Free The Cat’s Eye Shell by Kate Forsyth Page A

They smuggled it in with some books for Uncle George, and some French silk for mother and the girls, and Mother paid a fortune for it. Come and have a squint through it.’
    â€˜Why? What’s it for?’ Luka bent and put his eye to the end of the tube. Then he gave an exclamation and jumped back again.
    Tom and Emilia crowded round. ‘What? What is it?’
    â€˜I saw … no! Can’t have.’ Luka bent and put his eye to the tube again.
    â€˜It’s a telescope,’ John said, pleased with the excitement he had caused. ‘You can see faraway things through it as if they were close. I have another one, not nearly so good, but I really wanted one of the new ones so I could see the stars up close, and so Mother arranged to get me one for my birthday …’
    â€˜You can see stars up close?’ Luka looked up at him, utterly thrilled. ‘What do they look like?’
    Emilia took her chance and shoved him away, putting her eye to the telescope. All she could see was a green blur.
    â€˜All different. Some are big and white, some are all in clusters, some are sort of whirly and pink …’ John answered.
    â€˜Stars aren’t pink,’ Emilia protested, looking up from the telescope.
    â€˜Some of them are,’ John argued. ‘The planet Mars is red as a ruby. And you should see the moon! You can see mountains and seas on it …’
    As Luka exclaimed in amazement, Emilia put her eye to the telescope again. She swung it around a bit, and fiddled with the knobs, and then caught her breath as she suddenly saw a bird perched in a tree, preening its feathers. She looked up and stared through the window, but the tree in which the bird sat was right across the garden and she could see nothing but a mass of waving green leaves. She looked through the telescope again, and she could see the bird as clearly as if it sat on the windowsill. She sighed. ‘It’s magic.’
    â€˜It’s not magic, it’s science,’ John said scornfully. He began to rave on about how the new science was exploding all the old fears and superstitions, but Emilia had stopped listening.She played with the telescope a while longer, then reluctantly let Tom have a go, and went back to playing with the shells. Suddenly she caught her breath and was unable to take another. She felt as if someone had caught her from behind and was squeezing her so hard her ribs would crack.
    â€˜Lu … Luka,’ she managed to say, and showed him what she held in her hand. It was a small, round shell, a shiny greenish colour, that looked uncannily like a cat’s eye.
    â€˜Oh, I’ve got a couple of those,’ John said, rummaging through the jar of shells. ‘It’s the shell of a sea snail. My uncle brought them back from overseas, he thought I’d like them for my collection. They’re quite rare, apparently.’
    Emilia turned it over in her hand, finally able to breathe again. Zizi tried to snatch it away from her, and she jerked her hand away, closing her fingers over the shell.
    â€˜You can have it if you like,’ John said. ‘You canmake it into jewellery, apparently. My uncle said some of the fishergirls in Spain wear them as charms, to avert the evil eye. Superstitious rubbish, of course, but they are quite pretty, I suppose.’
    Emilia nodded and very carefully stowed the snail shell away in her purse, which she wore hanging down inside her skirts. Her head was all in a whirl. Would this cat’s eye shell count, or did she have to get the one that belonged to the Wells tribe? Would they be prepared to swap one cat’s eye shell for another? Was it just coincidence that John should have the very shell she needed, or was this part of some greater plan, some providence that was guiding her and Luka’s steps?
    She did not say a word to the boys, who were busy examining John’s experiments. Luka looked as if he would have been happy to