Island of the Aunts Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, followed by six goslings with their necks stretched out. Beyond the turf the ground sloped to a bay of perfect white sand—and then came the sea.
    Minette looked and looked and looked. The sea in the morning light was like a crystal mirror; she could hear the waves turning over quietly on the beach. There were three black rocks guarding the bay and on them she could make out the dark round heads of seals. White birds circled and mewed and the air smelled of seaweed and shellfish and wind. It smelled of the sea!
    “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she whispered.
    But of course she would not be allowed to go outside. Kidnapped children were kept in dark cupboards and blindfolded. Any minute now someone would come and deal with her. She looked round the room. Old furniture, patchwork rugs, and by the bed—and this was odd—a nightlight. She had begged and begged for one at home but neither her father nor her mother had ever let her have one.
    A small snuffling sound made her turn quickly. It had come from behind a screen covered in cutouts of animals in the corner of the room.
    A fierce dog to guard her? But the noise had not been at all a fierce one.
    Her heart pounding, she tiptoed to the screen and looked round it. On a camp bed lay a boy of about her own age. He had very dark hair and sticking-out ears and he was just waking up.
    “Who are you?” he asked, staring at her with big round eyes.
    “I’m Minette. And I think I’ve been kidnapped by an aunt.”
    The boy sat up. “Me too.” He blinked. “Yes, I’m sure. I was supposed to be going back to my grandparents. She gave me a hamburger.”
    “Mine gave me a cheese and tomato sandwich.”
    The boy got out of bed and stretched. He too was wearing his own pyjamas. “We’ll have to try and escape,” he said. “We’ll have to.”
    “Yes. Only I think we’re on an island. Come and look.”
    She didn’t know why, but she had had the feeling at once that the sea wasn’t just in front of them but all around.
    “Wow!” Fabio too was struck by the view. “What a place.”
    Minette had gone over to the door. “Look, it isn’t locked!”
    “I’m going out,” said the boy. “They don’t seem to have taken our clothes away. They’re crummy kidnappers.”
    “Unless it’s all a trap.” She thought of the films she had seen—holes suddenly opening in the ground with man-eating piranhas or sharks. “Do you think they’ve kidnapped us to feed us to something?”
    He shrugged. “You’d think they’d choose fatter children than us. Come on, get dressed. I’m going out.”
    There was no one in the corridor; there was no one on the stairs.
    Then, from behind a door across the hallway, they heard a scream, followed by a thump, and then a second scream. Someone in there was being tortured—and it sounded like a child.
    Minette leant back against the wall, white-faced and trembling.
    “Come on—quick!” Fabio clutched her arm.
    The children ran out across the turf, over the dunes, along the perfect crescent of sand. The tide was out; it was a shell beach; there were Venus shells and cowries and green stones polished like emeralds. No one stopped them; there was no one to be seen. It would have been like Paradise except for that ghastly scream.
    “Look,” said Fabio.
    A group of seals had swum towards the shore and were looking at them, swimming in a semicircle, snorting and blowing…With their round heads they looked like a group of Russian dolls.
    The children were silent, looking at the seals, and the seals stared back at them. Then suddenly they turned and swam back into the deep water.
    All except one, a bull seal with white markings on the throat, who came close to the shore, and closer, till he was in the shallows with his flippers resting in the sand.
    “It’s as if he’s trying to tell us something.”
    “He’s got incredible eyes,” said Minette dreamily. “He doesn’t look like a seal at all. He looks as though inside he’s a