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“Why would anyone use a flash when it’s a bright sunny day?” Gabriel asks.
“Then maybe it was a reflection,” she says, coming out to stand with us. “You know? Like sunlight hitting a lens or a mirror. I saw it flash.” She insists.
We stand very still. Almost imperceptibly, the men move to stand in front of us. Nothing happens. Everything is silent, then a gust of wind passes through the trees and my skin comes up in goosebumps. The green cedars quiver slightly.
“There!” Gabriel cries.
We all see it this time. The flash of light. It winks on then off again.
“It’s behind the trees.” Hal is already off; pushing the cedar fronds aside so he can squeeze through. The branches snap back into place, hiding him from sight.
“Be careful!” I call.
The next instant we hear him shout in alarm. I’m already running, Gabriel and Pierre in step behind me. I dash through the branches, not caring as green needles rasp on my skin.
Hal is on his knees. “Stand back!” he shouts, spreading his arms sideways to stop us. “There’s a drop.”
I can’t see what he’s looking at, but Gabriel has dropped to a crawl under the branches.
Pierre and I follow on our hands and knees under the thick fronds.
“Careful,” Gabriel says. “The cliff comes to a sudden end here.”
So, we crawl slowly, sometimes ducking our heads so low, nearly sliding on our tummies. Then I see the light again, ahead, and below.
I freeze on the spot, mouth open.
“Oh my God.” Pierre gasps.
What we thought was a forest is in fact only a small copse. The flash of light comes again. It’s the sun sparkling on the sea below. A long way down. We inch forward to peek over the edge. “You don’t get vertigo, anyone?” Gabriel asks.
The cliff is a sheer drop, alright. Smooth rockface all the way down with only the occasional stubborn bush growing from a crack in the wall. Down below, there’s a beach. If you can call it that, it’s only a thin strip of sand, less than six feet wide.
“We saw this before, remember?” Pierre asks from beside me, looking straight out to sea, a hand shading her eyes.
“Yes,” Gabriel answers. “We took a boat around the island when we were searching. It’s a blind cove. There’s no access to it.”
“Yes, there is.” Hal, too, is on his stomach, his head right on the edge. He points straight down.
Flush against the rockface is a narrow path, little more than a stone ribbon cutting diagonally down the cliff.
Hal edges very slightly forward. I resist the temptation to grab his legs in case he falls. “You can’t see it from the sea because that bush below hides the start of it. I imagine from a distance it just looks like a crack in the stone, but you can definitely walk it.”
“Blimey, you’d have to walk sideways with your back pressed to the wall.” Gabriel’s voice is just above a whisper. “But I think it might be the way the boatman brought the Montague kids back after pretending to sail away with them.”
“Do you think the beach is long enough to the west to reach the boundary between Low Catch and Labri Catch?” I ask. From where I am, I can’t see because the cliff curves inwards to the left.
If it extends past the boundary, this might just be the thing to save us.
“We can go back and take a boat to the beach and check—” Pierre starts to say when Hal speaks.
“I’m going down.”
Both men push themselves back away from the edge and stand up.
I start to get up too, but Gabriel grabs my arm, stopping me. “The two of you stay here. We might need you to call for help if one of us falls or something.”
He says this like it’s just falling off a chair onto the sitting room floor rather than plummeting to certain death.
