Copyright

First published in hardback and paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2014

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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For Stacy’s blog, competitions, interviews and more, visit www.stacygregg.co.uk

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Text copyright © Stacy Gregg 2014

Cover photographs © Shutterstock; Decorative illustration © Shutterstock; Jacket Design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Stacy Gregg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007580262

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007580286

Version: 2014-08-30

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Diary of Beatriz Ortega

The Guardian of the Words

Great Abaco

Voodoo Queen

The Mudpit

A Shadow on the Sun

Annie’s Crib

If They Catch You…

Medicine Hat

The Diary of Felipa Molina

The Duchess

F.M. Diary Entry, 10th September 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 17th September 1493

The Obeah

F.M. Diary Entry, 18th September 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 19th September 1493

Island Stallion

F.M. Diary Entry, 20th September 1493

Storm be Comin’

F.M. Diary Entry, 24th September 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 27th September 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 24th October 1493

Abandoned

F.M. Diary Entry, 21st November 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 30th November 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 5th December 1493

Night Voyage

F.M. Diary Entry, 7th December 1493

F.M. Diary Entry, 10th December 1494

Chosen

After the Storm

Epilogue

About the Author

Other books by Stacy Gregg

About the Publisher

The Diary of Beatriz Ortega

12th April, 2014

I am writing this as fast as I can. The doors on the Phaedra don’t lock, and Mom could walk in any moment. I have no privacy. I am the only twelve-year-old girl I know who has to share a room with her mom. I have pointed out how unfair it is, the way the jellyfish equipment takes up the whole front of the boat, but Mom won’t listen. Typical – the jellyfish get their own room and I don’t.

I’m not trying to make excuses for my handwriting or anything, but if it is all scrawly that’s because my arm’s so trembly I can hardly hold the pen. I think it’s from gripping on to the tractor for so long. The entire way home I had to cling to the wheel arch, sitting up there behind Annie like a parrot perched on a pirate’s shoulder. The way she drove along those rutted jungle tracks, I was petrified I was going to lose hold and fall beneath the wheels.

By the time we reached the bay and I could see the Phaedra, my body had been shaken up like a can of fizzy drink.

There was no sign of Mom as the tractor lumbered over the dunes and down the beach towards the sea. I was kind of relieved, to tell the truth. The whole time at Annie’s house I had been desperate to get back to the boat, but now that I was home I felt sick at the thought of facing Mom. She would be furious with me. I had been gone for two whole days…

The Guardian of the Words

Annie jolted to a stop and I lost my grip on the wheel arch and fell to the sand, collapsing like jelly out of a mould, my legs giving way beneath me.

“Bee-a-trizz!” Annie leapt down from the tractor and hooked her arms under my armpits to lift me to my feet again.

“For heaven’s sake, child!”

She was really strong for a little old lady. She held me like a rag doll, so that my feet dragged through the sand and my face was buried against her chest. I could smell the cotton of her dress and see where the blue floral pattern had gone all yellowed with sweat.

Annie carried me up the beach to the tidemark where the sand was dry and I lay there for a while with my eyes shut, taking deep breaths, trying to make the sick, dizzy feeling go away.

That was when I heard the Zodiac coming. I recognised the familiar whine of its outboard motor and the slap-slap the rubber inflatable made as it smacked across the waves. I opened my eyes and there was Mom steering the Zodiac to shore. She gestured frantically to me and I gave her a feeble wave in return. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Wait here, Bee-a-trizz.” Annie headed down to the water to help bring the Zodiac in. She stood knee-deep in the waves, holding it steady, and Mom jumped out and left her there as she ran up the beach to me.

“Beatriz!” She dropped to her knees beside me. “Oh my God, Bee!”

“Hi, Mom,” I managed a weak smile. When she touched my face her hand felt like ice against my skin.

“Beatriz, you’re burning up!”

“I’m OK,” I insisted. “I just got a little sunburnt.”

“OK?” Mom looked horrified. “We have to get you to a hospital…”

“No.” I pushed myself up off the sand. The world was spinning around me. “I’m fine. Honest…”

“De child be al’right.”

It was Annie.

“I’m sorry?” Mom said, clearly shocked at the declaration from this stranger. “Are you a doctor?”

“Bee-a-trizz don’ be wantin’ no doctors,” Annie replied. “Child had de fever real bad, so I keep her to sleep at ma crib til day-clean. De fever broke, so she be al’right now…”

“At your place? She’s been missing for two days…” Mom’s voice was tense. Here we go, I thought. Mom was going to grill Annie until she got the whole story. She was going to hear all about the horse and the mud flats and Annie finding me…

But Annie’s attention had been caught by the Phaedra, moored about forty metres offshore. She gave a flick of her head, gesturing at the boat with her lips, using them the same way other people used their hands to point at stuff.

“You all alone on dat tink?”

Mom’s eyes flitted briefly to the boat, then back to Annie. I could see that she was suddenly aware that we were in the middle of nowhere with no one else around except this weird old lady with her tractor.

“Yes,” Mom said warily. “I mean, alone with Beatriz – the two of us.”

Annie frowned. “You takin’ a vacation?”

My mom shook her head. “I’m a marine biologist. I’m working on a research paper for Florida University, studying the migratory patterns of sea thimble jellyfish…”

Annie grunted. She had lost interest and began to walk back to her tractor.

“Wait!” Mom said. “I mean… Thank you. For bringing Beatriz back. I have been worried sick…”

“De child be al’right. No need for worryin’,” Annie said. She clambered back up on to the tractor seat, yanking at her skirt to get comfortable. Then she turned the key in the ignition and stuck her bare foot down hard on the tractor pedal. The rattle and burr of the engine instantly killed any hopes Mom might have had for further conversation.

Annie shoved her straw hat down hard on her dreadlocks. “De island be a dangerous place,” she said. She was gazing over at the dunes where we had come from, taking in the far distant end of the island where the mud flats lay. “Very dangerous. You best be careful…”

Then, the tractor rumbled forward and Annie swung the steering wheel, turning the tractor so close to me, I thought she might run over my toes with those giant tyres. Then she raised her hand to flick me a goodbye wave and set off, the tyres digging zigzag patterns into the smooth white sand.

Annie’s battered straw hat was the last thing I saw as she crested the dunes and sank out of sight.

“That woman is flat-out crazy.”

My mom, making her usual proclamations.

“Annie’s not crazy,” I countered. “She’s my friend…” Although that really wasn’t true, was it? Annie gave me the creeps. The whole time I had been at her place I had wanted to leave. But I would never admit that to Mom.

“You stayed at her house?” Mom launched into it. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call me?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was sandy and crusted with salt, its insides totally soaked.

“It died,” I said. And the thought briefly flashed into my mind, should I tell Mom what had happened to me? No. I stopped myself.

If she knows what happened then she won’t let you go back there – and you must go back. You have to see your horse again…

“Mom?” I took a deep breath. “Can we go back to the boat, please? I think I’m going to throw up…”

I managed to control the nausea, even with the Zodiac bouncing and skittering across the waves. I sat in the prow on the bench seat, focusing hard on the horizon, which is what you do to stop feeling seasick.

When we reached the Phaedra, Mom tied off the inflatable while I dragged myself up the ladder and on to the deck. I was still a bit shaky and I stumbled and fell forward, grabbing the side of the boat to stay upright.

“Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?” Mom asked. It was a silly question. Even if I did need a doctor where would we find one in a wilderness reserve on the outer edge of the Bahamas?

“I just need to lie down,” I insisted.

“Do you want me to make you something to eat?” Mom offered.

I shook my head gently. “No thanks, Mom. I just need to sleep.”

I made my way past the steering cabin and the kitchen on the upper deck, gripping the railings the whole way, and then down the narrow stairs that led to our room.

Below deck there are two rooms. The room at the front of the boat is where the jellyfish tanks and monitors and equipment are kept. And the other room is for me and Mom. On my side the walls are covered with horse pictures. The best one is of Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum jumping her horse Shutterfly over this huge water jump at the Olympics.

I flopped down face first on my bunk mattress, my sunburn throbbing, body aching. Then I thought about the diary and I forced myself to sit up again.

I had dumped my backpack on the floor and I reached out and grasped it, dragging it closer so I could unzip it. The ancient diary was right at the top where I had packed it, bound up in filthy, grey cloth.

I noticed as I unwrapped it that the rags were trimmed with tattered lace and there was even a collar with a buttonhole. I guessed the cloth had once been an old-fashioned shirt, but it was so decayed it was hard to imagine anyone ever wearing it.

I put the cloth aside and held the diary in my hands, my fingers tracing the stiff cracks in the leather, the letters stamped on the front.

I was about to open it to the page where I had last finished reading when there were footsteps on the stairs.

“Bee?” I hurriedly wrapped the diary in its cloth and shoved it back inside the backpack. My heart was pounding. I waited a beat, expecting the door to open.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to cook some pasta. You want some?”

“Uhh,” I hesitated, “no thanks, Mom. I’m not hungry.”

“OK.”

I waited for a heartbeat or two and then I heard her go back up the stairs. I was about to reach over and take the ancient diary out of the backpack again when a thought occurred to me.

I got up from my bunk and pulled open the drawer underneath where my books were kept. I had to dig through the pile, and for a moment I thought maybe it wasn’t even there. But here it was, right at the very bottom. It was smaller than I remembered it, with a blue cover and pale yellow lined pages. I opened my ‘Year 5’ diary and was relieved to find that, as I remembered, most of it was blank.

My handwriting hadn’t changed much over the past three years since I wrote these entries.

The diary had been a school assignment and our teacher Mrs Moskowitz graded it. We were supposed to write our feelings but I never did. Even though Mom and Dad were fighting. This was just before they broke up, before we left Florida.

I didn’t mention anything about horses either. I was worried that someone might grab the diary off me in class and read it out loud and I already got teased about being a ‘horsey girl’.

Most of the entries were about what I ate for lunch and who I sat next to in class and stuff. On the last page I had written all about how Kristen Adams and I were the bestest friends in the whole of Year 5. I winced a bit when I read that. Some BFF. She hadn’t returned my emails for at least two years.

Anyway, once I’d read that page I ripped them all out – the ones with writing on them. I tore them carefully so as not to disturb the blank pages and I balled up the used ones and tossed them aside on my bed. Then I propped myself up on my pillows and smoothed down the first clear page. It felt good to have that empty page looking back at me – waiting for me to put something on it.

I thought back to when Annie had given me Felipa’s diary. She had acted really serious about it, handing it to me like it was a big deal. “Bee-a-trizz,” she said. “You be de guardian of de words now.”

At the time I thought she meant that because Felipa’s diary was written in Spanish and so I could understand it, I should look after it. But now I realised that maybe Annie meant something more than that. She said I was the guardian of the words. So maybe my own words mattered too? After everything that had happened to me over the past two days, out on the mud flats and at Annie’s house, I finally had something important to write. I had my own story to tell.

It wouldn’t be like the old pages that I had torn away. It would be true this time, like diaries are meant to be, but it would be amazing too. And it would begin with the day that I found my horse. Running wild in the most impossible place you could imagine. Here, on this tiny island, a million miles from anywhere, on the outer edge of the Caribbean.

Great Abaco

If things are going to make any sense at all then I need to backtrack a little and explain how I came to be on Great Abaco Island.

Mom and I had arrived, like we always do, in the wake of a bloom. A bloom is the name for a herd of jellyfish. That is what Mom does – she tracks jellyfish and studies their breeding patterns.

I was nine years old when Mom yanked me out of school and straight into the middle of nowhere. She’s been dragging me around on the Phaedra with her for three years now, back and forth around the islands so that a map of the Bahamas has been seared into my brain.

Jellyfish, by the way, are totally brainless. I’m not being mean just because they are taking up what should be my bedroom – it’s the truth. Mom says they cope perfectly well without a brain. She says that Nature, unlike people, is non-judgemental about such matters. But I think Nature needs to take a good hard look at itself because it has invented some really stupid stuff. Did you know that a jellyfish’s mouth and bottom is the same hole? Eughh!

Even without brains, jellies can get together and bloom, and when they do we follow them. Our boat, the Phaedra, is real pretty. She’s painted all white with her name written in swirly blue letters above the waterline so that it seems to dance on the waves.

The Phaedra was designed as a lobster trawler, so she can only do 12 knots an hour. Which is OK since the jellyfish blooms that we chase never move faster than two knots.

Some of the islands that the jellies lead us to are really small, not much more than a reef and a few trees. Others are huge with big hotels and water parks, and at Christmas time when the tourists come they turn into Disneylands.

This was the very first time we had been to Great Abaco. It’s a remote jungle island, a long way from the mainland of Nassau, and we had charted our course to arrive at the island’s marina at Marsh Harbour so we could take a mooring for the night and buy supplies and refuel.

That first evening, instead of cooking onboard in our tiny kitchen, we went ashore and Mom treated us to dinner at Wally’s. It’s the local scuba divers’ hangout: a bright pink two-storey place, run-down but in a nice way. We sat on the balcony and I had a conch burger, which I always order, and fries and key lime pie. I was halfway through my dessert, when I asked Mom about moving back to Florida.

The funny thing is, when we left Florida Mom had me totally convinced about how much fun our lives would be. It would be an adventure. I’d be skipping out on school and travelling the high seas – like a pirate or something.

Trust me – it is not like that at all.

For starters, I still do school. Only now I am a creepy home-schooler. I do correspondence classes and workbooks and talk to my tutors over the internet.

“I have no friends here,” I told Mom as I ate my pie.

When I left school everyone made this huge fuss about how much they would miss me and stay in touch. Especially Kristen, making a big show of how we would be Best Friends Forever. Forever, it turns out, was a couple of months and then the emails and Skype just stopped.

“Well maybe you need to make more of an effort,” Mom countered.

This was what she always said. But she couldn’t say it was my fault about the horses.

In Florida we had a stables just down the road. I would park up my bike there after school on the way home and feed the horses over the fence. I had been begging Mom for lessons since I was really little and right before we left she had promised I could start.

“You did,” I said. “You promised.”

Mom sighed. “Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want…”

The thing is I have this whole plan where I become an amazing rider and go to the Olympics. Mom knows this because it is all I talk about.

“I am running out of time,” I told her. “Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum had already won her first Grand Prix by the time she was my age. How am I supposed to train for the Olympics when I’m stuck on a boat?”

Mom reached over with her spoon and helped herself to a chunk out of my key lime pie.

“Why don’t you train for the swim team instead?” she offered.

“Mom! You’re not taking me seriously,” I said. “I want to go back to Florida.”

“No.”

“You can’t just say no. I am a US citizen and I have rights.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” my mother said.

“How about if I lived with Dad? I could visit you in the school holidays…”

“Beatriz!” I cannot even mention Dad without her getting mad. “I have told you to drop it, OK? That’s not an option. You live with me. End of discussion.”

***

The following morning we set off at dawn, chugging out of the marina and heading South along the shoreline of Cherokee Sound where the tangerine, mint and lemon-sherbet-coloured beach cottages dotted the shore. By the time we reached the end of the Sound, the cottages with their bright colours and pretty gardens had disappeared and the coastline had become colourless and windswept. The white sand beaches were deserted, and instead of manicured flowerbeds there were nothing but tangles of sea grape, mangroves and cabbage trees.

This was the Great Abaco wilderness reserve. The whole southernmost end of the island was uninhabited, cloaked in jungles of Caribbean pine, snakewood and pigeon berry. From the bow of the boat the jungle seemed to sit like a black cloud across the land as we moved by.

“We’re going to anchor here.” Mom throttled back the engine.

“Where is here?” I asked, peering out suspiciously at the desolate shoreline.

Mom kept her eyes down on the scanner as she steered the Phaedra.

“Shipwreck Bay,” she said.

She handed me the map, her eyes still glued to the scanner and I could see now why she was steering so carefully. There was a hidden reef at the entrance to the bay, so close to the surface that it was almost impossible to navigate your way through.

I went to the side of the Phaedra and stared down into the water. It kept changing colour as we passed over the reef, turning dark indigo where the water was deepest. I could see shadows moving beneath the waves. Reef sharks, big ones by the look of it. And then another shadow, deeper down below, which looked like the outline of a ship. I lay down on the deck of the Phaedra and hung my head over the side so that I could get a better look, staring down into the dark water. It was a ship all right. As we motored over it I could make out the shape of the mast.

“Bee?” Mom called out to me. “Go drop the anchor for me, will you?”

Mom kept the engines of the Phaedra running as she turned into the wind and I ran downstairs, going through our room and into the jellyfish quarters to engage the anchor winch. I pressed down hard on the button and the motor began to grind, unravelling the chain link and lowering the anchor into the sea. I watched it unravel until the marker hit twelve metres and stopped. The anchor had struck the seabed.

By the time I got back up on deck Mom had already started work. She had her laptop out and various sea charts were spread over the kitchen table.

“What are you doing today, Bee?” she asked me.

Sometimes when Mom is working, I stay onboard and lie on the deck and read books. I am brown as a berry from all that reading. Mom says it’s our Spanish blood – we tan easy. She is dark like me with the same black hair, except mine is long, hers is short.

The problem with staying onboard is that Mom says she doesn’t like to see “idle hands”. There is always a list of chores that she is keen to dish out to me.

“I’m going ashore,” I said.

“Have you done your school work?” She didn’t look up at me.

“Yes.” I lied. I had a Spanish vocab test on Friday and I hadn’t studied for it, but I could do that later. Being home-schooled, you can kind of keep your own timetable.

I stood on the deck of The Phaedra and looked at the island. I didn’t need to take the Zodiac. It was only forty metres to shore and I could swim that far easy.

Mom wasn’t totally joking when she said about me making the swim team. If I trained I could probably go to the Olympics. I can swim like a fish. Maybe better than some fishes. So Mom never worries about me.

I stepped out of my shorts and pulled off my T-shirt and stood on the edge of the boat in my bikini, staring down at the deep blue water. Then I raised my hands above my head and I dived.

The water was cooler than I expected. It shocked me and left me gasping a little as I broke the surface and began to swim for shore. Every ten or so strokes I raised my head right up to see how much further I had to swim. As I got nearer to the island, the jungle loomed dark and silent on the horizon. I was in mid-stroke when there was a violent eruption from the treetops. A flock of scarlet parrots suddenly took flight, flapping their lime-green wings, cawing and complaining loudly.

I stopped and trod water, listening to their cries echo through the bay. I couldn’t see what had spooked them. I shielded my eyes with my hand against the glare of the sun on the water and peered out into the jungle. There! A shadow flickering through the trees. I felt a shiver down the back of my neck. I hesitated, and then put my head down and started swimming again.

Shipwreck Bay was shaped like a horseshoe and I swam my way right into the middle of the curve. In both directions white sand stretched on for about a hundred metres or so. My plan was to walk along the beach to the next bay and then all the way to the headland, which I figured would take about two hours – I would be back in time for dinner.

I set off, enjoying how my reef boots made alien footprints in the sand – with circles like octopus suckers on the soles and no toes. The parrots had gone silent, but I kept an eye on the trees all the same.

As I rounded the rocks to the next bay, I could see that my plan of walking to the headland wasn’t going to work out. The bay ahead was sandy, the same as the one where we’d moored the Phaedra, but at the southern end there was a cliff-face that jutted all the way into the sea, too sheer to climb. If I wanted to keep going then I needed to turn inland.

As I pushed my way through black mangroves and waist-high marsh grass, the ground became squelchy underfoot. I hadn’t gone far when I noticed an itching on my ankle and I looked down and saw this big, black leech stuck to my leg just above the rim of my reef boot.

If you ever need to pull a leech off, the thing you mustn’t do is panic. If you rip them off, they will vomit into the wound and cause an infection. You need to use your fingernail to detach the sucker and ease the leech off.

I tried to use my fingernails, but I kept getting grossed out and pulling my hand away. I had finally got up the nerve to do it when the leech got so full and plump that it just plopped off of its own accord. I stomped down on it and felt sick as I watched my own blood oozing back out.

After that, every blade of grass against my shin made me jump. I kept imagining shiny black leeches attaching themselves to my flesh, looking for a warm pulse to plunge their teeth into.

As I got closer to the jungle the parrots started up again. They were shrieking from the tops of the Caribbean pines. Look out! their cries seemed to say. Dangerous, dangerous!

And then, another sound. Louder than the cries of the parrots. A crashing and crunching, the sound of something moving through the scrubby undergrowth beneath the pines.

I stood very still and listened hard. Whatever was in there, it was big and it was coming my way, moving fast.

From the sounds it made as it thundered towards me, I figured it had to be a wild boar! They live in the jungles on most islands in the Bahamas and the islanders hunt them for meat. If you’re hunting them, you have to make sure your aim is good because you don’t want to wound them and make them angry. Boars can attack. They’ve got these long tusks that can kill you on the spot.

I looked around me for a tree to shimmy up, but it was all snakewood and pigeon berry, too spindly to take my weight. My heart was hammering at my chest. The boar must be close now, but there was nowhere to run. I scrambled around, trying to find a stick, something big and solid. The crashing was deafening, so near…

And then she appeared in the clearing in front of me.

It hurt me afterwards to think that the first time I ever saw her my reaction was to shrink back in fear. But like I said, I thought she was a boar. The last thing you ever expect to see in the jungle is a horse.

She had this stark white face, pale as bone, with these blue eyes staring out like sapphires set into china. Above her wild blue eyes her forelock was tangled with burrs and bits of twig so that it resembled those religious paintings of Jesus with a crown of thorns, and along her neck the mane had become so matted and tangled it had turned into dreadlocks.

Strange brown markings covered her ears, as if she was wearing a hat, and there were more brown splotches over her withers, chest and rump. The effect was like camouflage so that she blended into the trees and this made her white face appear even more ghoulish, as if it just floated there all on its own with those weird blue eyes. She was like some voodoo queen who had taken on animal form.

She didn’t turn and run at the sight of me. It was as if she expected to find me there in the middle of the jungle.

She stood there for a minute, her nostrils flared, taking in my scent on the air. And then she took a step forward, moving towards me. I stepped backwards. I mean, I wasn’t scared. It was just that she was nothing like those horses down the road back home in Florida. I had never seen a horse like this before. The way she held her head up high, imperious and proud, as if she owned the jungle.

The horse stretched out her neck, lowering her white face towards me and I held my ground. I could feel her warm, misty breath on my skin. She was no ghost. She was flesh and blood like me. Slowly, I raised my hand so that the tips of my fingers brushed against the velvet of her muzzle and that was when I felt it. I know it made no sense but right there and then I knew that it was real and powerful and true. That this bold, beautiful arrogant creature was somehow mine.

And then the stupid parrots ruined everything. I don’t know what startled them but suddenly the trees around us shook as they took flight, screeching.

I put out a hand to grasp her mane but it was too late. She surged forward, cutting so close to me that I could have almost flung my arms around her as she swept by, taking the path back the way I had just come through the mangroves.

Her legs were invisible beneath the thick waves of marsh grass, so that as she cantered away from me with her tail sweeping in her wake she looked like a ship ploughing through rough ocean, rising and cresting with each canter stride. And then she was free of the grass and galloping along the beach. I could see her pale limbs gathering up beneath her and plunging deep down into the sand. She held her head high as she ran and didn’t look back. Her hoofbeats pounded out a rhythm as she rounded the curve at the other end of the cove. And then she was gone.

Voodoo Queen

There was no way. I could catch her, but I ran after her all the same. I slogged through the mangroves and then back on to the beach.

By the time I reached our bay where the Phaedra was anchored she had disappeared. No hoofprints and no sign of her anywhere. The birds, who had been so full of noise, had gone eerily quiet.

I crouched with my hands on my knees to get my breath back, then I stood up and scanned the sand dunes for my horse. When I couldn’t see her, I waded straight out into the sea. My strokes cut the water fast and clean all the way back to the Phaedra.

“Mom?”

She wasn’t on deck.

“Mom!”

Mom ran up from below deck. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

“I saw a horse.”

The look of concern turned to annoyance. “Beatriz, this isn’t funny. I am working.”

“I’m not trying to be funny!” My chest was still heaving from the effort of my run and swim. I was having trouble getting the words out. “I saw a horse… just now.”

“Being ridden on the beach?”

“No.” I was still trying to breathe. “It was alone in the jungle and it was wild, but I patted it and then the birds scared it away.”

Mom frowned. “You met a wild horse in the jungle that let you get close enough to pat it.”

“Yes, well, almost.”

“And what did this horse look like?”

“It had blue eyes and a white face and dreadlocks and this marking on its head like a hat…”

Mom looked hard at me.

“Mom, I’m not making it up… I can show you.”

“The horse?”

“No,” I shook my head. “She ran away but I can show you the hoofprints. Not here. They washed away. But in the next bay there will be some.”

“I really don’t have time for this.”

“It won’t take long,” I pleaded. “Come and see!”

“Beatriz,” Mom’s voice was firm, “I don’t know where you think you are going with this horse business, but if this is part of your campaign to convince me to go back to Florida, I can tell you now that interrupting my work is going the wrong way about it.”

“I’m not lying!”

“I never said you were lying, Beatriz…”

“Yes, you did!” I was furious now. Mom is always saying I have an overactive imagination – which is true, but that is totally different from telling lies. Also, people are always telling you to have big dreams – like going to the Olympics – and then they tell you off for being a dreamer. So which one is it?

“I tell you what,” Mom said, “how about if I come and look for the hoofprints later, OK? We can go before dinner and have a walk on the beach and you can show me then.”

“It’ll be too late by dinner,” I insisted. “The waves will have washed them away.”

“Just give me an hour then,” Mom said. “Once I’ve done this migration chart we can go, OK? We’ll take the Zodiac to the next bay and you can show me.”

“OK…” I gave in. “One hour.”

I stayed on deck staring out at the island while Mom worked downstairs, watching in case the horse reappeared.

She was real, I whispered, trying to convince myself. But she hadn’t seemed real at first, had she? Did I actually touch her? My horse was like a ghost, a voodoo queen, and now she was disappearing, fading like a vapour as I waited for Mom and the next sixty minutes to tick past. And then another sixty. She was still working.

“I have about another half an hour to go,” she insisted when I went downstairs.

And another half an hour after that.

“We’ll go in the morning, OK?” Mom said as she served up dinner. She had made curried fish with coconut cream and rice – which is usually my favourite, but I wasn’t eating, just poking it around the plate.

“Sure,” I said in a flat voice. “Great, Mom.”

I lay in bed that night and looked up at the horse posters on my wall. I guess it is true that I have a vivid imagination. When I lived in Florida I had lots of imaginary horses. I made them all bridles out of rope with their names on bits of cardboard and I hung them up in the garden shed and pretended that was my tack room.

This was back when I was friends with Kristen. She was a horsey girl too. She would come over after school and we would showjump. We’d leap over fences made out of broomsticks and paint cans in the backyard. We didn’t always go clear – sometimes our horses would refuse, or knock a rail down and get faults. But I knew all the time that those horses weren’t real. And I could never have made up a horse like the one that I had seen in the jungle. I had never seen a horse like that in my life.

Well, if Mom wanted proof then she would get it.

Looking back, I guess I should have left a note. At the time I thought it would only make Mom angry if I told her what I was doing. I would have acted differently if I had only known what lay ahead.

The Mudpit

I’d got my clothes ready before I went to bed so that I could sneak out of the bunk room early the next morning and get dressed on deck without waking Mom. I’d already loaded my supplies – a bottle of water, a knife, some rope, a cheese sandwich (for me) and an apple (for the horse) – into my backpack and I threw the pack in first then climbed down the ladder and into the Zodiac.

I didn’t want to make a noise with the outboard motor so I rowed the Zodiac to shore. I’m OK at rowing, but I do end up going in circles sometimes. Luckily it was an incoming tide so that made it easier. When I reached the beach, I had to drag the inflatable all the way above the high tidemark so that the waves couldn’t pick it up and wash it away. I made sure Mom could see it from the Phaedra – I figured she could always swim over if she needed it while I was gone. Then I strapped on my backpack and headed inland, walking in the direction that the horse had gone, tracing her path from yesterday, following her into the jungle.

Beneath the dark canopy of the trees, the jungle floor was a tangle of snakewood and sea grape. I was looking for signs that the horse had been this way. You know, like they always do in movies, where they find a broken branch and then they know that the fugitive they are tracking has been there? Only I couldn’t see any broken branches, so I just kept walking.

As I pushed my way through the undergrowth, I thought about the horse, the way her mane had been tangled with burrs. If she really belonged to someone then you’d think they would have brushed her. The way I figured it, she must have been roaming loose for a long time. Maybe she didn’t even have an owner at all. I remembered that feeling I had when our eyes met, like we were bonded together somehow. My horse.

“You have an overactive imagination, Beatriz,” I muttered.

What I didn’t have was much sense of direction. As I walked deeper into the jungle I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to find my way back to the Phaedra again. When I had looked on the map, the island hadn’t seemed that big. I thought it would have taken me maybe half an hour to walk all the way across. But I had been walking that long already and I was still in dense jungle.

All the time as I walked, I had been listening to the birdsong, but now I heard another noise. In the trees to the left of me – the sound of branches snapping and crackling underfoot. I couldn’t see anything, but I had this feeling – like I was being stalked. Something or someone was in the trees with me, watching me, keeping their movements in step with my own. If I stopped walking, then it was quiet, but then when I set off again, I could have sworn I heard something.

“Who’s there?”

There was no reply.

I changed direction, heading away from the noises, walking faster, pushing my way through the trees.

I fought my way through the snakewood and pigeon berry and suddenly found myself in this vast clearing. I felt like I’d stumbled into a magical realm. The undergrowth disappeared completely, and there was a perfect circle of bare earth. At the centre of the circle was a massive tree. Its branches spread out in all directions, with sturdy limbs that were the perfect cradle for a secret tree house. The trunk was broad, with deep crevices, like folds in a curtain that you could have hidden yourself inside, and the roots stretched out like gnarled hands clawing into the earth.

I sat down on one of those roots, leant against the trunk and opened my backpack. I took out the sandwich and ate that and drank about half of the water in my bottle. Then I pulled out the rope and made a horse’s halter. I hadn’t ever used a real halter so I just fashioned it like the ones for my imaginary horses back in Florida, with a piece to go over the nose and another piece behind the ears – but big enough for a real horse obviously. I am good at sailor’s knots from being on the Phaedra so it looked quite sturdy once I was done.

I slung the halter over my shoulder and then I closed my eyes and I listened. I could hear the birdcalls, I could hear the leaves rustling above me, but there was also another sound – gentle, persistent, pounding in my head.

I could hear the sea.

I knew where to go now. The jungle began to thin out as the sea sound grew closer. On the other side of the island, the beach was quite different from Shipwreck Bay. The coast was one vast expanse of mudflats. Forests of mangroves sprouted up out of murky, shallow seawater pools, the remnants of the last tide that had been trapped and left behind.

I pushed my way through the tangles of mangroves and then stopped dead. Right in front of me in the middle of the mudflats, grazing on the marsh grass, was my horse.

She was real. And she was just as strange-looking as I’d remembered. With her crazy dreadlocked mane and her weird markings – the white face with the brown sunhat over her ears. But she was beautiful too. She had a pretty dish to her nose and a crest to her neck that made her look refined and elegant despite her bedraggled state. I thought about the way she had looked at me, when she first saw me in the forest, like she was queen of the island. There was that same nobility about her, even now as she stood fetlock-deep in the muddy waters, ripping up mouthfuls of the unappetising marsh tussock.

All the time I was walking, I had been planning what I’d do when I found her. My idea was to use the apple in my backpack to tempt her and then I would put the halter on. No, I am not joking – that was my plan. I can see how mad it was now, but the first time I met her, I had been so near, I figured I could easily get that close again and then the apple would do all the work.

Some plan. At the sound of me splashing and stumbling my way towards her through the mud she startled like a gazelle.

“No – don’t go!”

I wrestled frantically with my backpack, yanking it open to pull out the apple, but it was useless. She was gone already – galloping off across the mudflats, her tail held up high like a banner behind her, great splashes of seawater flinging up beneath her belly as she thundered across the mud.

I didn’t even try to run after her this time. She was way ahead of me, and she was so fast! I watched her, marvelling at her beauty, the way her legs gathered up and then drove back to earth again all at once, working like pistons powering her on.

And then, halfway across the mudflats, for some reason her strides slowed. She began to lumber along, her legs moving in an ungainly way, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, she fell. She went down hard and the way she lurched so violently reminded me of a zebra being taken down by a lion in a nature documentary.

As she struggled to right herself and get back up on her feet, I noticed that her hindquarters had almost completely disappeared into the mud. And that was when I realised. She hadn’t been taken down. The ground beneath had given way.

I thought she would fight her way free and get back to her feet. But she couldn’t seem to get out of the mud. She was flailing about, thrashing with her front legs. She got herself right up on her haunches, rearing up out of the sand, but then plunged back down again, rolling and twisting to one side as she fell.

I ran out on to the mudflats, dropping my backpack halfway across. It was like those dreams you have where your legs are stuck in glue and you can’t lift them and everything goes into slow motion. The mud suctioned at my feet, dragging at my legs. I was fighting for every stride. My breath came in panicked, desperate gasps.

My poor horse was going totally crazy. She lurched and faltered so that her neck swung like a pendulum, her head smacking down hard into the mud with a sickening thud. She was trapped, and struggling was only making it worse.

I kept running to her until I felt the ground beneath my feet go really soft. From here on in I had to test the ground with each step. I circled right round the horse, padding as I stepped, trying to find the best spot to approach from, where the ground was more solid.

My horse was foaming with sweat and shaking all over. She didn’t seem scared of me though; she was too focused on fighting her way out of the mud. I could see the whites of her eyes showing at the edges, making her blue eyes look even wilder. I could feel my heart hammering, but I had to get closer if I was going to help her, so I kept edging forward. I’d only taken a couple of steps when I felt the mud beneath me give way. I let out a squeal and the horse stopped thrashing and looked at me. Stay calm, I told myself, you can do this. I was almost close enough to reach her.

I ploughed on and felt the ground devouring me with each step. Then my foot got stuck and I collapsed hard against her.

The horse swung her neck as I fell, trying to move away from me, but she had nowhere to go. I grasped her soaking wet mane and clung on to it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I tried to push myself back off her but I was stuck. Her shoulder was pressed up hard against my thigh and I sank further into the mud.

“Easy, girl. Stay calm. I’m going to get you out.”

I still had the rope halter slung over my shoulder. With fumbling hands I tried to slip the loop over her nose and then I lifted the earpiece over her head. She didn’t flinch from my touch. It was like she knew I was trying to help her.

Once I got the halter on, the hard work really began. It took me ages to pull myself back out of the mud. I would work one leg free only to have it suctioned back down as I fought to loosen the other limb. In the end I managed to crawl free by clawing my way out with my hands, using my fingers like grappling hooks to pull myself out. At least I knew that I could get free again if I needed to. But while I was light enough to get out of the mud hole, my horse wasn’t. And the more she struggled, the deeper she sank.

I moved round so that I was facing her, and then, grasping on with one hand each side of the rope halter, I leant back with all my weight, dug in my heels and I pulled. I pulled with all my strength, as hard as I could.

And… Nothing. The only thing that happened was I began sinking faster than before back into the mud.

I tried again, really yanking at the halter so that the ropes dug into the horse’s face. But even as I tried again I knew it wasn’t going to work. The horse must have weighed at least ten times as much as me and she was stuck deep.

I looked around me for something I could use – a stick or a branch. But there was nothing except marsh grass and tidal pools. And the sea. The sea, which, as I now noticed, was getting closer. The tide was coming in.

This whole mudflat must end up underwater when the tide was high. My horse would end up underwater. I searched more desperately for something to pull her out with. And then, when I couldn’t find anything, I began to dig. Maybe I could make a channel through the mud so that she could fight her way back to the surface again.

I used both hands, scooping up the sand through my legs like a dog. There was a frenzy to my digging as I shovelled the mud up and threw it aside, and I flung myself into the task, digging the channel as fast as I could. With every handful of mud that I dug up, more mud oozed in to take its place. All I was doing was making the hole more and more squishy and unstable.

I tried to dig closer to the horse, and felt the mud cave away completely so that I was up to my thighs once more.

It was futile to try and get her out. So instead, I made up my mind that I would stay with her for as long as possible. She struggled less if I stayed close and stroked her, spoke soothing words to her. I could drag myself out when the time came, but until that moment I would not abandon her.

“It’s OK.” I cradled her head. “It’s going to be OK.” But I believed this less and less. She was exhausted and so was I. The sun was right overhead and it was hot, really hot. My head was throbbing, and I felt prickly all over, like my skin had hot needles pressing into it.

I became mesmerised by the lapping of the sea, the way it kept creeping forward, slowly but surely. We had another hour left at most before it reached us.

“I’m sorry,” I kept saying to my horse. Because I knew now that I couldn’t save her. But I couldn’t leave her. Not yet.

Maybe it was the sun that made me dizzy, I don’t know, but at some point I must have begun slipping in and out of consciousness. I would wake up with a jolt and then sink back into a dream.

Get up, I told myself. Things have gone too far now. It was time to get myself out of the mud. It probably sounds weird to say I was freezing, because the sun was right up overhead, but suddenly I felt chilled to the bone.

It was when I realised that I couldn’t move my legs that I truly began to panic. They’d gone completely numb under the mud. I tried to kick and felt myself sink deeper.

I clawed at the mud, driven on by raw adrenaline, but even the fear wasn’t enough to bring the strength back to my exhausted arms. My muscles were jelly.

“Help me!” The words came out weak and strangled. My throat was thick and dry, my tongue swollen. “Help me!”

I swear the parrots laughed at me. I heard them caw-caw. Why were they so horrible?

“Help me…” My words were choked with tears. I was so stupid. I should have left Mom a note. What if she never ever found me? I didn’t want to die out here in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t want to die.

My head was all woozy. I shut my eyes to block out the glare and my world became darkness and sounds. There was the constant lap and swell of the sea as it crept up on me, and the birds calling in the sky above us, the rattle of the horse’s breath and the mud gurgling beneath me. And then, cutting through all of these, I heard a shrill whine, like a mosquito at first, then growing closer and louder until it filled my ears. I opened my eyes and squinted into the sun.

It was a motorbike.

A Shadow on the Sun

The horse had lost all her fight. She lay submerged in the mud beside me, each rattling, heaving gasp she took seeming like it might be her last. Then the motorbike roared into the silence and brought her violently back to her senses.

She began to thrash about, legs flailing in the mud alongside me. I felt one of her front hooves accidentally glance against the hard bone of my ankle and I swallowed the pain in a wrenching gasp of agony. Trying to get away from her, I uselessly clawed at the mud again. But I had no strength left.

I tried to cry out again, to say, “I’m here!” but my tongue had turned to rubber. The motorbike noise filled my head, piercing my brain.

And then it stopped.

I could see a figure walking towards me. I screwed my face up against the blinding glare. My eyes hurt so much I had to shut them tight. When I opened them there was a shadow looming above me, blocking out the sun.

“My goodness, child! How long is you been like dis?”

I squinted up at the silhouette.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Hours, I guess.” I could barely get the words out of my dry mouth. I was still sun-blind but when the figure bent down really low, putting her face near mine, I could see that it was a woman. She had dark coffee-coloured skin and her hair was matted in dreadlocks, tangled with grey. She had a thick, broad nose, and swollen lips. Her eyes stared into mine with a keen brightness.

“Here.” She held my head by the chin and pushed a water bottle to my lips. “Drink it.”

I took five or six deep gulps. I had to fight with my own tongue to get the water down. It felt amazing.

I drank again and the woman grunted her approval, then put the empty bottle back in the bag she’d slung over her shoulder. She stood up and her shadow, which had mercifully blocked out the sun, was gone. I shut my eyes against the sun’s glare and when I opened them again I could see her walking away.

“No! Don’t leave! No!”

The motorbike engine cranked back to life. She was driving away!

I shouted until my throat was raw. But she didn’t come back. Soon, I couldn’t even hear the bike any more.

I willed the old woman to return. But there was no sound except the lapping of the waves growing nearer and the cries of the seabirds spiralling in the sky. In my mind the birds became vultures, circling above, waiting for the life to ebb out of us. When a gull landed right in front of me I screamed and reeled back in fright.

“Go away!” I shouted, grabbing a handful of mud and throwing it as hard as I could. “Leave us alone!”

That was when I broke down and cried. My breath came in horrible hiccups, as I choked on my sobs.

I washed in and out of consciousness and when I was awake it all felt like a dream. I honestly don’t know how long it was before I heard the sound of an engine again. Not a whine this time, but a full-bodied roar. In the distance something big was rumbling across the mudflats. I shielded my eyes with my hands. It was an old farm tractor, ancient rusty red, but the old woman drove it like it was a racing car, speeding across the mudflats, flinging a sheet of water up in her wake.

When she reached us she swung round wide so she wouldn’t disturb the mud hole. Then the tractor engine went dead and the next thing I knew she was standing right there next to me.

“You got a name, child?”

“Beatriz.” I managed to get the word out through my swollen, sunburnt lips. “My name is Beatriz Ortega.”

“Well, Bee-a-trizz child, I be Annie.” She thrust a ragged bit of frayed rope at me. “Take it!” she insisted. “You needs to get your hand under de horse’s belly. You’ll have to dig de mud, Bee-a-trizz, dig hard.”

“I can’t do it!” I was weeping as I said it. My fingernails were already raw from trying to dig the horse out and my arms were too weak.

“Yes, you can, child,” Annie said firmly. “Come on now!”

Annie went back to the tractor and grabbed a shovel and then she came and began to dig on the other side of the horse. She was making a hole for me to poke the rope through. “Come on, Bee-a-trizz. Not much more… keep goin’.”

I dug until my fingers bled, tears running down my cheeks.

“Dat’s de way!” Annie encouraged me. “You is doin’ it, Bee-a-trizz child! We almost dere…”

And then I felt her fingers clasp my own and she had the rope in her hands. She pulled it beneath the horse’s belly and then knotted it across the horse’s back, taking another length, which she crossed through and ran round the horse’s hindquarters. I lay my face down on the mud, utterly exhausted.

“You got to do another tink for me, Bee-a-trizz.”

Annie passed the rope to me again. “Tie it off by her belly and we is done. Tie a strong knot, make it tight.”

I plunged my hands back into the mud once more. I did the knot by feel, tying it blind beneath the mud. My hands were so weak and numb it took forever, but I managed it. The rope now ran right the way round the horse’s belly, closing the circuit and creating a harness.

Annie checked the knots and grunted with satisfaction. Then she came over and bent down on all fours and clasped me under the armpits.

“Hang on to me, child!” she commanded. I was shaking so badly I could hardly grip. “Get a good strong hold!” Annie snapped at me. “You gots to be ready when I pull. You cling to me, child, and you stay dead still. Ain’t gonna do no good if you kick about.”

With her arms wrapped round me, Annie crouched low and then she took a deep breath and strained. With a firm, sudden yank she heaved me out and dragged me clear of the mud hole. For an old woman she was plenty strong! I lay on the sand, gasping like a fish that had just been landed on a dock.

She dragged me up the beach a little way and then gave me another bottle of water to drink and went back to her tractor. Humming to herself, she got behind the wheel and revved the engine. The tractor lurched forward and the ropes went taut. Then suddenly the tractor tyres began to spin, straining against the weight. The tractor was going backwards, being dragged into the hole, falling in on top of the horse!

Annie didn’t seem concerned. Still humming, she cranked up the gears and put her foot down. The engine revved and, in fits and starts, the tractor edged forward. As it did so, my horse seemed to stir back to life. Reawakened, she began flailing with her forelegs.

The tractor had loosened the mud’s grip and with a dramatic scramble of limbs, the horse lurched forward. She came halfway out so that her front legs were visible above the mud. She only needed to get her haunches out and she would be free. But her legs didn’t seem able to move any further. They had gone weak and numb from their hours thrashing beneath the mud. When Annie finally dragged her up so that she was almost standing, the horse wobbled as her hind legs collapsed. She was going to fall back into the hole!

Annie was ready for her. She let the horse find her feet, ignoring the seawater that had begun to fill the hole and the tractor tyres rapidly sinking down into the mud.

Then the tractor gave a loud growl as Annie suddenly gunned it forward and the horse was catapulted clear out of the mud hole.

I watched in horror as my horse stumbled and fell to its knees. For a sickening moment I thought she might break a leg, but Annie kept the ropes taut so that the horse managed to go forward in a series of awkward stumbles until it stood at last on firm ground.

Annie dug a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her dirty floral dress and used it to mop the sweat off her brow. Now that the horse was out, she had a look of utter relief on her face as she jumped down off the tractor.

The horse didn’t flinch at Annie’s touch. She stood weak as a kitten while Annie ran her hands over her and then untied the ropes and refastened them to the halter and hitched the horse to the back of the tractor.

“She be OK,” she said, nodding sagely. “Notink broken. Just some scratches is all.” Then she looked me over. “Bee-a-trizz,” she said, “look at you shakin’! You gonna catch youself ammonia from bein’ in dat hole. You be comin’ home wit’ me.”

Annie helped me up on to the tractor so that I was sitting on the wheel arch of one of the massive tyres.

“I want to go home,” I said. My voice sounded weird to me – so small, so pitiful. Annie didn’t even seem to hear me – or at least she didn’t say anything. She clambered up to take her place at the steering wheel in front of me and put the tractor into gear.

And so, with the horse following behind the tractor, and me perched up there on the wheel arch, Annie chugged slowly back across the mudflats. Not towards home, but in the opposite direction, away from Mom and the Phaedra, towards the dark jungle hills of Great Abaco.

Annie’s Crib

“My boat is in the other direction… please…”

It was useless. Annie didn’t even acknow-ledge my words. She just kept driving, humming away to herself.

The ride got even bumpier when we left the mudflats and took the wide dirt track that cut up through the jungle hills. The horse stumbled on behind the tractor on wobbly legs, doing her best to keep up and I clung on, flung about with every pothole and rut we struck.

I was still feeling really woozy and I was about to beg Annie to stop when she cut the engine and said, “We is here.”

‘Here’ was a bright yellow and turquoise beach cottage, a tiny hideaway with its front porch poking out from beneath the trees. To the side of the cottage there was a rusted-out old car wreck, and beside it some makeshift wooden pens that looked like they were used to house animals, although they were empty at the moment. The only living creatures were three scrawny brown chickens roaming free and a painfully thin white cat who ran at the sight of us. A tinkling like wind chimes came from a tree in the middle of the front yard, its branches strung with beer bottles. Annie caught me staring at the bottle tree and gave a cackle.

“Dey for keepin’ away de evil.”

Annie jumped off the tractor and helped me down from the wheel rim.

“I want to go home,” I mumbled weakly as she lifted me to the ground. I felt like a four-year-old begging for Mommy. Annie paid me no attention. She just walked up to the front porch and I had no choice but to follow her.

The porch floorboards were so old they bent dangerously beneath my feet. Tangles of chicken bones and purple herbs were bound in knotted red twine and strung from the eaves, and I had to duck underneath to get inside.

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