Through the Tiger's Eye by Kerrie O'Connor Page B

with a ghost. She wanted someone who was married to her and not to some star he hadn’t even found yet. She said Dad loved whatever he saw at the end of his telescope more than the people in his own lounge room. Lucy was terrified then and wanted to throw up or cry, but she didn’t do either. She just yelled at Ricardo.
    Now, holding the strange book, Lucy wished he would hurry home from China.
    Grandma’s voice snapped her out of it.
    ‘That’s a beautiful old book, dear! Where did you get it?’
    ‘In the hall.’
    Well, the strange green leather atlas wasn’t Grandma’s. Lucy kept looking in the index of Auntie Alice’s one. She tried B for Burchimo. Bingo! There it was: a cluster of red-brown islands with a big fat one in the middle. They were in the Pacific Ocean, way up to the north-east of Australia.
    Lucy looked in vain for Telares. She looked carefully at the cluster of red-brown islands that made up Burchimo. Then one caught her eye. It was the same colour but sat like a lonely seagull in the ocean, much further east. It had no name but a distinctive shape: two halves joined like the outstretched winds of a soaring gull. It was right near a dotted line called – Lucy had to squint to read the tiny writing – International Date Line. But it wasn’t Telares. According to the map, it was definitely part of Burchimo.
    Just then, Grandma looked up and said: ‘What was that suburb you asked about, Lucy, love?’
    ‘Telares, and it’s not a suburb, it’s a country.’
    ‘You’re a good girl doing homework in the Christmas holidays. A country, eh?’
    Lucy didn’t bother trying to explain to Grandma that you didn’t get Christmas holidays homework, especially when you were never going back to primary school again. She knew it was useless because Grandma had got that thinking look on her face. Lucy imagined a little ticking clock on her forehead, like the icon on the computer when the hard drive was busy. But Grandma didn’t have the right software installed. She shook her head.
    ‘Telares. No. I don’t know it. It’s ringing a bell, only I can’t remember why. Strange.’
    And she went back to her crossword.
    Lucy closed Auntie Alice’s atlas and opened the mysterious old green leather one. When she turned the heavy, yellowed pages to the index, the name Telares jumped out immediately. She turned to page 17 and there it was, the nameless, lonely seagull of an island that she had seen in the other atlas, massively enlarged. She could clearly see the two ‘wings’, joined like a V at the bottom. The surrounding ocean was beautifully painted in glowing greens and blues. Dolphins and whales cavorted in the water, and schools of fish swam close to the sandy shores. The island was ringed with golden beaches. At the top of the page, in gold writing, was a date: 1600 AD. Faintly, on the left of the page, was the rough ink outline of a familiar cluster of islands: Burchimo. Telares had pride of place in this atlas!
    As Lucy stared at the map, a rushing and roaring filled her ears. The solemn greens and browns of mountain ranges, valleys and plains rippled, and the black dots of cities and towns shook and shifted. The sea boiled and frothed, surging onto golden beaches, swamping plains, roaring through the valleys, flooding all in its path, until only the tallest mountains remained. The island was sinking under the sea! The roaring intensified, like a giant shell held to Lucy’s ear. Suddenly she realised that her head was so close to the atlas she was almost lying on it. As she lifted her head, the sound of the sea retreated and she watched the map resolve itself again into ordinary greens and browns. The sea resumed its innocent calm blue.
    Lucy shook her head. She couldn’t escape the overwhelming sensation that Telares had almost disappeared before her eyes.
    Lucy flicked back a few pages. There was Telares again, that same unmistakable stretch of wings and golden beaches. But the date was 1300 AD!