The Deep Read Free

then.
    “Is that thing still working?” I ask
Tony.
    He shakes his head. “Henry disconnected most
of the solar panels hooked up to that VHF radio and mounted them on
an old bus, so we could drive back to Bodmin once we got back to
Penzance. He used the lightweight panels to power up the engine of
the old boat we used to sail to Tresco.”
    “Ah.” I have no idea what he just
said.
    In the meantime, Walt has walked over to a
table full of old books. His hands caress the covers reverently.
“Leia,” he calls out to me. “Come and have a look. Here’s the diary
that belonged to Luke’s dad.”
    I still have to get used to the fact that
Luke’s father is not Dark Father – he was a nice, normal guy,
trying to save his son by broadcasting one final message. A few
days ago, I read through the list of names in the ship’s manifest
together with Walt, and that’s how we found out that the boy who
once wrote our Book was called Lucas Walker. Maybe that’s why he
felt inspired to take on the name of his hero, Luke Skywalker, when
he started a new life.
    When I open the diary and stare at the last
page, I can’t help but shed a few tears. The words muddle together
and swim away. If only Lucas had known how much his father loved
him. If only we had known. I have to bring this book and
show it to the people in Newexter so they can see with their own
eyes that parents are not unreliable – that Luke should never have
turned his back on his father.
    “Can I keep this?” I ask Tony hesitantly.
    “Of course,” he says. “That diary should be
your new Book.”
    I slip the notebook into the pocket of my
pants. It’s not big – even smaller than our old Book with Luke and
Leia on the front cover – but its contents mean the world to
me.
    Walt puts his arm around my shoulders and
pulls me along to go outside, leaving the stifling heat of the port
building behind. We end up in the graveyard. Many of the grave
markers here are made of wood and have a strange shape – two beams
crossing each other. No idea what it means. Our graves are always
marked with flat, square tombstones. Silently, we follow William on
his way down the path, reading the names scribbled on the markers.
Some of them sound familiar. There’s a Toja, a Walter, a Tom. But
we also encounter names I have never seen before – Tamsyn, George,
Vincent.
    William comes to a stop next to a small
marker leaning against a tree. “Walt,” he whispers. “Here she is.
Mary’s mother.”
    My eyes flash to the name on the tombstone
shaped like a cross. “Jenna Whitford,” I read out loud. The person
all those people in Hope Harbor were waiting for without knowing
it. Mary’s mother – the black-haired woman who transformed into a
goddess for the Hope Harborers as the years passed. We also found
Mary’s family name on the list in the manifest.
    “So here she is,” Walt states, a bit sadly.
“Annabelle. Our savior.” He touches the wood of the grave marker as
if to affirm his words.
    “Shall we put some flowers on her grave?” I
propose, taking his hand.
    Walt looks up, a gentle smile around his
lips. “Yeah, let’s. White and yellow ones, just like we do at home.
And I want you to read a passage from the diary. Like a kind of
tribute.”

    And so we spend our first hour on the Other
Side by visiting our own past.

3 – Leia

    When Tony said his friend had put the old
radio solar panels on the roof of a bus, I had no idea what he was
talking about, obviously. And now that I’ve seen Henry’s invention
in action, the enormous vehicle is still a big mystery to me. It
has wheels, just like our carriages, but it’s not cow-drawn. And
yet, it moves.
    Tony has settled into the front seat of the
bus and is currently driving it around the square in front of the
port building, to prove to our people that it’s perfectly safe. To
turn the vehicle, he uses a kind of steering wheel similar to the
ship’s wheel on the Explorer .
    “How is that possible?” I