out of her hiding place while the pirates slept, hoping she would be able to escape the cave.
She walked down many of the tunnels, scratching her initials as she went. Being an unusually intelligent child, she knew she might need to find her way back.
For three nights she explored the caves while the pirates slept, always careful to return to the apple barrel before they awoke. On the final night, as she curled herself inside the cask, she began to fear that she might never again see the sky.
Some hours later she was abruptly woken by a whispering – a mournful sound as she later described it. Louder and louder it called, but the pirates slept on. Yet when they finally awoke, they let out terrible screams, the screams of grown men, fearless men, who now had terror in their cries.
‘It will kill us all! It strangles us in our sleep. This monster, this devil of the deep.’
Martha saw a tongue of lightning strike at the cave and then heard a huge thundering as a rock crashed down and the cave quickly filled with turbulent water. The barrel was sucked into a whirling thing as she described it. Down, down it went and then up again and the child was flung far from the island cave and there she bobbed in her apple barrel.
The breakers carried her tumbling to shore, and like a cracked nut, the barrel broke in two and the little girl could once again see sky, and watched as a star fell from the heavens.
Hours later she was found like a tiny mermaid asleep on the sand, her turquoise dress gathered up like a tail, her face, legs and arms all dyed indigo by some mysterious pigment. The child told the story to those who would listen, of the pirates and the plunder, her mother and the rubies, the treasure caves, the whispering and the devil from the deep.
A search party went to find the Seahorse, some motivated by revenge, some by greed. But few boats could sail in those waters, and the ship, even if it had gone down where she claimed, had sunk far beyond human sight into the turbulent currents of the seas, and the jewels could not be retrieved. As for the hidden rubies and casket of gems, the caves the child spoke of simply did not exist, could not exist – some brave souls searched, but no cave was ever found, and her talk of floating to the Sibling Islands on a raft was not possible with the currents in that region as furious as they were.
Martha was forgiven her ungodly lies because no one could doubt that she had been through a trauma so terrible, she could no longer speak the truth. Her mother dead, her inheritance lost. She never spoke one word more about those dark days of seafaring terror. And as for the story, it gradually became myth. The treasure, the Seahorse, the pirates? Perhaps the boat had just been hit by a terrible storm.
Ruby closed the book and sat back in her chair. She remained there for some time, quite still. She thought about Martha – her long, long-distant relative, her long-dead relative whose voice she almost thought she heard. Believe me, it seemed to say, listen, I tell the truth, I cannot lie. Ruby opened her notebook and wrote:
QUESTION:
Why would Martha lie?
ANSWER:
So the search would continue for her lost mother? Because she could not bear to face the truth, that her mother was truly dead?
Possible of course.
But what if Martha was telling the truth?
What if her mother was carried off to join the pirate band?
What if the pirate caves did exist?
What if the Seahorse really did sink somewhere near the Sibling Islands, and for some reason the currents were still then too, like they were for my parents? Like they are right now?
And if it WAS the asteroid that calmed the waters for them, could the same one have passed by the earth all those years ago?
Ruby was well aware that asteroids can come back again and again, in very long orbits. Two hundred years didn’t seem impossible. And Martha did talk about seeing a falling star as she lay on the shore…
Then of course there was the matter of the whirling thing.
A giant whirlpool?
It was certainly possible.
The cave?
Perhaps the huge rock Martha heard crashing down covered the cave entrance so it could no longer be seen.
The sea devil?
Maybe the lightning had conjured the illusion of a sea monster by casting strange shadows on the cave walls.
The whispering and mournful sounds?
Just voices of woe and fear combining with the sound of sharp splitting rock as the cave collapsed and the water rushed in, no monster, no supernatural being, just weather and sea colliding.
The picture was getting less blurry. Ruby and Blacker’s theory about ships being rerouted to keep them out of Sibling waters, the calmed currents… someone out there wanted something from the Siblings seas, and if Ruby Redfort could believe in the treasure of the Seahorse, then maybe she wasn’t the only one.
Maybe, a mere 200 years later, someone was trying to dive the wreck and secure its sunken bounty.
The only thing was how to prove it.
A schoolboy error
WHEN RUBY GOT HOME, SHE WENT IN SEARCH OF HITCH: he was nowhere in the main house so she guessed he must be downstairs in his apartment. She could hear him playing music – the clarinet, something he often did if he got more than a few moments to himself. He claimed it helped him think, but Ruby wondered if it didn’t help him block out the noise of the day, the tricky thoughts that must buzz endlessly around that head of his. The music, his own form of white noise.
He didn’t seem to hear her knock, but the door was ajar and Bug, who had followed her down, pushed his way in. Hitch continued to play until he noticed Ruby standing there in the doorway.
‘Hey kid, you not out cycling the streets of Twinford fighting crime?’
‘No, I’ve been at the library.’
‘How very civilised. Any new books I should be reading?’
‘Maybe an old one,’ said Ruby.
‘I’ve always enjoyed the classics. What’s it about?’
‘Pirates, treasure, sea monsters – that kinda stuff,’ she replied.
‘Sounds gripping,’ said Hitch.
‘Yeah, it was,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.’
‘I look forward to it kid. Oh, by the way, I got you the radio tapes, left them in your room.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll go check them out.’
She
