Raffie Island (book two in the Portal Series)

Of Maps and Things (chapter one)

 ‘Do you think today’s trip through the portal will be as scary as yesterday?’ Laura whispered to her brother Max. She was mindful of not waking their parents.

‘Yesterday wasn’t all scary! The rainbow corices and breezlings made it kind of wonderful,’ Max mumbled through a mouthful of cereal, nodding as he remembered the taste of the rainbow ice and the feel of the breeze wafting over his face.

‘True but those sluggers…’

As Laura and Max had found out, sluggers are quite a bit larger than your average household drinking glass, though they are indeed exactly the colour of milk. The albino slugs had a very nasty temperament and Laura, Max, the rainbow corices and Oscar had run into a spot of bother with them on their last trip to Realand.

Laura shuddered as she looked at the milk, changed her mind and put the carton back in the fridge. She poured herself a glass of orange juice instead.

‘It’s really important that we stock up Oscar’s salt stores today,’ Max reminded his sister. His toy crab morphed from a hand sized soft toy into a giant walking, talking version of itself once they went through the portal.

‘Well that’s why we’re going to go to Raffie Island next time. Instead of getting to the salt beach by going through the canopy forest in Realand, I mean,’ Laura said as she saw Max open his mouth to disagree. ‘Oscar told me that means we can be sure of avoiding the sluggers completely.’

‘I wonder how we get to Raffie Island? Use the portal to Realand d’you think?’ Max’s curls bounced as he bent his head down to take another bite of his cereal.

‘No idea! Oscar didn’t say, did he?’

‘No, he just said don’t forget to bring him.’

Max and Laura thought for a while, their chewing of breakfast the only noise until Max said, ‘Let’s look in the book of magic words and see if it says.’ Max smiled proudly as he remembered the good job he had done with his top-secret pen to make the blurry words readable. 

~

 ‘Nothing here about Raffie Island is there?’ Laura said after they had read each page carefully. She pushed the book away from her, sat up and pulled her bent knees towards her until she could rest her chin on them.

Max shook his head and began rummaging in their dad’s box of broken things.

‘Shhhhh…’ Laura reminded him. She scratched at her legs where her hanging hair tickled and then gathered it up into the hair grip she took from around her wrist.

Max nodded and tried to be quieter. He stood up with a rolled up piece of paper in his hand and a triumphant look on his face.

‘A treasure map and a gold coin!’ he said, sitting on the carpet beside Oscar. He smoothed his hand over Oscar’s red fuzz then unrolled the map, holding it up to get a better look.

Laura twisted the final plait into her hair then kneeled down beside Max. ‘Why are the footsteps leading away from the treasure chest?’

‘I don’t know. Mind out for Oscar.’

‘He can’t feel anything Max, he’s just a toy when we’re on this side of the portal!’

‘He’s not just a toy!’ Max glared at Laura who smiled an apology and ran a finger along Oscar’s soft front claws before raising an eyebrow.  Max ignored her, placed the map on the carpet and tried to smooth out the paper, which kept rolling up. ‘It’s a funny sort of paper,’ he said, as he smoothed it with his fingers.

Laura touched it.

‘Feels more like thin bark, y’ano like from those trees in Cobden Park where it hangs off the trunk in places?’

Laura placed a hand on either side of the top of the map to help hold it open.

‘Yeah, it’s just like that stuff!’ Max put Oscar and the coin, which he could now see was just a circle of chocolate wrapped in gold coloured foil, on the spot where the paper was a bit torn on the bottom edge, and then held the bottom corners open, frowning as he tried to make sense of the crazy map.

The footsteps were definitely moving away from the treasure chest towards a large beach on an island labelled “Raffie”. The beach looked like it was covered in red, blue, green and yellow hundreds and thousands. There was a brown circle under a clump of trees on the island with the word “STINK BUGS!!” next to them. Behind the trees was a flat-topped hill. At the far edge of the map Max could see the canopy tree forest.

‘Laura, look!’ Max pointed to the spot on the map. ‘Raffie Island must be part of Realand because those look like the canopy trees. Look at the beach, it’s all rainbow coloured like the corices and the speckle plants.’

‘Yes, I think so too! Maybe the salt beach Oscar wanted to go to yesterday is close to Raffie Island? Which would be why he didn’t tell us how to get there because we just have to step into the box of broken things portal?’

Max eased the map out from under Laura’s fingers. He rolled it up, and then, together with the chocolate coin, he shoved it into the side pocket of his shorts. Picking up Oscar he said, ‘What are we waiting for?’

They stood up and stepped into the portal.