Free PathFinder by Angie Sage Page A

go. “They are chasing a monkey,” she said to Nicko as she climbed down into the cabin. “They are a little peculiar, do you not think?”

The Monkey
    Following the monkey was not as difficult as Tod had feared. As it scampered along the dusty path beside the creek, people leaped out of the creature’s way. Tod noticed that many of them crossed their index fingers against each other and held them in front of their faces, making the seafarer’s sign to ward off the Evil Eye.
    Suddenly the monkey sat down and bit into the lemon. It leaped up squealing and hurled the offending fruit out into the creek.
    Oskar chuckled. “Serves it right,” he said.
    The monkey dropped down off the path and set off along the sand uncovered by the low tide. The flash of its red jacket against the dark yellow was easy to see, and Tod and Oskar jogged along the path keeping pace with it. They had left the market behind and the creek was now bordered by a dense wood, which curved into a steep left-hand turn ahead. As they rounded the bend, Tod and Oskar no longer had any need to watch the monkey. In front of them lay a beautifully elegant ship, her paintwork shining blue and gold. Her white sails were neatly furled, her woodwork shone, her ropes were perfectly coiled and the line of windows in her broad stern – their blinds down – gleamed in the sunlight. And just below the stern rail, proud curlicues of gold proclaimed the ship’s identity: Tristan .
    Tod was shocked. “But … she’s beautiful .” She had been convinced that somehow the ship would show the evil that lurked within.
    Oskar, too, was dismayed at his inability to read the ship. He had been convinced that as soon as he saw the Tristan he would feel that Ferdie was close by. But Oskar felt nothing at all. His twin could just as easily be thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.
    Down in the deep cut of the creek, the monkey was scampering towards the ship. Her blue hull reared up like a cliff face and they watched the monkey run into the shadows of the ship’s overhang.
    “Look!” said Tod. “There’s a rope ladder for the monkey!”
    “We could use that to get on board,” Oskar whispered.
    There were some ivy-clad ruins deep in the shadows of the trees. In an old, eerily dark archway with the figure IV carved into it they put on their Tristan tops.
    “This is some kind of tunnel,” whispered Tod.
    Oskar peered into the depths of the archway. “Yeah, you’re right.”
    “Can you see a spooky white mist way down there?”
    “Weird,” said Oskar with a shiver.
    “Yeah,” said Tod. “Let’s go.”

The Prisoner
    Balanced at the top of the rope ladder, Oskar peered into the ship. It was just as Annar had said. The only person on deck was a sailor guarding the gangplank on the far side, and he was facing away. Oskar looked down at Tod and gave the PathFinder “OK” sign. With a movement as sinuous as if he were tracking dune rats, he pulled himself up over the gunnels and slithered silently down on the deck, which was warm and smooth to his bare feet. He crouched behind a raised hatch and waited for Tod.
    Tod was up the ladder as fast as the monkey. In thirty seconds she had slipped over the gunnels and landed lightly beside Oskar. They began to crawl slowly forward, keeping hidden behind neatly stowed coils of rope, upturned boats and a stack of packing crates. Soon they reached a long, raised skylight, which concealed them from view and allowed them to head fast for the open cargo-hold hatchway that Annar had described.
    The cargo-hatch ladder took them two decks down into hot, stuffy gloom. As they descended they smelled something nastily familiar – the damp-dog stench of Garmin. As Tod and Oskar crept warily off the ladder, they saw three large cages in the shadows. Each contained a Garmin. The creatures got to their feet, their eyes glinting yellow out of their broad, white faces, their monkey-like front paws gripping the bars. They