Chapter Twelve: Breakthrough

Communication between a boy and a zebra is, you would be right in thinking, difficult at the best of times. Imagine then how much more difficult it was when the boy communicated through sign language and the zebra only spoke Spanish (And a very little English, David always liked to remind me).
There was one thing, however, that they both had in common: the most important basis for any type of communication: they genuinely wanted to understand each other.

So there they stood and looked at each other. The boy and zebra in the snow on this strange night. Together, but each lost in his own world; not knowing how to let the other in.
Rodriguez looked into the face of the young boy: red cheeks glistening with tear trails, eyes filled with sadness and, pain. David looked up at the beast which stood over him and saw the same pain reflected back from those large, brown eyes. He glanced down at the chains around the creature’s legs and understood that he was not the only one who had had something precious stolen by the intruders.
And there it was. Something recognised. Something that both understood. Something shared. It was a start; something to build upon.

David placed his hands on one of the thick upper legs of the creature and made as if to pull him down the garden path.
The zebra frowned in confusion: [what?].
The boy pulled at the massive leg again and then pointed towards the lake. The departed pirate ship: [there].
Rodriguez understood but shook his head.
Again the boy pointed but the zebra snorted and would not budge. He nodded down at the chains binding his legs.
David, his eyes lighting up as a sudden idea entered his head, indicated with his hands for the creature to stay where it was and raced around the corner of the house, disappearing into the open front door.
When he reappeared minutes later, he was carrying his father’s tool box and had dressed for the weather: thick jeans tucked into sturdy boots; a padded anorak over a warm jumper; a woolly hat and scarf.
He even remembered to pull the door shut behind him, taking a second to lock it with a spare key which he had grabbed from the hallway.
Another ten minutes and the young face, red with exertion, grinned up at the zebra through cold puffs of air. His dad’s hacksaw had made short work of the chains.
The zebra moved his legs, stretching out. Back, forward, to the side. A large grin spread across his face and without warning he burst into a huge leap in the air, hooves clashing together (a thing, David later told me, he wasn’t entirely sure that a zebra should be able to do) in sheer joy at the freedom of being able to move properly once more.
David stood watching, and despite the worry which still clouded his eyes, a massive smile appeared on his face. Rodriguez, his short celebration finished, trotted a step towards the boy, bent his neck down and gently nuzzled the boy’s chest. David understood and gave a brief modest shrug of his shoulders [you’re welcome].
Then fumbling in his coat pocket, he pulled out a small tablet of paper (the type that you leave next to telephones so that you can scribble a message down quickly) and a pencil. David started to write, his tongue sticking from the side of his mouth in concentration. Once he had finished he held the paper up so that the zebra could see it. The following words were written:

My name is David.


The zebra bent close, almost touching the paper in front of him and squinted down at the letters the boy had written. He frowned, took a step back and shook his head. David saw the confusion in the zebra’s eyes. The boy pointed to the words on the pad and then jabbed a finger at his own chest, but Rodriguez’s eyes softened in apology and he shook his head again.
With a sudden realisation David understood that the zebra could not read. But refusing to admit defeat, he flipped over to the next piece of paper and began to scribble rapidly. The zebra stood patiently watching and one brief sketch later, David held up the tablet of paper one more time:


He pointed to himself and instinctively signed the word for sister. This time, there was a flash of understanding in the zebra’s eyes.
“Tu hermana?” The zebra asked and David nodded vigorously. He saw the look of comprehension in the creature’s eyes and he signed at him [please]. Then he turned and pointed once more, firmly, resolutely towards the pond.
The yellow flame of fear flared up behind the horse’s dark pupils and the black mane waved back and forth through the snowy air as yet again Rodriguez made his feelings clear. He took two steps backwards and bowed his head down towards the ground: a definite refusal.
The boy’s signs became frantic: [please please]: a desperate, pleading look on his face. Tears squeezed out of the corner of his eyes.
The zebra, unable to look the boy in the eyes, stared down at the ground and slowly continued to shake his head. His bowed almost broken posture communicated to the boy what his lips could not: [sorry no sorry].
When Rodriguez finally looked up, David had gone. He was walking quickly down the path towards the garden gate. His straight, sure back spoke of a strength within the small frame and a willingness to do whatever it took to rescue his sister.
The horse sighed, partly in exasperation, partly in guilty anger at himself. He shook his head again, but nobody was watching. It was only Rodriguez himself now, alone with his own refusal to help the boy who had unchained him. This small boy.
David walked towards the garden gate. Tears streamed down his cheeks but fierce determination was etched into his creased brow. He didn’t know how he was going to do it but he must catch up with that ship. They had taken Sally and probably his parents too!
His determination was such that it was a second or two before he noticed the rumbling vibration from the path behind him. Then suddenly with a sudden whip of wind in his face and a ballooning thrill in his stomach, he found himself in the air for the second time that night.
In mid-gallop, the zebra had grabbed the back of the young boy’s anorak with his teeth, and with one swift jerk of that large head, Rodriguez swung David up, over his neck and onto his vast, striped back.
The boy grabbed quickly onto the soft, black mane to stop himself from falling. Despite the dark worry which he carried inside, he couldn’t help but feel a joyful excitement as the zebra almost flew out of the garden gate, and down towards the pond.
Rodriguez did not hesitate for a second as he leapt the pond fence cleanly. Landing on the other side, the zebra briefly skidded on an icy patch before quickly regaining his footing. Then he was off, surefooted, galloping around the pond, past the mouth of the river and along its banks. As fast as the wind. The boy and the zebra.
The pursuit had begun.

THE END OF PART ONE

Chapter Eleven: Untied

The strange voice cut through the darkness again. “Hold still, young lady. We’ll have you free in a jiffy.”
Despite its reassuring tone (and despite herself), icy fear flooded through Sally’s veins as the red pinpricks in the shadows came closer still. She squeezed her eyes tight and desperately repeated to herself. Please wake up. Please wake up.
Scurrying and scratching noises erupted around her feet and the small of her back where her hands were tied, and the creatures, whatever they were, began to tug at the bindings. She felt the brushing of short, prickly fur on the skin of her wrists and ankles. Curiosity forced her to look again and she saw that the floor around her seemed alive with small, shadowy creatures. Still she did not scream. Instead, she bit her lower lip hard.

More things you should know about Sally:

1. I have told you already that Sally was tougher than a girl of her age should be. Well, she was the way she was for a reason. And that reason was that she felt like she had to be strong all the time, that she had to be brave. She didn’t want to give her parents any more reasons to be angry and argue.
2. But as hard as she tried, things just never seemed to work out the way she had planned. In fact, she could remember a few occasions when the best of intentions on her part had resulted in terrible arguments (Like the time: when silence had fallen over the house like a dark, heavy cloud and she had tried to help by trying to by making a surprise lunch. The sound of the plate shattering had been nothing compared to the eruption of her parents’ anger. The shouting soon became about something more than just broken plates and she had sat silently as the door had slammed behind her mother. It had been a whole day before she had come back that time).
3. And so she set up a protective barrier around herself; one, which kept hidden the types of feelings which, she believed, might lead to other people becoming angry.
4. Now, sadly, it had come to the point where she tried to hide these feelings even from herself and the parts of her that felt sadness and fear had hardened like healing skin around a wound.

No, Sally did not like to show her feelings to anyone; not even the monsters that were about to devour her. She bit her lower lip hard to stop any noise emerging.
It wasn’t long, though, before she realised that these furry creatures didn’t seem intent on hurting her at all. Instead, they seemed more interested in the ropes which tied her wrists and ankles. After a few uncomfortable tugs and jerks, the bonds began to give slightly and Sally found that she could move her wrists a fraction.
Another few seconds and they were undone completely and her arms came apart. Immediately, a painful burning sensation crept up her wrists and she rubbed her hands together rapidly to help the blood flow back to the tips of her fingers.
As soon as her legs were free, she painfully crept to her feet and jumped from foot to foot to relieve the sharp sensation of pins and needles.
“Better?” asked the voice from the darkness.
“Um Y-yes,” Sally stuttered . “Th -thank you …um…whoever you are.”
No sooner had she stopped speaking when a light blazed into life in the lantern swinging above. Sally had been in the dark for so long that it stung her eyes, forcing her to squeeze them shut. It took a while for the pain to subside and slowly opening them a fraction at a time, she became aware of the bizarre scene in front of her.
Lined up in the circle of light cast by the lantern, stood an assortment of very small creatures which included: squirrels, field mice, an otter, hedgehogs and …were they… meerkats?
“Stand to attention lads!” It was the peculiarly British voice that had spoken to her earlier and it came from a very red, very handsome-looking fox.
Only, this fox was missing his back legs and was resting on what looked like half of a wooden skateboard on two large wheels. He used his front legs to manoeuvre backwards a little so that he could look up at the girl who stood in front of him.
“On behalf of the Last Ones and myself, may I welcome you, madam, to, the Huntress, the largest prison ship to sail the high seas!”

Chapter Ten: The Long Room

The smell from that terrible sack had been thick and impenetrable and wrapped her like a mummy in bandages. Then suddenly it was gone and one by one her senses slowly came back to her.

Smell: Musty, earthy smells. Wet dogs; damp hay; stables; just like the farmyard she’d visited with school the year before.

Feeling: The tightness of her bonds. A vibration from deep somewhere deep below her. A rocking, swaying movement.

Taste: the bitterness of bile. Dryness. She moved her parched tongue until saliva worked its way into her mouth once more then forced it through the sticky seal of her lips. Her mouth opened with a wet clack.

Sound: A metallic creak; something swinging on rusted hinges back and forth, back and forth. And beneath its rhythm the strangest combination of noises: whistling, rasping, clicking and whimpers; snorting, snuffling, the occasional whoop and squeak. Her befuddled brain tried to concentrate on one all-important thought: “David!” The other sounds around her fell silent and it took her a while to realise that it was her own voice which had spoken. Sally realised that she was awake.

Sight: Her eyes flicked open. Everything was dark.

She was lying on her side, her hands and feet bound tightly by a rough, fibery rope.
She felt that disgusting sack against her cheek on the floor next to her. The strange rocking movement must have dislodged it. With an effort, she managed to move back away from that stinking cloth. What had happened? It took her a few seconds to remember. Then it all came flooding back and Sally felt the flush of hot anger in her cheeks.

Some things you should know about Sally:

1. She was a very practical young girl and, lately, had got used to doing things for herself. This is why, whereas most people might have shouted for help at this point, she realised that the fact that her hands and legs were still bound meant that help was probably not near at hand and if she was to be free then she was going to have to do something herself.
2. It seemed as if this independence had formed a hard shell of anger around her (although we all know that such things have their roots in deeper matters). She was the sort of girl who would clench her fist and bite her lips in silence if something hurt her rather than cry out in pain. Sadly, she was angry in a way that a girl of her age should have no experience of.
3. This anger and independence had combined to give Sally strength in situations where other girls her age may have just given up in fear. It was a hard strength, not the sort that would make her many friends in life, but still it did have its time and place. And that was time was now and that place was here.

So gritting her teeth and using the anger inside of her to force her whole body to move, she twisted and groaned until she managed to manoeuvre herself into a sitting position and rest her back against a square, wooden post fixed into the floor behind her.
Once there, she looked around her again and began to realise that it wasn’t as dark as she had at first thought.
Shapes began to emerge from the shadows: two upright barrels in the near corner, an old unlit lantern slowly swinging on the cross beam above her head, a high wooden ceiling and one, two, three wooden walls. She followed the near wall with her eyes. And followed. And followed. And began to see that the room was very long. So long , in fact, that it receded off into shadow and the far wall could not be seen.
The long room, at first sight, seemed empty, punctuated only by the occasional post holding up the ceiling. Peering through the darkness at the walls nearest her, however, Sally saw that they were, in fact, lined with strong, thick wooden doors secured with heavy iron padlocks and that each door had a small, metal-barred opening at the top.
She twisted her neck to look behind her and could just about make out a short flight of steps leading up to a door set half–way up the wall. It was closed.
Sally turned her attention to her bound hands and feet. The bonds were strong and cut into her flesh tightly and the tips of her fingers were starting to tingle with the lack of blood supply. She struggled briefly with them but quickly realised that they had been tied expertly and she had no chance of removing them alone.
The bonds were quickly forgotten, though, as a sound suddenly emerged from the darkness. It was a very strange sound indeed and to Sally’s ears sounded like the scritch-scratch of a puppy’s claws on wood mixed up with the trundling clunking of a shopping trolley. And it was coming closer.
She turned her head from side to side trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. Was it behind her somewhere? But before she could twist her head to look behind again, she became aware of something even more worrying. The shadows in front of her appeared to be getting closer. They were moving!
And in the shadows there were tiny, red pinpricks of light. Four, five, no more, at least ten pairs of red eyes! All moving towards her!Suddenly, with no warning, there was a blast of hot breath onto the side of her face and a strangely, old-fashioned British voice whispered in her ear: “I do beg your pardon, madam, but try not to struggle and I promise we’ll make this as painless as possible.”

Chapter Nine: The Kidnappers

Now, I know that you are thinking: What about Sally? The last that David had seen of his big sister was the look of shock on her face as a net had been pulled over her head, and he had fallen backwards out of the bedroom window.
It’s not that he had forgotten about his older sister, it’s just that for the briefest of moments the shock of meeting a real-life zebra in the back garden had blotted out everything else.
And although our story may have been long in the telling, in fact, less than five minutes had passed from the moment that he fell from the window to the crashing sound that was about to smash through the night air any moment now.

Three, two, one…

Crash! The zebra jerked backwards startled as the sound of a slamming door and excited voices shattered the peace of the snow fluttering gently down in the dark.
David recognised that the animal had heard something and his sister’s name popped immediately into his head: Sally!
He waved desperately at Rodriguez but the zebra was no longer paying attention to him. Instead the creature had lowered his head defensively, his ears pointing forward sharply, trying to locate the source of the voices.
David watched as Rodriguez began slowly to tiptoe (can a zebra tiptoe? Tip-hoof?) around the corner of the house and down its side towards the front garden.
David rushed alongside but quickly found himself pushed gently back by the zebra’s long snout until he was standing behind the creature and close to the wall. David understood the message; it was similar to the one his sister had given him less than ten minutes before: keep behind me, be quiet!
The boy and the zebra moved quietly up to the corner of the old brick wall and slowly looked around.
The front door was wide open; the small glass window at the top smashed.
Then they saw them: half way across the front lawn there were two figures carrying something heavy across the lawn.
David blinked in surprise at the sight of the first: it was a monkey! It was just slightly taller than David and its reddish-brown fur was matted and dirty. It wore a dark jerkin and a red scarf around its neck. For a brief second as its head turned to the left, he saw that it was wearing a black eye patch.
Behind it came the second and (if at all possible) even more curious figure. It stood about a head shorter than the monkey and appeared to have no fur at all. Its long snout ended in a pink nose and protruding teeth. Its large ears, moth-eaten and dirty, squeezed out from under a black bandana. A skinny, mangled tail almost touched the ground along which it ran. It looked, to all intents and purposes, like a giant furless rat.
Both of the creatures staggered across the snowy grass beneath the weight of what they were carrying and as the boy and the zebra watched, the rat-like creature tripped and the large object slipped from their grasp and thudded onto the snow.
David’s mouth fell open as he saw that this object, which they were now scrambling to pick up, had arms, legs and a mess of blonde curls. It was Sally!
David could stand still no longer and began to run towards his captive sister. It was a second before he realised that he was running but not moving and another second before he managed to twist his head around and saw that the back of his pyjama top was gripped firmly between those very white, very strong zebra teeth.
He tried to pull away but Rodriguez shook his head roughly. Again the zebra’s message was unmistakable: No! His eyes told David that he would accept no argument. But behind the firmness in the zebra’s eyes there was something else: fear.
Desperation filled the boy’s eyes. He turned back and saw that the two strange figures had managed to lift Sally’s unconscious form and had struggled down the path, through the garden gate and across the small road which separated the houses in Dunstable Lane from the banks of the large pond. They hopped over the short pond fence, staggered down the slippery banks and ran straight up the bouncing, wooden gangplank of a ship.
A ship!
David hadn’t seen it until that moment. It was just so unbelievably huge and black that it hadn’t registered against the backdrop of the night-time countryside. At least three times higher than the houses which stood in Dunstable Lane, it filled the night sky. It was quite the biggest and the most sinister ship that he had ever set eyes on either in pictures, on the television or in real-life. And just as with his sister seconds before, the sight of this terrible dark vessel struck sharp blades of terror into his heart.
His struggling against the zebra stopped and he looked up at the sharp black masts and the rigging which crawled with ugly, ape-like creatures. A black flag flapped from the top of the central mast and despite the thickening snow, he could clearly make out the white skull and crossbones. There was no doubting the type of ship that this was.
As the gangplank lifted, David pulled futilely one last time against Rodriguez but to no avail; the zebra would not let go. And, anyway, it was already too late. The ship was moving.
How, you may ask, could it possibly cross a frozen pond? Well, the answer to that is that it was balanced on two giant silver blades that ran its entire length and surprisingly for a vessel of its size, it moved elegantly along the ice. It turned and glided to the far banks of the pond. A strange, melancholic music faded in the wake of the dark vessel and as quickly as it had arrived, it had reached the mouth of the frozen river and was gone once more, taking David’s sister with it.
Sally Hargreaves had been kidnapped by pirates!

Chapter Eight: Communication Problems

Well, you may by now be asking yourself which fact you are supposed to find more surprising: that a zebra could speak or that it spoke Spanish? But then, as Sally always said to me: why would you automatically just assume that a zebra would speak English?
But there you are and there it happened. The zebra looked David straight in the eye and spoke in a soft, lilting Spanish accent.
Now, some of you may have studied a little Spanish before or picked up a few words on holiday. If that is indeed the case, then you will know more than I did the first time I heard those words. You will know that what the zebra actually said to the boy was:
“Hello. My name is Rodriguez. Do you speak Spanish?”
David smiled at the beast and shrugged his shoulders. He tapped his right ear with two fingers [deaf] but in response the zebra just took another step back and blinked in puzzlement.
After another second of staring at each other, Rodriguez tried again. This time in a hesitant, strongly accented English: “You…er… espeak inglis?”
David shook his head again, a resigned look in his eyes. This wasn’t the first time that this sort of thing had happened.

Things you should know about David’s Language:
1. David communicated through BSL; that is to say: British Sign Language. He communicated through gestures made with his hands and expressions on his face.
Despite the fact that both of his parents and Sally were Hearing, like most Deaf children, BSL was his natural way to communicate.
2. His mum and dad had both been to sign language classes so that they could talk with him. They knew, however, that they would never be as good as the kids who had been learning from a very young age. In fact, when they visited his school and watched the blur of hands as the children signed to each other, they often struggled to keep up.
3. Sally had also gone to classes with her parents. At first, she had been as enthusiastic as any of them about learning David’s language (in fact, at one point she had appeared to have almost as natural a talent for it as her brother) but one day, something had changed and she had refused to sign anymore.

The Day it All Changed:
He remembered it well: coming home, racing to see his sister, his hands shaping the air in front of him with a story from his day at school. But something in her face was different. She turned away, refused to look at the pain in her brother’s eyes.
From that moment on Sally had refused to participate in any communication which had involved signing. David still did not understand why.

And This had Caused:
1. A lot of arguments! Mainly between Sally and their parents but she stuck firmly to her guns and for reasons known only to herself refused to make any effort to understand her younger brother when he used BSL.
And:
2. Lip reading! When Sally spoke to him, she now rarely used anything but her mouth and for that reason he had had to learn to lip read in a rudimentary way. He tried to associate the movements of lips with the words that he understood in his head but would never be able to pronounce properly. It was difficult.

In this instance neither signing nor trying to lip read would have served any purpose as David didn’t speak a word of Spanish. And for once in his life, he was at a loss as to what to do.
So the boy looked helplessly at the creature which huffed in frustration in front of him. He was still amazed that such a fantastic creature was actually there.
Rodriguez was about a foot taller than boy standing before him in the snow. His head, long and broad across the nose, sat on a wide, muscular neck. His eyes, dark and shining with a fierce intelligence, peeped out from under a long, black mane which flopped rakishly down over the creature’s forehead. Large, rounded ears twitched in the icy chill of this winter’s night. David wondered if he wasn’t the most handsome animal which he had ever seen.
But for all his beauty (in David’s eyes, anyway) he was actually in quite a sorry state of affairs. Red scars cut across the black and white hair on his back, and his ribs jutted painfully from his skinny flanks. Chains connected the two fore legs and the two back legs and they must have made it very difficult for the zebra to walk.
They stood there, their first attempt at communication having failed completely and looked at each other, both unsure as to what to do next.

Chapter Seven: A Moment Happens

The angry eyes, unblinking, glared down at David and the young boy, frozen with fear, wasn’t entirely sure what it was that he was looking at.
Whatever it was, it now raised itself to its full height and shook roughly from side to side. The snow clinging to its sides fell free revealing the black and white stripes beneath.
It was the zebra! He knew he had seen a zebra! He knew that it hadn’t been his imagination but in all of the excitement of the last few minutes he had quite forgotten the creature he had seen from his bedroom window less than fifteen minutes before!
Now, you, like me I suppose, would imagine that an eight-year-old boy coming face-to-face with an angry wild animal in the middle of the night, would have felt nothing but the most paralysing fear. However, the David of our story, as you will soon come to realise, was a most surprising boy in so many ways.
No, it wasn’t terror which spread across his face at the sight of this creature, it was sheer delight at actually meeting (touching!) an animal which he had only ever seen in books or on the TV.
A smile spread across the boy’s face which was so wide and full of joy that a look of confusion appeared on the face of the angry horse-like creature. It hadn’t been expecting that at all!
It took a footstep (hoofstep?) back from the puzzling little creature that sat on the ground in front of it but
in the process managed to catch its hoofs on chains which, as David now saw for the first time, were strung between its thick legs.
The creature tripped on the chains and in a sudden explosion of snow and hoofs it skidded on the sheer ice beneath the snow. First this way, then that, the black and white striped legs seemed almost to dance in their desperate effort to gain purchase on the slippery ground.
David stood there and watched stunned; the grin frozen on his face but the joy behind it gone. For a second, just a split second, he had considered laughing. However, this disappeared at the look of sheer panic that had appeared in the creature’s eyes and the sight of red welts that David now saw beneath the manacles of the chains and criss-crossing the creature’s back .Without another second’s thought, he jumped up and rushed towards the struggling animal’s side and pushed with all his strength.
Now as you can imagine this zebra, being such a large animal was extremely heavy, but just that
extra bit of support from the boy’s hands (small as they were) pushing against the zebra’s side gave the creature the momentum that it needed to find firm ground again.
David, though, was not so lucky and as the zebra found its feet, he slipped face first towards the snow.
Before he hit the ground, however, the creature moved forward quickly and grabbed the back of his dressing gown with its strong teeth, pulling David back up into a standing position.
And there they stood, chests heaving and breath puffing out into the cold air: a small, thin boy with brown hair and a dressing gown and a shackled zebra, in the middle of the night while the snow continued to fall and cover all that it touched.

And in that strange never-to-be-repeated situation, something happened. A moment of magic.
Not the type of magic that we associate with wizards and witches and magician’s top hats, but the kind which comes along with one of those brief, incredible all-important moments which just occasionally pop up out of nowhere.
They might arrive with a phone call, an unexpected encounter or a missed train. They might be waiting at the end of our garden. Sometimes they go unnoticed or seem unimportant; other times they are dramatic or deadly and we will remember them for the rest of our lives.
But, however these moments appear, one thing is certain: nothing will ever be the same again. They set our lives on a course which we have never expected and in a second, alter the shape of everything.
Our lives are built upon a stream of these moments, one leading on to the next and the next. Point to point to point until our life, drawing the line between them, gradually takes shape like a vast dot-to-dot puzzle. Then one day we look back and this picture suddenly becomes clear. It is the shape of who we are.

This was one of those moments. It did not go unnoticed and both present recognised it for what it was: a point in the grand circle of things which would change everything to come.
They felt it. It bounced like beams of light from the falling flakes and surrounded them both in its knowledge. They did not know how or why; they just knew that it was and that it had started at this moment.
They stood there, face-to-face, each looking the other in the eyes and waiting for the first to communicate.
Unexpectedly, it was the zebra who spoke first:
“Hola. Me llamo Rodriguez. Hablas espanol?”

Chapter Six: Kidnapped

A series of disjointed sensations:

The tight mesh of net pulls her back from the window. The round O of her brother’s mouth as he slips from her grasp and tumbles backwards. “David!” she knows that he cannot hear but screams anyway.

“GET…” Her leg kicks out, connects with a soft, fleshy belly and causes a satisfying grunt.

“OFF…” She pushes and pulls and thrashes against the strangers (creatures?) who have invaded her home.

“MEEE!“ A brief glimpse of a pair of evil, squinting, red eyes and thin, bloodless lips drawn back over rodent teeth in a nasty smile and … “ooooooh!”… What is that terrible smell?

The net is suddenly pulled away. Strong fingers bite into the flesh of her upper arms. Some kind of sack is pulled over her head. A sack that has possibly the worst smell that she has ever smelt in her life. A smell like the fishy reek of potatoes that have gone mushy and bad milk and the stink that wafts over when the boy sitting at the desk next to you has thrown up. She gags. Everything spins. The world becomes dark for a while.

Bits and pieces, flashes of sound and sensation, come to her through the darkness:

Pulling and tugging as her arms and legs are tied firmly behind her and she feels herself being picked up.

The slamming of doors. The clomping of heavy steps. The tinkle of broken glass.

Movement. A sudden thump, Sally realises that she is outside the house, on the ground laying in snow and the sack has fallen from her head. She gulps the fresh air greedily and blinks confused at a garden full of snow and lights.

Fire flickers in the sky. She looks up and up and up. It seems to go on forever. A great big ship at the end of the garden! Flames outline the masts and sails. It is so big. Really much bigger than a ship should possibly be. It towers above the white banks of the icy pond, a deep, terrible, black colour. A black which sucks that light from the world around it. It is a terrible thing this ship, she knows that immediately. It is a thing to cause icy shards of fear as cold as the ice upon which it stands. Then the sack is pulled tightly over her face once more and the rank odour blots out everything except for a deep dread at the knowledge that she is being taken to that ship.

More jolting, rough movement. Feet running on wooden boards. A loud chorus of whoops. Chattering and gibbering noises.

Thump! She has been dumped on the floor again. This time there is no soft snow to land on, just hard wood. Whispers creep through the foggy haze of putrid stench: Squideye…Ratboy…huntress

Then in the last few seconds of semi-consciousness before she passes out completely, she hears one last snatch of conversation:

Skinny thing, ain’t it? Not much fur? Can’t see her skin making as much money as the others. Oh well.

Horror.

Blackness.

Chapter Five: An Escape and a Capture!

Before she could even blink in surprise, Sally was falling backwards, screaming and as she did so she managed to do two things simultaneously:

1. she kicked the door shut with a huge push from her feet
2. she landed slap bang on top of her brother

For the first second as she began realise that this wasn’t, in fact, a dream, Sally lay staring at the door and watched as whoever was outside twisted frantically at the door handle.

Something you should know about the bedroom door at 22 Dunstable Lane: Old, damp houses such as these have grown, shrunk, moved and generally changed over the years, just as the bones in the human body bend and shift and creak as we get older. So the once true wooden door frames, windows and floorboards of the house by the pond had all warped with age and sadness. Sally’s door jammed. Not just a little, but jammed as if it were locked and only a short, sharp kick to exactly the right spot would open it.

Coming to her senses, Sally became aware of a thumping wheezing noise from behind her and suddenly remembered David. With escape the one thought in her mind, she twisted around, scrambled to stand up, grabbed hold of her brother’s pyjama top and dragged him along with her as she did so.
[whatwhatwhat?] the boy signed frantically at his sister but she had no time to reply as she pulled him desperately over to the window and with her free hand pushed the old sash frame up.
Her heart thumping and trying to ignore the increasingly loud shouts and bangs of frustration outside the bedroom door, Sally grabbed her by now struggling brother and pushed him up so that he was sitting on the window sill facing her.
It was only a matter of seconds before the door-bangers found the right spot, she knew, so with no time for any explanation, she started to push him backwards out of the window. David, as anybody would do in his situation, grabbed at his sister’s arms and tried to resist. What was she doing?
The thought had barely had time to form before, over his sister’s shoulder, he saw, in what seemed like slow motion, the door burst open and two figures run into the room dragging a net between them. No taller than Sally, one of them appeared to be an orange monkey with an eye patch and the other…was that really a giant, pink rat wearing a bandana?
Such was the shock at seeing these very strange creatures that David completely forgot to hold on to his sister. As his fingers let go, he saw, in horror, Sally’s screaming face as the net covered it and she was pulled backwards away from him while at the same time shrinking and spinning upside down.
Or rather, he suddenly realised in panic, it was him who was spinning! He had fallen backwards through the window and was now sliding down the snow-covered porch roof outside!
The dark night sky raced overhead and wet flakes of snow slapped into his eyes and more snow went down the back of his pyjamas as he slid back, gathering speed. Then all of a sudden he was no longer on the roof but in mid-air and falling!
Whoosh! His stomach turned a summersault. His arms and legs flailed desperately for something to hold onto. There was nothing. David shot towards the ground, his eyes clenched tightly shut in terrified anticipation as the hard ground below got nearer. Any second now -
Clump! He fell right on top of a mound of snow which cushioned most of the fall. For a second he couldn’t believe it, he was fine. Completely unhurt. Then he remembered – Sally!
But before that thought could go anywhere else, the ground beneath him began to move. There was something beneath the snow! Something which wasn’t very happy at having been landed on!
David found himself slipping as the snow fell to either side of the mound and the thing beneath the snow stood up.
The thing shook the rest of the snow from its body and turned a very large head round on a very thick neck and glared down at the boy sitting in the snow in front of it. David’s mouth fell open as he came face to face with two furious eyes, two wide flaring nostrils and some of the angriest looking teeth that he had ever seen.

Chapter Four: Invaders!

The sudden fear in Sally’s eyes reflected in those of her brother.

Something you should know about David #1: He read faces just like most of us read books. He had never been able to hear, nor indeed understand what hearing actually means to most of us (try explaining things like music to somebody who has never and will never hear it and you will understand what I mean). Instead, David was used to picking up on the slightest flicker of an eyebrow or twitch of the nose to help him make sense of the world around.

Now David recognised fear and it was an emotion which he was not used to seeing in his sister’s eyes. Irritation - certainly, anger – sometimes and, yes, let’s face it, occasionally just sheer malice when she was trying to get her brother into trouble. But never fear. In fact, it was something he had only seen on her face once before (that day - both of them hid behind the curtains – they watched from the window - mum locked the boot of the car, walked round to the side, got in, drove away). No, seeing Sally afraid at all was enough for a hot coal of dread to burst into flame in his own stomach.
[What?] He signed at her, his face showing the concern he felt. Sally shook her head, placing a finger to her lips and motioning for him to stay quiet and still while she craned her neck forward to listen carefully.
[What?] His fingers moved again and when he still received no response, David tugged at her pyjama sleeve until Sally turned to look at him, irritation rather than fear now playing across her brow.
[what? mum dad?] His fingers were a blur and David saw the understanding in his sister eyes, even though she shrugged angrily at him and pretended not to. He pulled at her sleeve again and with a massive effort forced the sounds from his throat: “maaabdaaab? “
Her face softened slightly for just an instant. Then an angry look spread over her face again and she shook her head roughly from side to side and pointed towards the floor. He understood: No, something’s wrong. There’s something downstairs. Be quiet!
Sally climbed slowly down from her bed and took the purple dressing gown which hung on the end of the bedstead. She shrugged it on and with a sideways glance at David, motioned for her brother to be quiet again.
Then, careful to avoid all of the places on the floor where she knew that the old floorboards under the green carpet creaked, Sally tiptoed towards the door.
David fell into step beside her only to have the front of his dressing gown grabbed almost immediately and to find himself pushed roughly behind his older sister. She raised the flat of her hand to him: Stay here! and frowned, still not one hundred percent sure that whatever was going on was not somehow his fault.
Seeing this suspicion on her face, David pouted madly, but fully aware of his place in the power structure that existed at number 22, Dunstable Lane (and also knowing that he was already dicing with danger by having entered the forbidden realm without an invitation or permission), he reluctantly stayed put.
Sally reached the door and opening it a crack, she slowly peeked round.
There was nothing out there; just the dark, dusty old landing.
She pulled the door open a little wider.
Dark shadows. Nothing.
Briefly looking back at her brother, she frowned: if this is a trick... then turning again, she pulled the door wide open. Still nothing.
Taking a deep breath, Sally tiptoed carefully along the passage towards her parents’ room.
She wanted to shout out for them but she didn’t for two reasons:

1. She was scared at the angry reaction she would receive at waking her parents in the middle of the night just because her good-for-nothing younger brother had had a bad dream.
2. There was something else. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on but out here in the dark, but she began to understand why David had looked so afraid.

When she reached her parents’ room, the door was still open. Peering through the darkness inside, she suddenly found it hard to swallow as the realisation that David hadn’t been fibbing sunk in. The bed was an empty shadow! She flicked the light switch. It didn’t work.
Beginning to panic now, Sally turned and quickly returned along the hallway to her bedroom.
There she found David still waiting. He looked up at his sister. She began to open her mouth but froze halfway.

Suddenly a number of things seemed to happen at once:
1. David saw his sister’s whole body tense and she spun around again towards the door.
2. Something heavy landed on the landing, its vibrations travelling through the boards beneath the carpet.
3. Two shadowy figures appeared, jumping towards the bedroom.
4. Sally fell back into her brother, knocking him over.
5. David went down hard, the wind knocked out of him, his sister’s heavy weight blocking his view of the doorway.

And there he lay helpless, unable to move and waited for whatever had invaded their house to enter the room.

Chapter Three: Sally

They just weren’t there. The beds were made and there was not a ruffle in the blankets. In fact, no sign that they had been slept in at all.
[Mum?] David’s hands moved in the air in front of him as he unconsciously signed to himself. [Dad?] Then the memory came back. The memory of the something different which had awoken him. His small heart sank inside his chest. Had somebody left? Again?
He ran out of his parents’ room and looked elsewhere. The bathroom. Empty. He ran down the stairs with its dirty grey carpet. Down to the dark hall on the ground floor. Empty. He flicked the light switch but no light came on and a slippery worm of fear crept down the back of his neck. David hated the dark.
He moved through the other shadowy rooms quickly, afraid. The living room, the kitchen, the dining room: none of the lights worked and all were empty. He ran back upstairs to his parents’ room. The small boy stood there in his pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers staring at the bed. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to look. He…Sally!
As quickly as he had crashed into his parents’ room earlier, he now threw himself back down the corridor towards Sally’s room.
As usual, her door was shut.
He grabbed the door knob and for just a second froze. A different type of dread grabbed him: the fear of the maddened older sister. (As any eight-year-old boy will tell you: there is no dragon more monstrous, no ogre more terrifying, no witch more cackly and evil than an eleven-year-old older sister). And even now with the terrible news that he had to share, David hesitated.
You and I know, however, that the mind begins to play funny tricks on us when we are alone in the dark. And here all by himself in the middle of the night in this old, dusty, neglected corridor, the deep dark shadows suddenly made themselves known and edged just a little closer. David didn’t hesitate again. He grabbed the knob, gave the bottom of the door a good stiff kick where it usually jammed and threw himself into the forbidden realm.
SallySallySallySallySally! Her face flashed through his mind as he fell into the room.
SallySallySallySallySally! Crash! The pile of books, magazines and games that had been stacked somewhere in the middle of the room went flying.
SallySallySallySallySally! Snap! He didn’t even want to think about what it was that he had just trodden on or the revenge that it would surely provoke later that day.
SallySallySallySallySally! Something stirred under the duvet on the bed in front of him. Something angry, something older, something still capable of beating him in a fight.
“Muuuuuuuuuuum!” It started as a low, terrible moan. “Daaaaaaaaad!” Rose to a shrill crescendo. And then the dreadful, angry realisation. “He’s in my room AGAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNN!” She sat bolt upright, her blonde, shoulder-length hair flicking back from her face, her eyes (usually a startling blue in the light of day) glowering darkly.
SallySallySallySallySally!
“GET OUT! GET OUT! MUM!”
[Mum Dad]
“OUT OUT OUT! DAD!”
[bed empty]
“SHUT UP! OUT! GET OUT!”
[house empty]
“OUTOUTOUTGETOU-“
[mum dad gone zebra garden snow gone!]
“WILL YOU JUST GE-“
CRASH! Sally froze as the sound of broken glass shattered the night!

Chapter Two: David

No one in the house heard the hiss of metal blades cutting through ice. Nor did they stir at the straining groan of hemp ropes or the complaint of wooden boards juddering to a halt. Not a soul had woken to the sharp but whispered commands of the strange crew aboard. And the muffled, fearful whimpers, bleats and squeaks hidden beneath the other sounds of the dark ship all went unnoticed.
No, the arrival of the pirate ship not fifty yards from number 22 Dunstable Lane had gone unheard for a number of reasons.

These are the reasons:
1. Sally did not hear because both she and David slept in rooms at the back of the house facing onto fields which stretched away into the dark, wooded countryside.

2. It had started to snow and the fields were slowly disappearing under a fresh, white blanket. The slow, thick, heavy flakes absorbed each creak, groan, and frightened whimper from the new arrivals like soft, white sponges.

3. The third reason was quite simply that the youngest child, David, could not hear. He was deaf.
4. There is one reason but we shall come to this as the story unfolds.

And so for all of these reasons, the sinister new arrivals went unnoticed. Until…

The eight-year-old boy’s eyes snapped opened and he was surprised to find himself in his own bed in his own room and not somewhere else entirely. For, in the first instant of waking, David knew that something was different. He wasn’t sure what it was that had woken him but something was changed, wrong, not the way it was supposed to be.
Nothing stirred and, for you and I, the house would have been completely silent. But something echoed through this silence: some strange vibration; the memory of a sound hanging in the air. The very night itself seemed to pause, and hold its breath, waiting, and David felt this.
He sat up and gasped as the cold hit him and the sweet, warm blankets slipped away. He scratched the back of his head, his fingers combing through the messy brown hair and rubbed the sleep from his bright, green eyes. Then he got out of bed, slipped on his slippers, grabbed his blue dressing gown from the floor where he had dropped it before going to bed and padded gently across the carpet to the window.
The curtains seemed to stir with movement from outside, a slow, magical, glowing movement, and a long-forgotten joy burst into life in the small boy as David realised that it was snowing.
He yanked the curtains aside and made a swift hole in the condensation on the window so that he could see outside.
Every child knows this feeling: the deep, intense pleasure of the first snow fall of the year. The delicious chill. The shiver of happiness that runs up your spine and then down again. The sharp expectation of fun that snow promises: warm gloves, hot soup, no school, snowmen, snow sledding, snow balls. Snow. Christmas.
For a brief moment, a memory of sadness filled the young boy but he quickly shook it off and allowed the glowing, alien snow-light to shine through the window and wrap him in its magic.
He watched as the flakes danced through the night air, twisting, turning, rhythmic. Almost melodic in its movement; every flake a note in a symphony of white and for a second he fancied that he understood what people meant when they spoke about music. For indeed, the falling snow was a song of silence whose lyric and tunes were built from poetry of movement. It was a song that even a Deaf boy could appreciate.

David stared out gleefully as the fields behind his house slowly disappeared beneath a white cloak. It was a good snow – it was laying. Everything began to soften: the dark trees, the garden fence, the zebra which gently nibbled on the long blades of one of his mother’s ornamental grasses.The white, icy…
What?
Hang on ?!
A zebra?!
David blinked and quickly rubbed his eyes. It was still there; its black mane falling over a long, striped nose.
It couldn’t be true! He pinched himself. Ow! He was definitely awake! And there, absolutely, certainly and without a doubt, was a black and white zebra munching away at the bottom of the garden.
He stared amazed as long as he dared, all the time wanting to run and shake his parents awake but scared that if he took his eyes from the chewing creature outside, then it might just disappear.
After a few minutes, during which the snow gradually built up on the window sill outside, and after he was as sure as he could be that the horse (was it a horse? He would have to look that up in his encyclopaedia later) looked like it might not just up and run away, he pulled himself back from the misted glass and ran from the room. He hurtled down the corridor, past Sally’s closed door and charged through into his parents’ bedroom.

And now we finally come to that fourth reason for why nobody had heard the peculiar goings on on this strange winter’s night: his mother and father had not heard because, to state it plainly, they were not there. Their room was empty. David’s parents were nowhere to be seen!

Chapter One: The House by the Pond

Once, not too long ago but still on the edges of memory, a house stood by a pond near a river and close to the wide open blue of the sea.
It was not a happy house; shouting echoed from its dusty, old corners.
And when the shouting stopped, the silence began and this was worse and, in a strange sort of way, louder than the shouting.
Then, one day the winter arrived and blew away the last golden dreams of autumn.

The house was home to two children, Sally and David Hargreaves, and on one cold, boring day during the Christmas holidays, they sat watching the rain dribble down the dirty windows. All they could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit (but that, as David always told me, was another story).
It was four days before Christmas but this year there was no Christmas tree, no decorations, no talking. In this silence, they felt invisible and had fallen into the huge gap which had grown between their parents. They almost wished that the shouting would start again. Almost.
Sally had even turned off the television. A very unusual thing, you may say for a young girl to do. She had started watching, but all of the programmes had been Christmassy ones and only served to remind her of what the children wouldn’t be getting this year. So off went the TV and the silence grew louder still.

At that time of year, the day crept into early night and food that was cooked without love was eaten without a word and the night grew dark and was all the darker still for no Christmas lights.
Then during the night, the temperature dropped. The pond and the river froze and the ice creaked like a dead man’s bones; and in the cold and the dark and the stillness, the black ship arrived.