Devastation by Jane Dougherty

Author:Jane Dougherty [Dougherty, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group Ltd
Published: 2016-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

* * * *

The teardrops were still damp on Carla’s lashes when she woke the next morning. All through her watch in the early hours with Tully, she had not spoken a word. Now, with the eastern sky completely obscured, she felt such a wave of despair submerge her that she gave an audible shudder. Tully’s eyes flicked open and he reached for her hand.

“Next time, we’ll get her. I heard her last night. I’m sure of it.”

Carla braved a smile. “And I almost caught a dream, but almost isn’t good enough.”

“Next time, we’ll try somewhere else. We can’t have trawled the entire mountain range. It’s not possible. So, we went through Tibet with a fine-toothed comb, searching all the places that looked forested, like they’d have monkeys, and Garance isn’t there. But there are loads of other countries tucked away in the mountains that we haven’t tried yet. There’s Nepal for a start, and Sikkim, Bhutan…”

The shock made Carla feel faint. “Bhutan,” she whispered. “That was the name.”

‘You’d love it here, Carla, nothing but forests, monkeys and gorgeous butterflies.’

“Tully, she’s there, in a temple restoring paintings. The pictures she sent… I remember now. She went through northern India, where the tea comes from. I remember that, Darjeeling, Assam, then through the mountains, and it’s there, just before you get to China.”

Tully grabbed Carla in his arms and held her tightly. She wrenched herself free.

“How could I have been so bored with what she was doing that I just glanced at her letter and pictures and barely registered that she’d moved to a different country?”

“Garance is always on the move, Carla. That’s her job. Since you were aware you had a mother, she must have been on a hundred different missions, all over the world. It’s become second nature to you, to have a mother who sends you postcards from weird places—”

“Never being at home, even for birthdays, always poggling about in some Greek temple, or Chinese pagoda or Welsh chapel or Bhutanese monastery!” Carla hid her face in her hands and sobbed, but with relief as much as shame. In a few seconds she was over it. She held her head high as she felt determination surging through her, taking the place of distress. “Tonight, I just need to skim over Bhutan, locate that monastery in the forest with all the monkeys and butterflies, catch her dreaming, and… Everything will be hunky-dunky!”

“Hunky-dory.”

“Oh, go and get yourself buggered!” Carla shouted, laughing, and threw her arms around Tully’s neck.

“Here, listen to this.” Tully reached down the flute Jim had given him from a saddlebag. “It’s the tune I heard last night.”

Carla rested her chin in her hands and listened, every fiber concentrated on Tully and his music. The tune was soft, lilting and melancholy, hanging on the high notes, then dropping back down into a tragic low register, and it brought tears to her eyes. When it was finished, she shook her head sadly.

“It sounds like a peasant song, but not one I know.

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