Read The Dark Light for Free Online

box.
    ‘Careful!’ Father shouts. He seems really angry about something, I’m not sure what. In the prayer meeting this morning one of the congregation had a prophecy. A passage from the Book of Samuel about David and Goliath, in which David hurls a stone at the giant and kills him. There was lots of discussion about its meaning, but then we had to go. The pastor said he would pray for it to be revealed, but it seems to have made Father nervous and anxious to get back to the island.
    When the hold and half of the small cabin are packed with our stuff, we stand on the harbour road pulling on our waterproof clothes.
    ‘The time is soon at hand, Brother,’ the pastor says to Father as he shakes his hand. ‘I’ll be seeing you in the glory before I see you here again.’
    Father nods, but he doesn’t seem too happy about it. ‘Well, I hope so.’
    ‘Come on. Let’s not be pessimistic.’
    I wonder what’s happened, but when Father catches me watching he shoos me away. ‘Go on, Rebekah, get ready.’
    We wear bright red trousers and coats that smell of mildew from the boatshed. I have to roll the skirt of my dress up into a bunch around my middle in order to get the trousers on. There was some discussion about us being allowed to wear trousers at all, but they decided in the end that there was no alternative, although Hannah did suggest that they had solutions for these things in the Middle East, but as that would have meant buying clothes from the Internet it was decided that waterproofs would be allowed just for the length of the boat journey. Gulls circle above us, and rigging clangs as the boats in the harbour bob on the rising tide.
    The pastor drives off in the van and we all jump onboard, Terry unhitches the rope from its moorings and the boat slips quickly into the tide and out of the harbour to the open sea. I huddle in the cabin with Hannah on top of some of the catering tins of sugar and flour that Terry has lashed to the sides to stop them falling over. Alex won’t sit with us; she insists on standing outside with Father and Terry.
    ‘I want to see where I’m going,’ she says, pulling up the hood of her windcheater and zipping it so I can see only her eyes. ‘How long does it take?’ she asks.
    I shrug. ‘Six hours,’ I say.
    Immediately the boat is in the open sea it starts to dip and roll in the swell. It’s much choppier than on the way over, in the calm, when the water was so smooth and clear it was almost a lake. The tins shift underneath me and I have to grab on to the ropes to stop myself from slipping off.
    Before long we are out of sight of the mainland; the cliffs and the mountains disappear into the murk behind us, and ahead nothing but the folds of the sea. The engine drones against the hiss and roar of the ocean as it slams against the boat. The waves are tipped with white foam, which after a while become hypnotic as we lurch in between the peaks and troughs, and I don’t notice that Alex is sick until she’s bending over the side of the boat, hurling into the spray.
    I go out to her, the full force of the wind a shock after the shelter of the cabin.
    ‘Come inside,’ I shout, grabbing on to her arm. But she shrugs me off.
    ‘Please make it stop,’ she says. Her face is pale as milk; she turns away from me and heaves again. ‘Haven’t you got any tablets or anything?’
    Terry clambers around the edge towards us holding a yellow plastic bucket. ‘You need to sit inside, cariad .’
    When we finally get her inside the cabin, she sits on the floor with the bucket between her knees. When I offer her a drink of water she just shakes her head and tells me to go away.
    Fine then, I think, be like that. I go back outside.
    All there is to look at is the sea: white foam churning under the mist that makes the horizon close in around us. Sometimes in the angles of the waves I’m sure I can see other things: the dark shapes of whales, other boats, shadows that fill me with dread. There