The Mountain on the Other Side of Light: A Cry for Help

By Malcolm Haslett

On holiday at a small seaside resort, Bridget meets Tom, whose aunt pilots the airship Goodcheer that takes lucky tourists on sightseeing trips around the bay. She does not guess what a role the airship will play in her life as she gazes out to sea with her wheelchair-bound brother and remarks casually:

“Isn’t it funny how we often see clouds on the horizon and like to think they’re mountains?”

Nor does she foresee the role of the sinister Madame Retsinis, a fairground fortune-teller who talks darkly of opportunities to travel to far lands...

Or what it all has to do with the strange local tales of Manny Reeve, a local eccentric who claimed to have visited a land whose people were threatened with ecological, fierce tribal conflicts and power-hungry tyrants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Jan 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370788576

Malcolm Haslett

Malcolm Haslett has been involved in conflict situations from an early age. Brought up in Northern Ireland, he worked as a volunteer for two years in Rwanda, and for most of his career worked at the BBC World Service trying to explain Russia to the world, and – rather more difficult – the world to Russia. He is very happily married, with three adult children, and lives in London.

Book preview

Prologue

For a few days one summer the seaside town of Havenmouth was rocked by the unexplained (the local papers called it ‘tragic’) disappearance of a teenage girl, Bridget Light. She had been on holiday there with her parents and her younger brother. According to her parents she had gone off by herself, either along the cliffs or to the summer fairground above the town – without their permission – and never come back.

Was she abducted? the headlines wanted to know.

The papers noted that there had been a larger than usual number of shady characters seen that summer in the back streets of Havenmouth near the railway station. Two in particular had made a sinister impression, an awkward-looking pair, one very large, the other small and wiry, both wearing unsuitably dark and heavy clothes for the hot and sultry weather that had prevailed.

What made the girl’s mysterious disappearance all the more poignant, according to the papers, was that Mr and Mrs Light’s other child, Timothy, was disabled, and permanently confined to a wheelchair. Apparently the young boy had said absolutely nothing since his sister’s disappearance, though one local paper – clearly claiming greater knowledge than its main rival – informed its readership that this was simply because he was in fact a deaf mute.

Only one publication, a little-read newssheet with the quaint title The Fisherman’s Almanac seemed to entertain the possibility of a happy ending. The Almanac, a square tabloid printed on light green paper, reminded its small and diminishing readership of the strange case many years previously of a local fisherman, Emmanuel Reeve, who had also disappeared in mysterious circumstances, but had – remarkably – reappeared some two years later, as suddenly and bizarrely as he had vanished.

Manny Reeve, the Almanac continued, had then become a well-known figure around the town, only too glad to regale anyone who would listen with strange stories of his adventures ‘over beyond that mountain’. The mountain he referred to was thought to be the mountain of myth and legend which allegedly appeared to some folk on Midsummer’s Eve – on the horizon, out beyond the Further Point at the entrance to Havenmouth Bay.

Strangely, the Almanac did not seem to treat this story with the degree of scepticism one might have expected. Nor did it make any mention of what eventually became of Manny Reeve.

Had he possibly disappeared a second time?

It was surprising perhaps in the circumstances that none of the papers made any connection between the girl’s disappearance and the other tragic story of that summer: the loss of the airship which for the last few years had come during the tourist season to offer flights round Havenmouth Bay. Most people had probably only noticed the airship because of the rather curious advertisement for an insurance company which it carried in bright red and blue letters on its silver sides.

The airship, ironically named the Goodcheer (after the insurance company), had apparently been swept out to sea by the sudden onset of a summer storm. And no trace had ever been found of it…

Or of its pilot, the indomitable and popular Madge Tytrus, and her nephew Tom, who had been her only crew.

***

Chapter 1

A Trick of the Eyes

The first clue was the stone pillar. No one else seemed to pay it any attention, but Bridget had been aware of it for several days. It stood alone on the grassy headland above the beach, a gaunt finger of blue-grey rock about twice the height of a tall man.

If Bridget’s attention had not been drawn to it, she often thought afterwards, she would never have looked out to sea that day and seen what she thought was a mountain. And she would never have begun following the long trail of clues and riddles that would take her...

Where had it taken her?

…to a different level of awareness, another world, another realm?

And she would never have ended up in that final, incredible, terrifying place...

The tall rock tilted slightly in the direction of the sea, as if trying to catch the inquisitive bystander’s gaze and direct it out towards the horizon. But when, on that fateful morning three or four days into their holiday, Bridget did allow her eyes to drift in that direction, all she saw was a line of clouds...

Just a line of clouds. It was no more than that. A row of brilliantly white clouds riding along the horizon.

Isn’t it funny... she said, more to herself than to her brother Tim, who was beside her in his wheelchair. Isn’t it funny how we often see clouds on the horizon and like to think they’re mountains?

That’s exactly what the clouds did look like just at that moment. A ragged jumble of mountains with gullies and ridges and, near their summits, snowfields, glaciers and cliffs.

Tim said nothing. He looked cold, sitting there wrapped in his plaid blanket.

I suppose we’ve all done it, Bridget continued, wittering on absent-mindedly. I mean, at one time or other... imagined, that is, that we see mountains on the horizon. She was hoping vaguely to distract her brother, if only for a few minutes.

Tim again was silent, but an indeterminate sound came from beyond his wheelchair. The father was slouched back in his deckchair, a floppy white sunhat pulled down over his eyes. He was battling with the crossword from the Saturday supplement. It was now Tuesday, and so far he had solved just four clues.

Some do it more than others, he muttered.

Bridget’s mother lay limp in the deckchair beside him, her eyes hidden by ornate sunglasses. She raised her head momentarily, then let it flop back on to the canvas.

Mm…, she said. What mountains?

Actually, they do look like mountains, insisted Bridget. Or rather one particularly large mountain, covered with ice fields and glaciers... A very oddly shaped mountain, as if someone had taken a bite out of the top of it… What do you think… is it just a trick of the eyes?

Mm, probably, said her mother, waggling her toes to dislodge some sand.

Her father made a clicking sound with his tongue.

Perhaps it’s not a cloud, said Tim laconically. Perhaps it is a mountain...

Bridget glanced at him. ‘What an odd thing to say,’ she thought.

Tim managed an ironic little smile. You weren’t there yesterday, he said, at the fairground... Mum and I found this crazy fortune-teller in her ever so creepy booth, near the entrance... Countess Baimonti she was called, or something like that... We went in just for a laugh.

And? Bridget couldn’t hide her fascination.

Oh, she said that I, or someone close to me, might well be destined for a ‘flight over the clouds’, to a land… I can’t remember how she put it… ‘on the other side of light’! Or something like that…

Bridget’s attention was now well and truly captured. What on earth did she mean? she asked, getting closer to the wheelchair.

She meant an aeroplane, of course, said the father knowingly. Not hard to see that... It’s easy to guess that people like us might be going somewhere in an aeroplane...

But Bridget ignored him. What did she mean, Tim?

He turned his sad, gentle eyes to her, and smiled.

It was strange, he said. The woman... she had a twinkle in her eyes, as if she knew that we all knew that it was a joke. And yet...

He paused. Bridget looked at him expectantly.

And yet she seemed to be taking it all so seriously. She asked if I’d heard of Elonym...

Of what? asked Bridget, with a small giggle.

Elonym... It seems there’s a legend along this coast, one of those old Celtic legends, about a mysterious country out there over the sea... He nodded vaguely towards the horizon. It only appears on special days... when the light is right, she said. And it’s called Elonym.

Hm, I did read something silly like that, the mother murmured, in the local guidebook. About the legend of some ‘sunken realm’. Out there somewhere… She waved her arm lazily towards the sea, and gave a little laugh. Apparently people say that you can sometimes see what they call ‘the Mountain’.

Bridget glanced instinctively back towards the horizon.

Her father made another dismissive noise.

Good for the tourist industry, no doubt, he murmured.

Mm, said the mother.

There was silence for a minute or two.

But... what if people really have seen it? Bridget asked at last.

No one reacted.

I mean it! she said indignantly. If so many people have really seen something, a mountain or whatever, then it must mean it’s really there...

Don’t, Bridget! said Tim sharply, and huddled down into his chair, frowning. Don’t start up about imaginary places where everything is happy and wonderful... places which don’t exist. You’re always inventing happy places. You’re always such an optimist, thinking things are better than they really are...

Bridget was hurt. It was true, she supposed, that she always tried to look on the bright side of things... usually for Tim’s sake. She felt so sorry for her little brother, having to sit all the time in his chair, usually with only her for company.

A large lump formed in her throat.

She took up her sandals and got to her feet. I’m just off for a little walk, she said, trying to hide the hurt she felt. I won’t be long. I’m just going up to the headland... to get a better look at ‘the Mountain’. She looked defiantly at her parents. And then smiled sadly down at Tim. He tried to smile back, but it was clearly an effort. At least, she thought, he isn’t angry with me. She turned and walked slowly off across the beach.

She made her way past all the bronzed bodies and brightly coloured towels, her mind full of gloomy thoughts. Soon she reached the flight of stone steps leading up the cliff. And on a sudden impulse, to free herself from the clouds of gloom, she took a deep breath, threw back her shoulders and began to leap up the steps, three at a time. She didn’t stop until she was right at the top, where she pulled up abruptly, breathless.

As she stood there recovering, she picked out the forlorn little group of three sitting below in the middle of the beach. The lump in her throat grew larger. She felt so guilty about leaving them. Sometimes she could get rid of her guilt feelings by feeling angry with her parents, because they expected her to be there all the time, looking after Tim. But that particular day she felt so sorry for them too. And a deep, unreasonable love for her brother. He was really very patient, she reflected. He must be totally fed up with being so dependent on her, on her hauling him in and out of his chair, in and out of his bed, in and out of the car, in and out, in and out...

She knew that she should be there for him. Occasionally, however, she just had to get away by herself, to get a little rest. And give him a rest too, from her.

So she didn’t turn back. She turned and started off along the path towards the headland. What she really wanted to do, she realised, was investigate the strange ‘standing stone’ which stood there.

And maybe, at the same time, take another look at the curious line of clouds on the horizon.

Sometimes you see things more clearly from a cliff top.

***

Chapter 2

A View of the Sea

Why had her family not seen the stone? she wondered. Or noticed the cloud? It was funny how two or three people could sometimes look at the very same thing, and see it in totally different ways. Sometimes, she knew, her father would stare for hours at a crossword clue, and be baffled, and then, in a flash, the answer would come to him. ‘So obvious!’ he would mutter to himself. ‘So blinking obvious.’ Yet it wasn’t a matter of just brains or effort. Some people, Bridget knew, just had an instinct for seeing things. Or was it a gift?

Or was it sometimes inspired from outside?

As she strode along the top of the cliff a seagull flapped noisily past, its desolate cry echoing around the rocks. Somewhere over in the town across the bay an ice-cream van tinkled its way round the streets. And beyond that, from above the neatly terraced houses, came the dull roar of a big dipper, the grinding clash of dodgems and the relentlessly jolly organ music of a merry-go-round.

A droning noise above her head made her look up. It was that airship again, the one which seemed to be giving tourist trips around the bay. It came right overhead, heading out to sea. She saw clearly the long, cigar-shaped gondola slung under its sleek belly. And as it purred onwards, it turned, and she caught sight of the words inscribed on its silky silver flank, in enormous red letters. ‘GOODCHEER I’. And underneath, in smaller blue letters: Goodcheer Life Insurance – Get Rid of those Worries!

The airship seemed to come from somewhere above the town, near the fairground. It would make its way a mile or two out to sea, turn round slowly and then, almost reluctantly, make its way back to an appointed place on the hill opposite.

Bridget was now close to the headland. The path at this point turned left and headed towards the fishing port. To reach the standing stone she would have to cut off the path in the other direction and plough through an area of thick, tufted grass. She could see the top of the strange stone rising above a grassy knoll some way in front of her.

It was only now, as she drew ever closer to the stone, that she began, inexplicably, to grow nervous. What was this stone? Had she chanced upon some cliff-top cemetery, and was it simply one of the more prominent gravestones? That could well be it, she decided. A logical explanation. Yet at the same time, as she walked on over the grass she was increasingly aware of an irrational fear welling up inside her. It was as if the stone sensed she was coming, and had been waiting for her.

As she reached the crest of the knoll, she got a clear view of the standing stone for the first time. No, it wasn’t really much like a gravestone. It was much too tall, more like the pictures she had seen in books of megaliths or menhirs. It stood no more than ten yards from the edge of the cliff. And there were no other stones around it. It was absolutely by itself.

Bridget started the short descent towards it. As she advanced, it struck her again, as it had on the beach, how much the standing stone looked like a person. The closer she came, the more it resembled a man, a very large man with his back to her, tall but hunched, leaning slightly towards the sea and gazing out at the horizon.

She stopped some twenty feet from the stone, gazing at it in fascination. Here and there its weather-worn surface was covered by a coating of pale green lichen, which in a curious way made it look even more lifelike, as if the patches of green were the remains of some ragged coat or robe. Cautiously she moved towards the leaning stone and walked slowly round it to the seaward side.

The stone towered high above her. But where she had imagined there might be a face, there was nothing. Only blank rock.

When her eyes passed down the rugged surface of the standing stone, however, she saw that halfway down there was a smoother patch on the rock surface. It was about head height, and it seemed to carry some sort of inscription. She moved closer and, reaching up, wiped away the lichen that had partly obscured what was written. Yes, the words were clearer now, and they read:

I N H O N O U R O F

EMMANUEL REEVE

of Havenmouth

Teacher and Mariner

Discoverer of strange lands and mountains

There was no date on it. Yet in spite of the lichen she saw from the sharpness of the carved letters that they were not particularly ancient; probably, she guessed, no more than ten years old.

Was this a grave then, after all? She looked round the base of the stone. There was no indication that anyone was buried here, or anywhere nearby. Perhaps it was, as it said, just a memorial.

But if so, why put it here, on this lonely cliff top?

At that moment she trod on something that made a faint crunching noise under her feet. Bridget looked down. On the ground in front of the stone, directly in front of the inscription, lay a faded bunch of flowers.

It was a small bouquet of deep red roses, thrown carelessly on the open ground. They had withered in the recent sun, but only a little. They could not have been there for very long.

Another surprise. Who had cared enough about this unusual sounding person, Emmanuel Reeve, to leave flowers… and red roses at that? Some by-passer touched by the inscription? Or some surviving relative, perhaps the only one he had?

Bridget stood next to the curious rock for several minutes, walking round it a number of times, puzzling over the strange form of the stone, the even stranger inscription and lastly the mystery of the red roses.

Then she noticed something else. The bunch of roses was tied loosely with a piece of green string. And attached to the string, but obscured by the stems of the flowers, was what appeared to be a small card. She knelt down and extricated it from beneath the bouquet.

There was something written on it, in purple. The ink had run and the letters had been almost washed away by successive downpours of rain. She had difficulty at first in deciphering the brief message on the card. It appeared to be a single phrase, and when she had examined each word carefully she finally managed to make out what it said.

It was a question. It asked:

Did you find your paradise?

She stood there, holding the card, trying to understand what on earth it could mean.

Only one thing was clear. There was somebody in Havenmouth, or somebody who had been in Havenmouth quite recently, who had known this Emmanuel Reeve. Somebody who had cared for him, yet apparently didn’t know what had become of him.

Somebody who apparently didn’t even seem to know if he were alive or dead. Because if Emmanuel Reeve had been dead, would the inscription not have read In Memoriam, or something like that, instead of just In Honour of?

Was the person who had erected the stone the same person who had put the flowers there, and the mysterious message?

Were they, perhaps, still searching for him?

Bridget always carried a small pocketbook in her anorak so she could note down anything of interest she came across. Things just like this! She jotted down the inscription, and as she did so her eye fell on something she had not noticed before. Above the carved letters, near the top of the stone pillar where she had imagined there might be a face, there was some sort of sign or emblem, also cut in the stone.

It was obscured by the lichen, and too far above her head for her to wipe clean. She screwed up her eyes in the sun and looked at it from several angles. It appeared to be an oval cut roughly in the stone, maybe ten or twelve inches across, and she thought she could make out, inside it, another shape, this one roughly circular.

The whole thing looked vaguely like an eye, staring out towards the sea.

So the rock was looking out to sea, as she had imagined earlier! And it seemed to be focussing on something far away across the water. Instinctively Bridget turned and looked in the direction the eye was pointing, out over the wide expanse of the bay and the open sea beyond, towards the horizon where she had earlier seen the line of white cloud she imagined was a mountain.

But now there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

A band of dark, wispy clouds covered the whole horizon… And these really were clouds. They were moving. And they kept changing shape. Whatever it was she had seen earlier from the beach was no longer there.

For a while she stood there, disappointed, with lingering hopes that perhaps the clouds might part and reveal again that same white shape she had seen from the beach, the one she had been so sure was a mountain. Could it still be there somewhere, behind the darker clouds? She smiled to herself at the thought.

Perhaps it was... She would have to look again on another day.

One last time Bridget walked round the standing stone, examining its every crevice carefully. But after a few minutes she decided there was nothing more to be gleaned from it, not that day at least. Yet she was reluctant to leave. She felt sure it had more secrets to divulge, if only she could decipher them.

Finally, however, with a last wistful glance towards the misty sea, she turned and headed back towards the headland track.

Bridget had not noticed two strange figures standing some way off at the top of the steps leading from the beach. They had been watching her closely. Despite the warmth of the day, they were both dressed in heavy, sombre clothing. One was small and wiry, all hunched up as if he felt cold even in the warm sunshine. His limbs seemed unnaturally long for the size of his body, almost as if he could expand to twice the size if he were ever to stretch out his arms and legs.

Is this the one, Mr Lulby? he said to his companion. You’re sure that this is the girl in question?

Indeed she is, Mr Stitgoe! replied the other. He was a much bulkier man, with a great barrel of a body, thick, powerful arms and legs to match and a broad, poorly shaven face. The landlord was most precise in his description...

Hm, she certainly seems to be a curious one... and shows interest in the Stone.

Yes indeed, Mr Stitgoe...

She has submitted an entry to our competition, you say?

Yes, Mr Stitgoe.

And she’s the one whose brother told the Mistress his sister is ‘the brainiest in the world’?

The very same, Mr Stitgoe. The boy in the wheelchair... Do you think that perhaps...?

We cannot be certain, Mr Lulby. It is for the Mistress to decide.

Indeed, as she always does… so wisely.

But we now have two entrants, this girl and the boy from the fairground. Hm. It seems to be working out just as the mistress expected! After so many years!

That does seem to be the case, Mr Stitgoe. At last. At long last.

The girl had meanwhile disappeared round the headland. The strange couple turned and walked back along a path that led towards the town. Despite their discovery they both seemed downcast and cheerless.

Lulby ambled along with an awkward, rolling gait, while Stitgoe almost seemed to glide across the ground on his strange, elastic legs.

***

Chapter 3

A Riddle and a Puzzle

Bridget trudged off along the cli ff-top path, heading in the direction of the guesthouse where they were staying.

As she wandered along, puzzling over the curious standing stone, its inscription and the mysterious bouquet of flowers, her hand reached up to her neck and she started to fondle a small stone that hung there on a rough leather thong. She did it automatically, without thinking, as she always seemed to do when she was perplexed or deep in thought…

She stopped abruptly and looked down at the small object hanging round her neck. Why did she always do that – fondle and kneed the stone when she was thinking? She had always worn the pendant, a sort of misshapen stone about two inches long, since as long as she could remember. Her parents had always been reluctant, for some reason, to talk about it. Her mother had told her, when pressed, that it was a worthless old thing she had bought at a bric-a-brac stall in one of the narrow streets near the promenade, when Bridget was still quite small. It had caught her eye, her mother said, because of its curious opaque quality and its mixture of blue and purplish-red tints. More than that, she had been attracted by its curious shape – a sort of pear-shape with curves, her father had called it.

Bridget herself sometimes thought of it as a large, misshapen tear, frozen in stone.

Her mother said she had bought it for herself, but soon tired of it. Seven-year-old Bridget, on the other hand, had immediately been bewitched by it, and from an early age had taken it to be her own. She had worn it like this, round her neck, ever since, and was now never parted from it.

She kept it hanging round her neck even when she was asleep.

Bridget smiled as she looked at the familiar object. Strange that such an anonymous, bizarrely shaped trinket was so dear to here. Strange how comforting it was, even in her darkest, gloomiest moments…

She walked on. It still felt bad, turning away from the beach and leaving Tim and her parents there by themselves. But sometimes she just had to be alone, if only for a little while.

She continued in the direction of their guesthouse.

Their guesthouse! Was that the right word for it? She had always thought her family stayed in one of the most peculiar hostelries Havenmouth had to offer. It was a ramshackle building near the fishing port called the Albatross Tavern. From a distance its wildly irregular roof, with all sorts of turrets and small towers, looked more like a tiny forested island than a house. And the location was bizarre – halfway along a spit of land which formed one of the harbour walls. Frequently she wondered why someone had ever built a tavern in such an exposed position. It must take an awful buffeting from the wind in winter.

Yet this place, like the trinket round her neck, was associated with her earliest memories. She could remember as a small child being wheeled there from the station in her buggy. She could remember standing at the end of the spit, when she could have been no more than four or five, holding her father’s hand, watching the waves break over the rocks. She could remember returning home to it every evening, after long happy days on the beach...

Now, as she approached it down the steep path from the headland, she reflected how forlorn it looked, with its dark green, steeply sloping roofs and uneven, jutting gables. The whole building was shabby, with its paint peeling and its plaster crumbling away from the outer walls. Yet over the years she had grown used to this shabbiness. She had even grown to be very fond of it, maybe for the very reason that it played such a big part in her childhood memories. In a sense, though it seemed a bit odd to think in this way, it had become a spiritual home…

As she traipsed wearily in through the ornate side entrance, with its flowery carvings round the lintel, she paused in the little hallway and glanced at the notice board beside the stairs. It was still there, the large sheet of paper pinned in the centre.

It had appeared there the day after Bridget and her family had arrived. In big black letters it announced rather pompously:

A competition for clever young persons!

Under the caption it continued, in the same very strange and stilted language:

‘A competition with really very nice prizes is offered for young persons of any age – even up to 20!

All you have to do!

Answer the following riddle:

‘I am of water, but live in the air.

‘I know the mountain, and refresh the lake.

‘When days are warm I grumble, and often weep.

‘When days are cold I spread my bed of white.’

Complete the second part of the competition, which will be communicated to you after you have completed the first part.

Answers to your landlord, please.

Prizes include the opportunity to travel!’

‘What a laugh!’ Tim had said when they first saw it. ‘They couldn’t have sounded more patronising if they’d tried…’

Bridget agreed. And yet… the strange ‘competition’ somehow intrigued her. She had guessed the answer to the riddle almost straight away. It was a single, simple word. And surreptitiously, without telling Tim or her parents, she had written it down on a piece of paper and handed it to the landlord, as requested.

She had immediately regretted having done so. The notice did have such a pompous, condescending tone. And the organisers could have been anyone! Child-kidnappers or the like...

The ‘second part’ of the competition had duly arrived. As Bridget came down for breakfast on the third day, ahead of her parents and Tim, she saw a plain white envelope pinned to the noticeboard, beside the original poster. Inscribed on it, in ornate and spidery handwriting, was her name.

Bridget Ruth Light

Who on earth was it who knew her full name? She never called herself anything but plain Bridget. Could she have written it on the sheet of paper when she gave the landlord her answer to the riddle? She didn’t remember doing so...

When she opened the envelope she found a picture;

She burst out laughing. What a ridiculous picture, and crudely drawn too! Even she could have done better, she told herself. It was all lopsided, for a start. She gazed doubtfully at the dragon-headed monster for a couple of minutes, trying to see something, anything in the picture which might explain why it had been sent to her. But there was nothing in the picture which gave her the faintest clue.

Beneath it was a title:

The Monster Jiduperec

Again she giggled, at the very sound of the name. But it said absolutely nothing to her. So she had been given a picture of a monster with a funny name! But what was she supposed to do with it?

She had thrown the picture down on her bedside table in exasperation.

But after that Bridget found that she was just a little nervous when she walked into the ‘Albatross’. She would glance quickly at the noticeboard, half-expecting to find some further inexplicable message waiting for her. Yet none had appeared. And now, two days later, as she returned from the headland, she noted with relief that there was no new surprise waiting for her. The only thing on the board was the original message, advertising the competition for clever young people.

She began to climb the stairs.

Ah, th-there you are! an extraordinarily deep voice boomed out behind her.

She turned, and gave a start as an enormous figure suddenly loomed out of the passageway from the bar.

It was the landlord, a huge man with a shaggy, flaming red beard and a terrible speech impediment.

J-just w-w-wait a moment... I’m-m sup-posed to give you something…

He disappeared, and a moment later brought back a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper.

Th-this, they said, is f-for you.

Bridget looked at the package suspiciously. Who? she asked. Who are they? Are they the same ones who put up that notice about the competition?

He nodded gravely.

But who are they? she asked.

He shrugged.

Oh, th-these two b-blokes… Very r-rum fel-fellows they are… N-never seen their likes be-be-before…

But where are they from? Are they from some organisation? What’s their competition for, didn’t they tell you?

The big man seemed embarrassed, even ashamed, as if he knew he shouldn’t have had anything to do with the suspicious couple. But he didn’t answer. He just shrugged again, awkwardly.

Then someone called for service from the bar. The landlord gave her a quick, nervous smile and disappeared back through the door.

She looked at the parcel. There again, inscribed on the paper, was her name, in the same spidery handwriting.

Bridget Ruth Light

She stared at it in dismay. By now she just wanted rid of the whole thing – competition, riddles and now the package.

But she decided she couldn’t just leave it there. And though she felt deeply suspicious and sceptical about the whole thing, her natural curiosity got the better of her. Slowly she trudged up the stairs, clasping it in her arms.

She stopped on the landing and examined the box. It looked innocent enough, she told herself. She shook it gently, and something shifted inside, making a gentle rattling sound. What on earth could it be?

Instead of going to her room Bridget climbed further, up a narrow staircase to a tiny landing right at the top of the house. She had discovered the place many years before, on their first visit to the tavern, and because no one else ever seemed to go up there she had made it her own personal hideaway. At the end of the landing was a window which looked out towards the sea, and beside it was a table and a single chair.

This was where she came to be alone, her private spot for reading and thinking. And watching the boats going in and out of the fishing port.

She sat down by the window and for some time just stayed there motionless, looking down at the brown paper parcel. Then, unable to resist any longer, she tore the wrapping off.

It was a cardboard box all right, but disappointingly dull. The lid was a plain white one, with a criss-cross grid of lines on it, forming a pattern of squares. The squares were arranged in a curious, star-like formation;

What on earth was this supposed to mean? she wondered. Was the pattern supposed to convey some message? If so, she couldn’t begin to imagine what it was.

Only now did she notice that a small piece of card had fallen out of the package on to the table. She picked it up.

Have you not solved the second part of the competition yet? it read. "We are a little disappointed. We hope you are still trying to find the answer. Meanwhile here is the third, and final, part, which you can be working on at the same time.

"If you solve this one too, you will qualify for the main prize!

Remember, those that seek diligently usually find!

Astonished, increasingly nervous, yet despite herself intrigued, Bridget eased off the top of the box.

She couldn’t stifle a small cry of pleasure. Now this was different! Colour, colour, colour! Five hundred or more small pieces of cardboard, the brightly coloured pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Whoever the organisers of this curious competition were, she began for the first time to warm to them. She didn’t like to admit it to her friends at school, but jigsaws had always been one of her favourite things! Especially brightly coloured ones like this.

What, she wondered vaguely, did the jigsaw have to do with the strange grid pattern on the box? She hardly stopped to think about it, however, as she set about the puzzle with gusto. There was no picture to guide her, but never mind. She preferred in any case to do jigsaws without the completed picture in front of her.

The first thing to do, as always, was find the edge bits. Then she would start sorting out pieces of a similar colour.

Soon she had arranged the pieces in small piles. There was a lot of greenery in the picture, especially on the edge bits. And a lot of a streaky blue, like the surface of a lake or river. And then there were grey and white bits, some of them tipped with blue. So the completed picture had a background of high mountains, covered partly in snow…

A mountain!

She began to look for pieces that fitted together…

But she soon found she had underestimated how difficult the puzzle was. After thirty minutes’ solid work she still hadn’t found even two pieces that went together. Pieces which obviously represented the same thing – the lake’s shoreline, for example – simply did not want to join with each other. It was infuriating! She was secretly proud of her skill in solving jigsaw puzzles. But this one was particularly uncooperative. After almost an hour she had still failed to make any progress at all!

Yet the colours were all similar. And she could even guess, from the individual pieces, the outlines of the scene depicted. A mountain lake, she guessed, surrounded by forests. And towards the further side of the lake some sort of building, perhaps a castle. Yes, there were several pieces which had towers and turrets on them, and one curious, pagoda-shaped building.

And on another part of the lake there seemed to be at least one small boat. It was so small that most of it fitted on to one piece. There were several people sitting in the low, slender skiff, apparently rowing. And at the prow a single figure, dressed in a long, dark cloak, standing erect and looking forward...

She tried to find the piece which would complete the small boat. But though she searched everywhere, turning up all the many pieces with great care, it simply was not there. It was as if half the pieces of the jigsaw were missing!

Her nervousness on opening the box had initially changed to fascination, but now it changed again, to anger. The organisers, whoever they were, seemed to have a very warped sense of humour. How dare they try to make a fool of her with their nonsensical riddles and puzzles!

She looked again at the pieces of the undo-able jigsaw puzzle, lying scattered on the table. Her eye fell on the piece which depicted the skiff on the lake.

That figure, she said to herself, the one standing at the prow of the boat... why did it remind her of something?

She picked up the piece of card that had fallen out of the package and read it again. Then she turned it over. Printed in the same flowery script as the message was an address:

Lulby and Stitgoe (Books) Ltd.,

3 Paradise Gate,

HAVENMOUTH.

Ha! she thought triumphantly. At least I now know who’s responsible for this nonsense!

The puzzle had come from a bookshop. But were the oddly named bookshop proprietors merely the sellers of the puzzle, or had they actually made it? Either way, their shop should at least provide some clue as to what this and the other extraordinarily frustrating puzzles were supposed to mean.

Bridget looked at her watch. The family would probably be back from the beach soon, so if she wanted to scout out the bookshop that day she had better do it now, before they arrived. In any case, she didn’t feel up to the normal supper of cold meat and weak tea provided by the bearded landlord’s wife…

She would go out and at least locate the strange-sounding shop, then decide whether to take the matter further.

On an impulse she piled the jigsaw pieces back into their box. Then she descended to her room and