Free Troubletwisters by Garth Nix, Sean Williams

Mr Carver shook the twins’ hands again, meeting their eyes meaningfully and sincerely. They both noticed the dampness of his palm. ‘I’ll look forward to getting to know you better tomorrow.’
    ‘Uh, sure,’ said Jack. Grandma X’s grip on his shoulder was tight as she led them out the front of the school’s sole building. From the direction of the sea came the smell of fish. They had passed the fishing co-op during the short trip from Watchward Lane, and a trawler was offloading a big catch of something.
    ‘I suppose the school is at least convenient ,’ said Grandma X, screwing up her nose at yet another apparition of rainbow paint, this time along the fence, a mural of many children holding hands and smiling exaggerated smiles.
    ‘Where else could we go?’ asked Jaide.
    ‘Nowhere close,’ replied Grandma X. ‘I don’t believe a long train trip each morning and afternoon would improve your minds very much.’ She peered at the clouds. ‘There’ll be time for that tour I promised you, I think.’
    Grandma X’s car was a canary yellow 1951 Hillman Minx, with bulging leather seats and a steering wheel as big as a truck’s. It was Jack’s turn to ride shotgun, and he paid more attention to the car’s wood panelling and ancient accessories than to the places he was taken in it. There was no CD player or MP3 plug. The radio had only one dial. When Grandma X changed gear, the whole car vibrated, as if the gear change required the effort of the entire vehicle.
    The park was on the other side of the iron bridge that crossed the wide, lazy river and its attendant swamps, leading to the town’s main street. Jaide had expected the usual trees and shrubs in the park, but found instead a large, carefully mown lawn with a bizarre centrepiece: an oval-shaped garden of cactuses growing out of weirdly placed stones. One cactus in particular stood up like a long, skeletal hand, pointing straight up into the sky. Others puffed and prickled in the breeze, looking various degrees of dangerous. They seemed very out of place in the rain.
    ‘Why cactuses, here?’ asked Jaide. ‘I thought they only grew in the desert.’
    ‘They require careful tending,’ replied Grandma X. ‘But they have been here since the town was founded. In fact, your great-great-grandfather – my husband’s grandfather – planted them, I believe out of a hankering for a former life in more arid parts.’
    When quizzed about which parts, exactly, Grandma X was vague. The twins trailed after her as she looked at each cactus carefully, even getting out a pair of brass opera glasses to peer at the flowers atop the largest and presumably oldest cactus, which was well over thirty feet high.
    But when she had finished, she summoned the twins with a clap of her hands.
    ‘Not a moment to lose!’ she exclaimed, even though she’d been the one staring at the plants. ‘Not if we’re going to see everything. Time is of the essence!’
    ‘Why?’ asked Jaide. ‘We’re not in any hurry.’
    ‘The rain, dear, the rain,’ Grandma X said.
    From the cactus park Grandma X took them past the hospital and police station, but not, unfortunately, to the beach they had visited the day before. Grandma X parked on the edge of the coastal reserve and peered through the trees at the ocean. She fiddled in her bag and produced the opera glasses again, which she focused on Mermaid Point. She hummed and tutted for a moment, then passed the glasses to Jack.
    ‘Tell me what you see,’ she said.
    ‘Just rocks. Big black ones.’
    ‘Now you, Jaidith. Anything unusual?’
    Jaide squinted down the unfamiliar instrument. ‘The rocks look like a giant, curled up into a ball.’
    ‘Let’s see,’ said Jack, taking the glasses back from her. ‘Where?’
    ‘Look for the shoulders. Once you see them, you can see the rest.’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘I see him!’
    ‘ Her ,’ Grandma X corrected, without further explanation.
    Jaide assumed they were going