Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
22 December, 1936
| 22nd December, 1936 Dear Diary: we all made it back alive. But Saimmi was quite right; it was a trip nobody would volunteer for had they known. On the afternoon of the 20th we piled into the flying boat, heading for somewhere just as hazardous as the Aleutians but this time the terrain was safe and the locals dangerous. Although the weather was clear for the first part of the trip, when we got to what should have been Krupmark Island around sundown there was nothing to be seen but a fog bank. Rather unseasonal, and not at all what the forecast expected. Still, the mare flying the plane proved to be an excellent pilot, and we touched down just inside the barrier reef. A tricky landing even in good conditions! We have rehearsed this jumping out of a cart shed on Main Island; as soon as we felt the keel grate into the beach we dived out in all directions, throwing ourselves into the shallow water making hard targets. In ten seconds nobody fired at us, so we picked ourselves up and waved Priestess Oharu to come out of the shelter of the aircraft and join us. As soon as we were starting up the steep hillside above the beach the flying boat reversed prop pitch and backed out, the sound of its engines soon vanishing into the night and fog. The way up the trackless hillside was steep, but we could keep a fairly direct line using our radium dial compasses even in the dark and thickening fog. Priestess Oharu is evidently not trained for this, but we expected as much; there was always a friendly paw available from one or other of us to pull her up or boost her over obstacles. It is a help with three of us being felines; we needed no telltale torches and one would have to be very close to see our eyes shining in what moonlight trickled through the fog. As far as we could tell, nobody lives on this side of the island, and there are few paths. We had arrived about half way up the Western coast, aiming for the col between Mount Krupp and the charmingly titled Traitor’s Ridge; Fort Bob is on the far side with its church. Molly seemed to be quite happy with the trip; at one rest stop she grinned unnervingly and whispered “Military-religious Target ahead,” as if she was a bomb aimer on approach run. Had it been daylight in friendly territory we could have forged over the col in an hour from the beach; advancing “by bounds” through the scrub is tiring work, and we were very glad of the high boots with steel shin pads as we found out about branches in the dark. According to books on colonial peacekeeping, police have spotted disguised rebels by looking at the scars on their shins; honest folk rarely need to roam around off the path in the middle of the night. At last we found the high point, crawled over the skyline (a force of habit, besides the moon just might have chosen that moment to break through and silhouette us to the whole of Fort Bob) and took a five minute break. A handful of dried dates apiece were most welcome, and leave no telltale packaging behind. On the top of the ridge the mist was thinner, and we checked our bearings. The “Hill” above Fort Bob is not the highest spot on the ridge (that would be far too exposed to storms) but a large knoll standing out above the main settlement. We could just about make it out through the mist, though even felines with binoculars could not see any details. Maria’s eyesight is very good in daylight but bovines are very poorly equipped for night hiking, and she brought up the rear. Her ears are as good as anyone except Molly, and she is a very reassuring friend to have watching one’s back. At about ten we stopped to prepare the other defences, the ones that do not get smuggled in from Vostok. Helen, Saffina and I handed over our rifles to Maria to carry for the next bit. They would do us no good underground and spiritually hardly fit with what we must do there; however unconsciously having material weapons available would distract us from the rituals that are all that will help keep us alive. While Molly and Maria stood guard Oharu led us in the first protective chant, something that hopefully should slow down what is down there recognising us. This took half an hour, and then it was down to the church and what we found there. Just as we arrived outside, we heard a series of loud explosions from down the hill in Fort Bob. A yellowish glow tinged the fog, and by the sounds of distant yells and fire-bells there would be no furs idly wandering up the hill that night. Good for Adele! At least, we assumed it was Adele and Madeleine X. But we had to put that completely out of our minds a minute later; they had done their part but we had to concentrate totally on our own. The church was quite small, but in surprisingly good condition. Houses on Fort Bob are generally rather ramshackle prefabricated affairs but this has been repaired with proper building stone and imported slates. It is by far the oldest Euro building I have seen in the Nimitz Sea islands, by a century and more. The door was unlocked, which was disturbing in its own right. Molly was equipped to get in quietly if the locks had defeated us; these days she carries a large crowbar that has just the right curve to hook over her shoulder for carriage and is quite inconspicuous under a long coat. For some reason policemen tend to look down on folk who walk around equipped to open harmless crates and the like. Inside the church there were no lights, and although it had traditional pews, from the murals on the walls it was obvious that the ceremonies enacted in here in recent years are quite unconnected with anything in the Common Prayer Book. We were careful not to look too hard at those scenes. There was a small staircase leading up to a bell tower, but no other obvious doors except the one we had entered through. As our Tutors have been impressing on us since the first year, another name for a building with one exit is “A Trap”. This is where it would have been good to have another party covering the building from outside; the trouble is, such would make our trip far more likely to be discovered in the first place despite the fog. As it is, once we are in the church or underground, any casual patrols outside should see nothing untoward and our scent would soon disperse. The altar was the obvious place to look according to all the books, and indeed after a few minutes Maria worked out the combination of pulling and twisting that got the big stone slab moving. She looked rather ill as she looked down that steep passage; although our noses only detected damp rock, the effect was like coming across unburied bodies. She reached for her crucifix – then hesitated, as if realising it would be like trying to jam a radio transmission with a searchlight, and stepped aside. Since Cranium Island she has had her viewpoints rather widened, and though I think she hardly really approves of our taking up the Spontoonie religion, she knows as a fact that it works. Oharu led the way down the stairs, and after she demonstrated an amazing expertise in getting through defences we could scarcely see the full extent of, we emerged in what was perhaps once a natural cavern, dimly glowing with the sickly yellow light of luminous mosses. The cave looked rather like those medical photographs one sees of bloated cysts and tumours, but in negative – as if the living rock had strained to pull away from what was in the centre. There was another altar there, this one of ancient bones. I knew without being told what had happened to the priestesses who had bound the glowing Fragment to this place five hundred years ago. They had used all their power to seal the thing underground and discovered they no longer had enough to break free of it themselves. It is a good thing Molly is not as trigger-happy as she used to be and was carrying a single shot rifle rather than her Thompson – she would have burned through half a drum magazine as figures came shambling towards us from the shadows. We were surprised by the starving wrecks of what I think had been three missionaries, bearing the book Saimmi had warned us to search for. Exactly what is in the book is a mystery to us, but it is unlikely to be cosy bedtime reading. Oharu judged the three harmless – and indeed they collapsed, giving us another problem to think about for the return trip. The book itself is exceedingly dangerous, even I could tell. Once we had it, things started to happen. Saimmi had been quite right, our rifles would have been useless against what came at us. On the other paw, Molly had hers what many religions would call blessed, and while we started the great binding chant she burned through four clips of ammunition. What she hit was never entirely material – but regardless, she put them down remorselessly one after another. The main chant seemed to last forever, but at last it was finished and Oharu seized the Fragment – still glowing, and rather larger than the one I found on Cranium Island. With the skills we have learned, it was like seeing a barrel of gunpowder with sparks landing all around – one false move and the whole thing would have gone up. Though her fur bristled and I could smell scorching cloth, she picked it up unharmed – and the horrible altar dissolved, turning into dust of half a millennia of decay. Whoever worshipped in the church building above us might sometimes have come down here but could never have removed the fragment; the sacrifices of the Priestesses had bound it to this place and no ordinary force could have moved it. Saffina managed to sweep up a token amount of what was left on the altar slab, to return to Spontoon soil – but then the roof started to shake, and it became very obvious that this was no more a place for the living. Maria handed the bundle of rifles to Saffina and picked up the three missionaries; they were of small species and almost starving, though they must have been her own weight between them. Even as we got back to the staircase great chunks of rock were crashing down around the altar site. I had feared the narrow stairs would be blocked, but somehow they seemed to be wider rather than narrower than on the way down. As soon as we got out I realised we really should have had a covering party aboveground. Kansas Smith had found us; or rather she had let us do the hard and dangerous bit then just waited for the prize to fall into her skinny lap. A dozen henchmen were there, low-grade hired guns by the look of them. I was more worried by the sight of the small pig Half Ration and the thing that goes with him. I could see it quite clearly in that light, like the living shadow of one of those impossible shapes Susan de Ruiz draws. In that place it seemed to be bigger, more definite as if it could be seen better in the light of the fragment. I somehow found time to realise that having had an effective covering party would mean bringing in a big enough military force to shoot it out against all comers, not just Kansas Smith but the heavily armed Krupmark residents who might swarm up The Hill to see what all the action was. The ritual underground needed utter concentration, and definitely I got the impression that if we had missed one beat, the results of the surface battle would no longer be our worst worry. Dear Diary: I now see why Saimmi values her Priestess so very highly; the rest of us are cannon-fodder in comparison. Oharu faced down Kansas Smith plus the book – and with her powers defeated both of them. I could tell she was drawing on the power of the Stone she carried as she pulled Kansas’s bullets off course to slam into the stone or the ground. I had the feeling that this was a rather bad idea, but it was that or death for all of us and letting Kansas get the stone. I think that Molly was the only one who could not feel the power building up; Maria certainly was eyeing all the exits. In the course of the battle of wills, it had gone hard with the hired guns who had discovered their weapons were no use whatsoever against what appeared when the book was opened by Half Ration. Only Kansas and Half Ration were left alive on their side of the room, and the pig escaped despite our best efforts. Oharu ordered us all out and Molly was the only one who stayed to see Kansas dealt with. I did not see what happened back in the church, but something certainly did. There was a release of power like a lightning stroke, and then a devastated looking Oharu came staggering out, a few minutes after a very angry-looking Molly. I did not see what happened to Kansas Smith, but I would not bet a farthing on her walking out of that building. Maria and I were in the lead, scouting for the track back when we heard voices behind us in the mist. They sounded determined and efficient, a trained patrol rather than an impromptu posse. Evidently the events in the church had attracted attention of all the wrong kinds. I remembered the expensive murals on the walls, and shuddered at the thought of what rituals and celebrations must have been held there over the years. Even as the Cranium Island fragment had its adherents, this one must have been used for dark purposes by some of the highly ranked inhabitants up on the hill – and in pure Hollywood style we were running off with their Native Idol, in a most hideously primal form. Oharu looked in a bad way with the Fragment clutched tight to her burned kimono, but we managed to get her away into night and fog before the locals turned up. Everything had already taken far too long; by our watches it was barely an hour before Nikki was due to pick us up that we left the church, and by repute that mare is not one to hang around patiently. Getting down the hill with the pursuit beating the bushes was a nightmare. We had to stay quiet; sound travels a long way in the fog. But neither could we lose any more time; all of us were strained to the limit carrying the three unconscious furs and sometimes ended up dropping them in sheer exhaustion. Mercifully I doubt they felt it at the time. In Songmark training we are taught various ways to carry injured furs, but most of them involve some kind of stretcher. It is extraordinarily difficult to carry an unconscious body down a pathless hillside in the dark, no matter if they are half one’s own weight. We were already very tired, being drained in ways our gymnastic training never prepared us for. Maria and Saffina took one of the chipmunk nuns each, all the way down to the beach; the missionary was shared between the rest of my dorm, the other two guarding the rear. The Fedorov automatic rifles may have only a small cartridge but fit plenty into their clip; had any party of furs with ordinary rifles jumped us, just two of us could have sprayed out a lot of lead. Definitely we were glad not to be lugging the bulk and fifty pound load of my T-Gew through the bushes. Although the beach was cold, deserted and almost hidden in the darkness, it was as fine a sight to us as anything on a South Island postcard. For a few seconds we stood at the edge looking at our watches and compasses, then Molly’s ears perked up and she declared our ride home was arriving. She was quite right; inside a minute Nikki’s aircraft ghosted into view out of the fog. Tired as we were, we made sure to board it properly – Oharu first with the stone, then we passed onboard the unconscious furs, the last three of us standing guard ten yards off just expecting a patrol of locals to jump out of the bushes with guns blazing. I think what saved us was our unlikely exit point heading West down the trackless hillside; anyone just trying to get away from the church as fast as possible would have fled along one of the regular trails we had crossed, heading along the main ridge towards Mount Krupp and the forests we lay up in on our first trip. I think most of the pursuit went that way. The coral reef on the Western side of the island is impassable by anything bigger than a native canoe according to the chart, and as for aircraft – most folk would think that anyone crazy enough to want to take off in twenty yard visibility along a narrow lagoon would not be a good enough pilot to manage it. Two shattering aircraft flights in a week, the Aleutians and now this! Fortunately Nikki’s aircraft had seats, and the journey was much shorter. We very soon cleared the fog bank; looking back we could see it draped over the island like a blanket, with a few plumes of smoke rising through to show where something in Fort Bob was still smouldering. I do hope Adele and Madeleine are all right. If they were caught it is unlikely they would be kept alive long enough for us to mount a rescue mission, but we would have to go in anyway to make sure. One quite realises why our Tutors dislike us meddling with Krupmark business. We had time to talk with Oharu, who was clutching the fragment as if it would go off with the slightest vibration. It was covered tightly against the light, but when we closed the blinds in the back of the aircraft she declared it would be safe to work on providing we were quick. At her instructions we used the materials that had been arranged; a lead box with a lid that we melted hermetically shut with a blow-lamp. Using a blow-lamp onboard an aircraft in flight is something we would probably get thrown out of Songmark for doing in other circumstances, but there is more danger in the box than in any quantity of fuel vapour. It was only when Nikki called back to strap ourselves in and commenced a tight spiralling descent that I realised where we were going to touch down. Sacred Lake! We had all been told never to attempt this; it takes an exceptionally powerful aircraft to get out again, clearing even the lowest point where the river comes out in a narrow gorge. I know Angelica just managed it in her Silver Angel; I also have seen the dents branches made in her floats. Another metre lower into the canopy and they would have been mourning her in Gothenburg. We landed safely, much to my amazement though in truth I was too exhausted to think straight. Maria dropped the sealed box in about ten fathoms of water onto one of the ledges that one can see deep down – the walls are vertical but from altitude with the right light one can just make out several ledges where the main fragment might be. I hardly noticed that Oharu had left us till we were taking off again and I saw her scrambling ashore, wearing nothing but her fur. That kimono was burned as full of holes as an ironing board at Saint Winifred’s first year Domestic Economy class, but there was no smell of scorched fur from inside. To be honest, I fell asleep about the second we cleared the trees. Saffina and Helen had slept all the way since five minutes out of Krupmark, in a nervous reaction. I can believe my Father’s stories from the Great War of experienced troops sleeping through a nearby artillery barrage, only waking up when it got too close for comfort. Maria told me later that we went to Casino Island to hand the unconscious missionaries over for medical care; possibly they ended up in that hospital on Meeting Island that tourists are never taken to. I never saw them again. One wonders what the offspring looked like. I vaguely remember being on a water taxi to South Island and being half carried down to Haio Beach, where I woke up at Sunset in the Hoele’toemi guest longhouse with Helen and Saimmi still asleep next to me. Such was our Solstice day, the day we were going to get Tailfast! Well, at least it was memorable – and all in the course of duty. next |