Emily Rodda - Isle of the Dead

‘Did you tell Tom you would see me in Tora, Manus?’ he asked sharply.

Manus’s eyes widened. ‘Of course not. How could I?’ he squeaked. ‘I did not know it myself! I thought you were still travelling in the north-east, and so I told Tom. In fact, I told him he should keep the package, for you would very likely visit his shop yourself, before too long.’

‘And what did Tom say to that?’ Barda demanded.

Manus wrinkled his nose. ‘He just smiled, in that knowing way he has, and said I might see you when I least expected it. He said I was to give you the package with his compliments, but no-one else was to know of it.’

He saw the companions glance at one another and his face grew troubled.

‘It seems you are not pleased,’ he murmured. ‘I hope I have not done wrong.’

‘No, no, Manus!’ Lief said quickly. ‘We are only surprised, that is all.’

He took the package and turned it over in his hands. There was nothing written upon it at all.

‘Open it, Lief!’ Jasmine urged.

Lief pulled off the string. The wrapping paper fell away to reveal a jar of fire-making beads and a bag of large, round, pink-striped sweets that smelled strongly of peppermint.

‘There!’ exclaimed Manus, leaning forward. ‘He has sent you a gift!’

‘A gift from Tom?’ snorted Barda. ‘I do not believe it. That man cares only for business. He has never given away anything in his life without being forced into it!’

‘There is no note?’ Jasmine asked curiously.

Lief shook his head. He smoothed out the thick, white wrapping paper and peered at it in the fading light. Both sides were smooth and unmarked.

Manus glanced over his shoulder at the fire. ‘The Torans think I am fetching my flute,’ he murmured. ‘They would like some music, they say.’

‘And so would we,’ said Barda heartily. ‘Be off, then!’

Manus grinned and scurried away.

The three companions looked at one another, and then at the bag of pink-striped sweets sitting before them on the sand.

‘They look and smell very good,’ Lief said longingly. ‘But I daresay we would be foolish to eat them.’

‘Indeed!’ Barda said. ‘It would be best to bury them, or throw them in the fire.’

‘What reason would Tom have to poison us?’ Jasmine exclaimed. ‘He is a rascal, perhaps, but surely not a villain. He guessed where we were in Deltora, but this does not make him our enemy. After all, Josef claims to have discovered our whereabouts, too, and we do not suspect Josef of evil intentions.’

‘Josef says Doom does not trust him.’ Lief was frowning. It had been a great shock to discover that their movements were known to so many, despite all their care.

Jasmine snorted. ‘Doom does not trust anyone but himself,’ she said.

The sweet sound of Manus’s flute drifted to their ears on the cool wind.

Jasmine picked up the jar of fire beads and rattled it thoughtfully. ‘We know what these are, at least,’ she said. ‘They could be very useful to us in the time to come. I will try one now, as a test.’

She scraped a shallow hole in the sand before her, then broke the seal on the jar and took one bead. She placed the bead in the hole.

‘Move back,’ she said. ‘Just in case…’

Lief and Barda edged further under the canopy.

Sitting well back on her heels, Jasmine reached forward and hit the bead sharply with the hilt of her dagger.

The bead burst into flames. Nothing else happened. After a few moments, Jasmine added another bead and soon they were all enjoying the warmth and light of a small but cheery fire.

Barda held his hands out to the blaze and shook his head. ‘So it was just a simple gift,’ he muttered. ‘A welcome one, too. But it is very strange.’

Lief bent to move the bag of sweets and the discarded wrapping paper away from the fire. As he did, he saw something that made his jaw drop.

Words were appearing in the centre of the paper. Dark brown words, that had not been there before.

He snatched the paper up. It was stiff and warm.

‘Tom sent a message after all!’ he gasped. ‘A message written in ink that is invisible until it is warmed.’

Barda stared at the paper, fascinated. ‘That was why he sent the fire beads, no doubt—to make sure we lit a fire at once!’

Lief raised his head from the message, and met his companions’ astonished eyes.

Jasmine was the first to recover.

‘I am astounded!’ she said. ‘And most of all, I think, to learn that Tom has a sister! It is impossible to imagine him as a child, and part of a family.’

‘Plainly he was a child once, however,’ growled Barda. ‘And it sounds as if his sister is as strange a bird as he is.’

‘Even stranger, perhaps,’ Lief muttered. ‘But who is to say we will ever meet her? Her shop could be anywhere.’

Still, he carefully tucked the bag of Peppermint Fancies away inside his jacket. He felt excited and uneasy, both at the same time.

Something about the note nagged at him. It was not just Tom’s knowledge that they were in the west. It was something else—something he felt he should see, but which eluded him.

Slowly he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fire. It flared up. One line showed bright in the flames.

Perhaps it was always fated to come to this…

Then the paper blackened, and crumbled to ash.

The next morning, soon after dawn, the companions left the Sleeping Dunes. They left alone, yet not alone, for the thoughts of the Torans went with them, and sped them on their way.

Barda was the only one of the three who had not experienced the rush of Toran magic before. For a long time he could only stare, wide-eyed, as first the dunes, then the broad coast road that lay beyond them, slipped rapidly away beneath his flying feet.

At last, he managed to speak. ‘This is incredible!’ he muttered huskily. ‘Why—in minutes we have gone half a day’s march! If only this magic could be harnessed—used all over Deltora. Think what it would mean!’

‘The Torans have tried,’ Jasmine said. ‘Or so Marilen tells me. But beyond the borders of their territory, their power weakens, then dies. Only between Del and Tora is the path strong, because it was opened by the ancients.’

Filli was peeping from beneath her collar, chittering cheekily at Kree, who was flying close beside them. Kree squawked loudly.

‘Do not be jealous, Kree,’ Jasmine grinned. ‘Soon you will be flying ahead of us again, as is proper.’

Sure enough, it was not long before their speed slowed. They were still travelling far faster than normal walking pace, but their surroundings no longer flashed by in a blur. Now they could see pounding waves on their right, and the occasional ruined house amid the barren land to their left.

‘You see? We have crossed the border,’ Jasmine told Barda, as Kree drew ahead of them with a triumphant screech. ‘The magic is fading.’

And we are in the land of the diamond, Lief thought. He glanced down at the Belt of Deltora. The great diamond winked in the sunlight.

He put his hands to the gem, closed his eyes, and willed the diamond dragon to wake and come to him. But he felt no special warmth, no answering glow.

In his mind he saw Doran’s Dragon Territories map, and the broad, empty spread of the land of the diamond.

By the time we reach the Isle of the Dead, the diamond dragon will have sensed the Belt, he told himself. Wherever it lies, however far away, it will wake and come to me, as the other dragons have done.