Eva Ibbotson - Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie-And Other Cautionary Tales (Short Story Collection)

But the Fuath would not be shushed and she would not be shooed. She just dripped and she threatened and she talked .

The Brollachan by now was very upset. His burn did not hurt any longer but he felt that things were not as they should be. His red eyes were wide with worry and his shapeless darkness shivered at all this unpleasantness. What he wanted more than anything was to make things all right.

So he made himself very big and he opened his mouth and he went right up to his mother, who was still talking and scolding and waving her arms. If only he could do it! If only he could do the thing she wanted so much! Wider he opened his mouth and wider . . . and closer he went to his mother and closer . . . and harder he tried and harder . . . harder than he had ever tried in his whole life.

And then at last he did it. He actually did it!

“MUMMY!” said the Brollachan. “MUM – gluck – gulp!”

Then he stopped. His mother was not there.

The Brollachan was puzzled. He looked under the stool and behind the door but there was no sign of her. But though he was puzzled, he was not worried. He felt very close to his mother. And because it made him tired to be so clever he lay down again – but further from the fire – and fell asleep.

The old man took half his beard out of his right ear and half his beard out of his left ear and came over to have a look. He could see the Brollachan’s mother inside the Brollachan as clear as clear. He could even see the wart on the end of her nose. She was still talking and talking and talking but Brollachans are soundproof so he couldn’t hear a thing.

So he smiled and nodded at the Brollachan as if to say, yes, you can stay, and went back to his rocking chair. The next day he made a fireguard so that the Brollachan wouldn’t get burnt. And then he and the Brollachan lived together very happily. Because both of them had said all they were ever going to say and each was happy to let the other be the kind of person that he was.

‘We must kidnap some children,’ announced Aunt Etta. ‘Young, strong ones. It will be dangerous, but it must be done.’

Three children are stolen and taken to a bizarre island, which is home to some extraordinary creatures – including mermaids, selkies and the legendary kraken. The island is the base for a very mysterious mission, but the adventurers find themselves in perilous danger when it is suddenly under siege. Can they save themselves and their new friends?

To read an exciting extract from Monster Mission just turn the page . . .

Chapter One

Kidnapping children is not a good idea. All the same, sometimes it has to be done.

Aunt Etta and Aunt Coral and Aunt Myrtle were not natural kidnappers. For one thing, they were getting old and kidnapping is hard work; for another, though they looked a little odd, they were very caring people. They cared for their ancient father and for their shrivelled cousin Sybil who lived in a cave and tried to foretell the future – and most particularly they cared for the animals on the island on which they lived, many of which were quite unusual.

Some of the creatures that made their way to the Island had come far across the ocean to be looked after, and lately the aunts had felt that they could not go on much longer without help. And ‘help’ didn’t mean grown-ups who were set in their ways. Help meant children who were young and strong and willing to learn.

So on a cool blustery day in April the three aunts gathered round the kitchen table and decided to go ahead. Some children had to be found and they had to be brought to the island, and kidnapping seemed the only sensible way to do it.

‘That way we can choose the ones that are suitable,’ said Aunt Etta. She was the eldest; a tall, bony woman who did fifty press-ups before breakfast and had a small but not at all unpleasant moustache on her upper lip.

The others looked out of the window at the soft green turf, the sparkling sea, and sighed, thinking of what had to be done. The sleeping powders, the drugged hamburgers, the bags and sacks and cello cases they would need to carry the children away in . . .

‘Will they scream and wriggle, do you suppose?’ asked Aunt Myrtle, who was the youngest. She suffered from headaches and hated noise.

‘No, of course not. They’ll be unconscious,’ said Aunt Etta. ‘Flat out. I don’t like it any more than you do,’ she went on, ‘but you saw the programme on TV last week.’

The others nodded. When they first came to the Island they hadn’t had any electricity, but after his hundredth birthday their father’s toes had started to turn blue because not enough blood got to his feet and they had ordered a generator so that he could have an electric blanket. After that they thought they might as well have an electric kettle, and then a TV.

But the TV had been a mistake because of the nature programmes. Nature programmes always end badly. First you see the hairy-nosed wombats frisking about with their babies and then five minutes before the end you hear that there are only twelve breeding pairs left in the whole of Australia. Or there are pictures of the harlequin frogs of Costa Rica croaking away on their lily leaves and the next minute you are told that they’re doomed because their swamps are being drained. Worst of all are the rainforests. The aunts could never see a programme about the rainforests without crying, and last week there had been a particularly bad one with wicked people burning and slashing the trees, and pictures of the monkeys and the jaguars rushing away in terror.

‘What if we became extinct?’ Aunt Coral had wondered, blowing her nose. ‘Not just the wombats and the harlequin frogs and the jaguars, but us .’

The others had seen the point at once. If a whole rainforest can become extinct why not three elderly ladies? And if they became extinct what would happen to their work and who would care for the creatures that came to the Island in search of comfort and of care?

There was another thing which bothered the aunts. Lately the animals that came to the Island simply wouldn’t go away again. Long after they were healed they stayed on – it was almost as if they knew something – and that made more and more work for the aunts. There was no doubt about it, help had to be brought in, and quickly.

So now they were deciding what to do.

‘How do we find the right children?’ asked Myrtle as she looked longingly out at the point where the seals were resting. One of the seals, Herbert, was her special friend and she would very much rather have been out there playing her cello to him and singing her songs.

‘We shall become Aunts ,’ said Etta firmly, settling her spectacles on her long nose.

The others looked at her in amazement. ‘But we are aunts,’ they said. ‘How can we become them?’

This was true. There had been five sisters who had come to the Island with their father many years ago. They had found a ruined house and deserted beaches with only the footprints of sandpipers and dunlins on the sand, and barnacle geese resting on the way from Greenland, and the seals, quite unafraid, coming out of the water to have their pups.