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Chapters (20)
  1. Dedication
  2. Chapter 1
  3. Chapter 2
  4. Chapter 3
  5. Chapter 4
  6. Chapter 5
  7. Chapter 6
  8. Chapter 7
  9. Chapter 8
  10. Chapter 9
  11. Chapter 10
  12. Chapter 11
  13. Chapter 12
  14. Chapter 13
  15. Chapter 14
  16. Chapter 15
  17. Chapter 16
  18. Firebird Lighthouse
  19. Author's Note
  20. Lighting the Way

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.

Chapter 6

6

AROUND THE ISLAND