Indigo Island by Susan Moore

Author:Susan Moore [Susan Moore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857639592
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

THE ISLAND

The waters of the Bay were choppier than Zixin expected, colder too. He somehow had it in his head that because he was in California the water would be warm; instead it was freezing. He pulled the fringed jacket tighter around him. The sun had gone down and the wind kept changing direction, so the guy had to keep changing tack to navigate the small sailboat towards Alcatraz.

They didn’t talk much so Zixin watched the dark shadowed cliffs loom closer.

“I’m not going to be able to get you in close enough to drop you on shore. Give me another hundred and I’ll let you have my dinghy and you can row in if you’re really that keen to get there tonight.”

“From here?” said Zixin, seeing a huge expanse of dark swell between him and the rock.

The guy laughed. “I can take you in closer than this, just not all the way.”

He reached into his jacket for the cash. Anything to get a head start on the search before Nat arrived.

Twenty minutes later he was on his own in a kid’s orange inflatable dinghy. It was only just big enough for him, and it sat very low on the water.

“Careful of the great whites!” shouted the guy, disappearing off back to the bright lights of the city.

Sharks. That was all he needed. Zixin dipped the flimsy plastic paddle into the dark water and began to propel the dinghy towards the island.

He soon broke into a sweat as he moved the paddle from one side to the other, trying to get a rhythm going. He kept imagining that at any moment a massive shark would surface, open its jaws, and gobble him up.

He wondered where Scorta was right now, and what his grandad was plotting. And Vesperetta, where was she? What had his grandad done to her?

It took all his strength to row the dinghy close enough to the rocks to be able to jump on to dry land.

The dinghy slipped back out into the Bay while Zixin stared up at the cliff face before him. There probably hadn’t been many people wanting to break into this place; most would have wanted to escape. He began to climb and soon found Slider boots weren’t made for climbing. They kept slipping on the wet rocks. The only thing that kept him going was the thought that this was the only way he was ever going to get Vesperetta back.

He crawled up and on to a pot-holed road. He lay for a moment catching his breath, grateful to be off the water. He had no way of knowing what time it was but he guessed that it had to be close to midnight.

He sat up and looked around him. The place was eerily deserted. He could only hear the wind and the waves. A group of buildings lay further up the rock, like some kind of ghost village. This island was way bigger than he’d imagined.

He got to his feet and started walking along the road.

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