The Glory Walk
By Lynne Roberts
Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts
ISBN 978-1-927241-06-6
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Contents
1. Life is no Picnic
2. Space Monsters
3. Aquarius Base
4. Fair Exchange
5. Whirling Whirbles
6. Meeting the Master
7. Spurls and Stitches
8. Losing Hope
9. Back in Time
10.Floating and Flying
11.Friends at Last
Chapter 1. Life Is No Picnic
‘Slow down, Kate, and let Phoebe catch up with you,’ called Phillip. ‘She doesn’t know the tracks the way you do.’
Kate ground her teeth in frustration. ‘Oh, I mustn’t get ahead of Feeble,’ she muttered savagely. ‘I can’t walk at the speed I want to. I have to wait for her.’ She crossed her arms and stood stock still on the bush track, tapping a foot impatiently as she waited for her step-sister to reach her. ‘I’ll give her until the count of ten.’
Kate had reached seven when Phoebe rounded the bend and walked calmly up beside her. She was cool and unruffled in a clean white T-shirt and jeans. Her blonde hair was neatly tied back in a ponytail and she wasn’t even out of breath. Kate felt this was grossly unfair. She gave a despairing look at her own rumpled T-shirt. It had once been white but many washes later it was a creamy pink, the legacy of being washed with a pair of red socks, and it was decidedly grubby. Kate had tied her own brown hair in pigtails that morning but she could feel wisps of escaped hair sticking damply to her forehead. Without speaking, she began walking up the track again.
The track was steep. Not so steep as to be classified as a climb, but certainly a walk that made the back of Kate’s calves ache the higher she went.
‘This is a stupid idea anyway,’ Kate said moodily, but Phoebe didn’t bother answering. Kate sighed to herself as she quickened her pace, determined to be the first to reach the top of the hill. If it hadn’t been for Phoebe doggedly walking behind her, she might even have enjoyed it. It had been ages since she had been up here. She and her father used to go tramping regularly after her mother died. They would pack a picnic lunch and her father’s sketch book and head off for the day. Her father would find a spot that appealed to his artistic eye and begin the rough outline of one of his paintings, sketching in the background and filling pages with details he would use later. Things such as a rock covered with patterns of moss or the pattern of light and shade dappling a tree trunk beneath a canopy of branches. Kate would sail leaf boats in trickles of streams or crawl into hollows beneath fallen trees and pretend she was a forest fairy living in a leafy house. She collected leaves and pieces of bark and even twisted twigs and bore these treasures home at the end of the day. But those days were gone since her father had re-married and she had to suffer the unwanted burden of a sister.
‘It might not have been so bad if she had been a heap younger,’ Kate thought sadly. ‘Or even a whole heap older.’
But to her dismay, Phoebe was the same age. The brief hope that they might have been friends was extinguished the first time they net. Her admittedly grudging overtures were met with polite but definite rebuttal. Phoebe was remote and uninterested in anything that Kate did. Her slim long-legged build was in complete contrast to Kate’s more solid dumpiness. But the worst part, as far as Kate was concerned, was that she was expected to share her bedroom with Phoebe.
‘Flaming Feeble,’ she muttered under her breath.
Kate had accepted it as inevitable when her father said he was marrying Anna, and that she and Phoebe would be living with them. She liked Anna and she and her Dad had been going out for six months during which time her father had been back to his old cheerful self again.
‘Is Phoebe having the studio?’ she had asked.
Her father looked at her in blank amazement.
‘Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea? That’s where I do my painting. Phoebe will be sharing your room.’
‘What?’ howled Kate. ‘She can’t. It’s my room. It’s not big enough, anyway.’
‘It’s plenty big enough,’ her father said briskly. ‘You’ve always had a spare bed in it for friends to stay so it won’t make any difference.’
‘But friends are different,’ Kate wailed. ‘I need my privacy. I don’t want to share. Why don’t you give her the studio and paint somewhere else, or why doesn’t she stay with her own father.’
She knew she was being unreasonable. Her father explained, patiently to begin with, that the sale of his paintings plus the part time job he did at the Gallery did not make enough money to buy a bigger house. He needed the studio as it had the right light for his work, and that meant that Kate and Phoebe would have to share a room.
Kate protested. She screamed and sulked, loudly and obviously in turns. Her father quickly lost his temper and started yelling back.
‘I won’t hear another word about it. You will share your room with Phoebe and that is final.’
None of this was calculated to make Kate see Phoebe in the light of anything other than an intruder after that. How Phoebe felt about it she didn’t know and didn’t care. They shared a room like strangers forced into a prison cell together, avoiding eye contact and barely speaking to each other. Kate pointedly marked a line across the room by arranging furniture along it and making it clear that this was her territory. Not that it was hard to spot. Kate’s side of the room was an untidy jumble of unwashed clothing and half read books. Phoebe’s side was neat and feminine. An assortment of teddies in frilly dresses and ribbons sat on her bed while a collection of fashion magazines that her mother worked for as a designer was stacked neatly on the bookshelf. Kate would have loved to have looked at these but she would have died rather than admit it.
Anna was very hurt by Kate’s attitude. In the early days, before she married Kate’s father, they had got on well. Kate had been thrilled by Anna’s glamorous job and happy to accept any tips on fashion that Anna could give her. But with the arrival of Phoebe everything changed. Kate felt betrayed. She decided that Anna had not been honest with her and should have told her about Phoebe right from the start. She conveniently overlooked the fact that Anna had told her she had a daughter and that she was staying with her father in another town. Anna had been working on a temporary assignment but when this became permanent Phoebe came to join her.
The adults decided to let the girls sort things out between themselves and were reigned to a brief period of initial hostility. But Kate had decided she was never going to accept Phoebe and from that moment on they existed in a state of mutual antipathy.
‘It’s always me who has to make the sacrifices,’ thought Kate as she set as fast a pace as she was capable of, willing Phoebe to give up through exhaustion. But Phoebe toiled silently behind her while Kate’s breath came in short pants and she grew hotter and sweatier. She frowned as she thought back on the past few months. Anna had asked Kate nicely to look after Phoebe when she started at Kate’s school.
‘It’s always hard being the new kid, so if you can introduce Phoebe to your friends it will be much easier for her.’
Kate snorted as she remembered that. It was easy for Phoebe all right. Phoebe immediately became part of the ‘in’ group; friends with Emma and Naomi who Kate had tried for years to g
et close to. Everyone liked Phoebe. The teachers were impressed with her work and how neatly she set out her assignments. She was one of the first to be picked for teams in PE when they played netball or cricket. She joined the school choir and sang sweetly as a soprano while Kate’s strong alto voice was frantically hushed by Mrs Coles the conductor.
Within three months, Phoebe was well on the way to being one of the most popular girls in the class while Kate seethed with resentment and redoubled her efforts to make her feel unwanted. Today’s picnic was an attempt by Anna and Phillip to have a family activity.
‘There’s a wonderful view from the top,’ Phillip had said. ‘There is quite a big flat area up there so the girls can run around while I do some sketches of a waterfall a little lower down.’
‘Just like dogs,’ thought Kate. ‘We can run around chasing our tails until they call us again.’ She scowled. She had privately decided to set off in front and hope that Phoebe got lost on one of the many tracks criss-crossing the main route. This cunning plan was thwarted by Phillip who was determined the girls should stay together.
Kate put on a last spurt of speed as she saw the gnarled kahikatea tree that stood at the end of the track. She stepped out onto the grassy expanse as Phoebe strolled out beside her. The view really was magnificent; even Kate had to grudgingly admit that. Stretched out below them was the bush covered hillside, while way down on the plain were farmhouses dotted beside long roads that wound like ribbons across the valley. A cluster of buildings marked the town, while beyond that was the sea stretching mistily into the distance until it merged with the sky. More hills, or rather mountains, rose behind them in the distance, dark and forbidding with touches of snow on their crests. Smaller hills rose beside the plateau they were standing on and marched away in seemingly never-ending undulations.
Marking the summit was a lookout point; a wooden bench seat beside a circular metal plate set into the ground. On the observatory plate were marked the various points of interest that could be seen from the lookout, while the outer edge had had a series of engraved arrows marked with the distance to far-off countries. Kate walked carefully onto the plate and stood in the absolute centre. When she was little she used to close her eyes and turn around and see which country she was pointing to. Then she would pretend that was where she was living. While her father drew his sketches she would hold imaginary bullfights if she was in Spain, being the bull and the matador in turns, or play at Indians sneaking up on unsuspecting wagon trains.
‘Is there a better view from there?’ asked Phoebe, stepping onto the metal plate beside Kate.
This intrusion was more than Kate could bear. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone!’
Three months of frustration boiled up inside her. ‘I hate you,’ she screamed. ‘Why don’t you go away?’
She grasped Phoebe’s shoulders and began to shake her. There was a crack of lightning and a sound like metal being torn apart as the entire plateau began to heave in shuddering jerks.
‘Earthquake,’ thought Kate wildly, and found herself clutching Phoebe for support as a jolt larger than the others threw her to the ground. There was a period of bright light and the feeling of not being able to breathe properly. Kate gasped for air as suddenly there was a tingling feeling like getting an electric shock and the world went black.