³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

The multi-coloured beads on the ends of Myra's dreadlocked hair clinked together as she rested her head on her slender fingers and gazed, wistfully, towards the horizon, where a small rowing boat bobbed along on its own, without a sailor to control it. She studied the boat as it floated towards the misty coastline far off in the distance. It made its watery journey and came to rest on a jagged, rocky area, which jutted out from the quivering surface of the sea.

Myra yawned and stretched as she turned around to find the four other children, strewn about on the floor in front of the fire. Amity, the eldest of the five children, had in her hands a heavy, brown, leather bound book, from which she was reading fairy tales to the two young boys and a girl on their stomachs in front of her. She finished the chapter that she was reading and closed the book. A cloud of dust flew into her face and she coughed a little as she tucked the book away on the shelf. Yawning slightly and stretching, Amity beckoned Myra over to her. They both sat down and, with a glass of milk in one hand, began to discuss their new home.

They and the rest of the children lived in an abandoned lighthouse off the coast of Northern Ireland. Myra had come across from the Caribbean when she was four years old. Her parents had died in an arson attack and she had been sent to live in an orphanage. That was where she had met the other children- Seamus, Benji, Lydia and Amity.

Amity was their leader and the most intelligent of the group. She had found them food and a home after the carers in the orphanage had abandoned them.

Seamus was the eldest boy, He had a logical explanation for everything and even though he was only ten, he could always be found with his pale face buried in an old book from the miniature library he had created.
Benji was the most restless of the group. He was only eight and a half (the half was very important to him) years old and he liked nothing better than climbing, the higher the better. Every day he would find a higher tree or a larger jumble of rocks to climb up and come rushing back into the lighthouse to tell the girls how far he had climbed.
And finally there was Lydia. She was the youngest of the group at only six years old. You could often find her out on the rocks, rifling through the old bottles and other lost property that had washed up on the shore. Lydia was a discoverer. She loved toddling along the beaches and climbing over the rocks, trying to locate new places where she could hide the little treasures and random knick-knacks she had accumulated over the weeks.

Eventually, after half an hour of making beds and mopping up spilt milk, Amity and Myra managed to get everyone settled in bed and sound asleep. Amity crawled under her blanket and found herself drifting into a deep slumber. It was altogether pitch black in the tall lighthouse. The only sounds that could be heard were those of the ocean waves, heard through the hole in the front door, and the tiny snuffles drifting from under the covers of Lydia's bed.

Myra, however could not sleep. She tossed and turned until she could bear it no longer and clambered out of her bed. She lit a lantern and tiptoed through the door, taking care not to stand on any loose floorboards as she went. It was another five minutes or so before Myra decided to go and watch the sea from the balcony. Myra gradually made her way up the many flights of stairs that led to the service room at the top of the lighthouse. The light in the lighthouse still worked, but it hadn't been cleaned for quite a few years and Myra always wondered if there were any secrets hidden away behind the years of dust that had collected on the lens. Myra stopped to catch her breath at the circular window in the wall. She took care not to make a sound, as she knew that Amity would get very angry if she knew she was wandering about at this hour. As she let the moonlight shine through the window and highlight the silver buttons on her pyjamas, Myra noticed something bobbing in the ocean, out of the corner of her eye. What was it? She squinted through the window to see what it was, but it was impossible to see in detail what it was that was out there.

Myra, filled with the urge to learn what the floating object was, began to stumble up the winding staircase, right up to the service room to get a better look.

When she finally reached the top of the lighthouse, Myra paused outside the door, deciding what to do. Should she go back to bed and forget about the mysterious object? Or should she brave the dangers of the lighthouse and find out what it was?

It will only take a second, she thought, and everyone's asleep anyway, they'll never know! She reached for the door handle and turned it ever so slowly, so as not to wake the others with its high pitched squeal. As the door opened the moonlight burst in and filled the room with light, making Myra squint to stop her eyes hurting.

Shading her face with her arm, Myra gradually made her way through the room, brushing cobwebs out of her way with her free hand. The moon was nearly covered with clouds now, so Myra let her arm drop to her side. The view that met her was amazing. There was ocean as far as the eye could see and to the left of the lighthouse there was the ragged coastline where Myra had watched the rowing boat get stuck the night before. From here Myra could see the coastal town of Castlerock. The domed building on the cliff top looked eerie under the moonlight and the beaches were deserted. Nobody could see her from the coastline though; she was too far away. The only people that could ever see the children in the lighthouse were the local fishermen in their rowing boats, but they were old men who still believed in the ghost stories told to them, about the lighthouse, by their fathers.

Now Myra had a better view of the sea, she crept forward and looked down into the water and eventually spotted the floating object. It looked like a broken boat or a raft with something on it, but Myra still couldn't quite see what. Myra spun around and found herself face to face with a brass telescope.

That was lucky, she thought. She picked up the telescope and focused it on the wooden object in the water. Indeed it was a raft, but there was a person sprawled on it. A boy.