“Let’s carry on around the rest of the island and see what we can see. Might find something.” Ryan grinned at the look of dismay on his young son’s face. “Trader always said that a man who made his decision without having all the facts was setting one foot in his grave.”
THEY COULD SEE the other five picking their way very slowly over the treacherous rocks, about three hundred yards ahead of them. Between them lay a small bay, about one hundred paces across, filled with banks of torn seaweed and a jumble of driftwood.
“Hey,” Dean yelled, pointing at the timber. His shout scared away a pair of sea otters that had been exploring in the cove. “Make a raft, Dad?”
“Mebbe,” Ryan said. “Mebbe.”
THEY WERE REUNITED as they stood on the only patch of beach on the whole island, a strip of shingle barely twenty feet long, dotted with empty mussel shells.
“Nothing around this way,” J.B. reported, staring out across the ocean. “Looks like our only chance of getting off to the mainland is to build some kind of raft.”
“How about sharks?” Mildred asked.
Everyone considered that, looking in silence at the featureless expanse of water.
“Don’t see any sign of anything.” Trader spit into the pebbles. “Nothing to be scared about, lady.”
“Point about being scared of a great white, Trader, is that you don’t see it until it comes up from underneath and bites you in two.”
“Yeah, all right. But if we can make a good raft, it should be safe enough.”
“Plenty of wood.” Abe shaded his eyes against the sun. “What do we tie it together with?”
“Can see ropes and stuff,” Jak said, pointing to a straggling coil of orange hemp.
Ryan looked around at the rest of the group. “We going to try for this?”
Doc raised his cane. “I have to register a still, small voice of calm. I mean, of dissent. My memories of occasions when we have taken to the water is that they have almost always been tainted with the proximity to disaster.”
It was true.
“Just walking through a quiet wood on a summer day can get you chilled,” Trader said. “Try and avoid a risk, and you run smack into another one.”
Doc nodded. “I can’t refute the veracity of that, my old companion. Indeed, it puts me in mind of the legend of the fabled ruler of classical times. A soothsayer told him”
“A what?” Abe asked.
“Soothsayer. Shaman. Wise man. Prophet. A doomie. A seer on the future.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry.”
Doc carried on. “Thiswiseman warned the king that he had dreamed and had received a warning that the king’s only son, a merry little chap of some eight winters, would meet his ending at the handsthe claws, of a lion. Well, the father was horrified. Such omens often came true. He built a wondrous palace, with barred windows and stout doors, filling it with armed men. So that no lion could possibly reach his son, who was forbidden ever to leave the palace.”
“So, there was no way that a lion could chill him, Doc?” Dean asked.
“Right, dear boy. But his son was curious, having heard the rumors from the servants. He asked his father what a lion looked like. So the king purchased a huge painting of a fearsome lion, crouched over its prey. The picture was in a massive, ornate golden frame and was hung in the boy’s bedroom where he often stood and admired it.”
“I know this,” Krysty said. “I’m sure Uncle Tyas McCann told me the fable when I was a little girl back in Harmony ville.” She saw the look on Doc’s face. “Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”
“Very well. One day the lad was staring raptly at the painting when there was a mighty thrumming sound, like a bowstring being drawn back. A sharp crack, and the cord supporting the picture snapped through. The painting fell on the poor little prince and crushed his skull like a Kerry pippin.”
“So, the father didn’t manage to save him and the omen was true,” Dean said. “Hey, hot piping story, Doc. You got any more like that?”