Wherever Amberdrift Got To

The jigsaw piece had been glowing in Alex's pocket since lunch, so quietly that he had assumed it was sunshine. It wasn't. By the time Felix noticed, there was a small gold circle on Alex's trousers, and the leg underneath it was warm.

"It's doing it again," said Felix, pointing at the leg.

Alex took the piece out and held out his hand. Felix took it, and the kitchen went gold and soft at the edges. Then it was salt air and gulls, and the particular smell of a picnic that has been left in the sun.

Nib's island looked, as it always did, like a sandwich somebody had stopped eating halfway. Two enormous slices of bread leaned against each other, with a bite taken out of one corner. Lettuce hills rolled down to a shore of crusts. In the middle, in a little hut built from the end of a baguette, sat Nib at a table covered in paper, with a pencil behind each ear and a third one in her hair. A seagull on the windowsill was wearing a very small sash. The sash said DEPUTY.

"Why's the seagull got a sash?" said Felix.

"That's Deputy," said Nib, as though this covered it. "Oh, thank goodness. Come and look. Don't touch. Actually, do touch, I've tried everything else."

On the table lay her great map of the Isles, every island inked in neat, tiny lines. In one corner, an amber dot the size of a lentil was crawling slowly across the paper, like a very small, very determined snail.

"Amberdrift," said Nib. "It won't stay put. I've rubbed it out eleven times." She held up a rubber worn down to a nub. "Twelve."

She rubbed it out. The dot vanished. It came back two inches further along, looking pleased with itself.

Then it reached the edge of the paper, right beside Nib's own island, and stopped.

"It's never done that," said Nib, very quietly. "It's close."

• • •

Nib pulled an old, brown, curling chart out from under a jam jar and unrolled it across the others. It smelled of attics. In the very bottom corner, past the last painted wave, somebody long ago had written four words in a wobbly hand.

HERE BE DINNER (PROBABLY).

"The Land of Cockaigne," said Nib. "In Cockaigne, the roads are paved with pies. Roast geese fly up and land on your plate already covered in gravy. The houses are made of cake, which is a terrible building material, but never mind. And to get in, you have to eat your way through a mountain of porridge."

"Brilliant," said Felix.

"Nobody has ever got in," said Nib. "Because it's never where you left it. Every sailor who's ever looked for it has come back with a good story and an empty stomach."

"Does the goose mind?" said Felix.

"Nobody's asked the goose," said Nib. "The trouble is, this week everybody's saying Cockaigne is Amberdrift. A whole boat of chefs came by yesterday and asked me to point. Then a man in a bath."

"A bath?"

"Rowing, yes. He was very polite about it. I told them all it isn't anywhere. And that's the real problem. Every map in the world says where a thing is. How do I draw a place that isn't anywhere?"

Alex was looking at the amber dot, sitting still for the first time. "It's a place that goes somewhere else," he said. "That's still a kind of where."

"That's nice," said Nib, without much conviction.

On the windowsill, Deputy suddenly screamed. Everyone looked up.

Out across the water, something warm and golden was coming round the headland, with a long ribbon of steam trailing behind it.

• • •

Amberdrift came round the corner the way a very large cat comes into a room, not hurrying and not stopping. A dozen toffee-dipped trees stood on it, still shining amber. A copper vat leaned to one side. And on the deck, tangled in rigging, stood a stocky, sticky-handed man in a hat, holding a rope in each hand and a third in his teeth.

"TOFFIT!" shouted Felix, and ran down the jetty waving both arms.

"HELLO, YOU TWO!" Toffit spat the rope out. "CAN'T STOP! DON'T KNOW HOW!"

Above him, between two of the trees, hung the beginnings of a sail. It billowed, and flapped, and went slack, and turned itself inside out, like an umbrella in a gale.

"I've read the instructions," called Toffit. "They're in a language called Knots."

Amberdrift drifted past the jetty at no more than a throw's distance. The island had collected things. A wardrobe stood among the trees with its door slightly open. A single boot sat on a stump. And wedged between two trunks, no bigger than a bath, was a tiny wooden boat, painted red, with a name on its bow in wobbly white letters. WINKLE.

"Found her Tuesday," said Toffit, following Alex's eyes. "Or she found me. I keep what turns up." He picked three toffee apples out of a bucket and tossed them across the gap. Felix caught one in each hand and the third, to everyone's surprise, in his mouth.

"Where are you going?" called Alex.

"No idea!" said Toffit, delighted. "Rather the fun of it." Then he squinted at the jetty, at Nib, and at the crumpled map in her arms. "Funny thing, though. I always seem to turn up where somebody's got a face on."

"I haven't got a face on," said Nib, who had.

Amberdrift sailed on, trailing its warm gold ribbon of steam, until it was a small bright speck. Then, from the other side of the headland, came a long, deep, official-sounding horn.

• • •

The tugs came round the point in a line, like very serious ducklings. There were twelve of them, red and squat and gleaming, and each had a name painted on its bow in tidy white letters: THE BAP. THE COB. THE BARM. THE BATCH. THE STOTTIE. THE BUN.

"It's a bap," said somebody on the first tug.

"It's a cob," said somebody on the second.

"It's a barm," said somebody on the third, with feeling, and the argument went back down the line until the last tug, which just said "Roll."

The lead tug came up to Nib's jetty, and a very stiff man stepped off it, wearing a uniform with more ribbons than there was room for. He carried a megaphone and a clipboard. His badge said Commodore Bollard, Moorings and Regulations.

"Regulation One," said the Commodore, without saying hello. "Every island must be somewhere."

"It is somewhere," said Nib.

"Where?"

"...Different places."

The Commodore raised the megaphone, although everyone was standing right next to him. "Where is it supposed to be?"

"Nowhere in particular," said Nib.

He wrote it down. "Not good enough." He turned to the horizon, where a thin gold thread of steam was just disappearing. "That island has been at large for several weeks. It is a navigational hazard and a clerical error. By teatime, it will be moored safely at Crumpet Quay. With a number."

"It's like he wants to put it in a car park," said Felix.

"Exactly," said the Commodore, who had not noticed it was a joke.

"But Toffit likes drifting," said Alex.

"Nobody likes drifting," said the Commodore. "They simply haven't been stopped yet." He bowed to Nib, once, from the neck. The twelve tugs turned in a slow red curve, still arguing, and chuffed off after the steam.

Alex was already looking at the little rowing boat tied to Nib's jetty. "We'd have to warn him."

"It's a rowing boat," said Felix. "They've got engines."

"We'd need to be faster."

"Crispin," said Nib, and for the first time all morning she wasn't frowning. "He used to race. Back at the Reef."

• • •

Fish Finger Reef glittered in the afternoon sun, golden and crisp, its cliffs the colour of perfectly cooked batter. The sand was chips. Captain Crispin was waiting at the end of the harbour wall, as if he had known they were coming, standing very upright in a small peaked hat. His badge said Captain Crispin, Crumb and Courage.

"Felix," he said gravely. "Alex. Kindly do not lick the harbour."

Felix, who had been about to, stopped.

Crispin listened to the whole story without blinking. Then he disappeared into a boat shed and came out hauling a mast over his shoulder, with a folded sail under the other arm. "The last time I saw your boat," he said, "your sail was a bedsheet."

"It was a good bedsheet," said Felix.

"It was a sheet," said Crispin.

He explained it in the cove, sitting bolt upright in the bow with his hands on his knees. "You never sail straight at where you are going," he said. "You go a little left, and then a little right, and the wind thinks it has got its own way."

"That's cheating," said Felix.

"That is sailing," said Crispin.

By tea-time, Felix had been knocked into the sea by the boom, a total of once, and had come up delighted. Alex had fallen in once on purpose, to see how it felt. It felt wet. But the little boat went where it was pointed, more or less, and zigzagged beautifully, and the sail stood out against the sky like a wing.

"I shall accompany you," said Crispin. "In an advisory capacity."

He sat in the bow, in his hat, and raised one crumbly hand. "Cast off."

• • •

Sailing, it turned out, was mostly sitting still very fast.

The wind filled the sail with a soft, definite whump, and the little boat leaned over and went, with a long hiss under the bow. Felix had the sail rope wrapped twice round his fist. Alex had the tiller. In the middle, Captain Crispin sat as upright as a candle, in his hat, with a length of liquorice lace tied to the rigging above his head.

"The telltale," he said, pointing. "When it blows straight back, you are going the right way. When it does that—" The lace twirled and flopped. "—you are not."

"What does it do now?" said Felix.

"It is doing the thing," said Crispin.

They sailed past Candy Floss Clouds, pink and blue against the sky, and a school of tiny sprinkle-fish flicked in and out of the waves beside them like confetti. Alex watched the telltale, and the sail, and the shape of the waves, as he did with everything new, until he'd worked out what each of them was for.

Then, off the bow, the sea changed colour.

It didn't fade. It simply stopped. On one side of a clean, bright line the water was blue, and on the other it was bright strawberry red, and a little further on there was a stripe of mango gold, and then peach, and then a wide band of watermelon pink with little black seeds floating in it.

"The Frozen Fruit Sound," said Crispin, looking at it as if it had said something rude. "No sensible sailor goes in. It confuses the compass."

A cold, pale mist lay along the water, in low banks like cotton wool.

"Where's the steam?" said Alex.

It was gone.

• • •

They sailed in slowly. The Sound was cold, and smelled of fruit, and the water went by in glossy ribbons, each one a different flavour and each one going somewhere different.

"Look," said Felix.

Ahead, in a clearing in the mist, the twelve red tugs were going round in a circle. The Bap followed the Cob, which followed the Barm, which followed the Batch, in one slow, wide, cross-looking ring, like a very large and unhappy carousel.

"WHO IS NAVIGATING?" came a voice through a megaphone.

"THE BATCH, SIR."

"THE BATCH IS BEHIND US."

"WE KNOW, SIR. WE'RE TRYING TO CATCH THE BARM."

Felix dipped one hand in the sea and licked it. "Strawberry," he said. He tried another place. "That's raspberry. And that's definitely mango." He leaned further over. "Strawberry goes that way. It's cold, it pulls my hand."

"Which way?" said Alex.

Felix pointed.

Alex looked at the mist, and then at the ribbons of colour, and then at his own hands on the tiller, quite still. He wasn't looking for the island. He was thinking about it.

"Toffit doesn't steer," he said slowly. "He said so. So he goes where the sea goes. Like a leaf." He turned to Felix. "Riddle. What goes nowhere on purpose, and always ends up somewhere?"

"Toffit," said Felix.

"A leaf," said Alex. "So we don't ask where Toffit is. We ask where the sea takes a leaf. Strawberry that way. Mango that way. They bend together there."

"And there's no steam," said Felix.

"There's no steam on the water," said Alex. "The mist is low. Steam goes up."

They both looked up. Far above the mist, past the last stripe of the Sound, a thin gold thread was rising into the sky.

"There," said Felix.

• • •

Between them and the thread lay the Porridge Narrows.

It was a long, grey, lumpy channel between two black rocks, and it was entirely full of porridge. A great pale hill of it plugged the way through, steaming gently. Standing on it, sitting on it, or leaning out of small boats beside it, were about forty people, all with spoons.

"Four days," said a man in a tall white hat, scooping. "Three feet." He ate the spoonful. He didn't look as though he'd enjoyed any of the previous ones. "It's Cockaigne. You have to eat your way through."

"Can't you go round?" said Felix.

"Nobody goes round," said the man. "It's tradition."

"A very poor one," said Crispin.

There were twelve chefs, in a boat. There was a man sitting in a bath, eating porridge off a ladle with great sadness. On the third boat, in a deckchair, sat a goose. Nobody explained.

"We can't wait four days," said Alex.

Felix put his hand in his pocket and touched the toffee apple Toffit had thrown him. Everybody who knew Felix knew what this meant. He took it out. He held it for a moment. Then he handed it to the man in the tall hat.

"It's from Amberdrift," he said, with real effort. "It's not free, though. A man made it."

Alex broke his own apple in half, handed over one piece, and put the other back in his pocket.

The chef took a bite. His eyes closed. The other eleven chefs, one after another, took a very small bite each.

"A man made it," said the chef at last. "It's not Cockaigne, then, is it."

"Probably not," said Alex.

"Hm," said the chef, and sighed, the way you do when you have been wrong for four days and feel better about it. He turned round. "Brigade. Spoons."

Twelve spoons went in at once. A channel opened through the porridge, neat and straight, in a minute and a half. Chefs are good at spoons. The little boat slid through, and behind them the goose, who had watched the whole thing, let out one long, thoughtful honk.

• • •

On the far side, the sea was open and the wind got up. Waves slapped the hull. Spray flew over the bow in cold handfuls, and one of them found Captain Crispin at about half past four.

He didn't complain. He sat a little less upright. Then a little less than that. His edges, which had been so crisp, began to look slightly thoughtful, and the brim of his hat went soft.

"I had hoped," said Crispin, with great dignity, "that it would not come to this."

"Are you all right?" said Alex.

"I swam once. To rescue a small boy. I was soft for a week. I should like to be a dry fish finger now, please."

There was a rock just ahead, tall and pale and straight, like an enormous breadstick, with a sunny ledge halfway up. They brought the boat alongside, and Felix helped him onto the ledge, and Crispin sat down on it with his hat on his knees.

"I shall be perfectly crisp by morning," he said. "I am quite a rock person now."

"We'll come back for you," said Alex.

"I know." He looked at the tiller, and at the two of them. "You will do," said Captain Crispin. "A little left. A little right. The wind will think it has had its own way."

"It's been an honour," said Felix, and saluted, with the wrong hand.

Out on the sea again, Felix took the jigsaw piece out of his pocket and held it up. It warmed in his palm. It flickered. It let out one gold spark and went out.

"Not yet," said Alex.

• • •

The wind swung round while they weren't looking. When Alex glanced up, it was blowing directly in their faces, straight from the place where the gold thread was rising.

"Brilliant," said Felix.

Far ahead, the twelve red tugs had found the thread too, and were going to get there first.

"We can't sail at it," said Alex. "Straight at it. We'd just stop."

"So we go left."

"And then right."

The first time, Felix let go of the wrong rope. The sail swung across, the boom missed Alex's head by an inch, and the boat politely did nothing at all.

The second time, they got halfway round, and the boat stopped dead, pointing at the wind, with the sail flapping above them like a very large, very disappointed flag. A seagull landed on the mast and looked at them for a while.

"Don't say anything," said Felix.

"I wasn't going to," said Alex. He looked at the sail, and then at the telltale, which was doing the thing. He thought about the shape of it, the way Crispin had said it. "It isn't fighting us. It just wants to think it's winning."

"Left," said Felix, with the rope in both hands.

"Now," said Alex, and leaned on the tiller, gently, a long way before he'd have thought he needed to.

The boat turned. The sail went across with a crack and filled, and the whole boat leaned over, and picked up speed, and began, at a long slant, to climb into the wind.

"A bit right," said Felix.

"A bit left," said Alex.

Three tacks later, they could see Amberdrift. It sat in the middle of the water, steaming faintly, tilted at its usual jaunty angle. And all round it, in a perfect ring, sat twelve small red tugs.

• • •

The tugs had thrown their lines. Twelve thick ropes ran from twelve bows to twelve padded hooks, each one clipped on to the island's edge, as gently as a hook can be. A small notice on each said REGULATION SIZE.

On the lead tug, the Cob, the Commodore stood on the roof with his megaphone.

"ISLAND," he said. "YOU ARE IN BREACH OF REGULATION ONE. YOU WILL BE MOORED."

On the deck of Amberdrift, Toffit was sitting on an upturned bucket, eating a toffee apple. "I wouldn't," he said, quite pleasantly.

"WHERE," said the Commodore, "IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE?"

"Where's what?"

"THIS ISLAND."

"Dunno," said Toffit. "Ask it."

Twelve engines rumbled. The ropes tightened, and the island, very slowly, began to move. Not where it liked, but where it was told. The wardrobe's door swung open. The boot fell off its stump. The big copper vat sloshed, and a ribbon of toffee ran down its side. In its tree, the little boat Winkle gave a small, creaky wobble.

"Hang on," said Toffit, reaching for the nearest trunk.

The boys' boat came sliding up on the edge of the ring, and Felix stood up on the bow, which he knew he was not meant to do.

"WHEREVER IT'S GOT TO!" he bellowed.

The Commodore swung round. "THAT," he said, "IS NOT A LOCATION."

Alex hadn't said anything. He was looking at the ropes. All twelve of them were pulling in the same direction, hard. Then he looked at the tiller under his hand, and at the little boat, which could go left, and then right, and then left again.

"Felix," he said quietly. "They're all pulling the same way."

"So?"

"So what if they weren't?"

• • •

"Left," said Alex, and the boat shot between the Barm and the Batch.

"OI!" said somebody on the Barm.

"And right."

They slid back the other way, behind the Stottie and across the bow of the Bun, and each time they crossed a tow line, it swung. The tugs, trying not to hit a very small boat, each steered a little aside. That pulled their ropes across each other's. Left again, and right again, and the twelve lines began to lie over one another, then under one another, like somebody doing a very large, very slow plait.

"What are you DOING?" shouted the Commodore.

"Sailing," said Felix, truthfully.

Then the Bap and the Cob, trying to get out of each other's way, both turned the same way at once, and the little boat was suddenly in between them. Two red hulls came together with a long, groaning creak, and the mast began to lean.

"Lean!" said Alex.

They both threw themselves out over the side. The boat heeled, the sail dipped, and the little boat popped out of the gap like a pip out of a grape, a heartbeat before the two tugs met, with a tremendous DOOF.

The doof went all the way down the line, doof, doof, doof, until all twelve tugs were jammed together in the middle of the sea, bound up in their own ropes.

"It's a bap," said a voice from the tangle.

"It's a cob," said another.

On the deck of Amberdrift, the ropes had gone slack. The island gave a small, relieved wobble and settled. Toffit looked at the knot of tugs, then at the boys.

"Lovely," he said.

Felix sat down in the bottom of the boat. His knees had stopped working. "That was close," he said, and then, to his own surprise, he started to laugh.

• • •

It went very quiet.

The Commodore was standing on the roof of the Cob, bound to the waist in tow line, with his clipboard in one hand. The megaphone had fallen into the sea. He looked smaller without it.

Alex brought the boat in close, and let the sail go slack. He didn't shout. He didn't say anything clever.

"Commodore," he said. "Why does it have to be somewhere?"

The Commodore opened his mouth, to say Regulation One. Nothing came out.

"I had a boat," he said.

Nobody moved.

"When I was six. I painted her myself. I used all the red." He looked at the clipboard, not at them. "I tied her up myself, too. Badly. In the morning there was a rope on the post, and no boat." He said it quite flatly, the way you say something you have said in your own head for a very long time. "Everything that drifts gets lost. That's all it is. That's all Regulation One is."

"What was she called?" said Toffit, from the deck of Amberdrift.

"Winkle."

Toffit got up off his bucket. He walked to the tree where the little red boat sat wedged between two trunks. He lifted her down in both hands, as carefully as an egg, and turned her bow to the light.

The white letters were wobbly. WINKLE.

"That's my W," said the Commodore.

"Found her Tuesday," said Toffit gently. "Or she found me. She's been about a bit. Not lost. Just took a while."

The Commodore didn't say anything. Alex reached into his pocket, took out the other half of his toffee apple, and held it across the gap.

The Commodore took it. His hand shook a little. He ate a bite.

"It is extremely sticky," he said, after a while.

"Yes," said Alex.

• • •

"But then where is it supposed to be?" said the Commodore. He had stopped being stiff. He was holding Winkle in both hands.

"Dunno," said Toffit. "Never thought about it."

Alex was looking at the little red boat, and at the island, and at the Commodore. "Toffit said it turns up where somebody's got a face on."

"I have never," said the Commodore, "had a face on."

"You've had one for about forty years," said Felix. "Like, a big one."

The Commodore looked at Felix. Then, slowly, he looked at the boat, and a very small, very reluctant corner of his mouth went up.

"Riddle," said Alex. "What do you only find if you don't tie it up?"

"I don't—"

"Dinner," said Felix.

"Here be dinner," said Alex, "probably. It isn't free. And it isn't a mistake on the map. That's the bit that's true. It's somewhere you can't moor, because it turns up when you need it, and if you tie it to a post it won't."

"Probably," said the Commodore, quietly.

"Probably," said Alex.

The Commodore stood very still. Then he took a deep breath, and turned to the tangle of tugs, and in the loudest voice he had, which was without a megaphone and therefore not very loud, he said: "Release the island."

It took forty minutes. Twelve crews had to unpick twelve lines, one loop at a time, and the Stottie and the Bun were found to have been tied to each other since the beginning. In the middle of it all, the Barm lost an argument, quietly, and was very gracious about it.

• • •

Crumpet Quay lay round and flat and golden at the edge of the harbour, covered all over with neat round holes. Every boat in the harbour was tied through a numbered hole. In each hole sat a small yellow pat of butter, melting slowly, for luck.

"Berth Twelve," said the Commodore. "Vacant since the quay was built. I wasn't sure what it was for."

He found a pot of white paint and a brush. Felix and Alex held the board, and Toffit, whom the twelve tugs had towed in for the last stretch, extremely politely, held the ladder. The Commodore painted slowly, in neat capitals, and everybody read it as he went.

AMBERDRIFT BERTH. (VACANT. PROBABLY.)

Underneath, he fixed a small flag on a tall pole, brown as toffee, with a swirl in the middle. "If anybody wants it," he said, "they run that up, and wait. It'll come. Or it won't."

"Probably," said Toffit.

It had taken the boys the whole afternoon to teach him the sail. Toffit's first tack was a mess, and his second was a disgrace, and by his third, he was sailing a floating orchard in a perfect curve, which he said he had always known he could do.

When the sign was dry, the Commodore took out his clipboard. He looked at the page for a long time. Then he turned round, in front of everyone, and asked it one more time, in a very small voice.

"Where is it supposed to be?"

"Wherever it's got to," said Toffit.

The Commodore wrote it down, under Regulation One, in brackets. Then he underlined it. He tied Winkle up, last of all, in Berth One, with a loose bow, so she could go if she wanted. Neither boy said anything about that.

• • •

Captain Crispin was still on his rock, perfectly crisp, saluting, when they sailed by at dusk. He came aboard with enormous dignity and sat in the bow with his hat on straight. "Well?" he said.

"Left," said Felix. "Then right."

"Very good," said Crispin, and closed his eyes, quite content.

Nib was at her table with a fresh sheet of paper, a pen in each hand and a pencil behind each ear. Deputy sat on the windowsill, wearing a new sash. It said SENIOR DEPUTY.

"It's gone again," she said, nodding at the old map. On it, the amber dot had crept two inches along, and stopped. "I keep thinking I should draw it properly. Then it wouldn't be it."

"Draw where it's been," said Alex. "Leave the rest."

Nib looked at him. She dipped her pen. Slowly, she drew a loop, a dotted one, wandering round the corner of the map, never quite closing. Under it she wrote, in tiny letters: AMBERDRIFT. WHEREVER IT'S GOT TO.

The ink stayed still for a moment, and then the little amber dot slid off along its line. Nib watched it go. She didn't reach for the rubber.

"I'm getting rather good at unfinished," she said.

In Felix's pocket, something was glowing. It was gold right through, and warm, and it wasn't going out. "Now it works," said Felix. He took Alex's hand.

"Goodbye!" said Nib, with both pens in the air. "Mind where you've got to!"

The beach went gold. The sandwich went gold. And then it was the kitchen, and the tea was only just being called, and nobody had noticed anything at all.

P.S. The Cockaigne seekers never gave up. The twelve chefs opened a café on the Porridge Narrows, called Probably, which has received excellent reviews. The man in the bath still hasn't arrived anywhere, but he says the bath is lovely.

P.P.S. That evening, when Mummy asked where they'd been all afternoon, Felix said, "Wherever we got to." Mummy said that wasn't an answer. "It's the only true one," said Alex, and Mummy, after a moment, gave up and gave them both a biscuit.

Upstairs, the new piece clicked into the puzzle in the playroom: a small amber island with a curl of steam over it. In the morning, neither of them was entirely sure it was in the same place.