Changeling's Island - eARC by Dave Freer Read Free Book Online Page B

guard his master carefully.
    * * *
    Alicia Symons drove home slowly, thinking about the youngster they’d picked up. She’d not, at first glance, been too impressed. Actually she felt sorry for him. He was small and looked defeated and rather lost walking along the road with a lunchbox.
    And then he’d smiled and confused her daughter. And it seemed Molly’s dog had caught that confusion. It was something for a mother to think about!
    She drove down through the she-oaks toward the house on the promontory. Not, for once, looking at the view from their hill and losing herself in the rapture of it. From the minute they’d seen the view, she and Michael had loved the place. They’d known they couldn’t really afford it, and had gone ahead and done it anyway, because they couldn’t bear to lose their chance. They should have looked at the school issues first. It wasn’t that the school wasn’t trying. It was just dying for lack of children. She should have been delighted that there was another child. But…well. Perhaps she was being overprotective.
    Her husband was out working on the turbine. It was all very well being self-sufficient, and saying there was lots of wind for power, except the wild wind here was forever breaking something.
    “We picked up a boy on the road today,” she said, looking up at him.
    “Ah. Molly picked up one yesterday, on the plane,” he said, coming down and wiping his hands on his jeans. “Remember, I told you last night. She’s growing up.”
    “It’s the same one. He was on his way to school.”
    He knew her well enough to need no further explanation. “I’ll phone a few people. This is Flinders. Everyone knows everything in twenty-four hours.”
    A few minutes later he came back. “Seems his parents have got divorced. He’s staying with his grandmother. She’s apparently an old tartar. They’re ‘real islanders.’ Old family.”
    She smiled at the “real islanders”—you had to be here for fifty years to get considered more than temporary flotsam by some of the islanders. “That…might explain the look. Poor kid.”
    “The look?”
    “He looked like the whole world was on his shoulders. And Bunce growled at him.”
    “Good grief. Well, if he gives Molly any trouble I’ll growl at him too.”

CHAPTER 5
    Tim had been…well, terrified, when he went to the headmistress’s office. Almost inevitably, just as he went in, a whole pile of paper sprayed across the room, and the lightbulb exploded with a loud pop.
    “Goodness! What an entrance.” The woman shifted her glasses back on her nose, and smiled at him. She didn’t blame him! That was different. “You must be Timothy Ryan. I’m so glad to see you. Give me a hand to pick these up, will you?”
    It was said in such a calm, easygoing way, and she really did seem happy to have him here. She talked while they picked up papers. She spoke so quickly that it was hard to get a word in edgeways, but she was also very good at asking the right sort of questions. And she wasn’t in the least troubled by his lack of uniform. “I’ll get you a shirt from the lost property box for now. Come to me at break and I’ll take you down to town.
    She never mentioned knowing anything about why he’d come. Neither did anyone else. The day, like any first day, rushed around him in a confused welter of newness. He was introduced to a lot of people. He couldn’t remember any of them. He was ahead in some areas, far behind in others. As for the place, he felt as if everything was moving around him, just as soon as he got his bearings. He was whisked away to a small shop in the little town, and paid over his grandmother’s money, and left with a carrier bag and what passed for a uniform here. St. Dominic’s would have sneered, but then he’d hated those clothes anyway.
    And no one said, right out to his face, “Why are you here?”
    Somebody had to know. Someone had to tell. And then…yeah, well. Shoplifting wasn’t that big a