"Hey, Sep," said Jenna as she and Beetle scrambled down the last dune toward him.
"You okay?"
"Yep." Septimus grinned. "I am now. You two have a good time?"
"Lovely. It's such a beautiful place here and - hey, what's that on Spit Fyre's head?"
"It's a cat bucket," said Beetle. "That right, Sep?"
Septimus grinned. It was so good to have Jenna and Beetle back. There was no denying it - the island was a creepy place to be on your own. That afternoon, Septimus made a hideout.
The feeling of being Watched had unsettled him, and Septimus felt himself slipping into his Young Army way of thinking. The way he was beginning to see it, they were trapped in a strange place with unknown, maybe even invisible, dangers, and they needed to act accordingly. This meant having somewhere safe to spend the nights. Using the contents of Marcia's Young Army Officer Cadet Hostile Territory Survival Pack, and with rather reluctant help from Jenna and Beetle - who liked sleeping on the beach and didn't understand what he was bothering about - Septimus constructed a hideout in the dunes. He chose a spot overlooking the bay but near enough to Spit Fyre to keep an eye on him.
He and Beetle took turns digging a deep hole with sloping sides and strengthened it with driftwood to avoid any danger of collapse. Septimus then pushed Marcia's set of bendy telescopic poles deep into the sand around the hole and covered them with a roll of lightweight Camouflage canvas, which he found wedged at the bottom of the bag and which blended into the dune so well that Beetle nearly stepped on it and fell in. Septimus then covered the top of the canvas with a thick layer of grass pulled from the dunes, because that was how they had always done it in the Young Army, and it felt wrong not to. He stood back to admire his handiwork. He was pleased - he had constructed a classic Young Army hideout.
The inside of the hideout was surprisingly spacious. They lined it with more long, coarse grass and placed the opened-up saddlebags on top as a rug. Jenna was won over - she pronounced it "really cozy."
From the outside, the entrance was hardly visible. It was no more than a narrow slit that looked out through the dip between two dunes to the sea beyond. Septimus was pretty sure that, once it too was covered with grass, no one would ever guess they were there.
That evening they sat on the beach and cooked fish.
The Young Army Officer Cadet Hostile Territory Survival Pack did, of course, include fishing line, hooks and dried bait, which Marcia had naturally remembered. And as the evening tide came in over the warm sand, bringing a shoal of black and silver fish with it, Beetle had sat on a rock and caught six in quick succession. Fish held high, he had waded back triumphant and worked with Jenna to make a driftwood fire on the beach.
They cooked the fish in the approved Sam Heap style, by threading them onto wet sticks and holding them over the glowing embers. Marcia's StayFresh bread and dried fruit provided the rest of supper, and the WaterGnome fueled so many FizzFroots that they lost count.
They sat late into the night, chewing Banana Bears and Rhubarb Lumps, and watched the sea as it began once again to retreat, leaving the sand shining in the moonlight. Far across the bay they saw the long line of dark rocks that led to a lone rock standing tall like a pillar, which Jenna named the Pinnacle. To their right, past Spit Fyre's rocks, they saw the rocky summit of a tiny island at the end of the spit, which Jenna declined to name, as she had an odd feeling that the island knew its own name and would not take well to being given another. The island was, in fact, called Star Island. But for much of the time they looked neither right nor left but gazed straight ahead to the distant lights of the lighthouse, the lights that had drawn them to the island and saved them. They talked about the little man at the top of the lighthouse and wondered who he was and how he had gotten there. And then, much later, they squeezed into the hideout and fell fast asleep.
Sometime later, in the early hours of the morning, the thin shadowy figure of a girl in green wandered back down the hill and stood over the hideout Listening to the sounds of sleep.
Septimus stirred. In his dreams someone was calling to him; he dreamed that he put a bucket on his head and heard no more.
Chapter 24 Post
Back at the Wizard Tower, Marcia was having a very late breakfast. On her table, beside a scattering of toast crusts and a sulky coffeepot (which had fallen out with the toast rack over a question of precedence), lay a glass capsule - neatly snapped in half along its red dotted line - and a flimsy strip of rolled-up paper. On the floor beside her feet, a pigeon pecked at a pile of grain.
In the ExtraOrdinary Wizard's kitchen the stresses of the previous week were showing. A pile of dishes lay unWashed in the sink and a variety of crumbs, much to the pigeon's delight, were scattered on the floor. Marcia was still a little distracted - while she had been Stirring her oatmeal that morning, the coffeepot had managed to get away with nudging the toast rack off the table without her even noticing. Marcia herself was not looking her best. Her green eyes had dark shadows beneath them, her purple tunic was crumpled and her hair was not as carefully combed as it might have been. And a late breakfast was almost unheard of - except possibly on MidWinter Feast Day. But Marcia had not slept much the previous night. After Septimus's self-imposed midnight deadline for his return had expired, she had spent the night staring out of the tiny lookout window high in the roof of the Pyramid Library, hoping to see the sight of a returning dragon. But she saw nothing until, at first light of dawn, she saw the dark shape of the Pigeon Post pigeon flapping purposefully toward the Wizard Tower. The pigeon had arrived bearing a message capsule. Marcia had breathed a sigh of relief when she had opened it and seen Septimus's name (oddly sticky) on the outside of the tiny scroll. She had unwound the flimsy piece of paper, read the message and, feeling immensely relieved, immediately fallen asleep at her desk. Marcia now swallowed the last of her coffee and reread the message: DEAR MARCIA. ARRIVED SAFELY. EVERYONE HERE. ALL WELL BUT
RETURN DELAYED. SPIT FYRE VERY TIRED. WE ARE ON MILO'S SHIP. WE HAVE NOT LEFT YET BUT WILL ASAP. LOVE FROM YOUR SENIOR
APPRENTICE, SEPTIMUS XXX. PS PLEASE TELL MRS BEETLE THAT
BEETLE IS FINE
It was easy to read - each letter was placed neatly in a square on a grid. Perhaps, thought Marcia with a wry smile, she ought to get Septimus to write like that in the future. She fished her pen out of her pocket to write the reply, and the edge of her sleeves brushed the remaining toast crusts off the table. Irritably Marcia yelled for the dustpan and brush to come and Sweep. As the dustpan and brush whooshed in, Marcia carefully filled out the reply grid on the back of the message:
SEPTIMUS: RECEIVED NOTE. SAFE VOYAGE. WILL MEET YOU AT PORT
ON RETURN OF CERYS. MARCIA X
Marcia rolled up the piece of paper and replaced it in the capsule. She twisted the two halves of glass together and held them in place until the glass had ReSealed. Ignoring the clatter around her feet as the brush swept a panicking toast rack into the dustpan and refused to let it out again, Marcia scooped up the pigeon and reattached the capsule to the tag on its leg. Clutching the pigeon - which pecked happily at a few stray toast crumbs on the sleeve of her tunic - she walked over to the tiny kitchen window and opened it.
Marcia plunked the pigeon outside on the window ledge. The bird shook itself to settle its ruffled feathers and then, with a clattering of its wings, it rose into the air and flapped off toward the higgledy-piggledy roofs of the Ramblings. Oblivious to the sound of the dustpan emptying its contents down the kitchen rubbish chute and the victory dance of the coffeepot among the dirty plates, Marcia watched the pigeon as it headed over the bright patchwork of rooftop gardens and out across the river, until she finally lost sight of it over the trees on the opposite bank.
There was, however, one more message to be dealt with.
The hands of the kitchen clock (a frying pan that Alther had converted and that Marcia did not have the heart to throw out) were just coming up to a quarter to twelve, and Marcia knew she had to hurry. She strode into the sitting room and from the wide, semicircular shelf above the fireplace she took the stiff Palace card that was propped up against a candle. Marcia did not like messages from the Palace, as they were generally from Sarah Heap with some picky inquiry about Septimus. However this message, which had arrived very early that morning, was not from Sarah but was equally - if not more - irritating. It was from Aunt Zelda, written in an impossible-to-ignore thick black ink, and it read:
Marcia,