not be.
That was the truth. If she didn’t warn him about the Bijous, her twin could be in terrible danger. She put her hand on the tent flap. The Bijous’ tent was facing away from hers, but that meant she couldn’t peek into it and run when they were facing the other way. Sticking her head out was going to be the most terrifying thing she’d ever done.

‘I can’t believe how easy they’re making this for us!’ Leonora laughed. ‘Anika and Ryan are just as sweet and stupid as Selina and Peter – and Jack’s so simple he’s left all his research in that cave. It’s as if he
wants
someone to destroy it!’

‘I’m happy to help out,’ Lance said grimly. ‘I’ve been a fuel engineer all my life and I’m not going to have algae ruin my plans!’

‘Opal fossils for me, no competition for you,’ Leonora gloated. ‘Coming here is working out even better than we’d hoped!’

There were no more choices.

Tiffany crouched, bounded out of the tent and started running. She raced right across the grasslands without stopping, her little brother bouncing on her back. By the time she reached the safety of the first trees she was gasping for breath. Ollie rolled out of the sling as she sank to her knees in the soft forest litter. He looked around, and squeezed his eyes tight shut again.

‘You can wake up now,’ Tiffany panted, looking anxiously over her shoulder for any sign of the Bijous. ‘We’ll play a different game.’

‘Aren’t I a baby koala anymore?’

‘Now you’re …’ Tiffany tried to think of the quietest, fastest animal she could. She didn’t want to start hopping like a rabbit or slithering like a snake. ‘We’re quiet little mice, and we’re going to go through the forest as fast as we can without anyone hearing us.’

‘Why?’ asked Ollie.

‘Because there’s a great big cat that wants to eat us up,’ said Tiffany.
But it would be a lot easier if the mice knew
where they were going!

She didn’t say that part out loud.

This morning she’d thought Nim was talking about a new cave, but Leonora and Lance seemed to be talking about the Emergency Cave. The problem was that Tiffany hadn’t paid much attention when they were there yesterday. She knew the cave was on top of the Black Rocks, but she couldn’t exactly remember how they’d got back from there.

All she knew for sure was that Tristan had disappeared in this direction. There was a bit of trail going up the hill.
Please let it be the right one!
Tiff thought to herself.

Ollie was crawling up it already. ‘This is how mice run!’

‘These mice run faster on their legs,’ said Tiffany.

The little boy obediently raced past her, running as hard as he could. Sticks snapped and branches twanged. A tree root caught his foot – but Tiffany leapt and scooped him up before he hit the ground.

‘That was fast like a horse!’ she whispered.

Ollie wrapped his arms around her neck and rested his face against hers. ‘You’re my nice horse sister,’ he said.

He sounded so surprised that Tiffany flushed. She staggered on carrying him, until her right foot stepped in a hole and her left foot skidded, and she sat down hard. Her bottom hurt and somehow she’d thumped her funny bone, which wasn’t funny at all. But at least she hadn’t twisted an ankle. She bit her lip and got back up.

‘Ready to walk quietly as a mouse?’ she whispered. ‘Look – this is my tail.’ She unknotted the top of the sling so that the sheet flowed out like a cape from her waist.

‘Where’s my tail?’ Ollie whined.

‘I’ll get you a good one later. Promise. But now the baby mouse holds onto the sister mouse’s tail.’

‘So it’s my tail too,’ Ollie said.

‘Okay,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just hold onto it. And remember the game – we don’t want the cat to hear us. So we can’t step on sticks, or fall down, or talk more.’

She started off again, walking fast. Ollie held the sheet and jogged behind her. The trail climbed steeply. They’d stopped and started so often that Tiffany had no idea how long they’d been walking, or if they were still going the right direction.

I don’t even know how I’m going to know!
she thought despairingly. Whichever way she looked, the forest was the same: just trees and vines and ferns … and the bowerbird’s nest. The pile of sticks decorated with yellow flowers and berries, where Nim had glared at her just because she’d taken one little flower.

But today it was the bowerbird who’d stolen something new. Placed carefully in front of the bower was a scorpion, trapped forever in a big amber necklace.

Leonora and Lance went by here this morning! We’re going the right way.

Ollie darted ahead and grabbed the pendant. The bird stared fiercely from beside his bower.

‘Put it back!’ Tiffany hissed. ‘It’s not yours.’

‘You took the flower,’ Ollie reminded her.

‘That’s different!’

But Tiffany didn’t want to touch the necklace, and Ollie wouldn’t let it go.

‘It’s my mouse tail,’ he said, slipping the chain over his head with the scorpion at the back. It bounced along behind his bottom, just the right place for a tail.

For half a second, Tiffany forgot how afraid she was, and laughed. It felt good. She took her brother’s hand, and they hurried on.

A few minutes later, they smelled the rotten-egg stink of the Hissing Stones and saw the start of the Black Rocks.

Reaching the Black Rocks was good because it meant they were getting close to the cave, but bad because there was nowhere to hide. Once she and Ollie started to climb, the Bijous would be able to see them from nearly anywhere on this side of the island.

Tiffany stopped under the last tree of the rainforest and listened. There were bird sounds, ocean sounds and Hissing Stones sounds. There were no people sounds – but Lance and Leonora were smart enough to be quiet if they were following her.
What if they’re right behind us and I
just can’t hear them?

But she couldn’t turn around now, and she couldn’t let Ollie see how afraid she was.

‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘we’re going to be monkeys and climb up those rocks before a big gorilla catches us!’

T
IFFANY WASN’T STRONG
enough to climb the Black Rocks with Ollie on her back. They each needed both hands to climb, so they couldn’t hold hands and he couldn’t hold onto the end of the sheet. But Ollie was so little and the rocks were so big, that she was afraid to let him go by himself.

She unknotted the sleeping bag sheet from around her waist, and ripped the sides open into one long skinny strip. She knotted one end around Ollie’s middle and the other around hers.

They began to climb.

The boulders were round and rough, piled like stacks of marbles; sometimes Tiffany needed her hands to balance and sometimes she could scramble up without them. Sometimes she stopped and pulled Ollie right up beside her before she started again.

‘I like climbing rocks!’ said Ollie.