Free Magnus Fin and the Moonlight Mission by Janis Mackay Page A

gently rocked the boat, but Tarkin felt his stomach lurch. Under his unsteady feet the boat rocked like a cradle. Tarkin snatched in air, and wound his fingers tightly over the edge of the boat. He groaned. The last thing he wanted was to be sick.
    Frank’s words of advice from the night before came back to him, “Bend your knees and go with the flow, buddy.” Tarkin bent his knees and moved with the gentle rocking motion of the boat. It helped. He breathed out and unclenched his grip.
    Seasickness scare over, Tarkin checked again that everything was in place: towel, life jacket, rope, huge bag of sweets, blanket, torch, pen and paper. The water slapped against the hull of the boat. The moon shone. Tarkin sat at the stern guiding the boat through the calm water and chewing his toffee.
    Awesome! Life at sea , he thought, is definitely the life for me. What muckle bliss.
     
    Aquella sat on the flat rock, with four dead seals for company. She knew these seals, had swum with them, and at solstice times had come ashore with them. Fin had gone, into the freezing water. And there, if she wasn’t mistaken, in a small fishing boat out at sea, was Tarkin. She couldn’t see anyone with him. Her strong selkie eyesight could only make out Tarkin wearing a bulky life jacket. She felt relieved seeing the life jacket but nervous at the thought of what an eleven-year-old boy in a boat alone, at night – who didn’t know how to swim – might get up to.
    “Oh, Tarkin,” she sighed, standing to see him better, “in the name of Neptune, don’t try anything heroic.”
    Aquella liked Tarkin fine. She could see how he admired Fin. He had even tried once to wear a coloured contact lens so he too would have different coloured eyes. And he was forever speaking about the mermaid he once saw. He wanted adventure badly. More than anything he wanted to be different. And there was Magnus Fin, as different as day is to night, adventure seeming to seek him out, and him wishing he could be normal.
    Aquella watched the little boat. It seemed to bob about aimlessly. It was enough that she was there to help Fin if he got into trouble. Tarkin was bound to be more a hindrance than a help.
    “Tarkin!” she shouted. But he was further away than he seemed and she didn’t dare go any closer for fear of salt water. “Tarkin don’t be stupid!” But her words evaporated into the night air. “Now I’ve got you to look out for as well as Magnus Fin,” she said to herself, annoyed that a boy who couldn’t even swim would take a boat out.
    Aquella stood on the rocks and waited, for what she didn’t know. She stared out to sea, resisting the urge to walk right into it. She thought about how Ragnor had said the best way to be a land girl was not to think too much about her life under the sea.
    “It’s like Tarkin,” Ragnor had said to her, comforting her one night when she felt homesick. He’d been listening while she struggled on with her reading, and when she gave up he just sat with her.
    “How?” she’d asked, not understanding how she was like Tarkin. She had black hair, he had blond hair – she had green eyes, he had blue eyes – he was skinny, she wasn’t. And now – she was responsible – and he wasn’t.
    “Well, he probably misses America,” Ragnor said. “I know he misses his dad. But he’s in Scotland now. Here – up in the north – same as you – and he’s getting on with it. Think of it like living in another country. It helps. And it doesn’t help to think too much about the past, Aquella.”
    That made sense to Aquella. She was a foreigner in a new land. And she was determined to make the most of it, just like Magnus Fin’s friend from America. She had looked at Tarkin differently after that. He, like her, had also come from far away.
    And he, like her, just wanted to help. Thinking this, she breathed in the salty tang of the sea, sat back down on the flat rocks, pulled her jacket about her, and waited.

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