‘Can I help?’ She gestured towards the canvas wall. ‘I’m not afraid. I like storms.’
‘I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t the storm. This is just a touch of rain. Trust me, when the storm catches up with us, you’ll know about it.’
The words were barely out of his mouth before the ship gave a great lurching, bucking movement that hurled the children and the wolves against one of the tent’s thin canvas walls.
The storm had finally arrived. But the canvas wasn’t strong enough to take their weight and instantly tore free of its ropes. Before they knew what was happening, Stella and Shay were out on the open deck, slipping and sliding across the soaking wet boards whilst the rain lashed at their skin like thousands of salt needles.
‘The wolves!’ Shay yelled, gesturing at the two that had fallen out with them. ‘We have to get them back in or they’ll be washed overboard!’
As the ship gave another stomach-churning lurch, Stella thought that they were in danger of getting washed overboard themselves. Felix would be absolutely furious if he knew she was up here. But no wolves were going to get swept away tonight if Stella had anything to do with it, so she wrapped her arms around the nearest one – a reddish-coloured wolf with soft brown eyes. Shay grabbed the other, picked it up and hurried back towards the canvas wall of the kennel. Stella tried to follow but she wasn’t strong enough to lift the wolf, and the next moment another great wave crashed into the ship.
The wooden deck made a groaning sound, and Stella and the wolf fell back against the railings. For a moment she couldn’t tell what was up or down, what was sea and what was stars. Then a huge flash of lightning lit up the sky, making it almost as bright as daylight, and a cold, foaming wave reached right over the side of the ship and tried to pluck her from the deck, drenching her in the process.
‘It’s okay,’ Stella gasped as the wolf whined and panted in her arms. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you. I won’t let go.’
She struggled back to her feet and took a lurching step in the direction of the kennel. Thunder broke overhead so loudly that it was almost like the sky was being cracked in two. The deck suddenly fell away from Stella’s feet as the ship took another plunge over the edge of a giant wave. She fell back, and this time she was higher than the railings and there was nothing to stop her from sailing right over them – out, out, out towards the sea.
As she flew over the side – beyond the point of no return – she couldn’t tell whether the roaring in her ears was from the pounding of the waves, or the crack of the thunder, or just the thrumming of her own blood beating against her eardrums. She heard Shay shout her name, but her jaw was too locked up with fear to call back. Her arms were still clamped tight around the wolf as she screwed up her eyes and tried to brace herself for the shock of the icy water hitting her skin; the terrible, black, greedy sucking of the ocean that would draw her right underneath the surface with the drowned men and the mermaids and the sunken pirate treasure.
Only it never came. Instead she landed with a crash and a thump on something solid. And then everything went unnaturally, eerily quiet. The wolf squirmed out of her grip and Stella sat up, trying to work out what was happening. Her back gave a twinge of protest but she seemed to be all in one piece. An oar clattered against her foot and she realised that she had landed in one of the lifeboats.
‘Are you all right down there?’
Stella looked up and saw Shay peering over the railings at her.
‘I think so,’ she called back.
‘Thank the stars! And Kayko?’
‘Who?’
‘The wolf.’
‘She’s okay too.’
‘Man, when I saw you go flying over those railings I thought you’d had it for sure! Look, please don’t start crying or anything – I’ll have you up from there in a jiffy.’
‘I have no intention of crying,’ Stella replied, feeling quite indignant at the suggestion. ‘What happened to the storm anyway? Is it over?’
Shay hesitated, then shook his head and said, ‘It’s not over.’
‘Then how come it’s so quiet?’
It had completely stopped raining. There wasn’t even a puff of wind – just a strange heavy feeling in the air, as if the sky was pressing down on her.
‘It’s the Eye,’ Shay said.
‘The what?’
‘The Eye of the storm,’ Shay said. ‘Look there.’
He pointed down into the water and Stella craned her neck over the side of the lifeboat. She couldn’t work out what she was seeing at first but then, suddenly, she gasped. Where she had expected to see only dark waves, there was a huge great eye staring up at her, shining silver in the moonlight. It was easily the most enormous eye Stella had ever seen. The pupil alone was wider than she was tall – a deep, dark black, the colour of strange and terrible secrets. The silvery iris rippled like water, and gigantic eyelashes, as thick as a man, reached right up out of the sea to brush against Stella’s lifeboat.
‘Great Scott!’ she muttered, staring down, torn between fascination and dread. There was something almost hypnotising about that eye, something that made it hard to look away.
‘We don’t have much time. Hold tight, I’m going to pull you up,’ Shay called from the deck, already tugging at the ropes.
Stella looked back over the side. If she were
