Featherlight by Peter Bunzl (debian ebook reader TXT) 📕

The stone is actually an egg. Cracks appear in the egg’s surface, and red light spills out, brighter than the light beam. So bright it almost blinds me. The egg breaks open and inside is a golden feather that burns me like the sun.

4

THE LIGHTHOUSE

I wake and look around me, feeling cold and tired. It is morning and I am in the keeper’s office. For a moment I wonder what I am doing here, sitting in Dad’s armchair. Then I notice that the fire in the stove has gone out.

A jolt of guilt zips through me. I must have fallen asleep on watch. Dad told me never to do that!

I jump to my feet and rush upstairs to the lantern room to check everything is all right. Daylight floods the glass windows, but the lenses still turn and the lamplight still flickers. The light has been working for the whole night. Relieved, I put out the flame and stop the clockwork.

Outside the day is calm. The sea is quiet with only a few ships passing. There’s no sign of trouble. No water-babies, or eggs, or burning feathers … Did I really dream all that? Then I remember what really happened – the shooting star and how I vowed to find it. Mum and Dad setting off for the mainland because their real baby was about to be born.

That’s why I’m up here alone. I promised Mum and Dad I’d look after the lighthouse. That means I’m no longer the lighthouse keeper’s daughter. I’m the lighthouse keeper!

At least until they get back. I wonder when that will be. Has Mum had the baby yet? Do I have a little brother or sister? If so, I hope he or she is all right.

When Dad and Mum get back, they’ll expect to find the chores done. That’s a lot of work for one person to do on their own. Especially someone as young as me. I should probably get started on the chores before I look for my shooting star. Dad and Mum will be cross if they come back this afternoon and find that nothing has been done.

I wipe the lantern lenses with a cloth. This is the first job Dad does every day. It cleans the soot off the lenses and stops the lamp from clouding up and weakening the light. When I have finished that, I head downstairs to the empty keeper’s cottage to make a start on the rest of the chores.

5

COMPLETING THE CHORES

It’s strange to be here in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage on my own. But I am used to doing chores for Mum and Dad, especially in last few weeks. Mum’s been so ill during the final stage of her pregnancy that she’s barely left her bed. I’ve had to help Dad around the lighthouse much more than I used to, so I know what has to be done.

I step into the yard and wash my sooty hands with water from the hand pump. Then I go to the shed on the far side of the house. I milk the goat, whose name is Gertrude. I collect the eggs from our three chickens, Bertha, Brenda and Bella, who live in the hutch next door. When I am finished, I have half a pail of milk and three eggs.

In the kitchen, a bowl full of dough rests on the table, beneath a tea cloth. Mum made it last night for the morning and left it out to rise. The dough has grown immensely and bulges from the bowl. Beneath the cloth it seems as big and round as Mum’s belly. The fire in the stove has turned to ash. I build it up with logs from the basket, wait for the flames to get good and hot, then put the dough on a tray in the oven.

While the dough is baking into bread, I heat some water in the kettle for tea and some more in a pan to make myself a boiled egg.

I sit down to breakfast and flick through my school books. Dad and I have been reading A History of Astronomy. I decide I will look up shooting stars and see what the book has to say about them:

Shooting stars are meteors: the trails of rocks falling from outer space. The light that you see from a shooting star is the meteor burning up in the sky as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. When a meteor lands on the Earth, it is called a meteorite. A meteorite may look like a big shard of black rock.

By the time I’ve eaten my egg, the kitchen is filled with the warm and sweet smell of the baking bread.

I take the loaf from the oven. You are supposed to wait for it to cool. Mum always does. But I’m still hungry.

I cut off a steaming hunk of bread and stuff that in my mouth for my second breakfast. Then I cut another steaming hunk and stuff that into my cardigan pocket for my lunch. Finally I close A History of Astronomy and set off across the island to look for my meteorite.

6

AROUND THE ISLAND

Our island is called Featherstone Island because the ragged rocky coastline makes it look like a feather. There are no trees. It’s too windy and wild for them to grow. The only tall thing is the lighthouse. It is the sort of tower you might imagine a princess from a fairy tale living in, except it’s painted with red and white stripes so it