Before long, the wind had carried them to the entrance of the lagoon – a narrow passage between the rocks leading to a natural harbour. Inside it the water, only three or four metres deep, sparkled above the sandy white swathe of the seabed. Irene gazed in amazement at the scene as a shoal of silver fish darted beneath the hull of the Kyaneos.
‘It’s incredible,’ she spluttered.
‘It’s the lagoon,’ Ismael countered, his tone more prosaic.
While Irene drank in the view, Ismael lowered the sails and dropped anchor. The Kyaneos swayed gently, like a leaf on a calm pond.
‘Right. Do you want to see this cave, or don’t you?’
Smiling defiantly, without taking her eyes off Ismael’s, Irene slowly removed her dress. Ismael could do nothing but stare. Clad in a skimpy swimsuit, so skimpy her mother would never have called it by that name, Irene grinned at Ismael’s reaction. After letting him admire her in stunned silence for a couple of seconds, but not long enough for him to get used to it, she plunged into the shimmering sea. Ismael gulped. Either he was very slow or this girl was too fast for him. Without wasting another moment, he dived in after her.
Ismael and Irene swam towards the entrance of the Cave of Bats. The tunnel burrowed into the land like a cathedral gouged out of rock. The cave had a vaulted ceiling, crowned by large shards of rock that dangled down into the void like tears of ice. Sunlight glinted through cracks, revealing a thousand and one nooks and crannies among the rocks. In the half light the sandy seabed emitted a ghostly phosphorescence that spread like a luminous carpet towards the interior of the cave.
Irene submerged herself beneath the water and opened her eyes. A world of fleeting reflections danced before her, inhabited by creatures both strange and fascinating. Small fish whose scales changed colour depending on how the light fell; iridescent plants clinging to the rocks; minute crabs scuttling around the seabed. She gazed at the undersea fauna until she had to come up for air.
‘Keep doing that and you’ll grow a tail, like a mermaid,’ said Ismael.
She winked at him, then kissed him in the dim light.
‘Perhaps I already am a mermaid,’ she whispered, swimming further inside the cave.
Ismael exchanged glances with a crab that was observing him with mild interest from its lair on the rocky wall.
‘What?’ he prompted.
The crustacean seemed to be smiling at his expense.
She’s been absent for a whole day, thought Simone. The hours had gone by and still Hannah hadn’t appeared. Simone wondered whether this was just a disciplinary problem. She hoped so. She’d spent the whole day waiting to hear from the girl, imagining she’d had to go home for some reason. Some minor ailment. An unexpected family engagement. Come to think of it, hadn’t she spent Saturday with her family too, as she hadn’t appeared up at the house then? Any explanation would have been enough for Simone. Finally, she decided to face the problem. She was about to pick up the phone and call Hannah’s home when an incoming call got in ahead of her. She didn’t recognise the voice, and the way its owner identified himself did little to reassure her.
‘Good afternoon, Madame Sauvelle. My name is Henri Faure, I’m superintendent at the Blue Bay police station,’ he announced.
A tense silence travelled down the line.
‘Madame?’ said the policeman.
‘I’m listening.’
‘This isn’t easy for me to say . . .’
Dorian had finished his work as a messenger for the day. The errands Simone had entrusted him with had all been done, and the prospect of a free afternoon was refreshing. When he reached Seaview, Simone hadn’t yet returned from Cravenmoore and his sister Irene was probably out and about wi
th that boyfriend she’d found for herself. After downing a couple of glasses of cold milk, the absence of women in the house began to disconcert Dorian. He’d become so used to them that, when they weren’t around, the silence was worrying.
Since there were still a few hours of daylight left, Dorian decided to explore Cravenmoore’s forest. With the sun overhead, just as Simone had said, the sinister shapes revealed themselves to be nothing more than trees, bushes and undergrowth. With this in mind Dorian set off towards the heart of the labyrinthine wood that stretched between Seaview and the mansion of Lazarus Jann.
He’d been walking for about ten minutes when he noticed a trail of footprints entering the forest from the direction of the cliff and then vanishing mysteriously when they reached a clearing. He knelt down and put his fingers in the imprints, which were deep, more like random holes stamped into the ground. Whoever or whatever had left those prints must have been very heavy. Dorian took a closer look at the tracks, following the marks up to the point at which they disappeared. If he believed what he was seeing, whoever had made them had stopped walking and simply evaporated.
He looked up at the web of light and shade spun between the treetops. One of Lazarus’s birds fluttered through the branches. Dorian couldn’t help shivering. Were there no real animals living in this forest? The only ones he had seen were the mechanical creatures that appeared and disappeared in the shadows, making it impossible to work out where they had come from or where they were heading. He continued to search the area and noticed a deep notch in a nearby tree. Dorian moved closer. Similar lacerations scored the trunk the whole way up to the top. The boy swallowed nervously and decided to get out of there as fast as his legs would carry him.
Ismael led Irene to a small flat rock that jutted out about half a metre in the middle of the cave, and they both lay down to rest for a while. The light coming in through the entrance cast a flickering pattern of shadows against the walls and curved ceiling. The water was warmer here than in the open sea and the air felt almost humid.
‘Are there any other entrances to this cave?’ asked Irene.
‘There is one other one, but it’s dangerous. The only safe way in and out is by sea, from the lagoon.’
Irene gazed at the eerie light infiltrating the very depths of the cave. For an instant, she felt as though she were inside the grand hall of a palace carved into the cliffs.
‘It’s . . . unreal, like something out of a dream.’