Eva Ibbotson - Island of the Aunts

“There’s a naak in the loch,” she said. “A funny sort of fellow. The stoorworm won’t be pleased.”

Naaks are Estonian; they are the ghosts of people who have drowned and are apt to be silent and grim. This one, Coral said, was the ghost of a schoolteacher.

“One of those strict ones with a cane, I should imagine,” she said, “though it’s not easy to tell under water.”

The arrival of the naak all the way from Estonia made it certain. If the ghost of a drowned schoolteacher with a cane had come nearly a thousand miles to welcome the kraken, he must be coming very soon.

It was the strangest of days. Everyone was violently excited but they didn’t dare to say aloud what they believed.

The stoorworm insisted on being wound round a tree by the north shore so that he could get a good view and, just when Fabio had fixed him up, he decided that the kraken would come straight into the bay by the house and asked to be unwound again.

“Wait for me, wait for me,” shouted Old Ursula to the other mermaids, and this time they did wait for the poor old thing and swam out to the rock they had chosen, holding Walter aloft, and sat there practising a song that Myrtle had taught them. It was a Lapp reindeer-herding song and not particularly suitable but it was the most Northern song that Myrtle had been able to find.

In Art’s kitchen, the iced buns he’d made from the boobrie’s egg overflowed the larder, were stuffed into flour bins…and still they came from his oven.

The Sybil’s face turned from blue to purple; her washed feet glistened in the light.

The Captain had pushed his bed right against the window and wouldn’t take time off even to eat.

Only Lambert felt nothing and noticed nothing and spent the day crouched over his telephone trying to get through to his father, even though his battery was now completely flat.

By the late afternoon the shore was packed with creatures of every sort. Like people lining the route of a royal wedding or a funeral, they had come early to get a good place from which they could see. There were sea otters and jellyfish, there were anemones and starfish peering out of their pools; there were shoals of haddock and flounders and codlings…Some of the animals lined the north shore, others waited in the bay by the house; the birds and rabbits and mice and voles watched from the hill. The children could hardly eat their tea and the aunts did not nag them. They too were having trouble with Art’s boobrie buns.

The sun began to dip behind the horizon. The Hum, which had been steady all day, began to change its rhythm and every so often there was this strange gap filled with a kind of exasperated rumbling.

“Please don’t make us go to bed,” begged Minette, and Fabio said he wasn’t going to bed and if they tried to make him there’d be trouble.

But when darkness came and the old clock in the kitchen struck nine, and ten, and eleven, everyone lost hope. At midnight the children went to bed of their own accord; the lugworms and the water fleas and the starfish crawled back into the sand or burrowed under stones. On their rock, the mermaids stopped singing and the boobrie fell silent on her nest.

“We must have been mistaken,” said the aunts bleakly — and they too went to bed.

But when they woke in the morning, there was a new island out in the bay.

The island slept. It slept the sleep of the dead after the long journey — and round it and on it and under it, the creatures who had come with it slept too.

The Hum had stopped. Only a slight sighing, a soft soughing, could be heard as he drew in breath and let it out.

For the watchers on the shore, this second welcome was different from the first. It seemed to have nothing to do with velvet bows and polished shoes. It came from somewhere deeper down.

Fabio and Minette stood side by side, half hidden by an old bent alder which grew by the brook where it ran into the sea. They couldn’t find any words. There weren’t any to find. The aunts, down on the shore, were holding hands like children.

On their rock, the mermaids were not singing and when Walter began to grizzle, Loreen shushed him angrily. For the kraken slept and the excited welcome they had planned had become a vigil. No one would wake the great beast: not the naak with his cane, not the boobrie on her nest; no one.

They waited for one hour, for two…The sunshine grew stronger. The sea was turning the most amazing colours, as if a rainbow was hidden underneath the waves, and the air as they breathed in tasted like gorgeous fruit.

“It’s like the beginning of the world,” whispered Minette.

And then the kraken sneezed!

Everything changed after that. The moles and the mice and the rabbits on the hill were blown backwards and righted themselves again; Aunt Etta’s bun flew from its mooring of hairpins; the boobrie let out a startled squeal…and everybody laughed.

And the kraken lifted his head out of the water and began to swim very slowly, very carefully so as not to swamp the shore, towards the bay.

He was facing the house now, facing the aunts and the children.

Minette, and Fabio beside her, made exactly the same noise: a gasp of wonder and surprise. For in spite of all they had been told about the kraken — about his goodness, about his effect on the sea, about his healing powers — they had not been able to imagine anything very different from a gigantic whale.

But the kraken’s eyes were not in the least like the eyes of a whale. They were huge and round and golden: to gaze into them was like looking into a lamp which did not burn or dazzle but warmed and comforted. His nostrils were small and deep, but his mouth was large and generous, curving across his face like a bow, and tilted upwards at the corners.

As he moved towards them, the mermaids started to sing, croakily at first, then more strongly. Herbert swam beside the kraken’s head, solemn and proud.

And now they saw that his body was not black as they had imagined but dappled in soft colours — the chestnut of a chaffinch’s breast, the rose of a stippled trout, the blue grey of a moonstone — all were in his skin as it caught the light.

But he had stopped. He was looking at the aunts. He began to speak.

Unfortunately he spoke in Polar. It sounded like the rumbling and clashing of icebergs and no one understood a word.

Aunt Etta hurried into the house and fetched a megaphone. “I’m sorry, we don’t understand,” she shouted.

But the kraken had already gathered that. He tried again. This time he spoke Norwegian because Norway is further south than the Pole, and he tried only one word but still nobody understood.

“Could you try English?” shouted Aunt Etta through the megaphone.

There was a long pause while the kraken thought about this. Then he took a deep breath and said:

“Children?”

His accent was strange but they understood him perfectly and the relief was tremendous.

“What about children?” yelled Aunt Etta through her megaphone.

The kraken repeated the word.

“Children?” he asked. “Are there…here…children?”

The aunts talked excitedly among themselves. Did that mean that the kraken wanted children, or that he didn’t?

But anyway none of them were able to tell a lie. They moved over to the alder tree, pulled out Fabio and Minette and led them down to the sand. They didn’t even think about Lambert who was still shut in his room. Lambert wasn’t a child; he was a stunted adult.

There was a pause while the kraken looked at Fabio and Minette. Have we got it wrong? thought the children. Are we going to be eaten after all?

Then the kraken smiled. It was the most amazing smile; his great mouth curved up and up and his eyes glowed with warmth.