Free The Island House by Posie Graeme-evans

formed by arms and legs, swords and axes spun out into ever greater circles of repeating motifs. There were animals too, many-legged horses and snarling hounds.
    Freya put the lamp on the floor. She knocked with one careful knuckle on the surface of the wood. This was very old, Viking age at least, and museum quality, as were all the finds she’d seen.
    She closed her eyes. Her head was tight and aching—as if there wasn’t enough skin to properly stretch over her skull. Time to ask a few questions of the living.

CHAPTER 8

     
     
     
    L ATE IN the morning a fresh wind pushed the fog away. Hauling on the backpack and zipping her wet-weather jacket tight to her throat, Freya closed Compline’s back door. She resisted the urge to lock it.
    The little cart was waiting in the shed, and Freya picked up the handles. It was heavier than it looked and would be cumbersome on the cliff path, but if she bought provisions in Portsolly, it would beat carrying them home. Home. Hmmm, bit premature that.
    Head down against the wind, Freya walked the narrow trail to the cove. Natural buttresses forced the path to curve along its length, and she tried to avoid looking down at the rocks below. When she reached the beach, she put the cart down and flexed her shoulders, scanning the headland at the other end of the cove. The granite was black against the white sky, and it was hard to pick out detail except where light caught on the knobs and spines of rock, but there it was. A void, at sea level—a different shade of dark beneath a natural arch of stone.
    Workshop Man was rude, but he was right. This had to be the sea cave.
    Heartened, Freya trudged along the hard sand above the tide line. It was tough pushing the cart, so she tried pulling it. After a time her arms quivered with the effort, but she slogged on virtuously—this was better exercise than in any gym, and it was free. Of course, the real price would be paid when she tried to get out of bed tomorrow.
    Closer to the headland, Freya began to appreciate how usefulthis sheltered beach must have been to the islanders. Sand and shingle sloped gently into the water, and landing boats must have seemed easy on Findnar compared to the rest of this difficult coast. And, too, the headland blocked the worst of the weather from the strait. The air was gentle in the cove, and warmer, a contrast to the cold buffeting she’d had on the cliff path.
    Nearly there, now, nearly . . .
    She could see the opening was many times her height though narrow, and a tongue of shingle licked out of its shadows.
    But there was one further trial; swollen by water cascading from a rent in the cliff face, a stream guarded the entrance to the cave. The rain last night had turned the trickle to a minor torrent, and it would be hard going indeed to pull the cart to the other side.
    Freya made a mental note. Enough with the wooden wheels—she had to get something with a tread for this cart and gum boots too for her; no, make that waders.
    Panting, wet beyond the knees, Freya finally shoved the cart inside the cave. And there it was—a small cruiser, nothing elaborate but solid and well used. Amidships, there was a proper cabin for protection against the weather, and the seats inside were comfortably padded, including a high chair for the driver, plus there was a substantial panel-mounted VHF radio. Below there was space enough to sleep a couple of people on narrow benches; a tiny, simple kitchen; and tucked away under the nose, a microscopic toilet. Michael must have made the trip to Portsolly and back many, many times and in all weathers. Maybe, thought Freya, he liked exploring the coast as well. Comfortable and dry, that’d be his style.
    A natural stone quay began where the shingle ran out, and Michael’s craft was moored to a steel ring hammered into the rock. At high tide, as now, a wide channel in the floor of the cave floated the boat so that it faced an opening on the sea side of the cliff. At low tide,