Island of the Aunts

Chapter 15

Minette sat on her bed beside the open window, trying to brush her hair. Aunt Etta insisted on a hundred strokes each night, but now she put her brush down and sighed.

“I’m never going to have children. Never. It’s awful.”

“Oh come on,” said Fabio, wandering in from the bathroom. “It isn’t as bad as that.”

But it had been very bad.

They had woken early and at once known what had happened. Even before they went to the window they had felt the emptiness and the silence.

Downstairs the three aunts sat stiffly at the breakfast table. Coral looked thinner and Myrtle’s blouse was on back to front.

“Go to him,” said Aunt Etta as soon as the children had finished. “You’re excused all your other duties.”

Outside it really hit them. Yet the kraken had only been here just over a week. How could the bay seem so empty, so wrong? And how could such a great beast slip away so silently?

It was all very well for Aunt Etta to say, “Go to him,” but where was he? Not by the shore, not in his favourite rockpool. The mermaids were guarding the entrance to the bay but the children knew he would not have tried to follow his father. He might be small but he knew what it was to keep a promise.

They found him in the end, half hidden under an overhanging rock. He was almost submerged but his head came up out of the water and he was staring at the open sea. When he saw them, he made the most pitiful sound they had ever heard, a heartbroken moan which ended in a whimper. Like a puppy told to “stay”, when his master leaves the room, the baby kraken waited…and looked as though he would wait to the end of time for his father to return.

“Come on,” said Fabio leaning down from the rock. “It’s time for breakfast. We’ll go and see what Art has got for you.”

But the kraken only looked at him and then two tears welled out of his golden eyes and rolled into the sea.

He wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t play.

“No ball,” he said when they fetched the beach ball and “No hide an’ see.” He wouldn’t follow them in the boat, though when they moved away he moaned and shivered even more. In the end they got into the water with him and swam round him rubbing his back and telling him again and again that his father would be back, that they loved him, that he was the last of a great and mighty line of krakens and must try to be brave.

Everyone helped. The mermaids came and sang to him but he only closed his eyes and juddered with sighs. The stoorworm swam out and spoke into his ear.

“To go is to come,” said the worm in his solemn voice.

What he meant was that the earth was round so that the great kraken was on his way back as soon as he set off. But thoughts about the earth being round were too difficult for the kraken’s son, whose tears went on flowing and making the seaweed and the little fish look larger and brighter wherever they fell.

“Do you think if Myrtle played the cello to him it would help?” asked Minette, but it didn’t. Although Myrtle had just said goodbye to Herbert, who had gone off with the great kraken, she came at once, but you never know where you are with music. It can make you happy but it can also make you very, very sad.

The children did not dare to leave him alone; whenever they moved away he moaned even more pitifully. Art brought their lunch to the shore and they tried to share it with him but he only turned his head away.

“No soss,” he said when they offered him a sausage roll, and “No cheeps,” when they handed him the chipped potatoes that had been his favourites.

By the end of the day the children were getting frantic.

“What if he just fades away and dies?” said Minette, close to tears.

“He won’t,” said Fabio.

But his eyes were even blacker than usual. People did turn their faces to the wall and die; he had seen it in Brazil.

When he had been on his way for a few hours, the great kraken began his Healing Hum once more. Everything was as it had been when he was on the way to the Island. The sky was blue, the air was soft; above him flew his escort of birds, below him the dolphins and seals circled him.

He drew level with a fishing boat a hundred miles away. The crew had pulled in three tons of tuna and were casting their nets once more to add to the pile of bloodied thrashing creatures on the deck when the captain straightened himself and rubbed his forehead.

“Enough,” he said suddenly. “We’ve caught enough.”

His crew stared at him. He was the greediest fisherman in that part of the world; he’d been fined again and again for exceeding the quota.

“You heard me,” he said and the nets were pulled in and the boat turned and headed for home.

But though the kraken went on putting the sea to rights, as he had done before, his heart was heavy. There was an awful emptiness on his left side where his son had swum beside him, and at night his back felt strange without the small bump that had slept on it.

“You’re to promise to stay and be good,” he had said to his son, and the child had understood, but it was best not to remember the look in his eyes.

After they had travelled for a day and a night, Herbert came to the front of the kraken’s head and said goodbye. It was hard for him to leave the kraken and return to the Island but his mother was getting very weak and he felt it was his duty.

It was even lonelier after Herbert left. Other seals swam with the kraken but they were ordinary seals, not selkies; they did not know his thoughts as Herbert had done.

On a great rock, after another day of swimming, the kraken saw something he had been looking out for. A huge black bird with a yellow beak and yellow feet, huddled up and muddled-looking. He paused and looked directly at the unfortunate bird and, as the kraken’s eyes pierced his sadness, the boobrie came to himself again. He remembered that he had a wife who had been expecting eggs and that he had gone to look for food and got lost, and forgotten who he was and where he was going.

Now, as clear as daylight, the boobrie saw the Island and the nest by the loch and his partner waiting and waiting. Why, he might be a father by now…and he flapped his wings once and twice and a third time and then managed to lift himself off and to fly away.

And the kraken swam on.

By the third day Fabio and Minette were beginning to lose hope. They had tried everything they could think of to cheer up the little kraken. They used up all Art’s washing-up liquid to blow bubbles for him, they invented underwater games, they sang to him and told him stories, but nothing helped. The only thing you could say was that when they left him even for a moment he was worse; moaning more pitifully and watering the sea with his tears.

What worried them most was that he wouldn’t eat.

It wasn’t just “No soss,” it was “No spag,” though he had loved spaghetti, and “No burgs,” even when Art soused the hamburgers with rich tomato sauce. They watched carefully to see if he was feeding himself from the seaweed and plants by the shore, but he wasn’t.

“I can just see him getting thinner every minute,” said Minette, who wasn’t looking exactly fat herself.

At teatime Aunt Etta came down to the shore and said enough was enough.

“You’re to go up to the house and have hot baths and have your tea in the dining room. You look like something the cat’s brought in, both of you.”

“No, please. We can’t leave him,” said Minette. “We want to bring a tent down and spend the night on the beach.”

“Better not keep Art waiting,” was all Aunt Etta said.

So the children had their hot baths and went into the dining room. Art had laid out all their favourite things: sardines and cheese straws and chunks of pineapple on sticks.

And the cake tin was on the sideboard. Poor Art always put the cake tin on the sideboard. He put it out for breakfast and for lunch and for tea, hoping and hoping that someone would manage to eat another bun.

For if one can make seventy-two omelettes from one boobrie egg, it is quite amazing how many buns one can make. Art had made the buns look very beautiful: there were buns with pink icing and a cherry on top and buns with white icing and smarties on top and buns with brown icing and chocolate drops on top — but one by one the aunts and the children had stopped eating them. Boobrie buns are very filling and they just couldn’t get them down any more.

Now, as Fabio picked up the tin, Minette said “No! Absolutely not. I couldn’t!”

“I know,” said Fabio. “I couldn’t either. But I wonder…”

When they got back to the shore the children took no notice at all of the kraken. They sat down very close to the water’s edge and opened the cake tin. Fabio held up a white bun and Minette held up a pink bun. They pretended to eat them, making loud chewing noises.

“Buns,” said Fabio, rubbing his stomach.

And: “Buns,” said Minette, sighing with pleasure.

The kraken came closer and watched them.

The children went on pretending to eat buns.

The kraken edged closer still.

“No buns for you,” said Fabio. “You don’t like buns.”

An offended look spread over the kraken’s face. He was not used to being left out. He was half out of the water now, his head on the sand.

“Buns?” said the kraken, trying out the word.

Fabio shrugged. “Well, you can try one, I suppose, but you won’t like it.” He picked out a white bun with a big cherry on top and held it up. The kraken studied it…opened his mouth…shut it. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a glow came into his golden eyes.

“Buns,” said the baby kraken. “Ah, buns!” and opened his mouth once more…

When he had eaten seven buns Fabio turned to see Minette crouching on the sand. Her hands covered her face but he could see the tears squeezing out between her fingers.

“Well, really,” he said crossly. “You’d better not have children of your own if you’re going to be as wet as that.”