Hollow Earth (13 page)

Zach tapped his mouth. ‘Good eye.’

‘He read their lips,’ said Matt, pulling a handful of flyers from the front pocket of his backpack. ‘Zach and I will head to the cove and get things set up. Let us know when you’re close.’

The boys pedalled back in the direction they’d come, while Em kept her eyes on the American family. When they’d pulled out on to Beach Road, she followed them.

Beach Road was really more of a paved lane. Whenever two oncoming cars needed to pass each other at one of the island’s sharp bends, one of the vehicles had to swerve on to the verge of the hill or pull on to the stony beach. As the American family reached the first bend in the road, the traffic was at a standstill. A car pulling a caravan had taken the curve without checking the mirror on the side of the road, sideswiping a tour bus coming in the other direction. Both were locked together.

For most of the traffic stuck behind the obstruction, the late summer weather, the calm sea and the peaks visible on the nearby isles were far too beautiful to make it an incident worth complaining about. A few people walked out on to the pebble beach to get around the blocked road, some settled on to the hillside to wait, while the rest turned and went back the other way.

Em was now directly behind the American family, who were debating whether or not to risk wading through the low tide to get around the bend, turn back or wait until the obstruction was removed.

‘Sometimes it can take the tow truck hours to get here,’ Em offered, ‘and that’s if Mr Ralston is even at the garage when the call comes in. He’s probably off fishing on a day like this.’

‘Are you a local?’ asked the mum. The youngest son, who looked about five, was sharing her tandem.

Em wheeled her bike closer. ‘It’s bound to happen again – it always does. You don’t want to spend your entire day waiting around.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I know a really fun thing for your family to do that’s not too far from here.’

Em felt a surge of warmth emanating from the mum. She glanced at the dad, balancing a girl of about seven on the back of his tandem, and the warmth deepened. Em could tell they were good parents, that they were genuinely thrilled to be on holiday, and that they wanted their children to really enjoy themselves, too.

Renard had been teaching Em to pay attention to the way people made her feel. Someday, he said, it might save her life. She knew this particular situation was not what her grandfather’d had in mind, but she also knew, like Matt and Zach, that she was really tired of being told what she could and couldn’t do with her own mind. Plus, what was the real harm in practising some of what they’d been learning?

Em concentrated on the younger children next. The boy seemed focused and distracted at the same time. She couldn’t figure out what she was sensing from him until he climbed off the back of his mum’s tandem, feet crossed, bouncing on his heels.

Em laughed to herself. He needed to go to the loo.

The girl was willing to do whatever her parents suggested, but Em was feeling something else, another desire that was overwhelming the first. The girl was getting hungry.

The older children, two boys aged about ten and eleven hanging at an appropriate distance from their parents, were far easier for her to assess. Both were clearly bored with everything they had done so far on this trip. In their opinions, Em was the first interesting thing that had happened since the vacation began.

‘My family used to work in television in London,’ said Em, telling the tale she had rehearsed with Matt and Zach, concentrating on the mum. ‘Now we live on the island with my grandfather. He owns a lot of the land along the far coast of the island. Every summer for a limited time, my family presents a re-enactment of one of the most famous moments in the island’s history. There’s a performance beginning in an hour if you’re interested.’

Em handed the mum one of the flyers she and Matt had drawn, advertising
The Battle of Auchinmurn
. Her fingers glanced across the mum’s hand. The woman was already convinced, enthusiasm flowing from her.

‘Oh, Tom, let’s go,’ she said excitedly. ‘We’ll be supporting some local enterprise and I’m sure the boys will learn something unusual about Scotland.’

‘I’m hungry,’ whined the little girl.

Em remembered Jeannie’s packed lunches. ‘We have sandwiches.’

The eldest of the two boys spoke up. ‘C’mon, Dad, everything we’ve done so far on this stupid vacation has been so lame.’

‘Yeah,’ said his brother. ‘You’re always telling us we need to try new things. Let’s do it!’

‘I don’t know,’ said the dad, looking at his family and then down at the flyer. The picture the twins had drawn on the front was of an angry Viking standing next to his longship.

Suddenly the Viking on the flyer thrust his sword out of the page towards the dad who yelped, instinctively ducking.

‘Jeez Louise! Lori, did you see that?’

‘Hologram,’ lied Em.

‘Well, young lady,’ he laughed, ‘I guess you’ve got yourself some customers.’

TWENTY-THREE

E
m led the Nelsons from Nebraska – Tom, Lori and their four children – back round the island to Viking Cove, a rocky inlet on the southeast point of Auchinmurn. From the air, the cove looked as if something had taken a bite out of the rock, leaving an empty slice tucked from the view of passing boats. Because the beach was layered with uneven slabs of limestone – unlike the sandier beaches on the rest of the island – the cove was no more than a passing highlight on the island’s tour.

I’m ten minutes away.

We’re ready.

The Nelsons followed Em along Beach Road, then on to a forest path, heading towards the sea. About five minutes along the trail, they reached a dilapidated fisherman’s shack, where they parked their bikes, continuing on foot across a rocky plateau that eventually stepped down to the cove.

The view was so stunning from this promontory that Em had to wait for Mr Nelson to snap a number of photos of his family with the Celtic tower as a backdrop. When they eventually climbed down to the cove, haunting Gaelic whistle music rose up to greet them from wireless speakers Zach had installed under the rocks.

‘Oh, listen kids,’ said Mrs Nelson, helping her youngest children down off the ledge. ‘Maybe there’s a leprechaun hidden in that cave.’

Puhleeze
, thought Em, but let the statement pass. ‘Welcome to the site of one of the most famous events in Auchinmurn’s history. If you’ll please take a seat.’ She pointed to a long wooden bench inside the mouth of a cave hidden under the overhang of rocks. ‘I’ll see about sandwiches, and getting your tickets.’ Em smiled up at Mr Nelson. ‘They’re five pounds each. Children under five are free.’

‘Oh, of course,’ laughed Mr Nelson. ‘You’re quite the entrepreneur. Good for you.’

He counted twenty-five pounds into Em’s palm. She thanked him and ducked inside the cave, returning quickly with Jeannie’s lunches, which she handed over for another four quid.

Once the Nelsons had settled, the children having eaten all Jeannie’s chocolate biscuits and most of the cheese sandwiches, Em dropped a curtain over the cave’s entrance. Pulling a rope divider in front of the bench where the Nelsons sat, she darted behind a black screen that Matt and Zach had built from old painting canvases. A row of lights, strung along the roof, illuminated the space.

The Gaelic music came on again, the tune echoing eerily off the rocks. A silver light appeared in the centre of the black canvas, spreading out to the edges as if the film projector was too hot, melting the film. The lights went out.

‘Woot! Woot!’ exclaimed the older Nelson boys.

The two younger children shifted closer to their mum and dad.

The lights came up, gradually revealing a stunning sight on the screen – a painting of a bustling village square, obviously from a very long time ago. The fortified monastery tower loomed in the background, thatched cottages surrounded the square in the forefront, and, beyond that, a square-sailed ship floated on a sliver of sea.

But what brought a gasp from the mum and ‘awesome’ from the older boys was that everything in the painting was in motion: shoeless children chasing each other while dodging slop thrown from an open cottage window, fat men drinking and brawling outside a tavern, two rosy-cheeked women gesturing and joking with a laughing monk, a farmer feeding his horse, a band of musicians leading a wedding party through the square, chickens foraging in the dirt, dogs fighting under a tree, and a pig spinning on a spit.

‘Looks like a Brueghel painting, doesn’t it?’ said Mr Nelson to his wife. ‘Very clever how they’re doing that.’

‘Shhh!’ Mrs Nelson said.

I told you to copy something else.

Shhh! Get out of my head, Em.

The lights dimmed. This time when they came up, one of the rosy-cheeked peasant women from the painting, her shoulders wrapped in a woollen shawl, stepped out of the lively scene and appeared to stand before them in the cave.

Mr Nelson clapped his hands.

The peasant curtseyed, and the whole family applauded enthusiastically.

‘Good morrow, strangers. Welcome to the Middle Ages!’ The voice had a pleasant highland lilt. Em had recorded Jeannie’s voice last week, saying she needed it for a project she was working on with Simon. Jeannie had been thrilled to oblige.

Good morrow? Really, Em?

It sounds historical.

Hysterical, maybe.

‘Focus!’ signed Zach to them both.

They were all hidden in the darkness behind the canvas screen. With his computer, Zach was controlling the lighting, the prerecorded sounds and dialogue, while the twins were animating drawings they’d planned out beforehand from Renard’s stories about the island. They were drawing on a storyboard that they had rigged behind the screen. Each square of the storyboard, and there were many, contained an outline sketch. As Matt and Em used their imaginations to fill in the image, their animations appeared to burst through the black canvas in trails of colour and light like holograms. The screen created an illusion for their audience that the images were somehow being projected from behind the canvas.

‘My name is Morag,’ said the peasant woman. ‘Many centuries ago, I lived in the village near the Monastery of Era Mina. I’d like to tell you the story of how my son, a thirteen-year-old boy, saved the children of the village from slavery during a bloody Viking raid.’

‘Is she real?’ asked the Nelson girl.

‘Of course not, sweetie,’ whispered her mum, ‘it’s special effects.’

‘It’s called CGI,’ said one of the older boys. ‘Computer-generated images. It’s brilliant! Can’t she just be quiet and watch?’

Morag stepped to the side of the screen. The boisterous village behind her was now quiet as dawn approached.

‘It was the day after market day, when under the cover of dawn a band of Norsemen invaded the island. Without warning, they torched the village, forcing us all inside the protection of the Abbey’s fortified walls.’

As the twins started filling in the next outline sketch, another painting of the village square filled the screen, one with terrified villagers fleeing from a swarm of encroaching Norsemen, their torches engulfing the thatched houses, flames flickering out of the screen so realistically that, for a second, Mrs Nelson thought she could feel the heat of the blaze.

Careful, Matt! You’ll singe her eyebrows.

Zach hit the sound effects, and the tolling of the monastery’s warning bell made the Nelson children jump. Zach hit another key, and the screams of terrified villagers filled the cave.

Nice, Zach.

‘I’m scared,’ said the Nelson’s little girl.

‘Oh, it’s just pretend, sweetheart,’ said her mum, pulling her closer. ‘Those bad men can’t hurt you.’

Morag looked directly into Mrs Nelson’s eyes. ‘After they torched our homes, the Norsemen shepherded us all into the square. Then they began to round up our children. All except Solon, my son, an apprentice to the monastery and a very brave boy.’

A painting of the monastery courtyard came alive on the screen. The Vikings, their longswords dripping with blood, began rounding up the village children.

‘But the villagers were not going to let that happen without a fight,’ added Morag.

‘Why do they want the children?’ the Nelson girl whispered to her mum.

The cave filled with villagers, pitchforks, spades and knives in hand, charging the Norseman, while the children pelted them with horse manure.

I think we’re scaring the little girl, Matt. Maybe we should stop.

Aw, no! We’re almost at the best part with Solon and the beast.

Mr Nelson and the boys were loving every minute of the battle that was unfolding in front of them. A Viking came flying out of the screen, rolling into the corner of the cave, where he disappeared in a flash of light and colour. The youngest boy was so excited, he stood up and cheered, the apple he’d been saving for later falling from his lap and rolling against the screen.

Darting under the rope, the boy crouched and grabbed his apple, as two villagers brandishing pitchforks leaped off the screen, one after the other, in pursuit of the Viking. The second villager stabbed the Nelson boy, before tumbling into the darkness.