Free Troubletwisters by Garth Nix, Sean Williams Page A

home – Portland was very small, after all, and they had already seen most of it – but instead of turning up Parkhill Street, Grandma X headed out onto the headland visible from the opposite side of the bay.
    There they found an old church and cemetery, and a lighthouse, all under the shadow of Portland’s most striking geological feature: the Rock.
    The Rock was a hill of grey stone that speared up out of the ground fully four hundred feet high, providing numerous rookeries for seabirds on its steepest side and some precarious perches for clumps of pandanus trees and other small plants on the other.
    The view from the top would be fantastic, thought Jack, and it didn’t look too hard to climb. In fact, he could see the beginning of a path, and a sign that looked like it marked the start of a trail. But his hopes of climbing it were temporarily dashed when Grandma X parked the Hillman at the base of the lighthouse and peered up at the tapering white column through the opera glasses.
    ‘What are you looking for?’ Jaide asked her. She was getting bored of sightseeing, particularly when she didn’t get to look through the opera glasses.
    ‘Oh, nothing, dear.’
    ‘Then what are we doing here?’
    ‘You can live somewhere all your life and see it afresh every day,’ Grandma X said. ‘It’s all in how you use your eyes . . . how attentive you are to changes .’
    It didn’t look to Jaide like the town had changed in at least a generation, maybe two, and she could tell when she was being fobbed off. She folded her arms and huffed back into the seat, despairing of ever seeing or doing anything that interested her.
    ‘How long have you lived here, Grandma?’ Jack asked.
    ‘Hmmm?’
    ‘Were you born in Portland?’
    The glasses came down. Grandma X’s expression was distant, as though seeing something very far away.
    ‘Oh, no, I grew up on the other side of the world, almost. It was your grandfather who came from here. He was a clockmaker, and a very good one, too.’
    ‘What happened to him?’ Jack asked, thinking of the broken clock in the lounge, and the other one that went tick-tock-tack .
    ‘He died a long time ago.’ Grandma X sniffed, and turned her steely gaze back to the twins. ‘Things have changed an awful lot since his time. Schools, for instance.’
    ‘Can we go for a walk?’ Jack asked.
    ‘I’m sure you can,’ Grandma X said, ‘but may you? That’s the question.’
    Jaide had heard that line from her father. ‘ May we go for a walk, Grandma? It looks like the sun is coming out.’
    Grandma X raised the opera glasses once more, but not to look at the clouds, which were parting a little. Instead she focused the glasses at the top of the lighthouse.
    ‘I suppose the . . . conditions . . . are not unfavourable,’ she said slowly. ‘Stay within sight of the lighthouse, keep well away from the rocks at Dagger Reef, and be home before dusk. That is very important. Do you understand?’
    ‘Yes, Grandma,’ they both said. They already had their car doors open.
    ‘You do remember the way home from here, don’t you? Go back down Dock Road and left at Parkhill. If you reach the iron bridge, you’ve gone too far.’
    ‘Yes, Grandma.’
    ‘If you’re not home in an hour, I’ll come looking for you!’
    The twins slammed the doors behind them, making the car’s heavy body rock from side to side. They didn’t need to discuss where they would go first. Gravestones beckoned by the church.
    Maybe their grandfather lay under one of them.

JAIDE AND JACK RACED ACROSS the car park and around the lighthouse. Jack relished the feel of the pavement under his sneakers and of holding back as he always did at the end, to let his sister catch up a little, but not too much. When he reached the first of the headstones, he slowed to an amble in order to read what they said.
    ‘Look,’ said Jaide, pointing. ‘This guy died when he was ninety-eight!’
    ‘Well, this whole family died in the same